Killed in the Act

by William L. DeAndrea

  Spot didn’t even bother to say “woof.” He knew how stupid that theory was. For one thing, as any movie-goer could tell you, Melanie was not a man, and if she ever had been, the doctor that had done the hypothetical job was an artist to rival Da Vinci. For another, there was the fact that she and Baker had been in New York when Bevic had been killed.

  Of course, it was possible Bevic had found out about Baker’s drug business. I assumed they grew some pot in Costa Rica, and Bevic had been there. But Baker had an alibi for the time the bowling ball was dropped. And in this version, Baker has every reason not to risk Melanie’s lovely neck.

  But the big thing wrong, I told myself again, was that it still gave no reason on God’s battered earth for using that stupid bowling ball in the first place. If you wanted to murder somebody, why couldn’t you just take him by surprise and beat him over the head with a baseball bat? After all, that was a close approximation of what had happened to Jim Bevic and Jerry de Loon.

  If Bevic was connected with this at all. I caught myself making fist, marks in Jane Sloan’s six-thousand-dollar white leather sofa. I made myself stop. Then I asked myself, And why were those kines taken, Cobb? and I wanted to scream.

  I decided it was time to get ready for the banquet. There was an hour and a half to go, but I still had to shave and shower, and it takes me a long time to get my bow tie right.

  CHAPTER 18

  “Put a little fun in your life...”

  —KATHRYN MURRAY, “THE ARTHUR MURRAY PARTY,” NBC

  THAT BANQUET WAS A mistake; at least that’s what hindsight tells me. Not that any new catastrophe took place. The consensus of the press was that the Network was bearing adversity with style.

  Style isn’t everything. I was there, and though it might have been my imagination, I perceived a mind-poisoning atmosphere in the ballroom that hung on the gold-lamé drapes and dripped off the ridiculous square crystal chandeliers.

  Too many people there Friday night had seen what happened Friday afternoon. They kept looking at the chandeliers, I guess for falling bowling balls. They (and I, I suppose) kept looking over their shoulders, unconsciously watching for the Phantom of the Network.

  Outwardly, the men were suave, and the women charming. Fashions were probably being set. One paper printed that every gown in the place was an original. Melanie Marliss wore something in fire-engine red that was half sequins and half see-through. Only she could have gotten away with it. There were slits and plunges and pants and turbans and hats and things I don’t even know the words for.

  Roxanne Schick, who winked at me when I came in, was all in white, very demure, very pretty. Llona was in purple velvet. It whispered when she walked, and must have weighed a ton, but somehow, it took her out of competition with the other women, and made her the hostess. The whole weight of the dress was suspended by a velvet ribbon tied behind her neck. There was no back to the dress. Llona stood very straight, as though the weight of the material were a penance.

  Network executives were there, and the press, and the celebrities, and politicians, and waiters and musicians, and the grim-faced security guards. The only thing this opening of the big fiftieth birthday celebration lacked was a lexicographer to give us words for the new emotions that were loose in the room.

  Lorenzo Baker, for example, never took his eyes off me, and I could never tell if it was hate or fear or respect, or what. I got the feeling he was thinking or me as someone who had the power to destroy him, and no real reason not to.

  That, in turn, depressed me. I’ve never wanted to be dangerous. I’ve never wanted people to brood about how much better their lives would be if I weren’t around.

  Melanie Marliss was a little afraid herself. Baker was too busy guarding his flank from me to be the constant shower of approval to Melanie he usually was. Melanie didn’t want to lose the upper hand, but it was easy to see she was excited by the prospect of a Lorenzo who was less of a yes-man and more of a man.

  Porter Reigels was sitting at the head table, not taking part in the general pre-dinner mingling. A teetotaler as well as a non-swearer, he was knocking back ginger ales like a man drinking whiskey as though it were water, if you follow me. When I talked to him, it was almost like he was getting drunk on them.

  “It’s a comfort, Cobb, that’s what it is, a comfort.” His Texas drawl was a lot more noticeable than usual.

  “What’s a comfort?”

  “Knowin’ when it’s gonna happen. My whole life comes down to Sunday. Monday, I go back to Hollywood, or back to Texas. Mebbe shoulda never left Texas.” He killed the bottle of ginger ale.

  “Listen, are you still carrying the gun?”

  “Dern right.” He patted his hip. I tried to talk him into giving it to me, but he narrowed his eyes and said anyone who wanted to leave him unprotected with a lunatic around would have to fight him for the gun—he called it “Mah ahrn.”

  Shelby and Green talked about the act. They talked all through dinner, all through the speeches, and would have talked all through the dancing, if there was a way they could have danced with each other. As it was, whenever one got dragged away to dance, the other would wait impatiently for him to return. From what I overheard, their main concern was how badly, if at all, the water had damaged the mechanism of the Great Bomboni’s magic cabinet. They’d check it out tomorrow.

  Alice Brockway was the hardest to figure of all. She sat on a chair between Shelby and Green like a queen on a throne. She was in a dress of a color somewhere between yellow and amber and she made it glow like the sun. As a boy, I’d wanted to catch up with her in age, but it looked as though she was catching down with me. She smiled at everybody. The two men talked across her. She never said a word. She was very beautiful and happy.

  All these little private vibrations were being picked up subconsciously by everyone else; condensed and amplified like radio signals, and put back into the atmosphere for the process to start again. It got so there was an almost audible whine of emotional feedback behind the standard party sound track of talk and music and clinking glasses.

  None of this interfered with anyone’s enjoyment of the meal itself, at least not that I could tell. The chefs of the Brant did their all to give the Network full value for the prime time plugs that were coming Sunday. The food had started out as veal and carrots and ice cream, but by the time the culinary artists got through with it, it took four pages of fancy French calligraphy to describe it.

  Llona had placed me at a relatively calm table, with Theodore Farnsworth and my congressman and his wife, among others.

  The cameras and video tape recording stuff were set up while the lights went out for the chef to set fire to the ice cream.

  The speeches followed the food.

  To my surprise, Falzet gave the best speech. I’m sure he didn’t write it himself, but I was still impressed. He did full justice to the long and eventful history of the Network, and he showed a confidence in the future that was very becoming to a Leader of Persons. He touched on the current problems without belaboring them. He was pompous and humorless (a trademark), but he also came across as sincere (a rarity) and even literate (a miracle).

  A few heavyweight VP’s came next, followed by Roxanne Schick. She lied prettily about how happy she was to be there, and how proud she was to represent the family of Mr. Hewlen at such an auspicious moment. The whole thing took forty seconds, well under her limit.

  Porter Reigels drawled thank-yous to everybody for everything, then said he had to go back across the street to whip the show into shape. If I ever got applause like that for leaving a party, I’d start to get insecure.

  It was all very corny, but nice. The Network had done a lot of good things over fifty years—it had brought the nation and the world closer together; it had made practically everyone an eyewitness to history; it had exposed corruption; and most important, it had diverted and entertained millions.

  Then the orchestra took over. Roxanne deliberately didn’t hear Falzet’s
request for the first dance. Instead, she swept off the dais and swooped down on me. “Dance with me, Cobb,” she said. “You won’t see me in a dress again until Graduation Day.”

  I told her her dignity was slipping.

  “No time for dignity,” she said. “I have an exam Monday, and right after this song, I’m hopping in my car and going right back to school.”

  So I danced with her. I made small talk, asked how school was, and all that, but inside I was thinking that this was the third time I had her in my arms, the first time she wasn’t thrashing. The first time I held her, she was a fifteen-year-old mainlining junkie too long without a hit, and I held her to keep her from shaking herself apart. The second time had been just a few months ago...

  “You’re feeling guilty, aren’t you, Cobb?”

  It was scary that she should know me so well. “Of course not,” I said.

  She shook her head in time to the music. “You know you can’t lie to me, Cobb. Don’t try. Or feel guilty, either. There’s no reason to.”

  “My, how times have changed. Isn’t that my lecture?”

  “Not any more,” she said. “You’re the one who’s being stupid now. Look,” she said, suddenly very serious, even solemn, “that night was a nightmare. Hell. We’d both been knocked silly, and we both needed someone—someone we could trust not to hurt us. That’s who you are to me, Cobb.” The music stopped and the spell was broken. The flip defenses were back up in case the world at large might be listening in. “So don’t blow it now, Cobb, got it?”

  I smiled back at her. “Yes, boss.”

  “That’s another thing,” she said, as we walked to the check room to get her coat. “I’m giving you a direct order as principal owner of this Network.”

  “Well, let’s hear it, Rox.”

  “I don’t know what’s going on around here,” she said. “After—well, after what happened this summer—I’m afraid to even think what it might be. And I’m not going to. I’ve got to think of something to say about George Bernard Shaw that he didn’t already say about himself for that test Monday.

  “But whatever it is, Cobb, I want you to promise me that if it comes down to a choice between the Network and you, you will choose you, even if it bankrupts me, and I have to earn a living like a normal person. Okay?”

  “Sure.” I nodded.

  “Promise?”

  “I promise.”

  “Good,” she said. We got her coat, went outside, and waited for her car to be brought around. Then this elegant lady grabbed me by the ears and kissed me, hopped into a battered Volkswagen, and sped away to the waiting arms of GBS.

  I went back to the party.

  I’m not a good dancer. I can’t seem to move my feet to any rhythm but that of a bouncing basketball. My card was pretty well filled despite that, though. I managed not to step on anybody’s feet, not even my own.

  Every now and then, I’d catch a glimpse of Llona, standing just out of the lights in some corner of the room, scanning for trouble the way an owl in a treetop scans for mice. She wasn’t dancing or drinking or anything; she was working. In odd moments, I’d have a few words with her. In one odd moment, it was arranged that after the ball was over, I’d see her home.

  Her vigil was largely wasted. Nobody got so drunk that he passed out, and no one made any passes at anyone else’s spouse. At least, if passes were made, they weren’t noisily resented.

  At the end of the night, the band took no chances on generation gaps. They played “Good Night, Ladies,” and “The Party’s Over,” and “Good Night, My Love.” If people stayed after that, they deserved to turn into pumpkins.

  In the cab on the way to Llona’s apartment, which was down in Greenwich Village, she sat with her head back and her eyes closed. A little pulse jumped in a hollow at the base of her throat, just above the edge of the purple velvet.

  “It really went well,” I told her. “You did a terrific job, Llona.”

  “Ritafio will get all the credit,” she said without opening her eyes. “You’d think he could have at least mentioned my name. How was the food?”

  “It was terrific, didn’t you taste it?”

  “I’m a vegetarian,” she said dolefully. There was more conversation, but you get the idea. I recognized her mood for what it was—the letdown after the completion of a big project. Llona felt drained, felt weak, wondered if it was worth it.

  She showed signs of bouncing back before the ride was over. I pointed out to her she’d been spared the burden of PR for the bowling ball hunt, and that perked her up a little.

  When we got to her address, she asked me if I wanted to come up for a drink. I didn’t have anywhere else to go.

  Llona’s apartment was a sort of modified loft, one big room, with the windows near the ceiling. The windows were many and large, and let in, at artistic angles, rays of soft white light that were coming either from the moon or from mercury vapor lamps out in the street.

  The room looked even bigger than it was because there wasn’t much in it. A sofa, which probably converted to a bed; a chest of drawers; a bookcase; a refrigerator; a hot plate; a couple of wooden chairs; and over where I judged the best light would fall in the daytime was a sewing machine. No stereo. No TV.

  Because of the size of the windows, I could take this all in even before Llona turned on the light. “Welcome,” she said when she hit the switch. “It’s not much, but I’m not going to be here forever. Will you get the drinks? White wine for me, in the refrigerator. Liquor is behind the couch.”

  I said white wine sounded fine, and headed for the refrigerator. “Where are the glasses?”

  “In the cabinet under the hot plate.”

  I found them, good no-nonsense glasses, and poured the wine, good, no-nonsense wine. Llona was sitting on the sofa, kicking her legs the way she had yesterday afternoon at the fountain in the plaza. Her feet were bare, and she was holding a stocking in each hand.

  “I see you managed to turn up a garter belt,” I said.

  “Mmm hmm,” she said, around a sip of wine. “Found it yesterday at the lingerie shop in the Brant. I was going to try Forty-second Street if they didn’t have it there.”

  I raised my glass. “To the rich and the kinky,” I said. She laughed. My eye was drawn to the sewing machine. It bothered me, didn’t seem to fit. Then I saw the scraps of purple on the work surface and the floor.

  “I must congratulate you on your gown, madame,” I said, “especially since it appears you made it yourself.”

  “Thank you,” she said, smiling and dimpling. “I’m glad you like how it looks, because the damn thing is like a millstone around my neck. No more velvet—it’s hard to sew, and it weighs a ton.”

  “Do you make all your own clothes?”

  She finger-combed her dark hair. “Let me read your mind,” she said. “You’re thinking, ‘Why does a woman who is reasonably well paid—though not well enough, of course—live in a place furnished slightly better than a nun’s cloister, and make all her own clothes?’ That’s what you’re wondering, right?”

  “None of my business. You’re happy here—”

  “I hate it here! I grew up in a room like this, only smaller, and I watched my mother go nearly blind over a sewing machine, making her clothes, my clothes, and clothes for other women who could afford a seamstress. I can’t wait to get out!”

  I apologized, though God alone knew what for, and Llona gave a conciliatory murmur. The conversation lapsed. I was going to finish my wine and go.

  Llona drank the rest of hers first and asked for more. I poured.

  “I saw you with Roxanne Schick tonight, Matt,” she said.

  I laughed. “I wasn’t hiding,” I said.

  “That’s not what I meant. Why don’t you marry her?”

  “Just like that, huh?”

  “I saw how she looked at you. You could have her in a second. She’s rich, she’s pretty, she’s young—”

  “Too young,” I said. “Besides, Roxanne
and I are much closer as friends than we ever could be as lovers. Can you understand that?”

  Llona cocked her head and rolled her tongue around the inside of her mouth while she considered it. “I think I can,” she said at last. “You believe in love, don’t you, Matt?”

  “How do you mean that? The way I believe in Santa Claus, or the way I believe in the Free Market Economy?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Are you asking me if I think love exists, or if I think it’s a good idea?”

  She shrugged. “Both, I guess.”

  I got the feeling the answer was very important to her. I was learning a lot about Llona, just from sitting in this room. It proved she’d go through a lot for her dream, whatever the dream happened to be.

  “Well, it definitely exists,” I told her. “It hurts too much to be an illusion. I mean, you can’t be stabbed with a rubber knife.”

  “What about the other part?”

  “Is it a good idea? I don’t know. I’m not the right person to ask. You should ask winners how they like a game.”

  “That’s just it,” she said. She stood up, started walking around the room. In the places where the lamp didn’t reach, she’d walk in and out of the shafts of light from the windows.

  “Just what?” I wanted to know.

  “Winners,” she said. “Losers. Love is a trap, whether it’s real or not.”

  “That’s a little severe, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t think so. It trapped my mother. She worked as a waitress in a hash-house for years, when I was a little girl, putting my father through medical school. Then, as soon as he was successful, he left us, and married an administrator from the hospital. He found her more ‘intellectually compatible.’ She was a winner.