When he had finished polishing it he phoned Lacy.
“Young Mr. Berger,” his editor said brightly. “I wondered when I’d hear from you.”
“I’m responsible for his death, Lacy.”
“What are you talking about? The first set of wire stories are labeling it ‘an apparent suicide.’ ”
“I could have prevented it. I gave him some advice. Bad advice. And now he’s dead. He was the best damned actor of his generation and he’s dead. He deserves a critical tribute in tomorrow’s paper, Lacy. His career was so much more than tabloid tiffs and that stupid Dark Star. His real story needs to be told. I need to tell it. What do you think, am I being too self-indulgent?”
“What I think, darling boy, is that you’re the only arts critic I’ve ever worked with who actually wonders whether someone would be interested in what he has to say. Don’t you realize that there are one million avid readers who can’t wait to read your final take on Tito? They will gobble up every single word. Go for it, Mitch, do you hear me? Give me something.”
“On its way,” he announced, e-mailing her the file.
Then Mitch went off in search of his relief.
He found it exactly where he had found it ever since he was a small boy. Most of the favorite childhood haunts were long gone now-the New Yorker, the Regency, the Little Carnegie, the Bleeker Street Cinema. Skyrocketing rents and the advent of video rentals had driven them out of business. Fans could watch the old movies in their own homes now. And that was well and good. But for Mitch, the movie up on the screen was only one aspect of his viewing experience. He loved being inside of the theater itself. The world made sense to Mitch when he was in a movie theater after the lights went down. It wasn’t merely his refuge from the painful disorder of the outside world. It was his natural habitat.
In the darkness of a movie theater, Mitch Berger came alive.
A precious few sanctuaries still remained scattered here and there across the five boroughs, if you knew where to go. And on this steamy July afternoon Mitch knew exactly where to go-to a matinee double bill of The Deadly Mantis and Them! at the Film Forum on Houston Street.
He was practically alone there in the blessed darkness. No one sat within ten rows of him as he sank into a seat, loaded down with sandwiches, pickles, potato salad, cookies, candy, and soda. He unwrapped a sandwich and got busy chomping on it, sore jaw or not, as Craig Stevens got busy examining those very curious tread marks in the snow outside the demolished arctic lookout station. And so, as The Deadly Mantis played out on the screen, Mitch found his solace.
Until suddenly someone tall and slim slid into the seat next to him and whispered, “Is that corned beef I smell?”
“No, it’s pastrami,” he whispered back, stunned. “What are you doing here?”
“Looking for you, doughboy,” Des replied. “What did you think?”
“But how did you know where to find me?”
“I know you, that’s how. Besides, this isn’t my first stop. I’ve already been to the American Museum of the Moving Image out in Astoria-”
“Naw, I wasn’t in a Bergman mood. Want a half sandwich?”
“Uh-uh. Then I stopped at the Thalia, where they were running a Laurence Olivier retrospective.”
“Yech, he was a poseur. How about a piece of pickle?”
“Damn, there sure are a lot of white men in this city who look like you and go to films by themselves in the middle of the day. And here I’d thought you were unique. What are we watching? Look out, that’s one gigantic bug!”
“It’s a praying mantis,” Mitch whispered excitedly, as the two of them sat there with their heads together. “This is actually a classic cautionary tale about the effects of nuclear radiation on nature. They’re saying that we shouldn’t mess around with powers we don’t understand, because really bad things can happen. We have to be humble. Can’t think that we know everything.”
She glanced at him curiously. “Are we still talking about this movie?”
“Well, yeah,” he replied, frowning. “Hey, want a Mallomar?”
She leaned over now and kissed him with an urgency that surprised Mitch. “You scared me, baby.”
“I’m sorry, Des. I didn’t mean to. I just had to get away.”
“I know that,” she whispered, squeezing his hand. “My ride’s double-parked out front. I need for you to come back out into the world, okay? I have some important things to tell you.”
“Are we going to come back in and watch the rest of the movie?”
“No, we’re not.”
He gathered up his food and followed her up the aisle and out into the hot sun, blinking at the bright light and colors. Horns honked. Tires screeched. People shouted. People rushed. The world was never a more vivid place than it was in that first moment after emerging from a movie theater into daylight.
The interior of her cruiser was already hot and stuffy. Des turned on the engine and cranked up the air conditioning to high. Now that he was able to get a good look at her Mitch realized that the love of his life looked exceedingly frazzled and upset.
It was me. She was worried about me.
“We won’t get toxicology results for several days, so we have no idea how stoned Tito was or wasn’t,” she informed him, sitting there with her hands on the wheel, shoulders squared inside her uniform. “But the medical examiner’s autopsy has turned up some indications that are not entirely consistent with suicide as the cause of death.”
“What indications, Des?” Already, he could feel his heart beginning to race.
She turned her steady, green-eyed gaze on him, and said, “They found moss and lichen under Tito’s fingernails, which were severely torn. And the tips of his sandals were scuffed. A crime scene tekkie went back with a long-range lens to check out the side of the cliff, and the moss that’s growing six feet or so from the top has definitely been disturbed. All of which indicates that the man was hanging there, scrabbling and kicking, before he went over.”
Mitch gulped. “He was murdered, is that it? Somebody pushed him.”
“Slow down, cowboy,” Des cautioned him. “Nothing is obvious yet. If you want to spin it that he jumped, there’s still a perfectly plausible explanation.”
“Which is?…”
“That the man changed his mind at the very last second. Tried to save him himself, failed, and over he went. Which would also explain the position of his body when he landed.”
“Oh.”
“Except for one other interesting piece of information our canvassing turned up,” Des continued. “A lady who lives in one of those farmhouses on the Devil’s Hopyard Road says she heard a car sideswipe the guardrail near her house sometime around one in the morning. It’s a harsh, god-awful noise. She knows it well. She claims the car was heading in the direction of the falls. This would correspond with the fresh scrapes we found on Tito’s Jeep, okay? Now here comes the interesting part-she couldn’t get back to sleep. Was still up at about two-thirty, heating up some milk in her kitchen, when she heard another car speed by. Only this car was heading backdown to Dorset from the falls. It’s a dead-end road, Mitch. That means somebody else was up there when Tito died.”
“His killer,” Mitch declared.
“Or a material witness, at the very least. Not that we’ve found any physical evidence to support it. The rain washed all of the shoe prints away. The only fingerprints on the schnapps bottle were Tito’s. The only tire tracks in the ditch belonged to his Jeep. Of course, somebody could have just left their car in the middle of the damned road at that time of night.” Des paused now, her face tightening. “There’s one other ingredient we have to stir into the mix… Esme Crockett’s fat lip.”
“You think Tito hit her, don’t you?”
“Somebody sure did.”
“How did she explain it?”
“She hasn’t. She’s in seclusion. Too distraught to talk, according to her big-time New York doctor. Her big-time New York lawyer says he’ll m
ake her available for questioning tomorrow. In the meantime, I need for you to come back to Dorset with me.”
“What for, I’ve already told them everything that I…” Mitch trailed off, swallowing. “Wait, they don’t think I killed him, do they?”
“Rico doesn’t know what to think. At this point, he just wants to learn whatever he can.”
“Is that new sergeant of his any good?”
“Boom Boom? She’s got her some game.”
“Why do they call her Boom Boom?”
“You trying to tell me you didn’t notice?”
“Seriously, Des, am I a suspect?”
“You’re a material witness. The last person who had contact with him.”
“Other than his killer, you mean.”
“Assuming that’s how it plays out,” she countered. “Real life, the autopsy report supports either suicide or homicide. Let’s say it’s suicide… He left no note, which doesn’t fit the pattern. But he did call someone-you. He didn’t plan it out very carefully, putting his business affairs in order and so forth. Again, that doesn’t fit the pattern. But, hey, he was an actor, not a notary public. Okay, now let’s turn it around, say somebody killed him… Where’s the stanky?”
Mitch frowned at her. “The stanky?”
“I’m thinking of a murder I worked a couple of years back. A housewife up in Newington. It played suicide right on down the line-except we had us a husband who’d removed five thousand from a joint account the day before his wife died. He had a girlfriend. He had three different post office boxes in his own name. He just plain stank of it, understand?”
“Yes, I do.”
“You said Tito told you he was into something that he wanted to get out of, right?”
“You are.”
“Could he have been talking about something romantic?”
Mitch considered this. “He sure could have. Of course, Des! He was meeting someone up there for a tryst. He wanted to break it off, and she didn’t, and so she killed him. Wait a minute-he made some vague reference to Chrissie Huberman last night. I jotted it down when I was making notes this morning. I remember him saying, ‘None of it’s real. I’m not real. Esme’s not real. Esme and me, Chrissie and me… ’ And I said, ‘What about Chrissie and you?’ And he quickly changed the subject. I assumed he was talking about Chrissie’s influence on his career. But maybe the two of them were involved. That would certainly explain why Martine hates her so much. Although why on earth he’d get mixed up with Chrissie when he’s got Esme Crockett-”
“Don’t try to understand other people’s love lives. You’ll get nowhere.”
“Well, if this does turn into a murder investigation I just hope the tabloids don’t come after me. We did have that brawl at The Works and I could be construed as a-” Mitch broke off, gazing miserably across the seat at her. “They can do that, can’t they? They can actually turn me into the prime suspect.”
“Baby, they’ve got a license to do anything they damned please.”
“But Tito called me from the falls,” Mitch pointed out. “His cell phone record will show exactly what time that was. How could I have killed him if I was talking to him on my phone moments before he died?”
“Okay, there are a couple of holes in that,” Des answered. “The time of death is never that precise. Twenty, thirty minutes either way is well within the margin of error. You could have had that phone conversation, then driven up there and pushed him.”
Mitch sat there massaging his tender jaw, not liking this. “What’s the second hole? You said there were two.”
“There’s no proof it was you who he spoke to. Someone else could have answered your phone while you were on your way up to the falls to kill him. Anyone who was in your house at the time.”
“You’re right. God, I am a suspect, aren’t I?”
“Boyfriend, if I didn’t love you I’d be taking a cold hard look at you. You have motive, opportunity, and no alibi. Unless, that is, do you have an alibi?”
“What kind?”
“Was someone else with you at the time of his death?” she asked tonelessly.
“How can you ask me something like that? You know I was alone.”
“I know only what you tell me.”
“Okay, I’m telling you I was alone.”
“Okay, fine,” she said shortly.
Mitch gazed out the window at the sidewalk. Two smartly dressed young professional women walked by together. Both were talking on cell phones, though presumably not to each other. “Des, do I need to hire a lawyer?”
“You’re a material witness, not a suspect. But I do have to bring you back, understand?”
“I understand.”
“Good, then let’s ride. We split now, we can still beat the rush hourtraffic.” Des put the cruiser in gear and eased it along Houston Street, heading west toward Varick. “Will this get me to the West Side Highway?”
“Can’t we go back in the morning?”
“Why would we want to do that?”
“Because we never spend any time here together. I want to eat spinach fettuccine with you at the Port Alba Cafe.”
“Yum, sounds totally off the hook,” she responded as they came to a dead stop at Varick. The intersection was gridlocked-trucks, vans, horns. “But now isn’t the right time.”
“It’s never the right time,” Mitch grumbled, because there was something else going on here. She considered his apartment Maisie’s turf. She would not stay over. She would not keep any clothes there. “I left my computer and stuff at my place.”
“So we’ll stop on the way,” she said easily.
“Des, we should stay over tonight. This is something you need to do.”
“We are never going to move,” she said distractedly as the signal went from red to green to red, the gridlock failing to budge. “Okay, why do I need to do this?”
“Because you’re lost, that’s why.”
She drew back, scowling at him. “Is this about those damned trees?”
“You can’t find your way, and it’s making you crazy. Making you a big nonfat pain to be around, too, I have to point out. Because I can’t lie to you.”
“Maybe sometimes you should,” she said menacingly.
“If I did then you wouldn’t believe me when I said no one else was at my place last night, would you?”
“Well, no.”
“And you are sure, aren’t you?”
“Well, yes.”
“Then believe me when I tell you this-you need New York.”
Des let out an impatient sigh, drumming the steering wheel with her long, slender fingers. “Mitch, I live in the country. That’s wherethe damned trees are, remember? This is the city, nothing but pavement and broken glass and, God, I hate this traffic.”
“That’s why you don’t appreciate it. You have to put away your car keys. New York is for walking and looking and listening. You’re bombarded by more of everything when you’re here-more beauty, more ugliness, more excitement, more jeopardy. That makes you more alive. And that sharpens your senses. Des, this will work for you. I’m sure of it. Have I ever steered you wrong?”
“Totally. You promised me that Written on the Wind was a good movie.”
“It’s a camp classic. The apex of Douglas Sirk’s career. You just have no appreciation for kitsch, that’s all.”
“I consider this an asset, not a liability.”
“Besides, Dorothy Malone won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress.”
“Which one was she?”
“The blond nymphomanic. Interestingly enough, she went on to play Constance Mackenzie in the TV version of Peyton Place.”
“Wow, what goes around comes around. Your brain is like a continuous loop, you know that?”
They finally cleared the intersection and she went barreling west toward Hudson, honking at a bike messenger who strayed into her path.
“There’s something else I should warn you about,” he added. “Sex is better i
n the city.”
“If it gets any better I’ll have to be sedated,” she said, flashing a quick smile at him. “I can tell you’re starting to cheer up-you’re getting your mojo back.”
“I have mojo?” Mitch asked, brightening.
“Oh, most definitely.” At Hudson she took a hard right and floored it, heading uptown toward his apartment. “Look, when this Tito business gets cleared up, and I get me a day off, maybe we’ll give it a try. If we can go dancing, that is.”
“Dancing?” he repeated, frowning at her. “In public?”
“I’m saying it.”
“No, no. I don’t do that.”
“What do you mean, you don’t do that?”
“Have you ever seen me engaged in the physical act of dancing?”
“Now that you mention it, no.”
“It’s not a pretty sight, Des. I have a spongy bottom, poor flexibility, no actual moves to speak of. Trust me, you don’t ever want to see me dance.”
“Got to dance, doughboy.”
“What, this is a package deal?” he demanded, wondering just exactly how this whole situation had gone so horribly wrong so fast.
“Package deal.”
“You don’t play fair.”
“I don’t have to, I’m a girl. And you’re my boy. And I want to see you out on that dance floor, shaking what your mama gave you.”
“Fine, if that’s what it takes to get you here, I’ll do it. Because nothing, but nothing, is more important to me than your art. Not even my own personal dignity.” Mitch paused, squaring his jaw at her grimly. “I just hope that you realize the sheer, unmitigated horror of what you’re letting yourself in for.”
CHAPTER 8
Ethel Merman very nearly bounced Des right out of her bed.
This was all about Bella and her digitally damned remastered cast album of Annie Get Your Gun. As far as Des was concerned, waking up to Ethel Merman singing “I Got the Sun in the Morning” was like coming to at the epicenter of an earthquake that registered 5.1 on the Richter scale.
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