“Tell him his mother wants him.”
“Okay.” Archie hung up the phone. “Your mother wants you,” he told Valenti.
“Mama? What’s the matter?” He looked worried.
“Maybe she’s having a heart attack,” Archie suggested vindictively.
“That’s not funny! I oughta punch you right in the--”
“Knock it off, Valenti!” The detective in charge cut the patrolman short.
“J. P.! J. P.!” One of the business tycoons bulled his way into the room. Some of the other barons of commerce followed in his wake. “This is outrageous!” The lead muckymuck’s face was livid. “Invasion of privacy!” he sputtered. “They’re taking our pictures! Scandal! Can’t afford to be mixed up in-"
J. P. Jones ignored him. He was busy with another aspect of the confusion. “. . . and I want this man arrested for extortion immediately!” he was insisting to one of the officers. He pointed a shaking finger at Howard Kupp. “I am prepared to prefer charges of blackmail against him! The evidence is right there on the table!"
Two of the reporters raced for the table and seized the pictures. “Wow!” the first said. “It’s the Jones kid en flagrante!"
“Page one for the morning edition,” the second reporter enthused.
“The broad with him’s kind of over the hill,” the first remarked, studying one of the pictures.
“Watch that kind of talk!” Howard Kupp said indignantly. “That’s my wife!”
“Put those pictures down!” J. P. demanded. “They’re private property! "
“Those your kids, too?” the first reporter asked Howard Kupp, pointing to one of the pictures.
Howard peered over his shoulder. “Yeah.”
“Cute kids.”
“Yeah.” Howard puffed up a little with pride.
“I have to tell you that you are entitled to have legal counsel present and that anything you say may be held against you,” the head detective was informing Archie.
“Hey, Inspector,” one of the cops called from the doorway. “Look what I found.” He pushed Vito into view, holding the little man gingerly by the neck of his jacket as if he was a particularly rancid dead fish.
“Well, well,” the inspector stared with distaste at Vito. “Aren’t you out of your territory?”
“Caught him red-handed, too,” the cop holding Vito boasted. “Got him just as he was accepting money from two fish. Joe! ” he called to a cop outside. “Bring the suckers in here.”
Another policeman, holding onto each of their arms, propelled Strom Huntley and Professor Albert Stynestein into the room.
“Officer, you’ve leaped to a conclusion on the basis of inadequate observation,” Stynestein was protesting. “The empiricism of your entire methodology is so questionable as to render it unscientific! ”
“Communist infiltration in the police department,” Huntley was muttering. “I’m being framed to embarrass the government. The CIA shall demand a Congressional investigation! ”
“That’ll be a switch,” a photographer hooted as he snapped a picture of the trio.
“Brought one of his girls with him, too,” the cop gripping Vito added to the inspector. “Caught him red-handed describing to these two how she was going to entertain them.” He stood aside to let a cop hustle Melanie into the room.
“Y’all don’ have to push!” she was complaining.
“Police brutality! " Quentin brought up the rear.
“Let me go! Take your hands off me!” Carlotta was indignant as yet another policeman escorted her none too gently onto the scene.
“I think I got the madam! ” he announced proudly to the Inspector.
“What are you doing?” J. P. raged. “That’s my wife!”
“For Pete’s sake, you guys,” the inspector reminded them, “this isn’t a vice raid. We’re here to pick up this kid for homicide. You’re on the homicide squad, remember?”
“The vice squad is more fun!” The cop holding Carlotta released her and poured.
“I demand ta see my attoiney!” Vito said loudly.
“Tell them I’m innocent,” Archie insisted to Storm Huntley.
“One of the first rules of being a CIA man,” Huntley observed to the room at large, “is that one swallows one’s cyanide tablet before involving the parent organization.”
“I’m not a CIA man,” Archie reminded him. “And I don’t have a cyanide tablet.”
“Would you like to borrow mine?”
“No, thanks.”
“This heah ofiicah is bruisin’ mah titties,” Melanie complained.
“Let her go,” the inspector commanded.
Abashed, the cop withdrew his hands from Melanie’s bodice and released her. She backed off, stumbling into the not-unwilling grasp of one of the tycoons. Just as his hand fastened over her left breast, a photographer snapped their picture.
“J. P.!” the tycoon wailed. “We've got to get that photo before my wife sees it! ”
“My wife’s a member of the D.A.R.!” another chimed in. “A scandal like this might result in her being drummed out. She’ll leave me! Do something, J. P.!”
“Gentlemen! Gentlemen!” J. P. Jones tried to calm them.
But before he could continue, another element was added to the melee. A theatrical young man with long blond hair and suspicious hips bounced into the room. “The morning papers, everybody,” he announced. “The reviews are in.”
A well-known and aging matinee idol was right behind him. “Let me see them! ” he demanded.
“Me first!” The equally well-known actress who was his leading lady in the show which had just opened snatched some of the papers from the blond young man.
“I wrote the bloody thing! I should get first crack at the reviews!" A snarling Englishman in tweeds grabbed them away from the leading lady.
“Ooh! What does it say about me?” The ingenue of the show hung over the author’s shoulder.
“Look out!” A hungry—looking Balkan type elbowed her aside. “I want to see what it says about the direction.”
“The Times says your heavy hand was unmistakable,” the author told the director smugly.
“Kerr points out that there isn’t much that even the most competent actors can do with such unbelievable dialogue,” the leading lady told the author.
“And he also says that your portrayal of a woman in love was too geriatric to be believable,” the author stabbed back.
“The News said you kissed with more suction than sex,” the leading man informed the ingenue.
“Is that so?” She peered over his shoulder and read farther down. “And they also suggest that it's time for you to retire gracefully,” she pointed out maliciously.
“What about the sets?” Carlotta asked, attempting to smooth over the dissension.
“Kerr says they’re remarkable.”
“He also calls them ingenious.”
“The News compliments their superb artistry.”
"Got it!” The theatrically blond young man pulled out a pad and pencil and began jotting down some notes.
“What are you doing?” Carlotta wanted to know.
“Getting up the ad for the show,” he told her. “Look.”
She looted and read what he had written: “Ingenious! — Times. Superb artistry! – News. Remarkable!—Kerr. Order tickets now for the smash hit of the season!”
“Isn’t that sort of misleading?” she suggested timidly.
The blond young man shot her a look that accused her of being very naive indeed.
“Oh,” Carlotta said. “Sorry about that.”
“An outrage!” one of the tycoons was protesting.
“The trick is low-key lighting," Howard Kupp was explaining to one of the photographers.
“It’s a better haul than Appalachia,” one cop exulted to another.
“And if you hadn’t upstaged me through the entire first act . . .” The leading lady was loosing a tirade at the leading man.