He drank straight from the bottle. Riganti poured his beer into a glass, and then sat opposite Ollie at the table.
“So what do you know about this creep who killed her?” Ollie said.
“Who do you mean?”
“Her agent. Johnny Milton.”
“I don’t know him too well.”
“How about the girl?”
“Michelle?”
“Yeah. How well did you know her?”
“Well, we were in rehearsal together for three weeks when she…”
“What does that mean? Were you boffin her?”
“No. Certainly not.”
“Why certainly not? Are you gay?”
“Of course not.”
“Why of course not? Lots of actors are gay.“
“But not me.”
“Did you know he was living with her? The agent?”
“That’s what we began to realize.”
“Who’s we?”
“All of us. The cast, the crew. It got to be pretty evident.”
“That they were living together,”
“Yes.”
“Why do you think he killed her?”
“I’m not sure he did.”
“You think there might’ve been some other guy she was involved with?”
“Do you always conduct an interrogation this way?”
“This ain’t an interrogation.”
“Then what is it?”
“Two guys sittin around talkin, havin a few beers.”
“No, really, I’m interested in the process. I play a lot of detectives, you see.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Casting directors think I look like a cop.”
“They do, huh?”
“You think I look like a cop?”
“I think you look a little faggoty to be a cop.”
“I already told you…”
“I’m not sayin you are a fag. I’m only sayin you look like one. For a cop, anyway.”
“Well, casting directors find me authentic-looking.”
“Do I look like a cop?” Ollie asked.
“No.”
“What do I look like?”
A fat tub of shit, Riganti was tempted to say, but didn’t.
“You look like an actor playing a cop,” he said.
“No kidding?” Ollie said. “Is there any more of this beer?”
“Sure, let me get you another one.”
“An actor, huh?” Ollie said. “I wished I was.”
“It’s not as easy as you think,” Riganti said, and carried another bottle of beer to the table. He uncapped it, slid it across the table to Ollie, and then sat down at the table and picked up his own unfinished glass again.
“Thank you,” Ollie said, and tilted the bottle to his mouth, and took a long swallow. Wiping his lips with the back of his hand, he said, “You think she was cheatin on him?”
“Not from what I could gather.”
“Then why’d he kill her?”
“Well, that’s your assumption. I’m not sure he did.”
“One cop to another,” Ollie said, and winked, “why do you think he killed her?”
“One actor to another,” Riganti said, “why do you think he killed her?”
“Cause he’s a fuckin liar,” Ollie said.
“How do you know that?”
“I was there when they were questioning him.”
“I do a lot of questioning, too,” Riganti said.
“Me, too,” Ollie said.
“What’s your technique? During a questioning?”
“I ask questions, the perp answers them. What do you mean, technique?”
“Well, do you prepare for a questioning in any way?”
“Prepare?”
“Yes. The way I use a fake gun to…”
“I almost blew your fuckin brains out.”
“… put me in a detective’s frame of mind. I carry that gun with me everywhere I go. On the subway, in a restaurant, wherever. Because a gun is a vital part of being a detective, isn’t it?”
“Oh sure.”
“Take away a detective’s gun, you take away his penis.”
“Well… sure.”
“Carrying the gun helps me live the part, do you see?”
“Sure.”
“It’s my way of preparing for the role.”
“Sure.”
“So how do you prepare?”
“Prepare?”
“Yes. For questioning someone.”
“I don’t.”
“You don’t?”
“I just go in, I say Where the fuck were you last Tuesday night, you little shit? He don’t answer me, I keep at him I keep tellin him this can go easy, it can go hard, it can go however he wants. You help me, I’ll help you. You want a local jail, you want a state pen, you want niggers fucking you in the ass? Tell me where you were, you dumb shit!”
“Uh-huh.”
“Like that,” Ollie said, and picked up his bottle, drank, set it down again, belched, and said, “Sorry.”
“For example,” Riganti said, “suppose you were questioning this girl who… well, here, take a look,” he said, and picked up the Romance script in its binder, pulled his chair closer, and said, “This scene here. How would you approach it? The scene I have with the girl.”
“What girl?” Ollie asked.
“Her understudy.”
“Whose understudy?”
“The girl who got killed.”
“The Cassidy girl?”
“Well, no, this is in the play.”
“I hear it’s a dumb fuckin play.”
“It is.”
Ollie picked up the script. Squinting at it, he asked, “Why are these pages blue?”
“They’re new pages. They’re blue to differentiate them from the original pages. We can have blue, yellow, pink, green, sometimes even purple pages before all the revisions are done.”
“These are hard to read, blue fuckin pages.”
“They are.”
Ollie kept squinting at the script. At last, reluctantly, he reached into his jacket pocket and took out an eyeglass case. The glasses he pulled from it were little Ben Franklin glasses. He suddenly looked like a fat scholar.
“For reading,” he explained apologetically.
“I wear contacts myself.” Riganti said consolingly.
Adjusting the glasses on his nose, Ollie cleared his throat as if he were about to read aloud, but then didn’t. Silently, he read the page. Turned it. Read another one.
“You’re right,” he said, shaking his head, “this is a dumb fuckin play.”
“I told you. But… just for the hell of it… how would you conduct this questioning?”
“This questioning right here?”
“Yeah. Where he wants to know whether she’s ever thought of…”
“Yeah, I sec it,” Ollie said. “What I’d do, I’d say `Look, miss, let’s be realistic here, okay?’ This is a girl I’m talkin’ to, right?”
“Yes.”
“Cause you have to clean up the act a little with a girl. I mean, you can’t talk to a girl the way you can talk to a fuckin thief, you understand me? You got to be more gentle. So what I’d say… what’s her name?”
“She doesn’t have a name.”
“What do you mean she doesn’t have a name?”
“She doesn’t. She’s just called the Understudy.”
“So what do you call her, if she doesn’t have a name?”
“I don’t call her anything.”
“That makes it harder.”
“How so?”
“Because say her name is Jean, you can start by tellin her ’Look, Jeannie, let’s be realistic here, okay?’ You use the diminative, you understand, You say Jeannie, instead of Jean. You put yourself on personal terms with her right away. Unless she don’t even have a fuckin name, which makes it difficult.”