Death in the Fifth Position by Gore Vidal Read Free Book Online Page B

citizens would say that it takes an ape to keep the other apes in line but then again it is piteous indeed to listen to the yowls of those same good citizens when they come afoul the law and are beaten up in prisons and generally manhandled for suspected or for real crimes: at such moments they probably wish they had done something about the guardians of law and order when they were free. Well, it was no problem of mine at the moment.
    I found Jane already downstairs in her rehearsal clothes. I gave her a big kiss and then, when she asked me if I had had anything to do with her getting the lead in
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and I said that I certainly had, I got another kiss. She asked me all about the investigation.
    “Everybody’s being pumped,” I said. “They just got through with me. You better go look on the bulletin board and find out what time they’ll want to see you.” We looked; and she was to be questioned at six o’clock.
    “What did he want to know?”
    “Just stuff. Where I was when it happened … who else was around, and gossip.”
    “What did you tell him?”
    “Not much of anything … in the way of gossip: it’s his job to find out those things.”
    “I suppose it is.”
    Wilbur and Louis appeared, both in work clothes. “Come on, Jane,” said Louis. “We got work.” He winked at me. “How’re you doing, Baby?”
    I called him a rude but accurate name and marched off to telephone the newspapers about Jane’s coming debut as a soloist … it wouldn’t get in till tomorrow but then, perhaps, we might be able to get a few of the critics out to report on her the next night. Needless to say, we were scheduled to do
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at every single performance until we closed. After I had made my calls and arranged for some photographs of Jane to be sent around by messenger, I left the building with every intention of going to get something to eat … I was getting light in the head from hunger and the heat. I was so giddy that I almost stepped on Miles Sutton who was lying face down in the corridor which leads from the office to the dressing rooms.
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    “What’s going on here?” were, I am ashamed to say, my first words to what I immediately, and inaccurately, thought to be a corpse, the discarded earthly residence of our conductor who lay spread-eagled on his belly in front of the washroom door.
    The figure at my feet moaned softly and, thinking of fingerprints, I nevertheless was a good Samaritan and rolled him over on his back, half expecting to see the hilt of a quaint oriental dagger sticking through his coat.
    “Water,” whispered Miles Sutton, and I got him water from the bathroom; he drank it very sloppily and then, rolling up his eyes the way certain comedians do when their material is weak, he sank back onto the floor, very white in the face. I trotted back into the bathroom, got another cup of water, returned, and splashed it in his face. This had the desired effect. He opened his eyes and sat up. “Must’ve fainted,” he whispered in a weak voice.
    “So it would appear,” I said; at the moment there was very little the conductor and I had in common. I stood there for several seconds, contemplating him; then Sutton pulled out a handkerchief and dried his beard. His color was a little better now and I suggested that, all in all, it might be a good idea for him to stand up. I helped him to his feet. He lurched into the washroom; I waited until he came out.
    “Must be the heat,” he mumbled. “Sort of thing never happened before.”
    “It’s a hot day,” I said … it was remarkable how little we had to say to each other. “Do you feel O.K. now?”
    “A bit shaky.”
    “I don’t feel so good myself,” I said, hunger gnawing at my vitals. “Why don’t we go get something to eat across the street? I’m Peter Sargeant, by the way; I’m handling publicity. I don’t think Mr. Washburn introduced us.”
    We shook hands; then he said, dubiously, “I don’t suppose I should hang