Laugher Page 9

  Written on the white board was:

  “Tonight’s Headliner:

  Tom Jackman!

  w/ special guests

  Richie Brackson!

  Naomi Jordan!

  Robert Simms!

  Eddie Wilson!”

  “Think we should stay?” I asked her. She scanned the showroom for a familiar face.

  “No. No, he’s not here. Let’s go.”

  Outside was dark now. The streetlights came on just as we got back into the car. I headed back on Island toward the lights of the Marina.

  “What’s next?” I asked.

  Before she could answer, her phone beeped. I glanced over and saw the screen: “Text Message from: Bart.” She pushed the ignore button and the screen disappeared. I looked back at the road before she noticed.

  “Uh, the Artley is next,” she said. “Artley Theater. Twelve-sixty Front Street. The turn is coming up in a few blocks.”

  She turned the phone face down on her lap and looked out the window.

  -------------------------------

  Outside the Artley Theater was a marquee reading “NutCrackers Tonight! Hilarious Improv Comedy! 8 and 10!”

  Nobody was in the box office, but a few patrons were waiting inside the lobby.

  A couple of guys were hanging out by a door on the side propped open by a cinder block. Hipster types. No older than 25, wearing golf caps and fancy facial hair, smoking clove cigarettes. One of them was a tall ginger. The shorter one was proportionately round with mutton chop sideburns and a lazy eye.

  “Excuse me?” I said approaching. They both looked at me. “You work here?”

  The Tall One took a puff. The Short One was eyeballing Nora up and down.

  “Guys?” I said. “Did you hear me?”

  “Depends,” said the tall one.

  “On what?”

  “Whether or not you are who I think you are.”

  I glanced over at Nora. She had the same razor look she gave me in the restaurant, but directed at him this time.

  “Smoke, sweetie?” The Short One said as he held out his cigarette box.

  “No thanks,” she said, obviously having been “offered a smoke” many times before and not feeling flattered by it.

  “Who is it that you think I am?” I asked the Tall One. He leaned against the wall and put his foot up against it like a lone cowboy. Then he leaned toward me, spoke quietly.

  “Has the Moroccan...baker...been to Sweden?” he asked.

  What the hell is this? I thought. The CIA?

  He reversed his footing and kept a tight glare on me. The Short One backed away from Nora and sat down on the pavement and lit another cig.

  “Has the Moroccan baker been to Sweden?” The Tall One asked again.

  “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” I said.

  He came at me trying to look intimidating. But I was the one with a gun on my hip. He looked me up and down. Studious. Like he was memorizing me. “You don’t, huh?...Well that’s just too bad.” His face was still, tough, ready for anything.

  I told Nora to stay back. But just before I reached in my jacket pocket to get my license and show this rat I meant business, he started laughing. Laughing up a storm, and the Short One joined him.

  “Oh man! We totally got you!” He said. “Whatdja think we were gang bangers, or something?” They were laughing uncontrollably between themselves. The self-crowned Kings of Practical Jokes, but Nora and I looked at them like nothing more than a couple of obnoxious third graders.

  “Dude, you looked like you were about to shit your pants!” Veins started protruding from his red forehead, he was laughing so hard.

  “Hilarious,” I said. “Now who are you, really? Do you work here?”

  “Weee are two fifths of the critically-acclaimed, audience-loved, hilarity-abundant NutCrackers! At your service!” He removed his hat giving an exaggerated Elizabethan bow, bending so low he wiped the hat on the pavement. The Short One was still laughing, but calming down to get a hold of himself.

  My license was out. “My name is Marshall Santone. I’m a private investigator.”

  The Tall One held out his hands like he was getting cuffed. He said, “Sorry, officer. I thought it was still legal to fuck around with chumps” and busted up again.

  I was sick of listening to him laugh himself breathless, so I grabbed him and shoved him hard against the wall and he started taking me seriously.

  “Jesus, what the fuck, man--?”

  “Shut up. You’ve had your fun, now let me have mine. You ever hear of Denny Granger?”

  In my peripheral, I saw the Short One back off and lean against the wall.

  “What? Who?” said the Tall One.

  “Denny. Granger. He’s a comedian, he’s missing.”

  “Granger...uh...yeah, sounds familiar. Think I saw him on TV once.”

  Nora stepped forward. “He’s here, in San Diego. Did you know that?”

  “No. I don’t know anything about the guy. Never met him.”

  “How about you, Shorty?” I directed at the Short One. He looked at his shoes first, then shook his head and turned away pretty quick.

  “Man, get your hands off me!” The Tall One shook himself and broke free of my grip. I was still looking at the Short One, raising a cigarette to his mouth to keep his lips from trembling.

  “You sure you don’t know anything?” I asked him.

  He looked back at me. “Never heard of him.” His lazy eye was calm, but the other was lying. The muscle underneath his eyeball was twitching. After fifteen years, you learn how to read these things from witnesses.

  “What’s your name?” I asked. He didn’t answer. “You know anyone named Barry?”

  “Man, we got a show to do,” said the Tall One. They went to the door and kicked the block away. It closed.

  “Great,” said Nora and started walking back toward the car at the end of the block.

  “Wait.” I said. “Let’s stay.”

  “What? Why? They don’t know anything. It’s a waste of time to stay here.”

  “I’m a little tense. I could use a laugh.”

  We snuck in with the crowd without buying tickets and sat at the back. The theater was so small, though, that anywhere you sat couldn’t hide you from the stage lights. Nora sighed. I could tell she was annoyed.

  “This is stupid,” she said. “Why are we here? We should be going to the next club.”

  “The little guy knows something.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Just trust me.”

  The lights went down. Pounding music began and a spotlight hit the stage where an MC

  stood with a microphone. Everyone started clapping except two in the back.

  “Hello! Thank you!” said the MC. “Welcome to the Artley Theater. My name is Eric and I’ll be your gracious, and handsome, host.” There was a mellow ripple of laughs. “All right, are you all ready to have some fun tonight?! Yeah!” The crowd erupted into more clapping and hooting and hollering. “All right then! Please help me welcome to the stage...The NutCrackers!!” More music played and five people ran on from backstage. Four men and one woman, including my two new friends. They were jumping up and down and dancing to the music.

  “These, folks, are your NutCrackers for the evening. I’m gonna let them introduce themselves to you riiiight...NOW!”

  “Jimmy!”

  “Nancy!”

  “Ron!”

  “Sam!”

  “Dashiell!”

  Sam was the Tall One, Dashiell the short. He saw me right as he yelled his name and it must have made him a little nervous because his voice cracked on the second syllable.

  Eric hopped off the stage into the aisle beside the crowd. “Now this first game is called One At A Time and how it works is, these guys are going to tell a story one word at a time. What I need from you guys is to tell me your favorite fairy tale.”

  The audience started yelling: “
Rapunzel!” “Cinderella!” “Rumplestiltskin!” “Three Bears!” “Hansel and Gretel!”

  Nora leaned over to me. “What does he know?”

  “What?” I asked.

  “The little guy. What does he know?”

  “I’m not sure, but when I asked him about Denny he had a tell.”

  “A tell? Like in poker?”

  “Yes. He was lying when he said he’d never heard of him. I want to know why. And maybe he knows who Barry is too.”

  “The Three Bears!” Eric interrupted. “Let’s go with that one, The Three Bears, but we’re gonna mix it up a little. So instead of Goldilocks being Goldilocks, give me a celebrity.”

  “Lindsay Lohan!” “Pamela Anderson!” “Marlon Brando!”

  Eric cracked up at the last suggestion. “Marlon Brando. Okay. So this is the tale of Marlon Brando and the Three Bears. Ready, actors? And...Go!”

  “Once.”

  “Upon.”

  “A.”

  “Time.”

  “Marlon.”

  “Brando.”

  “Was.”

  “Wandering.”

  “Through.”

  “The.”

  “Forest.”

  “Looking.”

  “For.”

  “...Canolis.”

  The audience laughed. Nora leaned back over to me. “Are you sure?”

  “Tell me a lie,” I said. “Any lie, but something that’s believable.”

  “Okay...um, my...father lives in Toronto.”

  “Your lip,” I said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Your bottom lip curls a little then goes back to its place.”

  She touched her lip and looked at me like a sad kitten. It was kind of cute.

  “Give it up for ‘em, ladies and gentlemen!” The game was over and the crowd applauded.

  Eric was still in the aisle. “Now this next game is called ‘Sound Effects’ and Mr. Sam and Mr. Dashiell will be acting out a scene,” they both stepped up to center stage, “but they can’t act and make sound effects at the same time, so they need someone to supply those sound effects for them. Someone from our audience.” He scanned the crowed. I instinctively put my head down.

  “So who’s it gonna be?” he said. Everyone was looking around, wondering the same thing. Nora slumped in her chair.

  “There he is!” Eric shouted. “What’s your name, pal?”

  Studies on what people fear most have been done for years. Every time, death takes a back seat to public appearance. And I was no exception.

  The first thing I saw when I raised my head was Dashiell and Sam, on stage, recognizing me. They didn’t want me up there any more than I did.

  “Sir, what’s your name?” said Eric, holding the microphone to my mouth.

  “Uh...Marshall,” I said, my voice cracked a little.

  “Marshall. Well, come on up here with me, Marshall.” He took a few steps toward the stage while the glue of fear kept me in my seat.

  “Come on, don’t be shy,” Eric said.

  Nora was giggling to herself. She nudged me. “Go on.”

  So I stood. “Give it up for Marshall, ladies and gentlemen!” Applause broke. I quickly buttoned my jacket when I realized I still had my gun on. If my jacket flapped open and someone saw it, it could stir up a lot of panic since I wasn’t wearing a uniform. I followed Eric up a small staircase that led on stage.

  I turned out and looked for Nora, but the stage lights were so bright I could only make out silhouettes in the first two rows. Beyond that was a black abyss. I was on the reflective side of a two-way mirror.

  “Now Marshall, you are going to provide the sound effects for these two guys,” he handed me an extra microphone.

  Sam gave me a dirty look.

  “So if one of them was opening an old, squeaky door, it might sound like...”

  “Oh. Um...creeeeek,” I said in a low baritone and the audience laughed.

  “Okay,” said Eric, and turned to the guys. “Try not to do a scene with squeaky doors.” The audience jolted into more laughter, and, to my great surprise, so did I. Maybe it was only out of embarrassment, but I was laughing. At myself. And I liked it.

  The boys hit center stage while Eric grabbed a chair from backstage and I sat off to the left. The scene took place at a garbage dump. Dashiell played the official in charge and Sam played a guy trying to get his wedding ring back after it fell in the trash by mistake.

  I did the best I could. I made squish sounds when they said they were walking on mud. Dashiell pointed and yelled, “Look at that flock of crows!” But I froze at the idea of making a high-pitched caw and not even a squeak came out.

  “They must have laryngitis!” yelled Sam. The audience roared.

  In the end, Sam found his wedding ring and Eric came back on stage. “Marshall, ladies and gentlemen! Give him a big round of applause!”

  Dashiell shook my hand and awkwardly said “Thank you.” I nodded. Sam said nothing and simply went back to his place with the other actors.

  “Thank you, Marshall,” said Eric. I stepped down the small staircase and went back to my place beside Nora. She smiled at me and patted my leg.

  “That was funny,” she said. “I didn’t know you were funny.”

  I don’t remember what my reaction was. The whole thing was a blur and I couldn’t clearly remember most moments of it. But it felt good to see her smile.

  -----------------------------------------

  When the show ended, the crowd shuffled out through the lobby. Nora and I were on the tail end.

  “You’re gonna talk to him?” she said.

  “Yeah. There’s another show at ten. I assume he’ll be going out for another smoke break.”

  She nodded.

  “Why don’t you wait for me at that café across the street?”

  She agreed with a melancholy half-smile and followed the last of the audience out. I kept my eyes on her until she was on the other side. She tossed a look back at me and entered the café.

  At the side door outside, I grabbed a spot on the wall and lit up a cigarette. After a few minutes, the doors opened and two of the performers came out. Jimmy and Sam. They were whispering. Sam moved the cinder block in front of the door and Jimmy whipped out a joint from his jacket. They lit up and each took a hit.

  “Good show,” I said. They both jumped and turned toward me.

  “Who the fuck are you?” yelled Jimmy, hiding the joint. “You a cop?”

  “No,” said Sam, “He’s a dick. What are you still doing here? I told you I don’t know anything.”

  “I wasn’t asking you. I want to see Dashiell.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he lied to me.”

  “Dash lied to you? About what?”

  “Where is he?”

  “Who is this guy, Sam?” said Jimmy. Sam didn’t answer, just stared at me.

  “Go get Dash,” he told Jimmy.

  Jimmy took another hit of his joint and went back inside.

  “You’re a real pain in the ass. Anyone ever tell you that?” Sam said.

  “They don’t have to. I know.”

  I stamped out my cigarette. Dashiell emerged from inside. “What is it?” he said to Sam.

  “Our friend is back.”

  Dashiell looked over and saw me.

  “He wants to talk to you.”

  “Alone,” I said.

  Sam decided not to play dirty again. He went back inside. Dashiell looked at me and his good eye twitched.

  “I had fun up there,” I said.

  “...You were good.”

  “Cigarette?”

  “No, thanks.”

  I lit up another. “What’s your last name, Dashiell?”

  “Why?”

  “So I can call you Mister, like a gentleman.”

  “...Taggart.”

  “All right, Mr. Taggart.”

  “What’s this about?”

  “The same thing as befo
re. Denny Granger.”