Murder on a Hot Tin Roof Page 3

  “This is so fab!” Abby whooped, grinning and clapping like there was no tomorrow. “I think I’m going to die. Gray’s such a good actor! He’s on his way to the top!”

  “That could be true,” I said. “All the columnists will be singing his praises in the papers tomorrow. I wonder if Brooks Atkinson is here. He’s the most influential theater critic in the city. If he caught tonight’s performance, Gray’s career will be made in the shade.”

  “Critics schmitics!” Abby scoffed. “Gray doesn’t need any help from those clowns. Just look around at the people in the audience. They’re enraptured. They’re madly in love with him. They’re going to make him a star.”

  She was right. Every face I looked at was euphoric. The entire audience was caught up in some kind of weird religious ecstasy. Billy Graham couldn’t hold a candle to our boy Gray.

  “Let’s go backstage,” Abby said, after Gray had taken his final curtain call. “I want to thank him for the tickets and give him my up-close and personal congratulations.” (I knew what that meant: she wanted to give him a tongue kiss so deep it would shock his socks off.)

  “Will they let us in?” I asked.

  “We won’t know till we try,” she said, “so let’s go find out!” She turned and began inching her way toward the aisle, sticking so close to the line of people slowly exiting our row that she seemed to be attached.

  I stuffed my feet back into my shoes and followed along behind her, hoping that we would be admitted backstage. I was curious to meet Abby’s gorgeous and gifted loverboy, of course, but I was even more curious to see how long we’d be allowed to remain in the blissful comfort of the air-conditioned theater.

  Abby stopped at the end of our row, waited for the aisle to clear, then sauntered over to the side door closest to the stage. “I’ll bet this leads to the dressing rooms,” she said, pulling the door wide and sashaying through it as if she owned the place. I scurried through right behind her, surprised that no usher or doorman sprang from the shadows to turn us away.

  The narrow, dimly lit corridor on the other side of the door led to a short flight of steps, which led up to a wider, slightly brighter hallway. And when I climbed the steps and saw that this hallway was full of laughing, chattering, well-dressed people-each holding a cigarette in one hand and a glass of champagne in the other-I knew we had come to the right place.

  Wriggling her way through the crowd, Abby headed straight for the star dressing room, which actually had a gold star painted on the door. I scooted after her as quickly as I could. Was that where the champagne was being served? Maybe they were handing out canapés, too! I was so hungry I’d have swallowed a fistful of live tadpoles, no questions asked.

  But there was no such delicacy in sight. No more champagne, either. Just five empty bottles piled in the trash can near the door. Jeezypeezy! I complained to myself. These show-biz vultures work fast!

  There were so many people crammed in the tiny star dressing room I knew we’d never work our way inside. The entire cast was in there, including all five of the child actors (or, as Maggie the Cat had called them, “no-neck monsters”) who had provided the play with some very unruly and annoying moments. Several columnists, reporters, and photographers were in there, too, shouting out toasts and questions and popping flashbulbs to beat the band.

  “Gray! Gray!” Abby yelled, standing on her tiptoes and waving her arms furiously in the air. “It’s Abby! I’m over here! Can you see me? Thanks for the tix, babe. You were great! Better than Humphrey Bogart or Cary Grant. Way better than Marlon Brando!”

  If Gray actually saw Abby waving out in the hall, or managed to hear any of her enthusiastic accolades, it was impossible to tell. He was completely surrounded by fellow cast members and other well-wishers, who were all kissing him and slapping him on the back and sticking to him like glue. (When the vultures sense you’re taking off for the top, they all want to hitch a ride. At least that’s what I’ve been told. I can’t speak from firsthand experience since I’m still squirming around on the bottom.)

  “Oh, it’s no use!” Abby said, finally lowering her waving arms and coming down off her tiptoes. “He can’t hear me. Those no-neck monsters are making too much noise. And I’ll never get into that dressing room. It’s packed tighter than an old maid’s hope chest.”

  “There’s no more champagne, either,” I whined. “And nothing to eat.”

  “Come on then,” Abby said. “Let’s make like a tree and leave. I’ve got some more gin at home and we can grab a pie at John’s.” (She meant John’s Pizzeria, which was on Bleecker, right across the street from us.)

  “Sounds good to me,” I said. “But what about Gray? I thought you wanted to give him your ‘up-close and personal congratulations.’ ” My tone was just the teensiest bit sarcastic. I swear.

  “I’ll do it tomorrow,” she said. “I’ll hop over to his apartment in the morning, before he has to leave for the theater. And you’ll come with me, you dig? He lives real close to us, just a couple of blocks away on Christopher Street.”

  I didn’t say anything. It was sweet of Abby to invite me, but I had no intention of tagging along to watch her give Gray a gooey french kiss (or whatever else she had in mind). Tomorrow was Saturday! I didn’t have to go to work. I didn’t have to hop around all day serving coffee to my demanding male bosses and coworkers. I wouldn’t have to work like a slave to compose all the captions, proofread all the galleys, file all the invoices and photos, rewrite and retype all the head staff writer’s boring and ungrammatical stories, and fend off the oily art director’s offensive advances and annoying jokes about my name.

  No, tomorrow was the first day of a long, luxurious holiday weekend. It belonged to me, and I was going to do what I wanted to do. I planned to sleep until noon, take a cool shower, put on a sleeveless blouse and my cool new capris, pop into Chock Full o’Nuts for an iced coffee and a datenutand-cream-cheese sandwich, then spend the rest of the afternoon in an air-cooled library or museum.

  Ha! I might as well have planned to go swimming with Frank Sinatra. Destiny had a very different agenda in store for me, and there would be nothing cool about it.

  Chapter 3

  I WAS AWAKENED AT NINE INSTEAD OF noon. Somebody was ringing my buzzer and throwing something-or, rather, a lot of little somethings-against the screen of my open bedroom window. I opened my eyes and stared up at the ceiling, wondering who I was, where I was, and why my entire, near-naked body was slick with sweat.

  “Paige Turner!” a familiar voice shouted from the street below, giving me a pretty good clue to my identity. “Are you dead or alive? If you don’t come to the window this minute, I’m going to freak out and call the cops!” Another round of hard little somethings blasted into my window-screen insert, knocking it loose from its unstable moorings and sending it crashing to the floor.

  I groaned and rose to a sitting position, swinging my sweaty legs over the side of the bed. Bed, I said to myself. I must be in my bedroom… Hot, I slowly comprehended. It’s hotter than a furnace in here. I dropped my feet to the floor and tried to stand up. “Yikes!” I shrieked, as my feet came down on several round little somethings and rolled right out from under me.

  I fell flat on my rear like a sack of potatoes.

  And that’s when I saw all the radishes on the floor.

  Huh?! Radishes?! What the holy hell is-

  I was crawling over to the window to see what was going on when another batch of little red missiles came hurtling through the screenless opening, pelting me in the face and chest.

  “Hey, Paige!” Abby hollered. “You’d better get up right now! Angelo doesn’t have any more radishes. I’m gonna have to switch to turnips!” (Angelo, I should tell you, is the owner and sole proprietor of the fruit and vegetable store under Abby’s apartment.)

  I hurriedly pulled myself to my knees and leaned over the sill, sticking my head all the way out the window. “Are you out of your mind?” I screeched, gaping down to the sidewalk wher
e Abby was standing. (My bedroom is on the top floor of our tiny duplex, directly above my living room and two floors above Luigi’s street-level fish market.) “What the hell are you doing down there? Why are you ringing my buzzer and throwing groceries into my bedroom? I have a door, you know! Can’t you just knock on it like a normal person?”

  “I tried that, you dodo. I practically knocked a hole in the damn thing! But I couldn’t wake you up. No matter how loud I pounded and shouted. And your phone must be off the hook or something. All I could get was a goddamn busy signal. I didn’t know what was going on! I thought you had a stroke and died!”

  At that particular moment, I sort of wished I had. I was so hot and sweaty and achy and groggy that being conscious was a pain in the ass. Literally. (My radish-induced flop to the floor had bruised my bottom bigtime.)

  “So, what do you want?” I said, heaving a thunderous sigh. “Make it snappy. I’m going back to bed.”

  “Oh, no you don’t! I want to talk to you! And I can’t keep yelling to you from down here. I’m disturbing the peace!” She was right. A slew of nosy neighbors and morning shoppers had begun to gather on the sidewalk around her. “I’m coming upstairs,” she said. “Come down to your door and let me in.” Before I could protest, she disappeared inside the building.

  Cursing under my breath and kicking radishes out of my way, I staggered out into the hall, grabbed my robe off the hook on the bathroom door, and hurried down the steps to the main floor of my apartment (i.e., the single narrow room that housed the kitchen, dining, and living areas combined). Abby was already at my front door, banging on it with her fist (or maybe her head).

  I pulled on my robe and yanked the door open. “This better be good,” I snarled, giving her a really dirty look.

  If Abby noticed my indignation, she didn’t let on. She just breezed into my kitchen, plopped herself down at my yellow Formica table, lit up one of my L &M filter tips, and asked if I had any coffee.

  “Yes, but it isn’t made,” I said, growing angrier by the second. “I don’t usually perk a pot of coffee while I’m sleeping.”

  “Then, you’d better perk some now,” she said, exhaling a stream of smoke in my direction. “You look like you need it.”

  Aaaargh!

  “I do not need it!” I growled, stomping my bare foot on the linoleum. “The minute you finish telling me whatever it is you have to tell me, I’m going back to bed. And then I’m going back to sleep. So, I don’t want any damn coffee since it will just keep me awake.”

  A look of pure desolation fell over Abby’s beautiful face. “You mean you’re not going to Gray’s apartment with me?”

  “No. It’s too hot and I’m too tired. I took the phone off the hook for a reason, you know. I really need to get some sleep. Now I’m going back to bed.”

  “But you said you would go with me!”

  “No, I didn’t.

  You said I would go with you.”

  “Don’t you want to meet Gray? I thought you wanted to tell him what a good actor he is.”

  “He doesn’t need me to tell him that. After last night, the whole world will be telling him.”

  “Yes, but-”

  “No buts!” I snapped. “I’m going back to bed and that’s that!”

  Abby looked so sad I thought she might start crying. “Uh… well, okay… if that’s the way you want it,” she said, staring down at my kitchen floor as if it were the boulevard of broken dreams. She took a deep drag on her cigarette. “It’s just that I really need some company today.”

  “Two’s company, three’s a crowd,” I said. “Gray will provide more than enough togetherness. I’d just be in the way.”

  “Oh, no you wouldn’t! Gray has to go to the theater, don’t forget, and there’s a matinee today. He won’t have any time for me. He’ll only be home for a short while this morning, and that’s why we have to go so early.”

  Uh oh. She was using the we word again.

  “Why this sudden need for company?” I asked her. “What’s wrong? Is something troubling you?”

  “No… yes… well, sort of…”

  “Then tell me what it is already! The sooner you get it off your chest, the sooner I can go back to bed.”

  She smashed her ciggie in the ashtray and gave me a pleading look. “ I guess I’m just lonely,” she said. “I’m so restless and depressed, I didn’t get any sleep at all last night. I’ve been feeling pretty low since Jimmy moved out.”

  She was talking about Jimmy Birmingham, her most recent live-in lover, an absurdly handsome beatnik poet who wrote absurdly silly poems. Jimmy was very popular in the Village bars and coffee houses where he gave frequent readings of his work, but I’d never been able to pinpoint the reason for his success. I supposed it had something to do with his youth (Jimmy was just twenty-two years old), or his outrageous good looks (Tony Curtis, with a little Gregory Peck thrown in), or the adorableness of his little dog, Otto-the miniature dachshund who was always at his side. I was pretty sure it didn’t have anything to do with his poetry. Or his dopey personality.

  “You mean you actually miss having Jimmy around?” I asked, in disbelief. “You said you were bored with him-sick and tired of being his muse. You claimed you’d rather eat nails than have to listen to one more of his pompous recitations. You practically begged him to move back to his own apartment! Are you telling me you’ve had a total change of heart?”

  Abby’s lips curled upward in a shameless smile. “Not total, just partial.”

  She didn’t have to tell me which part had changed. “So, you miss having him at your beck and call in bed,” I said, trying not to sound too judgmental. “That’s easy to fix. Just give him a buzz and tell him to come back.”

  “And subject myself to more boring poetry readings? You must be crazy!”

  She hit a nerve with that one.

  “You’re driving me crazy!” I cried, grabbing two fistfuls of my shoulder-length brown hair and pulling it out by the roots.

  (Well, sort of, anyway. A few strands got caught in my fingernails and came loose from my scalp.) “I’ve had enough of this ridiculous conversation. I’m going back to bed. Lock the door on your way out.” I turned and headed for the stairs.

  “No, Paige!” Abby cried. “Please don’t leave me! I wasn’t kidding before. I feel really, really lonely today, you dig? I don’t know why, but I do. And since Dan is away for the weekend, you must be lonely, too. Can’t we spend the day together? You could come with me to see Gray, then we could have lunch at Louis’, and then we could catch a movie at the Waverly. They’ve got air-conditioning.”

  I’d never known Abby to be so blue. Her shoulders were sagging, her chin was drooping, and every breath she heaved was a hefty, heartbreaking sigh.

  “Could we go to Chock Full instead of Louis’ for lunch?” I asked.

  Her face flashed bright as a sun lamp. “Any place you say, babe!”

  “Okay,” I said, heaving a hefty sigh of my own. “You make us some coffee. I’ll go get dressed.”

  IT WAS A SHORT BUT SIZZLING WALK TO Gray’s apartment. Just ten thirty in the morning and already the temperature had climbed to 97.4 degrees. (At least that’s what Angelo’s outdoor thermometer had shown.) Abby and I were wearing our coolest, lightest street clothes-cotton capris, midriff halter tops, thin-strapped platform sandals-but we were wilting in the humid heat. My naturally wavy hair had curled into something resembling an eagle’s nest.

  “You should have called first,” I said, as we were slogging across Seventh Avenue. “Maybe Gray is still sleeping. Maybe he doesn’t want any visitors. Jeez, he’s probably not even home!” Just call me a cockeyed optimist.

  Abby grunted impatiently. “Knock it off, Paige. If he doesn’t want to see us, or if he’s not there, we can hop over to Washington Square Park and groove to the sights and sounds around the fountain. Jimmy might be there.”

  Oh, great. Just what I want to do. Stand out in the blistering sun and pretend to be di
gging some fey young composer’s new folk song, or-worse-Jimmy Birmingham’s latest incomprehensible opus.

  (The circular rim of the Washington Square Park fountain is, in case you didn’t know, Greenwich Village’s theater-in-the-round. Actually, some would call it the theater of the absurd. All the Village idiots-I mean, artists!-gather there to perform their music, poetry, monologues, or whatever, to a roaming, free-wheeling audience.)

  Hoping that Gray would be at home and receptive to our unannounced appearance (thereby sparing me from the Washington Square fountain festivities), I quickened my pace across Seventh and followed Abby’s lead down Christopher Street. The sooner we could give Gray our congratulations, get to Chock Full, and then to the air-conditioned movie theater, the better.

  Gray lived in a neat four-story brownstone. There were eight apartments in the building, and according to the numbers on the mailboxes in the entryway, Gray resided in 2B. Abby rang the appropriate buzzer, but there was no answer. She rang again. Still no reply.

  “I knew he wouldn’t be home,” I said, with a loud harrumph. “How the devil did I ever let you talk me into this wild goose-”

  Before I could finish my sentence, Abby moved her finger over to the buzzer for 2A and pressed it repeatedly.

  “Go away!” a tinny male voice came over the intercom. “I’m not home. Unless you’re Rock Hudson, that is. Or Montgomery Clift. If you’re Rock or Monty, you can come on up. But be quick about it. I haven’t got all day!” Then, without another word (or any answer from us), he buzzed us in.

  Abby gave me a puzzled but triumphant look, then promptly charged up the stairs to the second floor. I scooted up right behind her. “Gray’s probably in the shower,” she said, heading straight to the door marked 2B. “That’s why he didn’t hear us ringing. I bet he’ll hear me knocking, though!”

  As she raised her balled fist in the air and prepared to begin banging, the door to 2A was pulled wide open. And out stepped one of the oddest-looking men I’d ever seen in my life. He was short, pudgy, uncommonly potbellied, and his thick blond hair was slicked back from his face with gobs of goopy pomade. His pug nose was dotted with freckles and his bulging blue eyes were as big as… well, radishes were the first things that came to mind. And you wouldn’t believe what he was wearing! It was a short, yellow silk kimono with black embroidery and a tasseled sash! On his feet were a pair of black satin slippers. I guessed him to be about forty.