Soap Opera Slaughters (17 page)

“Laddie,” the elder statesman of “Riverday” hailed me, “I didn’t suppose you’d come this soon! Welcome! Help yourself to some mulled wine.”

Bannister shook hands with Willie, whom I introduced, and also greeted Hilary. They were already acquainted with each other from time she’d spent at
WBS
conferring with her client and cousin. He gestured for us to gather round the check-out table. Next to the cash register on top of a hot plate was a metal pot with a ladle in it steeped in a scarlet liquid redolent of cinnamon, cloves and apples. Willie declined a drink and wandered off to examine the nonfiction, but Hilary and I accepted the paper cups the actor filled for us.

“Very nice,” Hilary said, “but isn’t it a bit early in the season? I usually associate hot wine punch with autumn.”

“True, true,” Bannister laughed, “but at my age, lass, it sometimes pays to rush things.” He sat down again behind the counter and, running a hand through his gray hair, regarded me with a rueful smile. “Quite a day you picked to get a behind-the-scenes glimpse, eh? The plot in the Jennett kitchen was thickening, but in the hospital, it was sickening.” He intoned the latter melodramatically.

“Well, taking all that into account, I was generally impressed with the way ‘Riverday’ is put together,” I said, sipping at the wine before adding, “and also disappointed.”

“Naturally. Gods don’t look good up close. Unquote.” He gestured with his pipe stem like a professor stressing some obscure point “Soap opera fantasy is meant for the living room. It’s practically impossible for the fans to understand that, but even some of the kids we get on the show have a hard time with it.”

“In what way?” Hillary asked. “You mean the younger actors?”

He nodded. “They haven’t yet learned how to distance themselves from their roles. See, there’s hardly enough time to get the lines down, let alone polish. The plot is unpredictable, anyway, so the tendency is to mine your own emotional memories...and that can draw blood.”

“How?”

“A common example, lass, is when a new cast member has to pretend to be in love with some actress he’s just met, and maybe doesn’t even like. There’s never time on a soap for intensive rehearsing, so he’ll probably just invest her with an ‘as-if affection he really feels for his wife or girl friend or lover. He plays love scenes with the actress. It goes on for weeks or maybe even months, and then the head writer decides to bring in a new man to steal away his ersatz love. Bang! All of a sudden, he actually feels threatened, sexually inadequate.”

“What happens then?” I asked.

“If he’s lucky enough to be paired with a mature actress, she’ll see the symptoms and spend a little time with him between scenes. Nothing significant, understand, just a few human fellow-actor chats to remind him that, after all, the show is only make-believe.”

Hilary refilled her cup. “Lara’s told me she often has to sit with Florence to ‘talk her down’ from some attack of Jennett family anxiety.”

“Well, that’s understandable,” said Bannister, “though you’d think Ms. McKinley is old enough to know better. But the role of Martha is her hiding place, don’t y’ see? She’s
become
the mother she never had herself. Don’t know what she’d do if they ever tried to kill off Martha.”

Hilary and I exchanged glances, but said nothing.

The conversation passed on to the topic of “Riverday’s” fans. The actor pinched the bridge of his nose with index finger and thumb, closed his eyes. He looked worn out. “The letters we get,” he soliloquized. “They send presents and propositions to the heroes and poisoned candy to the villains. Two or three months ago, a woman wrote inviting me to spend a weekend with her. Among other things, I was supposed to escort her to
her husband’s
annual company dinner. She said he’d given her full permission to do whatever she and I wished. She confided that she goes to bed every night with my picture under her pillow.”

“Did you accommodate her?” Hilary asked drily.

“Oh, I said no with great difficulty,” he replied in an ironic tone. “It was quite a test, too. As an added inducement, she included a photo of herself. Three hundred pounds, I do
not
exaggerate, and dressed in a strapless evening gown.”

Hilary and I chuckled, but it was hollow laughter. I wondered how many years of suffering that man and woman endured before reaching their unusual agreement. A grotesque example, perhaps, but not all that different from millions of Americans with no one to rejoice or cry with except strangers performing improbable morality dramas five days a week, same time, same channel.

“It’s an inescapable paradox,” Donald Bannister asserted, knocking the dottle from his pipe into an ashtray. “You see flesh-and-blood people moving and speaking on TV and you can’t help but think the puppets are the characters you fall in love with. It’s like that Fred Brown science-fiction story where a man conceives a passion for a woman telepathically conjured up by an intelligent cockroach. It’s not so different with soap actors. I mean, you might just as well try to share the soul of a Chopin étude by going to bed with the piano tuner.”

The door opened and a customer entered, seeking information from Bannister. The actor excused himself, and Hilary used the opportunity to begin browsing through the shop. I did the same, choosing another aisle. I saw Willie. He pointed to his watch.

“Ten more minutes tops, Gene.”

“Fine. I leave you the task of prying Hilary loose.”

The attorney smirked. “How many favors do you think I owe?”

I walked to the back of the store, my eyes automatically running swiftly along the spines of faded bindings here and there interrupted by a newer volume’s garish dust jacket. It was hard to break the habit of looking, Hilary had trained me well.

My breath caught as my eye stopped on a tall blue book enclosed in a slipcase of the same hue.
Impossible!
The only other copy I’d ever seen was in the now nonexistent reading room of the old Lambs club. I practically leaped on it, looked for the price, couldn’t find any. I carried it up front, keeping an aisle between me and Hilary.

“Ah-hah,”
Bannister said, his wreathed in smiles when he saw my selection. “A man of rarefied tastes! There’s a wonderful story that goes with this volume. For twenty years—”

“Shh,” I hushed him, “tell me it another time, I want to make this a surprise. How much?”

He adopted my conspiratorial whisper. “I’ll give it to you for cost. Sixty dollars.”

“Thanks...but I don’t have that much money with me. Will you put it aside?”

Pressing it into my hands, Bannister said, “Go on and take it with you, lad. I trust you.”

I thanked him again, but explained the book was so huge, I’d look pretty conspicuous trying to leave with it. “But I can come back tomorrow.”

“Done,” he said, winking, and hid it under the counter.

Farewell my own,

Light of my life, farewell,

For crime unknown

I go to a dungeon cell.

W
HEN THE APARTMENT DOOR
opened, the strains of the second act octette of
H. M. S.
Pinafore
reached our ears. I introduced Florence to the attorney, Hilary remaining out of sight in the hallway till Willie and I entered, then she joined the procession. The actress opened her mouth to object, but I distracted her by thrusting a dollar bill into her hand.

She frowned at the money. “What’s this for?”

“To give to him,” I said, indicating Willie.

“Why don’t you just hand it to him yourself?”

“Because,” I replied with some pique, “you’re the one who needs him, and I figured I never could get you to part with a dollar of your own to ensure his discretion.”

My insult earned me a nasty look and a buck for Willie. He put it in his wallet and took out the receipt he’d prepared at the bistro. As soon as Florence accepted it, the lawyer told her, “Ms. McKinley, so far as I’m concerned, you are now my client and anything I hear tonight will be regarded as a privileged communication. May I have a few words with you in private?”

“I don’t intend to say a thing until my friend Lara arrives,” she stated in her haughtiest manner.

“A very good idea,” he agreed, nodding sagely and stroking the thing he called a beard. “You needn’t speak, I’ll do all the talking. Call it advice, if you wish, or perhaps rules of procedure.”

She hesitated long enough for me to make a crack about her getting my dollar’s worth. “And while you two are in conference,” I said, “I’ve got a telephone call to make. Don’t worry, it’s local.”

That was the last straw. As I’d meant it to be. Drawing herself erect—her ankle-length midnight blue dressing gown adding to her appearance of height—she told me I could use the kitchen phone. “Down that hallway. And you needn’t leave a dime.”

“Thanks. While I’m there, may I bring you some tea?”

“No!”
Then she made an awkward attempt at a gracious smile. “I suppose someone else may want some.”

Hillary declined, and so did I, but Willie said he wouldn’t mind a scotch. A bit nervy, perhaps, but then he was on a one-buck retainer.

Looking like she might have a stroke any minute, Scrooge McKinley said, “I’m not sure I have any in the kitchen.”

“Oh, as long as I’m there,” I volunteered helpfully, I’ll try to find some.”

“Thank
you,” she euphemized.

Hold! Ere upon your loss

You lay much stress,

A long-concealèd crime

I would confess.

As Buttercup sang her dire secret to the assembled Pinafore cast, I went to the kitchen, which was closer to the living room than my first visit led me to believe. As I entered, Florence’s tubby tawny cat, Rathbone, sleepily gazed at me through half-shut eyelids. He lay comfortably ensconced in a straw basket next to the gas range, swathed in a downy blanket, and with a pillow yet.

I dialed Fat Lou’s home number and gave him a down payment. He took the information without asking questions—he was on his own time. The call took us less than a minute.

Hanging up the phone, I checked the drawers and cabinet doors till I found the McKinley liquor stock. I almost burst out laughing. One shelf was crammed full of innumerable tiny flasks of every imaginable variety of whisky, cordial and liqueur, all of them miniatures.

I removed a pair of Johnny Walker Blacks, poured them over ice and brought the drink to Willie. He was standing by the picture window overlooking the river promenade talking in a low voice to Florence. I gave him the glass and joined Hilary by the aquarium.

“Housekeeping is hardly her strong suit,” she said beneath her breath.

The room was the same as I saw it the night before: tables groaning under piles of scripts, sheet music and dust; the same recording paraphernalia atop the
FM
/phono compact. The cassette in the compartment whirled the finale of the G&S operetta to its joyous conclusion.

“Sounds like an old recording,” I remarked.

“It is,” Hilary nodded. I’ve got it They transferred a 1930 performance from 78s to tape. It’s back to back with an even older
Trial By Jury.”

The last mock-Wagnerian
motif
sounded and in the silence that followed, the burbling of the air pump in the fish tank seemed surprisingly loud. Willie’s voice momentarily stood out in the hush, but he quickly adjusted his volume, and then more music played, a piano solo, something by Gottschalk.

There was a curious frown on Hilary’s, but before I could comment the doorbell rang. Florence left the room and returned presently with Lara, who immediately crossed to me, apologizing for being late. But when she was a few feet away, she stopped talking and came to a halt.

“Hello, Lainie,” Hilary said.

The two cousins stared at one another like mirror images, then Lara gazed at me wide-eyed, lips half-parted in an unspoken question. A second of silence, and she turned away.

Florence stopped the tape before the end and sat next to Willie on the couch. Their backs were to Hilary, who remained standing by the aquarium. Lara chose the same chair as the night before, the one opposite the sofa.

Facing the group on my feet, I had Hilary straight ahead on the other side of the couch and Lara on my right Their stares were the legs of an obtuse angle with me at the apex, like a moth double-pinned to a specimen board.

I made an effort to ignore them and concentrate on Florence McKinley. “I’m going to construct a scenario, and you’re the star. I’m taking a calculated risk doing this, and I don’t expect you to appreciate it, either.”

I paused, waiting for her to comment, but she just glared at me with lips pressed into a thin, grim line, evidently following Willie’s advice not to speak.

“Lara,” I began, “brought me here last night because you claimed someone was trying to blame Ed Niven’s death on you. I checked and found out you were extremely jealous of any woman Niven so much as smiled at—and according to at least one witness, he smiled at quite a few of them. You probably had Kit Yerby fired for that reason.”

She opened her mouth, then remembered and closed it again.

I went on. “It didn’t take much effort on my part to discover you really called me here as a tool to get at Joanne Carpenter. It’s true, of course, that she lives near
WBS
and has no alibi for Saturday, but then, neither do you. And in my opinion, Joanne never could have hurt him.”

I phrased it deliberately to rile her, and it worked. Angrily, she began, “And you think that I have the capacity to—” But she stopped herself at a glance from Willie. A vein throbbed in her temple.

I continued. “I can’t prove that you put the alcohol in Joanne’s ‘medicine,’ but you were quick to suggest that she did it herself to further implicate you. Unfortunately, the argument cuts either way. Lacking evidence, I have to call it a stalemate.”

Florence sniffed disdainfully. “Your incompetence is not my fault.”

Ignoring the taunt, I said, “Hitting Ames with his Emmy showed a total lack of caution. Joanne was in the hospital when it happened, sleeping off her attack. An even if she’d been at
WBS
, she wouldn’t have had any idea what was going on between Ames and Tommy Franklin.”