I nodded soberly. “Oh, you’re perfectly right. She doesn’t like me. And I’m sorry about that. I think I could like her very much.”
“We ought to talk to her about it,” Lucille said very seriously. “I like you, Mister Noon. And since we’ll be seeing a lot of you, I think we should all like each other, don’t you?”
“Thanks, kitten. That’s the most sensible thing anybody ever said to me.”
Lucille was just a kid but she was all woman. Her face glowed with the compliment. And stayed that way until Helen Tucker came back and guided her off to their seats. Tucker had nothing but a frozen smile for me in thanks. I looked around for Sanderson but the mob in the lobby was milling around so much I couldn’t find him. I put out my butt and went into the theatre proper.
The final act of Kick and Sing was perfect.
The show swept along, each bar of music and comic turn of plot just a little better than what had gone before. The way a show ought to be. I flung a glance up to the balcony where Sanderson and his blonde were. Even he seemed to be enjoying the show.
But something kept bothering me. I couldn’t peg it except for one thing. When I’m mixed up in murder, I wouldn’t even trust my own grandmother.
The .45 under my left armpit felt awfully comforting. Which shows you what a bad habit like carrying one can be. You get to depend on the thing for a feeling of security. Which is tricky psychology in a grown man. A grown man should get security in his thinking, not in whether or not he’s carrying a gun.
Still you need an argument sometimes. And a gun can equalize things.
I stopped fidgeting and settled down. The show was going off without a hitch. Guy Prentice and Feather Daly, the two leads, did a wonderful turn with the Mistress that tickled the house silly, and the finale number came up rich and full with the whole cast thrown in for a mass delineation of a comic version of Hamlet. It was Shakespeare with all the iambic stops out, lampooned from stem to stern, and very probably the best thing in the show.
Prentice really stole everybody’s thunder. Because he would have been a perfect Hamlet. And when a guy who could have been a wonderful Melancholy Dane isn’t melancholy about it, you’ve really got something that is worth seeing.
He looked terrific in skin-tight breeches, and the contrasting tuxedo that was slung over his shoulders just for burlesque set him off from everybody else. Including the chorus, there were nearly thirty people on stage, and in spite of some very attractively near-naked showgirls, you only had eyes for him.
He went into his closing song with all the gusto of a Nelson Eddy turned loose in a musical comedy, and he had Kick and Sing in the palm of his hand.
There was a minor distraction though. A murmur of voices beside me and little Lucille suddenly whispering, “Excuse me, Mister Noon. I just have to go to the—” She couldn’t finish and she didn’t have to. I grinned and let her squeeze past me. Helen Tucker stared after her in mild annoyance.
And then Guy Prentice was taking the notes of music and hitting home runs all over the theatre.
My hands itched to applaud along with everyone else’s. You get that feeling too sometimes, no matter how jaded you are.
His voice fell into a low register and the orchestra in the pit spaced itself for a sudden pickup into a crashing medley that closed the show—and it happened.
The thing I had waited for. The sensation that the thrill-seeking crowd had hoped for. None of us were disappointed.
In the split-second interval between his pause and the orchestra’s rest, a shot rang out. Not loud, not slamming, not noisy at all. Just a short, spiteful spurt of sound. But just as well defined a noise as the snapping of a very brittle twig on a cold morning. It sounded like it came from the left side of the theatre. Maybe the wings or one of the balconies.
The orchestra blared back almost reflexively and the chorus was already howling its head off without realizing anything had happened. But to everyone in front of them, it was a different thing entirely.
Guy Prentice had gone down to one knee, swiftly and abruptly, as if someone had pulled out a support from under him. He swayed like an overloaded drunk trying to fight off collapse. Even from where I sat, I could see his face was like ashes behind his make-up.
The curtain was coming down on a thunderous wave of applause. And Guy Prentice came down too. Even before the heavy drapes separated him from the view of the audience he pitched forward on his face, the tuxedo slipping from his broad shoulders. Feet were moving toward him in a blurred flurry as the curtain closed off my view.
Helen Tucker started to cry almost on cue. I cursed. Lucille was running down the aisle toward us, her pigtails flying. The kid must have seen it all too.
Somebody was going in for target practice. And it looked like it was open season for shooting Prentices.
ELEVEN
Pistol shots have a funny effect on me. I move when I hear them. Even if it isn’t always in the right direction.
Lucille was whimpering out loud and half the audience was on its collective feet buzzing like so many bad radios, but I couldn’t be bothered. I pinned Helen Tucker with a look and grabbed her aristocratic wrist.
“How do I get back there?” I practically snarled at her, jerking a thumb toward stage.
There was too much bewilderment on her face to fight with me. Either that or the sight of her adored Guy taking a very low bow had finished her off. She motioned dumbly toward the platform with her free arm.
“To the right there,” she husked. “The stairs—they lead to the stage and then cut off into the wings. But Guy isn’t dead—he can’t be!”
“Nobody says he is. Take care of the kid.” I was flinging away from them when I got a notion. “It’s nothing for her to see anyway. Wait in his dressing room—”
Maybe she heard me, maybe she didn’t. I was already up the stairs, attacking the thick heavy curtains until I found an opening. I stepped through a mass of velvet and the world of the audience fell away. The effect was like a magician’s trick, a stepping through the mirror like Alice in Wonderland. This was the other side of the footlights. The performer’s world. Where all the magic went on.
I blinked, my eyes adjusting to the change of lighting, the garish nakedness of so many bright bulbs gleaming down like a million sunlights. I got the whole wonderful impact of change-of-scene head on. The wooden catwalks and wide grid suspended above me like some gigantic, flat-bellied monster. It dangled down all the ropes and trimmings that ‘fly’ a show—as they say in show biz parlance. When the area of a stage isn’t large enough, the entire set for the next scene can be set up in the air and then dropped when needed. It’s faster besides.
A thousand all-color spotlights seemed to glare down at me as I burst into their world. The false fronts of the sets bordered me the way some of the cities and towns do in nightmares or movie sets. But the biggest change of personality in the show was the wildly disorganized group that was huddled around something in the center of the stage.
Show business is magic. The gaily clad chorus that had just been singing its head off now seemed like so many ribbon clerks and salesgirls who had stopped to buzz around an unfortunate pedestrian run down by a truck outside Macy’s Department Store.
I pushed through the pack and they made way for me. Maybe because I acted like I knew what I was doing or because they automatically sensed the stranger in their midst. I guess I don’t look like an actor.
I stopped pushing when I reached him. Somebody said, “Who are you?” And Guy Prentice stared up at me and his face forgot about the running red wound in his thigh. His lip curled and his eyes blazed.
“What do you want—now?” he growled through clenched teeth.
“I’m working my way through Medical School,” I said and got down to one knee. My fingers explored before he could protest. I was really surprised to find him among the living. I whipped my pocket handkerchief out, balled it up and jammed it against the trouble spot in his leg. “Your luck’s changing, Prentice. The
slug went right on through without stopping to chat with the bone.”
“Where’s that doctor?” another Somebody behind me said out loud. Prentice winced a little as I held the blood-stopper up tight against his thigh.
“I don’t need your help, Noon,” he rasped in a low voice. “You get out of here—”
“You don’t owe me a thing, Prentice,” I grinned amiably. “I’m just getting you back in condition so I can return that punch to you.”
That made him smile in spite of himself. Then the pain got home to him again and he bit his lips.
“Come on, everybody,” I said over my shoulder. “Let’s give him some breathing space—”
I didn’t have time for a sermon. Somebody else had cleared the area around us and a pair of size-twelve brogans parked solidly alongside me. I didn’t have to look up to see who it was.
“Okay, Noon. The Doc here’ll take over.” A small, neat-as-a-pin man carrying the inevitable black bag knelt down beside me and gently removed my hand and bloodied handkerchief with a professional frown. I showed him my teeth.
“It’s clean, Doc. I always blow my nose on my sleeve.”
A chuckle charged out of Prentice, and Sanderson, James T., stared at me. This time his contempt wasn’t concealed at all. Badly or otherwise.
“I wish you’d make up your mind,” he said bitterly. “What are you—a detective, a doctor or a comedian?” His fingers came out of his pockets with a pencil and memo pad. He jerked a thumb at one of his uniformed detail that was ringing off the rest of the cast like so many sheep. “No reporters, Steve.”
“Way ahead of you, Sarge. Keefer’s got ’em blocked off in the alley.”
A smell of antiseptic filled the air and Guy Prentice cursed. Very aristocratically. He made son-of-a-bitch sound like a declaration of love. I grinned. I stopped grinning because a pair of beefy, blue-coated arms had seized my elbows.
“What is this, Sanderson?” I demanded.
His expression was fierce.
“You are leaving us, bright boy. By the front door. I don’t have to have you hanging around in my hair. No matter who you swing weight with.”
I shrugged. Shrugged hard enough so that the copper hanging on my elbows was suddenly hanging on to nothing. I moved away from him and stared him down.
“Do that again and I’ll stop paying taxes.” I turned back to Sanderson. “I’ll go but you don’t have to strong-arm me. I’m sober and I haven’t broken any laws. Unless you can drum up something phony right here and now.”
I waited while he thought it over. I could see the wheels moving slowly behind his dumb, arrogant face. Then he scowled. He scowled for my benefit. I nearly yawned.
“Beat it,” he growled.
I grinned and turned away putting my back to all of them. I was almost off stage when Guy Prentice called out my name.
“Noon. Where are you going? Come back here. I want you to stay.”
That surprised me too. There was an urgent plea in the Prentice voice that I had never heard until then. I turned.
He was sitting up, his leg cleanly bandaged. Somebody had given him a shot of brandy or something, and he was polishing it off like he really needed it.
Sanderson made a face. “I call the shots here, mister. I don’t need Noon. I don’t want Noon.”
Guy Prentice stared up at him. I could see Sanderson had never seen a sneer of cold command before. Prentice was turning on all his power.
“Either he stays, Sergeant, or I refuse to answer any of your questions regarding this little affair.”
“Do you know what you’re saying?” Sanderson was bluffing. He sounded like he was bluffing.
Prentice knew it too.
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Has there been a complaint? No, of course there hasn’t. Merely a disturbance which was in your jurisdiction to investigate. Beyond that you cannot go unless I co-operate with you. So I want Mr. Noon to be present in my best interests. Do you understand?”
Poor James T. Sanderson had never run up against anything like a Prentice before. For answer, he took his hat off, punched it out of shape and put it back on his head. Then he glared at the pair of us and went back to his memo pad.
“Okay,” he rumbled. Suddenly, the doctor folding his little black bag was annoying to him. “All finished, Doc? I got work to do.”
The doctor sniffed. “Gunshot wound. Nothing serious but it will bear watching. Stay off that leg, Mr. Prentice—er, you have a family physician, of course?”
Guy Prentice gave him a cold smile.
“Of course. Thank you so much. You will be suitably recompensed.”
Sanderson scowled at the little doctor until he mumbled something indistinct and scuttled off. Prentice fidgeted stiffly, then looked around anxiously. He subsided when he caught me watching him. I didn’t need a playbill. He was looking for Helen Tucker and Lucille.
Sanderson coughed. I was enjoying his hard time.
“Did you see who did the shooting, Mr. Prentice?”
Guy Prentice smiled.
“Rather difficult to do under these circumstances, Sergeant.”
Sanderson had had enough. “Answer the question.”
“No, I did not see who did the shooting.”
“Nothing at all? No movement from the audience—or anything like that?”
“Sergeant, when you are on stage, the footlights are rather blinding. You sing to the furthest seat in the gallery to begin with. In short, no one could see a gun leveled at him from a sea of heads and faces.”
“Mr. Prentice, in view of what happened this afternoon—” Sanderson was trying to match his decorum.
But he was out-decorumed. “Sergeant, in view of what has happened tonight, don’t you think it would be more comfortable for me if we continued this interview in my dressing room? The lights are very bright and hot here. And all of my colleagues are driving me insane with their insufferable staring. Look at them. Like so many Romans in the Amphitheatre.”
Sanderson folded his pad with an effort. “Sure, sure,” he muttered. “McKenna, Klein. Over here.” Two stalwarts in blue came over and between them and Sanderson and myself, we formed a man-made pallet that bore Guy Prentice off the stage, past the buzzing cast, down a long straightaway to his dressing room. En route we nearly collided with the biggest thing in a suit of clothes that I have ever nearly collided with. You would have sworn the guy was wearing a football uniform. His shoulders were fantastic and his hips were as neat as if they’d been Size 18.
The guy’s face nearly came apart when he saw who we were carrying.
“Guy!” he boomed like a small volcano, “you okay?”
“About as well as could be expected, Wally.” Prentice’s smile was heroic. “Curious conditions for introductions but there it is. Gentlemen, Mr. Walter Wilder, the brilliant young author of Kick and Sing. Wally, Sergeant Sanderson, Officers McKenna and Klein of New York’s Finest. And Mr. Ed Noon of—”
“—New York’s Worst,” I finished the joke I could see was coming. Prentice shot me a respectful look and then went back to wincing.
But Wally Wilder looked me up and down a good deal longer than was necessary considering the circumstances. We hadn’t reached the Star dressing room yet.
“Noon, eh?” He breathed in my ear, getting just close enough for me to see his shoulders were real. “So you’re the fresh guy that’s been bothering Miss Tucker. I want to talk with you.”
“Sorry, Wilder. I’ve got my own troubles.”
“You sure have, son,” he said grimly. “You sure have.”
Then we all had troubles. A veritable avalanche of newsmen and photographers descended on us like a swarm of bees. We almost dropped Prentice in the rush. Sanderson bellowed angrily, shouting instructions, and Officers McKenna and Klein left poor Guy in our hands.
They were two efficient cops. Midst exploding flashbulbs and machine-gunned questions from the gentlemen of the press, the two blue boys cleared a pa
th for us all to the dressing room. The newshounds fell back before their bulk and the beautiful blocking lunges of Wally Wilder.
We finally got Prentice “home” where the grease paint is, and a worried Helen Tucker and Lucille sprang to meet us. They engulfed him when we set him down gently on the leather couch. Sanderson, his boys and I stepped back. Wally Wilder stepped back too. Next to me. And a reunion scene similar to the one I had witnessed in the murderous afternoon was repeated.
I looked at Wally Wilder. Because he was looking at me. And a pair of hands that would have made a football look like a baseball were opening and closing like clockwork.
Lucille whimpered out loud, “Oh Daddy! Why does somebody want to hurt us so much? First Mommy, now you—”
“Sssh, sweetie. Don’t talk about it. Everything will be all right.” Famous last words. But Prentice was a different guy entirely when he was talking to the kid.
“Guy, are you really all right?” Helen Tucker wanted to know.
He smiled bravely for her.
“Just peppered with birdshot, Helen. Nothing serious.”
“Nothing some rest won’t cure,” Wally Wilder chimed in.
“Rest?” Guy Prentice raised himself to one elbow. “Out of the question. The show’s a sell-out. It’s nothing, really. I can cut out the little dancing I do. I fake it as it is—”
“Nuts to you, leading man.” Wally Wilder was real Joe College in speech. “The show isn’t all to your credit. Breen can understudy well enough to get by. He’s no Guy Prentice of course. But he’ll have to do.”
“Breen?” Prentice’s eyes lidded. “The man’s a complete idiot. A no-talent, I tell you—”
“Don’t argue, now,” Helen Tucker cut in. “It’s all settled.”
“Excuse me, folks,” Sanderson said almost apologetically. “I’d like to get on with this—”
“Certainly,” Guy Prentice said as if there were no question about it. “I can’t for the life of me understand what’s been happening this mad day. This sudden assault on the Prentices—”
“Guy, please.” Helen Tucker looked ashamed for him. “The child—”
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