I smiled.

"I know. You feel that would be no loss. To tell you the truth, and I'd deny publicly that I ever said this, I don't like the play either. But it is an attempt to grapple artistically with some fundamental issues, and, however clumsily rendered, it is an attempt that needs to be encouraged."

"Especially when you've got a hole in your schedule," I said.

"Especially then. I'm not a holy person. Had there been a better play available, we'd have put it up. I'm trying to make a living, and see to it that the company makes a living, and draw an audience, and raise money to make this thing work. It means I put on things I don't like, and kiss asses, and tolerate ignoramuses. On the other hand, we don't have Cats in for an extended run."

"That's something to be grateful for," I said.

"Real theater, any art, speaks the otherwise inarticulate impulses of the culture," Christopholous said.

"Art energizes the collective consciousness. The arts are more vital to the well-being of a society than missiles or Medicare. Do you know that English theater grew out of early religious ritual?"

Christopholous was a hyperbolic shmoozer, and a remorseless fund-raiser, and he made me tired. But he was also one of the major thinkers about theater in the world. I had read a couple of his books, and the voice from the books was the voice he was using now.

"Quern Quaeritis," I said.

I was showing off again, like when I'd said "dramaturge." And it worked again. Christopholous looked at me as if I had just levitated.

"You are an odd goddamned detective," he said.

"I read a lot on stakeouts," I said.

"Let's talk a little about the play."

"Handy Dandy?"

"Yeah. If you talk slowly, I'll be able to follow you."

"I'm not buying that pose," Christopholous said.

"You know a lot more than you look like you know."

"Be hard to know less," I said.

"What do you think is in this play that stirs up so much opposition."

"Albeit crudely," Christopholous said, "it challenges everyone's preconceptions. Not just the preconceptions of right or left, of racism or humanism, but all. If you come in with compassionate preconceptions about women or blacks, it destroys them. If you come in with hostile preconceptions about women or blacks, it destroys them. It challenges people to consider each human experience directly, without an historic framework."

"An historic framework is not useless," I said.

"Certainly not," Christopholous said.

"But Leonard would argue that you must first tear down the jerry-rigged facade, before you can begin to build a sound framework. Leonard O annoys everyone: secular humanists, fundamentalist Christians, conservatives, liberals, libertarians, blacks, whites, women, men, Jews, homosexuals, heterosexuals, bisexuals, Hari Krishnas, the AMA, you name it."

"Leonard's the playwright?" I said.

"Yes."

"Is that O?" I said, "as in say can you see?" or as in 'story of '?"

"The latter."

"Is it his real name?" I said.

"I doubt it."

"I'll need to talk with him."

"That should be interesting," Christopholous said.

CHAPTER 7

I sat in DeSpain's office in the back corner of the squad room in the neat, square, one-story, red-brick Port City Police Station.

DeSpain had his coat off and his gun unholstered and lying on the desk next to the phone.

"Damn thing gets me in the ribs every time I lean back," he said.

"Trouble with the nines," I said.

"They're not comfy."

DeSpain shrugged the way a horse does when a fly lands on him.

"You got something on the Sampson killing, or you just in to chew the fat?"

"I was hoping you had something."

"Here's everything I got," DeSpain said.

"Killer was probably male. There's no agreement on what he was wearing, except that it was black. Had on some kind of a black mask with eye holes cut into it. He came in during the play and stood at the top of the aisle maybe ten minutes. People figured he was part of the play. The piece might have been a target gun, though to tell you the truth none of the eyewitnesses know a handgun from their pee pee.

What everybody agrees is, he fired one shot and put the gun away, and walked out. Nobody saw where he went. ME took a.22 long out."

DeSpain picked up his gun and aimed it over my shoulder.

"Bingo," he said.

"Through his heart."

"Maybe the guy's a shooter," I said.

"Sort of showing off with the.22."

"There was a fad a while back like that," DeSpain said.

"Mob guys were using.22s."

"Or maybe it's the only gun he could get his hands on."

"And it was a lucky shot," DeSpain said.

"What do you know about the victim?"

"What is this, Travelers' fucking Aid?" DeSpain said.

"Hey, I'm telling you all I know," I said.

"You haven't told me shit," DeSpain said.

"True, but it's all I know."

DeSpain shook his head and turned the gun on his desk in a slow circle with his finger through the trigger guard.

"Don't know much more than you do. Studied acting in New York. Was in some plays I never heard of in places I never heard of. Got a job up here. Kept to himself. Stayed out of trouble. Sound like we're closing in?"

"Prints?"

"No record of him ever being fingerprinted."

"So what do you think?" I said.

"I think neither one of us knows shit," DeSpain said. He kept the gun turning slowly.

"Well," I said.

"It was about something?"

"Usually is," DeSpain said.

"Yeah, but this more than most," I said.

"I mean, if you just want the guy dead you don't dress up in a black costume and shoot him dead on stage in a crowded theater."

"Wouldn't be how I'd do it," DeSpain said.

"That's right. But somebody wanted to make a point."

"And did," DeSpain said. He grinned a big, wolfish grin.

"Except we don't know what the point was."

"He was there for a while," I said.

"What was he waiting for?"

"Maybe for Sampson to come to the front," DeSpain said.

"Get a clear shot."

"Or maybe for Sampson to say the lines he was saying so that the killing would have meaning."

"To whom?"

"I don't know."

"Me either," DeSpain said. He stopped twirling the gun and drummed lightly on it with a forefinger the size of a sap.

"But it might have to do with love," I said.

"It's what he was singing about when he got shot."

"Lucky in love," DeSpain said.

"So you've been thinking about it too," I said.

"Some," DeSpain said.

"So maybe it would mean something to a lover," I said.

"

"Cept he didn't have one," DeSpain said.

"That you know about," I said.

"You know about one?"

"No."

DeSpain did his wolfish smile again, pulling his lips away from his teeth with no hint of warmth or humor. He had big teeth, with prominent canines.

"Maybe it was a fruitcake," he said.