The Apostrophe Thief (24 page)

Marian couldn't stand it; she had to ask. “Why does he do that? Why does Luke talk that way when the rest of you speak perfectly good English?”

Matthew looked puzzled. “Talk what way?”

Arrgh
. Not worth trying to explain. “Matthew, call me if you get anything. And the next time you see Augie Silver … tell him I'm sorry.”

Matthew gave her a wry smile and a thumbs-up.

Marian took the IRT to Times Square and walked to Gene Ramsay's building on West Forty-fourth; a phone call from the lobby revealed he still wasn't in. Then she took the Forty-second Street shuttle to Grand Central; John Reddick lived only a few blocks uptown.

He was up when she got there, and talking on the phone.

“Have a seat, Marian, I'll be with you in a moment.” No
Larch-Tree
today. She sat down and looked around. The apartment was comfortably cluttered, as if the inhabitant didn't pay a whole lot of attention to his surroundings. A few unpacked crates stood in corners; evidently he hadn't lived there very long.

John was back on the phone. “It isn't that I don't respect his work—I do,” the director said. “He's always got something to say that's worth listening to. But the man has no ear for natural speech. His characters talk in essays, not dialogue. Going from Abby's lines to his … it's too big a jump.” John listened for a while and then said, “Oh, all right, all right—I'll read the script. But I'm not promising anything, Gene.”

“Is that Gene Ramsay?” Marian asked. “I want to speak to him.”

“Hold on, Gene—Marian Larch wants a word.”

She took the receiver. “Gene—hello. The word is ‘alibis' and I'm collecting them. Mind giving me yours for Tuesday night?”

A mild chuckle. “And if I
do
mind?”

“Then I have to go into my tough-cop mode, and it's still too early in the day for that.”

“Um, we can't have that. Alibi, let's see. You're in my alibi's apartment right now.”

“John?”

“Uh-huh. Some of us went out for a drink after the performance, and John got to moaning over Kelly and had a few too many—well, you've seen what he's like when he's in that state. I had to take him home.”

“What time was this?”

“Oh hell, I don't know—well after midnight. One or two.”

“Can you pin it down a little more than that?”

“I'm afraid I can't,” he said apologetically. “Nobody was paying attention to the time.”

“How long did you stay here?”

“In his apartment? Just long enough to get him in bed. Then I went home and tucked myself in.”

“Okay, Gene, thanks.” She hung up. “He says he was out drinking with you Tuesday after the performance.”

John squinted his eyes as an aid to memory. “That's right, he did join us later.”

“Later? How much later?”

“Oh, after midnight, I think.”

After
midnight. “He says he brought you home and put you to bed.”

The director grinned sheepishly. “Somebody did.”

John had been in Captain Murtaugh's line the night before, so Marian didn't know the details. “Who else was there?”

“Oh, Leo Gunn. Mitchell Tobin. Ned Young, the properties manager.” He squinted his eyes again. “That's all—until Gene came along later.”

“How'd he know where to find you?”

“Don't know. Maybe I told him earlier, I don't remember. Why?”

She frowned. “You and he both are a bit vague about exactly where you were during the crucial period. Do you remember what time you left the bar?”

“Marian, I don't even remember
leaving
the bar.”

How convenient
. Marian let it go, thinking there were three other drinkers she could check with. “Now—how about this collection of yours? Are you going to show it to me?”

“Oh, absolutely. Walk this way.” He did a John Cleese Ministry-of-Silly-Walks amble that made her laugh. The collection was kept in what was meant to be a small bedroom.

One glance was enough to tell her that John Reddick was a “paper” collector. A few posters and signed photographs on the walls, but everything else was stacked in piles or collected into plastic crates. Old playscripts, notebooks, sketches for scene designs, even musical scores. He showed her programs for plays she'd never heard of, plays with titles like
Hollywoodn't
and A
Blot on Rorschach's Name
. One fire-resistant box was reserved for reviews of shows that had closed after only one performance.

But his pride and joy was his collection of correspondence. “Letters from directors to producers, to playwrights, to scene designers and costumers,” John said. “Gossipy letters to friends and family about rehearsal problems.” He sighed. “You know, people don't write letters now the way they did in the last century, or even in this century before the Second World War. Now they just pick up a phone and take care of business that way. All those conversations that could tell us so much about the way directors like José Quintero or Joshua Logan worked—they're all gone.”

“What a pity.”

“Yes, it is. Once in a while you can track down people who were on the other end of the line, but try getting some old codger to remember word-for-word a telephone conversation that took place fifty years ago. It's impossible.”

He went on talking, as much to himself as to Marian, rearranging stacks of papers, occasionally going off on a tangent when a note or a
Playbill
reminded him of something. John Reddick clearly loved his collection, the same way he loved his work. There was no sign anywhere in the room of costumes or stage props or actors' personal belongings, none of the sort of thing that had been taken from Ernie Nordstrom's apartment.

As Marian listened to him, she found herself thinking an unprofessional thought: she earnestly hoped that John Reddick was not the killer she was looking for.

16

Perlmutter's news was bad. “The night doorman at Ernie Nordstrom's building is a washout.”

Captain Murtaugh glared at him. “Why?”

“He couldn't identify any of the pictures I showed him. At first I thought that just meant the killer was one of the stage crew I didn't have pictures of.”

Marian said, “I told him to skip them for the time being, except for Leo Gunn.”

Murtaugh nodded. “Go on.”

“I thought I might as well check some of the other tenants,” Perlmutter said. “Nobody could identify anyone in the photographs, either, but they did tell me the night doorman had a habit of wandering off for a quick snort or two. Sometimes he'd be gone as long as forty-five minutes. Four tenants told me separately that they'd complained to the management about him. But if he was off wetting his whistle Tuesday night, the killer could have come and gone without ever being seen at all.”

“Christ,” said Marian, disgusted. “That was our best shot.”

Murtaugh looked equally disgusted. “So what's our next-best shot?”

“We don't have one. We do have a couple of vague alibis Perlmutter could check out, all right?” Murtaugh said yes. “Four of the men were out drinking Tuesday night after the play,” Marian went on, “John Reddick among them. Gene Ramsay joined them later, and later still took Reddick home when Reddick was sailing three sheets to the wind. Both Ramsay and Reddick claim they don't know the times involved, so check with the other three.” She wrote their names down on a piece of paper. “We need to know exactly what time Ramsay got there, exactly what time he and Reddick left, and exactly how much longer the others stayed on in the bar.”

Perlmutter took the list. “Leo Gunn again, huh? Who's this Ned Young?”

“Crew. The properties master.”

“Who's the third?” Murtaugh asked.

“Mitchell Tobin. If nothing else, we ought to be able to eliminate those three.”

“Okay, I'm on it,” Perlmutter said, getting up to go.

“Leave the photographs,” Murtaugh said.

“I'll get 'em.” Perlmutter went out to the squadroom.

Marian looked a question.

“I want you to show them to Vasquez,” the captain said. “Wait until Campos gets back from lunch to interpret for you and then have another go at him. Vasquez has to know more than he's telling us. Find out what it is.”

“Yes, sir. But I'm pretty sure he doesn't know who the killer is.”

“‘Pretty' sure isn't good enough, Sergeant. Make
damned
sure.”

Marian said she would. She went back to Lieutenant Overbrook's office to wait for Sergeant Campos and spent her time stewing over a couple of details that didn't quite fit. Gene Ramsay hadn't mentioned he'd joined his fellow imbibers at some unspecified later time; he'd merely said they'd gone out drinking—the implication being that he was with the others all along. It was John Reddick who'd told her that Gene hadn't come until later. Was Gene counting on John's alcohol-befuddled memory not to mention that little fact? Unfortunately, it was the kind of sloppiness of detail that characterized most statements made to the police by guilty and innocent alike.

Or had John Reddick got it wrong? If he'd been drinking heavily, he might easily have gotten Tuesday night mixed up with some other postperformance toot he'd been on. Or perhaps John wasn't drunk at all; perhaps he was acting. So instead of Gene using John as an alibi, it was the other way around? John could have feigned intoxication as an excuse to leave the bar and … Well, the other three in the bar could clear up those details; Perlmutter would get the answer.

The other detail that bothered her was the fact that the Zingones hadn't known Kelly was wearing Sarah Bernhardt's jacket in
The Apostrophe Thief
when the play first opened. Gene Ramsay said he'd had her wear it for its publicity value; but what kind of publicity was it when even the Zingones hadn't heard about it? The Zingones knew everything going on in the world of collectibles, according to Augie Silver. And they had known about the burglary at the Broadhurst before the story appeared in the papers. But either the Zingones weren't as knowledgeable as they liked to think, or Gene hadn't publicized the jacket after all.

Gene Ramsay. But as Captain Murtaugh had said, why would a man steal his own property? The most obvious reason was for the insurance. But it seemed such a petty scam for a wheeler-dealer like Gene Ramsay.

“You need me?” a voice said from the doorway. Campos was back from lunch.

“I do indeed,” Marian said, getting up. “Let's go.”

Vasquez was still in the lock-up. Neither he nor Kevin Kirby could make bail, but Kirby had been kicked loose because he had no priors. Vasquez, on the other hand, had a yellow sheet: illegal possession of a firearm, a drugstore hold-up, and a B&E. The charges had all been dropped and Vasquez had done no prison time. But this time around, the kid lawyer from the Public Defender's office had been unlucky enough to draw a hardliner judge; as a result Vasquez still languished in the Pens, officially known as the Court Detention Facilities on Centre Street.

Marian and Campos sat across a table from the prisoner and his young lawyer in an interrogation room. Marian spread out the photographs Perlmutter had collected and watched Vasquez's face carefully as he looked through them. Not a flicker of recognition registered for most of them, but he named Kelly Ingram and Ian Cavanaugh. Nothing there; virtually everyone knew those two faces. To the question of whether he'd ever seen any of the people in the photographs in the company of Ernie Nordstrom, Vasquez answered no.

Through Campos, Marian questioned him again about what Nordstrom had told him of his contact at the Broadhurst. Vasquez repeated that all Ernie had said was that it was an important man. At least they knew it was a man; that was something. But how important? Marian pressed. The producer? The director? The stage manager? Vasquez didn't know. Even when Marian offered to go to the DA's office and put in a good word for him, Vasquez still couldn't come up with anything.

“He just plain doesn't know,” Campos put in.

“I think you're right.” Marian thought a minute. “Ask him how the loot was to be divided—the stuff from the Broadhurst.”

Vasquez said he and Kevin Kirby were paid in cash; Nordstrom didn't want his two helpers peddling memorabilia before things had had time to cool down. Marian pointed out that Kirby had lifted a hairbrush belonging to one of the play's stars; did Vasquez too, perhaps, filch a little something for himself? Vasquez hesitated; but when his lawyer advised him to cooperate, he admitted he'd managed to slip a notebook computer inside his windbreaker when Ernie wasn't looking. What did he do with the computer? Sold it, at a pawnshop on Canal Street. The name of the pawnshop? Liberty Loans.

Marian said, “Tell him he may just have earned his word in the DA's ear after all.”

She and Campos hurried up to Canal Street and took a right; Liberty Loans was only a few blocks along. It looked like a hardware store from outside; inside was long and narrow, two counters separated by an aisle. Among the guns, knives, jewelry, and musical instruments, four notebook computers were for sale; but only one was the same make as Mitchell Tobin's. The Hispanic clerk pretended not to understand when Marian started talking about receiving stolen goods. Campos took care of
that
in a hurry, and the clerk sullenly pushed the computer across the countertop toward them. Marian wrote out a receipt.

Their ride back uptown on the BMT was an exuberant one; finding the computer might not turn out to be the break in the case Marian was looking for, but it had to be a step in the right direction. One way or another, it would tell them
something
.

“
Vasquez
took it?” Captain Murtaugh said in surprise when Marian told him how they'd found it. “Well, well … the things you come up with when you ask the right questions. Nice going! I didn't realize the computer would be so small … to fit inside a briefcase?”