'Ah.'
'But now I don't even care about that.'
She stared down at the body of Ken Norris. 'He said he'd just finished a pilot and would probably be on CBS next season.'
Tobin tried hard not to frown. What a seducer's ploy that had been. 'Probably be on CBS next season.' He could hear the deep-voiced Norris saying exactly that, that line of lines uttered by thousands of TV has-beens daily to wives, children, creditors, eager midwestern girls, and themselves. Most especially-and desperately-to themselves.
Tobin went and called the captain.
6
'And you believe her?'
'Yes,' Tobin said. 'You hesitated a moment.'
Tobin shrugged. 'You asked me an absolute question that required an absolute answer.' He nodded back to the room where Ken Norris's body lay, and where Cindy sat with a dour steward. Tobin smiled. 'Absolute answers take a little longer.'
'She's very nice-looking.'
'Believe it or not, Captain,' Tobin said, knowing what the large, white-haired man in the perfectly tailored white uniform was implying, 'I've been around nice-looking women before.'
They leaned against the railing and watched the silver sea sprawl in the moonlight. The night noises had largely subsided-most people were drunk and passed out, fornicating, or simply sleeping. Tobin watched the horizon line. Easy to imagine that the entire planet was water. That this was a little world unto itself, that there was no other world at all.
'Perhaps he tried something on her and she didn't like it. It could always be self-defense.'
'You want an answer right away,' Tobin said, 'and I understand that. You want to greet your passengers in the morning with the news that, yes, there has been a murder but no, the murderer is not at large. In fact, she's in custody and everything is wonderful.'
'I don't want panic. I don't want the cruise ruined.'
Tobin said, angrily, 'I don't want to see a woman charged with something she didn't do.'
'Then you really believe somebody was in the closet?'
'If she says so.'
'Then who would it have been?' The captain caught himself and laughed. 'I guess that would fall under the general heading of stupid questions, wouldn't it? If we knew who was in the closet, then we'd know the killer.'
'Not necessarily.'
'What?'
'She didn't say this person was the killer. She just said he or she was in the closet.'
'What's the difference?'
Tobin, dragging on his cigarillo and thinking that it wasn't really smoking if you didn't inhale, said, 'I'd say there's a good chance that that's the killer-the person in the closet-but we don't know that for sure.'
'Then what else would he or she have been doing in the closet?'
'I don't know.'
Capt. Robert Hackett, who had the outsize, handsome features of a Roman senator, said, 'You really think she's innocent?'
'You talked to her. Do you really think she killed him?'
'Yes.'
'God, really?'
'Who else would have done it?'
'The person in the closet.'
The captain shook his head. 'You really believe there was somebody in the closet?' Before Tobin could respond, Hackett said, 'I'd better go tell the other cast members what's going on. There are three of them in the lounge.'
Tobin said, 'Do you mind if I go with you?'
'No.' Then he nodded to the room. 'Maybe you'd want to take the young lady for a stroll along the deck while we remove the body. Then we can go down to the lounge. You might tell her we'll get her a different room for the rest of the voyage.'
He started back toward the cabin and then paused. 'I still think she did it, Mr. Tobin. I don't believe a word about the person in the closet. Not a word.”
7
The small lounge was got up art deco, with a smoky, neon ambience long on mirrors, shadows, and black- and-white floor paneling. On the small dance floor a couple in matching Hawaiian shirts performed something fat and slow and melancholy, something very middle-aged that both stunned and saddened Tobin. It was not so much a dance as some simple but profound animal reassurance that if all else failed, they at least had each other. To the right of the bar was a small section of pink love seats and overstuffed chairs and tables of glass and chrome. Behind this was the bar where a thin man in a severe black dinner jacket from the thirties wiped drinking glasses as if he were doing something far beneath his dignity. His glowering gaze grew only more hostile when he saw Tobin and Captain Hackett.
The party, such as it was, lay in the area of the love seats, where three members of 'Celebrity Circuit' sat luxuriating in the adoration of some very drunk passengers.
The three members were Kevin Anderson, the blond All-American sort whose canceled series had been 'Night Patrol,' about an undercover cop; next to him was Susan Richards, a true dark beauty whose canceled series had been 'Galloway House,' a nighttime soap opera about a very wealthy Irish family; and Todd Ames, the smooth, gray-haired character actor (invariably he played the handsome cad, a more virile George Sanders) whose canceled series had been 'Killer's Call,' about a professional killer who stalked other professional killers.
Six of their seven fans were about the sort you expected to find-decent enough people, Tobin supposed, from Des Moines or Baltimore or Spokane, stocks and bond people, or retail people, or medical people-but caught up in a very silly moment, that of treating has-been Hollywood types as if they were something special, as if they were golden people not plagued by age or illness or failed relationships or poverty. And maybe that's what it was all about, anyway- maybe that's what people from Des Moines or Baltimore or Spokane wanted to believe, that out there in Hollywood was this different, better species, one safe from the sag of jowl, the loss of money, the specter of surgery. Maybe it was somehow comforting to believe in this species.
There was a couple, a husband and wife; two men who wore a few hundred pounds of gold chains around their necks; and two very young and very drunk girls who seemed to be serving as snacks for the two men with the great tonnage of gold chains.
Only one man seemed unimpressed with the three stars. He sat a bit to the left, sipping at a beer not from a long slender glass but directly from the bottle. There was a certain quiet defiance in the gesture but then there was a quiet defiance about the man, period. He wore a sedate western suit-no spangles or piping-a Stetson that sat parked on what was obviously a black toupee, and a gigantic wedding ring. He watched. He listened. He didn't smile and he didn't talk. He did only those two things. He watched. He listened. Captain Hackett and Tobin pushed past
