“Gwen’s boyfriend,” she said.
“Gwen?”
“She’s the tiger lady, the one in the tiger costume,” Marie said.
I remembered her. She was very pretty and very young.
“Dead man is about forty-five, overweight, and looks a lot like Charles Laughton,” I said.
“He’s also rich,” she said. “Gives … gave her lots of stuff, you know?”
That explained a few things. Cunningham was seeing a girl in the show. Cunningham used a false name. Cunningham pretended he was wealthy. Now Cunningham was dead. The police were on the way. I wanted to find Gwen.
“Police will be here soon,” I said. “Stay here. You want company?”
The “yes” nod.
“I’ll send someone in.”
I went out the door. The pack was waiting for me. Jeremy was on the landing now, protecting the door of the dressing room where Phil was looking for whatever he could find.
I motioned for Jeremy. He pressed his way through the crowd on the narrow landing, and I told him to sit inside with Marie till the police came. He went through the door and I asked, “Which of you is Gwen?”
No one answered. People looked around at each other.
“The girl in the tiger costume?” I tried.
“Gone,” came a voice from the stage level below.
I looked over the railing and down at an old man with an open white shirt and a pair of wide suspenders.
“Gone? Where?”
“Out there,” said the man, pointing a pipe toward the stage door. “You went up the stairs,” he said, pointing the pipe at the stairs, “and she went flying out, running like a banshee was snapping at her heels.” He was pointing toward the stage door again.
On cue, the stage door opened and two uniformed cops came in.
“What is going on?” said Blackstone, stepping off the stage and looking at the cops and then up at me. “I need Peters back on the roller right now. I have a very impatient lion and more impatient audience, and I need something that resembles silence.”
“Man’s been murdered,” I said to the cops and Blackstone.
The backstage crowd went silent.
Blackstone said, “Who?”
One of the cops said, “Where’s the body?”
“In there,” I said, pointing at the dressing room door and then to Blackstone, “A man named Cunningham.”
“Why? Who did it?”
The cops were hurrying up the clanging stairs, muscling past performers and stagehands. The cop in the lead was florid and heavy, one of the wartime retreads. The kid behind him looked like my fourteen-year-old nephew.
Blackstone’s questions were good ones.
I didn’t have the answers.
“Did anyone see a guy with a beard wearing a turban with a green stone in it?” I asked.
“I did,” said Jimmy Clark. “He was up on the landing next to the dressing rooms right before the buzz saw act.”
“Went out that door,” said the old man with the pipe, pointing once again at the stage door. “Couple of minutes ago right behind the tiger lady.”
“Sara,” Blackstone called in a loud whisper and pointed to a blonde girl in a Little Bow Peep costume. “You’ll appear instead of Mr. Peters. Now all I need is some new patter.”
“The double whoops,” Pete said, leaning over the rail.
Blackstone raised a finger, nodded, motioned for Little Bow Peep to move behind the curtains, and went back onstage.
Chapter 5
Hand half a pack of playing cards to two people with the cards faced down after you have dealt out two piles. Have each person take a card from his or her deck, look at it, and place it in the other person’s pile. Have each person shuffle the half deck he or she has. Place on pile on top of the other. Look at the cards. Pull out two. Lay them facedown. Have the two people turn over the cards. It will be the two cards they have selected. Put the packs together, shuffle them, and then spread them out to show that it is a regular deck. How it’s done: Take a normal pack of cards. Alternate a red card with a black card. When you deal out the two packs, one will be all black and the other all red. When each person puts the card he or she has chosen into the other pack, there will be one red card in the black pack and one black card in the red. Look through the pack and pick the two cards.
A third cop I hadn’t seen was stationed at the stage door. I knew the routine. No one in, no one out, till the detectives came and said otherwise.
“I need Gwen Knight’s address fast,” I told Peter Bouton, looking down at the cop at the door and hearing the other two cops going into the dressing room where Phil was waiting with Cunningham’s body.
The cop at the door was familiar to me. I didn’t remember his name. He had been transferred to the Wilshire District when the Hollywood force had been juggled after a hush-hush about uniforms on the take from bookies that hung around Columbia Pictures studio. He looked up at me. Recognition.
“Downstairs,” said Bouton.
I followed him down the wobbling metal steps and into a small office lined with rusting file cabinets surrounding a small banged-up wooden desk.
“I leave my stuff in my briefcase whenever we …” Pete began as he shuffled through a pile of papers reaching behind the desk. “Here.”
He pulled a battered briefcase from behind the small desk and opened it. He found the sheet he was looking for.
“Not what I thought,” he said. “The other girls are staying at the Arlington Arms. Gwen is staying with someone … her sister … on Beverly, the Bluedorn Apartments.”
He found a pencil and a small pad of paper and wrote the sister’s name, address, and phone number on it. He handed it to me. I glanced at it, pocketed the sheet and said, “Thanks.”
I left the small office, ignoring the eyes of the cop at the door, and headed for the stage. Blackstone was pointing a wand at some black enamel boxes. The buzz saw trick was over. I could only see the sides. I moved behind the curtains and down the stairs into the audience. People were looking at me. I glanced back. Blackstone saw me and said with a wave of his hand, “Ladies and gentleman. The man who was cut in half by the buzz saw.”
The audience applauded. I bowed as I went up the aisle.
“Uncle Toby,” Nate called out.
I waved at my nephews, grinned at the audience, hurried through the doors and into the lobby. No cops on guard. I almost bumped into Calvin Ott, who was entering the theater. He was dark-blue suited and grinning.
“Mr. Peters,” he said. “How is the show?”
“You missed the best part,” I said.
He looked at my uniform and shook his head.
“Welcome to show business,” he said.
