Evan Hunter - Romance

She stared into the camera for a moment until the operator gave her the signal that she was clear. She turned to the bed then, said, “Terrific, Miss Cassidy. Good luck with the show,” and then turned again to her crew and said, “We’re out of here.”

The hot lights went out. The TV people cleared the room, and the nurse went outside to let in the newspaper people. The two city tabloids had each sent a reporter and a photographer. Carella could just see tomorrow’s head-lines:

Or:

The stately morning paper hadn’t deigned to send anyone to the hospital; maybe the editor didn’t realize a former child actress was the victim. Or maybe he simply didn’t care. Cheap stabbings were a dime a dozen in this town. Besides, there’d been a riot in Grover Park this past Saturday, and the paper was still running postmortem studies on the causes of racial conflict and the possible remedies for it.

Again, all Carella and Kling had to do was listen. They realized at once that this was to be a more in-depth interview than television, with its limited time, had been able to grant.

“Miss Cassidy, did you see the man who attacked you?”

“Yes, I did.”

“What’d he look like?”

“A tall slender man wearing a long black coat and a black hat pulled down over his head.”

“What kind of hat?”

“A fedora. Whatever you call them.”

“A brimmed hat?”

“Yes. Black.”

“Wide-brimmed? Narrow-brimmed?”

“Wide. He had it pulled down over his eyes.”

“Was he wearing gloves?”

“Yes. Black gloves.”

“Did you see the knife?”

“No. Not really. I sure felt it, though.”

Nervous laughter.

“You wouldn’t know what kind of knife it was, would you?”

“A sharp one.”

More laughter. Not as nervous this time. The kid was being a good sport. She’d just been stabbed in the shoulder, inches away from the heart, but she was able to joke about the weapon. The reporters liked that. It made good copy. Good-looking woman besides. Sitting up in bed in a hospital gown that kept slipping off one shoulder. As the reporters asked their questions, the photographers’ cameras kept clicking.

Kling noticed that neither of the two reporters had yet asked her what color the man was. Maybe journalists weren’t allowed to. As cops, he and Carella would ask that question the minute the others cleared the room. Then again, they were looking to find whoever had just attempted murder. The reporters were only looking for a good story.

“Did he say anything to you?” one of the reporters asked.

“Yes. He said, `Miss Cassidy?’ Same thing he calls me on the phone. ”

“Wait a minute,” the other reporter said. “What do you mean?”

“He’s been calling me for the past week. Threatening to kill me. With a knife.”

“This same man ? The one who stabbed you tonight?”

“It sounded like the same man.”

“Are you saying his voice sounded the same? As the man on the phone?”

“Exactly the same. Just like Jack Nicholson’s voice.”

Both reporters were scribbling furiously now. Jack Nicholson stabbing a young actress in the alley outside a rehearsal theater? Jesus, this was made in heaven!

“It wasn’t Jack Nicholson, of course,” Michelle said.

“Of course not,” one of the reporters said, but he sounded disappointed.

“Who was he?” the other one asked. “Do you have any idea who he was?”

“Someone familiar with Romance,” she said.

“Someone familiar with romance, did you say?”

“ Romance . The play we’re rehearsing.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because what happened in that alley also happens in the play.

Carella could now see the subhead on the story:

Now they wanted to know all about the scene in the play, and who else was in the play, and who had written it, and who was directing it, and when it would be opening here, and whether there were plans for moving it down-town, the cameras clicking, the reporters tirelessly questioning her while a black nurse fluttered about the bed telling them they mustn’t exhaust her, didn’t they realize the poor woman had been stabbed?

A man wearing a maroon sports shirt open at the throat, a gray sports jacket, and darker gray trousers rushed into the room, went immediately to the bed, took Michelle’s hands in his own and said, “Michelle, my God, what happened? I just heard the news! Who did this to you? My God, why you? ”

The reporters asked him who he was, and he introduced himself as Johnny Milton, Michelle’s theatrical agent, and handed cards to both of them, and said he’d heard the news a few minutes ago, and rushed right over. Somewhat imperiously, he asked who the two men in the suits at the back of the room were, didn’t they realize a woman had been stabbed here?

“We’re the police,” Carella said quietly, and showed the agent his shield.

“Hello, Detective Kling,” Michelle said from the bed, waggling her fingers at him.

And suddenly all reportorial attention was on Kling, the two journalists wanting to know how he happened to know the victim, and then soliciting from Michelle herself the fact that she’d reported the threatening calls to Kling at approximately four-fifteen that afternoon, before she went back to rehearsal.

“Got any leads yet, Detective Kling?” one of the reporters asked.

“None,” Carella said. “In fact, if you’ve got everything you need, we’d like to talk to Miss Cassidy now, if you don’t mind.”

“He’s right, boys,” her agent said. “Thanks for coming up, but she needs some rest now.”

One of the photographers asked Michelle if she would mind one last picture, and when she said, “Okay, but I’m really very tired,” he asked if she would mind lowering the gown off her left shoulder to show the bandaged wound, which she did in a demure and ladylike manner, while simultaneously managing to show a little bit of cleavage.

The moment everyone was gone, Kling asked, “Was the man who stabbed you white, black, Hispanic or Asian?”

The black nurse seemed about to take offense, but then Michelle said, “White.”

At nine that night, Ashley Kendall was still rehearsing his cast, but instead of Michelle up there playing the Actress, her understudy was filling in for her. Kendall hated Corbin’s pretentious naming — or non-naming — of the characters in his play. Right now, he was rehearsing the Actress’s under-study, who happened to be an actress named Josie Beales, but on the same stage with her was an actress named Andrea Packer, who was playing the character named the Under-study, although her understudy was an actress named Helen Frears. It could get confusing if you weren’t paying attention.

Josie was twenty-one, with strawberry-blond hair that was only a timid echo of Michelle’s fiercer tresses. But she was taller than Michelle, and less cumbersomely endowed, and therefore moved more elegantly. In Kendall’s opinion, she was also a far better actress than Michelle. In fact, he’d wanted to cast her as the Actress, but had been outvoted by Mr. Frederick Peter Corbin III. So now Miss Tits had the leading role, and Josie was a mere understudy who moved furniture and props and played a variety of non-speaking roles. Such was the tyranny of playwrights. Josie hadn’t expected to be here tonight. She’d been interrupted at home, eating dinner — actually a container of yogurt and a banana — and watching Love Connection in her bathrobe, when the stage manager called to say, “You’re on, babe.” She’d thrown on a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt and rushed right over. Now she waited with the other actors for the rehearsal to resume.