Richard Hawke - Cold Day in Hell

“Okay, that might qualify as too much information.”

“Sorry. I’m just a bitter old washed-up thirty-two-year-old. Any of a dozen regional theater directors would vouch for my talent, but look who ends up the TV star. Tracy’s the laughingstock of that stupid TV show she’s on, but do you think she even knows it? The whole thing is like a big cosmic joke. Tracy Jacobs, an Argosy client? I’m sorry, but that’s Alice-through-the-looking-glass time.”

“What’s Argosy?”

“Only the top boutique agency in the biz. They take only the cream of the cream.”

“And what you’re saying is that Tracy Jacobs is not cream.”

“As an actress? Low-fat skim. Curdled.”

“You are bitter.”

“I’m just a jealous bitch. This town is full of us.”

Jane offered me a cup of tea. Lapsang souchong, which is a tea that tastes like smoke. I passed. “I really need to speak with Tracy.”

“Tracy has been in Paris. They’re still on holiday hiatus with their show. She came here for about a week and then she went over to Paris. She’d never been. Check this out. She actually told me that her character on the show has been to Paris and that she thought it’d be a good idea if she went so she could be more convincing about it.” She rolled her eyes. “I’ve never been a barmaid in Elizabethan England, but you know what?”

I said, “It’s called acting.”

“Don’t get me started.”

“When is Tracy due back from Paris?”

Jane consulted her watch. “You’ve got impressive timing, I’ll give you that much. If the snow doesn’t slow things down, she’s due to land about an hour from now.”

I asked, “What do you know about her relationship with Danny Lyles?”

She made a face, and she made it well. “You know him?”

“We met this morning.”

“If you’d like to take a shower, I’ll understand.”

“How long were Tracy and Lyles seeing each other?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. No more than a couple of months is my guess. They met at some club in the meatpacking district. Tracy had a thing for trolling the hot venues. Though if all she’s going to come up with is a charmer like Danny Lyles, I say stay home and watch water boil. I’m sure Tracy thought that by hooking up with Danny Lyles, she was getting herself in tight with the Marshall Fox club.”

“According to Lyles, Tracy did meet Fox.”

“Oh, sure, she met him. Big deal, meeting a celeb. Though it’s totally screwy. I mean, Tracy thought that by sleeping with Marshall Fox’s driver, she was making a real career move. And it turned out she was right.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean Argosy. The TV show. Miss Hotshot flies to Paris. The whole thing. If not for the fluke of her meeting Alan Ross, none of that ever even becomes a pipe dream. If you-”

“Slow down a minute. Where does Alan Ross fit into this? Lyles told me that he gave Tracy’s number to Ross.”

“Oh yeah. You said a mouthful. Somebody got somebody’s number, all right. Sure. Ross called her up. He had her come into his office to meet with him. And the next thing I know, she’s going back the next day for an audition, so she says. By the time I come home, she’s sitting on that couch over there with a bottle of champagne and she’s landed a plum role on Century City and she’s moving to Los Angeles immediately. And Ross has told her he’ll get his wife to sign her up with freaking Argosy. People slit wrists to get a meeting with Gloria Ross.” Jane leaned so far forward I thought she was going to fall right out of the chair. “You have to understand something. Our friend Tracy? Didn’t. Even. Have. An agent.”

She fell back in the chair, disgusted. “I put it right to her. I asked her if she slept with Ross. She thought I was kidding at first, but I was serious. It’s the only thing that makes any sense. Tracy swore up and down that it was nothing like that. She said Ross told her he had this role in one of his shows that he thought she might be perfect for. I don’t know, maybe the guy’s a genius. Essentially, the character’s a trophy wife. And not the brightest bulb in the pack, or whatever that stupid phrase is. So maybe you can say typecasting, right? But still, there are plenty of actresses out there who’d have killed for that role. I mean name actresses, not this total unknown.”

“What’s your take? Do you think she slept with Ross?”

“It’s too screwy. A guy like that doesn’t need Tracy Jacobs. Or let’s put it this way-he doesn’t need to promise her the moon if he wants to get her in the sack. Tracy told me that Ross had her back to the network the next day for what sounds to me like the world’s lamest audition. It was just him in his office running the camera and audio. She read a monologue. Cheesiest dialogue in the world. She showed it to me. You can’t believe they pay people good money to write this dreck. Not that Century City is exactly David Mamet, but please. On the basis of this , she lands a gig like that ?” Jane wrapped her arms around her knees and gave herself a good hug. “Oh well. Fuck it. I’ll always have Tim Robbins, right?”

Before I left, I asked Jane what airport Tracy was scheduled to fly into. Kennedy. Air France. At the door, Jane told me she would be appearing in a show in February in Chelsea.

“I play a Mormon lesbian who’s running an orphanage in Kabul. There’s some music in it, too. It could be good or it could stink. If you’re interested, I could probably get you some comps.”

I told her I’d keep it in mind.

“No, you won’t,” she said flatly. “You’ve already written me off as a theater flake. That’s okay. It was nice snooping with you.”

On the street, I hailed a cab. As we made our way slowly up Sixth Avenue, I dialed Margo’s number.

“I’m going to throw a name at you,” I said when she answered. “Tell me what comes to mind. Free association.”

“Sure,” she said. “Fire away.”

“Tracy Jacobs.”

“Tracy Jacobs. Easy. Actress. TV show. Looks like a hundred other actresses.”

“Have I ever seen her show?”

“ Century City ? I think it came on the tube once, and you said something like ‘Life’s too short.’ It’s not so bad, as those things go. It can take in a sucker like me. But Tracy Jacobs is definitely the weak link. She’s pretty, but no big deal. Why do you ask?”

I gave her a quick rundown of what I’d picked up from Jane and from Danny Lyles concerning the meteoric rise of Tracy Jacobs. Margo listened without interruption. As the cab crossed Twenty-third Street, a florist delivery van in front of us went into a slow-motion skid. My driver whipped the wheel left then right and tapped the brakes, and we slid deftly by the van at a slight angle. The driver muttered a creative curse.

“Somebody’s lying,” Margo said. “If Tracy Jacobs called the police and told them about Marshall Fox and Cynthia Blair, then clearly she knew. Maybe she overheard Fox saying something to his driver.”

“No. Lyles swears that didn’t happen. He says she was threatening to call the cops, but only to give them a heads-up about Marshall Fox’s penchant for violence. That’s when Alan Ross contacted her and ended up offering her the role in his TV show. According to Lyles, Tracy supposedly called both Fox and Zachary Riddick sometime later and said she knew that Cynthia Blair was pregnant with Fox’s kid and that if Fox didn’t come clean to the police, she’d tell them.”

“Was she trying to get money? Was it an extortion thing?”

“Lyles didn’t say it was. But maybe. He was out of the loop by then.”

“So what do you do next? Take your taxi up to Seventy-first Street and mull it all over with your one and only while the gorgeous snowfall continues?”