Inherit the Shoes

by E. J. Copperman

  We walked to the couch, with Evan leading the way (I’d have gone directly to the bedroom, but I didn’t want to appear over eager – perhaps the Victoria’s Secret special I wore under my clothes would send enough of a signal later on – it had taken me forty-five minutes to work up the courage to put it on, before the wine).

  Not a word was exchanged as we faced each other and Evan took my face in his hands. He leaned in, and the kissing began, slowly, tenderly, almost too politely. But after a few minutes of this, I felt my patience start to wane, and I sent my tongue to deliver a message, which was obviously received and appreciated. Wanton Woman was in da house.

  It took another few minutes before I decided that what had worked for a tongue could also work for hands, and I took his and guided them to my torso, just under my breasts, giving a hint I didn’t think could be missed. But it appeared for a while that it could be, as Evan merely moaned a little and put his hands around my back, rubbing and caressing.

  Just when I was debating the idea of reaching for his belt and ending the suspense, Evan’s libido appeared to come back from its siesta, and he began very carefully, deliberately, unbuttoning my silk shirt. He started at the top, and went three buttons down, seeming to wonder why I wasn’t stopping him, as if we were in the back seat of his father’s Impala in our junior year of high school. I moaned my approval, and pulled him closer.

  Finally, he got the idea, and responded lustily (there’s no other word for it). I was just about to discover what kind of lover he might turn out to be. I reached for his belt buckle and undid it.

  And that, of course, is when the apartment door was unexpectedly opened by Angie, a huge suitcase at her feet.

  On first spotting us on the couch, she closed the door and said. ‘OK, who’s trying to kill my …’

  Then, things began to properly register with her. ‘Oops,’ she giggled.

  TWENTY

  ‘You could’ve told me she was coming,’ Evan hissed at me. We’d retreated to the bedroom to compose ourselves, leaving Angie an inch away from a laughing fit in the living room. The introductions had been awkward, to say the least.

  ‘I didn’t know she was coming,’ I hissed right back. ‘She didn’t say anything about it. I thought we’d have the whole night to ourselves. And for all I knew, the rest of the month as well.’

  ‘The least you could’ve done was lock the apartment door,’ he said, still annoyed and looking for some solid ground to stand on. ‘People are threatening you, shooting at you, trying to blow you up, and you leave your apartment unlocked?’

  I smiled a little, and my hand went to my mouth. Then I felt my face redden. ‘What?’ Evan said.

  ‘Angie has a key,’ I explained. ‘It’s an old tradition that goes back to high school. We were going away for a vacation and Angie was watching my dog, so I gave her a key, and she never gave it back. Since then, whenever I get a new address, she gets a new key. She even had a key to my college dorm room. It never occurred to me she’d use this one. Until two minutes ago, I thought she was three thousand miles away.’

  Angie called through the door. ‘You weren’t that undressed. If you’re talking about me, come out and do it to my face.’ She giggled again. ‘You know what I mean.’

  I tucked my silk shirt into my pants and smoothed my hair down. I gave Evan, who was completely composed again, a glance, and said, ‘Let’s go.’

  ‘This should be fun,’ he said with an odd tone.

  The strange part was that for me, it was fun. I knew Angie was the human equivalent of comfort food – that she was there strictly as support, and not to assume or demand anything. She was the unlimited, always reliable backup everyone should have.

  I could tell, though, that Evan was having a lousy time, and I couldn’t really blame him. After being promised sex, sitting through a reunion of the New Jersey Girls Club had to be something of a letdown. He wasn’t showing much, smiling at the right times and asking questions about me when he could get a word in edgewise, but it wasn’t long before he noted the hour and his need to study for class tomorrow night. Evan left with a kiss and an unspoken promise.

  ‘Well, that was a guy to find with his pants open!’ Angie began as soon as I returned from the apartment door. ‘How’d you get him on the couch so fast, Ms I-Gotta-Be-Friends-With-the-Guy-First?’

  ‘He is a friend,’ I said, realizing how stupid that sounded. ‘But he has a nice body, too.’

  ‘Amen.’

  I sat and gave Angie my most searching stare. ‘So what are you doing here?’

  ‘It was the Barbie doll that did it,’ Angie said, swirling the wine in her glass. ‘I mean, shootings and car explosions are bad enough, but killing you in tiny effigy was too much for me. I had to come out and see for myself.’

  ‘How long are you here for?’

  She shrugged with a failed effort at casual indifference. ‘I dunno,’ Angie said. ‘Until things blow over.’

  I narrowed my eyes. ‘What about the Dairy Queens?’

  ‘What, you think they can’t peddle soft serve without me for a little while? Don’t worry. My job’ll be there when I get back.’

  ‘You’re a maniac. What are you going to do? Follow me around with a blackjack in your pocket? You’re an ice cream manager, not a bodyguard.’

  ‘I’m a Jersey girl. I can do both. So tell me about the guy with almost no pants.’

  I looked at the kitchen and tried to estimate the clean-up time with Angie factored in. ‘He’s a nice guy,’ I said. ‘He’s working with me on the McNabb case, and … I’ve spent too much time listening to you.’

  Angie raised an eyebrow. ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Meaning I wanted to get laid. Is that so awful?’ Angie practically spit wine across the room, and we laughed ourselves into a helpless heap on the couch and easy chair.

  Finally, I managed, ‘Thank God the couch pulls out. It’s a one-bedroom, you know.’

  ‘So you’ll be sleeping out here, then?’ Angie had a glint in her eye, and I sighed.

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘I’m kidding. You stay in your bedroom. Guests are supposed to sleep on the couch.’

  ‘You don’t really have to stay,’ I told her. ‘I’ll be OK, really. And it’ll only be a few months until the trial is over.’

  Angie looked up, suddenly reminding herself of something. ‘Oh my God, I forgot to tell you. The phone rang while you and your … friend were putting your clothes back on in there.’ I made a mental note to take my phone everywhere I went, then looked at the answering machine.

  ‘There’s no voice mail.’

  ‘I picked up,’ Angie said. ‘A woman from your office named Holiday – can you believe it? Holiday?’

  ‘I can believe it. What did she say?’

  ‘I’m so sorry I forgot to tell you right away, but the whole pants thing threw me for a loop. She said the court had called, and the judge set a trial date for three weeks from today.’

  Three weeks? ‘That can’t be right,’ I said.

  ‘She said it over and over,’ Angie told her. ‘I’m sure that’s what she said.’

  ‘I’m going to be trying a homicide case before the whole world, with no evidence in my favor, in three weeks, and Patrick McNabb’s life will be on the line if I screw up?’

  ‘I believe that was the message,’ Angie told me.

  ‘Three weeks?’

  I sat for a while and let my mind reel. All I could hear was Gene Wilder’s voice from The Producers chanting in my head: ‘No way out … no way out … no way out … ’

  Finally, Angie’s voice broke through. ‘Hey, Sand?’

  I snapped to attention, and looked to my friend, whose sympathetic eyes were clearly trying to ease my pain.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Can I meet Patrick McNabb?’

  PART TWO

  THE THINGS THAT AREN’T TRIBULATIONS

  TWENTY-ONE

  The courtroom was packed, as was expected. The case had been in the
newspapers, on television, and all over the internet for weeks, with theories flying about as to motive, opportunity, and of course, method. But the verdict seemed to be a foregone conclusion: everyone agreed he was guilty.

  Famous people don’t live like anyone else when times are good, and there was no reason for that to change when times were … like now. Even in the back of the courtroom, ardent fans were wearing ‘Free Arthur Kirkland!’ T-shirts, as if that was going to be any help. He couldn’t help but notice, and he made a point, from the defendant’s table, to give them a warm smile – the one he considered his best – but this one didn’t have its usual juice. He was tired, weary and wary, and more than anything else, afraid.

  The judge entered the room looking grim, but then, why should he be any different than everyone else (except the prosecution team, whose members were trying unsuccessfully to hide their giddiness)? He sat, and instructed everyone else to do the same.

  ‘Ms Foreperson, I understand you have reached a verdict?’

  Slim, attractive, but somewhat unassertive (just what a prosecutor wants in a foreperson), she nodded. ‘Yes, Your Honor.’

  ‘Would you hand it to the bailiff, please?’ She nodded again, and gave a small slip of paper to the burly bailiff, who’d been lifting weights for an hour and a half downstairs in the bowels of the courthouse when the news of the verdict had been received. At this point, he was lucky he could lift the paper.

  He managed to bring it to the judge, who took the paper and opened it. The judge always did his best not to move a facial muscle when a verdict was presented to him. He would not betray any emotion that might lead onlookers to believe he’d been prejudiced in either direction, even on those occasions when he had.

  But this time, he couldn’t help but smile just a bit and stare in the direction of the defendant’s table. He saw the defendant look at his lawyer, but she was staring into the judge’s eyes, and that stopped his smile. The look he saw, one of utter and complete outrage, was enough to make any man’s blood run cold. He cleared his throat.

  ‘The defendant will rise.’

  He did, and his lawyer did the same. She reached over and patted his hand, then put her own on his and left it there.

  ‘Arthur Kirkland, you have been found … guilty of murder in the first degree …’ The gasp that went up in the courtroom drowned out the rest of the verdict.

  ‘Oh, my God!’ Angie wailed. ‘They found him guilty!’

  I’d been coerced into watching Legality again because, as Angie put it, ‘I’m your guest and you have to be nice to me.’ I shook my head back and forth, mouth agape, absolutely and totally stunned.

  ‘They put him on trial for murder … on his own show?’ I said when speech once again became possible.

  ‘Sure, didn’t you know about that?’ Angie couldn’t believe that everyone didn’t have the same popular culture priorities she had. ‘This has been going on for weeks. Remember, I told you his girlfriend was cheating on him, and when he found out …’

  ‘He killed her? On television? Just when he was being charged in a real courtroom for killing his wife? What are these people thinking?’

  ‘No, no,’ Angie said, trying to calm me down. ‘He didn’t kill her. He went to confront her, and found her body on the floor already. Or at least, that’s what he told Ozzie.’

  ‘Ozzie?’ Ozzie Nelson? Ossie Davis? Ozzy Osbourne? The Wizard of Ozzie? ‘Who’s Ozzie?’

  ‘The one who was defending him in court. He told Ozzie …’

  ‘I don’t care what he told Ozzie! They had the nerve to write a storyline where Patrick McNabb’s character is put on trial for murder, and, with this on half the DVRs in America, I have to defend him in a real murder trial?’ I stood up and turned off the TV. ‘How am I going to find a jury who didn’t just see that, or at least hear about it?’

  ‘You’re not,’ Angie said. ‘Does that mean you should get a change of virtue?’

  ‘Venue, and there’s no advantage to a change of venue in this case. Besides, where are we going to move it to where they don’t have American television? Bangladesh?’

  I couldn’t stop shaking my head in wonder. ‘I’m gonna kill him,’ I said. ‘The least he could have done was tell me.’ I went to the kitchen to pick up the phone. ‘What time is it?’ I asked Angie.

  ‘Just after eleven.’

  I hesitated. ‘Do you think it’s too late to call?’

  Angie stood up and pulled the phone out of my hand. ‘Oh, for Pete’s sake,’ she said. ‘He’s an actor. They’re constantly out at clubs and stuff until four in the morning. He might not even be home.’

  I chewed my lower lip. ‘That’s true,’ I said. ‘I guess it can wait until tomorrow.’

  ‘You won’t be this mad tomorrow,’ Angie said. She picked up a worn denim jacket from the sofa. ‘Come on.’

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘Patrick McNabb’s house. You’re going to introduce me, and then ream him out.’

  It wasn’t until we got to Angie’s rental car that I stopped and looked at her. ‘If he’s not home, how does going to his house make more sense than calling?’

  Angie got in on the driver’s side and unlocked the doors. ‘If he’s there, he’s more likely to see you than he is to pick up the phone. If he’s not there, it gives us that much more time while we drive over for him to get there. Besides, I’m hungry and we’re out of … everything.’

  I sat in the passenger’s seat as Angie started the car. ‘This is just so you get to meet Patrick, isn’t it?’

  ‘Not just.’

  I supplied directions. Otherwise, we drove in silence until we reached Patrick’s ‘bachelor pad.’ Angie’s mouth was open in an oval as we approached the gate.

  ‘Wow.’

  ‘Huh,’ I scoffed. ‘This is just a temporary house. Wait until he gets his permanent place.’

  ‘Am I dressed all right?’

  ‘For a midnight ream-out? Yeah, you look fine,’ I smiled.

  ‘You’re ragging on me, Ms Moss,’ Angie said with a hint of the original Angie voice.

  ‘You’re acting like a TV groupie, Angela.’

  ‘I’m not acting.’

  Angie pushed the button on the intercom, and Meadows answered almost immediately. From the passenger’s seat, I shouted, ‘Hey, Meadows, old chum! It’s his lawyer! Let us in!’

  There was no reply, but the gate opened, and Angie, breathing a little more heavily than usual, drove the car up the winding driveway.

  ‘Just keep in mind that nothing about him is real,’ I advised Angie. ‘His name is really Dunwoody.’

  ‘Actors change their names. They’re supposed to. You, on the other hand, know that, a few generations back, your family name was Moskowitz, so let’s not have too much superiority, OK, Sand?’

  ‘It was at Ellis Island! I didn’t do it myself!’ I wanted Angie on my side in any dealings with Patrick, and was worried that Hollywood glitter might get stuck in her eyes.

  ‘Yeah, yeah.’

  At my insistence, we parked near the door (‘don’t they have, like, a parking lot or something?’) and walked to it, Angie adjusting her cleavage once or twice for maximum effect. Angie’s cleavage could achieve maximum effect on its own, thank you, and here she was helping it. It was a good thing we weren’t competing. Right?

  She was a little disappointed when Meadows, and not Patrick, opened the door, but managed to overcome her discouragement when she heard him say, ‘Mr McNabb is at home,’ and ‘will of course see you immediately.’

  As we were ushered into the hall, where the best memorabilia was kept, Angie’s eyes grew so wide and round that I thought she looked just a little like Little Orphan Annie, but for the irises and pupils (which Angie had, and Annie, not so much). But it was an empty display case that caught my eye.

  It was the one set up much like that for the Cary Grant shoes Garrigan had found so fascinating. It was in a much more prominent place, an area that couldn’t be miss
ed, practically right in front of the main entrance. But the shoes weren’t there – only a small engraved plaque. I couldn’t get close enough, but I was relatively sure I could guess what was carved into the flawless silver.

  The case was meant to house James Cagney’s tap shoes. That meant Patrick already had them, or expected to have them very soon.

  TWENTY-TWO

  It wasn’t just the opulent room that caused Angie’s sudden inability to speak. It wasn’t the fact that her current TV idol was sitting in front of her, perhaps six feet away. It wasn’t even the fact that said idol was in an honest-to-God silk dressing gown.

  It was the fact that this was his bedroom.

  Angie, her mouth squeezed shut for fear she’d actually say what she was thinking, couldn’t take her eyes off Patrick McNabb. He, to his credit, was giving her just as much eye contact as she wanted, which might have been a testament to her cleavage, but also might have been at least partially due to the fact that he didn’t want to look me in the eye as I mercilessly berated him.

  ‘Do you know how this looks?’ I wailed. ‘How long has this storyline been playing out? Practically the day after you appeared on the front page of every newspaper in America arrested for murder, you were being arrested for murder on your TV show, right in front of every juror?’

  ‘How was I supposed to know?’ Patrick retaliated. ‘You know, love, we don’t exactly make this thing up as we go along. They wrote those scripts weeks before Patsy died. We shot the beginning of the arc more than a month before that night. Besides, it’ll drum up some sympathy for me, don’t you think?’

  I bit so hard on both my lips that I was sure I’d draw blood. ‘Don’t you see,’ I said with great effort, ‘that they’ve already seen you convicted of murder on television, and the real trial doesn’t start for twenty-one days, assuming I can’t get the continuance I’m requesting?’

  ‘A continuance? Why do we want a continuance? Let’s get in there and get this done!’ Patrick was smiling. That, more than anything else, convinced me he was completely insane.