Richard Hawke - Speak of the Devil

“I misplaced the bagels,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

I heard a sound that I took to be a long breath being let out. Either that or my sweetie had suffered a puncture and was leaking.

“Where are you?”

“I’m in a bar.”

“Ten-thirty in the morning,” Margo said. “How colorful.”

“Trust me. They’re not letting too many colors into this place.”

“I feel stupid asking, but you do know what happened up at the parade while you were out, right?”

“Don’t feel stupid. Yes. I wandered up to take a peek.”

“Before or after?”

“During.”

There was another pause. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. A little scrape here, a little banged up there.”

“You got caught up in the stampede?”

Up on the television, they were showing footage of the parade prior to all hell breaking loose. The Spider-Man float. The Pink Panther. A two-story dog poking its head out of a Christmas stocking.

“I got caught up chasing after the shooter,” I said.

“Is that right? Hmmm. I’m not surprised.”

“I’m not surprised you’re not surprised.”

“The television is saying that the guy who did it was caught. They say he was shot by the police.”

“By the police? That’s not what happened. I shot him, Margo. I chased him into the park. I winged him at the Bethesda Fountain.” This was the conversation Tommy Carroll had warned me not to have. “But for the moment I think it would be best if you kept that piece of information between you, me and the pillow.”

“What do you mean you shot him? Your gun’s here. The cute little fellow’s been keeping me company in your absence.”

“I borrowed a gun from a policeman.”

“Borrowed a… Why couldn’t he just shoot him himself?”

“He was already dead.”

There was another pause. The longest one yet. Finally she spoke. “Could you just do me one favor? Could you drag yourself away from your little bar and get back over here? We were having a very sweet morning until you went out for the damn bagels.”

“I’d love to, but I can’t, I’m sorry. Not yet. I’ve got a little sorting out to do on account of my sticking my nose where it didn’t belong.”

“You’re going to sort it out in a bar?”

“It’s a long story. To be honest, I don’t know how it goes yet. I’m not even supposed to be talking to you.”

“Me? What have I done?”

On the television, the picture cut to what appeared to be a scene from a Broadway musical. The stage held a mock-up of the broad side of an ocean liner, and a chorus of about twenty male singers in scrubbed white sailor suits, sailor caps and hundred-watt smiles were lined up at the rail, engaged in some sort of manic clog dancing. While their feet smacked out the vigorous patty-cake, their arms were swinging and jerking as they waved snappy red and blue semaphores in perfect unison. I have to admit, my musical-theater gene is profoundly underdeveloped, so maybe what looked like utter inanity to me was actually Tony-winning choreographic genius. Whatever it was, I couldn’t figure out what it was doing on the television screen right in the middle of live news coverage of a bloody massacre.

A lifeboat appeared from above the earnest seamen, lowering on cables. A slender-waisted woman in a modified sailor suit designed to give her bare arms and legs maximum freedom and exposure was standing in the middle of the lifeboat singing her little lungs out. Even from the rear of the bar, I could catch the tinny sounds of her voice. Her face was framed by a headful of blond ringlets that I was sure was a wig, topped by a sailor cap of her own, raked at the jauntiest of angles.

I recognized the face.

“What’s on your screen right now?” I asked into the phone.

“… They’re showing a reporter standing in front of City Hall. Why?”

“Switch channels.”

“Okay.”

“You’re looking for a girl singing in a lifeboat.”

“A what?”

“It’s a show. Broadway musical. You got it?”

“I got it.” She laughed. “Gosh, Fritz, let’s run right out and buy tickets! It looks great.”

I asked, “Who is she?”

“The singer?”

“The singer-sailor. Who is she?” Margo writes for magazines. She knows who all these people are. The scene on the television had switched. I was looking at the same woman, without the blond ringlets, this time sitting on a cushy chair being interviewed by Katie Couric. The sailor woman was a redhead, which was how I had remembered her.

“That’s Rebecca Gilpin,” Margo said.

“And Rebecca Gilbert is?”

“ Gilpin . Don’t they have People magazine under your rock? Rebecca Gilpin of the TV show Trial Date ?”

“ Trial Date . Is that where a couple go out together first to see if they might want to actually go out together?”

“You’re not as obtuse as I know you’d like to be. You’ve heard of Trial Date .”

She was right. I had. It was a popular TV show. Cops, robbers, lawyers, judges, juries, witnesses and suspects. I wasn’t sure what its particular twist was, but it must have had one. It had been around for a while.

“Rebecca Gilpin is on the show?”

“She was. She left it.”

“What did she play?”

“She was a prosecuting attorney. She was the character with no scruples. Lie, cheat, sleep with the enemy.”

On-screen, Rebecca Gilpin and Katie Couric were enjoying a huge laugh together. Sisters. On top of the world.

“So now she’s on Broadway?”

“Yep,” Margo said. “Lies, cheats, sleeps with the enemy and she can dance and sing. Whatta gal, eh?”

I frowned. The old guy sitting under the television set launched into a world-class smoker’s cough. “Rebecca Gilpin was Mother Goose in the parade today,” I said.

“I know.”

“The guy who killed all those people took a shot at her first.”

“They’re not certain about that,” Margo said.

“I am. I was right there.” The picture on the screen switched from the Today show footage. We were back to the scene of the parade, post-shooting. I asked, “Do you know if she was hit?”

The television showed two policemen. One was holding the pointy Mother Goose hat that Rebecca Gilpin had been wearing. The camera zoomed in as the cop holding the hat turned it in his hand to show something to his colleague. It was a pair of small holes. One going in, one going out. The second cop produced a large plastic bag. The hat went into the bag.

“Apparently, she’s fine,” Margo said. She added, “One bright spot for the mayor.”

“The mayor? What do you mean?”

“You really do live under a rock. You don’t know about the mayor and the Broadway star? Are you completely out of the zeitgeist?”

“Mayor Leavitt and Rebecca Gilpin are an item?”

Margo laughed. “An item.”

“And everyone knows this?”

“Everyone but you, my sweets. Common knowledge.”

The old guy beneath the television set hadn’t stopped coughing. Ten more seconds of this and his ruined lungs would be on the floor.

“I’ll call you,” I said. And I hung up.

I DIDN’T WAIT FOR THE MAYOR’S AND TOMMY CARROLL’S STATEMENTS to come on the tube. I left the Three Roses and hoofed it up the street to City Hall Park. I noted that both of the police cars that had been parked across the street were gone. An uncommon quiet filled the downtown air between the bar and City Hall. Only my footsteps and my ricocheting thoughts. I was mulling over what Margo had just told me. Someone had taken a shot at the mayor’s girlfriend. And following that, at his citizens.