Killed in the Act Read online

  The dignified actor was never quite the same after that, but then neither was I. It would be good to see Shelby and Green together again. I looked at the picture, and remembered and laughed, and hoped their plane had arrived safely.

  When I finally turned away from the picture, I was surprised to find the entire cast of the “Shelby and Green Program” walking right toward me.

  CHAPTER 3

  “One of these days, Alice. One of these days...”

  —JACKIE GLEASON, “THE HONEYMOONERS,” CBS

  THEY WALKED RIGHT BY me, up to the seats and monitor.

  Shelby and Green were there, of course, looking very much as they had when they’d broken up more than ten years ago. And Melanie Marliss. Whatever anger she’d felt about Shelby and Green’s late arrival had apparently vanished. She was smiling and nodding as she listened to Porter Reigels talk about the show.

  “Now, the Anchorman will talk to Melanie first, then I’ll run the Harriet Gunner tape, then, we’ll go live to you two.”

  Reigels was a tall, rugged Texan, with a whispery drawl and a deeply lined face. He was legendary in the fields of movies and television because he never swore—the language you usually hear in a studio when the camera’s off could make a longshoreman blush.

  Nobody seemed to mind my listening in. It’s my face. People have told me I look like I know what I’m doing, even during those extended and frequent periods when I don’t. So I listened as Reigels went on. “After the chitchat, Ken and Lenny and Melanie, you go over to that area in the corner, there, for your sketch. Now, I wanted to talk this over with you, but since you weren’t here, I put the ‘Reluctant Magician’ in the run sheet. Okay?”

  Shelby said, “Fine,” and looked at Green. Green shrugged and said, “Okay by me. I’m not about to go learning new material at this stage. Not with the money this chicken outfit pays.”

  I smiled. As usual, it was the delivery that made it funny—that, and Ken Shelby’s painfully embarrassed reaction-take. They might never have broken up.

  “It’ll be fine, Porter—” Shelby began, but a haggard-looking woman in dark glasses cut him off. “Why that sketch?” she snapped.

  My God, I thought, that’s Alice Brockway. I hadn’t even recognized her; I’d thought she was Reigels’s production assistant or something.

  “What’s the problem?” asked a specimen with shiny black hair and an equally shiny black mustache who had a proprietary hold on Melanie Marliss’s elbow. It was Lorenzo Baker, the taco tycoon, whose face was as familiar as that of Colonel Sanders. He could pass for a Mexican, as long as he kept his mouth and eyes shut. The midwestern twang and baby blues were too obviously north-of-the-border for his deception to be successful anywhere outside his printed taco wrappers.

  Though the Golden Goddess he was hanging onto topped him in both height and weight, Baker was going to be everybody’s big brother—just give the problem to him, and everything would be hunky-dory. People like that get on my nerves. I distrust anybody who doesn’t think he has enough problems of his own.

  Evidently, Alice Brockway thought the same way. “Shut up!” she told him. She turned to Reigels. “Everybody is sick of that routine,” she told the director.

  Ken Shelby smiled, but his teeth didn’t move when he talked. “Now, dear,” he said, “that’s hardly possible. Considering the act broke up twelve years ago.”

  I was troubled and confused by all this. It had the look of something that could get out of hand and make trouble, and I don’t like trouble. It occurred to me to wonder where Llona was.

  “Well,” Porter Reigels drawled, “it’d be kind of a shame to change it, seein’ as how that’s what we lit the set and rehearsed the camera angles for. You folks, as you might recollect, weren’t here.”

  Shelby and Green had the good grace to look embarrassed. Lorenzo Baker was about to make a remark, but after a noise of fury from Alice Brockway that made human speech seem inadequate by comparison, he shut up.

  Alice turned on Lenny Green. The little comedian almost jumped when he saw her face.

  “What’s the matter with you, Len?” she hissed. Green had his back to me, giving me a perfect view of Alice’s face. I was happy she was wearing the dark glasses—judging from the rest of her features, her eyes might have turned me to stone.

  “Hey, Alice,” he said in his pleasantly hoarse voice. “Calm down, all right? People like the Reluctant Magician, it’s one of our best bits.”

  “Sure,” she said. “You go into a box, and disappear from view, while my beloved stays outside and mugs at the audience. Don’t think that if you go along with him on this, he’ll get the act back together. This is a one-time thing, Len, and you’re going to let him get all the camera time!”

  “But I get all the laughs,” Green said.

  Alice’s calm was deadly now. “How long are you going to go on listening to him?”

  Green laughed. “If I had listened to you, Ken,” he said to his ex-partner, “maybe I’d be as rich as you are now, right?”

  “He’s an egomaniac!”

  Her husband spoke. “I’m an egomaniac. I suppose that’s why I quit show business and went into real estate?”

  “You went into real estate because you love money even more than attention!”

  I should break this up, I told myself, but I was too involved in the conversation. It was all those veiled references to the mining scandal that was widely rumored to have been the cause of Shelby and Green’s breakup. They, and a whole lot of other famous entertainers, actors, and even government officials (who, theoretically, should have known better), were big news in the late sixties, when they entrusted extraordinary sums of cash to a man named Ollie McHarg for shares in an outfit called Utopia Uranium. They found themselves holding an extremely empty bag when McHarg took off with the cash and left them the proud owners of nonexistent nuclear material processing plants. No one had told them that “Utopia” means “no place.”

  As it turned out I didn’t have to break anything up, because Llona came bustling into the studio. She gave me a little wave, then looked at the group of stars. Undoubtedly, she noticed that all was not exactly roses and lollipops, but she followed that first principle of PR: “Trouble does not exist until it is acknowledged,” and chose not to acknowledge it.

  “I’m back,” she announced, cheerfully and unnecessarily. “The hotel has your rooms all ready, so when you’re through here—”

  “I’m through,” Alice Brockway said. “I’m going to lie down. You’re a fool, Len. Excuse me.”

  That last was addressed to me; the first words the girl of my dreams had ever said to me. She had crashed into me while building up a head of steam on her way to the door. I said, “Clumsy of me,” as I stepped aside, and she actually gave me a tentative smile as she strode on.

  No one said anything until the echo of her last high-heel click was gone from the studio. Then Llona, in a kind of desperate attempt to change the subject, lit on me.

  “I—I want you all to meet Matt Cobb. He’s one of the vice-presidents here at the Network.”

  “My God,” Lenny Green said, feigning shock. “Vice-president of what? Diaper-changing?”

  “I know what you mean, Lenny,” Melanie Marliss cooed. She looked from Llona to me and back. “It used to be, the entertainers could count on being the best-looking people in the Network, but look at these two.

  “They just wanted to make you feel at home, darling,” Lorenzo Baker crooned. His voice was not suited for crooning.

  It had raised my self-image a few points to hear that Hollywood’s reigning sex symbol thought I was good-looking, but I could see that Llona, in some feminine way, was taking it as a mild insult.

  “I’m pleased to meet all of you,” I said. I told Shelby, Green, and Marliss, truthfully, that I was a big fan of theirs.

  “Since you were a child, right?” Green said, and everybody laughed. Melanie insisted that everyone get on a first-name basis; then Llona made the r
are (for her) gaffe of bringing up my boyhood crush on Shelby’s wife. Not only did that prove I had been a fan since I was a child, it also violated the tacit agreement to forget about Alice’s conduct that afternoon.

  Ken Shelby felt obliged to do something about the situation. He was still wearing his smile, but by now, it looked more like rictus sardonicus than any human emotion.

  “You’ll...ah...you’ll have to make allowances for my wife,” he said, adjusting his horn-rims. “If there are two things that put Alice in a bad mood, they’re getting up early and jet lag, and today, she’s had to put up with both.”

  Porter Reigels shrugged it off, saying, “Well, it don’t really matter for this afternoon. I hope she’s feeling better by tonight, though. I want to have a read-through, tonight about—what time was it you said you could make it, Mel?”

  Melanie, in turn, looked at Baker, who said, “About eight o’clock. Melanie and I will have an early dinner.” He was being gracious.

  The whole setup seemed wrong. It was unsettling to fall in with a bunch of big stars, then listen as they exhibited marital flare-ups and social embarrassment like any civilians from Scarsdale would.

  Lenny Green said, “Hey, Porter, if you expect the Reluctant Magician sketch, you better make sure they’ve got two trap doors in this set.”

  “They’re there,” the Texan assured him. “You sent me the goldang specifications in your letter, didn’t you? I c’n read, y’know.”

  “What about the vanishing cabinet? Did you go to the magic shop I mentioned?”

  Reigels sighed. “Yes, I did, and I think you’re getting a kickback on it, too. Cost us an arm and a leg. Got it in the prop room.”

  “Good,” Green said. “But I better take a look at it, anyway, if I’m supposed to disappear from it.”

  Reigels said it would be a heck of a note if he couldn’t disappear from it, and said to come along. Ken Shelby said he’d better go with them, and they strode off. I noticed Green was limping slightly. Llona waved me a hasty good-bye, and took off after them. “They still don’t know what rooms they have in the Brant,” she explained.

  Melanie said that reminded her of something. “Lorenzo dear, please go back to the hotel and see if that telegram from Paramount has come yet.”

  “Not necessary to go back right away, Melanie. It’s too late to do anything about it today, anyway.”

  “Nonsense,” she told him. “You know it’s three hours later out here. I’ll be right along, I promise. I just want to say hello to my old wardrobe girl. I understand she’s still working here. Please go, Lorenzo. For me?”

  He said, “Of course,” and obeyed. He didn’t make it from taco king to movie producer by defying his meal ticket, that was for sure.

  That left me alone with Melanie Marliss, with only about thirty-five carpenters for chaperones. I was just as glad to have them. The woman had something that in the right circumstances could make a gentleman forget to be gentle. But I don’t have to tell you that—millions of people have sat in movie theaters memorizing every inch of Melanie Marliss’s face and body. I can only add that she was just as beautiful in three dimensions as in two. She had some laugh lines at the corners of her eyes that don’t show up on camera (she was no spring chicken, after all), but God (or Clairol) had given her hair a warm honey glow no film could ever capture, and that made up for it.

  “I never did find out what you’re the vice-president of,” she said.

  “Special Projects,” I told her.

  She looked surprised. “Oh, the Network snooper. Whatever happened to McFeeley?”

  “He had hip trouble and retired.”

  “Oh. Remind me to have you give me his address. He got me out of some...embarrassing spots when I was with the Network. You must be very smart to replace him so young.”

  “I’m not smart,” I told her with a smile, “just dedicated. Smart people avoid trouble.”

  “Is it trouble that brings you around here?” Her voice took on an edge of wariness, under its usual velvet.

  “No, no trouble for a change. I’m just a hopeless TV fan. I came down here to look around. I was especially interested,” I said, pointing to the Shelby-Green picture, “in that.”

  “Oh,” she laughed. “That was really something. That was the last show the Network let us do live. Lenny is crazy in front of an audience.”

  “Well,” I said, “I’d like to know how he did it, myself. I mean, it’s obvious that Green got the belt off the guy when he shook hands with him...”

  “Yes?”

  “Oh,” I said, “sorry.” It had occurred to me, somewhat belatedly, that this was a hell of a topic to discuss with her, especially since it was probably the first and last chance I’d ever have to speak to Melanie Marliss.

  “But,” I went on resignedly, “Green was off on the other side of the stage for two or three minutes before the guy’s pants fell down. How’d he do that?”

  “I can’t tell you that,” she grinned. “I made a promise. You know Lenny started in the business as a magician’s assistant? Well, not revealing secrets is one thing he’s serious about, even if the tricks are played more for laughs than anything else.”

  I could understand that, and told her so.

  “I can tell you this, though,” she said; “It’s really very simple. If you’re as smart as Hugh McFeeley, you’ll be able to figure it out.

  “Oh, and I want to warn you—Lenny has been hinting about a surprise ending to the sketch, but he won’t tell anyone what it is. Not even Ken, and that’s rare. I think someone ought to warn Porter before Lenny launches his surprise on the air live, don’t you?”

  She didn’t give me a chance to reply, but said instead, “I’ve really enjoyed meeting you—Matt? It’s so nice to have a chance to talk to someone for five minutes without autographs or money being mentioned.”

  “The pleasure was all mine.”

  “How sweet.” She put out her hand, and I took it. It was a friendly grip she gave me. “Will I see you again?” she asked.

  “I’ll be at the banquet.”

  “Wonderful.”

  I said I thought so, too. She asked where the wardrobe room was, I told her, she took her hand back, and left.

  I took a few minutes to look around the rest of the studio—that’s what I’d come down for in the first place, remember—but before I finished, the carpenters and stagehands started to pack up their tools, and that told me it was time to go home.

  CHAPTER 4

  “And now, for something completely different.”

  —JOHN CLEESE, “MONTY PYTHON’S FLYING CIRCUS,” BBC & PBS

  NATURALLY, I HAD JUST stepped out of the shower when the phone rang. I stayed in the bathroom drying off, but opened the door so I could hear what was going on as the phone-answering thing took the call.

  “Hello,” I heard myself say, “this is the pre-recorded voice of Matt Cobb. Due to circumstances beyond my control, I am unable to bring you my living self at this time. Please leave a message when you hear the thousand-cycle tone, and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can. Thank you.”

  As usual, when he heard my voice coming from somewhere, and saw my body somewhere else, Spot, the purebred Samoyed whose house guest I was, dashed back and forth between the phone and me, giving me a dirty look each time he reached the bathroom. I was watching Spot, and his luxury Central Park West apartment, for Rick and Jane Sloan, a couple of friends of mine with more money than they knew what to do with. They decided to send some of the excess to Thailand in the form of an archaeological expedition, and then, at the last minute, decided to follow it.

  After the beep, I heard the agitated voice of Llona Hall say, “Oh, damn!”

  Fainter, but still clear, as though he was sharing the receiver with her, Sal Ritafio’s voice said, “What’s the matter? He’s there, isn’t he?”

  Instantly, my heart started to bleed for him. That was the secret of Ritafio’s success. His face (which resembles two choc
olate chips pressed into a matzoh ball) and his voice (a tremulous tenor) were so piteous, nobody could refuse the guy for fear he would pine away and die. He always looked harried, like a man trying to feed seven hungry lions with six pieces of meat.

  Now I had to go pick up the phone. I wrapped the towel around myself. It’s silly to do that when the only one who’s going to see you naked is a dog, but I do it anyway. When the towel was secure, I had to dash across the big white shag rug to get to the phone before Llona decided to hang up.

  “Hello?” I said breathlessly.

  “Matt?”

  “Yeah. What’s up? You sound troubled.”

  “I’ll say. We’ve been ripped off.”

  “Oh, boy,” I said.

  A television camera, one television camera, costs anywhere from fifty-five thousand dollars up. Add in the cost of the lens and the pedestal, and it’s way up. The nightmare was that some night some nut would back a truck up to the loading dock and make off with about three million bucks in hardware. It would have to be a nut, because the stuff would be almost impossible to fence, but he could hold it for ransom or something. The real worry was the possibility it would get damaged in transit. One scratch, and good-bye twelve-thousand-dollar lens.

  “What did they get?” I braced myself as I asked the question.

  “You’re not going to believe this...” Llona said. She sounded grim.

  That’s a conversational gambit that never fails to set my teeth on edge. “I’ll believe it, I swear,” I assured her. “What did they steal, for Christ’s sake, the Anchorman’s denture?”

  “Oh, my God,” I heard Ritafio breathe. “Don’t even think that!”