by Barbara Paul
“Then you weren’t one of the companies The Apostrophe Thief called on for help Tuesday night?” When he didn’t know what she was talking about, Marian explained about the thefts from the Broadhurst. “Not just costumes, but scripts and personal belongings as well. Somebody made a real haul.”
Augie had the same shocked/delighted look on his face that Lenora and her friend had had. “They took all the costumes?”
“All of them.”
“And that’s the script you’re after? The Apostrophe Thief?”
Marian smiled ruefully. “I don’t think I have much chance of finding that one—although I’d give ten years of my life for the director’s copy. No, what I’m looking for is Three Rings. Remember it?”
“Sure, but it didn’t run very long. Why do you want that one?”
Marian thought it was time to elaborate on her story. “I’m writing a book about John Reddick—the director? So, I want to get my hands on every script of his I can.” When Augie looked suitably impressed, she added, “He’s being very cooperative, but a few of his scripts are missing. Three Rings is one of them.”
“And now The Apostrophe Thief is another.” Augie nodded. “I see. So you’re in the market for The Apostrophe Thief as well, then?”
Marian raised her eyebrows. “Damn right. But the thief won’t just advertise what he’s … Augie, do you know something?”
He shook his head vigorously. “I just like to keep track of what people are looking for. For the finder’s fee?”
She pretended to think it over. “I’d be willing to pay a finder’s fee. What’s usual?”
“Ten percent.”
“That seems high.”
Augie shrugged. “A dealer would charge you twenty.”
Marian groaned. “Okay, ten percent. Do you think you can get a line on Reddick’s copy?”
“I have no idea. But I can put the word out, and we’ll start with the Zingones.” He wiped his mouth with a paper napkin. “Do you want me to leave the tip?”
Marian took care of it, and they left the restaurant to head up Seventh. “This Ernie Nordstrom,” she said as they walked, “does he have a partner? Younger, tall, wears his dark hair in a ponytail, doesn’t talk much?”
“No-o-o-o,” Augie said. “Can’t say I ever heard of one. Ernie tends to work alone.”
“What about another younger fellow, hunk-type?”
“No. Where are you getting these descriptions?”
“Friend of mine. The one time she talked to this Ernie Nordstrom, if it’s the same man, these other two guys were with him.”
“Here we are,” Augie said. “Upstairs. It’s a sort of unofficial clearing house for show biz collectibles. They know everything that goes on.” He pushed a bell; after a moment something unintelligible squawked over the intercom. “Augie Silver,” he said back. The steel door buzzed open. “What’s your last name?” he asked as they climbed the stairs.
“Larch.”
The Zingones turned out to be four siblings—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and Janet. Their place of business was jammed full up to the ceiling with props, stacks of souvenir programs, posters, rack after rack of costumes, shelves filled with books, trinkets, photographs, gewgaws, memorabilia of all sorts. There was a beer tray decorated with one of the Marilyn Monroe calendar nude photos. And a Charlie McCarthy bank; the dummy’s mouth opened to receive the coin. Another oral knickknack: a Geraldo ashtray, with a widely gaping mouth as the place to put the butts. There was even an Antoinette Perry Award statuette locked away in a showcase.
“Whose Tony?” Marian asked.
One of the Zingones pronounced a name she didn’t recognize. “It’s for scene design.”
Augie made the introductions, stressing that Marian was a writer and not a collector, and that he was acting as her agent. Marian translated that as: This is my pigeon; you want in, you’ll have to deal through me.
“Not a collector.” All four Zingones immediately lost interest—not exactly dismissing her, but not eager to get acquainted, either.
Marian made a point of looking around her with an awe that was not totally affected. “No, I’m not a collector—but I’m beginning to think I’m missing something. Look at all this great stuff! This … staff, is it?” She bent over a locked display case and read an index card. “Did James Earl Jones really carry this in King Lear?”
“He really did,” Matthew Zingone said with a smile. He was the only one of the four who wore glasses and was thus easy to distinguish from his two brothers. “The Delacorte in Central Park. That one was used in only the first two performances—it was too heavy. They made Jones a lighter one.”
“You didn’t have to tell her that,” Janet said with a laugh.
“Everyone knows about it,” drawled either Mark or Luke; all three brothers looked so much alike they could pass for triplets. “As long as we’re on a truth kick today, Jones stopped using a staff altogether before the end of the run. But the two are remahrkably alike,” he continued in his affected drawl. “You have to scrutize them quite closely to tell them apart.”
Scrutize? Marian looked at a white silk muffler that the index card said may have been worn by Edward Woodward in The Equalizer. “May have been?”
“It was,” Janet declared firmly.
“We’re pretty sure it was,” Matthew said. “Production companies aren’t always careful about labeling things.”
“Is that how this stuff gets on the market? The production companies sell it?”
“Unless the stagehands or the properties crews or the costume people steal it first,” the drawly one said. “But production companies have to get rid of the stuff. Storage costs in this town are unreal. We have that problem, too. We had to pass up a backdrop curtain from Rosenstern and Guildencrantz Are Dead because we don’t have room for it.”
Rosenstern …? Marian looked at him to see if he was joking, but he wasn’t. Then something glittery caught Marian’s eye. “Are those … Dorothy’s ruby slippers? From The Wizard of Oz? I thought they—”
“They’re copies,” Augie interposed in a bored tone. “The originals went at an MGM auction back in 1970, thereabouts.”
In spite of herself, Marian was tempted. “How much?”
“Six thousand,” a Zingone said.
She gulped. “Dollars? Oh, I get it—these are famous counterfeits somebody tried to—”
“Nope, they’re advertised as copies.”
Marian was appalled. “And they still bring six thousand dollars?”
Four heads nodded in unison.
“Only five hundred pairs were made,” Janet explained. “And the original shoemaker’s last from the movie was used, so they’re all Judy Garland’s size six. They initially sold for five thousand, but we had to pay more than that to get this pair. And they’ll appreciate even more.”
“It’s a good investment,” Matthew said, fiddling with his glasses. “Especially if you’re just starting a collection.”
Marian was saved from having to refuse when Augie decided it was time to get down to business. “That’s not what she’s looking for, Matthew.” He explained about the missing Reddick scripts, but none of the Zingones looked surprised when he said the Broadhurst had been raided.
“Tuesday, wasn’t it?” Matthew said. “We heard.”
“They hear everything,” Augie said with a sigh.
Mark or Luke asked, “Do they have any idea who did it?”
“I don’t know,” Marian replied innocently. “But if the director’s script happens to come your way—”
“They’ll get in touch with me,” Augie interrupted. “Right now, however, what we’re looking for is the director’s copy of Three Rings.”
“Don’t have it,” Janet said. “Those scripts were stolen, too, weren’t they? None of them came through here.”
“Well, then, have you seen Ernie Nordstrom lately?” Augie asked.
At that moment they were interrupted by the doorbell. Luke or Mark buzze
d in a couple of customers and moved away to take care of them. The newcomers were both women in their thirties, and one of them asked, “Do you have any Bernadette Peters personal items? Clothing, jewelry, letters, anything?”
Her friend laughed, gently. “An old toothbrush, a pencil stub …”
The first woman said, unnecessarily, “I collect Bernadette Peters.”
“You do?” the Zingone brother said, but then made a quick recovery. “We did have a fringed shawl of hers, but it may have been sold. Let’s go take a look.” He led the two women to the back of the shop.
“Ernie Nordstrom?” Augie prompted.
Matthew said, “We haven’t seen him in a couple of months.”
“Hurray, hurray,” Janet muttered.
Matthew grinned. “Janet doesn’t like Ernie.”
“He always was a little bit strange,” Janet said. “But after the Lucy thing he turned downright weird.”
“What Lucy thing?” Marian asked.
“The I Love Lucy pilot episode,” Mark or Luke drawled. “Ernie Nordstrom spent nearly twenty years of his life looking for it—it was the only one of all the Lucy episodes that was missing. Then somebody’s wife finds a copy she didn’t know she had, and they casually show it on television for anybody to copy who wanted to. Twenty years Ernie had been looking … and he ends up out on a limb without a paddle! That would turn anyone sour.”
“Oh, yes,” Marian said, thinking back. “I believe I watched that. Pretty bad, as I recall.”
Augie laughed shortly. “It was dreadful. But that’s not the point. The point is it was one of a kind and nobody could find it. Ernie Nordstrom had just about made a career of looking for Lucy … and suddenly all these VCRs are whirring away, taping the thing straight off television.” He laughed again. “Jesus.”
Marian asked, “Do you have an address for him?”
The Zingones shook their heads. “Ernie doesn’t want people to know where he lives,” Mark/Luke said. “He deals out of his apartment, so he keeps a lot of valuable stuff there. He’s just being careful.”
“Do you know of any partners he might have?” Marian asked. “Younger—one’s dark and quiet, wears his hair in a ponytail, and the other’s a hunk?” She got more head shakes, this time accompanied by looks of incipient suspicion that she hastened to squelch. “I got a tip that some man who had two younger buddies with him knew something about the Three Rings scripts. Augie’s pretty sure the one I’m looking for is Ernie Nordstrom, but I’d hate to spend a lot of time tracking down the wrong guy. All I have to go on is a description—short and stocky, wheezes a lot, middle-aged.”
“That could be Harley Wingfield,” Janet said, “but unless it has ‘Elvis’ written on it, Harley’s not interested.”
“So that leaves Ernie Nordstrom,” Augie said with an air of finality. “If he’s got a line on the Three Rings director’s script, I’d like to let him know a customer’s waiting to do business.” He cleared his throat. “So if anybody who knows him comes in …”
“We’ll take care of it,” Luke/Mark promised. “That’ll be our number-one agenda on things to do. We’d like to know what happened to the Broadhurst haul too.”
Janet spoke up. “Wait a minute. You said one of the younger guys is dark-haired and quiet?”
Marian looked at her quickly. “That’s right.”
“Not a partner, but …” She turned to her brothers. “Didn’t Ernie use to hire some Latino whenever he had heavy lifting to do, or a whole bunch of stuff he needed to move—”
“You’re right,” Matthew said. “Uh, what’s his name … Vasquez?”
“Uh-huh, Vasquez, that’s it. He barely speaks English, I remember.”
“First name?” Marian asked. Nobody knew that, or where he could be reached.
The bell rang again; more customers. Augie looked at his watch and said, “I’ve got to get to work.”
Marian thanked the Zingones and followed her “agent” out. Back down on the street, she and Augie exchanged phone numbers. “You’ll get in touch the minute you hear anything?” Marian asked.
“Count on it,” Augie said with his big-toothed smile, and waved goodbye.
Lieutenant Overbrook looked amused. “Matthew, Mark, Luke … and Janet?”
“Best-laid plans,” Marian said with a grin. “But these two possibles look pretty good—they fit the descriptions. Vasquez is just muscles-for-hire, and I’m guessing the hunk is too. Ernie Nordstrom is the one we want. Shady dealer, smalltime.”
“APB?”
“Not yet, it might spook him. Let’s give Augie and the Zingones a chance first. And now that I’ve got a name, I can do some more hunting myself.”
Overbrook was frowning. “Vasquez … the cleaning crew didn’t mention one of the men was Hispanic. Perlmutter would have said so.”
“Maybe they were too busy ogling the hunk. Janet Zingone said Vasquez didn’t speak much English. If he didn’t talk at all in front of the cleaning crew, they might not have realized he was Hispanic. Depends on his coloring.”
“Possible. How’s this Augie Silver going to get in touch with you?”
“I gave him my home phone number,” Marian said. “He thinks I’m a writer researching John Reddick—Reddick’s the director of The Apostrophe Thief. I’m pretending to be looking for the script of an earlier play he directed … which was also stolen.”
“Same thief?”
“No reason to think so—it just gave me an excuse to go looking for someone fitting the description we got. If Ernie Nordstrom is the one who raided the Broadhurst dressing rooms Tuesday, he’s not going to sell a copy of The Apostrophe Thief to the first person who comes along looking for one. So, I’m supposed to be trying to track down this earlier play. Three Rings, it’s called.”
“Good, good,” Overbrook said, nodding. “And I like your cover story. Everybody’s used to running into writers—they’re all over the place these days. Okay, writer, go write up what you’ve got so far. You can use Korobovsky’s typewriter.”
Marian went out into the squadroom and asked Perlmutter which desk belonged to Korobovsky, whoever he or she was. When she’d finished typing up her report, she spent the rest of the workday trying to get an address for Ernie Nordstrom. He had no police record, not even a traffic citation. The two E. Nordstroms in the NYNEX white pages were both women, and the phone company said he didn’t have an unlisted number. The gas and electric companies had no record of him, and he didn’t subscribe to cable TV. Nor did he own a car. He wasn’t registered to vote, and he didn’t carry any plastic; Marian tried the major banks and credit bureaus but they’d never heard of him. He didn’t even have a checking account that she could find. Social Security had over a hundred Ernest Nordstroms on its rolls, but not one of them lived in New York.
Yet nobody could be that anonymous; it was beginning to look as if “Ernie Nordstrom” wasn’t his real name. Marian put through a routine request for information to the FBI, but she didn’t hope for much there. Nordstrom was small cheese, maybe a little bent and maybe not, but clearly not a big-time criminal. Still, he’d certainly made sure no one could find him in a hurry. Marian kept at it until her shift ended before finally giving up and going home.
To find Curt Holland lounging against the door of her apartment. “This play you want me to see Saturday night,” he said casually, “it wouldn’t happen to be The Apostrophe Thief, would it?”
6
Marian and Holland sat across from each other at her kitchen table, eating the Thai food they’d sent out for. They dug into the cardboard cartons, chewed thoughtfully, and watched each other. Holland still had shadows under his eyes, but the pinched, strained look was gone from his face. The trauma of the shooting was fading, for both of them; they were recovering, in their different ways.
A certain formality hung in the air; they were both treading cautiously, as if fearing traps lying in wait, tiptoeing around the question of whether there would—or could—be more bet
ween them. Marian was wondering if she wanted more. No, that wasn’t true; she did want more. But. There were too many things about this man she didn’t like … or perhaps didn’t understand. Still, she wasn’t about to yield to impulse; she’d been burned before, doing just that.
“What did you do today?” she asked around a mouthful of Evil Jungle Princess Chicken.
“I looked at office space.”
“See anything you liked?”
“Not really.” He offered no details. “What about you? Are you still on personal time?”
“Lord, no. I’m in up to my ears.” She told him about the burglary at the Broadhurst Theatre and her subsequent temporary assignment to Midtown South. She described the auction, Augie Silver, and the Zingones. “You should see the stuff they have there. A silk fan Helen Hayes carried in some play, hotel bills from a Beatles tour, a couple of Star Trek uniforms—the ones really used, not just copies … you name it, it’s there. And the prices! I can’t believe what people are willing to pay for what are really nothing more than souvenirs.”
“I can,” Holland said. “Who collects these castoffs? Sad ineffectual nonentities with no lives of their own, out of touch with quotidian reality and hoping for a little reflected glory from the mere fact of owning something once handled by a celebrity. Riding in the wake of others because they’re unable to make waves of their own. Sheer voyeurism.”
There it was, that damned arrogance of his. “Holland, do you have any idea how condescending that sounds?”
“Does that make it any the less true?”
“But collecting’s a harmless form of self-indulgence. It hurts no one and it makes the collectors feel good. Who wouldn’t buy a little happiness if they could?”
