The Renewable Virgin (12 page)

Back in New York I made one more visit to the
LeFever
set. They were shooting their last episode and I wanted to find out where Kelly Ingram and Nathan Pinking would be during the rest of the summer. And to see if Nick Quinlan had learned anything about acting yet.

There was a last-day-of-school sort of gaiety on the set, but the laughter was a little too loud and a bit edgy. I guess doing a weekly series does get to be a strain after a while. There were visitors on the set, mostly young women clustered around Nick Quinlan. The director looked harried, but determined to keep his temper.

‘Well, there she is, the missing policewoman!' Kelly Ingram's voice bubbled behind me. ‘Where've you been lately? I thought you'd deserted us.'

‘Blame Captain Michaels,' I told her. ‘He decided I wasn't working hard enough.'

‘Come along, I've got to do some pickups,' she said, not really listening. ‘They might even use one of them, who knows?'

An assistant director fussily positioned Kelly in front of a neutral-colored wall. ‘Give us some choice, love,' he said. ‘Yes-no-maybe should do it.'

Kelly stood in front of the camera and registered three facial expressions, each one lasting about ten seconds—a smile, a worried frown, and a perfectly blank look that could be anything at all. If the episode ran a few seconds short that week, a shot of Kelly ‘reacting' could be inserted.

‘Harder than it looks,' Kelly said to me in mock seriousness. ‘Have you tried holding a smile without moving for a full ten seconds? Your face starts twitching.'

‘What terrible things you're called on to do,' I murmured.

She smiled her big smile, not the one she used for the camera. ‘It's those little things that sometimes mean the difference between working and not working. Once I got a role because I was the only woman interviewed who could run down a flight of stairs without looking at her feet,
my
feet. And once when we were …' She trailed off without finishing. Then Kelly did an odd thing: she ducked her head in a curiously childlike and vulnerable-looking gesture I'd never seen her make before.

‘Kelly?'

She raised her head and peered over my shoulder. ‘Who,' she whispered, ‘is
that?'

I turned to see Nathan Pinking introducing the man with the invisible eyes to Nick Quinlan. ‘You mean Ted Cameron? That's your new sponsor—haven't you met him yet?'

A barely perceptible shake of the head. ‘
That
's Ted Cameron?' She seemed surprised. ‘My God, what eyes! They do have irises, don't they?' she half-laughed.

‘Pale blue ones.
Very
pale. You have to stand at a certain angle to see them.'

‘How come you know him, Marian?'

‘Met him in Nathan Pinking's office. Last week.'

‘Ladies, you're going to have to move,' a tense male voice told us. We moved; a camera was rolled past us, followed by two men arguing quietly.

‘Poor Harry,' Kelly smiled.

‘Poor Harry' was the director, who looked as if he wanted to lie on the floor and kick his heels and scream a lot. Here he was trying to keep to a tight schedule when the boss showed up with the new money man, wasting valuable shooting time.

‘Do something!' Poor Harry hissed to an underling. ‘Get them off the set!'

‘How can I get them off the set?' the underling hissed back. ‘You do it!' I wondered how long
he
would last.

I turned back to Kelly, but she was no longer there. She'd moved off by herself. She stood quietly, watching Ted Cameron.

And then slowly, gradually, he became aware of her attention. Cameron kept on talking to Pinking and Nick Quinlan, but his eyes slid over to where Kelly stood silently watching. Then looking at her became the main thing and the talking with the others slipped to second place. Finally he excused himself and walked over to her.

‘Yeah, she can do that all right,' a voice behind me said. It was Poor Harry. ‘Make men come to her just by standing still. It's her most marketable commodity.'

I whirled on him angrily. ‘What a
vile
thing to say.'

He looked honestly surprised. ‘What? I didn't mean anything.'

He probably didn't at that. I muttered something conciliatory and moved over to where Nathan Pinking and Nick Quinlan were standing watching their new sponsor and their leading lady.

‘She sure doesn't waste any time,' Pinking snickered. ‘Go for the bucks, babe.' Both halves of his mismatched face were busy grinning in their separate ways.

I made my presence known. Strange thing, in all the times I'd come around while
LeFever
was shooting, I'd never yet met Nick Quinlan. But Nathan Pinking assumed I had—and so did Nick Quinlan.

‘Hiya,' he said, casually draping an arm over my shoulders. The familiarity was only slightly offensive, because with this man it had about as much meaning as a handshake did with other people. He probably remembered seeing me around the set and thought we were old friends.

I asked Nathan Pinking where he'd be for the next couple of months.

‘Here, California, London, goddamned Cairo. You ever been in Egypt this time of year? And someplace cool, if I can squeeze in a vacation.'

‘Sorry to push, but I have to have dates and addresses. We need to keep track of where everybody goes once
LeFever
finishes.'

‘Hell, I don't remember all that. Ask my secretary—she'll give you a list.'

‘Tansy?'

The right side of his face grinned. ‘Mimsy. Tansy left.'

Surprise attack. ‘When did you dissolve your partnership with Leonard Zoff?'

Surprise defense. ‘What partnership? I was never partners with that worm.'

I didn't bother hiding my surprise. ‘Well, isn't that interesting. And here I found some correspondence from Pinking and Zoff Productions, Incorporated—right there among Rudy Benedict's papers.'

‘Oh, that.' He shrugged. ‘Must have been dated twelve, fourteen years ago, right? In a moment of weakness I actually considered going into business with Leonard Zoff. But sanity returned in time. He must have had the stationery printed up—I don't remember it. Whose signature was on the letters?'

‘Zoff's.' On all four letters.

‘There you are,' Pinking said dismissively. ‘Zoff is such a tightwad he'd use the stationery even if the business didn't exist.' Then, with no attempt at subtlety at all, he switched the subject back to what we'd been talking about before. ‘See Mimsy. She'll give you my itinerary. I'll be going a lot of places in the next few months.'

‘I'm goan' to Wes' Germany,' Nick said helpfully. ‘Man, y'looka that? They jus' glommed onna each other.'

I stood there in the quasi-embrace of a TV star watching Kelly Ingram and Ted Cameron discovering each other. I couldn't hear what they were saying, but their talk didn't have the flirtatious look to it you might have expected. Instead it was intense, almost urgent. And private—oh boy was it private, in this very public place. The rest of us just weren't there.

Even Nathan Pinking sensed something unusual going on. ‘I never saw two people take to each other quite like that.'

‘'S fast,' Nick nodded.

It was more than just fast. It was
meant
. I realized I wouldn't be talking to Kelly any more that day, so I said goodbye to the two men.

‘Y'take care y'self, promise?' Nick called after me.

I promised and left, faintly bemused by what I'd seen. I knew Kelly Ingram was no nun, yet I was still a little surprised by the swiftness with which she'd acted. She'd taken one look at Ted Cameron, decided that was what she wanted, and made her move. I was willing to bet next month's salary it had
not
been like that with Rudy Benedict. Suddenly it became important to know more about Ted Cameron. The one time I'd talked to him, I'd seen only a man restraining his anger in order to be polite—which made me think well of him.

Captain Michaels had been only mildly interested in the Pinking and Zoff letterhead stationery I'd found in Ohio. He'd been disappointed I hadn't uncovered the entire solution to Rudy Benedict's murder in the writer's papers, and he'd even hinted it was my fault the crime was still unsolved. But Nathan Pinking's explanation of the stationery as a leftover from a partnership that had never materialized was peculiar, to say the least. I decided to check with the other ‘partner'.

Leonard Zoff's office was on Seventh Avenue, and I had to get past no fewer than three Tansys (or Mimsys). There were four or five young hopefuls waiting to see the agent, but my gold shield got me in ahead of them.

To my surprise Leonard Zoff remembered me. ‘Hello, Marilyn, how's the policing business? Sorry, darling, I can't recall your last name.'

‘Larch. And my first name's Marian.'

‘Sure, sure, Kelly's friend, I remember. Have a seat and what can I do you for.' The only other time I'd seen Leonard Zoff he'd had laryngitis and had barely been able to whisper. Now he talked in a voice so loud it made me wince. I hate loud voices. I'm surrounded by them constantly—screaming, abrasive voices, and I hate them.

I sat down and said, ‘I want to ask you about Pinking and Zoff Productions.'

At that he threw up both hands, palms facing me, fingers spread—as if I'd said
Stick 'em up
. ‘Temporary insanity,' he said in an incongruous attempt at wistfulness. ‘That's the only possible explanation. I hadda be mad to go into business with Nathan Shithead.'

‘Then you
were
in business together?'

‘Whaddaya mean “were”? Shit, we're still in business together. I can't get rid of the sonuvabitch. He won't sell me his forty-nine, so I sure as hell ain't gonna sell him mine.'

I couldn't make heads or tails out of that. ‘What are you talking about?'

‘I'm talking about Nathan Shithead refusing to let go,' he shouted at me. ‘“Pinking and Zoff”—what a laugh. It was Pinking and Pinking and Have Some More Pinking and Who the Hell's Zoff? I stuck it out for two years and when I wanted to sell that shithead knew he had me.'

Just thinking about it made him boil, but eventually I got the story out of him. Zoff had wanted out of the partnership about ten years ago; Pinking wouldn't buy him out. Their contract said neither partner could sell to a third party without the consent of the other partner, a consent Pinking had steadfastly withheld. According to Zoff, their production company was more than slightly wobbly at the time, and Pinking had wanted a little insurance. So eventually they worked out a deal. Zoff would start his own theatrical agency, which Pinking would help underwrite in exchange for forty-nine percent ownership. In return, Zoff would retain forty-nine percent of the production company. That way if either enterprise failed, the losing partner would have something to fall back on. It certainly explained why they continued to do business in spite of hating each other; it was to their mutual benefit to do so.

But things had changed in the ten years since Pinking and Zoff had become Nathan Pinking Productions. Both the producer and the agent had succeeded on their own, and that insurance policy didn't look quite as attractive now as it did back in the earlier days. At least not to Zoff. ‘I've offered to buy him out a hundred times,' Leonard Zoff told me. ‘But he won't give up his piece of my agency. The shithead.'

‘Pinking told me less than an hour ago that he and you had never been in business together. Why did he say that?'

Zoff snorted. ‘Instinct. Sonuvabitch
never
tells the truth. He lies on principle. How do you think he got to be such a successful producer? He talks shit. Don't you believe anything he tells you.'

‘So when he tells me he's going to Egypt next month …'

‘You can be damned sure he's headed for Australia, darling. Don't believe
any
thing that shithead tells you. How did you know about Pinking and Zoff? It ain't something
I
talk about.'

I told him about finding the letters among Rudy Benedict's papers.

‘You went through his papers? I thought his momma took everything back to Michigan.'

‘Ohio. I made a special trip there just to read the papers. But I couldn't go through all of them—there are just too many. I had to skip his scripts and story treatments and so forth.'

Zoff was nodding thoughtfully. ‘Think there might be anything there? Some clue, I mean. In his scripts?'

I shrugged. ‘Long shot at best.'

‘Nobody's going to read 'em and see?' He looked mildly shocked. ‘Seems to me you oughta check everything. Rudy shouldn't have died—he was a sweet, harmless guy. Who'da needed to kill
him?
You oughta check everything.'

‘Dr. Benedict is checking for us. She's giving the entire summer over to reading through all his papers. She gave me her word she'd let me know if she found anything the least bit out of the ordinary.'

That seemed to satisfy him; we both stood up, and he made a production out of shaking my hand. ‘Good to see you again, Mary Ann. Any time I can help, you just lemme know.'

This time I didn't correct him, because I'd finally caught on. This important, successful man had so many things on his mind he couldn't be expected to get my name quite right, yet he'd courteously made time for me to ask my little questions. If Nathan Pinking lied as a matter of principle, then Leonard Zoff played one-upmanship games for the same reason.

I should have stopped off in Pinking's office before leaving the
LeFever
set, but I hadn't. So when I got back to my desk at Police Plaza, I dialed Nathan Pinking's number and got this low, velvet voice that assured me I was indeed talking to none other than Mimsy herself. The owner of the voice claimed there was nothing she'd rather do than type up a copy of Mr. Pinking's itinerary for me—and made me believe it. I sure would like to have a secretary like that.