Fletch’s Moxie

“Come, let’s away to prison. We two alone will sing like birds i’ the cage. When thou dost ask me blessing, I’ll kneel down, and ask of thee forgiveness.”

Fletch sat across from him at the empty table.

“So we’ll live, and pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh at gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues talk of court news; and we’ll talk with them, too: who loses and who wins, who’s in, who’s out; and take upon’s the mystery of things, as if we were God’s spies; and we’ll wear out, in a wall’d prison, packs and sects of great ones that ebb and flow by the moon.”

Mooney, palm outward, passed his hand between the stormy sky and his face, turning his head as he did so, finally fixing Fletch with a mad stare. Mooney looked utterly insane.

“Jeez.”

Terror, horror had skittered up Fletch’s spine. He gulped beer and took a breath.

“Actually…” Fletch cleared his throat. To his own ears his voice sounded like a flute played in a tin box. “I saw you in King Lear once. As an undergraduate. In Chicago. Not so long ago.”

Mooney’s face turned puckish. “Only once?” he asked.

“Only once. I had to sell my portable radio to afford that once.”

“Lear,” said Mooney. “The role Charles Lamb said could not be acted.”

Fletch raised his beer can. “Nuts to Charles Lamb.”

The hand that reached for the glass of cognac shook badly. “Nuts to Charles Lamb.”

They drank.

“Do you act?” Mooney asked.

“No.”

“What?” Mooney asked. “Not even badly?”

“There’s been some trouble,” Fletch said slowly, carefully. “On location. Someone’s been stabbed.”

Mooney’s eyes were half-closed. Again his breath was coming in short, shallow strokes.

“There’s been a murder,” Fletch said.

Mooney sat back. He looked around, at the bar, at the verandah’s roof, at the storm outside. His eyes were huge, with huge pupils, dark brown and wide set. Together they were the tragi-comic masks, each capable of holding a different expression simultaneously, one sombre, sad, emotional, the other, objective, thinking. Looking at him closely, Fletch wondered if one eye might actually be lower in the man’s head than the other. He wondered if it was an actor’s trick or an accident of birth. He wondered if it was an expression of the man’s personality.

Mooney said, “Do not abuse me.”

“Did you hear me? There’s been a murder.”

“I gather Marilyn is all right.”

“Marilyn? Yes. She’s okay. But she was sitting next to the victim when he was stabbed.”

“And who was the victim?”

“Steven Peterman.”

Mooney frowned. He scratched his gray, grizzly hair.

“Your daughter’s manager, producer, whatever.”

Mooney nodded.

“They were taping The Dan Buckley Show. In the middle of Midsummer Night’s Madness location.”

“Not a play within a play,” commented Mooney, “but a stage within a stage.”

“Within a stage,” added Fletch. “Because the press was there, too, taking videotapes and still photographs.”

“And no live audience.”

“Not much of a one.”

“How removed our art has become. No longer do we perform for the groundlings. For human beings we must distract from playing blackjacks in the dirt. No longer for the Dress Circle or The Balcony. But for banks and banks of cameras.” Mooney leaned forward, picked up his glass and chuckled. “For the banks. Peterkin?”

“Peterman. Steven Peterman.”

“Peterman was in camera.” Mooney drained his glass. His eyes glazed. They crossed, slightly. He reached for the bottle with a very shakey hand. “Do you know the expression?”

“The thing is, Moxie’s waiting for us.”

“We’ll just have a drink together, you and I. Talk of who’s in and who’s out. Get yourself a drink.”

“I have one.”

Mooney’s eyes narrowed to find Fletch’s beer can. “So you have.”

He had poured himself a good three ounces.

“So who was this Peterperson. Much of a loss to the world, do you think?”

Fletch shrugged. “Moxie’s manager. A producer of the film.”

“And how did he die?”

“He got stabbed in the back.”

Mooney laughed. “Typical of the business. The hindustry, as it’s now called.”

“I’m afraid your daughter is one of the prime suspects.”

“Marilyn?”

“Yes.”

“I wouldn’t put it past her.” Mooney looked speculatively over the railing through the storm, not seeing it.

Fletch hesitated. For such a genius, how drunk was drunk; was he seeing lucidity or Lear; was the subject Regan or Moxie? “You wouldn’t put what past whom?”

“Murder.” Mooney’s eyes came back to Fletch. “Past Marilyn.”

A worse shiver went down Fletch’s spine, and up again where it hit the back of his head like a fistful of feathers.

Mooney lowered his eyes to the scarred table. “She’s done it before.”

“Done what?” Fletch blurted.

Mooney dug into a scar on the table with his thumb nail. “Murder,” he said.

The surf pounded three times on the beach before Fletch had enough easy breath to say, “What are you talking about?”

“That incident at the school,” Mooney said. “When Marilyn was thirteen, fourteen. The year her benign Daddy—yours truly—decided to transfer her to a school in England at mid-term. November, I think it was. No one is supposed to know what precipitated the sudden transfer, of course. I said I wanted her near me. I was scarcely in England at all that year.”

Fletch said, “I knew she spent a year or two in school in England.”

“But you don’t know why.” Mooney then used the tired voice of someone reciting sad, ancient history. “At the private boarding school she was attending in California, her drama coach… maybe I could remember his name…” He gulped some of his drink. “… Can’t. No matter. Little creep. Was found drowned at the edge of the school pond, his feet sticking out. Someone had bopped him on the head with a rock. Knocked unconscious. School authorities investigated. There were only three girls anywhere near the pond that afternoon. Marilyn was the closest. Marilyn was the only one of the three who knew the creep, was a student of his. Marilyn was the pitcher on the school’s ballteam, entirely capable of forcefully beaning someone with a rock.” Mooney hiccoughed. Then he sighed. “She did not like that drama coach. She had written me so—in flaming red pose. I mean, prose.”

“The man could have slipped …”

“He was face down in the water. He had been hit on the back of the head. Murder most foul…and deliberate. Couldn’t prove for a certainty who did it… that Marilyn did it. She was questioned. Good actress even then. Had her old man’s blood, you know. Born with it. Veins are stuffed with it.”

“So you hustled her to a school in England.”

“Yes,” Mooney said slowly. “She was being questioned, questioned, questioned. Don’t object to questions, mind you. One or two of the answers might have been…” Mooney’s voice went up the long trail.

“But if she was guilty of murder—”

Mooney jerked to attention. “She’d still be my daughter, damn it. Brilliant future. All that blood in her veins.