Chapter One
Mike Fright
Kay Winters walked up to the microphone as if she were afraid of it, deathly afraid. The engineer, all but hidden behind a panel of flashing red-and-green-colored lights, suddenly stopped playing with a couple of dozen little knobs and dials and held up three stiff fingers.
“Three minutes, Kay,” he warned and pointed at the clock high on the wall of the lounge.
She nodded as if she weren’t sure and glanced nervously at its neon-lighted face, her strangely-dilated eyes almost revealing the all-consuming fear that she felt sweep over her.
For two years she’d been doing this. Every night at midnight for two years she had sat behind that same microphone in the Shell-Aire Cocktail Lounge, and every night when the man at the controls said “Three minutes, Kay,” she’d felt those same cruel little pinchings of fright gnawing viciously at her insides.
Usually she’d swallow hard and try to make the muscles of her stomach good and tight, and then when she heard her familiar theme music on the turntable and the engineer opened up her mike, she’d say:
“Happy midnight, everybody. This is Kay Winters, your girl disc-jockey...”
That’s when the mike fright always went away. But tonight she knew it wouldn’t. Because tonight it wasn’t mike fright. The cold fear that was stabbing deep into her quivering insides was murder — cold, calculated, murder. And Kay Winters knew that she was to be its victim...
Charlie Walp, the program producer, leaned down from the platform and took her small hands in his.
“Easy does it, doll,” droned his smooth voice oiled by the years on Broadway.
As she went up the two steep steps that were the difference between performer and audience, Charlie’s fingers touched the soft fur of his reddish-brown mustache and there was a surprised look on his tired face.
“Like ice, your hands. What’s it, doll? You got that mike fright again?”
“Still,” she said, and she tried a nervous little laugh that didn’t quite come off. “I’ll be all right, Charlie.”
“Sure, sure.” he patted the soft whiteness of her bare shoulder, his palm moist and spongy; then he turned and walked away.
Kay shivered. He mustn’t know; nobody must know about her fear.
She slid in behind the microphone and sat down at the hideous gold thing that was Nat Peters’ idea of a “classy” desk. Nat was the owner of the Shell-Aire and he’d had the gilded monstrosity especially made for her opening. Kay had wanted to throw it out the first time she’d seen it, but it was a present from Nat and she couldn’t hurt his feelings that way, so she kept it and hated it. For two years she had hated it.
The engineer adjusted the headphones on his ears, touched a button, and the turntable started to spin with the sound of her recorded theme music. As a soft white spotlight hit her, the nervous jabbering at the tables on the floor slowed down and came to a halt. Then there was just the clinking of glasses and her theme. By the time Charlie threw her the On Air cue with his finger, they were listening intently and watching expectantly. The waiters stopped what they were doing and watched. Everybody watched.
In the rear of the room a white-jacketed bartender, his mouth partly open, leaned his portly middle against the black and gold wood of the bar. He paused momentarily, the filled shaker he held stiffly reflecting hundreds of bright facets of light from its frosted chromium surface.
“Happy midnight, everybody,” Kay’s warm vibrant voice said into the mike and they all smiled at her. “This is Kay Winters, your girl disc-jockey, speaking to you from the beautiful lounge of the Shell-Aire Restaurant.”
It was just like always then, with them sitting there in the subdued informal lights of their table-lamps watching the blonde beauty of young Kay Winters doing her nightly stint as if she weren’t going to die... as if she didn’t know for sure she was going to die!
In between records someone sent a note up to the desk and she read it cautiously. She was afraid of notes now. As long as she lived she would be afraid of notes. She put her fear back in her throat and said:
“Thanks for the nice things you say about me, Joe Greene.” She glanced quickly at the piece of paper she held in her hand as if she couldn’t quite remember what it said. “A benefit at the Hippodrome Wednesday? I’ll be glad to, Joe.” Her smile was sweet and sure. She hadn’t missed a benefit yet. She wondered if she would have to miss this one...
She looked past the mike into the dozens of staring eyes, and she felt her throat closing up again. Why had she accepted that Wednesday charity date as if she expected to be there? Didn’t she know she couldn’t make it — would never make anything again?
Suddenly she wanted to scream — she knew she was going to scream. She tried to but she couldn’t. Her voice — where was her voice? What had happened to her voice?
They were looking at her, then, all of them down there on the floor; they were looking at her, staring at her. Her friends, her well-wishers, the regulars who came just to hear her, the transients... and, of course the killer!
She searched their faces frantically. Who was it? For heaven’s sake, which one was the killer? The pink and white blobs at the tables had eyes; they all had eyes, and they were watching her curiously. Why didn’t she say something?
She could make out Sue sitting there. She was smiling as if to reassure her. Go ahead, Kay, go on, you’ll be all right, go on! Why was Sue grinning like that? Why?
Good old Sue. Not every gal was lucky enough to have a manager like Sue Grinnell. She remembered way back two years ago when they had started together. Two long years ago. Two years...
“Look, Mr. Peters,” Sue had said. “This is something different, believe me.”
“So what’s different? A plain ordinary disc-jockey?”
He sounded only mildly interested and Kay was scared. She’d already quit her job as the only woman announcer on the small 250-watt station up in the Bronx. Sue had done that to her. She had told her that there was no future in being a gal announcer. It had meant coffee and cake to the beautiful blonde for six months, so Kay had been skeptical.
“Have you a better idea?” she asked.
The redhead had — and that’s why Kay was sitting there in Nat Peters’ office, scared because he didn’t sound as coked up as he should have been over Sue’s idea.
Sue Grinnell slapped the desk as if she were sore at it.
“A girl disc-jockey, Mr. Peters, from a restaurant every night. Your restaurant, Mr. Peters. It’s new. It’s never been done before. It’ll be the talk of New York.”
The pudgy restaurateur rubbed the tip of his bulbous nose with his broad thumb. “So what’ll it cost?” he asked cautiously.
Kay felt the muscles in the pit of her stomach do a strip tease and she wanted to yell that she’d work for peanuts, but she said nothing. Sue was doing the talking. Only Sue didn’t appear to hear what Nat Peters said.
“Well pack them in, Mr. Peters.”
“Yeah?”
“We’ll get the after-theater crowd and make it a habit. It’ll be like dope, Mr. Peters. They won’t be able to stay away. Kay Winters will make your restaurant a meeting place for all of Broadway.”
“So, how much?”
Sue leaned back in the large red leather chair as though she’d just finished a heavy meal. The huge chair looked two sizes too big for her — so did her grin.
“Well?” prodded Peters anxiously.
“Line charges, Mr. Peters,” she told him.
Kay licked her dry lips and he echoed, “Line charges?”