Strange Embrace (3 page)

“Sure, Johnny. It’s a mess. I ask questions because I have to. Then we find out it was a sex killing and we have to start all over again. We throw out a net and catch perverts, and we make all the perverts tell us what they were doing at the time and with whom, and maybe we get the bastard and maybe we don’t.” He held up his sheet of notes. “This,” he said, “I could throw it in the garbage and it wouldn’t matter.”

“I’ll see you,” Johnny said. He stood up. “You’ll have to solve this one without me, Sam. But let me know when the ME report comes in, right?”

“Of course,” Haig told him. “And you keep your crew of hams in town until they’re cleared.” He smiled sadly. “You won’t be able to go into action for a while in any case, will you? Not with your leading lady waiting to be replaced. I guess it’s been a bad night all around, huh?”

Johnny agreed with him.

Ito was still up. Johnny got rid of his hat and coat and found a chair to sink into. Then he gave Ito a full summary of the night’s activities. The butler’s face remained impassive.

“Hell of a thing,” Ito said. “If whoever raped her waited one more day she’d have been all right. She’d have been out of town.”

“I know. It’s quite a coincidence.”

“What do you think?”

“I don’t know. Somehow I can’t swallow the sex-killing bit. I’ve got a theatrical mind, Ito. I want a plot to dovetail neatly. The police have the right idea. They question everybody until one person looks wrong. They throw questions at half the town until one guy can’t answer them straight. And nine times out of ten the first one they pick is guilty.” He lit a cigarette. “I want it more complex than that, damn it. She—she died in a strange way. She couldn’t have put up much of a fight at all. She looked almost peaceful, for the love of God! As though she’d been sleeping when he…cut her throat.”

“Does she always sleep nude?”

“How the hell would I know? All right, you can stop laughing at me now. I fell for it. Any calls while I was out?”

Ito told him there were none. Johnny finished his cigarette, then stood up.

“I’m going to sleep,” he announced. “I’ve got a hell of a lot to do tomorrow. I’ll have to check out all the girls around who might be candidates for Elaine’s part. If I find a fast study in a hurry we may be able to open in time.”

“Really?”

“Really,” Johnny said. “With only two weeks for the leading lady to learn to tell her lines from her behind, we’ll be lousy in New Haven. But we can straighten it out in time for the New York opening. Look, it’s six now. Do you think you can be up by noon?”

“I’ll be up at ten. Should I wake you at noon?”

“Yeah, wake me at noon,” Johnny said. “But how in hell will you manage to be up at ten?”

“You know, we Orientals are wonderfully industrious,” Ito said. “And inscrutable. You can never tell what we’re thinking—”

“Go get some sleep,” Johnny said, then headed out of the room.

J
OHNNY LANE CAME OUT OF SLEEP
slowly, groggily. Ito was shaking him, attempting to be both gentle and firm at once. Johnny’s eyes opened and the light was painful.

“Go away,” he said sourly. “Go join your honorable ancestors or something.”

“Mr. Lane—”

Johnny groaned. “God,” he said. “It can’t be noon yet.”

“It isn’t.”

“What the—”

“It’s eleven-thirty, which is close. And you have company. A visitor.”

“Haig?”

Ito shook his head. “Not even close,” he said. “A woman. An attractive woman. She insists that her name is Jan Vernon and that she has to see you at once.”

“What does she look like?”

Ito thought it over. “She looks as though she was slept with not long ago.”

“Then it’s Jan,” Johnny said, grinning. “And she probably was. Tell her to sit down and relax while I try to turn back into a human being. She probably needs some coffee. Me, too. With vitamins in it.”

“Vitamin B for bourbon?”

Johnny nodded. He wondered how long it would take him to wake up. Quite a while, he decided.

A shower helped. So did a shave. He brushed his teeth to remove their fur coat and splashed cold water on his face. He dressed in a hurry, putting on a sport shirt and a pair of light flannel slacks. He broke his shoelaces trying to tie them, threw the shoes away and put on a pair of loafers instead.

A hot cup of fortified coffee was waiting for him in the living room. So was Jan Vernon.

“Johnny,” she said, “I’m scared.”

“I’m exhausted,” he told her. He sat down and took a sip of the coffee to clear away mental cobwebs. There was a lonely cigarette in the tray on the coffee table. He lit it and smoked, studying Jan at the same time.

Ito was right, he decided. She definitely looked as though she had been slept with, and recently. The black hair that cascaded over her shoulders managed to look mussed up, even when every strand was in its place. The mouth pouted even when she smiled. And the eyes beckoned provocatively even when she was scared, which she obviously was now.

“I’m scared,” she said.

“You heard about Elaine?”

She nodded, her face grim. “Some policeman came banging on my door in the middle of the night.”

“Haig?”

“That’s the one. He was halfway through the story before I figured out what he was talking about. At that point I started to shake. I’m still shaking.”

“It was something to shake about,” Johnny told her. “A pretty rugged scene.”

“You found the…body?”

“Uh-huh. Didn’t Haig tell you?”

“He probably did. I was a little out of it at the time. Johnny, are we still going through with the show?”

He nodded. “Sure,” he said. “We may get going a week late at the outside, but I doubt it. I’ll call around and dig up another lead. I know it sounds ghoulish but that’s show biz, to coin a phrase.”

“The show must go on?”

“Uh-huh. A lot of backers have a lot of dough in this. Why? You sound like you think we ought to dump the thing, Jan.”

The eyes clouded, then turned to the floor. “Maybe we should,” she muttered. “Maybe we should.”

“Huh?”

She sighed. “I told you I was scared,” she said. “I’m not scared because I’m a woman and a vicious killer is walking the streets. That’s garbage. I don’t scare that easily, Johnny. I’ve got a better reason than that.”

He was interested. “Okay,” he said, “let’s hear it.”

“I’m scared because I’m in
A Touch of Squalor.”

Johnny stared at her. “You heard me,” she went on, “Somebody has it in for this show, Johnny. Somebody who wants to keep us from opening in the worst way. I don’t believe this sex-nut story. I don’t believe it at all. I think Elaine was murdered because she had the lead in the show.”

“You been smoking the wrong kind of cigarettes again, Jan?”

Her temper flared. “That was a damn lie,” she snapped. “And if you’d wait a goddamn minute you’d find out what I’m talking about.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You should be. I’ve had three phone calls,” she said. “Three times a male voice has told me to drop the show cold or get my head handed to me. I was supposed to quit or get killed—that was the message.”

“And you didn’t tell me about it?”

“I thought it was a gag. An actor making jokes. It’s the kind of joke an actor makes, isn’t it?”

“I suppose so. Did the—this voice—did it say anything else?”

“Just that somebody important didn’t want the show to open. That was all. Johnny, I didn’t even think about it the first time. The second time it wasn’t funny anymore but it still seemed like a gag. When the third call came I was pretty teed-off. I gave the guy on the other end of the phone a few choice directions and slammed the phone down hard enough to hurt his ear. Then later on I was thinking about it again. I was with Elaine and I mentioned the calls to her. I asked her if she thought they were a gag.”

“How did she take it? Did she laugh?”

“Like you laugh at a funeral, that’s how she laughed. She went white in the face and her hands started to shake. I told her to relax, it was only a joke, and besides, I was the one he was threatening. And she repeated that of course it was a joke. And she calmed down, or put on a good act.”

Johnny nodded. Maybe Jan wasn’t out of her head at all. Maybe she had gotten hold of something—something not very pretty.

“Well, Johnny, what do you think?”

“The same as you, probably. She must have received similar calls herself. And when you told her she wasn’t the only one…”

“She took it seriously.” Jan sighed.

Johnny closed his eyes and tried to think straight. He was damned if he knew who would want to keep a play from opening. There were people who tried to make sure plays closed early—they called themselves critics—but few who didn’t want a show to open in the first place. It didn’t make any sense.

What if he postponed rehearsals a month and delayed the opening by that much time? The backers would not be able to wriggle free; the money was already committed. The delay would run into a certain amount of money but the play was a strong enough property to carry through.

He frowned. It wouldn’t work—he couldn’t announce it as a delay or the murderer, whoever he was, would still be out for blood to prevent the show from opening at a later time. And he couldn’t fake it through by announcing that the show was cancelling itself or there would be hell to pay. The backers would demand their cash and the cast would look around for other work. Could he call it a closing while cluing in cast and backers to the truth? No, he couldn’t, he thought. Because he might manage to clue in the murderer in the process.

“Ito!” he bellowed. The servant came on the run, bowing for Jan’s benefit. “Call the cast,” he said. “We’ll be staying in the city until further notice. I’m busy looking for the right replacement for Elaine James and our opening will probably be postponed two weeks, maybe longer. Everybody should get his lines down pat and do a lot of constructive thinking about his part. Got it?”

Ito nodded.

Johnny paced, trying to think straight. “Better call the trade papers, too. Give them the same news but phrase it differently. We’re all broken up over what happened to Elaine and we’re taking a two-week break to honor her memory, or something like that. Everybody will figure out what that means but it looks better in print. Otherwise they’ll think I’m a cold-hearted bastard.”

Ito nodded again and went looking for a telephone. When they were alone Jan looked at Johnny and smiled grimly. “You,” she said, “are a cold-hearted bastard.”

“I probably am,” he agreed. He finished the combination of coffee and bourbon and got another cigarette going. His mind was working much better now and his body was not objecting quite so strenuously to the lack of sleep. His body, as a matter of fact, was proving that it was alive. The presence of Jan Vernon was having a disconcerting effect upon him.

If Jan could project sexiness from the stage to the balcony—and she definitely could—the effect was greatly increased in the privacy of a living room. She did not seem as frightened now as when she had arrived. She was relaxed in her chair, one leg crossed over the other at the knee, and Johnny had trouble keeping his eyes from her limbs.

They were good limbs and she knew it. There was nothing wrong with the rest of her, either, and she knew this as well. She would not have worn tight sweaters, for example, if she were not thoroughly satisfied with the quality and quantity of her mammary equipment.

The elaborately rumpled hair and the pouting mouth did not detract either. The play of the breasts within the sweater when she yawned and stretched was no soothing balm. Obviously, Jan’s position in life was basically a horizontal one and Johnny struggled with a strong urge to haul her off to the bedroom and ravish her. He had a hunch she would not mind at all.

Johnny sighed and switched back to business. “You didn’t tell Haig about the phone calls, did you?”

“I didn’t think about them. Why?”

“Just an idea,” he said. “If he ties it to the show none of us will have time to breathe. I’d rather sound out the rest of the cast first and find out who’s been getting the same kind of call, if anyone has. And there’s still the chance that this is a fluke—a sex-killing coincidentally tied in with a not-too-practical joke.”

She looked at him quizzically. “You don’t really believe that, do you?”

“I don’t know what I believe. I’ll have Ito set up a cast meeting for this evening. Over here, say, at eight o’clock. Just the principal players, plus Ernie—if some joker is trying to stop the show he won’t bother frightening bit players. We can sit around together over a drink or two and get everything out into the open. It’ll clear the air. Because if anybody else has been getting phone calls and hasn’t mentioned it, he’s scared out of his wits.”

“I know what you mean,” Jan said. “I’m a little steadier now that I told you. Johnny, why don’t we have the meeting at my place? It’s certainly big enough—I’ve been rattling around in it since I got rid of my last husband. And it’s more convenient. Most of the people in the show live downtown.”

“Well…”

“And I’m a sissy,” she said, grinning. “The less I go out at night the better I like it.”

“Good enough. You’re around the corner from Gramercy Park, right?”

“Right.”

“Expect company at eight, then. We shouldn’t take too long.”

“That’s fine,” she told him. “And if you get there a little early, that’s also fine. My coffee is every bit as good as Ito’s, you know. And I may think of something I’ll want to tell you in private.”

He saw her to the door, then paced the living room. The last bit of byplay had been an open enough invitation, especially in view of the fact that Jan Vernon had done the inviting. Which raised an interesting ethical question. It was bad form for the producer to sleep with his leading lady, true. But what about the second lead?

He thought of writing to
Variety
and asking them. He laughed softly, then went to the telephone to get busy calling agents. But he couldn’t get the idea completely out of his mind. Whatever the ethics of the situation, he was sure it would be a pleasant experience to share Jan Vernon’s bed.