Stuart Kaminsky: Show Business is Murder

If by any chance the police suspected him of being involved in Lou’s death they would look for evidence that he had taken the trail down to Lou’s property. And that brought up something else Detective Chaney had told him about: The Law of Contact.

The Law of Contact was the basic rule of crime-scene technicians. You go somewhere, you leave something behind. You touch something, you take part of it with you. If the techies started looking for signs of him beside Lou’s pool they might find them, but could they prove they were from today and not from his last visit, a week ago? Mitch didn’t think so.

And if the found Mitch’s lab gloves in his own trash, well, the compost easily explained their use, and he figured the organic waste would make it harder to find a trace of chlorine. As a bonus, turning the compost over would explain any vegetation from the trail that stuck to his clothes.

A year of playing Lieutenant Muldoon had taught him well. Prepared him well.

Once he had disposed of the gloves, Mitch went back into the house. He forced himself to walk at his usual pace, acting the part of a man without a care in the world.

Only after he poured himself a Scotch did he walk out onto the deck and casually glance down toward his neighbor’s property. The float had upended and he saw Lou’s arm come out of the water, flailing. He was trying to hold onto the float, but the thing was slippery and unstable and Lou was far too drunk to control it.

Goodbye, old man. You should have retired.

He strolled back into the house. The message light was blinking on the answering machine. No doubt it would be Si calling with the bad news. Well, the network was going to have to rethink their schedule now, wouldn’t they? All of a sudden they had a big hole to fill. He touched a button.

“Hey, Mitch baby, this is Si. I just met with the network guys. Most amazing thing. Turns out we calculated wrong. They had decided to cancel Muldoon and Cutting Edge. That’s right, both of them. Make more room for those damned reality shows.

“But hold onto your hat, kid. Your neighbor changed their minds. He convinced them that what they needed to do was run the shows together. He said you’re a better lead-in for him than that doctor show they have on now. The network decided he might be right. They’re gonna move Muldoon to Saturday night, run it between Private License and Cutting Edge. Call it “Men of Action Night.” Maybe do some crossover episodes.

“You better buy ol’ Lou some champagne. He’s keeping your show alive. Bye bye, babe. We’ll talk later.”

Mitch could hear something down the hill. He knew it must be the wail of a distant siren, but to him it sounded more like the bursting of an enormous bubble.

I USED TOrob women, which is how I got into acting. I don’t do it any more because it is morally indefensible (I’m talking about robbing women), but it was a good living for a while. I could easily make five hundred pounds in a day, if it was a good day.

Women in the UK spend twelve million pounds a year on anti-cellulite treatments. There is no such thing as an anti-cellulite treatment, it is a scientific impossibility, but British women spend twelve million quid a year on them. And that is only the tip of the icebird. If you factor in the billions spent on women’s magazines, makeup, slimming pills, and so on, you begin to get a picture. I’m not saying all women are stupid, but enough are stupid that robbing them is never hard.

For my targets, I would choose women who were not attractive. I didn’t choose out-and-out hounds, because they have nothing to lose-no dignity, no delusions-and so they might possess confidence. I chose women who were just sufficiently the right side of ugly so that they’d spend every minute of their lives in a preoccupying torment of hope. I picked them up on the pavements outside busy shops in the West End. I knew the location of every CCTV camera in Oxford Street, believe me.

I would approach them smiling. This in itself is confusing. Do they know me? I’m a good-looking young man, quite tall, slim… I’m smiling at them, but if they knew someone like me surely they’d remember? I’d walk right up to them, my smile not crazy, just confident, and then when I got up close enough to smell their breath, still smiling, I’d slap them across the face with my open hand. Right hand. Big swing. Exactly the way a woman slaps a man when he tries to kiss her in an old film.

Her hands go to her face. Naturally-instinct. She can’t help it. If she’s carrying anything, she drops it. If her bag is still on her arm, I take hold of her wrist and slide the bag off. Then I run, and I can run fast. Along the way I dump the bag; I only ever take cash. Cash is safest.

A woman of that sort-even once she’s recovered from the astonishing shock of being slapped like that, almost certainly for the first time in her adult life, and by a handsome young man who was smiling at her-it’s going to take her several seconds before she can bring herself to react. To raise her voice, scream, say something, tell someone. Get her breath back. Five seconds, maybe more.

And in five seconds, believe me, I’m in a different borough.

ONE SATURDAY AFTERNOONduring this period of my life I was in a pub in Fitzrovia, having finished work for the day, and the old potman was telling me about some mate of his who’d died the previous day during an operation to remove a brain tumour. “Well, that’s the thing about brain tumours,” I said. “You can’t live with ’em and you can’t live without ’em.”

The potman laughed and said, “I don’t know, son, the things you come out with!” Then he went back to collecting pots and I went back to reading the international news in the paper.

I was reading about an attempt by lawmakers in Arkansas to force teachers to declare atheism or agnosticism along with previous criminal convictions on job application forms, when a female voice said in my ear: “Five hundred quid. Half now, half after, and more to come.” Of course, I looked up and smiled.

She had one of those chafed faces, as if her midwife had buffed it up the middle with a sander. It was pink, with invisible eyelashes, a bent-back tip to the nose, and a moist, quivering chin which was trying to hide behind her Adam’s apple. She didn’t look like the kind of woman who would have the confidence to say the sort of thing she’d just said, to a handsome young stranger. She was about forty and rather thin. No man had ever looked at this woman lustfully, unless it was her own father. Still, though stereotyping can be a useful tool it makes an unreliable master.

“Have a seat,” I said, standing up and touching her elbow. “Gin and tonic, is it?”

“Thank you,” she said. “No ice.”

I fetched the G &T for her and a particular beer for me. There are great beers from around the globe available easily in London, if you care enough to look for them.

“Do you,” she said, “ever watch daytime TV?”

“My life has never yet been that empty of purpose,” I admitted.

She sipped her drink. “Fair enough. Well, in that case, you won’t have seen a cable show called Libby’s Place. It’s presented by a young woman, a very forceful young woman, named Libby Priest, and it takes the form of an audience-participation discussion show, centred around a number of invited guests.”

“Not really my sort of thing. I prefer history shows.”

“Really?” She looked at me over her glass. “Any particular period?”

“All periods,” I said. “There is only one period.”

“The past, you mean?”