The Actor's Guide To Greed

by Rick Copp

  Chapter 11

  I briefly thought Charlie might have gone out to dinner with Akshay just to teach me a lesson, but it was going on one in the morning. He would’ve come back by now. Wouldn’t he? This was crazy. Where was he? What was he doing? Had I gone too far this time? Had I driven him to the point of just wanting to wash his hands of me? It was possible. And absolutely horrifying to think about. Charlie and I had been together for four years now. There were challenges, just like in any relationship, but we were happy, and in love, and there wasn’t any reason to think it would ever fall apart. Charlie knew I would be a high-maintenance boyfriend from the day he met me. What actor isn’t? But he didn’t scare easily—he was a rugged cop, after all—and he knew that in the end he could handle me.

  God, this was maddening. Charlie was so predictable. I could call his every move. But this one was unexpected and worrisome. Had he gone out to a club? He didn’t know anyone in London, so he would have gone alone. Correction. He did know one person. I had to know. I had to know if he was with Akshay.

  I scooped up the phone and dialed Akshay’s flat. I held my breath, waiting for Akshay’s groggy voice to assure me that he was asleep in his bed. Alone. The phone rang ten times. Maybe he was just a heavy sleeper. Or maybe he had turned the ringer off.

  I raced out of the room and down the hall to the elevator and rode down to the lobby. Arthur was off duty, so I approached the gangly, pimply-faced, twenty-year-old bellhop-in-training who stood near the concierge. He was sleepy-eyed and bored. There wasn’t much to do during the graveyard shift. The lobby was now empty of guests.

  “Excuse me,” I said.

  His eyes lit up. He recognized me instantly. Not from my life as a sitcom star, but from weeks of holding the door open for me as I returned from a series of late-night rehearsals at the Apollo.

  “Yes, sir, how may I help you?” He was thrilled that someone was taking the time to talk to him.

  “Slow night, I guess,” I said.

  “Oh, yes, sir. Very quiet,” he said.

  “Do you remember seeing a man, about six feet two, dark hair, nice build, leaving earlier? It was probably between eight and nine o’clock tonight.”

  The boy shook his head. “I’m sorry, sir, I just came on duty a half hour ago. I was at my niece’s birthday party and I arrived rather late for my shift.” He leaned in and smiled. “Don’t tell the manager.”

  I promised to keep mum and crossed over to the reservations desk where a stout, curly-haired, rosy-cheeked woman in her early thirties typed on a computer. She looked up at me and smiled.

  “Good evening, sir.”

  “Good evening. It seems I’ve lost someone,” I said.

  “Oh, dear. That’s not good.”

  “My boyfriend.”

  “Oh, yes, sir. I saw the two of you leaving last night with Mr. Kapoor.”

  “So you remember him?”

  “Oh, yes. Very tall. Quite handsome. I couldn’t help but notice him, sir.”

  “Have you seen him tonight?”

  She thought about it. She really wanted to help me. But then she shook her head. “No, sir. I can’t say that I have.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Believe me, sir, I would’ve remembered.”

  “Have you been here at the desk all night?”

  “Yes. Except for my break.”

  “When was that?”

  “Around eight-thirty. I was gone until just before nine o’clock.”

  So Charlie left sometime between eight-thirty and nine. If he had actually gone out. He could still be somewhere in the hotel.

  “Who covered the desk while you took your break?” I said.

  “That would be Ian, sir.”

  “Can I talk to him?”

  “Oh, he’s gone home for the night.”

  “Do you have a number where I can reach him?”

  “I’m sorry, sir, I’m not allowed to give out any personal information on the staff.”

  “When will he be back?”

  “Tomorrow morning. His shift starts at eleven.”

  “Thank you.”

  I was lost. I had absolutely no idea what to do next. So I headed back to the room to wait some more.

  Five hours later I was still waiting. And in a complete panic. Charlie hadn’t come back all night. I dialed Akshay’s room fifteen more times, never getting an answer. I flipped open the phone book and looked up Muhib Indian Cuisine. I didn’t seriously expect Akshay’s mother to pick up the phone at six in the morning, but it was worth a try. I got a machine rattling off the operating hours and location of the restaurant. I left a message asking Mrs. Kapoor to call me back at the Savoy.

  By eight, I had to take action or I was going to go out of my mind. I headed back down to the lobby and out to the street, where I hailed a taxicab and instructed the driver to take me to the nearest police station.

  I half expected to see DI Sally Bowles in full investigative mode when I arrived at the precinct, but since there were dozens of police stations in London, I figured that might be a long shot. The reception area was surprisingly clean and tidy considering the criminal element that was ushered through the premises all day and night. I approached a rail-thin, balding, beak-nosed man who sat behind a raised desk, clutching a cup of coffee and perusing the morning’s headlines. At first he didn’t notice me, so I cleared my throat. He took a long, slow sip of his coffee and then raised his eyes, settling on my face. He waited for me to speak first.

  “I’d like to report a missing person,” I said.

  He sighed. I was asking him to do something and it annoyed him.

  “He’s only been gone the night, and I know in the States it has to be twenty-four hours before someone can be declared missing, but it’s so unlike him to do this, especially in a foreign country,” I said.

  I suddenly noticed that this guy in uniform with his side patches of red hair and big nose looked just like a British version of the Beaker character from The Muppet Show. I almost laughed in his face.

  He sighed again. He lowered his gaze back down to his newspaper in the vain hope that I would just go away. But then he saw something in the paper that caught his eye. He looked up at me and then back down at his newspaper.

  Beaker shot up out of his seat, spilling coffee everywhere, and opened a door to allow me to come inside the main area housing all the officers on duty.

  “Right this way, sir,” Beaker said with a forced smile, his newspaper tucked underneath his arm.

  He led me down a hall to an office at the end and rapped on the door. A tall Nigerian man with an angular face and wearing a tan suit stood to greet me.

  “I’m Detective Colin Samms,” he said in a deep, commanding voice.

  “Jarrod Jarvis,” I said, shaking his hand.

  “He wants to report a missing person,” Beaker piped in excitedly.

  I saw Samms make quick eye contact with Beaker before waving him away. Beaker slapped his newspaper down on the desk in front of Samms before leaving. After we were alone, Samms casually sat back down.

  “Now then, you’d like to file a report?”

  “Yes. It’s my boyfriend, Charlie. He vanished. Just like that. And I’m going insane with worry.”

  I told Detective Samms everything I could remember about the night. He listened with rapt attention, taking in every detail, jotting a few notes on a pad that rested on the desk in front of him. When I finished my story, I waited for him to respond. He consulted his notes before speaking.

  “You say you left around seven-thirty and came back around nine?”

  “Yes, give or take a few minutes.”

  “So he had to have left during that time.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why did you leave?”

  “Pardon me?”

  “Your boyfriend had just arrived in town. You hadn’t seen him in over a month. Why did you leave?”

  “Oh. We had a little spat,” I said, feeling like a lonely housewife
desperately trying to conceal her marital problems from the outside world. Spat. Why did I say spat? Why couldn’t I have just said fight? Who says spat anymore?

  Samms nodded. “What was this spat about?” Of course he emphasized the word spat just to make me feel even more foolish.

  I explained how one of my costars was obviously attracted to Charlie and that I was threatened by it.

  “So you blew up at him and then stormed out?”

  “I wouldn’t say blew up. And I didn’t storm. I just needed some air.”

  “But you left angry?”

  “Yes.”

  This was a disaster. I was coming across as some unstable, needy Twinkie. There was a long, agonizing silence before Samms lifted his head and stared at me.

  “This sounds to me like a simple lovers’ quarrel,” he said.

  “I know it does. And it was, in part. But for him to disappear like that, it just doesn’t make any sense. If you knew Charlie—”

  “You seem to be embroiled in a lot of those lately,” Samms said.

  “I’m sorry, embroiled in what?”

  “Lovers’ quarrels,” he said, his eyes carefully weighing my reaction.

  I stopped. “What do you mean?”

  Samms slid the newspaper Beaker had given him over in front of me. I looked down at it, my mouth contorting into a mask of distress. It was a copy of the Daily Mirror, one of London’s bestselling tabloids. And on the front page was a picture of Claire Richards and her young lover, Liam Killoran, their arms around each other and smiling. In a box to the lower right of the page was a picture of me. It was a recent 8 x 10 of mine that I had submitted to the producers of the play for publicity purposes.

  The headline blared, “Claire Richards’s Lover Claims Child Star Killed Her in Crime of Passion!” I grabbed the paper and thumbed through it until I found the story. It was an exclusive interview with Liam, full of contemptible charges and false allegations of my romantic involvement with Claire. How she had delicately tried to extricate herself from the affair because she realized how much she loved Liam. And how I became obsessive and dangerous, and ultimately convinced Minx to administer the fatal peanut oil that caused her anaphylactic shock and subsequent stroke.

  I slapped the paper back down in front of Detective Samms. “This is trash. There’s not a word of truth to it.”

  “Yes, but you must admit to a pattern here,” Samms said in a dead-serious tone.

  “Pattern? What are you talking about?”

  “Well, I would have thought this was rubbish too had you not come down here today with a sordid tale of a heated fight between you and your lover, and now he’s vanished under mysterious circumstances. One lover dead. One lover missing. You must admit, Mr. Jarvis, it does give one pause.”

  If I didn’t know myself, I would have suspected me of foul play too.

  Chapter 12

  By the time Detective Colin Samms finished grilling me, it was almost ten-thirty in the morning. He had nothing to charge me with, but the mere fact that Charlie was missing turned up the heat on me as a suspect in Claire’s murder. It didn’t matter that Minx had been arrested and presumably arraigned by now. The cops were still investigating the case, trying to piece it all together, and had clearly decided I was a key piece of the puzzle. It’s hard to tell exactly when the tabloids, so full of blatant lies and innuendo, had been accepted as the mainstream press. Some say it was during the OJ Simpson murder trial. The National Enquirer and the Star were unearthing evidence at a much faster rate than most legitimate news sources. Networks and cable news channels began using their stories as facts in their broadcasts. And now, the Enquirer seemed to enjoy the same reputation and reliability as CNN. It was a scary world. And the English tabloids were even more intense than the American trash papers. They were vicious and judgmental, printing sordid sex tapes involving the royal family without a hint of discretion or sense of responsibility. Prince Charles moaning to his longtime love Camilla Parker Bowles that his wish was to be a tampon so he could be inserted inside of her. It was a ghastly thought to begin with, but soon the revelations became part of the norm, slapped on the front page with the regularity of the daily weather forecast.

  There was absolutely no evidence connecting me to Claire’s murder. The cops were betting on Liam’s preposterous story having a grain of truth to it. They couldn’t arrest me. I was free to go. Detective Samms, however, offered vague promises that I would be watched from this point on until the investigation was concluded. It was an obvious ploy to rattle me. I left the precinct frustrated. They were less concerned with my missing boyfriend and more into somehow tying me to the crime at the Apollo. I could understand. Charlie was just a tourist. Claire was an integral part of British culture. But that didn’t make it hurt less.

  I grabbed a taxicab back to the Savoy and arrived a few minutes before eleven. Ian, the desk clerk who might have seen Charlie, was scheduled to work in just a few minutes. That gave me some time to run up to the room and see if Charlie had somehow miraculously returned. When I approached the room, the door was ajar and there was someone stirring inside. I held my breath and rounded the corner. But as I entered the room, I only found a smiling housekeeper fluffing a pillow. My hopes crumbled.

  “Good morning, sir,” she said in a working-class Liverpool accent.

  “Good morning,” I said, noticing the red light on my phone blinking. Someone had left a message. I pushed past her and grabbed the phone, punching the button for my messages.

  The call had come in just a couple hours earlier. I silently prayed I would hear Charlie’s deep, reassuring voice.

  “Mr. Jarvis, this is Mrs. Kapoor, Akshay’s mother, from Muhib restaurant. I received your message this morning. I have been trying to find my son all night. I called his flat. I called everywhere. No one has seen him. I’m very worried. Please call me.” There was a click and then silence.

  I wasn’t about to jump to any conclusions. The fact that both Charlie and Akshay were missing meant nothing. It didn’t mean they were together. I was just being an overly paranoid boyfriend. And even if my worst fears had a pinch of merit, there was no way I was ready to face them at this point.

  I grabbed a playbill for Murder Can Be Civilized and raced back down to the lobby and was relieved to see a portly, smiling young man in his late twenties, with an already receding hairline and thick black glasses tipped on the bridge of his nose, behind the front desk. His gold-plated name tag said “Ian.” I hurried up to him so fast the rush of air hit him in the face, immediately alerting him to my presence.

  “Good morning, sir,” he said. You had to love the English for their impeccable manners at all hours of the day.

  “Good morning. The woman on duty last night said you relieved her during her break yesterday between eight-thirty and nine?”

  He thought for a moment, and then nodded with a smile. “Yes, that’s right, sir.”

  I reached for my wallet, pulled a small photo of Charlie on the beach during our vacation to Barbados last year out of a plastic sleeve, and placed it in front of Ian. “Do you recall seeing this man leave the hotel during that time?”

  Ian picked up the photo and inspected it. “No, sir. I didn’t see him leave. Sorry.”

  I was back to square one.

  “He mostly just hung out in the lobby talking,” he said.

  “I’m sorry, what? You saw him?”

  “Yes, sir. I saw him conversing with a man over there near the elevators. But I became distracted by a guest who arrived to check in, and when I was through he was gone,” Ian said.

  I slapped the playbill down in front of Ian. It was open to the page that featured a photo of the entire cast. I pointed to Akshay.

  “Was he speaking with this man?” I said.

  Ian shook his head. “No, sir. He was talking to that man.”

  I looked down at the photo. Ian was pointing to Sir Anthony Stiles.

  I tried calling Sir Anthony’s flat from my hotel room s
everal times to no avail. I was desperate so I made an on-the-spot decision to bunk out in front of his flat until he returned. I knew his address from the cast list. He was a local, so the producers felt no need to put him up at the fancy Savoy. I jumped in a taxicab that spirited me over to Knightsbridge, the upscale neighborhood that boasted the world-famous Harrods department store, which was shopaholic Laurette’s number-one destination whenever she was in London. Traffic was hopelessly congested and pedestrians clogged the street crossing over to Mohamed Al Fayed’s crown jewel of consumer consumption. It took us almost twenty minutes to drive just a few blocks south to some quieter residential streets. The driver stopped at a well-kept brownstone painted brick red. I double-checked the address from the cast list, paid the driver, and stepped out onto the curb. I was about to sit down on the stoop and wait for Sir Anthony to come home, but I rang the bell just to make sure he was still out. I heard someone call from inside.

  “Just a moment, please.”

  It sounded like Sir Anthony, and when the door was flung open, to my relief it was. He stood there, a big grin on his face, greeting me. And he was completely nude. There wasn’t a stitch of clothes on him. My mouth dropped open at his flabby, powder white birthday suit, his shriveled-up private parts on full display in all their glory. Oh God. Not again.

  “Jarrod, what a pleasant surprise. What brings you here to my humble abode?” he said, still not the least bit concerned that he was stark naked for everyone in his neighborhood to see.

  “I . . . I . . . tried calling first, but there was no answer,” I stammered, still in a complete state of shock.

  “Oh no, I never pick up the phone when I am tutoring one of my students,” he said with one of his conspiratorial winks.