Slaughter - Lutz John (читать книги без txt) 📗

Sitting toward the back of the diner suited them. There were windows there, and they didn’t have complete privacy, but it would do. Students from the nearby Theatre Arts Academy hung out at the Liner Diner, and neither Betty or Macy wanted to be seen. Especially Macy. Betty had made the second cattle call. Macy knew by the casting director’s piercing look that she wasn’t going to make it.

They would find out officially after lunch.

Two other dancers, and Darby Keen, hot new star out of the TV world, walked up and stood outside talking, near the front window of the diner. Betty and Macy sat still, unnoticed, while the other two dancers entered and found a booth near the entrance, to the side and out of sight and earshot.

“At least we won’t have to listen to Keen brag about himself,” Macy said.

Betty didn’t comment. She thought Darby Keen was a beautiful piece of work. Couldn’t sing. Couldn’t dance. But what the hell, he was a draw. And more than once, when she was onstage with the other dancers, he’d given her a certain look.

“What do you think of the playwright?” Macy asked.

The writer of Other People’s Honey, Seth Mander, was still in his thirties, tall and blond, with sloe blue eyes that turned Betty on. Betty thought she and Seth would make a good pair. Even if he was part of the process that might deny her the job, she was still prepared to like him.

Perhaps more than like him.

“Betty?”

“Seth is beyond cute.”

“And talented,” Macy said. “Other People’s Honey is a seriously good play.”

“With lousy choreography.”

“You noticed?”

“It’ll sprain or break a few ankles,” Betty said.

Both women laughed.

Then Macy felt suddenly glum. She’d be glad to risk a sprain, if only her luck would change and she could be a member of the cast that was shaping up for Other People’s Honey. Nobody really knew where hit musicals came from—they either did or didn’t have the magic. It looked, sounded, felt like Other People’s Honey was going to be a hit.

But Macy knew it wasn’t going to happen for her. Not this time, and maybe never. Enough rejection taught you how to recognize it when it was still on the way. She could see it in the posture and faces of the ones who were judging hopefuls for Other People’s Honey. The money gods who held fate in their hands. Macy, in her heart, was already defeated. All that was needed was for it to be made official.

Macy wanted to know, wanted the suspense to end. Or was not knowing a kind of masochistic pleasure? After all, if you didn’t know you were a failure, it wasn’t yet an established fact in the minds of others.

And in your own mind.

The verdict would be suspended for another hour or more, after the tryouts for voice. Macy didn’t worry about that. She didn’t even pretend to be able to sing. She was a dancer, and not just a chorus line dancer. She knew she was unique, and could carry a show.

Yet something in her doubted, and it seemed impossible to change that.

She knew what she needed. A new love. And luck with a new luster. The first would be easier than the last. She could fall in love—or something like love—easier than she should.

There was a flurry of activity up near the front of the diner. The background traffic noise was louder, then softer. Someone had entered. Others had stood up.

Darby Keen, sleek and muscular in jeans and a T-shirt (he certainly looked like he could dance), entered the diner. And right behind him, Seth Mander, his straight blond hair mussed by the breeze and dangling over one eye. He was wearing dress slacks, loosened tie, and scuffed moccasins. Betty stared at him, transfixed.

Hands were shaken, backs were slapped. The dancers in the front booth were standing up. Everyone was standing. Some were congratulating themselves.

“They’ve seen us,” Macy said.

Betty forced herself to raise her head and look.

My God! They’re coming back here!

32

Little Louie, as his fellow workers called Louis Farrato, was working the jackhammer today, breaking up already cracked concrete in front of the Taggart Building, the area that was to become the driveway of a portico. Louie, who was a few inches over six feet tall and built like an NFL linebacker, handled the jackhammer like a toy. He was following a yellow chalk line, where a concrete saw would neaten and emphasize the driveway, where it was projected it would encircle a fountain.

It took skill to use a jackhammer, alternating heavy and light touches, and it was a tool that had to be guided carefully. That was why Louie so diligently followed the curved yellow chalk line.

Louie had paused in his work with the other hard hats as the women they’d heard were Broadway dancers crossed the street and entered the Liner Diner. On a scale of one through ten, they were all tens, on the basis of their bodies alone. The little blond one they called Betty was particularly appealing to Louie. For whatever reason, he preferred small women. His wife, Madge, was only a little over five feet tall.

Not that she wasn’t a fireball. More of one than the blond dancer, actually.

Thinking of Madge, Louie smiled.

Which was why he almost missed seeing the guy in the battered yellow hard hat.

At first Louie thought he was looking at a kid roaming through the debris of the building. Then he saw that the guy had the bearing if not the stature of a man. He had on faded jeans and a tan shirt with a tie and was carrying a clipboard.

Louie looked around, and didn’t see Jack Feldman, the job foreman, or anybody else. Then he realized everyone was on lunch break. He hadn’t worn his wristwatch today because he didn’t want it subjected to the jackhammer vibrations.

He leaned the jackhammer at an easy angle against a pile of debris. Then he pulled a handkerchief stuffed in a back pocket and used it to wipe sweat from his face and the back of his neck.

Louie put on his own hard hat, with the company logo on it, and made his way toward the little guy.

He could see, as he drew closer, that the man was smaller and older than he’d seemed from across the jumble of debris, and the steel stacked near where the crane was systematically lifting it to be eased into position. Those involved in this delicate operation worked while the others were at lunch or otherwise off-site. Everything was done with extreme care. People had died working with high steel. People Louie had known. But he figured the pay warranted the risk, so here he was.

The crane, affixed to the twentieth floor, was preparing to lift a steel beam that looked small from this angle, up to where it would straighten its long, jointed arm and steel would be fixed to steel with rivets. The welders would follow close behind, making all but permanent what the riveters had done. And another piece of an empire’s giant toy would be fitted in place.

Some of the other workers were coming back to work now, after leaving the Liner Diner. The Broadway-star types were hanging around in front of the diner, the women casually bending and doing light exercises, well aware they were being watched.

The little guy in the hard hat looked over at Louie, looked back at his clipboard, and made a check mark. Then back at Louie. He smiled and said, “Safety.”

Louie noticed a line of faded black letters on the scuffed and dented yellow hard hat. So the twerp was here in some official capacity.

“I think we’re up to code here,” Louie said, though he had no idea. This guy, in washed-out jeans and a tan shirt with a tie, looked like management to him. A dress shirt and tie and a clipboard could add up to trouble.

“You want me to call the boss over for you?” Louie asked. Pass-the-buck time.