The Last Dance (15 page)

In much the same way, Meyer had once asked Carella if
all
his Christmas cards read “Seasons Greetings” or “Happy Holidays” or “Yuletide Joy” or the like, or were these just the cards he sent to Meyer and other Jewish friends each year? Did Carella send other
cards that read “Merry Christmas”? And if so, was it to spare Meyer's feelings that he sent the generic card? Carella told him
all
his cards were similarly antiseptic because what he was celebrating each December was not the birth of Christ, but instead the peace he hoped would prevail at Christmas time—a view he was sure would provoke a flood of letters from people he didn't know. Meyer said, “In fact,
I'll
write you a letter, you heathen!”

Thus encouraged, Carella went on to wonder aloud why he sent Christmas cards at
all
since he knew in his heart of hearts that Christmas—in America, at least—was simply a commercial holiday designed by merchants eager to recoup losses they'd sustained during the rest of the year. Meyer asked him if he was using the word “merchants” in an anti-Semitic way, and Carella said, “Vot minns anti-Semitic?” and Meyer said, “In that case, I wish to remind you that ‘White Christmas' was written by a Jew.” Carella said, “Giuseppe Verdi was a Jew?” Thus encouraged, Meyer said, “‘A Rose in Spanish Harlem,' too.” All amazed, both men went out to drink fervent toasts to Mohammed and Buddha.

That was too many Christmases ago.

This year, they shared a guilt that had something to do with what each considered a solemn duty to protect and preserve. A lonely old man had been befriended by someone who'd later drugged him and hanged him. A nineteen-year-old black quasi-hooker had been drugged in the same manner and then stabbed to death, most possibly by the same person who'd slain the old man. That person was either still here in this city, or else in Houston, Texas, or else only God knew where. For all they knew, he himself might be dead by now, killed in a bar fight or a motorcycle crash, murdered by a stiffed hooker or a miffed lover. Until they knew for certain, both cases sat in the Open File, neither resolved nor any longer under investigation, exactly like the Danny Nelson assassination.

But then, on the last day of November, Carella opened the morning paper.

The article was headlined “Jenny Redux.”

Norman Zimmer, whose “Tea Time” is still running after 730 performances, has announced the acquisition of all rights to “Jenny's Room,” a musical he plans to revive here next fall. “Auditions will start this week,” he said, “with rehearsals planned for the spring. We're looking for an L.A. tryout in late June, early July.” Mr. Zimmer added that negotiations were already under way with a top female star whose name he refused to divulge.

For those with long memories, “Jenny's Room” was first produced in 1927, as a vehicle for Jenny Corbin, a popular musical comedy performer of the day. It did not fare well with the critics and closed within a month. Mr. Zimmer is certain this will not be its fate this time around. “I've worked too hard acquiring the rights,” he said. “The original copyright holders have all passed on, and it was a matter of tracking down whoever had succeeded to their ownership. We found one of them in London, another in Tel Aviv, a third in Los Angeles.”

The quest ended happily five days ago when the last of the successors, a woman named Cynthia Keating, signed on the dotted line, right here in the big bad …

Carella spit out a mouthful of coffee.

He found a listing for a Zimmer Theatrical downtown on The Stem and called the office shortly after nine
A.M.
A woman told him Mr. Zimmer would be at auditions all day today, and when Carella told her he was a detective investigating a homicide—the magic word—she gave him an address for Octagon Theater Spaces and told him the auditions were being held down there, she didn't know in which studio. “They don't like to be bothered, though,” she added gratuitously.

Octagon Theater Spaces was a six-story building in a section of the city called King's Road after the one in London, but bearing scant resemblance to it. The actual name of the street was Kenney Road, a heavily trafficked thoroughfare lined with furniture warehouses, electrical supply stores, auto repair shops, a garage for the city's Department of Sanitation trucks, and an occasional restored and renovated factory like the Octagon and its virtual twin down the street, Theater Five, an eight-story structure divided into large rehearsal spaces. A receptionist told them there were six studios on each floor. In some of them, rehearsals were in progress; in others, auditions were being held. The
Jenny's Room
auditions were in studio four, on the second floor.

A lumbering elevator dating back to the building's factory days took them to the second floor, where they stepped out into a large entrance hall, one wall of which was hung with pay phones. The pleasant hum of busy chatter hung on the air. Good-looking men and women—this was their profession, after all—greeted each other familiarly, all of them seeming to know each other. Actors holding scripts, dancers in tights and leg warmers roamed from telephones to rehearsal halls, elevators to corridors, rest rooms to audition rooms. They glanced only cursorily at Carella and Brown, knowing at once that they weren't actors, but unable to peg their occupations.

Brown hadn't expected to be in the field today. He was wearing blue jeans, a ski sweater with a reindeer pattern, a green ski parka over it, and a blue woolen watch cap pulled down over his ears. He looked as square as a tuba. Carella could have passed for some guy here to read the gas meter. He was wearing a heavy mackinaw over a maroon sweater and gray corduroy trousers. No hat, although his mother constantly told him if his head got cold, he'd be cold all over. Both men were wearing wool-lined pull-on Bean boots. As they came down the corridor looking for studio four, a young girl in jeans and a leotard top chirped, “Hi,” smiled, and flitted on by.

A door with a frosted-glass upper panel was lettered with the words
STUDIO FOUR
. It opened onto a small waiting room lined with folding chairs upon which sat young men and women in street clothes, all of them intently studying pages Carella assumed had been photocopied from a master script. A feverish-looking young man wearing glasses and a V-necked vest sweater over an apple green shirt asked Carella if he was here for Jenny. Carella showed him his shield and said he was here to see Mr. Norman Zimmer. The young man didn't seem to get it at first.

“Will you need sides?” he asked.

Carella didn't know what sides were.

“I'm a police detective,” he said. “I'm here to see Mr. Zimmer. Is he here?”

“Just a second, please, I'll see,” the young man said, and opened a door beyond which Carella glimpsed a very large room lined with windows on one side. The door closed again. Brown shrugged. The man was back a moment later. He said auditions would be starting at ten, but Mr. Zimmer could spare them a few minutes before then. “Please go right in,” he said.

Carella looked at his watch.

It was a quarter to ten.

At the far end of the room, Zimmer—or a man they assumed was Zimmer—stood alone behind a row of folding chairs behind a bank of long tables. The moment they stepped into the room, he said, “What's this about, gentlemen?”

Brown blinked.

His voice. I recognized his voice. He had a very distinctive voice. Whenever he got agitated, the voice just boomed out of him.

Mrs. Kipp's words. Describing the voice of the man who'd visited Andrew Hale three times during the month of September, arguing with him each time, threatening him.

The voice was a trained voice, an actor's voice, an opera singer's voice, a radio announcer's voice, something of that sort.

Carella—remembering the description from the report Kling and Brown had filed—was himself suddenly paying very close attention to the man who now came around the end of the row of tables, walking toward them.

“Mr. Zimmer?” he asked.

“Yes?” His voice sounded as if it were coming over a bullhorn.

“Detective Carella. My partner, Detective Brown.”

“How do you do?” Zimmer said, and extended his hand. His grip was like a moray eel's. “I haven't much time,” he said. “What is it?”

Like Andrew Hale's visitor, Zimmer had dark hair and blue eyes. He was about Brown's size, a tank of a man with a barrel chest, and a belly that overhung the waistband of dark blue trousers. A blue jacket matching the pants was draped over the back of the chair he'd been sitting in. He wore a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up and the collar unbuttoned. The knot of his tie was pulled down. The tie sported alternating stripes, yellow to match his suspenders, navy blue to complement them and to pick up the color of his suit.
A big man,
Mrs. Kipp had said.
Very big
.

“Sorry to bother you,” Carella said. “We know you're busy.”

“I am.”

“Yes, sir, we realize that. But if you can spare a moment …”

“Barely.”

“… there are some questions we'd like to ask.”

“What about?”

He was scowling now. Carella wondered what had put him so immediately on the defensive. Brown was wondering the same thing.

“Did you know a man named Andrew Hale?” he asked.

“Yes. I also know he was murdered. Is that what this is about?”

“Yes, sir, it is.”

“In which case …”

“Did you ever have occasion to visit Mr. Hale?” Carella asked.

“I met with him on three occasions,” Zimmer said.

“What for?”

“We had business to discuss.”

“What kind of business?”

“That
is none of your business.”

“Get into any arguments on those occasions?” Brown asked.

“We had some lively discussions, but I wouldn't call them arguments.”

“Lively discussions about what?”

The door from the waiting room opened, and a tall, thin woman wearing a mink coat and matching hat stepped into the room, hesitated, said, “Oops, am I interrupting something?,” and seemed ready to back out again.

“No, come on in,” Zimmer said, and turned immediately to the detectives again. “I'm sorry,” he said, “but why are two police detectives asking me …?”

“Won't you introduce me, Norm?” the woman said, and took off the mink and tossed it casually over the back of one of the chairs.

“Forgive me, this is Connie Lindstrom,” Zimmer said. “Detectives Carella and Brown.”

She was a woman in her mid-thirties, Carella guessed, wearing the mink hat at a rakish tilt that gave her a somewhat saucy look. Dark hair showed around the edges of the silky brown hat. Darker eyes flashed at Carella for a moment. “Nice to meet you,” she said, and turned away.

“Mr. Zimmer,” Carella said, “do you know a woman named Cynthia Keating?”

“I do.”

“Do you know she's Andrew Hale's daughter?”

“I do.”

“Did she recently sign some papers for you?”

“Yes, she did.”

“Assigning some rights to you?”

“Why should a business deal we made with Cynthia Keating …?”

“We?” Brown asked.

“Yes. Connie and I are co-producing
Jenny's Room
.”

“I see.”

Threatened him how?

Told Mr. Hale he'd be sorry. Said they'd get what they wanted one way or another.

They? Was that the word he used?
They?

Pardon?

They'd get what they wanted?

Yes. I'm pretty sure he said they.

So now we've got
two
producers, Brown thought, and
they
are doing this show here. The rights to which they finally got from a woman whose dear old dad got killed a month ago. My, my, what a tiny little world we live in.

“The newspaper said you worked very hard acquiring the rights to this show,” he said.

“Yes, we did.”

“Original copyright holders all dead …”

“I'm sorry, but this is
really
none of your …”

“Had to track down whoever'd succeeded to ownership, isn't that correct?”

“Wow, it is fucking
cold
out there!” a voice from the door said, and a short, dark man wearing ear muffs, a camel-hair coat, and blue jeans stuffed into the tops of unbuckled galoshes—though it wasn't snowing outside—burst into the room like a rocket. “Sorry I'm late,” he said, “there's construction on Farrell Avenue.”

“There's
always
construction on Farrell Avenue,” Connie said, and opened her handbag. Removing a package of cigarettes from it, she lighted one, blew out a stream of smoke, and said, “Excuse me, Norm, but there are some things we ought to discuss before …”

“This won't take a minute more,” Zimmer said.

“One of the owners in London,” Brown said. “Another in Tel Aviv.”

“Is that some kind of code?” the man in the camel-hair coat asked. He swung a tote bag off his shoulder, took off the ear muffs, carefully folded them into their own spring mechanism, unzipped the tote, and dropped them inside it. Tossing his coat carelessly over Connie's mink, he said, “Are we reading truck drivers today?”

Brown guessed he and Carella were the truck drivers in question. “Mr. Zimmer,” he said, “when did you learn that Andrew Hale's daughter owned these rights you needed?”

“Why should our business affairs be of any interest to you?” Connie asked suddenly and quite sharply.

“Ma'am?” Brown said.

“Don't ‘ma'am'
me,
mister,” she snapped. “I'm young enough to be your daughter.” She turned abruptly to Carella, effectively dismissing Brown. Puzzled, he gave her a closer look. He figured her to be thirty-two, thirty-three, what the hell did she mean, old enough to be her father? Or did she find it difficult to judge a black man's age? Was he dealing with a closet racist here?