It Happens in the Dark - M11

by Caroll O'Connell

  The doorknob turned, and Mallory walked in, allowing Charles another opportunity to watch her interact with the little man beside him on the floor.

  Bugsy gave her a tail-wagging smile. “I got some beer left.”

  “No thanks,” said the detective. “Charles and I have to leave. But I brought you some dessert.” She opened a napkin to show him a large brownie. “You said you loved them.”

  How kind—how oddly considerate.

  She hunkered down beside the gopher, affording Charles a closer inspection of the brownie, and he noticed a pattern of holes in the crust, perhaps a baker’s signature design. Very neat holes. Perfect symmetry . . . perfectly Mallory. He stared at her. Oh, you wouldn’t!

  Bugsy pointed to the pizza carton. “I’m kind of full right now.”

  “That’s too bad.” Mallory feigned deep disappointment.

  Charles knew she was faking it.

  “I made this brownie myself,” she said.

  In a pig’s eye. Oh, no!

  And before Charles could say, Don’t do it! Bugsy had crammed the whole thing into his mouth.

  • • •

  Mallory turned the car south toward SoHo, admitting to “just a few ground-up pills to help him sleep,” as if she drugged people’s brownies every day. “I need him to stay put for a while.”

  Either her driving had improved, or she did not want to distract him.

  Buckled in on the passenger side, Charles quickly finished reading the transcript for a sanity hearing, though that was a bit of a misnomer. It was more like a tutorial on a Supreme Court decision. On to the second document, he flipped through the pages of an old psychiatric evaluation of Alan Rains. This had not been court-ordered but paid for by family. “This is privileged information. You can’t—”

  “We got the report from his mother,” said Mallory. “It’s fair game.”

  Could he believe that? She lied with such ease.

  Going on groundless faith, chomping the brownie as it were, he read the evaluation nearly as fast as he could turn the pages. It took less time to consider the findings. “I agree with Bugsy’s psychiatrist. Profound depression. It’s all here—every sign. It’s a pity the hospital stay was cut short by Crippen’s lawyer. Even grief counseling would’ve been better than nothing. Based on current behavior—” Oh, there was that word again, the one she so disliked. “I’d say he’s role-playing. Though it’s an extreme case—and more complex than delusion. Bugsy works at it to the point of exhaustion. That’s why he shut down when you challenged the false persona. I wouldn’t try that again if I were you.”

  “So he’s crazy, right?”

  Succinctly put.

  “Yes, he’s ill. Has been for a long time. Mrs. Rains comes into town once a week to see his subway performance. She says he still recognizes her. I’d expect facial recognition. That fits. But I doubt that he calls her Mother.”

  “No, he wouldn’t,” said Mallory. “Bugsy’s mom died in childbirth.”

  “His fictional mom. He won’t tell me about the first time he rode a bike, kissed a girl, any schools he attended as a child. He’ll only relate what Bugsy knows. So every day, all day long, he exhausts himself, constricting his whole life to the confines of a character on the pages of an old play.” Because Charles knew that Mallory loved brevity—hated it when he took the long way round—he cast about for summary lines that were not clinical. “Alan Rains was grieving. Profoundly depressed. Unbearable pain. Years of it before he made a conscious choice of hells. He picked the one where he had no wife . . . she never died.” Charles glanced at the other document, the one that spoke mostly to law, the one that said, with greater authority, Bugsy’s fate was fixed in stone.

  “Years?” Mallory pulled over to the curb at a bus stop, her favored parking space, and she switched off the engine. “No, he was already Bugsy when Crippen’s lawyer got him released from the hospital. That was only months after his wife died.”

  “That’s not what his mother said.” Charles held up the documents. “And there’s no mention of Bugsy in either one of—” Oh, wait! Context was everything. “You seriously thought that Alan Rains became Bugsy overnight? Is that what Leonard Crippen led you to believe?”

  “He flat out lied about it.”

  “Then maybe we should also look at the critic’s pathology. I know the Bugsy persona didn’t exist when Alan Rains left the hospital. That’s when Crippen brought him back to New York and got him the first gopher job. Menial work was probably all that Alan could handle. Depression is crippling. It would’ve been hard to hold down any job. So the critic must’ve used his influence to keep Alan employed . . . and that was the beginning of a very unhealthy dependency.”

  “But Crippen was his biggest fan.”

  “Hardly. Mrs. Rains showed me all the reviews of her son’s Broadway debut. Crippen’s was the standout, the only one that didn’t shout the actor’s praises. He acknowledged Alan’s talent, but the whole column was peppered with sniper shots—some of them rather cruel.”

  “Not a fan,” said Mallory. “Another lie.” Her hands curled around the rim of the steering wheel in a tight squeeze. “So Alan Rains was working as a gopher—just like the character he played on Broadway.”

  “Years go by,” said Charles. “And over all that time, a mentally ill man, a gifted actor, reclaimed his old stage role—with the encouragement of Leonard Crippen. Didn’t you wonder why the critic had Bugsy visit him to pitch those plays?”

  “We already caught him in that one.” She banged the wheel with one closed fist. “He told us it was his only chance to see Bugsy act. But he could’ve seen a performance any night of the week in the subway.”

  “Bugsy was Crippen’s masterpiece,” said Charles. “That monster could never get enough of him.”

  • • •

  The gopher yawned as he laid out tattered pages long ago ripped from the binding of a play. He never carried more than one scene into the subway, and he would need only one beggar to read the other part for this one. Cold reads were never very good, but, in his experience, drunks and stoned junkies did not improve with rehearsals.

  What now? All his work was done.

  Bugsy looked down at his wristwatch, which had been frozen at four o’clock for the past three years. It was early yet, and he had no fear of being late for tonight’s performance. Well, now he had nothing to do but wait.

  He could not stop yawning.

  A nap might be a good idea.

  He smoothed out his bedroll, fluffed the pillow and slid the girl’s photograph underneath it. She had no face. That part of the picture had been kissed away, though Bugsy had no memory of doing this. And no memories of her. She was Alan’s girl.

  The gopher laid his body down and went to sleep—and dreamed he was a man.

  ROLLO: Begging has no effect on them. My grandmother tried to trade her life for chocolate-chip cookies. She baked them at two in the morning. I’m sure they were delicious. She died anyway.

  —The Brass Bed, Act III

  They made an odd pair.

  CSI Clara Loman wore winter boots to match her clothes. She was head-to-toe gray, so drab alongside Detective Sanger, who loved all things flash—loud-colored shirts, louder ties and the sparkle of his diamond pinky ring. They stood together at the cork wall, pinning up their notes and talking chili. They had not yet found the restaurant for Dickie Wyatt’s last meal.

  Sanger laid out the crux of the problem for Riker and his partner. “Wyatt loved chili. The guy was on a quest for perfection from Harlem to Battery Park. If chili’s on the menu, he’s been there. I heard that from a waiter in Times Square. But there’s only a few places near the theater that remember the guy as a regular.”

  “And nobody remembers seeing the actress,” said Clara Loman.

  “Pretty girls like that get noticed,” said Riker. “The Alma connection might be a dead end.” And they had their boss to thank for that chunk of wasted time. So he picked his next words care
fully to keep peace in the house. “Alma’s got the drug connection—but why poison Wyatt after he quit the play? He’s not buggin’ her anymore. So what’s the point? Where’s her—”

  “We could have two killers,” said Loman. “That would solve the problem of no common motive for both murders. If the perps worked together—”

  “Strangers on a Train?” That was one really fine old Hitchcock flick, and the plot worked for two murders in a swap of kills. But it would only work in the movies. Yet Riker pretended to give this some consideration before he said, “Naw. Too much of a stretch.”

  And apparently, that had not been diplomatic enough.

  Clara Loman had pinned up her last sheet, and now she turned on him. Before the CSI could get in his face, Mallory, everyone’s last choice for diplomacy, said, “Collusion works for me. But, right now, we need leverage on the stagehands. Alma wasn’t their only customer.”

  “A possession charge won’t scare ’em,” said Sanger. “Let’s see where they go tonight. We might get lucky.”

  • • •

  “Good night, Nan Cooper, old girl.” The balding red hag wig and cut-rate dress were tossed on the bed, and Nanette Darby, a woman of means, sat down at the vanity table, wearing her own black hair and clothing selected from the bedroom closet. She had chosen a cashmere blazer and designer jeans like Mallory’s. The last item of the young cop’s wardrobe had been purchased this afternoon, the very same brand of black running shoes—with a shocking price tag.

  The former film star faced the oval mirror ringed by small bright bulbs, and she pressed a button at the base to ramp up the luminosity for stage lighting.

  The wigmaker stood behind her chair, proudly holding the accessory that would complete her ensemble. Adolpho had truly outdone himself this time. And so that his client could fully appreciate his art, the man explained the difficulties of matching the strands of varying shades found in the natural blonde. “The styling was difficult, too. The detective certainly has her hair done on Fifty-seventh Street. This is a four-hundred-dollar cut.” And so ended his pitch for a huge tip in addition to a rush-time payment.

  The actress already knew that the detective had taste exceeding her paycheck. And she liked this element of the role—a cop who might be dirty.

  Adolpho settled the wig on her head. With a change of hair, Nanette had daily moved back and forth through time, from a hag aged by bald spots to a woman in her forties, made thirtyish by surgery. And now, she lost more years as the blond curls softened wrinkles that lotions could not fix. She put on the finishing touch, green contact lenses.

  “Wonderful,” said Adolpho. “You could be that cop’s younger sister.”

  “Liar.” But it was a lie well told, and worth a bit of cash on top of his promised tip of cocaine. Now where were those nasty boys with her dope delivery?

  The maid appeared at the bedroom door. “They’re here, ma’am. The doorman’s sending them up. Should I let them in?”

  “Oh, hell, no!” The stagehands had never been allowed inside. There were too many expensive objects in the foyer, pricey, pocketable, hockable things. And the teenagers would be surprised if they saw a maid. On their previous visits, Nanette had always responded to the doorbell herself. Well, not quite herself. The boys only knew her in the guise of the redheaded dresser, Nan Cooper.

  And tonight those two young morons would provide the acid test of wig and wardrobe. As Nanette Darby strolled through the rooms of her lavish apartment, her face became a mask, and her eyes were green ice when the bell rang. She opened the door to Joe Garnet and Ted Randal. Their frozen, frightened poses were delicious. The boys with the bag of dope in hand took her for a cop they had come to know all too well.

  Good job.

  A woman her age could not pass for twenty-something much beyond their immediate reactions, but she was well satisfied.

  When their cash-for-cocaine transaction was done, she lingered at the door to hear the latest news about Alma Sutter. Poor—dear—cra-a-a-zy Alma. “Oh, she’s coming unglued? Well, that’s tragic.” But not fast enough. Nanette thought she might have to push the bitch down a flight of stairs.

  Getting good roles used to be so easy.

  • • •

  The stagehands must be flush with cash. They were hailing a cab.

  Clara Loman had followed them on the B train uptown to Columbus Circle, and then she had called in their position on Central Park South. Now Detective Sanger’s car pulled to the curb alongside her. He had acquired a passenger since they had parted ways at the subway station. Detective Riker stepped out and held the door open for her, gallantly giving up his shotgun seat to ride in the back.

  Up ahead, the teenagers climbed into an eastbound cab, and the unmarked police car rolled after them.

  It could not be said that Clara was warming up to homicide detectives as a species, no one would dare say that in her presence, but she was enjoying herself for the first time in years. Sanger had complained that shadow details were ninety percent tedium. The CSI thought otherwise, even after spending hours outside of nightclubs, waiting for the stagehands to spend their drug profits. She had sorely missed her days in the field, gathering her own evidence.

  Clara turned around to face the man in the backseat. “It’s late. They’ll probably spend what’s left of the night in the clubs.” The teenagers seemed to have no ambition beyond a good time.

  “Nope,” said Riker. “We picked up a ping on Garnet’s cell phone.”

  “All we got is a pay-phone location.” Sanger turned south on Fifth Avenue. “The call was under a minute. That’s enough time to—”

  “To phone in a drug buy.” Clara, in her early days as a street cop, had the hang of drug deals when Sanger was only a know-it-all embryo. “So where to? Alma Sutter’s place?”

  “Naw,” said Riker. “Garnet’s pay-phone call came from TriBeCa. Mallory’s headed down there now.”

  “But the kids are pansy dealers,” said Sanger, “and they always travel light. So first they have to score some dope. That’s the next stop.”

  But they did not stop. The stagehands’ cab never even slowed down. The detectives and the CSI traveled past every turn for the places where Garnet and Randal shopped for their drugs. And now they were heading west.

  “Something’s wrong,” said Sanger. “These kids got a routine. I know they’re not holding.”

  They were deep into TriBeCa when Clara Loman recognized Mallory’s personal car, a small silver convertible, pulling up beside a pay phone. The origin of the buyer’s call? Yes. The cab slowed down, and Sanger’s car sailed on by in the seamless switch of shadowers.

  While Sanger rounded the corner and parked at the curb, Riker was on the phone with his partner, saying, “Up the block, that’s Axel Clayborne’s address, right? . . . No, Mallory, here’s the hitch. He’s not a customer. . . . No, the kids didn’t score any drugs on the way.”

  And the stagehands outstayed their normal transaction time in Clayborne’s apartment building—another break in their routine. Sanger characterized it as “Beer-drinking time,” and later as “Shooting-the-shit time.” Turning to the other detective in the backseat, he asked, “You see these guys as buddies? A movie star and two dumb-ass kids?”

  “No theories,” said Riker, and then his phone rang. “That’s Mallory.”

  “Finally.” Sanger started the engine. “They’re on the move again.”

  Riker held his cell phone to one ear as the car rolled away from the curb. “Mallory says when they left the building, the kids were divvying up cash—lots of it.”

  • • •

  Mallory let herself in through the alley door to the theater. She pocketed her pouch of lock picks and made her way toward the wings by the glow of the ghost light shining through the scenery doorway. Stopping by the blackboard, she read another change printed there, a few words to better phrase a line of dialogue.

  She ran one finger across the bottom of the slate’s wooden frame.
Dust. The chalk on the board was going to powder, falling away. Heller had said that it was old chalk, no modern binding.

  Old chalk. Old theater.

  Flicking on a wall switch, she descended a flight of stairs to the basement and a score of small rooms. She opened doors to see shelves of wigs and racks of wardrobe in one room, a sewing machine and bolts of fabric in another. The last door opened onto a workshop with carpentry tools. The area directly under the stage was an open space, where cartons were stacked and their contents labeled. No chalk. Scenery flats leaned against the walls in the form of painted trees. She saw rolls of sky blue silk and black canvas dotted with lights for a starry night. But not one stick of chalk.

  Mallory could also see that the cleaning crew rarely bothered to come down here. She stood between two rows of stacked boxes, where there were no signs of foot traffic, no shoe tracks but her own in a layer of dust, none to say that the CSIs had searched this area. Lazy pricks. So much for all that overtime spent hunting chalk.

  But she was not the only recent visitor.

  She was looking at paw prints, lots of them. That would explain last night’s crying, but there were no signs of a cat living in this theater. How did it come in and go out? Could Clara Loman’s crew have missed something else?

  Though she was reluctant to let go of any odd thing, the cat’s passageway might be only a rat hole, and she was not inclined to search for it tonight. Bone tired, Mallory climbed the steps leading up to the stage and then one more staircase to the row of dressing rooms. She walked down the loft platform to the last door. With a few seconds’ work, the lock was undone.

  Bugsy was still asleep. She checked his breathing by penlight, watching the rise and fall of his chest, though she had been careful in doping his brownie, just enough sedation to see him through till morning.

  No subway performance tonight.