Holy Terror Page 9

  The door marked BRONSKY THEATRICAL REPRESENTATION INC. had been left open and Conor stepped directly into a cramped outer office. The ditsy girl was sitting at her desk, a redhead in a sleeveless purple T-shirt with purple lipstick to match. She rattled away at the keyboard of her word-processor and chewed gum at five times the average speed. ‘Mr Brown?’ she said, scarcely bothering to look up. ‘Go ride on through.’ Then, ‘Shit!’ as she mistyped something.

  Conor said, ‘Thanks,’ and knocked on the inner door.

  Eleanor Bronsky herself was sitting in a tilting chair, her feet crossed on top of a desk which was cluttered with contracts and gilded statuettes and framed telegrams, as well as an overflowing onyx ashtray. Behind her there was a grimy view of Broadway. Despite the efforts of an asthmatic air conditioner, the room was uncomfortably humid and hazy with her cigarette smoke. She was a handsome woman in her middle sixties, thin, etiolated by smoking and decades of late nights, with well-cut white hair and a face that, once, must have been striking. She still had fine cheekbones and large blue eyes, although the skin of her cheeks had softened and withered, and the blue of her eyes had faded, like cornflowers pressed in a bible.

  She wore a cream silk dress and a gold chain belt. As Conor stepped in, she was talking on her hands-free telephone and lighting another Marlboro in an amber cigarette-holder. She waved her hand to indicate that he should sit down.

  ‘No, David,’ she was saying. ‘I’m not going to risk Stella’s reputation in a production like that. No, I don’t believe it will. Not for a moment. It’s a terrible idea.’

  Conor looked around the office. The shelves were crammed with dogeared screenplays and theatrical scripts: the walls were cluttered with scores of photographs of Eleanor Bronsky with Shelley Winters, Eleanor Bronsky with Lee Strasberg, Eleanor Bronsky with Tony Franciosa and Harry Guardino and Tennessee Williams. Late-night flash photographs of Eleanor Bronsky with drunkenly grinning producers taken at the tables of Sardi’s and Downey’s.

  Eventually she said, ‘Shalom, David,’ and switched off the phone. She blew out a cloud of smoke and said, ‘Can you believe it? That was David Bramwell. He wants to make a musical based on the life of Hugh Hefner – Centerfold! Can you imagine it? Centerfold! Indeed! It won’t be just the center that’s folding, it’ll be the whole goddamned ridiculous production.’

  Conor held out his hand. ‘Jack Brown. Pleased to meet you.’

  Eleanor Bronsky’s handshake was dry and surprisingly firm. The handshake of a woman who was used to dealing with powerful men. ‘My God, Mr Brown, if you’ll excuse my saying so, you look like you had an argument with Godzilla, and lost.’

  ‘Minor auto accident, that’s all. I’ll get over it. Ric Vetter called you this morning.’

  ‘Yes, he did. Darling, darling Ric. If he wasn’t as queer as a three-dollar bill, I could fancy him myself. He brings out the Blanche Dubois in me. Excuse my smoke,’ she said, flapping her hand. ‘I’ve been trying to give it up since the opening night of Wedding Feast. Or was it The Member of the Wedding?’

  Conor said, ‘Did Ric tell you who I was looking for?’

  ‘Uh-huh. Hypnos and Hetti. What a pair they were. I represented them for three and half years, right from the time they first came over here.’

  ‘But you don’t represent them now?’

  She shook her head. ‘They were incredibly good. They could hypnotize a dozen people standing in a bus line and make them gobble like turkeys. But I don’t know … there was something I didn’t like about them, something unhealthy. There was no joy in them, you know? And they didn’t seem to be very interested in performing for the sake of performing, not like most artistes. They didn’t want acknowledgement. They didn’t want applause. Quite frankly I don’t really know what they wanted.’

  ‘When was the last time you saw them?’

  Eleanor Bronsky sucked on her cigarette and peered at him narrowly. ‘Are you a cop?’ she asked.

  ‘Of course not. I’m a theatrical producer.’

  ‘Jack Brown? I’ve never heard of you, and I’ve heard of everybody.’

  ‘I’m based in Toronto, that’s why. Haven’t you heard of My Man’s a Mountie?

  ‘I’m sorry. I never did. But it sounds … well, I don’t know what it sounds.’

  ‘Ran for two and a half years at the York Theater. Now I’m interested in reviving Vaudeville Days.’

  ‘You want my honest opinion, Jack? You’ve got more screws loose than David Bramwell. Vaudeville Days died a slow and terrible death. People have the Internet these days. They have pay-per-view. They’re not going to make a special trip into town to sit through two hours of Wu Chin the Chinese juggler or Leila and her Performing Poodles.’

  ‘Well, I don’t agree with you. I think people still have a hankering for live entertainment. It’s the new nostalgia, if you like. Anyhow, I have dozens of new ideas for bringing the show up to date.’

  Eleanor puffed, and waited, and puffed some more. ‘And one of these ideas is to bring back Hypnos and Hetti?’

  ‘That’s right. Hypnotism is hot. Especially their kind of hypnotism. Audiences love to see people being humiliated.’

  ‘Oh, if it’s humiliated you want, Hypnos and Hetti are just what you’re looking for. In fact a whole lot more than humiliated. They were sacked, you know, from Vaudeville Days. They hypnotized a man so that he ate a whiskey glass on stage. He cut half his tongue off, there was blood everywhere. It was lucky he didn’t die, but so far as I know he was never able to talk again.

  ‘I refused to represent them after that. I’m not saying that I’m such a moralist that I won’t represent a drug addict or a bigamist or a man who beats his wife. If they can act, if they can sing, what business is it of mine? But there was something very, very unpleasant about Hypnos and Hetti. My late husband Ned used to say that they must have made a contract with Satan, or David Merrick at the very least.’

  ‘So you really don’t know where they are?’

  Eleanor Bronsky shook her head. ‘I could give you their last known address, but I doubt if it’ll do you any good.’ She paused, and crushed out her cigarette. ‘You are a cop, aren’t you?’

  Conor hesitated, but then he raised both hands in surrender. ‘OK, I admit it. But it’s critical that I find them. It’s a long story, but it’s almost a case of them or me.’

  ‘My Man’s a Mountie, ha!’ Eleanor Bronsky gave a fruity, tobacco-thickened laugh. Tor a second there, I almost believed you.’

  She stood up and walked over to a battered wooden filing cabinet. She pulled out a drawer and started to leaf through it. ‘You know something, you should have seen the office I had in the old days. I represented everyone who was anyone. I had tigerskin rugs and Louis XIV furniture and a cocktail cabinet the size of Grand Central Station. I had Jackson Pollock paintings. God, I hated those Jackson Pollock paintings, but they were so expensive. Still, they’re gone now. And look at me. I never thought that the glory days would pass so quickly.’

  She took out a file and said, ‘Here it is. Ramon Perez and Magda Slanic, 981 Thomas. But I can almost guarantee that you won’t find them there now. I sent them mail. I even sent them money, but it all came back.’

  ‘Still, thanks, I’ll check it out.’

  ‘Did they do that to you?’ asked Eleanor Bronsky, leaning against the filing cabinet. ‘Beat up your face?’

  ‘They didn’t actually do it, but let’s say they caused it.’

  ‘Well, there’s one more possibility you could try. Sidney Randall, if he’s still alive.’

  Conor made a face to show her that he didn’t have any idea who Sidney Randall was.

  ‘Sidney Randall,’ she said. ‘One of the greatest hypnotists in history. He had his own show in the 1950s, When You Awake. I represented him for three and a half years, and he made me a great deal of money. Sidney was fascinated by Hypnos and Hetti. He didn’t care for them personally, not at all, but he thought their hypnotic technique was amazing. Ther
e’s a chance that he might have kept in touch with them.’

  ‘So where do I find this Sidney Randall?’

  ‘The last I heard, he was broke and he was retired. As I say, there’s no audience for that kind of act these days. That’s why I’m quite relieved that you’re a cop, Jack, and not some poor misguided producer.’

  ‘Actually, I’m not a cop any longer and my name’s not Jack. I’m Conor O’Neil.’

  Eleanor Bronsky was right in the middle of lighting another cigarette. ‘My God, so you are! I saw you on the news this morning! That doesn’t say much for my memory for faces, does it? You’re wanted, aren’t you?’ She paused, and blew smoke out of her nose. ‘Would I get a reward for turning you in?’

  ‘This may sound corny, but I’m innocent. That’s why I need to find this Hypnos and Hetti… to prove that I’m innocent.’

  ‘You’re innocent, huh?’

  Conor didn’t say anything but sat and looked at her as she smoked.

  Eventually, she said, ‘You’re the cop who cleaned up all that police corruption, aren’t you?’

  He nodded. ‘The Forty-Ninth Street Golf Club. Don’t know whether you remember that.’

  ‘Of course I do. You were some kind of a hero, weren’t you?’

  ‘I made a lot of enemies, if that’s what you mean. That’s why they’re looking for me now.’

  ‘OK,’ she said, at last, ‘If you really are innocent, I’ll call my friends at the Vaudeville Artistes’ Benevolent Fund and see if I can find out where Sidney’s living – that’s if he is still living. If not there are one or two more people I can try. How can I get in touch with you?’

  ‘Just leave a message with Ric. And, thanks. You don’t know how grateful I am.’

  She touched his cheek. ‘You’re a friend of Ric’s. You’re innocent. What else could I do? It’s nice to know that after all these years I can still do something outrageous.’

  Chapter 9

  ‘I can’t tell you how frightened I was,’ said Lacey. ‘Lieutenant Slyman told me that he thought you were seriously hurt.’

  She took hold of his hand between hers and kissed his fingertips. Conor said, ‘Sorry. Pastrami flavor.’

  It was 1:05. They were sitting at a table in back of Stars Deli on Lexington Avenue. It was hot and busy. The counter was crowded with office workers ordering turkey and liverwurst and salt beef sandwiches, so that they could eat their lunch on the benches and walls around the Citicorp Center. Signed photographs of movie and theater stars hung on every wall. Conor had bought himself pastrami on rye but Stars’ sandwiches were three inches thick and it hurt him to open his jaws so wide. Apart from that, his appetite wasn’t improved by the awareness that he could be whacked without warning, at any moment, by a cop, by one of his own kind. A bullet in the head, no witnesses, no questions asked. He was still police, whatever had happened. He had been born police. But now his family had cast him out, and all they wanted was his blood.

  He knew the way they worked. If he were Lieutenant Slyman, he would have Lacey under twenty-four-hour surveillance. Not to mention phone taps and e-mail intercepts. That was why he had chosen Stars for them to meet. They used to lunch here regularly, in the days after the Golf Club trial, and it had taken only an untraceable copy-shop fax saying **1 (Stars, at 1) for Lacey to realize where he wanted to see her, and when. Stars was only three blocks south of the Lipstick Building, where Lacey worked, and the lunchtime crowd kept them well screened from the doorway and the street outside.

  He couldn’t see Lacey well because she was silhouetted against the light, but he thought she looked beautiful. All that blond flyaway hair. She was wearing a gauzy white cheesecloth blouse and tailored taupe slacks and lots of bangly jewelry. She was trying to act composed but there were dark shadows under her eyes because – like Conor – she had hardly slept.

  ‘You made sure you weren’t followed?’

  ‘I stopped to look in a couple of shop windows. Then I went left on 53rd Street and went all the way around the block. Then I went into the Steinman Pharmacy and came out by the other door.’

  ‘Good girl. Slyman hasn’t been giving you a hard time, has he?’

  ‘He never stops nagging me to tell him where you are. He says it’s my public duty. He keeps saying that if you’re innocent, why did you run away?’

  ‘But he hasn’t threatened you, or anything like that? He hasn’t touched you?’

  ‘If he tried anything like that, he’d regret it, believe me. I can look after myself, you know.’

  ‘What about my lawyers? You talked to Michael Baer?’

  She nodded. ‘Michael said the same thing as Slyman. He was even on television, saying it. If you’re innocent, why are you running? He said you should give yourself up and let him defend you in a court of law. He told me that he couldn’t protect you, otherwise.’

  ‘He can’t protect me. Not from Drew Slyman. Nobody can.’

  ‘But Slyman can’t just shoot you down in cold blood.’

  ‘He can, sweetheart, and he’s determined to, and I don’t want to spend the rest of my life wondering when the bullet’s going to hit me. What’s that perfume you’re wearing?’

  ‘Issey.’

  He gripped her hand and squeezed it. ‘It makes me homesick. But I can’t come back yet, sweetheart. I did nothing wrong here, and I have to prove it.’

  She leaned across the table and kissed his cheek. ‘I love you,’ she said. ‘I won’t let these bastards hurt you, I promise.’

  ‘Any news of Darrell Bussman?’

  ‘The last time Slyman talked to me, Darrell was still in a coma.’

  ‘Well, God take care of him, that’s all I can say. Right now he’s the only witness I’ve got.’

  ‘There’s something else,’ said Lacey. ‘After he appeared on TV, Michael said that he had calls from three attorneys representing some of Spurr’s deposit-box customers. They were all offering to pay large amounts of money to have their property back, no identities revealed, no questions asked.’

  ‘That’s unreal. When you say “large amounts of money”, what are we talking about?’

  ‘Millions, that’s what Michael said. Eight, maybe nine, maybe more. He couldn’t be specific’

  Conor couldn’t help shaking his head in amusement. ‘If only I had their property.’

  Lacey brushed back her hair with her hand. ‘It wouldn’t matter, would it, if you had their property or not? So long as they thought you did. You could make a deal. Take their millions of dollars, and give them nothing in return. You and me, we could buy a big house in Florida, couldn’t we, overlooking a golf course?’

  ‘You know I couldn’t do anything like that.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘And that’s why I love you. Because you will never do anything like that, even now, when you’re not a real cop any more.’

  ‘That’s where you’re wrong,’ he told her. ‘I’m always going to be a real cop. I can’t help it, even though it’s a curse. Could you stop being beautiful?’

  ‘Don’t try to flatter me. I’m not beautiful. But I love you, and I’m going to fight for you.’

  He touched her hair. She closed her eyes while his fingertips traced her eyebrows, her cheekbones, her nose and her lips. He didn’t usually like to display his affection for her in public, but he knew that he might not see her again for a long time, or maybe never.

  ‘I’m asking you to be patient, that’s all,’ he told her. ‘I’m going to sort out this mess and I’m going to stay alive. Don’t talk to anybody else about me. Don’t ever say you saw me. I’ll keep in touch.’

  They held hands on either side of Conor’s uneaten pastrami sandwich and that was all they could do. At the next table, a skinny old gent was sitting in a wheelchair with a cup of coffee and a donut. He gave them a white-whiskered smile, and then he leaned toward Conor and whispered, ‘Excuse me, sir. But are you going to eat that sandwich?’

  ‘Sure, you go right ahead,’ said Conor, and passed it
over to him. As he leaned across, he glimpsed a man waiting on the street comer outside the deli door. The man was wearing a flappy linen coat and a narrow-brimmed straw hat and there was something about the way in which he was standing that gave Conor the warning taste of salt in his mouth. Cops are like dancers or weightlifters: they give away their profession by the way in which they carry themselves. Conor couldn’t be totally certain, but he would have put even money on this man being a plainclothes detective on surveillance.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ asked Lacey.

  ‘I’m not sure yet,’ he said. He waited until the pedestrian crossing signs had changed from Walk to Don’t Walk and back to Walk. The man stayed where he was, occasionally glancing to one side. A police patrol car drew up on the other side of the street, and then another. This was it.

  ‘I have to get out of here,’ Conor told Lacey.

  She could tell by his eyes what was wrong. ‘How did they manage to follow me? I took so much care.’

  ‘It’s not your fault. They’re very experienced.’

  He glanced quickly around the deli. There was no rear entrance, only the door to the washrooms, and if Slyman’s men had half a brain cell between them they would already have covered that option.

  He looked back toward the hot, glaring street. There was no question about it: the cops were waiting for him. They wouldn’t come inside in case he was armed, and they couldn’t risk bullets flying in a space as tightly crowded as this. But they would have him as soon as he stepped out of the door.

  He said quietly to Lacey, ‘Faint.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Faint. Go all woozy and fall over onto the floor.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘Just do it, will you? It’s the only way I’m going to be able to get out of here.’

  ‘Well … OK,’ she said. She stared at him for a moment longer, still holding his hands, then suddenly slid sideways and toppled offher chair. She did it so realistically that Conor almost believed that she really had fainted. There were cries of dismay all around them and Conor quickly scraped back his chair and knelt on the floor beside her.