Bullets for Macbeth Read online

  “I played Seyton in my freshman year at Ogontz,” he continued. “On opening night, a flat tipped over and brained Lady Macbeth during her sleepwalking scene. The lashing at the top came undone, even though it had been tied tightly that afternoon, and it was seven feet above the stage floor. They rushed her to the hospital, but the concussion had already killed her.”

  We walked along in silence.

  “There is something about the play,” Godwin admitted, “I don’t know what exactly, but it weighs you down like lead. You feel it pressing, dead weight, even during tryouts, and early rehearsals are like swimming against the current in a river of sludge.”

  “I got depressed just pasting up Michael’s promptbook,” Melanie said airily, in an attempt to lighten the mood.

  Whelan just shook his head. “It has a grim history,” he stated. “Any actor will tell you that. Ask Olin Oakes. He goes back fifty years. I’ll bet he could tell some real horror stories about Macbeth.”

  “Olin Olvis Oakes?” I asked, impressed.

  “Yes.” Godwin nodded. “He was an old friend of my father’s. Occasionally he comes out of retirement just to prove he can still act rings around the younger generation.”

  “Who’s he playing?” Hilary inquired. “Duncan?”

  “He wouldn’t settle for less.” The director chuckled. “I think he’s played dead kings like Duncan and Hamlet’s father so long that he’s half-convinced he was born to the velvet.”

  “We also asked him to play old Siward, the Earl of Northumberland, who comes on in the last act,” Melanie added. “Since Duncan is murdered early and actually only appears onstage in the first act, I thought it’d be a shame not to use Olin to greater advantage, so I asked him if he’d mind playing two roles, and he was delighted.”

  “Most actors would be,” Godwin grumbled. “Don’t know why he retired in the first place. He hates civilian life, like most of us.”

  Harry cleared his throat as if to say something on the subject, but apparently thought better of it and kept his mouth shut.

  By then we’d reached the Opel. Hilary promised once more to meet Godwin at three o’clock the next day at the producer’s office. We said good night to the couple, who continued down the street to their apartment, which was only a short distance away.

  Harry asked if we could drop him off, and Hilary said sure, so he gave me an address way the hell out on the other side of Manhattan. I unlatched the doors and Harry clambered onto the rear seat.

  I stepped off the curb smack into a mud puddle that swamped my shoes and wet my cuffs. Cursing to myself, I rounded the car to open the right front door for Hilary, but halfway there I realized she was no longer waiting on the sidewalk. I ducked my head to peer through the side window and, sure enough, there she was in the back with Harry.

  I didn’t slam the door when I got in, but I gunned the motor viciously and pulled off with a lurch. If the roads hadn’t been so slippery, I might have jammed on the brakes at the corner, but I took it nice and easy the rest of the way.

  Neither of my “passengers” said a word during the ride, and I debated with myself whether or not I should charge Hilary double my usual salary rate for after-hours chauffeur duty.

  After we dropped Harry off, I drove uptown till I could pick up the Eighty-fifth-Street crosstown. I followed Eighty-sixth straight to West End, made a left, and let out Hilary at the same canopy where I’d picked her up several hours earlier. Then I drove around to the garage.

  The rain started up again as I was pulling the car onto the ramp. The wind was almost at gale force, gusting great sheets of water across the windshield. I switched on the wiper, but it did little good; the entranceway off Eighty-seventh Street appeared and disappeared like an hallucination seen in drugged sleep. I let the Opel crawl the last few feet and kept the motor running until the night attendant climbed in and put it away for me.

  As I fought the chilly gusts that blew in from the Hudson, whipping my coat against my legs, I wondered what I ought to say to Hilary, if anything, when I got back.

  I needn’t have been concerned. She was already in her room with the door closed and the lights out. I put my ear to the door to see whether she had the TV on, but the room was silent save for the steady susurration of her breath. She was already asleep.

  Une autre nuit blanche. ...

  When Hilary first hired me, I was frankly startled by her suggestion that I live in her apartment, but I was quick to take her up on the offer. I immediately learned, however, that the arrangement was meant to be purely practical. Hilary is a light sleeper, and she keeps a loaded revolver on a nightstand by her bed. The main reason she wants me close by is to man the phone during early morning hours, when she’s still in the sack. She detests mornings. Providing me with a room also enables her to afford my salary: she counts rent as part of my gross remuneration.

  My room is diagonally across the hall from hers and just beyond the library, which has a door into a bathroom connecting with my quarters. As I went in to brush my teeth, I saw that Hilary had left the light burning in the other room, so I entered to flick off the switch.

  The library is about twenty feet square and is lined floor to ceiling with cluttered shelves of varying heights. In the middle is a polished cherrywood table with chairs on either side. As I stepped over to the light switch, I noticed Hilary had removed a book from one of the shelves and left it on the table. It was a fat tome bound in dark crimson with gold letters stamped on cover and spine. I leaned over to see what it was, already guessing it to be a Complete Shakespeare. A bookmark protruded two-thirds of the way down from the top. I cracked the volume at the spot marked by Hilary and saw precisely what I expected to find: Macbeth, Act III, Scene 3.

  The Third Murderer scene.

  I sat down and scanned the text. It begins with disquieting abruptness as the three villains appear, the first one already interrogating the mysterious interloper.

  Enter three Murtherers.

  1. But who did bid thee join with us?

  3. Macbeth.

  The second is ready to accept the newcomer as part of the plot.

  2. He needs not our mistrust, since he delivers

  Our Offices, and what we have to doe,

  To the direction just,

  1. Then stand with us:

  The West yet glimmers with some streakes of Day.

  Now spurres the lated Traveler apace,

  To gayne the timely Inne, and near approaches

  The subject of our Watch.

  3. Hearke, I hear Horses.

  Banquo within. Give us a Light there, hoa.

  2. Then, ’tis he:

  The rest, that are within the note of expectation,

  Alreadie are in the Court.

  1. His Horses goe about.

  3. Almost a mile: but he does usually,

  So all men do, from hence to th’Pallace Gate

  Make it their Walke.

  Enter Banquo and Fleance, with a Torch.

  2. A Light, a Light.

  3. ’Tis he.

  1. Stand to it.

  Banquo. It will be Rayne tonight.

  1. Let it come downe.

  Banquo. O, Trecherie!

  Flye good Fleance, flye, flye, flye,

  Thou may’st revenge. O Slave! Dies.

  3. Who did strike out the Light?

  1. Was’t not the way?

  3. There’s but one downe: the Sonne is fled.

  2. We have lost

  Best half of our Affaire.

  1. Well, let’s away, and say how much is done. Exeunt.

  Not counting stage directions, there were only thirty-three lines in the entire scene. Scene thirty-three; thirty-three lines.

  I reread it once more, experiencing an icy frisson at the dreadful irony of the First Murderer’s signal to attack.

  1. Let it come downe.

  Damned if I could find any clue to the identity of the Third Murderer. Godwin said
there was textual evidence, but I couldn’t see where. I turned to the front of the script and counted the names of the principal characters. There were twenty-eight speaking parts listed. Eliminating Banquo, Fleance and the first two killers, that left twenty-four suspects. ...

  I smiled at the automatic phrasing I’d chosen in my mind. Working around Hilary gets you thinking like a detective, whether you want to or not

  Twenty-four suspects. A stupid way to put it. This was a purely literary crime.

  Godwin’s little puzzle had me hooked. Sighing, I opened the book again. Might as well read the whole thing. ...

  ACT I, SCENE I

  THUNDER AND LIGHTNING.

  But I fell asleep in ten seconds flat.

  * In theatrical parlance, the act and scene numbers in Shakespeare’s cinematically structured dramas are generally compressed for ease of verbal reference. Thus, scene 36 would be equivalent to Act III, Scene 6.

  3

  WE ALMOST DIDN’T TAKE the Macbeth account after all. Hilary’s meeting with the producer was less than a success, due chiefly to Grilis’ lack of grace. But she was also in a sour mood to begin with, which didn’t help things. I was partially to blame for the chip on her shoulder, but at first I couldn’t convince her of the innocence of my mistake.

  It started shortly after nine, when the phone woke me. Canada sent down a cold front in the middle of the night, and the rain had turned to a sooty sleet. It was chilly in the library, where I was still slumped in the easy chair. The Shakespeare had slipped off my lap onto the floor. I rose stiffly, my cramped joints protesting the unnatural position in which I’d slept.

  Feeling my way groggily to the office, I picked up the phone. It was Whelan asking to speak to Hilary.

  “For God’s sake, Harry,” I groaned, “it’s the middle of the night”

  “It’s morning!”

  “Not to Hilary, it isn’t.”

  “She still asleep?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “When will she get up?”

  “Not before noon.”

  There was a moment’s hesitation, and I asked him if he wanted me to take a message.

  “Uh—maybe I ought to call back.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  “Tell Hilary I’ll call around one.”

  He hung up.

  Hilary hates mornings, and I’m not wild about them, either, but it’s my job to run the office and answer the phone in the A.M. I pulled up the blinds, allowing the feeble winter sun to straggle in through rain-splattered windows. I put on some fresh clothes, shaved, fetched in the mail, and was pouring hot water for coffee when the phone rang again.

  It was Scott Miranda, demanding that Hilary bring the Trim-Tram PR budget in by noon.

  “That’s impossible. She isn’t even awake yet.”

  “Then wake her up and get it here.”

  That worried me. Scott has always respected Hilary’s unorthodox working hours, knowing she is frequently out late entertaining other clients. But this time he had no sympathy.

  “She should’ve finished it six weeks ago,” he protested. “She’s an old friend, but my board’s on my tail and if I don’t get the budget by twelve o’clock, I may have to start shopping around for another agency. Savvy?”

  I savvied. Without Trim-Tram, Hilary Ultd. would probably go out of business PDQ, and I’d be out of a job. I exceeded my authority and told Scott he’d have the budget on time. Then I roused the boss, not without trepidation. Merely waking her up was bad enough, but when she learned she’d have to put her brain in drive, she gave me a look that would have withered a petrified basilisk.

  I reheated the coffee while she shocked herself awake with a cold shower. She padded into the office in slippers and a damp terrycloth robe. Slumping into her chair, she scowled blackly into space; her robe fell open, revealing a quantity of thigh. She readjusted the material, glowering at me.

  “Stop gawking,” she snapped, “and open the damn mail.”

  I swiveled my chair away. It was no day to cross her.

  Somehow we got the report ready on time. While Hilary ran to her room to throw on some clothes, I assembled the precious pages in a plastic binder, grabbed an umbrella, and trotted off for the Opel. It was a little after eleven when Hilary climbed onto the back seat, stretched out, and rested while I circled around to Eighty-sixth. In spite of slippery roads and poor visibility, we made it to Queens via the Triborough in record time and pulled into the Trim-Tram lot just before noon.

  Scott was waiting in his office, leaning back in his chair with hands behind his head, eyes closed. Hilary plopped the budget on top of the broad teak desk. The toy exec opened his eyes in amazement.

  “Son of a bitch!” he swore. “It worked!”

  Hilary was out of breath. “Gene said you had to have the budget by noon or—”

  “I’ll be damned!” he chuckled. “You actually bought it! Wonder what kind of ploy I can use next year ...?”

  There was a heavy gold replica of Trim-Tram’s first toy, a sports car, on Scott’s desk. I had to stop Hilary before she parked it on his skull. She shot me a venomous glance which suggested that she considered me privy to Scott’s little deception.

  After she’d calmed down, she and Scott thrashed out the details of the budget, and then he took us to lunch. She didn’t cool off, though; she hardly spoke to either of us. Afterward, his secretary gave us a stat of the tentatively approved report and we headed back to Manhattan. It was after two, which didn’t leave us much time to make our three-o’clock appointment with Godwin and Grilis.

  I pulled up to the front canopy. Hilary got out and ran inside to assemble a representative portfolio of previous campaigns we’d handled. I kept the motor running. When she returned, her jaw was clamped tight and I knew that, for some reason, she was angrier than before.

  She deposited the portfolio on the rear seat, slammed and locked the back door, and got into the front, closing her own door hard enough to rattle the opposite window. I put the car in gear and started down West End.

  She spoke in a controlled, frosty tone of voice. “Why didn’t you tell me that Harry called this morning?”

  Uh-oh, I thought, so that’s it!

  “I forgot,” I told her simply.

  “How convenient!”

  I ignored her implication, though it made me begin to harbor unkind thoughts for the actor. I pretended not to notice anything unusual about her manner.

  “I take it that Harry phoned just now?”

  “Obviously,” she replied curtly.

  I still acted innocent. “I had meant to tell you he called, of course, but—”

  “I wonder,” Hilary interrupted, musing, “just how many other personal messages you’ve failed to deliver in the past?”

  “Look,” I said, determined to hold on to my temper, “we both got very busy with the budget and I forgot he called, that’s all. I’m very sorry!”

  She sniffed derisively, but didn’t reply.

  “Did he want anything important?” I asked.

  “I said it was personal!” Hilary snapped.

  My hands tightened on the wheel, but I managed to keep my mouth shut. I didn’t say another word to Hilary for the remainder of the ride.

  That’s the frame of mind she was in when she met Fred Grilis.

  There were five company names on the office door.

  GOODFELLOW INDUSTRIES

  GF PROGRAM SERVICES

  G&G

  GRILIS ENTERTAINMENT CORPORATION

  FRED GRILIS ENTERPRISES

  Godwin wasn’t there yet, the receptionist informed us, but we could go right in, Mr. Grilis was expecting us. We shed our coats and overshoes and entered.

  Grilis didn’t even look up. He was seated behind a large walnut desk in a spacious office whose sole picture window opened on a slushy portion of Fifth Avenue. A dark-green sofa and matching chairs stood on a tan wall-to-wall carpet. Numerous theatrical posters hung from cream-colored walls;
each bore the name of some show produced by one of Grilis’ firms. He motioned us to sit down, not raising his eyes from the ledger in which he was writing.

  Hilary placed the portfolio on a low, glass-topped coffee table covered with trade publications: Backstage, Variety, Cash Box, Billboard, and Show Business. I picked up Variety and idly leafed through it, stopping to read Hobe’s review of the latest Hitchcock opus. I finished it, read another, then another, and before I knew it, I’d completed the review section—but still Grilis kept his head buried in his work.

  Hilary doesn’t like to be ignored, and it was clear that that was what Grilis was doing. She cleared her throat “Mr. Grilis,” she said in no very friendly tone, “my time happens to be rather valuable. If you don’t mind ...”

  He looked up at last. “Oh,” he said. “I thought you wanted to wait for your friend.” With obvious reluctance, Grilis closed the ledger. He was a neatly attired businessman in his forties. He wore a dark pinstripe suit, unobtrusive necktie, and off-white-on-white shirt with button-down collar. His dull brown hair was thin and receding, leaving behind a broad, angular expanse of forehead. Clean-shaven, with prominent cheekbones and a crag of a nose on which rimless bifocals perched, Grilis looked more like a CPA than someone associated with the arts. He would be lost in any crowd.

  “So,” he said to Hilary, “you want to work for me!” It was neither question nor statement, but a challenge. Hilary, already annoyed, visibly stiffened.

  “I was approached by Michael Godwin,” she replied crisply. “He wants me to handle your PR.”

  “What else have you done?” His voice was harsh.

  She zipped open the portfolio and spread it out before him on the desk. Grilis flipped pages with an evident lack of interest “I see you’ve dabbled in theatrical PR,” he remarked, “but—”

  “I beg your pardon!” Hilary interjected, but he continued speaking, oblivious to her.

  “—frankly I’m used to working with a professional theater press agent. Harvey Wilkinson handles our business.”