Эд Горман - Murder on the Aisle

But of course he had a lover’s terrible fascination for the worst news of all. “How did it happen?”

“It started at a party.”

“Why Michael?”

“Because you and I were long past any kind of relationship and because Richard had stopped coming home completely, thanks to Sarah Nichols, and because I saw Michael hurt very deeply one night. At the party, I mean.”

“What happened?”

“He found his wife Joan in the back seat, of the car with Peter Larson. Making love. It was like high school. And Michael — just sort of came apart.”

“Michael?”

“Yes. I know the veneer he’s cultivated — very slick and indifferent. But actually he’s not that way at all.”

“So you played Mommy.”

“You’re being sarcastic.”

“I’m jealous.”

She touched his cheek again. “You’re not jealous. You’re just confused. We used each other as kind of a buffer against the world — you kept me from facing just how bad my marriage was, I kept you from realizing how lonely you are, Tobin. You’re a very lonely and angry man and the problem is, I don’t think there’s anything anybody can do for you about that. Anybody. Even yourself, Tobin, and that’s the saddest part of all.”

He looked around at the Christmas tree and the comfortable living room and realized she was right. “Goddamn, but I loved you when we were rolling there.”

“And I really loved you, too.”

“But now you love Michael?”

“I’m not sure what I feel — yet.”

“What’s he going to do about Joan?”

“Oh, she’s safely in the arms of Peter Larson.” She laughed. “The funny thing is, I think both of us got together partially out of spite.”

“What do you mean?”

“We both thought Joan and Richard were having an affair. There was a period of a month or so when they were inseparable.”

He thought back and then remembered that, yes, there had been a time six or seven months ago when Joan was around the studios a great deal.

“One night after you’d taped a show where Richard was particularly laudatory about one of Peter Larson’s films, she even called here to thank him. I thought she had a lot of guts.”

“I think the word you want is balls.”

“Yeah,” she laughed, “that is a better word. Balls.” She shrugged. “But as it turned out, anyway, the person she was having an affair with was Peter Larson, her boss.”

“She works for Larson now?”

“Yes. You didn’t know that?”

“No.”

He patted his pocket and took out the wrinkled piece of paper that had become so important to him. In addition to names, he had also started writing down one-word memory-joggers.

“That’s your list?”

“Right.”

“It’s not very impressive. Don’t policemen carry reporter’s notebooks and flip the covers back when they start an interview?”

“I’m not really a cop. Just a junior G-man.”

“That explains a lot.”

He smiled and looked at his list. “Did Ebsen ever mention anything about reviews?”

“What reviews?”

“I’m not sure. When I was at his place today he said something to the effect that I didn’t know what was going on with the reviews. I don’t know what that means.”

“Neither do I.”

“You think I could take a copy of the script?”

“Sure. If you like. There’s one in the den.”

While she went to get it, he walked over to the Christmas tree. He thought of his own mother and father and then of his own children. It was one of those moments when a man tries to make sense of his life and how badly he’s lived it; it was one of those moments when his existence made no sense whatsoever.

“Here.”

The script was in a nice black leather cover. He hefted it, then leafed through it. “Thanks. Oh. One more question.”

“What?”

“Starrett says Michael was embezzling from Richard. Did you hear anything about that?”

“Richard found a note that Michael wrote me. Right after that, all this talk of embezzlement came up. Michael and Richard were going to formally end their relationship next month, when Richard tried to get a new show for himself.”

“That isn’t how Michael acted the night Richard was killed. He didn’t give any hint they weren’t getting along.”

“He didn’t have much choice. You don’t exactly walk around broadcasting that your biggest client has left you.” Then she paused and said, “I see where this is leading.”

“I have to put Michael on my list.”

“He didn’t kill him.”

He sighed, looking at her in a kind of disbelief. He recognized her expression, had seen it many times. Love. Her very own kind of protective love. Only now it was not for him or for Richard but for that most unlikely and undeserving man, Michael. Tobin stood in her living room and felt invisible worlds crashing in on him. No one is more of a stranger than someone who loved you once but loves you no longer. A burdensome sadness came over him — for both of them — and he said quietly, “He still needs to go on the list, Jane. At least for now.”

“I don’t think I want you here anymore.”

“I know.”

“Are we even friends now?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Do I need to see you to the door?”

“No,” he said. “No, you don’t.”

Then he was gone.

5:17 P.M.

There was champagne. Real champagne. There were party hats. There were pink and yellow and blue streamers and confetti of a thousand colors. And there were women — bloody Christ, but were there women. Some with fetching faces. Some with beguiling breasts. Some with asses that winked and some with asses that frowned. There was enough laughter to fill an NFL locker room after a winning Superbowl and enough patter to keep Vegas (Hiya/Loveya/Kissya) in business for a year. There was a party going on at Emory Communications and Tobin did not need to ask why. Frank Emory had sold his way out of failure.

“Tobin. Goddamn — Tobin!”

Frank was drunk and kind of squatting down and holding his arms wide as if Tobin were going to come running into them. Despite the dignity his height and gray hair and preppy manner should have given him, he was anything but dignified now. This was Frank at his worst. Trying to be one of the boys. He was as bad at it as Tobin.

“Hi, Frank.”

“ ‘Hi Frank.’ That’s all I get on the biggest day of my life?”

“Congratulations.”

“At the least, buddy-boy. At the least.”

“Don’t call me buddy-boy, all right?”

“Jesus, did you come up here to queer my party?”

“Actually, I came up to ask you a few questions. I didn’t know you were having a party.”

Frank sloshed champagne. “That’s all I’m going to do for the next six months. Party. Party my ass off.”

His wife, who had been kissing cheeks, turned to Tobin and said, “Make that plural. Party our asses off.” She beamed. “Aren’t you proud of him?”

“For selling out?”

“For selling out at a profit, Tobin. For a profit. That’s what’s important,” she said.

“A big profit, Tobin,” Frank said. “A goddamn big profit.”

So there was no talking to him, not now anyway, so Tobin circulated, hearing tales of adultery and business betrayals and careering and the latest suspected AIDS victim and watching old men try to steal quick feels from young women, and watching young women try to cajole better jobs from old men. He stood by the Christmas tree and looked out over Manhattan, the night a crypt, his lungs raw from cigarette smoke, his mind fixed on misery, Jane’s look there at the last, Huggins’s trying to prove him a killer, Neely never growing up.