Romance
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Synopsis
It's not a mystery, it's a story of survival and triumph. That's what some people say about Romance, a would-be hit play about an actress pursued by a knife-wielding stalker. But isn't it romantic! Before the show can open, the leading lady is really attacked, outside the theater. And before the detectives of the 87th can solve that crime, the same actress is stabbed again. This time for keeps. A.D.A. Nellie Brand moves in for a murder conviction, but Detective Steve Carella is sure she's got the wrong guy, and wrestles for the case with Fat Ollie Weeks, Isola's foulest cop. While Bert Kling interviews witnesses and suspects ranging from the show's producers to the author - who has written novels about cops and knows how it's done - to the lead's lovely understudy, he can't keep his mind off what's happening to him. He's falling in love. With a doctor. Who happens to be a deputy chief surgeon. Who happens to be a black woman. In the city of Isola, nothing is black and white. In the play Romance, no one is guilty or innocent. And in the gritty reality of the 87th Precinct, everyone is in love with something - even if it's only murder.
Release date: May 1, 2009
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Print pages: 280
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Romance
Ed McBain
ALSO BY ED McBAIN
The 87th Precinct Novels
Cop Hater • The Mugger • The Pusher (1956) The Con Man • Killer’s Choice (1957) Killer’s Payoff • Killer’s Wedge • Lady Killer (1958) ’Til Death • King’s Ransom (1959) Give the Boys a Great Big Hand • The Heckler • See Them Die (1960) Lady, Lady, I Did it! (1961) The Empty Hours • Like Love (1962) Ten Plus One (1963) Ax (1964) He Who Hesitates • Doll (1965) Eighty Million Eyes (1966) Fuzz (1968) Shotgun (1969) Jigsaw (1970) Hail, Hail, the Gang’s All Here (1971) Sadie When She Died • Let’s Hear It for the Deaf Man (1972) Hail to the Chief (1973) Bread (1974) Blood Relatives (1975) So Long as You Both Shall Live (1976) Long Time No See (1977) Calypso (1979) Ghosts (1980) Heat (1981) Ice (1983) Lightning (1984) Eight Black Horses (1985) Poison • Tricks (1987) Lullaby (1989) Vespers (1990) Widows (1991) Kiss (1992) Mischief (1993) And All Through the House (1994) Romance (1995)
The Matthew Hope Novels
Goldilocks (1978) Rumpelstiltskin (1981) Beauty and the Beast (1982) Jack and the Beanstalk (1984) Snow White and Rose Red (1985) Cinderella (1986) Puss in Boots (1987) The House That Jack Built (1988) Three Blind Mice (1990) Mary, Mary (1993) There Was a Little Girl (1994)
Other Novels
The Sentries (1965) Where There’s Smoke • Doors (1975) Guns (1976) Another Part of the City (1986) Downtown (1991)
AND AS EVAN HUNTER
Novels
The Blackboard Jungle (1954) Second Ending (1956) Strangers When We Meet (1958) A Matter of Conviction (1959) Mothers and Daughters (1961) Buddwing (1964) The Paper Dragon (1966) A Horse’s Head (1967) Last Summer (1968) Sons (1969) Nobody Knew They Were There (1971) Every Little Crook and Nanny (1972) Come Winter (1973) Streets of Gold (1974) The Chisholms (1976) Love, Dad (1981) Far From the Sea (1983) Lizzie (1984) Criminal Conversation (1994)
Short Story Collections
Happy New Year, Herbie (1963) The Easter Man (1972)
Children’s Books
Find the Feathered Serpent (1952) The Remarkable Harry (1959) The Wonderful Button (1961) Me and Mr. Stenner (1976)
Screenplays
Strangers When We Meet (1959) The Birds (1962) Fuzz (1972) Walk Proud (1979)
Teleplays
The Chisholms (1979) The Legend of Walks Far Woman (1980) Dream West (1986)
KLING MADE HIS CALL FROM AN OUTSIDE PHONE BECAUSE HE didn’t want to be turned down in a place as public as the squadroom. He didn’t want to risk possible derision from the men
with whom he worked day and night, the men to whom he often entrusted his life. Nor did he want to make the call from anyplace
at all in the station house. There were pay phones on every floor, but a police station was like a small town, and gossip traveled
fast. He did not want anyone to overhear him fumbling for words in the event of a rejection. He felt that rejection was a
very definite possibility.
So he stood in the pouring rain a block from the station house, at a blue plastic shell with a pay phone inside it, dialing
the number he’d got from the police directory operator, and which he’d scribbled on a scrap of paper that was now getting
soggy in the rain. He waited while the phone rang, once, twice, three times, four, five, and he thought, She isn’t home, six,
sev …
“Hello?”
Her voice startled him.
“Hello, uh, Sharon?” he said. “Chief Cooke?”
“Who’s this, please?”
Her voice impatient and sharp. Rain pelting down everywhere around him. Hang up, he thought.
“This is Bert Kling?” he said.
“Who?”
The sharpness still in her voice. But edged with puzzlement now.
“Detective Bert Kling,” he said. “We … uh … met at the hospital.”
“The hospital?”
“Earlier this week. The hostage cop shooting. Georgia Mowbry.”
“Yes?”
Trying to remember who he was. Unforgettable encounter, he guessed. Lasting impression.
“I was with Detective Burke,” he said, ready to give up. “The redheaded hostage cop. She was with Georgia when …”
“Oh, yes, I remember now. How are you?”
“Fine,” he said, and then very quickly, “I’m calling to tell you how sorry I am you lost her.”
“That’s very kind of you.”
“I know I should have called earlier …”
“No, no, it’s appreciated.”
“But we were working a difficult case …”
“I quite understand.”
Georgia Mowbry had died on Wednesday night. This was now Sunday. She suddenly wondered what this was all about. She’d been
reading the papers when her phone rang. Reading all about yesterday’s riot in the park. Blacks and whites rioting. Black and
whites shooting each other, killing each other.
“So … uh … I know how difficult something like that must be,” he said. “And I … uh … just thought I’d offer my … uh … sympathy.”
“Thank you,” she said.
There was a silence.
Then:
“Uh … Sharon …”
“By the way, it’s Sharyn,” she said.
“Isn’t that what I’m saying?”
“You’re saying Sharon.”
“Right,” he said.
“But it’s Sharyn.“
“I know,” he said, thoroughly confused now.
“With a ‘y,’ ” she said.
“Oh,” he said. “Right. Thank you. I’m sorry. Sharyn, right.”
“What’s that I hear?” she asked.
“What do you mean?”
“That sound.”
“Sound? Oh. It must be the rain.”
“The rain? Where are you?”
“I’m calling from outside.”
“From a phone booth?”
“No, not really, it’s just one of these little shell things. What you’re hearing is the rain hitting the plastic.”
“You’re standing in the rain?”
“Well, sort of.”
“Isn’t there a phone in the squadroom?”
“Well, yes. But …”
She waited.
“I … uh … didn’t want anyone to hear me.”
“Why not?”
“Because I … I didn’t know how you’d feel about … something like this.”
“Something like what?”
“My … asking you to have dinner with me.”
Silence.
“Sharyn?”
“Yes?”
“Your being a chief and all,” he said. “A deputy chief.”
She blinked.
“I thought it might make a difference. That I’m just a detective/third.”
“I see.”
No mention of his blond hair or her black skin.
Silence.
“Does it?” he asked.
She had never dated a white man in her life.
“Does what?” she said.
“Does it make a difference? Your rank?”
“No.”
But what about the other? she wondered. What about whites and blacks killing each other in public places? What about that, Detective Kling?
“Rainy day like today,” he said, “I thought it’d be nice to have dinner and go to a movie.”
With a white man, she thought.
Tell my mother I’m going on a date with a white man. My mother who scrubbed white men’s offices on her knees.
“I’m off at four,” he said. “I can go home, shower and shave, pick you up at six.”
You hear this, Mom? A white man wants to pick me up at six. Take me out to dinner and a movie.
“Unless you have other plans,” he said.
“Are you really standing in the rain?” she asked.
“Well, yes,” he said. “Do you?”
“Do I what?”
“Have other plans?”
“No. But …”
Bring the subject up, she thought. Face it head-on. Ask him if he knows I’m black. Tell him I’ve never done anything like
this before. Tell him my mother’ll jump off the roof. Tell him I don’t need this kind of complication in my life, tell him
…
“Well … uh … do you think you might like to?” he asked. “Go to a movie and have dinner?”
“Why do you want to do this?” she asked.
He hesitated a moment. She visualized him standing there in the rain, pondering the question.
“Well,” he said, “I think we might enjoy each other’s company, is all.”
She could just see him shrugging, standing there in the rain. Calling from outside the station house because he didn’t want
anyone to hear him being turned down by rank. Never mind black, never mind white, this was detective/ third and deputy chief. As simple as that. She almost smiled.
“Excuse me,” he said, “but do you think you could give me some kind of answer? Cause it’s sort of wet out here.”
“Six o’clock is fine,” she said.
“Good,” he said.
“Call me when you’re out of the rain, I’ll give you my address.”
“Good,” he said again. “Good. That’s good. Thank you, Sharyn. I’ll call you when I get back to the squadroom. What kind of
food do you like? I know a great Italian …”
“Get out of the rain,” she said, and quickly put the phone back on the cradle.
Her heart was pounding.
God, she thought, what am I starting here?
The redheaded woman was telling him that she’d been receiving threatening phone calls. He listened intently. Six phone calls
in the past week, she told him. The same man each time, speaking in a low voice, almost a whisper, telling her he was going
to kill her. At a table against one wall of the room, a short man in shirtsleeves was fingerprinting a bearded man in a black
T-shirt.
“When did these calls start?”
“Last week,” the woman said. “Monday morning was the first one.”
“Okay, let’s take down some more information,” the man said, and rolled an NYPD Detective Division complaint form into his
typewriter. He was wearing a .38-caliber pistol in a shoulder holster. Like the man taking fingerprints at the table against
the wall, he too was in shirtsleeves. “May I have your address, please?”
“314 East Seventy-first Street.”
“Here in Manhattan?”
“Yes.”
“Apartment number?”
“6B.”
“Are you married? Single? Div … ?”
“Single.”
“Are you employed?”
“I’m an actress.”
“Oh?” Eyebrows going up in sudden interest. “Have I seen you in anything?”
“Well … I’ve done a lot of television work. I did a Law & Order last month.”
“Really? That’s a good show. I watch that show all the time. Which one were you in?”
“The one about abortion.”
“No kidding? I saw that. That was just last month!”
“Yes, it was. Excuse me, Detective, but …”
“That’s my favorite show on television. They shoot that right here in New York, did you know that? Will you be doing any more of them?”
“Well … right now I’m rehearsing a Broadway play.”
“No kidding? What play? What’s it called?”
“Romance. Uh, Detective …”
“What’s it about?”
“Well, it’s sort of complicated to explain. The thing is, I have to get back to the theater …”
“Oh, sure.”
“And I’d like to …”
“Hey, sure.” All business again. Fingers on the typewriter keys again. “You say these calls started last Monday, right? That
would’ve been …” A glance at the calendar on his desk. “December …”
“December ninth.”
“Right, December ninth.” Typing as he spoke. “Can you tell me exactly what this man said?”
“He said, ’I’m going to kill you, miss.’ ”
“Then what?”
“That’s all.”
“He calls you ‘miss’? No name?”
“No name. Just ’I’m going to kill you, miss.’ Then he hangs up.”
“Have there been any threatening letters?”
“No.”
“Have you seen anyone suspicious lurking around the building or … ?”
“No.”
“… following you to the theater or …”
“No.”
“Well, I’ll tell you the truth, miss …”
“This may be a good place to pause,” Kendall said.
Both actors shaded their eyes and peered out into the darkened theater. The woman playing the actress said, “Ashley, I’m uncomfortable
with …” but Kendall interrupted at once.
“Take fifteen,” he said. “We’ll do notes later.”
“I just want to ask Freddie about one of the lines.”
“Later, Michelle,” Kendall said, dismissing her.
Michelle let out a short, exasperated sigh, exchanged a long glance with Mark Riganti, the actor playing the detective who
adored Law & Order, and then walked off into the wings with him. The actor playing the other detective stood chatting at the fingerprint table
with the bearded actor playing his prisoner.
Sitting sixth row center, Freddie Corbin turned immediately to Kendall and said, “They wouldn’t be wearing guns anywhere near a thief being printed.”
“I can change that,” Kendall said. “What we’ve really got to talk about, Freddie …”
“It spoils the entire sense of reality,” Corbin said.
His full and honorable name was Frederick Peter Corbin Ill, but all of his friends called him Fred. Kendall, however, had
started calling him Freddie the moment they’d been introduced, which of course the cast had picked up on, and now everybody
associated with this project called him Freddie. Corbin, who had written two novels about New York City cops, knew that this was an
old cop trick. Using the familiar diminutive to denigrate a prisoner’s sense of self-worth or self-respect. So you think you’re
Mr. Corbin, hah? Well, Freddie, where were you on the night of June thirteenth, huh?
“Also,” he said, “I think he’s overreacting when he discovers she’s an actress. It’d be funnier if he contained his excitement.”
“Yes,” Kendall said. “Which brings us to the scene itself.”
Kendall’s full name was Ashley Kendall, which wasn’t the name he was born with, but which had been his legal name for thirty years,
so Corbin guessed that made it his real name, more or less. Frederick Peter Corbin III really was Corbin’s real real name, thank you. This was his first experience with a director. He was beginning to learn that directors didn’t think
their job was directing the script, they thought their job was changing it. He was beginning to hate directors. Or at least to hate Kendall. He was beginning to learn that all directors were shitheads.
“What about the scene?” he asked.
“Well … doesn’t it seem a bit familiar to you?”
“It’s supposed to be familiar. This is police routine. This is what happens when a person comes in to report a …”
“Yes, but we’ve witnessed this particular scene a hundred times already, haven’t we?” Kendall said. “A thousand times. Even the detective reacting to the fact that she’s an actress is a cliché. Asking her if he’s seen her in anything. I mean, Freddie, I have a great deal of respect for what you’ve done
here, the intricacy of the plot, the painstaking devotion to detail. But …”
“But what?”
“But I think there might be a more exciting way to set up the fact that her life has been threatened. Theatrically, I mean.”
“Yes, this is a play,” Corbin said. “I would assume we’d want to do it theatrically.”
“I know you’re a wonderful novelist,” Kendall said, “but …”
“Thank you.”
“But in a play …“
“A dramatic line is a dramatic line,” Corbin said. “This is the story of an actress surviving …”
“Yes, I know what it …”
“… a brutal murder attempt, and then going on to achieve a tremendous personal triumph.”
“Yes, that’s what it’s supposed to be about.”
“No, that’s what it is about.”
“No, this is a play about some New York cops solving a goddamn mystery.“
“No, that’s not what it’s …”
“Which you do very well, by the way. In your novels. There’s nothing wrong with stories about cops …”
“Even if they are crap,” Corbin said.
“I wasn’t about to say that,” Kendall said. “I wasn’t even thinking it. All I’m suggesting is that this shouldn’t be a play about cops.”
“It isn’t a play about cops.”
“I see. Then what is it?”
“A play about a triumph of will.”
“I see.”
“A play about a woman surviving a knife attack, and then finding in herself the courage to …”
“Yes, that part of it’s fine.”
“What part of it isn’t fine?”
“The cop stuff.”
“The cop stuff is what makes it real.”
“No, the cop stuff makes it a play about cops.”
“When a woman gets stabbed …”
“Yes, yes.”
“… she goes to the cops, Ashley. She doesn’t go to her chiropractor. Would you like her to go to her chiropractor after she’s stabbed?”
“No, I …”
“Because then it wouldn’t be a play about cops anymore, it’d be a play about chiropractors. Would that suit you better?”
“Why does she have to go to the cops before she’s stabbed?”
“That’s known as suspense, Ashley.”
“I see.”
“By the way, that’s a terrible verbal tic you have.”
“What is?”
“Saying ‘I see’ all the time. Somewhat sarcastically, in fact. It’s almost as bad as ‘You know.’ ”
“I see.”
“Exactly.”
“But tell me, Freddie, do you actually like cops?”
“I do, yes.”
“Well, nobody else does.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“Nobody else in the whole wide world.”
“Please.”
“Believe it. No one wants to sit in a theater for three hours watching a play about cops.“
“Good. Because this isn’t a play about cops.”
“Whatever the fuck it’s about, I think we can effectively lose a third of the first act by cutting to the chase.”
“Lose all the suspense …”
“I don’t find a woman talking to cops suspenseful.”
“Lose all the character develop …”
“That can be done more theatrically …”
“Lose all …”
“… more dramatically.”
Both men fell silent. Sitting in the darkness beside his director, Corbin felt a sudden urge to strangle him.
“Tell me something,” he said at last.
“Yes, what’s that, Freddie?”
“And please don’t call me Freddie.”
“I beg your pardon.”
“It’s Fred, I prefer Fred. I have a thing about names. I like being called by the name I prefer.”
“So do I.”
“Okay, so tell me, Ashley … why’d you agree to direct this play in the first place?”
“I felt … I still feel it has tremendous potential.”
“I see. Potential.”
“Must be contagious,” Kendall said.
“Because I feel it has more than just potential, you see. I feel it’s a fully realized, highly dramatic theater piece that speaks to the human heart about survival and triumph. I happen
to …”
“You sound like a press release.”
“I happen to love this fucking play, Ashley, and if you don’t love it …”
“I do not love it, no.”
“Then you shouldn’t have agreed to direct it.”
“I agreed to direct it because I think I can come to love it.”
“If I make it your play instead of mine.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Ashley, are you familiar with the Dramatists Guild contract?”
“This is not my first play, Freddie.”
“Fred, please. And, yes, I admit it, this is my first play, which is why I read the contract very carefully. Once a play goes into
rehearsal, Ashley, the contract says not a line, not a word, not a comma can be changed without the playwright’s approval. That’s in the contract. We’ve been in rehearsal for two weeks now …”
“Yes, I know that.”
“And you’re suggesting …”
“Cutting some scenes, yes.”
“And I’m telling you no.”
“Freddie … Fred … do you ever want this fucking play you love so much to move downtown? Or do you want it to die up here in
the boonies? Because I’m telling you, Fred, Freddie baby, that the way it stands now, your fully realized, highly dramatic theater piece that speaks to the human heart about survival
and triumph is going to fall flat on its ass when it opens three weeks from now.”
Corbin blinked at him.
“Think about it,” Kendall said. “Downtown or here in the asshole of the city.”
Detective Bertram Kling lived in a studio apartment in Isola, from which he could look out his window and see the twinkling
lights of the Calm’s Point Bridge. He could have driven over that bridge if he’d owned a car, but there was no point owning
a car in the big bad city, where the subway was always faster if not particularly safer. The problem was that Deputy Chief
Surgeon Sharyn Everard Cooke lived at the very end of the Calm’s Point line, which gave her a nice view of the bay, true enough,
but which took a good forty minutes to reach from where Kling boarded the train three blocks from his apartment.
This was Sunday, the fifth day of April, exactly two weeks before Easter, but you wouldn’t have known it from the cold rain
that drilled the windows of the subway car as it came up out of the ground onto the overhead tracks. A grizzled old man sitting
opposite Kling kept winking at him and licking his lips. A black woman sitting next to Kling found this disgusting. So did
he. But she kept clucking her tongue in disapproval, until finally she moved away from Kling to the farthest end of the car.
A panhandler came through telling everyone she had three children and no place to sleep. Another panhandler came through telling
everyone he was a Vietnam War veteran with no place to sleep.
The rain kept pouring down.
Kling’s umbrella turned inside out as he came down the steps from the train platform onto Farmers Boulevard, which Sharyn
had told him he should stay on for three blocks before making a left onto Portman, which would take him straight to her building.
He broke several of the umbrella ribs trying to get it right side out again, and tossed it into a trash can on the corner
of Farmers and Knowles. He was wearing a black raincoat, no hat. He walked as fast as he could to the address Sharyn had given
him, which turned out to be a nice garden apartment a block or so from the ocean. In the near distance, he could see the lights
of a cargo ship pushing its way through the downpour.
He was thinking he’d never do this again in his life. Date a girl from Calm’s Point. A woman. He wondered how old she was.
He was guessing early to mid-thirties. His age, more or less. Thirtysomething. In there. But who was counting? She would tell
him later that night that she had just turned forty on October the fifteenth. “Birth date of great men,” she would say. “And
women, too,” she would say, but would not amplify.
He was wringing wet when he rang her doorbell.
Never again, he was thinking.
She looked radiantly beautiful. He lost all resolve.
Her skin was the color of burnt almond, her eyes the color of loam, shadowed now with a smoky blue over the lids. She wore
her black hair in a modified Afro that gave her the look of a proud Masai woman, her high cheekbones and generous mouth tinted
the color of burgundy wine. Her casual suit was the color of her eye shadow, fashioned of a nubby fabric with tiny bright
brass buttons. A short skirt and high-heeled pumps collaborated to showcase her legs. She did not look like a deputy chief
surgeon. He almost caught his breath.
“Oh, dear,” she said, “you’re soaked again.”
“My umbrella quit,” he said, and shrugged helplessly.
“Come in, come in,” she said, and stepped back and let him into the apartment. “Give me your coat, we have time for a drink,
I made the reservation for six-thirty, I could’ve met you in the city, you know, you didn’t have to come all the way out here,
you said Italian, there’s a nice place just a few blocks from here, we could have walked it, but I’ll take the car, oh dear,
this is wet, isn’t it?”
It occurred to her that she was rattling on.
It occurred to her that he looked cute as hell with his blond hair all plastered to his forehead that way.
She took his coat, debated hanging it in the closet with all the dry clothes there, said, “I’d better put this in the bathroom,” started to leave the foyer, stopped, said, “I’ll be right back,
make yourself comfortable,” gestured vaguely toward a large living room, and vanished like a breeze over the savanna.
He stepped tentatively into the living room, checking it from the open door frame the way a detective might, the way a detective
actually was, quick takes around the room, camera eye picking up impressions rather than details. Upright piano against one wall, did
she play? Windows facing south to what had to be the bay, rain snakes slithering down the wide expanse of glass. Sofa upholstered
in leather the color of a camel hair coat he’d once own. . .
The 87th Precinct Novels
Cop Hater • The Mugger • The Pusher (1956) The Con Man • Killer’s Choice (1957) Killer’s Payoff • Killer’s Wedge • Lady Killer (1958) ’Til Death • King’s Ransom (1959) Give the Boys a Great Big Hand • The Heckler • See Them Die (1960) Lady, Lady, I Did it! (1961) The Empty Hours • Like Love (1962) Ten Plus One (1963) Ax (1964) He Who Hesitates • Doll (1965) Eighty Million Eyes (1966) Fuzz (1968) Shotgun (1969) Jigsaw (1970) Hail, Hail, the Gang’s All Here (1971) Sadie When She Died • Let’s Hear It for the Deaf Man (1972) Hail to the Chief (1973) Bread (1974) Blood Relatives (1975) So Long as You Both Shall Live (1976) Long Time No See (1977) Calypso (1979) Ghosts (1980) Heat (1981) Ice (1983) Lightning (1984) Eight Black Horses (1985) Poison • Tricks (1987) Lullaby (1989) Vespers (1990) Widows (1991) Kiss (1992) Mischief (1993) And All Through the House (1994) Romance (1995)
The Matthew Hope Novels
Goldilocks (1978) Rumpelstiltskin (1981) Beauty and the Beast (1982) Jack and the Beanstalk (1984) Snow White and Rose Red (1985) Cinderella (1986) Puss in Boots (1987) The House That Jack Built (1988) Three Blind Mice (1990) Mary, Mary (1993) There Was a Little Girl (1994)
Other Novels
The Sentries (1965) Where There’s Smoke • Doors (1975) Guns (1976) Another Part of the City (1986) Downtown (1991)
AND AS EVAN HUNTER
Novels
The Blackboard Jungle (1954) Second Ending (1956) Strangers When We Meet (1958) A Matter of Conviction (1959) Mothers and Daughters (1961) Buddwing (1964) The Paper Dragon (1966) A Horse’s Head (1967) Last Summer (1968) Sons (1969) Nobody Knew They Were There (1971) Every Little Crook and Nanny (1972) Come Winter (1973) Streets of Gold (1974) The Chisholms (1976) Love, Dad (1981) Far From the Sea (1983) Lizzie (1984) Criminal Conversation (1994)
Short Story Collections
Happy New Year, Herbie (1963) The Easter Man (1972)
Children’s Books
Find the Feathered Serpent (1952) The Remarkable Harry (1959) The Wonderful Button (1961) Me and Mr. Stenner (1976)
Screenplays
Strangers When We Meet (1959) The Birds (1962) Fuzz (1972) Walk Proud (1979)
Teleplays
The Chisholms (1979) The Legend of Walks Far Woman (1980) Dream West (1986)
KLING MADE HIS CALL FROM AN OUTSIDE PHONE BECAUSE HE didn’t want to be turned down in a place as public as the squadroom. He didn’t want to risk possible derision from the men
with whom he worked day and night, the men to whom he often entrusted his life. Nor did he want to make the call from anyplace
at all in the station house. There were pay phones on every floor, but a police station was like a small town, and gossip traveled
fast. He did not want anyone to overhear him fumbling for words in the event of a rejection. He felt that rejection was a
very definite possibility.
So he stood in the pouring rain a block from the station house, at a blue plastic shell with a pay phone inside it, dialing
the number he’d got from the police directory operator, and which he’d scribbled on a scrap of paper that was now getting
soggy in the rain. He waited while the phone rang, once, twice, three times, four, five, and he thought, She isn’t home, six,
sev …
“Hello?”
Her voice startled him.
“Hello, uh, Sharon?” he said. “Chief Cooke?”
“Who’s this, please?”
Her voice impatient and sharp. Rain pelting down everywhere around him. Hang up, he thought.
“This is Bert Kling?” he said.
“Who?”
The sharpness still in her voice. But edged with puzzlement now.
“Detective Bert Kling,” he said. “We … uh … met at the hospital.”
“The hospital?”
“Earlier this week. The hostage cop shooting. Georgia Mowbry.”
“Yes?”
Trying to remember who he was. Unforgettable encounter, he guessed. Lasting impression.
“I was with Detective Burke,” he said, ready to give up. “The redheaded hostage cop. She was with Georgia when …”
“Oh, yes, I remember now. How are you?”
“Fine,” he said, and then very quickly, “I’m calling to tell you how sorry I am you lost her.”
“That’s very kind of you.”
“I know I should have called earlier …”
“No, no, it’s appreciated.”
“But we were working a difficult case …”
“I quite understand.”
Georgia Mowbry had died on Wednesday night. This was now Sunday. She suddenly wondered what this was all about. She’d been
reading the papers when her phone rang. Reading all about yesterday’s riot in the park. Blacks and whites rioting. Black and
whites shooting each other, killing each other.
“So … uh … I know how difficult something like that must be,” he said. “And I … uh … just thought I’d offer my … uh … sympathy.”
“Thank you,” she said.
There was a silence.
Then:
“Uh … Sharon …”
“By the way, it’s Sharyn,” she said.
“Isn’t that what I’m saying?”
“You’re saying Sharon.”
“Right,” he said.
“But it’s Sharyn.“
“I know,” he said, thoroughly confused now.
“With a ‘y,’ ” she said.
“Oh,” he said. “Right. Thank you. I’m sorry. Sharyn, right.”
“What’s that I hear?” she asked.
“What do you mean?”
“That sound.”
“Sound? Oh. It must be the rain.”
“The rain? Where are you?”
“I’m calling from outside.”
“From a phone booth?”
“No, not really, it’s just one of these little shell things. What you’re hearing is the rain hitting the plastic.”
“You’re standing in the rain?”
“Well, sort of.”
“Isn’t there a phone in the squadroom?”
“Well, yes. But …”
She waited.
“I … uh … didn’t want anyone to hear me.”
“Why not?”
“Because I … I didn’t know how you’d feel about … something like this.”
“Something like what?”
“My … asking you to have dinner with me.”
Silence.
“Sharyn?”
“Yes?”
“Your being a chief and all,” he said. “A deputy chief.”
She blinked.
“I thought it might make a difference. That I’m just a detective/third.”
“I see.”
No mention of his blond hair or her black skin.
Silence.
“Does it?” he asked.
She had never dated a white man in her life.
“Does what?” she said.
“Does it make a difference? Your rank?”
“No.”
But what about the other? she wondered. What about whites and blacks killing each other in public places? What about that, Detective Kling?
“Rainy day like today,” he said, “I thought it’d be nice to have dinner and go to a movie.”
With a white man, she thought.
Tell my mother I’m going on a date with a white man. My mother who scrubbed white men’s offices on her knees.
“I’m off at four,” he said. “I can go home, shower and shave, pick you up at six.”
You hear this, Mom? A white man wants to pick me up at six. Take me out to dinner and a movie.
“Unless you have other plans,” he said.
“Are you really standing in the rain?” she asked.
“Well, yes,” he said. “Do you?”
“Do I what?”
“Have other plans?”
“No. But …”
Bring the subject up, she thought. Face it head-on. Ask him if he knows I’m black. Tell him I’ve never done anything like
this before. Tell him my mother’ll jump off the roof. Tell him I don’t need this kind of complication in my life, tell him
…
“Well … uh … do you think you might like to?” he asked. “Go to a movie and have dinner?”
“Why do you want to do this?” she asked.
He hesitated a moment. She visualized him standing there in the rain, pondering the question.
“Well,” he said, “I think we might enjoy each other’s company, is all.”
She could just see him shrugging, standing there in the rain. Calling from outside the station house because he didn’t want
anyone to hear him being turned down by rank. Never mind black, never mind white, this was detective/ third and deputy chief. As simple as that. She almost smiled.
“Excuse me,” he said, “but do you think you could give me some kind of answer? Cause it’s sort of wet out here.”
“Six o’clock is fine,” she said.
“Good,” he said.
“Call me when you’re out of the rain, I’ll give you my address.”
“Good,” he said again. “Good. That’s good. Thank you, Sharyn. I’ll call you when I get back to the squadroom. What kind of
food do you like? I know a great Italian …”
“Get out of the rain,” she said, and quickly put the phone back on the cradle.
Her heart was pounding.
God, she thought, what am I starting here?
The redheaded woman was telling him that she’d been receiving threatening phone calls. He listened intently. Six phone calls
in the past week, she told him. The same man each time, speaking in a low voice, almost a whisper, telling her he was going
to kill her. At a table against one wall of the room, a short man in shirtsleeves was fingerprinting a bearded man in a black
T-shirt.
“When did these calls start?”
“Last week,” the woman said. “Monday morning was the first one.”
“Okay, let’s take down some more information,” the man said, and rolled an NYPD Detective Division complaint form into his
typewriter. He was wearing a .38-caliber pistol in a shoulder holster. Like the man taking fingerprints at the table against
the wall, he too was in shirtsleeves. “May I have your address, please?”
“314 East Seventy-first Street.”
“Here in Manhattan?”
“Yes.”
“Apartment number?”
“6B.”
“Are you married? Single? Div … ?”
“Single.”
“Are you employed?”
“I’m an actress.”
“Oh?” Eyebrows going up in sudden interest. “Have I seen you in anything?”
“Well … I’ve done a lot of television work. I did a Law & Order last month.”
“Really? That’s a good show. I watch that show all the time. Which one were you in?”
“The one about abortion.”
“No kidding? I saw that. That was just last month!”
“Yes, it was. Excuse me, Detective, but …”
“That’s my favorite show on television. They shoot that right here in New York, did you know that? Will you be doing any more of them?”
“Well … right now I’m rehearsing a Broadway play.”
“No kidding? What play? What’s it called?”
“Romance. Uh, Detective …”
“What’s it about?”
“Well, it’s sort of complicated to explain. The thing is, I have to get back to the theater …”
“Oh, sure.”
“And I’d like to …”
“Hey, sure.” All business again. Fingers on the typewriter keys again. “You say these calls started last Monday, right? That
would’ve been …” A glance at the calendar on his desk. “December …”
“December ninth.”
“Right, December ninth.” Typing as he spoke. “Can you tell me exactly what this man said?”
“He said, ’I’m going to kill you, miss.’ ”
“Then what?”
“That’s all.”
“He calls you ‘miss’? No name?”
“No name. Just ’I’m going to kill you, miss.’ Then he hangs up.”
“Have there been any threatening letters?”
“No.”
“Have you seen anyone suspicious lurking around the building or … ?”
“No.”
“… following you to the theater or …”
“No.”
“Well, I’ll tell you the truth, miss …”
“This may be a good place to pause,” Kendall said.
Both actors shaded their eyes and peered out into the darkened theater. The woman playing the actress said, “Ashley, I’m uncomfortable
with …” but Kendall interrupted at once.
“Take fifteen,” he said. “We’ll do notes later.”
“I just want to ask Freddie about one of the lines.”
“Later, Michelle,” Kendall said, dismissing her.
Michelle let out a short, exasperated sigh, exchanged a long glance with Mark Riganti, the actor playing the detective who
adored Law & Order, and then walked off into the wings with him. The actor playing the other detective stood chatting at the fingerprint table
with the bearded actor playing his prisoner.
Sitting sixth row center, Freddie Corbin turned immediately to Kendall and said, “They wouldn’t be wearing guns anywhere near a thief being printed.”
“I can change that,” Kendall said. “What we’ve really got to talk about, Freddie …”
“It spoils the entire sense of reality,” Corbin said.
His full and honorable name was Frederick Peter Corbin Ill, but all of his friends called him Fred. Kendall, however, had
started calling him Freddie the moment they’d been introduced, which of course the cast had picked up on, and now everybody
associated with this project called him Freddie. Corbin, who had written two novels about New York City cops, knew that this was an
old cop trick. Using the familiar diminutive to denigrate a prisoner’s sense of self-worth or self-respect. So you think you’re
Mr. Corbin, hah? Well, Freddie, where were you on the night of June thirteenth, huh?
“Also,” he said, “I think he’s overreacting when he discovers she’s an actress. It’d be funnier if he contained his excitement.”
“Yes,” Kendall said. “Which brings us to the scene itself.”
Kendall’s full name was Ashley Kendall, which wasn’t the name he was born with, but which had been his legal name for thirty years,
so Corbin guessed that made it his real name, more or less. Frederick Peter Corbin III really was Corbin’s real real name, thank you. This was his first experience with a director. He was beginning to learn that directors didn’t think
their job was directing the script, they thought their job was changing it. He was beginning to hate directors. Or at least to hate Kendall. He was beginning to learn that all directors were shitheads.
“What about the scene?” he asked.
“Well … doesn’t it seem a bit familiar to you?”
“It’s supposed to be familiar. This is police routine. This is what happens when a person comes in to report a …”
“Yes, but we’ve witnessed this particular scene a hundred times already, haven’t we?” Kendall said. “A thousand times. Even the detective reacting to the fact that she’s an actress is a cliché. Asking her if he’s seen her in anything. I mean, Freddie, I have a great deal of respect for what you’ve done
here, the intricacy of the plot, the painstaking devotion to detail. But …”
“But what?”
“But I think there might be a more exciting way to set up the fact that her life has been threatened. Theatrically, I mean.”
“Yes, this is a play,” Corbin said. “I would assume we’d want to do it theatrically.”
“I know you’re a wonderful novelist,” Kendall said, “but …”
“Thank you.”
“But in a play …“
“A dramatic line is a dramatic line,” Corbin said. “This is the story of an actress surviving …”
“Yes, I know what it …”
“… a brutal murder attempt, and then going on to achieve a tremendous personal triumph.”
“Yes, that’s what it’s supposed to be about.”
“No, that’s what it is about.”
“No, this is a play about some New York cops solving a goddamn mystery.“
“No, that’s not what it’s …”
“Which you do very well, by the way. In your novels. There’s nothing wrong with stories about cops …”
“Even if they are crap,” Corbin said.
“I wasn’t about to say that,” Kendall said. “I wasn’t even thinking it. All I’m suggesting is that this shouldn’t be a play about cops.”
“It isn’t a play about cops.”
“I see. Then what is it?”
“A play about a triumph of will.”
“I see.”
“A play about a woman surviving a knife attack, and then finding in herself the courage to …”
“Yes, that part of it’s fine.”
“What part of it isn’t fine?”
“The cop stuff.”
“The cop stuff is what makes it real.”
“No, the cop stuff makes it a play about cops.”
“When a woman gets stabbed …”
“Yes, yes.”
“… she goes to the cops, Ashley. She doesn’t go to her chiropractor. Would you like her to go to her chiropractor after she’s stabbed?”
“No, I …”
“Because then it wouldn’t be a play about cops anymore, it’d be a play about chiropractors. Would that suit you better?”
“Why does she have to go to the cops before she’s stabbed?”
“That’s known as suspense, Ashley.”
“I see.”
“By the way, that’s a terrible verbal tic you have.”
“What is?”
“Saying ‘I see’ all the time. Somewhat sarcastically, in fact. It’s almost as bad as ‘You know.’ ”
“I see.”
“Exactly.”
“But tell me, Freddie, do you actually like cops?”
“I do, yes.”
“Well, nobody else does.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“Nobody else in the whole wide world.”
“Please.”
“Believe it. No one wants to sit in a theater for three hours watching a play about cops.“
“Good. Because this isn’t a play about cops.”
“Whatever the fuck it’s about, I think we can effectively lose a third of the first act by cutting to the chase.”
“Lose all the suspense …”
“I don’t find a woman talking to cops suspenseful.”
“Lose all the character develop …”
“That can be done more theatrically …”
“Lose all …”
“… more dramatically.”
Both men fell silent. Sitting in the darkness beside his director, Corbin felt a sudden urge to strangle him.
“Tell me something,” he said at last.
“Yes, what’s that, Freddie?”
“And please don’t call me Freddie.”
“I beg your pardon.”
“It’s Fred, I prefer Fred. I have a thing about names. I like being called by the name I prefer.”
“So do I.”
“Okay, so tell me, Ashley … why’d you agree to direct this play in the first place?”
“I felt … I still feel it has tremendous potential.”
“I see. Potential.”
“Must be contagious,” Kendall said.
“Because I feel it has more than just potential, you see. I feel it’s a fully realized, highly dramatic theater piece that speaks to the human heart about survival and triumph. I happen
to …”
“You sound like a press release.”
“I happen to love this fucking play, Ashley, and if you don’t love it …”
“I do not love it, no.”
“Then you shouldn’t have agreed to direct it.”
“I agreed to direct it because I think I can come to love it.”
“If I make it your play instead of mine.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Ashley, are you familiar with the Dramatists Guild contract?”
“This is not my first play, Freddie.”
“Fred, please. And, yes, I admit it, this is my first play, which is why I read the contract very carefully. Once a play goes into
rehearsal, Ashley, the contract says not a line, not a word, not a comma can be changed without the playwright’s approval. That’s in the contract. We’ve been in rehearsal for two weeks now …”
“Yes, I know that.”
“And you’re suggesting …”
“Cutting some scenes, yes.”
“And I’m telling you no.”
“Freddie … Fred … do you ever want this fucking play you love so much to move downtown? Or do you want it to die up here in
the boonies? Because I’m telling you, Fred, Freddie baby, that the way it stands now, your fully realized, highly dramatic theater piece that speaks to the human heart about survival
and triumph is going to fall flat on its ass when it opens three weeks from now.”
Corbin blinked at him.
“Think about it,” Kendall said. “Downtown or here in the asshole of the city.”
Detective Bertram Kling lived in a studio apartment in Isola, from which he could look out his window and see the twinkling
lights of the Calm’s Point Bridge. He could have driven over that bridge if he’d owned a car, but there was no point owning
a car in the big bad city, where the subway was always faster if not particularly safer. The problem was that Deputy Chief
Surgeon Sharyn Everard Cooke lived at the very end of the Calm’s Point line, which gave her a nice view of the bay, true enough,
but which took a good forty minutes to reach from where Kling boarded the train three blocks from his apartment.
This was Sunday, the fifth day of April, exactly two weeks before Easter, but you wouldn’t have known it from the cold rain
that drilled the windows of the subway car as it came up out of the ground onto the overhead tracks. A grizzled old man sitting
opposite Kling kept winking at him and licking his lips. A black woman sitting next to Kling found this disgusting. So did
he. But she kept clucking her tongue in disapproval, until finally she moved away from Kling to the farthest end of the car.
A panhandler came through telling everyone she had three children and no place to sleep. Another panhandler came through telling
everyone he was a Vietnam War veteran with no place to sleep.
The rain kept pouring down.
Kling’s umbrella turned inside out as he came down the steps from the train platform onto Farmers Boulevard, which Sharyn
had told him he should stay on for three blocks before making a left onto Portman, which would take him straight to her building.
He broke several of the umbrella ribs trying to get it right side out again, and tossed it into a trash can on the corner
of Farmers and Knowles. He was wearing a black raincoat, no hat. He walked as fast as he could to the address Sharyn had given
him, which turned out to be a nice garden apartment a block or so from the ocean. In the near distance, he could see the lights
of a cargo ship pushing its way through the downpour.
He was thinking he’d never do this again in his life. Date a girl from Calm’s Point. A woman. He wondered how old she was.
He was guessing early to mid-thirties. His age, more or less. Thirtysomething. In there. But who was counting? She would tell
him later that night that she had just turned forty on October the fifteenth. “Birth date of great men,” she would say. “And
women, too,” she would say, but would not amplify.
He was wringing wet when he rang her doorbell.
Never again, he was thinking.
She looked radiantly beautiful. He lost all resolve.
Her skin was the color of burnt almond, her eyes the color of loam, shadowed now with a smoky blue over the lids. She wore
her black hair in a modified Afro that gave her the look of a proud Masai woman, her high cheekbones and generous mouth tinted
the color of burgundy wine. Her casual suit was the color of her eye shadow, fashioned of a nubby fabric with tiny bright
brass buttons. A short skirt and high-heeled pumps collaborated to showcase her legs. She did not look like a deputy chief
surgeon. He almost caught his breath.
“Oh, dear,” she said, “you’re soaked again.”
“My umbrella quit,” he said, and shrugged helplessly.
“Come in, come in,” she said, and stepped back and let him into the apartment. “Give me your coat, we have time for a drink,
I made the reservation for six-thirty, I could’ve met you in the city, you know, you didn’t have to come all the way out here,
you said Italian, there’s a nice place just a few blocks from here, we could have walked it, but I’ll take the car, oh dear,
this is wet, isn’t it?”
It occurred to her that she was rattling on.
It occurred to her that he looked cute as hell with his blond hair all plastered to his forehead that way.
She took his coat, debated hanging it in the closet with all the dry clothes there, said, “I’d better put this in the bathroom,” started to leave the foyer, stopped, said, “I’ll be right back,
make yourself comfortable,” gestured vaguely toward a large living room, and vanished like a breeze over the savanna.
He stepped tentatively into the living room, checking it from the open door frame the way a detective might, the way a detective
actually was, quick takes around the room, camera eye picking up impressions rather than details. Upright piano against one wall, did
she play? Windows facing south to what had to be the bay, rain snakes slithering down the wide expanse of glass. Sofa upholstered
in leather the color of a camel hair coat he’d once own. . .
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