Which was just when Detective Huggins appeared, as if by magic, and stood by them.
He was there watching as Jane took her warm, teary face from Tobin’s. Watching carefully.
“You told me, Mrs. Dunphy, that you and Tobin here were old friends. I guess I just didn’t know how friendly.”
An eavesdropping uniformed cop smiled to himself. Apparently part of Huggins’s act was to provide snappy patter to keep the interrogations from getting dull.
Jane did just what Huggins wanted her to do. Got flustered. “We’re friends — good friends — we’ve known each other since college — we—”
Huggins held up a hand. “It’s fine. I understand.” He managed to put just the right amount of smirk in his voice. Not enough so you could accuse him of smirking but enough that he annoyed you.
Now he moved closer to Tobin and all of a sudden Tobin knew why he’d disliked the man instantly. Huggins reminded him of Frog Face McGraw, the eighth grade’s most notorious bully. In addition to cracking Tobin across the naked ass with a whip-like towel, in addition to sneaking up behind Tobin and shouting so loudly in his ears that Tobin was literally lifted several inches off the ground, in addition to taking his new Schwinn and “hiding” it until he finally got tired of the gag and gave it back, in addition to all the garden-variety bully numbers, Frog Face had specialized in humiliating guys in front of girls. The longer he looked at Huggins, the more resemblance Tobin saw — this was Frog Face twenty-five years later, a chunky if not quite fat body, sleek dark hair (though beginning to thin), a face that managed to be almost fascinating in an ugly way, and an easy laugh for someone else’s grief. Now, confirming Tobin’s suspicions that he was Frog Face reincarnated, Huggins said, “I thought show-biz people were cutting out all that kissy-face stuff. With all the diseases around.”
“It wasn’t kissy-face,” Jane said, her face exploding into a blush. “We’re...”
Tobin stood up from his chair. Touched her hand. “He’s just trying to rattle us. Don’t give him the satisfaction.”
“You were about to say something, Mrs. Dunphy. You were about to say, ‘We’re...’ I believe you were going to explain your relationship to Tobin here.”
“We’re friends, that’s all I was going to say. We’re friends.”
“I see.” He looked at them and his dark eyes, nearly as shiny as his hair, became ironic again. “Friends. Yes.” Then he said, “There’s a lunchroom downstairs, Mr. Tobin. I wonder if you’d meet me down there in ten minutes.” He indicated the crowd of police officials in the room. “This isn’t a good place to talk.”
Tobin waited for a smart remark. When none came, he said, “Ten minutes. All right.”
Huggins turned to go and then said, “I know what good friends are, Mrs. Dunphy, but I’d really like to talk to Tobin alone.” He smiled. “You can get back to your personal business later tonight.”
She flushed again.
8
10:46 P.M.
“He wasn’t going to sign the contract, was he?”
“Apparently not.”
“And if he didn’t the show wouldn’t be nearly as strong, would it?”
“Maybe it wouldn’t have been.”
“In fact, Mr. Tobin, without him, there might not have been any show at all, would there?”
“I can’t say. It’d be too speculative.”
“And that’s why you hit him last night, wasn’t it?”
“ ‘Hit’ him is too strong. I swung at him. Brushed him, more than anything.”
“And then again tonight — while your show was taping — even then you couldn’t restrain your anger. You got into it again.”
“If you got your facts correct, you’d know he started it.”
“But you didn’t try to stop it. You got down there on the floor and started punching back.”
“I was angry.”
“Obviously.”
“But not angry enough to kill him.”
“Let’s say I give you the benefit of the doubt.”
“Gee, thanks a lot.”
“Understand one thing here, Mr. Tobin. I take shit from only two people — my captain and my wife. You don’t happen to be either of them.”
“All right.”
“So let’s say I give you the benefit of the doubt. Let’s say that last night was a fluke and that tonight was all Dunphy’s fault. Let’s say you’re just a sweet little altar boy wandering around in a world of wolves. Let’s say all these things.”
“All right. Let’s say them.”
“There’s still one thing that bothers me a great deal.”
“What’s that?”
“Jane. His wife.”
“What about her?”
“What about her? Jesus Christ, are you kidding me, what about her?”
“No, I’m not kidding you.”
“The way she was kissing you when I walked up? You’ve got to be kidding me, Mr. Tobin. You’re having an affair with her.”
“No. I’m not.”
“Of course you are, and I’m going to prove it. You ready for a refill?”
When their cups were full again with strong black coffee, they went back to the table in the lunchroom where they’d been sitting and started talking again. Studio people — grips, lighting men, a makeup man or two — drifted in and out, and each of them, whether they got soda pop or coffee or a candy bar, each of them did the same thing.
Stared in a certain special way at Tobin.
A way that seemed to say, You’re a nice guy, my friend, but your ass is grass.
“So here you are sitting quietly in your dressing room, minding your own business, probably rereading the Constitution or something like that, when there’s a knock on your door and gosh darn if it isn’t your old buddy Richard Dunphy, who just happens to have a knife sticking out of his back. Put there, of course, by person or persons unknown.”
“That’s what happened, yes.”
But Huggins kept right on talking. “And then, almost as if he’s trying to get even with you for taking a swing at him the night before, not to mention having some good times with his wife on the sly — he falls through your door and onto your floor just in time for his protégée — a Miss Sarah Nichols — and his manager to step up and find you kneeling over his dead body.”
“That’s the way it happened. Yes.”
“That’s the way it happened? You’re sure?”
“I’m sure.”
Huggins stirred the sugar in his coffee. He’d used several packets of the stuff. He’d torn so many of the things open, he’d probably managed to build up his biceps in the process. “How many movies a year do you think you see?”
“Pardon me?”
“How many movies a year do you think you see?”
“Couple hundred, probably. Why?”
“Well, think about everything you’ve just told me in terms of a movie script.”
“I don’t follow you.”
“Say they based a movie on your alibi — that you were just sitting quietly in your dressing room and Dunphy came through the door — would that make a good movie?”
“Life isn’t like the movies.”
The smirk again. “Apparently not.” Some more stirring. Some more looking around the big plastic room with its lumbering armies of vending machines. Some more nods to police people who went in and out getting coffee for themselves. Then he looked back at Tobin. “Yosemite Sam, huh?”
Tobin frowned. “When I was younger, I was a bit wild.”
“Three wives?”
“Four.”
“You once drove a motorcycle across a midtown-Manhattan bar, right?”
“Right.”
“And you once slugged a critic who called a certain actress ugly, right?”