Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. Vol. 49, No. 1 & 2, January/February 2004

Absolutely Live in Person by Robert S. Levinson

“Look,” Mickey Barnum was saying, “I didn’t drag myself to LAX and red-eye three thousand miles to take no for an answer.” He slapped his palms on Coopersmith’s desk for emphasis and gave him one of his patented hard-stare smiles.

The lawyer let Mickey see he was unimpressed.

Mickey knew the look.

He’d seen it a million times, give or take, on every Forbes Coopersmith of the business, straight-arrow suits who liked to call a strike even before the pitch, as if that would be enough to intimidate Mickey and make him ratchet up his offer a notch or three.

Coopersmith leaned forward, settled his elbows on the sleek surface of a walnut desk that held no evidence of work, and made a finger pyramid.

“A hundred grand more up front and I might be interested,” he said, like he was shutting the door on any options, except—

He had a lazy left eye.

It was twitching now.

The twitch, all Mickey needed to see to figure the lawyer was running a Park Avenue bluff.

Mickey moved his hands out of sight and pushed hard on his thighs to steady his legs before the sound of his elevator heels on the parquet floor rose to ear level and revealed the flaw in his nerves of steel. For as many times as he’d been through one of these negotiating confrontations, he had never quite mastered anything beyond a poker face.

“Terrific, except it’s not you I want, Mr. Coopersmith. I want your client. I want to bring Diana Demarest back to life and give her fans throughout the world an opportunity to relive the magic moments they spent with her over all those decades in darkened movie palaces.”

“Mickey, perhaps you didn’t hear me when I said you aren’t the first promoter—”

“Entrepreneur. I do other things. Also quite well.”

“—You aren’t the first... entrepreneur to come at me with this type of proposal.”

“But I am the only Mickey Barnum, Mr. Coopersmith, the man who created Absolutely Live in Person.”

“Ab-solutely Live in Person,” the lawyer repeated, putting top spin on the word Live. “Even with the now-deceased stars of earlier years, the Diana Demarests who’ve become as close as any to the iconic stature of a Harlow, a Garbo. Monroe. Duke Wayne. Chaplin and Pickford before them. Quite the miracle worker you are.”

Mickey chose to overlook the lawyer’s sarcasm. He gave a modest shrug, anchored an acknowledging grin on his face, and ran an invisible chalk mark in the air.

“I’m also the biggest, the best, the most successful. I have put life back into the bank accounts of their heirs. And their lawyers.” He let the remark sink in. “Mr. Coopersmith, I have never run a losing tour and that’s because I’ve never run into anyone who knows more about show business history than me. A walking encyclopedia. I know what the public’s hungry for and I know how to feed that hunger.”

“I admire your modesty, Mickey. Let’s settle on another seventy-five grand to sweeten the pot and push forward. How’s that sit with you?” His left eye doing its little dance again, but something in the lawyer’s manner that was stronger than a simple bluff.

Mickey drew some comfort from his belief that the offer he’d put on the plate twenty minutes ago represented more bread than Coopersmith and the Demarest estate had seen in the twenty years since Diana had vanished.

Poof.

She’d been there one minute, gone the next, on the day she shot her last scene for what nobody suspected at the time would be her last movie for United Artists, for anyone — Street Corner Sinners, back in the early eighties.

She was never heard from again.

After seven years, she was declared legally dead, but—

Mickey hadn’t just drawn Diana Demarest’s name out of the hat and made her next in line for the Absolutely Live in Person treatment. He’d actually been thinking about a show that paired Lemmon and Matthau, “One More Night with The Odd Couple,” but—

He’d fallen into proof Diana Demarest might still be alive.

Even dead she would provide good value, only slower, over the long haul, especially if he could score the London Palladium for two nights, but—

Alive? Diana Demarest back among the living?

That’s what had gotten the adrenaline pumping and made him hop the American to JFK and round one of this gamesmanship with Forbes Coopersmith, Esq.

Mickey was certain finding Diana Demarest could mean the biggest payday of his career.

She would be his General Tom Thumb, his Jenny Lind, “The Swedish Nightingale,” his Jumbo the Elephant — the same kind of international attraction that had helped make his great-great-great grandfather, the great, the one-and-only Phineas T., rich and famous and an icon in his own right.

It was the rich that interested Mickey most. For all the success of Absolutely Live in Person and his other shows, his ultra-expansive lifestyle routinely kept him teetering on the brink of bankruptcy. Not that he didn’t enjoy being there.

Living on the edge was his drug of choice. It helped him to keep his engine recharged, as it had his father, his grandfather, and all the other family members who had devoured challenge as soul food.

They’d managed to survive, better than survive, come out on top, live happily ever after. Most of them, anyway, so he wasn’t going to be the one who defied Barnum tradition by conforming to the Average Joe Code of Conduct: a job and a weekly paycheck, a mortgage, a ten-year-old car in desperate need of brakes, braces for the kids. Clipping discount coupons and shopping at BuyCheap U.S.A.

Truth be told, he admired the people who lived that way and sometimes wished he could be one of them. He had even tried it once or twice when he was younger, but he had failed. The failure had pushed him back on a course that dictated a million-dollar bankroll before the age of thirty-five.

He had accomplished that.

He had scored it by the age of twenty-five — nine, almost ten years ago — and he’d lost most of it by the age of twenty-six. On and off the Golden Chariot.

Damn, what a rush.

And here he was making another charge.

Mickey could feel the invisible sweat washing his scalp and the roots of his thick, curly, coal black hair, collecting in his armpits, beading in the deep trenches of his broad forehead. In show business they called it “flop sweat.”

If Forbes Coopersmith noticed, he wasn’t saying, but maybe that’s what made him rear back in his cushy executive chair, fold his legs, lock his fingers on his lap, and tell the space between them, “Truth is, you don’t have seventy-five Gs to pull me in, much less a hundred thou, isn’t that so, Mickey?”

“What’s so, counselor, is that my offer of five thousand up front is what good faith is worth to me in this situation. Any dollars after that go into development, getting a Diana Demarest Absolutely Live in Person up and running and on the road.”

“I thought not,” Coopersmith said, as if he had answered the question. He removed his wire-rimmed frames, steam cleaned the lenses with his breath, and dried them with the patterned silk handkerchief he pulled from his shapeless Armani jacket. “Why don’t you come around and test your luck next time you have a hundred thousand to go with your five thousand up front. Then, we can talk about it again, though I can’t promise it won’t be more the next time, inflation being what it is.”

“You said plus-seventy-five would make the deal today.”

Coopersmith shrugged and flashed an insincere smile.

“The clock ran out on seventy-five, Mickey.”

“So, a hundred thousand and we would have a deal? Exclusive rights to a tour and all that goes with it. A souvenir program, posters, calendars, a book, maybe even a movie, and—”

“You’re dreaming pretty large, but why not? Yes. A hundred and five out the door, but I fear it’s only you heading for the door right now.”

Coopersmith started to rise, but Mickey pushed out his palm like a traffic cop.

“Not necessarily,” Mickey said. “A hundred-five and we can shake on it?”

Coopersmith challenged him with a puzzled look, but after a second added a discreet nod.

Mickey leaned down to retrieve his travel-pocked attaché case, its lid lost under destination stickers of various sizes, shapes, and countries. Settled it on the desk. Snapped open the lid and extracted a large manila envelope. From it he removed a series of smaller envelopes, checking notations until he found the two he wanted and offered them to the lawyer. He closed the case and returned it to the floor while Coopersmith checked them both for contents.

One envelope held five thousand-dollar bills.

The other contained a certified check made out to cash in the amount of one hundred thousand dollars.

Coopersmith blew out enough air to sail the QE2 across the Atlantic.

He decided finally, “I must say I’m surprised beyond words, Mickey.”

“What I’d like to hear you say, Mr. Coopersmith, is the one word: deal. Exclusive rights across the board, overseas as well as here in the States.”

Coopersmith stretched his hand over the desk, smiled for real this time, and said, “Call me Smitty.”

Mickey waited until he was back at his suite at the Plaza to phone his father in Los Angeles. Murray Barnum layered some asthmatic breath in the air and said, “So we only had to go the hundred G on top of the five?”

“Right, Pop. He was a total goner on the yarn you fed him about me dangling from the crest of Mount Disaster by my short hairs. Otherwise, he and I would probably still be doing battle somewhere north of five hundred thou. When he saw the bills and the certified check, he didn’t pause to consider how much might be in the other envelopes. We had him.”

Murray chuckled for both of them and fell into a reprise of the call he’d made yesterday to Coopersmith, dropping his voice an octave and assuming an accent from a country existing solely in his imagination:

“Stars on Stage, my company, is ready to spare no expense to bring a show about our beloved Diana Demarest to the stage, sir. Fifty thousand is all we ever offer to secure the rights, not a penny more, or we have problems with favored nations. But at least you know you will be paid, unlike promises you get from our piddling competition, Mr. Mickey Barnum, who is so broke not even all the king’s horses and all the king’s men could ever put him together...”

Turning serious again, Murray said, “You think her heirs, Diana Demarest’s, will ever see any of that hundred thou?”

“Pop, that’s between Coopersmith and his ethics. Lets hope we’re on a flight path to landing Diana Demarest alive. The headlines. The box office. The whole shooting match.” Mickey shook his head in disbelief.

“You get any sense of it from him?”

“Every reference was in the past tense, Pop. The starting point will have to be with her sister after I get back to L.A. He’s arranging for me to meet with her.”

“She has a sister living here?”

“An address over in the Atwater district.”

“Atwater, huh?” Murray Barnum grunted. “If I’d’ve known a neighborhood like that, I’d have urged you to cap the game at twenty-five. Maybe even the original five.”

Mickey said, “If it turns out Diana’s been alive all these years, we’ll make back our hundred on the sale of her story to one of the tabloids. The how and why of her disappearance. Not quite the same as discovering a living, breathing Elvis, but—”

“It turns out Diana Demarest is still dead?” Murray said, overriding his son, his voice begging the question.

“Then, Pop, we’ll still have the question of how she came to sign an autograph from the grave. Unless you want to change your mind and decide what you saw was a forgery.”

“Whatever else it was, Mickey, it was no forgery.”

If anyone knew, Murray Barnum knew.

That, Mickey Barnum knew.

Murray owned the M. Berman Gallery of Greatness, a modest shop on Little Santa Monica Boulevard in Beverly Hills, within walking distance of the Friars Club, where he specialized in the purchase and sale of celebrity autographs. His business grew out of the hobby he’d pursued since boyhood and over the years he’d come to be acknowledged as the matchless dean of authentication.

He was a grand master of the Collectors Society of America, having won the CSA’s highest honor, the “Siggy” (for Signature) more times than any other ranking authority, and of course, he was the first member to be voted into the CSA Hall of Fame.

He’d recognized the Diana Demarest signature for what it was — authentic — the instant he laid eyes on it, about half an hour after he’d bought the old autograph book from a guy who’d waltzed in off the street with a story Murray had heard almost word-for-word thousands of times over the years: He was the relative delegated by the family to unload the mementos of a life recently abandoned by a dearly beloved. In this case, a favorite aunt. The book was the kind school kids have used forever come graduation time, only the couple dozen pages inside the maroon pages here were covered front and back with the signatures of movie and TV stars from the late seventies and early eighties, most of them recognizable, but only a few major names sprinkled among them — a Peck here, a Nicholson there; Stanwyck; the Fondas, father and daughter; Jack Lemmon; Bob Hope.

“Worth a few bucks?” the man asked, in a voice that said he had been through the process a lot with other of Favorite Aunt’s keepsakes and was anxious for it to be over. Murray figured him for mid-to-late forties, a handsome, silver-haired gent with a perfect nose; expensive tailored suit cut to his six, six-one; sleepy eyes half-hidden behind lemon yellow shades. Bouncing nervously from one tasseled loafer to the other while waiting out an answer.

When it came to autographs, Murray never played games with the truth.

“Hard to say,” he said.

“For you? I heard you were the best. Why I came here. What makes it hard to say, or is that a trade secret?” A belligerent edge to the question.

Murray never minded the chance to show off, so he answered with a few of the basics.

“For one, a signature page is always worth more when it’s signed on one side only,” he said. “Look here where I’m showing you, you’ll see why. Where some of the ink bleeds through?”

“Yeah, yeah. Yes. How much then?”

“For another, from my fast check, all of these were what we in the business call ‘easy gets,’ stars who’d sign whenever they got asked. That sends the value way down, given there’s nothing rare about their signatures.”

“Down puts it where? Do you have a number?”

“I did spot an exception to the rule, sir. The Duke. John Wayne. You get into his rarified air, a genuine icon that one, and serious collectors never seem to care how many Duke Waynes are out there or their condition.”

“Okay, I was steered right. You know your stuff. How much for the book?”

“Maybe your aunt also got a Brando in there, or maybe a Cary Grant? Both of them hard gets, so that would push the total value up quite handsomely. You have a little time, I’m glad to make a careful study and offer an appraisal you could take to the bank on my signature.”

The gent pushed back his right jacket sleeve and checked the time, the watch a bold tribute to eighteen karat gold. His head jiggled left and right.

Murray said, “Let me keep your autograph book overnight and come back tomorrow. I’ll make out a receipt for it.”

“I’ll be gone tomorrow. What are you hoping? That I pay you to take the book off my hands? Look, give me a ballpark figure I can live with or the name of your nearest competitor.”

Murray looked at him like he was crazy. “Competitor? Tell me you’re kidding. You must be kidding. You heard about me, then you know I’m head and shoulders—” He picked up the book, toyed with it for about thirty seconds. “Eight hundred tops, based on what I saw so far, and mostly because of the Duke.”

“Fine. Done.”

“I might have gone higher, except the Duke’s in pencil and that weighs down the value to a serious collector. Ink’s always what most serious collectors prefer, except where it’s obviously not possible, because—”

“I said done. Deal. The eight hundred is fine.”

Murray closed the autograph book and gave the cover a few love pats. “Swell, then. I’ll make you out a check.”

“I’d rather have cash.”

Murray turned a palm to the chipped and peeling ceiling paint and made a Why Not? face.

Between the cash drawer and his billfold, all he could come up with was six hundred fifty. He said as much to the gent and offered to give him a voucher for the difference, suggesting, “You leave me your address, I’ll go to the bank first thing later and put it in the mail to you.”

“Six hundred fifty will do fine, Mr. Berman.”

He snatched the bills away from Murray and hurried out like he was one step ahead of the hounds from hell. Too late, Murray realized he had no bill of sale, no way to prove he’d purchased the lot, were the gent ever to come back demanding return of the autograph book, claiming it was stolen property; not a scenario unknown to the trade. Not the first time Murray had erred on the side of enthusiasm.

He brewed himself a fresh cup of tea and settled down into a careful page-by-page study of the book, armed with the trusty magnifying glass he used to help spot any flaws invisible to the naked eye that might impact the value of a signature for better or for worse.

Nothing especially unexpected he’d skipped over and missed before. The usual suspects. More than a few names he knew from the soaps, but couldn’t put a face to. A young Linda Blair from The Exorcist, who was on the autograph circuit nowadays. A nice Sylvia Sidney, the penmanship as revealing of her age as all the wrinkles she’d accumulated late in life. A hasty John Houseman, who had gone from winning an Oscar for The Paper Chase to the TV series based on the movie to those TV commercials for — Murray couldn’t remember what.

It would have been wonderful to stumble into the signature of Houseman’s old partner from the Mercury Theater days, Orson Welles, as well. Welles, always someone ripe to pay a premium for the great man. But finding Houseman and Welles together was as likely as falling into a Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis on the same sheet of paper.

Murray clucked at his good fortune when he came upon the bold and elegant signature of Diana Demarest, her penmanship grade-school impeccable, filling almost all the page, in the vibrant red ink that had become a Diana Demarest trademark.

If he had seen it before he’d quoted the gent a price, he would have had to go up by at least a thousand. Fifteen hundred. Maybe another two thousand over the eight hundred he first quoted. The six-five-oh he wound up paying a bigger bargain now than anything at the local Save-Mart.

Diana was always a hot catch, but never more so than after her disappearance, again when she was officially declared dead seven years later. Her autograph became a rarity, rarely found on the open market, and coveted by collectors around the globe. He had clients who’d fall over themselves to own it.

He began to fantasize about the bidding war he could start if he chose to go that route, instead of putting the signature in the safe deposit box along with others of rising value that he was saving for retirement and a Malibu condo with a view.

Murray put the glass to the signature, adjusting position until it came into perfect focus, moving the rectangular lens left and right and back again, then dancing it around the page.

Letter perfect and no question about its authenticity, but there was something...

What’s it, Murray? he asked himself. What do you see that’s not to your liking, that’s not right? What’s the bother putting a question mark on your mind?

He set the book aside to ponder the question over his tea. It had grown cold. He was halfway to giving it a warm-up shot in the microwave when the answer came to him.

Murray charged back to the desk and checked the autograph book.

Yes! There it was, what was bothering him.

He reached for the phone and autodialed his son.

“Yeah, Pop, what’s up?”

Murray quickly explained, his heart pounding excitement so loud, like a Gene Krupa or Buddy Rich was beating on the sticks, that he had trouble hearing his own voice.

When he finished, Mickey said, “Fine, Pop. Now slow down and say it so I can understand you. You’re telling me that the autograph is genuine, right?”

“Right. I’d swear it on your dear mother’s gravestone.”

“And what else?”

“Genuine, but wrong.”

“Wrong because?”

“Diana signed with the lower case d on both names. That’s how she signed her autograph when she was just starting out and unsure of herself, the same as Greer Garson did. Later, when she became the giant star she became, she did it the right way, with two capital Ds, like Greer Garson did when she became big.”

“What I’m hearing is that the collector got her when Diana was just starting out... So what, Pop?”

“That’s the half of it, Mickey. Whoever’s autograph book this was, that person wrote the date it was begun on the inside front cover. The date the last autograph was collected is on the inside back cover.”

Murray recited the dates.

“Diana Demarest was already the big star by then.”

Mickey played them back at him and, after a brief silence, said, “She also was already among the missing by then.”

“And that’s the other half,” Murray said. “Diana Demarest was not only missing by then, but she’d been legally declared dead.”

Mickey told him, “Sit tight, Pop. I’m on my way over there soon as I finish up with this call from London I’ve had hanging on the other line.”

The day after returning to Los Angeles, Mickey headed for the meeting Coopersmith had set for him with Diana Demarest’s sister.

Atwater was a neighborhood in transition between the east edge of Los Feliz and the onset of Glendale, close to Echo Park, but not part of anyplace in particular. It was the “bargain basement” of the real estate market, filled with rows of small homes on tiny lots, in various styles of architecture reflecting their decade of construction, and existing in harmony along soldierly lines of neatly kept front lawns of brown grass and FOR SALE signs.

Alice Buckingham’s house was from the gingerbread school of design, cute and quaint inside a white picket fence, the slanted roof in need of some new shingles to replace the ones blown away by recent windstorms, the woodwork also showing evidence of wind damage, but overall a credit to the neighborhood.

She was at the front door within a minute of Mickey ringing the bell, an expectant look on her attractive face, his name on her exotic lips, a sensual glimmer in her translucent blue eyes that he’d never before observed in a woman of her age, which he figured to be about fifty. She was buried inside a bulky terry cloth robe, her hair hidden under a towel the same pink shade.

The robe slipped apart when she pushed open the screen door and welcomed him inside, pointing him to the living room, where she had freshly brewed coffee and home-baked brownies set out in anticipation of his visit.

Mickey averted his eyes at the flash of tight pink flesh, but not fast enough for her to miss noticing. She blushed, but otherwise said nothing. She struck a provocative pose settling in the easy chair across from his spot on the sofa. She unwrapped the towel and dropped it on the worn carpeting, shook loose the freed bushel of snow white hair and groomed it with a few head tosses and her long, lean fingers.

“Smitty called and told me what you’re planning about my late sister,” Alice said, “this Absolutely Alive tour you just paid me so much money for to acquire the rights.” Her tone was tinged in amazement, while her voice conjured up mind pictures of sailing vessels being drawn to the rocks by a siren’s call. “Frankly, I’m surprised Diana, big a star as she was, is still worth so much after so many years, but no argument from me, Mr. Barnum. Frankly, I am not financially well off of late and can use your generous advance to pay off a ton of debts.”

“A lot more where that came from, Mrs. Buckingham.”

“Miss. Always the bridesmaid, that’s me. If anything, I’ve made a successful transition from bridesmaid to old maid.” She unleashed a laugh and her expression welcomed Mickey to join in.

Mickey smiled and sipped at his coffee. “I’m surprised,” he said, “given how—” And stopped short of finishing the thought.

Alice Buckingham finished it for him. “How well preserved I appear to be? Well, I am that, Mickey, if I may be so bold. And I’m Alice.”

“Be so bold, Alice.”

“Frankly, I’ve never been one to stand on formality. I have always taken care of my body. Clean mind. Clean body. Take your pick.” A pixie laugh. “Who said that? Not that it matters. It’s a philosophy I seem to have acquired quite naturally, ages upon ages ago.”

Alice sent over a devilish grin, started patting her robe in search of something, her hands momentarily fixating on her breasts before they slid down into the pockets and withdrew an old-fashioned cigarette case with a burnished gold finish, the size of a CD, and a matching slimline lighter.

She extracted a cork filter tip from the case and fitted it to her mouth like a straw, powered up the lighter, and swallowed enough smoke to power her lungs for a week while sliding into a half-reclining position. A section of robe retreated as her legs stretched and crossed at the ankles, exposing enough perfectly formed calf and thigh to inspire the next revolution.

She seemed to make sure he’d noticed, then covered up, this time without a blush. She then held up the cigarette like Exhibit A and said, “Some habits are filthier than others. The best ones are the ones hardest to break.” Her leer made him doubt she was talking about her smoking. “Do you indulge, Mickey?” That laugh again. “In cigarettes, I mean.”

Not trusting his voice, he glided his face left and right.

Alice pushed out her lips and gave him some Morse code with her eyes, said, “No smoking, but I’d bet you still steam a lot,” before she let the innuendos lapse into history.

He cleared his throat, took a monumental gulp of coffee, and got her back talking about her sister and the Absolutely Live in Person project.

Alice let him see she recognized the maneuver. She twisted her mouth into an awkward pout, pounded out the cigarette, and moved back into an upright position, her arms locked across her waist.

“Where shall we begin, Mickey?”

He explained what had worked successfully for the others he’d built shows around, the career keepsakes too personal to toss that get relegated to filing cabinets and storage garages, which take on a golden afterlife when offered on the altar of fan memory and adoration.

“You’d be amazed,” he said. “The audience will always go nuts when something as simple, as basic, as a dress Milton Berle wore gets rolled out. Sunset Beaudry’s ten-gallon hat. A sword Kirk Douglas wielded in Spartacus, or Chuck Heston in Ben Hur. Judy’s ruby red slippers. But most of all, it’s the old footage. A reel of a dozen highlight scenes from the best of the movies. Maybe some home movie footage, full of backstage glimpses the fans only knew from magazines and newspapers, the tabloids. When it’s over, everybody leaves the theater glowing, thinking the show was worth twice the ticket price.”

She signaled understanding and began counting off on her fingers what she knew to exist, in the basement and the attic, but mostly in the rental storage compound about a mile away. All the while, her wondrous eyes fixed on a corner of the ceiling, as if that was where she had filed the inventory on her sister’s possessions.

They turned back on Mickey when she was through, smiling triumphantly, complimenting herself on her memory, wondering, “Will that be enough for your program? I think so, don’t you?”

He picked this as a good time to drop the bomb on her. “How about Diana?” he said. “Having Diana step out at some perfectly timed moment from behind the curtain would make this a definite smash at the box office, keep both of you debt free for years to come.”

Alice ceased looking like she’d just finished first in the swimsuit competition. She bolted upright and dug into him with a stare as sharp as a stiletto, then closed her eyes, as if there were something working behind them that she did not want Mickey to see, and blindly grabbed after a fresh cigarette.

She wandered the room for a few moments, then stepped back until she hovered over him, legs spread wide, one arm across her midsection, the hand supporting the elbow of her cigarette hand. The smoke filtering like dragon’s breath from the corners of her mouth.

“What exactly was that supposed to mean, Mickey? Is there something you think you know that you haven’t been sharing with me?” Her words popping like acorns in a fireplace, challenging, but also trying not to make her sound threatened by whatever his answers might be.

“I’m sharing with you now, Alice.”

“You make it sound like you think my sister’s still alive.”

“Is she?”

Alice made an unintelligible noise of disbelief.

“Next, Mickey, you’ll be accusing me of being Diana.”

“Are you?”

He flicked the corners of his mouth and held her eyes for study. They were as flat as the world before Columbus. She took another drag and papered him with the bluish stream, spun around and moved quickly to the fireplace.

The mantel was decorated with photos of Diana Demarest at various stages of her career, the frames growing more elaborate and ornate with the success visible in her poses and costuming. Serving as bookends were the Oscar she’d won for Paris Holiday, the Emmy for her indelible Laura in Tennessee Williams’s The Glass Menagerie, opposite Jack Lemmon’s Gentleman Caller.

The centerpiece, above Diana’s portrait by Warhol, was a blue crystal vase.

Alice made a sweeping gesture of introduction and said, “You’re looking for Diana, here she is,” then addressing the vase, “Sis, I believe Mickey would like a word with you.”

She froze her stare on him and, as the room temperature dropped to a level only penguins could love, said, “Go for it, Mickey.”

Mickey finished the cookie he was munching, washed it down with a coffee mouth rinse, unwound from the couch, and headed to the mantel.

Alice stepped aside.

He leaned over and said quietly, as if he were dealing confidentially with the crystal vase, “Let me explain, Diana, assuming you don’t mind if Alice tunes in on us.” He gave the vase a minute to answer before advising, “Your sis apparently doesn’t mind, Al.”

It took only two or three minutes to share the story with Diana, about the man who’d sold the autograph book to Pop, how Pop had reacted upon discovering the Diana Demarest signature, and his subsequent realization about the double Ds in relation to the time frame.

“What got me to New York and your lawyer, Diana, the idea that you might still be alive. But it’s okay, you like this — as nice a vase as any gown Edith Head ever put you in. You’re sure to get heavy applause from all your fans when Sis here escorts you onto the stage.”

Mickey glanced over his shoulder at Alice.

“We get the personal touch from you, Al. The family thing never fails to work its magic. We script it right, you’ll have them drowning in tears when you explain how Diana, your loving sister—”

Alice signaled Mickey to stop with a wild arm motion. She insisted, “That person, the man who took the autograph book to your father’s shop. Can you describe him to me?”

He shared what he knew, not a lot, but enough to drain the color from her face, turn it pasty white, and inflate her eyes with sudden fear, like some startled Bambi confronting the headlights of an oncoming truck.

“I should have known it was too good to last,” Alice said. “That miserable—” She realized she was doing more than thinking the thoughts to herself and quit. She seemed to withdraw for several seconds into her memory before declaring, “It’s over, Mickey. No tour, no anything. Nothing, nothing, nothing. Thank you, but no. I’ll call him, Smitty, to tell him I won’t go forward with this and to send you back your money. Every penny. Thank you, Mickey. Now, go. Please leave. I need you to go.”

Instead, Mickey moved back to the couch and landed with a resolve that said he had no intention of leaving. “Not so fast or so easy, Al. Spill it. I want the story on this guy and what it is freaking you out.”

Alice crisscrossed the room, unable to settle down anywhere until, out of frustration, she picked a director’s chair next to the hallway, Diana Demarest’s name silk-screened in white block letters on the black leather backing.

“His name’s McCracken,” she said, her voice breaking on his name. “Murphy McCracken. I thought I’d lost him years ago, that he had quit hunting me in the hopes I’d lead him to Diana.”

“A stalker.”

“A nut case. Letters. Phone calls all hours of the day and night. Everywhere I turned until, finally, I managed to sneak out of New York. That was three years ago, three years after he first started coming around.”

“You never called the cops? Got a restraining order against this yutz?”

“Both. You see how much good—” Her voice sank into tears. She buried her face in her hands. “You have to go and I have to get moving again,” she said.

Before Mickey could tell her he had no intention of leaving without the answer he’d come for, somebody else was saying, “Too late this time. I’m here already.”

Mickey edged around to see they were being confronted by a man who fit Pop’s description of the gent who had sold him the autograph book, from his yellow-tinted shades to the tassels on his glistening loafers.

“The front door was unlocked, so I didn’t bother to knock,” he said, a smile in his voice, like a next-door neighbor who had dropped by to borrow two eggs. “It’s good to see you again. It’s been a long time, hasn’t it?”

“Never wouldn’t be long enough, you dreadful, distasteful excuse for a human being,” she said, spitting the words at him.

He smiled as if he had just been knighted by the queen and said, “I’m fine,” then to Mickey, “I’m Murphy McCracken, by the way, Mr. Barnum, but my friends call me Murf. Thank you so very much for making this occasion possible.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Mickey said, Alice asking the same question with an angry look.

“Just when I thought I’d never find her again—” He pointed at Alice. “The answer came to me at one of your Absolutely Live in Person shows. The ones back in June, the Starlight Theater in Philly honoring—”

“Laura Dane. Six nights, all SRO.”

“Right,” Murf said, tapping his nose. “I was there for all the shows. Laura Dane is my second favorite actress of all time, right behind Diana. A real hummer she is. You know, Laura once tried to get me into the sack? Nothing Laura said, but I could tell by the way she cast her eyes on me. Undressing me. Made me break out into a real sweat.” He rolled his eyes. “I was showing her how well I could sign her signature, and that’s when it came to me, the idea, because I can do Diana’s signature even better, so letter perfect after doing it all these years that nobody has ever spotted it for a forgery. It’s how I make any extra dollars I sometimes need, like for those Laura Dane tickets or this trip to L.A.”

“The autograph in the book you sold to my father—”

McCracken tapped his nose, then his temple. “My handiwork. The solution I hatched for finding Diana. I remembered reading once in Autograph Monthly how nothing can ever get by the great Murray Barnum. How you were his son. Get Murray Barnum involved could get you involved, I figured. With a little luck, get you interested in doing one of your Absolutely Lives for Diana. How that could open a new trail right up to the doorstep of—”

He smiled and bobbed his head at Alice, who responded with a venomous sound.

“I’m always picking up old autograph books at the collector shows and conventions. I put a Diana Demarest in one of them and took it to your father. To be certain it got Murray’s attention, hopefully get him to mention it to you—”

“You put the Ds of her name at odds with the dates in the autograph book.”

“Right as rain, and then I just staked out a place to wait and I waited. Once you showed up, I knew my plan was cooking. I stayed on your trail and, well, here we are, sir, where I have wanted and prayed to be for years.” He swung his palms out and over like he was getting ready to catch rain. “In the presence of the fabulous, magnificent lady herself, Miss Diana Demarest. Are you ready to admit it to me yet, Miss Demarest? So I’ll be able to share the wonderful news with all your legions of fans throughout the world that you’re still alive?”

Alice looked at him with mounting distaste. “You nut case. You need to be put away for good, once and for all. Under lock and key and never let out. Leave now or I’m calling the police.”

“You would not do that. Not after I’ve waited, worshipped, and prayed for all these years.”

Alice stepped over to the phone.

His head rattling left and right, a guttural denial raging from his throat, his joy collapsing, McCracken circumvented the sofa and rushed toward her.

Mickey leaped up and blocked his way. McCracken tried to push him aside, but Mickey wrapped him in a lover’s tight embrace, strapping McCracken’s arms to his side. From somewhere, McCracken summoned an abnormal burst of power. He broke loose, pushed Mickey to the floor, and fell on top of him. He worked into a sitting position and began pummeling Mickey on his chest and about the face.

Mickey felt his left cheek snap under one blow, his nose on the next one. He felt the flow of warm blood from both nostrils racing down the side of his neck. He vaguely saw Alice reaching after something. A moment later, as darkness began to cloud his consciousness, he heard Alice bring the blue crystal vase down on Murphy McCracken’s head. As black ashes watered McCracken’s silver hair and flowed down his face, Mickey heard a whimper of despair, and then he heard nothing at all.

Thirty-six hours after his encounter with Murphy McCracken, Mickey roused from his drug-supported sleep in a private room at Cedars-Sinai, Pop at his bedside, assuring him, “The doctors told me you’ll live, but getting that busted-up puss of yours back to beautiful will take time. I told them, ‘Beautiful? I always knew this was a great hospital, but I didn’t know that you performed miracles.’ ”

Mickey tried laughing, but it hurt too much.

He wondered, “McCracken?” hardly able to pronounce the name past the bandages mummifying half his face.

“Unfortunately, Diana Demarest only hit him hard enough to bust his skull a little, so he’ll live, too. He’s being charged with aggravated assault. It could have been manslaughter in the first degree, except for Wonder Woman here.”

Mickey worked his chin up and saw her peering back at him from behind Pop’s chair, an air of relief playing on her face. He worked his jaw a little to loosen the bandages and make his voice more than a mumble.

“So, I was right. And so was McCracken. You are Diana.”

“No, sorry, Mickey, I’m not. When your father said Diana hit McCracken, he meant the vase containing my sister’s ashes. I’m still Alice, and this—” She held up an envelope for him to see and turned it over to Murray. “—this is your authorization to take whatever you want from my storage garage and from the house for our Absolutely Live tribute to Sis.”

She noticed the question mark in eyes Mickey could barely keep open. Explained, “I’m heading for New York tonight on the red-eye to take care of estate business my lawyer called to say he urgently needs me for. It may take a while, Smitty said, but I’ll be in touch.”

“Be in the show?”

“Maybe. We’ll talk.” She moved around and leaned over him, kissed his forehead. Murray rose and held out his hand to her. Instead of taking it, she answered him with a hug, then hurried from the room, pausing for a backward glance and a goodbye wave before she disappeared.

Murray watched her leave, then he settled into the chair again and said, “So let’s double-check what we have ourselves here.”

He pulled a single sheet of elegant but inexpensive powder blue stationery from the envelope. The letter of authorization had been handwritten in black ballpoint, a flowing hand, every word letter-precise. Murray moved his lips while reciting the words under his breath. He got about halfway through before falling silent. He held out the sheet for Mickey to see and said, “Take a good look for yourself.”

Mickey struggled to fix focus, asking, “Is something wrong, Pop?”

“Authorization signed by Alice Buckingham, as clear as can be to let you go about our business, but the handwriting, that’s something else again. Her handwriting was always as distinctive as her signature, any time I saw it, so I’m ready to swear it on your dear mother’s gravestone that we just said goodbye to Diana Demarest.”

Mickey was discharged from Cedars-Sinai the next morning. Murray drove them to the house in Atwater.

There was a FOR LEASE sign posted on the parkway lawn. No evidence inside of its most recent occupant.

The next stop was the storage garage.

There was no space with the numbers indicated in the letter of authorization. No record of any space ever having been rented to anyone named Alice Buckingham.

Forbes Coopersmith took Mickey’s call on what was either the seventh or eighth try. He was cordial and polite while advising him, “My client’s changed her mind about your show. Your advance in full will be in the mail to you by the end of the week.”

For months afterward, Mickey startled himself awake in the middle of the night, always trying to hold on to his recurring dream about Diana Demarest, believing the dream held the key to her disappearance, but the dream always evaporated—

As Diana Demarest had.