Lullaby of Murder (23 page)

“Miss Julie?” Only one person… “This is Romano.”

“Yes, Mr. Romano.” She looked at Tim, a skittering glance that caught him puffing out his cheeks at the name; she looked at her watch. It was ten past ten.

“Am I intruding? Forgive my calling you at home, but my man tried your office numbers without success. I presumed to worry.”

“I’m fine,” Julie said, as tense as a drawn bow. Why was he worried?
If
he was worried. They were not in touch that frequently.

“I don’t often see your newspaper, I admit, but I am informed that you are carrying on Mr. Alexander’s column. I should have thought you could do better. There, I am being presumptuous.”

“I appreciate your concern,” Julie said. Oh, Christ. Never before had he made small talk with her on the phone. Always to the point instantly and off.

“And there must be a certain hazard to that occupation. I very much doubt the police are telling all they know about Alexander’s death. In fact, normally intelligent reporters sound as though they have been computerized on gobbledygook…

“And your investigation of the Garden of Roses, how has that got on?”

“I’ve pretty much dropped it, Mr. Romano. Tony didn’t like what I turned in.”

“Really? The gentleman in occupancy would seem a likely subject. I admire his courage—or perhaps it’s faith—in undertaking his small war on narcotics.” Another Romano pipeline had been tapped. “Quixotes always interest me. I was hoping you might bring him to see me if the occasion presented itself.”

“It might happen,” Julie said, “when things get straightened out.” She didn’t believe it would, and neither did he, she felt. But she knew now he was not making small talk. She simply had not yet got the message.

“There is no hurry.”

Julie plunged. It was the only way to turn things around, to handle her own anxiety. “Mr. Romano, have you seen a motion picture called
Celebration
?”

Tim waved his fist over his head in approval.

Romano chuckled. “I have seen it. It was screened here for me, perhaps a week ago. If I had known you were interested I could have arranged your seeing it here.”

“I’ve seen it,” Julie said. If it had been screened for him he knew everything there was to know about it—a good deal more than she did. “I think it’s great.”

“I’m so glad to hear you say so. The question is how to exploit it, wouldn’t you say?”

“Is it pornography or is it art? That’s one question.”

“Art is never pornographic, Miss Julie.”

“Then why was I asked in the screening room whether I thought it should be X-rated?”

“Because that’s the way your inquisitor thinks,” he said and then resumed his tone of gentle persuasion. “If you find it great, as you say, we are speaking of art. I hope it will be accessible to the general public. Many will not understand it, but it will explain themselves to a good many people who are in despair over their own eccentricity.

Julie made a noise of tentative agreement. Was this the very way he had intended their conversation to go when he called? Was this text, or sub-text?

“Do you know the young man who wrote and directed it?”

Wrote
and directed: from a story by David Clemens.

“No.”

“Then I must arrange a meeting: Eduardo Cardova. He deserves your attention. Very sensitive.”

“Eduardo Cardova,” Julie repeated for Tim’s benefit. Then another plunge: “I’m doing an interview with Patti Royce for the Sunday magazine if her manager lets it happen.”

“Is she articulate?”

“Oh, yes.”

“She must find it satisfying to talk to a woman of sympathy.”

“Someone who knew Tony.”

“I forbore asking whether you would mention that misalliance in your interview, given the unfortunate circumstances.”

There seemed to be nothing he did not know. Julie waited.

“It may interest you to know I was what they call the ‘swing’ investor in the project, Miss Julie: money that attracts money.”

“I see,” Julie said, shocked although she knew at once she ought not to be. But suddenly she had become aware of a situation that might account for Tony’s violent reaction to her Garden of Roses story. “To answer your question, Mr. Romano, if I don’t mention the relationship between Patti Royce and Tony Alexander, someone else will. It’s bound to come out.”

“In time, perhaps. But time, although you are too young to know it, is both arbiter and healer. You will do what you must do, I know, but let me suggest something to you. I know it’s presumptuous, given what you know of my filmic and photographic interests, but I beg you to consider: any sensational association among the principals will condemn the picture to the very fate you and I would save it from. I may be contradicting myself to say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder—it also being true of what is not beautiful—but if this picture is released in a flurry of scandal, it will have no audience except a numerous body of scandal mongers. You might also want to consider Alexander’s wife who has been both betrayed and bereaved, and further, if I am right in my interpretation of the gobbledygook, her daughter is under suspicion of the murder—surely more than a woman ought to bear.”

“I am aware, Mr. Romano.”

“I’m sure you are. Forgive me.”

“I am also aware,” Julie said, “that the story credit, David Clemens, is a pseudonym for Tony Alexander.”

There was a second of silence, then: “Thank you for telling me.”

“Didn’t you know it?”

“Oh, yes, I knew. I’m merely thanking you for being so frank with me. Until I have arranged with Cardova then.” He hung up.

“Tell me where the booze is and I’ll get you a drink,” Tim said.

Julie shook her head.

“Then I’ll get me one. You didn’t tell me the pseudonym bit.”

“Didn’t I?” she said, and let it go at that.

She went into Jeff’s study and taped her best recollection of Romano’s conversation, asking Tim to listen.

“You mean he really talks like that?” Tim said afterwards.

“I couldn’t make it up if I tried. What do you think he was saying?”

“I always thought when people like him had something to say, boom, boom, and they’d said it.”

“There was a warning in there of some kind, no question. And he was very touchy about Patti, the scandal part. Do you suppose it could have to do with her stint at the Tripod?”

“How would he know about that?”

“Believe me, if she did it, he’d know about it.”

“It was you who brought up the subject of
Celebration
with him,” Tim reminded her.

“But he chuckled when I did.”

“So he chuckled. What does that mean?”

“That I got where he was going ahead of him. It was
Celebration
that he called about: I’m more and more sure of it.”

“Art is never pornography. He ought to know, right? The king of porn.”

“Oh, Tim,” Julie said, “I think I know. I’ll bet anything Patti Royce made a porn film at some time, the hard core variety.”

“And somebody’s going to exploit it if
Celebration
is a hit, so Romano’s trying to buy time to head them off. Or is he doing the exploiting?”

Julie laid her hand on his. “Slow down, Tim. I don’t think Romano would operate that way. I don’t think he fumbles, you see. As you said, boom, boom. But what about Tony? How would he have felt about it? There was something Patti said this afternoon—everybody connected with
Celebration
was great friends until they realized they might have a very good picture. Then they began quarrelling. Tony advised her to keep out of it.”

“Out of what?”

“The quarrels, but between whom? I wish I knew.” She gave Tim the proof of the
Celebration
ad to read while she picked up her calls from the service. Marks had left a number at which she could reach him all evening.

Tim said the only name familiar to him was Cardova. He moistened his lips and added, “Actually, Julie, I only know him through a friend of a friend. He wouldn’t remember me, that’s for sure.”

“Okay,” Julie said, annoyed at his sudden reluctance to seek out the young director. “I’ll try and get to Patti again.” She started to dial the number the detective had left for her.

“Marks?” Tim asked.

“Yes.”

“You’re going to dish out the whole story to him—so he can hold open house for the entire New York press?”

“It’s my story,” Julie said.

“And my job that’s on the line. We’re collaborators, sweetheart. Remember?
Our Beat
?”

It took Julie less than one second to recover. “Then get the hell out of here and start collaborating. I don’t care how many removes you are from Cardova. We need his story of what went into making
Celebration.
”

M
ARKS RANG THE BELL
three times, paused and rang three times again, probably waking the entire building, but it was an arrangement they had both thought wise. He wanted something, Julie thought. He didn’t come to bear the gift of information. Not at this hour, if ever. His step was heavy on the stairs and the day’s growth of beard was dark on his chin and jaws. In the apartment, he lifted his head and inhaled the aroma of coffee. He put a black letter case on the floor alongside the chair he sank into. Before Julie had poured her own coffee he had drunk most of his. When she marveled that he could drink it so hot, he said, “I have a corrugated gullet,” and accepted another cup.

He lit a cigarette, reached for the letter case and drew from it a plastic-covered single sheet of typing which he handed to Julie. “I never promised you a rose garden,” he said. It was her article on Butts. “Now look at the back.”

Julie turned it over and read an agreement hand-written in block letters:

I, Morton Butts, promise to pay Tony Alexander ten percent of the gross income from the Garden of Roses during my occupancy. The books will be audited twice a year by an accountant agreed to by both of us.

It was signed with the looped signature through which the t’s were crossed with one long dash. It was dated the day of Alexander’s death.

“Where did you find it?” Julie asked.

Marks took another plastic folder from the case, this one containing a
Tony Alexander Says
…envelope. It was addressed:

Morton Butts

Garden of Roses Ballroom

Amsterdam Av.

NY, NY

“That’s Tony’s handwriting,” Julie said.

Marks nodded. “Butts got it in this morning’s mail—no street number, no ZIP code, therefore delayed. What do you make of it?”

“Tony didn’t sign it, for one thing.”

“And it looks now like he went out to the hall chute and mailed it himself soon after Butts left him.”

“He wanted to get rid of it,” Julie said. “He wanted no part of Butts’ proposition.”

“That’s what it looks like.”

“Why would Butts show it to you at all now? Why wouldn’t he eat it first? I mean he came to me so concerned that my article not fall into the hands of an evil doer. It was the agreement written on the back that he must have been most concerned about.”

“Well, he has fallen into the hands of evil doers, no question of that. We were there this morning when this arrived for him.” He put the two pieces of possible evidence away. “The day he started to register his contestants the mob moved in on him. When we found out the mob’s interest, we also moved in and leaned on him—on the theory that under pressure from them, he might have set Alexander up for his killer and then travelled to Brother Joseph’s temple like clockwork to establish his own alibi: the precision of his arrival at the hour of witnessing has always bugged me.”

“When you say ‘the mob,’ are you talking about drugs?” Julie asked.

“No. It’s a different syndicate. I’m talking about the old protection racket with a weekly collection. It’s the protectors who informed him of his drug problems: they guaranteed no interference from the pushers. He bought the protection. I might have done the same thing myself in his position.”

“I wonder if they moved in before or after my interview with him,” Julie said.

“Is it important to you?” Marks asked blandly.

“Maybe…. I can almost feel sorry for him…the Mafia. Phillips’ suicide must have shaken him badly, the one man he really trusted; and then crashing into Tony at the mayor’s party…”

“Whom he didn’t trust?”

“More importantly, I think, who wouldn’t have trusted him. Butts was once a preacher called Jeremiah Fox. He did a lot of baptizing in Tony’s home town and got into trouble. He was Tony’s enemy, Tony was his.”

“Excuse me, Julie, but does it strike you that Butts’ long-range plans could be to set up a religious center at the Garden?”

“Oh, yes,” Julie said, realizing how close to this conjecture she had come herself. “Of course that’s what it’s all about. He’s got five years to make it, and if he has a congregation by then, is the city going to evict him? No way. He starts out with the ‘dance away the habit’ scheme. Lots of publicity on drug rehabilitation, a television crusade—and that’s where the money is. I could write the scenario. And Tony probably did.”

“So the ten percent was an attempted bribe? And the rush to Brother Joseph’s was nothing more than Butts kibitzing his competition. He said it this morning: the last place in the world where he wanted to be conspicuous was Brother Joseph’s. But after Alexander’s death, he had no choice.”

Julie was trying to imagine how Tony would have felt, meeting Jeremiah Fox at the mayor’s party…. The eager, fearful Fox, prancing after him, begging him not to hurt his chance at the ministry again, and all the while, Tony’s mind would have been on Patti Royce. And Morielli? Then came Eleanor’s silent phone calls, and Fran’s alarm about Eleanor and the gun, his own sea of troubles. “I’m thinking about Tony mailing that rotten piece of paper himself,” she said. “He simply had too much worrying him at the time to deal with Butts. I can see him in my mind’s eye—getting up from his desk, stuffing the paper into an envelope, addressing it, and lumbering out to the mail drop with it just to get it off his mind.”

“So,” Marks said, “we have Alexander returning to the office from the party with a man in tow whom he considered a damn nuisance at the moment. And yet he tried to detain him, if Butts is telling the truth—and I think he is in this instance—the family phone calls, then someone of whom he is afraid, to whom he says, ‘I’ll be here.’ He would detain Butts if he could—safety in numbers? But Butts, having got as far as he could with Alexander, took off. He hasn’t said it, but Alexander’s fear probably made him jittery himself.