PASSION PLAY
A MYSTERY
W. EDWARD BLAIN
To those who taught me
MONTPELIER SCHOOL FOR BOYS
PASSION PLAY
The First Act
He was honestly unaware that a murder would follow the end of the play.
It was cold and growing dark as he emerged from the theater just before 5:00 P.M. in a crowd of dawdling tourists. With a quick dart he sidestepped the slowest pedestrians and hurried east, shrugging into his coat as he approached Seventh Avenue. It was the wrong direction, but at least he was moving. The theater had been too warm, full of vacationers like himself who had purchased half-priced tickets in Duffy Square an hour before the show, and now the contrasting air of the Manhattan streets hurt. The scarf and the hat helped keep back the cold a little. He turned right on Seventh and juggled the small travel bag he was carrying in order to pull on his gloves. Times Square offered a little more light, a little more humanity.
He had expected the musical to cheer him up—the dancing, the glitter, all those smiling faces singing those melodic songs—but it had had the opposite effect. The characters were stereotypes; all the jokes sounded familiar. It had made him feel as though he were watching television, as though he were wasting his life on something utterly mindless, as though he were taking drugs. It was past time to go home.
The theater had been full, but the city was dead. It was the Sunday after Thanksgiving, and he was among the last of the tourists to be pulling out of town. There were probably more people at LaGuardia than there were here in midtown. Well, not really. He’d have to remember that as an example of hyperbole to use for the students. At the corner, the air warmed for a moment as he passed a vendor selling hot chestnuts to tourists coming out of the theater. But now the vendor was busy placating a drunk who screamed that the whole country was going to hell under President Reagan.
At Forty-Second Street he saw a subway station, but he was reluctant to enter. It wasn’t the same one he’d used to get here; that one had been on Eighth. He turned right on Forty-Second, lifted his scrap of luggage, and carried it closer. He knew the city only in an uneasy acquaintance, knew he was safe enough to be walking here at dusk on Sunday afternoon, but he also assumed that it was not an entirely risk-free neighborhood. The pornographic movie houses along this block cast a white light on the few street people milling on the sidewalks, like wares in some block-long Kmart. It was too early and too quiet and too cold to attract many prostitutes or pushers, but he saw one woman in a red satin miniskirt and white boots. She was wearing a fake fur jacket and dangling earrings. How could she stand the cold? Maybe hookers had metabolisms like adolescents, faster somehow. He could remember, as a boy, playing outside when it was ten degrees Fahrenheit. All the parents thought he and his friends were crazy. Now he was reacting like a parent, hiding his face under a scarf and a hat.
He saw the boy in front of a theater halfway down the block. Blond, longish hair, maybe fourteen years old, maybe a little older, brown flight jacket, jeans, Converse basketball shoes. The kid flashed the jacket open and revealed that he wasn’t wearing a shirt.
Rage clicked on like a thermostat.
He stopped by the kid. Don’t do it, he thought, you have a train to catch, you have responsibilities, you are more disciplined than this. He stopped and looked at the kid. He was not a particularly well-built boy, but he was nice-looking. With his black Converse shoes on, who knows, he could have been an ordinary basketball player from Indiana. He wondered whether the kid would have needle scars on his arms, whether what he was seeing was a facade. He knew big cities just well enough to know that the clichés from television were not to be trusted.
“All the way down for fifteen bucks,” said the kid. He had a good voice, the kind of voice that would sound good on a stage. Where had this child gone wrong? The kid shifted his head and looked him over. This boy had the right neck, the right shoulders. Under his coat the man could feel his heart start to pound as the passion surged and took over. Now that it had happened, he knew: whatever he had told himself earlier, this was the real reason he had come to New York. His body was screaming commands; he could not help himself; he would obey. At the ticket booth he bought two tickets for $1.99 each. The boy led the way up to the balcony.
“Up here,” said the boy, pushing the man into the back row. It was very dark at first. As his eyes adjusted, he could see that the place was nearly empty. He wondered how many other tourists there were in this kind of theater in New York right now. On the screen in front of him, two naked men were dancing.
He was hot now; the passion was consuming him; he had to finish this.
“First the money,” said the kid.
The man pulled his wallet out of his left front trouser pocket. A couple of coins clattered on the sticky floor. He pulled a twenty out of his wallet and gave it to the kid.
“I don’t make change,” said the kid. The man told him to keep it.
The boy pocketed the money and leaned over the man’s lap. As he fumbled at the man’s coat buttons, the man firmly took the boy’s head in his hands, as if to guide him. With a quick twist, while the boy was pulling at the buttons, the man broke the boy’s neck. The
