Murder on the Aisle

14

9:17 P.M.

He was headed home again but an image from earlier in the day forced him to rap on the glass separating him from the driver and tell the man he wanted to go instead to Alfredo’s on the Park.

Fifty-Seventh Street was alive with Christmas decorations swinging in the cold winds. Blue and red and green holiday trees turned in store windows. An angel offering praise to heaven glowed like pure alchemist’s gold against a black office building’s facade. Even the doorman looked festive, a piece of mistletoe on his lapel.

The man nodded at Tobin and opened the door for him. He had not needed to consult his clipboard. Tobin would of course be invited to tonight’s party. That was one of the perks of being semi-famous.

He was shown to the private party room where his first few glimpses were of the New York critical mafia. The occasion tonight was for the Ryder Twins, as they were known, the brother and sister who took a sewing machine fortune made in Cincinnati and bought their way into Hollywood, where they proceeded to produce, in less than five years, such an amalgam of crap and craft that nobody knew what to make of them. The siblings, Karl and Karla, stood now at the front of the party room. Everybody made the pilgrimage, the way one visited special shrines while touring the Vatican. Karl was cross-eyed and pot-bellied, and no amount of Hollywood cash had been able to do anything about his basset-hound face; Karla looked as if she were trying to be the Baby Boomer’s version of Jayne Mansfield. She was given to gold-lamé pedal pushers and push-up bras and actual honest-to-God cigarette holders borrowed from Natasha on the old Rocky and Bullwinkle Show.

Tobin spent the first fifteen minutes seeing how much Scotch he could put away and giving a variety of people fleeting cheek kisses (this was the age of AIDS, there was no social dipping) and pumping hands and egos in a way befitting a society bent on having holiday cheer.

There were a few famous people here but mostly it was second-rank because this was a lousy time to pry major-league celebrities away from their families. But of course he was perfectly comfortable, for he was of the second rank too. He saw Chamales, who offered himself again as Dunphy’s replacement, and then he answered 1,346 questions about Dunphy’s death. And not a single eye that met his failed to contain at least a dim burning diamond of suspicion (murdering your own partner, imagine!). Then he was gone, on to the next set of eyes or breasts or capped teeth. There were orchids in glass bowls and orchids in drinks and orchids on evening gowns. Talk about your festive celebration.

He had come here to see Michael Dailey, Dunphy’s agent, but had yet to find him. But in looking he did see somebody who knew Dailey — somebody who shouldn’t have been here at all.

Apparently she didn’t own a winter cocktail dress because the buff blue gown she wore was summery and reminded Tobin of a prom gown which, given her age, it might well have been. She had her hair done up in a shining chignon and had applied her makeup in such a way that she almost completely camouflaged the fact that she was a film student at Hunter College who got mad when you insulted a jerk like John Hughes.

So here was one half of the riddle Tobin had come to solve — now all he needed to find was the man who’d stood on the college corner this afternoon and handed her a white envelope filled with what Tobin suspected was bribery money.

But bribery for what? That’s what Tobin wanted to discover.

He got himself another Scotch and started over to her.

She stood by a life-size stand-up cutout of the Ryder Twins’ latest creation, Gang Girls, two busty ladies in bikinis and low-slung Levi’s who made Russ Meyers’s women look like Betty Crocker. Of course these two had ammo belts slung over shoulders and breasts. Of course they had daggers stuffed inside their spike-laden belts. Of course they held Uzis aimed directly at you. The Gang Girls had thus far starred in three movies with, given the money they made, many more in prospect.

“Relatives of yours?” Tobin said when he reached Marcie Pierce, nodding to the Gang Girls stand-up.

“Funny,” she said.

“I wonder if I could ask you a question.”

“You can ask. I don’t have to answer.”

Tobin moved his Scotch from his right hand to his left. “Why don’t we shake hands again and see if we can be friends.”

“Why should we be friends?”

“Because it’s Christmas time.”

“Big deal. You don’t still believe in Santa Claus, do you?”

He just watched her. “No, but I happen to know that people still give gifts. You got one this afternoon.”

Her brown eyes, so lovely, were ruined by suspicion. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“When I was pulling away from campus this afternoon, I saw you standing on a corner talking to Michael Dailey, my partner’s agent. He handed you an envelope. A white envelope.”

“You’re crazy.” But when she said it her lower lip trembled.

He touched her arm, feeling sorry for her. All of a sudden she looked like a kid, not at all the hard-edged sophisticate she was trying to be tonight. “You don’t want to get involved in any of this, Marcie.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Sure you do.” He paused. “You probably get financial aid, right?”

“So what?”

“You’re probably not from a wealthy family.”

“I’m not from a family at all, if it’s any of your goddamn business,” she snapped. Then her voice softened somewhat. “My father died when I was eight. My mother works in an insurance office. But again — so what?”

“So you need money. That’s my only point.”

“Most people need money.”

“But most people don’t get involved in murder cases to get it.”

She put her eyes down. He had the feeling she was going to cry. “Just leave me alone.”

“I want to help you.”

She almost whispered. “Sure you do.”

Then her gorgeous brown eyes raised and stared across the room. He turned to see whom she’d recognized. But he should have guessed: Here came her benefactor Michael Dailey. On his arm was the inevitable Joan, looking recently risen from the dead.

“I see you’re wearing a blue suit,” Dailey said as soon as he reached them. “Don’t you think black would have been a little more appropriate, given the fact that Richard just died?”

“Actually, Michael, it probably isn’t appropriate that any of us are at this party,” Tobin said. “I mean, standing next to a stand-up of Gang Girls and all.”

Dailey’s cheeks flushed. “This is strictly business. It’s the only reason I’m here.”

“Right.”

“What children you two are,” Joan said. “Face it. Richard’s dead and life goes on.”

Tobin was fascinated by Marcie Pierce’s face. The callousness of Joan’s remark made Marcie look as if she’d just been told that Elizabeth Taylor was actually a transvestite. The innocence of her shock made Tobin like her all the more.

“You seem to have taken the death pretty hard,” Tobin said to Joan. In her strapless white gown, with her hair swept up dramatically and enough makeup on to last a full day under hot lights, she was a plaster goddess. Only her teeth, baby teeth, gave any evidence of real eroticism.

Then she startled him by tearing up. “I don’t want to talk about it. It’s none of your damn business.”

Tobin was about to ask her what was none of his damn business when Michael drew his head back like Christopher Lee eyeing potential necks to bite and said, “We’d best see some of our friends.”

Tears remained in Joan’s voice. “You seem to forget, Michael. We don’t have any friends.”

Dailey said, “That’s enough of the dramatics, darling. Let’s go now.” He squeezed her hand hard enough to break bones. You could see her wince under the pressure. Then they were gone, vanished into the land of floating orchids.

“Two of my favorite people,” Tobin said to the Daileys’ backs as they left.

Marcie looked revolted. “This is a long way from D. W. Griffith.”

“Huh?”

“Film is supposed to be about artistic expression. Neither of them have the dimmest idea what art is. They’re vultures and you—” Her grave brown eyes fumed. “You’re just as bad — you’re a critic.”

“I guess I don’t necessarily consider that an insult.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning I do an honest job trying to direct my audience to good films and stay away from bad ones.”

“And getting well paid for it.”

“Probably not as much as you think.”

But by now she had turned away, as if searching out a companion for the evening.

“How did you get in here?” he asked.

“What?” she said, not facing him.

“How did you get in here?”

“None of your business.”

“Michael got your name put on the list, didn’t he?”

Now she turned. “So what if he did?”

He surprised himself by reaching for her arm. She didn’t surprise him by jerking her arm away. “Don’t touch me.”

“Why don’t we leave?”

“Are you crazy? Me leave with you?”

“Yes.”

She smirked. “How do you stay out of rubber rooms?”

“I’m not so bad. I’ll buy you dinner.”

“You just want to find out, don’t you?”

“Yeah. But I’m also attracted to you.”

That was the second thing he’d said in the past forty-five seconds she found amusing. “Are you putting the moves on me?”

He shrugged. “I guess, yeah.”

“Jesus.”

“It’s Christmas time. I’m lonely and you’re probably lonely too.”

“If I’m as attractive as you say, then I doubt I’m very lonely.”

“Well, maybe just for tonight you’re lonely.”

“Well, maybe just for tonight you’re full of shit.” Then she walked away.

He watched her until she disappeared and then he saw an unlikely couple making their way through the crowd. Frank and Dorothy Emory.

Before Tobin could even say hello, Dorothy said, “Don’t look at Frank’s crotch.”

“All right, Dorothy,” Tobin said. “I promise not to look at Frank’s crotch.”

“He insisted on getting a paper cup of coffee on the way over here,” she said.

“Honey, I would’ve been all right if you hadn’t slammed on the brakes.”

“If hadn’t slammed on the goddamn brakes, Frank, we’d both be in the hospital. The truck ran a red light.”

“Well, anyway, that’s how come I’ve got coffee all over my crotch.”

“That is not why you’ve got coffee all over your crotch,” Dorothy said. “You’ve got coffee all over your crotch because you’re clumsy and because you wouldn’t listen to me about not getting any coffee, especially after you’d had so much to drink.”

Frank frowned. “See, Tobin, my fault as usual.”

But by now Dorothy was already looking around, bored with Frank’s coffee and crotch. “Nice to see you, Tobin,” she said airily, and then was gone.

“Never marry the runner-up prom queen in high school.”

“That’s not a very charitable thing to say about your wife.”

“If she’d have won, she wouldn’t be such a bitch. But she’s never forgiven herself for losing, especially to somebody who was knocked up at the time they were putting the crown on her head.”

“The queen was knocked up?”

“Yeah, and by a Puerto Rican, at that.”

“Sad tale, Frank.”

“You don’t like her, do you — Dorothy, I mean?”

“Not much.”

“How come?”

“Because you’re my friend and because she makes you eat too much shit.”

“How much is too much?”

“Anything that doesn’t fit into a lunch bag.”

“Well, at least she’s beautiful.”

“She is that.” And she was — shining blond, with legs up to here, and an erotic teasing mouth and breasts that seemed to pout at you. As if to disguise all this, she generally dressed in conservative clothes and feigned disapproval of anything even faintly sexual.

“Say, you missed the excitement tonight.”

“What?”

“Break-in. At the studio.”

“You’re kidding.”

Frank, still drunk, looked at him earnestly. “No, Tobin; why would I kid you about that?”

“It’s just an expression, Frank. Christ.”

“Well, anyway,” Frank said, kind of wobbling on his heels, “there was a break-in. Dunphy’s dressing room.”

“God.”

“What?”

Tobin told Frank about the break-in at Hunter College. Dunphy’s office.

“Shit,” Frank said.

“Exactly.”

“Wonder what they’re looking for.”

Tobin, who had been thinking about this occasionally over the past six hours, said, “Did you know Richard sold a movie script?”

“Not until this morning.”

“So you weren’t aware he was writing one?”

“No. Weren’t you?”

“No,” Tobin said.

“Well, you know how Richard was. He always liked to surprise you.”

“I know. But he also couldn’t keep a secret.”

“That’s true. Now that you mention it.”

“All the time he was writing a novel, that was all he talked about. He knew I’d be jealous.”

“You were jealous?”

“Sure,” Tobin said.

“Why didn’t you just write your own?”

Tobin sipped his drink. “Either I’m saving myself for the right time in my life, or I don’t have a novel in me.”

“So you think he would have said something to you about the screenplay?”

“Right.”

“I guess that is kind of weird, now that you mention it.”

“More than kind of.”

“Oh, damn.”

Tobin knew what Frank was frowning about without asking. Frank’s wife was waving him over to meet the Ryder Twins. Frank, who had an M.B.A., felt a vague contempt for show-biz people and the Ryder Twins were the worst sort of the breed. Being in their company was like spending time with your maiden aunt while all the other kids were outside playing baseball.

“Well,” Frank said. He left, shaking his head.

For the next twenty minutes Tobin made the rounds. He discovered that Dunphy’s death had made him a sought-after celebrity. Everybody had questions and condolences for him. He ogled breasts, stifled yawns, peed three times (he needed some food), exchanged glares with another set of TV critics (suburban boys they were, overripe and gushy, who seemed to enjoy nothing so much as a bad “campy” science-fiction movie), and found himself staring wistfully at Marcie Pierce, who seemed fetchingly lost, wandering about in her summer prom gown, apparently in search of somebody who wanted to talk about D. W. Griffith.

He was on his way to the john for the fourth time (he was going to have to load up on shrimp when he got back or else his wrist was going to get sore from doing and undoing his zipper) when he saw the slap Joan Dailey gave Peter Larson.

The two had stepped out of the party proper. They didn’t see him as Tobin approached so he watched a minute and a half of their arguing. Then the slap.

“You bastard,” she said. “You know you owe it to me.”

It was then that Larson saw Tobin coming toward them. He shushed her and nodded at Tobin. Joan, beautiful in her brittle way, drew into herself, straightening her shoulders, preparing a social smile.

“Hello, again,” she said to Tobin.

“Hi.”

“We were just having a little chat. Very noisy in there,” Peter Larson said. Larson was a producer who did “serious” middle-brow movies on big themes such as War and Death and Intolerance. A few of them had starred Meryl Streep at her histrionic worst. (Tobin was of the opinion that her appearance in Sophie’s Choice was one of the great unheralded comic performances of all time — “Thing you berry mooch—” Sophie says; gimme a break, Meryl — second only to Jane Fonda’s in Julia, when Fonda played the gushy plaster saint Lillian to the whiskey-ad mannequin of Jason Robards’s Dash.) In the last two years, Tobin and Dunphy had had particularly virulent arguments over the Larson films. Dunphy, in fact, had been one of the few major critics to give Larson good reviews.

“Why don’t we go back in and have another drink, Joan? It’s getting a bit chilly out here,” Larson said. He was a fleshy man, once quite good-looking, but now he was sliding into sedentary middle age, and his charm seemed to depend on the fact that he could rarely be glimpsed without his tuxedo on. Tobin wondered if he wore tuxedo jammies, too.

“No need to hurry off because of me,” Tobin said.

“I don’t know what it is about you, Tobin,” Joan said, “but every time I see you I want to hurry off.”

“Now, now, that’s not necessary,” Larson said, embarrassed.

“After all the terrible things he’s said about your movies.”

“Joan, please...” Larson said.

“It’s all right,” Tobin said. “Joan always has been a terrible drunk.”

Tobin got out of there before she could get another shot off at him.

When he got back into the party room, he saw that he was just in time for some sort of event. The lights went down. A spotlight erupted across a small raised platform in the front of the room. And then there they were — the Gang Girls themselves, wearing “Xmas” bikinis of the tiniest kind, with pieces of mistletoe dangling from their breasts and their panties, Uzi machine guns cradled in their arms.

Tobin had attended a bullfight once and heard the same spontaneous reaction that deafened him now — there the bullfighter had gotten wounded, here sex was served up in a mock-serious way that made the party-goers slightly crazy.

Within moments, the Ryder Twins had joined their creations on stage. “Isn’t this what it’s all about?” Karl Ryder yelled.

“Living in a land that lets you make beautiful money?” Karla Ryder yelled back.

And everybody went bug-fuck. What were they applauding exactly? Tobin wondered. Free enterprise? “Xmas-time”? The outrageousness of Karl and Karla’s hokey-dokey flag-waving number? The Gang Girls shook their mistletoe and their Uzis and the crowd applauded. (Christ, there was Stanley Kauffman pounding the hell out of his hands; would he review the girls’ breasts for The New Republic?)

“Do you have anything to say to this wonderful crowd?” Karla screamed at the girls.

“Just that we LOVE you and want to be your Gang Girls!” shouted the blonde.

“And please you in ANYWAY we can!” shouted the other. Tobin wondered if this was the longest piece of dialogue either of them had ever had to memorize.

He couldn’t take it anymore and so did the only thing he could. Went back into the men’s room to beat his kidney against the rock once again.

He had just flushed the urinal and was headed for the sinks when he saw Tom Starrett standing there combing his hair. Starrett got more mileage out of a comb than anybody had since Edd “Kookie” Byrnes. Starrett, tall, “into” bodybuilding, was a Manhattan attorney who represented many show-biz clients, including Richard Dunphy.

When he saw Tobin in the mirror, Starrett frowned. Good hack that he was, Starrett made his client’s enemies his own. Dunphy and Tobin had not exactly ended up friends.

He had a mane of hair, Starrett did, blond, and he kept combing all the time he talked, combing and angling his face in the mirror like some dumb male model trying to get the best angle for the camera. He looked like a disco’s idea of Adonis.

“He wasn’t going to sign with you again,” Starrett said. “So you probably did the right thing.” He paused dramatically. “Killing him.”

“I didn’t kill him.”

“Right.”

“Fuck yourself, Starrett.”

He kept combing. “Every one of you bled the poor man. Every one of you.” Starrett loved to give courtroom sob stories, apparently even in the men’s room. “Frank didn’t pay him what he was worth. His wife clung to him even though she knew he didn’t love her. And even his own agent stole from him.”

The last bit of news surprised Tobin. “Michael Dailey stole from him?”

“Get ready for one of the biggest lawsuits you’ve ever seen. By the time I get done with that lounge-lizard son of a bitch, Alpo wouldn’t buy him.”

“You’re sure of this?”

“You’re damn right I’m sure.” Then he smiled. “But a lawsuit’s nothing compared to what you’re going to get.”

Finally, he put his comb away. “You’re going to get the chair, Tobin. The chair.”

“Been watching Cagney movies again, huh, Tommy?”

Starrett was six-two. Tobin five-five. Starrett said, “If you weren’t such a little bastard, I’d beat your face in.” Then he smiled again. “But I’m just going to let the cops do that.”

Then he patted his hair and went back into the party.

Tobin wandered back via the phone booth. He checked in for messages. Nothing urgent except that his daughter, sixteen, needed money. But that did not fall under the heading of new news.

When he got back to the party room, he saw that Marcie Pierce had managed to get herself bombed and was standing in the corner hugging her drink to her wonderful chest as if it were a teddy bear.

He went over and said, “Do you like In a Lonely Place?”

She just stared at him. “You’re trying to tell me you like Nicholas Ray?”

“Sure I do.”

“Then why don’t you ever mention him on that shitty show of yours?”

“Ask Frank. He has research that says viewers hate Golden Oldies shows.”

“Research. It sucks.”

“I agree. But I’m not the boss.”

She nodded to Frank. “Well, he won’t be boss much longer.” She smiled then at Tobin, smiled in a way that chilled his middle-aged soul. “I mean, without Dunphy there, you and Emory are out of a job. Dunphy was the show.”

She’d meant it to hurt him, and for some reason he was stupid enough to let it do just that. He stood there as if frozen — feeling at the moment completely isolated from the rest of humanity (no man is an island but some are peninsulas) — and then he couldn’t hear anything, as if he were tripping out on some exotic drug (hashish used to do such things to him), and he felt as if he would cry or go machine-gun-berserk, he wasn’t quite sure which.

All he knew for sure was that he needed to get away from it all — the bitchiness, the malice, the careering, and the ludicrous Gang Girls who were still offering themselves like big bikinied presents. He missed seeing his children, and thought of his dead father, and worried in a dumbstruck way that he was just as shallow and amoral as he sometimes feared. This was a very dangerous kind of drunkenness and he knew it.

She saw it in his face, Marcie Pierce did, because suddenly the hardness was gone and she looked embarrassed and then sad and started to reach out for him, but this time it was he who shook her hand away.

“Tobin, Jesus, that didn’t come out the way I meant it.”

“Screw it,” he said.

“C’mon, I’m sorry. Really.”

“I know you are.”

“You being sincere?”

“Yeah.”

“I mean it. Oh, fuck it.”

“Yeah.”

And then he left.

Frank called to him, and then Michael Dailey, and then Marcie Pierce, but he needed to be outside and alone.

He stood in the hard cold of the night. Snow plows like yellow burrowing bugs worked their way up the street while a group of Salvation Army singers flung their voices uselessly into the whipping wind and snow. He started to cry and actually managed to convince himself he was only tearing up because of the cold.

Then from behind him he heard the sort of whistle you can only get when you put two fingers in your lips and are willing to risk future lung capacity to set world records. All over the city, dogs were probably going crazy.

She was a few feet behind him, doing the whistling. Her coat was flung over her arm and here she was, subzero, wearing a summer cocktail dress. She’d even managed to bring her cocktail along.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“Whistling for a cab.”

“Why?”

“Because we need one.”

“Why do we need one?”

“Because we’re going to your place and I read this article about you one time that said you always took cabs.”

“That’s because I got drunk once and was picked up for driving under the influence. Fortunately, I didn’t hurt anybody. But I handed over my license and haven’t been back to pick it up.”

“Yeah, I read that, too.” She nodded to a Checker kind of fishtailing toward them in the flurries. “Here’s the cab.”

“You sure you want to do this?”

“Positive.”

Tobin and Marcie got in, then the Checker started fishtailing its way up the street again.

Marcie pressed into Tobin with her lovely breasts and whispered to him, “But if you think I’m going to tell you anything about my deal with Michael Dailey, you’re fucking nuts.”

“Where to?” the cabbie said.

“You want some of this?” Marcie Pierce said, splashing her champagne like golden water across the air of the cab.