Death of a Blue Movie Star

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 Danny Traub was going to be $500,000 richer.

*****

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 connection with Schmidt?"

"Right."

Becker reminded her somewhat of Sam Healy. Tall, thinning hair. Unlike the cop's stone face, though, Becker's broke frequently into curls of emotion. Her impression too was that he wouldn't have any wives in his past, only boyfriends.

"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 funny fellow. You ever talk to him, you know he's got very definite ideas. Usually the producer couldn't care less about the hired help-the actors, I mean. He leaves that to the director. As long as the principals get good reviews and pull in a. crowd that's enough for them. But not for Michael. He rides herd on everybody: director, principals, walk-ons, arrangers, musicians, everybody."

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 beginning of Act Three. Then she gives the first line of dialogue in that act and looks at me-like a prima donna looking at a conductor who's dropped the beat. So I start feeding her the lines. 1 thought Michael was going to be royally pissed. He doesn't like people to do clever things he hasn't thought of. But after a minute he's impressed. My God, he's beside himself. And so was I. Shelly was amazingly good. We tell her, Great, thank you, we'll be in touch, which is what we always say. And Michael was his typical noncommittal Michael. Only she's got this look in her eye because she knows she's blown everybody else out of the water.

"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."

"He's got a thing about dirty movies?"

"Oh, yes. See, he's very religious."

"What?" She laughed.

"I'm not kidding. The pornography thing-it was a moral issue. And the funny thing is he was furious. Because she was perfect for the part. But he wouldn't let himself hire her. He was quite, um, vocal when he found out."

"But the way he behaved… This poor stagehand, the one who gave me your name… I thought he was going to kill the guy."