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

First I hit the phone, called my joint, and got Barry Kantrowitz on the line. Barry is my ex-agent, present partner, and a worry-wart par excellence.

“What’s going with you, Chick?” he says, telling me the cops have been in looking for me and Jeepers.

“Ignore them. You never heard of us. Barry, is Christy Balek still a big agent in soaps?”

“From what I hear you couldn’t book a birddog without her. What a specialty — and I had to handle comics.”

“Remorse will get you nowhere. Can you dig up her phone number, her home number?”

“No agent in his right mind gives out his home number.”

I told him to get it quick and call me back, and he did about two vodkas later. Christy Blake is an anomaly in show business. Number one, she is a lady, and then the degree from Radcliffe adds to the confusion. She also has the benefit of independence, because her grandpop worked hard on Wall Street and spelled her name right in his last will and testament.

“Chick Kelly?” she said after the maid called her to the phone.

“You make it sound like I’m calling from a hole in Forest Lawn. How are you, Christy? How would you like some of that German chow you love so much?”

She is as quick a study as any actor she handles. “Are you mixed up in that Powers mess?”

Now here I have to put on a diplomatic hat. Never tell a woman that you need her help to help another woman. Lionesses, pantheresses, and the two-legged breed of the female species will kill to protect a man, but when it comes to helping other broads, forget it. The ironic part of it is that women understand it, expect it, and respect it.

“No, but I think Billy Tibbs might have to take some heat,” I said. “Do you book anyone on ‘River of Life’?”

“Cal McKittrick, Ginny Owens, and Wyler Groves.”

“The anti-trust boys will be investigating you. Why don’t you jump in a cab and have dinner with me? I’m in a place that has the best Eisbein mit Sauerkraut you’ll ever taste.”

“I don’t know if I want to taste it.”

“Are you kidding? My friend Otto would be offended. It’s the favorite dish of Westphalia. You may not believe it, Christy, but there is a stained-glass window in a Westphalian church that shows the disciples at the Last Supper eating Eisbein. Now that’s a reconsideration, isn’t it?”

She laughed, so I knew she was following the lure. “And if you’re a real good girl I’ll have Otto serve some Erbenpuree.”

“Chick, you’re making this up.”

“Would a simple jester lie?”

“What’s the address, you nut?”

I gave it to her and reeled her in.

She had cold Swartzkatz and I stuck with the vodka.

“This is delicious, Chick,” she said, savoring the pickled pork and yellow split peas. “I’m afraid I’ll have a cardiac arrest if I eat all this.”

“Otto has a pickup service deal with Lenox Hill Hospital, so chow down. What can you tell me about ‘River of Life’?”

“Really, Chick, I only know what my clients tell me. Wyler Groves called me a couple of days ago complaining about possible changes in the show. That’s one of Wyler’s problems. He always thinks he’s a better scriptwriter. He wanted me to talk to Walt Powers about taking a new direction in the script. He’s Dr. Danner, you know. He wanted to expand it into a medical-center locale.”

“Which would mean goodbye Martin Family players.”

“Maybe goodbye everyone in the long run.”

“Was Powers buying Wyler’s ideas?”

“I doubt it. He was too vain for that. But you can bet he was making some dramatic changes. The show has become a drag.”

“Christy, somehow I can’t see an actor committing murder over a part.”

“Mr. Kelly, your naivete is busting out all over. When he was reviewing plays, Alex Woollcott used to say that if he was found dead with a knife in his chest, three hundred and sixty actors would immediately be suspect. Maybe Tippy Grant and this new girl, Jabbers something, could get other work, but not the rest of them. Why, Cal, Wyler, and Ginny have been on ‘River of Life’ for fifteen years. That’s good work, but deadly typecasting. Do you know, I can’t get them any on-camera commercials because the ad agencies say they are too heavily identified with the characters they play on the show? Cal and Ginny are Mother and Father Martin, Wyler is Dr. Danner. If they were killed off in the script, they might as well retire.”

“That’s some theory, Christy, but it’s got a big flaw. If Powers was knocked off, wouldn’t that be the end of the show, anyway?”

“Actors are emotional children, Chick. If they can’t have it, no one can have it. It’s even worse with soap-opera people. It’s about the steadiest work around, but for the life of me I can’t see why an actor would want to be part of one. It’s not like the movies or Broadway. There you have a locked-in role — the same lines, same mood and personality. But on a soap you’re a continuing character with different things coming at you every day. It’s like living two lives at once. Lord, as if one wasn’t enough. But don’t get hung up on just actors. Your pal Billy Tibbs has a lot to gain.”

“Tibbs?”

“Well, you said on the phone he might have to take some heat. I thought you meant that with Powers gone, so was ‘River of Life,’ which was a thorn on his path to a vice-presidency.”

“I’m listening, babe, but I don’t dig it.”

“Charles Xavier Kelly, for a comic you certainly are dense at times. Putting Tibbs on that show was like putting an albatross around his neck. Powers had control and the contract. If he continued the old-fashioned slop, and the show sank, Tibbs would sink with it. The networks always need a scapegoat. Tibbs is really hyped on game shows, anyway.”

“You know, you’re smarter than a few cops I know. Tell me, how good is Cal McKittrick — Pop Martin?”

“Good? Hmmm.” She sipped some wine. “What do you mean by ‘good’?”

“Well, he put on one beauty of a performance when the kid missed his cue while he was off finding the body. Is he that sharp at improvisation?”

“If you asked Cal to improvise a tree, he’d have to study one for three days. No, I don’t think he’s the Actor’s Studio type.”

“Okay, now for dear old Ma Martin. Ginny Owens isn’t that old, is she? She’s a very handsome woman.”

“She’d love you for that, Chick. But then, she’d love you anyway, because you’re pretty. That’s her problem.”

“I’m beautiful, not merely pretty. Haven’t you read my notices?”

“Beautiful I reserve for the champagne types. Did you know she was once Mrs. Walter Powers?”

“Ho boy, the plot sickens. Who divorced who?”

“Whom. She did the suing, but she was too entrenched in the part for Walt to drop her.”

“You sure have done a lot of thinking about this, Christy.”

“Well, the evening papers quoted some lieutenant as saying the murder could only have been committed by someone in the theater at the time, and that he suspects a member of the cast.”

It also told me why Jaffee was so free about letting us go. He plants that line with the press, then sees who jumps.

I turned down Christy’s invitation to a bash over at the Dakota and put her in a cab after dinner.

It was almost nine o’clock, and I decided to check in with Jeepers at the Waldorf. That, however, turned out to be impossible, because she had never checked in at the Waldorf. I went from the hotel operator to the desk clerk and finally to Ron Dugan in Security. No Miss Jordan. So I had picked a hotel with four entrances and she turned one of them into an exit. Why?