Hundreds and hundreds who were good but weren't good enough for the system: the star system, that goddamn inverted pyramid, with so little room for people at the top.
Arthur Tucker sipped the tea and wondered if his life had been a failure.
And now ... the incident with Shelly Lowe. He wasn't sure if--
His phone rang, a jarring metallic blare. He picked it up, said, "Hello."
And heard some breathless young girl talking a mile a minute. Checks? She was saying something about a problem with the mail. She was on the first floor of the building and some checks addressed to him had been misdelivered to her office. Tucker didn't believe he was expecting any checks. Most of his students paid in cash at the end of their lessons, handing him the crisp, precious twenties straight from the Chase ATM.
"Well, they look like checks. I'm all alone here. I can't bring them up. You want me to leave them outside my door tonight."
In which case they'd vanish in five minutes, he knew.
"I'll come down. What office?"
"One-oh-three. If I don't answer right away I might be on the phone," she said. "I'll just be a minute."
Tucker pulled on his tweed jacket, with its leather elbow patches and torn satin lining. He forwent his hat. He walked into the dark corridor, locking the door after him. He pressed the big black button to summon the elevator and waited for three minutes until it arrived. He stepped inside and began the grinding journey down to the first floor.
Rune tried a dental pick.
She'd bought it at a pharmacy from a clerk who didn't seem particularly curious why someone wearing Day-Glo Keds and a miniskirt printed with pterodactyls would be interested in a dental tool. Then she'd gone back to the houseboat. She'd practiced on the locks to some of the interior doors and got them open pretty fast. She hadn't graduated to the front door, which had a doorknob cylinder and a Medeco, because she got impatient. Anyway, she figured, the theory was undoubtedly the same.
It wasn't.
Sweating, the panic growing, she worked at Arthur Tucker's door for five minutes. Nothing happened. She'd get the pick in and twist it and turn it and hear clicking and snapping and unlocking sounds, all of which was real satisfying.
But nothing happened. The door remained snugly locked.
She stood back. There was no time. Tucker'd be back in three or four minutes, she estimated.
She looked up and down the corridor. There were only two other tenants on this floor: a lawyer's office, with signs in English and Korean, and an import company. There were no lights under either door.
"Oh, hell."
Rune shoved her elbow through the glass. A large triangular piece fell inside. She reached in and turned the latch.
Four minutes ... you've only got four minutes.
But it turned out she didn't need even that much time.
Because right in the middle of Tucker's desk was what she was looking for--the stack of papers he'd been going to great lengths to cover up. But it wasn't just any stack of papers; it was a play. The title was Delivered Flowers. Tucker, it seemed, had been making notes in the margin--additions, deletions, stage directions. Not many, a few words here and there. One change was pretty radical, though, Rune thought. Not in the play itself, but on the cover page: Tucker had crossed out by Shelly Lowe and written his own name in.
The copyright line had been changed too, his name substituted for hers.
On the cover was another note: Haymarket Theater, Chicago--interested.
Shelly's been dead a few days, Rune thought angrily, and this prick's already stolen her script and sold it to somebody.
Take it, she told herself. It's evidence.
But then Tucker would see it was gone. She looked behind the desk. There were piles of other plays, also loose-bound like this one, on his credenza. She rummaged through them and found another one on which Tucker had crossed off Shelly's name and put his own in its place.
She tossed it into her leopard-skin bag and left the office. There was a loud click behind her, up the corridor.
She'd been wrong. Tucker hadn't waited at the door downstairs for as long as she'd hoped. Or maybe someone had told him the company had moved months ago. In any event the elevator opened just as she got into the stairwell. She heard his footsteps, heard them stop, heard his muttered "Oh, no" as he saw the broken glass. She eased through the fire door and took the stairs two, then three at a time down to the ground floor.
Outside, she saw a cop up the street. Her first inclination was to bolt. But then she remembered that no way would Arthur Tucker call the police. At best he was a thief. At worst, a killer.