He and Maggie got off two stops later. More violets, more new leaves, a compact village center surrounded by more wooded subdivisions. They found a phone book in a drugstore.
“No Dennis Burns. No Dr. Burns,” reported Maggie. “The library is on Front Street.”
They were lucky—it wouldn’t be closing for another hour and a half. Last year’s directory yielded a Dr. C.K. Burns, obstetrician, at an address not far away. They strolled through twilight smells of earth and new leaves to look at it.
It was an early-nineteenth-century house, white clapboard, near the little downtown. The yew bushes around the foundation were ragged, the windows dark. A large brown-and-yellow sign advised that the building was For Sale, and to Call Winston Realty Now! They did.
“Just here for an hour,” Nick told the young woman who answered. “I’ve been thinking about moving out of Manhattan. Tired of the rush. A colleague told me Dr. Burns’s place might be available.”
“Oh, yes! Do you want to see it, Dr. Connery?”
“What are they asking?”
“Well, it does, um, need a little modernization. So they’re only asking seventy thousand.”
“Yes, let’s take a look. Meet you there in twenty minutes.”
Maggie frowned at his turtleneck and jeans as he hung up. “You don’t look much like a doctor, love.”
“But you look like a doctor’s wife.”
“Well, we’re halfway there. Buy me a drink.”
There was one bar. Crowded. Maggie hung up her trench coat, quickly downed her 7-Up, and headed for the women’s room. Pregnancy had reduced her capacity. Had also made her fussy about diet and drinking and exercise. A health book personified. But not a prude. Nick smiled at his scotch, remembering last night’s madeleine-scented frolic from sofa to hearth rug to bed. Living with Maggie was a festival.
By the time he’d paid the tab, she was waiting for him by the coat rack. “We’d better hurry,” he said.
“I know. Here.” She was already in her trench coat, holding one out for him.
He shrugged into it and they went out into the spring air. He could button it, just barely, if he didn’t inhale. “Nick the sausage,” he grumbled.
“It was the biggest one there. Don’t complain, Doc, it’s a Burberry.”
“Within which rift imprison’d, I do painfully remain.”
She grinned. “Let’s go, Ariel. Thou shalt ere long be free.”
The woman who met them at the doctor’s office was in her twenties, with a nice figure marginally too rounded for her miniskirt. Straight dark hair swung at shoulder length. “I’m Jill Marden,” she informed them brightly. “Sorry it’s not daytime. It’s hard to appreciate this lovely old house at night.”
“Well, let’s see the inside. That’s where I’d work,” said Nick, into his role. Brusque, clinical, no bedside manner when office-hunting.
“Of course, Dr. Connery.” She was already unlocking the front door. “Though you understand it will need a lot of modernization. He was an old-fashioned doctor, I’m told.”
They followed her into a pleasantly proportioned hall that smelled of dust and closed windows. Dim shadows on the colonial wallpaper showed where long-gone chairs and tables had stood against the walls.
“This was the waiting room,” said Jill.
“Did he leave any equipment?” asked Nick. Maggie was poking into a built-in cupboard—empty—and glancing at the reception counter, also empty.
“Only the old X-ray machine,” said Jill apologetically. “The family sold most of his things. Will you be needing—”
“Probably wouldn’t have been very up-to-date equipment anyway,” said Nick. “My colleague said there was a financial problem. Alcohol, he thought.”
“Yes, I’m afraid so.” Seeing that the Burns family secret was out, Jill became more forthcoming. “He really did fail those last ten years. My mother says he was a fine doctor at first, excellent reputation, but then his drinking got the upper hand. Word gets around and after the Collins affair, people stopped going to him, even though they hushed it up.”
“Collins.” Maggie’s convincing frown covered her fishing expedition. “That was the woman who died in childbirth?”
“Oh, no! That was Mrs. Briggs. An aneurysm, my mother said. Unavoidable. Mrs. Collins was different. She was supposed to be having a routine hysterectomy but Dr. Burns was so shaky he severed a spinal nerve. She sued, of course, and the hospital dropped him. Insurance trouble too.”
“Must have been hard for him to make a living,” said Nick dispassionately. But he was thinking sympathetically of young Denny at that fragile age when good opinion was of life-or-death importance. A drunken father, sued for crippling a woman—that would be tough. They were wandering through empty labs, examination rooms, bathrooms, all done in a 1950s version of modern. After the spring air it was closetlike.
“He ended up doing exams for insurance companies, and not many of those. No obstetrics, of course,” Jill informed them.
“Hard on the family, too. Weren’t there children?” asked Maggie.
“Just one boy. He wasn’t bad, just a little trouble once for running a car into a tree. Not a bad kid. Did a lot of school plays. Look, I forgot to ask, are you an obstetrician too?”
“Yes,” said Nick. “The layout of this place is good. But I was hoping for something larger, or that at least could be expanded. In my field it’s helpful to have a partner.”
“Hard to get a vacation in, or even dinner,” explained Maggie, with a conspiratorial woman-to-woman grin. “Babies don’t arrive by appointment. I’d love for him to have a partner.”
“I know what you mean, Mrs. Connery.” Jill smiled back. “You know, I bet it would be possible to expand toward the back. Let’s look.”
It was a relief to get out into the twilight breeze again. They dutifully admired the small graveled parking lot and traded suggestions about possible expansion plans. “It would take quite an investment, though,” said Nick. “Do you think they’d come down on the price any?”
“They’re ready to negotiate,” Jill assured him. “Mrs. Burns sold her house already and is back with her family in Pennsylvania. The boy graduated from high school and went to try to find work in the city. They’re eager to sell. It’s a shame. I was away at college, but my mother says it was a rough few years for them, at the end. He started out a very popular doctor.”
“Well, if they’ll be reasonable on the price, I may be back in touch,” said Nick. “We’re looking at a number of locations here in Westchester, of course. But this is a definite possibility. Thanks for showing us around.”
“Here’s my card. Keep in touch,” said Jill.
As soon as her car was out of sight Nick eased out of the trench coat gratefully. “Enough!” he said. “As a doctor I’d have to advise myself to go on a diet.”
“You looked okay.”
“Nah. It smothers up my beauty from the world.”
She grinned. “What next, beautiful?”
“No records left in that office,” said Nick. “The widow’s in Pennsylvania. We don’t even know Amy’s maiden name or Curt’s last name. What does that leave?”
“High school,” decided Maggie. “Let’s see if we can build on Amy’s story about the big role. Might even be a good turn for her.”
She returned the Burberry to the bar coat rack while Nick located the high school on the library map. It was a long hike. Once, they paused for Maggie to sweep her hair sideways and to unbutton her blouse halfway to her navel. As they arrived, a little after nine, lights on the playing field were clicking off. A cluster of boisterous boys with baseball gloves and bats came into the parking lot.
Nick had looped Maggie’s red scarf loosely around his turtleneck in what he hoped was a fifties bohemian fashion. The artist as lowlife and tough. “Where’s the theatre, fellas?”
“Theatre?” A couple of the boys stopped and stared at him.
“The high school theatre.”<
br />
A third boy, acne-infested, joined them. “They’re working in the cafeteria.”
“And where is that, darling?” asked Maggie, as husky-voiced and heavy-lidded as the most clichéd soap-opera actress-vamp.
“Around the corner. Big glass doors about halfway along.”
“Thanks, darling!” She kissed the astonished youngster on his pimply cheek, took Nick’s arm, and swept around the corner. Behind them they could hear jeering echoes of “Thanks, darling!” as his teammates ragged the lucky informant.
The glass doors opened into a big low-ceilinged space, lights at the far end. Nick’s throat caught. Nighttime cafeteria smells of stale food covered by disinfectant and young sweat. Long tables and cheap chairs in the semi-darkness. A little raised and curtained platform under the lights. It was so like his own high school stage. The earnest girls moving chairs back down from the platform to the main floor were like the first stage crews he had known. The loud-voiced and cocky pair talking to a mascaraed blond with Rapunzel-like hair to her waist were like the first actors he’d known. But had he ever been so young? With so much swagger, so much naiveté, so many pimples, so much hair?
Maggie’s quick worried glance roused him to the realization that someone had asked if they could help. She was stepping forward, still the husky-voiced vamp of the parking lot. “We’re looking for someone named Burns,” she said.
“Nobody here named that,” said a young woman in horn-rims. “And we’re just trying to wind up here. About to go home.”
Nick pulled himself together. “Dennis Burns,” he said. “We were told he graduated from here.”
“Hey, man, that was years ago!” A tall young fellow with brown curls dismissed the question. “He graduated when I was a freshman!”
“Right. And where is he now, darling?” asked Maggie.
A bored silence; these sophisticated facades were not as easily breached as the young ballplayers’. “His dad died, didn’t he?” asked one of the stage crew at last.
“Like, why do you want to know, anyway?” A gawky youth, skinny as bamboo and edging toward belligerence, shifted a clipboard to his other hip.
Nick knew these kids, knew how to reach them. “Because I’m a casting director in Manhattan,” he said, and suddenly the silence was no longer bored. “Dennis Burns auditioned for me. And when I tried to call the phone number he gave me, it had been disconnected.”
“A casting director!” Rapunzel’s black-rimmed gaze had locked on him, full of undying devotion, and of speculative hope. Five other pairs of previously contemptuous young eyes were fixed on him too. Nick the Messiah. Nick the fraud.
Disgusted with the game, he pushed ahead. “The only clue we have is this high school.”
The young woman in horn-rims stood up. “I’m Stella Barrett. Drama teacher here.” Pleasant humorous mouth, straight brown hair, looked maybe two months older than her students. She held out her hand.
“Claude Nicholas,” improvised Nick as he shook hands. “And this is my assistant, the actress Zelda Cocker.” Maggie shot him an amused and resentful look.
“Glad to meet you, Mr. Nicholas, Ms. Cocker. Now, who is it you’re looking for? Though I’m afraid I’m new this year.”
“Dennis Burns,” repeated the sultry Zelda Cocker. “For a part in a show.”
The previously disdainful young people were swarming around them now. “You mean Dennis is going to get cast? Far out!” exclaimed Curly. “You mean, like Broadway?”
“Maybe even that someday. If we can find him.”
The atmosphere was heavy with eagerness and desire to please. Information crystallized from it like drops of dew.
“His dad died.”
“His mom like moved away. Probably Brooklyn. They came from Flatbush.”
“Naw, not Brooklyn. She went to Pennsylvania. New Jersey, maybe.”
“Isn’t he the guy that used to hang out with that redhead?”
“Amy Hale, yeah. She’s still around.”
“My sister’s friends with her. She lives over on Vinegar Hill. But Dennis went to New York.” That was the bamboo-thin lad with the clipboard, veneer of belligerence melted away now.
“Well, if he’s in New York, he’s damn hard to get hold of,” said Nick, wishing it were not so true.
Bamboo said, “My sister even said Amy is in the city now visiting him. But see, he doesn’t have like a place of his own there.”
“Damn right he doesn’t,” said Nick. “No phone either. Is he staying at a hotel or the Y or something?”
“No. He’s thick with a guy named Curt Pritchard. Split for the city right after graduation. Don’t know where he hangs out.”
“Around Twentieth Street, I think,” said a husky boy. “Or Nineteenth.”
“Wherever,” said Curly. “I think Dennis would crash with him.”
“So how do I get in touch with him, if you don’t have an address and his phone is disconnected?”
“Curt’s mother remarried,” volunteered Husky. “They moved somewhere. Albany, maybe. My mom probably has her address from Christmas. I could find Curt’s address and phone for you in a couple days.”
“Jesus! You think I came out here to the boonies for fun? You think producers sit twiddling their thumbs while we chase down kids who disconnect their phones and take the day off? This kid Burns is front-runner for this part, okay, or I wouldn’t be here looking for him now. But there are two hundred others who tried out for it, and one hundred of them are just about as good. If I don’t find him tonight, that’s it. Kaput. He’s out of a job!”
“Look for him in a bar, like his dad,” said Husky darkly.
“Shut up! He’s okay.”
“Smashed up that car, didn’t he?”
“Yeah, and you never scraped a fender?”
Nick broke in, a heavy-handed referee. “Okay, people, is that all you can think of? We’ll get back to the city, if that’s where you think he is.”
“Look, man, that’s all I know,” protested Curly.
Rapunzel blurted, “Please, Mr. Nicholas, before you go, could you watch me do a scene?”
Nick glanced at her, and suddenly the blonded hair and black-rimmed eyes and youthful dewiness no longer concealed her raw hunger to perform. The recognition was like a blow: his successful friends, his failed friends, his dead wife, he himself had all begun like this: in a stale cafeteria they made believe was a theatre, with a batch of other green kids they made believe were actors. And with a savage passion to act that was not make-believe at all. A passion that gnawed away reason, spawned idiotic and necessary self-delusion, corroded lives. He could see his young self, stripped to the bones, in those pleading, predatory eyes.
So he said, “Hell, no! I’m not here to watch scenes!”
Their teacher stiffened. “Excuse me, Mr. Nicholas, but they’ve tried very hard to be helpful. Couldn’t you take just a couple of minutes to return the favor?”
“It’s no favor!” Nick exploded. Maggie’s astonished eyes turned to him. He jabbed a finger at the blond. “I know what little Rapunzel here is thinking. And Curly, and Husky, and all the rest of you. You’re thinking fate has chosen you to be a star. If you’re on the right stool at the right soda fountain, a casting director will descend from the heavens and discover you. And here I am, descended from the heavens! Ergo, I must be here to discover your great talent, right? No, ma’am, doesn’t work that way. It doesn’t happen. It’s a myth.”
He looked around at his audience: astonished, hurt, slack-mouthed. Only in Maggie’s eyes did he see the quick reflection of comprehension. He went on. “Myth Number Two: if you really want it, all obstacles will fall before you. Someone will notice your burning desire, your bone-deep need, and give you a chance. Right? Wrong! There are thousands and thousands of good, talented, trained actors in New York, all burning with the desire to act, all needing to act. Thousands more in LA, and all across the country. Actors who really want it. And they aren’t acting! Do you understa
nd? They have all the qualifications, all the talent, all the desire. And they aren’t acting! So what makes you think you can?”
There were tears of anger in the blond’s dark-edged eyes. “Look, I get your drift, you can lay off now!”
Nick the brute. They were only in high school. But he couldn’t forget the distorted young face of Dennis Burns, who had followed the myth to death in an alien place. He said tiredly, “No, you haven’t got the drift. That dream of being a star, of applause, of being the instrument that transmits a gift of something universal to humanity—that’s a tough dream. Doesn’t dissolve in a few tears.”
Rapunzel nodded violently, her eyes blazing. “Yeah, well, it’s tougher than you! I’ll do anything to become a star!”
“Ah, yes. Myth Number Three. You aren’t the only kid who’s ready to sell her virtue for a part.”
“Mr. Nicholas!” Stella Barrett was pale.
“You say you’ll do anything,” said Nick, ignoring her. Dennis Burns too had been ready to do anything. “Do you mean it? Really? Do you have any idea what you have to do?”
Rapunzel met his eyes, glare for glare, gutsier than he’d thought. “Whatever it is, I’ll do it!”
“I’ll tell you, then. First, you train. Train your voice. Train your body. Train your mind. Study mime and dance and singing and philosophy. Study people. Next you get a marketable skill. Cabbie license, bookkeeping, whatever. Anything that you can do in odd hours. Third, you make rounds. Knock on hundreds of doors. Leave your picture. Smile at secretaries. For years. Because your big chance, if it comes, won’t come from the clouds. It’ll come maybe the hundredth time you smile at a casting director and ask if anything’s happening.” God, he sounded preachy. The Billy Graham of greasepaint. But it had to be said. He shrugged. “And if that sounds like a lot of work, well, it is. But if you’re really ready to do anything, that’s what you have to do.”
They were silent, sullen, wanting to disbelieve him. Nick started to turn away, but glanced back at Rapunzel. “As for seeing your scene, sure, I’ll be glad to. In New York. After you’ve graduated. After you’ve studied voice and dance and scene analysis and literature and psychology. But you’ll have to get in line behind the two thousand others who got there first.” He strode out.
Murder Unrenovated Page 17
