A Motive for Murder

by Gallagher Gray

  “How could Morgan pull his son out of a movie after the contracts had been signed? Isn’t that illegal?”

  “Sure.” Silverstein’s snort was sympathetic. “But what is Levitt going to do? Sue? He hasn’t got a dime left. No lawyer will touch him because there’s a good chance they’ll never get paid. Morgan had millions to fight him on it in court. And they always come up with some reason they can point to as legitimate for breaking the contract.”

  “But that’s not fair!” Auntie Lil said indignantly.

  “Hey, it’s a shark pit out there. Kill or be killed.”

  “Well, someone took that advice a little too literally for my tastes,” Auntie Lil informed him. She rose and extended a white-gloved hand. “Thank you so much for your time, Mr. Silverstein. You’ve been most helpful.”

  “My pleasure.” He smiled, revealing yellowed teeth as he reached toward the bloated cigar remnant.

  Auntie Lil fled the office quickly. The smell of kitty litter and bourbon chased her all the way to the dingy elevator.

  As she stood gazing at the menu in the window of the Stage Deli—trying to decide which of the eatery’s famous enormous sandwiches she should eat—she remembered something Silverstein had said: Andrew Perkins had been Bobby Morgan’s costar twenty years before. And the name of the ballerina who originally replaced Fatima Jones was Julie Perkins. Could they be related? She thought this possibility over. Why would Bobby Morgan do his old rival a favor by making it possible for Perkins’s daughter to dance the lead? And if Morgan had cleared the way for Julie Perkins to take center stage, why would the girl’s father kill him in retaliation? No, it didn’t make sense. Yet Silverstein said that the Metro School was still considered an excellent training ground for a performing career. And if Andrew Perkins was anything like Bobby Morgan, perhaps he harbored dreams for his progeny as well—and sent his daughter to Metro for the training.

  There was only one way to find out. She’d have the chopped chicken liver, bacon, and egg-salad combination on whole wheat and then, refreshed and resolved, march right up to Perkins’s front door and ask.

  After lunch, she had to pull rank in the Metropolitan Ballet’s business office in order to obtain Julie Perkins’s address. But pulling rank had never bothered Auntie Lil. In fact, it was one of the few times when she was capable of subtlety. While the young secretary scurried to find the proper records for the obviously important board member, Auntie Lil appropriated her phone and called T.S. He answered on the first ring.

  “Where have you been?” she demanded.

  “Been?” he answered innocently. “Did you call?”

  “This morning. Three times.”

  “I was sleeping late,” he explained, although the truth was that Herbert had been teaching him ballroom dancing.

  “Nonsense, Theodore. You haven’t slept past eight o’clock since you had the measles in 1952.”

  T.S. resisted the urge to point out that she was the main cause for that, but he held his tongue. “I am retired and entitled to sleep in,” he said mildly.

  She let this pass but filed it away for future reference. Now she was certain that he was up to something that excluded her, which positively rankled. Auntie Lil was of the opinion that everything was her business, especially when it involved her beloved Theodore.

  “I may have a lead,” she explained. “But I am a little uneasy about going it alone.”

  “Is this really Lillian Hubbert?” T.S. asked with mock seriousness.

  “Well, I am uneasy,” she said defensively. It wouldn’t hurt to have Theodore along in case she ran into trouble, a thought that occurred to her more and more often in her... well, more advanced years. But he didn’t have to rub it in.

  “What particular brand of trouble are you contemplating?” he asked.

  The secretary returned with Julie Perkins’s enrollment card and handed it to Auntie Lil with an uneasy glance at the telephone. Surely the old woman wasn’t making long distance calls? The young girl left nervously and hovered on the other side of the office, wondering when Auntie Lil would leave.

  Auntie Lil examined the card carefully. “Remember Bobby Morgan’s costar in Mike and Me? The one named Andrew Perkins?”

  “You and Herbert remembered him. I didn’t.”

  “Julie Perkins has an ‘Andrew Perkins’ listed as the person to contact in case of emergency on her Metropolitan Ballet School enrollment card.” Auntie Lil turned the card over and read further. “That’s odd,” she added. “No mother is listed.”

  “You think it’s the same Andrew Perkins?” T.S. asked.

  “Of course it is,” Auntie Lil said. “And I’m going to go talk to him.”

  “Why?”

  “Why not?” she replied. “Come with me?”

  T.S. sighed. He could not, in good conscience, refuse. And if he admitted the truth—that his feet hurt too much—she’d ferret out his ballroom-dancing efforts. “I’ll meet you there,” he promised. “Don’t try anything on your own.”

  “Of course not,” she murmured sweetly. Getting her own way always put Auntie Lil in a good mood.

  Andrew and Julie Perkins lived in an expensive high rise co-op a few blocks from Lincoln Center. It was one of a dozen or so brick buildings that had risen around the cultural area in the seventies and eighties. Purchase prices and rents were exorbitant. As Auntie Lil waited in the lobby for T.S. to arrive, she surveyed the marble floors and the squad of doormen, then decided that Andrew Perkins must be doing pretty well to afford such a home.

  “Nice digs,” T.S. said, meeting her by the miniature lobby waterfall. “He must have successfully revived his acting career.”

  “He doesn’t act anymore,” Auntie Lil explained. “According to Morgan’s former agent, he works on Wall Street now.”

  “I should have known,” T.S. said piously, conveniently ignoring the fact that he had spent thirty years on Wall Street before retiring early at age fifty-five and leaving all of the backbiting and obsession with profits behind.

  Auntie Lil asked the doorman to ring the Perkins apartment. She was willing to settle for either Perkins, but was expecting the daughter or, perhaps, the unlisted mother. After all, it was the middle of a Tuesday afternoon and she was sure Andrew Perkins would be on the job. But, surprisingly, he was the one home.

  At first, he wouldn’t let them up. But when Auntie Lil grabbed the house phone from the startled concierge and explained her position on the Metro’s board, Perkins gave the okay to show his visitors upstairs.

  “Upstairs” was an understatement. The Perkins lived on the forty-fourth floor and enjoyed a breathtaking view of the Hudson River. A long plate-glass window ran along the side of a large sunken living-room area. If Andrew Perkins had not been standing in front of the window with an unhappy scowl on his face, it would have been a lovely vista.

  “What do you want?” he asked, waving reluctantly toward a low seating arrangement that bordered the living room on two sides. He remained standing, his gaunt figure made ghostlike by the glare from the afternoon sun behind him. He was a tall man, yet lacking in the grace that acceptance of his height would have provided. He stooped, as if permanently tired. His blond hair was thinning and brushed carelessly back from his forehead; the ends were in need of a trim. His features did not match: his nose was too broad for his thin lips and his small eyes looked lost in his pale face. Yet his daughter, Julie, was beautiful.

  T.S. noted that the apartment was as sparse and orderly as his own. Hardwood floors gleamed beneath white rugs, the furniture was modern with clean lines, and not a single magazine marred the coffee table’s glossy surface. No ashtrays either. This was a no-smoking home. All together, T.S. approved.

  “I have been asked by the board to look into the matter of Bobby Morgan’s death,” Auntie Lil explained.

  “Why?” Perkins demanded, pacing in front of the window and reaching for his shirt pocket, before stopping abruptly. T.S. knew at once that the absence of ashtrays was proba
bly part of the man’s desperate attempts to stop smoking. “Can’t the police do a good enough job on their own?”

  Auntie Lil let a moment of silence pass. Just because she had barged in unannounced was no reason to be curt. “I am sure the police are making plenty of progress,” she said.

  “Are they?” Perkins interrupted abruptly. “What have they found out?”

  “I don’t know,” Auntie Lil admitted, exasperated. “It’s just that the board felt we should make an extra effort to demonstrate our determination to get to the bottom of this unfortunate occurrence. So they elected me.”

  Perkins stopped pacing and stared at Auntie Lil. “In other words, they realize how much bad publicity they’ve gotten over the past few months and they want to cut their losses?”

  “Well, yes,” T.S. interrupted. “I might summarize the situation that way myself.” Auntie Lil glared at him, but T.S. ignored her. He was starting to enjoy himself. He was used to dealing with men like Perkins from his old Wall Street days, impatient men who felt their business alone took priority. They could not fathom why anyone else should think that what they had to do could possibly be as important.

  “Do you have an objection to the board attempting to find out the truth?” T.S. asked Perkins calmly. T.S. had learned that rephrasing a person’s comments into a challenging question was a good way to put them on the defensive.

  Perkins scrutinized T.S. and patted down his pockets absently. “Of course I don’t have an objection. Why would I?”

  T.S. shrugged. “Then you wouldn’t mind answering a few questions from my aunt here?”

  “Fire away,” Perkins agreed. Then, as if obeying his own command, he walked over to a black enamel sideboard and opened a small bottom drawer. Reaching to the very back of the compartment, he produced a pack of cigarettes and quickly lit one up, tapping the ashes into the base of a potted ficus tree nearby. T.S. wondered how many hours he had managed to go without the nicotine.

  “You are the Andrew Perkins who costarred with Morgan in Mike and Me, aren’t you?” Auntie Lil asked.

  Perkins shrugged again. “So what? It’s no secret. He came up to me in front of three dozen people and made a big deal about seeing me again. Everyone knew we had acted together as kids. If you’re suggesting I killed him out of jealousy because he got the lead in Mike and Me twenty-five years ago and I didn’t, you couldn’t be more wrong. I enjoyed every bit as much success as him. I got just as much fan mail and, when it was all over, just as many offers for more work: zero, zippo, absolutely nothing.”

  “Were you surprised to see him again?” Auntie Lil asked, ignoring his outburst. “You had nothing to do with his returning to New York and offering his son for the role?”

  Perkins shook his head vehemently. “I didn’t invite him, if that’s what you mean. I’d just as soon he’d stayed in L.A.” He walked over to the window and stared out. A tugboat was moving up the Hudson far below and he watched its slow progress intently.

  “My aunt asked if you had anything to do with his returning to New York,” T.S. pointed out. “Not whether you invited him.”

  Perkins stared at T.S. “Bobby may have come back to the Metro just to piss me off,” he finally said. “If that’s what you’re getting at. He was like that. Might have wanted to rub my face in how well his kid was doing, compared to mine. Bobby always had to win more than anyone else. But I doubt that’s why he showed up on the Metro’s doorstep. I doubt I’m important enough for the great Bobby Morgan to really give a crap about, to be perfectly honest.” He stopped and stared at T.S. again. “Have we met before?” he asked abruptly.

  “It’s possible,” T.S. said. “I understand you work on Wall Street. I worked at Sterling & Sterling for twenty-seven years. As personnel manager.”

  Perkins nodded. “I interviewed there once for a job. Didn’t get it. Went on to Salomon. I was their top bond producer for three years in a row. In the eighties. Made a pile of dough. Who needed acting?”

  “Congratulations,” T.S. said dryly. “How are things going in the bond world now that we’re in the nineties?” T.S. knew full well that the bottom had dropped out of the bond market and that everyone’s top producers were struggling these days.

  “I quit,” Perkins said. He ground out his cigarette and lit another. “Time to move on.”

  The man sounded suddenly as if he did not have a care in the world. T.S. was intrigued by his combination of arrogance and defensiveness. The oddest references seemed to set him off. Perhaps T.S. had turned Perkins down for the job and he still harbored a grudge. T.S. could not remember for sure, but it was possible. He had turned many people down over the years.

  Auntie Lil had been watching T.S. question Perkins and her eyes glittered with a dangerous curiosity. She sensed the undercurrents in the room and was intent on uncovering their meaning. “What do you do now?” she asked Perkins. “Manage your daughter’s career?”

  Perkins perched on the edge of the low-slung sofa. “My daughter can manage her own career,” he said. “She’s sixteen years old, going on thirty-five. I don’t know what I intend to do next but I am sure I will think of something.”

  Better make it quick, T.S. thought, calculating the probable mortgage and maintenance charges on such an opulent apartment, not to mention the tuition for Perkins’s daughter at the Metropolitan and all the expenses that went along with a professional dancing career.

  “Your daughter lives with you?” Auntie Lil asked.

  “Yes. Why do you ask?”

  Auntie Lil shrugged. “I was just thinking of how fortunate she is to have such a nice apartment so close to the school. Many of the other children aren’t so lucky. They live at the YMCA or as boarders with other families.”

  “And many of the other children aren’t so fortunate as to be given a role they don’t deserve,” Perkins added suddenly.

  “I didn’t say that,” Auntie Lil said. “I saw her as Clara the night of Morgan’s death. She did a very capable job.”

  “My daughter was not ready to dance that role,” Perkins said. “I was against it. It’s too soon. She needs time to develop, time to gain enough confidence in her technique to expand her interpretation. She may have the body of a young woman, but she is still a child in many ways. She needs seasoning. Didn’t you see the reviews? They will harm her career.”

  “Then why did you allow it?” Auntie Lil asked.

  Perkins laughed. “Allow it? You obviously have not yet met my daughter. My opinion is of no consequence to her.”

  “What does her mother think about it?” Auntie Lil asked.

  Perkins inhaled deeply and blew a long stream of smoke from his mouth, his eyes narrowing. “I wouldn’t know. Neither would Julie. We haven’t seen her in several years. Not since she packed up and left when Julie was up in Sarasota with the company one summer. To be frank, it was no great loss.”

  “That must have been hard on Julie,” Auntie Lil remarked.

  “Nothing is hard on Julie,” Perkins said. “Unless it’s about dance. That’s all that matters to her.”

  “Then she, at least, must have been delighted to have performed the lead,” Auntie Lil said.

  “I’m sure she was.” He stood up with a sudden jerk. “What more do you want to know? I don’t really see how I can be of help. Whoever killed Bobby Morgan probably had a good reason to do it. He was that kind of a guy.”

  “How do you know?” Auntie Lil asked. “I thought you hadn’t seen him in years.”

  “I hadn’t,” Perkins replied. He stared out the window again. “I’ve been following his career as an agent. He couldn’t have picked a better occupation, given his talents.” His laugh was short and bitter. “Bobby Morgan, big man about town, on top again, twisting the strings, torturing the people who tortured him, getting even for his bad skin and tendency to bloat. Ah, but revenge can be sweet.”

  “You think he became an agent just to get revenge for the way he had been treated?” T.S. asked.

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p; “Of course not.” Perkins strode to the ficus tree and ground out his second cigarette with one swift gesture. “He became an agent so he could make millions. And he did. He got one screwed-up kid out of the bargain, but hey—what did he care? He became a millionaire.”

  “You consider Mikey Morgan a troubled child?” Auntie Lil asked.

  “I don’t consider him a child at all,” Perkins said. “I consider him an abomination.”

  “Is there anyone in particular who you think might have wanted to see Bobby Morgan dead?” T.S. asked.

  “I can think of a dozen people without ever moving east of L.A. But I don’t have a shred of evidence that any of them did it, so I refuse to give you any names.” He produced yet another cigarette, then gazed sadly into the now empty pack. He would soon be facing the big decision of whether to break down and buy a new pack or try to quit again.

  “Where were you the night he was murdered?” Auntie Lil asked.

  “I beg your pardon?” Perkins said, standing up straight and staring at Auntie Lil.

  “I presume you were at the performance,” Auntie Lil answered, “watching your daughter enjoy her big moment.”

  “Of course I was there,” Perkins said, looking at his watch. “She may be ungrateful and stubborn, but she’s my daughter. Why? Want to see my ticket stub?” His tone and subsequent laugh were both sarcastic, an attitude that Auntie Lil despised. T.S. was suddenly glad he might have turned Perkins down for employment years ago. He hoped he’d been rude about it.

  “Well, we won’t trouble you anymore,” Auntie Lil said suddenly. “May I use the ladies’ room first?”

  “Down the hall,” Perkins said, nodding toward the back of the apartment.