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

“Take it easy, kid,” I said softly. “Sit down and make your statement. The Captain will be listening.”

Mike Monks listened, now without awe, as Tom Manhattan confessed to the murder of Walter Wiley. The motive had been revenge; the emotion one of pure Show Biz hatred for a man who had robbed an aspiring actor’s mind of an idea for a hit show and then reneged on the payoff. It’s happened before and I guess it will happen again when Ego is the dividing line between Comedy and Tragedy.

After Tom Manhattan had been led away in shining handcuffs with a bewildered Ed Fairlow in tow, Monks really gave me a pop-eyed once-over.

“Would you mind telling me how you pulled that bluff off? I’ve seen you in action a million times, Ed, but that was the biggest rabbit of them all.”

“Was it?”

“Damn tooting. You didn’t give him a shred of incriminating evidence and he folded. Come on — what was the trick?”

“No bluff, Mike. I told you about the location and the seating arrangement. The killing had to be performed by someone standing up. So who would be less noticeable than an usher who’s always on his feet and always in a darkened aisle?”

“All right, all right. I buy that much. But Manhattan wasn’t the only usher. What about the lady ushers? Why did you concentrate on him?”

I took out my Camels and unsaddled one.

“I told you. Those dames are all old and I couldn’t see them wandering into the Men’s Room to bury the .22 in a sand urn.”

“Still not enough. What about Fairlow? And where did you get that junk about the show — stealing the idea and all—?”

“Tom Manhattan himself,” I said. “Or else there is no argument for coincidence. His funny name. Why do you think I spelled it out for him?”

“Edward Noon,” Captain Michael Monks said officially. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“The Tan Hat Man,” I said. “A demonstration of pure effective Ego. Actors are all would-be writers, anyway. And vice versa. I’ve never known an actor who didn’t think he was capable of writing fiction or plays or anything.”

“Noon—” Monks rumbled warningly.

“Manhattan,” I smiled thinly. “The Tan Hat Man. It’s an anagram, Mike, and a personal signature if there ever was one. Man-hat-tan... tan-hat-man...”

“Ouch,” Monks groaned.

“That’s what Walter Wiley must have said when that .22 slug hit him on stage.”

That was all there really was to the murder of Mr. Excitement. Death in the afternoon for the wholesome heart throb of generations of married women, spinsters and divorcees. It had all come to a sensational finale with a tiny leaden pellet of .22 calibre lead. According to some other un-nice things that Monks and his boys found out about Mr. Walter Wiley’s peccadilloes, he had had a date with that slug for a long, long time.

The curtain hadn’t been rung down on a Star.

The set had been struck on a Number One Heel.

But in the best tradition of Show Biz, The Tan Hat Man opened again two weeks after Tom Manhattan was booked for a lifetime performance in Ossining, New York. The show did a bonanza box-office business, helped by the headlines and augmented by the presence of another star of the first magnitude. Hollywood’s own Victor Vining.

They tell me The Tan Hat Man will be a movie in a couple of years. The Coast bought the screen rights for two million bucks.

That really is Show Biz.

Morning Song by Betty Ren Wright

Rose had a secret. And she wouldn’t tell it to anybody. Ever!

* * *

The song blew into her mind unexpectedly, like hot September wind, bringing with it the smell of the kindergarten room and the feel of her plastic nap-pack warmed by the sun. She closed her eyes and pretended she was lying on the nap-pack right now, and she sang the song in a very small voice, hoping no one else would hear:

“Good morning to you,
Good morning to you.
We’re all in our places
With bright shining faces.
Good morning to you,
Good morning to you.”

The first day of school, Rose thought, they had learned that song the very first day. Where were the red-checked dress and white pinafore she had worn that morning? Home in the closet, probably; her mama hadn’t packed any of the clothes she liked best when she sent her to this place. Rose remembered fingering the smocking on the front of the dress when Miss Williams called her name and made her stand up. Later, Miss Williams had taken off the pinafore and hung it up so it wouldn’t get dirty when she played with her new friends.