Ed McBain - Eighty Million Eyes

“Thanks,” Meyer said. “I appreciate your help.” He started walking toward the door leading to the studio floor. Cooper stepped into his path. His eyes met Meyer's, and he stared into them searchingly.

“Somebody poisoned him, huh?” he said.

“What makes you think that, Mr. Cooper?”

“They’re all talking about it out there.”

“That doesn’t necessarily make it true, does it?”

“Dr. Nelson says you’ll be asking for an autopsy.”

“That's right.”

“Then you do think he was poisoned.”

Meyer shrugged. “I don’t think anything yet, Mr. Cooper.”

“Listen,” Cooper said, and his voice dropped to a whisper. “Listen, I…I don’t want to get anybody in trouble but…before the show tonight, when we were rehearsing—” He stopped abruptly. He glanced into the studio. A man in a sports jacket was approaching the hallway, reaching for the package of cigarettes in his pocket.

“Go ahead, Mr. Cooper,” Meyer said.

“Skip it,” Cooper answered and walked away quickly. The man in the sports jacket came into the hallway. He nodded briefly to Meyer, put the cigarette into his mouth, leaned against the wall, and struck a match. Meyer took out a cigarette of his own, and then said, “Excuse me. Do you have a light?”

“Sure,” the man said. He was a small man, with piercing blue eyes and crew-cut hair that gave his face a sharp triangular shape. He struck a match for Meyer, shook it out, and then leaned back against the wall again.

“Thanks,” Meyer said.

“Don’t mention it.”

Meyer walked to where Krantz was standing with Nelson and the hospital intern. The intern was plainly confused. He had answered an emergency call, and now no one seemed to know what they wanted him to do with the body. He turned to Meyer pleadingly, hoping for someone who would forcefully take command of the situation.

“You can move the body,” Meyer said. “Take it to the morgue for autopsy. Tell your man one of our detectives’ll be down there soon. Carella's his name.”

The intern left quickly, before anybody could change his mind. Meyer glanced casually toward the corridor, where the man in the sports jacket was still leaning against the wall, smoking.

“Who's that in the hallway?” he asked.

“Art Wetherley,” Krantz answered. “One of our writers.”

“Was he here tonight?”

“Sure,” Krantz said.

“All right, who else is connected with the show?”

“Where do you want me to start?”

“I want to know who was here tonight, that's all.”

“Why?”

“Oh, Mr. Krantz, please . Gifford could have died from the noise alone in this place, but there's a possibility he was poisoned. Now who was here tonight?”

“All right, I was here. And my secretary. And my associate producer and his secretary. And the unit manager and his secretary. And the—”

“Does everybody have a secretary?”

“Not everybody.”

“Let me hear the rest.”

Krantz folded his arms, and then began reciting by rote. “The director, and the assistant director. The two Hollywood stars, and the folk singers. Two scenic designers, a costume designer, the booking agent, the choral director, the chorus—seventeen people in it—the orchestra conductor, two arrangers, thirty-three musicians, five writers, four librarians and copyists, the music contractor, the dance accompanist, the choreographer, six dancers, the rehearsal pianist, the lighting director, the audio man, two stage managers, twenty-nine engineers, twenty-seven electricians and stagehands, three network policemen, thirty-five pages, three makeup men, a hair stylist, nine wardrobe people, four sponsors’ men, and six guests.” Krantz nodded in quiet triumph. “That's who was here tonight.”

“What were you trying to do?” Meyer asked. “Start World War III?”

Paul Blaney, the assistant medical examiner, had never performed an autopsy on a celebrity before. The tag on the corpse's wrist told him, as if he had not already been told by Carella and Meyer, who were waiting outside in the corridor, that the man lying on the stainless-steel table was Stan Gifford, the television comedian. Blaney shrugged. A corpse was a corpse, and he was only thankful that this one hadn’t been mangled in an automobile accident. He never watched television, anyway. Violence upset him.

He picked up his scalpel.

He didn’t like the idea of two detectives waiting outside while he worked. The next thing you knew, they’d be coming into the autopsy room with him and giving their opinions on the proper way to hold a forceps. Besides, he rather resented the notion that a corpse, simply because it was a celebrity corpse, was entitled to preferential treatment—like calling a man in the middle of the goddamn night to make an examination. Oh, sure, Meyer had patiently explained that this was an unusual case and likely to attract a great deal of publicity. And yes, the symptoms certainly seemed to indicate poisoning of some sort, but still Blaney didn’t like it.

It smacked of pressure. A man should be allowed to remove a liver or a set of kidneys in a calm, unhurried way. Not with anxious policemen breathing down his neck. The usual routine was to perform the autopsy, prepare the report, and then send it on to the investigating team of detectives. If a homicide was indicated, it was sometimes necessary to prepare additional reports, which Blaney did whenever he felt like it, more often not. These were sent to Homicide North or South, the chief of police, the commander of the detective division, the district commander, and the technical police laboratory. Sometimes, and only when Blaney was feeling in a particularly generous mood, he would call the investigating precinct detective and give him a verbal necropsy report over the phone. But he had never had cops waiting in the corridor before. He didn’t like the idea. He didn’t like it at all.

Viciously, he made his incision.

In the corridor outside, Meyer sat on a bench alongside one green-tinted wall and watched Carella, who paced back and forth before him like an expectant father. Patiently, Meyer turned his head in a slow cycle, following Carella's movement to the end of the short corridor and back again. He was almost as tall as Carella, but more heavily built, so that he seemed squat and burly, especially when he was sitting.

“How’d Mrs. Gifford take it?” Carella asked.

“Nobody likes the idea of an autopsy,” Meyer said. “But I drove out to her house, and told her why we were going ahead, and she agreed it seemed necessary.”

“What kind of a woman?”

“Why?”

“If someone poisoned him…”

“She's about thirty-eight or thirty-nine, tall, attractive, I guess. It was a little hard to tell. Her mascara was running all over her face.” Meyer paused. “Besides, she wasn’t at the studio, if that means anything.”

“Who was at the studio?” Carella asked.

“I had Genero take down all their names before they were released.” Meyer paused. “I’ll tell you the truth, Steve, I hope this autopsy comes up with a natural cause of death.”

“How many people were in the studio?” Carella said.

“Well, I think we can safely discount the studio audience, don’t you?”

“I guess so. How many were in the studio audience?”

“Five hundred sixty.”

“All right, let's safely discount them.”

“So that leaves everyone who was connected with the show, and present tonight.”

“And how many is that?” Carella asked. “A couple of dozen?”

“Two hundred twelve people,” Meyer said.

The door to the autopsy room opened, and Paul Blaney stepped into the corridor, pulling off a rubber glove the way he had seen doctors do in the movies. He looked at Meyer and Carella sourly, greatly resenting their presence, and then said, “Well, what is it you’d like to know?”