Romance, p.3
Romance, page 3
Johnny tended to agree with her.
“I open in this play,” Michelle went on, gathering steam, “I’ll be back doing dinner theater two weeks later. Make it two days later. If you can even book me ever again. I mean, really, John, who cares about the girl in this play, who cares if she gets to perform on opening night? Because you want to know something? The other play stinks, too, the play within the play, whatever the hell Freddie calls it, the play they’re supposed to be rehearsing. It’s even worse than the real play. He’ll get two Tonys for worst play of the year, the one he wrote and the one the playwright in his play wrote. How did I manage to get stuck in two lousy plays is what I’d like to know?”
Johnny was wondering what they could do to salvage this deplorable situation.
“Also, I think you should know Mark’s been playing a little grab-ass backstage,” Michelle said.
Mark Riganti. The actor playing a character named the Detective, who nearly faints with joy when the character named the Actress tells him she’s been on Law & Order. Mark was not a very good actor. Take a lousy play—two lousy plays, as Michelle had pointed out—add a lousy actor and a lousy actress in the leading roles, and what you’ve got is trouble. Though Johnny couldn’t fault Mark for groping Michelle backstage, which he himself was beginning to do at this very moment, albeit in bed.
“I’ll ask Morgenstern to talk to him,” he said.
“Lot of good that’ll do,” Michelle said. “He was there first.”
Johnny sighed heavily.
The trouble with Michelle—aside from her being a not very good actress who never could dance and who no longer possessed a very good singing voice—was that men could not keep their hands off her. Women, too, to hear her tell it. At least in Ohio, one time. The trouble was her looks were too damn distracting. People, men and women, tended to forget that someone who looked the way Michelle did could possibly be a good actress, which she wasn’t, anyway. Being so sumptuously endowed would have been a failing at any time, unless a girl wanted to play bimbos or hookers for the rest of her life, a not insignificant ambition for many actresses Johnny had known and incidentally slept with. But coming out of your dress in a role that called for the actress to recite lines like “This is the world’s noblest calling” could he something of an impediment in a play where the girl’s extraordinary talent is rewarded with stardom due to her courage, dedication and perseverance.
After getting stabbed, that is.
The plot of Freddie’s play revolved around the Actress getting stabbed by some crazy person whose identity is never made entirely clear because Freddie felt that resolving the mystery would cheapen the play. Freddie had more exalted interests in mind. Like exploring the concept of giving one’s all for one’s art, for example. The dedication of the Actress in his play was intended as a sly reference to the play’s title, in that her true romance is with the theater, which she loves from “the very depths of her soul,” as she puts it in a memorable soliloquy premised on the corniest scene in Chorus Line. In his play, Freddie loved to ponder the significance of even the tiniest creative act as opposed to the worthlessness of mundane matters like earning a living or feeding a family. Freddie’s Romance was a “play of ideas,” as he was fond of telling Kendall. Contrarily, Kendall felt the play was far too “mysterious” and not quite “serious” enough.
Neither of them seemed to understand something Johnny had known from the first time he’d ever read a crime novel: there ain’t no way you can turn a murder mystery into a silk purse. That’s because the minute somebody sticks a knife in somebody else, all attention focuses on the victim, and all you want to know is whodunit.
Which isn’t such a bad idea, he thought.
Focusing attention on the victim.
2
BECAUSE SHE DID A LITTLE DOPE EVERY NOW AND THEN, SHE was never comfortable around cops anyhow. She knew this had to be done, coming here this afternoon, but just approaching a police station made her nervous. Gave her the willies just seeing those big green globes with the numerals 87 on them, one hanging on each side of the tall wooden entrance doors, each one screaming “Cop! Cop!” And sure enough, a real live cop in a blue uniform was standing at the top of the steps just to the right of the doors, looking her over as she climbed the steps, and fumbled with the brass knob, and opened the door. She smiled at him as if she’d just killed her mother with a hatchet.
Where she was when she stepped through the door was inside a big, noisy, high-ceilinged room with a lot of uniformed cops milling around, and a high wooden desk on her right, with a brass rail in front of it about waist high, and a sign on the counter stating ALL VISITORS MUST STATE BUSINESS. There were two more uniformed cops behind the desk, one of them drinking coffee from a cardboard container. A clock behind the desk read ten minutes past four. The rain had stopped, but it was still pretty brisk for April, and the room seemed chillier somehow than it did outside, maybe because there were no windows in it or maybe because it was full of cops. She stepped up to the desk, cleared her throat, and said to the one drinking coffee, “My name is Michelle Cassidy, I’d like to talk to a detective, please.
“Kling wondered if Deputy Chief Surgeon Sharyn Everard Cooke had ever been inside a detective squadroom. You worked here at the Eight-Seven long enough, you began believing everybody in the entire city had been here before, everybody knew precisely what it looked like, down to the tiniest fingernail scraping. But he couldn’t imagine Sharyn’s job taking her anywhere near the outer reaches of the solar system here, which he sometimes felt the 87th Precinct was. A planet devoid of anything but the basest form of animal life, an airless, sunless, apple-green void where nothing ever changed, everything remained always and ever exactly the same.
He wondered if her office at Rankin Plaza was painted the same bilious green as the squadroom here. If so, was it as soiled as the paint on the walls of this room that was used and abused twenty-four hours a day, three hundred and sixty-five days a year, six in leap year, which this happened to be? He could remember the squadroom being painted only once in all the time he’d worked here. He was not looking forward to that experience again anytime soon, thank you. He supposed apple green and shoddy were the operative interplanetary words that best described the squadroom, or in fact the entire station house. Well, maybe shoddy was too mild a word, perhaps a better description would have been seedy or even shabby, although to tell the truth the only valid description was shitty, a word he had not yet used in the deputy chief’s presence, and might never find an opportunity to use with her ever in his lifetime if last night’s date was any indication.
The Italian restaurant she’d chosen was called La Traviata, which might have led one to believe they’d be piping operatic music into the place, but instead they seemed to favor Frank Sinatra’s Hundred Greatest Hits. Which was okay with Kling. He was a Sinatra fan, and he really didn’t mind hearing him sing “Kiss” over and over again, even if by the fifth time around he knew all the lyrics by heart.
Kiss …
It all begins with a kiss …
But kisses wither
And die
Unless
The first caress …
And so on.
But then “One for My Baby” came on for the third time.
The conversation had hit one of those unexpected roadblocks by then, although Kling couldn’t figure out what he’d said or done to cause her sudden silence. Being a detective, he knew that people sometimes reacted belatedly to something that’d been said or done minutes or even hours ago—sometimes years ago, as was the case with a lady they’d arrested recently for poisoning her husband twelve years after he’d called her a whore in front of their entire bowling team. So he was sitting there across from her, trying to figure out why all at once she looked so thoughtfully sullen, when, gee whiz, what a surprise, here came “One for My Baby” again. Hoping to yank her out of whatever the hell was bugging her, and thinking he was making a brilliant observation besides, he remarked that here was a song that merely threatened to tell a story, but never got around to actually telling the story.
“Guy’s had a disastrous love affair,” he said, “and he keeps promising the bartender he’ll tell him all about it, but all he ever does is tell him he’s going to tell him.”
Blank expression on her face.
As if she were ten thousand miles away.
He wondered suddenly if she herself was trying to recover from a disastrous love affair. If so, was she thinking about whoever the guy might have been? And if so, when had the ill-fated romance ended? Twelve years ago? Twelve days ago? Last night?
He let it go.
Concentrated instead on the linguini with white clam sauce.
“Is it because I’m black?” she asked suddenly.
“Is what because you’re black?” he asked.
“That you asked me out.”
“No,” he said. “I don’t think so.”
Is it? he wondered.
Before now, he’d never dated a black woman in his life.
But what the hell had brought that on?
“Is it because I’m white?” he asked lightly, and smiled.
“That you accepted?”
“Maybe,” she said.
And did not return his smile, he noticed.
“Well… do you want to talk about it?” he asked.
“No. Not now.”
“When?”
“Maybe never.”
“Okay,” he said, and went back to the linguini.
He figured that was the end of the story. So long, Whitey, nice to’ve known you, but hey, this ain’ gon work, man.
When she told him after dinner that she’d really rather not go to a movie, they both had to get up so early, and it was already close to ten, he was certain this meant so long and goodbye, bro, see you roun the pool hall one of these days. They shook hands outside her apartment. She thanked him for a nice time. He told her he’d had a nice time, too. It was still raining, but only lightly. He walked through the drizzle from her building to the train station five blocks away.
Three black teenagers came into the car while the train was still on the overhead tracks in Calm’s Point. They seemed to be considering him as they approached. He gave them a look that said Don’t even think it, and they went right on by.
The phone on his desk was ringing.
What Michelle saw when she reached the top of the second-floor landing was another sign nailed to the wall, indicating that the DETECTIVE DIVISION was either just down the corridor past several doors respectively labeled LOCKER ROOM and MEN’S LAVATORY and CLERICAL OFFICE, or else right there on the landing itself, since the sign merely announced itself in black letters on a smudged white field, but gave no other directions. She followed her instincts, and—being right-handed—turned naturally to the right and walked down the hall past the smell of stale sweat seeping from the locker room, and the stench of urine floating from behind the men’s room door, and the wafting aroma of coffee brewing in the clerical office, a regular potpourri here in this “little old cop shop,” as the Detective called it in the play they were rehearsing. At the end of the hall, she saw first a slatted wooden rail divider and beyond that several dark green metal desks and telephones and a bulletin board with various photographs and notices on it, and a hanging light globe, and further into the room some more green metal desks and finally a bank of windows covered with metal grilles. A good-looking blond man sat at one of the desks. She stopped at the railing, cleared her throat again the way she had downstairs, and said—remembering to project—“Detective Kling?”
Kling looked up.
The woman had hair the color of a fire truck dipped in orange juice. Eyes the color of periwinkles. Wearing a tight blue sweater that matched the eyes. Peacoat open over it. Navy-blue skirt to match the coat. Big gold-buckled belt. Blue high-heeled pumps.
“The desk sergeant said I should see you,” she said.
“Yes, he called me a minute ago,” he said. “Come on in.”
She found the latch on the inside of the railing gate, looked surprised when the gate actually opened to her touch, and came tentatively into the room. Kling stood as she approached his desk, and indicated the chair opposite him. She sat, crossing her legs, the blue skirt riding high on her thighs. She lifted her behind, tugged at the skirt, made herself comfortable in the hard-backed chair. Kling sat, too.
“I’m Michelle Cassidy,” she said. “I spoke to someone up here earlier this morning, he said I should come in.”
“Would you remember who that was?”
“He had an Italian name.”
“Carella?”
“I think so. Anyway, he said to come in. He said some-one would help me.”
Kling nodded.
“Let me get some information,” he said, and rolled a DD form into the typewriter. He spaced down to the slot calling for the date of the complaint, typed in today’s date, April 6, spaced down some more to the NAME slot, typed in C-A-S-S, stopped and looked up. “Is that A-D-Y or I-D-Y?” he asked.
“I,” she said.
“Cassidy,” he said, typing. “Michelle like in the Beatles?”
“Yes. A double L.”
“May I have your address, please?”
She gave him her address and the apartment number and her phone number there, and also a work number where she could be reached.
“Are you married?” he asked. “Single? Divorced?”
“Single.”
“Are you employed, Miss Cassidy?”
“I’m an actress.”
“Have I seen you in anything?” he asked.
“Well … I played the lead in Annie,“ she said. “And I’ve been doing a lot of dinner theater work in recent years.”
“I saw the movie,” he said. “Annie.”
“I wasn’t in the movie,” she said.
“Good movie, though,” he said. “Are you in anything right now?”
“I’m rehearsing a play.”
“Would it be a play I know?”
“I don’t think so. It’s a new play, it’s called Romance. We’re opening it uptown here, but we hope to move down-town later. If it’s a hit.”
“What’s it about?”
“Well, that’s the funny part of it.”
“What is?”
“It’s about an actress getting phone calls from somebody who says he’s going to kill her.”
“What’s funny about that?”
“Well … that’s why I’m here, you see.”
“I’m sorry, Miss Cassidy, I’m not foll … ”
“I’ve been getting the same kind of calls.”
“Threatening calls, do you mean?”
“Yes. A man who says he’s going to kill me. Just like in the play. Well, not the same language.”
“What does he say? Exactly?”
“That he’s going to kill me with a knife.”
“With a knife.”
“Yes.”
“He specifies the weapon.”
“Yes. A knife.”
“These are the real calls we’re talking about, is that right?”
“Yes.”
“Not the ones in the play.”
“No. These are the calls I’ve been getting for the past week now.”
“A man saying he’s going to kill you with a knife.”
“Yes.”
“Which of these numbers does he call?”
“My home number. The other one is the backstage phone. At the theater.”
“He hasn’t called you there?”
“No. Not yet, anyway. I’m very frightened, Detective Kling.”
“I can imagine. When did these calls start?”
“Last Sunday night.”
“That would’ve been… “He looked at his desk calendar. “March twenty-ninth,” he said.
“Whenever.”
“Does he seem to know you?”
“He calls me Miss Cassidy.”
“What does he … ?”
“Sort of sarcastically. Miss Cassidy. Like that. With a sort of sneer in his voice.”
“Tell me again exactly what he… ”
“He says, `I’m going to kill you, Miss Cassidy. With a knife.’ ”
“Have there been any threatening letters?”
“No.”
“Have you seen any strangers lurking about your building...’’
“No.”
‘’… or the theater?’’
“No.”
“Which theater is it, by the way?”
“The Susan Granger. On North Eleventh.”
“No one hanging around the stage door… ”
“No.’’
“… or following you … ?”
“No.”
“… or watching you? For example, has anyone in a restaurant or any other public place … ?”
“No, nothing like that.”
“Just the phone calls.”
“Yes.”
“Do you owe money to anyone?”
“No.”
“Have you had any recent arguments or altercations with… ”
“No.”
“I don’t suppose you fired anyone in recent …”
“No.”
“Any boyfriends in your past who might… ”
“No. I’ve been living with the same man for seven years now.”
“Get along okay with him?”
“Oh, yes.”
“I have to ask.”
“That’s okay. I know you’re doing your job. We have the same thing in the play.”
“Sorry?” Kling said.
“There’s a scene where she goes to the police, and they ask her all these questions.”
“I see. What’s his name, by the way? The man you’ve been living with.”
