by Parnell Hall
“Jesus Christ!” Connely cried. “What is it? Stop equivocating and get on with it! Can’t you see you’re driving me nuts?”
“Sorry,” I said. “Basically the theory is this. Cliff McFadgen wasn’t really blackmailing your wife. The two of them were actually working together.”
Connely s eyes narrowed. “Excuse me?”
“That’s the theory. That it was all an act. What your wife told me about being blackmailed.”
“What are you saying?”
“It’s not what I’m saying. It’s one of the police theories. That your wife and this Cliff McFadgen knew each other and were confederates. And they were mixed up in something together and that’s why they were killed. I take it the police didn’t mention this to you?”
Connely slammed his fist down on the coffee table, lunged to his feet.
“Damn it!” he said. “Damn it to hell! Are you saying my wife was mixed up in something?”
“Not me. The police.”
“I don’t care who’s saying it,” Connely said. “I don’t want to hear it. I don’t want to listen to it, do you understand? First you say my wife was paying blackmail. Now you try to tell me she was involved? I’m sorry, but I don’t have to listen to that.”
I knew he was about to throw me out, so I played my trump card. I opened my briefcase and took out a sheet of paper, printed on and folded in half.
“What’s that?” Connely demanded.
“Program,” I said. “For the show. The producer gave it to me.” I opened it up, pointed. “There’s six actors in the show, plus a producer, director, lighting man, and stage manager. As you can see, Cliff McFadgen’s name is in the cast. Your wife’s is not. The producer and director claim they never heard of her. The other actors are yet to be contacted, but are likely to say the same.”
“Let me see that,” Connely said.
He practically snatched it from me.
“Do any of those names mean anything to you?” I asked.
Connely looked up, shook his head. “I don’t know any of them.” He looked back at the program. Frowned. “The name Jack Fargo is familiar. I’ve heard the name, but I’ve never met him.”
“Is it possible you heard it from your wife?”
He waved it away. “No. I’m sure she never knew him. I mean heard like in a review. Or like some other actor was in a show with him.”
“And you heard that mentioned?”
“It’s possible.”
“Who might that other actor be?”
“I have no idea. You understand, I have no specific recollection. Just a feeling I’ve heard the name.” Dealing with the program had calmed Connely down. Now he even smiled slightly. “I could even be thinking of Wells Fargo and just imagining I’ve heard the name.”
“I see,” I said. “And none of these other names are familiar?”
“No, they’re not.”
“Nor the names of the technical crew?”
“No.”
“And the show doesn’t ring a bell? Footdance?”
He shook his head. “No. Except it sounds like half-a-dozen other shows of that type.”
It sure did. The whole New York actor showcase routine was a familiar and depressing syndrome.
Things were not going well. The guy didn’t know anything, and wasn’t about to hire me. Pretty depressing for a day that had started off with such promise. I took the program back from him, folded it, and put it in my pocket.
“Sorry this doesn’t help,” I said.
I was gone shortly thereafter, neither having gained employment nor learned anything useful.
I did make a mental note, however, to be sure and let MacAullif know just what Bradley Connely thought of his theory.
30.
JACK FARGO WAS UNEMPLOYED. THAT was why I was able to find him home at two o’clock on a weekday afternoon. Jack was an actor obviously suited to character roles. Evidently, there was no role for a short, plump, genial type available at the moment, but there had been one in the showcase Footdance, and Jack Fargo had beat out twenty-six other actors for the part.
“That’s right,” he said. “Twenty-six. I got friendly with the director, and after we were running, he went back and looked it up. They had records from the auditions. Well, not records, really, but the resume photos. They’d sorted them out into the actors they were considering for particular parts. The part of Sam, the part I played—there were twenty-seven photos in that pile. Just for that one part. Shows you what you’re up against, huh?”
“Yes, it does,” I said. “Now, about Cliff McFadgen ...”
He shook his head. “Boy, that’s a shock. Couldn’t believe it when you told me. Damn shame. Not that I really knew the guy, but even so.”
“You hadn’t heard then?”
“No. Didn’t I say that on the phone? I think I did. It was news to me. Kind of sad, don’t you think? An actor dies and nobody hears about it. Even people he’s worked with. Death of a nobody. Kind of makes you stop and think.”
“Right,” I said. “When you say you didn’t know him well ...?”
“Hardly knew him at all. Just that one production. Quite a nice enough guy. Not that talented, maybe. Not that great an actor. I don’t know how many guys he beat out for his part. But that was a different type of role. I’m sure he was just typecast in it. Beefy, overbearing redhead.”
“Overbearing?” I said.
Fargo smiled. “Well, that was the role.”
“Yes. But you said it was typecast. Did you find Cliff McFadgen overbearing? I thought you said he was a nice guy.”
“Well, one hates to speak ill of the dead.”
“Of course,” I said. “On the other hand, this is a murder investigation. Anything you know that might be helpful, please don’t withhold it on the theory that the ghost of Cliff McFadgen might be offended.”
Speaking of offending people, I made another mental note to work on my patience and tact, which, it occurred to me, I seemed to have much less of now than before I’d been thrown in the drunk tank.
Fargo bristled, said somewhat stiffly, “I’m not withholding anything. The fact is, I didn’t know the man well, and my impressions are probably not that helpful. If I say overbearing, that was merely an impression I got. I can’t think of a single instance to base it on. We didn’t have that much contact. We weren’t really friends.”
I imagined it was exactly that which had led Jack Fargo to form that impression.
“I understand,” I said. “It’s just a baffling situation, and I need all the help I can get. You didn’t know Cliff McFadgen well. I didn’t know him at all. So far I haven’t been able to find anybody who did know him well. I apologize if I speak out of my frustration.”
That seemed to mollify him. Fargo relaxed somewhat, settled back in his chair, crossed his legs.
Fargo lived in a studio apartment on West Eighty-eighth Street, fairly similar to the one where I’d found Cliff McFadgen. It was also as poorly furnished. Between that and not having a job, so far the only thing Jack Fargo had up on Cliff McFadgen was in being alive.
I smiled at Fargo. “So you can see my problem. I need to get a line on this guy, and no one knows him. So when I hear a word like overbearing, it may not seem like much, but at the moment it’s all I got.”
Fargo nodded. “Right. But then you gotta understand, I didn’t know the guy personally. If I got an impression of him, it came from rehearsal.”
“What did he do in rehearsal?”
Fargo frowned, considered. “That’s just it. He didn’t take direction well. If the director told him something, he didn’t just do it. He’d stop and think about it, with this intense look on his face, as if he was going through some artistic agony. It was like he couldn’t do it unless he could justify it to himself. To his character, I mean.
“And if he couldn’t, he’d turn back to the director and say, ‘Fred wouldn’t do that.’ And then they’d have to talk him into it.”
�
�They?”
“The producer and the director. Phil and Charlie. They were really like co-directors—did everything together. They’d work on him, talk him into it.”
“Could they do that?”
Fargo shook his head. “Not all the time. Most of the time, yeah. But some of the time the bastard wouldn’t budge. That’s what I mean by overbearing. There were times he’d get an idea in his head and just wouldn’t budge.”
“Why didn’t they fire him?”
“I asked myself the same question. But, you know, a showcase, you do it on a shoestring. There’s no extra money, no extra time. And once they’re into rehearsals—to write those days off, bring in someone else—it’s an iffy thing. I know there were times they’d have liked to fire him.”
“Thanks. That’s very helpful,” I said. “Can you think of anything else you noticed about him? Anything at all?”
Fargo hesitated a moment. “Well, I don’t know if it’s what you want, but he wasn’t good at learning his lines. He was awful, in fact. He was on the book longer than anyone, and when he came off it, he didn’t say them as written. He paraphrased, you know. Gave you the general idea. Well, that’s damn hard to work with. You never know when your cue’s coming, ’cause you never know when his line’s gonna end.”
I nodded. “Despite all that, this play went on?”
“Oh yes, it went on.”
“How was he in performance?”
“Same thing. You could never be sure what line he was gonna throw.”
“What kind of reviews did it get?”
Fargo looked pained. “We didn’t get reviewed. I know Phil tried to get ’em down there, but he couldn’t pull it off. Damn shame. It’s not like I did it for the money, you know.”
“Yeah. Too bad,” I said. “Tell me, does the name Patricia Connely mean anything to you?”
“Patricia Connely?”
“Yeah.”
“Is that the woman who was killed?”
“That’s right.”
He shook his head. “Never heard of her. You say she was an actress?”
“That’s right.”
He shrugged. “In New York City, every woman’s an actress. Unless I worked with her, I wouldn’t know.”
“What about Bradley Connely?”
“Bradley Connely?”
“Yeah. Name mean anything to you?”
He wrinkled up his nose. “It’s a bad stage name. Both names ending in lee. It should be Brad Connely. If the guy’s an actor. Is he?”
“As a matter of fact, he is.”
Fargo shook his head. “Then I don’t understand the name. With a one-syllable last name Bradley is fine, but with Connely?”
“I meant had you ever heard of him?”
“No, I haven’t.”
“Are you sure?”
“A name like that, I wouldn’t forget.”
“Un-huh,” I said. “Now about the woman—I’m wondering if you might have known her without knowing her name. Seen her out at auditions somewhere, or just making the rounds.”
I reached in my jacket pocket, pulled out the photograph of Patricia Connely, and handed it to Jack Fargo. He took it, studied it.
“This is the dead woman?” he said.
“That’s right.”
“Attractive.”
“Yes. What about it? Did you ever see her?”
He shook his head. “No, I haven’t.”
Fargo handed the picture back. I took it, wishing like hell I’d been able to dream up a reason to ask Bradley Connely for a picture of the two of them.
“Is that all?” Fargo said. “I don’t mind helping, but I’ve got things to do.”
“I think that’s about it,” I said.
I got up and went to the door. Fargo followed to let me out.
I turned back in the doorway. “Just one thing,” I said.
“What’s that?”
“I was wondering if you’d know of any actors who would be working legit now—but who might at one time in their career have posed for pornography.”
Fargo’s face drained of color.
“No,” he said. “I can’t think of anyone.”
And he closed the door behind me.
Son of a bitch.
I figured it probably had absolutely nothing at all to do with my investigation, but still I couldn’t help wondering just what sort of pornographic pictures Jack Fargo had been involved with at some point in his career.
31.
ALICE WAS NOT HAPPY. “You’re getting nowhere,” she said.
“Excuse me?”
“Nothing adds up. There’s got to be a link somewhere, and you haven’t found it.”
“What more could I be doing?”
“You only saw this one actor.”
“That was the one the guy mentioned.”
“What guy?”
“Her husband.”
“You said he didn’t know him. He just thought the name was familiar.”
“Right.”
“This actor probably wasn’t any more important than anyone else in the cast.”
I exhaled, rubbed my head.
We were sitting at the kitchen table. In the living room, our son, Tommie, was playing Super Mario World on his Super NES, the new, improved, more expensive Nintendo system that all the kids simply had to have. The graphics were better and Mario got to ride on a dinosaur named Yoshi, and I had to admit the whole thing was indeed incredibly cute, but right now the bouncy music from it was getting on my nerves.
“Tommie, turn that down,” I yelled.
There was a pause, then moments later the volume level dropped almost imperceptively.
I groaned, rubbed my head again.
“I’m not blaming you,” Alice said. “It’s just very frustrating.”
It was indeed. What was even more frustrating was the fact that she was blaming me, but wouldn’t admit it. A situation calculated to drive me crazy.
“The way I see it, Alice,” I said. “If we’re going to consider MacAullif’s theory—” Here I paused and looked at her.
“Which of course we should,” Alice said.
“Well, if we’re going to do that, I think the important thing would be to find a link between Patricia Connely and Cliff McFadgen. So far we haven’t been able to do it. And neither have the cops. We got nothing. Cliff McFadgen was in a show. And her husband thought one of the other actors in the show sounded familiar. Doesn’t that make him a lead?”
Alice shook her head. “No.”
“Why not?”
“Because whatever she was mixed up in—whether it’s MacAullif’s theory or what have you—her husband didn’t know about it. So if there’s a link between her and Cliff McFadgen, her husband didn’t know about it. So if this is an actor her husband’s heard of, I would say that makes him the least likely suspect.”
I blinked, rubbed my head again. Looked up to find Alice waiting for a response.
“Well,” she said. “Doesn’t that make sense?”
I exhaled. “I suppose so.”
“Don’t humor me.”
“I’m not humoring you.”
“Well, don’t say you suppose so if you really don’t.”
“Alice, I’m not having a good time here. Today I interviewed this actor. I interviewed her husband. And I interviewed the producer and director of the show. I got a picture of the woman to show around—”
“A picture of who?”
“Patricia Connely.”
“You didn’t tell me that.”
“I forgot to mention it.”
“Where is it? Let me see it.”
I took the picture out of my jacket pocket, passed it over.
Alice inspected it critically. After a few moments she shook her head. “Figures.”
“What does?”
“Your description of her. She doesn’t look anything like it.”
“Oh, come on,” I said. I was afraid I was due for another composite-sket
ch-incident bashing.
But Alice merely frowned and said, “Poor woman.” She looked up and said, “We’ve gotta do something.”
“If you want me to interview the other actors, I’ll interview the other actors. You gotta remember I’m fitting this in around my job. I got two cases for Richard already tomorrow. Who knows how many more will come in.”
“I know,” Alice said. She thought a moment. “Maybe I should interview those actors.”
That was all. Just that simple flat statement.
I felt an absolute rush of panic.
It was incredible. Like I was suddenly hollow inside.
I’d like to think that it was fear for Alice. Not just fear that she was encroaching on my territory. Usurping my position and taking away my job. I mean, this wasn’t castration anxiety, was it?
At any rate, I’m sure my face drained of color just as Jack Fargo’s had when I’d mentioned pornography.
“You can’t do it,” I said.
Alice looked at me. “Good lord, what’s the matter?” she said.
“I just had a panic attack at the thought of you doing that. Look, it’s fine you making composite sketches and thinking this thing out. But it isn’t just a game. Someone killed two people. And one of them was a woman. This person kills women. See? We don’t know who and we don’t know why, but we’re asking these actors to find out.
“And if we do find out, if we do find the connection, we could be next. ’Cause any one of these actors could be the killer, see?”
Alice smiled. “I think you’re being overprotective.”
“I don’t. I’ll see them myself. In between jobs. I’ll fit them in.”
“Okay,” Alice said. “And what about this Fargo?”
“What about him?”
“You gonna tell the cops about him?”
“Tell ’em what?”
“What you said. About pornography. How he reacted.”
“That probably doesn’t mean anything. Most likely he dabbled in it once.”
“Yeah, but maybe not. Maybe the word pornography made him think of the pictures.”
“You mean he’s involved in the blackmail?”
“Right.”
“And the murder?”
“Could be.”
“Not likely. We discussed all that. Blackmail doesn’t bother him. Murder doesn’t bother him. Pornography does. I figure it’s personal, not part of some scheme.”
