Ed McBain_87th Precinct 47 (7 page)

The stately morning paper hadn’t deigned to send anyone to the hospital; maybe the editor didn’t realize a former child actress
was the victim. Or maybe he simply didn’t care. Cheap stabbings were a dime a dozen in this town. Besides, there’d been a
riot in Grover Park this past Saturday, and the paper was still running postmortem studies on the causes of racial conflict
and the possible remedies for it.

Again, all Carella and Kling had to do was listen. They realized at once that this was to be a more in-depth interview than
television, with its limited time, had been able to grant.

“Miss Cassidy, did you
see
the man who attacked you?”

“Yes, I did.”

“What’d he look like?”

“A tall slender man wearing a long black coat and a black hat pulled down over his head.”

“What kind of hat?”

“A fedora. Whatever you call them.”

“A brimmed hat?”

“Yes. Black.”

“Wide-brimmed? Narrow-brimmed?”

“Wide. He had it pulled down over his eyes.”

“Was he wearing gloves?”

“Yes. Black gloves.”

“Did you see the knife?”

“No. Not really. I sure
felt
it, though.”

Nervous laughter.

“You wouldn’t know what
kind
of knife it was, would you?”

“A sharp one.”

More laughter. Not as nervous this time. The kid was being a good sport. She’d just been stabbed in the shoulder, inches away
from the heart, but she was able to joke about the weapon. The reporters liked that. It made good copy. Good-looking woman
besides. Sitting up in bed in a hospital gown that kept slipping off one shoulder. As the reporters asked their questions,
the photographers’ cameras kept clicking.

Kling noticed that neither of the two reporters had yet asked her what
color
the man was. Maybe journalists weren’t allowed to. As cops, he and Carella would ask that question the minute the others
cleared the room. Then again, they were looking to find whoever had just attempted murder. The reporters were only looking
for a good story.

“Did he say anything to you?” one of the reporters asked.

“Yes. He said, `Miss Cassidy?’ Same thing he calls me on the phone . ”

“Wait a minute,” the other reporter said. “What do you mean?”

“He’s been calling me for the past week. Threatening to kill me. With a knife.”

“This same
man
? The one who stabbed you tonight?”

“It sounded like the same man.”

“Are you saying his voice sounded the same? As the man on the phone?”

“Exactly the same. Just like Jack Nicholson’s voice.”

Both reporters were scribbling furiously now. Jack Nicholson stabbing a young actress in the alley outside a rehearsal theater?
Jesus, this was made in heaven!

“It
wasn’t
Jack Nicholson, of course,” Michelle said.

“Of course not,” one of the reporters said, but he sounded disappointed.

“Who
was
he?” the other one asked. “Do you have any idea who he was?”

“Someone familiar with
Romance,”
she said.

“Someone familiar with
romance,
did you say?”

“
Romance
. The play we’re rehearsing.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because what happened in that alley
also
happens in the play.

Carella could now see the subhead on the story:

ALLEY ROMANCE STABBING

Now they wanted to know all about the scene in the play, and who else was in the play, and who had written it, and who was
directing it, and when it would be opening here, and whether there were plans for moving it down-town, the cameras clicking,
the reporters tirelessly questioning her while a black nurse fluttered about the bed telling them they mustn’t exhaust her,
didn’t they realize the poor woman had been
stabbed?

A man wearing a maroon sports shirt open at the throat, a gray sports jacket, and darker gray trousers rushed into the room,
went immediately to the bed, took Michelle’s hands in his own and said, “Michelle, my
God,
what
happened?
I just heard the news! Who
did
this to
you? My God,
why
you?
”

The reporters asked him who he was, and he introduced himself as Johnny Milton, Michelle’s theatrical agent, and handed cards
to both of them, and said he’d heard the news a few minutes ago, and rushed right over. Somewhat imperiously, he asked who
the two men in the suits at the back of the room were, didn’t they realize a woman had been
stabbed
here?

“We’re the police,” Carella said quietly, and showed the agent his shield.

“Hello, Detective Kling,” Michelle said from the bed, waggling her fingers at him.

And suddenly all reportorial attention was on Kling, the two journalists wanting to know how he happened to know the victim,
and then soliciting from Michelle herself the fact that she’d reported the threatening calls to Kling at approximately four-fifteen
that afternoon, before she went back to rehearsal.

“Got any leads yet, Detective Kling?” one of the reporters asked.

“None,” Carella said. “In fact, if you’ve got everything you need, we’d like to talk to Miss Cassidy now, if you don’t mind.”

“He’s right, boys,” her agent said. “Thanks for coming up, but she needs some rest now.”

One of the photographers asked Michelle if she would mind one last picture, and when she said, “Okay, but I’m really very
tired,” he asked if she would mind lowering the gown off her left shoulder to show the bandaged wound, which she did in a
demure and ladylike manner, while simultaneously managing to show a little bit of cleavage.

The moment everyone was gone, Kling asked, “Was the man who stabbed you white, black, Hispanic or Asian?”

The black nurse seemed about to take offense, but then Michelle said, “White.”

At nine that night, Ashley Kendall was still rehearsing his cast, but instead of Michelle up there playing the Actress, her
understudy was filling in for her. Kendall hated Corbin’s pretentious naming—or non-naming—of the characters in his play.
Right now, he was rehearsing the Actress’s under-study, who happened to be an actress named Josie Beales, but on the same
stage with her was an actress named Andrea Packer, who was playing the
character
named the Under-study, although
her
understudy was an actress named Helen Frears. It could get confusing if you weren’t paying attention.

Josie was twenty-one, with strawberry-blond hair that was only a timid echo of Michelle’s fiercer tresses. But she was taller
than Michelle, and less cumbersomely endowed, and therefore moved more elegantly. In Kendall’s opinion, she was also a far
better actress than Michelle. In fact, he’d wanted to cast
her
as the Actress, but had been outvoted by Mr. Frederick Peter Corbin III. So now Miss Tits had the leading role, and Josie
was a mere understudy who moved furniture and props and played a variety of non-speaking roles. Such was the tyranny of playwrights.
Josie hadn’t expected to be here tonight. She’d been interrupted at home, eating dinner—actually a container of yogurt and
a banana—and watching
Love Connection
in her bathrobe, when the stage manager called to say, “You’re on, babe.” She’d thrown on a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt
and rushed right over. Now she waited with the other actors for the rehearsal to resume.

Kendall supposed he could have called off the rehearsal, but Michelle’s earlier behavior and stormy departure had left the
other actors feeling confused and miserable. Besides, he was grateful for the opportunity to run through the scenes with an
accomplished and disciplined young woman like Josie standing in, and without Mr. Moneybags Morgenstern sitting by witnessing
a tantrum. The producer was gone now. In his stead in the sixth row center sat the exalted playwright himself, who had been
home earlier today rewriting some
lines
that were troubling him, when he should have been rewriting three or four
scenes
that were troubling Kendall. Or maybe even the whole damn
play,
for that matter.

Everyone in the theater already knew that their “shtar” had been stabbed in the alley outside and taken to Morehouse General.
Chuck Madden, the show’s stage manager, had called there a few minutes ago. Now he leaned into the sixth row, and informed
Kendall and Corbin that some blue-haired volunteer had told him Miss Cassidy’s condition was stable and that she’d be released
from the hospital some-time later tonight.

“Thank you, Chuck,” Kendall said, and rose and said, “People?”

The actors chatting onstage, waiting for things to start, turned and squinted out into the darkened theater.

“I know you’ll all be delighted to learn that Michelle’s okay,” Kendall said. “She’ll be going home tonight, in fact.”

“Terrific,” someone said without enthusiasm.

“Who did it, do they know?” someone else asked.

“I have no information on that,” Kendall said.

“Not germane, anyway,” someone else said.

“I heard that, Jerry!”

“Sorry, boss!”

“Chuck? Are you back there yet?”

“Yes, sir!”

Chuck Madden sprang out onto the stage as if he’d almost missed a cue. He was wearing high-topped workman’s boots, a rolled,
blue woolen watch cap, and painter’s coveralls that partially showed his bare chest and muscular arms. He was twenty-six years
old, some six feet tall, with chestnut-colored hair and brown eyes. He shielded those eyes now and peered out toward the sixth
row of the theater.

“Do you think you can do something with the lights when she comes out of the restaurant?” Kendall asked.

“Like what’d you have in mind?”

“It’s supposed to be dark, the stabber is supposed to come out of the shadows. We’ve got Jerry popping out with the lights
up full …”

“Yeah, give me some atmosphere,” Jerry said.

“I know this is far too early to be discussing lighting …”

“No, no, what’d you want?”

“Can you give me a slow fade as she makes her cross?

So that the stage is almost black when Jerry comes at her?”

“I like it, I like it,” Jerry said.

“Let me talk to Kurt, see what he …”

“I heard it,” the electrician called. “You’ve got it.”

“Start the fade just as she comes through the door,” Kendall said.

“Got it.”

“People? Shall we try it?”

“
Uno má
s,” Chuck said. “From the scene at the table.”

Corbin had constructed his play in an entirely predictable manner. Once you recognized that there’d be a short quiet scene
followed by a yet shorter scene intended to shock, and then a lengthy discourse on the shocker, you pretty much had the pattern
of the play. As a result, there were no surprises at all; Corbin had given birth to a succession of triplets, most of them
malformed.

The triplet they were now about to rehearse yet another time …

It was Kendall’s conviction that this particular stretch would
never
play …

… consisted of a scene between the Actress and the Director sitting at a table in a restaurant, followed by a scene in which
someone non-germane
stabs
the Actress, which is then followed by a scene in which the Detective interrogates ad infinitum the other two principals.
There was simply no
way
to make this drivel come alive. The writing in the restaurant scene was
so
foreboding,
so
portentous, so fraught with foreshadowing, that any intelligent member of the audience would
know
the girl was going to get stabbed the minute she
left
the place.

“Why haven’t you told me this before?”

The Director speaking.

The one onstage. Not Kendall himself sitting out here in the sixth row.

“I … I was afraid you were the one making the calls.”

“Me?
Me?“

This from Cooper Haynes, the dignified gentleman doctor of soap opera fame, looking thoroughly astonished by the mere
idea
of being the person making threatening phone calls to the actress he was directing. His stupefaction looked so genuine that
it almost evoked a laugh from Kendall, exactly the
wrong
sort of response at this point in the play’s time.

“I’m sorry, I know that’s ridiculous. Why would you want to kill me?”

“Or anyone.”

Another line which—when delivered in Cooper’s wide-eyed bewildered way—could result in a bad laugh. In the dark, Kendall was
furiously scribbling notes.

“You must go to the police.”

“I’ve been.”

“And?”

“They said they can’t do anything until he actually
tries
to kill me.”

“That’s absurd.”

“Yes.”

“With whom did you speak?”

“A detective.”

“And he said they could do nothing?”

“That’s right.”

“Impossible! Why … do you know what this means?”

“I’m so frightened.”

“It means you can be sleeping in your bed …”

“I know.”

“… and someone could attack you.”

“I’m terrified.”

“It means you can leave this restaurant tonight …”

“I know.”

“This very moment …”

“I know …”

“And someone can come at you with a knife.”

“What shall I do? Oh dear God, what shall I do?”

“I’m going home right this minute to make some calls. I know a few people downtown who’ll get on this
detective
of yours and see that he
does
something about this. Finish your coffee, I’ll drop you off on my way.”

“That’s all right, go ahead. I thought I’d walk, anyway. It’s just a few blocks.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, go ahead.”

“I worry about you, darling.”

“No, don’t.”

“I worry.”

“Good scene,” Corbin whispered.

Kendall said nothing.

He watched as Cooper walked over to Helen Frears, who was playing the cashier, and settled his check, and then pushed his
way through the imaginary revolving doors to the street outside. As he walked off into the wings, Josie sat finishing her
coffee at the table.