Romance

9

THE GALLOWAY SCHOOL — OR MORE ACCURATELY THE GALloway School of Theater Arts, as the sign downstairs announced it — was on the third floor of a building that had once been a hat factory. Kling wanted to know how Carella had known this. Carella said there were just some things a good detective knew, kid. A scene was in progress as they slipped into the vast room. Some thirty or so students sat on folding chairs watching Josie Beales and an older man going through an aria intended to break the heart, Carella figured. In it, the old man was telling his daughter he had cancer and had been given thirty days to live. Josie didn’t seem to have much to do in the scene except listen. She did that very well, brown eyes glistening with tears as the old guy told her about all of life’s little missed opportunities. Carella wondered if Freddie Corbin had written the scene. They stood at the back of the room, listening and watching. On the folding chairs, there was a lot of respectful fidgeting.

When the scene ended, a bearded man in the front row personally critiqued it, and then called for reactions and responses from the assembled students on the hard wooden folding chairs. A half hour later, he called a break and Josie and the old guy went out into the corridor together. She was standing by a radiator in front of a very tall window, smoking, when they joined her. The old guy was nowhere in sight. Josie’s strawberry-blond hair was piled on top of her head. She was wearing blue jeans and a white T-shirt, and she looked very young and fresh and innocent. But she was twenty-one years old and an experienced actress. And she had inherited the starring role in Romance from another actress who’d been brutally stabbed to death.

“How’s it coming along?” Kling asked.

“Oh fine. Well, you know, I knew all the lines and stage directions already, I was her understudy, you know, this wasn’t like coming into something cold, taking over cold for somebody. Chuck rehearses all the understudies — Chuck Madden, our stage manager — three, four times a week, so really we’re pretty much up on it.”

She had stubbed out her cigarette and was leaning against the radiator now, arms folded across her chest, a defensive posture, Carella noticed, but nothing else about her seemed guarded. Rail thin in the tight-fitting blue jeans and T-shirt, she appeared almost waif-like. Brown Bambi eyes wide in a pale white face crowned with masses of reddish-blond curly hair, her mouth lipstick-free, a single ruby-red earring in…

She saw where his eyes had wandered.

“This isn’t an affectation,” she said.

Carella looked puzzled.

Her hand went immediately to her right ear, tugged the earlobe there. “I lost the other one,” she said, “I can’t imagine where. I know I had both of them on at rehearsal today.”

“I’m sure things have been pretty frantic,” Carella said.

“Well, yes, but understudies are used to going on at a moment’s notice, you know, if anybody gets sick or anything. So I really do know the part.”

“Must be a strain, though,” Carella suggested.

“A strain? How?”

“I mean replacing a murder victim,” he said softly, and watched her eyes.

“Yes,” she said, “it’s a terrible thing, what happened to Michelle. But this is show business, am I right? The show must go on, isn’t that so?” Eyes clear and bright, eyes unflinching. “And what you said, replacing her, this isn’t really replacing her, it isn’t as if she was fired so I could take the role, it isn’t that at all. I was her understudy and something happened to her, and so I’m going on in her place, but that isn’t replacing her, is it? You don’t really think it’s replacing her, do you?”

“Only in a manner of speaking,” Carella said, and kept watching her eyes.

“Well,” she said, and shrugged. “I feel awful about what happened to Michelle, but I’d be lying if I didn’t say I feel happy for myself, for getting the opportunity to play the leading role in a play that now… well, this’ll sound terrible, too. But, you know, we really do have a shot now. With all the publicity the play’s getting, I mean. I know that’s awful, we wouldn’t be getting the publicity if someone hadn’t killed Michelle, but that’s the simple truth of the matter. She got killed and now there’s a lot of focus on the play. And a lot of focus on me, too — there, I said it before you did,” she said, and smiled.

“I wasn’t about to say it,” Carella said.

“Neither was I,” Kling said.

“No, but you were thinking it, weren’t you? You’ve got to be thinking it. If it wasn’t Johnny who killed her, then it had to’ve been somebody else, am I right? The papers said he admitted stabbing her but not killing her. So, okay, what you’re thinking — the police, I mean, not you two individually, though I’m sure you’re both thinking it, too — what all of you are thinking is that it must’ve been somebody who had a lot to gain from her murder, am I right? So who gains more than her understudy? Who gains more than me? If I go out there and do a good job in this play that everybody’s already talking about weeks before it opens, I’ll get to be a star. Me. Little Josie Beales. So, sure, I can understand why you’re wondering where I was the night she got killed.”

“In fact…” Carella said.

“Sure,” she said, and nodded.

“… where were you, Ms. Beales?”

“I had a feeling you’d ask that right on cue,” she said, and smiled again.

“You understand…”

“Sure,” she said. “I’m the one who got the part. I’m the one who gets a shot at stardom. So, sure. But did I kill Michelle to get it?”

“No one’s suggesting…”

“Oh, please, guys, why are you here otherwise?”

“A routine visit,” Kling said.

“Routine, my ass,” she said, and smiled yet again.

Carella wondered if the smile was an actress’s trick. Or even an actress’s tic. He realized all at once that with an actress, you could never tell when she was acting. You could look into her eyes from now till doomsday, and the eyes would relay only what she was performing, the eyes could look limpid and soulful and honest, but the eyes could be acting, the eyes could be lying.

“From what I understand,” she said, and paused dramatically, very serious now, almost solemn now.

“According to the newspapers and television,” she said, and paused again.

He was thinking she was a very good actress.

“Poor Michelle was…” she said.

The word caught in her throat.

“Killed…” she said.

One hell of an actress, he thought.

“… around seven-thirty, eight o’clock on Tuesday night.”

“That’s right.”

“In her apartment on Carter and Stein.”

“Yes.”

“In Diamondback.”

“Yes.”

“A black neighborhood all the way uptown,” Josie said.

Kling wondered why she’d felt it necessary to comment on the racial breakdown of the neighborhood. He wondered, too, how Sharyn might react to such an observation. Or was Josie merely establishing that the neighborhood, black or otherwise, was all the way uptown?

“Yes,” he said. “A black neighborhood.”

“Which doesn’t mean a black person killed her,” Josie said.

“That’s true,” he said.

“But who did?” she asked, and opened the brown eyes wide. “If not Johnny, and not some black junkie burglar…”

Black again, he noticed.

“… breaking into her apartment and killing her…”

Which wouldn’t have been a bad supposition, except that there’d been no signs of forcible entry, something they hadn’t reported to the media, and something she could not possibly have known unless Michelle had unlocked the door for her and opened it on a knife.

“Then who?” she asked.

Kling said nothing. Carella said nothing. They both knew when somebody more talented was taking the spot-light.

“Me?” she asked.

They still said nothing.

“Was I in Diamondback on Tuesday night at seven-thirty, eight o’clock? Was I on Carter and Stein?” she asked. “All the way uptown?”

They waited. Sometimes, if you waited long enough, they outsmarted themselves.

“Was I up there doing Michelle in her own bed?”

Michelle had been killed in the doorway to her apartment. Nowhere — not in the papers, not on television — had it even been suggested that she’d been killed in bed.

“Were you?” Kling asked.

“I was taking a singing lesson,” she said, and smiled. “All the way downtown.“

“All the way downtown where?” he asked.

“In the Quarter. On Sampson Street,” she said. “My teacher’s name is Aida Renaldi, I’ve been taking from her for four years, I go every Tuesday night at seven — unless there’s a performance or a rehearsal. On Tuesday, we quit rehearsing at five. I was downtown at ten to seven. My lesson started at seven and ended at eight. I went directly home afterward. I’ll give you Aida’s card if you like.”

“Thank you,” Kling said.

She searched in her purse, decided she didn’t have a card after all, and wrote down an address all the way downtown. Carella had just come from all the way downtown. He did not feel like going all the way downtown again.

“Call her first,” Josie said. “She’s very busy.”

“I will,” he said.

“I didn’t kill Michelle,” Josie said. “In fact, I feel very sorry for her.”

She looked suddenly mournful.

“But at the same time,” she said, “I feel happy for myself.”

Aida Renaldi was delighted that one of the detectives visiting her was Italian She didn’t know that Carella thought of himself as American, perhaps because he’d been born in the United States and had never been informed otherwise. Aida, on the other hand, had been born in Milan, Italy, and rightfully considered herself Italian since she was still an Italian citizen here in the country on a work visa. In fact, she planned to go back to Italy as soon as she’d saved enough money to finance an operatic career interrupted by marriage, childbirth and divorce, not necessarily in that order.

Aida was forty-six years old and she weighed a hundred and eighty-seven pounds, which qualified her as a diva in at least one respect. Her hair was dyed a midnight black and she was dressed like a Gypsy when Carella and Kling arrived at her studio later that night. Both detectives figured she had just done a performance of Carmen. Instead, she had just given a lesson to a girl who did not know Verdi from Puccini, but who — like Aida — was hefty enough to entertain operatic aspirations. The girl smiled at Kling on the way out. Carella noticed that a lot of girls smiled at Kling. He wondered again who Sharyn might be.

During the interview with Aida, the teacher sat at the piano and sang an impromptu aria from Butterfly, discoursed mightily on the benefits of knowing both French and Italian if one desired to sing opera…

“German no matter too much, eh?” she said.

… told them she far preferred Domingo to Pavarotti, and incidentally confirmed that Josie Beales…

“Nize-a girl…”

… had been there for a singing lesson on Tuesday night between seven and eight o’clock.

“Nize-a voice,” she said.

“So what’s this all about?” Carella asked out of the blue.

This was now a little past ten that night, and they were eating what cops always ate whenever they had a chance, hamburgers and fries, in a coffee shop on Avery and West, a block from Aida Renaldi’s studio apartment.

“What’s what all about?” Kling asked, and bit into a hamburger dripping with ketchup and mustard.

“I always thought we could talk about…”

“We can…”

“… anything together. I always felt…”

“So do I…”

“Like a goddamn older brother to you…”

“Yes, me, too, but…”

“So what’s this about you’re dating a black girl and you can’t tell me about her? I mean, goddamn it, Bert, what the hell is that about, you can’t tell me about a black girl you’re dating, you have to tell Artie about her, you can’t tell me about her? What the hell do you think I am, some kind of racist_.jackass? What the hell is this, Bert?”

“Wow!” Kling said.

“Yeah, wow, shit!” Carella said.

“I just didn’t know how you’d feel,” Kling said.

“Oh, terrific!” Carella said. “Compound the felony, tell me you don’t know how I’d feel about a black-white relationship, tell me…”

“I’m sorry.”

“Sure, kid, terrific!”

“I just don’t know how I feel myself!” Kling said, and both men looked at each other in startled surprise, and just then the bigot of the universe walked in.

“I’ve been tracking you all over this fuckin city,” Fat Ollie Weeks said, and shoved his way into the booth. “Hey, miss!” he yelled, and ordered three hamburgers and a side of fries. “My lieutenant says if it turns out Johnny Milton done the girl, the Eight-Eight definitely wants the homicide collar.”

“So take it,” Carella said. “If it turns out that way.”

“Sure. Meanwhile, when Nellie indicts next Tuesday…”

“If she indicts.”

“She’ll indict. And by then we’ll have a strong case to back her up.”

“What do you mean?”

“My loot wants me to keep digging.”

“Forget it!” Carella snapped.

“What’s wrong with you?” Ollie asked, looking offended. “If Milton done this, you should be glad we’re lendin a hand here.”

“No, we’ve got two different agendas here,” Carella said. “We want to catch whoever killed Michelle Cassidy. All you want to do is nail Milton.”

“That’s one and the same person, pal.”

“We don’t think so.”

“Who don’t think so? Your lieutenant? Nellie? I was there, remember? You’re the only one don’t think so. They’d both be grateful if I came up with something makes the case stronger. If I can get people who’ll testify…”

“What people? What are you talking about?”

“People who knew both Milton and the girl. People who can say…”

“Ollie, stay away from this! The people who knew them are the people we’re already talking to. If you screw this up…

“Hey, come on, screw it up! What’s the matter with you?”

“You hear me, Ollie? Keep out of it. Come on, Bert.”

“Where you going? What’s the matter with you?”

“Enjoy your hamburgers,” Kling said.

Whenever Mark Riganti played a detective, which was often, he prepped for the role by wearing a fake pistol in a shoulder holster day and night. The gun was weighted to give it heft and it had come from the factory in the same bluish-black color as a real.38 Smith & Wesson. Riganti had purchased it before toy manufacturers realized that somebody shoving a fake gun into a shop owner’s face could cause him to wet his pants and open his cash register as easily as a real gun could. This gun looked real and it felt real and it made Riganti feel like a real cop. Truth was, even without the gun, he’d played so many detectives in his lifetime that sometimes he felt more like a cop than he did an actor.

Riganti had played a detective in the movie Fuzz which had been about policemen in Boston, and he had played a detective in the movie Without Apparent Motive which had been about policemen on the French Riviera, and he had played a detective in the movie Blood Relatives which had been about policemen in Toronto, and he had played a detective, albeit in Asian disguise, in the movie High and Low, which was about policemen in Yokohama. In the play Romance, which was about policemen in New York, he played a detective investigating the stabbing of an actress performing in a play called Romance, go figure it. A fake play called Romance in a real play called Romance, where nobody gets to kiss the girl.

At eleven o’clock that night, he was sitting barefooted at his kitchen table, wearing his fake gun in a real leather shoulder holster, and real faded blue jeans, and a white long-sleeved shirt with the sleeves rolled up, the way detectives everywhere rolled them up, he supposed. Open on the table before him was his script for Romance, which now included several new scenes typed on blue paper by their illustrious playwright and handed to the cast at rehearsal this afternoon. If anything, the new stuff made the play even worse than it had been. Riganti figured they were all lucky Michelle had been killed.

This was a shame in one respect, though, since before her death Riganti had considered her a likely prospect for a bedmate if the play enjoyed a long run. One of the reasons Riganti had become an actor was that you got to meet a lot of good-looking women and in some plays you got to kiss them and in some instances you got to lay them. Offstage. In many instances, in fact. In fact, Riganti was willing to give two-to-one odds that actors in plays got laid more often than detectives in police stations. Which was neither here nor there. What was here at the moment was this terrible play with its rotten new scenes Riganti had to memorize before tomorrow’s rehearsal at nine A. M. Usually, Riganti got this or that aspiring young actress to run lines with him, the better to entice her into the bedroom. But there was no time for fooling around tonight. Tonight, there was only the drudgery of having to learn all this uninspired crap from Freddie.

Riganti hated speeches with underlined words in them.

He also hated interrupted speeches. The hardest thing to do onstage was to interrupt another actor and make the interruption seem convincing.

A knock sounded on the door.

Startled, Riganti looked first at the locked door and next at the clock on the kitchen wall.

Ten minutes past eleven.

He had been burglarized twice since moving into this apartment eight months ago. Now some son of a bitch was at the door at ten minutes past eleven.

“Who is it?” he yelled.

“Mr. Riganti?” a voice yelled back.

“Who is it?”

“Police,” the voice said.

Yeah, bullshit, Riganti thought.

He got up from the table, went to the door, and placed his ear to the wood, the way he had done many times before while playing a cop. Simultaneously, he slipped the fake pistol from its shoulder holster, holding it alongside his free ear, the barrel pointed up at the ceiling, the way cops did in plays and in movies. He could hear nothing but heavy breathing in the hallway outside. Another knock sounded on the door, close to where his ear was pressed to it, causing him to jump back a step. His heart was pounding.

“You hear me in there?” the voice said.

“I hear you. How do I know you’re a cop?”

“Open the door, I’ll show you my shield.”

Shield. That was a good sign. Riganti had been in many plays and movies where you could tell a fake cop because he called his shield abadge. Only civilians called a police shield a badge. Riganti turned the thumb bolt, made sure the night chain was in place, and opened the door a crack. He was looking out at a very fat man holding up a gold-and-blue-enameled detective’s shield.

“Detective Oliver Weeks,” the man said, “Eighty-eighth Detective Squad. I’m investigating the murder of Michelle Cassidy, would you please open the door?”

“Let me see your ID card,” Riganti said.

The fat man made an exasperated sound, and then took out his wallet and fished through it for a laminated card which he held up to the crack in the door. The seal of the city’s police department was on the card, and so was a color photograph that looked very much like the person holding up the card, and there was also the name he’d just given Riganti, typed across the face of the card, DETECTIVE/FIRST GRADE OLIVER WEEKS, with a matching signature below it.

Riganti figured the guy was really a detective.

He took off the night chain, and opened the door wide, forgetting that the fake pistol was in his right hand and not back in its holster. Ollie saw the gun and immediately reached for his own very real pistol in a clamshell holster on his right hip. Riganti realized at once what was happening. He yelled, “It’s fake, I’m an actor, for Christ’s sake I’m an actor!” Ollie remembered that the man he was here to see was, in fact, an actor. But he’d been a cop for too long a time now, so he immediately barked, “Drop the gun!” which Riganti was only too tickled to do. Ollie kicked it across the kitchen floor.

“I almost shot you,” he said.

“Yeah, tell me about it,” Riganti said.

He was having a little difficulty breathing.

“You got a permit for that piece?” Ollie asked.

“I told you. It’s fake.”

“It looks real.”

“That’s the idea.”

“Why you packing a fake gun?”

“I told you. I’m an actor.”

“Yeah?” Ollie said.

“I play a detective in this play we’re doing.”

“Oh, yeah, right.”

“You scared the shit out of me,” Riganti said.

“Me, too,” Ollie said. “You got anything to drink here?”

“What do you mean?”

“Something medicinal?”

“Like booze, do you mean?”

“Yeah, like booze, beer, wine, whatever.”

“Are you allowed to drink on duty?”

“No,” Ollie said, and sat at the kitchen table.

“I think I have some beer in the fridge,” Riganti said.

“Yeah, beer’ll be fine.”

“That’s very interesting,” Riganti said, going to the refrigerator and opening it. “You’re not allowed to drink on duty, but you’re accepting a beer from me.”

“Yeah, that’s very interesting, all right,” Ollie said. “What kind of beer is it?”

“Heineken.”

Ollie watched as he popped the caps off two green bottles. Riganti handed him a glass and one of the bottles.

“I almost blew your fuckin head off,” Ollie said. “Cheers.”

He drank straight from the bottle. Riganti poured his beer into a glass, and then sat opposite Ollie at the table.

“So what do you know about this creep who killed her?” Ollie said.

“Who do you mean?”

“Her agent. Johnny Milton.”

“I don’t know him too well.”

“How about the girl?”

“Michelle?”

“Yeah. How well did you know her?”

“Well, we were in rehearsal together for three weeks when she…”

“What does that mean? Were you boffin her?”

“No. Certainly not.”

“Why certainly not? Are you gay?”

“Of course not.”

“Why of course not? Lots of actors are gay.“

“But not me.”

“Did you know he was living with her? The agent?”

“That’s what we began to realize.”

“Who’s we?”

“All of us. The cast, the crew. It got to be pretty evident.”

“That they were living together,”

“Yes.”

“Why do you think he killed her?”

“I’m not sure he did.”

“You think there might’ve been some other guy she was involved with?”

“Do you always conduct an interrogation this way?”

“This ain’t an interrogation.”

“Then what is it?”

“Two guys sittin around talkin, havin a few beers.”

“No, really, I’m interested in the process. I play a lot of detectives, you see.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Casting directors think I look like a cop.”

“They do, huh?”

“You think I look like a cop?”

“I think you look a little faggoty to be a cop.”

“I already told you…”

“I’m not sayin you are a fag. I’m only sayin you look like one. For a cop, anyway.”

“Well, casting directors find me authentic-looking.”

“Do I look like a cop?” Ollie asked.

“No.”

“What do I look like?”

A fat tub of shit, Riganti was tempted to say, but didn’t.

“You look like an actor playing a cop,” he said.

“No kidding?” Ollie said. “Is there any more of this beer?”

“Sure, let me get you another one.”

“An actor, huh?” Ollie said. “I wished I was.”

“It’s not as easy as you think,” Riganti said, and carried another bottle of beer to the table. He uncapped it, slid it across the table to Ollie, and then sat down at the table and picked up his own unfinished glass again.

“Thank you,” Ollie said, and tilted the bottle to his mouth, and took a long swallow. Wiping his lips with the back of his hand, he said, “You think she was cheatin on him?”

“Not from what I could gather.”

“Then why’d he kill her?”

“Well, that’s your assumption. I’m not sure he did.”

“One cop to another,” Ollie said, and winked, “why do you think he killed her?”

“One actor to another,” Riganti said, “why do you think he killed her?”

“Cause he’s a fuckin liar,” Ollie said.

“How do you know that?”

“I was there when they were questioning him.”

“I do a lot of questioning, too,” Riganti said.

“Me, too,” Ollie said.

“What’s your technique? During a questioning?”

“I ask questions, the perp answers them. What do you mean, technique?”

“Well, do you prepare for a questioning in any way?”

“Prepare?”

“Yes. The way I use a fake gun to…”

“I almost blew your fuckin brains out.”

“… put me in a detective’s frame of mind. I carry that gun with me everywhere I go. On the subway, in a restaurant, wherever. Because a gun is a vital part of being a detective, isn’t it?”

“Oh sure.”

“Take away a detective’s gun, you take away his penis.”

“Well… sure.”

“Carrying the gun helps me live the part, do you see?”

“Sure.”

“It’s my way of preparing for the role.”

“Sure.”

“So how do you prepare?”

“Prepare?”

“Yes. For questioning someone.”

“I don’t.”

“You don’t?”

“I just go in, I say Where the fuck were you last Tuesday night, you little shit? He don’t answer me, I keep at him I keep tellin him this can go easy, it can go hard, it can go however he wants. You help me, I’ll help you. You want a local jail, you want a state pen, you want niggers fucking you in the ass? Tell me where you were, you dumb shit!”

“Uh-huh.”

“Like that,” Ollie said, and picked up his bottle, drank, set it down again, belched, and said, “Sorry.”

“For example,” Riganti said, “suppose you were questioning this girl who… well, here, take a look,” he said, and picked up the Romance script in its binder, pulled his chair closer, and said, “This scene here. How would you approach it? The scene I have with the girl.”

“What girl?” Ollie asked.

“Her understudy.”

“Whose understudy?”

“The girl who got killed.”

“The Cassidy girl?”

“Well, no, this is in the play.”

“I hear it’s a dumb fuckin play.”

“It is.”

Ollie picked up the script. Squinting at it, he asked, “Why are these pages blue^?”

“They’re new pages. They’re blue to differentiate them from the original pages. We can have blue, yellow, pink, green, sometimes even purple pages before all the revisions are done.”

“These are hard to read, blue fuckin pages.”

“They are.”

Ollie kept squinting at the script. At last, reluctantly, he reached into his jacket pocket and took out an eyeglass case. The glasses he pulled from it were little Ben Franklin glasses. He suddenly looked like a fat scholar.

“For reading,” he explained apologetically.

“I wear contacts myself.” Riganti said consolingly.

Adjusting the glasses on his nose, Ollie cleared his throat as if he were about to read aloud, but then didn’t. Silently, he read the page. Turned it. Read another one.

“You’re right,” he said, shaking his head, “this is a dumb fuckin play.”

“I told you. But… just for the hell of it… how would you conduct this questioning?”

“This questioning right here?”

“Yeah. Where he wants to know whether she’s ever thought of…”

“Yeah, I sec it,” Ollie said. “What I’d do, I’d say `Look, miss, let’s be realistic here, okay?’ This is a girl I’m talkin’ to, right?”

“Yes.”

“Cause you have to clean up the act a little with a girl. I mean, you can’t talk to a girl the way you can talk to a fuckin thief, you understand me? You got to be more gentle. So what I’d say… what’s her name?”

“She doesn’t have a name.”

“What do you mean she doesn’t have a name?”

“She doesn’t. She’s just called the Understudy.”

“So what do you call her, if she doesn’t have a name?”

“I don’t call her anything.”

“That makes it harder.”

“How so?”

“Because say her name is Jean, you can start by tellin her ’Look, Jeannie, let’s be realistic here, okay?’ You use the diminative, you understand, You say Jeannie, instead of Jean. You put yourself on personal terms with her right away. Unless she don’t even have a fuckin name, which makes it difficult.”

“That’s a good point.”

“Nobody in the world doesn’t have a name.”

“Except in this play.”

“Yeah,” Ollie said, shaking his head, and looking at the script again, and then saying, “But even without a name, what I’d say is ’Look, miss, let’s be realistic here, okay? Do you expect me to believe you’re understudyin the starring role in this play, and the girl gets killed and you never even once think Gee, maybe I’ll get to go on in her place? Don’t you ever go to the fuckin movies, miss? Didn’t you ever see a movie where the star breaks her leg and the understudy has to go on for her? And all these fuckin workmen are sittin up on these little catwalks, high above the stage where the lights are hangin, and they all catch their fuckin breaths when she starts singin? And this old guy who pulls the curtain is standin there with his fuckin mouth open in surprise and a little old lady with costumes in her hands and pins stickin in her dress is standin there like she got struck blind, too, and all over the fuckin theater they’re amazed by what this understudy is doin, you mean to tell me you never saw that movie, miss? Let’s be realistic, miss.’ Is what I would say to her.”

“Wonderful,” Riganti whispered. “Thank you.”

“You ever get to kiss a girl in any of these plays you’re in?” Ollie asked.

“Oh sure.”

“What does a gay guy do when he has to kiss a girl in one of these plays?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“I’m not sayin you’re gay, you understand. I’m just wonderin how they’d feel about something like that. You think they go home afterwards and wash out their mouths with soap?”

“I’m sure they don’t.”

“I was just wonderin. You ever throw yourself into any of these scenes? Where you have to kiss a girl in one of these plays?”

“Oh sure.”

“But somebody’s gotta do it, I guess, huh?” Ollie said, and grinned like a shark.

“Still, it’s not as easy as you think.”

“Hey. It must be very difficult, soul-kissin some strange girl in front of ten thousand people.”

“It is.”

“I’ll bet. You ever have to play a nude scene with one of these girls?”

“Oh sure.”

“What do they tell these girls when they want them to take off their clothes?”

“Who do you mean?”

“Whoever it is that tells them to take off their clothes.”

“The director, you mean?”

“Yeah, what does he tell them?”

“Well, if the scene calls for it…”

“Yeah, let’s say the scene calls for it.”

“He’ll just say, ’People, we’ll be doing the scene now.’ Something like that.”

“And she just takes off her clothes, right?”

“If the scene calls for it.”

“Are there any scenes in this play where they have to take off their clothes?”

“No.”

“Michelle Cassidy didn’t have to take off her clothes anyplace in this play, did she?”

“No.”

“So her boyfriend couldn’ta been annoyed by anything like that, huh?”

“No.”

“So what got him mad enough to stab her twenty-two times?”

“If he did it,” Riganti said.

“Oh, he did it, all right,” Ollie said.

“Maybe Andy did it.”

“Who’s he?”

“She. Andrea Packer. She plays the Understudy. Remember the scene you just read…?”

“Yeah, right,”

Ollie was thoughtful for a moment

Then he said, “No, it couldn’ta been her. Nor the other actress, either.”

“Why not?”

“Cause they’re actresses,” he said.

“What does that…?”

“They both had to’ve seen the movie,” he said.