what kind of scientific tests the police have these days? He didn’t want to risk having it traced.”
What I couldn’t get over was how clever Sy was. In the course of just a couple of days, he’d come up with a brilliant, almost foolproof scheme for getting rid of Lindsay. Except instead of convincing Mikey to carry out the plan, Sy had relied on a fool. So maybe, in the end, he wasn’t such a brilliant mogul. He’d executive-produced his own death.
“Who decided on the rifle?” I asked.
“I did. He wanted me to stab her.”
“Wouldn’t that be a mess?”
“Yes, but it would be very convincing,” Easton explained.
“Stab her once, to kill her, but then do it again and again, so it looked like the work of a mental case. Except I told him I didn’t have the stomach for it.” I nodded with great seriousness, trying to show how much I cherished my brother’s decency. “But then I told him I’d been a pretty good shot as a kid. And he loved it that I already had the rifle, that we didn’t have to go out and buy one. He was very edgy about leaving any kind of tracks.”
“I don’t blame him. We’ve been checking gun dealers’ records going back six months. He was a smart guy.”
“Yes, he was.” My brother got teary again. He sniffed.
“East, how did you have the balls to pick up a rifle that probably hadn’t been touched for years? And then to rely on your being able to bag Lindsay with one or two shots?”
He gave me an I-thought-of-everything smile. “Well, it did take some balls, as you say. But I did some fast planning.
Although first I had to find the key to the padlock for the gun cabinet. That took me hours! You’ll never guess where it was.”
“On top of the gun cabinet.”
426 / SUSAN ISAACS
“You knew? ”
“Yeah. You should have given me a call. I could have saved you some time.” We both went chuckle-chuckle. “So you just took it out, locked the cabinet and went ready, aim, fire?”
“No. I cleaned it.”
“Smart. Did you try it out?”
He inclined his head. “I went to a range.”
“Which one?”
“The one up near Riverhead.”
“Right. I’ve been there. Where did you get the bullets?”
“At a hardware store right near there.”
“Took some target practice?”
“Yes. But I didn’t need much. It’s like riding a bike. You never really forget it.”
“No, you don’t,” I agreed.
“And from fifty feet, it’s so easy.”
“Did you and Sy plan where you’d stand?”
“Yes. It had a clear view of the whole pool, but the spot itself was sort of in shadows because of the porch. The only thing I had to worry about was to make sure no one else was around. Sy would be in L.A., the cook would be off. Sy was worried Lindsay would invite some people over for drinks. Or Victor Santana for…you know.”
“What did he say to do if Santana was there?”
“To wait, see if he’d leave.”
“But if not? Get rid of him too?”
“Not on Saturday. If he was there, I should leave and come back on Sunday afternoon. There was a good chance he’d have left by then, to go over the next day’s work. She’d be alone. But…You want me to be totally honest?”
“I really do, East.”
“Well, if not, get Santana too. It would look like the crazy fan saw them together and got jealous.”
MAGIC HOUR / 427
I stood, walked to the open window, lifted the screen and leaned out for a minute. I pulled a couple of leaves off an overhanging branch. Then I turned back to my brother. “It was a terrific plan.”
“It really was.”
“So how come it didn’t work?”
Easton got real earnest. He crossed his legs, rested his elbow on his knee, braced his chin on the heel of his hand.
“That’s what’s so maddening. It should have worked. You know how impossible the traffic is Friday afternoons? I mean, the Long Island Expressway: the world’s longest parking lot.” This quip hadn’t been funny even in 1958, when it had probably been invented, and hadn’t improved with either age or repetition. But I laughed as though hearing one of Western Civilization’s Great Witticisms. “Well,” Easton continued, apparently satisfied with my appreciation of his ability as a raconteur, “the casting director was so crazed—she was casting another movie and two plays—that when I left, I realized she wouldn’t have any idea of the time.
And then I got finished at Sy’s shirtmaker in about two seconds. So instead of taking the Expressway or the Northern State, I took every obscure east-west road ever built on the Island. I mean, if I’d been in your car, one of those potholes I went over would have swallowed me and the Jag whole!”
I laughed again. Such cleverness! Such superb humor! Of course, I’d done that audience appreciation bit more times than I could count. It was part of the job, not only turning a suspect into your friend but also turning yourself into the one person most able to savor his comic or tragic art. It had never bothered me before, this playacting. But now, every smile, every good-natured nod of understanding I offered, cost me too much.
A couple of times I had to fight down surges of 428 / SUSAN ISAACS
insane vitality—like rushes of a mainlined drug—to go for him, hurt him, kick him off his chair, hold him down and smash his bland, handsome face against the floor. The killer was so civilized; the cop was so savage.
“So you pushed a little and got home earlier than you’d expected?”
“Yes, a little before four. I’d been in quite a state all day, as you can imagine. This was not going to be any ordinary weekend.”
“Doesn’t sound like it,” I said.
“I said to myself: I can’t wait. I have got to get this over with today. I cannot stand the tension. But I was smart. I knew I’d promised Sy to wait until Saturday or
