“Like I said, after ten minutes we knocked on the front door. Mick answered. He had a beer in his hand and he had this complacent smirk on his face-every guy in the universe knows that look.”
“So does every woman, you jackass.”
“Maybe, but like I said, a guy always knows. So Mick gives us both this look like I ain’t feeling no pain and you schmucks are and offers us a beer. Then Marci comes out and she’s all chirpy, got this flush on her cheeks. John tells Marci he’d like to speak to her and you know what? She looks at Mick, silently asking him what to do. He gives her a little nod, hands her his beer can, stretches, and tells us he’ll be leaving us to it and out the door he goes.”
“Don’t tell me he was whistling.”
“Could have been. So John asks Marci how long she’s been seeing Mick, you know, he’s trying to ease into it, but she sings right out that it’s been a week now and he’s made her feel so much better about things. How after Jason’s murder he was such a comfort to her, but now-she stops talking and stands there and glows. And John and I are thinking about how she’s certainly made old Mick feel better.”
“I’m sorry, Jack, but I have to say it. That’s incredibly tacky. Her husband was murdered such a short time ago.”
“Not to mention her dad. We asked her about who could have killed her father, asked her whether she or her mother had visited the Goddard Bay Inn. She claimed she didn’t know a thing, that her mother adored her father and wouldn’t ever have hurt him, that she was devastated. Meanwhile, she’s still glowing. Then a yapping dog comes racing into the living room and she gets all kissy-face with it. She says she’s devastated too and she’s so grateful to Mick for helping her get through this nightmare. When I ask her how long Mick’s been on the scene, she loses her glow and gets all huffy. She claims she was never unfaithful to Jason-what a horrible thing that would be for us to think-particularly since Jason was Mick’s younger brother. Anyway, that’s all that’s happened up here. I know you want more details, Mary Lisa, but I’m a cop and all those little details are privileged info. Hey, I’m glad you called. Do you think you can go to sleep now?”
“I sure hope so. Hey, I’m nearly nodding off into the phone.”
He laughed. “Sure you are.”
“Thanks for getting my mind off my own troubles. Did I ever tell you I think you’re a good man? Good night, Jack.” She disconnected, pleased she’d managed not to ask him if he was wearing pajamas.
FORTY-EIGHT
Chris Noth played Lucky on As the World Turns before his role on Law & Order.
BORN TO BE WILD
Sunday Cavendish walks into her grandfather’s library, past paneled bookshelves filled with books, dark leather furniture, and thick draperies. It’s old-money rich, understated and elegant.
“Hello, Grandfather.”
Nelson Blakeney Cavendish II, eighty-one years old, looking frail but with a lovely head of white hair, is sitting in a big leather chair reading the newspaper. He looks up, nods.
She walks to the leather chair opposite him and sits down. “My father is in town.”
She watches him closely as she says it. Slowly, he folds the newspaper and lays it on his lap. “Your mother told me.” He shrugs. “What does he want?”
“I don’t know, he hasn’t told me. I understand that Grandmother eavesdropped on your conversation with him twenty-seven years ago, that you tried to kill him with a gun but he took it away from you.”
The old man doesn’t hesitate, shrugs. “I’m glad he did. It would have been difficult to keep his death by gunshot out of the papers and behind the doors in the D.A.’s office.”
“Difficult even for you?”
“Yes, even for me. Not impossible, I would probably have managed it, since I was the one who put the D.A. in office in the first place and the last thing he’d ever want to do is embarrass me.”
“Grandmother said my father accused you of breaking the law-extortion, stock manipulations-business as usual?”
“Your grandmother was always a fanciful woman.”
“Then why is it you never call me by my name?”
He stares at her a long moment. Finally he says, “It’s a ridiculous name given to you by a pompous, hypocritical charlatan who has done nothing in his life but swindle people out of their money with the idiotic promise of setting them on the path to eternal life. It makes me sick, always has.”
“Me as well,” Sunday says.
He looks surprised.
“The thing is, I’m not at all sure my father is a charlatan. Have you ever watched him on TV?”
Her grandfather looks disgusted. “Oh, he’s a good actor, I know that. He has an oily charm that appeals to gullible people. Don’t let him draw you in because that’s why he’s come back-to draw you in, to make you believe all of us were wrong about him.”
“That’s certainly possible,” Sunday says. “Was it true? Did you cheat people? Break laws? Ruin lives?”
He gives a scratchy laugh. “You, of all people, ask me that? You know as well as I do that power, no matter how wisely used, can have bad consequences, for some. When elephants fight, the grass suffers, as they say. You do it yourself every day. Have you done a head count of the people you’ve hurt with your company policies? Your buyouts? You don’t think much about who gets hurt, do you? Of course not. Your mother never did either. She enjoyed having power, until you managed to take it from her. Are you honest enough to admit it? Tough enough?”
She looks at him steadily. “You wanted to kill your own son-in-law because he stood up to you?”
She waits a moment, but he doesn’t answer her.
“Why did you react so violently to what he said to you?”
“You’re like a damned lawyer. You don’t answer a question, you ask another one. Your mother trained you well.”
“My mother never trained me at all. What she did was send me out of the country. Or was it you who did that? You who saw to it that I, the hypocrite’s seed, was removed from your sight?”
He sips a glass of water from the carafe at his side. He sets the glass down, looks at her thoughtfully. “Self-pity doesn’t suit you, it hangs better on Susan. Maybe it was good for your character that your mother cut you loose-very well, that we cut you loose. Yes, I was the one who insisted I wanted you gone.” He snaps his fingers in her face. “Gone.”
She is stiff with pain, but she tries not to show it. She’s known how he felt, but hasn’t ever admitted it, never asked him or her mother. She stares at him. She smiles. “Why then, thank you, Grandfather.”
“You’re good. Very good. You would have made an excellent lawyer.”
She draws a breath, shrugs. “Think of it as part of your heritage, Grandfather-and his.”
Her grandfather looks at her broodingly-
“Clear!”
The last scene. A relief. Once out of her makeup, back into jeans and a T-shirt, Mary Lisa walked out of the studio into the bright late afternoon sunlight. She rummaged in her purse for her sunglasses. There were people from the studio scattered around her. She raised her face to the sun, smiled. She’d wait for Lou Lou right there.
But then she heard Lou Lou yelling her name. She heard a scream, and then the rumble of a motorcycle. It was close, coming closer. It was jumping the curb, roaring louder than a rocket now, coming straight at her.
FORTY-NINE
The last network radio soap opera went off the air in November 1960.
It happened in an instant. Jeff Renfrew shoved her back against the door, and the bike skidded sharply away, tires screeching, engine revving. Jeff leaped forward, and threw a hard punch, hitting the rider against his shoulder. The bike jerked and skidded some more, but the man in the black helmet managed to stay on and keep the bike upright. He turned on a dime and took off, bounced over the curb and wove back between two cars, horns honking all around him, curses filling the air. Jeff raced after him and cut him off before he could pick up speed. He kicked the back tire, but the guy managed to pull in front of a car, blocking him off. Jeff stepped back, watched the bike speed up, and knew he couldn’t catch the guy now. He trotted back to Mary Lisa.