Play It Again

by Stephen Humphrey Bogart

  Remarkable, really. The reserves in the woman. Quite as powerful as anything she had ever done onscreen.

  And he had been magnificent too. Of course, he had no movie roles to compare his performance to, but he had known. It had been the performance of his life.

  Better than anything he had ever done before—in Chicago, Atlanta, San Diego, Houston, and Sacramento. All the miserable, half-sophisticated hick towns where he’d gotten dinner theater roles.

  All the moldy hotel rooms, the dim and uncomprehending audiences, interested only in two-for-one drinks and pawing at each other.

  And he had to go through with it, all the hundreds of performances of Barefoot in the Park, The Fantasticks, Camelot, The Owl and the Pussycat. Nothing ever changed; the shows the same, the other actors performing in the same way, saying the same shallow, stupid, self-centered things, even the towns the same after a while.

  No relief from the horrifying, blurry murk of the whole existence. No relief at all—except when The Feeling comes and he plays out a scene as he has scripted it himself

  The quickened pulse as he spots a potential scene partner and knows, Yes, that one. The delicious delay as he follows them home from the AA meeting, planning the scene, wondering how it would be, hoping he’s found a partner with real talent.

  And then it would happen. And always just a little disappointment afterward, when they failed to really stretch into the role as he wanted them to.

  He has known for a while now. It is time to try something new, to work a scene with somebody stronger. Somebody unlike the rabbits, with more depth, range, and power.

  Somebody like the son. Yes, that one would be different, not a rabbit at all.

  They were too easy, the rabbits he followed home. So unsuspecting. He can almost read their minds. But you can’t be doing this, not to me.

  And they would all realize at the same time, as he did something so interesting, so completely shattering to their little rabbit minds, that he did mean them. It was happening to them.

  That’s his favorite moment, that moment of realization.

  He takes a long sip of his drink, letting the ice cube clink against his front teeth.

  It is like Shakespeare, he thinks. That great, tragic moment of self-awareness. All the great works of theater have that. His are just a little more immediate, that’s all.

  He finishes his drink and raises a finger for another.

  In a few hours it will be evening. Perhaps tonight would be a good time to mingle with the rabbits.

  CHAPTER 23

  R.J. snapped awake in his office chair with the telephone ringing.

  Somehow he had let himself doze off as he sat there. He’d been having a dream that his mother caught him in a hot tub with Casey. Belle opened her mouth to scold him and the water turned red.

  He shivered and rubbed his eyes, glad the phone had ended the dream. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know how it would have turned out.

  Wanda stuck her head in the door.

  “Phone call for Rip van Winkle,” she said. “It’s a Detective Bertelli?”

  “Thanks, Wanda,” R.J. said and picked up the receiver. “Angelo,” he said. “What’s up?”

  “I had this idea,” Bertelli said. “Maybe it flies, maybe it doesn’t. But I was thinking about those tapes that got stolen. And I thought, if only we could of seen ’em, we could of made a composite with all the disguises and have a picture of the killer.”

  “I know that, Angelo. I’m sorry.”

  “So then I says, Hey! Youse guys have seen the tapes! You and Miss Wingate! It’s practically the same as if you saw him live, right? So let’s pull out the old Identi-Kit and make a composite from memory!”

  R.J. laughed. “You thought of that by yourself, huh?”

  “Yeah, you know. The lieutenant is kind of following the book here—”

  “That’s not exactly a surprise,” R.J. said.

  Bertelli ignored the interruption. “And technically, you’re not witnesses, on account of you seen a tape of an alleged suspect who we can’t really pin to nothing, and not the crime. So this ain’t strictly procedure, but since we got jack shit at the moment, I figured, what the fuck. So what do you think?”

  “I think I’ll vote for you in the next election for lieutenant,” R.J. said. “It’s a great idea, Angelo. When do you want us?”

  “The thing is, I gotta run it by Kates.”

  “Oh, boy.”

  “I got to, R.J. That’s policy, capish? So hows about youse guys meet me at his office in ninety minutes?”

  “He’s not gonna go for it, Angelo.”

  “Hey, you never know.”

  “I know this: You put my name on anything, I don’t care if it’s Toys for Tots, and he won’t like it.”

  “I gotta do it this way, R.J. That’s the rules. I’m sorry.”

  “All right, Angelo. Ninety minutes.”

  R.J. hung up, sure that the idea was dead before it got off the ground. But it was a good enough idea that it was worth the try anyway. He called Casey.

  It took him forty-five minutes to track her down. When he finally got to her, she was in the West Nineties, interviewing a man who had been a judge in the first beauty contest Belle had won so long ago.

  She couldn’t, or wouldn’t, come to the phone. So R.J. went to get her.

  He had loaded her, protesting, into a cab and filled her in on Angelo’s scheme on the way downtown. She thought it was a pretty good idea too.

  “But an artist?” she asked as the cab ground to a stop in midtown. “Don’t they use a computer for that now?”

  “New York’s Finest are a little old-fashioned. And anyway, the individual precincts do pretty much what they want. Angelo must like the artist.”

  Outside the cab, on the corner of 42nd Street, a man played a wild drum solo on a manhole lid. He leaped up, arms in the air, and harangued the lightpole. He saw R.J. watching and stepped over to the cab and glared through the window.

  The cab moved on. Through the back window R.J. watched the man shake his fist, then squat over the manhole lid and start drumming again.

  “There’s just one thing,” R.J. said to Casey, turning back around again. “The politics of this thing are a little screwed up. We have to get Kates’s approval.”

  “Lieutenant Kates? The talking ape in the green jacket? Who are we kidding, R.J.?”

  “Angelo seems to think he can pull this off.”

  “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

  They pulled up in front of the precinct with almost two minutes to kill before they were supposed to meet Bertelli. But by the time they’d waded through the tide pool of whores, pimps, drug dealers, rapists, beating victims, con men, three-card monte dealers, and winos and up to the second floor, where Kates’s office was, they were five minutes late.

  Bertelli was already into his pitch as Casey and R.J. came in. He stopped and looked up at them.

  “Thanks for coming,” he said politely.

  “Sit down, Brooks. Miss Wingate,” Kates said in a flat voice. Boggs sneered at them from a chair by the window.

  R.J. and Casey sat in two wooden chairs, and Bertelli resumed.

  “It occurred to me,” he said, in his best night-school accent, “that we could facilitate the investigation and at the same time achieve a certain tactical edge by utilizing what is in actuality a standard resource.”

  R.J., sitting on a wooden chair next to Casey, had to snicker at the lost expression on Boggs’s face as Bertelli spoke. The poor dumb sap looks like he needs a translator, R.J. thought.

  Boggs caught the snicker and glared at R.J.

  Lieutenant Kates was shaking his head. “It’s a waste of time,” he sneered. “These two are scamming us, trying to scam the Department, and I don’t buy it.”

  Bertelli shook his head. “With respect, Lieutenant, departmental policy mandates the procedure in cases—”

  “Don’t ‘mandate’ me, Angelo. I know what departmental po
licy is. And it also mandates that the officer in charge of the investigation has broad discretionary powers in determining the course of the investigation. That’s me—and I’m not going to spend the time and money on helping these two make monkeys of the NYPD.”

  R.J. stood up. “We don’t need to make a monkey of you, Fred. You’re doing fine on your own. You and your Neanderthal pal here,” he said with a nod at Boggs.

  Boggs stood up too and faced R.J. with a mean glower on his face. “All right, Brooks,” he said. His big hands curled into fists. “This is as good a time as any.”

  “Sit down and shut up, Boggs.” Kates’s voice cracked like a whip, but Boggs stared a second longer before obeying.

  “Get out of here, Brooks,” the lieutenant said. “Next time I see you in here, you’re going to be answering formal charges. Now get lost.”

  R.J. deliberately turned his back on Kates. “Coming, Miss Wingate?”

  She stood up and gave Kates a look, cool and distantly amused. “Absolutely, Mr. Brooks,” she said.

  Bertelli stood up too. He leaned over and whispered, “Wait for me at the front desk,” then turned to deal with his superior officer.

  R.J. gave Casey his arm. She took it and they strolled out, with Kates’s voice already grating at Bertelli.

  “I’m afraid Angelo is in some deep shit,” he said.

  “I think he’s used to it,” Casey said. “It can’t be easy, being the only guy on the Force with a three-digit IQ.”

  They sat downstairs by the front door for ten minutes before Bertelli came down. He looked cool and unruffled, in spite of having just gone through a ten-minute tongue-lashing.

  He straightened his cuffs as he joined them. “Sorry about that, guys,” he said. “But I have to follow procedure.”

  “I still think it was a good idea, Angelo,” R.J. said. “It would have helped a lot.”

  “I think so too,” Bertelli said. “But the lieutenant doesn’t agree, and he’s the boss. He’s given me a direct order to drop the whole idea.”

  “So what do we do now?” Casey asked.

  Bertelli winked. “Disobey orders,” he said.

  “Thataboy,” said Casey.

  “Let’s get back downtown onto my turf. I got a police artist stashed there who can do this for us, and Kates will be none the wiser.”

  “That last part goes without saying,” R.J. said.

  * * *

  The police artist was a guy of about forty-five, with thinning reddish hair and a drooping red mustache.

  He hardly looked at them at all. Instead he stared at his sketch pad through glasses with lenses like Coke bottles as they described the killer in his various disguises.

  “What we’d like,” Bertelli told the artist, “is some kind of idea of how the guy looks without the disguises. You know, kind of average appearance?”

  The artist shrugged. “Let’s have it,” he said.

  Bertelli motioned to R.J., who sat down and closed his eyes, concentrating as hard as he could on the details of the three faces. R.J. gave him the priest first, then the drunk, then the newsman.

  When he was done, Casey took the chair nearest the artist and went through the same three descriptions. She also added her brief memory of the Pakistani cab driver.

  “’Kay,” the artist said when Casey was done. “Gimme a minute.”

  It was actually six minutes later when he stubbed out his cigarette and shoved a sheet of paper into Bertelli’s hands before disappearing down the hallway.

  Bertelli looked it over, raised an eyebrow, and handed it to R.J. “What do you think?”

  R.J. took the paper and glanced down at it. The bland face that looked up at him could have been anybody. But if you half squinted, you could see that face as all the others.

  R.J. nodded and passed the picture to Casey.

  “It looks good, Angelo,” he said.

  Bertelli looked insulted. “Course it looks good. What’d you expect?”

  Casey looked up from the sketch. “So what do we do with it?”

  “Well,” said Bertelli with a shrug, “things being what they are with the lieutenant, there’s not a whole lot I can do officially. In fact, I was kinda hoping you might do something with it, R.J.”

  Casey looked at R.J. and raised an eyebrow.

  “I got just the thing,” R.J. said.

  CHAPTER 24

  Outside the precinct R.J. flagged a cab. As it pulled to the curb, a bald man in a three-piece suit shoved at Casey with an expensive briefcase and grabbed for the door handle.

  R.J. yanked him back by the collar and the belt and walked him into a lightpost.

  “Hey, what the fuck—” the bald guy started to say. BONG. R.J. rang his forehead off the post.

  “Sorry,” R.J. said. “This cab is taken.”

  “You’re in a lot of trouble, asshole. I’m a lawyer.”

  “Then it sounds like you’re the one in trouble,” R.J. said. The guy thought he was going to say more, but when R.J. took half a step toward him he shut up.

  R.J. turned and, stepping to the cab, opened the door for Casey, who glared at him before getting in.

  R.J. heard steps behind him and turned. The lawyer, briefcase raised, was rushing at him. But at the last minute he rushed right past, pretending he was just hailing another cab.

  Grinning, R.J. got in.

  “We could have gotten another cab easily enough, R.J.”

  He turned to Casey. She still looked miffed.

  He shrugged. “So could he. In fact, he did.”

  “I can take care of myself, you know. And I don’t like the idea of having you running around like a cheap thug defending my honor.”

  “Listen, I’m a very expensive thug.”

  “At least stop looking so pleased with yourself, like you just did something noble.”

  R.J. gave her his best sour face and turned to look out the window.

  I don’t get it, he thought. If I did nothing I’d be a spineless, gutless weeny. So I run the guy off and I’m a thug. He sighed and wished he could figure this woman out.

  “Where are you taking me?” she said after several minutes of silence.

  She wasn’t sulking anymore. She looked composed, cool, completely neutral, and that bothered him just as much: that she could shake it off so fast, like whatever he did was not really that important to her.

  Get a grip, he told himself.

  “We’re going to see a friend of mine,” he said, holding up the brown envelope Bertelli had given them. It contained twenty photocopies of the sketch.

  She arched an eyebrow. “You have friends?”

  “Just a couple.”

  “And what does this one do? Break legs for a bookie?”

  R.J. grinned. “That’s my other friend. This guy is in urban intelligence.”

  “Say what?”

  “Hookshot is a little hard to explain,” he told her.

  She shook her head. “I’ll bet.”

  “I’m giving him the composite, see what he can do with it.”

  “We’re counting on a guy named Hookshot?”

  “That’s right.”

  She looked away. “Just don’t ask me to team up with anybody named Tinkerbell.”

  * * *

  Casey was not impressed with Hookshot’s office, either. The midtown news kiosk was shabby and festooned with cheesy tabloids. It looked its age.

  “Oh, brother,” Casey muttered as they got out of the cab. “I’ve never seen a newsstand that beat up.”

  “Relax, will you?” R.J. told her.

  “It looks like a Bowery Boys set.”

  They walked around to the front of the kiosk. A middle-aged man in a gray coat hurried past. At the last moment he snaked out a hand and grabbed for a Times.

  From inside the booth there was a streak of silver, so fast it was only a bright blur. The gray-coated man jerked to a halt.

  His coat sleeve was pinned to the counter by a steel hook.

 
; On the other end of the hook was Hookshot.

  He flashed his teeth at the man. “Fifty cents, please,” Hookshot said.

  “Jesus Christ,” said the man and Casey at the same time.

  The man fished out the change as R.J. laughed.

  “Hook-shot?” Casey said.

  “You got it.”

  “Jesus Christ,” she repeated as the gray-coated man scuttled away.

  “Nice snag,” R.J. told his friend.

  Hookshot gave Casey the once-over. “You too, R.J.”

  “This is Casey Wingate, Hookshot.”

  “The TV producer?”

  R.J. nodded. “That’s right.

  Hookshot looked doubtful. “Weeelll, if R.J. says you’re okay…”

  “I do say.”

  Hookshot held out his hand. “Nice to meet you.”

  Casey took his hand and shook it. “It’s mutual, I’m sure.”

  “I got something for you,” R.J. told him, flipping the envelope onto the counter.

  “This have to do with your mama?”

  “That’s right. I need your help.”

  Hookshot opened the envelope. “You got it.” He pulled out the picture and studied it for a minute.

  “He looks like a shoe salesman,” Hookshot said, studying the picture. “You sure that’s him?”

  “That’s him,” R.J. said, wishing he felt that much confidence.

  “Uh-huh. You want me to check all the Thom McAns in Manhattan? ’Cause I look at this face, and it ain’t a Florsheim’s face, know what I mean?”

  “I know.”

  “Maybe I oughta take a shoehorn along.”

  “All right, Hookshot. I got twenty copies in there. Pass ’em out to your best boys.”

  Hookshot shook his head. “I told you we don’t use that word, R.J. They the minimensch.”

  “I don’t care what you call ’em. Just find this guy, all right?”

  Hookshot smiled. “If he’s out there, we’ll find him.”

  * * *

  It is dark now. He’s finished three or four drinks. The greasy sandwich he ate as he sat at the bar lies in his stomach like a lead weight, but that doesn’t matter.

  It is time.

  He feels the thing inside him uncoil and stretch in preparation for what he will do tonight.