“Just what the hell are you doing?” Dailey said. He wore a gray pinstripe suit so smartly tailored it resembled a dinner outfit.
“I need to talk to you.” But he couldn’t keep his eyes from Jane’s face. He felt so confused and angry and despairing.
“Then make an appointment.”
“I don’t have time for an appointment.”
Finally, finally she spoke. Her soft voice both soothed and chilled Tobin. It was over between them and he had acknowledged that months ago, but — Michael Dailey? “I really should be going anyway.”
“I’m sorry this happened,” Dailey said.
“It’s all right.” She glanced at him and wrinkled her mouth in a little smile and then she glanced at Tobin and he thought for a moment he saw something like shame move across her face, but then she put on a smile identical to the one she’d just given Dailey and started out of the office. Today she wore a blue jumper with a white blouse and her hair was pinned up with a sweet little pink barrette. She belonged in the suburbs, for Christ’s sake, not here in the clutches of a leading theatrical vampire. What was going on?
“I’ll call you,” Dailey said and he made it sound proprietary, husband-to-wife.
“All right,” she said, and was gone.
In the ensuing silence — Dailey obviously taking pleasure in Tobin’s shock — Tobin looked dully around the office. A window half as wide as the wall showed the windows of nearby office buildings. From the street below came the distant sounds of Christmas music.
Dailey went around behind his desk, neat and tidy as Forbes would recommend, and said, “I’m giving you exactly two minutes.”
“I have a list.”
“Good for you. So do I. It’s Christmas time. A lot of people have lists at Christmas time.”
“I have a list of people who might be considered serious suspects in Richard’s death.”
“Perhaps you haven’t heard, Tobin. The police consider you suspect number one.”
“That’s strange, Michael. Suspect number one on my list is you.”
“Me?”
“You were cheating him.”
Dailey surprised him by laughing. While he unconsciously played with his solid-gold cufflinks (which were big enough to clog up drains), he also put on his best Cesar Romero smile and said, “You’ve been talking to Starrett.”
“He says he has proof.”
“He doesn’t have a damn thing except a bad case of envy. He wanted to be Richard’s exclusive representative for the screenplay. He’s just angry that Richard let me handle all the details.”
“Why didn’t I hear about this screenplay until yesterday?”
“Gosh, Tobin, I wasn’t aware that either Richard or I had to keep you informed of our activities.”
“Richard and I used to be good friends. The best friends.”
“Until you started mooching a free ride.”
“Bullshit. We each brought things to the show.”
“Richard sold a novel. You didn’t. Richard, thanks in part to my own talents as a publicist, had very high visibility — you didn’t. Now there’s a screenplay. Some very big names on the Coast are interested in starring in it.” He smirked. “How’s your career been going lately?”
Tobin couldn’t stop himself. “Are you sure Richard wrote that screenplay?”
For the first time that morning, Dailey seemed uncertain of himself. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Just what I said.”
“Of course he wrote it.”
“Do you know anything about a man named Ebsen?”
This time Dailey tried to laugh but couldn’t quite manage to make the sound. “That creep.”
“So you know him?”
“Richard told me about him. He was a student of Richard’s.”
“He seems to be hinting that he had something to do with writing the screenplay.”
“He’s a liar.”
Tobin smiled. “I’d like to see you call him that to his face, Michael. You’d keep that plastic surgeon you represent busy for several weeks in the operating room.”
“Richard wrote the screenplay.”
“Ebsen says he’s going to the press unless he’s paid a certain sum of money.”
“I know. He’s been pestering Jane.”
Again Tobin couldn’t help himself. “You don’t have any right to be with her. The man is only one day dead.”
“Her being married didn’t seem to bother you any when you were having your affair.”
Tobin knew he was blushing.
“For shit’s sake, Tobin, do you think it was a secret? Richard knew all along. He thought it would be good for Jane. She hadn’t taken his fame very well — felt very much left behind. Especially when she began to sense that Richard was seeing a lot of other women, which happened to be the case. Did her good to have somebody pay special attention to her. Even if it had to be you.”
There was nothing to say, of course. He felt embarrassed and hollowed out and betrayed by everybody involved, including Jane herself, who now had some indeterminate relationship with Dailey here.
Tobin went back to the reason he’d come here. “Starrett will demand an audit of the books.”
“He can demand anything he wants. It doesn’t mean he’ll get it.”
A buzz on the intercom. Discreet as the earth tones. “Mr. Dailey, it’s the Coast.”
“The Coast. Good.” Dailey nodded to the phone. “That concludes the interview part of our show,” he said to Tobin. “Don’t think it hasn’t been fun.”
“Let me give you a word of advice. If you’re playing games with Harold Ebsen, you’d better be careful. He’s a very dangerous guy.”
Dailey smiled. “Thanks so much, Tobin. You know how much I value advice coming from you.”
Tobin left.
18
1:04 P.M.
Jeff Bridges said, “It isn’t my fault I’m cross-eyed.” Then he crossed his eyes and made Helen Slater, who had previously been mad at him, laugh. It was good teaming, Bridges and Slater (God, but she had a good clean beautiful uncomplicated face), and for a time Tobin sat in the darkness of the screening room dreaming teenage dreams again (all about meeting Helen Slater and being puppy-love happy walking down the golden winter streets with her). And then it was all over, the credits rolling while the rock tie-in song played, and he knew it had been a good movie (a murder mystery set in an advertising agency) because he didn’t want it to end.
In the lobby afterward, Chamales came up and offered himself yet again as Tobin’s TV partner. Tobin said, “We’ll have to look into that, won’t we?” Then a critic named Swenson who did pieces on action stars for magazines that featured the trade secrets of gore movies’ special effects appeared. As always, he was dressed in a bush jacket and wore mirror sunglasses. He was a half inch shorter than Tobin. A bloody goddamn midget.
“Piece of shit,” he said.
“I’m giving it four stars,” Tobin said.
“I’m going to give it five,” Chamales said, patting his girth, which was today swaddled in a red turtleneck sweater that gave him the appearance of a globe on legs.
“Pretentious,” Swenson said. “Too much talk.”
“Believe it or not, Swenson, more people talk than get into car chases or get chased by monsters,” Tobin said.
“At least they could have had more cleavage,” Swenson said.
All Tobin could do was shake his head. In a column once (true story) Swenson had attacked Fellini’s Amarcord as a perfect example of why the United States shouldn’t import movies but should only “show things produced right here in the good ole U.S.A.” He had gone on to say that Amarcord could have used a little “Roger Corman magic.” Tobin assumed that some night he and Swenson would get drunk together and then Tobin would beat his face in.