And then you have the moneymen, who always make life a living hell. A producer has to be tough-minded—and tough.
And Sy was. He never backed off from a confrontation. He just kept going.” A small, affectionate smile passed over Easton’s face for a second. “Sy was like a steamroller. He wouldn’t stop. You either moved or got crushed. At some point, just about everyone involved probably told him, or wanted to tell him: Drop dead.”
“Son of a bitch!” Carbone blew up in front of me and Robby Kurz. He was yelling about Eddie Pomerantz, Lindsay’s agent, now safely on his way home, who, two minutes earlier, had informed him that Lindsay had taken a couple of Valium and was out like a light, but who then admitted, when Carbone started screaming at him, that she’d had four or five. Possibly six, although he wanted it clearly understood that his client was seriously not into drugs. Carbone explained to us: “I had that doctor from the M.E.’s office—the one with the Dumbo ears—go up to her room. He says she could be genuinely knocked out for more than eight hours.
Passive-aggressive bitch.”
We sat in Sy’s office, a room on the second floor that had probably been a kid’s bedroom. You knew it was an office because there was a phone with so
46 / SUSAN ISAACS
many buttons that it looked like it could launch a satellite, and a small computer. But that was it for modern stuff. The rest of the room looked like some fish-crazy English gentleman’s study: there was a stuffed marlin on the wall, some washed-out paintings of salmon leaping out of the rapids, a bunch of gleaming, never-used rods, perfectly, casually arranged in a corner.
Carbone scanned his notepad. “Now listen, no matter when we get out of here tonight or tomorrow morning, I want both of you back at ten to interview Lindsay Keefe. I’ll probably be stuck in a meeting with Shea on how to handle this thing. This thing’s bigger than Newsday. It’s national.
International. Now, Robby,” Carbone went on, “before ten, get what you can from Steve’s brother, Easton. Then meet Steve here, for Lindsay. After you’re through with her, you work on Sy’s business associates. First from this movie. Then start working back.
“Steve, you concentrate on all the nonbusiness-type movie people. Oh, and his women. Look into if he was currently involved with anyone besides Lindsay. And check his ex-wives. He had two of them. One lives in Bridgehampton, so maybe you can get to her before ten.” He glanced down to his pad. “Bonnie Spencer.”
I shook my head. It sounded vaguely familiar, but I was sure it wasn’t anyone I’d actually met.
“A movie writer.” He handed me a piece of paper with an address. “You know where it is?”
“About two minutes from where I grew up.”
“The other ex lives somewhere in the city. She was the first, and we’ll have a name and address on her by tomorrow.
All right? We’ll use Southampton Village’s squad room as a command post for the next day or two. I’ll meet up with the two of you as soon as I can get out here tomorrow.” He stopped, looked right at
MAGIC HOUR / 47
me, and sighed. “I think this is going to be it. The case where I find out that I’m too old for this kind of work.”
I stood in Sy’s gym, talking to Lynne from his wall phone.
All the not-fun stuff I’d been bugging myself about since the afternoon now seemed stupid. Engaged-guy nerves, a last-ditch defense of bachelorhood. Because, objectively, Lynne was so terrific.
One of the things that had always knocked me out about her was that she acted as though I had a normal, not-terribly-exciting job. I could be a manager of an Aamco transmission franchise. She deliberately did not focus on what I actually did. I understood why; homicide is the ultimate breakdown of law and order, and Lynne’s whole life, as a teacher and as a person, was dedicated to being constructive. She was there to give someone a chance, not take it away. Murder wasn’t exciting. It was sinful, and it was also outrageously unfair. In the deepest sense, killing wasn’t nice.
Another thing: despite her career and her really astonishing competence, she was enough of a traditional female not to want to hear the details of a fatal beating, or how the scalp is peeled back from the skull during an autopsy. So she concentrated not on the subject of my work—the dead and how they got that way—but on the living.
So we were not chitchatting about the murder, other than the briefest summary of what had happened and where I was. Instead, we were talking people. We’d done thirty seconds on how Carbone managed to be an intrusive pain in the butt and a terrific guy at the same time, a minute and a half on why I couldn’t stand Robby, and now we were on to my brother.
“Did you say anything like: ‘Gee, Easton, I’m sorry 48 / SUSAN ISAACS
about Mr. Spencer. I know how much you liked him and how important he was in your life’?”
“Don’t bust my chops, Lynne.”
Except for the floor, the entire gym was mirrored. I was the only thing in the room that didn’t gleam. Besides a sta-tionary bike, a treadmill and one of those stair-climbing things—all with glowing red or green digital displays—there was a bunch of Nautilus equipment. I stood up straighter; either Sy had a lot of vanity to work out in front of all those mirrors, or he needed tremendous incentive.
“Steve,” she said patiently, “did you say anything at all to comfort your brother?”
“Yeah. I said I was sorry.”
“That’s all?”
Just when I thought I looked okay in one mirror, I’d see my reflection in another. I pulled my shoulders back. I knew I didn’t have a gut, but in the ceiling mirror I seemed to, so I sucked it in. “Don’t get on me about Easton now. I
