Nightbird (12 page)

“Do you know that for sure?”

“Hell-ooo. I don’t think they were playing Parcheesi in there.”

Stella said that Winters was a regular in the building. In the time Gillian lived in 18K, Winters visited at least once a
week.

“Were you home the night Gillian died?” Ryan said.

“Yeah, getting ready to leave for Pittsburgh the next morning.”

“Did you happen to notice when Trey Winters arrived?”

“I was watching the news at eleven, hon. Listening for the weather. I try to check the weather on the nights I’m traveling,
and if it’s shitty, I call a car to get me to the bus station. If not, I wait downstairs for a cab. The weather guy was just
starting when I hear lover boy banging.”

“About eleven-fifteen.”

“Yeah. Banging. He never banged on the door before. This time he’s banging, holding this white dress over his shoulder.”

“He usually didn’t bang?”

“Always before a little tap, tap, tap. Very quiet. Very discreet. You could hardly hear. Usually, the only way I knew he was
here was when I heard the stairway door squeak.”

“He usually came up the stairway?”

“Yeah, gotta give him credit, right? After eighteen flights sex would be the last thing on my mind. But I figured he took
the elevator to another floor to fool people. Then he just walked up a few flights.”

“But this night he doesn’t take the stairway, and he’s not tap-tapping?”

“Right. So I heard the banging. You gotta look out for yourself in this city. I had the portable in my hand, got the nine
and the one already dialed. But I see it’s just himself.”

“So he’s banging on the door. Holding this white dress over his shoulder.”

“Right. The whole floor should have been awake the way he was banging. But not long; she answered quick. I couldn’t get a
good look at her face. She was behind the door, and those peepholes, they’re not worth shit. But it was her.”

“Could you hear anything after the door closed?”

“I wish I had a nickel for every time he called her a fucking bitch. Not that I was snooping, but he was loud.”

“What was she saying to him?”

“Never heard a peep. Ten, fifteen minutes later he storms out.”

“You saw him storm out?”

“I was peeking; so sue me.”

“You never heard her yelling?”

“Not once.”

“Did you hear anything after he left?”

“Nothing.”

“What else do you remember?”

“After he left, I thought, Good riddance. Then I went to bed. I had to schlep to Pittsburgh in the morning.”

“You heard nothing at all after he left?”

“I went to bed, hon. That was enough excitement for one night for me. Six in the morning I left for Steeltown. I had theater
brats to teach. I didn’t even know what happened until I saw the commotion outside the next morning.”

“A police officer knocked on your door at three-fifteen in the morning,” Ryan said, double-checking the sheets.

“At three-fifteen, I was zonked,” she said. “I have a ritual. Whenever I have to travel the next day I take a Darvon, put
on the white sound machine, the surf, I like the sound of the surf. Don’t ask me why, I hate the beach. But the machine I
can take. It’s soothing. Then I put on my eye mask and sayonara.”

Ryan handed her his card. “I’m going to be across the hall in eighteen-K,” he said. “If you think of anything else, please
get in touch with me. Today, tomorrow, anytime.”

“I can think of something right now,” she said.

“Whatever you remember is important.”

“Damn right it is. If you see that Tommy Blue Eyes, tell him that every day I say a prayer he gets fucking cancer. The bastard.
And tell him to call his daughter.”

I
n Danny Eumont’s eyes Joe Gregory and his uncle were blind to the fact that their century was almost over. The evidence they
ignored was more than numbers on a calendar. The old Hubert Street Police Academy where they started their careers was long
gone, turned to rubble by a wrecking ball. Most of the boys with whom they’d entered that building were either in Florida
or under the turf. Even their old war stories seemed to be told in grainy black and white, voice-over by Robert Mitchum, the
score sad Sinatra songs. No Dolby, no 3-D, no slo-mo, no FX.

Danny pictured them standing in fog, wearing trench coats and fedoras, newspapers blaring headlines of a foreign war. They
were a walking period piece. That was why he’d first assumed that the theater district informant they’d asked him to interview,
code name Mister WW, was some play on the initials of the late Broadway gossip columnist Walter Winchell. He was wrong. His
name was Wacky Walzak.

“Yul Brynner ate brown eggs only,” Wacky Walzak said. “
The King and I
, 1951. He’d scream if you tried to sneak in white eggs.”

Joe Gregory had told Danny that Wacky would meet him after the lunch rush, in front of Vasili’s Shoe Repair Shop on West Fifty-first.
Danny had been there for an hour when he spotted Wacky coming out of the Gershwin Theater, looking exactly as they’d described
him, snapping coins into his belt changer. He said he only had a few minutes, he’d forgotten an egg salad sandwich and some
road-show Olivier had thrown a hissy fit.

“When Brynner went on the road,” Wacky said, pointing vaguely west, “he always had them paint each dressing room the same
color as the one in the St. James. I first met him in the Plymouth Theatre, 1946.
The Lute Song
, his big break. He played Mary Martin’s husband.”

Wacky Walzak had run coffee and sandwiches around the theater district since he was a child. But he was clearly a few fries
short of a Happy Meal.

“I’m working on a story about Gillian Stone,” Danny said. “I suppose my uncle told you that.”

“You’re supposed to buy lunch,” Wacky yelled. “Detective Joe Gregory said anywhere I want to go. Money is no object.”

“If that’s what Gregory said, it’s fine with me.”

“Too bad I don’t have time today. Such an attractive young man. Have you considered acting?”

Wacky Walzak was a character Dick Tracy would have called “Mushface.” His flattened features were set in the fattest cheeks
Danny had ever seen, his eyes barely visible. His hair, dyed a coppery red, contrasted with his pale complexion and thick
purple lips. Short arms hung at belt level, pudgy hands dangling, as if ready to begin typing. His belly peeked out from under
a black T-shirt that read, “Who died and left you boss?”

“When did you first meet Gillian Stone?” Danny said.

“When she was a swing girl in
Cats
.”

“What’s a swing girl?”

“A swing girl replaces any girl dancer in the chorus out for any reason, illness, death in the family, time of the month,
et cetera, et cetera.”

“What was your impression of her?” Danny said.

“I don’t do impressions,” Wacky said, and did a laughing pirouette. He was unable to stand still for ten seconds. He’d talk
and turn, re-turn and then pirouette, often finishing a sentence with his back to Danny.

“Did you ever have a conversation with her?”

“Tuna on toast, she said to me,” Wacky Walzak said. “Rye toast. No wheat, no white. Sprite, Mountain Dew, or Seven-Up. No
diets, no Pepsi. The girl hated colas.”

“Was that the extent of your relationship with her?”

“Va-va-va-voom,” Wacky said, shaking his little hands in front of his chest. “I only wish our relationship had an extent.
The lady was stacked. She looked like Judy Tyler, remember her? In
Pipe Dream
, Shubert Theatre, 1955. Stacked like her. Judy was Princess Summerfall Winterspring on the
Howdy Doody
show. Poor dear was killed in a car crash the year after
Pipe Dream
closed. Bill Johnson, the male lead, died of a heart attack the same year. Strange co-inky-dink, don’t you think?”

Wacky arched his dyed eyebrows and gave a half turn.

“I know what she looked like,” Danny said. He decided he’d better be more specific. “Did you hear any rumors about Gillian
doing drugs?”

“I heard she was partying hardy. Some days she growled, some days she glowed.”

“Where did you hear that?”

“On the street, here and there,” Wacky said. “Speaking of Mary Martin.
South Pacific
, 1949. Wash that man right outta my hair.” He smiled and aped the hair-washing motion. “She was supposed to use a bar of
soap, but the soap wouldn’t lather fast enough. So they sent me out to buy shampoo. I bought Prell.”

“Were people surprised she took her own life?” Danny said.

“Mary Martin?” Wacky said, eyebrows ascending.

“Gillian Stone,” Danny said.

“Ooo, shocked,” he said. “Disbelief not suspended. She was a star in the making.”

“But you heard nothing specific about drugs?” Danny said.

“Not my area of expertise,” he said.

“What do you know about Trey Winters?”

“Did a turn in
Barefoot in the Park
, 1983. Espresso drinker, lousy tipper. At that time I had to schlep up to Sixth Avenue to get espresso. Marousek’s Deli.
It’s gone now. They moved to Florida. And please tell Detective Ryan, please, pretty please, take a look over near the TKTS
booth. Charlatans are selling pilfered tickets before the booth opens. Ripping people off and giving the theater a bad name.
I told Mid-Town North, but they have bigger fish, apparently.”

“I’ll tell him,” Danny said. “Were there any rumors of a romance between Gillian and Winters?”

“Whispers, whispers, whispers,” Wacky hissed, baring his chewed-off fingernails.

“What were they saying?”

“The man is a swordsman,” he said, pulling an imaginary rapier from his waistband. “Like Errol Flynn, he’s always in.”

“Anything more specific you can tell me about Winters?” Danny wanted to address him by name but felt funny calling him Wacky.

“Looks nine, talent three, class zero,” Wacky said. “Mark it down. Without the wife’s money he’d be working the ticket window.
The only thing show biz about him was his Ethel Merman temper.”

“What about his temper?”

“Kate Hepburn wouldn’t put up with his shit. Threw him out of a run-through for
Coco
. Mark Hellinger Theatre, 1969.”

“Threw him out why?”

“Late, he was always late. Union rules state you must be in the theater thirty minutes before curtain. Then she caught him
bragging about his summer stock turn as Macbeth. Kate said he knew less about the theater than Clive Barnes’s cat.”

“What does that have to do with his temper?”

“It’s bad luck to say the name ‘Macbeth’ backstage.”

“But what does that have to do with his temper?” Danny said. “Wacky, listen to me. I really want to know what makes Trey Winters
tick today, not twenty years ago.”

“Women make him tick, young, pretty ones.”

“Any current girlfriends?”

“Not since Gillian.” He made a gesture with his hands like a wobbly aircraft fluttering to the ground.

“You have any proof they were having an affair? Did you see anything? Or know anyone who saw anything?”

“There is one witness,” he said.

“Who?”

“Paul Klass.”

“Paul Klass is dead.”

“Don’t remind me. AIDS, the plague. Empty chairs and empty tables. Empty apartments. Empty theaters.”

Wacky rocked back and forth; Danny figured he was acting out a ticking clock. “What does Paul Klass have to do with anything?”
he asked.

Wacky spun around, his eyes wide, incredulous. “One of the greatest people in the history of Broadway. Choreographer, performer,
director. God rest his talented soul.”

“With this case,” Danny said. “What does he have to do with this case?”

“Paul Klass was pretty-boy Winters’s mentor when he arrived here from Wyoming or Kansas. One of those big square states.”

“And he witnessed Gillian’s death?”

“His ghost saw it all. That was his apartment, eighteen-K. Paul Klass owned that apartment before Winters. He died there and
tears flowed into the street. His spirit haunts that apartment, and the Morosco. Maybe the Royale.”

“I’m confused,” Danny said.

“So was everyone else,” Wacky said. “No one knows what he saw in Trey Winters. I think he didn’t have the heart to tell him
he lacked talent. Too nice a man. No balls. His one failing.”

He rolled his eyes in a complete circle, then pointed to Vasili’s Shoe Repair. The window was filled with dozens of autographed
pictures of stars. Sly Stallone… “To Sam, my pal, thanks for everything.” Liza Minnelli, Glenn Close, Meryl Streep, Katharine
Hepburn, all apparently counted themselves in Sam’s circle of close friends. Danny couldn’t remember the last time he’d been
in a shoemaker’s shop. He wondered why movie stars seemed to have more problems with their footwear than the average citizen.

“Kate Hepburn,” Wacky said. “She has balls. One night she stopped the opening number of
Coco
and threw a woman out of the audience, a paying customer who took a picture of her entrance. Then she made them start the
show all over again.”

“Wacky,” Danny said, pointing to his watch, “it’s been marvelous, but I’m due back on the planet Earth.”

Danny’s Groucho Marx voice was humming the theme to
Twilight Zone
.

“Would it make it easier if I told you how Winters got into the building unseen?” Wacky said.

“The ghost of Paul Klass beamed him up?”

“Funny, but nooo… through the back door. I saw him do it a few weeks ago.”

“Cops checked the back door,” Danny said. “It’s through the basement, and it was locked.”

“I bet they didn’t check the old back door,” Wacky said, again displaying his exaggerated eyebrow arch. “Remember March 23,
1982?”

“I was in grade school that day,” Danny said. “That whole year, in fact.”

“Blackest day in the history of Broadway,” Wacky said, clapping his hand over his heart. “Five theaters torn down. The Morosco,
the Astor, the Victoria, the Bijou, and the Helen Hayes. We were all there, swaying, arm in arm. Like the barricade scene
in
Les Miz
. We sang ‘God Bless America’ and ‘Give My Regards to Broadway.’ Voices of angels. And people in your uncle’s profession arrested
Colleen Dewhurst, Estelle Parsons—”