Read Online Ed McBain_87th Precinct 47 by Romance - Free Book Online

sir!”
    Chuck Madden sprang out onto the stage as if he’d almost missed a cue. He was wearing high-topped workman’s boots, a rolled,
     blue woolen watch cap, and painter’s coveralls that partially showed his bare chest and muscular arms. He was twenty-six years
     old, some six feet tall, with chestnut-colored hair and brown eyes. He shielded those eyes now and peered out toward the sixth
     row of the theater.
    “Do you think you can do something with the lights when she comes out of the restaurant?” Kendall asked.
    “Like what’d you have in mind?”
    “It’s supposed to be dark, the stabber is supposed to come out of the shadows. We’ve got Jerry popping out with the lights
     up full …”
    “Yeah, give me some atmosphere,” Jerry said.
    “I know this is far too early to be discussing lighting …”
    “No, no, what’d you want?”
    “Can you give me a slow fade as she makes her cross?
    So that the stage is almost black when Jerry comes at her?”
    “I like it, I like it,” Jerry said.
    “Let me talk to Kurt, see what he …”
    “I heard it,” the electrician called. “You’ve got it.”
    “Start the fade just as she comes through the door,” Kendall said.
    “Got it.”
    “People? Shall we try it?”
    “
Uno má
s,” Chuck said. “From the scene at the table.”
    Corbin had constructed his play in an entirely predictable manner. Once you recognized that there’d be a short quiet scene
     followed by a yet shorter scene intended to shock, and then a lengthy discourse on the shocker, you pretty much had the pattern
     of the play. As a result, there were no surprises at all; Corbin had given birth to a succession of triplets, most of them
     malformed.
    The triplet they were now about to rehearse yet another time …
    It was Kendall’s conviction that this particular stretch would
never
play …
    … consisted of a scene between the Actress and the Director sitting at a table in a restaurant, followed by a scene in which
     someone non-germane
stabs
the Actress, which is then followed by a scene in which the Detective interrogates ad infinitum the other two principals.
     There was simply no
way
to make this drivel come alive. The writing in the restaurant scene was
so
foreboding,
so
portentous, so fraught with foreshadowing, that any intelligent member of the audience would
know
the girl was going to get stabbed the minute she
left
the place.
    “Why haven’t you told me this before?”
    The Director speaking.
    The one onstage. Not Kendall himself sitting out here in the sixth row.
    “I … I was afraid you were the one making the calls.”
    “Me?
Me?“
    This from Cooper Haynes, the dignified gentleman doctor of soap opera fame, looking thoroughly astonished by the mere
idea
of being the person making threatening phone calls to the actress he was directing. His stupefaction looked so genuine that
     it almost evoked a laugh from Kendall, exactly the
wrong
sort of response at this point in the play’s time.
    “I’m sorry, I know that’s ridiculous. Why would you want to kill me?”
    “Or anyone.”
    Another line which—when delivered in Cooper’s wide-eyed bewildered way—could result in a bad laugh. In the dark, Kendall was
     furiously scribbling notes.
    “You must go to the police.”
    “I’ve been.”
    “And?”
    “They said they can’t do anything until he actually
tries
to kill me.”
    “That’s absurd.”
    “Yes.”
    “With whom did you speak?”
    “A detective.”
    “And he said they could do nothing?”
    “That’s right.”
    “Impossible! Why … do you know what this means?”
    “I’m so frightened.”
    “It means you can be sleeping in your bed …”
    “I know.”
    “… and someone could attack you.”
    “I’m terrified.”
    “It means you can leave this restaurant tonight …”
    “I know.”
    “This very moment …”
    “I know …”
    “And someone can come at you with a knife.”
    “What shall I do? Oh dear God, what shall I