Gifford came on to introduce a group of folk singers who sang Greensleeves and Scarlet Ribbons, a most colorful combination. He walked onto the stage again as soon as they were finished, and then went to work in earnest. His next guest was a male Hollywood personality. The male Hollywood personality seemed to be somewhat at a loss because he could neither sing nor dance nor, according to some critics, even act. But Gifford engaged him in some very high-priced banter for a few minutes, and then personally began a commercial about triple-roasted coffee while the Hollywood visitor went off to change his costume for a promised skit. Gifford finished the commercial and then motioned to someone standing just off camera. A stagehand carried a chair into viewing range. Gifford thanked him with a small bow, and then placed the chair in the center of the enormous, empty stage.
He had been on camera for perhaps five minutes now, a relatively short time, and when he sat in the chair and heaved a weary sigh, everyone was a little surprised. He kept sitting in the chair, saying nothing, doing nothing. There was no music behind him. He was simply a man sitting in a chair in the middle of an empty stage, but Carella felt himself beginning to smile because he knew Gifford was about to do one of his pantomimes. He touched Teddy’s arm, and she looked up from her book. “The pantomime,” he said, and she nodded, put down her book, and turned her eyes toward the screen.
Gifford continued doing nothing. He simply sat there and looked out at the audience. But he seemed to be watching something in the very far distance. The stage was silent as Gifford kept watching this something in the distance, a something that seemed to be getting closer and closer. Then, suddenly, Gifford got out of the chair, pulled it aside, and watched the something as it roared past him. He wiped his brow, faced his chair in another direction, and sat again. Now he leaned forward. It was coming from the other direction. Closer it came, closer, and again Gifford got up, pulled his chair aside at the last possible moment, and watched the imaginary thing speed past him. He sat again, facing another direction.
Carella burst into laughter as Gifford spotted it coming at him once more. This time, he got out of the chair with a determined and fierce look on his face. He held the chair in front of him like a lion tamer, defying the something to attack. But again at the last moment he pulled out of the way to let the something roar past. It was now on his left. He turned, whipping the chair around. The camera came in for a tight shot of his perplexed and completely helpless face.
Another look crossed that face.
The camera eye was in tight for the close-up, and it caught the sudden faintness that flashed across the puzzled features. Gifford seemed to sway for an instant, and then he put one hand to his eyes, as if he weren’t seeing too clearly, as if the something rushing from the left had taken on real dimensions all at once. He squeezed his eyes shut tightly, and then shook his head, and then staggered back several paces and dropped the chair, just as the something streaked by him.
It was all part of the act, of course. Everyone knew that. But somehow, Gifford’s pantomime had taken on a reality that transcended humor. Somehow, there was real confusion in his eyes as he watched the nameless something begin another charge. The camera stayed on him in a tight close-up. Gifford looked directly into the camera, and there was a pathetically pleading look on his face, and suddenly contact was made again, suddenly the audience began laughing. This was the same sweet and gentle man being pursued by a persistent nemesis. This was comedy again.
Carella did not laugh.
Gifford reached down for the chair. The close shot on one camera yielded to a long shot on another camera. His fingers closed around the chair. He righted it, and then sat in it weakly, his head drooping, and again the audience howled, but Carella was leaning forward now, watching Gifford with a deadly cold, impersonal fixed stare.
Gifford clutched his abdomen, as if struck there by the invisible juggernaut. He seemed suddenly dizzy, and his face went pale, and he seemed in danger of falling out of the chair. And then, all at once, for eighty million eyes to see, he became violently ill. The camera was caught unaware for a moment. It lingered on his helpless sickness an instant longer, and then suddenly cut away.
Carella stared at the screen numbly as the orchestra struck up a sprightly tune.
2
There were two squad cars and an ambulance parked in the middle of the street when Detective Meyer Meyer pulled up in front of the loft. Five patrolmen were standing before the single entrance to the building, trying valiantly to keep back the crowd of reporters, photographers, and just plain sightseers who thronged the sidewalk. The newspapermen were making most of the noise, shouting some choice Anglo-Saxon phrases at the policemen who had heard it all already and who refused to budge an inch. Meyer got out of the car and looked for Patrolman Genero, who had called the squadroom not five minutes before. He spotted him almost at once, and then elbowed his way through the crowd, squeezing past an old lady who had thrown a bathrobe over her nightgown, “I beg your pardon, ma’am,” and then shoving aside a fat man smoking a cigar, “Would you mind getting the hell out of my way?” and finally reaching Genero, who looked pale and tired as he stood guarding the entrance doorway.
“Boy, am I glad to see you!” Genero said.
“I’m glad to see you, too,” Meyer answered. “Did you let anyone get by?”
“Only Gifford's doctor and the people from the hospital.”
“Who do I talk to in there?”
“The producer of the show. His name's David Krantz. Meyer, it's bedlam in there. You’d think God dropped dead.”
“Maybe he did,” Meyer said patiently, and he entered the building.
The promised bedlam started almost at once. There were people on the iron-runged stairways, and people in the corridor, and they all seemed to be talking at once, and they all seemed to be saying exactly the same thing. Meyer cornered a bright-eyed young man wearing thick-lensed spectacles and said, “Where do I find David Krantz?”
“Who wants to know?” the young man answered.
“Police,” Meyer said wearily.
“Oh. Oh! He's upstairs. Third floor.”
“Thanks,” Meyer said. He began climbing the steps. On the third floor, he stopped a girl in a black leotard and said, “I’m looking for David Krantz.”
“Straight ahead,” the girl answered. “The man with the mustache.”
The man with the mustache was in the center of a circle of people standing under a bank of hanging lights. At least five other girls in black leotards, a dozen or so more in red spangled dresses, and a variety of men in suits, sweaters, and work clothes were standing in small clusters around the wide expanse of the studio floor. The floor itself was covered with the debris of television production: cables, cameras, hanging mikes, booms, dollies, cue cards, crawls, props, and painted scenery. Beyond the girls, and beyond the knot of men surrounding the man with the mustache, Meyer could see a hospital intern in white talking to a tall man in a business suit. He debated looking at the body first, decided it would be best to talk to the head man, and broke into the circle.
“Mr. Krantz?”
Krantz turned with an economy and swiftness of movement that was a little startling. “Yes, what is it?” he said, snapping the words like a whip. He was dressed smartly, quietly, neatly. His mustache was narrow and thin. He gave an immediate impression of wastelessness in a vast wasteland.
Meyer, who was pretty quick on the draw himself, immediately flipped open his wallet to his shield. “Detective Meyer, 87th Squad,” he said. “I understand you’re the producer.”