“You don’t need to tell me.”
Roz Nachman turned off the tape recorder.
6
Soaking wet from running through the heavy rain, Fletch slowed at the top of the outside, sheltered stairs when he recognized Frederick Mooney’s famous profile.
His back to the white, churning Gulf of Mexico, Mooney was sitting alone at a long table on the second floor verandah of a drinks-and-eat place on Bonita Beach. On the table in front of him was a half empty litre bottle. In his hand was a half empty glass.
Fletch ambled to the bar. “Beer,” he said.
“Don’t care which kind?” The bartender had the tight, permanently harrassed look of the retired military.
“Yeah,” Fletch said. “Cold.”
The bartender put a can of cold beer on the bar. “Some rain,” he said.
“Enough.” Fletch popped the lid on the beer can. “Mister Mooney been here long?”
No one else was on the verandah.
“You come to collect him?”
“Yeah.”
“Couple of hours.”
“Has he had much to drink?”
“I don’t know.”
Fletch swallowed some beer. “You don’t know?”
“Drinks out of his own bottle. Carries it with him. Five Star Fundador Cognac. I don’t keep such stuff.”
At Frederick Mooney’s feet was an airlines travel bag.
“You allow that?”
“No. But he tips well. As long as he pays a big rent for the glass, I don’t care. After all, he is Frederick Mooney.”
There was a roll of thunder from the northwest. Rain was blowing into the verandah.
“Does he come here every day?”
“No. I think he hits all the places on the beach.”
“In what kind of shape was he when you rented him the glass?”
“He’d been drinkin’ somewhere else before. Took him ten minutes to get up the stairs. Heard him comin’. Had to help him sit down and then bring his bag over to him.”
The rain spray was passing over Mooney.
“Think of a famous, talented man like that…”
The bartender popped a can of beer for himself.
“You an actor, too?”
“Yeah,” said Fletch. “At this moment.”
“I mean, you’ve come from the film crew, and all, to pick him up. What films you ever been in?”
“Song of The South,” Fletch said. “You ever see it?”
“That the one with Elizabeth Taylor?”
“No,” said Fletch. “Maud Adams.”
“Oh, yeah. I remember.”
“He ever talk to anybody?” Fletch asked, nodding to Mooney.
“Oh, yeah, he’s friendly. He talks to everybody. Usually the old ladies are six deep around him. Young people, too. Mostly he recites lines. Sometimes he gets loud.”
“Good for business though, huh?”
“Sure.”
“A traveling tourist attraction.”
“You’d think he’d be livin’ on the Riviera, or something. Superstar like that. He’s a lonely man.”
“All the wrong people live on the Riviera.”
Fletch walked over and stood at the edge of Mooney’s table.
Mooney did not look up.
Lightning flashed in the north sky.
“Your daughter sent me for you, Mister Mooney.”
Mooney still did not look up. He was breathing rapidly, shallowly. Spray was lightly in his hair and on his shirt.
Suddenly, the great voice came out of this hunched over man, not loud, but with the compel ling vibrato of an awfully good cello played by an awfully good musician.
“No, no, no, no.” He looked up at Fletch. He spoke companionably. “Come, let’s away to prison. We two alone will sing like birds i’ the cage. When thou dost ask me blessing, I’ll kneel down, and ask of thee forgiveness.”
Fletch sat across from him at the empty table.
“So we’ll live, and pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh at gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues talk of court news; and we’ll talk with them, too: who loses and who wins, who’s in, who’s out; and take upon’s the mystery of things, as if we were God’s spies; and we’ll wear out, in a wall’d prison, packs and sects of great ones that ebb and flow by the moon.”
Mooney, palm outward, passed his hand between the stormy sky and his face, turning his head as he did so, finally fixing Fletch with a mad stare. Mooney looked utterly insane.
“Jeez.”
Terror, horror had skittered up Fletch’s spine. He gulped beer and took a breath.
“Actually…” Fletch cleared his throat. To his own ears his voice sounded like a flute played in a tin box. “I saw you in King Lear once. As an undergraduate. In Chicago. Not so long ago.”
Mooney’s face turned puckish. “Only once?” he asked.
“Only once. I had to sell my portable radio to afford that once.”
“Lear,” said Mooney. “The role Charles Lamb said could not be acted.”
Fletch raised his beer can. “Nuts to Charles Lamb.”
The hand that reached for the glass of cognac shook badly. “Nuts to Charles Lamb.”
They drank.
“Do you act?” Mooney asked.
“No.”
“What?” Mooney asked. “Not even badly?”
“There’s been some trouble,” Fletch said slowly, carefully. “On location. Someone’s been stabbed.”
Mooney’s eyes were half-closed. Again his breath was coming in short, shallow strokes.
“There’s been a murder,” Fletch said.
Mooney sat back. He looked around, at the bar, at the verandah’s roof, at the storm outside. His eyes were huge, with huge pupils, dark brown and wide set. Together they were the tragi-comic masks, each capable of holding a different expression simultaneously, one sombre, sad, emotional, the other, objective, thinking. Looking at him closely, Fletch wondered if one eye might actually be lower in the man’s head than the other. He wondered if it was an actor’s trick or an accident of birth. He wondered if it was an expression of the man’s personality.
Mooney said, “Do not abuse me.”
“Did you hear me? There’s been a murder.”
“I gather Marilyn is all right.”
“Marilyn? Yes. She’s okay. But she was sitting next to the victim when he was stabbed.”
“And who was the victim?”
“Steven Peterman.”
Mooney frowned. He scratched his gray, grizzly hair.
“Your daughter’s manager, producer, whatever.”
Mooney nodded.
“They were taping The Dan Buckley Show. In the middle of Midsummer Night’s Madness location.”
“Not a play within a play,” commented Mooney, “but a stage within a stage.”
“Within a stage,” added Fletch. “Because the press was there, too, taking videotapes and still photographs.”
“And no live audience.”
“Not much of a one.”
“How removed our art has become. No longer do we perform for the groundlings. For human beings we must distract from playing blackjacks in the dirt. No longer for the Dress Circle or The Balcony. But for banks and banks of cameras.” Mooney leaned forward, picked up his glass and chuckled. “For the banks. Peterkin?”
“Peterman. Steven Peterman.”
“Peterman was in camera.” Mooney drained his glass. His eyes glazed. They crossed, slightly. He reached for the bottle with a very shakey hand. “Do you know the expression?”
“The thing is, Moxie’s waiting for us.”
“We’ll just have a drink together, you and I. Talk of who’s in and who’s out. Get yourself a drink.”