Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Vol. 46, No. 11, November 1982

I read aloud from my list. “Porters: Jess Tompkins, Harry Lee, Sam Patterson. All blacks. They live in Manhattan, are all married and wouldn’t have been inside the theatre proper while the show was on. It isn’t permitted. Now the ushers downstairs are Mary Williams, Ada Perkins and Louisa Jones. They are all middle-aged dolls, been working the Dover for years and from my viewpoint have a hard enough time handling their flashlights let alone a .22. The candy concession and cloakroom boys are Tom Manhattan, Ed Fairlow and an executive type named Guba who runs the stand. They all can move around willy-nilly once the curtain goes up. Manhattan and Fairlow, like most people who work these jobs, are aspiring actors, making a few bucks working Broadway shows as candy butchers and such. Of course, there’s more ushers and suspects upstairs but counting on the angle about the .22 and the range, I rule them out.”

Monks showed his teeth. “Don’t remind me. We’ve been all over your list. If you’re trying to tell me I’m a long way off from home, I agree with you.”

“No, Michael.” I smiled, putting the memo pad away. “With the means of killing fairly well fixed in our minds and ruling out the greater part of the audience the way we have and finding the .22 buried in a sand urn in the Men’s Room, I’d say you had a good chance. Fact is, I’ve narrowed the list of suspects down to two.”

“Noon, if you don’t stop acting like a television dick, I swear I’ll never invite you in on a Homicide again. You can’t possibly have spotted something Headquarters hasn’t. This place has been gone over with a fine tooth comb—”

I held up a restraining hand, sensing one of his lectures.

“The advantages of my racket, Michael, is that I don’t have anyone to answer to like you have. No pressure. I did see something you didn’t.”

“What for God’s sakes?”

“Give me five minutes to try something?”

Monks started to say something then shrugged. The Bickford shrug. The one that almost dislocates his shoulders. He always gave me my head when the chips were down. I walked to the dimness of Stage Left and said what I had to say to the policeman on duty there. Monks watched, the scowl on his face deepening. For three days, the Dover had been staked out for surveillance and examination and for three days, all the people who had been on duty, including the cast, reported for work just as if the show was still running. The cast had been excluded from my pet theory almost from the first moment I had learned the direction of the .22 bullet that had found Walter Wiley’s glorious heart.

Almost immediately, two men in maroon uniforms emerged from the gloom of Stage Left. The cop took up his position again.

Men. They were boys. Tousled-haired, defiantly young. Over the breastpocket of each uniform was proclaimed, in golden thread, the sponsorship Of the Dover Theatre.

“This won’t take long, fellows,” I said cheerily. “Captain Monks, these are two of the ushers. Tom Manhattan and Ed Fairlow. They’re actors, of course, but they earn their living working theatres like the Dover between jobs. Before that first Big Break.”

The ushers grinned at that, sheepishly chuckling. But they both looked uncomfortable. I was counting on that too.

Monks smiled a sour greeting and beetled his brows at me. I nodded and got down to business. Monks was never long a patience.

“Tom,” I said suddenly. “Wiley’s dead now so there’s no use hiding your star under a bushel. Everybody knows you write a lot. Plays, stories.”

Tom Manhattan blinked. He was thin, nervous and handsome in a helpless, petulant way. “I don’t get you, Mister.”

I tried to look sympathetic. “I’ve been talking around to people in the business. You know — places like Downey’s and the Theatre Bar. And everyone backstage knows the secret, too. Common knowledge, you might say. I know this show is yours — the idea for it, I mean. You were foolish enough to give Walter Wiley the whole plot one night in Downey’s. You thought his name and rep would help you sell it. It did but not the way you wanted it. He stole the whole idea for himself and got it going before you could holler foul to Equity. With his own writer.”

Manhattan shook his head. “You’re putting me oh, Mister. Me and this show—?”

“Is it so crazy?” I asked quietly. “Manhattan.” I spelled it. “M-A-N-H-A-T-T-A-N.” I smiled at the other boy. “Go ahead, Fairlow. Tell him what you told me.”

“Me?” Fairlow was shorter and heavier than Manhattan. He jumped as if I’d thrust a live snake into his face. “Why I never—”

“Fink!” Tom Manhattan shrilled, leaping for his partner. “You promised me on your mother’s grave you wouldn’t talk! You crummy dirty fink—” He went for Fairlow, arms pumping, fists balled. Fair-low fell back in amazement.

Before Manhattan could reach him, I stepped in, chopping a Judo blow to the boy’s stomach. Manhattan collapsed, staggered off from his partner and would have lurched off the apron of the stage but Monk’s alert cop on duty grabbed him in time.