Murder in the Wings

by Ed Gorman

  Chapter 5

  Seven hours later I was standing at a display of sunglasses, watching in a mirror a man thinking about taking a watch from the jewelry counter. After breakfast Donna had gone to Ad World to wrap up the current issue and I'd come here, to Sparkle City (yes, indeed), where I was presently a wage slave for the American Security company.

  Lunch I got from a machine. At three, when I'd finished my four-hour shift, I headed straight for home and my jogging clothes. The only way I would get through the rest of the day without sleep was to run a few miles.

  By seven o'clock, showered and dressed in a buttoned-down white shirt without a tie, a tweed sport coat with one button missing, and a pair of jeans that hadn't exactly come wrinkle-free from the drier, I pulled my rusting Honda Civic up in front of the Bridges Theater.

  The marquee was dark. Inside the locked front doors, the light from the stage was glowing dimly into the lobby. Somebody was in there. I went around to the alley and tried the side door. Locked. I knocked. Stan DeVoto, the janitor, opened up.

  "Hey, Dwyer, what're you doin' here? Figured you woulda heard they closed down for the night."

  "Yeah. Ashton left word with my service."

  He smiled. He was in his sixties, bald and beer fat, and I would have given at least one of my testicles to be as happy as he usually seemed. Nuclear war? Piss on it; the Cubbies are on this afternoon (though come to think of it, the way the Cubbies play sometimes, nuclear war might be more enjoyable to contemplate). He always talked about the "mizzus" and where a guy could get Blatz on the cheap (but never cheap enough for my taste) and who among the actors was a "good guy." He never said who wasn't a good guy, but you could tell what he thought by the way his mouth tightened and he squinted his spaniel eyes.

  "They're all inside," he said.

  "You mean the cast?"

  He nodded. "David, he told me nobody would be coming over, but they all seemed to drift in." He smiled. "Just like you."

  I shook my head. "I suppose we're all in a state of shock."

  "Yeah, like that guy Lockhart."

  I didn't know who he meant. "Who's that?"

  "One of Reeves's friends." The way he said "Reeves" told me that death hadn't changed his mind about Reeves. He'd never been one of the "good guys." (Reeves treated most people pretty badly unless there was something he wanted from them.) "Came in here like he was in a daze. Seemed all broke up. Kinda felt sorry for him."

  "What'd he want?"

  "Wanted to see Michael's office. Hell, the cops were here earlier in the day, so I didn't figure there'd be any problem lettin' him in, you know."

  "So you let him in?"

  He could sense that maybe he hadn't done the right thing. "They were buddies, Dwyer."

  "All right," I said.

  But he wasn't finished defending himself. "Seems Lockhart was one of Reeves's convict friends. You know that acting class he teaches? Lockhart's one of those guys."

  "All right, Stan."

  He rubbed his bald head. "I fucked up, huh?"

  I shrugged. "That's how I've spent my life, Stan, fucking up. It isn't anything to worry about."

  "I won't let the s.o.b. in there next time—if he ever comes back, I mean. You can bet your ass on that."

  "Great."

  "I thought there was something fishy about him, Dwyer. I really did."

  "See you, Stan."

  In case you don't already know, Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night is the autobiographical drama of America's greatest playwright. It's his tortured recollection of his mother, a morphine addict, his father, an insensitive cheapskate, and his brother, a doomed alcoholic. In the inscription he wrote to his wife Carlotta, O'Neill says, "I give you the original script of this play of old sorrow, written in tears and blood." He ends by saying that at last he can "face my dead and write this play—write it with deep pity and understanding and forgiveness for all the four haunted Tyrones."

  The tone of his inscription was the mood on stage when I reached it.

  Evelyn Ashton and her mother Sylvia and her father David sat on the couch, while at the table Keech, who played my younger brother, sat with a beer in his hand. Anne Stewart, who played our mother, sat across from him. There was no conversation. They were just staring blankly. From the wings, I watched for a time. At one point Evelyn, even in blue jeans and a wrinkled white blouse the beautiful ingénue, put her head on her mother's shoulder and began crying softly. The rest of us had lost a director—she'd lost a lover. For some reason Keech looked irritated with her tears. He scowled in her direction, but then he met Anne Stewart's disapproving gaze and softened his expression.

  When I came on stage, only David Ashton seemed much interested in me. He came over and poured me some wine from a bottle on the dining room table. While I waited for him to finish, I turned and looked out at the theater. There was something lonely about all those empty seats.

  "Here you are, Dwyer. Glad you decided to show up." He leaned in so his daughter wouldn't hear him. "I suppose we're holding our own impromptu little wake here." He wore his standard blazer and white shirt. He had good features and his blond hair lent him an almost dashing quality. But there was something weak about him. I was never sure how to explain it. He struck me as a boy wearing his father's clothes. "Why don't you come over and sit down?"

  I did, but the next ten minutes made me wish I'd done what Donna had wanted me to do, which was meet her at an Italian place for dinner and then go over to her place and watch a very good lost movie called Who'll Stop the Rain.

  I don't know what was said; I hardly listened. I just responded on autopilot. Wasn't it terrible? Indeed it was. Could any of us have guessed that Wade was in such desperate straits? Indeed we couldn't have. Poor Michael; poor Evelyn; poor Bridges Theater. Indeed indeed indeed.

  Keech said, "Have they found the cocksucker yet?"

  Ashton said, "That sort of language is hardly called for. There are ladies here."

  Keech, his curly hair like an aureole around his head, said, "Have they, Dwyer?"

  "Not that I know of."

  "And not that you'd give a shit, either."

  "What's that supposed to mean?" I was tired and edgy enough that my temper responded before my brain did.

  "Just that you're probably a lot more worried about Wade than about Michael. You and your girlfriend got pretty chummy with the drunken bastard."

  Ashton said, "Do we have to argue among ourselves? Don't we have enough to feel badly about?" He had the whining intonation of a fourth-rate minister.

  "Why don't you both shut up?" Evelyn snapped at US. "Anyway, Keech, you're a fine one to defend Michael."

  "What's that supposed to mean?" Keech said.

  "I was in the parking lot the other night when you tried to punch Michael. I suppose you call that being a good friend?"

  It was as if Keech had been ready for her. He did it quick and he did it ugly. "I suppose now's not a good time to tell you about the girl Michael was keeping on the side."

  "You're a liar!"

  Keech laughed. "You know better than that, Evelyn. It's time you quit kidding yourself." Keech stood up, drained his bottle, and set it down. He was one of those little men who seem physically perfect—the sort who inevitably get called "cute"—but his size had made him insufferable. He was far too fond of himself. He looked around with what seemed to be pity and amusement and then said to me, "I hope they shoot the fucker, Dwyer. That's what he's got coming."

  There wasn't anything to say to that kind of malice. There never is. To Ashton, he said, "Let me know when we'll do another performance." With that, he left the stage.

  When he was sure Keech was gone, Ashton stood up and said, "Well, that wasn't very pleasant, was it?"

  Evelyn looked at her father and shook her head. "Can't you just call him a name, Daddy? Do you always have to be so goddamn polite?"

  Sylvia took her daughter's hand. "Dad hardly has that coming, darling." Sylvia's dark good looks
were spoiled only by her mad eyes. Though nobody in the cast had been ungallant enough to say it, she was reminiscent of the mother in the play: living in her own world, dealing with the worst sort of atrocities but pretending there was absolutely nothing wrong. "Now apologize to your father."

  Evelyn glared at the man. "I'm sorry, Daddy."

  "I don't want to stoop to his level, that's all, honey." Evelyn was not persuaded.

  Anne Stewart stood up next. She was wearing a leotard and very tight Levi's. She had auburn, gray-streaked hair pulled back and tied up in a piece of Navajo jewelry the size of a fist. She had a nose that a queen would envy and dark eyes that you could study for a century and never quite figure out. She was fifty and sexy in a breathtaking way that not even Evelyn's beauty could match. "I guess I'll go, too," she said.

  "No more wine?" David Ashton said.

  Anne shook her head. "It's really getting to be a downer, I'm afraid."

  "The rain isn't helping," Sylvia Ashton said.

  Anne nodded in agreement. "Well, everybody, good night."

  We all said our good nights.

  When Anne was gone, Sylvia said, "Where do you suppose he went?" She stared at me.

  "Wade, you mean?"

  "Yes."

  "I don't know."

  "It said on the news tonight that you were the last person to see him."

  "Me and my lady friend, yes."

  She looked as sad as a child who'd just been told that her Daddy had died. "Do you suppose they'll kill him? Then Michael will be dead and Stephen will be dead."

  You could hear it in her voice, whatever happened when she started on her inevitable path to the madhouse again. I felt sorry for her. I wanted to touch her in some way, just a reassuring touch, but that's always a bit difficult to do with a husband less than ten feet away.

  Obviously David Ashton heard it in her voice, too. He jumped up as he'd jumped up many times in his life, and his hand went out, a life preserver of sorts. She took it without fuss or hesitation.

  Even Evelyn stopped feeling sorry for herself long enough to say, "Come on, Mom, let Daddy and me take you upstairs and we'll watch some TV."

  "Isn't Jack Benny on cable?" Sylvia wanted to know.

  "Yes," Ashton said gravely. "Yes, darling, he is."

  "Then let's hurry," Sylvia said. She sounded bright and happy all of sudden. She also sounded spooky as shit.

  "Thanks for coming by," Ashton said. He had one of those strong grips that bland men sometimes surprise you with. It was like sticking your hand in a vise. "I don't suppose we'll open again for a few days." I pulled my hand away. It stung.

  They left the stage. I stood and looked out at the empty theater again. Two years ago I'd been a cop, and that's all I'd wanted to be. Then I had gotten a part in a traffic safety spot and people started telling me how well I'd done. All of a sudden, being a cop wasn't enough. I wanted to be an actor. Of course I'd had a wife back then, too. She hadn't understood and she'd found a man who hadn't understood right along with her, a good enough man that my fifteen-year-old son liked him a hell of a lot more now that the guy was his stepfather. I usually saw my wife when I picked our boy up. Recently, she had started looking as if she'd just discovered oil in her back yard. I don't think she ever looked that happy all the time we were married. Probably with good reason.

  Behind the flats I heard the elevator taking the Ashtons to the top floor of the theater. There was a sprawling penthouse up there where they lived along with the matriarch of the clan, Mrs. Bridges. A nervous disorder had confined her to bed. I had never met her. Everybody assured me that I was lucky. I was told that her servants called her "Benito," after Mussolini.

  My footsteps rang hollow as I left the stage and headed for the wings.

  I was going to look up Stan and say good night and see if Donna was still awake enough to let me come over. It's fun to be in your forties and still live essentially the way you did in high school.

  I was walking past the dressing rooms when I heard something at the top of the winding metal stairs that led to more dressing rooms and Michael Reeves's office. As the resident director here, he had been given space to conduct all his business affairs, including the commercials he directed for various ad agencies.

  I raised my head. The lights upstairs were out. Somebody tiptoed through the gloom above my head. A door yawned open. The tiptoeing stopped.

  I thought of locating Stan and borrowing a flashlight. But maybe the visitor would be gone and I wouldn't find out who it was and what the person wanted. If I wanted to believe that Stephen Wade was innocent—and I did—then it was up to me to prove it.

  I went up the stairs on tiptoes myself, cursing myself at each step for being such a water buffalo. The damp night caused me to sweat and the darkness made me stumble. I reached the stairway with almost no pride left. Light from the window at the east end of the hail showed me a corridor with four doors. I stood absolutely still. My heart sounded as if it needed a tune-up. My feet felt damp. I needed a shower; I needed help.

  When the door opened, I leaned back into the shadows.

  She stuck her lovely head out and looked first one way and then the other, and then she slowly came out. She must have thought I was gone. After checking the corridor for signs of life, she walked past me to the stairs and descended with utter grace and without making a sound. The police force could have used her.

  After a few minutes I heard her saying good night to Stan, and then I heard the big metal side door squeak open. I ran to the window and watched as Anne Stewart got into her Mercedes and drove off.

  What the hell had she been doing in Michael Reeves's office, I wondered as I went downstairs.

  I was nearing the stage door when I heard the phone ring and Stan answer it. He said, "I don't know, Mr. Ashton. I think he may already have gone. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Good night, sir."

  He hung up just as I reached him. "Oh, Dwyer. You are here, huh?"

  "Unless I'm a ghost."

  "That was Mr. Ashton."

  "Oh?"

  "Yeah, he said he thought you might still be down here. He said he wants you to come up to the penthouse."

  "You're kidding?"

  He shrugged. "That's what he said."

  "Did he say what he wanted?"

  "Nope."

  "You think there's an emergency or something?"

  "Not that I know of."

  "I wonder what the hell's going on."

  "There's a good way to find out." He smiled; nodding toward the elevator. "Get on the damn thing and go up there."

  I smiled at him. "Good point."

  I got on the elevator and went up. I was still wondering about Anne Stewart and what she'd been doing in Reeves's office.

  Chapter 6

  Even before the elevator doors had opened completely I saw a chandelier that cast an almost blinding light over a reception area nearly as large as the theater's. A fleshy man with sleek white hair and wearing a blue jumpsuit nodded hello. When he spoke it was in good English with a Latin American accent. "You are Mr. Dwyer."

  "Yes."

  "Mrs. Bridges would like to see you."

  I looked around. Three hallways angled off from the reception area. Somewhere down the corridors lived the three Ashtons. The place seemed to be divided into three apartments.

  "I'm not going to see David or Sylvia?" I asked.

  "Mrs. Bridges did not mention them." He pointed to the second hallway. "She'll be most happy."

  I followed him down a corridor so broad that it was almost a room itself. Discreetly lit lithographs by Klee and Picasso lined the north wall. On the other wall were photographs of the Bridges family, usually posed outside a factory or a store or a building that the family owned. For a family from a small Midwestern town they were exceptionally wealthy. Two presidents had selected family members to be foreign ambassadors; one president had even taken a Bridges into his cabinet.

  The closer we got to the end of the hall, the sweeter the a
ir became. Cloyingly sweet. When the servant in the blue jumpsuit stopped, I paused and sniffed the air.

  "Flowers," he explained with a smile. "Many, many flowers."

  The smell reminded me of a funeral parlor. When I got inside the room, I understood why.

  Before my eyes settled on the banked rows of flowers, I saw the frail, almost cute little woman propped up in a huge bed covered with a pink brocaded bedspread. Amid all the flowers, the tiny woman reminded me of an illustration from Alice in Wonderland.

  When I reached her, she stuck out a slip of a hand and put it in mine. It was like shaking with a kitten. She glanced at the man in the blue jumpsuit, and for the first time I saw the power of the Bridges family: he left the room instantly.

  Before I devoted more attention to her, I finished inspecting the room. The flowers, roses and gardenias and mums, literally filled the room. With the thick gold drapes drawn and the door closed behind the servant, I felt as if we were out of time, existing on some altered plane between death and life—particularly when I saw the collage of old photographs next to her bed.

  Calvin Coolidge doffed a derby; Ike smiled baldly; Nixon grinned nervously. Each was pictured with an arm around Hughton Bridges, who would have been this woman's husband. But that was not all. There was Ronald Reagan, Celeste Holm, Caesar Romero; there was Frank Sinatra and Satchmo and Dinah Shore—each with both of the Bridges, Hughton and the woman before me, Lenora.

  "I'm afraid I don't know many of the celebrities today," she said, drawing back my attention.

  I smiled. "I'm afraid I don't, either."

  "I noticed your nose."

  "Pardon me?"

  "Your nose." She giggled. "It wiggled. Like a rabbit's. It's the flowers. Not everybody likes them. I love them. But you don't." Her little blue eyes were flirtatious. In her pink silk nightgown it was still possible to see what a beauty she'd once been, the beauty she was still in the fading photographs. She said, "You're wondering how old I am."

  I felt myself flush.

  "Perfectly natural and perfectly understandable," she said. "I'm eighty-three."