“We come to pick up Patti,” Morielli said, pushing in ahead of his sister, in case Julie tried to close the door on him, she supposed. “The kid’s got an engagement she must’ve forgot about.” He headed straight for the back room.
“Hello, again,” Mrs. Conti said and followed her brother. She was wearing a lot of mink.
Julie missed whatever exchange occurred between Patti and Morielli because Mrs. Conti, in very high heels, slipped on the painted floor and caught hold of the curtain that partitioned the rooms. It ripped out of several rings. Julie helped the woman stay on her feet.
“Damn! I’ve twisted my ankle. Ron?”
“Get her jacket,” he said, without looking round. And to Patti: “Come on, kid. Pick it up and let’s go.”
Mrs. Conti limped across the room and got Patti’s jacket from the halltree where Julie had hung it.
“She’s going to write up everything and show it to us before it goes in the paper,” Patti said, conveying neither fear nor command in her voice.
“Yeah,” he said, and to Julie: “We’re trying to keep her under wraps for a while. I’ll level with you, Mrs. Hayes: till the Tony Alexander story cools. I mean we want all the publicity we can get, but not that kind. We got nothing against you, you understand.”
She’d been under wraps before Tony’s death, according to Patti, but his version sounded credible.
“Patti,” Julie said, “why don’t you phone me when you’re ready to finish the interview?”
The sister, meanwhile, had spotted the tape-recorder and called Morielli’s attention to it.
“Why don’t we all sit down and have a listen?” Morielli said.
“We didn’t use the tape,” Julie protested, well aware that Patti had cut it off at the question of how Ron and Ted felt about Tony.
Morielli said, “Let’s take it along, Sis.”
“It’s my property,” Julie said.
Morielli smiled and tossed his head toward Patti. “The kid’s mine. How about that?”
“Ron, you shouldn’t say things like that,” Mrs. Conti removed the tape and rewound the few turns by hand. “He’s only kidding, Mrs. Hayes. I promise to replace this.” She tucked the tape into her pocket.
Patti put on her shoes. “Julie, that was the best cup of tea I ever had.” Whatever her qualities, poise was high among them. “Ron, she knows about David Clemens.”
“What else?”
“Ask her.”
Morielli shifted his gaze to Julie. “You going to blow all this in the Daily?”
“Somebody’s going to blow it soon, whether it’s me or not. I’d be glad to have your version, Mr. Morielli. We could even tape it.”
Morielli gave Patti’s shoulder a rub as though for good luck. “We got a motion picture that’s going to make fifty million dollars, and we’re going to cut Tony’s widow in for his share. Right, Patti? And maybe we should give her a cut of your share. How about that?”
“I couldn’t care less,” Patti said. She tossed her jacket around her shoulders and walked with a kind of swagger to the front door.
The other two followed her, having to step around the dangling curtain. It was pretty crowded where they waited for Julie to let them out. The silence was so eerie while she drew the latch, she glanced around. Morielli had his hand under Patti’s jacket, apparently twisting her arm. Patti forced a grimace of pain into a smile for Julie’s benefit. Morielli covered, too, by putting his cheek to Patti’s. “The kid’s all right, isn’t she?” He winked at Julie.
“You bet.”
JULIE FOUND HERSELF shivering after they had gone. The brother-sister act was scary. So was Morielli’s masked menace, and Patti’s mix of flare and submission. She did a haphazard job of stitching the curtains. She pricked herself twice with the needle. Very edgy. Call it scared, Julie. She kept hearing Morielli repeat, “What else?” to Patti. What else had she told Julie. Therefore, what else was there to tell that he hadn’t wanted told? She telephoned Homicide, not knowing what she would say to Marks, but wanting reassurance from someone whose place was fixed. That was her greatest trouble: things, people, kept breaking loose when she thought she had them pegged. Marks was off duty.
Someone upstairs turned on the radio full blast. The whole building throbbed with Latin rock. You couldn’t even hear the children crying. Or a scream if you needed to give one. She called the office on the chance that Tim might be there. It was seven thirty. No answer. Something told her to get out of the shop and she could not convince herself that it was imagination. She gathered notes and note book into her carry-all and took off. On the street she shed much of her anxiety, and by the time she reached the Village her fears seemed to have been ridiculous.
All day she had carried Gus’ skewers wrapped in a napkin at the bottom of her carry-all. She delivered them and had a coffee at the counter. Gus tried to persuade her to have dinner. He’d made the day’s specialty himself, moussaka. Julie said she couldn’t eat anything. He gave her a lecture on anorexia, a disease from which he’d never known a Greek woman to suffer…so why give it a Greek name? Call it something American.
Julie wished she had tried the moussaka.
THIRTY-FIVE
WHEN SHE SAW THE man waiting on the steps at Sixteenth Street, her heart began to thump. She crossed the street and approached her house, obscured from view by the parked cars. When he shielded his eyes from the street lamp the better to see her, she was tempted to turn back. Then she recognized Tim Noble. They started toward each other and had to stop for a spurt of traffic. Again the intrusion of the ridiculous, so that she was almost helplessly glad to see him.
“Are you running scared, Julie?” he asked.
“A little,” she admitted, getting out her keys.
“I’ve been waiting almost an hour,” Tim said.
“The phone won’t do?” She collected the mail.
“No.” He held the mail while she opened the inner door and followed her upstairs. In the apartment, as soon as Julie had turned on some lights, he said, “I saw Celebration tonight.”
“And?”
“Patti Royce used to work at the Tripod. You know, the Turkish bath?”
Julie was surprised and yet not surprised. “So that’s where Tony met her.”
“I never met her myself, but I saw her there: very special. Julie, we’ve got to break something about her or be scooped by every jabberwock in town.”
“I know…. I like that, jabberwock.”
“I made it up after Alice. It’s what we do, right?”
“Did you like Celebration?”
“The story’s kind of old-fashioned, but that isn’t going to matter much with all that bottled up sex in it.”
Julie decided to hold back on the identity of David Clemens. To tell him would only increase the pressure he could put on her.
“And I liked her,” Tim added, “but I had trouble drawing the line, if you know what I mean.”
“I don’t.”
“Between art and…whatever.”
“I see.”
“I mean it’s a porn film. Let’s face it. Soft, maybe, but porn.”
“I’m not so sure.” Julie the expert.
“Julie, all I want to know: why can’t I run something like this: ‘The once and future star, Patti Royce, did some real life research for her soon-to-be released…’”
“No,” Julie interrupted. “Absolutely not.”
“Because of Tony?”
“Mostly.”
“We don’t have to do a one-two on it, for God’s sake. How long are you going to sit on this thing? It’s ready to hatch now if you’ll get off the nest. Did you get the interview?”
“I got a lot.”
“So?”
“Tim, does a man named Ron Morielli have anything to do with the Tripod?”
“Sure. He owns it.” Then, slowly: “Oh? Romulus Films?”
“I think so,” Julie said. “He and his sister broke up my interview with Patti.”<
br />
“Is she an amazon-type blonde with Groucho Marx eyebrows?”
Julie nodded.
“I’ve seen her around.”
“Are they Mafia, Tim?”
He shrugged. “Ask your friend Romano.”
“Thanks.”
“I still say we got to break the story, Julie.”
“Did you find anything out about the production? Did you talk to the director? You said you knew him.”
“I just saw the picture a couple of hours ago.”
“Let’s hold out until tomorrow noon. Okay?”
“You want to talk it over with the cops, right?”
“Approximately right.”
Tim threw up his hands. “What do you care about Our Beat?”
Julie didn’t answer.
“What do you care about it, Julie?”
“Tim, let’s not quarrel. Are you hungry?”
“I’m always hungry.”
“I’ll make sandwiches. How about a beer?”
“Couldn’t you get hold of Lieutenant Marks while I’m still here?”
“Let me fix the sandwiches and I’ll try, but I know he’s off duty.”
Julie rummaged through the cans in the kitchen cabinet and came out with Alaskan crabmeat. Tim was allergic. They divided a can of sardines.
“Hey,” Tim said, looking around. It was his first time in the Hayes apartment. “I should have worn a tie.”
“Jeff does most of the time.”
“Even in bed?”
“You are not always humorous, Tim.” She was stalling, half dreading to call her service or to try to reach Marks. When the phone rang she was glad that Tim was with her.
“Miss Julie?” Only one person… “This is Romano.”
“Yes, Mr. Romano.” She looked at Tim, a skittering glance that caught him puffing out his cheeks at the name; she looked at her watch. It was ten past ten.
“Am I intruding? Forgive my calling you at home, but my man tried your office numbers without success. I presumed to worry.”
“I’m fine,” Julie said, as tense as a drawn bow. Why was he worried? If he was worried. They were not in touch that frequently.
“I don’t often see your newspaper, I admit, but I am informed that you are carrying on Mr. Alexander’s column. I should have thought you could do better. There, I am being presumptuous.”
“I appreciate your concern,” Julie said. Oh, Christ. Never before had he made small talk with her on the phone. Always to the point instantly and off.
“And there must be a certain hazard to that occupation. I very much doubt the police are telling all they know about Alexander’s death. In fact, normally intelligent reporters sound as though they have been computerized on gobbledygook…
“And your investigation of the Garden of Roses, how has that got on?”
“I’ve pretty much dropped it, Mr. Romano. Tony didn’t like what I turned in.”
“Really? The gentleman in occupancy would seem a likely subject. I admire his courage—or perhaps it’s faith—in undertaking his small war on narcotics.” Another Romano pipeline had been tapped. “Quixotes always interest me. I was hoping you might bring him to see me if the occasion presented itself.”
“It might happen,” Julie said, “when things get straightened out.” She didn’t believe it would, and neither did he, she felt. But she knew now he was not making small talk. She simply had not yet got the message.
“There is no hurry.”
Julie plunged. It was the only way to turn things around, to handle her own anxiety. “Mr. Romano, have you seen a motion picture called Celebration?”
Tim waved his fist over his head in approval.
Romano chuckled. “I have seen it. It was screened here for me, perhaps a week ago. If I had known you were interested I could have arranged your seeing it here.”
“I’ve seen it,” Julie said. If it had been screened for him he knew everything there was to know about it—a good deal more than she did. “I think it’s great.”
“I’m so glad to hear you say so. The question is how to exploit it, wouldn’t you say?”
“Is it pornography or is it art? That’s one question.”
“Art is never pornographic, Miss Julie.”
“Then why was I asked in the screening room whether I thought it should be X-rated?”
“Because that’s the way your inquisitor thinks,” he said and then resumed his tone of gentle persuasion. “If you find it great, as you say, we are speaking of art. I hope it will be accessible to the general public. Many will not understand it, but it will explain themselves to a good many people who are in despair over their own eccentricity.
Julie made a noise of tentative agreement. Was this the very way he had intended their conversation to go when he called? Was this text, or sub-text?
“Do you know the young man who wrote and directed it?”
Wrote and directed: from a story by David Clemens.
“No.”
“Then I must arrange a meeting: Eduardo Cardova. He deserves your attention. Very sensitive.”
“Eduardo Cardova,” Julie repeated for Tim’s benefit. Then another plunge: “I’m doing an interview with Patti Royce for the Sunday magazine if her manager lets it happen.”
“Is she articulate?”
“Oh, yes.”
“She must find it satisfying to talk to a woman of sympathy.”
“Someone who knew Tony.”
“I forbore asking whether you would mention that misalliance in your interview, given the unfortunate circumstances.”
There seemed to be nothing he did not know. Julie waited.
“It may interest you to know I was what they call the ‘swing’ investor in the project, Miss Julie: money that attracts money.”
“I see,” Julie said, shocked although she knew at once she ought not to be. But suddenly she had become aware of a situation that might account for Tony’s violent reaction to her Garden of Roses story. “To answer your question, Mr. Romano, if I don’t mention the relationship between Patti Royce and Tony Alexander, someone else will. It’s bound to come out.”
“In time, perhaps. But time, although you are too young to know it, is both arbiter and healer. You will do what you must do, I know, but let me suggest something to you. I know it’s presumptuous, given what you know of my filmic and photographic interests, but I beg you to consider: any sensational association among the principals will condemn the picture to the very fate you and I would save it from. I may be contradicting myself to say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder—it also being true of what is not beautiful—but if this picture is released in a flurry of scandal, it will have no audience except a numerous body of scandal mongers. You might also want to consider Alexander’s wife who has been both betrayed and bereaved, and further, if I am right in my interpretation of the gobbledygook, her daughter is under suspicion of the murder—surely more than a woman ought to bear.”
“I am aware, Mr. Romano.”
“I’m sure you are. Forgive me.”
“I am also aware,” Julie said, “that the story credit, David Clemens, is a pseudonym for Tony Alexander.”
There was a second of silence, then: “Thank you for telling me.”
“Didn’t you know it?”
“Oh, yes, I knew. I’m merely thanking you for being so frank with me. Until I have arranged with Cardova then.” He hung up.
“Tell me where the booze is and I’ll get you a drink,” Tim said.
Julie shook her head.
“Then I’ll get me one. You didn’t tell me the pseudonym bit.”
“Didn’t I?” she said, and let it go at that.
She went into Jeff’s study and taped her best recollection of Romano’s conversation, asking Tim to listen.
“You mean he really talks like that?” Tim said afterwards.
“I couldn’t make it up if I tried. What do you think he was saying?”
“I always thought
when people like him had something to say, boom, boom, and they’d said it.”
“There was a warning in there of some kind, no question. And he was very touchy about Patti, the scandal part. Do you suppose it could have to do with her stint at the Tripod?”
“How would he know about that?”
“Believe me, if she did it, he’d know about it.”
“It was you who brought up the subject of Celebration with him,” Tim reminded her.
“But he chuckled when I did.”
“So he chuckled. What does that mean?”
“That I got where he was going ahead of him. It was Celebration that he called about: I’m more and more sure of it.”
“Art is never pornography. He ought to know, right? The king of porn.”
“Oh, Tim,” Julie said, “I think I know. I’ll bet anything Patti Royce made a porn film at some time, the hard core variety.”
“And somebody’s going to exploit it if Celebration is a hit, so Romano’s trying to buy time to head them off. Or is he doing the exploiting?”
Julie laid her hand on his. “Slow down, Tim. I don’t think Romano would operate that way. I don’t think he fumbles, you see. As you said, boom, boom. But what about Tony? How would he have felt about it? There was something Patti said this afternoon—everybody connected with Celebration was great friends until they realized they might have a very good picture. Then they began quarrelling. Tony advised her to keep out of it.”
“Out of what?”
“The quarrels, but between whom? I wish I knew.” She gave Tim the proof of the Celebration ad to read while she picked up her calls from the service. Marks had left a number at which she could reach him all evening.
Tim said the only name familiar to him was Cardova. He moistened his lips and added, “Actually, Julie, I only know him through a friend of a friend. He wouldn’t remember me, that’s for sure.”
“Okay,” Julie said, annoyed at his sudden reluctance to seek out the young director. “I’ll try and get to Patti again.” She started to dial the number the detective had left for her.
“Marks?” Tim asked.
Lullaby of Murder (The Julie Hayes Mysteries, 3) Page 18
