Death of a Blue Movie Star (Rune 2)

"Well, yeah."

She opened the swan's back. She stared down at it.

"It's leftovers, isn't it, Bob? This isn't a swan bag. It's a doggy bag."

"Thought you might like something."

Rune was poking at the contents with a pencil. "It's green beans and potatoes. That's all that's left. What went with it?"

"Dunno. May've been a steak." He stretched and for a moment looked like the cute, innocent boy he had never in his life been and walked out the door. "Eight-thirty for tomorrow, doll. 'E likes croissants, so pick up some on your way in, could you?"

The door shut behind him.

She wadded the cold potatoes up and was about to throw them out when she felt her stomach rumbling. Her hand hesitated.

"Double damn."

Rune opened the foil and then, with a glance out the window to make sure Bob had left, cued up her own videocassette on the Sony video editor next to the Moviola and started the tape. She watched it as she ate the potatoes and beans, using two pencils like chopsticks.

The shots of Danny Traub told her nothing other than that the porn producer was a stupid, egotistical, horny bastard. The shots of Michael Schmidt--taken with the hidden video camera--told her that he was a smart, insincere, egotistical bastard, who may or may not have been horny, but at least didn't let it get in the way of his job.

Rune replayed the flicker in his eye when she mentioned Shelly Lowe's name. A tiny motion. What was he thinking? What was he remembering?

She couldn't tell. As Larry had told her, "Cameras don't lie, luv, but that doesn't mean they tell the whole truth."

No, Schmidt's tape told her very little. But the tape of Arthur Tucker ... that was different.

The first thing she noticed: Shelly's acting coach had spent several minutes casually covering up something on his desk as he talked to her. It might have been a pile of papers or a manuscript. He'd been very subtle; she hadn't even noticed him doing it in the office. What didn't he want her to see? Rune rewound the tape and freeze-framed the image. She couldn't make out anything.

But then she glanced at a plaque on the wall behind him. It held a set of medals. But not those mail-order medals that commemorate stupid events like Great Moments in the Industrial Revolution. Franklin Mint stuff. These were real-looking military medals, along with other mementos, including a gold cross.

She squinted as she studied them, recalling one of her favorite movies. A black-and-white film made by Metropolitan Studios in the fifties. The Fighting Rangers. A World War Two film. One of the main characters--the nice kid from a Midwestern town, played by somebody like Audie Murphy--is terrified of battle. He's never sure if his courage is going to break. But in the end, he sneaks up on an enemy bridge and blows it to bits all by himself to keep the enemy from sending reinforcements.

She remembered the little crescent name badge--the simple word RANGERS on the hero's shoulder--when he lay dying in the last scene of the movie. It looked just like the tag Arthur Tucker had in his plaque of medals. He'd been a Ranger too.

The other thing she remembered was the scene earlier in the movie when another soldier had asked the hero if he knew how to rig the explosives on the bridge.

And he'd answered, "Sure, Sarge. All Rangers know how to blow up things. It's what they teach us in training."

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Arthur Tucker was feeling old.

Sitting in his dusty Times Square office, he dropped a dull-white heater coil into a chipped cup of water. It sputtered fiercely. When the water boiled he removed the coil and dropped in a twice-used, crusty Lipton tea bag. The sunlight came through the curtains, which were faded in waves that marked the sun's passage over the year. Outside, the sounds of construction were like the noises of battle.

Feeling old.

Sometimes, watching one of his young proteges on stage, he felt anything but old. He almost believed he was still the twenty-five-year-old, dressed in the musty costume of Rosencrantz or Benvolio or young Prince Hal, waiting for his cue to enter from stage right.

But not today. Something had triggered this morbid feeling of antiquity as he'd climbed off the Eighth Avenue train at Fiftieth Street and walked in a slow zigzag to his office. Looking at the marquees of the theaters. Many of them were now on the ground floors of high-rise buildings; they weren't

separate structures like the grand old Helen Hayes, the Martin Beck, the Majestic. He thought that said something--the theaters being parts of office buildings. When he remembered the old marquees--the huge, jutting trapezoids of dotted lights--he remembered mostly the logos of musical comedies. Why did he picture those (a form of theater he did not enjoy and rarely attended) more easily than the marquees announcing the plays of Miller and O'Neill and Ibsen and Strindberg and Mamet, all of whom he believed to be geniuses?

It must be because he was getting old, he figured.

He thought of his students. Where were they all? A dozen on or off Broadway. Six or seven on television sitcoms or adventure shows. Two dozen in Hollywood.

And hundreds and hundreds that had gone into accounting or law or carpentry or advertising or plumbing.