Walking Shadow (3 page)

"First let me apologize for the board," Christopholous said.

"Being smart isn't always the primary function of a board," I said.

Christopholous smiled.

"Quite true," he said.

"Willingness to raise or donate money counts for a lot."

"Counts for approximately everything, I would think."

Christopholous kept his smile but made it wry.

"The arts are a very precarious proposition these days. Reagan and Bush killed us. And dear Jesse Helms, who suspects Little Women of having a lesbian agenda."

"Grants dried up, have they?"

"In the name of thrift," Christopholous said.

"They still subsidize fucking tobacco, which is a fucking poison, excuse my French, but they save money by cutting back on the arts."

"That's 'cause they don't grow arts in North Carolina," I said.

"Sure, I know that. But they pretend to believe that theater and other performing arts should be self-supporting. For cris sake Shakespeare was subsidized. If the performing and visual arts must support themselves, then they will be required to be popular.

Television is what you get when you try for commercial art. Plays like Handy Dandy would never be put up."

I smiled.

"I know. You feel that would be no loss. To tell you the truth, and I'd deny publicly that I ever said this, I don't like the play either. But it is an attempt to grapple artistically with some fundamental issues, and, however clumsily rendered, it is an attempt that needs to be encouraged."

"Especially when you've got a hole in your schedule," I said.

"Especially then. I'm not a holy person. Had there been a better play available, we'd have put it up. I'm trying to make a living, and see to it that the company makes a living, and draw an audience, and raise money to make this thing work. It means I put on things I don't like, and kiss asses, and tolerate ignoramuses. On the other hand, we don't have Cats in for an extended run."

"That's something to be grateful for," I said.

"Real theater, any art, speaks the otherwise inarticulate impulses of the culture," Christopholous said.

"Art energizes the collective consciousness. The arts are more vital to the well-being of a society than missiles or Medicare. Do you know that English theater grew out of early religious ritual?"

Christopholous was a hyperbolic shmoozer, and a remorseless fund-raiser, and he made me tired. But he was also one of the major thinkers about theater in the world. I had read a couple of his books, and the voice from the books was the voice he was using now.

"Quern Quaeritis," I said.

I was showing off again, like when I'd said "dramaturge." And it worked again. Christopholous looked at me as if I had just levitated.

"You are an odd goddamned detective," he said.

"I read a lot on stakeouts," I said.

"Let's talk a little about the play."

"Handy Dandy?"

"Yeah. If you talk slowly, I'll be able to follow you."

"I'm not buying that pose," Christopholous said.

"You know a lot more than you look like you know."

"Be hard to know less," I said.

"What do you think is in this play that stirs up so much opposition."

"Albeit crudely," Christopholous said, "it challenges everyone's preconceptions. Not just the preconceptions of right or left, of racism or humanism, but all. If you come in with compassionate preconceptions about women or blacks, it destroys them. If you come in with hostile preconceptions about women or blacks, it destroys them. It challenges people to consider each human experience directly, without an historic framework."

"An historic framework is not useless," I said.

"Certainly not," Christopholous said.

"But Leonard would argue that you must first tear down the jerry-rigged facade, before you can begin to build a sound framework. Leonard O annoys everyone: secular humanists, fundamentalist Christians, conservatives, liberals, libertarians, blacks, whites, women, men, Jews, homosexuals, heterosexuals, bisexuals, Hari Krishnas, the AMA, you name it."

"Leonard's the playwright?" I said.

"Yes."

"Is that O?" I said, "as in say can you see?" or as in 'story of '?"

"The latter."

"Is it his real name?" I said.

"I doubt it."

"I'll need to talk with him."

"That should be interesting," Christopholous said.

DeSpain had his coat off and his gun unholstered and lying on the desk next to the phone.

"Damn thing gets me in the ribs every time I lean back," he said.

"Trouble with the nines," I said.

"They're not comfy."

DeSpain shrugged the way a horse does when a fly lands on him.

"You got something on the Sampson killing, or you just in to chew the fat?"

"I was hoping you had something."

"Here's everything I got," DeSpain said.

"Killer was probably male. There's no agreement on what he was wearing, except that it was black. Had on some kind of a black mask with eye holes cut into it. He came in during the play and stood at the top of the aisle maybe ten minutes. People figured he was part of the play. The piece might have been a target gun, though to tell you the truth none of the eyewitnesses know a handgun from their pee pee.

What everybody agrees is, he fired one shot and put the gun away, and walked out. Nobody saw where he went. ME took a.22 long out."

DeSpain picked up his gun and aimed it over my shoulder.

"Bingo," he said.

"Through his heart."

"Maybe the guy's a shooter," I said.

"Sort of showing off with the.22."

"There was a fad a while back like that," DeSpain said.

"Mob guys were using.22s."

"Or maybe it's the only gun he could get his hands on."

"And it was a lucky shot," DeSpain said.

"What do you know about the victim?"

"What is this, Travelers' fucking Aid?" DeSpain said.

"Hey, I'm telling you all I know," I said.

"You haven't told me shit," DeSpain said.

"True, but it's all I know."

DeSpain shook his head and turned the gun on his desk in a slow circle with his finger through the trigger guard.

"Don't know much more than you do. Studied acting in New York. Was in some plays I never heard of in places I never heard of. Got a job up here. Kept to himself. Stayed out of trouble. Sound like we're closing in?"

"Prints?"

"No record of him ever being fingerprinted."

"So what do you think?" I said.

"I think neither one of us knows shit," DeSpain said. He kept the gun turning slowly.

"Well," I said.

"It was about something?"

"Usually is," DeSpain said.

"Yeah, but this more than most," I said.

"I mean, if you just want the guy dead you don't dress up in a black costume and shoot him dead on stage in a crowded theater."

"Wouldn't be how I'd do it," DeSpain said.

"That's right. But somebody wanted to make a point."

"And did," DeSpain said. He grinned a big, wolfish grin.

"Except we don't know what the point was."

"He was there for a while," I said.

"What was he waiting for?"

"Maybe for Sampson to come to the front," DeSpain said.

"Get a clear shot."

"Or maybe for Sampson to say the lines he was saying so that the killing would have meaning."

"To whom?"

"I don't know."

"Me either," DeSpain said. He stopped twirling the gun and drummed lightly on it with a forefinger the size of a sap.

"But it might have to do with love," I said.

"It's what he was singing about when he got shot."

"Lucky in love," DeSpain said.

"So you've been thinking about it too," I said.

"Some," DeSpain said.

"So maybe it would mean something to a lover," I said.

"

"Cept he didn't have one," DeSpain said.

"That you know about," I said.

"You know about one?"

"No."

DeSpain did his wolfish smile again, pulling his lips away from his teeth with no hint of warmth or humor. He had big teeth, with prominent canines.

"Maybe it was a fruitcake," he said.

"Thinks he's a Ninja assassin. Buys a ticket. Walks in the front door, puts on his mask, works up his courage, does the deed."

"And that's why he stood there for however many minutes, working up his courage," I said.

"Sure. Ain't so easy for some people."

"You got a whacko file?" I said.

"Sure."

"Anybody fill the bill?"

"Not till we get desperate," DeSpain said.

"Then you make do," I said.

"I've squeezed a lot of square pegs into a lot of round holes," DeSpain said.

"Just need to shove sort of hard."

DeSpain had picked up the handgun and was now twirling it by the trigger guard around his forefinger, like a movie cowboy.

"You been a cop," he said.

"Can I see the file?" I said.

Still playing with the handgun DeSpain reached over to the computer on the side table behind his desk and turned it on with his left hand. When the screen brightened, he tapped the keys for a minute. A list of names formed on the screen.

"Want a printout?" he said.

"Or you want to read it off the screen?"

"Printout," I said.

DeSpain turned on the printer, hit a couple of keys, and the list began to print.

"Couple years," DeSpain said, "these things'll violate a suspect's civil rights for you. Won't have to lift a finger."

The paper eased out of the printer and DeSpain picked it up and handed it to me. He pointed at the list with the muzzle of the gun.

"Ding dongs are hard to keep track of," he said.

"List may need an update."

I nodded.

"You learn anything, you'll dash right on in here and tell me about it," DeSpain said.

"Sure. Who's working the case?"

"Me," DeSpain said.

"Keeping your hand in?" I said.

"Sure."

"I find something, I'll let you know," I said.

"

"Predate it," DeSpain said. He scratched a spot behind his ear with the muzzle of the gun.

"We're fighting crime up here day and night," he said.

"Day and fucking night."

"Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty," I said.

DeSpain's wolfish grin flashed again. It was almost a reflex.

There was no humor in the grin, or in the eyes that were as hard and flat as two stones.

"Yeah," he said.

"It is, isn't it."

Pearl the Wonder Dog raced around in steadily widening circles, her nose to the ground, her short tail erect. After every full circle she would come to stand in front of Susan with her mouth open, and stare up at her for a moment. Susan would pat her, and Pearl would dash off in another circle.

A single blue jay curved in past some pine trees and settled on the lawn and cocked his head and listened for worms. He heard none and went up again, circling closer to us before he settled on the limb of a red maple. Like most birds he seemed never completely at rest, moving his head, fluttering his wings, making brief, abrupt hops on his tree limb for no reason that I could see. On the other hand, he may have thought me sluggish, leaning against the car in the last glimmer of sunlight beside this striking woman.

Probably at least thirteen ways of looking at a blue jay.

"This is the house," Susan said.

"Perfect," I said.

"Having established that we cannot live together, we should buy a house in the country together."

"We have also established that we can spend weekends together," Susan said.

"That's because you always distract me with endless sexual invention," I said.

"Doesn't seem endless to me," Susan said.

"Ever since I sold the Maine place I've thought we should buy a weekend place out of the city, with some land we could fence, so the baby could run around and point birds."

"Pearl's instincts run more to pointing Oreo cookies, I think."

Susan ignored me.

"And this is the place. It's run down so we can buy it cheap.

Then you'll fix it up, and we'll come here with Pearl on autumn weekends and roast chestnuts and have a nice time."

When she was really intense about something she paid very little attention to anything else. Except, usually, me.

"We always have a nice time," I said.

"Yes. We do," Susan said.

"Are you making any progress in Port City?"

"Sure. Hawk's watching Christopholous and no one's following him," I said.

"I had a nice talk with DeSpain."

"Does he know anything?"

"No. He gave me the psycho list, but there's nothing on it that helps."

"Is he any good?" Susan said.

"DeSpain. Yeah. He's a good cop. Very tough cop."

"Too tough?"

"Some people thought so," I said.

"Tougher than you?"

"Never a horse that couldn't be rode, little lady. Never a rider that couldn't be throwed."

"Good heavens," Susan said.

"Does that mean he might be?"

"Means maybe we'll find out some day," I said.

"What do you know about Rikki Wu?"

"Rikki?"

"Yeah. It's not much, but so far she's the only one who's objected to my looking into the murder."

"Oh, well, yes, I suppose so. It's hard to take Rikki seriously."

"Somebody does," I said.

"If she pawned the jewelry she was wearing the other night, she could buy this house."

"Her husband, Lonnie Wu, is very wealthy, and Rikki is totally indulged. A Chinese American Princess. It has left her with a feeling of near total entitlement."

"Perhaps we should introduce her to Pearl," I said.

"A Canine American Princess," Susan said.

"Rikki gives large sums of money to the theater."

"And now she's on the board," I said.

"Can you arrange for me to have lunch with her?"

"I'm not sure she'd be willing to see you."

"Mention to her about me being hunk city."

"I'll ask her to lunch with both of us, and then I'll have a crisis with a patient and you can convey my apologies."

"Okay," I said.

"But I think hunk city would have worked just as well."

"Rikki's too self-centered to be flirtatious," Susan said.

"Shows what you know," I said.

"You seriously think…" Susan started, but Pearl started barking and jumping around, and the real-estate lady pulled up in her maroon Volvo station wagon. When the real-estate lady got out, Pearl dashed up to her and rammed her head between the real estate lady's thighs.

"How embarrassing," Susan said.

The real-estate lady smiled and patted Pearl. She didn't mind at all. She knew Pearl's owner was a live one.

"House needs a lot of work," I said.

"We prefer the term 'great potential,"

" the real-estate lady said.

"I bet you do," I said.

"In this price range. In a lower price range we would prefer the term 'handyman's special,"

" she said.

"You like this kind of work," Susan said to me.

"At my own pace," I said.

"Of course," Susan said and smiled at me.

I smiled back. I didn't believe her for a moment, but her smile was worth any servitude. Which is how I found myself, an hour later, the co-owner of a very large house, with a jumbo mortgage, on a street where other home owners raised cows and rode horses and drove Volvo station wagons.

If I weren't so heroic, I would have been nervous.