Shadowtown

by Lutz, John

  Myra’s voice flowed harsh and insinuating over the line. “I mean, Jennifer, you sleep with the man—he must tell you something!”

  Jennifer laughed. She liked Myra and forgave her snoopiness and persistence. “Not about his work, Myra. Ox seldom talks about his job when he’s home.”

  “Cops,” Myra said wisely. “They’re like that; keep everything bottled up. It’s not good for them; not good for anybody.”

  “So I should get him to talk more about work,” Jennifer said, “then repeat to you everything he tells me.”

  “Not everything, Jennifer dear. Some secrets are necessary between men and women. They help keep a relationship alive.”

  Jennifer knew better. Sometimes secrets could become dark and hideous monsters that devoured a relationship.

  “Myra, listen, I’ve gotta go. I’m working on an ad layout.” And my ear might grow to the phone.

  “Artists!” Myra said with mock frustration. “Artists and policemen!”

  “This is a magazine ad for Scrumpty-K dogfood, Myra. I don’t know, you think that qualifies as art?”

  “Yes, the way you do it, Jennifer. Your work’s the best. Like that Smooth Shoulders Perfume ad that was in Modern Woman. Beautiful, with the mist, and the handsome hunk on the white stallion. I bet it sold perfume to millions of post-bra burners sitting at home regretting missing romance.”

  “Myra, I’m sorry, but I really—”

  “Okay, dear, I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  “Do that, Myra.”

  Jennifer made a mental note to screen her calls with her answering machine tomorrow, then said good-bye and hung up.

  The “Shadowtown” case sure had Myra buzzing. Maybe it had been a mistake to send Ox to her. Myra tended to stick her nose, and then the rest of her, where she didn’t belong.

  But the phone conversation had made Jennifer curious about the case. It certainly seemed to have captured the public’s interest, and she’d been so busy with the layout that she hadn’t even read about it in the papers. Hadn’t read about anything in the papers. Or caught the news on television, for that matter. Maybe Myra was right about artists being self-absorbed. An unhealthy habit to fall into.

  Oxman was working tonight; he’d phoned and said he had an appointment to talk to one of the show’s producers. Jennifer had done enough work, she decided. Her back was getting sore from bending forward, anyway. She’d build a dry martini, sit on the sofa with her feet up, and read the paper. Let herself relax.

  She put the spare bedroom that was her studio in order, then went to the kitchen and found that they were out of gin. Out of everything but half an inch of bourbon, which Jennifer despised. She settled for a diet Coke and went into the living room. She’d read, catch up on the “Shadowtown” murder, then watch TV until Ox came home. Maybe she could convince him to go out for a late supper, try the new Pakistani restaurant over on Amsterdam.

  She’d read only a few paragraphs on page two about the “Shadowtown” case when she sucked in her breath and spilled diet Coke down the front of her blouse. She looked again at the paper, ignoring the spreading cold stain, making sure she’d read correctly.

  She had.

  Zach was a set designer, among other things. But she’d never dreamed he worked on “Shadowtown.” She hadn’t been in touch with him in years. She’d heard some time ago that he’d gone to California. Los Angeles. For some reason, she’d always assumed he’d spend the rest of his life—or most of it—in California.

  Jennifer concentrated. Tried to remember. She was reasonably sure she’d never mentioned Zach’s last name to Ox. But would Ox find out anyway? Did he already know?

  Should he know?

  Jennifer mentally kicked herself for the shame she felt. She didn’t like to think about Zach, much less talk about him with Oxman. And Ox had sensed the pain in her about Zach and didn’t pry.

  Zach. Lean and burning Zach. Who’d beaten her on a regular basis. Who’d caused her miscarriage and then left her. Who’d messed up her mind so badly that it had taken years, and then E. L. Oxman, to straighten out her life.

  She put down the paper and hunched forward on the sofa as if suddenly cold. She didn’t want to read any more about the “Shadowtown” case. Her stomach ached terribly, almost the way it had that day so long ago when she’d finally been rushed to the hospital. When she’d lost her baby. Oh, God!

  Ox had to know about Zach, she decided. He’d find out anyway that Zach Denton was the same Zach they’d briefly and tentatively discussed. So Jennifer and nobody else should be the one to tell him.

  Before it came to his attention some other way that Zachary Denton was her former husband, man of her dreams turned man of her nightmares.

  Harry Overbeck—7:45 P.M.

  Overbeck stepped out onto his narrow balcony twenty stories above Central Park South and squinted up at the sky. The shadowed clouds were traveling swiftly and it was beginning to rain; cool flecks of mist moistened his face gently, almost without seeming to have touched it. He glanced down at the miniaturized moving headlights and tiny foreshortened pedestrians, then beyond them at the view of a darkened Central Park with its winding trails of streetlights. Towering, mountainlike buildings blocked the sky on the west side of the park. He liked his expensive apartment with its expensive view.

  And he liked not having to worry about paying the rent. He was living comfortably for the first time in his life. “Shadowtown” had been good to him and he wanted it to keep on being good.

  Behind him the doorbell rang. He walked in through the open sliding door, brushing the mist from his damp, brown-tweed sport jacket. He used the intercom to confirm that the caller downstairs was Detective Oxman, as scheduled.

  While Oxman was making his way past the doorman and up in the elevator, Overbeck wondered just what the persistent and insidious cop was going to ask him. He’d seen men like Oxman before, deceptive in their deliberation, easy to underestimate. From the moment he’d met Oxman he’d recognized an observant and calculating presence. He hoped Oxman could use those characteristics. On the other hand, there were certain facts Overbeck didn’t want to be discovered.

  But this was a murder investigation. And Oxman had talked to Lana Spence.

  Damn Lana Spence!

  Overbeck heard a firm rap on the door. The decisive command of The Law. He checked through the peephole and saw Oxman’s sandy-haired, solid countenance, then opened the door to admit the detective.

  Oxman smiled an uncoplike hello and stepped inside. He was wearing a light tan raincoat, which Overbeck took from him and draped over a hook on the hall tree by the door. Overbeck noticed that the coat seemed heavy, and he wondered idly if Oxman carried a gun in the pocket and maybe fired through the material if he got in a tight spot, just like on TV.

  Without the coat to occupy his hands, Overbeck suddenly felt ill at ease. “Can I get you a drink?” he asked.

  “Thanks, no. You just come up from outside?”

  “Uh, no,” Overbeck said, then remembered standing on the balcony. He realized Oxman had noticed the slight dampness on him. “Well, I was out on the balcony for just a minute. I like the view.”

  Oxman turned and gazed for a moment out the wide glass doors, at the mist-shrouded park and distant lights. “I don’t blame you,” he said. “Seems almost unreal.”

  Overbeck motioned toward the sofa, and Oxman unbuttoned his suit coat and sat down. Overbeck chose to remain standing, gaining the superior position.

  But positions didn’t seem to affect Oxman; apparently he hadn’t read the how-to-get-ahead manuals. He leaned back at ease in the soft cushions and said, “Let’s see, Mr. Overbeck, you were at Youngerman’s party last night.”

  “That’s right.” Overbeck felt himself getting nervous; he didn’t like being interrogated. Some cops could make anyone feel guilty.

  “Where you there most of the evening?”

  “From about seven until the police called, at about eleven.”

&
nbsp; “Who else connected with ‘Shadowtown’ was at the party?”

  “Oh, let’s see, there was Shane the director, and Linda Beller, who plays Midge Brown on the show. Quite a few of the production crew. And Arthur Sales was there early; I don’t know how late he stayed. It was the sort of party where people came and went without a lot of notice.”

  “And only a short walk away from the ‘Shadowtown’ studio.”

  “Well, not exactly a short walk.” Overbeck knew what Oxman was implying. “I suppose someone could have left the party, gone to the studio, then returned without anyone noticing,” he said, before Oxman could ask. “But it would be taking a chance. I mean, someone might have noticed.”

  “Oh, sure,” Oxman said amiably. “I’m not hypothesizing, Mr. Overbeck, just chewing on possibilities however remote. Would you do me a favor and write down the names of everyone you can remember from the party?” He held out a small, leather-covered notebook and a pen in one hand toward Overbeck.

  Overbeck accepted them and began to write, pausing now and then to search his memory. The pen made a loud scratching noise on the paper each time a name was listed in his scrawled, slanted handwriting. The scratching seemed to get louder with every name.

  Oxman was silent the five minutes or so until Overbeck had finished and returned the notebook Then he studied what Overbeck had written. No reaction, though; his features remained immobile.

  “Was Zachary Denton at Youngerman’s party?” he asked.

  “Zach?” Overbeck sorted through his recollection of all those faces, all those people drinking and milling about in Sy’s small apartment. He’d drunk a few more martinis than he should have, and the scene was a kind of montage without detail or time sequence. Overbeck had listed everyone whose name he knew. “I don’t recall seeing Zach,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean he wasn’t there. You know how cocktail parties are sometimes; half the people aren’t sure if they’re even in the right apartment, and don’t know the other half, but they sip drinks, get slightly loaded, and make small talk. And it isn’t called small talk for nothing.”

  “Sounds as if you dislike cocktail parties.”

  “I do.”

  “Then why’d you go to Youngerman’s?” Oxman asked.

  Overbeck had no ready answer. “Guess I didn’t want to hurt Sy’s feelings,” he said, knowing the inadequacy of that explanation. He cautioned himself to be more careful talking with Oxman. Still, he had to ask: “What, uh, did Lana Spence have to say to you?”

  “Something that might not be pertinent,” Oxman said. “What do you know about her?”

  “Lana? She’s the show’s star. Her Delia Lane character is what everything else revolves around.”

  “What’s she like off-camera, though?”

  Overbeck ran his hand over his close-cropped hair. Why not level with Oxman about this? It was sure to come out anyway, float to the surface like something bloated and undeniable. “She’s not all that different on-or off-camera, if you want to know the truth,” he said. “A bitch. The black widow.”

  “Black widow? As in spider?”

  “As in Lana. That’s what some of her former lovers—and there are plenty—call her. Because of how she leaves men when she’s done with them. When she’s finished and there’s only the husk. I know it sounds trite, but it’s the truth.”

  Overbeck didn’t like the way Oxman was staring at him. As if he could look past flesh and blood and bone and into the gears of the mind.

  “So who are some of the spider’s victims?” Oxman asked.

  “There’s Zach Denton. Then after him it was Arthur Sales, until Sales’s wife Wendy wised up and got after them.”

  “What about before Denton?”

  Overbeck felt a weight drop through him. He sighed. “All right, it’s not that big a secret anyway. I was involved with Lana for a short while. Until she got tired of me. That’s the way she is with men, she simply drains them, gets tired of them, then discards them. They stand in line for that, the ones who haven’t been there before.”

  “She the one who broke off your affair?”

  “Of course. She’s always the one who ends affairs. Nobody walks away from Lana Spence.” Overbeck was aware of the bitterness in his voice. “And she never ends affairs cleanly; she has to leave her lovers, even what little remains of them, crushed.”

  “How’d she crush you?” Oxman asked softly, almost as if he really wasn’t interested. Overbeck knew better.

  “The rumor began that she’d slept with me to get the part of Delia. That, anyway, wasn’t true; Lana had the part before we became lovers. But she didn’t like the rumors and how they might affect her career, so she stopped seeing me and spread her own rumor—that I was a homosexual and we’d merely been good friends.”

  “Nice lady,” Oxman said. “You sure the rumor started with her?”

  “Oh, I’m sure.” Overbeck noticed his hands were trembling. He jammed them deep into his pockets. “I wouldn’t be surprised if someday it might be Lana Spence getting murdered,” he said.

  Oxman looked up at him sharply, and Overbeck laughed to signal he’d been kidding about Lana getting killed.

  “What kind of man was Allan Ames?” Oxman asked.

  Surprised, Overbeck said, “Allan? He was a decent enough sort. He had dark and moody good looks, and his Edgar Grume role really took off with the viewers. It was a shame he had to die when he was at the top of his career. I mean, ‘Shadowtown’ isn’t King Lear, but it sure pays a lot better.”

  “Was there anything between Ames and Lana?”

  Overbeck shook his head. “I’m sure there wasn’t. That was at about the time Lana and I were … close.”

  “But can you be absolutely sure?”

  Smiling sadly, Overbeck said, “There are no absolutes, are there?”

  “Yes,” Oxman said. “In every homicide case, someone is absolutely guilty.”

  He stood up and thanked Overbeck for his time, then told him they’d probably be talking again.

  “You’re working late,” Overbeck said, walking with him to the entrance hall and handing him his coat. “Guess it’ll be good to get home to your family.”

  “I’m not married. Not quite, anyway.”

  Overbeck watched Oxman walk down the carpeted hall to wait for the elevator. Then he closed the door and drifted back out onto the balcony.

  He didn’t stay outside more than a few seconds. It was raining harder now, not just misting. And a chill wind was rushing along the high corridors formed by building walls.

  Just as Overbeck was about to step inside, he noticed a dark figure crossing the street and entering the park. Whoever it was must be crazy; no one sane walked through Central Park at night. Especially on a night like this. A cold sensation moved along the back of Overbeck’s neck; there was something familiar about the striding figure in the long dark coat.

  Or was there?

  Overbeck focused his gaze on the blackness where the man had disappeared, but he saw nothing. Maybe he’d only imagined someone was down there. It wouldn’t be any wonder, the way his life had gone lately.

  Back inside, Overbeck stared out through his own reflection on the glass and remembered the way Oxman had glanced up at him when he’d mentioned the possibility of Lana someday being murdered. And how he had tried to make a joke of it.

  He knew Oxman hadn’t been amused.

  Art Tobin—7:15 P.M.

  Tobin forged out into the rain and turned up the collar on his topcoat. He stuffed his note pad deeper into his left-hand coat pocket, lowered his head, and made for the car. The cool drizzle managed to find its way down the back of his neck. He shivered, dragged the polished toe of a shoe through a puddle, and cursed.

  What in Christ’s name was he doing wandering around interviewing soap-opera producers in the middle of the night—well, in the evening, anyway—when he could be home on the couch watching a Mets rain delay? Sometimes Tobin wished he were back on the burglary detail. Some
times you could actually catch the bad guys in the act on that duty, if a burglary-in-progress squeal came in and you were close by the scene. But murderers, they were almost always long gone by the time the crime was discovered. And the victim wasn’t around to cry foul and help the law.

  He hadn’t learned much from talking to Sy Youngerman. He wondered if Ox had had any luck with Youngerman’s co-producer, Overbeck. This was all probably a waste of time, anyway. It seemed more and more likely that some loony-tune pretending to be a soap-opera star had been surprised in the act and took it all too seriously. The city was crawling with people who belonged in mental institutions.

  Youngerman had simply stated that he’d been at his cocktail party in his apartment all evening, straight through the time of the murder, and he spit out a lot of names to substantiate his story. But Tobin knew how it was with cocktail parties in Manhattan; people entered and left, and if a host played it right, he or she was in the easiest position of all to come and go without attracting attention. People at cocktail parties were involved with each other, themselves, or with their sore feet, and didn’t notice much else.

  Still, here Tobin was with a story that was probably true, and a list of people who’d been at the party. A party that was within walking distance of the murder scene.

  Tobin climbed into his Datsun, ignoring the parking ticket waving at him from beneath the windshield, and pulled away from the curb. Didn’t the dumb blue uniforms ever think of running a check on his license plate? He was going to quit using his personal car for department business and sign out one of their unmarked clunkers that might as well have “Police” printed all over it, if he kept having to explain parking tickets. He was supposed to be a goddamned public servant, not a victim.

  Halfway down the block he switched on the Datsun’s wipers. He watched with satisfaction as the soaked traffic ticket worked its way out from beneath the flailing wiper blade and slid along the side of the windshield to disappear into the night.

  Tobin figured he’d check in at the Two-Four with Manders, who was on late duty, then wait for Ox to phone in, as they’d agreed, with any useful information from Overbeck. They would compare notes. Then Tobin would organize the file on the McGreery case and head for home and bed.