Romance, p.5
Romance, page 5
part #47 of An 87th Precinct Novel Series
“Hi,” Jerry said, popping his head out from behind the teaser, where he’d been waiting for his cue.
“… who was the waiter with the mustache in the scene just before this one. I don’t think it’s the waiter with the mustache who’s stabbing me, is it? Because then it becomes just plain ridiculous. And it can’t be the Detective who’s stabbing me because he’s the one who leads me back to finding myself again and all that. So it’s got to be either the Understudy or the Director because they’re the only other important characters in the play, so which one is it? Is it Andrea or is it Coop, I just want to know who it is.”
“Well, I don’t think it’s me,” Cooper Haynes said apologetically. He was forty-three years old, a dignified-looking gentleman who’d done years and years of soap opera—daytime serial, as it was known in the trade—usually playing one or another sympathetic doctor. In Romance, he was playing the Director. Actually, he was much nicer than any director Michelle had ever met in her life, even the ones who didn’t try to get in her pants. “I haven’t been playing the part as if I’m the one who stabs her,” he said, and shaded his eyes and looked out into the darkness. “Ash, if I am the stabber, I think I should know it, don’t you? It would change my entire approach.”
“I think we’re all entitled to know who stabs me,” Michelle said.
“I truly don’t care who stabs you,” Andrea said.
“Neither do l,” Mark said.
“Ashley’s right, it’s not germane to the scene.”
“Or even to the play.”
“Maybe the butler stabs you,” Jerry whispered from the wings.
“If a person gets stabbed, people want to know who stabbed her,” Michelle insisted. “You can’t just leave it hanging there.”
“This isn’t a play about a person getting stabbed,” Andrea said. “Or hanged.”
“Oh? What’s it about then? An understudy who can’t act?”
“Oh-ho!” Andrea said, and turned away angrily.
“Freddie, are you out there?” Michelle shouted to the theater.“Can you tell me who stabs … ?”
“He’s not here, Michelle,” Kendall said wearily.
He was uncomfortably aware that Morgenstern was sitting beside him here in the sixth row and he didn’t want his producer to get the impression that he was losing control of his actors, especially when he actually was. The moment an actor started screaming for clarification from the playwright was the moment to come down hard, star or no star. Which, by the way, Michelle Cassidy wasn’t, Annie or no Annie, which was a hundred years ago, anyway.
Using his best Otto Preminger voice, seething with controlled rage, he said, “Michelle, you’re holding up rehearsal. I want to do this scene, and I want to do it right, and I want to do it now. If you have any questions, save them for notes. Meanwhile, I would like you to get stabbed now, by whoever the hell stabs you, as called for in the script at this point in the play’s time. You have a costume fitting at six-thirty, Michelle, and I would like to break for dinner at that time, so if we’re all ready, let’s begin again. Please. From where Michelle pays her check, and comes out of the restaurant, and walks into the darkness … ”
From where he stood in the shadowed side doorway of the delicatessen that shared the alleyway with the theater, he saw her coming out of the stage door at the far end, tight blue sweater and open peacoat, short navy-blue mini, gold-buckled belt, blue high-heeled shoes. He backed deeper into the doorway, almost banging into one of the garbage cans stacked alongside it. She checked her watch, and then stepped out briskly in that long-legged stride of hers, high heels clicking, red hair glowing under the hanging stage door light.
He wanted to catch her while she was still in the alley, before she reached the lighted sidewalk. The delicatessen’s service doorway was just deep enough in from the street to prevent his being seen by any pedestrians, just far enough away from the stage door light, too. Clickety-click-click, long legs flashing, she came gliding closer to where he was standing. He stepped into her path.
“Miss Cassidy?” he said.
And plunged the knife into her.
3
STANDING AT THE SQUADROOM WATER COOLER, DETECTIVE/Second Grade Stephen Louis Carella could not help over-hearing Kling’s conversation at the desk not four feet away. He filled his paper cup and turned away, standing with his back to Kling, looking through the wire-grilled window at the street below—but he could still hear the conversation. Deliberately, he tossed the empty cup at the wastebasket, and headed back across the room toward his own desk.
Carella was close to six feet tall, with the wide shoulders, narrow hips and gliding walk of a natural athlete—which he was not. Sitting behind his desk, he sighed and looked up at the wall clock, marveling at how the time did fly when you were having a good time. They were only three hours into the shift, but for some reason he was enormously weary tonight. Whenever he was this tired, his brown eyes took on a duller hue, seeming to slant more emphatically downward than they normally did, giving his face an exaggerated Oriental cast.
Four detectives had relieved the day shift at a quarter to four that Monday afternoon. Mayer and Hawes caught a liquor store holdup even before they took off their topcoats, and were out of the squadroom almost before they’d officially arrived. At around four-fifteen, a redheaded woman came up and told Kling somebody was trying to kill her, and he took down all the information and then discussed the possibility of a trap-and-trace with Carella, who said they wouldn’t have a chance of getting one. Kling said he’d talk it over with the boss soon as he came in. Lieutenant Byrnes still wasn’t here and Kling was still on the phone with someone named Sharon, whom he kept asking to meet him for coffee when the shift was relieved at midnight. From the snatches of conversation Carella could still over-hear, Sharon wasn’t being too receptive. Kling kept trying. Told her he’d be happy to take a cab to Calm’s Point, just wanted to talk to her awhile. By the time he hung up, Carella still didn’t know if it had worked out. He only knew there were five long hard hours ahead before they’d be relieved.
They caught the theater squeal at eight minutes past seven. The Susan Granger, a small theater on North Eleventh, near Mapes Avenue. Woman stabbed in the alley there. By the time Carella and Kling arrived, the woman had already been carted off to the hospital. One of the blues at the scene told them the victim’s name was Michelle Cassidy and that she’d been taken to Morehouse General. Kling recognized the name. He told Carella she was the redhead who’d come to see him only three, three and a half hours ago, whenever the hell it was.
“Told me somebody was threatening to stab her,” he said.
The uniformed cop shrugged and said, “So now he did.“
They decided it was more important to talk to the victim than to do the neighborhood canvass just now. They got to Morehouse at about seven-thirty and talked to the ER intern who’d admitted Michelle Cassidy. He told them that two inches lower and a bit to the right and Miss Cassidy would at this very moment be playing first harp in the celestial philharmonic. Instead, she was in room two thirty-seven, her vital signs normal, her condition stable. He understood she was an actress.
“Is she someone famous?” he asked.
“She played Annie,” Kling said.
“Who’s Annie?” the doctor asked. His name was Raman-than Mehrota. It said so on the little plastic tag on his tunic. Carella guessed he was Indian. In this city, the odds on finding a doctor from Bombay in any hospital emergency room were extraordinarily good. Almost as good as finding a Pakistani cabdriver.
“They’ve got TV cameras up there,” Mehrota said. “I thought she might be someone famous.”
“She is now,” Carella said.
The TV reporter was doing their job for them. All they had to do was stand at the back of the room and listen.
“When did this happen, Miss Cassidy?”
Carella recognized the woman as one of Channel 4’s roving reporters. Good-looking woman with curly black hair and dark brown eyes, reminded him of his wife, except for the curls; Teddy’s hair was straight, but just as black.
“Everybody else had already gone to dinner,” she said, “but I had a costume fitting, so I was a little late leaving. I was just coming out of the theater when …”
“What time was this?”
“A little after seven. We’d been rehearsing all day long ...”
“Rehearsing what, Miss Cassidy?”
“A new play called Romance.”
“What happened when you left the theater?”
“A man stepped out of a doorway there in the alley. He said, `Miss Cassidy?’ And then he stabbed inc.”
The camera came in on the reporter.
“Michelle Cassidy, stabbed tonight outside the Susan Granger Theater, where she is rehearsing—ironically—a play about a man who stabs an actress. This is Monica Mann, Channel 4 News, live at Morehouse General Hospital.”
She stared into the camera for a moment until the operator gave her the signal that she was clear. She turned to the bed then, said, “Terrific, Miss Cassidy. Good luck with the show,” and then turned again to her crew and said, “We’re out of here.”
The hot lights went out. The TV people cleared the room, and the nurse went outside to let in the newspaper people. The two city tabloids had each sent a reporter and a photographer. Carella could just see tomorrow’s head-lines:
ANNIE
STAR
STABBED
Or:
ACTRESS
SURVIVES
STABBING
The stately morning paper hadn’t deigned to send anyone to the hospital; maybe the editor didn’t realize a former child actress was the victim. Or maybe he simply didn’t care. Cheap stabbings were a dime a dozen in this town. Besides, there’d been a riot in Grover Park this past Saturday, and the paper was still running postmortem studies on the causes of racial conflict and the possible remedies for it.
Again, all Carella and Kling had to do was listen. They realized at once that this was to be a more in-depth interview than television, with its limited time, had been able to grant.
“Miss Cassidy, did you see the man who attacked you?”
“Yes, I did.”
“What’d he look like?”
“A tall slender man wearing a long black coat and a black hat pulled down over his head.”
“What kind of hat?”
“A fedora. Whatever you call them.”
“A brimmed hat?”
“Yes. Black.”
“Wide-brimmed? Narrow-brimmed?”
“Wide. He had it pulled down over his eyes.”
“Was he wearing gloves?”
“Yes. Black gloves.”
“Did you see the knife?”
“No. Not really. I sure felt it, though.”
Nervous laughter.
“You wouldn’t know what kind of knife it was, would you?”
“A sharp one.”
More laughter. Not as nervous this time. The kid was being a good sport. She’d just been stabbed in the shoulder, inches away from the heart, but she was able to joke about the weapon. The reporters liked that. It made good copy. Good-looking woman besides. Sitting up in bed in a hospital gown that kept slipping off one shoulder. As the reporters asked their questions, the photographers’ cameras kept clicking.
Kling noticed that neither of the two reporters had yet asked her what color the man was. Maybe journalists weren’t allowed to. As cops, he and Carella would ask that question the minute the others cleared the room. Then again, they were looking to find whoever had just attempted murder. The reporters were only looking for a good story.
“Did he say anything to you?” one of the reporters asked.
“Yes. He said, `Miss Cassidy?’ Same thing he calls me on the phone . ”
“Wait a minute,” the other reporter said. “What do you mean?”
“He’s been calling me for the past week. Threatening to kill me. With a knife.”
“This same man? The one who stabbed you tonight?”
“It sounded like the same man.”
“Are you saying his voice sounded the same? As the man on the phone?”
“Exactly the same. Just like Jack Nicholson’s voice.”
Both reporters were scribbling furiously now. Jack Nicholson stabbing a young actress in the alley outside a rehearsal theater? Jesus, this was made in heaven!
“It wasn’t Jack Nicholson, of course,” Michelle said.
“Of course not,” one of the reporters said, but he sounded disappointed.
“Who was he?” the other one asked. “Do you have any idea who he was?”
“Someone familiar with Romance,” she said.
“Someone familiar with romance, did you say?”
“Romance. The play we’re rehearsing.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because what happened in that alley also happens in the play.
Carella could now see the subhead on the story:
ALLEY ROMANCE STABBING
Now they wanted to know all about the scene in the play, and who else was in the play, and who had written it, and who was directing it, and when it would be opening here, and whether there were plans for moving it down-town, the cameras clicking, the reporters tirelessly questioning her while a black nurse fluttered about the bed telling them they mustn’t exhaust her, didn’t they realize the poor woman had been stabbed?
A man wearing a maroon sports shirt open at the throat, a gray sports jacket, and darker gray trousers rushed into the room, went immediately to the bed, took Michelle’s hands in his own and said, “Michelle, my God, what happened? I just heard the news! Who did this to you? My God, why you?”
The reporters asked him who he was, and he introduced himself as Johnny Milton, Michelle’s theatrical agent, and handed cards to both of them, and said he’d heard the news a few minutes ago, and rushed right over. Somewhat imperiously, he asked who the two men in the suits at the back of the room were, didn’t they realize a woman had been stabbed here?
“We’re the police,” Carella said quietly, and showed the agent his shield.
“Hello, Detective Kling,” Michelle said from the bed, waggling her fingers at him.
And suddenly all reportorial attention was on Kling, the two journalists wanting to know how he happened to know the victim, and then soliciting from Michelle herself the fact that she’d reported the threatening calls to Kling at approximately four-fifteen that afternoon, before she went back to rehearsal.
“Got any leads yet, Detective Kling?” one of the reporters asked.
“None,” Carella said. “In fact, if you’ve got everything you need, we’d like to talk to Miss Cassidy now, if you don’t mind.”
“He’s right, boys,” her agent said. “Thanks for coming up, but she needs some rest now.”
One of the photographers asked Michelle if she would mind one last picture, and when she said, “Okay, but I’m really very tired,” he asked if she would mind lowering the gown off her left shoulder to show the bandaged wound, which she did in a demure and ladylike manner, while simultaneously managing to show a little bit of cleavage.
The moment everyone was gone, Kling asked, “Was the man who stabbed you white, black, Hispanic or Asian?”
The black nurse seemed about to take offense, but then Michelle said, “White.”
At nine that night, Ashley Kendall was still rehearsing his cast, but instead of Michelle up there playing the Actress, her understudy was filling in for her. Kendall hated Corbin’s pretentious naming—or non-naming—of the characters in his play. Right now, he was rehearsing the Actress’s under-study, who happened to be an actress named Josie Beales, but on the same stage with her was an actress named Andrea Packer, who was playing the character named the Under-study, although her understudy was an actress named Helen Frears. It could get confusing if you weren’t paying attention.
Josie was twenty-one, with strawberry-blond hair that was only a timid echo of Michelle’s fiercer tresses. But she was taller than Michelle, and less cumbersomely endowed, and therefore moved more elegantly. In Kendall’s opinion, she was also a far better actress than Michelle. In fact, he’d wanted to cast her as the Actress, but had been outvoted by Mr. Frederick Peter Corbin III. So now Miss Tits had the leading role, and Josie was a mere understudy who moved furniture and props and played a variety of non-speaking roles. Such was the tyranny of playwrights. Josie hadn’t expected to be here tonight. She’d been interrupted at home, eating dinner—actually a container of yogurt and a banana—and watching Love Connection in her bathrobe, when the stage manager called to say, “You’re on, babe.” She’d thrown on a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt and rushed right over. Now she waited with the other actors for the rehearsal to resume.
Kendall supposed he could have called off the rehearsal, but Michelle’s earlier behavior and stormy departure had left the other actors feeling confused and miserable. Besides, he was grateful for the opportunity to run through the scenes with an accomplished and disciplined young woman like Josie standing in, and without Mr. Moneybags Morgenstern sitting by witnessing a tantrum. The producer was gone now. In his stead in the sixth row center sat the exalted playwright himself, who had been home earlier today rewriting some lines that were troubling him, when he should have been rewriting three or four scenes that were troubling Kendall. Or maybe even the whole damn play, for that matter.
Everyone in the theater already knew that their “shtar” had been stabbed in the alley outside and taken to Morehouse General. Chuck Madden, the show’s stage manager, had called there a few minutes ago. Now he leaned into the sixth row, and informed Kendall and Corbin that some blue-haired volunteer had told him Miss Cassidy’s condition was stable and that she’d be released from the hospital some-time later tonight.
“Thank you, Chuck,” Kendall said, and rose and said, “People?”
The actors chatting onstage, waiting for things to start, turned and squinted out into the darkened theater.
“I know you’ll all be delighted to learn that Michelle’s okay,” Kendall said. “She’ll be going home tonight, in fact.”
