“Someone familiar with Romance,” she said.
“Someone familiar with romance, did you say?”
“Romance. The play we’re rehearsing.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because what happened in that alley also happens in the play.
Carella could now see the subhead on the story:
Now they wanted to know all about the scene in the play, and who else was in the play, and who had written it, and who was directing it, and when it would be opening here, and whether there were plans for moving it down-town, the cameras clicking, the reporters tirelessly questioning her while a black nurse fluttered about the bed telling them they mustn’t exhaust her, didn’t they realize the poor woman had been stabbed?
A man wearing a maroon sports shirt open at the throat, a gray sports jacket, and darker gray trousers rushed into the room, went immediately to the bed, took Michelle’s hands in his own and said, “Michelle, my God, what happened? I just heard the news! Who did this to you? My God, why you?”
The reporters asked him who he was, and he introduced himself as Johnny Milton, Michelle’s theatrical agent, and handed cards to both of them, and said he’d heard the news a few minutes ago, and rushed right over. Somewhat imperiously, he asked who the two men in the suits at the back of the room were, didn’t they realize a woman had been stabbed here?
“We’re the police,” Carella said quietly, and showed the agent his shield.
“Hello, Detective Kling,” Michelle said from the bed, waggling her fingers at him.
And suddenly all reportorial attention was on Kling, the two journalists wanting to know how he happened to know the victim, and then soliciting from Michelle herself the fact that she’d reported the threatening calls to Kling at approximately four-fifteen that afternoon, before she went back to rehearsal.
“Got any leads yet, Detective Kling?” one of the reporters asked.
“None,” Carella said. “In fact, if you’ve got everything you need, we’d like to talk to Miss Cassidy now, if you don’t mind.”
“He’s right, boys,” her agent said. “Thanks for coming up, but she needs some rest now.”
One of the photographers asked Michelle if she would mind one last picture, and when she said, “Okay, but I’m really very tired,” he asked if she would mind lowering the gown off her left shoulder to show the bandaged wound, which she did in a demure and ladylike manner, while simultaneously managing to show a little bit of cleavage.
The moment everyone was gone, Kling asked, “Was the man who stabbed you white, black, Hispanic or Asian?”
The black nurse seemed about to take offense, but then Michelle said, “White.”
At nine that night, Ashley Kendall was still rehearsing his cast, but instead of Michelle up there playing the Actress, her understudy was filling in for her. Kendall hated Corbin’s pretentious naming — or non-naming — of the characters in his play. Right now, he was rehearsing the Actress’s under-study, who happened to be an actress named Josie Beales, but on the same stage with her was an actress named Andrea Packer, who was playing the character named the Under-study, although her understudy was an actress named Helen Frears. It could get confusing if you weren’t paying attention.
Josie was twenty-one, with strawberry-blond hair that was only a timid echo of Michelle’s fiercer tresses. But she was taller than Michelle, and less cumbersomely endowed, and therefore moved more elegantly. In Kendall’s opinion, she was also a far better actress than Michelle. In fact, he’d wanted to cast her as the Actress, but had been outvoted by Mr. Frederick Peter Corbin III. So now Miss Tits had the leading role, and Josie was a mere understudy who moved furniture and props and played a variety of non-speaking roles. Such was the tyranny of playwrights. Josie hadn’t expected to be here tonight. She’d been interrupted at home, eating dinner — actually a container of yogurt and a banana — and watching Love Connection in her bathrobe, when the stage manager called to say, “You’re on, babe.” She’d thrown on a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt and rushed right over. Now she waited with the other actors for the rehearsal to resume.
Kendall supposed he could have called off the rehearsal, but Michelle’s earlier behavior and stormy departure had left the other actors feeling confused and miserable. Besides, he was grateful for the opportunity to run through the scenes with an accomplished and disciplined young woman like Josie standing in, and without Mr. Moneybags Morgenstern sitting by witnessing a tantrum. The producer was gone now. In his stead in the sixth row center sat the exalted playwright himself, who had been home earlier today rewriting some lines that were troubling him, when he should have been rewriting three or four scenes that were troubling Kendall. Or maybe even the whole damn play, for that matter.
Everyone in the theater already knew that their “shtar” had been stabbed in the alley outside and taken to Morehouse General. Chuck Madden, the show’s stage manager, had called there a few minutes ago. Now he leaned into the sixth row, and informed Kendall and Corbin that some blue-haired volunteer had told him Miss Cassidy’s condition was stable and that she’d be released from the hospital some-time later tonight.
“Thank you, Chuck,” Kendall said, and rose and said, “People?”
The actors chatting onstage, waiting for things to start, turned and squinted out into the darkened theater.
“I know you’ll all be delighted to learn that Michelle’s okay,” Kendall said. “She’ll be going home tonight, in fact.”
“Terrific,” someone said without enthusiasm.
“Who did it, do they know?” someone else asked.
“I have no information on that,” Kendall said.
“Not germane, anyway,” someone else said.
“I heard that, Jerry!”
“Sorry, boss!”
“Chuck? Are you back there yet?”
“Yes, sir!”
Chuck Madden sprang out onto the stage as if he’d almost missed a cue. He was wearing high-topped workman’s boots, a rolled, blue woolen watch cap, and painter’s coveralls that partially showed his bare chest and muscular arms. He was twenty-six years old, some six feet tall, with chestnut-colored hair and brown eyes. He shielded those eyes now and peered out toward the sixth row of the theater.
“Do you think you can do something with the lights when she comes out of the restaurant?” Kendall asked.
“Like what’d you have in mind?”
“It’s supposed to be dark, the stabber is supposed to come out of the shadows. We’ve got Jerry popping out with the lights up full…”
“Yeah, give me some atmosphere,” Jerry said.
“I know this is far too early to be discussing lighting…”
“No, no, what’d you want?”
“Can you give me a slow fade as she makes her cross?
So that the stage is almost black when Jerry comes at her?”
“I like it, I like it,” Jerry said.
“Let me talk to Kurt, see what he…”
“I heard it,” the electrician called. “You’ve got it.”
“Start the fade just as she comes through the door,” Kendall said.
“Got it.”
“People? Shall we try it?”
“Uno más,” Chuck said. “From the scene at the table.”
Corbin had constructed his play in an entirely predictable manner. Once you recognized that there’d be a short quiet scene followed by a yet shorter scene intended to shock, and then a lengthy discourse on the shocker, you pretty much had the pattern of the play. As a result, there were no surprises at all; Corbin had given birth to a succession of triplets, most of them malformed.