Stella nodded. ‘Some bastard got me with a black pen.’
‘Wonderful. The cops are looking for a serial vandal. Pray for a slow news day. Maybe we’ll get your face on TV. And take that blouse with you. It’ll make a great prop.’
‘But I don’t have it anymore,’ said Stella. ‘I threw it away.’
‘No, honey, don’t tell me that. Look me in the eye and tell me you saved that blouse.’
Well, how hard could it be to mark up another one?
‘Okay, I saved it.’ ‘That’s my girl.’
Two hours later and home again, fresh from the shower and clean of blood, Stella Small opened a can of beer in hopes that it might dull the throb in her wounded arm. She spotted a pair of sneakers only partially hidden by her cast-off clothes. No, bad idea. Her agent had given her too much Valium, and tying shoelaces might be too hard. She reached under a chair for a pair of sandals.
Stella flopped down on the couch in a cloud of dust and consulted a copy of Backstage, the only newspaper she ever read. The turned-back page with the schedule of auditions listed nothing for today. Yet she could not lose the nagging idea that she was supposed to be somewhere this afternoon.
She picked up her TV remote and flicked through the channels until she found a children’s program.
Good. Cartoons were easy.
The television screen went black, and no button on the remote control could bring it back to life. This was a bad omen, but Stella was not completely shattered – not yet. She had a fascination for how long a disaster streak could go on and how awful it could become before playing itself out. The young actress was also determined that no life experience would ever go to waste if she could only stay alive in this town.
A bug was moving up her leg. Mid-scream, she stopped and smiled. It was only a spider. She flicked it off her skin and watched it crawl across the floor. It was a big one, but the Abandoned Stellas had always said that a spider in the house was good luck. However, it was a big one. She rolled up her newspaper and smashed the creature flat.
The Abandoned Stellas had said a lot of things.
She reached down to the floor and picked up the bloodstained suit jacket. While going through the pockets, preparing to throw it away, she found a note in her agent’s handwriting.
Oh, right – the cattle call. She read the address of the SoHo police station and the time when she was expected – along with a few hundred other actresses. The stationhouse was within easy walking distance, and there was at least an hour to kill.
The telephone rang, and Stella cringed. She let her answering machine take the call. The young woman from Ohio was much too fragile to deal with New Yorkers right now.
She paid more attention to the machine when the words police department filtered through her Valium fog. Stella grabbed up the phone. ‘Hi! Is this about the actress interviews in SoHo?… No? Midtown? I thought – Oh, right. Sorry. I didn’t know… Yes, I’ll be there.’
And now she recalled her agent dragging her out of an emergency room, though she had been told to wait there until a police officer arrived. She had left the hospital in the company of a tabloid reporter who had taken precedence over the law.
How much trouble was she in?
The timing would be close. With a little luck and a functional subway, she could make the appointments at both police stations, but only if the SoHo interviews went by alphabetical order. Martha Sutton’s note reminded her that she needed a vandalized blouse for a prop.
After rummaging through the closet and the drawers, every article of clothing was strewn about the small apartment, and all the effort of last night’s cleaning binge had been undone. This was so disheartening. Just looking at the mess made her weary. She turned to the smiling portrait of the Abandoned Stellas, but they had no homilies to cover a life spinning out of control.
In the pile of clothes at her feet, she found an old thrift-shop garment that would do nicely. Then she went off to make another mess of the kitchenette, emptying the catch-all drawers in search of a pen to make a large X on the back of the blouse.
The ground floor of the SoHo police station was packed with actresses, all sizes and every color of hair, though Special Crimes Unit had specifically requested blondes. Jack Coffey stood near the street door and stared at the double-parked news vans. Reporters were roaming the sidewalk in gangs.
He turned to Detective Wang. ‘Exactly what did you say to the talent agencies?’
‘Just what you told me. I said we were investigating vandalism on the subway.’
Detective Desoto folded his cell phone and turned to the lieutenant. ‘One of the agents tipped the reporters. She told them we were hunting a sex maniac with a thing for blondes.’ He looked toward the open door and its view of reporters milling on the street. ‘But none of those bastards made a connection to Special Crimes Unit.’
Lieutenant Coffey silently thanked the city accountants for being too cheap to paint the name of his unit on the door at the top of the stairs. ‘Okay, take the actresses up to the squad room, ten at a time. And pass the word – nobody mentions Special Crimes. I don’t want anybody handing out cards to these women – I don’t care how pretty they are. Now weed out the brunettes.’
Coffey watched the actresses being herded toward the staircase, where Desoto pulled out the women with dark hair. The first group of blondes climbed the stairs behind Detective Wang. They were all so young, so unprepared for what was going to happen to them.
A few minutes later, when Lieutenant Coffey entered the squad room, the actresses were lined up in a tight row, all but standing at attention. Detective Janos played the part of their drill sergeant, pacing back and forth in front of them, inspecting his troops. ‘If you’re jerking us around to get your names in the paper, you’ll be charged with obstruction of justice. That means time in lockup.’
Though the man had a gentle voice, he also had a thug’s face and the gravitational mass of a small planet. The blond heads turned in unison, following his movements back and forth.
‘Our lockup isn’t very clean. Fleas, lots of fleas.’
Two dishwater blondes were edging toward the stairwell door while the other women were still debating flight.
‘Oh, and lice are a problem, too.’ Janos sighed. ‘So you’ll be stripped and deloused in a gang shower.’
After the mass exodus of actresses, all that remained was one intrepid blonde in the fairest range, and the large detective engaged her in a staring contest. She burst into tears, then ran toward the door, where another ten women were waiting in line. And Janos hollered, ‘Next!’
CHAPTER 11
Charles stood apart from the others as they argued in Mallory’s private office at Butler and Company.
Chief Medical Examiner Edward Slope said, ‘No, Riker, I’m not going back to that hospital, not for at least ten years.’ And now that the subject of the dying coma patient was closed, he turned back to his study of Natalie Homer’s new and improved autopsy photographs blown up to many times the original size.
Mallory’s magic had created sharp definition from grainy enlargements, using her computer to refine light and shadow, replacing ambiguity with certainty and exposing details never seen in the originals. Although it appeared to be the camera’s eye of truth, Charles suspected that she had cheated the pieces, the pixels that made the pictures, and the result was only the best guess of artificial intelligence.
‘Okay,’ said Riker, somewhat testy. ‘Can you give me a second opinion on this?’ He handed the pathologist an X-ray of Natalie’s head, something Mallory had not retouched.