Several Deaths Later

by Ed Gorman

  "Look," said one of the very young girls. "It's that film guy!"

  "Tobin!" said her friend.

  Husband poked wife and wife poked husband. "It's Tobin," whispered wife.

  "The film guy," whispered husband.

  Captain Hackett said to the three stars, "I wondered if we might talk with you."

  "What's up?" Kevin Anderson grinned drunkenly. "Did Tobin lose his temper and throw somebody overboard?"

  Tobin wanted to make an obscene gesture but decided that would only underscore Anderson's point. Tobin was tired of True Temper Tales. He had long ago quit throwing tantrums. For the most part, anyway.

  "I'm afraid this is more serious than that," Captain Hackett said.

  "Aw, come on," one of the chain-encumbered men said. "Todd was going to tell us which of the 'The Pendergasts' guys is a fag."

  "Yeah, which one?" said his buddy.

  The captain turned to the fans and said, with the expansive courtliness of one long accustomed to appeasing those he considers beneath him, "I know what an inconvenience this is-getting people like this dragged away from you. But I'll tell you what. If you'll let me have them for just ten minutes…" And here he made a gesture the pope would have envied, a sweeping kind of thing that bestowed freedom on these people. "Then if they'd like to come back and spend some more time here in the lounge, the drinks will be on me. How's that?"

  "Ten minutes and no more?" asked the eager husband.

  "And no more," promised the captain.

  Then he indicated to the three confused-looking stars a private party room at the end of the lounge. He quietly asked a steward who had been helping the bartender to go get two other passengers.

  "It's-that red-haired guy, isn't it?" one of the hairy, golden-chained men called out as the group started to the party room. "He's the fag, isn't he?”

  ***

  Nothing looks lonelier than a room meant for festivity when nothing festive is going on.

  The party room was long and narrow, with beautifully flocked red wallpaper, a dry bar along the west wall, a sensational view of the moon-tipped ocean, and a jukebox, Tobin noted, loaded with as diverse a play list as any forty-year-old drunk could hope for-Sam the Sham & The Pharaohs, Dan Fogelberg, Judy Collins, Firefall, David Bowie, Jackson Browne, Hank Williams (the real one, not the fat-ass no-talent bully boy son living off the old man's rep), Madonna, Michael Jackson, and Patti Page.

  The captain, still in the grand style, saw that his guests had the drinks they chose. Tobin had a diet 7-Up.

  "Something terrible happened, didn't it?" Susan Richards said. Though she invariably played the beautiful bad woman, off-camera she was often overwrought, her looks somewhat wasted on her unspoken anxieties. She sighed and sounded sorry for herself. "I thought getting out of LA was going to make me feel better. And now this."

  Todd Ames slid an arm around her. "We don't know what happened yet, Susan. Maybe it's not as bad as it would seem. No sense borrowing trouble." As he spoke, he took note of his sleek, gray-haired good looks in the window.

  Kevin Anderson said to the captain, "This is really bullshit."

  "What is?" the captain said calmly.

  "Keeping us all on edge like this."

  "I'd simply prefer not to go through it twice," the captain said mildly.

  "Something's really wrong," Susan said, touching her breast. "I can feel it."

  Anderson stared directly at the captain and said, "Nothing more than heartburn, Susan. It's the food we eat."

  The captain looked over at Tobin. He smiled apologetically at Tobin, as if the three stars were the captain's children and they were misbehaving and embarrassing both themselves and him.

  Tobin had to find a bathroom. He said, "I'll be back in a minute."

  The captain glanced at his watch. "I'd like you all here if you don't mind."

  "Just need a bathroom."

  "Oh."

  "A minute."

  "Fine."

  Susan said, "Tobin, I thought you and I were friends. You're really going to leave this room and not tell us what's going on?"

  "I can't, Susan. At sea the captain is boss."

  "What a brownnose," Anderson said in his best blond TV hero way.

  Tobin laughed. This was like being in sixth grade. Brownnose. Right. (His all-time favorite line was from Andre Malraux, in which an elderly Italian priest is asked if he learned anything hearing confessions for sixty years. The priest thinks for a moment and says, "Yes. There is no such thing as an adult." And fortyish Anderson had just proved the priest's point-as Tobin proved it every day, putting his own age of maturity at eighteen, tops.)

  ***

  The deal was he just needed to go to the bathroom located at the east end of the lounge and get right back. It was not supposed to be a significant trip.

  But as he opened the party room door from inside, he heard the sound of something heavy moving quickly away.

  When he looked out, he saw the chunky man in the western suit and the Stetson hurrying back toward the bar. He remembered how intently the man had watched and listened to the celebrities holding court.

  He'd been listening again, only this time by leaning against the door.

  Tobin wondered more than ever who he was, and what he was doing.

  ***

  The men's room reminded him of a column he'd written for his college paper in his senior year, all about why men's rooms should have rubber floors that could be easily hosed off.

  Presently, the three urinals were occupied by three drunks carrying on an enthusiastic but totally meaningless conversation while paying not the slightest attention to where they aimed.

  Tobin took a stall, kicked the lid up with the toe of his shoe, and acted like a very responsible citizen, aiming, and aiming to please.

  He left the men's room feeling like a very responsible citizen. Perhaps he'd get a gold star in urine.

  8

  1:12 A.M.

  Tobin had learned that the news of unexpected death is generally greeted in one of two ways-angry denial ("There has to be some mistake") or instant shock, usually expressed by tears or a kind of animal keening that has nothing to do with gender, the ageless noise of grief over the fact that human beings must die.

  When he returned to the party room he found two additional guests, "Celebrity Circle"'s producer, Jere Farris, and Cassie McDowell, the thirtyish blond who had played the cute and sweet Ms. Franklin on the recently canceled "McKinley High, USA."

  As Tobin reached the dry bar, lighted another cigarillo, and poured himself another glass of diet 7-Up from a big green plastic job that seemed to weigh about eight pounds, Captain Hackett, obviously wanting to break the news in the most efficient manner possible, said, "I'm afraid that Ken Norris was murdered earlier tonight."

  Tobin, leaning against the bar, sipping 7-Up and smoking his cigarillo, watched and listened to the various reactions.

  Jere Farris, looking almost bankerish in his blue button-down shirt, dark blue slacks, brown belt, penny loafers, and somewhat bookish face, said, "He likes playing practical jokes. Once he got us all up to his hotel room by making us all believe he was going to jump out the window."

  Cassie McDowell said, quietly, "The captain isn't fooling, Jere." She brushed a graceful hand back through her bangs. The hand was twitching.

  Susan Richards said, bitterly, and apparently to Todd Ames (as if Ken Norris's death were his fault), "I told you this was going to be bad news."

  "You're sure this isn't some kind of hoax?" Farris said.

  Captain Hackett shook his head. "It's no hoax."

  "But who would have done it?" Kevin Anderson said.

  Tobin watched each of them carefully and then said, pushing away from the dry bar, "The captain is under the impression that a woman named Cindy McBain did it."

  "Who the hell is Cindy McBain?" Todd Ames said. "Has she been on television?"

  Tobin shook his head. "Another one of Ken's conquests. Or near-conquests.
She insists she was taking a shower for their night of bliss. Then she came out and found the lights out in her cabin and Ken dead on her floor."

  "Poor Ken," Susan Richards said. Farris said, "What do you think of her story, Captain, this McBain woman?"

  "I don't believe it."

  "You think she killed him?"

  "Yes." He nodded to Tobin. "She told Mr. Tobin here that she saw somebody hiding in her closet."

  "And you believed that, Tobin?" Anderson said. He was getting back into his TV cop role, scorn in his voice.

  Tobin had some of his cigarillo. "She might have done it. But it wouldn't make a lot of sense. Why would she kill him?"

  Just then Susan Richards started sobbing, her dark hair swinging across her face, her lovely blue eyes vanished now. Ames took her to him and held her very tightly. Tobin noticed that Ames once again looked at his reflection in the window. Ultimately everything was a role and you had to worry about camera angles, even when you were comforting the grief-stricken.

  "I want to get good and drunk," Anderson said. Now he was a beer commercial cowboy. There was a swagger in his voice.

  There were times when Tobin wanted to take all the actors in the world, put them on an elevator on the ninetieth floor, then cut the cords. All the way down they'd be worrying about how they looked-appropriately frightened? Appealingly dismayed? At least on "Celebrity Handyman" all the non-acting host worried about was whether he pounded nails with the proper end of the hammer.

  "This is just crazy," Cassie McDowell said. "It's unreal." She looked at Tobin. At a post-launch party, something like electricity (of a low-voltage type) had passed between them over the lunch-dinner of duck and champagne, and ever since she'd offered him this kind of twitchy eye contact that could easily be confused with nearsightedness. "Don't you think, Tobin?"

  He shrugged, sighed. She startled him by coming over to him and sliding her arms around him and then without warning breaking into tears. She leaked through his sport jacket and his shirt to the flesh of his shoulders. Her tears were warm and inexplicably erotic. He wished his feelings were more appropriate to the moment-the game-show host had, after all, been a fellow human being. He tried hard to form an image, of the dead man in his mind and feel some sort of sorrow. But he hadn't liked Ken Norris very much. Their first day shooting Norris had made innumerable on-camera jokes about Tobin's height and then he'd bullied a cameraman till the man had tears in his eyes and then he'd turned his scorn on an effeminate makeup man and then he'd complained aloud, in front of the entire cast, that Susan Richards was drinking again.

  "He was no angel, I'll give you that," Susan Richards said now, her tears ceasing. "But he was a damn good host. He really was."

  Yes, Tobin thought, he had the looks and demeanor for it. The predatory gaze, the glibness that was almost decadent in its emptiness.

  In Tobin's arms, Cassie was calling a halt to her tears too. Apparently tears were doled out in three-minute segments. Like a camera take.

  "I'll never forget that Christmas special he did with the handicapped kids," Cassie said, drawing away from Tobin. He realized then why he liked her so much. She was maybe five-two. "He looked so-sincere-when he held those kids on his lap and sang Christmas songs. Even if he did get mad when that kid wet his pants right on Ken's lap." There was a loneliness in her laughter that made Tobin like her even more.

  Farris said, "He had a few faults but I'll tell you, he wasn't nearly as cruel as the press said he was. I think they were very unfair to him."

  Ames said, "Absolutely. When he dumped his second wife, he had no idea she'd have a stroke a few days later. Yet the press blamed him entirely."

  "He wasn't perfect," Susan said again, snuffling. "But he really was a very good host. He really was."

  Tobin now watched the captain. Real amusement played in the older man's eyes. The same kind of amusement Tobin felt.

  The captain said to Farris, "Will there be a taping tomorrow?"

  "God, there'll have to be. We've got so much money at stake here in the crew and equipment. There'll have to be."

  "Then who'll be host?" Cassie said. Apparently the formal mourning period was over. Talk, infinitely more passionate, had turned to career.

  Farris, who gave every evidence that he too was about to break down, but from anxiety more than sorrow, ran slender fingers through thinning hair and said, "I'll have to let you know in the morning. We can pick up an additional celebrity panelist by using your wife, Todd, if that's all right?"

  Todd Ames's wife was the actress Beth Cross, whose canceled series had been "Crime Town."

  "She'd be delighted," Ames said, sounding much happier than he should have under the circumstances. He corrected himself at once, drawing himself erect, getting a glimpse of his gray head in the window once more. "I mean, under these unfortunate conditions."

  The captain said, "Well, I will continue to question Miss McBain about this evening and meanwhile, I invite you to stay here and have a few more drinks if you wish."

  "Poor Ken," Susan said.

  "He really wasn't nearly the jerk people thought," Anderson said. Then he smiled manfully. "I always knew it would be a babe who did him in. That old stud sure did get around."

  "I think," Cassie said, using one of the lines from "McKinley High, USA"-with which she'd become inextricably associated-"I think all he needed was some good old-fashioned love."

  Tobin had seen that promo at least 4,629 times, where Cassie in a clip faced the camera in close-up and said in her squeaky-clean voice, "I think all he needed was some good old-fashioned love." He'd always wanted to barf.

  Nobody should be that treacly. Nobody.

  9

  1:47 A.M.

  "I hope my friends can find a few nicer things to say about me when my time comes," Captain Hackett said as he and Tobin walked along the deck back to Tobin's cabin. "You noticed that, huh?"

  "He wasn't nearly as much of a jerk as most people thought."

  "Sure he dumped his wife but how could that possibly help her have a stroke?"

  The captain said, "I don't suppose he did much worse to that little handicapped boy who wet his pants than slap him a time or two." He pawed at a chin in need of a shave. "Was he really that much of a jerk?"

  "You're asking the wrong guy."

  "Why?"

  "Because he was unpleasant to me. He let it be known that he considered me a very weak guest panelist and he treated me accordingly. Plus he made jokes about my height."

  "Oh, yes. They call you 'Yosemite Sam.' I think my wife told me that."

  "I love that name."

  "Are you serious?"

  "What do you think?"

  They walked on a bit. The night was beautiful, the ocean endless, the thrum of powerful engines reassuring evidence of man's illusory dominance over the ocean.

  "You don't think she did it, do you?"

  "No," Tobin said. "And based on how everybody reacted tonight-Sure he was a wife-beating, child-molesting, embezzling sonofabitch but deep down all he needed was old-fashioned love-I'd say there are at least several other equally good suspects."

  "Meaning what?"

  "Meaning that if we look beneath the surface, we'll probably find all sorts of reasons he was killed-by one of them."

  Captain Hackett sighed. "It just wouldn't make sense that she didn't kill him."

  "Of course it would. She'd be the perfect setup."

  They reached Tobin's cabin. "They really didn't seem to be very moved by his death, did they?"

  Tobin smiled. "I remember back in 1953, when I was very young. I was over at a friend's house watching TV-they were the only people on the block with a set-and news came that Stalin had died. They interrupted 'Mr. Peepers.' I've never forgotten it. Everybody was euphoric because Stalin had died. It seemed as if everything in the world was going to be all right." He nodded back toward the lounge. "I kind of had that same sense tonight, didn't you?"

  "Nothing you could prove," the captain s
aid.

  Tobin said, "Not yet, anyway.”

  10

  2:47 A.M.

  In the dream he sat in a vast dark movie theater and on the screen was Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Dana Wynter, whom he still thought the most beautiful actress of her time, was just about to fall asleep and in so doing become one of the pod people and he was in seventh grade again and watching the movie in the State Theater and held spellbound not only by the beautiful noir writing and directing but mostly there was just Dana Wynter, the luxuriant elegance of that face, the silken dark hair and silken dark gaze, domestic and exotic in equal parts-and now, as always in the dream, he cried out for her to not close her eyes, not to become one of the pod people, cried out to no avail…

  Knocking woke him.

  Disoriented, he had to put his circumstances together one word at a time. Ship. Cabin. Sleep. Dream. Knock. Door.

  "Huh?" he said, peering through the safety chain.

  She wore her white terry-cloth robe again. Her hair looked a bit mussed. Her wonderful mouth looked forlorn.

  "They gave me a new cabin," she said. Moonglow made a nimbus of her blond hair. "Yes."

  "But I couldn't sleep."

  "Ah."

  "I tried."

  "Umm."

  "But I couldn't."

  "Uh."

  "You're not awake, are you?"

  "Mhrmw."

  "What?"

  He shrugged.

  "I'm sorry," she said.

  He shrugged again.

  "I shouldn't have bothered you. I'm just lonely and afraid. Not even telling Aberdeen everything helped. Well, not 'telling her.' Writing her, actually. I mean, I put everything down. Everything he said to me-you know about that really annoying guy-and everything I said to him. I had quite a bit of champagne and even told him about that United pilot and what we did in the bathroom that time. And then how he was stabbed and all and…"