Murder on the Aisle

20

5:17 P.M.

There was champagne. Real champagne. There were party hats. There were pink and yellow and blue streamers and confetti of a thousand colors. And there were women — bloody Christ, but were there women. Some with fetching faces. Some with beguiling breasts. Some with asses that winked and some with asses that frowned. There was enough laughter to fill an NFL locker room after a winning Superbowl and enough patter to keep Vegas (Hiya/Loveya/Kissya) in business for a year. There was a party going on at Emory Communications and Tobin did not need to ask why. Frank Emory had sold his way out of failure.

“Tobin. Goddamn — Tobin!”

Frank was drunk and kind of squatting down and holding his arms wide as if Tobin were going to come running into them. Despite the dignity his height and gray hair and preppy manner should have given him, he was anything but dignified now. This was Frank at his worst. Trying to be one of the boys. He was as bad at it as Tobin.

“Hi, Frank.”

“ ‘Hi Frank.’ That’s all I get on the biggest day of my life?”

“Congratulations.”

“At the least, buddy-boy. At the least.”

“Don’t call me buddy-boy, all right?”

“Jesus, did you come up here to queer my party?”

“Actually, I came up to ask you a few questions. I didn’t know you were having a party.”

Frank sloshed champagne. “That’s all I’m going to do for the next six months. Party. Party my ass off.”

His wife, who had been kissing cheeks, turned to Tobin and said, “Make that plural. Party our asses off.” She beamed. “Aren’t you proud of him?”

“For selling out?”

“For selling out at a profit, Tobin. For a profit. That’s what’s important,” she said.

“A big profit, Tobin,” Frank said. “A goddamn big profit.”

So there was no talking to him, not now anyway, so Tobin circulated, hearing tales of adultery and business betrayals and careering and the latest suspected AIDS victim and watching old men try to steal quick feels from young women, and watching young women try to cajole better jobs from old men. He stood by the Christmas tree and looked out over Manhattan, the night a crypt, his lungs raw from cigarette smoke, his mind fixed on misery, Jane’s look there at the last, Huggins’s trying to prove him a killer, Neely never growing up.

“I’m sorry I was so rude.”

Sarah Nichols, looking more the Irish beauty than ever, touched his arm. There was no doubting what Richard had seen in her. Why he’d spent more and more time with her. Her eyes, her hazel eyes, cast you in their grace and you never wanted to leave. “Out at the college, I mean.”

“It’s all right.”

“No, it isn’t. I was just upset. I don’t really think you killed him.”

“Then you seem to be in the minority.”

“The police still suspect you?”

“I’m afraid they do.”

“Well, anyway, I just wanted to come over and say I was sorry.”

“I accept.”

“Thank you.”

She turned to leave.

He said, on a whim, really, half serious about his question but at least half motivated by the tidal power of those hazel eyes, “Do you know a man named Ebsen at the college?”

“Harold Ebsen. Sure. Everybody does.”

“Then you probably know what he says about Richard?”

“That Richard stole his screenplay?”

“Yes.”

“He’s s been saying that for months.”

“Is it true?”

She surprised him. “I don’t know.”

“You mean you think there’s a chance Richard actually cribbed his screenplay?”

“Oh, not cribbed it exactly. Took something that was very primitive, perhaps, and improved it. Improved it a great deal.”

“Do you think Ebsen would have killed him over it?”

“I have absolutely no doubt Ebsen would have killed him over it. After he followed us around with that shotgun microphone, I wouldn’t put anything past him.”

“Shotgun microphone?”

“A few months ago, when he really began pestering Richard and me, he started following us everywhere with a shotgun microphone he stole from the school’s production department. Then the next day he’d drop off the tape in Richard’s office. Obviously it gave him a great sense of power.”

“But you never heard him actually threaten Richard?”

“Threaten him physically, you mean?”

“Right.”

“Not actually, no. But with somebody like him, that’s always there implicitly.” She nodded with her lovely head. “Here’s your friend.” She looked matronly suddenly, sixty-year-old disapproval on the face of a young woman. Something was going on behind him that displeased her.

He turned to see Frank Emory doing a kind of dirty boogie, legs flailing, to a disco song that was blasting out of wall speakers.

“Richard always said he was a silly ass. He wasn’t wrong.”

Then Frank was with them and throwing his arm around Tobin and pressing his head against Tobin’s head and spilling champagne everywhere. “Am I drunk, or what?”

“You’re very drunk,” Sarah Nichols said. “Inexcusably drunk, as a matter of fact.”

She went away.

“She never liked me.”

“Right now you’re sort of hard to like.”

“You don’t like me? My old friend Tobin doesn’t like me on the happiest night of my life?”

“The night you got married — the nights your kids were born — one of those should have been the happiest night of your life. Not this, Frank. This just means you couldn’t take the heat anymore and you gave up.”

Tobin saw how badly he’d hurt him and for just a moment he took at least some small pleasure from the pain he’d inflicted, but then he saw Frank’s face — the jaw coming open, the drunken eyes go dead — and then he knew he’d had no right to say that, no matter how true it might be.

“Jesus, Frank, I’m going to go.”

Frank’s tears were obvious. “I thought we were friends.”

“We are.” And this time it was Tobin who threw his arm around Frank. (Not easy, given Tobin’s height.) “We’re goddamn good friends, and I had no right to say it. I don’t blame you a damn bit. I would have done the same thing myself as soon as Richard was killed. I have to put my ego aside and just look at the facts. Without the team, there was no show.”

Frank managed to recapture at least some of his previous luster. He slurred his words but he seemed to be having a good time slurring his words. “Actually, my friend, I started negotiating for the sale several months ago.”

“Really?”

Frank pawed the front of his blue blazer. “Right. This whole process has taken months.” He said “processessh” and “shtaken.”

“And you didn’t tell anybody?”

“Just my wife.”

“So they wanted our show then?”

“They wanted your show very much. The papers were signed two days ago — before Richard was killed.” He shook his head. Lowered his voice. Leaned in. “Goddamn, Tobin, I’ll be honest with you. I just lucked out is all. If Richard had been murdered before those papers were signed—” His eyes grew miserable again. “There wouldn’t have been any sale, buddy-boy, no sale at all.”

“I’m glad it worked out for you, Frank. I really am.” He was overdoing it, overcompensating really, for being such a jerk. Then he said, “I wanted to ask you about a man named Ebsen.”

Frank grinned, leaned in again. “Don’t ask me about men, ask me about women.” He whispered. “Did you see that secretary from the second floor?” He said, “... she that shecretary from the shecond floor?”

“Yeah.”

“With the boobs?”

“Yeah.”

“Out to here?”

“Right.”

“Out to goddamn here?”

There was no point talking to Frank. Not tonight.

“Well,” Tobin said.

“You sound like you’re leaving.”

Tobin feigned a yawn. “I’m tired. Been a very hard twenty-four hours, Frank.”

“Don’t leave.”

“I’d really better.”

He threw his arms wide again. “We’re having a party. A party.” Then he shrugged. “I mean, I know it’s pretty soon after Richard’s death.”

“Almost forty-eight hours.”

“Don’t get sarcastic again.”

Tobin sighed. “There’s no reason not to have a party, Frank. It’s a big night for you, as you say. Life goes on.”

“Life goes on. Right on,” Frank said.

“Well,” Tobin said again in that preparatory tone. Three minutes and twenty-two seconds later he was in the elevator.