The Apostrophe Thief (11 page)

“Well, the men start across, but then Kong comes back. The hero gets away … what's his name?”

“Bruce Cabot,” said Augie.

“Right. Bruce Cabot makes it to the other side, but the rest of the men are still crawling across when Kong picks up one end of the tree and starts rotorating it, back and forth, back and forth.”

“And the men all fall off,” Marian said in an attempt to hurry him along.

“That's a great scene,” Kirby announced feelingly.

“
But,
” Luke went on, his eyes gleaming, “that's the point where Cooper shot another scene. Merian Cooper, he directed. The scene showed that one of the men survives the fall, for all the good it does him. Because down at the bottom of the gorge is this hugemongous hairy spider, big as a two-story building—and the spider has the survivor for lunch. But Cooper himself cut the scene from the final version. Claimed it was too frightening.”

“Wow,” Marian said appreciatively.

Augie gave a sarcastic little laugh. “Yeah, it makes a good story. But it never happened.”

“Yes, it did, Augie,” Luke said testily. “It's been documentaried. The only print was thrown away back in thirty-two, thirty-three, whenever the hell it was. But it's been documentaried.”

“Docu
ment
ed, not documentaried,” Augie snapped, getting a little testy himself.

“Whatever. But you can check it out.”

“The point is,” Augie said to Marian, “that no print exists
now
. Ernie's a dreamer. Chasing off to California after a nonexistent scene? Sheesh.”

Marian kept a poker face and prayed that Kevin Kirby hadn't caught it. But while he was slow, he wasn't that slow. “Ernie?” He looked from Augie to Luke to Marian and back to Augie again. “Who said anything about Ernie?”

The color drained out of Augie's face when he realized his gaffe. “Why, uh, you did, Rocky. You said somebody named Ernie had a line on the hairy-spider scene and—”

Kirby's handsome face had tightened. “I did not. I didn't mention any names at all. What the hell's going on here?”

Marian made an attempt to save the situation. “Yes, you did say ‘Ernie'—I heard you. Didn't you hear him, Luke?”

Kirby jumped up. “First Vasquez, and now Ernie! What the hell?” He jerked away from the booth and hurried out of the bar.

Luke sighed. “Nice going, Augie.”

Aaarrrrrghh!
Marian screamed mentally. But she said nothing; it was a risk you ran when you worked with civilians.

“Oh jeez, I'm sorry!” Augie whacked his forehead with the palm of his hand. “Stupid, stupid, stupid!”

Luke nodded solemnly. “You should have been more precautious.”

“Me and my big mouth! Marian, I'm sorry. Look, let me out—maybe I can catch him.”

Marian slid out of the booth and let Augie go, knowing Kevin Kirby was already out of reach. Luke mumbled something about helping Augie and followed him. When they were both gone, she sat back down and stared disconsolately at the empty beer bottles.

“Well, that was an invigorating exercise in futility,” said a familiar voice. “One Augie Silver needs a few lessons in discretionary interrogation techniques, wouldn't you say?”

Marian leaned around the end of her seat to look into the next booth. “Oh, that's cute. What did you think you could learn by eavesdropping that you couldn't hear sitting with us?”

“Nothing.” Holland got up and joined Marian in her booth. “But maintaining my role of naysayer while you were moving in for the kill would have put undue strain on the negotiations. By the way, where did your friend Luke learn to speak English—Albania? Too bad Rocky got away. I assume you have his real name and address?”

Marian said yes. “But there's no point in bringing him in—we couldn't hold him. And I can't even take him in for questioning. He'd get spooked and warn the other two.”

“And Ernie Nordstrom's off in California looking for hairy spiders.” A mocking laugh. “You were right. These people
do
love what they're doing. And they're thoroughly convinced of its importance. Shock rock, ancient movies, and Elvis. God bless America.”

Marian grinned at him. “Oh, I don't know. I'd kind of like to see that hairy-spider scene myself.”

“Sometimes you worry me. What are you going to do now?”

“Well, I lost the hunk, so I guess I'll go after the ponytail. At The Esophagus next week, whatever The Esophagus is.”

“Probably an East Village rat hole,” Holland said. “Does this mean you'll be taking the weekend off, just like normal people?”

“Looks like it.” She smiled at the thought. “Like normal people.”

The Saturday night audience in the Broadhurst Theatre was utterly, pin-drop silent for about ten seconds—and then came an explosion of applause and cheering that rocked the rafters. It went on and on, as if the members of the audience couldn't say loudly enough how much they liked the play. The same thing had happened the other time Marian saw
The Apostrophe Thief
, on opening night. It had been exciting then; it was exciting now.

Even poker-faced Holland was clapping his hands. When the curtain calls were over and the hubbub began to die down, he turned to Marian and said, “I want to meet Abigail James.”

Not a word about Kelly. “If she's here,” Marian said. “Let's go backstage and see.”

The play had been running only a little more than a week, so there was no noticeable lessening in the crowd of well-wishers backstage; the only difference was that camera crews no longer prowled about looking for celebrities. Kelly's dressing room was packed, as was Ian Cavanaugh's. Abigail James was there, standing off to the side and talking to two earnest interviewers, both of whom were thrusting microphones into her face.

“… he was partially right,” the playwright was saying. “It's when we allow the
minutiae
of life to be stolen from us—and what could be more minute than an apostrophe?—that we lose control over the quality of life in general. But I meant the title in a literal sense as well … in the area of language, that is. The degeneration of language is typically a good indicator of the erosion of standards in other areas of life. For example, the word ‘Halloween' used to have an apostrophe in it. What happened to that apostrophe? Where did it go? Carelessness concerning the use of apostrophes just happened to be the example I fixed on, but it could be anything.”

“Would you say the degeneration of language is an omen of erosion to come in the rest of life?”

Abigail James appeared to think. “No, I would say it follows. The erosion has already begun.”

“Can we stop this degeneration of language?”

“I doubt it. All we can do is warn each other. I know no way to enforce linguistic vigilance.”

“But if there were a way, would the effect be retroactive? Could restoring linguistic standards lead to the restoration of other, unrelated life-quality standards?”

The playwright's eyes glazed over. Then she turned and looked directly at Marian. “Sergeant Larch! How delightful you could come!” To the interviewers: “You'll have to excuse me. An old friend.” The two turned off their tape recorders, murmured their thanks, and went hunting for other game. Abigail James looked at Marian contritely. “Please forgive me for using you to end that farce, Sergeant. I don't know how much longer I could have kept a straight face.”

Marian shook her head in mock disapproval. “Is this the same Abigail James who once told me she paired the words ‘apostrophe' and ‘thief' for the sole reason that she liked the way they sounded together? That the title of the play has absolutely no meaning at all?”

The other woman laughed, and even looked a little embarrassed. “Did you happen to see the Friday
Times
? Some idiot wrote a piece about how the apostrophe is the most microcosmic of microcosms, and ‘thief' is a metaphor for anything or anyone who destroys by means of attrition. The piece was pompous and pretentious and utterly nuts. I thought it was hilarious. But all day today I've had people like those two
seriously
questioning me about it. And no matter what nonsense I spout, they tape it or write it down as if it were Holy Writ.”

Holland spoke up. “And some earnest theater student in west Texas will read those very words … and make them the basis of a graduate thesis.”

“Alas. And that's my contribution to knowledge.”

“No. That's your contribution to
education
.”

“Ah. They aren't the same, are they? Sergeant, introduce me to this man.”

Marian did; soon Holland and the playwright were deep in a discussion of the latter's use of minor characters to “shadow” the major conflict of the play. Marian left them to it and tried working her way toward Kelly's dressing room. She got as far as the door but had to stop; no room inside.

She turned away and resigned herself to waiting. After a moment she caught a glimpse of Leo Gunn doing whatever it was stage managers did after a performance. Marian amused herself for a while watching the postperformance performance being given by a young woman who played Kelly's kid sister in the play. She was putting on quite a show—flirting, laughing gaily, playing the sweet young innocent to the hilt. She had an odd first name … Xandria, that was it. And young Xandria was having the time of her life, holding court backstage at the Broadhurst Theatre.
Well, why not?
Marian thought. She was young, pretty, and in a hit Broadway play—why not show off a little?

Suddenly Marian found herself caught in wall-to-wall people; evidently Kelly and Ian Cavanaugh both had shooed the rest of their visitors out at the same time. The last one out of Kelly's dressing room was John Reddick. He came out laughing and shaking his head. “I should have known she'd rope you into coming along,” he said to the man right ahead of him. “One dancing partner isn't enough! Where does she get her energy? She gave two performances today, she has one tomorrow—and she wants to go dancing!”

The other man said simply, “Be thankful.”

“Oh, I am, I am!” Then Reddick spotted Marian. “Well, hello, Sergeant. Gene, this is the police detective investigating our burglary, Sergeant, er, Birch.”

“Larch.”

An exaggerated sigh. “I knew it was something arboreal. Sergeant Larch, this is our producer, Gene Ramsay.”

Ramsay was monochromatic: tan suit, tan hair, almost the exact shade as his face. Even the irises of his eyes looked tan. They both muttered
Gladtameetcha
, and Marian said, “You're going dancing? Kelly loves to dance.”

“But I don't,” Ramsay said. “John, if you were a better dancer, I wouldn't have to do this.”

The director placed one hand flat on his chest. “I try. God knows I try. Is it my fault I was born with two left feet? Besides, it's the producer's job to keep his star happy. Oh—there's Leo. Excuse me, folks, I have to see him about something.” He hurried off after the stage manager.

Marian smiled. “Seems to me he's not exactly lacking in energy either.”

Gene Ramsay grunted. “John's been rejuvenated. He used to wear the rest of us out, he was so go-go-go all the time. But then he got a little older, as we all did, and everyone breathed a sigh of relief when John started slowing down. But now—” He laughed.

“But now?”

“Now he's back to go-go-go again, worse than ever.”

“Hm. Is he sharing the mystery of his newfound youth or is he keeping it to himself?”

“Oh, no mystery. John's not the first director to fall in love with his star, and he won't be the last. Nothing like it to get the old juices flowing again.”

“What?” Marian wasn't sure she'd heard right. “What did you say?”

But before he could answer, Marian heard her name being sung out in bell-like tones. Ian Cavanaugh stood posed in the doorway of his dressing room, drawing the eyes of everyone backstage. “Sergeant, did you come to tell me you've recovered my shaving mug?”

Marian saw Abigail James laugh and turn back to her conversation with Holland. “Not yet,” Marian said. “But we do have a line on the thieves.”

“You do?” Gene Ramsay said.

Cavanaugh dropped his pose and came over to her. “You mean there's a real chance of getting our things back? Frankly, I never expected to hear that.”

“Frankly, I never expected to say it. I don't want to get your hopes up, but we do have a shot at recovering your things—including the scripts.”

The actor waved a hand. “They're no longer urgent—we have our new scripts marked now. Of course, Abby always worries about play piracy. But I'll be glad to see that old shaving mug again.” He raised his voice slightly. “Abby—I'll be ready to leave in about ten minutes.” She waved acknowledgment.

When Cavanaugh went back to his dressing room, Marian turned to ask Gene Ramsay what he'd meant, but the producer was no longer there. John Reddick in love with Kelly? She went over and knocked on Kelly's door. “It's me.”

Kelly said to come in; Marian spent the next few minutes telling her friend how great her performance had been that evening, with Kelly encouraging her every step of the way. Both women were laughing—and it hit Marian with a shock that she felt happy. What had happened to her depression?

“Lock the door, will you?” Kelly asked. “I don't want someone walking in on me while I'm changing.” She slipped out of the sparkly jacket she wore in the last scene and hung it up.

Marian went over for a closer look at the garment. “Is this a copy of the Sarah Bernhardt jacket?”

“Not an exact copy. The costumers had to come up with something fast, and they were working from photographs instead of designs. Gene Ramsay … our producer?”

“I just met him.”

“Gene got the jacket at an auction in Paris. I think he meant it to go straight to the theater costume museum, that one on Fifth? But … do you remember that rough period I was going through during rehearsal? That time I was thinking I was just a television actor, that I'd ruin the play for everybody?”