Sammy Two Shoes, page 3
Everyone stared at her.
I looked around the room. My impression was that none of these people could kill anything stronger than a bottle of Chardonnay. But I didn’t really know the theatre world. Who knows what lurks in the heart of an actor in an all-female Hamlet set in a prison?
‘I’m leaving now,’ Hamlet said without moving, clearly expecting me to object.
All I did was wave goodbye.
Everyone else took that as a cue and split with relative haste.
As soon as they were all out, I took a good look at Emory’s place. Most of her stuff was gone, including the spiral notepad and the pencil, of course, but also most of her makeup and some of the bits of costume. I was certain that the police had taken everything that mattered, but I thought it was still worth a good close look.
I was staring at all the bits of broken mirror when I suddenly had an idea about when Emory might have been killed. Her place was the tidiest one of all the actor spots when I’d first seen it. Emory was neat. She would have cleaned up the bits of mirror if she’d had the chance. And the thing about her character, Ophelia, is that she jumps in a river and drowns before the play’s over.
Which said to me that Emory, the actor, would have had time to tidy up when she came off. Long before the curtain call. She had to have been killed sometime between then and during the last scene of the play, when everybody in the whole thing is on stage for the final slaughter scene. Besides Ophelia, the characters not on stage, because they were already dead or gone, were Polonius, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern.
Then, of course, there was Nan, the understudy, who could have showed up, snuck in the back door right when she knew Emory would be there, and given Emory a note she couldn’t ignore.
I thought that’s where I’d start. So I found my way to the booth in the dark and flipped on a little lamp beside what I assumed was the lighting board. There was a prompt book, a couple of candy bar wrappers, lots of tissues, and, eventually, a contact sheet.
Top of the list: Nan Breen, Understudy.
FOUR
Less than an hour later, I knocked on Nan’s door. It had five bullet holes in it.
‘Who is it?’ someone asked; the voice was jittery.
‘I’m sort of a friend of Phoebe’s,’ I told her.
‘What do you want?’
‘Did you hear about Emory?’ I asked her softly.
Silence. Maybe she hadn’t heard.
Then the lock clicked, and the door cracked. Nan peered out.
‘I heard.’ She stood there, tissue in hand, sniffling.
‘Then you may also have heard that they arrested Phoebe,’ I went on.
‘Yeah,’ Nan said. ‘Phoebe didn’t do it.’
The door opened all the way.
Nan was a manic pixie: five-foot-nothing, close-cropped hair, dark blue eyes. She was wearing a T-shirt that said ‘To be or … line?’ and no shoes.
‘The police came to see you?’ I asked, still standing in the hall.
She shook her head. ‘Gossip’s like lightning in the theatre world.’
‘May I come in?’ I asked.
She thought about it.
Her apartment reminded me of one of the downsides of Manhattan living. I could see from the hallway that it was only one room and a bathroom. There was a kitchenette stuck in one corner and a rusted radiator taking up almost as much space as her futon. She had a poster of a window where she wished a window would be. The other posters, all over the walls, were nature scenes, like the woods in autumn and a snow-capped mountain. There was Mozart on the stereo. Papageno from The Magic Flute. There was a pleasant smell of coffee in the air.
She decided that she wouldn’t let me in. She just wiped her nose and swallowed.
‘Your place is smaller than my hotel room,’ I said, looking around.
‘If I’d been in this room when Emory came over the other night and shot up the place,’ Nan told me, ‘I’d be lying here dead.’
‘Emory was scary,’ I agreed.
‘How can I help you?’ she asked, standing at the door like a guard. ‘Or really, how can I help Phoebe? I like her.’
‘Me too, far as I can tell.’
She gave me a quick once-over. ‘You’ve got to be a friend of that Sammy character, her new boyfriend. What is he, like, some kind of smalltime hood?’
‘Did you kill Emory?’ I asked calmly.
Sometimes a thing like that worked, as I was saying. You might catch a person off guard, and their face could tell you everything.
Nan’s eyes widened. ‘Me?’
‘She tried to shoot you through this door. That’s what we call a motive in the killing game. Did you go to the theatre last night?’
‘God, no,’ she assured me. ‘I was at Tap-A-Keg down the block. From around seven until, like, after midnight. They know me there. Ask anybody.’
‘I’ll do that.’
She looked like she was telling the truth, but she was an actor, so, yes, I was going to check.
‘Jesus,’ she muttered, shaking her head. ‘Emory’s dead.’
‘Right,’ I said. ‘Can you go through a few things with me?’
‘Such as?’
‘In the last scene, when Hamlet kills everybody,’ I began, ‘some characters aren’t on stage anymore because they’re dead or gone, right?’
She thought about it a little longer than we both felt comfortable with, and then she finally stood aside to let me in.
‘Those characters aren’t on stage, but the actors are,’ she told me. ‘They fill out the court. Everyone’s on stage for the last scene, in different costumes. You want espresso? I got a machine.’
I shook my head. ‘So nobody would be in the dressing room?’
She bit her lower lip. ‘Well, nobody’s supposed to be. But most of the time Emory didn’t come back on after Ophelia’s dead. She told me at a rehearsal that her performance would make too strong an impression, and she’d be recognized if she came back on stage. She said it would spoil the show. I always assumed she meant “more than it was already spoiled,” right? I mean, you saw the show?’
‘Right. But nobody else would have been back in the dressing room during the final scene. Except Emory.’
‘No. Everybody else is always on stage at the end as far as I know. Why? Is that important?’ She sat at a little two-top table near the kitchenette, sipped from a demitasse cup, and pointed. ‘Sit?’
I sat.
‘If Emory was killed during the last scene,’ I said, ‘then we have a dozen witnesses who can clear Phoebe. She was in the booth and it was obvious to me that the actors could all see her there from the stage.’
‘Not to mention the light cues and the sound cues,’ Nan agreed. ‘Phoebe was the only one in the booth, and I assume all that happened in the final scene.’
‘Now you mention it, there were plenty of lights changing, especially when Horatio sang Hamlet to his rest.’
‘It was actually flights of angels that did the singing,’ she corrected me, ‘but, yes.’
‘And, anyway,’ I went on, ‘there’s no way to get from the booth to the dressing room without everybody in the audience seeing.’
‘Because the booth is right there at the back of the audience.’ She nodded. ‘And no way Phoebe could have slipped out of the booth, out the front door, around the back, stabbed Emory, and gotten back to the booth without everyone seeing her and missing a bunch of cues! Hey, you’re not as dumb as you look!’
‘Thanks.’
‘You solved the case!’ She smiled in a very appealing way.
‘No. This line of examination doesn’t tell me who killed Emory,’ I said. ‘But it does tell me that Phoebe didn’t do it, and that’s all I really care about at the moment. So, thanks for your help.’
I stood.
‘That’s it?’
‘Well, Phoebe didn’t do it, and you didn’t do it,’ I told her, ‘so now I figure I gotta go talk with the other cast members, don’t you think?’
‘Oh,’ she said slowly. ‘Like, you’re a private investigator!’
‘Something like that,’ I said.
‘Cool.’ She stood and saw me to the door.
‘Tell them I sent you when you go to Tap-A-Keg,’ she encouraged me. ‘They can be a little standoffish with strangers, but they love me there.’
I smiled. ‘And I can see why.’
What I didn’t say was that I had no intention of actually letting her off the hook. Her or any of the other actors. Because if it was true that Emory hung out back in the dressing room for the last scene instead of going on, then everyone would be aware of that. It would be the ideal time for someone to slip in, ice her, and be back on stage or out the back door before anyone could notice. Very dramatic, and very opportune. I couldn’t see any of these actors murdering anything other than Shakespeare’s language, but I had to be sure.
So, I bid goodbye to Nan, but I went directly to Tap-A-Keg.
FIVE
Tap-A-Keg was five doors south of Nan’s apartment building on the same block. I pushed open the door into the familiar smell of fried onions and spilled beer. When my eyes adjusted to the relatively low light, I could see everyone in the place giving me the once-over. In absolute silence.
I closed the door behind me and headed for a bar stool. The place was more or less like a thousand other neighborhood bars in Manhattan. Ten tables, same number of booths, tall wall of booze behind a short bartender. Red neon in the window, unlit candles on the tables, maybe fifteen guys in the joint before noon on a weekday. I’d been in the place before, only it was in Brooklyn, and on a Sunday.
I sat. ‘Dark draft?’
Not a move or a peep.
‘Nan sent me on ahead,’ I went on.
Everybody relaxed.
‘Can’t remember the last time we saw a guy with a suit in the place,’ the bartender said, pulling a beer glass from under the bar. ‘You gotta be one of Phoebe’s theatre buddies.’
He said theatre like it might have been catching.
I smiled. ‘Not me. Nan’s in a little bit of trouble and she asked me to help.’
A couple of the guys at the bar nodded. They wanted to let me know they were wise.
‘Who told you to help Nan?’ one of them asked, only a little belligerently.
‘Allie Tannenbaum,’ I shot back without a split-second hesitation.
I might as well have fired a gun. One guy at a table actually ducked a little.
‘Tick-Tock.’ The bartender nodded, referring to Allie’s hitman moniker.
Now, in reality it had been years since I’d seen Tick-Tock. As a teen, I’d had a sort of Dutch uncle by the name of Red Levine, may he rest in peace, and Red had introduced me to Tick-Tock. Their idea was that they were grooming me for some kind of position in their organization, but I never got any farther than boosting cars in Brooklyn before my fatal incident and subsequent lamming to Florida.
Still, if you knew anything about the Jewish mob, you knew Red. And if you were really wise, you were a little afraid at the mere mention of his name. Because Red and Tick-Tock had been members of the Combination, which was the real name for what the press called Murder, Inc., a very professional association of Hebrew hitmen. Men I grew up under when I lived in Brooklyn. So.
‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘my uncle Red Levine introduced me to Mr Tannenbaum a number of years ago. I try to help out when I can.’
All relatively true, although not remotely germane to the current situation. But it had the desired effect. To wit, there was a lot more deference in the room than there had been a few moments previously.
Jesus, I missed New York. Where else can you mention an obscure hitman and garner some serious respect?
‘Nan’s in some kind of trouble, you said,’ the bartender said, setting down a dark beer in front of me.
‘One of the actors in the show for which she is the understudy,’ I said carefully, staring at my beer, ‘is dead, and Nan’s a suspect.’
Nobody moved.
‘You guys seen her lately?’ I asked.
Nobody spoke.
I hoisted my beer. ‘She told me she was in here last night.’
‘Oh,’ the bartender said, like he’d gotten a sudden electric shock. ‘She was. She was sitting right there, in that stool.’
Several others nodded instantly.
‘All night?’ I asked.
Everyone in the place nodded. It was a little creepy.
A guy in a booth cleared his throat and said, weakly, ‘Nan’s connected with Tick-Tock?’
I tossed back another slug of beer. ‘Not exactly. But, I mean, who do you think runs Broadway? Our people, right?’
Eyebrows lifted. Whether they were thinking that hitmen ran the theatre or Jews were ultimately in control didn’t really matter to me. I was thinking about how differently these guys were going to treat Nan from then on, and it made me smile.
That is, if Nan didn’t zotz Emory. If she did, they probably wouldn’t be seeing much of her, what with her subsequent arrest and jail time and all.
‘Well,’ I said. ‘She’s alibied, courtesy of you guys, so that’s that. Thanks, gentlemen. What’s the tab?’
The bartender shook his head. ‘It could not be more on the house. Anything for Nan.’
That was genuine. He really cared about her.
I stood up. ‘Nan’s got good friends. I’m glad of that.’
Table guy ventured, ‘She’s the only girl who comes in regular. She’s, like, a little sister to most of us. You know?’
Once again, I was reminded of a bar just like that one, only in Brooklyn, where I’d been a kid, maybe nine, and all the guys in the place, drunk or sober, took care of me, watched out for me, wouldn’t let anything happen to me.
So I said, ‘I do know. It’s a good feeling.’
‘Like family,’ table guy said, ‘only without all the fighting.’
And that, of all things, made me lonesome for my mother and my aunt, damn it. Looked like I was going to be in New York longer than I’d planned, and I didn’t see how I could stay there any longer without going to Brooklyn to see them.
But I put that out of my mind as best I could for the moment, waved to all and sundry in the joint, and popped back out to the morning street, headed toward Hamlet.
SIX
Hamlet’s address was Central Park West. Apparently, Hamlet’s parents were loaded. They weren’t home, but Hamlet was, along with some sort of little dog that yapped and snapped when she opened the door.
Hamlet was hungover and dressed in a floor-length kimono. She sported long blonde hair that had been hiding under a short black wig for the show. Her skin was tea-cup delicate and poreless. And her eyes looked like a red roadmap.
‘What do you want?’ she snapped in almost the same register as the dog.
‘Phoebe.’ I wanted to see if she knew what had happened, to see if Nan was right about theatre gossip.
‘Oh.’ She rubbed her head, then she screamed at the dog.
The dog shot off like a cannonball into another part of the house and a blessed silence reigned.
‘I can’t believe they closed the show,’ she muttered. ‘When am I gonna get another chance to play Hamlet?’
‘Let’s talk about Emory,’ I said.
‘Why?’ She tried to focus her eyes.
‘I thought you’d want to,’ I said, somewhat disingenuously. ‘She’s dead. Somebody killed her. That’s the reason the show got shut down.’
‘No.’ Hamlet shook her head slowly. ‘That’s just an excuse. The show stank up half of Manhattan. Critics hated it. Audiences agreed. I’m never going to get work again. Come on in.’
She headed for a large white sofa in a room flooded with sunlight and left it to me to close the door.
She collapsed on to the sofa like Camille and let out a sigh that could have cracked the world in two.
‘I thought you were pretty good,’ I told her, but mostly because I’d heard that actors responded well to compliments.
Hamlet lifted her head and looked me in the eye. ‘Really? Did you really think so?’
‘You’re the best female Hamlet I ever saw.’
‘Well.’ She smiled. ‘Have a seat, then.’
I came to rest in an overstuffed leather chair.
‘Emory was a pain in the ass,’ I prompted.
‘There’s not an actor in the cast who wouldn’t have minded sticking that pencil somewhere,’ Hamlet agreed, ‘but actors complain. They don’t kill people.’
‘John Wilkes Booth was an actor.’
‘I don’t know his work. Was he in anything that I might have seen recently?’
I moved on.
‘Right,’ I said. ‘You were on stage for the last scene.’
‘Yes.’ She blinked. ‘I kill a bunch of people and then I get killed.’
‘I remember,’ I told her. ‘You couldn’t possibly have gotten off stage to stab Emory, so you’re one of the only people I can be certain couldn’t kill Emory. But who could have? Any thoughts?’
She took a second.
‘Polonius stays in the shadows,’ Hamlet said, ‘because she’s supposed to be dead, so, of course, she couldn’t let anyone in the audience get a look at her face. She could have slipped away. Same for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Everyone else is kind of prominent.’
‘Because they end up slaughtered on the stage.’ I nodded. ‘Mostly by you.’
‘Why are you doing this?’ she asked. ‘Why are you trying to get Phoebe out of jail?’
‘Because she didn’t do it.’ Simple.
‘No, but, I mean,’ she went on, ‘what’s your motivation?’
‘Oh.’ I smiled. ‘Sammy Two Shoes is my friend, and he’s in love with Phoebe.’
‘That’s the hoodlum boyfriend? His name is Sammy Two Shoes?’
‘Yes.’
‘And that’s all there is to it?’ She squinted. ‘You’re helping a friend? Honor among thieves.’
She didn’t know how right she was, and I was in a mood to oblige her curiosity.
‘A number of years ago, a cop was whacking me with a club one night.’ I explained further, ‘Sammy kicked the cop in the head. Another time, when I got shot, he took me to a guy and got me patched up. And also, when my mother was sick, Sammy brought her soup. And when I was in jail once, Sammy bailed me out. Should I go on?’
