The Decoy (2 page)

'Fine,' Claire says. She's dropped the accent now. In her real voice, which is British, she asks the client, as she always asks, 'Are you sure you want to hear this? Sure you wouldn't rather go home and make it work?'

And the woman says, as they always say, 'I want to know.'

Claire hands her the machine. 'The bottom line is, he's a regular user of prostitutes. Not just when he's away, either. He talked about paying up to five hundred dollars a time back in Atlanta.'

The wife's eyes fill with tears. Henry puts his arm around her.

'I'm sorry,' Claire says awkwardly. She slides out of the limo. Henry passes her an envelope with his free hand. Four hundred dollars. Not bad for an hour's gig.

As he hands it to her he whispers, 'Did he give you any?'

'Uh-uh. I left him in the lobby. It's all on the disc. I swear.'

'You know I'd know if you were lying.'

'I know you would.'

He nods, satisfied, and she puts her hand in the air for a cab.

===OO=OOO=OO===

Claire Rodenburg. Almost twenty-five years old, and almost beautiful. Eye colour, blue; hair colour, flexible; occupation — well, if you looked in her passport you'd read
actress,
but in truth that was a little flexible as well.

She hadn't realized, when she'd boarded her cut-price flight from Gatwick six months earlier, how difficult it would be to get work — any work — in the States. Used to the relaxed attitude of British employers to casual workers, she had instead discovered a labour market where enthusiastic students were two a penny — or rather, a dime a dozen — where you couldn't open a bank account without a social security number, or rent a room without a reference from your bank.

She'd managed to cobble together a patchwork of part-time jobs, sprinting from her rush-hour cover in a Midtown deli to a bar on the Lower East Side, where the owner cared more about the way his staff looked than their paperwork. But he had an inexhaustible supply of pretty girls to choose from, and it didn't make sense to let any of them stay too long. That way, if the IRS or Immigration came checking, he could claim the new girl's forms were in the post. After three months he told Claire, not unkindly, that it was time to move on.

She was blowing everything she earned on seeing shows, not the dumbed-down blockbusters or endless Euro-musicals that played to packed houses on Broadway, but the smaller, performance-orientated pieces at Circle in the Square and the Pyramid Club, getting to know the names of the best directors and casting agents.

The auditions advertised in
Variety
were only for chorus parts and extras, of course, but she had to start somewhere.

At her first audition the casting director asked her to stay behind. When everyone else had gone, she'd approached Claire thoughtfully. In her hand was the form every hopeful had to fill in before the session, giving their name, height, previous experience and agent.

'It says here you don't have an agent, honey,' the woman had purred.

'Not in this country. I had one back home.'

'I'd like you to meet a friend of mine. I think she might be interested in representing you.'

The agent, Marcie Matthews, had indeed been delighted to meet Claire. She'd taken her to lunch at Orso, an Italian restaurant in the middle of the theatre district, and thrown around the names of shows for which she could get Claire auditions, directors she must meet, film producers she would be perfect for.

Until she discovered Claire didn't have a work permit.

'Get out of here. No green card?'

'Does it really matter?'

'It does if you want to work,' Marcie had said bluntly.

'Isn't there anything I could do? Just to earn some money?'

'Sure. Table dancing, stripograms, nude modelling. What they call the glamour industry, though personally I don't imagine it's all that glamorous.' Marcie had waved a ringed hand dismissively. 'I don't get involved in that stuff, but I can give you the names of some people who do.'

'There's really nothing else?'

Marcie sighed. 'I shouldn't say this, but I've got a lot of friends in this business. Maybe I can slip you into a few things.' She held up her hand to forestall Claire's thanks. 'And voice-overs. The advertising people always want British accents. But it's going to be tough. If I was you, and if I really wanted to work in the States, I'd go right back home and apply for a card.'

Claire had shrugged.

'You want to stay in New York? Well, I don't blame you. But don't expect it to welcome you with open arms. The days when we embraced the huddled masses yearning to be free are long gone.'

Claire found herself another bar job and waited.

And waited.

There was a single voice-over, and an audition for a non-speaking part in a pop video. In the casting session she'd had to strip down to her underwear and mime riding on horseback. She didn't get the part.

Another month passed.

She'd met some other young aspiring actors by now, and was rooming with one of them, a friendly Texan called Bessie. Claire paid her in cash, which took care of the bank-account problem. Unfortunately, it didn't take care of the fact that she never had any cash in the first place.

Then she got a phone call from Marcie, asking her if she'd have a chat with an old friend of hers called Henry Mallory.

'I'll be honest with you,' the other woman had said on the phone. 'It's something you might not want to do. But the money is amazing and, well, I know you'd be good at it.'

Detective Frank Durban rides up in the elevator with the Lexington's manager, a pile of equipment in metal flight cases, a major crime scene search officer and a couple of tourists with subway maps tucked into their money belts, wet with snow.

It's the fourth load of equipment to go up, and the hotel manager is developing a twitch.

The silence is broken by one of the tourists, who wants to know what's going on. Are they shooting a movie?

And, in fact, it's not such a stupid notion, the logistics of a modern crime scene demanding much the same equipment as a film shoot: lights, cameras — both stills and video — playback monitors, fingerprint people with their little make-up cases tucked under their arms and a small army of technicians with walkie-talkies strapped to their belts.

'That's right,' the manager says nervously. 'A movie.'

Frank Durban lifts his eyes to the elevator's roof.

'Who's in it?' the man's wife asks. 'Anyone famous?'

The manager looks at Frank desperately, but Frank's inspecting the ceiling tiles.

'River Phoenix,' the manager blurts at last. The man's wife nods, impressed.

'He's dead,' Durban says under his breath.

'I mean, it's about River Phoenix,' the manager corrects himself. 'They're using a double.'

The lift stops at four and the couple get out. 'Need any extras?' the man asks, holding the door.

'He's really good,' the woman agrees. 'Go on, honey, do your Clint Eastwood.'

Durban sighs and looks at his watch ostentatiously.

Rattled, the manager flaps the tourist's fingers away from the elevator door. 'Have a good evening. I hope you enjoy your stay,' he snaps.

They ride up to the fifth in silence.

===OO=OOO=OO===

After she leaves the lawyer's wife, Claire tells the cab to take her to a theatre on 53rd and Broadway. Bessie, her roommate, has just opened in a musical, and Claire promised to drop by the cast party.

It isn't actually a first night, just a change of cast in a show that's already been running for two years. Since it's a sell-out, opportunities for self-expression are somewhat limited; even more limited than they usually would be, playing a singing, dancing sheep.

When Claire gets there the actors are standing around backstage, flushed with applause, and the place smells of make-up and scenery paint and spotlights, the peculiar addictive smell of a theatre. She pauses and breathes it all in.

For a brief moment a pang of longing stabs at her guts. This is the forbidden kingdom.

She pushes the feeling away. It's unfair to Bessie to get jealous on her big night. She finds her friend and gives her a hug of congratulation.

Bessie returns the hug a little absent-mindedly. She's still working, Claire sees, one of a group of young actors shamelessly flattering the director, a fat toad of a man whose jokes, surely, can't be half as funny as their laughter suggests. Claire leaves her to it. Bessie loves her like a sister, but when all's said and done, Claire's part of the competition.

She looks at her watch. The lawyer, pacing up and down in his suite at the Royalton, will just be getting a phone call to say his wife's downstairs.

'Hey, Claire,' a voice says.

It's Raoul Walsh, a guy she went out with a few times when she first came to New York. 'How's tricks?' he asks.

Is it her imagination, or does he give the word 'tricks' a subtle emphasis, a hint at its other meaning?

'Not bad,' she says. 'My agent's got me some voice-overs. And I'm auditioning for
Vanya
next week.'

'Really? I heard they gave the last part to Carol. Carol Reuben,' he says, looking over her shoulder and nodding at a passing acquaintance.

'Oh,' she says. 'I hadn't heard that.'

'Still, voice-overs, that's great. Really great.' He smiles at her, a plastic New York smile.

She thinks, He's a good enough actor to fake that better, if he wanted to.

'And how about your investigator friend,' he drawls. 'Still working for him?'

'Henry Mallory,' she says. 'Yes, sometimes.'

'Henry Mallory,' he says. His lips twitch. 'My God, Henry
Mallory.
I loved that guy when I was a kid. When he was in
Gumshoe.
Is he, you know, OK?' He mimes the gesture of drinking from a glass.

'Henry's fine,' she says wearily.

'Oh, well,' Raoul says, drifting away from her. 'I'll see you around, OK?'

===OO=OOO=OO===

It's true, Henry isn't even a real private detective. Once upon a time he played the part of an investigator in a television mini-series, from which his character was abruptly dropped. People said he'd been too drunk to read the cue cards.

Whatever the reason, he'd decided to change careers but not roles. He'd started a detective agency, a real one. There had been a court case once, long before her time, when the network had sued to stop him using the name of his character from the show.

Not surprisingly, matrimonial work is pretty much all he gets. That and missing pets.

===OO=OOO=OO===

All Marcie had told her on the phone was, 'Treat it as a go-see. If you get along with him, we'll talk some more. If you don't, it's just another wasted afternoon.'

Claire had taken the subway to the Lower East Side, and struggled with the grille of an ancient lift in a dilapidated office block. On the fourth floor there was a row of doors with company names in brown lettering, like something from an Edward Hopper painting. 'Sahid Import', 'Nutreen Clothing', 'Downey Insurance' and, finally, 'The Mallory Private Investigation Bureau'.

'I'm looking for Mr Mallory,' she'd said to the gaunt old man behind the desk.

'That's me,' he replied, swinging his feet stiffly onto the floor. His craggy face was still handsome, but his eyes were rheumy, the whites as yellow as his nicotine-stained fingers. 'And you must be the dame.'

'The dame?' Where she came from, dames were a part in pantomime.

'The dame who made the bishop kick a hole in a stained-glass window.'

She must have looked puzzled, because he'd laughed, a short, chesty bark. 'Don't they teach young actors anything these days?
Farewell My Lovely,
starring Dick Powell and Claire Trevor. All the best detective stories start with a dame.'

Suddenly she realized why the little room seemed so familiar. Henry Mallory had dressed his office like something out of a 1950s film noir. A heavy steel fan scythed smoke-filled air over a hatstand, a pre-war filing cabinet, a bentwood chair and a brown deal desk. The only things missing were a Bakelite phone and a fifth of bourbon, and, as she soon discovered, the latter was missing only because Henry generally kept his fifths in the wastebasket.

One thing she never discovered, though, was whether the props were for the benefit of the customers or the proprietor.

'Marcie said you were auditioning—' she began.

Henry shook his head. 'Uh-uh. Not auditioning. Auditioning means a hundred talented people made to feel like stale meat on a rack. This is more like… executive recruitment. You've been headhunted, Claire.'

'To do what?'

'To work for me.'

'As a
detective?
Listen, there must have been—'

'As an actress,' he interrupted. 'Marcie said you can act.'

She shrugged.

'But can you really?' he wondered aloud. His shoes swung up onto the desk again as he slouched back in the chair, looking at her with eyes that, despite being rheumy, were, she saw now, also bright with intelligence. 'Perhaps you can walk on a stage and do the things other actors do, all the little mannerisms and affectations that people call acting. But can you do it for real?' He gestured with his thumb in the direction of the street. 'Can you do it out there?'

'I've been acting professionally since I was fourteen.'

'Aha. A stage-school brat.'

'We weren't brats.'

'Takes one to know one.' This time the thumb jerked at his own chest. 'When I was fourteen I was being directed by Orson Welles.'

'You were in an
Orson Welles
movie?'

Henry winked and pushed the second chair at her with one of his feet. 'Take a seat,' he suggested, 'and I'll tell you about the time I was seduced by Audrey Hepburn.'

A week later, Claire sat in a quiet bar just off Central Park and allowed a businessman to tell her that his wife no longer attracted him. Afterwards, in a limo waiting just across the street, Henry handed her an envelope containing $500, and she handed the man's wife a Minidisc of their conversation.

Even in hindsight it seemed like a better deal than riding a horse in her underwear.