Magic Hour (32 page)
"He was never preoccupied like that before?"
She shook her head. "No. But see, it's nothing concrete. It's just a sense that a wife—or an ex-wife—gets about a man. That he wasn't really with me."
"I don't want to hurt your feelings, but could he have been cooling down on you?"
"No, because then he wouldn't have had me come over. If he'd just wanted sex and gorgeousness, he could have spent some time with Lindsay in her trailer. Or found someone else. Don't forget; Sy was an unmarried heterosexual multimillionaire movie producer. With a hundred forty IQ and a thirty-two-inch waist. Women tend to find that attractive. But he wanted me that afternoon."
"What for? I'm not being a shit now. I know why I would want you. Why would he want you?"
"Comfort. He could be himself with me. Well, as close to himself as Sy could ever get. I can't say he wanted me for fun, because he took himself too seriously to really let loose and laugh. But he seemed to have a good time bird-watching, walking with me; it was such a change from the rest of his life. And he loved sitting out in back—he called it his ex-yard—drinking lemonade and gossiping. And the sex was good." I waited for her to say, Not anything approaching the way it was with you, Stephen. Ah, Stephen: what a beautiful name. She said: "Sy and I knew how to please each other."
"It's nice that you had that." Tramp, I thought. I was so steamed. I went to my closet and picked out a tie, one that Easton had gotten me four or five Christmases earlier. Naturally, it was tasteful: red and blue and pale-yellow stripes.
Bonnie didn't seem to notice. "I know you have to get going, but just think for a minute. From your professional point of view: Did anyone say anything that would back up the feeling I got of Sy's being preoccupied? Was there any kind of a change in him?"
I sat on the edge of the bed and started doing my collar buttons. She did not lean over to help. "That's not an easy call to make," I explained. "Sy had a talent—a genius—for being what people wanted him to be. Not just what you've told me about, in the sack. He could be tough with a Mikey, be intellectual with a film critic, be Mr. Chicken Soup with an old Jewish reporter. He didn't seem to have any center. You knew him better than anyone. Who was the real Sy Spencer?"
"I don't know if there was one."
"Right. So it's almost impossible for me to find out if Sy wasn't himself, because no one can tell me who 'himself' is. Except that he always kept the lid on; I mean, his normal behavior was not screaming and kicking the crap out of production assistants and spitting on actors. And there was nothing in his behavior before his murder to show anything different. He was acting like a reasonable, rational man. No sudden blowups, no fits of melancholy."
"So you don't see anything."
"Shut up and let me finish."
"Don't tell me to shut up. Ask me to please be quiet."
"Please be quiet and go fuck yourself."
"That's better."
"Good. Now, two things strike me, but they're so petty they may not mean anything. But like you have a wife's sense, I have a cop's sense."
"What are they?" She caught me staring at the inner part of her thighs again. Taut, no baggy skin. Paler than the tanned tops of her legs. She pushed herself back, so she was leaning against the headboard, stretched her legs straight out and clasped her hands over that indefinite region south of her vulva and north of her thighs. "Come on," she urged. "You said two things struck you. Tell me. Function."
"I am functioning. Okay, Sy could definitely indulge himself with material things, indulge women if he was in the mood. But basically he was a real cheapo. Always trying to get a better deal, always afraid that people were trying to cheat him. And you told me one of the reasons you didn't ask for alimony is that you wanted to stay in his good graces, and you knew he had a bug up his ass about women wanting him for his money. Am I right?"
"Yup."
"Okay, so knowing all that, how come he paid Lindsay Keefe a half-million bucks more than her contract called for?" Bonnie looked astounded. "Does that sound like him?"
"No. Not at all. It sounds like a schnook who never made a movie before."
"Right. Some guy who's letting a movie star lead him around by the dick. I mean, so thrilled she's letting him in her pants, so scared she'll change her mind, that he throws in another five hundred thou."
Bonnie brought up her clasped hands and rested her chin on them. She was intrigued. "You're on to something. I don't know what. But Sy wouldn't let go of a nickel without a reason."
"So what was the reason? Is it possible he made an off-the-books deal with her agent?"
She began to gnaw her knuckles while she considered the question. "I doubt it," she said finally. "Lindsay and Nick were getting a million each. Normally, they're in the two-to-three-million range, but they were getting it on the back end."
"A percentage of the profits?"
"Yup. The first-dollar gross. And Lindsay's agent ... Why would he go for an off-the-books deal? He's not going to trust an actress. He, his agency, is going to want the protection of a written contract to collect his ten percent."
"So if a deal was struck, it would have been a private one between Sy and Lindsay."
"It would have been. I just can't see him doing it. Except..."
"Except what?"
"Except she
was
living with him, had been for months. Sy took women out, had sex with them, maybe had an occasional sleep-over in Southampton for a weekend. But nobody besides me and Lindsay ever kept a toothbrush in his house; he didn't operate that way. So maybe he had fallen in love with her. Maybe he
was
going to marry her."
"But it went sour."
"Well, you have to ask whose fault that was. If it was hers, she was in trouble. Sy was vengeful."
"How would he get his vengeance?"
"Just for starters, he'd stop having sex with her—but not tell her why. And he did that."
"You don't know that for a fact."
"I do know that's what he told me: He'd stopped sleeping with her. And I know him well enough sexually to know that you could stand on your head and whistle 'Dixie' stark naked, and he still wouldn't—couldn't, probably—do it more than once a day. God, I hate getting clinical."
"Get clinical."
"Well, he could keep going for what seemed like forever, but once he ... you know..." She got all flustered.
"Bonnie, you're forty-five years old."
"Thank you. Well, once he came, that was it. And so if he was keeping company with me every single day, he would have had to put on a splint to do anything for her."
"He saw you every day?"
"Every day. And he was so
angry
at her. He always got hostile during production, that quiet, nasty seething; I mean, if a fly would land on a wall, he'd want five grips with bazookas to go after it. But with Lindsay it was more. He was venomous. He called her terrible things, and that was so out of character for him."
"Like what?"
"Well, maybe you won't think it's so terrible, because you have a filthy mouth. But Sy liked to think of himself as the epitome of refinement. And also as a clearheaded man of enlightenment. That meant buying politically correct ice cream and being pro-environment, anti-fur and ultra-pro-feminist. All of a sudden, though, he was calling her 'cunt.' You have no idea how out of character that was for him. Sure, he could be a miserable, heartless, vindictive rat, but always a genteel rat. He'd eat your face and tell you how profoundly he valued your friendship. So my guess is, Sy did love her. But then he turned on her. And just from his language, I'd say he'd lost control. In his mind, she'd betrayed him in some fundamental way."
"Well, she'd betrayed him by screwing up her acting," I suggested.
"Right. But for the first week or so, that didn't seem to stop his attraction. I mean, dailies were horrible, but you said people saw him around her on the set with steam coming out of his ears."
"Okay. So what do we have? He was upset with her, angry with her, but he was still hot for her despite her lousy performance. But then she seeks out Santana as an ally—and Lindsay's way of forming an alliance is to fuck somebody. Then, within a day or two, Sy is looking to replace her. With other actresses for
Starry Night
. And with you for sex. So I'm asking: What's your gut? Doesn't it look like Sy knew?"
"It sure looks like it. I can't say definitely, because he had an enormous ego, and it would have been hard for him to accept that a woman would prefer anyone else to him. But on the other hand, he was very, very astute. And he
had
crossed her off his list. Now, you could call it a business decision, maybe a smart one; I don't know enough about the economics of moviemaking to say. But it was personal too. This was Lindsay's first soft, romantic role, and he was letting it leak to everyone in the business that she—his lover, girlfriend, fiancee, whatever—didn't have the versatility, the charm, the comedic talent, to handle the light stuff. He knew what the gossip would be: 'If Sy has to replace Lindsay, she must be doing a
horrendous
job.' "
"Was he trying to ruin her?"
"If he could have, he probably would have. But I told you: no producer today has the power to ruin a star. Still, Sy was out to do Lindsay as much damage as he could."
"At the dailies, a few people were talking about lightning special effects. Sy said if Lindsay got hit by lightning, it would be the answer to his prayers. Obviously he was kidding about the completion guarantee business, but the impression was that for all he cared, she could be dead, and in fact, if she
had
been dead he probably would have thrown a party."
Bonnie was doing a great job chewing her knuckles. "Okay, Sy had fallen in love and had been cuckolded and was out to get even."
I nodded. "Right. Now all we've got to figure out is whether his Lindsay passion was a temporary lapse for such a dispassionate man, or if he was starting to lose his marbles." I went and unlocked the strongbox on the top of my closet, got out my service revolver, then got my suit jacket. "I have this feeling he was really losing his marbles."
"Why?" She watched me putting on the holster and the jacket. I could see she didn't want me to leave. I could also see that, unlike every other woman I'd ever slept with (except for girl cops), she didn't blink or recoil or raise eyebrows or in any way show discomfort in the presence of a .38.
"Sy had this assistant or associate producer," I said. "A new guy he hired for
Starry Night
. A guy from around here."
"Super WASP?"
"My brother. His name's Easton." "He's your brother? Oh. Sy told me about him."
"What did he say?" Bonnie didn't want to tell me. "Go on. I know what he is."
"Sy said he was very good-looking, personable, but a little..."
"A loser."
"Someone who hadn't had much success in life. But he turned out to be terrific. Sy liked him a lot. It was a perfect match. Sy needed someone who'd be on call twenty-four hours a day, who'd jump to do anything he wanted done. It sounded as though your brother was thrilled to do that. And more important, it sounded like he didn't have—forgive me, but I'm just repeating what Sy said—much ambition. Sy saw him as someone for the long haul."
"A glorified valet."
"Why don't we just say a lifetime retainer?"
"That's my brother. Anyway, I was over at Easton's, with Robby Kurz. Department ethics: I couldn't question my own brother. So I'm sitting there, and I pick up a script. Easton says Sy told him it was their next movie."
"Was it mine?"
"No. Okay, now; in all fairness, I just glanced at it. And I never read a screenplay before. But I'm telling you, Bonnie, what I read was such complete, unmitigated shit I couldn't believe it. He was losing his marbles."
"Do you remember the title?"
"Yeah.
Night of the Matador
, by—"
"Mishkin! Milton or Murray."
"You read it?"
"Years ago. Look, Sy wasn't going to make
Night of the Matador
. Not in a million years. It was a joke. Well, the writer hadn't written it as a joke, but Sy had gotten it about a year after we were married, and it was so terrible it was funny. It was one of his Hideous Scripts collection. He treasured it. He used to give readings from it: 'I kill the beast to kill the beast in my heart, Carlotta.' Now, I'll grant you, Sy did get a little goofy over Lindsay. But he
never
would have gotten goofy enough to make that movie."
"Then why would he tell my brother that was the movie they were going to do together?"
"Kidding around."
"I don't buy that."
"Knowing Sy, maybe he wanted to see if your brother had the guts to stand up to him, tell him it was the worst hundred and twenty pages in the world. And God forbid if he said he liked it; Sy would torture him about it for the next twenty years."
"Easton was positive this was Sy's next project."
"Well, it could all be a mistake. Maybe you just looked at the wrong screenplay."
"Maybe," I said. "I'll give my brother a call." I walked to the door. "We have a deal," I reminded her. "You won't leave till I get back."
"I know."
"I said five, but if it's six, just hang on. I know it's rough on you. What can I tell you?"
"Tell me, 'Bonnie, you're beautiful. You're a truly fine person. And I love you.' "
"Bye," I said.
"See you around, big boy."
Bonnie had wanted to call Gideon to reassure him that she was all right, and I'd wanted to call him before he decided her absence had something to do with me. I could picture him gazing at his phone, wondering, Is it possible? Could this Brady be one of those congenial psychopaths, someone who smiles, chats and tortures? Slowly, he would lift the receiver, call Homicide, demand Shea, tell him I'd once slept with Bonnie and I might be obsessed. Dangerous.
But I couldn't risk a call from my house. Someone on the squad—Robby—could already have put an illegal tap on Gideon's phone, hoping she'd call him. So before I went to Pomerantz's, I stopped at one of those self-serve gas stations/snack food stores, called something like Thrif-T Gas, a place where only locals went, since to New Yorkers, concepts like fuel supplied by a company not traded on the New York Stock Exchange, thrift, and sour-cream-and-onion-flavored corn chips were too degrading to the human spirit to even consider. The place was on one of the more obscure north roads. I used the pay phone. Gideon's boyfriend answered. He had one of those powerful, honeyed, southern Do-you-believe-in-Jesus-Christ-as-yo'-Savior? voices. When I said I was calling about Bonnie Spencer, Gideon got on right away.
"Your friend Bonnie is fine," I said, disguising my voice so it sounded like a cross between Casey Stengel and a frog. "She just didn't think it was time to get arrested yet."
Gideon didn't bother to ask who I was. He knew. "I'm concerned about her," he said slowly. "I would feel better if I knew—"
"—that she's okay? She said to tell you Gary Cooper was at his most beautiful in
The Westerner
." I couldn't believe that I'd agreed to deliver such a goddamn stupid message. "End of conversation. She'll call you tonight."
An orange shirt, with its itsy-bitsy polo player, stretched across Eddie Pomerantz's belly, while a pair of half-glasses dangled from a darker-orange cord. The shirt hung over a pair of khaki bermuda shorts.
We were standing in his living room; the entire back wall was glass. The house itself stood on top of a bluff overlooking the bright, white-capped water and bobbing sailboats of
"I went through this whole thing with you the night Sy got killed," he said. "Remember? We'd been discussing a picture of Lindsay that turned up in
USA Today
that she hadn't approved." To show me he was keeping his temper, he filled up his cheeks with air and let it leak out. I was trying not to lose my cool, even though he was lying through his shiny false teeth. "I had to cancel a breakfast meeting because of this," he complained. "I don't know what you want from me." He looked down at the giant face of his gold-and-stainless-steel watch.
I took out my stainless-steel handcuffs and swung them before his eyes. "I don't want anything from you, Mr. Pomerantz. I'm here to arrest you. Section four ninety-two of the New York State Penal Code." I made that up. "Impeding a criminal investigation. And section eleven thirty-eight, Sub A: Aiding and abetting—"
I didn't have to finish. He tottered backward to a long couch and dropped onto it. He seemed mesmerized by the swinging cuffs. I put them back in my pocket. He wheezed: "If I tell you something now that's different than what I told you last week..." His mouth kept working, but he couldn't finish his sentence.
I didn't want him to drop dead of a coronary. Seeing him in daylight, I realized he was well into his seventies. My guess was, if I'd caught him when he was younger, he would have been tough enough to give me a hard time. But he was old, tired, probably not in the best of health. I felt kind of bad for scaring him. "If you cooperate, nothing will happen."
"I'll cooperate." The couch was covered in something like sailcloth, broad red and white stripes; his orange shirt looked particularly hideous against it.
"Tell me about the phone call," I said. "Did you call Sy or did he call you?"
"I called him."
"What about?"
"He was having trouble with some aspects of Lindsay's performance."
"I'd appreciate it if you didn't try to jerk me off, Mr. Pomerantz."
"Sy was going to
"And what were you trying to do?"
"Trying to stop him."
"Any success?"
"I don't know. He wanted Lindsay out. He seemed to have made up his mind." Pomerantz fiddled with his eyeglass cord. "I was working on getting him to at least agree to call me after he met with the others, for one last talk. That's when he was shot."
"Two shots?"
"Yes."
"You're positive?"
"Yes. I know what a gunshot sounds like. I was in the army. Battle of the Bulge." I nodded, respectfully. "Wounded. You should've seen me then. A skinny kid. Three quarters of an inch lower, it would have gone straight through my heart. So I know from guns. And I heard two shots."
"You do a lot of your business on the phone?"
"Sure. Most of it."
"You must have a good ear."
"A great ear."
"If someone was having an off day, or had a sudden change of mood, you could pick that up?"
Pomerantz understood what I was saying. "Yes. And there was nothing that made me think Sy saw anyone—with or without a rifle. Or that he felt something was wrong. But wasn't he shot from behind?"
"Yeah, but if the killer was someone he knew, he might have spotted him out of the corner of his eye, acknowledged him in some way and then turned away. What I'm looking for is a 'Hi, Joe' or 'Hello, Mary" that you might have picked up early in the conversation."
"Nothing like that," Pomerantz said.
"No pause at any point? No sudden intake of breath right before?"
"Nothing. Bang, bang, and then absolute silence." He lifted his shirtfront and used it to clean his glasses.
"Let's talk about Lindsay. Straight talk. Did she know how bad things were with Sy, that he was getting ready to pop her?"
"Yes."
"Did you know she was sleeping with Victor Santana?"
"Yes." Tight lips. "Fifty-two years in the business, and you know what I finally realize? I hate the ones who make it. Even the smartest of them are stupid. Stupid and arrogant. They think they can do anything they want, no consequences."
"You can't do anything you want with a guy like Sy Spencer, can you?" I observed.
"No."
"Do you think Sy had a clue that she was cheating on him?"
"Yes."
"What makes you think so?"
"He told me. I was making my big pitch to keep her on
Starry Night
, and he said, 'I can't do it, Eddie. You've seen the dailies. She's not putting out.' He gave that cold laugh of his. It's like being stabbed to death with an icicle. And then he said, 'Excuse me. She is putting out—in Santana's trailer.' "
"In your mind, if any of those actresses in L.A. would have fit the bill, would it have been all over for Lindsay?"
"Bottom line?"
"Bottom line."
"Sure it would have been all over—except for the fact that it would have cost too much. Even if Sy could have hired a not-so-hot star for less money, it still would have cost him almost three million in salary and reshooting to start from scratch. He couldn't have raised it outside; he'd already maxed out on financing. So unless it was worth it to him to ante up two-point-seven-five million of his own money to get rid of Lindsay, she would have stayed."
"Would it have been worth it to him?"
"I think he was considering it. But I'd been doing deals with Sy for ten years. I knew him. I knew what a tightwad he was. Look, it would have gotten real ugly, but in the long run the names above the title would have been Nicholas Monteleone—and Lindsay Keefe."
"Did Lindsay know that too?"
"I told her."
"Did she believe you?"
"I don't know. She was scared."
"Of what?"
"Of Sy Spencer."
I can't say Lynne was overcome with ecstasy when she answered her door, but she did look pleased. She stood in the doorway. Her beautiful dark-red hair fell over her shoulders. She wore a crisp white blouse and a polka-dot miniskirt. It took me a minute to grasp that she was waiting for me to kiss her. I did. Then she led me inside.
The house had a Sunday hush. Judy and Maddy, her two roommates, were at work, and Lynne had spread her folders over the living room coffee table. Well, not spread. I marveled at how they were in flawlessly symmetrical piles. Her pens and colored highlighters were parallel and equidistant from each other and just the perfect distance from the curved edges of the light wood table so that, should one decide to roll, she could reach it before it fell to the floor. "You're my kind of girl." I smiled at her. "In 2013, when I'm looking for my 1996
"You don't think I'm compulsive?" Lynne asked. I sat down in a club chair. She squeezed in beside me. "Judy is always saying I'm compulsive. Just because I always put away my shoes with the toes facing out. She says if I could just throw my shoes on my closet floor I'd be more creative."
"Look at it this way. Neither of us will probably ever write
Hamlet
, but we'll never misplace a bank statement or a kid. That's reassuring."
"It is." She smiled. "Tell me, how is your case going?"
"We're getting there," I said.
"Good. There must be a lot of pressure, with all the publicity."
"There is." I glanced around the living room. Nothing really went with anything else. The leatherette chairs and the striped chairs, the 1950s Danish-modern coffee table, the massive brass floor lamp, the poster of a bowl of flowers from the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, were castoffs from the families of three pretty, marriageable girls in their mid-twenties, all of whom would have husbands—and nice furniture that coordinated with tasteful rugs—long before they were thirty. "How is your class for September?"
"I think it's really going to be a challenge. I'm excited. Do you have time for me to go through the student list?"
"Can you do it in two minutes?"
Lynne snuggled against me. "That's all you have?"
"Sorry."
"Did you think about stuffed chicken breasts?"
I slipped my hand under the neckline of her blouse, around her bra. "These aren't chicken breasts."
"You know what I mean!"
I smiled, eased my hand out.
I had no desire for her.
"Going to the beach today?" I asked.
"Well, I'd like to, but I have to get my hair trimmed." She seemed to think the news would upset me, so she added, "Just a little bit off the ends."
"The ends look all right to me." I was so bored, and so ashamed of myself for being bored.
I thought: I could be having this same exchange with Bonnie, about chicken breasts and hair ends, and okay, it wouldn't be the world's most enthralling conversation, or the most amusing, but I'd hang on every word.
Even if I'd had two months' vacation, I wouldn't want to hear about Lynne's dyslexics and dys-graphics. And it wasn't that I couldn't get interested in that sort of stuff; it was that I couldn't get interested in Lynne.
How could someone have the perfect resume and not be right for the job? She was precisely what I should want. Why didn't I want her? Other men did. We'd walk down the street, and heads—local guys, city guys—would turn. Turn? Spin. Half the time her phone was ringing with old boyfriends, or guys she barely knew, none of them willing to believe she could actually consider marrying someone else before she listened to their fantastic, incredible lifetime offer.
Lynne played with the veins in the back of my hand. I suddenly realized that no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't make myself love her. There was nothing more about Lynne I cared to know. Not about her job, her family, her pastimes, her feelings.
But I wanted to know every single course Bonnie had taken at the
Cowgirl
. I wanted to read her new screenplay and her descriptions of bathing suits for the fat-lady catalog. I wanted to meet her old man, haul him away from the new wife and the bridge games and go hunting with him. I even wanted to bird-watch with Bonnie—or at least watch her watch birds. I wanted to go running with her. Camp out. Fish for trout. Take her on a whale watch off Montauk. I wanted to tell her all about my work, my entire life. Watch the Yankees and her 1940s movies with her. Make love to her.
"You're quiet," Lynne said.
"Yeah. I've got a lot on my mind." I thought: Maybe all this is camouflage, and what I really want is custody of Moose.
"What are you smiling about?" Lynne demanded.
"Nothing much."
"Tell me what else is new."
I shifted, trying to sit up straighter, but she was wedged in so close to me I couldn't move. "Oh, Lynne, I'm so sorry."
She knew, but she asked, as if expecting a passionate denial: "Is something wrong?"
"I don't know where to begin. I don't know what to say."
"Oh, God." She got up out of the chair, stood before me. So fabulous-looking. Such a nice person. Responsible. Solid values. Hardworking. "What is it?" It would make so much sense to marry her. "Are you drinking again?"
"No." I don't have to say anything at all, I thought. I can let it ride. Close the Spencer case, sort things out. It made sense to take my time. Lynne was so right for me; there must be a way it could work.
"Is there someone else?"