Bitter Finish (10 page)

"It's me," he said. "Where and when tomorrow?"

"Spraggue, I've been trying to reach you for—"

"
Never mind. Just tell me."

"
You've got to leave me a valid phone number! At least check in with your aunt——"

"Do I work tomorrow or not?"

"Downtown Crossing. You'll be filming there and around Park Street Station. And you're gonna love this: six sharp."

"In the morning?"

"
Of course."

"
Thanks." Spraggue hung up.

He wound up staying at the Airport Hilton, cramming for the morning's scenes, unwilling to waste two of his possibly five sleep-or-study hours on the drive home and back. He could have sworn he hadn't been asleep ten seconds when the phone rang: "`Wake-up call for Mr. Spraggue. Five o'clock." The voice was pure Boston, the accent alone enough to wake the dead.

The dead was what he felt like. Zombie film actor. An entire army of zombies hung out at the corner of Winter and Washington Streets. The new freshfaced excited ones were obviously PR from the mayor's office. Or insomniac fans.

Boston Police, happily collecting overtime, stopped him at a barrier. He flashed his ID and they let him park in one of the alleys normally reserved for flower and fruit sellers.

He was seized and shuffled off to a makeup trailer as soon as his feet hit pavement. A well-preserved blonde gave him a tan, ruffled his hair, massaged his neck.

"Nervous?" she asked.

"
Numb."

"You ought to be nervous. Gets you up for the scene. All that adrenaline . . ."

Spraggue shrugged. Up for the scene he was not. He knew there'd be trouble over his interpretation.

"Mike, baby," Everod began. Spraggue cringed, but the director plowed on. "You know you're doing something very nice, very interesting, very forties with this .... Now what I want is modern. Very eighties."

"It's just not an eighties scene, Everod. I told you—"

"
Play with it for me, Mike. We'll shoot it both ways, run both versions in the dailies and fight it out there."

Sure, Spraggue thought, some fight.

"Don't give me grief, Mike. It's bad enough doing location stuff anywhere. But here. The light's awful. The extras kill the language. Christ, I told Joey we could just build another Boston on the back lot, but no. Authenticity, that's what he wants!"

Spraggue wondered idly what Everod's tirade had to do with the upcoming scene.

"So I want everybody to pull together, understand? No grief, Mike. Okay? Ready?"

Spraggue sighed.

"
Action!"

So he played it modern. The first scene was the worst, the one with Karen Cameron. It wasn't Karen; he'd worked with her before, on stage, and she was a pro. It was her role, her damned soft, pleading little-woman role.

Scene One: Our Lucy (Cameron) lurks in the street just outside the stairs leading up to Harry Bascomb's (Spraggue's) office.

Harry Bastard Bascomb, hard—boi1ed P.I., works in a small dump over a hosiery Store. He'd refused Lucy's case earlier. Didn't touch marital stuff. Might stumble across an emotion instead of a clue.

So now Little Orphan Annie waits in the rain, hoping to accost him as he passes, plead with him, invite him for coffee, exercise her feminine wiles ....

Shit, Spraggue thought. She'd just try another detective. Plenty in the yellow pages. Or else she'd move out on her double-dealing husband and do her talking in court, through a lawyer.

The only chance for the damn scene was chemistry: if she'd been instantaneously attracted by Spraggue, if he felt the same. The old Bogey-Bacall magic. But when he and Karen played it that way, Everod called it old-fashioned. When they played it cool and modern, Spraggue called it unmotivated crap.

Start and stop. Roll and cut. Never would he get used to the rhythm of film, the jerky repetitive all or nothingness so foreign to stage. They did four takes of the scene, one his way, three Everod's, broke for coffee. Spraggue checked the shooting schedule: one more scene for him that morning, another late that afternoon. Between the two, time to visit Alicia Brent.

Wardrobe grabbed him, whisked him into his stunt padding and next-scene costume. Makeup ruffled his hair again, pressed her breasts very deliberately against his shoulders. Trying to get him psyched up for the next scene, Spraggue guessed.

He left the trailer, ran in place until he started to sweat, rubbed dirt on his clothes. His stunt double had already done most of the tough work. Spraggue just had to look worried and winded. He thought about the fall downstairs; the worry came easy.

The scene started with a car chase, mercifully brief, already filmed the day before. Spraggue left all car stunts strictly to the pros. Then a footrace down Winter Street, with stops to dodge flying bullets, a fistfight at the top of a little-used subway entrance, a long fall downstairs.

The chase continued down in the subway station. Spraggue jumped a couple of turnstiles for practice. Then the villain's dash across the tracks, the sudden fatal train ....

Bits and pieces required Spraggue's face: the close-ups when shots were exchanged, the fight at the top of the stairs. Everod and the director of photography argued over the best angle for the fall while Spraggue stared quietly down the long flight of hard stone steps. The stunt coordinator chuckled.

"
You only take the first ten. Then three of my guys scoop you up and put you back on your feet. Unless you'd like to do the whole twenty-seven—"

"
I'll pass."

The scene was shot like fragments of a dream, out of sequence, unreal. Makeup puffed his eye, split his lip during the fight. Harvey insisted on three takes of the fall. Then makeup added blood, dripping from a scalp cut. The bruises and aches were all authentic.

Spraggue picked up from his double at the bottom of the stairs, staggered to his feet, stumbled after the killer. The longest shot was the fade-out, Harry Bascomb staring down at the train-mangled body of the murderer—a man he didn't hate, didn't love—but a man nonetheless, horribly dead.

"
Again!" Everod called. "Get some more dirt on Mike. More blood. Some nice stuff, Mike, but this time, pull out the stops. Don't just see Dave flat on the tracks." The actor playing Dave stuck his tongue out of his bloody mouth. "See gore. See the inside of a man, the fragility of a man, the yolk with the shell broken—and realize how close you were to death. Okay?"

Smell is the most evocative sense. Spraggue closed his eyes, concentrated on the scent of Morrison's Funeral Chapel, recreated that little back room, saw the headless man. Fluid rose in his throat.

"
Roll," Everod cried.

Spraggue stared at the actor on the tracks, saw the body on the mortuary table, felt again the revulsion, the need to distance himself from awful bloody reality, the—

"
Cut!" Everod screamed. "Great, Mike; Beautiful."

Spraggue barely heard him. But he made it back to the trailer before he threw up.
 

11

Alicia Brent's house was close to the sea, one of six tiny cottages huddled together on a rocky Gloucester outcropping. Summer homes mostly, but the stacks of firewood piled beside the porch proclaimed Alicia's intent to stick it out for the winter. A lonely bleak season out here, Spraggue thought. Gulls circling, the low moan of the wind alternating with the booming cry of the foghorns.

He shivered in the cool ocean breeze, knocked again. He'd been lucky so far. The drive from Boston had taken just an hour and a quarter. Open roads and no cops.

"
What do you want?" The woman's voice was sharp, anxious, but Spraggue recognized it. He slipped a pleasant smile on his face, hoped all the fake blood had yielded to cold cream, soap, and water. Alicia Brent's door had a peephole Howard Ruberman would envy.

"My name is Michael Spraggue/' he shouted back. "Can we talk? It's important."

"To me?"

"Yes. And me. And a close friend of mine. I could explain better if you'd open the door."

"
Got any identification?"

A woman after Howard's heart. Spraggue fished in his wallet, shoved his driver's license down the mail chute.

"Spraggue," he heard her mutter. "We've met, haven't we?"

"A long time ago."

That seemed to reassure her slightly, but the door stayed shut. "Look," she said, "if this is about Lenny, if it's a condolence call or—well, you might—as well save your breath."

"I wouldn't bother you if it wasn't necessary." Spraggue jammed all his actor's sincerity into the eight words, shuddered inwardly.

The door creaked open. "Come in then. The neighbors have got plenty to gossip about without us shouting on the stoop."

"
Thank you." He stepped inside.

There was hardly room in the vestibule for both of them. The woman retreated hastily to her right, motioning Spraggue to follow. He tried to match Alicia, this older Alicia, to Grady's description. Short, she was. Plump, maybe to someone of Grady's slimness. Her dark short hair was streaked with gray.

Alicia led him to a small bow-windowed living room, waved him into a chair by the fireplace. The springs sagged as he dented the chintz throw-cover. Color had done as much as it could for the place.

A first impression of warmth and welcome was soon replaced by one of thrift; every article in the room was chipped, mended, shabby, cheap. An old model train circling a single loop of track lay derailed on the rough floorboards. The glow from the lone lamp was dim. Alicia Brent wore dark glasses.

"
Can I get you anything? Coffee? Tea?" The woman was plainly ill at ease. She fussed with the thin curtains as if she couldn't decide whether to draw them or not.

"
Coffee would be nice," Spraggue said. Maybe she'd calm down given something to do.

She knelt, righted the engine. "The kids, they leave things everywhere. Here"—she moved to the sofa, lifted a large brown—wrapped parcel from a cushion—"I'll get this out of the way. If you'd prefer the sofa—that chair's not very—"

"May I help?"

"No. Please. I'll heat up the coffee. It'll just be a minute."

Spraggue got to his feet as soon as she left, stared out the window, read the book titles on the two warped shelves. He was studying the train when Alicia returned, tray in hands.

She'd not only made coffee, she'd combed her hair, tucked in her blouse, changed from terrycloth slippers to high-heeled shoes, applied makeup like a mask. She still wore the glasses.

"Cream? Sugar?" She set the tray on an open metal TV table, tried to force cordiality into her
voice.

"Black," said Spraggue.

Her hand shook only a little as she passed him the cup and saucer. They drank in silence. Spraggue let the tension build.

"
So," she began finally. "If you'll tell me why you're here—"

"
How did you hurt your eye?"

"
A . . . a door. One of the kids—they're so careless. I was bringing in the groceries and she just let it slam."

"
Have you had a doctor look at it?"

"
No. No need. A simple black eye, really—"

"
And you probably didn't know a doctor in California."

The cup almost jerked out of her hands. She set it down hurriedly. "I don't understand—"

"
You were seen, Mrs. Brent."

"Don't call me that." Her tone was fretful rather than angry. "Alicia's good enough. I only kept his name for the kids' sake. Now that they're older, maybe I'll change it .... "

"Why did you lie about going to California?"'

"I didn't. The police never asked. Are you working for them?"

"
For myself."

"Then I think you'd better leave." Her voice trembled, died near the end.

"I'm much easier to talk to than the police."

Spraggue kept his tone gentle, but the threat was there.

"What do you want to know?"

"
When were you in Napa?"

Silence.

"
It's so easy to find out," he said. "Airlines keep records."

"I left here September ninth, a Tuesday. I meant to stay a week, but I came home a day early."

Came home Monday, the fifteenth. And Sunday night Kate had a fight with Lenny.

"
Why did you come back early?"

"I was ashamed," she said simply. She pulled off the glasses, clutched them in her lap. Her left eye, fading now, was still a mass of bluish-yellow bruise.

"I didn't want anyone to see this."

Spraggue waited.

"My parents sent me the plane ticket. They live in St. Helena. They want me to bring the kids and move back there. Maybe I will . . . now." She gulped her coffee, coughed. "I begged them to send money instead. Both my children need braces and . . . But my folks are old, they wanted to see me. A neighbor was glad to take the kids ....
 
"
It was okay at first. The valley was just like I remembered. And then I picked up some local rag, with a big front-page story, all about Lenny Brent, the bright star of winemaking? Her mouth tightened into a hard little line. "They had a picture of him, dancing with this lovely young girl." The mouth turned wistful, shook, regained control. "And I decided to talk to him, because it wasn't fair. Why should kids grow up with crooked teeth when their father's making good money?"

She didn't want or expect an answer.

"I shouldn't have seen Lenny, but I had to. I was waiting at his house when he finally drove up. Can't you see"—her hands fluttered helplessly—"I'm not the right generation for this? I wasn't brought up to it. You got married, you had kids, you lived happily ever after. I'm coping; I'm making a living now, finally; but I don't want to. I want their father to take care of our children."

"
What happened?"

"
With Lenny?" She laughed, but the noise wasn't warm or funny. "He hardly recognized me. He said hello and started past me to the house, and I yelled at him. I called him names I didn't even think I knew, words I must have picked up at the hospital. I wasn't even coherent. I went there to make a statement, to plead, if you like, but not for me—for the kids—and then I acted like some hysterical idiot. I couldn't stop screaming . . . until he hit me."