Kisser

“Miserable son of a bitch,” Carrie Cox said. “And with her.” She pointed at Mitzi.

“Oh, come on, Carrie,” Mitzi said, sitting up on one elbow. “You’ve got to get over high school.”

“Carrie,” Stone said. “What are you doing here?” He realized that sounded hollow, but he couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“What am I doing here? What is she doing here?” Carrie pointed again.

“You want to join us, Carrie?” Mitzi asked.

“What?”

“Stone’s pretty good at threesomes,” Mitzi said. “Come to think of it, so am I. And I like your dancer’s body.”

“Mitzi, please,” Stone said. “Let me handle this.”

“Okay, handle it,” Mitzi replied. “I’ll wait here.”

“Carrie,” Stone said, getting to his feet, “let me get you a cab home.”

“Why should I leave?” she demanded.

“Carrie,” Mitzi said, “I’m trying to make the best of this. Either get into bed or get out of here.”

Carrie seemed to be thinking it over, and Stone found himself speechless. Then Carrie disappeared into his dressing room, and a moment later she came out, holding her clothes in her arms.

“I’ll get my own cab,” she said, stalking out of the room.

Stone made to follow her but found his wrist locked in Mitzi’s iron grip.

“She’s an actress,” Mitzi said. “Don’t spoil her exit.”

Stone sat down on the bed, and a moment later he heard the front door slam. “I hope she got her clothes on before going outside,” he said.

Mitzi knelt on the bed behind him and put her arms around his neck, pressing her breasts into his back. “How did she get in?”

“I seem to remember giving her a key a while back,” Stone replied.

“Oh.”

“She was in trouble and needed a place to stay.”

“She seems to have taken a proprietary interest in the house. And in you.”

Stone sighed. “I guess this is my fault.”

“Let’s talk about it in the morning,” Mitzi said, pulling him back onto the bed. “Carrie was always a little crazy, even when she was fourteen.” She fondled his penis. “Oh, she frightened it. Poor baby.”

Stone did his best to turn his attention to Mitzi again, and his best was pretty good.

VERY EARLY in the morning the bedside phone rang. Stone opened an eye and checked the clock. Half past five. He closed his eyes and let the machine pick up on the third ring.

After a short delay it rang again, and the machine picked up again.

“Maybe you’d better get that,” Mitzi said, pulling a sheet over her head. “Somebody really wants to talk to you.”

When it rang again, Stone picked up the phone. “What?”

“Stone, it’s Bob Cantor. Carrie has been shot; she’s in the Lenox Hill Hospital ER.”

“I’m coming,” Stone said, then hung up. He went to his dressing room and started pulling on clothes, noticing that a lacy pair of Carrie’s panties still hung from a hook there.

“What’s going on?” Mitzi asked, sitting up.

“I’m sorry,” Stone said, “a bit of an emergency has come up, and I have to go out.”

“At five thirty in the morning?” she asked. “What kind of emergency comes up at this hour?”

“Gotta run,” Stone said, grabbing a jacket. “Go back to sleep, and when you wake up, Helene will fix you some breakfast.” He trotted down the stairs and out the front door just as, miraculously, a cab drove by. He stopped it in its tracks with a loud whistle.

AT SIX in the morning the Lenox Hill ER was already getting busy. As Stone strode toward the admitting desk he was intercepted by Willie Leahy.

“Hang on, Stone. They said we can see her in a few minutes.” Willie dragged him toward a chair and sat him down.

“What happened?” Stone asked.

“Last night, Carrie left the house and went to your house, walked right past me, and I didn’t have time to stop her before she got in the cab. I got the next one and followed her.”

“Well, I didn’t shoot her. How badly is she hurt?”

“I know you didn’t shoot her. I got her into my cab after she came out of the house, half naked, and took her home. She was ru

“Willie, tell me: How badly is she hurt?”

“Flesh wound at the top of the shoulder. Went in and out, bled a lot. I got her here as fast as I could.”

“Why didn’t you call me then?” Stone asked. He thought he must have been banging Mitzi or vice versa when this happened.

“Tell you the truth, I was a little shaken up,” Willie said, “and I was covered in blood. Peter brought me a shirt, and after I got cleaned up in the men’s room, I called Bob.”

“Why didn’t you call me?” Stone asked, while grateful that he hadn’t.

“Because I work for Bob, remember?”

“Oh, yeah.”

A young doctor in blue scrubs came out a door, looked around, and beckoned Willie. Stone followed.

Carrie was lying on an ER bed that had been cranked to a sitting position, her left arm in a sling. “You two,” she said, pointing at Willie and Stone. “Get me out of here.”

53

CARRIE SAT, SEETHING, between Stone and Willie Leahy in the back of the cab.

“Carrie,” Stone said, “I…”

“I’m not speaking to you,” she said.

“Now wait a minute…”

“And I’m not listening, either.”

Willie wisely kept his mouth shut.

“Willie,” Stone said, “did you get a look at him?”

“At his back,” Willie said. “Tall, slim, black raincoat.”

“It was Max,” Carrie said.

“Did you see him?”

“I didn’t need to see him,” she replied. “It was Max.”

“Carrie, during rehearsals has anyone shown any animosity toward you?” Stone asked.

“Everyone,” she replied.

“Beg pardon?”

“I’m the star; nobody likes the star.”

“And you’ve been behaving like the star?”

“It’s my right.”

Stone looked at Willie. “I think the list of suspects is growing.”

“Yeah,” Willie said. “Anybody in the show could have done it; she’s been a perfect bitch.”

“What?” Carrie screamed. “You’re fired!”

“I don’t work for you, remember?” Willie seemed to have had enough.

“Stone, fire him this minute.”

“He doesn’t work for me,” Stone said, “and I don’t doubt for a minute that Willie is right.”

Carrie started to get out of the moving cab, but Stone and Willie held her down.

“You’re hurting me!” she shouted.

“No, you’re hurting you,” Stone said. “Stop it.”

Amazingly, she went both limp and silent. The cab arrived, and the three got out.

“I want to go to bed,” Carrie said. “I’ve got a rehearsal at ten.”

“You’re going to be late,” Stone said. “You’ve got to talk to the police before you can go anywhere.”

“The police? Why?”

“Because they take gunshot wounds seriously, and Lenox Hill Hospital has already reported this one to the police. We just happened to get out of the ER before they arrived.”

As they reached the top of the steps an unmarked police car pulled up, and two detectives got out. Stone didn’t know them.

“Carrie Cox?” one of them asked.

“Come on in, fellas,” Stone said, flashing the Brian Doyle badge. “Let’s get this done.”

Stone left the four of them in the living room and used the kitchen phone.

“Bacchetti.”

“It’s Stone. Can you get over to Carrie’s house?” He gave Dino the address.

“What for?”

“Somebody took a shot at her, only a graze. Probably her ex-husband. She’s supposed to open in the big show next week, and we don’t want it in the papers.”

“Any of our people there?”

“Two. I didn’t get their names.”

“Gimme fifteen minutes.”

Stone went back to the living room and sat down, knowing that Willie would have steered the conversation in his absence.

“You got anything to add?” one of the detectives asked Stone.

“Nope. I wasn’t here. I went to the hospital as soon as I heard.”