Murder on a Hot Tin Roof (29 page)

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Authors: Amanda Matetsky

BOOK: Murder on a Hot Tin Roof
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Lord have mercy!
I screeched to myself (in the same tone both my Georgia-born grandmother and Willy Sinclair would use).
It’s James Dean! I’m sitting five seats and three rows away from James Dean! If Abby ever finds out about this, she’ll kill me!
To say that I was shocked would be like saying Salvadore Dali was a little bit strange. If I had thought for even a second that Abby’s fave new screen boy would be here, you can bet your sweet tushy I’d have brought her with me! Abby would have had the famous film idol wrapped around her little finger by now, and if it turned out James Dean had been a friend of Gray Gordon’s . . . who knows what stories (or clues) he might have revealed to us (I mean, her).
But as shocked as I was by the sight of James Dean, that was nothing compared to the stroke I suffered when another well-known (to me) man suddenly pushed his way into the audience and sat down in one of the two reserved seats right in front of me. When I caught my first glimpse of him, I almost passed out. My temperature shot through the roof, my heart went into convulsions, and I broke out in such a serious sweat my bangs went from damp to dripping.
It was Baldy!
My first frantic impulse was to slip down to the floor and crawl under my seat. But slipping and crawling were out of the question. There wasn’t enough room. And all the closely packed chairs on either side of me were full, making a fast, inconspicuous exit from the row impossible. I was stuck. All I could do was sit there like a stump, holding my breath and hiding my face with my hand, praying to every deity I ever heard of that Baldy wouldn’t turn around and see me.
For the time being, my prayers were answered. Baldy leaned his large torso forward, propped his elbows on his knees, and—without a single backward glance—aimed his eyes at the stage. And he continued to sit that way, leaning and staring forward in a seeming trance, until another man entered the crowded fourth row, squeezed his way through the gauntlet of knees, feet, and legs, and sat down next to him.
There was nothing shocking about this well-known man’s arrival. He was the director Elia Kazan, and everybody in the audience, including myself, had been expecting him to appear. I
was
surprised, however, by the audience’s cheerful and friendly reaction to his unannounced entrance. Everybody was looking at him and smiling. James Dean stood up and saluted. Many people were waving and applauding, and those sitting close enough stretched out their arms to shake his hand. The well-dressed man to my left leaned over and gave him a sporting slap on the back.
Was I the only one in the room who felt uncomfortable being in Kazan’s presence? Was I the only one who remembered that just three short years ago, in 1952, Kazan had gone before Senator Joe McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee, and identified eight of his old theater friends as former members of the Communist Party? So what if the man was a brilliant Broadway director? So what if his movies were huge Hollywood hits? Did that make it okay for him to be a snitch?
I was spinning these and many other questions around in my brain when a medium-tall middle-aged man wearing a suit and a tie and a pair of large horn-rimmed glasses stood up from one of the reserved seats in the center of the front row and turned to address the crowd.
“Good evening, ladies and gentleman,” he said. “My name is Lee Strasberg, and I welcome you to the Actors Studio. One of our founders, Mr. Elia Kazan, is with us tonight, and three of our most talented young actors will be auditioning for the lead understudy role in his current Broadway success,
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
. And now it’s time to get started. We hope you will enjoy the auditions and continue your support of the Actors Studio.”
There was a brief round of applause, and Strasberg returned to his seat.
So that’s it,
I said to myself.
Kazan is looking for an actor to fill Gray’s shoes, and Binky is hoping his own feet will fit.
Now even more questions were spinning in my dizzy skull. How long, I wondered, had Binky been preparing for this Cinderella audition? Had he begun rehearsing after or before Gray was murdered? How much had he coveted Gray’s understudy role? Enough to kill for it?
And what about Baldy?
I reminded myself, staring straight at the back of the man’s big hairless head. What did
he
have to do with the whole production?
Going crazy from the storm of questions and my inability to answer any of them, I was relieved when Binky suddenly emerged from behind the stage, then walked out into the middle of the floor and introduced himself.
“Good evening,” he said. “My name is Barnabas Kapinsky and I’ve been a member of the Actors Studio for four years. For my audition tonight I will be playing the role of Brick in a scene from
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
. It’s the pivotal scene between Brick and Big Daddy, which comes at the end of Act Two. Mr. Strasberg will be reading the part of Big Daddy.”
Binky nodded to Strasberg and then to Kazan (or was it Baldy?). Then—raking his fingers through his curly beige hair and loosening the collar of his tightly buttoned shirt—he took a step toward the audience, cleared his throat, and began his well-practiced performance.
Chapter 27
BY THE TIME THE AUDITIONS ENDED I was practically jumping out of my skin. It isn’t easy to sit squished in a hard wooden seat for an hour and a half, watching the same long scene from the same play three times in a row, and having a major panic attack every time the bald guy sitting in front of you turns his head. Binky’s performance was really good—so I didn’t mind sitting through that so much—but watching the tiresome auditions of the other two actors (and I use the term loosely) was like waiting for a bus that never comes.
So when the last guy finally finished his presentation, and Strasberg stood up and thanked everybody for coming, I started looking for a quick escape route. I didn’t want to talk to Gray’s peers anymore, not even James Dean. And I didn’t have the slightest desire to hook up with Binky again. All I wanted to do was get up and get out of there before Baldy saw me.
But being wedged in the very middle of the next-to-the-last row the way I was—well, I’m sure you get the picture. I couldn’t go my way until all the chatty, slow-moving people next to (i.e., ahead of) me had gone theirs. And the same was true for Baldy and Kazan. All three of us had to sit tight and wait for our rows to clear. Which, believe it or not, turned out to be a good thing (for me), because it allowed me to monitor (okay, eavesdrop on) the following script (I mean, dialogue):
 
KAZAN:
The Kapinsky kid was good, don’t you think? I remember him from the last understudy audition. He gave a decent performance then, too. He was my second choice. He wasn’t as polished as Gray Gordon—and not nearly as good looking, of course—but he had a lot of energy and drive.
BALDY:
Yeah, he’s okay, I guess. A hell of a lot better than those other two goons. Has he had any experience?
KAZAN:
He’s been on TV a couple of times. Had a small role in a
Pepsi-Cola Playhouse
production, and he played a burn victim on
Medic
. They say he did a good job on that one—even though he was wrapped up like a mummy in bandages through the whole show. You never saw his face.
BALDY:
So are you going to hire him, or run some cattle call ads in the papers?
KAZAN:
We need somebody right away. I think we should sign up Kapinsky and save ourselves the time and torture of a cattle call. But what do you think? You’re the producer. You have a stake in this, too.
BALDY:
Yeah, but the talent is your territory. I’m just the money man. And my money’s on you, pal—so whatever you say goes.
KAZAN:
Okay, I’ll tell you what. Go find Kapinsky and tell him to meet us at Sardi’s tonight after the show, around eleven thirty. I’ll bring Ben and Barbara, and you bring Rhonda. We’ll see how everybody gets along. If the other actors like him and want to work with him, he’s in.
The fourth row had almost emptied out, so Baldy and Kazan stood up and began making their way toward the end of the passage. I sat still as a statue in my seat, hoping Baldy would just keep shuffling off to Buffalo (i.e., backstage to find Binky) and never look back. In case he
did
turn around, though, and find his eyes drawn to my shocking-pink and red-plaid ensemble, I kept my face turned in the opposite direction, with my wavy, still damp hair draped like a curtain over my profile.
It wasn’t that I was insanely terrified, or anything like that. I mean, what could happen to me
here
, in the shelter of the sanctified Actors Studio? And besides, it
could
have been somebody else’s big black limousine that Flannagan’s anonymous caller had seen down at the river last night. And maybe Baldy had interrogated the Vanguard bartender about me—and given him a secret C-note—just because he thought I was cute.
But I wasn’t taking any chances. If Baldy was in any way connected to the murder of Gray Gordon, and if he had any idea that I had become connected to the case, too—well, let’s just say I thought it would be a good idea for me to lie low. Real low.
So I stayed in my seat until Baldy and Kazan had both disappeared. Then I quickly exited the little theater and stole into the crowded entrance hall. People were standing around in groups, smoking cigarettes, complaining about the heat, and extolling the virtues of the “Method”—the style of acting endorsed by the Actors Studio. I wriggled my way through the herd, darted down the steps to the street-level side door, and then bolted, like a stallion out of the starting gate, into the steamy night.
Heading back across 44th Street toward Times Square, I was a total wreck. (Yes, I know. I had been a total wreck since this whole thing started! But so what? I’m just a total wreck of a person, and you should know that about me by now. I wish I were less emotional, and a heck of a lot more stable, but I’m not. And that’s all there is to say about that.)
It was very dark. As I crossed over Ninth and aimed myself toward Eighth, I felt as though I were staggering, alone, through a murky underground tunnel. There were a few scattered lights in the tunnel—a street lamp up ahead, an illuminated hardware store window over there, a foyer light in the entrance of a tenement building over here—but the overall effect was one of pure and absolute gloom.
Could doom, I wondered, be far behind?
Hardly any people were walking up or down the block, and cruising cars were few and far between. So when the furtive footsteps fell in behind me, I was able to hear them. And when I yanked my head around to see who was there, my response was so sudden and immediate I actually
did
catch a glimpse of a shadowy figure—a slim, dark man dressed all in black, who darted into an unlit doorway before I could see his face. Was it Aunt Doobie? Was it Blackie? I was dying to know the phantom’s identity, but too scared to stick around and find out. I tore all the way over to Times Square and hopped the subway home without a backward glance.
 
 
WHEN I CHARGED UP THE STAIRS OF MY building and saw that Abby’s door was open, I almost sang the Hallelujah Chorus (or some of it, anyway). My best friend was at home! Coltrane was on the hi fi! Cocktails were being served! (Or so I hoped.) I burst into her apartment with a huge sense of relief and a heap of high expectations.
But the scene inside could not have been more
un
expected.
Abby was standing at her easel, wearing her color-streaked white painter’s smock, and jabbing at her canvas with a big purple-tipped brush. This, in itself, wasn’t so surprising—Abby always wore a smock and listened to Coltrane when she was working on a new illustration—but when I saw who her model was, I was shocked right out of my sandals.
It was Willy! (It seemed Abby had changed her mind about him being the murderer.)
Wearing a scanty homemade toga (Abby must have had an old sheet to spare), and a wreath of ivy (hopefully not the poison variety) on his head, Willy was reclining on a pile of pillows on the floor, and dangling a cluster of grapes (wax, not real) over his open, upturned mouth.
“Hail, Caesar!” I croaked, tossing my purse on the kitchen table and heading straight for the kitchen counter where a big pitcher of rum punch was alluringly displayed. “What’s up, Cleopatra?” I called out to Abby, quickly filling a glass with ice cubes and punch. “Let me guess. You’re doing a cover for a new magazine titled
Roman Orgy
.” I carried my drink into the studio and sat down on Abby’s little red loveseat, close to the whirring fan.
“Nope,” Abby said, giving me a nasty look, then stepping back from her canvas and studying it through squinted eyes. “It’s an illustration for
Coronet
. They’re running a three-part serial about the fall of the Roman Empire.”

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