Richard Hawke - Speak of the Devil

“They’re wasting their nickel sticking you as a bodyguard,” he said. “They should be cutting you loose to go find the son of a bitch who’s behind all this.”

The memory of a white balloon bumped gently against my cheek.

“I plan to keep my eyes open,” I said.

“And your back covered?”

“And my head down.”

Charlie laughed. “By God, I guess I did teach you a few things.”

“Meanwhile, I’ve got to hook a line onto the mayor’s celebrity girlfriend tonight. She’s insisting on strutting around onstage, and Martin Leavitt doesn’t seem to have the balls to shut the theater down.”

“I heard him on television just before you got here,” Charlie said. “That’s his message to the city. ‘The danger’s over. Go about your business. Enjoy your turkey.’ ”

“Well, if someone really is still gunning for her, I guess I’ll get to see it all over again.”

Charlie looked out at the street. After a moment he said, “You might want to pick up another bag of bagels, Fritz. Worked pretty good the first time.”

TIMES SQUARE NEVER TAKES A NIGHT OFF. THE ELECTRONIC BILLBOARDS and the zippers and the commercials being projected onto the sides of the glass buildings were all flashing and moving and blinking at their usual epileptic-seizure-inducing speed. The funnel where Broadway and Seventh Avenue merge was clogged with yellow taxis trying to get downtown, any random thirty of which were unleashing their horns for no apparent reason. I spotted one double-decker tourist bus. There was a lone inhabitant on the exposed upper level, wrapped in an Eskimo-like parka, twisting this way and that, a camcorder pressed to his face. As I crossed Broadway, the steam pouring forth from the Cup O’ Noodles billboard looked particularly inviting.

For all the dazzle and noise, the sidewalks were noticeably less packed than usual. A clown sat on the large sidewalk space in front of the Viacom Building, smoking a cigarette. His unicycle lay on the pavement next to him. His bucket was empty.

At the last minute Margo had opted out of joining me. The look of relief on her mother’s face when Margo announced she’d be staying over with them for the night told me that it was the right decision.

“Now I can go spring that Swedish honey I’ve had stashed away,” I’d told Margo. “Show her a swell time on the old town at last.”

A look of alarm had leaped to Margo’s mother’s face. “He’s kidding, isn’t he?”

“He’s kidding or he’s dead,” Margo answered. “The choice is completely his.”

THE THEATER WAS NOT FILLED TO CAPACITY. THE SEAT TO MY RIGHT, the one that would have been Margo’s, remained unoccupied. To my left was a geriatric couple who looked to have been lifted intact from another era and deposited into G-12 and G-13. He was a frail man in a three-piece brown wool suit and red bow tie, with a fine shiny cane. She was in something vaguely deco and pale. Her hair was like blue spun sugar. They leaned shoulder to shoulder to read the program together.

The show was the most ridiculous thing imaginable. In between numbers, there were a lot of slamming doors and fast entrances and exits, loud declarations intended to shove forward the so-called plot, a handful of huffy hands-on-hips speeches, would-be lovers misinterpreting mixed signals and one ham-it-up actor portraying a waiter who wrapped the audience around his finger from his very first entrance and made off with every scene he was in. The couple next to me loved him. Every time the waiter appeared onstage, the old man pointed his bony finger and announced loudly to his sweetheart, “There he is!”

With Rebecca Gilpin’s first entrance, you’d have thought we were greeting the woman who had cured cancer. The audience leaped to their feet, applauding the skin right off their palms and calling out hoorays and bravos. A man seated in front of me-now standing in front of me-put his fingers to his mouth and sent out a series of whistles so piercing that I nervously eyeballed the old chandelier dangling from the theater’s ceiling.

Everyone eventually settled down, and the actors, who had frozen into a tableau while riding out the spontaneous outpouring, swung back into action. Gilpin, making a comely dazzle out of her vintage frills, glided like a ballerina to center stage, where she delivered her first line in a voice that was somewhat huskier than I’d have expected.

“All I can say is, whoever called this a pleasure cruise doesn’t know the gee-dee meaning of the word ‘pleasure.’ ”

Right, I thought. This is definitely worth the risk of being shot at for the second time in one day. I checked my watch and settled in.

After the show, I headed backstage. As with most Broadway theaters, I had to go outside and enter a narrow walkway that led to the stage-door area. The union man at the door wasn’t letting anybody in. He didn’t even have a clipboard of names to consult.

“No chance, Mac. Not tonight. You gotta wait.”

I showed him my PI license. He reached out and patted me on the accomplice. He shook his head. “You wait.”

Good man. Exactly what I wanted to hear.

Some of the chorus members had already left the theater. I backed off to the far side of the alleyway to let them pass with as much flamboyance as they required. After about fifteen minutes, Rebecca Gilpin appeared. She was accompanied by the actor who’d played the waiter. I shoved myself off the wall and approached the stage door. The actress was giving the union man instructions.

“You’re going to have to just wait, that’s all. A car should be here any minute. Do you have any idea how many flowers I’ve got up there tonight?”

The union man scratched his freckled scalp. “Yeah, I do, in fact. Who do you think took them in?”

“Well, thank you. And now, if you’ll just wait, it won’t be more than a half hour, tops. They’ll be going off to the hospitals for all those people who were shot this morning. Am I asking a huge favor?”

I stepped forward. “Miss Gilpin? I’m Fritz Malone. Mayor Leavitt told you about me.”

She looked at me a moment with some confusion. Up close, her face was a series of sharp points. Nose, chin, even her eyebrows. Her ginger-red hair was pulled back in a severe ponytail. Her eyes were large, beautiful and unfriendly. She was wearing a silver fur coat that might have fed and housed a family of five for a year.

“You’re the detective.”

“We’re going to need about twenty minutes,” I said.

A finely etched eyebrow rose, but it wasn’t Rebecca Gilpin’s. It was the eyebrow of the actor who had played the waiter. I braced for the inevitable.

“Honey, if I were you, I’d take that deal,” he said.

I ignored him: the cruelest punishment. I addressed the actress. “Is there a place you’d like to go? We have to talk. I need to explain how I operate.” I conceded a sarcastic smile to the actor.

“Why don’t we go to Barrymore’s?” she said.

The actor piped up. “Or Joe Allen’s.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “But Miss Gilpin and I need to talk alone.”

The actor quipped, “Detective? Let’s see some ID.” He snapped his fingers rapidly five or six times as he said it. He thought he was being cute. I sent a silent appeal to Rebecca.

“Okay, Stephen,” she said. “I’m going with Mr. Malone. Thank you for the backrub, sweetie.”

I watched a half-dozen zingers die on the vine. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

I waited until he was several steps down the walkway. “I thought you were great tonight,” I called out.

A hand rose. A frozen backward wave.

Rebecca Gilpin pointed her face at me. “Stephen is a laugh whore.”