Magic Hour, Susan Isaacs [life changing books txt] 📗

222 / SUSAN ISAACS

black cotton sweater tucked into a straight white skirt, and black-and-white high heels. She must have put on some makeup, because her eyelids had turned bronze and her lips looked like she’d been eating raspberries. It wasn’t Bonnie; it was a tall and very tasteful tragic figure. She wore long gold earrings and looked heartsick.

I opened my eyes but couldn’t shake the vision of her, so I made myself look down at the file again. Robby had made lots of notes in his rounded fourth-grade penmanship: about Mikey’s mob associations, including known hit men, about his use of his family’s business as a front for Family business, about his friendship with Sy and his investment in Starry Night. Detailed notes, pages and pages. I could see how he’d prepared for Monday’s Homicide meeting, for making his case that Mikey was our guy.

But at the meeting I’d convinced him our guy was Bonnie.

And starting after the meeting, the pages had become paragraphs, the paragraphs, phrases. “8/22. 4:10.” That was about a half hour after Mikey and his lawyer had been in, not that Robby or I had cared all that much. We both knew by then who’d killed Sy. “Spoke to Nancy Hales, bookkeeper for Starry Night Productions, Inc.,” he’d written. “Finally admitted Mikey tried bribe for info re movie $$.”

I turned to the next page, but it wasn’t there. I hung up on “Daylight…” Something wasn’t sitting right. No more notes? Even if Robby had a videotape of Bonnie pulling the trigger, he should have asked some more questions. Like what did “Finally admitted” mean? Like how much was the bribe? Like how had it been offered to the bookkeeper? On the phone? In person? Like had this bookkeeper known what a bad guy Mikey was? How had she said no? Or hadn’t she?

I put the file back in the drawer, leaned back and closed my eyes. Relax. Not my problem.

MAGIC HOUR / 223

But then I opened my eyes, leaned forward and called Nancy Hales in the Starry Night production office at a film studio in Astoria, Queens. I gave her a song and dance about Robby being assigned to another case; I was just checking up on his notes.

“How many times did you speak with Detective Kurz?” I asked casually.

“That once in person.”

“In your office?”

“Yes. And two times on the phone.” Her voice was husky and overly slow. She was dull-witted or southern, or maybe she was into phone sex.

“Tell me about Mikey LoTriglio.”

“I told—”

“I know, but I want to hear it in your own words, not rely on his notes.” Then I added: “Believe me, it’ll be better for you.”

“He said…” She was nervous. “The detective said I wouldn’t be in any trouble if I cooperated.”

“You won’t be. Now tell me what happened.”

“Mr. LoTriglio came up to the office one day looking for Mr. Spencer, but I think he knew Mr. Spencer wouldn’t be there. Do you know what I mean?”

“Yeah.”

“He asked for the bookkeeper, and someone brought him over to my desk. He pulled over a chair and asked if anything funny was going on. I said, ‘Funny?’”

“What did he say?”

“He said, ‘Don’t shit me.’ So I told him I couldn’t discuss business with him and he told me he was a major investor and I said I knew that but he’d still have to get Mr. Spencer’s okay.” She paused. “He was…I kind of knew he was a gangster. Not like Scarface, but still, I was scared. That’s why I did it.”

“Took his money?” I asked.

“Uh-huh.”

224 / SUSAN ISAACS

“How did he give it to you?”

“He sort of slipped it under my telephone.”

“I mean, in what denominations?”

“Fifties.”

“How many fifties?”

“Didn’t the other detective tell you how much it was?”

“I thought you were cooperating,” I said.

“Ten fifties.”

“And what did he get for his five hundred dollars?”

“The Lindsay Keefe business.”

“Do me a favor, Nancy. I’m making my own notes. Let’s start fresh. Spell out the Lindsay business for me.”

“That the extra location scout and the two extra trailers and Teamster drivers and Nicholas Monteleone’s bonus on signing and four interior sets we built…well, all that didn’t exist. Sy just had me put in some invoices and…kind of move some money around.”

“Move some money to Lindsay?”

“Yes.”

“How much did it come to?”

She whispered: “Half.”

“Half a million?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Why did Lindsay Keefe get an extra half million?”

Her whisper became even softer. “I don’t know. I guess she was threatening to quit.”

I didn’t get it. Sy had wanted to get rid of her. “When was this?”

“Three days before the start of principal photography.”

I took a deep breath. “Nancy, why would he give her a half million more? She had a contract, didn’t she?”

“Yes.”

MAGIC HOUR / 225

“So?”

“So he was crazy about her. I mean crazy. Like he would have done anything to keep her happy.”

Or, at that point, to keep her in his bed. No big deal. He was Sy Spencer. He could get creative with the budget, and when Starry Night made ninety mil, who’d miss a few hundred thousand? And so, for a million plus another half million, Sy had bought himself a truly superior lay—and a lemon of an actress who was killing his movie. That must have been some kick in his arrogant ass. “Did you get the sense that Mikey LoTriglio had heard any of the negative talk about Lindsay’s acting that was going around?”

“I think…There were a lot of rumors. I’m pretty sure he heard about them.”

“How?”

“Probably by paying off someone in the crew.”

“Like who?”

“I don’t know.”

“And then he found out from you that Sy had diddled the books to give Lindsay a five-hundred-thousand-dollar bonus.”

“Yes.”

“And how did Mikey react?” Silence. “Didn’t Detective Kurz talk to you about this?”

“No. I would have told him, but he didn’t ask.”

“And you didn’t volunteer.”

“No. I was scared.”

“Tell me what Mr. LoTriglio said.”

“He said…when he heard the exact figure on what Lindsay had gotten, he said, ‘My friend Sy