Show Business Is Murder (32 page)

It looked like my little visit to Barney the Bat was going to pay off for the second time today. Looked like that for about two seconds, that is.

“But as you pointed out, it's written in code. He won't know what it means or who to take it to—if you're dead.”

What could I say? “Good point”?

She cocked her revolver. “Now give me Van Dine's copy of the script.”

“Like I said, no dice. And if you shoot me, you'll never find it. Looks like we've got us a stalemate.”

She waved the gun at a corner of my desk. “But isn't that the script sitting right there?” She sounded amused. At last, I'd gotten a little warmth out of her. It didn't help me feel any better.

“Well, I guess that was the dumbest bluff I ever tried to put over.”

“I'll have to take your word on that, Mr. Menace.” The barrel moved again. Now it was pointed squarely at my forehead.
“Das vedanya.”

I sighed again. “Yeah, O.K. So long, sister. Tell the boys in the Kremlin I said—”

A shot rang out before I could finish. I thought that was pretty rude. Not only does she kill me, but she's got to interrupt me, too. Some people ain't got no manners.

Then an amazing thing happened: The woman who just killed me toppled off her chair. The back of her head looked like a lasagna. Even more shocking—I was alive.

“Boy, am I gonna regret that in the mornin',” a familiar voice said.

FBI special agent Mike Sickles was standing in the doorway of my office, his gun in his hand. He was shaking his big, bald head.

“If I'd just waited two more seconds—
bang
. You'd have been out of my hair forever, Menace.”

I wanted to say something like “What hair, cueball?” But I wasn't about to push my luck. He could still change his mind and let her shoot me retroactively. It was just a matter of how he wanted to write it up in his report.

Sickles stepped into the room and bent down over Mary Smith. He was followed quickly by the lackey I'd seen him with earlier in the day. At least it looked like the same guy from the shins down.

“She dead, Mike?” Sickles' partner asked.

“Nah, she's just hibernatin'. Now call the meatwagon, knucklehead.”

Knucklehead scooped up the phone off my desk and asked the operator for the coroner's office.

Sickles waved his meaty hand back and forth before my eyes. “Hey, anybody home? Snap out of it, Menace. She scare you to death or somethin'?”

I blinked, maybe for the first time in a good minute. “Thanks,” I said.

Sickles grimaced. “Don't thank me. I handed you a break because you wouldn't give the broad the script. Next time I might not feel so merciful.”

“How long were you there in the doorway?”

“Not long. I only moseyed over when things started to heat up.”

“Moseyed over?”

“Sure. Knucklehead and me, we were next door listening to the whole conversation. It was mighty entertainin', too. Like
The Bickersons
and
Suspense
rolled into one.”

“You've got my place bugged?”

Sickles cocked his head and gave me a don't-ask-stupid-questions frown. “Course not. We had tin cans pressed up against the wall.”

I didn't push it. Besides, I had other questions on my mind. I nodded at Mary Smith's body without letting my eyes move that way.

“So what's her real name, anyway?”

Sickles ran his hands over his smooth, sweaty skull. He was obviously trying to decide whether or not to tell me the truth. The truth won out. What a day for sworn enemies. Around the world, cats and dogs stopped fighting and kissed each other on both cheeks.

“Beats me, Menace,” Sickles said. “I didn't even know she existed until she walked in here and started gabbin' with you.”

He saw my confusion and went on. “You were the one we were following. Ever since we walked in on you at John Smith's place.” He cracked a cock-eyed smile. “You were hidden O.K., but that beer you were guzzling wasn't. It was still cold when we came in. All the windows were closed and bolted, so I knew somebody was still in there somewhere.
I dropped a little hint about Dominic Van Dine—the next stop on my hunt for Smith—then stepped back to see what happened.”

I grunted with grudging admiration. “You amaze me, Sickles. You played this one better than Machiavelli himself.”

Sickles glared at me. “He some kinda Commie?”

I shook my head.

He allowed himself a half-smile. “Yeah, well, maybe. Only if I'm so smart, how come I've got boils on my butt the size of grapefruit from all the hours I spent sittin' in the car today? I tell ya', Menace, tailin' you is like getting in a high-speed chase with a three-legged turtle.”

What a charming development. Sickles and I were so thoroughly bonded now he felt free to tell me about his carbuncles. I stifled a sigh.

My eyes drifted back to the body of Miss X, the Unknown Communist. I hadn't killed her, but I hadn't helped her, either.

What kind of revolutionary was I? What kind of detective was I? What kind of man was I?

“All that is solid melts into air,” Marx wrote. That was me alright. Fred Menace, the Red Detective, had melted. I'm just vapor now, part of the smog that chokes L.A.

I still charge thirty dollars a day plus expenses, though. Even vapor's gotta make a living.

SHELLEY FREYDONT

EVERYONE LOVED WATCHING
George MacCready die. His dying was unparalleled. No one could clutch at his throat quite like George MacCready. No one's knees buckled with the gusto of George MacCready's. Nor could they sprawl ontheir backs, legs quivering ever so slightly, as they gasped their final breath. Only for him would the ermine trim of a velvet tunic kiss the floor as he fell, then twine about his outstretched legs like fingers of a foggy night.

No one could die quite like George MacCready. And no one enjoyed watching him die more than I.

For you see, George MacCready learned how to die from life. Not his life, for that would have been pointless—to die in order to perfect the business of dying. George MacCready learned by watching others die.

The first time I saw him watching death was after a performance of
Macbeth
. I left my seat in the stalls and hurried outside to wait for the great expirer at the stage door. MacCready had just exited the theatre when a cry rose up from the street behind us. MacCready lifted his head, listening. Then he strode down the alley, brushing away his admirers as if they were mere coal dust. I joined the others who followed in his wake.

When next I spotted him, he was standing among a
crowd that had gathered to watch two constables pull a boy from beneath a hansom's wheels. His body was mangled and crushed. A strange gurgling sound arose from within him. His head rolled and spurted blood with equal abandon. But his legs. Ah. His legs hopped around much in the same manner of that other great expirer, Edwin Forrest.

It seems only fitting that EF would pattern his death scenes after the snuffing out of a lower class soul. EF was all blast and bombast in his dying. His whole body would spasm and his arms shoot heavenward. Then he would fall and roll along the floor, his legs kicking out with as much grace as that poor urchin who lay in the street. EF didn't understand finesse in dying.

I watched MacCready study that poor boy—draw closer and peer over him until the constable eased him aside. And all the while, I watched him watching. I could tell the moment when he dismissed the boy's demise as beneath his study.

After a time, he sauntered away and I sauntered after him. Watched him walk along the cobbled street, opening and closing his fist just as the boy had done.

He stopped outside the Three Bells Oyster Bar and lifted his hand to the gaslight. Slowly, he contracted his fingers and spread them out again. He shook his head once, dropped his hand and went inside to dine.

I followed him. Studying the man who studied the dying. I leaned against the wall nursing a mug of flat beer while MacCready sat at a table for one, and a plate of oysters was placed before him. I watched him lift the corner of the napkin, shake it, and fold it into his shirt collar. Then his hand made a graceful arc toward the plate. In one deft movement, his fingers closed around a shell, while MacCready stared into the oyster's face.

Slowly he brought it to his lips, all the while his fingers throttling the shell. My own throat closed against the beer I
had been drinking, and I had to spit out the mouthful onto the floor.

Later that night in my rooms above the Majestic Theatre, I practiced bringing my hand to the light, clenched and unclenched my fingers as MacCready had done. When finally I put out the lamp and went to bed, I was filled with a sense of purpose that I had never known before.

Every night, I watched him from the stalls;
Lear, Hamlet, Richard III, Othello
. It didn't matter, though I liked his Hamlet best. Afterwards, I would wait with the crowd at the stage door until the great man appeared. Sometimes he would catch my eye, and a thrill would shoot through me. I felt his kindred spirit. And I was sure he must have felt mine.

I took a job with the theater company as a bit actor just to be near him. To witness the discovery of some new detail—the tiniest nuance that could be incorporated into his death scenes. I, too, learned to die—as a Roman soldier, a Capulet, a Nubian slave. Even when I wasn't dying, I stood on stage watching MacCready take his final breath. Night after night, I watched him as a lover might watch his beloved. I stayed in the wings after my exits, went early for my entrances, practicing his gestures as he performed them on stage.

During the breaks at rehearsals, I engaged him in conversation on his method of acting, staying away from the manner of his deaths, lest he become wary of my interest.

On our days off, we would find ourselves at separate tables at the oyster bar. It wasn't so unusual. The oyster bar was a few doors away from the theatre entrance. I didn't care much for oysters. I was always waiting for a grain of sand to crunch between my teeth, sending a shiver down my spine. But I ate oysters, platefuls of them, just to be near my mentor.

Sometimes, we would meet by chance in the street. Then he might invite me for a pint and I would take my place at the bar next to him, soaking up his presence. We would part with a hearty handshake and go our separate ways.

Only my way was his way, though he never knew it. I would follow, unseen, behind him, down the streets of the town, marking his unending quest for the perfect death scene that would enhance his own.

We witnessed (separately, for he never knew I was there) several deaths during that time, but none out of the ordinary, everyday kind of expiration. A rather amusing tumble down a flight of steps by an old washerwoman, unmentionables flying out in all directions as she bounced and squealed to the bottom. Nothing that could be used. A straightforward heart failure at the entrance of the Mercantile Bank. It was over before it began. Disappointing, since the fellow looked to have some promise about him.

Once we stumbled onto a woman that was hemorrhaging on the stoop of a tenement building. MacCready stopped to watch. I wanted to run to him. Tell him not to waste his time on so paltry a dying. He should witness the death of great men of wealth and intelligence and make them his own. But before I could budge from my hiding place in a doorway across the street, MacCready had moved on.

Every night I followed MacCready through the streets, stopping when he stopped, taking up his pace again. And while MacCready searched for death, I was perfecting my own dying. Not that it was noticed. I was only one of many bodies, roiling about the stage beneath the clang of metal swords and the clop of horses' hooves made by the beating of a spoon against a wooden barrel just off stage left.

I don't remember when I first began to formulate my plan to aid MacCready in his search for the perfect death. Winter was coming on, and the nights were damp, with the wind cutting like a knife around the corners of buildings. I didn't mind being uncomfortable, but I could see that MacCready did. His wanderings became shorter. The stops into pubs more frequent. The stay longer. I waited outside, stamping my feet and hugging my hands beneath my armpits to keep
warm. Impossible for me to join him in the pub, and I was afraid that if I went into another, I would miss his exit.

And then one night, a Saturday I think it was (we had just finished
Twelfth Night,
a dreary play as it had no commendable death scene in it). MacCready wandered in the direction of a derelict section of town. Prostitutes huddled in doorways and opened their cloaks just long enough for a man to catch a glimpse of their wares, then wrapped up tight again. Drunks lay on pillows of hoarfrost, neither alive nor dead. Windows were shuttered tight, only an occasional wink of light escaping through the chinks. I couldn't understand why MacCready had chosen this section of town to look for death.

I found myself wishing he would go home. There was no one here that was worthy of the great MacCready's talent.

A carriage pulled to a stop ahead of MacCready. He slowed his pace. I slowed mine and watched. The carriage door opened and a man in evening dress virtually fell from the top step.

And suddenly I knew what MacCready was about. Clever MacCready. A gentleman might die comfortably, undramatically at home, eased into death by a scented handkerchief dabbed at his brow, his fluxes and vomitings carried discreetly away. But here in the streets, where no one knew him, he must enter death with the kicking and squirming of lesser men.

The man tossed coins toward the driver then wove toward a door in one of the nondescript brownstones that lined the street. After a moment, the door opened and light and noise spilled into the night air. The man entered and the door closed behind him leaving the street once again dark and silent.

I have to admit that I was a little irritated at my idol. I thought I knew what he was hoping for, but it would be a long cold winter before we might stumble across a robbery
or murder if a man insisted on alighting from his carriage at the very door of his assignation.

The carriage pulled away and, like a great curtain, revealed a quartet of men coming our way. They were a gay bunch, drunk and singing and lumbering toward me like a giant multi-headed beast. MacCready was intent on the closed door of the brownstone and didn't see when they knocked me into the gutter.

It was soon after that night that I began to carry a metal pipe beneath my coat as I followed MacCready through the murky streets.

Several weeks passed and winter was full upon us. Snow fell by the bucketfuls on the stage and in the streets, turning to frozen sheets at the least hint of thaw. The audiences were sparse and there was talk of closing the theater until the weather broke. Everyone was at sixes and sevens trying to prepare for unemployment. MacCready alone seemed to be unconcerned about the possible closing. He needn't be. One week of his salary could pay the rest of us for a month.

I was already stretched as far as I could be stretched and could ill afford to lose even a week of work. I loathed the thought of giving up my cozy rooms, humble though they were. Not that I spent much time in them being in the theater all day and wandering the streets with MacCready at night. But what I feared most was the loss of MacCready if the theater were to close.

One evening as I lay dying during the second act of an undistinguished melodrama, I felt eyes upon me. Somehow I knew they were MacCready's. I fought the urge to exalt in that supernumerary death, but I forced my attention inward and died with great subtlety. I was very pleased with how it went. As soon as the curtain rang down and the slain cleared the stage at a run, I made sure that I would pass by MacCready who was, indeed, standing in the wings.

The briefest tip of his chin as I passed sent me into raptures. I had been good, really good, and MacCready had acknowledged my performance. And in the glow of that euphoric mood, I determined to do something to show my gratitude.

The snow was drifting down as we left the theater that night. The sky was clear above the roofs of town; the stars twinkling like diamonds on a black velvet drop. Once again MacCready went to the lowest neighborhood. I stayed farther behind than usual, for I had a twofold purpose.

He led me to a dismal street, the lamps of the streetlights broken into jagged icicles, the gas turned off to prevent an explosion. But the moon was high, casting a magical light over the whole. The night wore on and I was suppressing a yawn when I saw my purpose weaving down the street toward the square. A fine, tall man, with top hat, walking stick, and an opera cloak that swirled about his ankles. A young nob out slumming, alone. It was perfect.

The man stopped and looked about him, then peered up and down the street as if looking for someone. I felt my stomach clench. God, that he should be meeting his friends on this corner. I wanted to shake my fist at the heavens, Lear-style. My blood raced with impatience; the metal pipe weighted down my chest. At last, he took up his perambulation again, and he drew slowly nearer.

MacCready was nearly a block ahead of me now. If this drunken sot didn't hurry, it would be too late. I pressed into the shadows, my back feeling the impressions of a wrought iron gate that led into the square. I could hear the fellow muttering to himself.

My gloved hand closed around the pipe and drew it ever so gently from my coat. Poised, calm, fully into the part I was about to play, I lifted the pipe over my head. His shadow passed in front of me, and the pipe crashed into his
head. His top hat flew to the ground. He staggered and tried to turn, the blood spraying in all directions. I repeated the blow to his back, knocking out his wind, making it impossible for him to cry for help.

There was no time to observe my handiwork, but I was almost certain that he had received a mortal blow, and there was no time to give another. I backed through the gate into darkness and cried out, “Murder, murder by the square.” I only paused long enough to see that I had aroused the attention of several passersby who further sounded the alarm. I raced through the square and exited on the far side, then made my way back to where a crowd had already formed around the fallen man.

And yes, there was MacCready. I could see him well. I could not see the dying man, but I watched MacCready's hand clutch the air as he followed the man's progress toward darkness, and my hand followed his. His shoulder twitched, and I knew he was internalizing every detail, and so did I.

A constable came and pushed everyone aside. I was very nearly caught out because I had lingered until the last moment so as not to miss one tiny part of MacCready's mesmerizing performance. He turned suddenly and I fairly threw myself into the entrance of an ale house to avoid his gaze.