Dog Dish of Doom, page 4
That was unexpected. “Louise! What does she want?” I asked.
“You’ll know the minute she tells you.”
I picked up the phone, giving Consuelo the latest in a series of dirty looks. But with love. “Louise,” I said. “I was so sorry to hear about what happened.”
“I know,” Louise answered, in a tone that indicated surprise, like she was gossiping with a friend, not preparing to inter her husband. “I’m still pretty stunned.”
I thought that was a safe bet. “Is there anything I can do for you?” I asked. “Do you need someone to watch Bruno for a few days?”
There was a moment of silence—you should pardon the expression—on the other end of the conversation, like Louise was considering what I’d said because she’d never thought about it before. “I don’t think so,” she said in a little-girl voice. “Let me get back to you on that.”
“Sure. What else can I do?” Better not to give her suggestions, or this conversation would go on past Trent’s funeral. I wrote Ask about Trent’s funeral on the pad in front of me, which also bore a note reminding me about Mom’s doctor appointment the previous Monday, which she’d missed because I’d forgotten to remind her, the beginning of a grocery list (okay, the word “pretzels”), and a doodle for a new company logo that was supposed to be a cat playing Hamlet and looked more like Donald Trump’s toupée growing arms.
“I was wondering if you could come here to the apartment,” Louise said. “The police were here. They seem to think I killed Trent, and showing them I didn’t is going to take up a lot of my time. If Bruno is going to make the callback audition for Annie, I’m not going to be able to take him.”
“Sure, I … um…” Callback audition? What callback audition? “Les McMaster wants a callback? Why didn’t I know about that?” I said. Consuelo looked up, her eyebrows lowered in thought. Maisie squawked in contempt.
Louise, mistakenly thinking I’d been talking to her, said, “I don’t know. His office called about dinnertime last night before all this happened. They said he wanted to see Bruno again before he decided. Is that good or bad?” She was asking me about her dog’s acting career and I was wondering if they’d managed to clean her husband’s blood off the kitchen floor yet. People have different priorities.
I pressed the Mute button and asked Consuelo if Les McMaster’s office had called to ask about a callback for Bruno. She did not have to refer to notes and simply shook her head. If Consuelo said it hadn’t happened, I could bet my last dollar, which was probably in my wallet right now, on it.
“What time is the callback, Louise?” I asked after I took her off Mute.
“Two this afternoon.”
“I’ll be there in an hour. So sorry about Trent.”
“Yeah,” Louise said. “Me too.”
As soon as the conversation was over, I asked Consuelo to get me Les McMaster’s office on the phone, but she was already punching the number into her keypad. She waited perhaps four seconds. “Kay Powell calling for Mr. McMaster,” she said into the phone. “Sure.” She punched Hold and looked at me. “On two.”
We have two phone lines because theater is still an old-fashioned enough business that a fax line is a sporadically used necessity. I punched the button and nodded thanks to Consuelo as I said, “Les?”
“This is Akra, his executive assistant,” the woman’s voice said from the other end of the line. “Mr. McMaster is not currently available. How can I help you?”
It has been my experience that people who ask how they can help me usually are capable of doing so, but often aren’t willing. I decided to test my theory with Akra, whose name in third grade I would bet was Alice or Alex.
“I brought a client to see Les about the role of Sandy in Annie yesterday,” I told her. “I’ve just been told that he requested a callback with my client for today at two. Can you tell me why your office didn’t call mine to request that callback?” The agent always gets called about auditions. It is never okay to contact the client (or in this case, the person who walks the client three times a day) directly. That is a breach of professional protocol.
“Oh my,” Akra said, her voice trying desperately to sound like it had the capacity to convey emotion. “I’d really have to ask around. I have no idea how that happened, Ms. Powell.” I pictured the screen in front of her, where she had consulted my contact information before using my last name.
That made no sense. “Did you place the call?” I asked. “If you’re his executive assistant, I assume Les would ask you to do that.”
“I’m sure I didn’t, or I’d remember, Ms. Powell.” Akra was mentally patting herself on the back for remembering my name for six seconds without having to look it up again. I have an active fantasy life.
“Do you know which client I’m referring to?” I asked.
Silence. Consuelo grinned on the left side of her mouth. Maisie looked pissed off. Which was the way Maisie always looked.
Akra, having taken enough time to Google the entire population of Lichtenstein by last name, said, “I’m sure you mean Bruno Barclay. I see that audition scheduled for yesterday at four and then the callback today at two, but I don’t know who called about today’s meeting or why you weren’t consulted.”
“Can you find out?” I asked. “It’s pretty unprofessional, and I want to make certain that it doesn’t happen again.”
“Of course,” Akra said. She’d do it as soon as she had her battery recharged and her software updated. “Can I reach you at this number?” She read my phone number back to me.
“That’s the number,” I said. “Please let me know why it wasn’t dialed.” And I hung up. I’m not big on taking one’s frustrations out on the culprit’s assistant, but in Akra’s case, I was making an exception. It was something about the way she hadn’t had any idea who I was. Petty? Moi? It’s been suggested. I disagree.
I have a parking space rented at a garage just three doors down from the office, and I pay enough monthly that I prefer not to move the car (and pay to park elsewhere) in Manhattan when I don’t have to. So I took the 6 train from 116th Street to Grand Central, changed to the 7 to take me crosstown, and then the 1 train to Christopher Street, where a walk to Louise and Trent’s—well, Louise’s—apartment took only a few minutes.
And sitting on the front stoop waiting for me when I got there was my father, dressed in his “official” clothes—a pair of khakis from the early ’90s and a denim shirt with the logo of a cruise line on it. Dad was nothing if not a loyal company man when he thought it could help him get another gig.
“What are you doing here?” I asked when I regained the ability to compose sentences in English.
“I’m helping,” he said. “Consuelo called Mom to tell her you had an unexpected audition at two and couldn’t take her shopping, and she called me. I was in the city on an errand, so when I heard you’d be here, I took the subway down.”
“And you got here before me. What errand? You didn’t mention coming into the city this morning. I would have given you a ride.”
He found an invisible piece of lint on the denim shirt and meticulously removed it. “It’s not a big thing,” he said. “I’m meeting with a few booking agents, that’s all.”
“You’re firing Morrie?” Mom and Dad have had the same agent since before the Nevele closed.
“Baby, Morrie died six years ago. I’ve been doing it on my own, but…” Dad doesn’t like to let me know things aren’t going well for the act.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Although I had mentally answered my own question already.
Dad avoided eye contact. “I didn’t want you to feel bad,” he said. “We need a new agent and we didn’t ask our own daughter.”
“Dad, I’m an agent for animal performers. You and Mom are, unless there’s some horrible secret you haven’t told me, humans.”
My father looked at me sideways and grinned. “You’re funny. Ever think of going on the stage?” he said.
“I thought about it and then I started representing dogs who want to go on the stage. Now, what are you doing here? I thought you had auditions.”
The sideways glance turned once again into an evasive look up the street. “Your mother is better at those than I am, and she can play the piano. I thought you might want some help on this meeting, so I came by in case you wanted me to come up. I know it’s hard for you to deal with situations like this.”
“Situations like this?” I said. “How often during my childhood did I have to cope with the widow of a man who fell down in his dog’s water bowl because he had a knife sticking out of his back?”
Dad’s mouth flattened out. “You know what I mean. Situations that involve death.”
He had me there. Ever since I was a little girl, I’ve had a hard time coping with the idea of death. It’s always seemed hideously unfair to me that life ends, that we have no control, and that there’s no Reset button. You’re dead, and that’s it. When I was small, I’d lie awake trying to reconcile the facts and invariably end up crying.
Actually, I’m still not that crazy about the whole business to this day. But it’s more my death and those of my loved ones that bother me.
“I really didn’t know Trent very well, Dad. He was a client’s owner and that’s it. I just met him for the first time last week. So I actually do think I can handle this one on my own.” Frankly, if Dad hadn’t brought it up, I wouldn’t have equated Trent’s death with my own fear of the inevitable. Trent was a guy who was paying me to represent his dog, and if the truth were told, I really hadn’t liked him very much. He was loud, unnecessarily assertive, obnoxious, and annoying. So this wasn’t really hitting me in the solar plexus.
Luckily, I thought it unlikely I’d be asked to speak at his funeral.
“You sure?” Dad looked up at the building like he was trying to figure out which apartment might be Louise’s. I knew it was in the back of the building and the windows couldn’t be seen from here, but I didn’t think that was the point anyway.
“I’m sure. Go find yourself an agent, but don’t sign anything until I read it, right? I’m a lawyer and an agent, so I’ll catch anything they try to sneak by you.” I have to keep reminding my parents about the law degree they helped pay for.
But Dad kept looking up at the building, apparently waiting for it to divulge all its secrets to him. It seemed the building was being especially stubborn about such things. “I really don’t mind if you want me to come up,” he said.
I felt my arms cross in a gesture of impatience that I had probably learned from my mother. “What’s this really about, Dad?” I asked.
He looked sharply at me, the actor in him no doubt deciding to feign outrage at the perceived impugning of his character, but he saw my face and realized who he was up against. He shook his head a little and smiled sadly. “I never could put one over on you,” he said.
“Well, there was the whole Tooth Fairy thing. Come on, what’s up? Why do you want to go upstairs so badly?”
Dad sat back down on the stoop, and his age seemed to catch up with him all at once. My father doesn’t look as old as he really is, especially when he doesn’t want to, but now he seemed to shrivel a little and he let out a breath.
“The fact is, sweetie, the act hasn’t been going so well for a while,” he said weakly. “You know we haven’t gotten the bookings we’re used to, and even the cruise-ship stuff is starting to dry up. That’s not even a joke.”
I sat down next to him. “Things will pick up, Dad. They always do.”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. The act itself is a little outdated. Who wants to see a couple of old codgers singing and dancing up on a stage?”
“Works okay for the Rolling Stones, and they’re older than you,” I tried, but Dad wasn’t buying. He shook his head again.
“I’m just saying. We’re not getting booked, and frankly the travel is starting to get to your mother a little bit.” He looked away and I was afraid he might be crying softly. “She wants to stay close to home more often, and I can’t get us anything in the city. So I thought if I could meet this woman with the dog, and the dog got the job on Broadway…” He didn’t finish the sentence.
“You thought Louise was a way to get to Les McMaster about being in Annie?” I said. The idea was so beyond logical I considered the possibility my father was just kidding.
“It’s stupid, I know, but I’m grasping at straws here, Kay. Do you think maybe that would work?” He kept looking away. I didn’t study the part of his face I could see too closely. My father is a man of dignity, even when he’s performing what some would consider corny comedy on a stage to a half-empty house. I had no desire to puncture that dignity now.
“I’m insulted,” I told him, and Dad looked at me in surprise. Luckily, his cheeks were dry. “You want an in to a Broadway director, your own daughter is representing the performer in question, and you think you have to go to a woman whose husband was murdered this morning so she could put in a good word for you with her dog?”
Dad opened and closed his mouth a couple of times. “I don’t intrude on your business, sweetie,” he said.
“This is show business,” I reminded him. “If there’s one thing you taught me, it’s that you use every possible connection you can find.”
Dad shook his head, seemingly in amazement at the creature he had helped create. “You’re a peach, sweetie,” he said. He looked up at the building again. “Let’s go.”
“What do you mean, ‘let’s,’ kemosabe? I just told you I’d give you an in with Les. You don’t need Louise Barclay now.”
He was already starting up the stairs to the front door. “I’m here to help you, Kay. I want to see how you operate, and maybe I can be of use with the lady and the dog. Besides, it’s going to be pretty grim up there. You’ll need some moral support.”
I knew better than to argue with him when he started talking that fast; it was how he’d once convinced a club owner to take the three of us in for a full month despite the fact that I was a minor and the only shows this establishment usually booked featured women who weren’t always fully dressed. Hey, we needed the gig.
We walked up the four flights of stairs to Louise Barclay’s palatial apartment, whose stairwells didn’t smell and whose stairs were freshly painted. You’d think there’d be an elevator in a relatively upscale building like this one but in Manhattan, where the average price of a co-op apartment is over a million dollars, “upscale” is a relative term. This one was clean and well appointed, no doorman but working buzzers. We got to the landing (Dad wasn’t even breathing heavy) and found the brightly lit door to Louise Barclay’s home, which at the moment included yellow crime-scene tape on the front door, admittedly hanging down where it had once been stuck up in an intimidating fashion, I was certain. I knocked on the door because there didn’t appear to be a doorbell.
Louise opened the door after a moment. She was wearing a “silk” robe that I’ll bet she thought of as a dressing gown and fuzzy pink slippers that were open in the back. Without makeup, she looked about five years older than she had when I’d seen her the day before.
Of course, her husband being stabbed might have had something to do with her somewhat less polished appearance.
“Oh, it’s you,” she said by way of greeting. And sadly, that was not the worst reception I’d ever gotten from a client. There was this one chimpanzee who wasn’t happy to see me, and let’s not discuss what he tossed at my head to express this displeasure. Louise stood to one side. “Come on in. Bruno’s in the back.”
The apartment appeared to contain a living area, a bedroom, a bath, a tiny “lanai” that was basically large enough for one person to smoke a cigarette on, a galley kitchen (also fitted with drooping crime-scene tape), and a small nook that had probably once been a walk-in pantry and now had been fitted out as a home office with computer equipment, a tiny desk, and a telephone with actual wires coming out of it and plugging into the wall.
Louise didn’t ask me who the sprightly gentleman with me was, so I decided not to mention my father unless she brought him up. It was sort of a game designed to help me understand just how oblivious Louise was right now. The more she was out of it, the better for my dealings with Les when I brought Bruno to see him again.
But Dad had other ideas. Once inside the apartment, he stuck out his hand in Louise’s direction, smiled his best ingratiating book-me-now smile, and said, “I’m Howard Mancuso, Ms. Powell’s attorney.”
It took all the effort I could manage not to swivel and holler, “WHO?” at the top of my lungs. Instead, I felt my mouth tighten up, my throat dry up, and the moisture from there apparently migrate to my palms, which started to sweat. “You’re just here as a friend, Howard,” I said. I was striving for a pleasant tone and managed to sound more like a flamingo being run over by a garbage truck.
“Of course,” “Howard” said. Dad continued to hold out his hand until Louise, looking dimly aware of her surroundings, took it. He leaned over and kissed her hand, which I thought was overplaying the role, but Louise smiled after a moment. “Charmed,” my father said. Apparently in the role of Howard Mancuso, he was channeling the spirit of Charles Boyer.
“Thanks,” Louise answered. Which actually seemed sort of appropriate. She showed us into the living area, which was something of a relief, as looking into the kitchen and seeing the outline of the body on the floor was getting a little uncomfortable for me.
I don’t know if I would have reacted that way had my father not brought up my problems with the concept of death, but I’ll admit it was spooking me to be in the apartment where Trent had died. My immediate mission became to get Bruno and blow this popsicle stand as quickly as I possibly could. My stomach was queasy and my palms were no drier. I probably looked as white as a sheet.
“Is Bruno ready to go?” I asked as we walked back into the living area. Bruno was not visible there, and given that Louise had pointed in this direction when she’d mentioned where the dog was before, that was troubling.
