Murder in the Wings

3

The closer we got to Reeves’s apartment, the more Pizza Huts and Hardee’s and Long-John Silver’s we saw. In the rain all the neon had a certain beauty.

Reeves lived in a neighborhood on the edge of what had once been the Czech section of the city. Now some of the Czechs had moved out (literally), looking down on the houses they’d left behind — houses today occupied by people with NRA and country-and-western radio station stickers on their bumpers. It had become a lower-class white bastion. Blacks knew better than to move in. Reeves’s place was just on the dividing line. White upper-class couples had recently started refurbishing some of the rambling old houses into mock-Victorian apartment houses. We found Reeves’s building.

The run through the rain, from the driveway to the porch, got us soaked. In the vestibule we looked for his name along the row of ten mailboxes, and then we went up the curving staircase. The place smelled of fresh paint.

Reeves’s apartment was in the rear. A silver number 11 identified it. If you looked closely, you could see that the door was ajar.

“Boy,” Donna whispered, taking my hand and placing it over her breast. “Feel my heart.”

It was racing, pounding, and I didn’t blame it a damn bit.

I eased the door open. It squeaked so loudly I could imagine lights going on all over this side of town.

“Maybe we should just call the police,” she whispered again.

“Don’t you want to help Wade?”

I knew that would get her. She looked instantly guilty. She liked and, more importantly, felt sorry for Wade. She made a grim little expression with her mouth and nodded for me to proceed.

The first thing I noticed inside was the aquarium. It surprised me only because Reeves spent so much time playing the cool theatrical wizard. What the fuck would a cool theatrical wizard be doing with a tank full of fishies?

Light from the big fish tank was the only illumination in the front room. The rest of the place ran more to my expectations. The walls were decorated with posters from plays he’d directed as well as photographs of himself and the semi-famous actors he’d worked with at the Bridges Theater. Bookcases made of bricks and boards ran the length of the rear wall and were crammed with plays and quality paperbacks by writers as varied as Aristophanes and Neil Simon. That was the only time Simon would ever keep company with Aristophanes.

The furniture reminded me of my own stuff. A green couch that didn’t at all match the green overstuffed chair that clashed with the dark blue drapes. In other words, a salute to Goodwill stores everywhere.

Three halls led off from the living room. One went to the kitchen, which was empty and smelled of dishes left in the sink for days. Another went to a screened-in porch at the back that smelled of new spring grass and rain. The third hall led to his bedroom and that’s where we found him, sprawled across the bed. A butcher knife stuck out from between his shoulder blades, and a dark puddle of blood had seeped from the wound.

As Donna and I moved closer she started saying “Boy” and then “God,” and then alternating the expressions back and forth the closer we got.

The bedroom was sparsely decorated — a few more play posters, a few more photos of himself with the famous. A clothes hamper stood open. Apparently he washed his clothes about as often as he did his dishes. I angled away from the smell.

“That’s how I found him,” a rough voice said from behind us.

Stephen Wade, dressed in a dark turtleneck sweater, a hound’s-tooth Stanley Blacker sport coat, and a pair of dark pleated slacks, stepped from the walk-in closet looking dapper and very theatrical, as if he was playing a role in a British crime drama. To complete the image, he waved a .45 at us.

“God, Stephen,” Donna said, “what’s the gun for?”

I turned on a table lamp. He was sobering up fast, but a kind of madness, founded on fear I suppose, was setting in. His gaze was narrow and furtive. I wanted to say something to help — to calm him; to get that goddamn look out of his eyes — but nothing came to mind.

Donna started over to him. Maybe it was because her father had never been home when she was a child and as a consequence she secretly felt she’d never really had a father. Maybe it was because, with his large, handsome, silver-haired head, Wade looked like the ultimate TV-commercial father — or grandfather. Or maybe I was full of beans and she just plain old had a crush him. Whatever it was, being around Wade sort of unglued Donna, and she got real maternal. Now, as she moved toward him, she held out her hand for him to give her the gun.

He took her in his arms and they hugged. I heard her sob, and for a moment I saw him close his eyes in a kind of surrender to her presence, but then he gently pushed her away and said, “I don’t think I killed him, but I’m not sure.”

“Oh, Stephen,” she said, “you couldn’t have killed him. You just couldn’t.” She turned back to me. “Tell him, Dwyer. Tell him he couldn’t have killed him.”

“I appreciate your confidence,” Wade said. “I just wish I could share it.”

I looked at the body and then at Wade. His eyes seemed worse by the minute. The soberer he got, the more shock set in.

“Why don’t we go out into the living room?” I said.

“I’ll make some coffee,” Donna said. Then she remembered. “Boy, I wouldn’t want to drink any coffee made in that kitchen. How about if I walk down to that Pizza Hut and get some coffee?”

“Great idea,” I said.

While Donna left, I led Wade into the living room. For a long minute he said nothing. He just stared at the fish — gold and red and blue and green — slapping their wispy little tails through the water. At the moment they seemed to have it knocked. All they had to do all day was swim around and eat food that looked like crunched up communion wafers. They didn’t have to worry about murders or being a drunk or has-been actor or a security cop who couldn’t think of a damn thing to say to help out a friend.

“For what it’s worth,” I said finally, “I don’t think you did it, either.”

He smiled sadly. “I don’t deserve friends like you two. I really don’t.”

We were silent again for a time. The aquarium bubbled. Cars went by in the rain outdoors. The wood of the house started to smell sweet and damp, the way old wood does in rainstorms. The fishies didn’t say a damn word.

“You going to tell me about it?” I asked gently.

“Not much to tell.” He ran a hand across his face. “Actually, I don’t remember much at all. After the show tonight, I went back to my hotel room and really started feeling sorry for myself. I ordered a bottle up from room service and started in on it. Somewhere during that time I got the bright idea of trying to make amends with Reeves. I’m not kidding myself, Dwyer; if word gets back to Hollywood that I fell off the wagon during a show, I’m done. All done, my friend.” He shrugged. “So anyway — you know how you get bright ideas while you’re very drunk — I thought maybe if I came over and personally apologized to Wade, he’d come around. I was so drunk that I completely overlooked that he’d throw me out the minute he saw how drunk I was.” He passed his hand over his face again. The .45 was still in his hand. “But I came over. I dimly remember taking a cab. I came up to the door here — I’d been here once before for a party — and the rest of it I’m not sure about. I’m afraid it’s lost in the booze.”

I tried to keep the anxiety out of my voice, but I couldn’t. “Stephen, you’ve got to think hard about it. Very hard.”

“It’s a blank. A complete goddamn blank except for a couple of images.”

“Images of what?”

“I think — I wish I could be sure of this — I think when I came in I just sort of opened the door and walked right in and that’s when somebody pushed me down.”

“Knocked you out?”

“No. That’s not my impression, anyway. More like pushed me out of the way.”

“And then what?”

“Then the next thing I’m sure about is waking up and not knowing where I was at first and then finding Reeves in the bedroom. With the knife in his back.”

“Did you touch him?”

“Reeves? I think so.”

“Try to think, Stephen. It’s important.”

“I think when I saw him I went a little crazy and tried to pull the knife out.”

“Shit.”

“Bad, huh?”

“Real bad. Your prints are on the knife.”

“Could we wash them off with something?”

“From what you’re saying, I’m not sure it would matter. You took a cab over here, which means there’s a cabbie who will testify to bringing you here, and any number of Reeves’s neighbors could have seen you here.” I nodded to the .45. “So where did the weapon come from?”

“I always carry it.”

“Always?”

“Yeah. Too many creeps in the world.”

“Not smart, Stephen. Not smart at all. Particularly with your problems with the bottle.”

There was a tiny knock on the door. I got up. Wade raised the .45.

Donna came in with a big white Pizza Hut paper bag. She was wet and shivering. After she handed us our coffees she went into the bathroom. I heard a blow drier.

Wade sat in the light of the aquarium and drank his coffee and held the .45 in firing position and looked worse and worse. I was sitting there staring at the floor when he started crying.

Maybe because he always plays the patriarch, maybe because in person he’s so traditionally manly, I’d just never thought of Wade as crying. But he did and it was terrible to watch and hear because he didn’t know shit about crying; he was worse at it than I was. He’d start to cry and then he’d stop and then he’d start again. He sounded more as if he were choking or starting to vomit than crying, but he kept on and finally I could see that his cheeks were wet. That was just when Donna came out and you can imagine how she reacted.

“Oh, God, Stephen, oh, God,” she said and plopped herself down next to him and threw her arms around him. His coffee spilled all over the floor but she kept hugging him anyway. That seemed to help in the crying department, but by then he was sobbing and there was a kind of enviable freedom in the noise of it. It was sort of like getting all your past sins and shame out and starting life all over again.

“I’ve fucked it up, I’ve fucked it all up,” he said over and over again, and she only held him tighter.

I sat there watching and sipped my coffee. Every once in a while Donna would look over at me and shake her head as if Wade was our baby and he had the measles bad or something. I couldn’t help but agree with him; he had fucked it up — four marriages, enough children to fill an orphanage, fistfights and paternity suits and broken contracts, all the while doing very little to nourish the enormous talent God or his genes had given him gratis. As much as I liked him, I almost couldn’t forgive him for the waste he’d made of his talent.

When he finished he was very calm — almost eerily so. He got up and went into the john. Then we heard him piss, and we heard the water run for a long time.

“God, Dwyer, I don’t know what to do,” Donna said. With the water running we didn’t need to whisper.

“Neither do I.”

“You don’t really think he did it, do you?”

“I don’t know.”

“But if he had a gun, why would he have stabbed him?”

“That’s a good question, Donna.”

“You’re going to call the cops, aren’t you?”

She made it sound as if I’d said I was going to hand our baby over to the A-1 Child Molestation Agency.

“I have to,” I said.

She sighed. “Sometimes I wish you hadn’t ever been a cop. You know?”

“Yeah.” She understood why I had to call the police.

“Well, at least call Edelman.”

Donna and Edelman liked each other.

“Yeah, that’s what I was thinking.”

Wade came out. He had shaved and used some goop on his hair and straightened his clothes. He looked sober and ready for a night on the town. The .45 remained in his hand.

“I’m going,” he announced.

I’d half expected him to say that. “Stephen, that’ll just make things worse.”

“I don’t have any choice. They’re going to wrap it up nice and tidy and not even consider the possibility that I’m innocent.”

Donna got up and went to him. This time he wouldn’t let her near. “I couldn’t ask for better friends than you two. I really couldn’t. But for now I’m going to have to operate on my own.”

I got up, too. I had a vague idea about lunging at him and getting the gun.

He raised the .45. “I wouldn’t kill you, Dwyer, because you’re a pal, you really are. But I would shoot you in the leg or something.” He looked at me. He was sad and scared and confused. “You better take my word for it, kid, ’cause I fucking mean it.”

I didn’t doubt him at all.

He opened the door. He looked at me and then at Donna. She broke into horrible tears. And then he was gone.

I got her over to the couch and helped her lie down and tried holding her to stop the tears — she was shaking in a way that terrified me. Then I went to the phone and woke up Edelman.