Witness in Death (In Death #10)(34)

Eve continued. "He was a sexual predator."

"Yes, I read your updated report just before you arrived. I will agree that sex was one of his favored weapons. But it wasn't the sex itself that fulfilled him. It was the control, the package of his looks, his style, his talent, and sexuality used to control women. Women whom he considered his playthings. And through them, showing his superiority to other men. He was obsessed with being the center."

"And the illegal? A guy uses Rabbit on a woman because he doesn't think he's going to score with her. It takes away her right to choose."

"Agreed, but in this case, I would say it was just another prop to him. No different in his mind than candlelight and romantic music. He believed himself a great lover, just as he knew himself to be a great actor. His indulgences, in his mind, were no more than his right as a star. I'm not saying that sex doesn't play a part in the motive, Eve. I believe, in this case, you have layers and layers of motives, and a very complex killer. Very likely every bit as egocentric as the victim."

"Two of a kind," Eve murmured.

He had it figured. Actors, they thought they were so f**king brilliant, so special, so important. Well, he could've been an actor if he'd really wanted. But it was just like his father had always told him. You work backstage, you work forever.

Actors, they came and they went, but a good stagehand never had to go looking for work.

Linus Quim had been a stagehand for thirty years. For the last ten, he'd been top dog. That's why he'd been offered the head job at the New Globe, that's why he pulled in the highest wage the union could squeeze out of the stingy bastards of management.

And even then, his pay didn't come close to what the actors raked in.

And where would they be without him?

That was going to change now. Because he had it figured.

Pretty shortly the New Globe was going to be looking for a new head stagehand. Linus Quim was going to retire in style.

When he worked, he kept his eyes and his ears open. He studied. Nobody knew what was what and who was what to who in a theater company the way Linus Quim knew.

Above all, he was an expert on timing. Cues were never missed when Linus was in charge.

He knew the last time he'd seen the prop knife. Exactly when and where. And knowing that left only one window of opportunity for the switch. And only one person, to Linus's thinking, who could have managed it so slick. Could have had just enough time to stick the dummy knife in Areena Mansfield's dressing room.

It had taken guts, he'd give 'em that.

Linus stopped by a corner glide-cart for a late-morning snack, loading down a pretzel with bright yellow mustard.

"Hey!" The operator snatched at the tube with a hand protected with ratty, fingerless gloves. "You gonna use that much, you gonna pay extra."

"Up yours, wigwam." Linus added another blob for the hell of it.

"You use twice too much." The operator, a battle-scarred Asian with less than three months on the corner, danced in place on tiny feet. "You pay extra."

Linus considered squirting what was left in the tube in the man's pruney face, then remembered his upcoming fortune. It made him feel generous. He dug a fifty-cent credit out of his pocket, flipped it in the air.

"Now you can retire," he said as the operator snagged it on the downward arc.

He sucked at the mustard-drowned pretzel as he strolled away.

He was a little man, and skinny, too, but for the soccer ball-sized potbelly over his belt. His arms were long for his height, and ropey with muscle. His face was like a smashed dish badly glued back together, flat and round and cracked with lines. His ex-wife had often urged him to spend a little of his hoarded savings on some simple cosmetic repair.

Linus didn't see the point. What did it matter how he looked when his job was, essentially, not to be seen?

But he thought he might spring for some work now. He was going to take himself off to Tahiti, or Bali, or maybe even to one of the resort satellites. Bask in sun and sand and women.

The half million he'd be paid to keep his little observations to himself would pump up his life's savings nicely.

He wondered if he should have asked for more. He'd kept the payoff on the low end -- nothing an actor couldn't scrape up, in Linus's opinion. He'd even be willing to take it in installments. He could be reasonable. And the fact was, he had to admire the guts and skill involved here, and the choice of target.

He'd never met an actor he'd despised more than Draco, and Linus hated actors with almost religious equality.

He stuffed the rest of the pretzel in his mouth, wiped mustard from his chin. The letter he'd sent would have been delivered first thing that morning. He'd paid the extra freight for that. An investment.

The letter was better than a 'link call or a personal visit. Those sorts of things could be traced. Cops might have everybody's 'links bugged. He wouldn't put it past the cops, who he distrusted nearly as much as actors.

He'd kept the note simple and direct, he recalled.

I know what you did and how you did it. good job. meet me at the theater, backstage, lower level. eleven o'clock. I want $500,000. I won't go to the cops. He was a son of a bitch anyway.

He hadn't signed it. Everyone who worked with him knew his square block printing. He'd had some bad moments worrying that the note would be passed to the cops, and he'd be arrested for attempted blackmail. But he'd put that possibility away.