Death of a Blue Movie Star

"I want to do a film about her career. She wasn't happy. She didn't like the business, you know."

"What business?"

"Adult films."

Crystal seemed surprised. "Didn't she? Why not? She could have anything she wanted. I make fifty a year cash for working two times a week. And Shelly could get twice that. Only…"

"What?"

"People're scared now though. With this AIDS thing. I keep getting tested; everybody does. But you never know… John Holmes died of AIDS. He said he slept with ten thousand women." She rolled onto her back again, the glasses tilted toward the hot disk of a sun.

Crystal finally continued. "She was good. Shelly was. We get a lot of fan letters. Some are kind of weird-like, men'll mail us their underwear-but mostly it's just, I love you, I think about you, I rent all your movies. I get asked for a lot of dates. Da

Rune watched the Circle LineDayliner chugging along in the Hudson. "Hey, that's my Viking ship. You gotta ride it sometime."

Crystal glanced quickly. "Da

"Did you?"

"Community college. I was going to be a dental technician. And look what I've got now… Everything I could want."

Rune said, "You won't mention that I was…"

Crystal took off the sunglasses and shook her head. "You still haven't told me what you were looking for."

Rune couldn't see past the blue lenses but she had an odd feeling that this was someone she could trust. "Could Da

"Killed her, you mean?"

A hesitation. "That's what I mean."

Her answer was as drowsy as the rest of her conversation. "I don't know. Even if I did I wouldn't, like, testify against him. You know what he'd do to me, I did that?"

She knew something.

A long moment passed as Crystal rubbed more sunscreen on. Finally she dropped the tube on the roof. "You were looking in the wrong place."

"What do you mean?"

"He's not stupid."

"Traub?"

"He's not. He doesn't keep the important things in his desk. He doesn't keep important papers there, for instance."

"Why would I be interested in his papers?"

"He keeps them where he keeps his stash. There's a safe in the kitchen, under the sink. He doesn't think I know the combination. But I figured it out. Want to know what it is?"

"What?"

"It's forty right. Twenty-nine left. Back around to thirty-four. See, that's his idea of a perfect woman. Her measurements. He tells us girls that all the time. The perfect woman."

"What's in the safe?" Rune asked.

"You know, I have to tan my back now. And when I do that I fall asleep. Good-bye."

"Thanks," Rune said. But the woman didn't respond.

She hurried downstairs and found the safe. The combination worked. Inside were dozens of ounce bags of coke. Some crack too. But that didn't interest Rune very much-she already knew about Traub's likes.

What interested her was the insurance policy.

A thin binder from New York Accident amp; Indemnity. Rune opened it up. There were a lot of strange words, all capitalized, likeDouble Indemnity and Key Man andNamed Insured andOwner of the Policy. She couldn't figure out what they meant. But it didn't take her long at all to figure out that the policy was on Shelly Lowe's life and that because of her death Da

Rune had called Sam Healy and asked him to meet her. She was going to tell him about Tucker and Traub. But before they could get together she got a phone call at L amp;R. And that was why she was now in a coffee shop on West Forty-sixth Street -Restaurant Row, in the heart of the Theater District.

"I'm one of a very unelite corps," the man said. "Theater people who've been betrayed, fired or assaulted by Michael Schmidt. I don't know why you want to do a film abouthim. There're so many decent people in the business."

"It's not really about him."

"Good." Franklin Becker poured another sugar into his coffee, stirred. He was a former casting director for Michael Schmidt. After she'd had her talk with the producer at the theater she'd approached the stagehand Schmidt had dressed down about dropping the load of lumber. She'd bought the poor man a cup of coffee and delicately extracted from him the names of several people who might be willing to dish on Schmidt. Becker was the first one who'd called her back.

Rune explained, "It's about Shelly Lowe."

"The actress who was killed in that bombing. And you know about her co

"Right."

Becker reminded her somewhat of Sam Healy. Tall, thi

"What can you tell me about them-Shelly and Schmidt."

He laughed. "Well, I can tell you quite a story. What she did… it was astonishing. I've been casting on Broadway for almost twenty years but I've never seen anything like it.

"We had a number of EPIs… Michael preferred interviews to EPAs-auditions. He's a fu

Rune wasn't sure where this was going but she let the casting director continue at his own pace.

"So when it came time for casting, Michael kept his beady little eyes over my shoulder. We read resumes, we saw tapes, we talked to talent agencies." He shook his head. "Everybody went through the standard interview- everybody but Shelly. That's the astonishing part.

"Somehow she'd gotten her hands on a copy of the script for the new play. I can't guess how. Michael treated them like gold ingots. There just weren't any copies floating around. But she'd gotten one and had memorized the leading role. So it's time for her interview. She walks into Michael's office and doesn't say anything. She just starts walking around. What's she doing? I don't know. He doesn't know.

"But then I catch on. I've cross-read the play enough during auditions… She's doing one of the crucial scenes, following the stage directions for the begi

"After she leaves we read her resume again. Strange, you know: She doesn't have any formal training. Some respectable off-Broadway productions, some LORT- that's regional theater. Some summer stock and some performance pieces at Brooklyn Academy and local repertory groups. Either she shouldn't be as good as she is or we should've heard of her. Something was fishy."

Rune said, "And he did some investigating?"

"Right. Michael found out what kind of movies Shelly made. And that was it for her."