The Cutting Room (18 page)

Shutter Gallery was closed at seven the next night.

Even though it was the time I had been told to arrive, this did not surprise me. I just turned the knob of the unlocked door and walked in. I was getting good at figuring out this kind of thing.

The place was empty. It would have been completely dark, were it not for lights from outside, seeping in through venetian blinds, shooting off the glass that covered Gavin de Klock’s hospital photos. It allowed me to see my way to Stu’s back office.

Here it was dark, too, but not unoccupied. Stu was waiting in the leather chair by his computer, its light the room’s only illumination. A takeout tofu dinner in a Styrofoam dish was on the desk before him.

Seeming genuinely relieved to see me, he waved his chopsticks in greeting. Then, after swallowing a final bite, he beckoned me closer, placing a finger at his lips.

Stu’s preppy/mystic cool had begun to crack. He was unshaven, and blond-gray flecks dappled his face. He wore just a short-sleeved shirt, without the sweater. His scent was a mixture of sweat and expensive aftershave.

Still wary of surveillance, he turned and began to type. Standing behind him, I leaned down and read the screen over his shoulder. His message was uncharacteristically brief:

HAVE IT?

I took a deep breath. Then, reaching over Stu, I hit two keys to answer:

NO.

Stu looked up at me, clearly flustered. Behind his wire rims, his blue eyes blinked disconcertedly. Since he did not move to “communicate” more, I took the lead.

LITTLE BOBBY’S DEAD. SO’S HIS GIRLFRIEND. COPS WILL THINK THAT IT WAS GANGS. BUT SOME GOON GOT MY MOVIE. AND WHATEVER IT WAS OF YOURS LITTLE BOBBY STOOL.

My fingers had pressed too hard, causing an embarrassing mistake on the last word:
stole
. Stu didn’t even notice. He was too busy standing up and grabbing me.

It was a move not of anger but of desperation. Pulling me by my shirtfront, Stu stared right into my face, with the terrified look of someone who was told he was a terminal case.

Did he wish me to hug him? Stu was that kind of guy. But I only pulled back, to get out of his grasp. I felt sorrier for silly Bobby, his disloyal new girlfriend, even for the king of fools, Ben Williams. There was a long list before I got to Stu.

By now, I had seen murdered people. But I had never seen anyone actually killed. After I called the cops—anonymously, from a pay phone—I had cried in the cab coming there. Did other detectives do that? I didn’t care.

I placed on his desk the two envelopes full of money and the third holding the gun. Then I merely shrugged, the universal language for
sorry
.

As I passed through the gallery again, I looked at the photos for a final time. The picture most visible was that of a patient who, despite extreme measures, had not pulled through. He was being covered by a sheet.

“What do you mean, humming?” Jeanine asked me.

“The guy who came in and killed Little Bobby,” I answered, “who wanted the Filofax, who took the movie.”

“Who lived in the house that Jack built?”

I was too busy packing to respond to Jeanine’s little joke.

“He was humming something, and I can’t get it out of my head.”

There was a long pause as I glanced at the clock. Rosie’s money had bought me a last-minute flight, the most expensive kind there is.

“Why does that matter?” Jeanine asked me.

“Because it may lead me to
Ambersons
.”

There was more silence. I could tell Jeanine thought it had been a long day for me. Even though it had been, I wasn’t raving.

“Look,” I said, “I’ll tell you when I get there.”

“Are you coming into Kennedy or Newark?”

“Neither. I’m coming into Logan. And so are you.”

Jeanine’s tone now became gentle and slightly cautious, as if she were dealing with the insane.

“But, Roy . . . isn’t that in Boston?”

“Yes.”

Maybe Stu’s paranoia had infected me: I did not say what else I was thinking. I packed the Filofax neatly inside a hotel towel.

Congressman Webby Slicone was in Boston, too.

PART 5

BOSTON

We began in Cambridge, actually. Jeanine and I met in the Hyatt Hotel there, the place where parents of Harvard students stay. It had an open lobby with circular floors, and in the bar, we looked up and down at them and felt we were in the middle of a well-heeled honeycomb.

I did, anyway. Jeanine had other thoughts.

“I keep thinking of falling off,” she said. “Hopping up and leaning on the railing, very casually. Then one false move, and—whoops!”

“That’ll do,” I said. “I thought I would spring for a little luxury—courtesy of Rosie, of course—and now all I can think of is your splattered body a dozen floors down.”

“How about your own?” she said. “It could happen to you, just as easily.”

It sounded like a threat. Jeanine may have still been steamed at me about Barcelona or just in a morbid mood. She seemed almost vindictively badly dressed—her French
Seven Year-Itch
T-shirt over sweatpants—and her appearance caused stares in a hotel favored by rich Moms and Dads. This made me feel protective of her, as well as annoyed. I thought I better cut to the chase.

“Look,” I said, “wait here.”

I stood and approached the aging singer at the bar piano. After he finished his sincere rendition of the song from
Titanic
, I slipped five dollars into his brandy snifter and requested a tune.

When I returned to the table, Jeanine was crankily pressing a maraschino cherry flat with her thumb.

“Visual aids?” she said.

“
Audio
visual.”

Before I could finish my word, the piano music began. The singer poured his heart and soul into a bubblegum song of the late Sixties.

One and one

They still make two.

One of me

Needs one of you.

Just one alone

Is oh so sad.

You don’t need school

To learn to add.

The new math!

The new math!

The new math!

It’s all about love.

Jeanine started to comically sing along, moving her head back and forth, in a parody of “digging it.” With a face, I signaled that I understood her “subtle” rib.

“Just bear with me, okay?” I said.

Then the song ended, to my lonely applause.

“It was awful then, and it’s awful now,” she said.

“But who sang it?”

“The DreamDates, of course.”

“And who were the DreamDates?”

There was no point in playing trivia with Jeanine, though pop music ranked below movies and TV in our hierarchy.

Jeanine frowned, as if to ask, what was I getting at. “Webby Slicone and June Faber.”

“Well, that’s why we’re here.”

I had kept the Filofax close since leaving L.A. It was still on me, wedged in the inside pocket of the jacket on loan from Annie Chin. Now I opened my coat and flashed the leather-bound object, discreetly.

“Let’s just say I’ve got Webby in my pocket,” I said.

“You mean, like big business does?”

“Funny.”

Jeanine was referring to the politics of the Republican Congressman from Massachusetts. After the breakup of the DreamDates—and the death of his partner and wife, June, in a drunken car crash—Webby had directed all his energy into business. Impressed by his success, captains of industry backed the diminutive charmer’s run for office in his old home state. Only a celebrity—albeit a flea-bitten relic of the Sixties—could have defeated a Democrat in Kennedy country, and that was what Webby had done.

But he had not left all of his old L.A. pals behind. Or all of his L.A. habits.

“Webby’s name is in Stu Drayton’s Filofax,” I said.

The piano player started atrociously tinkling “Born in the U.S.A.” Jeanine took a long time to nod. Then she came a bit more to attention.

“I see. So you think—”

“That the guy in the ski mask worked for Webby. He came after Little Bobby for it, after the boy was stupid enough to call him and attempt extortion. Webby’s name in that Filofax wouldn’t look so good in an election year.”

“And you base this idea entirely on a tune that a hitman was humming?”

“Well, not entirely. But sort of.”

“So Webby’s got
Ambersons
,” she said, “and you’ve got the Filofax.”

I nodded. The experience in L.A. had made me angry, and so less shy about suggesting something this outlandish. It was my first pure, detective-like deduction, and I was proud of it. Still, I waited for her response, with trepidation.

Then Jeanine said what she said so often now.

“I guess it makes as much sense as anything else.”

I grinned, glad to hear it.

“But I’ve got just one more question,” she said.

“What’s that?”

“Why are we in Boston? Doesn’t our nation’s business get done in D.C.?”

“Well,” I said, “it
is
October. Webby’s finally coming home, to campaign.”

Jeanine nodded. I could see her old feelings for me—whatever they might have been—resurfacing. Spitting gently into a napkin, she wiped off some of the screwdriver that was left on my lips. It had been my attempt at cocktails.

“Why do so many celebrities become right-wing when they go into politics?” she wondered. “Reagan, of course. George Murphy. And that Gopher guy from
Love Boat
—”

“Well, not Miss Hathaway from
The Beverly Hillbillies
—”

“Who lost.”

“Right. Sorry, but I don’t know the answer.”

“Look,” she said then, “I’ve only got two days off from the Film Forum.”

“That shouldn’t be a problem.”

I proceeded to explain. Before I left L.A., I had managed to get myself a little closer to the world of Webby.

A former trivial man, Taylor Weinrod now worked in the sphere of cable television. Taylor was head of acquisitions for Landers Classic Movies, a service devoted to twenty-four-hour golden-age entertainment. Tan and buff, in a suit and tie, with that new combed-forward-balding-guy haircut, he had been appalled to find me sitting in the waiting room of LCM’s plush Century City digs.

As if to keep anyone from noticing me, he hustled me into his office pronto.

“Roy!” he said. “Please—please—please come in!”

He cautiously shut the door, very firmly. I had intentionally left my good clothes at the hotel. Looking like an aging loser, I had placed my sneakered foot onto his fancy glass table. He carefully moved aside a framed picture of his wife and son.

“Chic doings,” I said, looking around. “It’s a long way from Jersey City, right?”

Taylor had once run a movie memorabilia store in that affordable location. Now, smiling unhappily at the memory, he placed his hands nervously beneath his expensive suspenders.

“Well,” he said, only half-kidding, “I wouldn’t say that too loudly around here.”

“Why,” I said, “would an alarm go off?”

Taylor did not respond. He just stood, turned, and closed his window blinds, ostensibly to block the sun. But I think he feared
anyone’s
view of me, this ghost of trivia past.

He explained, condescendingly, “This
is
a place of business.”

I nodded. “I know. That’s why I’m here.”

Taylor’s face twitched a little. “What do you mean?”

“I’ve been looking to get out of what I’m doing. Climb the ladder a little. You know, you’re my role model.”

I could see Taylor was complimented. But his need to protect his lifestyle took precedence even over his vanity.

“What did you have in mind, exactly?” he asked, concerned.

“Doing what you’re doing. I know a lot about movies, of course. And I’d like to make a lot of money. So, you know,” I chuckled, “where do I sign?”

Taylor’s eyes widened a bit in disbelief.

“It’s not that easy,” he said.

“Well, I
know
that. I’m willing to work my way up. But when you start out, they say it’s who you know. And I realized—I know you.”

Taylor stacked some papers, almost touched, but more unnerved. Then his fingers twiddled on his desk, made of beautiful blond wood.

“There’s really nothing that I can—”

“The health insurance is really the attractive part,” I said. “I bet you’re protected up the wazoo.”

I wasn’t lying about that; if I had a heart attack tomorrow, there would be no way to pay. But it was my first moment of sincerity.

Sweat was forming on Taylor’s upper lip. “As I say, there’s really nothing I can . . .”

I was staring at Taylor as innocently as a newborn babe. Maybe I tweaked what remained of his conscience. But I really think he just wanted to get rid of me—and all those trivial memories—quick.

“Look—do you have a résumé?”

“Is that important?”

I was really laying on the fella-on-the-fringe routine. Laughing, Taylor now addressed a savvy, unseen audience.

“Well, it might help!”

“Okay, okay, résumé, that’s something I should”—I pulled out a pen and made a note on the back of my hand—” ‘Make a résumé,’ that’s a good thing to . . .”

“Because, without that”—Taylor was staring at that hip crowd only he could see—“there’s really nothing
anyone
can—”

“Well, okay, then let’s scale it down,” I said definitively. “I mean, it doesn’t even have to be in the office. It could be something . . . just, well, in the general vicinity.”

“The general vicinity.”

“Yes.”

I saw an idea forming inside Taylor’s blue-colored contacts.

Ed Landers was the multimillionaire media mogul who owned Landers Classic Movies, as well as many other stations, sports teams, and high-tech firms. He was heavily involved in Republican politics, and notorious for illegally leaning on his employees to donate both time and money to his favorite candidates. Objections to this occasionally bubbled up, then subsided. Working for Landers was so coveted, and Landers owned so many things.

“Surely,” I said, “Ed Landers has such an empire that there must be something that—”

“Well, now that you mention it, there is.”

Taylor had said it with relish, as if there were an opening to carry live grenades in your mouth and I was the man for the job.

“Great,” I said. “Great.”

“Now, it’s not working for LCM proper,” he said.

“That’s okay,” I answered eagerly.

“But it’s the kind of thing that will give you brownie points with Ed Landers.”

“Brownie points with Ed,” I said. “Those are good.”

“Do you mind”—and here Taylor pretended to take my needs into account—“traveling?”

“Traveling is okay. Except, well—”

“It’ll be on the company, don’t worry.”

“That’s what I was wondering.”

Taylor started pulling out forms that probably had nothing to do with anything.

“You’ll just have to write down where you can be reached. Are you busy this weekend?”

I thought for a second. Then I read the back of my other hand. “Nope. I’m free!”

“Good.”

Taylor passed me the forms and showed me where to write. He smiled, as if killing several birds with one stone, placing a feather in his cap, and all those other things that ambitious people thought important.

“This might work out,” he said, “after all.”

Back in Cambridge, I paused and took a final sip of my OJ and vodka. As the live bar Muzak shifted to Alanis Morissette, Jeanine looked at me, aghast.

“What’s the matter?” I said. “You mind wearing a funny hat? I seem to remember seeing you in one now and then.”

“No—but what if someone sees us?” she said. “Handing out flyers for Webby Slicone?”

“It’s all for a good cause. And not a political one. It’s for
Ambersons
.”

“You couldn’t have just
called
Webby’s numbers in the Filofax?”

It was my turn to make a
no kidding
face. “They’ve all been disconnected. Of course.”

Jeanine sighed deeply, trying to find a comfort level.

“Well, I’m not cheering for him,” she said.

“Suit yourself.”

Jeanine just sat back then. Beneath the table, her foot played lightly and, as before Barcelona, ambiguously, with the hem of my pants.

“Now I see,” she said, getting used to it. “Boston. It all adds up.”

“Yeah.” I nodded happily, pleased with myself. “Like the new math.”

No one on Earth supported Webby Slicone.

Maybe it just felt that way. Certainly none of the indifferent people gathered the next morning at Faneuil Hall were actually
for
him. Everyone was either someone’s friend or someone’s kid, an aspiring actor or, as in my case, a fobbed-off job seeker. Whoever would be paid to fill the crowd at Boston’s waterfront tourist site, that’s who our motley crew was, huddled over cool coffee and stale-as-cracker crullers.

“Only the best for us,” Jeanine muttered, adjusting her funny hat.

The campaign workers knew that we were fake enthusiasts, but they still spoke to us sincerely of Webby’s qualities, as if any cynicism might expose the waste of their efforts and their lives.

But, after all, these were people willing to kill to see this man re-elected.