The table tension hadn’t departed with Culver.
“You’re embarrassed to see me again, aren’t you?” I said.
She shrugged; the cocktail-party smile settled uneasily on one side of her face. She lit a cigarette and handled it gracefully, almost regally, but underneath it were nerves. Even nervous, though, she seemed somehow calm; a bundle of contradictions, Cynthia Crystal was-cool and warm, bitchy and sweet. Whatever, she was a beautiful woman. I had told her so, once.
“I still have a crush on you,” I said.
She laughed. “That’s so like you, that word. ‘Crush.’ Are you destined to be an overgrown adolescent your entire life, Mal? Will you never grow up?”
I shrugged. “Yes and no,” I said.
Her smile turned gentle and suddenly her brittle manner fell away.
“Yes, damnit,” she admitted, “I am embarrassed at seeing you again. The last time I saw you, I treated you badly. I know it. And you know it.”
I shook my head no. “You treated me the way I deserved to be treated. I misread the situation, and you put me straight. Let’s leave it at that.”
She leaned over and gave me a kiss on the cheek.
“Friends?” she said.
I held a hand out and she took it, shook it.
“Friends,” I said.
Culver was on his way back to the table, finally having worked his way through the line to pay the check.
“You just like older men, that’s all,” I said.
“He’s a better writer than you, too,” she said with a wicked smile, and the sort of natural charm that made a remark like that seem a compliment.
I smirked. “You’re just saying that ’cause it’s true.”
She patted my hand and I rose.
I nodded to Culver as he approached and he at me, and I went on to join Sardini and Murtz in a booth.
“Mal!” Tom said, having been too deep in conversation with Murtz to notice me come in. “Jesus, sit down! You must’ve been through it last night.”
“The news about Roscoe Kane sure got around fast. I didn’t tell anybody. Has Mae Kane been down or something?”
Murtz made a disgusted expression under the every-which-way-but-trimmed mustache. “The hotel leaked it, apparently; reporters were around for a couple of hours, starting about eight, questioning every mystery writer they could get a hold of. I’m surprised they didn’t track you down.”
“They’ve talked to Mae, then?”
Tom said, “My understanding is she gave them a brief statement this morning. She mentioned that she’d been with a friend of the family when she found Kane’s body, but didn’t give ’em your name. I figured it was you, since you went up with her from the bar last night, and I mentioned that to some of our fellow wordsmiths-but not to the reporters. The word spread among the people here-but nobody tipped the reporters off that a mystery writer helped find the body. Nobody said much to the reporters at all, frankly, let alone hand ’em a juicy sidebar like that.”
“Why’s that?”
Murtz had a cynically amused smile going. “Well, the press sure wasn’t here ’cause Kane was a public figure; they vaguely knew who he was, of course. It’s more the sick joke novelty of a mystery writer dying at a mystery convention. An oddity, a cute ironic sidelight.”
“Who was here?”
Tom said, “A woman and a cameraman from the Trib. A guy and a cameraman from the Sun Times. Word is some TV people will be around this afternoon, when the ’con officially opens, to do a live minicam thing on the six o’clock news.”
The waitress came over at that point, and I had thought I wanted breakfast, but suddenly coffee seemed all my stomach could face.
“Has Mae been down?” I said.
Sardini shook his head no. “She talked to the reporters in her room. Just for a little while.”
I was surprised she hadn’t called me for some support; she was a strong woman, though, and had plenty of media experience. She could handle herself.
“Tom,” I said, “I’m assuming you’d like me to ask her to stick around until the awards ceremony Saturday.”
Tom shrugged elaborately, shook his head no, then broke out into a chagrined smile and admitted, “Yes. I don’t want to sound like as much of a media ghoul as those reporters, but we were depending on Roscoe-to get us a little ink.”
Well, he’d done that much for them already.
“It’d be good if we could get Mrs. Kane to accept the award for her husband,” Tom was saying as the waitress refilled our coffee cups. “I feel like a creep saying so, but we can use the publicity that’d bring.”
“I don’t think you’re out of line, Tom,” I said. “I want now more than ever to see Roscoe Kane given some public recognition.”
“Then you’ll talk to Mae Kane?”
“I’ll talk to her. Give it my best shot.”
“Thanks, Mal. Sorry to even mention it, really….”
“It’s okay. I brought it up.”
“Uh, would you mind,” Murtz ventured, “telling us what really happened last night?”
I told them; I took it easy on my suspicions, but I didn’t leave my suspicions out.
And Murtz said, “D’you really think he was murdered, Mal? Or have you just read too many mysteries?”
I tried to smile but it went sour. “I don’t know. Maybe I wrote too many. I found a body one other time, and it was murder-clearly murder. Remember? Maybe I’ve got delusions of being an amateur detective now.”
“Maybe you’re just researching your next book,” Tom offered, then realized that sounded uglier than he’d meant it to, and added, “I didn’t mean that exactly that way, Mal….”
“It’s okay,” I said. “I’m not sure myself, what to do or what to think. All I know is I’m depressed at losing a friend.”
Tom smiled tightly. “He was more than a friend. He was your damn idol. Your hero.”
I nodded. “You’re right. He was my hero. I’ve always been something of a hero worshipper. When I was a little kid my hero was Peter Pan; I even had a little green outfit I wore around-quote me, Sardini, and your ass is history! Then it was Batman, and I wore a mask and swung around on a rope for a couple of years. And then around junior high, the Saint was my main man… first the TV version, then the books. And then I discovered Gat Garson, and you know those pictures of Kane, in muscleman T-shirts, posing with guns and dogs and such on the backs of his books?”
“Yeah,” Murtz said. “He was spoofing Spillane doing the same thing.”
“I didn’t know that at the time,” I said. “I discovered Kane and Gat Garson first-Spillane and Mike Hammer came later, for me. My uncle Richard had some Gat Garson paperbacks in his attic, and I found ’em, and my uncle found me, looking at them. He only grinned and said, ‘Take ’em home with you if you want,’ and I did… under my coat. The pictures of Kane on the back of the books made me transfer my hero worship from Gat Garson to the guy who thought up Gat Garson. It was exciting to me, seeing these pictures of a tough-looking writer, who was a real person; I could never hope to be Gat Garson-by twelve, I was hip enough to know that-but I could be Roscoe Kane when I grew up, if I worked at it hard enough. And in high school I started trying to write my little stories. Sending ’em out in the mail. Piling up rejections. My detective was called Matt Savage. You probably had a Matt Savage, too, Sardini; you, too, Murtz.”
They were smiling, nodding.
“I had about three heroes, in my life. Real-life heroes I looked up to. During my teen idol phase, I liked Bobby Darin-probably ’cause ‘Mack the Knife’ was a blood-and-guts crime yarn-had pics of him plastered all over the walls of my room… next to the Elke Sommer pics, that is. She wasn’t my hero, but there was a place for her. And I liked Jack Webb. That movie, ‘Pete Kelly’s Blues,’ you guys ever see that? That shootout in the ballroom at the end, the rainstorm outside? Great! I always wanted to write Webb a letter and tell him how much I admired his work, but I wanted to wait until I’d written something I was really proud of, a book I could send him, as a fan who made good. Then last Christmas he died. I felt like I’d lost my best friend. I moped around. Everybody thought I was nuts. I took it damn near as hard as when my folks died. Crazy. Darin and Webb and Kane, they weren’t my only heroes, of course; I had the usual ones… John Wayne, Bogie, JFK. They’re all dead. Darin died after open-heart surgery at age thirty-seven, you know. Kane was the last one. The last living one. I’m thirty-three years old and feel old as hell, ’cause all my goddamn heroes are dead.”