Shadowtown

by Lutz, John

  “What about the vampire?” Oxman asked.

  “Edgar Grume? He’s not in the show anymore. He was a dream, loved the girls and let them die. Half the housewives in America would have bared their jugs for Edgar—jugulars, that is. Then poor Allan Ames got himself killed in a subway accident. Fell under a train.”

  “Allan Ames?”

  “The actor who played Grume. So they had to write the vampire out of the script. He didn’t live in Shadowtown, which is a little place not far from New York; he lived on Park Avenue and sort of flew there from time to time.” She sighed, heaving her bony chest. “He gave that show some real class.”

  “You mean the vampire character lived on Park Avenue, not the real Ames?”

  “Sure. I don’t have any idea where Allan Ames lived. Probably he was a jet-setter.”

  Oxman was somewhat confused. Well, more than somewhat. “This is all ridiculous,” he said.

  “Sure,” Myra said. “Forget about all that blackmail and money-owed stuff; that’s just background motivation. What ‘Shadowtown’ is really about right now is Delia trying to get the goods on Roger so she can get her bitchy hands on that baby. There’s other stuff going on in the show, like Roger’s sweet young thing, but for now the Delia and Roger affair is why everyone’s watching it. The sweet young thing’s gonna get her ass kicked out of Roger’s life by Delia. And soon. You can count on it.”

  Oxman shifted in his chair. He looked at the blank TV screen. It seemed to look back at him.

  “Get you some coffee?” Myra asked.

  He said no thanks, he’d had enough coffee. Then he said, “Myra, how involved do the fans get with the soaps’ stars?”

  She grinned. “To a lot of fans, ‘Shadowtown’ is a real place, and the people are real. At least as real as the polticians and other public figures we see on television. How many viewers have seen the real Tip O’Neill or even the real David Letterman. Not much of a line between real and unreal on that TV screen. And sometimes real people even play themselves on soap operas, cross over that line. Is ‘Shadowtown’ real? Are all those starving kids in Africa real? What about all those strutting Arabs in the Middle East, and the terrorists in ski masks? They all share the same tube, Sergeant Oxman, sandwiched between commercials for beer and cars and laxative and aspirin. I’d say that, to some people, Delia Lane is as real as the Ayatollah Khomeini.”

  “Real enough for them to cross over that line you talked about? To think they can become a part of what they see on ‘Shadowtown’ between those commercials?”

  Myra thought for a moment, then said, “Why not? There’s all kinds of people in this world.”

  Oxman knew she was right about that. His years as a cop had convinced him there was no end to human variation. Just when you thought you’d seen it all, somebody would show you that you hadn’t.

  He stood up, careful not to step on a magazine from whose cover a smiling man with incredibly fluffed white hair stared up at him. “Thanks for your help, Myra.” He glanced around at the array of magazines and a thought struck him. “Would you have a copy of anything featuring ‘Shadowtown’?” he asked.

  “Oh, sure.” She rooted around for a few minutes in a stack of magazines beneath the coffee table, tossing them aside one by one and adding to the mess on the floor. “Ah, ha!” she said finally, and handed him a tattered copy of “Shadowtown”: Sins, Shame and Ecstasy. On the cover was a color photograph of a man and woman kissing with such openmouthed enthusiasm that their features were barely distinguishable.

  “Delia and Roger?” he asked Myra.

  She studied the cover. “No, that’s Clint and Carlotta. They’re off the show now. Drowned when a cruise ship went down in the Bahamas. She’s doing shaving-cream commercials now and he’s on Broadway.”

  Oxman saw that the magazine was six months old. “May I keep this?” he asked.

  “Sure. I don’t collect them; they just pile up.”

  He assured Myra he’d tell Jennifer to call her again sometime soon, then headed for the door and thanked her once more for her help. The gray cat glanced over at him as if he could go straight to hell.

  “Hey, that’s okay,” Myra said. “I didn’t have anything to do anyway. ‘Ryan’s Hope’ doesn’t come on until noon. There’s nothing on now but stupid game shows.”

  Art Tobin—10:15 A.M.

  They were shooting at Shadowtown Productions when Tobin got there. Youngerman was nowhere in sight, but Overbeck, who was wearing the rumpled brown suit he’d had on last night, spotted Tobin through a wide window and waved him into the control room.

  The place was bustling, but in an orderly fashion, and there was plenty of terse conversation at low volume, people coordinating activities, nodding and giving hand signals. There were fancy electronic gadgets all over the place, banks of dials and switches. And there were half-a-dozen TV monitors so the people in the control room could see on the screens what was happening on the other side of the glass wall that faced the sound stage.

  Out there, beneath bright lights, a stunning brunette about forty was rolling on the floor of what looked like somebody’s living room. She wasn’t alone. A handsome young guy with his shirt off to reveal muscles and a flawless tan was trying to get on top of her and kiss her. Who could blame him? They were both laughing. Somehow the young guy’s elaborate hairdo stayed in place. The woman’s long hair was tousled, but on her it looked great. She had too much makeup on, Tobin thought. Then he noticed that the young guy with the engineered hair had makeup on, too. It was for the cameras, Tobin told himself; they didn’t walk around like that in real life. Or maybe the guy did.

  He wound up on top of the woman, grinned down at her. She brushed the gold chain dangling from his neck away from her face and they clinched and kissed. The shot on the monitors zoomed in tight.

  A big, bald man in the control room raised a hand, lowered it slowly, and said, “Okay, fade.” The images of the man and woman on the monitors became faint and then disappeared. Everyone in the control room seemed to relax, though not completely. There was an almost palpable residue of tension in the air.

  “Anybody got a cigarette?” a slim woman in skintight jeans asked.

  “Smoke those goddamned things outside the booth,” the bald man said.

  “I was going to,” the woman said. “Hold on to your balls and be patient. If you can. Be patient, that is.” She accepted a cigarette from a grinning kid who looked about sixteen, then sashayed out of the booth.

  On the sound stage, the brunette and her wrestling mate were standing. The woman was smoothing out her clothes while the man put on a silky blue shirt. He seemed preoccupied.

  “We’re into a commercial time-out,” Overbeck said. “We leave spaces in the tape so there doesn’t have to be any editing. Our show’s live-tape; that means there’s no editing at all unless something really bizarre happens.”

  “Such as?” Tobin asked.

  “Such as when Delia’s tit fell out of her dress,” the young guy with the cigarettes said. Nobody laughed, or even smiled. Tobin saw that he wasn’t nearly as young as he appeared at first glance. He just had one of those boyish faces that would stay that way until he hit senility. In fact, he might be well into his thirties. He looked unconcerned that his attempt at humor had fallen flat. Like he was used to it happening.

  “Matt, get everybody coffee or whatever they want,” the bald man snapped, and the youngish guy hopped to obey. He was taking drink orders and was out of the booth in no time.

  The company gofer, Tobin thought. Damned white nigger. Tobin thought of any ass-kissing subordinate, whatever the color, as a nigger. He’d had to survive in a police department that had treated him as an inferior from the time of his academy days. Only in the years after the turmoil of the civil-rights movement had things gotten easier for blacks in law enforcement, but by then Tobin had developed his calluses. He’d gotten used to being a better cop than many of those around him, earning survival but not recognition. And the
higher-ups had gotten used to seeing Tobin that way, too, as a survivor and not much else; it was assumed that he’d sought, and found, his level.

  But they’d never had the opportunity to think of him as an asskisser. He’d never given them that. Never would.

  “Alley scene,” the bald man said. He gave a countdown as if the space shuttle were about to be launched. The booth quieted, he flashed some more of the fancy hand signals, and the brunette and a sleazy underworld type in a black turtleneck sweater appeared on the screen. She called him Louie. They made arch remarks to each other then began an inane conversation about somebody’s infant girl.

  Overbeck whispered to Tobin, “How’s it feel to see the real Lana Spence in action?”

  “Like when I used to watch the soaps,” Tobin said.

  Overbeck looked surprised and pleased. Fans were where you found them. Tobin stood with him silently and watched the scene develop.

  The dialogue was predictable, and the acting ranged from simpering and mugging to wooden readings of lines. Yet it was all slick even if it was shallow. The actors were doing something close to live theater and were thinking on their feet, using quick wit and minor improvisation, maintaining a kind of balance that didn’t appear as precarious as it was. Tobin felt a twinge of admiration for them; he knew he was watching a rare combination of nerve and professionalism.

  “I need to talk to some of these people,” he said.

  “Certainly.” Overbeck was all cooperation.

  Sy Youngerman came into the booth, saw Tobin, and smiled and nodded. He was in a three-piece blue pinstripe suit today; he looked like a banker on his way to a foreclosure. An important lunch downtown, Tobin figured. Youngerman probably had a lot of those.

  “How’s it going?” he asked Overbeck.

  “Okay.” Overbeck glanced over at Tobin. “This is Friday’s show we’re taping.”

  “You into the cottage scene yet, Shane?” Youngerman asked the bald man in a soft voice.

  “No, it’s after the alley scene.” Shane sounded annoyed.

  Youngerman turned to Overbeck with an agonized expression. “Jesus, Harry, we got a schedule.”

  Overbeck nodded toward Shane the bald. “Talk to the director. I already have.”

  “This’ll be wrapped up today,” Shane assured them over his shoulder, then he turned back to study what was happening on the sound stage. For him, just then, nothing else existed.

  Youngerman looked again at Overbeck, shook his head, and said again, “Jesus, Harry.”

  Overbeck shrugged helplessly, as if to say, “Who are we? Only the producers.” But he gave the impression he felt secure enough in his authority to allow a little slack.

  Another actress, a tiny blonde, was now talking to Lana Spence and the gray-haired man. The dialogue didn’t improve.

  “This is where it happened,” the blonde said, holding back tears. “This is where my sister ran to so she could escape what was going on in that clinic, where she tried to abort her pregnancy herself. Where she bled to death because she was too drugged up to think straight. Oh, God, I wish it had been me!”

  “Jesus, Harry,” Tobin said.

  Overbeck looked over at Tobin; he seemed angry for an instant, then he grinned and ran his hand over his stub haircut. “Come on outside and we’ll talk,” he said. He patted Shane on the back and led the way to the door. Shane didn’t seem to notice. His heart and his head were in his job.

  “Looks like hard work, putting out a daily soap opera,” Tobin said. But not as hard as pounding the sidewalk and asking questions and usually getting nowhere.

  Overbeck nodded. “Hard but lucrative. And nerve-racking. We watch the ratings like a nervous old maid watches her birthdays. Everybody in this business knows eventually the wrong number will turn up, the one that confirms you’re without hope or a future.”

  “Speaking of people without,” Tobin said, “did anything turn up missing when you checked for theft?”

  “No. Except for a length of venetian-blind cord from the cottage set, the set you just saw. Zach Denton remembered it had been left over when the prop men hung the blinds; it had been lying on the windowsill, out of range of the cameras, for weeks.”

  “The murder weapon,” Tobin said. The killer must have been hiding on the dark set, maybe behind the drapes, realized he might need to kill the watchman at some point in order to work his way out of the building, and armed himself with the cord. “Nothing else missing?” he asked.

  “No. And we went over the place pretty damned thoroughly. Far as we can tell, nothing’s been stolen. Maybe Vince got to the burglar before he or any of his confederates had a chance to steal anything.”

  “Confederates?”

  Overbeck spread his hands. “There could have been more than one and poor McGreery scared them away.”

  That was something Tobin hadn’t thought of, but there was no sense in making things more complicated than they were already.

  “I’d like to talk to whoever’s in charge of costumes,” Tobin said.

  “Certainly.” Overbeck led the way down the hall. “So how about it?” he asked. “Do you have any clues?”

  Tobin tried not to smile. “I guess I’m here looking for clues, Mr. Overbeck.”

  “Harry.” Overbeck turned his head and smiled. “Call me Harry.” Tobin couldn’t help it; he liked the rumpled little easy-street jackoff.

  A tall, sour-looking girl named Velma, in charge of Wardrobe, explained that there were five Edgar Grume vampire outfits. The hot lights caused the players to perspire heavily, she said; five were necessary. Tobin told her he’d seen some people perspire under hot lights, too. She didn’t think he was joking and she got quiet and tense as she took him to a small, windowless room full of stacked cardboard boxes.

  Velma seemed to know where to look. She read the black felt-tip printing on the boxes, then wrestled one out of the middle of a stack of three. She opened the box, then ripped tape loose from some plastic and peeled it aside. It took her only a few seconds to straighten up and say, “That’s odd, there are only two costumes here. Want to see for yourself?”

  Tobin said that he did, stooped low, and counted two vampire costumes. These two, plus the two on the hangers in the costume room, made the proverbial four. Not five. Tobin smiled slightly. He and E. L. were actually involved in a case where two and two made four, the kind of case that was supposed to be easy to solve.

  “There’s an Edgar Grume costume missing,” Velma said, mildly bewildered. She was standing with her forefinger pressed to the point of her long chin, as if she were trying to use pressure to create a dimple. Someone had invaded her domain and she didn’t like it. She might simmer over it for days.

  Tobin thanked her for her cooperation and left her wondering.

  He felt better about the case now. It was beginning to shape up as he’d supposed: some screwball broke in here to take an ego trip on the stage of his favorite soap, got surprised, and carried the role too far. Manders would be pleased. They wouldn’t be able to catch the guy, but he’d turn up. His kind always did. Weeks or months would pass and he’d be arrested in Times Square for lascivious conduct wearing his vampire get-up, or he’d actually think he was a bat and try to fly and be no more problem to anyone. As far as the media were concerned, no one important on the “Shadowtown” set had been killed, not one of the actors. Just an old watchman, with an old wife who was now an old widow. A nobody was dead. So what?

  Tobin had a sour taste in his mouth. He saw a drinking fountain in the hall, went to it, and tried to wash the taste away.

  McGreery had been a cop. Tobin was a cop. Tobin wished one of those plastic assholes on stage or one of the backbiters in the control room had surprised the caped flake. The wrong people always died, the gentle people, the old and the very young and the unsuspecting and naive. Natural victims in a jungle that some of them weren’t even aware existed.

  He stood up from the drinking fountain and ran his tongue over the inside
of his cheeks. The sour taste was persistent. So was his sense of rage and futility. He understood how the villagers in Transylvania felt when they took out after Dracula in that old movie.

  Find the bastard and drive a stake through his heart.

  E. L. Oxman—11:00 A.M.

  Oxman showed his ID to the day security guard at the “Shadowtown” production facilities and entered the converted warehouse. He tried to imagine the place as it had been last night, when the murder had occurred, and he wondered how the killer had gotten in. So far no sign of forced entry had been found, though there was an unsecured window in the rear of the building that might have afforded easy access.

  “Hope you catch the bastard,” the day guard said, as Oxman stepped around him. “I liked Vince, what I seen of him, but it’s more than that. He was a cop, like I was and you are, and cop-killers are the worst of all the human garbage we deal with.”

  Oxman turned and looked closely at the man. He was in his early sixties, with a weathered, veiny face that suggested long mornings directing traffic on cold corners. The plastic name tag with his dour snapshot pinned to his tan uniform shirt proclaimed him to be one Thomas Merritt.

  “On the job here?” Oxman asked.

  Merritt shook his head. A lock of his gray hair flopped down above his left eye. “I served in a little town upstate, but a cop’s a cop wherever he did his job, and a cop-killer’s a cop-killer.”

  Oxman wasn’t surprised by Merritt’s emotional reaction to his fellow guard’s death. All cops held a particular hatred for someone who had murdered one of their number. It was a profound fraternal concern; it was the knowledge that a killer had struck at the very heart of what they represented. McGreery had no longer been on the force, but that didn’t matter. His days on the beat, in the patrol cars, swallowing fear but seldom pride—that was what mattered forever in a cop’s mind. Oxman felt the same emotion himself, the vague knowledge that with an old man he’d never met, some small part of himself had died. “Every man’s death diminishes me,” the poet said, and that was especially true about cops when other cops died violent deaths.