Murder in the Wings (15 page)

"It's a possibility. A neighbor saw her there the night of the killing."

"Saw Sylvia?"

"Yes."

"God." He went over and sat down again in the chair. He put his head in his hands and then he broke. He didn't cry exactly. It would have been better if he had. "It's all so goddamn crazy, Dwyer. I'm scared and confused and—" He paused. "Dwyer, there's some communion wine over there. It's still in the bottle so it hasn't been blessed. I need some, Dwyer. I'm not kidding you. I'm getting hot and cold flashes and my stomach's going to shit. I'll beg you if you want me to, Dwyer. I'll goddamn beg you, I promise."

"Dwyer," Donna said softly.

"Where is it?" I said.

"In that top cupboard."

I went and got it and brought it back. It was a quart of grape wine made by monks in Vermont.

He started shaking then, just as he reached for it, and then he did start crying. I unscrewed the cap for him.

He drank. For a long minute he didn't seem to be aware of either of us.

"I'm going to see the priest," I said to Donna.

She nodded and went over and knelt by Wade and started gently stroking his sleeve.

The priest was still at the communion rail, praying. In the red and green and yellow votive lights he looked
like a Christmas-card priest. He
crossed himself and stood up. "You're his friend. You know what we should do," he said.

"I know."

"He's in sad and sorry shape. He shouldn't be running."

"Is there a phone I could use, Father?"

He led me out of the church and across an open stone courtyard to the rectory. The rain hit us cold and hard for maybe thirty seconds. It made a lot of noise in the metal drainspouts. My feet got soaked in the puddles. The rectory smelled of a roast-beef dinner from earlier in the night. I used a phone by a hall closet filled with yellow dust mops scented with sweet polish. I called Edelman and told him what was going on. I must have said ten times at least, "Just be easy with him, Edelman. Just be easy with him." When I was finished I turned back to the priest and said, "Now I know how Judas felt."

"Now don't be getting melodramatic the way he always does, Dwyer. It's a curse we Irish suffer from. You may be saving his life and none of this has a damn thing to do with Judas Iscariot, if you'll pardon my French."

I laughed. Wade was right: he was a sweet old guy. We went back out into the rain and the puddles and the tinny sound of the drainspouts.

In the sacristy, Wade was still in his chair and Donna was still kneeling next to him. I went into the shadowy light and stood in front of him and said, "I have to tell you something."

He opened his eyes and looked up. "I know what you're going to say."

"You can believe it or not, but I did it for your sake."

"I know. I can't run anymore, anyway, Dwyer. I'm too goddamned tired." He saw the priest behind me. "Sorry, Father."

Donna said, "Is there anybody you want us to call, Stephen?"

This time he did break and he broke all the way. "That's the irony," he said, crying. "Every friend I've got in the world is right here in this room."

E
delman did it the way I asked him. Two cars came, one with Edelman, the other with two uniformed officers.

Edelman came into the sacristy, doffing his hat when he saw the priest. He nodded to me and Donna and then went over and stood beside Wade.

"They're not going to hurt you, Mr. Wade," he said, nodding to the two uniformed cops who stood nearby in yellow slickers, dripping water. The overhead lights were on now. Everything looked too real and harsh. Wade took off his beard. Theatrical glue stuck to his face like a skin rash. He looked silly and sad. He looked up at the priest and said, "Would you give me a rosary, Father?"

The priest reached in his pocket and handed Wade a circle of black beads. "I'll be praying for you, Stephen."

For the first time Wade, his eyes red from tears, laughed. He looked at the two uniformed cops and said, "Good, Father, because I've got a feeling I'm going to need it."

Edelman nodded to me. Then they took Stephen Wade away.

A
s we pulled up in front of the Bridges Theater, Donna said, "Isn't it kind of late?"

"I guess right now I don't much give a damn." Between us on the seat lay Lockhart's wallet. It was a cheap brown cardboard thing. Some of his blood was on the fold.

She covered my hand with hers. "It wasn't your fault, Dwyer. C'mon, now."

"I should open the damn thing and look inside. But—" I looked down at it. "I can't touch it. It's like having some sort of phobia."

"You want me to do it?"

"I shouldn't have stepped on his hand so hard." She didn't say anything.

"I shouldn't have, should I?"

She sighed. In a tiny voice, she said, "No, I guess you shouldn't have."

Then I couldn't say anything.

"I wish you hadn't asked me that, Dwyer, because I love you so damn much, but I don't want to lie, either."

"I know."

"But it wasn't your fault he died. I mean, you didn't push him out into the street."

"Yeah."

"Here, I'll open it." She picked up the wallet. She got blood on her hands right away. She looked at me. Then she took Kleenex from a box in the glove compartment and said, "It wasn't your fault, Dwyer. Do you understand?"

She opened the billfold and thumbed through everything. She found a ten and four singles. A picture of Lockhart and a plump girl in a bikini on a summer beach. A Milwaukee Brewers baseball schedule. A Trojan. She held the rubber up to the light and said, "God, that's really classy."

"I've got one in my wallet."

"Bull."

"I do."

"I know better because I looked through your wallet."

"You did, really?"

"Yeah, one day I needed money. I guess I should have told you. Does that make you mad?"

"Uh-huh."

"Really."

"No."

"You sure?"

"Positive. Because if I got mad at you then you'd get mad at me."

"For what?"

"Because one day when you were on the phone talking to Chad I got kind of pissed or jealous, I'm not sure which, and I started going through your purse."

"God, Dwyer," she said.

"Hey, you can hardly afford to get sanctimonious."

"A wallet's one thing but a purse is something else."

"You are stone fucking crazy, you know that?"

"No, really, Dwyer. There's only so much you can find in a wallet, but a purse can be filled with all sorts of things. I mean, there's a mathematical difference.
Looking in a purse is a lot worse than looking in a wallet."

"Right. So what else is in there?"

She put the Trojan back. The next thing she found was a business card. "Trueblood Medical Supplies," she read.

She handed it over. I thought of Lockhart being an orderly in the prison infirmary and stuck the card in my pocket.

She leaned over and kissed me. "At least you're feeling better. Even if you did look in my purse."

"You're really pissed about that?"

"Not
real
really, if you know what I mean."

"You're deranged."

I opened the door and got out. My clothes were wet enough that the constant rain didn't matter anymore. Donna got out, too. In front of us the marquee was dark, hundreds of dead little bulbs battered by rain. The six front doors leading into the theater were also dark, like the doors on a movie set shut down for the night.

We went around to the side and found Stan. He was sweeping up by the dressing rooms. He nodded hello. "You just can't seem to stay away from here, can you?" He smiled, rubbing one hand on his gray janitor's uniform.

"Actually, we'd like to see the Ashtons, if that's possible."

"Well, I'll call up and see what David says," he said.

"I'd appreciate it."

While he went over to the elevator, I walked from the nearest wing toward the stage. My footsteps were loud and hollow. I peeked out into the empty theater.

Donna came up behind me. "God, if I ever got on a stage, I'd freeze."

I kissed her. It was like high school. Furtive. And very sweet.

Stan came over. "David said for you to come on up."

He'd caught us kissing. Donna was blushing.

"We just heard on the news about Wade," David Ashton said as we stepped off the elevator. He wore a blue polo sweater and tan slacks. With his blond hair and Scott Fitzgerald features, he looked like an aging tennis pro.

I listened for excitement in his voice, but there wasn't any. He was just reporting the facts. He led us into a living room that in my neighborhood would have passed as a ballroom. Sylvia was sitting in front of a huge TV screen. In red lounging pajamas, her dark hair tousled, she seemed young and quite desirable. Only the dark glasses spoiled the effect. Instead of seeming mysterious, they smacked of neurosis, the tic of a perpetual mental patient.

"Sylvia, Dwyer and his lady friend are here."

Sylvia raised her head from the screen. She acknowledged our presence by rattling a glassful of ice in our direction. David dispatched himself instantly. He took her glass, went to a dry bar, and with almost chilling medical precision made a drink: three parts this, two parts that. Then he brought it back to her and put it in her hand.

He came back to us and said, "Sylvia's taking some of her heavier medication. It won't hurt her to have it with alcohol, but it makes her very drowsy." How convenient, I thought, in case the police ever wanted to question her about anything.

"It's odd that you should show up now," David said. He led us past an almost funereal dining room with a long shining table and a low-hanging chandelier toward the front of the penthouse where he and Sylvia and Evelyn lived.

"Why's that?"

"About ten minutes ago, Mrs. Bridges asked if I could help locate you."

I sighed. "Was this right after you learned that Wade had been taken into custody?"

"Yes. Why?"

"Oh, nothing. I suppose I'd better go see her."

He gave me an ironic smile. "I'd appreciate it, Dwyer. I don't like to disappoint the old woman."

I smiled back. "And I thought
I
had some lousy jobs."

"It's not that bad usually. She only gets upset with me when I clearly fail to live up to the 'Bridges standard,' as she puts it."

I kissed Donna on the cheek and followed Ashton down the hall. At the doorway leading into Mrs. Bridges' part of the penthouse, the servant took over again.

"I should warn you," he said on the way to her room. His shoes squeaked.

"I don't think you have to."

"You have upset her."

"So has the rest of the world."

He laughed. "At least you have a sense of humor."

"I'm assuming that I get a blindfold and a cigarette."

"Mrs. Bridges doesn't approve of smoking."

He knocked once on her door and then stepped back. Far back. He was no fool.

She was still a kewpie doll. Tonight she wore a powder-blue nightie. She had painted her nails. She was still surrounded by photos of the famous from the first half of the century and by the flowers that covered the odor of her illness. Her blue eyes blazed so intensely they were almost comic. "Young man, you have let me and this theater down very, very seriously."

I couldn't help it. She—or her money or the room or her age or her illness or all those things put together—intimidated me. I said, "I," but that's all I said. I didn't seem to have another word to put with it. She took advantage of my mealy mouth by applying her own words to the silence.

"I wanted you to save the reputation of this theater and you didn't."

"No, I haven't," I said, finding my voice. "Not yet."

"And what's that supposed to mean?"

"Wade didn't kill Reeves."

"You sound awfully certain of that."

"I am."

"And you have evidence of it?"

"No, but I have a lot of facts that point in a lot of different directions other than Wade."

"Such as?"

"Such as Michael Reeves was probably blackmailing somebody."

"Who?"

"Maybe several people."

"I don't want your damn games. I asked you a direct question. Who?"

I let her have it, and with no small degree of relish. "You, for one."

"Me? You're suggesting that Michael Reeves was blackmailing me?"

I took the envelope from my pocket, the one with her personal logo on it. "I found this in his apartment."

She snatched it from me and looked it over. "You're a liar."