Suddenly I know something is wrong, because at a point where Jeepers says, “I think that’s Timmy now,” the camera pans to an empty doorway and just sits there for one long empty minute. Then another camera picks up Pop Martin, who is obviously departing from the script and faking it with ad libs.
I’ve seen actors throw some very good cover for another cast member who has blown his lines, but this guy is fantastic. Jeepers is doing all right too, and between them they got through to the end of the segment.
I didn’t think any more about it, and switched over to a channel where they have cartoons playing. Cartoons have straight truth in them, if you look for it.
Half an hour later I got the phone call. Jeepers was slightly hysterical and under suspicion of murder. Hush, baby. Rush, Kelly.
They shoot the show live in a refurbished theater on upper First Avenue. All I got from Jeepers was that there was a murder, so I guessed it had to be of Timmy Martin. If you ever met a stage brat, you’d know why. I was wrong. It turned out to be the show’s writer-producer, Walter Powers.
Getting onto the scene of a crime without a badge can be tougher than getting a bank loan without collateral. The blue boy on the front door looked like an old pro at plowing away snow jobs, so I passed him up and hit the side door on 74th Street. The younger cop stationed there swallowed my story when I flashed my AGVA membership card and did five minutes of baloney schtick, then let me in.
Although I came in from the side of the building, I was actually at the back of the operation. Since the show was shot without an audience, the entire floor area was working space, with individual sets parked along the walls. I recognized the Martin living room, the malt shop, Doc Danner’s office. Good old Loganburg, U.S.A. I also recognized a burly guy with a shiny domed head talking with a group of people at the far end of the floor. It was Lieutenant Donald (Bullethead) Jaffee of Homicide, who rates me just below Genghis Khan on his Least Favorite People list.
I know if Jaffee or one of his goons spots me, it will be sidewalk time, so I slip around the back of the sets and head for an iron-grill stairway that leads up a brick wall to a balcony with a half dozen doors opening onto it. I’ve been in enough theaters to know they had to be dressing rooms. Since I didn’t see Jeepers in the small crowd around the lieutenant, I was hoping she was hibernating up here.
I opened the first door and found the room empty. So was the second. On the third try I lucked in. Jeepers was sitting at a dressing table talking to a gray-haired lady (Ann Harding-Fay Bainter-Spring Byington-Take Your Pick Stage-Mother Type). She turned out to be Ginny Owens, Old Ma Martin on the show.
Jeepers is really pouring on the emotion, but the Owens dame is giving her a run for the Emmy. I am dividing by seven to find out which part is actress, which part is for real. Between them I finally found out that Walter Powers, the show’s writer-producer, had been stabbed to death in his office downstairs, either before or during the afternoon show.
“I thought Billy Tibbs was the producer?” I asked them.
“He’s the executive producer, Mr. Kelly. Walt did all the work on ‘River of Life.’ In fact, he owned a piece of the show.”
“Make it ‘Chick,’ Ginny. What happened?”
I let Ginny give me the details because she was making ten percent more sense than her stage niece.
The reason the kid, Timmy Martin (his real name, Tippy Grant), missed his camera cue during the show was because it was he who discovered the body. When he was walking onto the set, he noticed smoke coming from under Powers’ office door, and opened it to find the writer slumped over his desk with a letter opener in his back and a fire blazing in the wastepaper basket.
“So what are you getting excited about, Jeep? You were on camera when Powers got it. You and Pop Martin,” I said, smiling.
“Cal McKittrick,” Ginny told me.
“Okay, McKittrick. I need a program.”
“Not according to that lieutenant.” Jeepers is still pouring it on. “You see, Chick, the opening six minutes of the segment was a tape intercut. It was an introspective, double-image shot, and Walt went for tape to make it easier. Everyone was just wandering around the set at the time the police say he was killed.”
“So anyone could have done it, says dear old Bullethead Jaffee, huh? You didn’t give him a statement, did you?”
“No, he’s talking to the rest of the cast downstairs. Will I have to, Chick?”
“From now on you go into pantomime. You’re mute. I’d suggest the same to you, Ginny, but be your own guide.”
I must remember to close doors behind me — at least I’d have some warning when anybody walks in. In this case I didn’t, and Jaffee nailed me.
“Good God Almighty,” he roars at my back. “Have you been here all the time, Kelly?”
Well, maybe he didn’t nail me. Maybe he dealt me a solid hole card. If by “all this time” he meant before the murder, I had him. If he checked with the cops on the door, he would bounce me out. So I lied, which I do not find difficult, and at times find enjoyable.
“I was visiting Miss Jordan before the show and must have fallen asleep up here. You know, like Goldilocks.”
That got him. The hackles went up on his neck. “Get downstairs with the rest of them!” he shouted.
I was hoping he would leave first, because I had eyes for a pay phone on the wall, and a dime ready to call Ted Summers, my lawyer, but I wasn’t that lucky. Jaffee herded us out like Lassie.
One of his minions, a guy named Coogan, was taking statements, while another played stenographer, and the rest of his merry men dragged crime-lab paraphernalia in and out. I slumped against a green cinderblock wall near a doorway that was getting a lot of official traffic. I assumed it was Powers’, the dead writer’s, office, because a smell of wet charred paper reeked out of it. One of the crime-lab boys was saying, “It couldn’t have been any more than six or seven pages, Lieutenant. There isn’t that much ash. I wish the hell they let it bum out instead of ruining everything with a fire extinguisher.”
“It was a natural reaction, Jim. Can you get anything out of that mess?”
“Snap answer, no, but we’ll give it a try, Lieutenant. Might have to send it to the Bureau in D.C.”
“Don’t, if you can help it. Who needs them? One thing is sure. Whoever gave it to him burned that stuff to cover up. Letters, maybe,” Jaffee said.
“Beats me. You getting anything out there with the cast?”
“It’s an Ipswich clam bed.”
When I heard Jaffee turn, I edged away from the door and mingled with the cast. I spotted Billy Tibbs talking with the woman who plays the Martins’ chowderhead neighbor. He introduced her as Mavis Clark. She nodded to me and wandered away.
“How did you get in here, Chick? This would be a good place to stay away from.”
I looked him straight in the eye, owing to Jeeper’s expanded part. “Because I’m in love.”
Billy’s no dope. He picked it up. “She’s got talent, babe. That’s all I care about.”
“Sure, Billy.”
“Look, Chick, don’t complicate matters. I have enough problems. I decided to up the ratings a couple of weeks ago, and the niece role came up. We were going to change a lot of things, but now — well.”
“What’s with this Walt Powers? Any enemies?”
“I thought you ran a night club?”
“I told you I’ve got a personal interest. I think I’m going to get tossed out of here if a certain patrolman comes in from the 74th Street door and sees me lined up with the suspects, so give me what you can fast.”
Billy Tibbs tilted his head in disbelief. “How do I know, Chick? Lord, a writer is a natural-born enemy of actors. So are producers. Walt happened to be both.”