“The whole kitchen and dining room staff are safe.” Her voice muffled against Chris’ chest. “The cast and crew are safe, except for…well…”
Chris released her, looking into her face.
Matilda finished: “No one has seen Nancy Ann.”
“What? We have to get in there.”
“Chris, we can’t. One of the guys said they were swapping the sets, putting Audrey Two away in the basement.”
“The basement? Nancy Ann was in the basement?”
“Yes. What? Yes, putting away the giant Audrey Two, the plant…”
Chris took off, running as best he could in heels toward home. He fought with the door, but it finally opened. He pulled it tight behind him with a bang and ran into the house. He kicked off his shoes as he ran through the loft to the door under the stairs. It opened with a woosh of air and smoke. Down the stairs, through the dusty passage, to the dead-end wall. He felt it, surprisingly cool. He pushed, it didn’t budge. He pushed again with everything he had and it opened, water splashed and gurgled around his ankles.
“Nancy Ann!” he called into the smoky darkness. Chris fumbled along the top of the cabinet next to the door, found the flashlight, turned it on. The room was empty. He moved to the door. “Nancy Ann!”
Pounding on the door. A muffled: “Here!”
With the turn of the lock, the door opened hard as it fought with the dirty water. She fell into him, gasping for breath.
“I’ve got you. I’ve got you.” He held her for the briefest moment. “Come on.” They shut the door, exited through the passage. As they made their way toward Chris’ loft, a huge crash followed by a muffled explosion cast a cloud of smoke and debris toward them. Nancy Ann helped Chris up the stairs and out of harm’s way.
Chris’ cell phone rang; he ignored it. He helped Nancy Ann into the bathroom. She started to breathe more normally. She went to the sink and saw herself in the mirror: drenched, hair and face and clothes covered in black soot and muck. Without words she stripped out of her clothes, leaving them in a muddy, dirty heap on the floor. She got in the shower.
He turned away from the naked girl. Not out of modesty, but out of sorrow. “I’m here,” he whispered. It was all he could think to say. He walked into the bedroom and rummaged around a drawer. Elmer had left sweatshirts and sweatpants there. He slept in them and lounged in them. He preferred them because he was always cold. Chris placed them on the counter in the bathroom.
His cell rang. “Yes,” he answered, hearing the shock in his voice, feeling it in his body.
“Where are you?”
Chris didn’t recognize the voice. “I’m at home. I got Nancy Ann out. I saved her.” The words mechanical.
Frank, that’s who spoke. “Chris, Liz—”
Chris snapped his phone shut. “Liz! She got out.” Chris shouted toward the shower. “I’ve got to go back to Tamburlaine. I’ve left clothes for you.”
“No! Chris!” Nancy Ann flew from the shower and wrapped her long, dripping arms around Chris, holding him. “You can’t. Tamburlaine is gone.”
“They’ve found Liz. They got her out.” He pulled himself free from Nancy Ann. “Clothes.” He pointed at the counter.
“Shoes!” Nancy Ann shouted, “Put on some shoes.”
Chris slipped into a pair of flats and raced for the door. He pushed on the outer door and it didn’t open.
“Fuck!” he shouted. He pushed and banged on the door, but it didn’t budge. He stopped and heard pounding. It came from the opposite side. “It opens out!” he shouted to whoever was out there. The racket stopped. Chris again pushed desperately at the door, but it didn’t move. He pulled out his key, tried to slide it under the door, but the industrial metal weatherstripping, flush against the ground, stopped him. He beat his hand against the door, pushing his whole body into the panic lock. It wouldn’t give, not an inkling.
“I’ve come for you!” A shout from behind the door. Gun shots rang out.
First, one, then two, then six metal mounds formed from Chris’ stomach to head. He pulled back against the bricks. A tugging: at his hand, his arm.
“Chris, move away. Come back,” said Nancy Ann, dressed in Elmer’s sweat suit, which hung on her, so much fabric around her small frame, her hair wet, her feet bare.
“You’ll catch your…”
More shots fired into the door, the door again stopped them.
Nancy Ann dragged Chris back further until they were on the patio. “Phone?”
“Your feet. Nancy Ann, you’ll be ill. It’s too cold. Get inside the—”
“Phone,” she repeated.
“What?” Chris said.
“Give me your phone.” She held out her hand in anticipation.
Chris rooted in his pocket, brought out the phone, handed it to her.
Light enveloped them from the device. “Chris, he’s called you.”
“Who?”
She held it up for him to see Liz’s picture on the screen. Chris fumbled and slid his finger over Liz’s face. He pushed the message and held the phone to his ear.
“I love you, Baby. I’m not going to—” In the background, cutting off his words, a deafening explosion.
Chris replayed it.
“I love you, Baby. I’m not going to—”
“Chris,” Nancy Ann said softly as she took the phone. She dialed a number. “Frank. Thank God. Listen. We’re at Chris’. Can’t get the door open. Someone has been shooting at the door. Yes. Shooting.” She listened and then ended the call. “Help is on the way.”
More gun shots rang out at random moments. Chris could feel the shooter’s frustration.
The two moved around the corner, back into the apartment. The blue cat watched over them, wagging his never ceasing tail.
Chris and Nancy Ann turned on the street video cam. “It’s Norton Folgate,” said Chris. “Norton!” he shouted into the intercom. “What are you doing?”
The man turned toward the sound. “Where are you, Marlowe? Come out here where I can see you, get a better shot at you.” His words slurred; tears streamed down his dirty cheeks. “You were supposed to be in there.” Norton wandered out of the small street image and came back into it. He aimed at the camera, pulled the trigger.
Chris winced.
Nothing happened.
The kid pulled the trigger again and again, but he’d run out of ammunition. He threw the gun toward the camera. “Why can’t I just kill you and be done with this?”
“Done with what?” Chris asked.
“You. My past. Everything.”
Nancy Ann touched Chris’ arm. “That’s good. Keep him talking,” she whispered.
Chris nodded. “What are you talking about?”
“You. My mother. That horrible old man…” he wiped at his eyes with his hands.
“Who is your mother?” Chris asked studying the youth on the screen. Who are you?
“Oh, you know my mother. You fucked her.”
“I what?” he said. There had only been one woman, ever. One drunken night. One of the drag queens, Eleonore, what was her last name? Bull. That’s it. Elly Bull. Wonderful stage name: Eligible. Turned out she wasn’t a queen, but a woman pulling a Victor/Victoria. A woman, pretending to be a man, pretending to be a woman. Things had progressed so far, to the point of no return, that Chris sampled a real vagina. Like a science experiment gone wrong. But, oh, how they had laughed and drank. Chris kept Elly’s secret for months, but then she just disappeared, as so many of the queens had.
“Is your real name Norton Bull?”
The guy looked hard into the camera. Blue and red lights flashed all around him. He never answered. Cops slammed him up against the brick wall. Handcuffed him. Out of the picture.
“Chris?” asked Nancy Ann, touching his hand. “You’ve gone white. Like you’
ve seen a ghost.”
“Not seen one,” he said. “Am one.”
“Not yet, Mr. Marlowe.”
His buzzer sounded. “Yes?” Chris asked into the video screen where two police officers waited.
“Can you let us in, Mr. Marlowe?” one of the officers asked.
“I’m sorry, but the door is stuck. It won’t open.”
After a long pause, the policeman said, “I’m sending two officers up the fire escape. We’ll get you out of there.”
“Okay,” said Chris. “Dear, go to the gallery. In the far corner is a ladder up to the ceiling. Unlock the latch so they can get in.
She ran from the room, her bare feet slapping up the stairs. He and Eligible had a son?
“I’m a father? And, my psychotic son has been trying to murder me? How Greek.”
Nancy Ann returned. “Chris, all the paintings, they’re gone.”
“I know.”
Two policeman, Leander and Hero, tall and solid and stern, followed her into the kitchen. They questioned him about the door and the shooting and the shooter. Chris answered their questions, wanting more bourbon, but afraid to reach for the glass. That’s what had gotten him into all this, being drunk on a bottle of bourbon and discovering his date wasn’t a man in woman’s clothing, but a woman in…well, woman’s clothing.
Before long, a crew of firemen had the old metal door opened. Chris and Nancy Ann, now free, walked back to Tamburlaine. Nancy Ann tried to get him to go to a hotel, to leave his home. But, the sun had begun to color the dark, morning sky. Just a glint. They got coffee from a corner cart.
Tamburlaine was gone, nothing now but a burnt-out brick shell: massive, ancient, hand-hewn charred timbers protruding from a smoldering hole. The ambulances were gone. One crew of firemen remained, hoses lined out straight and empty on the wet street as they coiled them back into their truck. The police or the city or the firemen or whoever takes care of such things had already circled the building and alley with metal stanchions like they use for crowd control on Gay Pride. Yellow police tape fluttering the message “Do Not Cross” flapped in the cold morning wind.
Fifty-four
Chris and Nancy Ann called the hospitals. Chris whispered, “He’s not at St. Vincent.”
No one had a Liz or an Elmer or a Nashe, or any unnamed patient fitting his description. No one knew what had happened to Liz. Frank’s call the previous night wasn’t that they’d found her, but that they hadn’t.
“There’s something I haven’t told you,” he said.
She turned, looked at Chris. He watched her face, blotchy from tears, eyes puffy from a lack of sleep. She poured more tea into his cup, added a lump of sugar, then a second.
“I should have told you,” he said.
“What?” she sat and placed her hand atop his. “Chris, what is it?”
“You own Tamburlaine. Owned.”
“What?”
“When I found out you are Jimmy’s niece, when I transferred the Streetwalkers to you, I had the lawyer transfer Tamburlaine to you, too.”
There were only looks between them for a long moment. Chris placed his free hand atop of hers. “I thought you should have it. Someone needed to take the place over if I died, which isn’t out of the realm of possibilities considering all that has happened. Jimmy said someone from his family would show up. I wanted someone who cared about it to take it over and run it.”
“Like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.”
“Not so much of a prize today as it would have been yesterday.” He patted her hand several times and thought, not realizing he said the words aloud: “You know what happened to the man who suddenly got everything he ever wanted?” He didn’t finish the quote, but said instead: “At least, there’s the insurance.”
“Insurance?”
“Yes, of course. Years ago, I met a man, very handsome, very hairy, very very big dick. He sold insurance. Boy, did I buy insurance. I’ve kept those policies going for years and years. Now, I’m glad I did.”
“You can rebuild. That’s what insurance money is for.” She slipped her hand free and drank more tea. “A new place with—”
“Oh, that’s a nice dream, but only a dream.”
“No, you must. You have to rebuild it.” Her eyes bore into Chris until he looked away. “We don’t have to make any decisions today.” She picked up the list of hospitals. Each one now crossed off. “He might have gotten out.”
A great, overwhelming sense of sadness washed over and through him. Tears didn’t come this time. Perhaps, he was finally all cried out. “I don’t think so. If he’d gotten out, he’d be sitting here with me and we’d be reading the paper together.” As an afterthought, Chris pointed to the list she held. “Or, he’d be at one of the hospitals.”
“What do we do now?” Nancy Ann asked.
“You should go home. Feed your cat. Get some sleep.”
“I don’t have a cat,” she said, a soft smile overtook her mouth and eyes. “Chris, what are you going to do?”
“I do not know, my dear. Sleep. Get on with it somehow.” Buying all those shares of Folgate’s company flashed through his mind. The idea of forcing him out, coming up against him, it felt overwhelming. What had he been thinking? If he’d just sold…. No, Norton Bull wouldn’t have been satisfied with that.
“Where are you?” she asked.
“Oh, thinking about what I might want next.”
“No decisions today.” She braced her long, thin arms on the table edge. The muscles pulsed under the clear, lightly haired skin. “Would you mind terribly if I slept on your couch for a bit. I just don’t think I have the energy to get home.”
Chris stood and held out his hand. She took it, stood up, and he led her to his bedroom. “It’s a very comfortable bed. You should sleep there. No protest.” He helped her take off her shoes and tucked her under the soft sheets and thick quilt. Her eyes closed and she slept.
He wandered the place, touched the door that led to the tunnel. He thought about going back down there, but knew there was no point. The smell of smoke caught up in his nostrils again. He didn’t know if it was real or imagined, if it came from without or within. He pulled a shawl around himself and went outside, down the alley. The door now gaped open, the firemen broke the lock to free them. The bullets had ripped the metal in places, but kept death outside, away. Chris touched a hole about four feet from the ground. His breath caught and he turned his head away.
He walked.
At the Jewish deli he bought a whole chicken and coleslaw. They’d have that later, when Nancy Ann woke. He ordered a corned beef sandwich, thought of eating the last one with Liz, and changed his order to turkey. He might never be able to face another corned beef sandwich again. Who would wipe the mustard from his chin?
While he ate, sitting in the overly-warm room with the smells of soup and pickles dancing around him, Chris wished for a moment he’d done it earlier, years ago; wished he’d gotten out, sold to Folgate, walked off the pier. What had been the point of keeping Tamburlaine open, of sitting there night after night for all those years, only to have everything come back together and then ripped away from him? There it was again, that wave of sadness and nausea he’d been feeling all night. He swallowed the turkey and drank a bit of coffee. No tears came.
He had a son—an angry, miserable, murderer of a son. Why hadn’t she told him? Everyone knew where to find Christopher Marlowe. But, that boy chose acting out, revenge, instead of talking. He could have offered him so many advantages: money, education, time. Chris had always had a lot of time.
Then again, the kid looked more like Folgate than he looked like Chris. Was it possible that Nigel and Eligible had…
What would become of that boy, now? People had been hurt because of his actions. Liz was missing. He clung to the idea. No. Dead. But, no one is dead until there’s a
body, right?
“Chris?”
Ingram.
He didn’t know what to say.
“Chris? Can I sit with you? I was coming to see you and looked in the window as I passed and here you are.”
Still Chris said nothing. The boy sat down. “Coffee,” he said toward the counter. “I don’t know what to say except I’m sorry. And, I am sorry. I had no idea who he was or what he was planning. He…”
Chris raised his hand and shook his head. “No. Please don’t make excuses or tell me stories about him.” He reached for the coffee cup, but didn’t raise it. “I trusted you.”
“It wasn’t me.”
The old waiter set a cup in front of Ingram, filled it with coffee, and topped off Chris’ cup. He watched them, but said nothing.
“No. Stop. I can’t be with you; can’t talk to you.” Chris stood, picked up his to-go order off the counter. “No.” Again he shook his head and placed a hand on the door. “No.”
The afternoon held grey clouds and shadows. The neighborhood, silent, dark, the dank smell of wet smoke clung to the cobblestones and pitted bricks. He owned most of this now, these crumbling, boarded up buildings. Saving it, restoring it, seemed stupid and ill-advised. Chris turned the corner to find Jericho standing at his door, fingering the bullet damage. Chris walked home and without words the two men hugged and then walked down the alley to the kitchen door.
“There’s nothing to say,” said Chris as he entered the kitchen and tossed off his wrap. He put the bag on the counter, pulled out the coleslaw, and put that into the refrigerator. He busied himself making coffee. The bourbon called to him from its shelf, but he ignored the desire, pouring water into the coffeemaker.
“Chris, look at me.”
“Jerry, I can’t.”
The coffee dripped into the carafe as wisps of steam escaped from the top of the machine. It needed to be replaced. Liz kept saying “Let’s go shopping today,” every time she made a pot of coffee.
“Chris, you had nothing to do with this. Some crazy person throws fire, you get out of the way. If I hadn’t dragged you into Sardis last night, you would have been there. You’d just told the cab driver to take you to Tamburlaine when I made you get out.”
Tamburlaine: A Broadway Revival Page 24
