Аврам Дэвидсон - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 67, No. 3. Whole No. 388, March 1976

“When do you think I can get in there to clean up?” an old guy in a gray work uniform asks me. “I don’t want to be here all night. I got to go clear to Brooklyn.”

“The way cops work, Pop, you should be able to get in there in a week or so.”

“With that stink of burned paper? Thought you was a dick, s’why I asked.”

“Bad casting, Pop. Don’t you want a future in show biz?”

“You must be one of them sloppy actors. Messin’ up the dressin’ rooms, powder on the floor, tissue everywhere. Bunch of pigs.”

“No, I’m a friend of Mr. Tibbs.” His eyes went up in O’s. “Tell me, Pop—”

“Kraft. Sigmund Kraft, studio maintenance.”

He said it as if to imply that he was a cut above actors, and if you consider job stability, he was. “Tell me, Sig, you look like you know your way around. You got any ideas on this?”

“Well, if it was that new lady, Miss Jordan, with a knife in her, I’d say it was Tippy Grant or his pain-in-the-neck mother. They sure were mad when the Jordan girl’s part was getting bigger all the time.”

“You like Miss Jordan?”

He winked at me. “Don’t let them baggy clothes of hers fool you, brother. She’s full growed.”

“Do tell.” Everywhere there’s competition. “But how about people who might not have liked Powers?”

“All of ’em. Every one of ’em had complaints about their lines or their parts. Fightin’ all the time. You see that popinjay over there by the stairs?” He pointed to a silver-haired matinee-idol type. “That’s Wyler Groves. He’s the doctor on the show. Used to be very big years ago on Broadway, and thinks he owns the place. He’s the worst with the tissues.”

“Yeah, he’s the tissue type, Sig.”

Sigmund tells me that if he can’t clean up the office, he might as well start in the dressing rooms, and I wished him good luck with the powder and theatrical debris and all.

I take another peek into Powers’ office, and only one lab man is left. Now I’ve got to handicap some odds, some long, some short. If the lab man winds up his work, it’s 20 to 1 he’ll call in Jaffee. It’s 10 to 3 Jaffee will put a department seal on the door, and 7 to 5 he’ll just get a uniformed bull to play statue in the doorway. If he were just to walk out and leave the room unguarded, you could go 100 to 1 easy. Getting Jaffee was 20 to 1 because Bullethead was still busy playing Torquemada at his table. The hell with the odds, I just walked in.

“Hi,” I said to him. He was a young fellow, maybe 25, with mod eyeglasses that made him look like a pilot, or maybe a blowup of a bug.

“You’re not allowed in here until the lieutenant clears it.”

I turn my eyes in a 180° sweep and go to work with the memory. I can keep him talking for maybe three minutes, so, eyes, do your stuff. I give him a humble act about never having been on the scene of a crime and how exciting his end of the business must be. He isn’t biting, but he isn’t giving me the heave-ho, either. My best bet to remember the place is to scan the room’s perimeter, then its center.

SCAN ONE, full sweep. To left of door is a small table, brown wood. Contains cigarette box, lighter, copy of Broadcast Magazine. (Stop. Do not record wall hangings — superfluous.) Left wall has leather couch flanked by two end tables with lamps, far one not lit. End wall has large chart showing segment schedules (too detailed to record). Right wall has bank of six file cabinets.

SCAN TWO, center of room. Two studio chairs in front of green-metal desk. Desk relatively clean. Piles of scripts to the left side of desk, pile of blank pre-carboned paper (the kind Mrs. Mangerton won’t use) to the right. Typewriter on roller stand, same model as Mrs. M’s. Charred wastebasket next to desk. Doorway wall to right bare. In doorway, irate man with prominent bald head bellowing, “Damn it, what are you doing in here?”

“Just seeing how efficient you fellows can be, Lieutenant.” I was going to give him the line about never having been at a murder scene before, but stopped. He would have made it five or six murder scenes, if you counted the girl who was once found dead at my pad.

“Don’t think you suckered me with that pitch upstairs, Kelly. You may have buffaloed your way in after we arrived, but that doesn’t mean you weren’t here earlier, left, then came back. You’re in and you’re gonna stay in, funny boy.”

“Glad to be aboard, Lieutenant. How many times a day do they empty the wastepaper baskets around here?” I didn’t ask Sigmund because I might or might not have gotten a straight answer. From Jaffee I was getting no answer. He ignored the question.

“You’re here because of that blonde kid, and you know it. Talk about robbing cradles!”

“As we say around here, Lieutenant, she’s full growed. You see, it’s the deceptiveness of the thespian art form—”

“Shut up and get out there with the rest of them. I ought to lock you up for interfering with an investigation. Did he touch anything at all, Al?”

Al said no with a headshake.

“Aren’t you supposed to put up signs saying Out — Crime Scene, Lieutenant?”

“You know the sign I’d like to put on you. Did you know Walt Powers?”

“Never met him,” I said.

“You know, your girl friend was very chummy with him. Had lunch with him today.”

“Along with being full growed, she’s friendly and frequently hungry.”

“Couldn’t have been a little sore about it, could you, Kelly?”

“With my win-loss record, you learn to cry a lot. When the brat discovered the fire, was it blazing or just smoking?”

That did it. Out I went to the mob on the set where Jaffee tells us we can all beat it on our own recognizance, not to leave the city, et cetera. That was a strange move, and I was wondering what he had going.

I grabbed Jeepers and hustled her out the 74th Street door and walked fast toward York Avenue. I didn’t quite hear what the young cop on the door said, something like “You wise son-of-a-something.” I kept moving down the block and hit it lucky with a cab. When we were in, I asked the driver if he liked pictures of Benjamin Franklin, and he said yes, so I told him to gun it down York and then head south.

“What’s the hurry, Chick?” my pseudo-Tammy asks.

“I want to jump the tail, Miss Luncheon, U.S.A. Head for the Waldorf, driver, Park Avenue side.” I gave Jeepers three C-notes.

“What’s this for and why the Waldorf? Are we having an early dinner?”

“No, luv, you just changed your address. It’s the Waldorf because it has four exits and I plan to use one. You go to the desk and ask for Ron Dugan, and if he’s not there, see Dave Hirsch. They’re with Security. Tell him to give you a room, backdated two weeks, and give him the money. Go to the room and sit tight.”

When we turned onto Park from 49th Street, I told the driver not to hit the doorman lineup of cabs, just to drop us in the double lane. His orders were to whip into 50th Street and wait by the hotel garage entrance. We were in the revolving doors in seconds, and I sent Jeepers up the stairs to the main lobby. I ducked down the steps to the lower shopping mall and hopped it to the Towers garage entryway. My hackie was waiting and we zinged east again.

I was sure I had ducked the tail, but the Waldorf ploy served two purposes. It saved Jeepers from answering any embarrassing questions about residence, and it set me free. Jaffee said I was in, but at the moment, I was out, bubby, way out, and winging it.

I left the cab at Third and 83rd Street and walked a block east to a cozy German restaurant that caters to the Herrenvolk of Yorkville. The innkeeper is a shortish bald man named Otto, who makes a specialty of bad memory, good food, and small back rooms.