Samuel Holt: The Fourth Dimension is Death

How stupid of me. That was all I could think at first, how stupid I’d been. Evening auditions are fairly common in off-Broadway theater, but in a theater as incomplete as this? And if the building isn’t going to be ready for occupancy until February, how is the theater going to do a production, however limited, over the holidays? And how could I still have believed in the audition when there was no one present at all except the smiling Kay Henry, who just happened to be an owner of the building?

I’d walked right into this spider’s parlor, as big and dumb as life, concentrating on my own performance and paying no attention at all to Henry’s.

“I take it,” he was saying, moving toward me from the relocked door, “Ed Dante isn’t your real name.”

So he didn’t actually know who I was; could that be a help at all? “Sure it is, Mr. Henry,” I said, playing the goofy Ed to the bitter end. “What’s going on?”

“My very question to you,” he said, and the barrel of the pistol angled downward, away from my face. “We’re alone in this building,” he pointed out. “You’re going to tell me who you are and what you’re up to. No question, you will tell me. If you take too long to answer my questions, I’ll start shooting you. Not to kill, not to begin with. Just to hurt and to maim. For instance, my first shot will go into your left knee.”

He extended his arm, sighting along it and along the pistol barrel, and I slapped off the lights I’d just switched on, spun away to the side as the pistol made a nasty crack sound, like a whip being snapped rather than a gun going off, and I leaped through the entrance into the dark auditorium, with no idea whether I’d been hit or not.

I stumbled over seating in the dark — plush, fortunately — and fell between rows as the lights behind me came back on. I scrambled away along the curving row, out of sight from the doorway just in time, because Henry’s voice sounded back there, still calm, amused, saying, “Don’t be stupid, Ed, or whoever you are. I can guarantee you there’s no way out except the door we came in. And I won’t let you near that door, Ed. I’m armed, and you aren’t. All we need is to have a discussion, Ed. Nobody needs to be hurt. You’ll answer questions, I’ll be satisfied, we’ll both go home.”

I crawled like a snake under seats, hoping not to disturb the upraised seats or make any noise that would tell him where I was. Fortunately, he covered any sounds I might make by going on talking: “Ed, your story about the lost luggage never did play, you know that? It was just a way to explain why you didn’t have photos and resumé, isn’t that right? And when I checked into the career you described to me, the whole thing was just a fairy-tale, a pack of fibs from beginning to end. I called Equity, and they don’t have an Ed Dante. Ed, Ed, how did you expect to get away with it?”

I no longer knew. At the extreme right side of the theater, I risked raising my head slightly, looking up across the rows of seats, and saw him there, just inside the lobby doorway, perched casually on a seatback, one foot up on the armrest, hand with the gun dangling over his knee. He continued to smile, calm and confident, as he chatted amiably at the theater and his quick eyes kept scanning, scanning.

I ducked back down. What to do? His voice moved over me, without apparent direction, showing how well-designed the acoustics were in here. A nice theater to work in, probably.

But not to die in.

“You’re a good actor, Ed, you really are, that Nazi soldier you did was very impressive. No fooling. When this nonsense is all over, maybe we could talk about a career. A career change for you, Ed. What do you say?”

Flight was impossible. Someway or other, I had to counterattack.

“After we talked this morning, Ed, after I told you about the audition here, you called Rita, didn’t you? Said you wanted to talk about the Theater Project dinner. You upset Rita a great deal, Ed, and I just can’t permit that. If you want to talk about the Theater Project dinner, you can talk about it with me . Let’s do that, Ed. What do you want to ask?”

He wasn’t moving. His knowledge of this theater, this building, was such that he didn’t have to move, he could just stay there by the only working exit — there’d be others, beyond the stage, mandated by the fire laws, but they’d be solidly locked now — and he could talk calmly and keep watching, and sooner or later the stalemate would end.

“My guess, Ed, is that you’re a private detective. Did Mrs. Wormley hire you? What do you think you’re investigating, Ed? Can’t you even tell me that much?”

If I moved across the row two down from where he waited, I could get very close to him without being seen. If I could then distract him, stall him, delay him somehow for just a couple of seconds, until I got within arm’s reach, there was a chance.

“Ed, I’m losing my patience here. Quit hiding like a child. Come out and let’s talk this over. How much do you get paid, in your business? Is it worth all this, Ed?”

Ed Dante was finished now. I pulled off the wig and moustache, stripped out of the raincoat, left them behind on the floor, started crawling.

“You were spying on me, Ed. Think about it. You don’t have that much goodwill to spend with me. But I want to make things all right. Just stand up like a man, Ed, and tell me what you want to know.”

The lighting was soft; dim enough for my purposes? I could only hope so. And hope I remembered the voice, the mannerisms. I fixed my face in an expression of aggressive grievance and rose to my feet, two yards from Henry, glaring at him. “It’s Dale, Kay,” I said. “Why did you kill me?”

“You should be dead, you know,” Sergeant Shanley said.

The hospital bed was not at all comfortable, the sheets constantly bunching and creasing beneath me. Shifting yet again to a slightly different position, feeling the twinges in my side and my shoulder and my arm, I said, “I know, Sergeant, I know. But I figured I was dead anyway. I had to take the chance.”

“Lucky,” she said, and shook her head.

Well, that was true enough. When I’d risen up directly in front of Kay Henry, doing my Dale Wormley imitation — full circle: this had begun with Wormley imitating me — the look of horror in his eyes had lasted only a second, he was recovering even as I lunged at him, and he managed to shoot me three times before I knocked him down and pounded his head onto the pseudo-marble floor. The shock and the speed had thrown him off balance just enough to keep me alive, though, the three shots all off-target to the left, one cracking and ricocheting off a rib on my left side, one punching into my left shoulder and doing some cartilage and muscle damage there, and one slicing through the flesh of my left arm, just below the elbow. I was bleeding like a fountain and only semi-conscious when I searched Henry for his keys, struggled to find the right one, unlocked that goddam padlock and went reeling out into the night on Charles Street looking for help. A cab that didn’t want to stop for me changed its mind when I draped myself on its hood, and now, three days later, here I was in the hospital, my food being sent in by Anita from Vitto Impero and Sergeant Shanley here to tell me the story.

“Your theory turned out to be pretty good up to a point,” she said. “The key to the thing was blackmail and a tape recording. But Rita Colby wasn’t a murderer, and she wasn’t the one being blackmailed, and Hanford Montgomery really did commit suicide.”

Laughing, even though it hurt my rib, I said, “But the rest I got okay, huh?”