“No. Rosey Patterson’s the only one I knew well, and I haven’t seen him in years.”
“Rosey used to drive me nuts,” Danny said. “All that excess energy got on my nerves.”
I smiled. Danny had the same effect on people.
“Anyway, they’re all still around. Rosey doesn’t run around like he used to, but he’s held on to some big-money clients. Elmer Belasco’s pretty much retired but still in good health, as far as I know. His son Arthur finally took his dad’s advice and gave up acting. Got into behind-the-scenes work. Last I heard, he has a job on some show in preparation, satirical revue with young unknown talent. Jerry Cordova works for a record label, and I still see him around once in a while, at parties, doing his Gershwin number. As for Mildred—”
“Poor Mildred,” Suzy sighed. “How she ever put up with you, I can’t imagine.”
“You know her?” I asked.
“Sure,” Suzy said. “We have lunch once in a while to compare notes. Sometimes we think all Danny’s ex-wives ought to get together, expand our horizons. How many are we now, Danny?”
“You’re no ex-wife, baby. Never will be.”
“So, what’s Mildred doing?” I asked.
“Good works,” Danny said. “Her new husband could buy and sell me a hundred times over. Anyway, let me get to the point. We’d talked about Anselm’s death, and somebody mentioned what a lousy golfer he was. Then the next day that first message hit the personal ad columns. Then three more murders, three more messages. All the times after the first, the message ran much closer to the crime, not two days later. Sometimes the messages had to have been placed before the murder even happened. So what does that mean, Seb?”
I had a hunch what he was getting at, but I wanted to hear it from him. “I don’t know. What’s it mean?”
“The Broadway Executioner murders were hatched in this apartment, that’s what. I don’t know who killed Anselm. Maybe a personal enemy, maybe a random mugger. But somebody at that party got the idea for a series of do-gooder murders of theatrical villains. They put that ad in the papers, whether they’d done the original killing or not, and then they continued on the same path and had a lot of crazy fun doing it. Somebody in this room that day took that idea and ran with it. Maybe Jerry. Maybe Elmer. Maybe Arthur. Maybe Rosey.” He smiled now. “Maybe me. Maybe you. Maybe Mildred.”
“No, not Mildred,” Suzy said. “She’d have killed you next.”
“Yeah, probably.” Danny was obviously obsessed with the case. He’d even checked out alibis for his roomful of suspects—how he managed to do that, I’m not sure. Unfortunately for his theory, none of them could have done all the murders, according to his charts. Elmer and Rosey were both out of the country at the time of the Floret killing. It was hard to see how Mildred could have physically managed the Esterhazy job, and I couldn’t see her in the serial killer role anyway. Arthur was in London when Esterhazy died. Jerry was working in Florida when Spurlock got his. As for me, I was in Hollywood the whole time. Danny didn’t mention his own alibis. For a minute I wondered if he was going to confess. He didn’t.
Danny was taking his detective work very seriously, but I wasn’t. I wasn’t even sure the Broadway Executioner existed, though how some opportunist could have entered those pointedly appropriate ads in the personal columns before the fact, short of psychic powers, stumped me.
That same day, maybe while we were kicking around theories, the Executioner was up in Cape Cod taking his fifth victim, Justin Gentry, an aging matinee idol best known for getting supporting players, stage hands, directors, dressers, and anybody who annoyed him fired. He’d even tried to dismiss the playwright on one production. Died in a boating accident, but what about that newspaper personal item that said “MASSACHUSETTS IS A LONG WAY FROM NEW YORK”?
“So,” I said to Evan, “that finished out the career of the Broadway Executioner, at least as far as I know.”
“But that isn’t all. What about the last one, about the highest spot? Who got killed to that melody?”
“As far as I know, nobody.”
“Then why was it on the list?”
“Because there’s a little more to the story.”