Ed Gorman - Showdown

David Ashton was a mild man given to bankerish three-piece suits and a perpetual sad smile. One could see, though, the fading good looks that had once helped him in his own stage career. When he saw what was going on, he said to Reeves, "I wish you wouldn't make things any worse than they already are."

"I've fired him, David, and I expect you to back me up on it."

Ashton looked pained. He hated confrontations and Reeves was pushing him into a bad one. "Why don't you and Stephen and I go to my office and discuss this?"

Reeves, probably rightly, sensed that Ashton was going to try to ameliorate the situation. "Goddamn you, David, why don't you show some balls for once? This has-been embarrassed all of us tonight and he should be fired for it!"

The small sob had the force of a gunshot.

Everybody turned to look at Sylvia Ashton. She was a frail woman of about her husband's age, maybe forty-five, with one of those too-delicate faces that suggests a mask. Her dark eyes had a quality of quiet madness. She seemed to see beneath surfaces, and what she saw there had unhinged her somehow. People around the theater spoke carefully of her stays over the years in various mental hospitals. Obviously, this was exactly the kind of pressure that got to her. In a sad but rather grand way, she said, "I thought we were all like a family here. We should be, you know. We all love acting more than anything else."

Reeves sighed, exasperated.

Anne Stewart, who was a good friend of Sylvia's, touched the smaller woman gently on the shoulder. Tears were shining in Anne's eyes.

But curiously, it was Wade who looked the most overwhelmed by Sylvia's obvious struggle with this moment. His head was down and he was shaking it side to side, like a penitent in a confessional. When he raised his head, his gaze was fully as forlorn as Sylvia's own.

Reeves pushed him then.

None of us expected it, and I doubt that Reeves meant the push to be that hard. Wade fell back into a grand piano. You could hear its impact with his back. A cracking sound, bone against wood. Then he fell to the floor, his arms flailing out comically.

What surprised me was how quickly he got up. What didn't surprise me was how angry he was.

Wade's reaction to Reeves's taunting had been atypical, perhaps because Wade had been ashamed of his drinking. Maybe he felt that he had no choice but to suffer Reeves's anger. But, according to twenty years of press reports, Wade had a furious temper. He'd been taken to court many times for brawling.

Now I could see that temper.

Before I could get to him, he'd arced an impressive right hand into Reeves's face, startling and hurting the taller man, and slamming him into the wall.

Wade stalked in closer, set to throw more punches at Reeves. Wade, his face red, his eyes crazed for the moment, spittle at either side of his mouth, was frightening to watch. Enraged drunks usually are, as any cop will tell you.

I grabbed Wade before he could get his next punch off. He was all curses and craziness. Keech came over and helped me keep him away from Reeves. For his part, Reeves pushed his face into David Ashton's face and said, "You choose, David—him or me." He jabbed a sharp finger into Ashton's chest and then stormed off.

By now Sylvia was weeping openly, and Anne Stewart was holding her carefully, as if she might break.

I said to Wade, "Why don't you let me give you a ride to your hotel?"

But he was still very drunk and very angry. "I don't want shit from you, Dwyer. Not shit."

Everybody looked at me. There wasn't much to say. I was the first one back to the dressing rooms. I got myself ready for the street and left.

Chapter 2

To date Donna Harris has published only six issues of Ad World, which means that she has yet to master everything required to put out a magazine that caters to the Illinois advertising industry. When she's gathering material and writing, she's great company, as usual. But the closer publication day comes, the more her office becomes a minefield of layouts, photos, odds and ends of manuscript, Hardee's wrappers and empty Tab cans, and she gets to a point where she might pick a fight with Mother Teresa. The pressure gets to her and she doesn't mind sharing it.

After the scene at the theater, I drove around the city, letting the FM jazz station soothe me with some Mulligan doing the theme from Exodus (if you don't think artists can change pop lead into jazz gold, listen to that one) and tried to recognize what was happening to the downtown area.

Three bridges lead into the Loop area proper. Now, in May, Chicago was again transforming itself from the steel of winter to the breezes of spring, the promise of new foliage as vast as the lake that spanned the horizon.

In the cold rain the Loop was finishing up for the night, with only a few trendy spots still shaking a fist at midnight. I waved to a few squad car cops who knew me from my own cop days. They looked bored. Loop duty isn't a lot of fun.

By the time I drove past Donna's office, which is outside the Loop, I was no longer pissed at Wade, if I ever had been exactly. I liked the bastard, couldn't help it, and so did Donna. Now I was worried about what he'd do next. Variety would certainly carry the story about how he'd been fired from a small theater in the boonies. It was just the kind of ammunition West Coast casting directors would need to shut him off for good.

I drove into the parking lot at Donna's. Her car was gone. I felt one of those inexplicable pangs of betrayal. I really needed her. Couldn't she sense that through telepathy or some damn thing?

"You're really in a bad mood, aren't you?" I said after she opened the door in her robe and curlers and stood, hip cocked, glaring at me.

"I will be if you start that number again," she said in her best severe voice.

The "number" she referred to was how I'd simply pointed out that she became intolerable the closer she got to deadline. I'd once made the same observation about the first few days of her period, but she got so mad—I mean fucking crazed—that I knew better than to ever bring that up again.

There was a long and nervous silence. I saw her ironing board up behind her—she hates ironing the way I hate making beds—and the TV was on. It was Elizabeth Taylor in Butterfield.

"You could always invite me in."

"Well, you can see the kind of shape the place is in."

"Yeah, and you know how much I care about that sort of thing."

"You sound kinda down."

"I am, I guess."

"Well," she said. "I mean, to be real honest, Dwyer, you think we should be together tonight?"

"Why not?"

"Well, even though I think your routine about me being crabby the closer I get to deadline is all in your imagination, the rain has sort of got me down. Or something. I mean I was sitting there watching a Fritos commercial and I just burst into tears. A Fritos commercial."

"It's the rain."

"Don't sound so goddamn smug."

"Jesus, Donna, lighten up."

"And don't tell me to lighten up."

"All I said," I said, "was that it's the rain. You know how you get."

"And you don't get that way?"

"Well, sort of I do."

"'Sort of.'"

I shook my head. Right then I felt like an orphan. "Maybe you're right. Maybe tonight's not a good night to get together."

She hadn't lightened up any. "Yeah, maybe you are right."

"Well," I said, wanting her to stop me. But she didn't. "Well, good night, Donna." I knew better than to try to kiss her.

"Good night, Dwyer." And with that she closed the door.

I went down the stairs, feeling very sorry for myself. I was about twenty feet down the walk, the cold rain combining now with fog, when I heard a window being pushed up.

"God, Dwyer, I'm sorry. I really am."