“Okay,” I said. “That’s all.”
Katie uncovered her face.
“All of this over some movie,” she said. “I don’t even like Jerry Lewis.”
“No? Have you ever seen The Nutty Professor?”
“With Eddie Murphy? Just the sequel. Why?”
“Never mind.”
There was no point in explaining. Katie hadn’t cared when Leonard Friend showed her Graus’s chapter, and she wouldn’t care now.
“Are you hungry?” I asked.
She nodded.
I kissed her forehead. “Don’t answer the door or the phone.”
“Sesame or poppy, okay? And butter, no margarine.”
Even as I was smiling, I was aware that Katie had never been prepared for anything. That had been her charm, and now it was her downfall.
—
Holding a brown deli bag, I stood outside the glitzy Times Square Marriott Hotel, where Graus’s story had so abruptly ended. Crime scene tape was already sagging on the front doors; tourists and other gawkers were starting to thin out. Everyone was moving on. For most people, after all, Graus was just a guy who played Nazis. A few cops, however, still hung around.
Looking up, I was distracted by something. A huge new billboard featured Marthe in a repeat of her old ocelot campaign. This time, though, she was selling a sciatica pill from the conglomerate that owned the perfume. At least she was bringing in some cash for the taxes, I thought. Then I gazed back down at the street.
Standing near a patrolman was Detective Florent.
Why was everything always in his precinct? This was what happened when you lived near “the crossroads of the world”; I made a mental note to move.
At the moment, however, it was too late.
“Hey!” he shouted. “You!”
He’d been whispering to a cop; I bet he was saying something like, “There’s that loser I’m always running into.”
Then he was in my face.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
“It’s a free country,” I said, brilliantly, and tried to get by.
“How come when there’s something bad, you’re always around?” Florent seemed genuinely confused.
“See, you’re a cop. You’re only around when something bad is happening. I’m around when good things are happening, too. But you’re not there.” This had the makings of a decent joke, but it was too long-winded. Florent didn’t get it, and it only made him angrier.
“Don’t give me that. Tell me what—”
“Look, I heard about it on the radio,” I said, to mollify him. “I just thought I’d take a look. I’m a movie fan, remember?”
Florent stopped for a second. Then his cheesily handsome features shifted. “Hey, Graus Menzies was an extra in The Day the Clown Cried, wasn’t he?”
I was getting out of there. His trivial qualifications were growing by the encounter, and it worried me.
“Wasn’t he?” he shouted, now in the distance.
—
I barged into my apartment suddenly enough to startle Katie. Dressed in T-shirt and shorts, she was sitting up, against the bed’s pillows, clicker in hand. She pressed it to mute.
“Wow,” she said. “You scared me.”
“Sorry.” I was agitatedly handing her the deli goods.
“Look. He’s dancing on the ceiling, like in that Lionel Richie video.”
I glanced at the classics movie channel, LCM. Fred Astaire was doing his famous number from Royal Wedding.
“That was copied from this,” I said, curtly. “And Jane Powell replaced Judy Garland who replaced June Allyson.”
“Know-it-all.” Katie was peeking at her bagel in its wrapper. “Hey, I said sesame or poppy, and this is whole whea—”
“Just eat it, for chrissake!” I found myself screaming at her.
There was a long pause. Katie looked hurt. She rewrapped the bagel very, very slowly. She pressed the mute button again. Fred could be heard tapping on the wall.
