Magic Hour by Susan Isaacs (cheapest way to read ebooks .txt) 📕

“I don’t know if there was one.”

MAGIC HOUR / 353

“Right. So it’s almost impossible for me to find out if Sy wasn’t himself, because no one can tell me who ‘himself’ is.

Except that he always kept the lid on; I mean, his normal behavior was not screaming and kicking the crap out of production assistants and spitting on actors. And there was nothing in his behavior before his murder to show anything different. He was acting like a reasonable, rational man. No sudden blowups, no fits of melancholy.”

“So you don’t see anything.”

“Shut up and let me finish.”

“Don’t tell me to shut up. Ask me to please be quiet.”

“Please be quiet and go fuck yourself.”

“That’s better.”

“Good. Now, two things strike me, but they’re so petty they may not mean anything. But like you have a wife’s sense, I have a cop’s sense.”

“What are they?” She caught me staring at the inner part of her thighs again. Taut, no baggy skin. Paler than the tanned tops of her legs. She pushed herself back, so she was leaning against the headboard, stretched her legs straight out and clasped her hands over that indefinite region south of her vulva and north of her thighs. “Come on,” she urged.

“You said two things struck you. Tell me. Function.”

“I am functioning. Okay, Sy could definitely indulge himself with material things, indulge women if he was in the mood.

But basically he was a real cheapo. Always trying to get a better deal, always afraid that people were trying to cheat him. And you told me one of the reasons you didn’t ask for alimony is that you wanted to stay in his good graces, and you knew he had a bug up his ass about women wanting him for his money. Am I right?”

“Yup.”

“Okay, so knowing all that, how come he paid 354 / SUSAN ISAACS

Lindsay Keefe a half-million bucks more than her contract called for?” Bonnie looked astounded. “Does that sound like him?”

“No. Not at all. It sounds like a schnook who never made a movie before.”

“Right. Some guy who’s letting a movie star lead him around by the dick. I mean, so thrilled she’s letting him in her pants, so scared she’ll change her mind, that he throws in another five hundred thou.”

Bonnie brought up her clasped hands and rested her chin on them. She was intrigued. “You’re on to something. I don’t know what. But Sy wouldn’t let go of a nickel without a reason.”

“So what was the reason? Is it possible he made an off-the-books deal with her agent?”

She began to gnaw her knuckles while she considered the question. “I doubt it,” she said finally. “Lindsay and Nick were getting a million each. Normally, they’re in the two-to-three-million range, but they were getting it on the back end.”

“A percentage of the profits?”

“Yup. The first-dollar gross. And Lindsay’s agent…Why would he go for an off-the-books deal? He’s not going to trust an actress. He, his agency, is going to want the protection of a written contract to collect his ten percent.”

“So if a deal was struck, it would have been a private one between Sy and Lindsay.”

“It would have been. I just can’t see him doing it. Except…”

“Except what?”

“Except she was living with him, had been for months. Sy took women out, had sex with them, maybe had an occasional sleep-over in Southampton for a weekend. But nobody besides me and Lindsay ever kept a toothbrush in his house; he didn’t oper-MAGIC HOUR / 355

ate that way. So maybe he had fallen in love with her. Maybe he was going to marry her.”

“But it went sour.”

“Well, you have to ask whose fault that was. If it was hers, she was in trouble. Sy was vengeful.”

“How would he get his vengeance?”

“Just for starters, he’d stop having sex with her—but not tell her why. And he did that.”

“You don’t know that for a fact.”

“I do know that’s what he told me: He’d stopped sleeping with her. And I know him well enough sexually to know that you could stand on your head and whistle ‘Dixie’ stark naked, and he still wouldn’t—couldn’t, probably—do it more than once a day. God, I hate getting clinical.”

“Get clinical.”

“Well, he could keep going for what seemed like forever, but once he…you know…” She got all flustered.

“Bonnie, you’re forty-five years old.”

“Thank you. Well, once he came, that was it. And so if he was keeping company with me every single day, he would have had to put on a splint to do anything for her.”

“He saw you every day?”

“Every day. And he was so angry at her. He always got hostile during production, that quiet, nasty seething; I mean, if a fly would land on a wall, he’d want five grips with ba-zookas to go after it. But with Lindsay it was more. He was venomous. He called her terrible things, and that was so out of character for him.”

“Like what?”

“Well, maybe you won’t think it’s so terrible, because you have a filthy mouth. But Sy liked to think of himself as the epitome of refinement. And also as a clearheaded man of enlightenment. That meant buy-356 / SUSAN ISAACS

ing politically correct ice cream and being pro-environment, anti-fur and ultra-pro-feminist. All of a sudden, though, he was calling her ‘cunt.’ You have no idea how out of character that was for him. Sure, he could be a miserable, heartless, vindictive rat, but always a genteel rat. He’d eat your face and tell you how profoundly he valued your friendship. So my guess is, Sy did love her. But then he turned on her. And just from his language, I’d say he’d lost control. In his mind, she’d betrayed him in some fundamental way.”

“Well, she’d betrayed him by screwing up her acting,” I suggested.

“Right. But for the first week or so, that didn’t seem to stop his attraction. I mean, dailies were horrible, but you said people saw him around her on the