The word hung in the air, explosive, thunderous. Suddenly he looked down at his hands, his expression troubled. I followed his eyes and saw a tremor in his right hand, a movement he tried to squelch by covering it with his left hand. He looked perplexed, as if he couldn’t believe his body operated independently of his brain.
“Preposterous!” A hiss. “I won’t sit here and take this.”
Frank glared. “Of course, you will.” The tenderness he’d showed Tony was gone now, the old spitfire back.
Ethan twisted his head slowly toward Frank, and I saw what I suspected these last few days, in bits and pieces: a fierce and massive dislike for the famous singer. I swear a sneer escaped from those tight, thin lips, and for a moment I envisioned Pete on the showboat, the vicious crew hand in love with Julie, whose love is unrequited and who turns her in to the sheriff. The dark melodramatic villain the audience rightly hissed. Ethan and Pete, two men at a moment of devastating reckoning.
Frank looked at me. “Prove it, Edna.”
Ethan, in that split second, must have believed he had an ally in his old friend, Lenny’s blood brother, because he nervously smiled at Frank. Prove it, lady.
“I shall,” I trumpeted, but paused, collecting my thoughts.
“Go ahead,” Ethan snarled.
“Timing,” I repeated. “Ava prompted me to revisit the night Max died, especially what happened at the Paradise. That got me thinking about the night before-the disastrous dinner at Don the Beachcomber, the night Frank here”-I nodded at him-“got a little drunk, resented Max’s idle flirtation with Ava, then hit him. Frank notoriously threatened to kill Max, a public declaration I gather he’s in the habit of making, unfortunately”-Frank winced-“but so be it. The following day the tabloids ran with it-Frank’s threat to commit murder. Timing. The next night Max was, indeed, murdered. The rumors grow, alarming Ava but not Frank…at first. Not until the cops took him in for questioning. It’s logical to suspect Frank, especially with his hair-trigger temper and his overweening arrogance.”
I glanced at Frank who had pulled his lips together, frowning. “Thank you, Edna.”
“You’re quite welcome.”
“Christ,” Ethan muttered, “This is…”
“Just a second,” I went on. “Someone wanting Max dead might see this as an ideal time, especially someone who’s harbored a long-standing, festering grudge that probably turned into outright hatred. Timing. It was also convenient that Max had become the poster boy for the blacklist, his name bandied about in the columns, the hate mail arriving on his doorstep. Even death threats. No one took such threats seriously, the product of loose cannons, crackpots.”
“Crackpots,” Ethan echoed me.
“But Max’s murder would not surprise some folks. Max was obsessed with the blacklist-he and Sol Remnick spent long hours talking about it. Sol made an interesting observation before he died. The so-called-patriots don’t murder; they torment, they deprive folks of income and reputation. Their cruel and unusual punishment is slow and deliberate. Desmond Peake, a leader in America First, got me to believe this, too. For all their absurdity and their misguided patriotism, his group believes in redemption, admittedly after coercion and appropriate public humiliation.”
“Max was a Commie,” Ethan seethed.
“No, he wasn’t. And you know it, Ethan. When you said that one night, it made me wonder. You pride yourself on logic, precision, all the orderly trimmings you’ve manufactured for living your own life. Everything in its place. Regimented truth. So that remark made no sense. You knew better, though you’d like others to believe Max courted his own death.”
“So how did I do it?” Cocky, he threw back his head.
“Just a minute. This is my script now, my storyboard. You’re a man who prides himself on control, but that wasn’t always the case. A drinker, a wife-beater, you reformed yourself, true, something that must have taken inordinate discipline. Severe, authoritative-a life lived with rigidity. Why? I wondered. Why so keen a transformation? Because, I suppose, you burned with a deep-seated anger, a desire for vengeance.”
Tony made a blubbering noise, and for a second we all stared at him.
I went on. “It was clear the other night when you and Tony fell apart at Ava’s house-you resent Frank and his success. It should be your success. Tony told us your comment about Adam and Ava-how they don’t deserve what they’ve worked for. I listened to a man who is craven, bitter, seething. And thus dangerous.”
“Your scenario is missing some elements.” He gave out a false laugh. “Missing pieces.”
“Circumstantial? You bet, Ethan. So far. But you resented your own failure. That’s your word: failure. It burned you, ate you up. Ava and Frank, success, money, cynosures whose lives are documented in the magazines. Hollywood, the land of dreams and money and fame-it all eluded you. So close…but gone. Fame, power, money-they eluded you. And with Frank now disappearing from both your lives, you despaired. Hence the business of heading back to New Jersey. That’s admitting failure, no? Back to staring faces, folks who’d point and remember the boy who left to meet his dreams.”
Tony started to say something but stopped when Ethan shot him a look.
“To you, Max was the instrument of that failure. Tony’s career was over. But yours never started. That script you gave Max-the one you’ve mocked and played down and cavalierly dismissed-it was the touchstone of your failure. In Max’s journal today I found his summary of your final conversation, a description of how you fell apart, weeping, a little drunk then, when Max told you it was worthless. You blamed him, irrationally-then Hollywood, then, bizarrely, Frank. Three lines stayed with me. ‘I have to do it for Lenny. He won’t like it if I’m a failure.’ Awful words. Max told you to get out and what did you say. ‘I’ll be back, Max.’ An innocent enough threat, idle, but one you took seriously. You did go back.”
“Crazy lady.” Tony was sweating.
“You believed in the puerile script you peddled, sadly. It was your ticket to your name in lights. After Max’s rejection, you played it down-mocked it with Lorena. But inside you seethed. Max squelched your most important dream. You were left with a penny-ante job and a life on the fringe of Frank’s glory.”
A whine, high and thin. “I make money in real estate…”
“Then Lenny died, the catastrophic event in all your lives, and you accused Alice of murder. That became your mantra. Alice the black widow. You let Tony believe she’d taken all the fortune Lenny bragged about, but you, the numbers man who probably laundered cash for his brother, knew there was little left after the government stepped in. But it served your purpose to let Tony believe and whine and spout his nonsense. Because, frankly, at that moment you made a decision: you stopped drinking and like the Iago character you sometimes quote, you plotted revenge. Or maybe it solidified when Alice married Max-the ultimate indignity. Max, the man who single-handedly killed your dream of fame and fortune. It all comes together, no?”
Ethan opened his mouth but nothing came out.
“You also decided to make Tony your unwitting dupe. The genial comic, plodding, a little funny, the social drinker, a soft-hearted soul though not so dumb as everyone thinks he is-he became your tool. You whispered murder in his ear. Words like betrayal, dishonor, family. And Tony fell apart, losing himself, gaining weight, losing jobs, a binge drinker. I don’t think you thought he’d get so out of control, and it might have scared you-this dissolution so quickly. So you coddled him, sheltering him at the Paradise where he could get plastered and not bother a soul. Except maybe Liz, who still cared for the young man she remembered fondly.”
Tony started to say something, but stopped.