Killed in the Act

by William L. DeAndrea

  “Ha!” Melanie said triumphantly. “And they used to say ‘Harriet Gunner’ wasn’t true to life; that a woman couldn’t fight that well. Ha!”

  Take that, critics-of-the-past. At least the Network wouldn’t have to worry about any future lawsuits. Melanie told me what was going on. She wanted to see Porter Reigels, but she didn’t have a pass (the colonel was now issuing passes) so the guards stopped her.

  “That wasn’t so bad,” she explained, “but when they said I was too old to be Melanie Marliss, I got mad, and decided to go through them. I would have, too, if you hadn’t rescued me.”

  I shook my head. “Harriet Gunner was all right. You’re the one who’s unbelievable.”

  She kissed my forehead. “You’re sweet. Do you know where Porter is? Lorenzo’s around here somewhere...”

  I told Melanie I couldn’t help her, then left her and went to find her former employers. On the way, I reflected on the futility of trying to figure out anything. I mean, when you see one woman struggling with five men, it’s only natural to assume they attacked her, right? I shook my head. The moral of the story was “things are not always what they seem,” and that didn’t seem like much of a moral.

  I made an interesting discovery when I told Ken Shelby and Lenny Green about Jim Bevic’s possible talk with Ollie McHarg: Shelby and Green were a tragedy team as well as a comedy team. When they heard the news, Shelby’s look of tight anxiety was a perfect complement to Green’s expression of loose-jawed shock.

  The choreography was there, too. Green slumped in the dressing room chair looking glum, and the taller Shelby paced rapidly, looking angry, rumpling his silver hair.

  The lines were delivered with split-second timing, and read to elicit the maximum of their potential for gloom.

  “McHarg,” Lenny whispered, “that bastard. That bastard. He’s behind this.”

  I told him we didn’t know that, but he didn’t hear me.

  His partner didn’t either. “He haunts me like a ghost! I—I can’t stand it!”

  “Me neither,” the short man said.

  Shelby glared at him. “You brought him into my life in the first place.” Green took it without a word; he just lowered his head and looked at his hands.

  “Look,” I said, “I didn’t come here to break you two up again, okay? I just want to know if it helps you remember anything. What could Bevic have found out from, or about, McHarg that he’d want to talk with one of you about?”

  “Who says he wanted to talk to us?” Green protested.

  “Who else connected with one, McHarg, and, two, Bevic, has had people trying to kill them recently?”

  Shelby smacked the wall with an open palm and laughed so hard I worried for a moment he might be going into hysterics. “He’s got a point, Len,” he said, when he’d calmed down a little.

  I nodded. “The only thing anyone could have been doing with that damned bowling ball was trying to kill you. Someone must think that Bevic made you dangerous in some way before he died. It’s the only thing that comes close to making sense.”

  “What do you mean? Like he told us something? But he didn’t!”

  “We know that,” Shelby told his partner. “And it could be even the killer knows it. But he’s got as bad a one-track mind as you had when you wanted to get the act back together. You badgered me for twelve years, and it wasn’t your life that was at stake. It seems as though the killer is determined to follow through on us, just to be complete.”

  “It’s not only that,” I said. Shelby and Green looked grim. “He doesn’t want to take a chance that either or both of you is lying about having spoken to Bevic. If he kills you, he doesn’t have to worry.”

  “Hey,” Lenny Green said, suddenly excited. “Wait a minute. This means Alice is in trouble, too, doesn’t it?” He grabbed his partner’s wrist. “Ken, we’d better get over there, right away!” He reached for his jacket.

  “Relax,” I told him. “Coyle’s got the building as secure as possible, and the New York Police Department is covering the hotel.”

  Shelby raised an eyebrow. “How long has this been going on?”

  “Since the bowling ball fell,” I said.

  “Why weren’t we told about it?”

  “I don’t know for certain, of course. My guess is that Lieutenant Martin doesn’t want to tip off our boy.”

  “In other words,” Shelby said with very precise enunciation, “we are bait.”

  I shrugged. “If you ask me, the only way you could be safer is to hole up in the Brant and forget about the show tomorrow night. Of course, if you do that, the killer will never be caught...”

  Lenny Green’s worried look seemed genuine. “Maybe we should, Ken. Stay in the hotel, I mean.”

  “No,” Shelby said. I could have read the small print in a Network contract by the bright flashes coming from his eyes. “We’re not going to let him do this to us, are we? In the old days, not even the censor could do that. No. The Reluctant Magician goes on tomorrow night, exactly as planned, and that’s final!”

  Green mumbled, “Whatever you say, partner,” but he looked happy and relieved. I noticed that it hadn’t taken Ken Shelby long to go back to making the decisions for the act.

  I told them to think some more about Bevic and let me know if they remembered anything. I was beginning to remind myself of a broken record.

  Just as I was about to leave, Ken Shelby reached into his pocket. “Wait a minute, Matt,” he said, “I want you to be a witness to this.” He turned to Lenny Green. “Your watch, partner. I lifted it when you grabbed my wrist a few minutes ago. You used to say I’d never be able to do it.”

  The little redhead laughed. “Son-of-a-bitch!” he said. “You finally got me!” Shelby smiled in return. “You taught me everything I know,” he said.

  I smiled, too. It was nice to think they were friends again. I said good-bye, and left the Tower. It wasn’t very late, but the sun was down, and it promised to be a cold night.

  I turned my collar up, stuck my hands in my pockets, and went home to Llona.

  CHAPTER 21

  “Have you no decency left? At long last...have you no decency left?”

  —JOSEPH N. WELCH, THE ARMY-MCCARTHY HEARINGS, ABC AND THE DU MONT NETWORK

  I’D ALREADY SEEN THAT Llona, so straight ahead and aggressive in the daytime, could be a different woman at night. By the time the sun rose on the morning of the Big Show, I was beginning to think she might be a different woman every night.

  The Llona of Saturday night was an emotional basket case. She mumbled and jerked about spasmodically in her sleep. She’d wake up and look at me and cry, or not look at me and remain stonily silent. Then she’d turn suddenly and reach for me, demanding, insistent, even angry.

  What she didn’t want to do was talk. I finally asked her what was wrong, and that closed her down completely.

  It couldn’t stop me from figuring, though.

  My best guess was that I had made as great an impact on Llona as she had on me. I decided that her determination to have no strings tied to her was colliding with an emotional attachment in the making. Now Llona was paying the price. You always pay for your hang-ups—I knew that from sad experience. It was nice to think I’d be the one to make Llona see the contradiction between her avowed philosophy and her True Self.

  I had gotten up and was in the living room watching a retrospective on fifty years of the Network’s sports programming when the phone rang. As usual, it rang at the worst conceivable moment—right in the middle of the film of Babe Ruth’s famous home run in the 1932 World Series. I’ve studied that clip over and over, straining to see something, some little tipoff that would settle for me whether the Babe actually called his shot before the pitch came in, or if he was just stretching his back. I watched just as closely this time, but as the ball disappeared over the wall at Wrigley Field for maybe the thousandth time, the matter was still to be decided.

  I picked up the phone.

  “Ma
tt?” Harris Brophy said.

  “Yeah, hang on a minute, Harris.” They had the homer in slow motion now, and I still couldn’t decide. “To hell with it,” I said. “What do you want, Harris?”

  “You’d better come down to the shop, Matt,” he said.

  “I plan to, later.”

  “Uh, uh. You’d better tear yourself away from Llona and come down here now.” There was a note of amusement in his voice. Harris found other people’s sex lives amusing; it’s not one of his more endearing traits.

  “Why?” I asked. “Heard from Shirley?” That was a pleasant thought, though I knew it was too early for her to have accomplished anything in Costa Rica.

  “No such luck,” Harris told me. “We have heard from Wilma Bascombe. I’ve been briefed about her.”

  “What does she want?”

  “She wants to talk to you, and she’s very determined about it. She says you’ll know why.”

  “She’s wrong,” I said. What now?

  “Well, she says she’ll wait for you. See you soon.” I said sure.

  Llona’s peaceful sleep hadn’t lasted long. She was sweated, and looked feverish. She’d taken hold of two tight fistfuls of bedding. It occurred to me that once in my life I should get involved with a normal, happy, well-adjusted girl, if only for the novelty of it.

  I touched Llona gently on the shoulder and she jumped as though I’d poked her with an electric cattle prod.

  “He-ey,” I said softly, “it’s all right. It’s all right.”

  “Matt,” she said.

  “Who’d you expect, Spot?” I pushed some damp hair from her forehead. “Look, I have to go to the Tower for something.”

  “Why?” she said. She sounded suspicious.

  “Duty,” I said. “Why else? It wasn’t my idea, believe me. Are you coming to work today?”

  “Not to work,” she said. “To watch. After the PR work I’ve done for this thing, they couldn’t keep me away with vicious dogs.”

  “Speaking of vicious dogs, walk Spot, okay? He likes you.”

  “I like him, too.” She turned on her side. “Matt, I—I want to talk to you later.”

  “Sure,” I said. I bent to kiss her good-bye.

  “Matt,” she said. “Isn’t this a rotten way to live? I mean, wouldn’t it be nice if you could be in complete control of your own life?”

  “Sure,” I conceded. “It would be nice if Spot could tap dance and whistle ‘Dixie,’ too, but I don’t spend a lot of time pining over it.”

  Llona’s mouth turned up in a little smile, which I kissed. I told her I’d see her later.

  Somebody called my name as I crossed the lobby of NetHQ. I turned around to see Murph, Wilma Bascombe’s answer to Knucklehead Smiff. I stopped to talk to him. Maybe he knew what was eating his boss.

  “I wanted to apologize about the other day,” he said.

  “Forget it,” I said. “I was kind of worked up. How’s Sammy’s knee?”

  Murph made a conciliatory gesture. “Don’t worry about it. We were all worked up, too. Chauncey died the night before, you know.”

  “Chauncey?”

  “Our dog. Sammy was pretty broken up about it.” It didn’t look as if Murph’s eyes would be dry too long either.

  “Oh,” I said. “Where is Sammy, by the way?”

  “He’s home cooking.” He did a funny little toss of his head, like a bashful kid, then said, “Well, I’m glad we got this straightened out, Mr. Cobb.”

  “Call me Matt,” I said. What the hell, right? “Do you happen to know why Miss Bascombe is here today?”

  “No, I don’t, but it must be something drastic. She didn’t say a word on the whole trip in from the estate. She’s never done anything like this before.”

  “Hmm,” I said. “Well, thanks anyway.” What I was doing was about as intelligent as trying to guess who’s calling when the phone rings. There’s only one way to find out.

  Harris met me in the outer office. He gave me some significant nods and knowing looks.

  “Talk, for Christ’s sake,” I told him. “You look like your head’s coming loose.”

  “It should,” he said. “I’ve just been talking with Madame La Guillotine in there.”

  “What’s she been saying?”

  “Nothing much. It’s chiefly her attitude and expression.” Harris made a silent whistle. It took a lot to make an impression on Harris.

  “All she said was that she wondered how much money you make,” he went on.

  “What did you tell her?”

  “I said compared to the other vice-presidents around here, you hardly get anything, but that compared to the rest of us in the department, with the amount of work you do and the amount we do, you get about ten times what you deserve.”

  “Thanks, Harris,” I said warmly.

  “Any time,” he replied. “Want me to go in and talk to her with you?”

  “Not at all. I’ve got to catch up with the rest of you hard-working folks, don’t I?”

  Wilma Bascombe received me. It was my office, but there was the unmistakable feeling that I was waiting on her. She was smiling at me, not benevolently. I felt the need to have something solid between us, so I said nothing until I was safely behind my desk. I wished I could intimidate people through force of personality the way she could. She was wearing a simple suit in a deep purple that added to the effect of royalty.

  “It’s an honor to have you here, Miss Bascombe,” I told her.

  She huffed. “I didn’t expect hypocrisy from you, Mr. Cobb. Please stop it. This is unpleasant enough.” She opened her purse and took out a small mirror to look at her face. Apparently, what she saw satisfied her; all she did was touch the corner of a dark blue eye with her little finger, and pat once at her white hair. It was obvious she was giving me time to let her words sink in, but it wasn’t doing much good, because I had no idea what she was talking about.

  “I’m afraid you’ll have to explain,” I told her.

  Wilma Bascombe was getting impatient with me. “I’ve come,” she said, “to find out what your terms are.”

  “Terms?”

  The former star started tapping her foot. “Don’t pretend you had nothing to do with the telephone call I received early this morning, Mr. Cobb. I have studied and practiced deception in too many places for too many years to be taken in by something as clumsy as this.”

  I stood up, walked to the door, opened it. Wilma Bascombe looked quizzically over her shoulder at me.

  “Good-bye, Miss Bascombe. I hope you have a pleasant trip back to the Island.” I gave her my nicest smile. “Give my regards to Sammy.”

  “You’ll regret this, Mr. Cobb,” she said coldly. She rose. “I decided after you came to my house that I wasn’t going to take it any more!”

  “Mad as hell, huh?”

  “What?”

  “Never mind.” I wasn’t going to take any more, either. I wasn’t mad, just tired. Overwhelmed by confusion after confusion. “If it matters,” I went on, “you were about to tell me why I was going to regret this.” As if I don’t already, I thought.

  “Ah, yes,” she said. “Yes, I do want to tell you. I was ready to listen to your demands, if they were reasonable, but you choose to ignore that. Now let me tell you what I choose to do.”

  She was radiant, triumphant. At long last, the Empress was going to thwart all those who had used her, frustrated her, made a fool of her. I was the de facto representative of the Young Man from Washington and all the rest.

  It was getting on my nerves. It was irritating to be considered contemptible by someone who had so thoroughly screwed up her own life. And through her own incredible gullibility, too. Furthermore, she was totally full of it in her accusations. I was going to tell her so.

  But I couldn’t. The look in her eyes, her bearing, the way she held every little part of that aging body was magnificent. Wilma Bascombe was a queen; a Hollywood queen, but born to that purple suit of hers nonetheless. She was—w
ell, special, that’s all. The words for what she had can’t be found. Just say I could no more try to show Wilma Bascombe how silly and stupid she was than I would try to hamstring the last wild mustang.

  Very humbly, I asked her what she planned to do.

  She allowed herself a tiny bit of controlled, scornful mirth. “As soon as I leave here, I shall go directly to Lieutenant Martin of the police; then, I shall confess to these murders.”

  I slammed the door. The Empress jumped, put a hand to her breast in a feeble gesture of self-defense.

  “You’re going to what?”

  “Confess,” she said. “What else can I do?” And still, in her voice, there was an inexplicable tone of that-ought-to-settle-your-hash-boy. I decided this was a stupid dream; that I’d wake up next to Llona in a few minutes.

  So, I decided if it was a dream, I might as well make the best of it. “Let me get this straight,” I said. “Are you telling me you killed Jim Bevic? Jerry de Loon? Tried to get Shelby and Green?”

  Wilma raised an eyebrow and looked at me with a detached, almost academic interest. “You really should have been an actor, Mr. Cobb. You’re quite a convincing liar.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “You should hear my Hamlet. But I would appreciate it if you would humor me and answer the question.”

  She shrugged. “All right, though I don’t know why. You know as well as I that the only reason I plan to tell the police I killed those people is so that when you tell them I did, they won’t believe you. Are you happy now, Mr. Cobb?”

  CHAPTER 22

  “...Decide whether the celebrity is giving me a correct answer, or making one up. That’s how they get the Squares.”

  —PETER MAKSHALL, “HOLLYWOOD SQUARES,” NBC

  WHAT IT DID WAS give me a headache.

  I did not dare to ask this woman another question. I had a feeling that if I did, she’d give me an answer that would make all the convolutions in my brain smooth out.

  “Come back in, Miss Bascombe,” I told her. “Sit down. You won’t have to go anywhere.”

  She came back and sat. I went to my desk and picked up the phone.