Red Cat

35

But for the stage lights, the tiny theater was dark, and but for Claudius, Hamlet, Laertes, and the director, it was empty. They were gathered at stage left, near a frail-looking table. I was quiet coming in, and they didn’t look up as I took a seat in the last row. The air was warm and old, and there was a chemical smell in it, like antifreeze.

King: Yo, playahs, the O.G. drinks to Hammy!

Let’s light it up

And you judging muthafuckahs bear a wary eye.

Hamlet: Come on, bitch.

Laertes: You come on, dawg.

Gene Werner watched as Hamlet and Laertes circled each other, foils wobbling in their uncertain hands. “No, you idiots,” he shouted, “you’re fencing, not skipping. You’re fighting for your fucking lives!” Werner’s own foil whipped through the air and snicked Laertes’s leg.

The actor dropped his sword and spun. “Screw you, Gene- you do that one more time, you’ll be fighting for your own fucking life.”

Werner’s laugh was rich and haughty, and it carried easily to the back of the house. “That’s right, Sean, get angry! And Greg, keep your fucking arm up. The way you hold that thing, you look like a faggot houseboy, mincing around the den with a goddamn feather duster. You’re the fucking prince of the ’hood, for chrissakes- the lead. This play is all about you!”

Hamlet’s face was shiny, and there were rings of sweat under his arms. He wiped his forehead and flipped Werner the bird. Claudius hitched up his baggy jeans and laughed, and the actors took their places to run it through again. Werner walked to the front of the stage and peered into the darkness. I didn’t think he could see me in the thick shadow, but some actor radar had made him exquisitely sensitive to the presence of an audience. I kept still, he turned back to his players, and the rehearsal continued.

I’d spent most of the morning in Brooklyn, where I’d paid another visit to Holly’s neighbor, Jorge Arrua. I’d spent the afternoon back in my apartment, reading through my notes and drawing up a timeline. I’d called Mike Metz several times throughout the day, and heard every time from his secretary that he was still downtown, at the Seventh Precinct house, with Stephanie.

When I’d finished the timeline, I’d gone hunting, on-line and on the telephone, for Gene Werner. I remembered what he’d told me about his upcoming directing projects, and I’d found one of them, a hip-hop interpretation of Hamlet, mentioned on the website of the Little Gidding Theatre. According to the site, the production was due to premiere in a month, and I’d called an information number and learned that rehearsals were taking place all afternoon, in the basement space on West Thirteenth Street.

Werner’s nasty laugh rolled over the rows of folding chairs. “What part of ‘switch swords’ don’t you get, Greg? It means he takes yours and you take his and then you start fighting again. Watch.”

Werner put the tip of his foil under the guard of Hamlet’s, and lifted it from the stage with a flourish. He caught it midair and offered it- grip first- to Hamlet, who took it hesitantly. Werner raised his weapon, and before Hamlet could do the same he shouted “En garde!” He batted Hamlet’s blade aside, stepped in, and locked the guard of Hamlet’s foil against his own. Werner grabbed the smaller man by his shirtfront and grinned down at him. Then he planted his sneaker behind the actor’s heel and pushed. Hamlet went down with an echoing thump and Werner laughed.

He hadn’t been laughing much on Holly’s video, nor had he been nearly so well groomed. It was an untitled, unedited work, shot in her apartment, with a single hidden camera, and Werner was its hapless star. He was unshaven and rumpled, his hair greasy-looking, and his eyes full of fear and anger. Holly, mostly unseen, was at her inquisitorial best. Her voice was a finely calibrated mix- wheedling, sympathetic, seductive, and patient.

“I made you angry, didn’t I?” she said from someplace. “You felt like I lied to you.”

“How else was I supposed to feel? Jesus, Holly, I loved you. How could you do it to me?”

“It wasn’t about you, Gene.”

“Not about me? All that time we were together, and you’re fucking these guys you don’t even know- making these porn flicks- how is that not about me?”

“It’s my project- my work. It has nothing to do with anyone but me.”

Werner shook his head, eyes wide. “Nothing to do with…And you wonder why I was angry. You’re un-fucking-believable.”

“I wonder less about the anger than I do about the theft,” Holly said.

A sheepish grin ran across Werner’s face. “What are you talking about?” he said. He tried for puzzled and irritated, but neither worked.

Holly was relaxed, almost amused. “Come on, baby, we know each other too long for games.”

“It turned out I didn’t know shit about you,” he said.

“You knew me,” Holly said. “You still do.” Her voice was lazy and insinuating, and Werner reacted to it like a dog to a whistleattentive and hungry.

“I thought I did,” he said slowly.

“Was it just money, baby, or was it something else? Say it wasn’t just about the money.”

He made a pouting face. “I was angry, Holly- fucking heartbroken.”

A clash of blades and another fall brought me back to the theater and to the action onstage. Laertes was rubbing his wrist, and Hamlet was dusting himself off. Claudius was laughing.

“The hell with you,” Hamlet said. “I don’t need a gig so bad I’m going to be a punching bag for anyone.”

Werner laughed some more and swept a hand through his shiny hair. “Your choice, Greggers. I’ll have ten guys here in an hour to audition for your part, and not one of them will be too lazy or delicate to learn stage combat. But, as I said, it’s your call. So what’ll it bestay or go?” He crossed his arms on his chest and smiled down on Hamlet.

The actor looked at him. “Screw you,” he said softly, but he picked up his foil and took his position for another run-through.

They stumbled through the fifth-act fight scene many times during the next hour, with no joy and no appreciable improvement in technique. Only Werner seemed to take pleasure in the process, full as it was of occasions for him to berate and abuse his colleagues. I was surprised that when the actors left for the day, exiting stage right, they left him still alive. When their voices faded, and a heavy door opened and closed somewhere backstage, I took a deep breath, and stood.

Werner was collecting the foils, and he heard me coming. He shielded his eyes from the stage lights and looked up the aisle. He took a step back when he recognized me.

“What are you doing here?” he said. No haughtiness now.

“I’m here to see you.” My heart was pounding, and I took some easy breaths, to slow things down.

“Technically, the theater is closed.”

“There was no one around to stop me.”

“Yeah, well- I’ve got someplace to be, so I have to lock up.”

I reached the stage, and jumped up. Werner took another step back. “This won’t take long.”

“What won’t take long?” he said. His jaw was grim and jutting.

“I came to talk, Gene. About the video.”

“We talked about Holly’s videos already, and I told you what I knew. I have nothing else to say about those things; I don’t even like thinking about them.”

“I’m not talking about the videos of her and those men.”

Werner swallowed hard and shrugged. He managed a casual stride to the little table, where he put the foils down, all but his own. “Then what the hell are you talking about?”

“Come on, Gene, we can be grown-ups, right? We can at least not waste each other’s time.”

Werner forced a smile. He smoothed his shiny hair and tugged on his little ponytail. Then he sent his blade through a series of blurring, humming arcs, and finished with his arm extended and the sword pointed at me. Somewhere along the line, the plastic button had come off the end, and the bare, wicked tip was motionless and level with my eye. Werner smiled wider and chuckled. He whipped the foil down.

“There’s nothing like the feel of a blade,” he said. He walked toward me, stopping when he was two arm’s lengths away. He pointed with his foil at my splints, and smiled.

“Fucked up your hands, huh?”

“A run-in with your pal Jamie Coyle,” I said. Color drained from Werner’s face. He opened his mouth to speak, but didn’t. “I saw the video, Gene.”

Werner frowned. He backed away two steps and began practicing lunges at half speed. He coiled and uncoiled himself- precise, flowing, and graceful each time. Each time, the tip of his foil came to a quivering halt twelve inches from my chest. “What video is this?”

“You never answered her question- whether or not it was just about money.”

“I don’t know what you’re saying.” He took the lunges up to three-quarter speed. The blade became a blur again.

“Holly made a backup, Gene. I have you on disk, confessing to her that you lifted unedited copies of her videos from her apartment, and that you tried to blackmail Mitchell Fenn with them.”

Werner stopped lunging and stood very still. His head was tilted as if he were straining to hear something. After a minute, he smiled in a way he might have thought was ingratiating. “Backup,” he said quietly. He tapped the sword against his leg and paced in a slow circle at center stage.

“It was a prank,” he said. “The whole thing with the videos and Fenn- the blackmail- it was just a prank.” I raised an eyebrow, and Werner chuckled ruefully. “It was stupid, I admit, but I wasn’t thinking straight at the time. I was…” He looked down at the stage and then up at me, his lower lip all but quivering. “I was heartbroken over her, for chrissakes. Can you understand that? I went a little nuts then, and I wanted to get even somehow.”

“And blackmailing Fenn seemed like just the thing?”

“That wasn’t serious- I would never have taken his money. I just…” Again his gaze dipped to the floor and back up. “Look, I’m not proud of this, but…I wanted it to come back at Holly. I wanted her to see what she was doing was crazy. That it had consequences.”

Consequences. I nodded, as if it made any sense. “And, what- you counted on Fenn tracing it back to her?”

Werner was eager. “Yes, exactly. And when he did, it scared the hell out of her.”

“And then Holly figured out that you were behind it- that you’d kept a set of her house keys, and you’d stolen her disks.”

More nodding. “And I was glad she figured it out. I wanted her to know what she’d done to me. And I wanted her to know the risk she was taking. She thought she was immune somehow. She thought she could control everything- but she couldn’t.”

“Apparently not,” I said. “So you weren’t surprised when Holly called you- when she wanted to see you?”

“Not surprised,” Werner said. He stopped pacing and assumed a splay-footed stance. He bent his legs and raised the foil, and his face was a picture of concentration as he carved long shapes in the air.

“The reason I ask is that, on the video, you seemed surprised when she told you what she wanted to talk about.”

Werner frowned. “I wasn’t surprised.”

I shook my head. “Definitely surprised, Gene, and nervous toosweating, pale. There were times I thought you might puke.”

Werner’s brow wrinkled. “I wasn’t sweating.”

I shook my head some more. “And you say that you wanted her to know what you’d done, but that isn’t true, is it? I mean, you didn’t own up to anything at all; you made Holly work to get it out of you.”

“I was nervous. It was a stupid prank, and I knew it. I was embarrassed at first- flustered. But then I told her all of it.”

“You certainly did,” I said, and Werner’s eyes narrowed. “When did Holly tell you she’d recorded it?” I asked.

Werner’s frown deepened. “What are you talking about?”

“Come on, Gene- it’s a simple question: when did Holly tell you she’d recorded your conversation? Did she tell you on the spot, or after the fact? Or maybe she didn’t tell you at all; maybe it just dawned on you at some point.”

“I don’t know-”

“Don’t play games, Gene- when did you find out?”

Werner windmilled his sword arm, like a batter in the on-deck circle. The blade whistled through the air. “I’m not playing games, and I don’t see why I have to tell you a goddamn thing.”

I smiled to myself. “You don’t have to say shit to me, Gene, but the police are another story. I imagine they’ve been around to see you already, and maybe you’ve already gone over this with them. Or maybe not. In which case, I’d be happy to mention it.”

He walked toward me, his arm still spinning. He stopped maybe six feet away, with a nasty grin on. “You know the cops pretty well, huh?”

My eyebrows went up. “What do you mean by that, Gene?”

Werner colored, and waved an impatient hand. “Nothing.”

“Then why’d you say it?”

“No reason,” he said, and turned away. “And if you must know, Holly told me about the video. She told me she’d recorded it.”

I smiled. “When was that?”

“I don’t remember- a week later; maybe longer than that.”

“The date on the file was December twenty-seventh. A week or so later puts it in January. Was it in January when she told you about it?” Werner shrugged. “And she played it for you?”

He made a show of thinking about it. “Yeah, she played it for me.”

“When was that?”

He hesitated. “After she called. After New Year’s, I guess.”

“And that was the last time you saw her?” Werner nodded. “You remember the date?”

He scowled and made an elaborate check of his watch. “I have to leave,” he said.

“Of course you do. Just let me go over the facts once more, to be sure. Holly recorded your confession on December twenty-seventh. Sometime after that- in early January, say- she told you about the recording, after which, on the Saturday before she was killed, you went to her apartment, beat the crap out of her, and walked off with her computer and her video equipment. Is that about right?”

Werner’s mouth fell open, but no sound came out. “What…what the fuck are you talking about?” he said finally.

We were getting there. I took a deep breath, and smiled big at Werner. “I have the video of you confessing to blackmail, Gene, and of Holly throwing you out of her apartment afterwards. It’s plain how pissed you were when you finally figured out she wasn’t taking you back. I can only imagine how you stewed over that, and all the more, I expect, when you found out she’d recorded the whole episode.”

Werner straightened his shoulders and shook his arms out. He ran a hand over his chin, as if to make sure it was still there. He hung a lopsided smile on his face. “You can make what you want out of that video, but I was there. I know what really happened. And as for that other stuff, it’s bullshit and you know it, and you can go fuck yourself. I never touched Hol-”

“You have a history of knocking her around. She told people.”

“Who’d she tell- Krug? Coyle? I told you that faggot has it in for me, and so does that fucking ape.” Werner’s face burned. He swung his arm in a big figure eight. A little bit closer now.

“You shoved her in the video, Gene.”

“I tripped. I tripped and fell and bumped into her.” His jagged smile grew, and the sword whirred through the air.

“You knocked her halfway across the room, for chrissakes.”

“You have your story, and I have mine.”

“Except that I also have a witness, Gene, who puts you in Holly’s apartment the Saturday before she died, in the middle of a noisy fight.” He stopped slashing and brought the foil to his side. His mouth was an angry line, and his jaw was like a millstone. I continued. “On top of which, you were seen leaving there, carrying what looked like a computer and video equipment.”

Werner’s fingers whitened on the sword grip. He bared his large teeth and his arm came up in a blur. The blade whipped the air, and I felt the draft on my face. Almost there.

I smiled. “You want to watch that, Gene. I’m not one of your actors, and I take a punch better than Holly.”

He snapped the foil to his side. “Besides ‘Fuck off,’ I have nothing else to say to you.”

Almost…

“I guess I’ll do my talking elsewhere, then.”

“You’re so full of shit- you won’t go to the cops. You can’t.”

“No? Now why would that be, Gene?” Werner worried his lower lip, but didn’t answer. “I wasn’t actually thinking of the cops, though. I was thinking more of having this chat with Jamie Coyle.”

Werner’s voice was a whisper. “You son of a-”

“So what happened after that Saturday, Gene? Did you not find the video in the stuff you’d taken? Or did you maybe get scared about the beating you’d given her? You really lost it, didn’t you? You drew blood; you left marks.” Werner’s face went from white to red. His hands were fists and he brought the sword up.

Almost…

“Were you scared she’d go to the cops- or maybe that she’d tell Coyle about it? Three long nights of worrying; you must’ve been out of your mind by the time you saw her again. But what I can’t figure out is whether you went there planning to finish the job, or whether things just got away from you.”

Werner drew his arm back, and his blade was pointed at my neck. “Fucker,” he spat, and he uncoiled.

There.

The blade slashed my arm, and despite the padding of my coat, I felt the sting. I pivoted, and kicked Werner- hard- on his left thigh. I was fast and I got weight behind it, and I caught him just above the knee. He crumpled like a puppet.

His bellow echoed in the empty theater. I kicked the sword away and watched him roll on the stage for a while, crying and clutching at his leg. When he stopped thrashing, I pulled the Glock from behind my back. I couldn’t hold it well enough to shoot straight, but Werner didn’t know that, and I made sure he got a good look.

“It’ll pass,” I said. “Yelling doesn’t help.”

His handsome face was red and twisted, but he managed some gasping curses. I squatted by his head. “You haven’t answered my question yet: did you go there to finish the job, or did things get out of hand?”

“You’re craz-” A cramp rolled through his leg, and squeezed the air from him.

“My question, Gene.”

“You’re saying I killed her. You’re saying I killed Holly.” His deep voice was cracking.

I laughed a little. “Well, of course I am.”

“But I didn’t-”

“You beat the shit out of her, Gene, and think hard before you tell me otherwise.”

“I-”

“Think hard.”

Sweat ran from Werner’s hairline. His ponytail was gone, and strands of hair were stuck to the side of his face. “It…it got out of hand. She told me she’d recorded me, about Fenn, and I wanted the video. But Holly wouldn’t give it to me. She just laughed.”

“And you hit her.”

Werner grimaced and squeezed his leg. “She wouldn’t give it to me, and she kept laughing.”

I stood up, and let out a dusty breath. “You beat the shit out of her.”

“You don’t know what it was like- what she was like. She was so beautiful…you had to have her. But she didn’t care- however much you felt for her, however much you wanted her, it didn’t matter. You could never get at her- she was always in control. She kept laughing and…I lost it. Even when I hit her, she laughed the whole time.”

I walked away from him, across the stage, and ground my teeth together. “You took her computer?”

“The computer, the cameras, the disks…”

“Your video was there?” Werner nodded. “And you found the video of my brother too, and his wife.” Fear crowded out pain on Werner’s face, and he propped himself on his elbow and tried to slide backward. “Think, Gene,” I said quietly. “You found video of my brother?” He nodded. “And after I came to see you, what happened then?”

“I…I got scared. I recognized your name, and I looked you up. I saw that you were his brother. I figured you were trying to get him off the hook for Holly…that you were looking for someone else.”

“Someone like you.”

Werner shook his head. “I was afraid if the police knew I’d…if they knew about Fenn, and that Holly and I had fought, they’d think that I’d…killed her.”

“And we couldn’t have that, could we? So you fed them my brother and his wife. You sent them that disk.” He scuttled back, like a wounded crab. I followed, and my shadow fell across him. “You sent them that disk,” I said again. He nodded.

I sighed. “Talk to me about that Tuesday night,” I said after a while.

“What about it?”

“We’re almost through here- don’t get stupid now. Tell me what happened.”

Werner looked confused. “Nothing…nothing happened.”

I stepped closer. “Goddammit, Gene-”

“For chrissakes, I’m telling you the truth! Nothing happened that night!” His face was white and his eyes were wild with panic. “I didn’t see her or talk to her or anything. I had nothing to do with what happened. It’s like I told the cops.”

I shook my head. “What line did you feed the cops?”

“They asked me to account for my time that Tuesday night, and I did.”

“With what bullshit?”

“It wasn’t bullshit.”

I crouched beside him. He tried to slide away but I caught his arm. My voice was a low rumble. “Don’t insult me, Gene.”

“I’m not! I was at the theater all night- the Morningside Lyceum, by Columbia. I’m directing and one of my leads was out sick that night. I had to fill in. I got to the theater before six, and all night I was either onstage, or backstage with the cast and crew. We didn’t get out of there till ten-thirty or eleven, and then a bunch of us went to eat. I didn’t get home until one, and I wasn’t alone.” He swallowed and squeezed his eyes shut, and he looked like he might throw up.

“You fucking beat her!”

“I know- Jesus, I know what I did. But I swear to God I didn’t kill her.”

“Then who did, Gene? Who killed Holly?”

Werner looked at me. His mouth was trembling and his face was breaking down. “I don’t know,” he said, and his voice was a choked thing. “I watched those videos, and afterward I thought…I swear to God I thought it was your brother.”