Bird, Bath, and Beyond

by E. J. Copperman

  “Well, he’s the boss, and everybody hates the boss,” Jamie said. “There are plenty of possibilities there.”

  Lo and I passed Cool Beans, where Sam was not visible from the street. She noticed me looking for him, but I did not hesitate as the five of us kept walking.

  “Anybody else?” I asked.

  “If you could find the woman who called Mannix out, that would be good,” Jamie said.

  “Haven’t the cops figured out who that was yet?”

  Now Lo was really interested; her mouth was practically twitching in anticipation. There wasn’t anyplace on West Roosevelt where we could stop and sit with the dogs, and Lo would turn left in two blocks if she was walking home. She wasn’t going to let that happen without finding out what was going on.

  “Not that they’re telling me,” Jamie said. “Keep in mind that I have virtually no contacts in the NYPD, although I am licensed in New York. I’m going to see about hiring a freelance investigator who might have better ties than me and be able to talk to cops he knows. I’ll let you know about that tomorrow. Meantime, talk to Mannix and to this Heather Alizondo, the director. She worked most closely with Mattone; she might know something. And you said there was a woman who thought Mattone had a drug connection on the set?”

  “Yeah, but Mandy was a guest actress trying to get noticed,” I told him. “She would have said she’d seen Godzilla in the commissary if she thought it would get her hired.”

  “So don’t talk to her. Talk to other people around the set. See if they knew what his connection was. Maybe ask like you’re trying to score something.”

  “Yeah. Maybe not.” My luck I’d ask an undercover narcotics agent and spend the next ten years in the big house because Jamie wanted to know if Dray had a connection on the set.

  “Okay, I’ll let you wing it. You’re an actress. Get out there and act.” Jamie hung up just when we were reaching Lo’s corner, which she could not have appreciated more.

  “You need help walking the dogs back to your house?” she asked. Butter could have melted in her mouth but probably wouldn’t have gone to the trouble.

  “No, it’s all right,” I said, reaching for Bruno’s leash.

  She snatched it away. “Forget that, Kay. I’m walking back with you and you’re telling me everything you know about Dray Mattone getting shot.”

  So I did. She’s Lo. She’s a force of nature.

  By the time we got to my back fence in an effort to avoid the news reporters at the front of the house, I had regaled her with my version of the Dray Mattone saga. Lo had not interrupted once—she listens intensely, as she does everything else—which led to my probably telling her more than I would have if she’d stopped me frequently. It’s a cute trick. Try it if you ever want to get someone to talk. Just listen.

  She digested the sordid tale for a few moments while I let the dogs into the backyard and closed the gate behind them. They did a couple of laps after being let off the leash just to show me what they could do if they decided to ignore my human rules. It was pretty impressive, even for Steve, the smallest and slowest of the bunch.

  “So who do you think did it?” Lo asked.

  I hadn’t really considered that before. Having been so intent on proving that Patty didn’t kill Dray, the fact that someone else had was sort of a forgotten side issue. I thought about it.

  “If I had to put money down on it, I’d guess it was Harve,” I told her. “He admits to putting the gun in Dray’s trailer. He claims he doesn’t know how it got loaded with live bullets, but he’d be the one to find them if he needed to.”

  “Okay, so the first thing you want to do when you’re asking around tomorrow is make sure you stay away from Harve,” Lo said definitively.

  That seemed counterproductive. “You sure? If he’s the most likely suspect, shouldn’t I be trying to find something that proves he did it?”

  “You’re forgetting,” she said.

  “Forgetting what?”

  Lo looked at me with a dash of pity in her eyes. “If he did it and you’re snooping around, he might not hesitate to do it again.”

  “Oh, yeah,” I said. “That.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Bagels the sheepdog did remarkably well in his audition for the Giant Productions film, which I knew he would. The audition had basically been to sit, stay, lie down, and stand on command, and Bagels can do that in his sleep. I’m not sure he hadn’t done it in his sleep today; the hair over his eyes makes it hard to tell. Bagels isn’t the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree, but he’s far from stupid, and once he’s shown what to do, he can do it without ever hesitating. He’s not quite the pro that Bruno is, but as his current guardian, I have decided that Bruno is retired. He’s been through enough.

  Once Bagels finished going through his incredibly furry paces with assurances we’d hear about the role in “a couple of days,” I called his human owner, Miriam, and gave her my report, which was that the dog had done well enough that I thought we had a very good chance for a hire. I asked Miriam if she minded whether Bagels got home an hour later than she might expect, and she said it would be fine.

  Dammit. Now I had to go onto the set of Dead City without Barney and ask questions.

  Mandy was no longer on set, since her part had been filmed and she was a one-week guest actress, although she’d be needed on location later in the week. There was no reason for her to hang around; she was either at her next job or on the hunt for one. So I moved on to finding Les Mannix, who I was told (by the stage manager Bonnie Prestoni, who was always around) was on the set today, although he would be in meetings with the producers and the regular cast for much of the afternoon.

  It was ten-thirty in the morning, so I had some time if Les did. I found him in the craft services (that’s food) area, of all places, having a chocolate-frosted doughnut. That indicated to me it was not a great day—people in the film business consider sugar to be synonymous with cyanide, and technically they’re close to being right, but I don’t care. In this case, Les eating a doughnut was much like seeing a normal person holding a bottle of sleeping pills too longingly.

  He nodded at me and then saw Bagels and looked concerned. “Did we hire a big dog?” he asked. “I don’t remember one in the script.”

  I shook my head. “He’s here auditioning for a movie elsewhere on the lot. I just wanted to see what was going on with the show, whether it’s been decided if you’re going to keep it on the air.”

  He grimaced a little; I took it the news was not going to be good. “I’m not ready to make an announcement yet,” he said. “And I don’t want to offend you, but I think some of the long-standing cast and crew members should hear what’s going on first.”

  Bagels sat, right next to a platter of his own name. “I’m not offended,” I told Mannix. “I do need to know whether Barney’s schedule is opening up or if he has a steady gig. But I completely understand your need to tell the others first. I’m not trying to be a problem; I’m sure you have enough to deal with.” The key to dealing with producers especially is to remind them what a colossal big deal they are.

  “Yes, I do.” Mannix agreed he was tremendously important and therefore terribly busy. He leaned over confidentially and spoke very quietly. “The network wants to cancel the show. They think it’s too expensive and that nobody will watch without Dray because he had the most followers on Twitter.”

  “Oh, that’s a shame,” I said, thinking of how Patty could have used the income from Barney’s job to pay some of her legal fees. “I wish it wasn’t going to happen that way. How soon?”

  Mannix looked a little offended. “I said the network wants to shut it down,” he reminded me. “I haven’t given up on it yet. Even if they do, I could find a home for it on cable or maybe Netflix. They get really good numbers from us, you know.”

  I nodded. “You have a lot of platforms to choose from.” It’s best to stay positive in these conversations. If there had been a grizzly bear carrying a
chainsaw advancing on Mannix, the best way to tell him to get going would have been saying that he was doing so well the president of the United States wanted to talk to him in the next room. He’d move much faster. “Does the way Dray died hurt your chances of catching on somewhere else?”

  Interestingly it never occurred to Mannix that my question was at all inappropriate. He was a show business professional and his loyalty was to the show. It was too bad one of his stars had been shot, but the rest of the company relied on him. So what I’d asked had been a totally legitimate question in his view.

  He put on a “thinking” face and moved his head back and forth like a beagle trying to decide which pose was more adorable, which I have seen happen. “Actually I’m not sure,” he said. “On the one hand, it hurts to lose a star the audience loved that much. It wasn’t the Dray Mattone Show, you understand, but his presence was a large part of the audience appeal, especially among women eighteen to thirty-four.” There is nothing a TV producer cares about more than demographics.

  “But on the other hand, by the time the show gets picked up by another platform and we have product ready to deliver and air, I’m sorry to say the coverage of Dray’s death will have gone away.” Mannix looked both wistful and irritated. “After the first episode or two, the novelty of it will have worn off. We’ll probably get huge numbers that first week, but if we don’t deliver a blockbuster show to keep them watching, it might be a problem.”

  “So a really strong first episode would be key.” I didn’t actually care about the first episode—other than to ensure that Barney had a steady source of income—but I wanted Mannix to feel that I was on his side. “Would it be too tacky to have the team investigating Dr. Banacek’s murder?”

  I know for certain, based on years in show business, that Mannix had considered that very question before. There’s no way he hadn’t, even if for just a moment. But he stared off into space as if it were the first time the subject had been breached. He might as well have been Columbus’s crewman in the crow’s nest searching desperately for land.

  “We will have to explain the character’s absence,” he said. Mannix, like most television producers, had begun his career as a TV writer, so he had a strong sense of what would and would not work on the screen. “But I don’t want to look like we’re exploiting what happened to Dray.” He broke his pose and looked at me. “I’m getting ahead of myself. First we have to get through negotiations and find the right outlet for the show, assuming the network definitely cancels us.”

  “There were some scripts in the pipeline before Dray was shot, right?” I said. “I heard there was one in which he would have to carry a gun.”

  Mannix turned his head to look at me as if I’d said there was a rumor Dray was really a unicorn. “Never! Dray had it written into his contract. No guns. And we respect our actors’ feelings, especially when it’s in their contracts.”

  This was perplexing, but I had to move on. “So would you have scripts you could rewrite to exclude Dray, or would you have to start from scratch with a new network?” I asked.

  “Still depends on whether our current network cancels us,” Mannix reminded me.

  “That’s not certain yet?” Bagels plopped down on the floor and put his head on his paws. A lot of dogs would have been attacking the meats and cheese available not far from his head. He was way too classy.

  “Nah.” Mannix curled his lip. “They’re all corporate executives. They’re terrified of making decisions that might blow up in their faces. They haven’t said that’s what they want to do, but I can read it.”

  “Would it help if Dray’s murder got solved?” I asked. Best to get back on the actual reason I was here today.

  “Why? Do you think you can do it?” Mannix thought he was funny. I could tell him stories. Well, one story.

  I decided to ignore his refusal to believe in my sleuthing skills, mostly because he was right. “I’m just thinking that if the murderer was found, there would be closure to the story and you’d know how to proceed with the show because you could be sure not to mirror the real events. Like, you wouldn’t want to have Dr. Banacek die of an overdose or something.” It was sensitive, but I thought I’d slipped in the drug reference skillfully.

  Mannix didn’t. His face reddened and his back stiffened in his chair. “What does that mean?” he asked a little too loudly. Bagels lifted his head, not threatening but wondering what the heck was going on.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, although I wasn’t sure what to apologize for in this case. “I’d heard that Dray might have been having some problems sticking to sobriety and that might have gotten him into trouble with the wrong people. Maybe I’m wrong in thinking that could have led to what happened with him.”

  “You’re definitely wrong,” the producer grumbled, although in a less offended tone. “I know for a fact that Dray was attending meetings and looking for a sponsor to help him through the rough spots. He wasn’t about to relapse.”

  He sounded absolutely sure of his words, but producers are good at that, telling you the next pilot they’re producing is groundbreaking and edgy when they know it’s just another sitcom. “Maybe it was something else, then,” I said. “Do you have any idea who that woman was at the memorial service?”

  Mannix didn’t have to ask which woman. “The crazy one with the curly hair who was telling me I killed Dray? I’ve been asking around the crew and nobody knew exactly who she was. You know under normal circumstances I’m not on the set very much. There are other producers who handle the day-to-day stuff. So I’d never seen her before. But they tell me she’d been around Tuesday or Wednesday last week, although nobody here could tell me what her job was or even her name.”

  “Why would anybody think you’d want to kill your star?” I asked. It’s funny what you can get people to say when you play dumb.

  “There had been some contract negotiations that weren’t resolved yet, and there were stories in the press that we’d had words,” Mannix said. “They weren’t true, you understand. Dray and I got along famously. But the rumors could lead people to think the wrong thing.”

  I wondered why the police had been so quick to bring Patty in for questioning when she was hardly the only person who might have had a motive to kill Dray. But I chose—wisely, I think—not to mention that to Mannix.

  “Well,” I said, “thanks for keeping me in the loop. If there’s a decision on the show, please give me a call.” I gave him a business card and got Bagels to stand up and walk away.

  I was heading toward the control booth where I had the best shot at finding Heather Alizondo, but was hijacked halfway across the set of the police precinct by Harve, the last person I wanted to be hijacked by, and he was looking unusually nervous even for him.

  “You didn’t tell anybody what I said, right?” That was Harve’s version of a greeting.

  Let’s see: I had told Jamie and Lo, and I was pretty sure I might have mentioned Harve to Bostwick, so yeah, I might have said just a little regarding him. “Of course not,” I said. “I promised, and I never break a promise.” This is showbiz language for “You should never trust me because I’ll do whatever I have to in order to forward my career,” the unspoken law of all things in the biz.

  “Well, I think the cops heard something, and you’re the only one I told.” I didn’t care much for Harve’s tone: It was hushed and had an edge of menace in it. “I know for a fact that I didn’t say anything, so that leaves you.”

  I relied on my stage training—and the stages had all been in resort hotels, not the Royal Shakespeare Company—to look nonchalant, although I was probably more chalant than most. I shrugged. “Somebody must have overheard,” I said. “I know I wasn’t the one who ratted you out, but if you want my advice, you’d tell the detectives what you know so you don’t get into any more trouble. There’s no crime in giving Dray Mattone a prop gun to practice with. Is there some other reason you think they’ll give you trouble?” I mean, besides the previous con
viction and jail time and the fact that Mannix said there would have been no reason for Dray to practice with a gun. Besides those things.

  Maybe there was something Harve, not necessarily in the running for a Mensa membership, might say if he was under pressure. We were in a public area, so I wasn’t all that concerned he’d do something violent or unpleasant; he wouldn’t want to be seen by the crew members walking in and out.

  “Nah, there’s nothing else.” He hadn’t been making eye contact before, so there was probably nothing to read into the fact that he continued to look past me, probably to make sure we weren’t being overheard this time. “You’re right. I didn’t do anything illegal. You’re a lawyer, so you’d know, right?” Actually, Jamie was a lawyer and I was an agent with a law license, so it was likely there were laws being violated I had no idea about, but why bother Harve with that kind of detail?

  “To the best of my knowledge and belief, you haven’t done anything illegal,” I said. It’s one of the few legal things I know. It sounds important but doesn’t really cover you in any serious way. Harve didn’t know that. Best to distract him and disengage from the conversation. “Have you seen Heather?”

  This time he did look at me. “She’s shooting on location with Ted and Mary,” he said. “She’s not coming back here until evening, if at all. They have to be done shooting in a couple of days, and then who knows?”

  Well, Les Mannix knew, but he wasn’t exactly saying, and in any event, it was almost none of my business. It was very little of my business, anyway. I thanked Harve and picked up Bagels’s leash. Harve, however, did not believe our conversation was over and took my arm, not hard but authoritatively.

  Bagels growled.

  Harve let go of my arm but delivered the message he had no doubt intended to do while maintaining contact. “You don’t want to be around if I find out you talked to the cops,” he said. “Remember, I’m your client and I have a privilege.” Around here everybody was theatrical; it was amazing. He turned and walked away, having made his point.