The Perfect Ghost (29 page)

“Miss, are you sure we can’t help you? Doctor Gerson will be free in fifteen minutes.”

Garrett got in trouble with the DA because he refused to give a DNA sample. When other men in Truro and Wellfleet and Eastham volunteered to help with the Forester investigation, Garrett refused.

The clinic burned. The records burned.

I stared up at the motherly face of the older receptionist. “My brother—that is, my boyfriend—” I lowered my eyes to my lap. “Um, do you think, uh, can you give me a rundown of the services you provide, um, for men?”

“Birth control, infertility, testicular cancer, and UTIs. That’s urinary tract infections.”

When I wrote, when I organized my writing, I thought of facts as beads, each a hard, round object, each complete in and of itself. Facts, like beads, need to be strung on thread of a certain length and composition, arranged in a particular order.

“Do you want to make an appointment for him?” the younger woman said impatiently.

Facts, like beads, can be manipulated, restrung, crafted into kaleidoscopic patterns. A dangling necklace of facts can be broken, with each isolated bead taking on a new and separate significance.

“Miss?”

“Uh, no, uh, that is—um, I’ll have to talk it over with him. Thank you. Thank you for your help.”

CHAPTER

forty-four

Tape 063

Sybilla Jackson

3/15/10

Teddy Blake:
Good morning, I have—

Sybilla Jackson:
I can’t believe Garrett actually wants me to talk, but then he knows I’m not the type to harbor a grudge. Still, I find myself surprised he didn’t send me the finished script, tell me exactly what I could and couldn’t say. Such a control freak, really, who could live with him?

TB
:
You did.

SJ:
Yes, for three years, almost four, wasn’t it? But we were apart so much of the time. I was traveling nonstop, making big money then, absolutely in demand, Rio one week, Milan the next, with a layover in Paris for a runway show. Those were my best years, really, and Garrett was such a lovely man for putting up with the hullaballoo. He wasn’t so much the big director then, but he was already leaving acting behind, turning the tables, which was so clever of him because he was a good actor, but he wasn’t going to be a star, just a flash in the pan, and then a has-been in a year or two, you know the kind. It’s a dog-eat-dog thing, acting, not that it’s any worse than modeling. In my business, you’re lucky if you get to be the flavor of the month. Actors have a teensy bit more time to develop a career. A model simply has a look, and if it’s your time, it’s your time.

TB:
He started writing screenplays when the two of you were together.

SJ:
We didn’t talk about work, really, we went to parties, and I went even if he refused to go. He had a bit of a dreary streak, to tell the truth. I always wanted to run out and play, and he was sometimes just a tiny bit stick-in-the-muddish, something about that dour New England background, that stuck-up theatrical family. He was overinvolved in his career. You tell him I said that. I know it all paid off, all that dreary work, but I certainly didn’t want to be stuck slaving with the ants when the grasshoppers were hosting a blowout.

TB:
Did he drink a lot then?

SJ:
Well, listen to you! Who said he ever drank a lot? I’m not talking about drugs and drink, dear, you always get in trouble for doing that, and I am the very soul of discretion. Except when I’m drinking, I suppose, but you’ve caught me cold stone sober. This isn’t exactly a party we’re having here.

TB:
Touché, and speaking of parties, you went to the Academy Awards with Malcolm when he won for the first time, didn’t you?

SJ:
God, do you remember my dress?

TB:
Tell me about it.

SJ:
Well, everybody wanted to dress me that year, because they all knew I’d be on the red carpet, front and center, and the competition was brutal. Malcolm felt quite overlooked in the brouhaha. Dior was phoning every day—Galliano, you know—and after Dior, then Versace. Both Armani and Marchesa were in the final four, and I desperately didn’t want to offend anyone because gowns were my absolute bread-and-butter then, because they wanted younger and younger talent for bathing suits, and makeup ads were going entirely celebrity, which was—and is—infuriating. I wanted to go with something risqué, cut down to here and up to there, and then, well, then Malcolm and I had a terrible fight and I thought the whole thing might turn to ashes and fall apart. I was devastated.

TB:
Did you argue often?

SJ:
Hardly at all. What’s the point, but I was so upset. It turned out to be nothing but a particularly ill-timed pregnancy scare. Nerves, you know, and I just wasn’t eating enough. And I wound up wearing Versace, and that gown became an international hit. Everyone copied it. You remember? A deep tangerine color, one shoulder, and slit to the top of the thigh?

TB:
Did you ever consider marriage, the two of you?

SJ:
Oh, if I’d gotten pregnant, he’d have married me in a flash. That was the deal. And I tried. I mean, I wasn’t opposed to the idea, but nothing ever happened. Beyond that scare. I remember I was angry with him at the time. I figured he’d gotten himself fixed. But then didn’t Claire go and prove me wrong?

CHAPTER

forty-five

RE: D’Arcy’s Garage

SENT BY: [email protected]

SENT ON: April 17

SENT TO: Paul Jericho, Chief of Police

Paul,

Stopped by D’Arcy’s, and guess who’s working for him? Remember that kid, Gary Blessing, with the scarred face? We used to have him and his dad in regular before you were made Chief. Kid would never talk, even though we figured his old man was beating him pretty bad. D’Arcy hired him five months ago, followed all the rules, ran a CORI on him. Kid’s got no police record, but his dad’s over in Plymouth, beat up a girlfriend evidently didn’t know about the code of silence.

Talked to Gary and he’s still real good at keeping his mouth shut. He was there, he had access to the lockup key, and he knew the wreck was in there. There’s no tape in the wreck now, and if Gary took it, I’d say there’s not much chance we’ll find out about it.

I might have him come down the station, see if that makes his tongue any looser, but I’d hate to get him fired over something might not be his fault. D’Arcy says he’s a real good mechanic.

Verizon records came in: Nothing out of the ordinary except a call to a legal firm in New York. Followed up and got to talk to Amory Russell, that lawyer guy everybody quotes, but turns out he’s a friend of Blake’s. I wonder about that tape.

Russell Snow, Detective Grade One

Dennis Port Police Department

One Arrow Point Way

Dennis Port, MA 02639

CHAPTER

forty-six

Fire extinguishers bloomed like scarlet flowers on the kitchen counter at the Big House and in the foyer of the Red House, which was filling rapidly with actors and stagehands, gaining in population nightly. Backstage at the Amphitheater, rows of extinguishers sat next to trunks filled with
Hamlet
props, plastic sacks of stage blood, and baskets of silk flowers.
NO SMOKING
signs took on a new prominence. Riggers were careful to move at least fifty feet from the stage before lighting up, gathering behind a sheltering dune and hurriedly snuffing out butts when the stage manager approached.

The sun warmed the stone benches in the bowl-shaped auditorium, where I huddled in the spot designated Seat P-17, a forty-eight-dollar ticket in season. Carpenters, riggers, and most stagehands were banned from the Amphitheater today. The actors had come hither, hardly “the best actors in all the world,” but a cast of Garrett’s choosing. The major stars were not yet present. The younger of the two potential Hamlets had joyfully accepted the role, but was tied up on the set of his TV show till the beginning of next week. Queen Gertrude was finishing the run of an Oscar Wilde in Stratford, Ontario, but Polonius had arrived last night, joining us for a jovial dinner during which he’d prattled on in the same manner as his character, pontificating on wine and food and Shakespeare, doing everything but launching into “To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.”

Later, in bed, Garrett and I giggled and debated whether the man was still auditioning or had ventured so far inside the school of Method Acting that he couldn’t control his Polonius-like tendencies offstage. Garrett seemed splendidly untroubled, undisturbed by Caroline’s visit or Snow’s interrogation, undeterred by the absence of his Hamlet. With his film background, he assured me, he was used to shooting scenes out of order on a variety of sets, filming all the scenes set in one particular location, then all the scenes in another, sacrificing linear flow for considerations of time and money.

This morning he’d overseen swordfight choreography, critiquing slow-motion thrusts and feints, gradually increasing their speed till the sharp clang of metal blades rang crisply in my ears. Then he’d worked briefly with Fortinbras’s army, marching them down the aisles of the bowl. Under his guidance, twelve eager-to-please locals cast flip-flops aside, threw shoulders back, and paraded as though on royal review.

On to Act III, scene 3.
A room in the Castle.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, well-cast, neither twins nor brothers, but alike as bookends in height and girth, detailed the plan to escort mad Hamlet safely overseas to England. Puffed with self-importance, Polonius scurried onstage and revealed his intent to hide behind the arras. I’d forgotten how many of
Hamlet’s
scenes involved eavesdropping.

I was engaged in that same activity, eavesdropping myself, since Garrett kept a closed set. When I’d mentioned auditing a rehearsal, he’d curtly replied that since he was working, I should also work. And I should have; I agreed. I would have been hard at work, writing, except that my mind was clouded with fire, obsessed with images of fire extinguishers and smoky pictures of burning buildings.

O, my offense is rank, it smells to heaven;

It hath the primal eldest curse upon’t,

A brother’s murder!

The rhythmic pulse of Shakespeare’s verse delivered by a master raked my attention to the stage. Compared to this, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, even Polonius, had tossed off their lines like waiters relaying orders to the kitchen staff.

What if this cursed hand

Were thicker than itself with brother’s blood,

Is there not rain enough in the sweet heavens

To wash it white as snow?

Garrett wasn’t filling in for Claudius the same way his PA was filling in for Hamlet, droning speeches to help the lighting tech number his cues. My God, Garrett was going to play Claudius; the role as he’d envisioned it, Claudius the King Slayer, a strong and determined foil for a strong and active Hamlet, was too alluring for the actor to resist. He’d already conceded that he might take on the part of the Ghost. I’d heard him do the Ghost at a table-reading, pitching his voice sepulchrally high. The Perfect Ghost, I’d named him, and we’d laughed because I, too, was a ghost. A matched pair, we could share the spirit role, I as his ghost writer, he as the Ghost of Hamlet’s father. Shakespeare himself is said to have played the Ghost.

Burbage to Burton to Branagh, theatrical history is studded with stellar Hamlets. There are fewer renowned Claudiuses, but Claudius is often double-cast as the Ghost since they never appear onstage together and the eerily lit Ghost wears full armor. Garrett Malcolm playing Claudius would generate as much buzz as the TV-star Hamlet. Draw a crowd. And he hadn’t told me. Another secret, another fact he’d failed to mention.

The guilt-ridden King dropped to his knees mid-sentence to pray for his blackened soul. The ragtag army, slumped in the first row, ceased their whispering and shuffling. The stage manager sank onto a bench transfixed. Kalver, onstage as Hamlet’s stand-in, froze in place and listened, cues and script forgotten.

My words fly up my thoughts remain below:

Words without thoughts never to heaven go.

At the soliloquy’s end, the silence grew, expanding like a bubble till one of the soldiers broke it with a flutter of applause. Others took up the cue and a wave of approval and admiration surged from the wings as well as the seats. Garrett Malcolm, actor, briefly reveled in the acclaim, but Garrett Malcolm, director, swiftly regained control and summoned the stage manager.