Lullaby of Murder

by Dorothy Salisbury Davis

Mrs. Conti turned and introduced Ron Morielli, her brother and Patti Royce’s business manager. He was already on his feet and lighting a cigar. “I’m sorry,” Mrs. Conti said, “I didn’t get your name.”

  “Julie Hayes. It’s a good picture, and I don’t see why, Mrs. Conti, it has to be X-rated.” She caught a reaction from Morielli that showed him to be less than pleased, and added, “Unless for some reason you want it released that way.” She assumed that the removal of some of the brother-sister footage would upgrade the rating to R, restricted.

  Morielli took the cigar from his mouth. “Are you a reviewer, Miss?”

  “I want to write a feature article on Patti Royce for the Sunday Magazine.”

  “So you want to meet the kid?”

  “I do.”

  “Let me introduce you before she comes out to take a bow,” Morielli said. “We got her meeting fans as fast as she makes them.”

  Julie, already propelled toward a door beneath the projection booth by Morielli’s hand at her elbow, called back that she was glad to have met Mrs. Conti.

  A publicity man was talking to the audience.

  Patti was sitting alone in a smallish room with easy chairs, a bar and a conference table. An ash blonde off screen, she sat, languid, a cola-colored drink in her hand, her attitude one of relaxed expectation. She wore a beige wool dress that showed a lot of cleavage.

  “Hi,” she said to Julie before the introductions. Throaty voice. A real, old-fashioned sex object.

  When Morielli said Julie’s name aloud it seemed to register with him that he had heard it before.

  Julie got her pitch in fast. “I’d like to do a story on you, Miss Royce, for the Sunday Magazine of the New York Daily. I enjoyed Celebration very much.”

  Patti looked from Julie to Morielli and back as though she wondered how they impressed one another.

  “It’s a good art film besides whatever else it is,” Julie added.

  “That’s nice,” Patti said, making two syllables of the word nice.

  “Explain to her what you mean,” Morielli said.

  “Ron, I know what she means. She means any jerk can understand it, only some understand more than others.” Then to Julie, “Sweetie, pull one of those chairs over close and tell me what you want to say about me in the Sunday paper.”

  “Not now,” Morielli said. “They’ll want you out front in a couple of minutes…. Ma’am, why don’t you send us a list of questions and take it from there?”

  Patti said, “Do me a favor, Ron? Go tell them I need a few more minutes to relax.” Her hand at the neckline of her dress, she gave it a scarcely noticeable tug that exposed another swatch of breast. If she were any more relaxed, Julie thought, her clothes would fall off.

  He went, but after a hesitation that made him look like a character in an Edward G. Robinson movie.

  “Maybe we could set a date and place,” Julie said, and pulled the nearest chair a little closer to the actress. “I don’t care for the idea of written questions.”

  “You worked for Tony, didn’t you?” Patti said in a soft drawl.

  “Yes.”

  “Is that why you want to interview me, because of Tony?”

  “That has something to do with it,” Julie admitted.

  “I didn’t bring him much luck, did I?”

  “Afraid not,” Julie said.

  Patti glanced toward the door. “You say where we should meet. Make it in the early evening and I’ll try and be there.”

  “You’re filming in the Ninth Avenue Studios, right?”

  “Almost every day.” She sighed. “Life is funny.” She sounded like every actress Julie had ever known on the verge of a first success: life is funny.

  “How about tomorrow if you can make it?” Julie took a card from her purse. “I have an office of sorts on Forty-fourth Street. I’ll pick you up in a cab at the studio entrance and we can get there in about five minutes.”

  Patti looked at the card and then gave it back. “You keep it. That’s not far from the Actors Forum, is it?”

  “Down the street.”

  “I adore the Actors Forum. I’d love to be a member some day.”

  “You will be,” Julie said. She was not about to say that she was herself a member. Not to the actress she had just seen in Celebration.

  “You’re sweet,” Patti said. “Pick me up at six at the side entrance on Fifty-eighth Street, and we won’t tell a soul. Okay?”

  “Okay,” Julie said, but it seemed a mighty strange condition to put on a newspaper interview.

  TWENTY-SIX

  “YOU’VE GOT TO GO see it, Tim,” Julie said over a beer at Downey’s. They had finally caught up with one another and just had time for the corned beef and cabbage special before Tim went to a preview of Alice the Wonder Child.

  “I’ll go,” Tim said. “Would you like me in on the interview?”

  “No.”

  “I’ll trade you Alice.”

  “Be serious, Tim. We don’t have much time.”

  “Don’t say that. It sounds like prophecy. Doomsday ahead.”

  Julie thought of Reggie Bauer from the Forum who was looking into Little Dorrit for her. She told Tim about him, suggesting that he might qualify if they ever needed a legman. “He’s a lot like you.”

  “Isn’t one of me enough?” Tim said. “I know one of you would do me just fine.”

  Julie reached across the table and gave his hand a squeeze. It was nice noise, nothing more. “Will you find out for me all you can about the producers and maybe even the distributor?”

  Tim had the Celebration hand-out in front of him. The only art work was a birthday cake: they were keeping Patti under wraps. But they couldn’t really, with her shooting daytime television. And her Tony Alexander connection: that was bound to break any minute. Julie wondered about having a photographer on hand for the interview.

  Tim’s mind was running in the same channel. “Shouldn’t we break this in the column, Julie? Or else give it to somebody downstairs. The boss-man won’t like it if he finds out we’re sitting on something as hot as this could be.”

  “The police are sitting on it too. I’m praying it holds that way till I get my interview.”

  “I hope it works,” Tim said doubtfully. He turned back to the Celebration hand-out. “The only name I know—the director, Ed Cardova. I’ve met him a couple of times. He’s one of those guys always about to do his big picture. Then somebody pulls out the money…Romulus Productions: wasn’t Romulus a wolf?”

  “Romulus and Remus, twin brothers who were nursed by a wolf. They founded Rome.”

  Tim handed back the literature. “Mafia money?”

  “Shame on you,” Julie said.

  “Why not? There’s art lovers among the Family—as you ought to know.”

  “Yeah.” Julie was herself thinking of Morielli who didn’t greatly take to the notion that the picture could escape the X-rating. As though that was where the money was. It wasn’t. So why would he think so? Illogical, Julie. She had already thought of asking Sweets Romano about him, and then, uncomfortable with the idea, let it slip out of mind. One of these days she was going to have to face up to her feelings about Romano. “How do you face up to an ambivalence?” she asked.

  “It’s easy if you’re two-faced.”

  “Thanks,” Julie said and changed the subject. “Who are you taking to the theater with you?” She knew he had two seats.

  “Would you have gone?”

  “Yes.”

  “I wish I’d known. I’m taking her namesake. Who else, for God’s sake. Our own Alice.”

  “You’re a good boy,” Julie said.

  She walked back to the shop from Downey’s, watching, for a little part of the way, Tim lope ahead of her. It was curtain time. She got an eerie feeling approaching the shop after dark, standing out in the open to insert keys into two separate locks. Nobody who knew its contents would try to burglarize the shop, but it had been broken into once and she had learned ca
ution from that and other people’s experiences. She did not enter until there were passersby, then she lit the lights and looked beyond the curtain into the back room before closing the outside door. But the precautions set her nerves on edge, and the rooms were cold and damp. She touched her hand to the radiator. Stone cold dead. By Halloween maybe, or Thanksgiving there’d be heat. After which the place would always be too damned hot.

  From upstairs came a barrage of tiny footfalls and the screech of maternal wrath: bedtime for Juanita and her cousins. She found herself wondering what Mrs. Rodriguez would think of Patti Royce if she was at her window looking out when Julie brought the young actress here. There was nothing whorish about Patti, but what was that associate quality? No question it had to do with sex. She was also disarming. She kept thinking of the droop to Patti’s wrist as she played her fingers inside the neckline of her dress. Was it instinctual or a calculated gesture? Come on, Julie: it was an instinct, the effects of which were calculable. Ron Morielli had been both provoked and appeased. Question. Who was Ron Morielli—besides being Patti’s manager?

  She jumped when the phone rang, a shattering noise in the quiet, sparsely furnished room.

  “Julie, I’m in trouble. It’s Eleanor. The police want to see me. They’re sending a car.”

  She had quite forgotten that Eleanor had asked her to find a lawyer for her in case she needed one. “Now?” She asked.

  “Yes. I don’t know what mother’s told them. She won’t talk to me about it.”

  “Don’t say anything until I’ve put you in touch with a lawyer. You have that right.”

  “Julie, I don’t want a lawyer. I just want you to be there.”

  “I’m not equipped to advise you, Eleanor.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “Is Fran home?”

  “No.”

  “Don’t leave the house till I get there. Understand? Make them wait.”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  THE UNMARKED CAR STOOD in front of the building. In the lobby Eleanor was waiting with her Saturday guards, Detectives Lawler and Ferretti.

  “A family reunion,” Julie said by way of greeting, and to Eleanor, “I thought we might get to talk for a few minutes here.”

  “It’s all right,” Eleanor said. “Inspector Fitzgerald agrees that you can advise me.”

  “I’ll bet he agrees,” Julie cried. “How does he know whether I can advise you or not? You won’t even take the best advice I’ve got, which is to get a lawyer.”

  “Please, Madam,” the doorman said. People were entering the building.

  “Julie, I’m only going to tell the truth,” the girl said with an air of reproach.

  As it turned out, Julie and Eleanor had time alone together in the interrogation room of the local precinct house. It was a small, bare room with a table and four chairs, an air vent, no windows, chalk-white walls. A video tape machine stood in one corner. The ceiling lights were inset and could be raised, no doubt, to high intensity.

  “What a place for a graffiti artist,” Julie said, talking to break her own tension. Some advisor.

  “Please don’t worry about me,” Eleanor said. “I’ll tell the truth and try to make them understand.”

  “Stop saying that. Why didn’t you tell it in the first place?”

  “Because I didn’t think anybody would believe me.”

  “And what’s different now?”

  “Something mother didn’t tell anybody before. She thought I’d taken her revolver all right, but what she was afraid of was that I’d gone homicidal. I guess suicidal would have been all right. Anyway, she called the office and spoke to Tony and told him I might be on my way there. And I was. But I never got there. He was waiting for me, but I never got there.”

  “He was waiting for you?” Julie repeated.

  “Mother says he was waiting for me. They talked on the phone.”

  “You did not kill him,” Julie said.

  “No. It was all make believe. I think. But she was right in the first place: I did take her gun.”

  “Eleanor, I can’t advise you.”

  “Don’t then. Just stay with me.”

  “TELL US in your own words, Miss Alexander,” Marks said.

  They sat at the table as though paired for bridge, Marks opposite Julie, the inspector leaning back, his arms folded, his eyes blue ice, opposite Eleanor. The video tape ran throughout.

  “I hated him first because my mother loved him more than she did me. But most of all, for the way he treated me when I was a child. I thought this was a way I could get even. If you don’t believe there was someone in the office with him when he called home, then it’s hard to understand.”

  “I think we can agree there was someone there at the time, don’t you, inspector?” Marks said.

  Fitzgerald grunted assent.

  “I imagined him there with this girl while he was asking me to tell Fran he needed another hour before he could get away…” She turned to Julie. “It doesn’t sound convincing now, but I was sure.”

  “Tell us what you did,” the inspector said. “Never mind the whys and wherefores of it for now, little lady.”

  “I left a note for my mother that I was going to a movie. On the way to the shop I fed a cat outside the apartment building and then two of them in front of the shop. It was in order to feed the cats that I went to the shop at all. Or that’s what I thought of first, but on the way I thought about mother’s revolver, and I had the keys to the shop and the alarm wasn’t on.” Eleanor stopped and frowned as though trying to clarify something. “I didn’t even know if there were any bullets in it. You see, there’s something I’m not really sure of: when was it that I thought of killing Tony…”

  Oh, Christ, Julie thought: why mention it at all?

  “…At first, all I wanted to do was break in on them, catch them right in the middle of—whatever they were doing. That would be true revenge.”

  Julie stopped her for the moment, putting her hand on the girl’s arm. “Inspector, Eleanor has always believed that her step-father deliberately exposed her to a child molester when she was eleven years old.”

  There was no change of expression on the inspector’s face as his eyes shifted to Julie and then back again to Eleanor. The information, as she had just put it, did Eleanor little, if any, good.

  “I know it,” Eleanor said. “It isn’t that I have always believed. I have known.”

  “So you took the handgun,” Marks prompted softly.

  “It made me feel—strong. Just to have it in my purse, to feel the outline of it in my lap. I took a cab to Forty-second Street and Lexington. It was when I got out in the rain and somebody tried to pick me up outside the hotel near Tony’s building that I became quite violent in my mind. I thought I’d been taken for a prostitute, you see, and that whole feeling came over me of guilt and revulsion and hatred, and I blamed Tony for it. I was sure I could kill him. And I wanted to. Oh, yes. He was with this woman, a young woman…”

  “Who?” Marks interrupted.

  “I don’t know who,” Eleanor said, furious at being interrupted. The vein was up in her forehead and both detectives noticed it.

  “Go on,” Fitzgerald said.

  “I stood there wondering if I could get in the building, or if a guard would take me for a prostitute and stop me. I know about Security. And I know how big the building is, though I’ve never been in it at night. I walked all the way around it. I even tried the door, I guess it’s on the south side, which is locked at night. I’m telling you all this although it doesn’t mean anything. When I got back to where I’d started, I went into the hotel and phoned to make sure he was still there. The man in the next booth, I could see his watch where he was resting his arm on the partition: It was ten o’clock.”

  She herself might easily have met Eleanor outside the building, Julie thought, but it would not have mattered, for not having yet met, they would not have recognized one another.

  “When Tony answered the phon
e,” Eleanor continued, “I didn’t make a sound. I had my finger in one ear: I kept listening for the other voice, but all I could hear was breathing and then he hung up. I was so tense by then I spilled my change all over the shelf, and then I dropped my pocketbook and it had the gun in it. When someone tried to pick it up for me I grabbed it from him and ran.”

  Marks and Fitzgerald exchanged glances. Julie guessed that the witness in the next phone stall had come forth, remembering the girl’s behavior when he learned of the homicide. He would have put Eleanor near the scene so close to the time of Tony’s death that the police had to consider her a prime suspect.

  “I don’t remember much about the next hour. I thought a lot about committing suicide. I must have run or walked all the way. I know I passed the movie house where Stevie is playing and felt saved. I must have unlocked the padlock on the grille and the shop door and I put the revolver in the drawer and then, like it happens in a dream, I was in the theater and I was terribly glad I got there before Stevie’s aunt was old and going to die. When the movie was over and I got home and mother wasn’t there everything about the whole night seemed even more like a dream, but the lids from two cans of Nine Lives were there and I couldn’t find the note I’d written mother. When the police came and I discovered what had happened to Tony, I was afraid to tell the truth. I didn’t even know the truth.”

  “Have you told it now?” Marks asked.

  “It is much ado about nothing, isn’t it?”

  “A man is dead and that isn’t nothing,” the inspector said. “You’ve a good deal to explain yet, little lady. No, indeed: We are not talking about nothing. You can’t just say, ‘like it happens in a dream.’ That won’t do, as experienced counsel will tell you. How do you know—admitting yourself to have been in a troubled state of mind—that you didn’t actually gain access to the building, which is by no means security-tight—and let me say to you now from a long experience of the streets of New York, any man who took you for a prostitute would never have seen one—but how do you know you didn’t take the elevator to… what floor was your step-father’s office on?”

  “You don’t need to answer that,” Julie said.