Goodnight Sweet Prince
By Harry Buschman
After only six weeks he was sick to death of it! Six damn weeks of listening to Sir John play Hamlet at the St. James. Six more weeks to go! No! He couldn’t take it. If he had a minor job in the company -- a minor role -- even a stage hand, it would be different.
But Walter Barnstone was Sir John’s understudy,
hoping -- hoping against hope
that something would happen to him so the audience could finally see and hear
the Hamlet of the century, not the watered down Nancy assed Hamlet of Sir
John’s. In those six weeks, only once did the Jerry Robbins the producer
give
him a chance to fill in at the duel scene when Sir John got a splitting headache.
His first and only break! Not nearly enough to make an impression. Having to
stand there night after night listening to Sir John butcher lines like “...for
murder, though it have no tongue, will speak with most miraculous organ.”
Accents on all the wrong syllables, stress in the wrong places. Six more weeks
of that? Impossible!
He got the French dueling pistol down from the top shelf of his closet. It was very much like the weapon that killed Lincoln, (and fired by another frustrated actor) he reminded himself. He stole it from the property department of the St. James Theater when Sandy worked there. It sat in a velvet lined and fitted case. Separate compartments held steel balls and percussion caps.
Sandy was fond of showing it off to Walter. “It’s a Lepage Freres, forty-eight caliber, heisted it from Met Storage -- look at the engraving, ain’t that beautiful work?” Sandy enthused. “Fully operational.” He showed Walter how the percussion caps fit in the chamber. "They put the ball in the muzzle end. So long as y’don’t put a ball in the barrel, all’s y’got is a big flash and a bang. Wakes up the sleepy heads in the first row, I’ll tell ya.” With a sly grin he showed Walter a handful of steel balls. “These are ball bearings I found, look .... I shouldn’t be tellin’ you this, but they fit the barrel like a glove, see?” He rolled one or two down the barrel. “They wasn’t made for the gun, but that’s the beauty part -- I’m holdin’ here one of the deadliest pistols in the world, and it ain’t even registered!”
Something about the story fascinated Walter.
The idea of a common stage prop
being used as a murder weapon .... when Sandy took sick, Walter took the case
home with him, along with Sandy’s prop inventory. When Sandy died, the
St.
James couldn’t find his property list and the theater had to make their
own
inventory. The pistol wasn’t on it.
***
Walter thought it through for the hundredth time. He’d wait until four o’clock. Henry the dresser would be at the theater by then, seeing to the make-up kit and Sir John’s costumes. He would walk in the side entrance of the hotel. That way he wouldn't have to pass through the lobby. The elevators were self-service and he’d wait for an empty one, jump in and punch the “close door” button immediately.
He would wear gray clothes, nothing loud or conspicuous. He’d bring a tote bag with him. In it would be the pistol, fully loaded, and a gauntlet from the property room, one that came up to the elbow. This would protect his arm from powder burns and any blood that might splatter. He would ditch them on his way back to his apartment.
Sir John was on the 23rd floor of Les Hotel
des Artistes. He remembered the
layout from the opening night party. Long blue carpet. Four apartments, two
at one end and two at the other. Two retired actresses had the apartments on
the right, Sir John and and a writer had the two on the left. The writer was
off on a book tour and wouldn’t back for a month. He’d have to chance
it that the old women wouldn’t hear him -- most likely they’d have
their TV’s on and never hear the shot. One shot, that’s all. One shot
with the pistol pushed up under his chin. The noise wouldn’t be a problem.
***
Walter waited until an elevator door opened, standing with his back to it, and from the sound of the passenger’s voices he knew they were headed for the exit door to 74th Street. He turned quickly, darted into the open elevator and pushed the buttons for the 23rd floor and the “close door” at the same time. It took an eternity for the doors to close.
All was quiet on the 23rd floor. The soft sound
of music came from one of the
women’s apartments. The writer’s apartment next to Sir John’s
was quiet. Sir John would be resting, he was sure -- mumbling his way automatically
through
his lines just as a singer does his scales. “Don’t delay. Don’t
delay,” he reminded himself.
Walter put his ear to the door and heard nothing. He reached into the tote bag and withdrew the gauntlet and the pistol then rang the bell. He heard a stir in the apartment as he drew on the gauntlet and he gripped the pistol firmly in his right hand.
“Who’s there?” The cultured tones of Sir John infuriated Walter even more.
The door opened a crack and the sleepy face of Sir John appeared. It was not the familiar face that had melted the hearts of matinee ladies for a generation, it was a wrinkled, over-the-hill face of a has been actor.
“Oh,” Sir John mumbled. “It’s you. Come in.”
With his left hand Walter pushed Sir John back across the foyer and closed the door. Startled, Sir John swore softly, “Damn! What’s going on -- what?” Walter jammed the pistol up under his chin and pulled the trigger. The explosion was loud but no louder than he expected. What he did not expect was the simultaneous slap of brain tissue and bone on the ceiling of the foyer. Sir John stumbled awkwardly into the living room and fell backwards over a sectional sofa.
Walter shook the pistol and the gauntlet back into the tote bag. A quick look at the splattered ceiling and walls of the foyer convinced him that the body now sprawled on the sofa was headless. There was blood on the pistol and the gauntlet but none on him or his clothes. It came as a shock to him that he hadn’t made a clear plan for getting away, and as he stood in the entryway with his hand reaching for the knob, he realized he would leave fingerprints.
“Think ahead. Think ahead!” he reminded
himself. He wrapped a handkerchief
around his hand and opened the door. It was still quiet outside. The soft music
still played in the apartment at the other end of the hall. He even recognized
the tune as he stood waiting for the elevator .... "Just picture a penthouse
way up in the sky, with hinges on chimneys so clouds can go by ....”
There was a girl standing in the rear of the elevator reading a newspaper. Should he get on or not? It would look suspicious if he didn’t get on -- Walter decided it would be better to act naturally and keep his back to the girl, she probably wouldn’t raise her eyes. He stared intently at the doors on the way down ignoring the slow arrow as it counted off the floors. When they reached the bottom he moved aside for her and she passed him without looking and walked into the lobby. He was sure it would be impossible for her to identify him if she was ever questioned.
It was getting dark when he reached the street, and so far Sir John’s was the only recognizable face he had seen that afternoon. “Thank God this is New York!” he thought. “I am invisible in a city of 7 million people.”
At the corner of 74th and Amsterdam he spotted
a dumpster below street level
at a construction site. It was being loaded on a flat bed and while no one was
watching Walter quickly threw the tote bag in the dumpster and walked away.
That was easier than he thought it would be, he had visions of walking the streets
looking for empty rubbish cans. In an hour the evidence would be in a landfill
on Staten Island.
He glanced at his watch and noticed a smear of blood on the crystal. The sooner he got back to his apartment and into a shower the better off he’d be. He noticed his legs were trembling -- nerves he thought -- he forced himself to breathe slowly and rhythmically. The picture of Sir John stumbling backward in his living room flashed before him .... the blood on the ceiling .... the bits of bone and flesh .... “Breathe slowly,” he reminded himself. He hailed a cab making its way up Amsterdam Avenue and rode back to his apartment, he told himself not to over tip -- drivers tend to remember things like that.
It was only 4:30. So much had been accomplished
in the last half hour! He let
himself into his apartment, making plans to strip down, call the cleaner to
pick up his clothes and take a long hot shower -- hot as he could stand. He
checked the thermostat on the wall, it seemed much colder than seventy degrees.
The shower helped a great deal and now he felt a great fatigue steal over him as he stretched out on the bed. He would spend the hour or so before curtain time going over his lines again and again, creating nuances and subtle changes of rhythm, things that Sir John never would have dreamed of. He was sure a call would come from Jerry Robbins about seven thirty informing him that Sir John could not go on tonight, and in the time honored tradition of the theater, Walter Barnstone must take his place. “There’s a divinity that shapes our ends,” he smiled.
What would he do when he came to lines like,
“.... for murder, though it have
no tongue, will speak with most miraculous organ.” Or “.... And now
how
abhorred in my imagination it is! My gorge rises at it.” Well he was a
pro, Walter Barnstone would cross those bridges when he came to them, he had
a show to do.
For more than an hour he dozed, practiced his
lines and dreamed of critical acclaim. “What would come after Hamlet,”
he wondered? Richard the Third
perhaps -- or maybe Hollywood. He justified his actions of the afternoon by
reminding himself -- “the Lord helps those who help themselves.”
The phone rang shrilly at seven thirty. Walter checked his watch -- “Right on cue,” he smiled.
“Walter, this is Jerry Robbins.”
“Yes, Jerry what can I do for you?”
“I’ve been trying to get you all afternoon, Walter. Sir John has laryngitis -- can’t go on this evening. We were going to cancel the performace but Sir john was sure you could handle it. Chance of a lifetime, Walter!”
© Harry Buschman 2002
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