Play It Again

by Stephen Humphrey Bogart

  “You look like a pigeon just shit on your ice-cream cone, R.J. What’s the problem?”

  Here was his opening. His heart gave a quick double knock of excitement. He could tell her everything, pour out his soul and let her sponge it up. Instead, he just said, “I don’t know. I’m not sure it’s that much of a lead.”

  She looked at him like she thought he might say something else, but when he didn’t she just said, “Tell me about it.”

  He told her about it. He ran through Benny’s ID of the picture, his interview with the giant priest, and the talk with Frank.

  “So now what do I know? Maybe he shows up at AA again next week. That’d be nice. If he does, I nail him. But he probably won’t, and if he doesn’t, where am I? Nowhere again. Or nowhere still. No closer to finding him than I was two weeks ago.”

  “You know, R.J.,” Casey said, “you’re cute, but you’re dumb.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “It means he handed it to you and you’re too boneheaded to pick it up and run with it. You’re acting like a quitter, and you’re giving up on the only really important thing you’ve tried in who knows how long.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Listen, schmuck. We got confirmation that the picture is good, right?”

  “Right. So—”

  “So we know what he looks like. And now we think we know something about his past. So we can follow his back trail with the picture and find out who he is. Do you think you can catch him if you know his name and what he looks like, R.J.?”

  He shook off her heavy-handed sarcasm. “You’re not making sense. What do we know about his past?”

  “I’m not making—For the love of God, R.J., you’re supposed to be the hot-shot investigator. I’m just a piranha, remember?”

  “I remember. I wish you’d drop it.”

  “Frank told you—what did he say? That the guy had a speech pattern like he’d gone to one of the good acting schools. So if he went to one of the good acting schools—and there aren’t that many—somebody will remember him.”

  R.J. nodded. “It’s something,” he admitted.

  “Asshole,” she said. “What do you mean, ‘something,’ it’s brilliant. Get to work on your big-time show-biz connections and find out what schools to call. You want to tell the cops any of this?”

  “No. They haven’t helped me any. All Kates wants is to see my head on his lunch plate. They get nothing from me.”

  “Angelo might take it bad if you don’t tell him.”

  “Angelo has to report everything to Kates. He’ll understand.”

  She shrugged. “Your funeral. Think you can handle the phone calls, or you want me to hold your hand?”

  “Lay off, Casey.”

  She nodded. “That’s a very strong comeback, R.J.”

  “Why are you on my case like this?”

  “Why are you so pathetic all of a sudden?”

  R.J. felt his stomach knot. “Is that what you think?”

  “Well, for Christ’s sake!” she exploded. “We’ve been cooped up in here for days, and if it was up to you we’d be here forever! You are nowhere at all on solving this and you’re not trying to get anywhere! She was your mother, R.J., and all you’re doing is moping around and grabbing some free ass!”

  “I don’t see you complaining about the ass-grabbing, Casey.”

  He knew as he spoke it was the wrong thing to say and he would have called the words back if he could, but it was too late. She gave him a look of pure disgust and contempt.

  “Well then you can consider this your notice,” she said. She turned and walked toward the bedroom door.

  “Casey…” R.J. said.

  She stopped and looked at him again. This look wasn’t any better. “What a sleazy piece of shit you are,” she said and went into the bedroom. She closed the door very firmly behind her.

  * * *

  He had been feeling it since he woke up that morning, and with the coming of full night it is so strong he is almost shaking with the power of it, the roaring in his veins and the surge through his head that is almost like singing.

  “Hallelujah,” he sings to himself.

  “What was that?” asks the bartender from fifteen feet away.

  “Nothing,” he says. “Nothing at all.”

  The bartender nods and says nothing. Good man, that. Knows the value of silence. He drains his drink and raises a finger for another.

  He can drink all day and it won’t affect him. Not when he is like this. Not when he can feel that splendid thing uncoiling inside him, flexing, fangs bared, ready to strike.

  It is time.

  Oh yes, it is time now, time at last, time to do it. He can feel the certainty of it bubbling inside him, and he lets it perk, feeding it with his thoughts, teasing it, drawing out the feeling as long as he can.

  This will be the best ever. Because it is personal, has always been personal. Unfinished business, something that has been hanging incomplete all these years and making him steadily, quietly furious; and now it is happening, the pattern is almost complete.

  It is all coming together now, all the threads from so long ago, everything falling into a perfect pattern that he will weave into the greatest scene of his life.

  Tomorrow. That will be the day.

  He sips.

  And he laughs quietly as it comes to him how he will begin.

  CHAPTER 29

  R.J. woke up feeling like his head was packed with sand and all his joints were fused. He was lying facedown on the couch, still dressed, where he had finally dropped, exhausted, at around four-thirty.

  He noticed right away when he opened his eyes. In spite of being dead tired, in spite of feeling like he’d been beaten up again, it was the first thing he noticed.

  The bedroom door was open.

  Casey was gone.

  It must have been the sound of her leaving that woke him. He sat up. Through the open door he saw how neatly the bed was made. With a sick lurch in his stomach he stepped into the room and looked around.

  There was no trace of her left behind. All her small items of makeup were gone, her toothbrush taken from the bathroom. Her clothes too, which he had watched her buy, and seen spread out across the bed and the chair. All the skirts and blouses and underwear. All gone.

  Casey was gone.

  She would rather take her chances with a psychotic killer than put up with him any longer.

  He sank onto the bed, rubbing his eyes. It wasn’t just a fight, it was the end. She wasn’t coming back.

  And why should she? Come back to what?

  Come back to a guy who could barely function emotionally? To somebody so closed off he had never even told his own mother what he felt about her, let alone ever telling a lover anything. He had told Casey nothing at all, except that he didn’t hear her objecting to the ass-grabbing.

  That was great stuff, man. Real smooth-talking. Amazing that she hadn’t thrown herself at his feet when she heard it.

  She was right. He really was a sleazy shit. A sleazy, amoral, orangutan-shit.

  He flopped onto the bed and lay there for a while, unable to see any reason to move. The bed still smelled of her, and it made his head throb so hard his teeth hurt.

  All right, he finally said to himself. She’s gone. So what?

  So everything. So he’d done it again, chased away somebody he loved. It was starting to look like that was his only real talent. The only thing he could do with people he loved: force them to run from him. What a rare and special gift.

  He wallowed in his emotions for half an hour. Finally he sat up on the bed.

  “Aw, the hell with it,” he said. He didn’t really believe it, but that didn’t matter.

  He had work to do.

  * * *

  It was still early on the Coast, but Arthur answered after six rings.

  “It’s R.J., Arthur,” he said in a loud voice.

  “I have my ears switched on
, old chap. No need to bellow.”

  “Have you found anything yet?”

  The old man gave a short bark of laughter. “You must remember how things work out here, laddy boy. As of my retirement seven years ago, I am capital N Nobody. It’s going to take several weeks before my calls are returned.”

  “I remember,” R.J. said. “I got another angle for you, if you’re still willing to help.”

  “Of course I am, R.J. Of course I’ll help.”

  “I have a composite picture, Arthur.”

  “You mean one of those dreadful drawings? My word, just like in the movies.”

  “This one isn’t that bad. The guy has been recognized from the picture already.”

  “Well, send it to me, posthaste. I’ll take it ’round and see what I can do.”

  “Thanks, Arthur. You’ll have it tomorrow.”

  “Splendid.”

  “I don’t know if this helps, Arthur, but there’s a chance this guy had some training at one of the good drama schools.”

  “How so?”

  “Well, I got a witness who says that’s what his speech sounds like. Polished, like they teach actors.”

  “Used to teach, old boy. Used to teach. Nowadays oatmeal mouth is all the rage. But back then… Well, back then diction was one of the calling cards of a legitimate actor. That would mean either Carnegie or Juilliard, I should think.”

  “Juilliard? Here in Manhattan?”

  “The same. And Carnegie in Pittsburgh. Now Carnegie-Mellon.”

  “Arthur, that’s a real help.”

  “You mean I have provided a lead, my boy? How extraordinary. I’m delighted.”

  “I appreciate your help. I’ll call when I find something.”

  “Godspeed, old chap. Godspeed.”

  R.J. hung up. The old boy would do his best, he thought with affection. Always had.

  R.J.’s next call was to directory assistance in Pittsburgh. He got a number for the main switchboard at Carnegie-Mellon and called it.

  R.J. got switched around several times until he had the Drama Department office. When he finally managed to get them to understand what he was after, he got disconnected. He called back and got the secretary again, who apologized and said she was still trying to figure out how the phones worked.

  “I have the same problem with secretaries,” R.J. told her.

  She giggled, and R.J. heard her hit the switch.

  She got it right this time. After three short buzzing rings, someone picked up the phone and R.J. spoke with a woman named Barbara who had a very nasal voice.

  “I certainly don’t advertise that I’m the senior faculty member,” she said. “I may have to do something awful to Shirley for this.”

  “Who?”

  “Shirley, the gal in the office. She could have given you the lighting teacher; he’s been here almost as long. Of course, he probably wouldn’t speak to you at all.”

  “Barbara, I’d like to ask your help in a murder investigation.”

  “If it takes time, forget it. We have three productions in the next month, and I’m doing a movie this spring.”

  “I just need you to look at a picture. Tell me if it’s a former student.”

  “What makes you think he might be?”

  “He has good speech.”

  She laughed, a funny, nasal little heh-heh-heh. “It would have to be quite a while back then,” she said.

  “It could be,” R.J. told her.

  “Well, send it along. I guess I can look at a picture.”

  * * *

  R.J. made a similar call to Juilliard. The only real difference was that he could drop the picture off in person, since the school was located in Manhattan.

  He found the place easily enough, not too far from Lincoln Center, and located the office. He left the picture with a strange, pale young man who wore a pince-nez and bow tie.

  R.J. felt reluctant to trust the picture to someone who looked like he belonged in a fish tank.

  “You’ll get this to the professor?” he asked.

  The young man goggled damply at him. “I said I would.”

  “You won’t forget or anything?”

  The young man sighed. “At the moment I am keeping in memory, flawlessly, the entire keyboard oeuvre of J. S. Bach, Rachmaninoff, and Eric Satie. I think I can remember to hand an ugly picture to an old professor.”

  R.J. had to grin in spite of himself. “I guess maybe you can. But you should loosen up a little.”

  “How so?” the fish asked him, already bored.

  “Learn some Jerry Lee Lewis oeuvre,” R.J. said.

  On his way back through midtown R.J. gradually lost the edge of excitement he’d been riding. He needed action, and dropping off a picture didn’t do it for him.

  The fight with Casey had hit him, even harder than he thought it had. Get a grip, he told himself. If it’s over, it’s over. It’s happened to you before, it’ll happen again.

  He felt bad enough that he decided to stop off and see Hookshot on the way back to the office. Maybe his friend could coax a laugh out of him. Always had before.

  But when R.J. came to the kiosk it was closed.

  He blinked. Hookshot’s place was never closed. Never. If he had to go someplace one of his urchins would watch the till.

  Except it was closed now.

  There was a raspy clatter behind him. R.J. whirled. Benny, the smart-ass kid, slid to a stop, popping his skateboard into the air and catching it casually.

  “Yo, hey, you some kind of a friend of Hookshot’s or something?”

  R.J. looked at the kid. He looked worried—as worried as a snotty street punk could look.

  “That’s right. Friend is the right word. What about you?”

  Benny pulled a black wad of fabric out of his battered backpack. “Yeah, funny. Lookit here.” He held up the wad. R.J. took it, shook it out.

  It was Hookshot’s jacket.

  R.J. looked at Benny. “Where’d you get this?”

  “What, like I stole it? Fuck you.”

  “No, like where you’d get it? Hookshot wouldn’t leave it lying around. He likes this jacket.”

  “No shit. Like I don’t know that?”

  R.J. threw a hand out. Benny was fast, but R.J. was faster, and he got a hand twisted into the kid’s jacket. He lifted. The skateboard clattered to the sidewalk.

  “Listen, Ace. I’d love to hang around and teach you some manners, but I think something’s wrong with my friend. I need to know: Where—did—you—” he said, shaking the kid with each word, “get—this—jacket?”

  “All right, shit! Give me fucking whiplash. I found it right here.”

  “Here? At the newsstand?”

  “Yeah. What the fuck—” He stopped as R.J. shook him again. “Right here. It was stuck on the front there.”

  R.J. put Benny down. “What do you mean, ‘stuck’?”

  Benny snaked a hand in and out of his backpack. “With this.” He held up an icepick, the handle wrapped with duct tape. “Fresh, huh?”

  * * *

  Hookshot lived in a tiny roach motel of an apartment on East 12th Street. He could have bought himself a brownstone on Fifth Ave or a co-op anywhere in the city, but he wanted to stay close to his roots. Either that or he was just cheap. A lot of millionaires were.

  The building smelled like somebody had been boiling cabbage in dog piss. R.J. held his breath as he climbed the stairs to the apartment.

  The up side to the place was that there was no doorman, no security of any kind. When nobody answered his knock, R.J. had no trouble kicking in the door.

  He stood in the doorway looking for just a moment. “Shit,” he said.

  Hookshot was cheap, but he was neat. Always had been. He would not have left the place like this. The battered couch was flung on one end into the corner. Dishes and food were scattered across the floor. The curtains were ripped down.

  It looked a lot like Casey’s apartment had looked.

  �
��Shit,” R.J. said again. Heart pounding now as he realized what that meant, he turned to go.

  He stopped dead. So did his heart.

  Skewered into the wall beside the door was a silver curve of metal.

  Hookshot’s hook.

  Stunned, unwilling to believe what he was seeing, R.J. stepped closer. The hook was pinning something to the wall, a flimsy piece of sheer fabric. R.J. had seen it before, seen it recently. As he recognized it he stopped breathing, and everything went black for half a second.

  It was a pair of Casey’s panties.

  CHAPTER 30

  R.J. was down the stairs and out on the sidewalk in less than a minute. He sprinted up to the corner and flagged a cab. “Twenty bucks if you get me there in under ten minutes,” he said, knowing it was impossible, knowing it didn’t matter, it was too late, Casey was dead, Hookshot was dead, the killer was gone already.

  “Get you where in ten minutes?” the cabbie asked.

  R.J. froze. He had no idea where.

  His brain whirled furiously. The killer was most likely holed up someplace safe, quiet, someplace R.J. could never find.

  He realized he was panting and his palms were sweating. Think, goddamn it. But there was nothing to think about, no way to figure out where he had taken them.

  Except…

  R.J. knew the killer was really after him. Not Hookshot, not Casey—him. He’d known since the attempt on Casey. He didn’t know how he knew it, but he knew it with certainty anyhow. He was the target.

  That meant Casey and Hookshot were just the bait.

  And bait had to be left in the open where it could be sniffed out.

  Which meant the killer had taken them someplace that R.J. could find, would find—not right away, maybe not on the first try, but the killer wanted R.J. to find him eventually. Wanted to torture R.J. with a search, certainly, tantalize him with the knowledge of what was happening to Casey and Hookshot while he scrabbled around, hopelessly looking for them; he wanted it to drag on as long as possible.

  But, ultimately, he wanted R.J. to find them.

  He wanted to be found. He wanted to do whatever he did and he wanted to do it to R.J.

  R.J. was as sure of that as he’d ever been of anything. The killer was out there someplace, waiting to be found.

  But where? Not Casey’s apartment; he had used it once already. Not the office, or he would have used some personal item of Wanda’s.