He reached for the carafe of wine, hesitated for a second, then pulled the stopper, and poured himself a glass. He lifted it in a toast to the younger man. “Here’s to weakness.”
“No,” came Mark Toland’s voice from the seats.
“What?” said the older man. “What’s wrong?”
“Judge Galassi, have you ever known a witness was lying when they came before your court?”
“Occasionally.”
“And how could you tell?”
“Well…there are many ways. But I always noticed a sort of tightness in the body. It freezes a little, stiffens—like when you know someone is taking your picture.”
“Very good! Well, that’s how I feel watching you pour that wine. You pick up that carafe like it was a drugged rattlesnake. You’re safe if it doesn’t wake up!”
“Well, yes, of course, what would you expect? I mean…it’s poison.”
“And you know that, Judge. But your character doesn’t. He just wants a glass of cabernet. He’s nervous, he wants to calm his nerves. Not you, though. You know the future, and you’re planning it in your head and going over the blocking. It’s kind of like the way you could almost hear Ryan Gosling counting out the beats to himself as he was trying to dance like Fred Astaire in that ludicrous musical movie. Kind of breaks the mood.”
“So what should I do?”
“Live in the moment. Feel the need for the wine, feel the relief of turning your back on this kid. Feel the fear, because you are, in fact, afraid of him. He’s angry and he has nothing to lose. Try to keep control of the situation. Keep your hands busy. Don’t let him see them shaking, don’t give anything away—to him or to us. Your life depends on it. Can you do that?”
“I guess. I can try.”
“You don’t see the blow that takes you down, Judge. People never do. You don’t see this one coming, and neither will the audience. Unless you flinch.”
“All right.”
“Okay, Jon? Let’s run the fight scene.”
Jon and the judge set themselves into grappling stances and engaged, pulling and pushing at each other. “Line.”
“Come on! Still?”
“I don’t know what to tell you, Mark,” Jon said. “I can’t seem to talk and fight at the same time.”
I couldn’t help noticing that he bore more than a passing resemblance to Blair Hollister.
“Forget the line,” Toland said. “We’ll just work the physical beats for now.”
“Bad idea.”
The voice came from the dark rows of seats sloping up from the stage: Hollister, himself. “He’s got to learn action and words together. You should have been off book two weeks ago.”
“Yeah, I know, sorry. But it’s just—I start pushing and shoving and my mind goes blank.”
Hollister grunted. It might have been a laugh. “Yeah—everybody has a plan until they get hit. But you’ve gotta hold onto that plan, buddy. We need those words.”
“Remember why you’re fighting.” Toland added. “Remember what this guy did to you.”
“Okay.”
“Let’s take the whole scene again from the top.”
The judge raised a hand. “Can we take a break first?”
“No.” That was Hollister, from the seats.
Toland patted his shoulder. “Afterward. Let’s get this done, okay, Victor? Then we can quit for the day and enjoy a little sunshine.”
The judge gave him a pinched smile. “Thanks.”
“I want to do the switch this time,” Toland added. “We’ll work out the lighting in tech but, Judge Galassi, figure you’ve got about twenty seconds in the dark to go go go. You too, Pete.”
The judge groaned dramatically. “Dear God.”
Toland laughed. “Tell me about it.”
“If I could get up that quickly, I’d still be running marathons.”
“Crawl, if you have to,” Hollister added helpfully from the shadows.
“Fuck you, Blair.”
“From the top?” Toland said. “Places, please.”
I had no idea what any of them were talking about but I remembered watching TV as a child with my mother. To my pestering questions, “Who’s that guy? Where are they going? What’s in the box?” she would always answer serenely, “Let it unfold.”
So I did.
Toland stepped off the stage and took a seat while Jon faded into the wings. Judge Galassi took the armchair in front of the painted plywood fireplace.
“It’s pouring rain outside. Do we have sound yet, Jenny?”
“Hold on,” a voice from backstage called out. “Yeah.”
“Thunder, too?”
“The whole package.”
“Run it.”
The hall was filled with the muted sounds of wind and rain.
“Okay,” Toland said. “Let’s go.”
Jon entered. “Good evening, sir.”
Galassi twisted in his seat, authentically startled and afraid. “What are you doing here? How did you get in? What do you—?”
“You turn your alarm off when you get home. That’s a common mistake. So is a having a glass-panel front door. But you can afford to get it repaired.”
“You broke into my home—”
“I hate that word—home. My home. Welcome to my lovely home. So bourgeois. Show some class, sir. This is your house. And a very nice house it is, too. Very expensive. Location, location, location, am I right? You can’t beat those water views. And the koi pond! Nice touch. Bet it draws the mosquitoes in the summer, though. Blood-sucking, disease-spreading parasites—your soul mates.”
“Wait, stop—this is crazy! Who are you?”
“Shut up. There’s no point trying to fake it. I did my homework. I was going to hire a private detective, but I thought, screw that. I have an Internet connection. I can google people. Detectives are as obsolete as travel agents. It’s a DIY world.”
“It—I…what are you talking about?
“DIY—Do it Yourself. Learn the lingo, sir. It’s the twenty-first century.”
“I don’t understand this. I don’t understand any of this. What on Earth do you think you—?”
“Fine. I’ll explain it, so you know that we both understand. A man goes on trial for fraud, misrepresentation, grand larceny, and second-degree murder. It’s a bench trial—no jury. That often happens when a case is so complicated or abstruse that a random group of twelve people might not be able to understand what the hell’s going on. It’s efficient, it’s quick. But in this case there was just one problem.”
“Wait! Please. I see now. You’re making a terrible mistake. Let me just—”
“Shut up! Or I’ll hold you in contempt. Oh, too late. I already do.”
He reached into his overcoat pocket and came out with very real-looking Beretta Brigadier 92 combat pistol. I flinched a little, as if I’d just noticed that sleeping rattlesnake. I had observed firsthand the impact of the nine-millimeter Parabellum rounds from one of those guns, and I never wanted to see it again.
No one else seemed alarmed—except Galassi, of course, who was fully committed to the scene and staring into the barrel of the prop weapon.
Jon kept talking. “Seriously, though. Not another word. As I was saying. The problem, the problem. Oh, right. The problem! The problem for the man whose mother was deceived, robbed, and driven to penury and suicide by the defendant? Well, his problem was that the judge presiding over the case was actually in business with the defendant! Oh, yes. They had their own little criminal enterprise going, selling fake jewelry to credulous geezers, repairing settings by replacing the real diamonds with paste, selling the real stones on the international market, and using the cash to finance their heroin start-up. It turns out, for people who can’t afford prescription opioids, heroin is the new hillbilly heroin! Lots
of money there, it’s a volume business, am I right? And the jewelry business makes a perfect little money-laundering set-up for the profits. Full circle. So the judge was a crook. That was the plaintiff’s problem. But the judge had a problem, too.”
“Please, whoever you are—”
“You know exactly who I am.”
“If you would just give me one minute to explain—just sixty seconds! That’s all I need. Thirty seconds! I can clarify this whole crazy—”
Jon lifted the gun again. “Shhhhhhhh.”
“But I—”
“I’m warning you...”
“I’m not who you think I am!”
“Right. You’re just misunderstood. Now let me finish or I will blow your fucking brains out. Pardon my French. No, I tell a lie. The French would be Je vais souffler tes putains de cervelle. But you wind up dead either way. So—your problem. Right. Your problem is the crazy accomplice who can’t keep away from the older women or give up his dirty little con games. He’s turning into a liability. Then he gets caught. Not necessarily a bad thing, at least for you. You make sure he gets tried in your courtroom. How am I doing so far? The rest is easy—you make a deal. He gets off—and he goes away, for good.”
“No, no, no—I never—you can’t—”
“Oops. You talked. If it makes you feel better, I was going to kill you anyway.”
Galassi catapulted himself out of the chair, an unexpected utterly feral leap—an old cat pouncing on a cocky mouse. He hit Jon and knocked the gun out of his hand. Both men staggered backward. Jon tripped over a coffee table and went down hard, with the judge right on top of him.
Jon pushed him aside. “What the hell? I’m supposed to grab him!”
“I changed the blocking,” Toland said.
“Without telling me?”
“It worked.”
“What do you mean, it worked? What worked? What are you—?”
“You looked alive for a second there. Something unexpected happened. You were in the moment. I actually believed you were scared and surprised.”
“Because I was!”
Toland shrugged. “Okay, so it’s not acting, but it’s the next best thing. Just remember how it felt. And be prepared. Because it could happen again any time. I’m going to ambush you into giving a real performance, even if it kills both of us. Judge, back in the chair. Take it from the jump.”
The old man leapt again, the two went down again, swinging inept punches. Toland’s trick had worked. The scene snapped with a new intensity. Maybe too much intensity. Jon lost the text again, in the jumble of action.
“Are you crazy, old man? Do want me to—shit! Line.”
“Just keep going,” Toland ordered.
“Do you really want me to beat you to death?” Jenny called out from the wings.
“Do you really want me to beat you to death?” Jon struck a glancing blow off Galassi’s shoulder and knocked him backward. Galassi hit the floor on his back, and the impact seemed to knock the wind out of him. Jon scrambled on top of him, locked his hands around the older man’s neck and started strangling him. Galassi thrashed and flailed but he couldn’t break Jon’s grip. Thunder pealed from the sound system.
“And the lights go out!” Toland shouted. “Go! Go go go!”
The judge heaved himself to his feet and stumbled off-stage, as Pete slipped past him to take his place on the floor.
“Okay, hold it,” said Toland. “I’m hearing the shoes. Can’t he be wearing just socks? Or slippers, at least? He’s at home for the night. Those footsteps ruin everything.”
“Slippers,” invisible Jenny said from off-stage. “I’m on it.”
“How will I ever have time for the costume change?” Galassi asked.
“Velcro,” Jenny snapped back.
“Okay. Let’s run it again.”
They ran the switch six more times, with lots of grumbling, creaking knees, jokes, and cursing. I started timing the move. The third time around, Galassi was off-stage and Pete was lying down on the carpet in fourteen seconds. Not bad.
“Sweet,” Toland said. “Let’s take it from there. You ready, Judge?”
“All set.”
“Whenever you like.”
Galassi ran on stage, shouting, “Stop!”
Jon wrenched himself sideways to see the intruder—the man he’d just been strangling to death. I had to admit it was an effective bit of stage business, if they could pull it off every night—light cues, shuffling actors, costume change, and all.
Pete croaked out, “David! Help me!”
Jon looked authentically stunned. “David?”
“Stop him! He’s trying to kill me! He thinks I’m you!”
Galassi stared down at them. “Jesus Christ—John Fenwick!”
“David...David LaFrance... Judge David LaFrance...”
Galassi pointed down at Pete. “His twin brother.”
“Oh, my God, I almost—”
Galassi spotted the gun on the floor and leapt for it. Jon went after it, too, but tripped on Pete’s body. Galassi picked up the gun, aimed it down at Jon. “This solves all our problems.”
He thumbed the hammer back but Jon managed to grab his ankle and yank him off his feet. Galassi broke his fall with one hand, yelping in pain. It sounded like real pain to me. Jon seized the moment, pushing to his feet and sprinting out the door at the left side of the stage.
Galassi got himself vertical somehow. “Stop!”
He started shooting—two shots, three, four, five—until the gun was empty. I was pleased to hear the sound of blanks—a rubber snake. Chalk it up to PTSD. But even the rehearsal of this outlandish melodrama worked the theater’s mysterious effect on me. You don’t suspend your disbelief—it floats away on its own.
“Breaking-glass sound,” Toland said.
Jenny’s voice: “Working on it.”
Galassi tottered to the door, panting. He stared into the darkness for a long moment, then turned back to Pete.
“Fenwick’s gone. He got away.”
Pete nodded solemnly. “And now he knows everything.”
“Lights to black. And that’s our second act curtain, people! Nice work.”
Everyone, including Jenny, short and dark and anorexic, in ripped jeans and an Adele concert t-shirt, came out onto the stage.
“That was much better,” Toland said. “Jon and Victor—you’re going to have to work the fight together on your own. I want real punches. Both of you are too feeble to hurt each other anyway. And start binding the line to the fight itself—match the action to the word, as Shakespeare put it. That’s actually the problem with getting off book too soon. I like actors to learn the text as they learn the blocking. That’s why I tricked Jon today. Pete, I need more of a nasal sound in your voice. And pitch it a little higher. You’re trying to sound like Victor. You do a fantastic Johnny Carson, a classic Chris Walken. This is your next great challenge. Seriously. It’s got to be perfect if we’re going to sell the switch. Jenny, let’s organize that costume change and the breaking-glass effect.” After a few more notes, he turned to me. “Any thoughts, Chief?”
I had plenty, and not just about the play. “Well…”
“Come on, speak your mind, we’re all friends here, and I’d love to hear what someone in law enforcement—with a show business background!—thinks about the play.”
“Show business?” Hollister said.
“Are you kidding, Blair? His father wrote Airport Time and The Virgins of West Fourth Street.”
“And the book for that Clue musical,” I added.
“There was a Clue musical?”
“It closed after ten performances. Frank Rich said he would have preferred a show based on Parcheesi. John Simon said, ‘David Kennis, in the Belasco Theater, with a typewriter.’ Not exactly a career highlight.�
�
“So how do we stack up?” Hollister said.
“Pretty well. I did have one question, though. If Fenwick googled Judge David LaFrance, why didn’t he find out that the judge had a twin brother?”
“That’s obvious,” Hollister said. “The whole…it’s—I…” The bluster dwindled to silence.
“We should think about that one, Blair.”
“I—yeah, I guess…”
The cast and the stage manager seemed inordinately pleased by Hollister’s embarrassment. I guessed he wasn’t caught speechless too often.
I reached over and clapped his shoulder. “I’m sure you’ll be able to figure it out. My girlfriend writes mysteries and she says...well, it’s like this—in a literary novel a character determines the plot. But in a mystery, the plot determines the character. Like with your play. If Fenwick googled the judge he’d find out too much information. So…make him a Luddite. He hates computers! He never even learned to e-mail. He thinks “google” is something that Cookie Monster does with his eyes. Maybe he still uses a rotary dial phone and an eight-track tape deck. See? That’s an odd quirk. He’s eccentric! It makes Fenwick more interesting—and it just happens to be extremely convenient for you—since it explains why he never googled the judge.”
“Who’s this girlfriend of yours?”
“Her name is Jane Stiles. She writes the Madeline Clark mysteries?”
Hollister coughed out a snide little laugh. “The ones with the blowhard douchebag Police Chief?”
“That’s them.”
“Well, she’s smart. And that’s good advice.”
Toland opened his arms and flipped his hands in a “voila!” gesture. “There you go. A little artful exposition in dialogue—and pouf! Problem solved.”
“‘Pouf’ for you. I have to sit down and write the stuff.”
I pushed on. “Anyway...you know how your detective says he doesn’t believe in coincidences?”
“It’s a cop thing. Cops always say that. You’re a cop, so I mean—you know, right?”
“Well, I believe in them. I just don’t trust them. But they keep cropping up. Like, for instance, your play is about a judge with a twin brother, and we have one, right here on Nantucket, where you came all the way from Hollywood to mount a production. And he seems to be starring in it.”
Nantucket Counterfeit Page 11
