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

I finally made it back in, mainly because Shea and Ray Carbone knew they needed me and went to bat for me. But I lost my rank of sergeant.

I was clearly not a leader of men. Shea said, “Bottom line, Brady. I don’t give a rat’s twat that alcoholism’s a disease.

That’s your problem. If I hear you even walk 24 / SUSAN ISAACS

within a mile of a bottle of anything, I’ll bust your ass for good. Hear me?” Yeah, I said. Fair enough.

In January 1989, on my way home from an AA meeting, I met Lynne, age twenty-three, originally of Annapolis, Maryland, a teacher of learning-disabled kids at Holy Spirit Academy in Southampton, when I stopped to help her with a flat tire. Lynne was intelligent. Serious. Classy. Pretty. And competent: she really didn’t need me to help her change the flat. And yes indeed, she was stable. On July 4, we got engaged.

There it is. My Life, by Stephen Edward Brady. Not precisely a sterling character. In fact, something of a not-so-good guy. Maybe even a bad guy. But a man who, like all men, holds within him the possibility of redemption. Right?

Anyway, my autobiography until that not-nice day when Sy Spencer was murdered and when I realized that—till death do us part—I would find peace and quiet and even happiness with Lynne.

But I might never have fun.

C H A P T E R T W O

Come on,” I urged the kid, hoping for an argument. “Sy and Lindsay were the perfect couple.” Jesus, I wanted life.

Believe me, I’d worked on enough homicides to know that the first interviews set the tone for the whole investigation.

You had to charge up your sources; any passion—rage at the killer, outrage, grief, hostility to the police—was better than slack jaws and lead asses. I paced back and forth. “Sy Spencer and Lindsay Keefe. A brilliant show-business couple: successful, in love, making a great movie.”

“No,” Gregory J. Canfield whispered. He had actually uttered a word. That meant he was metabolizing. But it was hard to tell; he was about as animated as the average homicide victim. Gregory was Sy’s personal production assistant, hired through some work-study deal with NYU film school.

Poor guy: not only was his personality bordering on inert, but he was a born creep. He was the world’s skinniest human being, and his tight maroon T-shirt, which clung to his rib cage, and his wide-legged shorts with pleats didn’t help.

Also, he had those spooky blue-white, 25

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almost colorless eyes, eyes that belonged to some slime-bellied animal that crawled along the sticky, grape-soda-splattered floors of dark movie theaters. “Uh, Mr. Spencer and Ms. Keefe—they weren’t any Irving Thalberg and Norma Shearer.” I could hardly hear him.

In comparison, my voice sounded overly strong—like an announcer on a toilet-bowl-cleaner commercial. “What are you saying? They weren’t happy?”

“Maybe Lindsay Keefe told you something else, sir,”

Gregory J. Canfield mumbled. That seemed as close to au-thoritative as he could get. “But I think, you know, maybe they were headed for disaster.”

“What do you mean? Personal disaster?”

“Well, um, more with the film. Maybe the personal stuff would follow.” He bent down and ran his finger under a too-tight strap on his leg. He was wearing sandals, handmade things with leather thongs that crisscrossed up his stick legs.

“What was wrong with the movie?” I asked. But I’d lost him; his attention was riveted on Sy and the crime-scene crew. His eyes panned the activity and then bugged out for a close-up of a couple of ID apprentices who were unreeling a tape measure from the corner of the pool deck to the back of Sy’s skull. Gregory’s skin got a little green; he swayed: a potential fainter. “Let’s move,” I said, grabbing his shoulder and steering him away from the action, down toward the stillness of the dune heath. “Talk to me. That’s it. Concentrate. Now, what makes you think Starry Night was in trouble?”

“Uh, the dailies. What they used to call the rushes. They weren’t…good.”

“Not good, or lousy?”

“Um, more than lousy. Actually, more than horrendous.”

His head had swiveled back to watch an M.E. tech MAGIC HOUR / 27

swabbing Sy’s nose with a giant Q-tip. I turned him around so he was facing the ocean and held my hands up on the sides of his face for a second, like blinders. “Stop looking at all the cop crap, Gregory. You’re a movie guy, not a Homicide guy. You’ll just make yourself sick. Now tell me about Starry Night.”

“Lindsay was killing the film. You should have seen Sy’s face after dailies: it went from disappointed to…traumatized.”

“What did he say?” I asked.

“Uh, well, you see, nothing. He was very—how can I put it?—reticent.”

“What do you mean? Reserved? Cold? Nasty?”

Gregory swallowed to clear his throat; his Adam’s apple bobbled. “No. He just didn’t…didn’t respond. It wasn’t one of those comfortable Gregory Peck silences, you know? More brooding De Niro—if De Niro was playing an Ivy League type. Something was going on underneath, but you weren’t sure what. Anyway, Sy’s secretary was staying in his New York office, so my job was to always be there for him: place phone calls, keep lists of whatever he wanted people to do, run errands back and forth to the set that his personal assistant—the assistant producer—was too important to do. I was in the house a lot, sometimes in the same room. But he never said anything to me unless it was some specific request.

Like get a glass of Evian; he liked it plain, no lemon. Or find out what kind of flowers the costume designer likes, because Lindsay had gotten pretty nasty over a red lace teddy; Sy wanted to smooth things over.”

“He never talked to you personally?”

“No. Just hello in the morning and goodbye when I left—if he wasn’t on the phone.”

“Did you ever see him angry?” Gregory shook his head.

“Did you ever see him show any emotion at all?”

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