Who He? - (20)

Stacy broke away and ran into his dressing room. Lennox massaged his fist happily. The stage manager appeared and returned the flowers to the prop table in a marked manner. Kay Hill came out in black lace court dress, ruff and cap to take position before the No. 1 camera with an Extra dressed in leather and carrying an axe. The wardrobe mistress appeared.
    "Not Grenadier. Household," Lennox told her severely.
    "I'm having trouble with Cooper."
    "What's the matter?"
    "He won't get into costume."
    "Where's he dressing?"
    "Up in Nine."
    Lennox ran up the iron steps to the balcony, three at a time. He passed the dancers' dressing room and had a flashing glimpse of naked flat-chested girls juggling into can-can costumes. He knocked once on the door of Nine and burst in. It was the size of a privy. Cooper sat on a stool before the bulb-ringed mirror staring at a red and white blazer and a scarlet banded straw hat. His face bore a ghastly expression.
    "What the hell, Sam?"
    Cooper looked at him without changing expression.
    "Your spot comes up in five minutes."
    Cooper shook his head.
    "What's the matter? Speak."
    "I'm sick."
    "Stage-fright, hey? Don't worry, I'll see you through." Lennox picked up the blazer. "Come on. Change."
    Cooper made no move. Lennox took his shoulder and shook him. "Wake up, boy. You're on in five minutes. Take off your coat."
    "Leave me alone!" Cooper knocked Jake's hand away.
    "Take it easy, Wolfgang. Don't get panicky. I told you I'd see you through."
    "See me through what? More hell?"
    "It may be hell, but it's worth it. We're promoting you, son."
    "Promoting me?" Cooper laughed hysterically. "You're an expert, aren't you? You've promoted yourself to hell."
    "Maybe I have, but I'm not quitting on the way down. Don't you quit on the way up." Lennox glared at him. "For Christ's sake, Sam! Do I have to fight for both of us? Don't you have any strength of your own?"
    Cooper started to his feet in horror.
    "Get that coat off." Lennox jerked the coat off, spun Cooper around and put him into the red and white blazer. He cocked the straw hat on his head, tapped it into a rakish tilt and shoved him out of the dressing room. Cooper trudged to the stairs like a sleepwalker. The stage manager below beckoned frantically and he increased his pace going down the stairs.
    Lennox nodded and picked Cooper's jacket up to hang it away. Three slips of paper had fallen out of the pocket in the tussle. He was about to return them; then he stopped short as his eye caught the familiar hysterical writing. He smoothed the slips out and examined them fearfully. His heart began to pound. There were fragments, phrases, names, numbers; all scrawled in that sick hand: SUIDI ... $$$ ... MOST ... MERRY XMAS ... AMPMAMPM ... ROX ... §§§3 ... ¶7 ... MY HEART & ... BLOOD. SWEAT. TEARS ... WHO WHO WHO WHO HE?
    Lennox went black with rage. He placed the slips in his pocket and burst out of the dressing room. Down on the main floor he left the stage, leaped down the short flight of steps to the empty green room and called Sergeant Fink on the pay phone.
    "Bob? Jake Lennox."
    "Yeah. Hello. We'll be over in time for the program."
    "Get over now. I've found out who's writing the letters."
    "You don't say?"
    "I do say. And I've got proof."
    Lennox hung up. He glanced at the green room monitor. Cooper and one of the dancers had started their duet. Lennox turned up the speaker volume and watched, his face drawn and savage. The spot started badly. Cooper and the dancer missed their cue, the orchestra had to wait for them, they came in off beat. Their singing was inaudible and ragged. Cooper moved like a St. Vitus dancer. Even on the monitor his shaking was obvious.
    "Varsity show talent," Lennox snarled.
    After two agonizing minutes, the voice of Avery Borden cut through the orchestra and singing with the clarity of exasperation: "No! No! No! This is impossible."
    Cooper and the dancer stopped and peered out into the theater.
    "Get them out of here!" Borden shouted. "What is this? Amateur Night?"
    "So they stink," Grabinett's voice came faintly from another part of the theater. "What can we do? We got three Almighty minutes to fill."
    "I'd rather fill three minutes with dead air than that no-talent. Sweep 'em off the stage."
    "This is a dress rehearsal!" Sachs roared on the P.A.
    "This is a goddam trappisty!" Grabinett answered.
    The dancer began to weep. Cooper left her and staggered off camera. Lennox ran up the steps from the green room to the stage and met him as he came into the wings. There was a confused uproar in the theater punctuated by Raeburn Sachs' repeated commands to the staff to stop their clocks. Lennox took Cooper by the scruff of the neck and dragged him back to the green room. He flung him into a chair and stood over him. Cooper shook and gasped for air.
    "You son of a bitch!" Lennox shouted.
    "Stand by me, Jake. I'm in a bad way."
    "You're going to be in a worse way, you bastard."
    "Please, Jake...."
    Lennox pulled the telephone slips out of his pocket and shook them in Cooper's face. "Look at these. Look at them, you filthy Judas."
    "Jake ... I need a drink. I'm in a bad way."
    Cooper tried to get out of the chair. Lennox backhanded him across the jaw. Then, in his fury, he yanked him up and cuffed his face. When he let him go, Cooper collapsed.
    "So it was you writing them," Lennox shouted. "What's inside you? What in God's name did you have against me? Why couldn't you come out into the open instead of sticking a knife in my back and twisting it?"
    "The ... letters?"
    "Yes, the letters. The threats. The filth." Lennox thrust the slips before Cooper's face again. "I found these in your pocket. It's the same writing. Your disguised hand, yes? What are they, practice sheets?"
    "No," Cooper said faintly. "I ... Jake, I've got to tell you. You're writing them. You're writing those letters yourself. Not me. You."
    Lennox burst out laughing.
    "It's true, Jake. Those times when you get drunk and black out.... That's when you write yourself those letters. So help me, Jake. I've been trying to keep it from you, but--"
    "I thought we were friends," Lennox broke in fiercely. "I thought we were working together ... standing by each other ... backing each other up. I thought we were two sane men bucking the rat-race and beating them at their own game. I believed in us. I'd have killed myself to keep it from being destroyed. I should have killed you before you destroyed it. You're not sane. You're like all the rest of them ... sick, vicious, living on hate and poison."
    "For God's sake, Jake! Will you listen to me?" Cooper struggled up out of the chair and put his arm around Jake's shoulders. "You're the sick one. You're the one who's destroying everything. You--"
    Lennox twisted away from Cooper and looked at him with hatred. "You can think of more vicious ways to knife a man in the back than a fag. Why didn't you dress under the stage with the other queens? That's where you belong!"
    "Mr. Lennox," the doorman called in his deaf voice. "Man here for you. Mr. Fink or such."
    "Be right out," Lennox answered. He showed his teeth to Cooper. "Wait here. I've got a surprise for you."
    He ran out to the stagedoor foyer. Fink was standing there with his swarthy colleague, Salerno.
    "He's in the green room," Lennox said. "This way."
    "Just a minute," Fink smiled. "Who's in this green room?"
    "Guy who was writing the letters. You were right, Bob. It was Cooper. Sam Cooper who lives with me. Look at this." Lennox waved the telephone slips. "I found them in his pocket. It's the same writing. You see? You see, Mr. Salerno? Come on."
    "Oh Jesus," Salerno grunted.
    "Come out to the car a minute," Fink said.
    "What for?"
    "To talk."
    "What about?"
    "Tell you when we get there. Come on."
    "What the hell is this?" Lennox looked from Fink to Salerno. "I tell you who's writing the letters and you want to talk. Go talk to him."
    Salerno slipped behind Lennox and caught his arm in a paralyzing grasp. "Come on out to the car," he said softly.
    "I will like hell come out to the car. What's the matter with you two?"
    "You want it tough?" Fink asked.
    Lennox was bewildered. In the background, the orchestra echoed brilliantly.
    "Tell him," Salerno said.
    "Now don't blow your top." Fink smiled. "We want to drive you down to City Hospital for a check-up."
    "Me? City Hospital?"
    "Just for a couple of days. Won't cost you a cent."
    "What are you talking about?"
    "Come on, Lennox. Don't make it tough."
    "I asked you what the hell you're talking about. City Hospital! Is this your idea of a funny?"
    "Tell him," Salerno repeated.
    "We know you're writing these letters," Fink said.
    "You know I'm writing--" Lennox was staggered. "You know I'm writing the letters? To myself?"
    Fink nodded.
    "You always smile at the wrong time," Lennox said slowly. "This is a joke-type joke at the wrong time. Yes?"
    "We'll talk it over down at the hospital."
    "What makes you think I'm writing the letters?"
    "Tell him," Salerno said impatiently. "Maybe he'll listen to reason."
    "Will you behave yourself if I show you?" Fink asked.
    Lennox nodded. There was a last fanfare off and then dead silence as the dress ended. Fink took a manila envelope out of his pocket and produced the poison pen letters. He unfolded one and pointed to the hysterical scrawl.
    "See? Five words to a line. In every letter. Five words to a line, no more, no less. That's an old telegrapher's habit, from counting ten word messages. We checked this program. You're the only ex-telegrapher working it. You're a professional telegrapher from twenty years back, when you were a kid in this town on Long Island."
    "Islip," Lennox croaked. "Yes."
    "And we found your prints in the envelopes."
    "I handled the envelopes," Lennox said desperately. "When Grabinett showed me the letters."
    "I didn't say on the envelopes. I said in the envelopes. We found your prints inside, under the flap, but the envelopes were slit open at the end. The only one who could leave prints inside there is the one that put the letter in the envelope and sealed it. Now come on, Lennox. Don't make it tough."
    "For God's sake, Bob! How could I write them and not know about it? I was scared. I was out of my mind trying to find who it was. How could it be me?"
    "They'll tell you down at the hospital. Come on."
    "The lunatic ward?"
    "Don't get jumpy. You won't be in a strait jacket."
    "Yeah," Salerno said. "Nice down there. Pretty nurses."
    "But--"
    "Come on," Fink said, and for the first time a terrifying hardness manifested itself under the surface of his mildness.
    Lennox whirled and wrenched himself out of Salerno's grasp. He didn't so much hit him as catapult him back into Fink with a bull thrust. He ran through the arch into the orchestra, whipping the heavy curtain across the arch behind him for cover. He squirmed through an empty row of seats to the center aisle and yelled: "Gabby!"
    She turned. Everybody turned and stared through the gloom.
    "Out!" Lennox roared. "Out!"
    Behind him, Fink called sharply: "Lennox! You'll be sorry!"
    Lennox sprinted up the center aisle, knocking aside the vague figures that blundered into his path. He cut around the glass corner of the control booth and headed for the bronze doors that led out to the theater lobby. At that moment, the doors opened and the studio audience poured into the theater in a solid mass, fighting and elbowing for the best seats.
    Lennox was slammed back against the control booth. He lowered his head and tried to charge through that unyielding wave. He could hear Fink and Salerno struggling near him and shouting orders to the network pages, the house manager, the theater fireman. Lennox was carried back again and shunted to the right where the broad stairs led up to the balcony. He started up the stairs. The fireman appeared above him and came down after him. Lennox turned and ran around the foot of the stairs to the right aisle, searching for fire exits.
    He went down the steep slope of the aisle toward the stage. There were no exits he could reach through the crowd. Fink and Salerno were calling to each other. The studio audience was in an uproar. Lennox leaped up on the orchestra platform at the foot of the aisle, battered his way through musicians, stands and chairs, and vaulted onto the stage. Gabby began screaming.
    Lennox started across the stage to the right wings. He tripped on the No. 3 Camera cables, fell, rolled over and was on his feet again. Salerno appeared in the right wings. Lennox stopped short and turned downstage. Fink was coming at him up the No. 2 Camera dolly-track. Lennox turned to the left wings. The fireman was advancing on him from that side. He backed up, panting, trapped. As Fink came onto the stage, the curtains swept in from either side, narrowly missing him.
    Lennox looked around wildly, searching the stage for a loop-hole ... left, right, back, up. Suddenly he was transfixed. Still staring up into the flies, he screamed: "Sam! Sam!"
    Every eye on the stage looked up. Fifty feet overhead, a figure in a red and white blazer balanced precariously on the criss-cross bars of the iron grid. Cooper teetered and sat down on a bar, his feet dangling through the opening of the three foot square. Then he thrust himself off and came plummeting down, feet first, arms outstretched. There was a sharp crack and his body was jerked up in mid-flight. His shoes flew off and clattered down. The arms flailed, the body shuddered once as though the bones were trying to burst out of the skin; and then it was still, swinging gently, the feet just a yard above the edge of the teaser that masked the top of the stage from the audience.
    Lennox sank to his knees and began to sob. The appalled silence was jarred by a fanfare from the orchestra on the other side of the curtain. Oliver Stacy, in dinner jacket, paused long enough to vomit in the wings, then slipped through the curtain, white-faced and smiling. There was a burst of applause. His voice rang out in cheerful greeting, and the warm-up for the New Year's Day "Who He?" show began.
    CHAPTER XV
    THE BODY CAME DOWN AND JERKED THE BODY CAME DOWN AND JERKED THE BODY CAME down and jerked the body came down and jerked thebodycamedownandjerkedthebodycamedown andjerked THE. BODY. CAME. DOWN. AND. JERKED.
    Lennox rolled out of the bed and knelt on the floor. He leaned his elbows against the iron bedstead, pressed his palms together and pressed his lips against his hands.
    Alongside him, No. 17 slept open-mouthed and filled the ward with the fetor of decay. No. 8 laughed in a baby voice, No. 20 scratched methodically with a monotonous rasp. No. 5 chanted: "The Lord is my hospital, I shall not want. He marries me to green Packards. He leadeth me leadeth me leadeth me...."
    "No. No. No. Not a hospital. It's a jail, that's what it is," No. 9 told him. "It's a jail run by the lousy Catholics and Masons where they can pull off their crooked political deals. Nuns and Priests letting on they're nurses and doctors. Spying me out. Reporting. Giving me blue looks and electric sparks out of the walls. They know I won't let 'em run the country. I'll tell the papers. I'll tell everybody!"
    "Did I ever tell you about paper?" No. 10 chattered with manic brightness. "Did I ever tell you? A sheet of paper is an inclined plane. A sheet of paper with lines on it is an ink-lined plane. An inclined plane is a slope up and a slow pup is a lazy dog."
    There were steps behind Lennox, and a heavy voice said: "Jesus! Will you look at him? He's prayin' again."
    Before the attendants could throw him back into bed, Lennox got up and climbed in. They laughed ... two impervious men in identical white uniforms wearing the identical expression of indifference. The only way they could be distinguished was by their hair; one black, one red.
    "Got you trained, huh buster?" the red-head said. "Not this time, though. Come on."
    Lennox put on the blue bathrobe and the straw slippers and meekly followed the attendant down the ward.
    "What day is today?" he asked.
    "Wednesday."
    The ward doors were unlocked and they passed out into a white corridor. Barred windows looked west across The Rock and halfway into New Jersey on this crisp, clear afternoon.
    "More tests?" Lennox asked.
    "Nope. You're all finished, buster."
    "What now?"
    No answer. Lennox shuffled in silence and terror.
    "Are they going to lock me up for good?"
    The red-head thrust open a door and led him into a tiled bathroom. Alongside the shower was a white table on which was neatly folded the clothing Lennox had worn the previous Sunday.
    "Extra special for you," he said. "Why didn't you tell us you was a big wheel, buster? Wash up and get dressed."
    In a daze, Lennox bathed and dressed. He looked at himself in the wash mirror. He was completely unchanged ... except for the three-day beard on his face.
    "Why should I be changed?" he thought. "Nothing's changed inside me. I'm like all the rest. Sick. Feeding on what happened to Sam. Living on poison. Loving the poison. It's only the innocents like Sam who suffer. Our diet kills them."
    Outside in the corridor, the red-head was waiting for him, sneaking a smoke like a convict. He pinched out the end of the cigarette, put it in his pocket, and took Lennox downstairs. There was a blurry business in an office of unlocking a file and restoring his possessions ... money, watch, keys, and the gimmick book which he slid into his jacket. He flexed his right arm against it repeatedly. It was his one hold on his life.
    There was further confusion in other offices; papers to be signed by a hand that could hardly bring itself to touch the pen, warnings and official counsel to be heard, a brisk lawyer whom Lennox vaguely recalled meeting before somewhere in the network. And most incredible of all, there was Ned Bacon waiting for him in the hospital lobby, leaning against a pillar like a Private Eye with his hat cocked over his brow. Bacon shook hands warmly and took him out to his car. Lennox was confused.
    "Yeah," Bacon said as he drove uptown, "We kicked it around and figured the best thing would be to hand Cooper the rap. He was cooled anyway and there was no percentage letting you sit in the penalty box."
    "You told them Sam wrote the letters?" Lennox faltered.
    "Sure. That's how we sprung you. That lawyer could be a Federal judge if he was willing to lose money."
    "But Fink and Salerno...."
    "Bob's a buddy," Bacon drawled. "We gave him the sign and he listened to reason."
    "So everybody thinks Sam...?"
    "Yeah."
    Lennox lay back in the seat, limp and helpless, too exhausted after three days of horror and remorse even to ask questions. He flexed his right arm against the gimmick book and let the arm drop into his lap. Bacon glanced at him and smiled knowingly.
    "Been rubbing elbows in the marketplace, huh Jake?"
    "I'm thinking of Sam."
    "Hell, he's dead. Think about the Quick."
    "I killed him, Ned."
    "A rope killed him, Jake."
    "I tied the rope for him."
    "He was an amateur," Bacon said. "He was out of his class. Nobody killed him. He killed himself trying to mix with the pros."
    "Trying to mix with the poison eaters."
    "What?"
    "Nothing."
    "Did you write those damn fool letters, Jake?"
    "Yes, I guess I did."
    "What the hell for?"
    "I don't know for sure yet. I think because I was sore."
    "What at?"
    "Myself."
    "What for?"
    "I don't know," Lennox said wearily. "It's like there were two of me ... and one didn't like the other. You know how every man's got a voice inside him that talks to him like a stranger. Mine didn't talk. It wrote letters."
    "You aren't thinking about taking from a head-shrinker, are you?"
    "I don't believe in them."
    "Stay away from those guys, Jake. I wouldn't trust a talent that wasn't crazy a little. It's the crazy that makes you the writer. Stay with it and enjoy."
    "Enjoy what? I've lost everything. God knows I made it a fight ... but I've lost everything. I've got nothing left."
    Bacon laughed.
    "If it wasn't for you, I'd still be in there doing word associations and ink-blot tests and--This is a big favor, Ned, but why? I thought you hated my guts after I sold you out to Blinky."
    "Just the Irish temper," Bacon said. "I'm directing 'Who He?' starting February."
    "It's going off."
    "No it's not.
    "But--"
    "Sachs is moving over to our new show."
    "Our new...?"
    "'The Couple from Missouri.'"
    "What's that?"
    "Wake up, Jake. You remember that show we faked to cool the Kansas beef last week."
    "The couple competing on give-away shows?"
    "Uh-huh. The network bought it. We've had to change it around a little. Blinky'll tell you while we're signing the contracts." Bacon parked the car in the low Forties. As he got out he said: "And remember, this time we split three ways. No fifty percent for Grabinett."
    They walked up Madison toward Grabinett's office. Lennox was even more dazed. A moment ago his world had been in ruins. Now it was apparently back in business and doing better than ever. He flexed his arm against his gimmick book. Then he phoned Gabby from a drugstore. There was no answer.
    As they passed Borden's office building, Avery came bouncing out and saw them. Lennox flinched. Borden ran over and shook hands.
    "Only got a minute," he said, glancing at his watch. "Have to grab an early train. What was it like in the hatch, Jake? They put you in a strait jacket? Do they really have padded cells? I tell you, let's have lunch tomorrow. I've got to hear all about it. Give me a call, not too early." He waved buoyantly and darted into a cab.
    Lennox watched him go. His jaw hung. He looked at Bacon with so much astonishment that Bacon laughed. "Wake up, Jake. You've got enough new material to eat free for a month."
    "Material?" Lennox echoed.
    "What else? You're lucky."
    They continued up Madison Avenue. Everybody in the business was on the street and everybody greeted Lennox as though nothing had happened. Oliver Stacy hailed them and shook hands. "I'll give you a little advice, Jake. Next time you have to handle three in a hassle, don't fight high. Work low ... from the gut down. And use your knees. Forget about fouls when the chips are down."
    "Thank you, Oliver," Lennox said humbly.
    Stacy spread his shoulders and massaged his ribs. "I can't figure how Cooper ever got up there. It took me twenty minutes to get across that grid and cut him down ... and I know how to climb." He turned to Bacon. "How'd you do with her?"
    "I'm going up to Brockton next week."
    "She can't be that good." Stacy tilted his fingers at them lazily and departed.
    Bacon led Lennox up to Grabinett's office. The signs had been removed from the corridor. Tooky Ween was in the main office with Grabinett and both greeted Lennox warmly.
    "What a Christ Almighty thing!" Grabinett blinked. "That crazy Cooper jeopardizing a show like that. Tsk. Tsk. You get any good ideas down there, Jake? Ray was saying how we ought to do the mad scene from 'The Count of Monte Cristo' on the 29th. Jesus, you need a shave." He picked up the phone and ordered a barber.
    "He helped my boy write a great tune," Ween rumbled. "I don't care what anybody says about him." He looked at Lennox. "Don't worry, Jake. I'm takin' good care of that property. His sister's gettin' her fifty percent regular, and it ain't a bad check."
    Lennox was too weary to argue. He phoned Gabby and there was still no answer. The barber arrived and shaved him while Bacon swaggered up and down the office with his hat tilted over one eye and organized the cadre of the show. It was to be a panel format on the insult level. Mr. and Mrs. Missouri would interview guest stars, challenge their right to celebrity and stardom, and demand to be shown. The stars would entertain to prove their merit. Ween would provide the stars from his stable. Grabinett would provide production and direction, Lennox would provide script.