The Fourth Wall

by Barbara Paul

  “I hope so,” Hugh said. “If only John …”

  “Yes.” I changed the subject and we chatted a few more minutes before I went out front to watch the performance.

  I no longer saw the play any more—it was too familiar, too often repeated even for me. All I saw now was the technique of the performance. And that technique had changed considerably from the last time I’d been to the theater. Leo Gunn had hit it right on the nose: the stage picture did seem out of balance in several places, and Vivian had transposed phrases and sometimes whole sentences in quite a few of her speeches. The scene she wanted me to rewrite was awkward, because Vivian worked at making it awkward.

  I went straight home after the first act because I didn’t trust myself to talk to Vivian right then. I was furious with the woman! She was too good an actress to have to stoop to this kind of spotlight grabbing. She was feeling her power, and she wanted to test it.

  It’s a drag for some actors, performing the same role night after night. The best ones can handle the repetition without becoming stale. But others need to add to their roles, to change things, to keep themselves interested even at the expense of the play. George M. Cohan had once had to call a special rehearsal “to remove the improvements.” I didn’t know whether Vivian’s meddling sprang from boredom or from her new-found star status. But the rest of the cast had been performing their roles even longer, and none of them was sabotaging the play.

  I felt like strangling her.

  6

  I practically had to force my way into Gene Ramsay’s office; he’d just returned from the West Coast and had a lot of work to catch up on. He was not exactly overjoyed to hear what was going on in Foxfire, but he took it with a lot more equanimity than I’d been able to muster.

  “It happens sometimes,” he said unhelpfully. “Even established stars go through these periods once in a while. Well, I’ll set her straight. If necessary, I’ll forbid her to speak to Cavanaugh off stage.”

  “That should make for good backstage relations,” I said dryly. “Besides, how could you enforce such a rule?”

  “I’ll simply remind her that the actress playing her role was replaced once before, and she can be replaced again. I’ve handled glory hogs before, Abby. Leave it to me.”

  “Gladly,” I said. “Leo Gunn thinks we need a director. And after watching the first act last night, I’m inclined to agree with him. Vivian can’t make the switch back just like that”—I snapped my fingers—“so a few extra rehearsals right now would be a help. To the whole cast.”

  Ramsay snorted. “That means Griselda Gold. You think a Griselda Gold can handle a Vivian Frank?”

  “She can if you’re there to back her up.”

  “Hell, Abby, I can’t take the time for brushup rehearsals now. I’ve got too many new projects going. You’ll have to do it.”

  “I’m leaving for San Francisco in a few days. And besides, you’re the one with the muscle, not me. Vivian’s even been after me to write a new scene for her.”

  “Sheesh.” Ramsay stopped to light a cigarette. “I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll go watch a performance—I’ll try to make it tonight. And if it’s as bad as you and Leo Gunn seem to think, I’ll call Griselda back.”

  “Good,” I sighed with relief. Then something occurred to me. “Why is Griselda staying with the tour company so long? They’re not in trouble, are they?”

  “I was wondering when you’d ask that,” Ramsay laughed. “No, they’re not in trouble. Griselda Gold is traveling with the company at her own expense. For personal reasons. She thinks she’s in love with Phil Carter.”

  Terrific. Young love on the road. “And what does Phil Carter think?”

  “Oh, he’s agreeable. Phil doesn’t object to having his own groupie, especially one who pays all her own bills. Of course, his wife isn’t going to be any too pleased when she finds out about it.”

  “Good Lord, she’s not traveling with the company too, is she?”

  “No, but she’s bound to hear about it sooner or later. Maybe bringing Griselda back now might be a good move—if she can tear herself away.”

  “She’ll come,” I said. “I’ve never seen Griselda in love, but she’s an ambitious young woman. She’ll come.”

  We left it at that.

  When I got home, I spent the next hour on the phone. My service had a message from Jay Berringer; he’d found an address for Loren Keith in Encino. Jay had added a reminder for me to mention him to Brian Simpson when I got to San Francisco. Yes, Jay, I got the message: I owed you one.

  I called Loren and said I wanted to come see him. It was an awkward conversation: Loren didn’t have anything to say and I didn’t know what to say. We settled on a time to meet and then I called TWA and made my flight arrangements. I decided to fly to Los Angeles and see Loren first. I timed the latter leg of my journey so I’d arrive in San Francisco the day of our first scheduled meeting and leave the evening of our last. I wanted to get in and out of that pastel little town as fast as possible.

  The police wanted to know whenever one of the Foxfire company left town, so next I had to call Lieutenant Goodlow and give him my itinerary. I asked if he had any leads to John Reddick’s whereabouts.

  “Not a trace of him,” he answered. “He didn’t seek medical aid for his thigh wound, so it couldn’t have been too bad. We’re fairly sure he’s not in New York, and there are a thousand ways out of the city. He could just have hid in the back seat of a car with a Jersey plate and got out that way. I know it’s hard not knowing, but this really is a case of no news is good news.”

  “You think he’s safe, then.”

  “Yes, I do. That’s a big country out there, lots of hiding places. All he has to do is keep a low profile until we catch this maniac and then he can come back.”

  “I can’t imagine John Reddick keeping a low profile.”

  “You can do anything if you’re scared enough,” the Lieutenant said shortly. “By the way, I’ve got some news for you. Manhattan Repertory’s business manager—Alfred Heath? Died in a traffic accident in Miami two years ago. So he’s out of it.”

  “Oh, poor man. I’m sorry. He wasn’t even forty yet and …” And he died too soon. “Lieutenant,” I said, “are you sure it was an accident?”

  “We’re looking into it. And into Preston Scott’s death.”

  “Preston died of a heart attack.”

  “We’re looking into it,” he repeated.

  I thanked him for the information and hung up. Had our unknown avenger struck twice before he started in on the Foxfire company? A traffic accident could be staged, but what about a heart attack? I was beginning to believe anything was possible.

  Suitcase packed, The New Play and a couple of paperbacks into an attaché case, and I was ready to go.

  I am not a good traveler. I hate the time it takes just to get to the airplane as well as the inconvenience of it. I hate the airplane itself, a plastic-lined cylinder packed with elbow-bumping strangers all determinedly pretending that air travel is the ne plus ultra of modern life. I hate the narrow seats, with the back of the seat in front of you practically in your lap. I suppose there are people who can spend hours on end staring out the window at the tops of clouds, but I’m not one of them. Remember Agatha Christie’s excitement at riding the Orient Express, watching Europe gradually yield to Asia? I had never known that excitement, and I felt cheated. We’re caught between the unrecoverable past and the uninventable future. Step into a booth on Seventh Avenue, dial Istanbul, and step out of another booth at the foot of the Bosporus Bridge. That’s the only way to travel.

  We were barely off the ground before I had my two paperbacks out. I read the first page of one and then slipped it into the seat pocket for some later passenger to find. I never seem to make it to page two of any novel in which the heroine finds it necessary to announce on the very first page that she doesn’t wear a bra. The other paperback was about codes and ciphers and was fun. I lost myself for a wh
ile in Gronsfeld tables and revolving grilles and Beaufort ciphers.

  Once when we were flying beneath the cloud cover I looked at the ground below and rather morbidly wondered if we were flying over a part of the country where John Reddick was hiding. How was he living? What was he doing for money? He hadn’t paid the rent on his apartment—afraid he might somehow be traced through the check? Most important: would he be able to keep away from theaters? John Reddick without a theater was like a bird without wings. Would he miss his chance to direct Tosca? I put these thoughts aside and resolutely turned to The New Play. I worked on a fourth version of one of the scenes until we came into Los Angeles International. In the hotel I put my body to bed with instructions to sleep away jet lag.

  The next day I rented a car. I was a little nervous at first; it had been nearly two years since I’d last driven. Like many New Yorkers, I kept my license up to date more for identification purposes than for any other reason. But before long I was gritting my teeth and taking chances like everyone else on the freeway. A map lay on the seat beside me for when I got to Encino.

  Encino was right where it was supposed to be, and I followed my map to Loren Keith’s address. On the way I passed a large building labeled Southern California Institute for the Blind; Loren’s house was only a few blocks away. The house was a California standard—a long, low ranch house indistinguishable from thousands of others. A station wagon stood in the driveway, and a woman was waiting in the doorway. Loren’s wife—what was her name? Deborah? Diane? Something with a D. She watched me get out of the car and walk toward the door.

  “Hello, Abby, how are you?” she said.

  “Fine, Dorothy,” I answered, the name coming to me at the last minute. We made small talk. Her pinched, white face made the effort to smile and be pleasant as she led me into the living room where Loren was seated at one end of a sofa.

  I was shocked by his appearance. He was thin, unwholesomely so. He looked like a brittle stick that would break the first time new pressure was applied. His eyes were masked by dark glasses, but I could see livid scar tissue on his nose and down one side of his face and on his neck. His cheeks were sunk and his mouth was a thin, tight line. If I hadn’t recognized his voice, I doubt if I would have known him.

  “Look terrible, don’t I, Abby?” he said. “You probably look great. Have a seat.”

  I stammered something and sat in a chair facing Loren. The air conditioning was humming and the drapes were drawn to keep out the sun. We were in a cave, dim and cool.

  Dorothy brought us all some coffee and drank hers standing up. “Abby, I can’t stay and talk,” she said. “I have a doctor’s appointment I can’t put off. I have to run.” With that she excused herself and I listened to the station wagon start up and back out of the driveway.

  “Turn on a lamp if it’s too dark for you,” Loren said.

  “No, it’s all right.” Then I blurted out, “You’re not getting enough to eat!”

  Loren made a sound that might have been a laugh. “Try having four operations in three months and see how much food you can keep down.”

  “Four …!”

  “Skin transplants. This face you see—that’s the improved version. Or so they tell me. I take their word for it. It feels a little smoother.” He touched his face with his fingers.

  This was even worse than I’d expected. I hadn’t fully understood the effect of carbolic acid on human flesh—and Loren had had it in his eyes as well. My God, how had he stood the pain?

  “Are you coming back to New York?” I asked him. “Or do you plan to stay here?”

  “Don’t know yet. There’s more surgery to come—we can’t make any plans until that’s all over. Besides, I’m still taking blind lessons at the Institute down the road. Tell me about Sylvia Markey.”

  I told him, briefly, not mentioning Sylvia was a prisoner in her own home. When I said that she still had her sight in one eye, Loren remarked how lucky she was. It wasn’t said bitterly. It was just a statement of fact: Sylvia was fortunate that she could still see.

  “Loren, have the police found anything about the man who did this to you?”

  “No, they gave up on it some time ago. They’ll never catch him now.”

  “Maybe they will.” I brought him up to date on what had been happening in New York, and reminded him of Michael Crown’s suicide, and pointed out that all the victims had been members of the Manhattan Repertory governing committee. “So the police think someone is out to avenge Michael Crown’s death. And I think they’re right. Some body blames us, and wants to punish us.”

  Loren was sitting on the edge of the sofa. “And John Reddick? You say he’s still hiding?”

  “We hope he’s hiding. He’s just disappeared—no one really knows what’s happened to him. Lieutenant Goodlow—he’s the police officer in charge—Goodlow’s convinced that John is safe and is just lying low for the time being.”

  “But the rest of you—you and Cavanaugh and … who else?”

  “Leo Gunn.”

  “You’re still in danger?”

  “It looks like it. Loren, our Avenging Angel may even have killed two other people besides Rosemary Odell. Preston Scott and Alfred Heath.”

  “Preston died of a heart attack. Who’s Alfred Heath?”

  “Our business manager—remember him?”

  “Oh, yes—the guy with the Charlie Chaplin waddle. He’s dead too?”

  “Traffic accident. But Lieutenant Goodlow’s looking into both deaths. I don’t know whether he’s officially reopened the investigations or what. I don’t know if he can get them reopened—neither death took place in New York.”

  Loren leaned back on the sofa and whistled through his teeth. “So what happened to me …”

  “Was part of a planned program of revenge. Goodlow is also convinced that our persecutor belongs to the Foxfire company, and there’s not many around who’ll argue with that. You were attacked on a Monday night, weren’t you? This man could have flown to Los Angeles Monday, tracked you down, and then caught the red-eye flight back to New York in time for a little rest before Tuesday night’s performance.”

  “You think he’s an actor?”

  “I think it’s a strong possibility. Two people have seen him—you and John Reddick. He was wearing a ski mask both times—but that’s not enough to disguise yourself from someone who knows you. The shape of the body, the way you walk—that would have to be disguised too.”

  “And that suggests an actor,” Loren agreed. “Yes, it’s not like holding up a liquor store where nobody knows you—a ski mask alone wouldn’t do the job. And I didn’t recognize the guy, Abby, not in the few seconds I saw him. But are you positive he’s part of the Foxfire company?”

  “Well, no, not positive.”

  “Couldn’t it be somebody who just knows his way around a theater? And who knows us personally?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Somebody to whom Michael Crown meant a lot. And I think I’ve got a candidate.”

  “Who? His family?”

  “Not his family. His lover.”

  Ah, so. “Who is she?” I asked.

  “He,” Loren corrected. “And I don’t know who he is.”

  That caught me by surprise. “I didn’t know Michael Crown was homosexual.”

  “Hardly anyone did. Crown was fanatically secret about it. He even married and fathered a couple of children to hide the fact that he was gay.”

  “But why? Nobody cares—not the way they used to. ‘Gay’ isn’t something to hide any more.”

  “Nobody cares any more,” said Loren, “but twenty, twenty-five years ago when Crown married, things were different. A lot of homosexuals married then simply because they didn’t dare come all the way out of the closet—and then proceeded to make themselves and their poor wives thoroughly miserable.”

  “But there have always been homosexuals in the theater,” I objected.

  “Ah, but Michael Crown wasn’t in the theater tw
enty-five years ago. He wrote a newspaper or magazine column or something like that. He’d only been writing for the theater six or seven years when he stole that play.”

  I thought back. “You’re right, I remember now. But what about his wife? Surely she knew.”

  “You’d think so,” said Loren. “I don’t know. I don’t know how much women sense about these things.”

  “Depends on the woman, I guess. Loren, how did you know about it?”

  “Purely by accident. I designed Thank You, Ma’am—remember that smarmy little play? It was one of Crown’s first efforts, and the tourists loved it—kept it running for almost two years. Well, during one of the rehearsals I was poking around backstage and I tripped over this guy. He was all bunched up into a ball, and he was crying. He was just a kid, nineteen or twenty—he had a small part in the play. I asked him what the matter was, and he told me Michael Crown had rejected him. At first I thought he meant professionally—I thought Crown had kicked him out of the play. But he made it clear he’d been rejected sexually.”

  “He told you? Just like that?”

  “Abby, it was embarrassing. It all just came spilling out—he would have told anyone who happened by at that particular moment. I felt sorry for the kid—he was so young and so miserable. He went on and on about how deeply in love he was with Crown, but Crown didn’t want to have anything to do with him. The kid said Crown had told him he’d been with the same lover for fifteen years and he wasn’t interested in any side action.”

  “And you believed this kid?”

  “Not entirely. I mentioned to Crown that the kid was pretty upset. Crown just brushed it aside and said he’d get over it, he was young. I urged him to talk to him, to try to cheer him up a little. Absolutely not, said Crown. His own lover was jealous and he wouldn’t understand. Then he realized what he’d given away and told me to stop butting in, and that’s the last word we ever exchanged on the subject.”

  “Well. Horse’s mouth.”

  “Yeah. This was, oh, eleven or twelve years ago, and Crown and his lover had already been together for fifteen. So whoever the lover is, he’s no spring chicken. Tell that police lieutenant of yours to look for a middle-aged fag.”