Melancholy Baby

46

Lolly Drake broadcast from an old theater, way west of Broadway, near the river. There were larger-than-life pictures of Lolly everywhere in the building. Lolly with movie stars. Lolly with senators. Lolly in Los Angeles. Lolly in Rome. Lolly with a cute dog. Lolly with a foreign dignitary. Lolly in London. Lolly on a horse. Lolly at the White House. Lolly in San Francisco. Lolly on a riverboat. In every picture, her face was framed by thick, auburn hair. Her famous green eyes stared from the photos as if they could penetrate your soul.

While Lolly finished taping her third show of the day, we sat in her office with her manager, whose name was Harvey Delk, and a lawyer named Curtin, from Harrop and Moriarty.

“Lolly will be really drained,” her manager said. “It’s always hard for her to come down on the three-show days.”

Corsetti smiled and nodded pleasantly. He sat in his chair, looking contented, his fingers locked across his stomach. It was a stomach you’d expect to be fat, but it wasn’t. Corsetti was built like a bowling ball, and was probably no softer.

It was a big office, and nicely furnished, but utilitarian at heart, with cinder-block walls painted yellow, and a thick, coffee-colored rug over the vinyl flooring. On the monitor, Lolly could be seen sitting on a couch behind a coffee table. When the guest was particularly captivating, she leaned over the coffee table toward him. It allowed a dignified show of cleavage.

“Truth is not merely fact,” she was saying, “it is also feeling, honestly expressed, don’t you think?”

The guest, a young actor promoting a new movie, nodded.

“It’s love,” he said, “and honest passion.”

I looked at Corsetti. He smiled at me benevolently.

On screen, Lolly looked at the audience.

“You know my mantra,” she said. “Where secrets exist, love cannot.”

The audience applauded. Corsetti nodded vigorously in agreement.

“She’s really something,” Corsetti said, “isn’t she.”

“Something,” I said.

“It’s what attracted me to the role,” the actor said, “the authentic honesty of the part.”

“You can be proud of that,” Lolly said. “Men are beginning to get it.”

“Well, if we are,” the young actor said, “it’s because you ladies have shown us the value of honest emotion.”

Lolly beamed at him.

“And we’re getting damned tired of it,” she said.

The audience applauded loudly. Lolly reached across and patted the young actor’s hand.

“And the name of the movie again?” she said.

“Timeless.”

“And it’s opening when?” Lolly said.

“January sixth,” the actor said, “in New York and LA. January thirteenth in general release.”

Lolly turned her head toward the studio audience. “I’ve seen a private screening of Timeless,” she said. “And it’s fabulous.”

She looked back at the young actor. “And you’re fabulous in it, Bob.”

She looked into the camera.

“I hope every one of you will see it. Bring the kids. It will do them some good to encounter honest emotion. There’s not enough of it around.”

The young actor looked modest. The audience roared into sustained applause. The credits began to roll. Lolly and the young actor began to chat without sound until the screen went gray.

“She really nailed it,” Corsetti said to her manager. “Not enough honest emotion these days. Is that right on the money, or what?”

The manager was a heavy young man, wearing an oversized double-breasted black suit, a white shirt, and a platinum-colored tie. The suit was probably supposed to conceal his weight. It didn’t. Nothing does.

“Miss Drake has a real grasp on the core values of this country,” the manager said.

The door opened and Lolly Drake came in. She was a little older than she looked on camera, but she was good-looking, and her eyes were everything they seemed to be in her pictures. Her dark green suit was beautifully cut. I paid close attention. My mother had watched Lolly Drake since she had gone national, and worshipped her. It could earn me many points that I’d met her. Lolly stopped inside her office door and looked at us.

“Who are they,” she said to her manager.

“Police, Lolly. You remember, I...”

Lolly nodded impatiently. “Yes, yes. What do you want?”

Corsetti smiled at her and took out his badge. “Detective Eugene Corsetti, Miss Drake.”

He nodded at me.

“Sunny Randall,” he said.

“I suppose it’s about Peter,” she said.

“It is,” Corsetti said.

“God,” Lolly said, “just what I need after three shows.”

“It’s a great pleasure to meet you, ma’am,” Corsetti said.

“Yeah, sure,” Lolly said. “Let’s get this over with.”

She went to her big semicircular desk and sat behind it.

“I’ll give you ten minutes,” she said.

“Oh, I’m sure that’ll be plenty, Miss Drake,” Corsetti said.

“How about your partner,” Lolly said. “Does she talk?”

“When I have something to say,” I said.

“Is that a remark?” Lolly said.

“No, ma’am,” I said. “Just the honest expression of my circumstance.”

Lolly frowned. “Don’t get chippy with me, girlie.”

“Okay,” I said.

“Your ten minutes are ticking,” Lolly said to Corsetti.

“Yes, ma’am,” Corsetti said. “Of course you knew Peter Franklin.”

“Of course.”

“And George Markham.”

“Who?”

“George Markham, ma’am,” Corsetti said.

“I never heard of him.”

“You and he worked together at a radio station in Moline in the early 1980s,” Corsetti said.

Lolly glanced at her manager. Her manager glanced at the lawyer. The lawyer frowned at Corsetti.

“What on earth are you talking about?” Lolly said after a time.

Corsetti looked at me.

“Sunny?” he said.

“You had a call-in radio show at WMOL Moline called Lolly’s Law. During that same time period, George Markham was an announcer at the station.”

“And I’m supposed to remember every loser I worked with at some five-thousand-watt station in East Bumfuck?” Lolly said.

“Never forgot where she came from,” Corsetti said to me.

I smiled. Lolly looked a little startled. What happened to her drooling fan?

“Anything else?” Lolly said.

“You have any idea why somebody would want to kill Markham?”

“Kill him? I told you, I don’t even remember him.”

“Peter Franklin was your lawyer,” Corsetti said.

“I already said he was.”

Corsetti nodded happily.

“Do you know why he hired some people to beat up George Markham’s daughter?”

Lolly stared at Corsetti. She opened her mouth and closed it without speaking. She looked at her manager and at her lawyer. Then she seemed to rally.

“You dreadful little man,” she said.

“I’m not little,” Corsetti said. “Just short.”

“I don’t care what you are,” Lolly said. “I am through wasting my time with you.”

“This interview is terminated,” the lawyer said, “as of now.”

“Interview?” Corsetti said. “You think this is a fucking interview? I’m questioning a suspect in a double homicide, and the questioning stops when I say it stops.”

“Perhaps you should tell us what this is all about,” the lawyer said.

He was an entertainment lawyer. A good criminal lawyer would have terminated the discussion right there. Corsetti didn’t have enough to arrest her. But Corsetti got some credit for that. He had concealed the limits of what he knew, and implied that it was more than it was. So the lawyer still didn’t know what we had.

“George Markham’s daughter, Sarah, hired Sunny Randall to establish her paternity. Peter Franklin hired some guys to make Sarah stop. And then to try to make Sunny Randall stop. Then George Markham got shot, and a couple days later, Peter Franklin got shot, in the same manner that Markham did, a shot in the chest that knocked him down. A bullet in the forehead, point-blank, to be sure they were dead. Miss Drake knew Markham, and she knew Franklin.”

“Hired this woman?” Lolly said.

Corsetti nodded.

“You told us she was a police officer.”

“No,” Corsetti said, “I told you I was a police officer. I told you she was Sunny Randall. Which she is.”

“You implied.”

Corsetti grinned and shook his head. “You inferred,” he said.

“I’ll have your badge,” Lolly said.

The lawyer made a placating gesture with his hand.

“Lolly,” he said.

“Don’t you Lolly me, you fucking wimp,” she said. “I want his badge.”

“Can’t have it,” Corsetti said. “Captain says I’m supposed to have one.”

“Get out,” Lolly said.

“Do you have anything you’d like to share with me about these murders, Miss Drake?” Corsetti said.

“Miss Drake,” the lawyer said.

“Shut up,” she said.

She stood and walked around her desk and leaned toward Corsetti.

“You came in here and pretended this floozy was a police detective. You imply that I am guilty of some preposterous crime. I will see to it, with every power I have at my command, that you are sorry. Do you actually think you can stand up to me? Do you have any idea who and what I am?”

“A highfalutin asshole,” Corsetti said. “Am I right or wrong?”

Lolly jerked back as if he’d struck her. Her face reddened as if she might cry. Then she turned and ran out of the office. Corsetti stood as she left and jerked his head at me.

“Have a nice day,” he said to the two men, and we went out.

Riding down in the elevator, Corsetti looked at me and grinned.

“Floozy?” he said.

“How did she know?” I said.