Romance

5

THE SECRETARY IN THE SMALL WAITING ROOM OF JOHNNY Milton’s office on Stemmler Avenue and Locust Street was on the telephone when the detectives arrived at three o’clock that Tuesday afternoon. She glanced up briefly, signaled to the bench on the wall opposite her desk, listened for another moment, and then said, “I can understand how you feel, Mike, but he really is on a conference call, and I don’t know how long he’ll be.”

She listened again, rolled her eyes, and said, “Well, that isn’t true, Mike, he talks to you all the time. When? What do you mean when?” she said, and rolled her eyes again. “Whenever there’s anything to report, he calls you. Well, that’s not true, either. He’s always got things to report to you. Mike, you just got back from a dinner club date in Boston, who do you suppose got that for you, if not Johnny. What? No, I’m sure that wasn’t two months ago. February? Really? Was it in February? Then I guess it was two months ago. Gee. Even so, he’s working for you all the time, Mike, I promise you. Ooops, there goes the other phone,” she said, although nothing else in the office was ringing. “I’ll tell him you called, he’ll get right back to you. Nice talking to you,” she said, and hung up, and expelled her breath in exasperation.

“Actors,” she said, and then, realizing that the two men standing near the bench across the room were cute enough to be actors themselves, and might just possibly be actors, she said in explanation, “Hitchcock was right,” and recognized she might only be compounding the felony although neither of the two seemed to understand the reference, which was to Hitchcock constantly saying all actors were cattle, which she’d read in a magazine in a doctor’s office, never having met the man.

“Can I help you?” she asked, smiling pleasantly and sitting up straighter in her chair, the better to impress in her somewhat tight red sweater. The blond one stepped away from the wall with the framed eight-by-tens of Johnny’s clients on it, and crossed over to the desk, a sort of leather fob falling open in his right hand to reveal a gold shield that had the name of the city on it, and the city’s seal in gold on blue enamel and the word DETECTIVE under it, and under that 87TH SQUAD.

“Detective Kling,” he said. “My partner, Detective Carella,” nodding toward him as he, too, approached the desk. “We’d like to talk to Mr. Milton, please.”

“Oh,” she said. “Sure,” and immediately picked up the phone and hit a button on its base, giving the lie to the conference-call story she’d just told the actor named Mike. “Mr. Milton,” she said, “there are some detectives here to see you.” She listened, nodded, and said, “Yes, sir, right away,” and replaced the phone on its base. “Just go right in,” she said, and indicated a wood-paneled door to the right of her desk.

Johnny Milton was dressed for spring sunshine this after-noon, although it was still raining outside his window. Wearing a pastel blue V-necked sweater over a yellow shirt open at the throat, beige slacks, and tasseled loafers, he looked like a producer on a Hollywood lot, rather than an agent in an office the size of the lieutenant’s back at the old Eight-Seven. Instead of mug shots, however, the walls here were covered with framed posters of shows in which Milton’s clients had presumably performed. Some of the shows were familiar to Carella, if only by their titles. Most of them rang no bell at all. Milton’s right hand was extended as he came around the desk.

“Gentlemen,” he said, “nice to see you again,” and shook hands first with Carella and then with Kling. “Sit down, please. Just move that stuff, here let me get it,” he said, and went to a sofa laden with what Carella guessed were scripts in variously colored binders. Milton carried them to his desk, dropped them on it unceremoniously, motioned for them to sit, and then went behind the desk and sat himself. The sofa was one of those narrow little love seats upholstered in a very dark green velvet fabric. The detectives sat side by side on it, their shoulders touching.

“Michelle’s fine,” Milton said at once. “If you’re wondering.” He looked at his watch. “Rehearsing right this minute, in fact.”

“Good,” Carella said. “Mr. Milton, had she mentioned any of these threatening phone calls to you?”

“Not until yesterday. I was the one who advised her to go to the police.”

“Ahh,” Carella said.

“Yes.”

“Did she tell you the man sounded like Jack Nicholson?”

“Yes. But, of course…”

“Of course.”

“… he isn’t Jack Nicholson. You understand that, don’t you?”

“Yes, we do.”

“Jack Nicholson is in Europe right now, in fact, on location.”

“So he couldn’t have been the man who stabbed Michelle in that alleyway,” Carella said, deadpan.

“Exactly what I’m saying,” Milton said.

“Any idea who that man might have been?” Carella asked.

“No.”

“Do any of your clients do jack Nicholson imitations?”

“No. Not to my knowledge, anyway,” Milton said, and smiled.

“Mr. Milton,” Kling said, “do you remember where you were last night when you heard Michelle had been stabbed?”

“Yes, I do. Certainly. Why?”

“Where would that have been, sir?”

“At a steakhouse on the Stem. Stemmler Avenue,” he added, explaining the abbreviation as if the detectives had just got off a boat from Peru.

“Do you remember the name of it?” Carella said.

“O’Leary’s Steakhouse.”

“On the Stem and North Twelfth?”

“Yes.”

“All the way uptown, huh?”

“Michelle was supposed to meet me there. It’s close to the theater.”

“Three, four blocks away, in fact.”

“Yes.”

“What time were you supposed to meet?”

“I made a reservation for seven.”

“But she never showed.”

“No. Well, you know what happened.”

“Yes. She got stabbed as she was leaving the theater. Apparently on her way to meet you.”

“Apparently.”

“What’d you do when she didn’t show?”

“I called the theater.”

“What time was that?”

“Seven-fifteen, seven-twenty. That was when I learned what had happened.”

“Oh?” Kling said.

Both detectives looked at each other.

“I thought you heard the news on the radio,” Carella said.

“No, Torey told me what had happened. The play’s security guard. Romance. The play she’s in. He told me she’d been stabbed and they’d taken her to Morehouse General. So I caught a cab and rushed right over.”

“I got the impression you’d heard the news on the radio,” Carella said.

“Really? What gave you that impression?”

“Just the way you said it.”

“What I said was I’d just heard the news.”

“Yes, and rushed right over.”

“Right.”

“Made it sound as if you’d heard a news broadcast.”

“No, I didn’t. It was Torey who told me about it.”

“I understand that now.”

The detectives looked at each other again.

“According to Miss Cassidy, you and she are living together, is that right?” Kling asked.

“That’s right.”

“Where do you live, sir?”

“Her apartment. What used to be her apartment, till we decided to take the plunge. Live together, I mean.”

“And where’s that?” Carella asked.

“The apartment? On Carter and Stein.”

The Eighty-eighth, Carella thought.

Carter and Stein was just on the edge of Diamondback, in what used to be the area’s Gold Coast back in the late twenties and early thirties. In those days, Diamondback was exclusively black, and the high-rise buildings on Carter Avenue between Stein and Ridge were populated with entertainers, musicians, artists, businessmen, politicians, all the elite of Isola’s black society. The buildings still afforded a splendid view of Grover Park, an inducement that had caused an enterprising black developer to renovate them into doorman buildings which downtown honkies had snapped up in a minute. These adventurous whites wouldn’t have been quite so bold if the buildings had been offered for sale a scant twelve blocks farther uptown. Living in the heart of Diamondback was a bit different, Charlie, from going uptown to Mama Grace’s for a down-home supper of chitlins, black-eyed peas, and grits. But Carter Avenue was still relatively safe for this city, and you couldn’t beat the price or the view of the park.

Diamondback was still predominantly black. In fact, one of its more clever nicknames was Diamondblack. But Hispanics from Colombia and the Dominican Republic — as opposed to the Puerto Ricans who were now third-generation citizens — and other immigrants, many of them illegal, from Pakistan, Vietnam, Korea, Bangladesh, Afghanistan and the planet Venus had begun infiltrating the area in ever-expanding pockets, foreign to most of the longtime residents and cause for cultural clashes of a minor scale — so far. The mix was a volatile and dangerous one. Except along Carter Avenue, where Johnny Milton lived with Michelle Cassidy in an apartment that used to be hers alone.

“She’s also your client, is that right?” Carella asked.

“Yes.”

“Which came first?”

“She was my client before we started a personal relationship, if that’s what you mean.”

“When was that?”

“Seven years ago.”

“The personal relationship?”

“Yes.”

“How about the business relationship?”

“That goes back a long while.”

“How long a while?”

“Since she was ten. She was a child actress, you know…”

“Yes.”

“I got her the touring company of Annie. She played Annie. The starring role.”

“So you’ve known each other how long?”

“Thirteen years.”

“Neither of you is seeing anyone else, are you?”

“No, no. It’s the same as if we’re married.”

“Would you say your relationship is a good one?”

“Very good. The same as being married.”

“Then it has its ups and downs, huh?“ Carella said. “Same as being married.”

“Yes. Exactly the same.”

“How’d you react when she told you about the threatening calls?”

“I told you. I advised her to go straight to the police.”

“Any idea why she waited so long to tell.you?” Kling asked.

“No.”

“Because apparently the calls…”

“Yes, I know…”

“… started on the twenty-ninth of March…”

“Yes, I know…”

“But she didn’t tell you about them till yesterday.”

“I think she was hoping they would stop.”

“You never talked to this man, did you?” Carella asked.

“No.”

“What I mean, you didn’t answer the phone and have someone in a Jack Nicholson voice asking for Miss Cassidy, did you?”

“No, never.”

“Any hang-ups?”

“Oh, sure. This is the city.”

“Wrong numbers, like that?”

“Yeah, like that.”

“Anyone ever say `Sorry, wrong number’ in a Jack Nicholson voice?”

“No. The wrong numbers are foreign voices mostly. Hispanic, Asian, Solly, long numbah. They don’t know how to dial a goddamn phone, you know.”

Carella made no comment.

“What time did you get to O’Leary’s?” Kling asked.

“I told you. Seven.”

“On the dot?”

“Few minutes before, maybe. My reservation was for seven.”

“When did you start getting nervous?”

“About her not showing up?”

“Yes.”

“About ten after. I knew they were supposed to break for dinner at seven. This is a play in rehearsal, you understand, everything’s racing against the clock, everything’s sliding downhill toward opening night. If the dinner break is at seven, that means seven, and it means you’re back at eight, to pick up where you left off. The theater’s, what, five minutes from O’Leary’s? I gave her till a quarter after, and then I went looking for a phone.”

“Who answered the phone at the theater?”

“Torey, I told you. There’s a phone backstage. The minute I asked to speak to Michelle, he said, `Hold on tight, Johnny. Michelle just got stabbed in the alley outside.’ ”

“His exact words?”

“Exact. I asked him where they’d taken her, and he told me Morehouse. So I left the restaurant and went right over.”

“By taxi?”

“Yes.“

“Left the restaurant at what time?”

“Soon as I got off the phone. Twenty after seven? Twenty-five after?”

“Went straight to the hospital.”

“Well, yeah. You were there when I walked in, what time was it? Quarter to eight, something like that?”

“Around then,” Carella said. “Mr. Milton, thanks for your time, we appreciate…”

“Are you gonna catch this guy?” Milton asked.

“We hope so,” Kling said. “Thanks again, sir, we appreciate your time.”

The secretary in the small waiting room was on the phone again when they walked out, explaining to Mike the Actor that Mr. Milton had had an unexpected visit, but that he was free to talk to him now. She smiled at Kling as they walked out, and then buzzed the inner office. In the hallway outside, as they waited for the elevator, Carella said, “Let’s drive uptown.”

“Sure,” Kling said. “The theater first? Or O’Leary’s?” ”

The theater,” Carella said.

No knife.

Such was what the sodden blues had reported upon their return to the station house late this morning, and neither Carella nor Kling had reason to doubt the diligence of their search. Nonetheless, he and Kling made another pass at the alley and the stretch of sidewalk and gutter in front of the theater, and confirmed in the riddling rain that indeed there was no knife.

None that they could find, at any rate.

Besides, they weren’t here primarily to search for a knife. They were here to clock the time it took to walk from the theater to O’Leary’s Steakhouse on the Stem.

They’d eliminated at once the possibility that whoever had stabbed Michelle Cassidy had run off after committing the dastardly deed; in this city, a running man attracts attention. So Kling hit the stopwatch button on his complicated digital watch, and together they began walking at a good clip, out of the alley, turning left under the theater marquee with the red-lettered title ROMANCE on a black back-ground, moving quickly past the posters announcing the April sixteenth opening of the play, Kling’s watch ticking away, both men striding out briskly like the youngsters they no longer were, but who was counting, up toward the corner of Detavoner Avenue where a red light stopped them, ticking, ticking, WALK, the traffic sign flashed, and they crossed the avenue that was still under construction after God knew how many years, but who was counting, nobody in this city counted, up toward Sexton Avenue, the watch ticking, ticking, and finally they reached Stemmler Avenue itself, the Stem of legend and lore, and made a hasty turn at the corner and headed uptown toward North Twelfth. Kling hit the button again the moment they pushed through O’Leary’s entrance door. The time was twentyseven minutes past twelve. It had taken them exactly five minutes and forty-two seconds to get here, and they’d been counting.

The place was already packed with its lunchtime crowd, and everybody was too busy to talk to a pair of cops who’d been walking fast in the spring rain. But Carella mentioned the magic name “Michelle Cassidy,” and in this celebrity-mad city, in this celebrity-worshipping nation, all at once everybody had all the time in the world to discuss the darling little thing who’d been stabbed in a theater alley, as reported on three television newscasts at eleven last night, and as plastered all over the front pages of the city’s two tabloid dailies early this morning.

“Michelle Cassidy, yes,” the headwaiter said. “She comes here frequently. They’re rehearsing just up the street, you know.”

Well, four blocks away, Kling thought. And five minutes and forty-two seconds

“She was in Annie, you know. On the road.”

“Yes,” Carella said, “so we’ve been told.”

Steak joints in this city tended to get noisy as hell. O’Leary’s was no exception. The place was filled with raucous businessmen in suits and vests who sat ham-hocked at tables with pristine white tablecloths and sparkling glassware, blowing smoke in the air, blasting laughter to the rafters, causing the place to reverberate with thunderous sound. Carella wondered why steak joints seemed to bring out the worst in men. None of them would have behaved this way in a tearoom.

“We understand she was supposed to be here last night,” he shouted over the noise.

“Is that right?” the headwaiter said.

He was as big as the noise in the place, a man with side whiskers and a belly that started under his chin, wearing a dark suit and a plum-colored tie fastened to his shirt with a modest diamond stickpin. Carella thought he looked like a British barrister in a Dickens novel. He sounded like one, too, come to think of it.

“With Johnny Milton,” Kling said.

“Oh, yes, the agent. Yes, he was here. I didn’t know she was supposed to join him.”

“What time did he get here?” Carella asked.

“Let me check the book.”

He moved toward his little podium like a galleon under full plum-colored sail, flicked pages like a conductor leading an orchestra, mumbling to himself as he scanned the reservation entries, “Johnny Milton, Johnny Milton, Johnny Milton,” and finally stabbing at the page with a plump little forefinger, and looking up triumphantly, and saying, “Here it is, seven o’clock.”

“Was he here at seven?” Carella asked.

“Well, I don’t know,” the headwaiter said.

“Could you try to remember, sir?”

“He may have been a few minutes late, I don’t know.”

“How late?” Kling asked.

Michelle had stepped into that alley at a few minutes past seven. Say two, three minutes past seven. Add to that the five minutes and forty-two seconds it took to walk here fast..

“Did he get here at five past seven?” he asked. ”

I don’t know.”

“Seven past?”

“Eight past?”

“Ten past?”

Both of them zeroing in. Trying to zero in.

“I have no way of knowing, really.”

“Would anyone else know?”

“One of your waiters?”

“Do you remember where you seated him?”

“Well, yes, I do. But I doubt anyone…”

“Which table would it have been, sir?”

“Number six. There near the bar.”

“Would that waiter be here now?”

“The one who had that table last night?”

“Gentlemen, really.. ”

“At seven?”

“Or seven-fifteen?”

“Around that time?”

“Yes, he’s here. But, really, you can see how crowded we are. I can’t possibly pull him off the…”

“We’ll wait till lunch is over,” Carella said.

The waiter’s name was Gregory Stiles, and he was a thirty-two-year-old aspiring actor, which did not make him exactly unique in this city. He remembered serving Johnny Milton, because he knew Milton was an agent, and he himself had been looking for a new agent ever since his last one moved to Los Angeles. Stiles had straight black hair, dark brown eyes, and an olive complexion, which made it difficult for him to get many acting jobs because everyone assumed he was Latino, and there weren’t too many roles for Latino actors in this city — or in this country, for that matter — unless you were a Latino actor who also sang and danced, in which case you could get a part in a summer stock production of West Side Story, maybe.

In the movie Walk Proud, which was about Chicano gangs in L.A., the starring Chicano role had been played by Robby Benson, a very good actor who happened to be an Anglo. The Chicano community raised six kinds of hell about this, even though the film created more jobs for Chicano actors than had previously been available since the Mexican Army stormed the Alamo and killed John Wayne. Unfortunately, Stiles hadn’t been living on the Coast when the movie was made, and so he’d missed out on a career opportunity. He was still annoyed that he looked so fuckin Hispanic when in fact his forebears were British.

He told all this to the detectives after the lunchtime hubbub had subsided, at ten minutes to three that afternoon, over coffee at a small table near the doors leading to the kitchen, where the dishwashers were busily at work. The dishwashers at work were almost as noisy as the businessmen had been at lunch, though not quite.

“He told me he was waiting for someone, but that he’d have a drink meanwhile,” Stiles projected over the clatter of dishes and pots and pans and someone singing in what sounded like Arabic. “He ordered a Tanqueray martini on the rocks, with a twist.”

“What time was this?” Kling asked.

“Exactly fifteen minutes past seven,” Stiles said

Both detectives looked at him.

“How do you happen to know the exact time?” Kling asked.

“Because I’d just got off the phone with my girlfriend.” Which did not answer the question.

“Do you always call her at a quarter past seven?” Carella asked.

Which seemed a logical thing to ask.

“No,” Stiles said. “As a matter of fact, she called me.”

“I see,” Carella said.

Which he still didn’t.

“What time did she call you?” Kling asked reasonably.

“About five after seven. She’d just been asked back for a second reading, and she wanted me to know about it.

She’s an actress, too. She also waits tables.”

“So she called you at five after seven…”

“Yes, and I took the call in the booth there…

” Nodding toward a phone booth at the end of the bar… where I could see the room and also the clock over the bar. I saw Mr. Milton when he came in, and I saw him when Gerard led him to the table. The headwaiter. Gerard.”

“What time did Mr. Milton come in?”

“I didn’t look at the clock when he came in. But I did look at it when Gerard led him to the table a few minutes later.”

“Why’d you look at the clock then?”

“Because I knew I’d be on in the next ten seconds. So I told Mollie I had to go, and I hung up, and the time on the clock was a quarter past seven.”

“You’re sure about that?”

“Positive.”

“So he sat down at a quarter after seven, and told you he was expecting someone, and ordered a Tanqueray martini.. ”

“On the rocks, with a twist.”

“Then what?”

“About ten minutes later, he went to the phone. Same phone over there. The booth at the end of the bar.”

“That would’ve been around seven twenty-five.”

“Around then. I didn’t look at the clock again. I’m just estimating.”

“Then what?”

“He came back to the table, threw down a twenty-dollar bill, and ran out.”

“Didn’t ask for a check?”

“Nope. Just assumed the twenty would cover it, I guess. Which it did, of course. More than.”

“Seemed in a hurry, did he?”

“Was Roadrunner in a hurry?”

“What time did he leave the restaurant, did you happen to notice?”

“I would say around seven-thirty. But again, that’s just an estimate.”

“But you’re absolutely certain…”

“Was Nostradamus certain?”

“… that he sat down at the table at a quarter past seven?”

“Positive.”

“And came into the restaurant a few minutes before then?”

“Yes. Well, I took Mollie’s call at five after, and he hadn’t yet come in, I didn’t see him standing at the door with Gerard till a few minutes later. If I had to make a guess, I’d say he got here about ten after.”

“Ten after seven.”

“Yes. And Gerard went through the greeting routine, and the shaking of hands, and all the maitre d’ bullshit, and then brought him to the table and sat him down at a quarter past seven on the dot. Which is when I looked at the clock, and said goodbye to Mollie, and hung up.”

“Thank you, Mr. Stiles.”

“De nada,” he said, and grinned.

He had been on the phone with Mike the Whiner for almost forty minutes, and then had got involved in what seemed like a hundred subsequent phone calls, and then had gone out for a meeting with a producer who was doing a revival of a play called The Conjuror, which he’d seen at the University of Michigan some twenty-five, twenty-six years ago, but which had never made it to Broadway… or anywhere else, for that matter. Why the producer wanted to revive it was something beyond Johnny’s ken, but he listened patiently as the play was outlined and then took notes on the actors and actresses required for the cast. He got back to the office at a little past five, called the theater and was told by the stage door guy that everyone had already quit for the day. So he’d called Michelle at the apartment and got no answer there, and kept trying every ten minutes or so until finally he reached her at close to six o’clock. She told him she’d just walked in the door.

“I was starting to get worried,” he said.

“Why?”

“The cops were here to see me,” he said.

The door to his office was closed, but Lizzie was still outside at her desk, and she had ears like a rabbit, so he automatically lowered his voice to a whisper.

“When?” Michelle asked.

“This afternoon,”

“Why didn’t you call me?”

“I did. As soon as I could. You’d already left the theater.”

“I didn’t leave the theater till five o’clock!”

“I had a meeting.”

“What’d they want?”

“Fishing expedition,” he said, and shrugged. “They think I’m the one who stabbed you.”

He heard her catch her breath. There was a long silence on the line. Then she said, “They accused you?”

“No, no, they’re not stupid. But they were asking how long we’ve known each other, how we got along…”

“Uh-oh.”

“Yeah, what time I ate dinner, what time I found out you’d been stabbed…”

“This is very bad, Johnny.”

“No, I think I covered it nicely.”

“Don’t you see what they were trying to find out?”

“Oh, sure. They were running a timetable in their heads. Trying to figure did I have time to stab you and then run over to O’Leary’s.”

“Which is just what you did.”

“Yeah.”

“So what’d you tell them?”

“I told them I had a seven o’clock reservation. Which, by the way, I did.”

“What’d they say?”

“They wanted to know what time I got there, never mind what time the reservation was for.”

“Johnny, we’re in trouble.”

“No, no. I told them I got there a little before seven.”

“They’ll check. We’re in trouble, Johnny.”

“Who’s gonna remember exactly what time I got there? Come on, Meesh.”

“Someone’ll remember. You shouldn’t have lied, Johnny. It would’ve been better to tell the truth.”

“The restaurant is my alibi!“

“Some alibi, if you weren’t there.”

“What’d you want me to say? That I didn’t know where I was? You’re getting stabbed in a fuckin alley, and I can’t account for where I was?”

“You could’ve said you were home. Getting ready to go to the restaurant. Or you could’ve said you were trying to catch a cab to the restaurant. There’s no way they can check on a man standing on a street corner waving at taxis. Anything would’ve been better than telling them you were already in the restaurant, which they can check in a minute. They’ll be back, Johnny, you can bet on it. They’re probably on their way back right this minute.”

“Come on, Meesh, stop tryin’a get me nervous.”

“You’d better start thinking up another story. For when they come back and ask you how come the people at the restaurant don’t remember seeing you there at seven.”

“I’ll tell them my watch was running fast.”

“Then you better set it fast right this minute.”

“Meesh, you’re really getting all upset about nothing. They bought my story. There’s no reason for them to…”

“How do you know they bought it?”

“They both thanked me for my time.”

“And that means they bought your story, huh?”

“What I’m saying is they didn’t seem suspicious.”

“Then why were they asking you all those questions?”

“Routine.”

“What else did they ask you?”

“Who remembers?”

“Try to remember.”

“They wanted to know where we live, and how long you’d…”

“Did you tell them?”

“Yes.”

“You gave them the address here?”

“I told them Carter and Stein.”

“Oh, Jesus, they’ll find me! They’ll come here!”

“No, no.”

“What else did you tell them?”

“I told them you’d been my client since you were ten years old, and that we’ve known each other for thirteen years. They wanted to know if either of us was seeing anyone else…”

“That’s good.”

“It is?”

“Sure. It means they were thinking it could’ve been somebody else. Not you, a third party. What’d you tell them?”

“That it was the same as being married, and that we had a very good relationship.”

“Good.”

“Yeah, I thought so. And then they wanted to know did I have any clients who did Jack Nicholson, and why you’d waited so long to go to them about the calls, you know…”

“Yeah.”

“… and how it was my idea that you go see them. They wanted to know…”

“That was stupid.”

“What was?”

“Telling them it was you who sent me to the police. Makes it sound like you masterminded the whole fucking thing. Johnny, we’re in trouble, I know it.”

“No, they were just trying to find out who the guy was, the guy making the calls. Wanted to know if I’d ever talked to him…”

“Sure, because they were already thinking the calls were bullshit…”

“No. No, I don’t think so.”

“Was all this before or after they asked about the restaurant?”

“Before.”

“Sure, they were closing in.”

“No.

“They’ll be back, Johnny.”

“I’m telling you no.”

“I’m telling you yes.”

“Why would they? When I asked them were they gonna catch this guy, the blond one — you remember the blond one?”

“What about him?”

“He said he hoped so. That they’d catch him.”

“Yeah, you. He was talking about you.”

“No, he was talking about the guy who stabbed you in the alley.”

“Yeah, who was you.“

“Yeah, but they don’t know that.”

“I’ll tell you, Johnny, if they come here asking questions, I’m gonna say I don’t know a fucking thing about it.”

“Good, that’s exactly what you should say.”

“No, you’re not hearing me.”

“What am I not hearing?”

“I’m going to say I didn’t know anything about it.”

“Right.”

“I’ll tell them you must’ve dreamt it all up on your own.”

“On my…?”

“Without my knowledge.”

There was a silence on the line.

“I’m not going down with you, Johnny…”

“You helped…”

“I’m gonna be a star, Johnny.”

“You helped me plan id” he shouted.

“Prove it,” she said, and hung up.

She had double-locked the door, and put the chain on, and angled the Fox-lock bar firmly in place, but she was still scared he might come in through the window or whatever, one of the heating vents even, he could be a crazy bastard when he wanted to. The moment she’d hung up she’d realized how stupid it had been to tell him in advance what she would do if push ever came to shove. Now she sat here wondering whether she ought to get out of the apartment altogether, go crash with any one of a hundred unemployed actresses she knew in this city, even take a hotel room someplace till the cops arrested him, which she guessed should be any minute now, the way they were closing in on him.

How could he have been such a jackass, telling them he was someplace he couldn’t possibly have been at the time of the stabbing? Didn’t he realize they’d time the distance from the theater to O’Leary’s? Didn’t he know they’d check his alibi? Even if they didn’t for a minute suspect there was some kind of conspiracy here, even if they never once imagined this was all planned to call attention to her as the star of a show about to go down the drain, even if they were every bit as stupid as all the other cops in this city, didn’t he know they’d suspect him if only because he was the significant other? Didn’t he read the newspapers?

What’d he think? That everything he saw on television and in the movies was the way it was in real life? All those complicated murder plots? All those shrewd schemes that would net millions and millions of dollars for the person clever enough to hatch them and execute them? Baloney. If you read the papers, you knew that most murders had nothing to do with brilliant planning. Most murders these days were either murders committed during the commission of some other crime, or else they were murders between people who knew each other. A little while ago, it used to be random killings, strangers knocking off strangers for no apparent reason. But now, the pendulum had swung back to the family circle again, and people who loved each other were busy slitting each other’s throats. Husbands and wives, sweethearts and lovers, brothers and sisters, mothers and sons and fathers and uncles, these were the people who were killing each other these days. She knew because she’d done a lot of research for this dumb play she was in.

One of the things that had to’ve occurred to the police was that the guy making threatening calls in a Jack Nicholson voice might have been none other than the guy who was currently sleeping with the victim, who by the way had been the same guy sleeping with her for the past seven years, give or take, and not counting the times his hands were up under her skirt when she was twelve or thirteen. If Michelle Cassidy gets stabbed in a dark alley coming out of a theater, who are the cops going to think did it, some crazed Puerto Rican drug dealer named Ricardo Mendez or whoever? No, they are going to think Boyfriend, they are going to think Johnny Milton, they are going to think there’s something wrong with that relationship there, be-cause that’s the way they’re trained to think. They’re trained to think mother father son daughter boyfriend girlfriend goldfish. Even if they never once think it’s a scheme to put my name up in lights, they’ll look to Johnny.

He should’ve realized that, and he should’ve been ready for whatever they’d thrown at him, instead of giving them an alibi that wouldn’t wash. The weak son of a bitch would probably begin sniveling the minute they went back and began turning the screws on him. They’d come here pounding on her door next, wanting to know what part she’d had in the scheme. Me, Officers? Moi? Why, I don’t know what you’re talking about, sirs. She knew all about interrogations because of this dumb play she was in.

She looked at her wristwatch.

Seven-thirty, dark outside already. Maybe he didn’t plan on coming home at all, maybe she’d scared him into running for China or Colorado, wherever. Maybe she could relax. No Johnny Milton, no cops, just her name up above the title of the play in big blazing lights,

Speaking of which.

She turned back to the blue-bindered script in her lap.

While perspiring over whether that lunatic would come break down the door or something, she’d been trying to go over her lines in the scene where the Detective takes her aside — takes the Actress aside — and talks to her confidentially about what he thinks is going on, a very difficult scene to play in that no one in the play knew what was going on because their genius playwright, Frederick Peter Corbin III, hadn’t bothered to mention anywhere in the entire script who it was that stabbed the girl, excuse me, the goddamn Actress. So the scene was like two people talking underwater. Or sinking in quicksand. The Detective doesn’t know what’s going on, and the Actress doesn’t know what’s going on, either, and neither would the audience. Which is why it had become necessary in the first place to stab her in the alley, not the Actress in the play, but the actress in real life, Michelle Cassidy, if she was ever going to get anywhere in this fucking business.

She hated it when a playwright—any playwright and not just their genius playwright, Frederick Peter Corbin III — underlined words in a script to show his actors exactly which word or words he wanted stressed. Whenever she read a line like “But I love you, Anthony,” with the word love underlined for indicated emphasis, she automatically and perversely read it every which way but what the playwright had heard in his head, how dare he intrude upon her creativity that way? Sitting around a table at a first reading, she would say, “But I love you, Anthony,” or “But I love you, Anthony,” or “But I love you, Anthony,” or even “But I love you, Anthony!“

All those fucking underlined words.

What a dumb fucking play, she thought, and was about to put the script down when the doorbell sounded, startling her. She hesitated a moment, not saying anything, sitting quite still in the easy chair with its flower-patterned slipcovers, the open blue-bindered script in her lap, the lamp behind her casting light over her shoulder and onto the script and spilling over onto the floor.

The doorbell sounded again.

Still, she said nothing.

From outside the door, a voice called, “Michelle?”

“Who is it?” she asked.

Her heart was pounding.

“Me,” the voice said. “Open the door.”

“Who’s me?” she said, and rose from the easy chair and placed the script down on its seat, and then walked to the door and looked through the peephole flap, and said in relief, “Oh, hi, just a sec,” and took off the chain, and released the Fox lock, and then unlocked the dead bolt and the Medeco lock and opened the door wide and saw the knife coming at her.