Ed McBain_87th Precinct 47 (6 page)

Freddie Corbin had named his four major characters the Actress, the Understudy, the Detective, and the Director. Michelle
found this pretentious, but then again she found the whole damn
play
pretentious. The other four actors in it played about ten thousand people, half of them black, half of them white, none of
them with speaking roles, all of them intended to convey “a sense of time and place,” as Freddie himself had written in one
of his interminably long stage directions.

The two male extras played detectives, thieves, doormen, restaurant patrons, ushers, librarians, cabdrivers, waiters, politicians,
hot dog vendors, salesmen, newspaper reporters and television journalists. The two female extras played prostitutes, police
officers, telephone operators, secretaries, waitresses, cashiers, saleswomen, token takers, newspaper reporters and television
journalists. All four, male or female, were also responsible for quickly moving furniture and props during the brief blackouts
between scenes.

There were two acts in the play and forty-seven scenes. The sets for each scene were “suggestive rather than literal,” as
Freddie had also written in one of his stage directions. A table and two chairs, for example, represented a restaurant. A
bench and a section of railing represented the boardwalk in Atlantic City, where the Actress wins the Miss America beauty
pageant that is the true start of her career.

The scene they were rehearsing this afternoon was the one in which someone stabs…

“Do we ever find out for
sure
who stabbed her?” Michelle called to the sixth row, where she knew their esteemed director was sitting with Marvin Morgenstern,
the show’s producer, affectionately called either “Mr. Morningstar” after the Herman Wouk character, or else “Mr. Money-bags”
after his occupation. Michelle had shaded her eyes with one hand and was peering past the lights into the darkness. She felt
this was a key question. How the hell was an actress supposed to portray
a stabbing
victim if she didn’t know who the hell had stabbed her?

“That’s not germane to the scene,” Kendall called from somewhere in the dark, she wished she could
see
where, she’d go out there and stab
him
.

“It’s germane to
me,
Ash,” she called, whatever the hell germane meant, still shading her eyes, still seeing nothing but the glare of the lights
and the blackened theater beyond.

“Can we just get on with the scene?” he said. “We’ll go over who done what to whom when we do notes.”

“Excuse me, Ash,” she said, “but the
scene
happens to be what I’m talking about. And the
whom
who gets the
what
done to her happens to be
meem.
I come out of the restaurant and I’m walking toward the bus stop, and this
person
steps out of the shadows … ”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, Meesh, let’s just do the fucking thing, okay?”

Mark Riganti, the actor playing the Detective. Tall and lean and dark-haired and wearing jeans, sneakers, and a purple Ralph
Lauren sweater.

“We’ve
been
doing the fucking thing,” Michelle said, “over and over
again
, and I
still
don’t know who it is that steps out of the shadows and stabs me.”

“That’s not important,” Andrea said.

Andrea Packer, the
All About Eve
twit who was playing the Understudy. Andrea was nineteen years old, with long blond hair, dark brown eyes and a lean, coltish
figure. In real life, she had a waspish tongue and a cool manner that perfectly suited the character of the Understudy; sometimes,
Michelle felt she wasn’t acting at all. Her rehearsal outfit this afternoon consisted of a short blue wraparound skirt over
black leotard and tights.

Michelle hated her guts.

“Maybe it’s not important to
you,
“ she said, “but then again
you’re
not the one getting stabbed.
I’m
the one getting stabbed by this unidentifiable
person
who steps out of the shadows wearing a long black coat and a black hat pulled down over his or her head, who is really Jerry…
”

“Hi,” Jerry said, popping his head out from behind the teaser, where he’d been waiting for his cue.

“… who was the waiter with the mustache in the scene just before this one. I don’t think it’s the waiter with the
mustache
who’s stabbing me, is it? Because then it becomes just plain ridiculous. And it can’t be the
Detective
who’s stabbing me because
he’s
the one who leads me back to finding myself again and all that. So it’s got to be either the Understudy or the Director because
they’re the only other important characters in the play, so which one is it? Is it Andrea or is it Coop, I just want to know
who it is.”

“Well, I don’t think it’s
me,”
Cooper Haynes said apologetically. He was forty-three years old, a dignified-looking gentleman who’d done years and years
of soap opera—daytime serial, as it was known in the trade—usually playing one or another sympathetic doctor. In
Romance,
he was playing the Director. Actually, he was much nicer than any director Michelle had ever met in her life, even the ones
who
didn’t try
to get in her pants. “I haven’t been playing the part as if I’m the one who stabs her,” he said, and shaded his
eyes
and looked out into the darkness. “Ash, if I
am
the stabber, I think I should know it, don’t you? It would change my entire approach.”

“I think we’re
all
entitled to know who stabs me,” Michelle said.

“I truly don’t
care
who stabs you,” Andrea said.

“Neither do l,” Mark said.

“Ashley’s right, it’s not germane to the scene.”

“Or even to the play.”

“Maybe the butler stabs you,” Jerry whispered from the wings.

“If a person gets stabbed, people want to know who stabbed her,” Michelle insisted. “You can’t just leave it hanging there.”

“This isn’t a play about a person getting stabbed,” Andrea said. “Or hanged.”

“Oh? What’s it about then? An understudy who can’t act?”

“Oh-ho!”
Andrea said, and turned away angrily.

“Freddie, are you out there?” Michelle shouted to the theater.“Can
you
tell me who stabs … ?”

“He’s not here, Michelle,” Kendall said wearily.

He was uncomfortably aware that Morgenstern was sitting beside him here in the sixth row and he didn’t want his producer to
get the impression that he was losing control of his actors, especially when he actually was. The moment an actor started
screaming for clarification from the playwright was the moment to come down hard, star or no star. Which, by the way, Michelle
Cassidy wasn’t,
Annie
or no Annie, which was a hundred years ago, anyway.

Using his best Otto Preminger voice, seething with controlled rage, he said, “Michelle, you’re holding up rehearsal. I want
to do this scene, and I want to do it right, and I want to do it
now.
If you have any questions, save them for notes. Meanwhile, I would like you to get stabbed now,
by whoever
the hell stabs you, as called for in the script at this point in the play’s time. You have a costume fitting at six-thirty,
Michelle, and I would like to break for dinner at that time, so if we’re all ready, let’s begin again. Please. From where
Michelle pays her check, and comes out of the restaurant, and walks into the darkness … ”

From where he stood in the shadowed side doorway of the delicatessen that shared the alleyway with the theater, he saw her
coming out of the stage door at the far end, tight blue sweater and open peacoat, short navy-blue mini, gold-buckled belt,
blue high-heeled shoes. He backed deeper into the doorway, almost banging into one of the garbage cans stacked alongside it.
She checked her watch, and then stepped out briskly in that long-legged stride of hers, high heels clicking, red hair glowing
under the hanging stage door light.

He wanted to catch her while she was still in the alley, before she reached the lighted sidewalk. The delicatessen’s service
doorway was just deep enough in from the street to prevent his being seen by any pedestrians, just far enough away from the
stage door light, too. Clickety-click-click, long legs flashing, she came gliding closer to where he was standing. He stepped
into her path.

“Miss Cassidy?” he said.

And plunged the knife into her.

S
TANDING AT THE SQUADROOM WATER COOLER, DETECTIVE
/Second Grade Stephen Louis Carella could not help over-hearing Kling’s conversation at the desk not four feet away. He filled
his paper cup and turned away, standing with his back to Kling, looking through the wire-grilled window at the street below—but
he could still hear the conversation. Deliberately, he tossed the empty cup at the wastebasket, and headed back across the
room toward his own desk.

Carella was close to six feet tall, with the wide shoulders, narrow hips and gliding walk of a natural athlete—which he was
not. Sitting behind his desk, he sighed and looked up at the wall clock, marveling at how the time did fly when you were having
a good time. They were only three hours into the shift, but for some reason he was enormously weary tonight. Whenever he was
this tired, his brown eyes took on a duller hue, seeming to slant more emphatically downward than they normally did, giving
his face an exaggerated Oriental cast.

Four detectives had relieved the day shift at a quarter to four that Monday afternoon. Mayer and Hawes caught a liquor store
holdup even before they took off their topcoats, and were out of the squadroom almost before they’d officially arrived. At
around four-fifteen, a redheaded woman came up and told Kling somebody was trying to kill her, and he took down all the information
and then discussed the possibility of a trap-and-trace with Carella, who said they wouldn’t have a chance of getting one.
Kling said he’d talk it over with the boss soon as he came in. Lieutenant Byrnes still wasn’t here and Kling was still on
the phone with someone named Sharon, whom he kept asking to meet him for coffee when the shift was relieved at midnight. From
the snatches of conversation Carella could still over-hear, Sharon wasn’t being too receptive. Kling kept trying. Told her
he’d be happy to take a cab to Calm’s Point, just wanted to talk to her awhile. By the time he hung up, Carella
still
didn’t know if it had worked out. He only knew there were five long hard hours ahead before they’d be relieved.

They caught the theater squeal at eight minutes past seven. The Susan Granger, a small theater on North Eleventh, near Mapes
Avenue. Woman stabbed in the alley there. By the time Carella and Kling arrived, the woman had already been carted off to
the hospital. One of the blues at the scene told them the victim’s name was Michelle Cassidy and that she’d been taken to
Morehouse General. Kling recognized the name. He told Carella she was the redhead who’d come to see him only three, three
and a half
hours
ago, whenever the hell it was.

“Told me somebody was threatening to stab her,” he said.

The uniformed cop shrugged and said, “So now he did.“

They decided it was more important to talk to the victim than to do the neighborhood canvass just now. They got to Morehouse
at about seven-thirty and talked to the ER intern who’d admitted Michelle Cassidy. He told them that two inches lower and
a bit to the right and Miss Cassidy would at this very moment be playing first harp in the celestial philharmonic. Instead,
she was in room two thirty-seven, her vital signs normal, her condition stable. He understood she was an actress.

“Is she someone famous?” he asked.

“She played Annie,” Kling said.

“Who’s Annie?” the doctor asked. His name was Raman-than Mehrota. It said so on the little plastic tag on his tunic. Carella
guessed he was Indian. In this city, the odds on finding a doctor from Bombay in any hospital emergency room were extraordinarily
good. Almost as good as finding a Pakistani cabdriver.

“They’ve got TV cameras up there,” Mehrota said. “I thought she might be someone famous.”

“She is now,” Carella said.

The TV reporter was doing their job for them. All they had to do was stand at the back of the room and listen.

“When did this happen, Miss Cassidy?”

Carella recognized the woman as one of Channel 4’s roving reporters. Good-looking woman with curly black hair and dark brown
eyes, reminded him of his wife, except for the curls; Teddy’s hair was straight, but just as black.

“Everybody else had already gone to dinner,” she said, “but I had a costume fitting, so I was a little late leaving. I was
just coming out of the theater when …”

“What time was this?”

“A little after seven. We’d been rehearsing all day long ...”

“Rehearsing what, Miss Cassidy?”

“A new play called
Romance.
”

“What happened when you left the theater?”

“A man stepped out of a doorway there in the alley. He said, `Miss Cassidy?’ And then he stabbed inc.”

The camera came in on the reporter.

“Michelle Cassidy, stabbed tonight outside the Susan Granger Theater, where she is rehearsing—ironically—a play about a man
who stabs an actress. This is Monica Mann, Channel 4 News, live at Morehouse General Hospital.”

She stared into the camera for a moment until the operator gave her the signal that she was clear. She turned to the bed then,
said, “Terrific, Miss Cassidy. Good luck with the show,” and then turned again to her crew and said, “We’re out of here.”

The hot lights went out. The TV people cleared the room, and the nurse went outside to let in the newspaper people. The two
city tabloids had each sent a reporter and a photographer. Carella could just see tomorrow’s head-lines:

ANNIE
STAR
STABBED

Or:

ACTRESS
SURVIVES
STABBING