The Role Players

by Dorien Grey

Jonathan shook his head. “Not in so many words, but he didn’t have to. The fact that he was really reluctant to talk about Tait at all was a clue, and when he did, well…” he paused to give me a rather odd glance, as though not quite sure whether he should bring up a still-touchy subject for him. He decided to forge ahead. “While I was hustling I got pretty good at reading people—not only what they said and how they said it, but what they didn’t say.”

  “So what did he say?” I asked as we stopped at the corner to wait for the light to change.

  “I tried to be cool about it, and not to sound like I was prying,” he said. “But I asked him how long he’d been working for Tait, and he said six years, right after he got out of college. When I asked how he’d come to work for him, he made a goof. ‘I met him at…’ he started to say, then changed it to ‘he had an ad in the paper for a personal assistant.’ Betcha anything Tait picked him up in a bar.”

  The light changed, and we crossed.

  “Another time,” Jonathan continued, “I asked him if he had a boyfriend. He blushed and said ‘No. No time. Mr. Duncan keeps me really busy.’ His answers were all really short, then he’d change the subject as soon as he could. I finally gave up, because I knew he was uncomfortable.”

  I shrugged. “Well, maybe he’s just really, really shy.”

  Jonathan gave me a raised-eyebrow look. “You believe that?”

  “No,” I admitted.

  “Me, neither.”

  *

  We took the subway up to the Port Authority Bus Terminal, and walked over to Times Square. Jonathan was of course excited about seeing another Broadway show.

  “Can we see another musical?” he asked. “I can’t imagine anything could be better than Cats, but then that’s the only musical I ever saw.”

  We were passing 44th Street when Jonathan stopped me in mid-stride by grabbing my arm and pointing to the Shubert Theater. “A Chorus Line!” he said. “I’d love to see that! Wouldn’t you?”

  I grinned. “Sure, if we can get tickets.”

  He propelled me down the street to the box office, which had a surprisingly short line. Well, I remembered, it had already been running for some time. When we reached the ticket window, I said, “Any chance for two tickets for tonight?”

  “You’re in luck,” the man behind the window said. “We had a group cancellation about ten minutes ago. I’ve got two of those left. Row 2 of the mezzanine. You want ’em?”

  “Yes!” Jonathan said, causing the man to look up sharply.

  He looked at Jonathan, then at me. “You’re together, I assume.”

  I nodded, taking out my wallet.

  The man grinned, put the tickets in a small envelope, and handed them to me. “Eight o’clock curtain,” he said.

  I handed the tickets to Jonathan, who opened the envelope to take the tickets out and examine them closely. “This is great!” he said, carefully replacing the tickets in the envelope, and handed it back to me.

  “You can hold onto them,” I said.

  A quick look of concern crossed his face. “I don’t want to lose them.”

  I smiled. “You won’t.”

  He put the envelope in his shirt pocket, taking great care to push it down to the bottom, then patting it to make sure it wouldn’t jump out and get lost.

  “What do you want to do now?” I asked.

  He moved his hand from his shirt pocket to his stomach. “Lunch?” he asked.

  “Good idea. Any preferences?”

  He grinned. “Yeah!” he said. He spotted a policeman on the corner and stopped me, holding up his hand. “Just a minute,” he said. Leaving me standing there, he walked over to the cop and said something to him. The cop nodded and pointed somewhere across Broadway. Jonathan smiled, said something else to the cop, then came back to me.

  “Come on!” he said.

  “Where are we going?” I asked, thoroughly confused.

  He grinned again. “You’ll see. It’s a surprise. Somewhere I’ve wanted to go since I read about it in The Weekly Reader in third grade! Come on!”

  He had me. We crossed Broadway, walked to 42nd and turned west. I thought maybe we were going back to Grand Central, but we passed it and kept going to 3rd Avenue.

  When we got close enough, I saw where we were headed—a Horn & Hardart’s automat.

  “I’ve always wanted to eat at a real automat!” he said enthusiastically as he pushed open the door and we entered. He quickly took out his billfold and went to the cashier.

  “We can get some more if we need it,” he said when he returned, guiding me to the long wall of small windows behind which were displayed delicacies fit for a royal court: tuna sandwiches, ham sandwiches, roast beef sandwiches; dishes of coleslaw and cottage cheese and baked beans and JELL-O and tapioca pudding; slices of endless varieties of pie and cake and rolls. Jonathan was in seventh heaven.

  We took our trays and started down the long line….

  *

  “I hope you didn’t mind,” Jonathan said as we left the automat. “When you asked if I had a preference, this place just popped into my mind.”

  “No,” I said. “That was fine.” And it was, though I made a mental note to call ahead next time to make sure Julia Child would be on duty.

  “Okay,” Jonathan said. “Your turn. Where to?”

  “We still have to get something for Mario and Bob. You want to try Macy’s?”

  His eyes lit up. “Macy’s? You bet!”

  “Walk, bus, or subway?” I asked.

  “Let’s walk.”

  *

  We discussed on the way the fact that, given Macy’s size, we should try to narrow down what we might look for when we got there. It couldn’t be anything too big or too fragile, and our suitcases had been full when we arrived. So it would be something small and unbreakable. And we’d have to make it quick.

  Right.

  We spent nearly two hours going from floor to floor, aisle to aisle, skipping only the women’s clothing, jewelry, and the babies’ and toddlers’ departments—Jonathan’s idea of “quick.” But when we came to the toy department, Jonathan stopped short.

  “Oh, my God, Dick!” he said. “I almost forgot! It’s Joshua’s birthday next week! How could I have forgotten my favorite nephew’s birthday?”

  “Well, luckily, you didn’t,” I pointed out. “You want to get him something while we’re here?”

  “Of course!” he said, moving quickly into the depths of the department.

  “How old will he be?” I asked, having forgotten. “Three or four?”

  “Four!” Jonathan said. “And I haven’t seen him in over a year! I really miss him.”

  “What do kids that age like?” I asked.

  “I’ll know it when I see it,” he replied, looking around and spotting something on a distant shelf. “There!” he said, pointing to a large stuffed rabbit.

  “A stuffed rabbit?”

  He looked at me as though I were crazy. “It’s not a rabbit,” he said. “It’s a bunny. I had one when I was his age, and I loved it. Sheryl, my sister-in-law, raised rabbits until just before I left. Joshua grew up with them.”

  “So your brother won’t mind you getting him a doll?” I teased.

  Jonathan looked at me sternly. “It’s. Not. A. Doll. It’s. A. Stuffed. Bunny,” he insisted, making each word its own sentence.

  “Okay, okay,” I said. “Get it.”

  He smiled at me sweetly. “I will,” he said. And he did.

  We asked the clerk if they could possibly ship it for us, and she said she would put it in a box and take it to the gift-wrap department, where they could take care of it.

  Twenty minutes later, Joshua’s bunny was on its way to Wisconsin, and we returned to our original quest.

  Men’s clothing, electronics, furniture, luggage, linen, housewares, you name it, we went through it.

  We finally found a nice gift for Bob and Mario…where else, of course, but in the China and Glassware department
: a pair of heavy glass candle holders with a candlewick pattern. Jonathan thought they’d look nice either on the dining room table or the mantle of their large Victorian house, and I agreed. They were heavy enough that I didn’t think we’d have to worry about them being broken in transit. And of course Jonathan checked to make sure they had a “Macy’s” sticker on the bottom of each one.

  On the way out of the store we passed again through the Men’s department so Jonathan could take another look at a shirt that had caught his eye—a long-sleeve pullover crew-neck shirt with wide blue-and-white horizontal stripes, which looked great on him just by his holding it up in front of himself. I urged him to get it, and he did.

  *

  We returned to the apartment at around four, using the key Max had given us. We were greeted by both Max and Chris and a great aroma coming from the kitchen that made Jonathan’s stomach growl.

  Chris grinned. “Pork roast,” he said. “We figured you’d be home right about now. Have a good time?”

  Ah, just the words Jonathan was waiting to hear. “We got tickets to A Chorus Line!” he said eagerly, taking the tickets out of his shirt pocket as if to show them he hadn’t made it up.

  “A great show,” Max said, leading us all to sit down. “You’ll love it. I saw it when it first opened, then I took Chris to see it right after we met.”

  Jonathan told them of our shopping adventures, then reached into the shopping bag between his legs and pulled out his new shirt. “You like it?” he asked, holding it up. “We got it at Macy’s.” He stopped abruptly. “Oh,” he said, looking suddenly embarrassed, then at me. “We really should have gone to Chris’ store!” he said.

  “That’s no problem,” Chris grinned. “You’ve got a Barton & Banks back home. They just still call it Marston’s.”

  “Oh, that’s right,” Jonathan said, feeling somewhat better about his lack of loyalty to a friend’s employer.

  Chris got up from his seat, saying, “I’ll go check on dinner.”

  The table, I noticed, was already set.

  “Can I help?” Jonathan asked.

  Chris grinned. “No, but you can keep me company if you want.”

  “Sure,” Jonathan said, following him into the kitchen.

  “So how did it go with Tait, if I may ask?” Max said when they’d left the room.

  I shrugged. “Not sure,” I said. “The gun in the box office is his, and he says it is a .38. He said he’d completely forgotten about it—but I can’t do much more to see if it might be the gun used in Rod’s death until I can take a good look at it and figure out if it has been fired recently. No idea how to tell that just by looking at it, though.”

  “Which is, as I said before, why I’m glad I’m not a detective,” Max said with a grin.

  Jonathan appeared long enough to announce, “Chris says dinner’ll be ready in about fifteen minutes. We’ve just got to make the salad.” Having so announced, he disappeared again.

  Max picked up our conversation. “So why not just have Tait turn the gun over to the police lab and let them check it out?”

  I shrugged. “We talked about it, and it’ll probably have to come to that,” I said. “But I’d really like to be a lot more sure than I am now that it’s the right gun. I can’t see bringing down the weight of the entire NYPD on the Whitman with just an ‘it could be.’ It’s a really big leap between ‘a .38’ and ‘this .38.’ Once the police get into it, there’s no telling what effect it might have on the Whitman or the production. So we really don’t want to drag them into it until and unless we absolutely have to. If it turned out it isn’t the gun that killed Rod, it would just stir up a hornet’s nest for nothing. There’s no time to send the gun back home to have my friends on the force there check it out. We’re leaving this coming Saturday. So I’ll just do the best I can to see what else might point to this particular gun.”

  “Good luck,” Max said.

  “Yeah,” I sighed, “thanks.”

  The phone rang and Chris called, “Can you get that, Babe?”

  “Sure,” Max said, getting up and moving to the phone.

  *

  When is a case not a case? I wondered as Max talked on the phone and I heard Chris and Jonathan laughing and moving about in the kitchen. Well, this one comes pretty damned close, I thought. Here I am in a strange city, supposedly on vacation, and I’m running off in all directions just on the one in eight million possibilities that some poor guy robbed and shot in a vacant lot might have been deliberately killed by someone who knew him.

  And all this is based on what? On another guy’s—albeit a very rich guy’s—vague feeling that that’s what might have happened.

  Jeezus!

  I had to admit that the further I went along on it, though, the stronger the possibility seemed. Still not to the point of being a probability, but getting closer.

  So assuming there was a case, who were the prime suspects? Tait’s announcement that he and Gene had hopes of moving Impartial Observer to Broadway had initially all but totally wiped out my very short list, which had consisted of Tait (a stretch even then), Gene Morrison, and Joe Kenyon.

  The least likely of those three, though just about everything centered on him, had always been Tait. I still simply could not comprehend that he would have done it. As much as he had invested in the Whitman—and especially if there was a however-remote chance for a Broadway run—what possible motive might he have?

  Yeah, my mind-voice in charge of cynicism said, but what if there was a strong enough motive—you still don’t really know anything at all about the guy. What if all this is his way of testing how well he’d gotten away with it? What better way than to hire a private investigator from another part of the country who’d be gone in a couple of weeks? How do you know he would turn the gun over to the police once you were gone? Obviously, if he had killed Rod, he wouldn’t. All he’d have to do, even now, is just get rid of the gun. But he probably wouldn’t as long as you’re around. That would be the same as saying “I did it!”

  Well, Tait did say when he hired me that he only wanted me to find out as much as I could while I was here. So if I didn’t come up with anything, and by some infinitely remote possibility Tait did do it, he’d be home free. It wasn’t likely that the police would spend much more time on Rod’s death, if they hadn’t just put it on a back burner already. New York’s a pretty rough town. Somebody getting robbed and shot in a vacant lot isn’t exactly “Stop the Presses” news.

  And if I was really desperate for potential suspects—and let’s face it, I pretty much was—I might throw Cam Roberts into the mix.

  Just because he said he’d kill for Rod’s part? Come on! The understudy-kills-lead-to-become-a-star plot sounds like the kind of movie that went out of style with the advent of the talkies, don’t you think?

  Hey, it was worth looking into, at least.

  I was beginning to feel like a dog chasing its tail.

  I realized I’d almost let Gene Morrison slip off the radar screen when I got sidetracked by nosing into Tait’s god-knows-what-it-was relationship to Keith. I’d assumed that if Gene had any hopes of taking the play to Broadway, it would be all but inconceivable that he’d let anger or jealousy destroy it all. But Tait’s saying that Gene would have agreed to replace Rod if he had to brought him back into focus. Rod was replaced, and the show went on, which just goes to prove that love is love, and Broadway is Broadway.

  I still wanted to have another talk with Morrison to find out why he lied about coming into town the day of Rod’s murder. He had been with Tait when Tait bought the gun; he had a key to the theater; he undoubtedly knew where Tait kept it—again if it was the murder weapon. Damn! Morrison believed, with the justification of a true Scorpio, that Rod had betrayed him. And hell hath no fury like a Scorpio scorned. There was a rehearsal going on when Morrison arrived in town, but he had a key to the main door, and the lobby was closed off from the auditorium during rehearsals.

  And then there was
Joe Kenyon. He served jail time for assault and battery. He knew the Whitman like the back of his hand, he very probably knew about the gun, and he had a key. Doesn’t take kindly to being used. Still, unlikely.

  And Cam Roberts. Uh-huh. Straw-grabbing time.

  I pulled myself back to the real world when I heard Max hanging up the phone as Chris called, “Dinner’s ready.”

  Face it, Hardesty, I thought as I got up to join the others, you’re screwed!

  *

  Jonathan volunteered us to clear the table and do the dishes so that Max and Chris could get ready for the performance, and after they’d left we took advantage of having the apartment to ourselves for one of our favorite games to which we’ve never given a name, but would probably be called Silent Movie, in which neither of us says a word—actually, we don’t have to; the body language says all that needs to be said.

  Another quick shower, dress, and out the door by just before seven o’clock. We were getting pretty good at this.

  *

  By the time we left the theater, Jonathan having collected another dozen or so programs as souvenirs, A Chorus Line had edged slightly ahead of Cats in his pantheon of greatest musicals of all time. And what made it even more enjoyable for me was simply being able to witness his total, absolute and unconditional enthusiasm.

  “Let’s move to New York,” he said as we made our way through the after-theater crowds toward the subway. “I want to be a chorus boy!”

  “I see,” I said. “And what will we do with your plants?”

  “We can bring them along!”

  “All 14,000?”

  He grinned. “There aren’t that many. We can make a couple of trips.”

  “And our friends?”

  “They can come too!”

  “Okay,” I said. I recognized an adrenaline fantasy when I heard one.

  We stopped for something to eat before we got on the subway, which toned him down a bit, and he settled for humming and singing the entire score all the way to the apartment.

  Max and Chris had just gotten home a couple of minutes before us and we sat and talked for an hour. When Jonathan did not mention the move, I assumed his feet had returned a bit closer to the ground. Chris announced that now that the production was running smoothly, he wouldn’t be going in unless he was really needed for something, which would give him, at least, more time to spend with us during our last week.