The Cinderella Killer

by Simon Brett

  She was quite a sight to see. Workouts with a personal trainer, expert attention to her jet-black hair and punctiliously applied make-up ensured that she looked fifteen years younger than her real age of forty-eight. Her olive-coloured eyes sparkled with life. A green dress in some shiny material stopped way up her thighs, revealing perfect black-stockinged legs which ended in short mushroom-grey boots. Over the ensemble a white faux-fur coat reached almost to the ground. To Charles Paris, she looked pretty amazing.

  And if there was anyone in the rehearsal room who hadn’t recognized her, Lilith Greenstone’s first words might have helped the identification process. ‘Where,’ she demanded, ‘is that bastard husband of mine, Kenny Polizzi?’

  It said something for the power of stardom that no one thought to reprimand her. Anyone else who had broken up a rehearsal like that – particularly someone who knew the usages of theatre – would have been immediately bawled out.

  And Bix, who as director should have been the one bawling Lilith Greenstone out, was all over her like a rash. A real Broadway musical star – right there in his own rehearsal room. Though not actually gay, Bix demonstrated all the camp reverence accorded to such mythical creatures.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Miss Greenstone,’ he said, before even introducing himself, ‘I’m afraid Kenny hasn’t been called for rehearsal today. He’s in London doing a chat show.’

  ‘Jeez!’ said Lilith. ‘You mean I could have gone straight to London, rather than dragging down here to Hicksville-on-Sea?’

  ‘Kenny should be back here this evening,’ said Bix in a conciliatory tone.

  ‘Then I’ll hang around for the bastard,’ said Lilith.

  The director, excited that she might mean she was going to hang around the rehearsal, saw an opportunity to impress her with his choreographic skills. ‘We were just about to break for lunch,’ he said. ‘Just after we’ve done one more run of the show’s closer. Would you like to see us do that?’

  ‘Hell, no,’ she replied. ‘What I want to see is a large drink. And I’m starving hungry too. I can’t eat that crap they serve on airplanes. Is there one of your traditional English pubs in this back-end of nowhere?’

  ‘Yes, of course there is, Miss Greenstone. And it would give me great pleasure to take you there once I’ve just finished rehearsing this number. Now if you—’

  ‘I want a drink now,’ said Lilith implacably.

  ‘Ah. Well.’ Bix’s rehearsal plans were instantly rescheduled. He clapped his hands. ‘OK, everyone, that’s a wrap for this morning.’ He hadn’t used the word ‘wrap’ to them before. Charles reckoned he just wanted to appear movie-savvy to Lilith.

  He wasn’t the only one who asked Bix if he was going to come back to rehearse the Walkdown again after lunch. If they weren’t, Baron Hardup wasn’t called for the afternoon and he would be free. The director said no, after the break he’d be moving on to the Fairy Godmother transformation scene.

  Bix escorted Lilith to the pub, glowing with the reflected glory of the stardust she scattered over him. Charles went to the pub too. But his journey had nothing to do with Lilith Greenstone. He would have gone there anyway.

  After half an hour in the Sea Dog, Charles was beginning to get a little sick of Bix’s sycophancy. And from the occasional look in Lilith’s eyes he got the impression she was beginning to tire of it too. Fine to have her work appreciated, flattering that Bix could provide such detail of every show she had been in, but there was a limit to how much flattery she could take. Charles sensed they were both relieved when the director regretfully said he had to return to rehearsal.

  By then they were two rounds of drinks in. Charles had knocked back a couple of large Bell’s, and Lilith had kept pace with large vodka tonics. At Bix’s departure both of them seemed to have found their glasses mysteriously empty. ‘Same again?’ asked Charles.

  ‘Sure. And I’m still starving hungry. What’s that traditional pub meal you have over here? Sausage and hash?’

  ‘Sausage and mash is the more usual dish on offer.’

  ‘Get me one of them.’

  At the bar Charles ordered sausage and mash for the both of them and the same again on the drinks, which he took back to the table.

  As he sat down he covertly looked again at Lilith with a degree of amazement. She was so perfectly groomed she looked like a doll that had just been taken out of its display box. But no, that was the wrong image. She was a lot feistier than a doll. But still so perfectly presented. Almost too perfect to be fanciable, thought Charles. It was hard to imagine rolling about in bed with something so soigné. But maybe with a little practice he could imagine it.

  ‘Have you just arrived today?’ he asked. It was a question that hadn’t been raised throughout Bix’s toadying.

  ‘Sure. Limo brought me straight down from Heathrow.’

  ‘To confront Kenny?’

  It struck Charles after he’d said it that the enquiry might be thought impertinent, but Lilith showed no signs of objecting. ‘Sure. And I’m not leaving till I’ve got this divorce finalized.’

  ‘Kenny did mention something about a disagreement between your lawyers.’

  ‘Forget the lawyers. It’s a disagreement between Kenny and me. Oh yeah, the lawyers have to sort out the details – at enormous cost – but basically it’s down to Kenny and me, face to face.’

  ‘I thought lawyers were there so that the two combatants don’t actually have to meet face to face. That’s certainly the way it works in England.’

  ‘That’s in theory the way it works in the States. But the lawyers move too slowly for my taste. I know it’ll be more effective if I – using your word – “confront” Kenny.’ There was relish in her voice at the prospect. ‘You ever been through a divorce, Charles?’

  ‘Erm … well … no.’

  ‘This is my third. You could say I’m getting good at it.’

  It was an echo of the line Kenny had used about his marriages on The Johnny Martin Show. Charles wondered which of the couple had come up with it first.

  ‘What you just wouldn’t believe, Charles,’ Lilith went on, ‘is how mean Kenny is. Mean in every sense of the word. He’s fighting each tiny claim my lawyers make on him. He wasn’t mean when I married him. What is it that happens to men when you marry them? All men. Or maybe, Charles –’ she brought the full beam of her amazing eyes on to him – ‘are you the exception that proves the rule?’

  ‘Hardly.’

  ‘But you said you hadn’t been divorced. Does that mean you’ve been married for a long time?’

  ‘It could mean I’ve never been married.’

  ‘And does it?’

  ‘No, it means … well …’ And the prospect of defining the state of his marriage brought back the cold visceral anxiety about Frances’s health.

  ‘Well, I figure I’ve done marriage now. I guess I’ll need men occasionally for sex, but I think I’ll leave it at that. I don’t want any more who’re still there the next morning.’

  At that moment their sausage and mash arrived. Lilith Greenstone asked the girl who brought them for ‘a helluva lotta mustard’, and dug into the meal like she hadn’t seen food for a month.

  When they’d got to the lip-wiping stage (which inexplicably didn’t seem to affect the perfect outline of Lilith’s painted mouth), she said, ‘So, Charles, this is some kind of musical of Cinderella you’re doing here?’

  ‘It’s not exactly that. It’s a pantomime.’

  ‘What? You mean black tights and white faces?’

  Charles thought he was about to have to go through the full explanation routine he’d done with Kenny, but fortunately Lilith didn’t seem that interested in the detail. Instead she went off at a tangent, suddenly asking, ‘Is Kenny keeping off the booze?’

  ‘Yes, he’s being very good.’

  ‘Firmly on the wagon?’

  ‘Squeaky clean.’

  ‘Huh. I pity whoever’s around when he falls off.’

  ‘You thi
nk he will?’

  ‘Inevitable, Charles. Sure as night follows day. An addict like Kenny never stops being an addict.’

  ‘Well, he’s trying very hard. He’s even found out where they have AA meetings here in Eastbourne.’

  ‘Has he?’ said Lilith. ‘Damn.’

  ‘Why damn?’

  ‘If he was still drinking, it’d help the character assassination my lawyers are planning for him. Drink and drugs always help when you’re building up a domestic-violence case.’

  ‘Was there domestic violence in your marriage?’ asked Charles, a little surprised. It didn’t fit with the estimation he had formed of Kenny.

  ‘My lawyers will say there was,’ Lilith replied complacently. ‘They’re going to throw the whole lot at him. A guy beating up on his wife while under the influence of booze or drugs – that always plays well in a courtroom.’

  ‘But is it true?’

  ‘Charles, Charles …’ She looked at him pityingly. ‘The allegations Kenny and I are making about each other left the truth behind months ago. Hell, the stuff Kenny’s been making up about my “cruelty” you just wouldn’t believe.’

  ‘But your lawyers have made charges of cruelty against him as well?’

  ‘Sure they have. They’re particularly building up the number of times he threatened me with a gun.’

  ‘And did he?

  ‘He liked guns. He had plenty of them. Who’s to deny that in the privacy of the marital home he didn’t threaten me with one?’ She focused her shrewd eyes on to Charles’s. ‘Has Kenny got a gun over here?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know,’ he lied.

  ‘I’ll bet he has. Kenny feels naked without a gun. He’ll have got Lefty Rubenstein to organize one for him. You met Lefty?’

  ‘Yes, I have.’

  ‘He does everything for Kenny, right down to wiping his ass.’

  ‘Is he representing Kenny in the divorce proceedings?’

  ‘No, but lawyers from his company are doing it. Lefty’s too busy tending to Kenny’s day-to-day demands. Which is good, because Lefty’s way ahead the brightest in his company, and Kenny’s divorce case is being looked after by incompetent underlings. Which means I’ve got far better lawyers than Kenny has. So I’m going to win.’

  ‘How do you define “win” in a divorce?’

  ‘Purely in financial terms. The amount of money my lawyers manage to screw out of the bastard, that’s what’ll define my success.’

  ‘But if you’ve got such good lawyers, I don’t really see why you felt the need to fly over here to see Kenny.’

  ‘I told you. I need to see him face to face. I’ve still got enough power over him to make him agree to my terms.’

  ‘And if he doesn’t agree?’

  Lilith Greenstone let out a thick throaty chuckle. ‘Then I’ll kill the bastard!’

  Their drinking session continued most of the afternoon. Once Lilith had indulged in a few cheery fantasies of how she’d shoot her husband with his own gun, they didn’t talk further about the divorce. In fact, afterwards, Charles couldn’t remember too well what they did talk about. There was a bit of discussion as to when Kenny was likely to be back from London, where he was staying, where Lilith might stay if, as seemed likely, she’d be in Eastbourne overnight. (As befitted his starring status, Kenny Polizzi was in the five-star Grand Hotel. Lilith, relishing confrontations, decided she would book in there too.)

  They also talked about acting. And though they came from opposite ends of the showbiz spectrum – Lilith Greenstone a Hollywood and Broadway star, Charles Paris a jobbing actor whose name was never going to be above the title of anything – they found a lot in common as they discussed the idiocies and injustices of their chosen profession.

  Charles found himself warming to Lilith. She could certainly hold her liquor; at no moment did she slur even the smallest word. And though nothing altered the fresh-out-of-the-box perfection of her appearance, further acquaintance revealed that underneath that lay a real, unaffectedly charming woman with a filthy sense of humour. While Charles had started the afternoon appreciating Lilith as a cunningly wrought work of art, by the end of it he was fancying her as a real woman. He even had the daring thought that she might be a little attracted to him too. And he was glad that they had exchanged mobile numbers.

  What broke up their alcohol-fuelled tête-à-tête was the appearance in the pub of Lefty Rubenstein. ‘Oh my God,’ he said when he saw Lilith. ‘It’s true.’

  ‘What’s true, Lefty?’ she drawled.

  ‘That you’re here.’

  ‘I sure am.’

  ‘I’ll have to let Kenny know.’

  ‘You do that. And fix up a meeting for him with me this evening.’

  ‘I’m not sure that I—’

  ‘Do it, Lefty. I assume you still have the role of Kenny’s gofer? His Pooper-Scooper?’

  The lawyer’s sweaty face coloured with anger. ‘I don’t like that expression to—’

  ‘Fix the meeting, Lefty. You should still have my cellphone number. Text me the time and place.’

  ‘Kenny isn’t going to like it,’ said the lawyer, ‘you being over here.’

  ‘I have long since ceased to care what Kenny likes and doesn’t like,’ said Lilith Greenstone magisterially.

  When the ringing of his mobile woke him it took Charles a moment or two to register where he was. And indeed what time of day it was. A quick look around told him that he was lying on the bed in his digs in Eastbourne. And a glance at his watch supplied ‘nine-fifteen’. Since there was darkness outside the windows whose curtains he hadn’t drawn, he assumed it was nine-fifteen in the evening.

  ‘Hi, Charles,’ said the voice at the other end of the line. ‘It’s Kenny.’

  ‘Safely back from London?’

  ‘Back, anyway. Charles, I need to see you. Meet me in the pub by the theatre – what’s it called?’

  ‘The Sea Dog.’

  ‘Yeah. Soon as you can get there.’

  It never occurred to Kenny Polizzi that anyone might not be free to answer one of his summonses. Charles, beginning to feel the headache brought on by his afternoon’s excesses, meekly agreed to go straight to the pub.

  ‘Good. See you there.’

  The ‘S’ of the word ‘see’ sounded just the teensiest little bit slurred.

  Was it possible that Kenny Polizzi was drunk?

  SIX

  BARON HARDUP: Don’t drink and drive – this warning’s real! It slops all over the steering wheel.

  It didn’t take long for Charles’s suspicion to be confirmed. On the table in front of Kenny was a row of empty tonic-water splits, a bucket of ice and a full glass. Charles could smell the vodka from the other side of the table. Kenny had very definitely fallen off the wagon. Charles remembered Lilith expressing pity for whoever was around when that happened. And he realized that he might have got the part. Kenny had marked him out as designated drinking partner.

  ‘I’d offer to get you something from the bar,’ said Charles, ‘but it looks like you’re sorted.’

  ‘I am very definitely sorted.’ Kenny took a long swallow from his glass. ‘God, you forget how wonderful booze is … Just the taste of the stuff is a kind of heaven.’

  Charles got himself a large Bell’s and returned to the table. He was determined not to ask what had caused Kenny’s backsliding. The last thing he wanted to do – or had any right to do – was to come across sounding censorious. If Kenny wanted to confide in him about the reasons for his broken resolution … well, that was a different matter entirely.

  So Charles confined his opening conversational gambit to a raised glass and the word ‘Cheers.’

  The vodka glass was lifted and clinked against his. ‘Your first drink of the day?’ asked Kenny.

  ‘Hardly.’ Charles was grateful for the way his first sip of Bell’s had started to melt away the headache he’d woken up with.

  ‘Why,’ said Kenny Polizzi in a way that was both bemused and wist
ful, ‘why is it that women have such good memories?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Charles replied safely, letting his drinking companion direct the conversation in his own way.

  ‘Every darned thing they seem to remember, every darned thing. They got some kind of compartment in their brains men don’t have. Something rash you said to them, something thoughtless you did fifteen years ago, they remember every detail. They store that stuff up and bring it out when you’re at your most vulnerable.’

  Charles wondered what rash words or thoughtless deeds Lilith had brought up at her meeting with Kenny. It must have affected him pretty badly to get him back on the booze with such speed.

  ‘Whereas men,’ Kenny went on, ‘we have a great capacity to forget stuff. We don’t brood about the past, we move on. If something’s broke, like a marriage or a relationship, we recognize that it’s gone and just move on …’

  ‘To the next marriage or relationship?’

  ‘Sure. Why not? You gotta keep hoping there’s something better round the next corner. Otherwise you might just as well curl up your toes and die.’

  This talk of marriages brought on another cold pang of anxiety about Frances. But Kenny was in no mood to notice what Charles might be feeling. He was off on his monologue. He only needed an audience.

  ‘I guess I kinda knew the stakes when I got into this business. You get famous, that brings a lot of shit along with it. Certainly you have to work damn hard to retain any privacy. Otherwise every single member of the public reckons they’re due a bit of you. And now every single member of the public has got a camera on their cellphone … and they can send their photos off on Facebook or Twitter or … Jeez, there is no such thing as privacy any more.

  ‘Then if you’ve got money – or if you’ve had money – everyone thinks they have rights to some of that too. They see in some newspaper gossip column how much I was paid for each episode of The Dwight House, and they think I must be rolling in the stuff. They don’t take into account the kind of expenses someone in my position has, the number of people I have to employ just to keep the Kenny Polizzi brand going. They don’t think about the pay-offs that come with three divorces. It never occurs to them that some people are just bad with money. Like me. It wouldn’t matter how much money I had, I’d still lose it all in misplaced generosity and rash purchases and dodgy investments. That’s what happened with me. Then I got involved in gambling, and you can sure as hell build up big debts very quickly there. And the people who want those debts paid aren’t necessarily the nicest people in the known universe.’