Lullaby of Murder (22 page)

“I got it,” Julie said.

“And you know what happened then, don’t you?”

“Mrs. Phillips went to the top of your building and threw herself off the roof.”

“When I heard about that it was like I jumped some place too. I wasn’t a child actor anymore after that. I did the movie, but they changed it a lot. They were looking for another Marilyn Monroe. I’m not that and I know it.”

“You’re a very special actor in
Celebration
,” Julie said.

“Like I was making up for lost time.” Patti smiled—a most winning smile. “Julie, I’m going to give you an exclusive: Do you know who wrote the story for
Celebration
? The screen credit says David Clemens, but that’s a made-up name. Tony wrote it.”

Julie felt so glad Patti Royce had told her that she could have cried. She needed very much to believe in her, but the supposed revelation came so suddenly that all she could say was, “Oh, well, now.”

“H
E KNEW A GIRL
just like her on the farm when he was a kid. Her father would go wild when the kids would tease her, and he’d beat the son for not standing up to them. Tony changed it a little.”

“I’ve got to tell you I did know about the pseudonym,” Julie said. “I showed Fran the ad that’s going to appear in next Sunday’s paper and she spotted the name right away.”

“I’m glad you told me. I scared myself giving that out to you. But I just wanted somebody to know. They were thinking of treating this David Clemens as just another guy who wrote a story Mr. Bigshot Cardova turned into something real. I guess we ought to have this off the record, huh?”

Julie laughed. “Could be.”

“Anyway, now that she knows Tony’s made-up credit, they won’t be able to keep it a secret.”

“I don’t understand why they’d want to,” Julie said.

“I keep telling you, they’re the kind of people who don’t want to get involved. Tony didn’t die a natural death, did he?”

“Patti, who else does Ron Morielli manage?”

Patti took several sips of tea. “I don’t want to talk about Ron. Tony said he was counting on me to make him rich and famous and that’s all right with me…now that Tony’s gone.”

“How did you find out about his death?”

“The police called me the next morning. I didn’t believe it right away. It was a nightmare I couldn’t wake up from. I’d stayed up all night learning next week’s lines…and wondering why Tony didn’t call me. Then I took a Seconal at five
A.M.

“And it still doesn’t seem real. Look at me. I got no more tears in me than a mannequin. Maybe it means I didn’t love him after all. I just wanted him to take care of me. Or maybe I can’t cry over real things, only when I make believe.”

“How did you land in the soap—what’s it called?”

“
Forgotten Splendor.
Doesn’t that just make your heart go thumpity-thump?”

Julie grinned.

“Well, first came Tony telling me the story we called
Celebration.
First it was going to be
Birthday Celebration.
Anyway, I got him to tell it to Ron then, and Ron liked it. He didn’t like it really. He says it’s sick, but he knows what I can do and so he liked it for me and he knew a producer and people with money and so forth. We shot most of the film on a potato farm on Long Island with some ducklings the prop department borrowed and never did return. They couldn’t catch them. I drove to upstate New York with the camera crew and the director and got introduced to my first cow. I must say, there ought to be an easier way to get milk.

“It all took about two months and everybody was great friends until they began to edit the picture and somebody thought they had something special. After that it was one thing after another, everybody quarreling with one another. Tony said I should keep out of it.

“He said I had to have an agent again and Ron finally agreed. I was flying. I was living a new life and I’d done it myself without dear Mum, and then Ted Macken came into the picture—Creative Talent, Inc.—and it was his idea that the daytime public, that means women, ought to get some kind of image of me before
Celebration
was released, and he knew of this part coming up in a daytime serial.”

“I got it,” Julie said. She had scribbled questions on a note pad, but she didn’t want to turn Patti off.

“He said he could get them to write me out of it after a while.” Patti drained the mug of the last of her tea. Just as she set it down, somebody pounded on the door. Impatient, whoever it was moved to the window and rapped with something as hard as stone. Patti moistened her lips. “Don’t answer,” she said. “Let’s pretend there’s nobody here.”

“Won’t work,” Julie said, and pointed toward the ceiling as she got up. “I’ve got a neighbor you can buy with a button.”

“I’m not supposed to give interviews.”

“Let’s deal with it.” Julie went to the window in front. Ron Morielli was making the clatter with a money clip from which he had not removed the money. His sister waited at the door. Julie opened it on the latch, then slipped that.

“We come to pick up Patti,” Morielli said, pushing in ahead of his sister, in case Julie tried to close the door on him, she supposed. “The kid’s got an engagement she must’ve forgot about.” He headed straight for the back room.

“Hello, again,” Mrs. Conti said and followed her brother. She was wearing a lot of mink.

Julie missed whatever exchange occurred between Patti and Morielli because Mrs. Conti, in very high heels, slipped on the painted floor and caught hold of the curtain that partitioned the rooms. It ripped out of several rings. Julie helped the woman stay on her feet.

“Damn! I’ve twisted my ankle. Ron?”

“Get her jacket,” he said, without looking round. And to Patti: “Come on, kid. Pick it up and let’s go.”

Mrs. Conti limped across the room and got Patti’s jacket from the halltree where Julie had hung it.

“She’s going to write up everything and show it to us before it goes in the paper,” Patti said, conveying neither fear nor command in her voice.

“Yeah,” he said, and to Julie: “We’re trying to keep her under wraps for a while. I’ll level with you, Mrs. Hayes: till the Tony Alexander story cools. I mean we want all the publicity we can get, but not that kind. We got nothing against you, you understand.”

She’d been under wraps before Tony’s death, according to Patti, but his version sounded credible.

“Patti,” Julie said, “why don’t you phone me when you’re ready to finish the interview?”

The sister, meanwhile, had spotted the tape-recorder and called Morielli’s attention to it.

“Why don’t we all sit down and have a listen?” Morielli said.

“We didn’t use the tape,” Julie protested, well aware that Patti had cut it off at the question of how Ron and Ted felt about Tony.

Morielli said, “Let’s take it along, Sis.”

“It’s my property,” Julie said.

Morielli smiled and tossed his head toward Patti. “The kid’s mine. How about that?”

“Ron, you shouldn’t say things like that,” Mrs. Conti removed the tape and rewound the few turns by hand. “He’s only kidding, Mrs. Hayes. I promise to replace this.” She tucked the tape into her pocket.

Patti put on her shoes. “Julie, that was the best cup of tea I ever had.” Whatever her qualities, poise was high among them. “Ron, she knows about David Clemens.”

“What else?”

“Ask her.”

Morielli shifted his gaze to Julie. “You going to blow all this in the
Daily
?”

“Somebody’s going to blow it soon, whether it’s me or not. I’d be glad to have your version, Mr. Morielli. We could even tape it.”

Morielli gave Patti’s shoulder a rub as though for good luck. “We got a motion picture that’s going to make fifty million dollars, and we’re going to cut Tony’s widow in for his share. Right, Patti? And maybe we should give her a cut of your share. How about that?”

“I couldn’t care less,” Patti said. She tossed her jacket around her shoulders and walked with a kind of swagger to the front door.

The other two followed her, having to step around the dangling curtain. It was pretty crowded where they waited for Julie to let them out. The silence was so eerie while she drew the latch, she glanced around. Morielli had his hand under Patti’s jacket, apparently twisting her arm. Patti forced a grimace of pain into a smile for Julie’s benefit. Morielli covered, too, by putting his cheek to Patti’s. “The kid’s all right, isn’t she?” He winked at Julie.

“You bet.”

JULIE FOUND HERSELF
shivering after they had gone. The brother-sister act was scary. So was Morielli’s masked menace, and Patti’s mix of flare and submission. She did a haphazard job of stitching the curtains. She pricked herself twice with the needle. Very edgy. Call it scared, Julie. She kept hearing Morielli repeat, “What else?” to Patti. What else had she told Julie. Therefore, what else was there to tell that he hadn’t wanted told? She telephoned Homicide, not knowing what she would say to Marks, but wanting reassurance from someone whose place was fixed. That was her greatest trouble: things, people, kept breaking loose when she thought she had them pegged. Marks was off duty.

Someone upstairs turned on the radio full blast. The whole building throbbed with Latin rock. You couldn’t even hear the children crying. Or a scream if you needed to give one. She called the office on the chance that Tim might be there. It was seven thirty. No answer. Something told her to get out of the shop and she could not convince herself that it was imagination. She gathered notes and note book into her carry-all and took off. On the street she shed much of her anxiety, and by the time she reached the Village her fears seemed to have been ridiculous.

All day she had carried Gus’ skewers wrapped in a napkin at the bottom of her carry-all. She delivered them and had a coffee at the counter. Gus tried to persuade her to have dinner. He’d made the day’s specialty himself, moussaka. Julie said she couldn’t eat anything. He gave her a lecture on anorexia, a disease from which he’d never known a Greek woman to suffer…so why give it a Greek name? Call it something American.

Julie wished she had tried the moussaka.

W
HEN SHE SAW THE
man waiting on the steps at Sixteenth Street, her heart began to thump. She crossed the street and approached her house, obscured from view by the parked cars. When he shielded his eyes from the street lamp the better to see her, she was tempted to turn back. Then she recognized Tim Noble. They started toward each other and had to stop for a spurt of traffic. Again the intrusion of the ridiculous, so that she was almost helplessly glad to see him.

“Are you running scared, Julie?” he asked.

“A little,” she admitted, getting out her keys.

“I’ve been waiting almost an hour,” Tim said.

“The phone won’t do?” She collected the mail.

“No.” He held the mail while she opened the inner door and followed her upstairs. In the apartment, as soon as Julie had turned on some lights, he said, “I saw
Celebration
tonight.”

“And?”

“Patti Royce used to work at the Tripod. You know, the Turkish bath?”

Julie was surprised and yet not surprised. “So that’s where Tony met her.”

“I never met her myself, but I saw her there: very special. Julie, we’ve got to break something about her or be scooped by every jabberwock in town.”

“I know…. I like that, jabberwock.”

“I made it up after
Alice.
It’s what we do, right?”

“Did you like
Celebration
?”

“The story’s kind of old-fashioned, but that isn’t going to matter much with all that bottled up sex in it.”

Julie decided to hold back on the identity of David Clemens. To tell him would only increase the pressure he could put on her.

“And I liked her,” Tim added, “but I had trouble drawing the line, if you know what I mean.”

“I don’t.”

“Between art and…whatever.”

“I see.”

“I mean it’s a porn film. Let’s face it. Soft, maybe, but porn.”

“I’m not so sure.” Julie the expert.

“Julie, all I want to know: why can’t I run something like this: ‘The once and future star, Patti Royce, did some real life research for her soon-to-be released…’”

“No,” Julie interrupted. “Absolutely not.”

“Because of Tony?”

“Mostly.”

“We don’t have to do a one-two on it, for God’s sake. How long are you going to sit on this thing? It’s ready to hatch now if you’ll get off the nest. Did you get the interview?”

“I got a lot.”

“So?”

“Tim, does a man named Ron Morielli have anything to do with the Tripod?”

“Sure. He owns it.” Then, slowly: “Oh? Romulus Films?”

“I think so,” Julie said. “He and his sister broke up my interview with Patti.”

“Is she an amazon-type blonde with Groucho Marx eyebrows?”

Julie nodded.

“I’ve seen her around.”

“Are they Mafia, Tim?”

He shrugged. “Ask your friend Romano.”

“Thanks.”

“I still say we got to break the story, Julie.”

“Did you find anything out about the production? Did you talk to the director? You said you knew him.”

“I just saw the picture a couple of hours ago.”

“Let’s hold out until tomorrow noon. Okay?”

“You want to talk it over with the cops, right?”

“Approximately right.”

Tim threw up his hands. “What do you care about
Our Beat
?”

Julie didn’t answer.

“What do you care about it, Julie?”

“Tim, let’s not quarrel. Are you hungry?”

“I’m always hungry.”

“I’ll make sandwiches. How about a beer?”

“Couldn’t you get hold of Lieutenant Marks while I’m still here?”

“Let me fix the sandwiches and I’ll try, but I know he’s off duty.”

Julie rummaged through the cans in the kitchen cabinet and came out with Alaskan crabmeat. Tim was allergic. They divided a can of sardines.

“Hey,” Tim said, looking around. It was his first time in the Hayes apartment. “I should have worn a tie.”

“Jeff does most of the time.”

“Even in bed?”

“You are not always humorous, Tim.” She was stalling, half dreading to call her service or to try to reach Marks. When the phone rang she was glad that Tim was with her.