Killed in Fringe Time Page 6

  Well, not exactly. There was no glittering star on his door, just the prosaic figures B13 badly stenciled in white on a dark green metal door, the kind that makes a blooping sound when you knock on it.

  The voice I had grown to know Friday evening said, “Who is it? What do you want?”

  I had visions of him with his goddamn pistol in there. It probably hadn’t occurred to him to leave it up in Connecticut.

  “It’s me,” I said ungrammatically. “Matt Cobb. I drove you to Bentyne’s house the other night.”

  The door creaked open, and the familiar bearded face greeted me. “Come on in,” it said. “I know who you are, cripes, it was only three days ago. You’d think I was senile or something.”

  “Richard Bentyne asked me to come over here and make sure you were okay,” I said. It wasn’t exactly a lie.

  “I’m fine. That him yelling before?”

  “That was him, all right.”

  “I thought so. Ain’t doing so well, is he?”

  Since there was nothing I could do with that one except agree with it, I ignored it.

  “He says he’ll be around to see you when he gets the chance.”

  Bates snorted. “Tell him to forget it until he gets his attitude in order. Otherwise, I ain’t interested.”

  “You’re going to have to talk to him on the air, you know,” I warned him.

  “On the air is different. I agreed to do that, and I stick by my word. Besides, he’s got to be more in control on the air.

  “How do you know?” I demanded. “Up till Friday night, you hadn’t seen any television in thirty-five years.”

  He looked for a second as if he were going to be angry with me, then decided against it.

  “Yeah,” he said, “but I sure got an eyeful Friday night. Including Bentyne’s show, by the way. Besides, it stands to reason. If he was as nuts in front of millions of viewers every night as I’ve heard him being in this building this morning, he would have been locked away a long time ago.”

  He scratched his beard. “Looking back, I’m a little nervous at the idea of having spent a month under the same roof as him. Though, to be fair, he was as nice as pie.”

  “You were lucky,” I told him. “It could have been like shacking up with Sybil.”

  And with that, I did it again. Bates cracked up and kept laughing long past what I thought the gag was worth. Finally he calmed down enough to say. “Yessir. Boy, am I glad I got the friendly personality.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “especially since you’re the only one who has.”

  He started to wheeze into another laughing fit, but he and I were saved by a knock at the door.

  “You get it, Cobb,” he told me. “I’ve got to go to the jakes for a while.” He picked up an old issue of Mirabella magazine, whether to read or to substitute for a primary function of the now-defunct Sears Roebuck catalog in his neck of the woods, I couldn’t say.

  I got up and answered the door. Outside was a tall guy, maybe six five or six six. He was bald with a black fringe, and he wore gray-framed half-glasses on the bridge of a hooked nose. He wore gray slacks, a white shirt, and a blue-checked bow tie. He looked like a small-town high school principal.

  “Yes?” I said.

  “Well, now. You’re not Clement Bates, are you?”

  “Neither are you,” I informed him. I pointed to my badge, which I hated. I feel stupid wearing a picture of my own face on my lapel. “Matt Cobb,” I said. “Network Special Projects. Bentyne wants me here. Your turn.”

  “We’ve got the wrong faces, don’t we?” he offered. “I mean, I look much more like what people think a Network vice president ought to look like, don’t you think? Not that you look like a comedy writer. At least what I’d like to imagine a comedy writer looks like.”

  “You’re a comedy writer,” I deduced.

  “Oh, right, right. Alf Kriecz.” He stuck out a hand for me to shake. It felt like a bag of candy canes, but his grip was strong enough. “I’m head writer on the show. Used to write for Carson, at the very end.”

  There was something wrong about this guy. Too deferential. In appearance, the classic nerd. I refused to believe it was for real. After all, the essence of Bentyne’s humor was the put-on, the continued kidding of the unhip. Maybe to be head writer for the guy you had to devote your life to it or something.

  “Maybe that’s why he retired.”

  Kriecz opened his mouth and eyes in a look of delight. He pulled a small notebook and the stub of a pencil from a hip pocket. “That’s good,” he said scribbling. “That’s very good. Don’t be surprised if we use that one sometime, Mr. Cobb. And no royalties for you, either.”

  All right, now I knew. My putdown had been a test, and Alf Kriecz had failed it. If he were what he’d been pretending to be, it would have hurt him or, more likely, made him laugh a little, or most likely, had him come back with a topper.

  So he was putting me on, and no doubt intended to put Bates on. He probably put on everybody who walked into the studio except for the anointed hip. No wonder the word in the industry was that Vivian Pike had had to up her Valium intake because of the fact that it was so hard to get name guests to submit themselves to the Bentyne treatment.

  As a (very) minor stockholder in the Network, I was beginning to think that the forty-five million bucks was going to turn out to be a waste of money, but I had to remind myself that the only thing that mattered was what went out over the air. The fact that there were millions of young Americans out there who described themselves as “the Richard Bentyne Generation” was good news for my investment, however big a tragedy it might be for the country.

  I was about to ask Kriecz how I could help him (a swift kick in the ass sprang to mind) when a toilet flushed as loud as a space shuttle launch, and Clement Bates appeared, hitching up his pants.

  He looked up at Kriecz, rubbed his beard, and said, “By Jesus, I’ve heard of people growing up through the top of their hair, but I never thought I’d see it.”

  Kriecz stood there.

  “Write that one in the notebook,” I suggested helpfully.

  To give him credit, he did it. I guess if your life is an imposture, if you don’t stick with it, you don’t have any life at all.

  I pronounced names. Bates said. “Writer? What can I do for you, sonny?”

  Kriecz explained that he and the writing staff had prepared some possible answers for questions Richard might be asking him during the taping.

  “Some guests, especially if they’re new to television, tend to tense up with the lights and the crowd. We like to have the guest ready in those situations, give him something to fall back on. Richard understands; we’ve got questions written for him that will tie into these answers beautifully. You’ll look like a genius.”

  The contempt behind the ingratiating grin was so strong, you could almost smell it. I looked at my watch. Eleven-fifty. I’d only been here an hour and a half. It felt like eternity. The only people I’d spoken to this morning who I could even stand were Bates and Vivian Pike, and they wouldn’t be my first choices to be trapped in an elevator with, either.

  I was beginning to get an idea of what hell must be like. This studio, forever.

  Bates sat down and told Kriecz to do the same. There were no chairs left, so the writer perched on the edge of a makeup table.

  “Let me get this straight,” the guest said. “You’ve written down a bunch of stuff for me to say? And I go out there and say it?”

  “Well, if you have to. But yes, that’s basically it.”

  The beard bristled.

  “Stand up!” Bates demanded.

  Kriecz looked astonished. This time, it was no put-on. “What?”

  “I said stand up. I’m going to paste you one, and you can’t hit a man while he’s sitting down. Stand up, dammit!”

  “What’s the matter with you?” Getting no answer, Kriecz tried the question on me. “What’s the matter with him?”

  “Maybe he likes to
speak for himself,” I suggested.

  “You’re damned right!” Bates yelled. “I didn’t come any two thousand miles just to parrot the words of some slick New York hack who thinks he knows how to make me funny. I didn’t come here to be funny! I came here to be myself! I may be a hermit, but I’m no goddamn rube. I’ve got over a hundred million dollars, you idjit!”

  He walked over to the still-seated Kriecz but did not paste him one.

  “Does Bentyne know you’re doing this? I don’t think so, because while he may be crazy, he ain’t stupid. But if he did know, I’m walking out of here right now. I don’t need him, I don’t need the show, and I certainly don’t need you.”

  “Um ... Richard doesn’t know anything about it. About you specifically, I mean. It’s just a routine. A routine thing that we do. To, um, make it easier. For the guests.”

  Bates poked each word home with an index finger to Kriecz’s chest. “I ain’t no routine guest.”

  He took a breath. “Okay, I’ll stay for now. But no more insults. And I don’t want to see your smirking face around at all.”

  “Um, right.” Kriecz and his smirking face made themselves scarce.

  Bates waited until the door clicked closed.

  “People,” he spat. “They bring out the worst in me. Listen, Cobb, as long as you’re here, I need your help with a little problem I’m having.”

  I suppressed a sigh. “What’s that?”

  “Those idjit cops up in Connecticut took my gun and won’t give it back.”

  I managed not to actually cheer out loud. I was about to explain how these things could take a long, long time, when there was a banging on the door that sounded as if it would leave dents in the metal.

  It was Vivian Pike. She was breathless and sobbing. Something had gotten past the Valium.

  “Cobb,” she said, “come quick! Richard is terribly sick, and he’s calling for you.”

  “Bon appétit!”

  —JULIA CHILD

  The French Chef, PBS

  8

  BY THE TIME I got there, he was no longer calling my name, mostly because he was throwing up, writhing, turning colors, and all the other things poisoned people do before they die.

  “All right,” I said, exactly like a man who knew what he was doing. “All right,” I said again, and finally my brain started to work.

  My first thought had been that Bentyne had yielded to temptation, and had scarfed down the forbidden chocolate cake, but a quick glance around the room showed it on the makeup table where it had always been, sitting there like Exhibit A.

  What had been eaten in that room recently was chicken. Fried chicken, to be precise. There were chicken bones in the garbage can, and brown crumbs in the folds of a crumpled napkin on a round table. There was also an empty pilsner glass with traces of foam clinging to it, and an empty Grolsch bottle, the kind with the built-in stopper, leading me to deduce Bentyne had drunk beer, too.

  It was obvious that something he had eaten had disagreed with him mightily. Bentyne was twitching now; I bent to hold him still. He was clammy and hot.

  I looked up to see faces floating like bubbles in the doorway.

  I recognized a couple. “Cass,” I said.

  “Yo!”

  “Visit all the security guards. Nobody leaves the building. Get the names of anybody who has left the place in the last hour or so.”

  There was finally emotion in Vivian Pike’s voice. She said, “Are you trying to say—”

  “I’m not trying, I’m saying it. You call 911. Say we’ve got what looks like an acute case of heavy metal poisoning, and we need an ambulance and the cops.”

  Marcie clicked her tongue in impatience. “He’s obviously dying,” she said, as if it needed to be pointed out. “I think you should—”

  “Nobody gives a shit what you think!” I snapped. Boy, did that feel good. “You want to accomplish anything, all of you try to remember if you noticed who gave him the chicken.”

  There was a general murmur. An unidentified voice from the back of the crowd said, “The black guy gave him the chicken. Your security man.”

  There is a phenomenon known as a klong, a term described by its coiner, political pro Frank Mankiewicz as “a sudden rush of shit to the heart.”

  I experienced a klong just then, with the realization that I might have just sent a murderer to run away and lock up after himself like a good boy.

  Fortunately, I didn’t have long to agonize over it, because a few seconds later Cass was back. If he wondered why the crowd parted around him like the Red Sea, he didn’t let on.

  “All set, Matt,” he said.

  “It looks like he was poisoned with the chicken or the beer, Cass.”

  “Really?” Cass said. He found the matter merely of academic interest. “Well, I got a list of suspects for you, then. Or I will have. People been in and out of here like a public toilet since Gambrelli delivered the basket.”

  “Gambrelli?”

  “Network chauffeur assigned to the show,” Vivian Pike said. I hadn’t noticed her return. “He brings Richard’s lunch in from Darien every day about eleven-thirty.” Vivian Pike looked at me and answered the question I was about to ask. “Ambulance and cops on their way.”

  There was a question in her face, too—“How is he?” but I ignored it because she wouldn’t like the answer.

  Richard Bentyne was dying under my hands. If the ambulance showed up this second, it would be too late. If we could somehow teleport him this second to the emergency room of Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center, it would still be too late.

  As usual, the cops got there before the ambulance did—their cars are smaller, and there are more of them. One of the cops, a grizzled veteran with about five citations pinned under his shield, took one look at Bentyne and told his partner to get back to the radio and call for the medical examiner and homicide.

  Vivian Pike gave a little-girlish shriek, the last thing I would have expected from her. From Marcie, we got exactly what I would have expected—abuse. “You haven’t even done anything. Why don’t you ask questions? Why don’t you help Richard? Typical men—hog all the power, deny any responsibility.”

  She was unanimously ignored.

  The cop, on the other hand, narrowed his eyes at me. “You’re Cobb, right? Matt Cobb?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I am. Do I know you?”

  He gave me a small grin. “No, but I know you by reputation”—he lifted his head and called to his retreating partner. “Reynolds! When you call homicide, ask for Lieutenant Martin.”

  And twenty minutes later, Lieutenant Martin it was. Now that my own dad’s gone, Detective Lieutenant Cornelius U. Martin Jr. was the closest thing I had to a father figure. And a big figure he is, too; massive and brown, with a frosting of white hair on top, his nickname on the force was the Chocolate Mountain. Despite his protests, he secretly liked it.

  Mr. M and his family had integrated our building when I was a kid, and his son, Cornelius III, and I had grown up together, sneaking up to Harlem to play in the toughest basketball games we could find. It had paid off for us. I’d won a scholarship to an expensive college I’d never have been able to afford otherwise, and Corny had ridden his talents through a University of North Carolina degree and a lucrative, if injury-shortened career in the NBA. He was happily coaching in the Midwest.

  And his father was still chasing murderers in New York.

  Lieutenant Martin grunted when he saw me. He was accompanied, as always, by Detective First Grade Horace Rivetz, a balding, wiry guy who seemed as hard as his name.

  Usually. Today, he seemed out of sorts and subdued. When Martin told him to take names among the crowd while Martin interviewed me as his first witness, Rivetz let me go by without so much as a sneer, let alone a sarcastic remark. He simply gave me a mild, “Hello, Cobb,” then ignored me and turned to his work.

  While Rivetz and the rest of the team got on with it, Mr. M led me away. When we were out of ear
shot, he said, “Where can we talk? You’ll have to fill me in on the background here.”

  “You trust me too much,” I told him. “One of these days, I’m going to turn out to be the one who did it, and I can fill your head with lies.”

  “Don’t even joke about it, Matty. Anybody can get tempted to kill somebody. You for instance. I should have snuffed your candle when I had the chance, before you got them all convinced downtown that I’m some kind of TV murder specialist. I don’t even watch TV.”

  “Mmm hmm,” I said.

  “Except for sports.”

  “Right.”

  “And the old Dick Van Dyke Show on Nick at Nite. But that’s it. I sure don’t watch much on this Network, despite all the cases you arrange for me around here. How much do they charge you for insurance, working for this place? Whatever it is, I bet they’re losing money.”

  I brought him to Bates’s dressing room, knocked on the door, and brought him inside.

  “Bates,” I said.

  “Clem.”

  Okay, I told myself, it was the guy’s name. If society could get used to taking names like Prince and Madonna and Arthur Garfunkel for granted, I could get used to the idea of somebody out of an old Disney cartoon named Clem.

  “All right, Clem. Listen—”

  “And I’ll call you Matt. What’s all the commotion?”

  “Something’s happened to Bentyne. This is Lieutenant Martin of the New York Police Department. He’s going to want to talk to you in a little while. In the—”

  “Police?” Bates said. “You mean Bentyne got somebody mad enough to thump him?”

  “Not exactly. I—”

  “Well, it must be something, if the police are here.” He turned to Martin. “Pleased to meet you, by the way, I’m Clement Bates. Nobody beat him up?”

  “No,” I said. I looked at Lieutenant Martin. He nodded. “Bentyne’s dead,” I said.