Magic Hour Read Free Page A

liked him," he said. "Reminds me of a young Gary Cooper. Good without being a goody-goody. And she's a good actress." Carbone shook his head in sadness. "But too left-wing for my taste."
    "With her body, do you care what her position on disarmament is?"
    Suddenly it hit Carbone. "Is Lindsay Keefe here ?' he asked, his voice a little hushed with awe. "In the house?"
    "Upstairs, with her agent. You didn't hear her? He's trying to calm her down."
    "Can you believe it? I was in there, interviewing the cook. I didn't even know she was here, in the same house."
    "The agent brought her back from the set. Heavy-duty hysterics." Carbone's eyebrows began drawing together in sympathy, so I added: "Let's not forget she's an actress. Anyway, according to the agent, for the last six months Lindsay's been living with Sy. Here, and he has a duplex on
Fifth Avenue
. They're madly in love. Perfect relationship. Never a harsh word between them. Blah, blah, blah. The usual. Oh, and they were going to get married the minute the movie was finished."
    "You believe the agent?"
    "He's not a slimeball. He's an older guy named Eddie Pomerantz. Late sixties, early seventies. You can't miss him. A color-coordinated hippo: pink polo shirt and forty-eight-waist pink madras slacks. He was the one Sy was on the phone with when he was killed. Claims they were discussing some minor problem about photo approval. A movie star gets to approve any picture before it's handed out to the press, and Pomerantz said someone on this movie slipped a shot of Lindsay drinking coffee with her hair up in curlers to USA Today and she started crying when it got published because it's detrimental to her career to be seen in hair curlers." I shook my head. "For this the guy gets ten percent. Anyway, Pomerantz said he heard two shots over the phone."
    "You buy his story?" Carbone asked.
    "I buy that he heard two shots. He sounded pretty definite on that. But he kept eating nuts like a fucking maniac. There was a giant bowl of nuts on the table in the library or den or whatever it's called, and he must have glommed two pounds of pistachios in five minutes. I was going to tell him not to eat potential evidence, but he was such a nervous wreck I didn't have the heart. He was upset about Sy, and very worried about his client."
    "Could it be normal professional concern?"
    "Could be."
    "Listen, in this situation, concern would be an appropriate response. You know and I know and this Pomerantz must know that murder may mean publicity, but in the long run, being the mistress of a homicide victim isn't going to help anyone's career." I nodded in agreement. "What's the matter? Do you think he's afraid of something specific?"
    "Couldn't tell. But we've got to consider if this business is in any way related to Lindsay Keefe. A jealous ex-boyfriend. Or some jealous ex-girlfriend of Sy's who got pissed off that Lindsay came into the picture."
    "And we have to find out if things were really that hunky-dory between Sy and Lindsay," Carbone said.
    "Yeah. Maybe Sy did something so terrible she felt she had to kill him."
    "Like what?"
    "How should I know, Ray? Maybe he left dental floss with last night's corn on the cob on the sink. Who the hell knows what sets people off, makes them kill? Do you?"
    "No."
    "Me neither. Maybe it was just something boring, like Sy was getting it on with the script girl."
    "You can't wait to start with the hypotheses, can you, Brady?"
    "No. Now listen: someone on this movie besides Lindsay might have had a grudge. Or from some other movie. Or it could have been a cold-blooded hit. We've got to find out what kind of life Sy had—beyond his movie life. Did he gamble? Was he cooking the books? Into weird sex? Doing drugs?"
    A video tech stepped in front of us and, walking around Sy's body, aimed his camera on the white robe. Then he zoomed in on the two small splotches: the one on the hood, where a bullet entered just above Sy's brain stem, and another by his left