Murder at Ford's Theatre Page 31

  “Showbiz hysteria.”

  “I guess.”

  “Hate to get stuck next to him on a long plane ride.”

  “You don’t have to worry about that, Mo.”

  Klayman was unable to take his eyes off Bancroft as backstage preparations continued. Although their encounter had been brief, there was a look in the actor’s eyes that both detectives had picked up on, and that Klayman hadn’t noticed during their earlier meetings. Yes, Bancroft was a manic personality, with eyes constantly in motion, emoting through them, using them to provide punctuation. But this was different. Was it fear Klayman had observed? Or something else?

  Diana Krall and her quartet opened the show, the popular Canadian jazz singer and pianist setting an upbeat mood for the audience. As she romped through her first number, a pulsating version of Gershwin’s “The Man I Love,” Bancroft stood on the opposite side of the stage from where Klayman and Johnson were posted. He’d avoided members of the stage and TV crews since arriving at the theatre late that afternoon, and had come in close proximity with Clarise only once when she’d come down to the theatre from her office to check on something with the house manager. They locked eyes, but she turned away, which didn’t especially nettle Bancroft; his anger at her unwillingness to even speak with him had peaked the previous day when she’d refused, through her secretary, to meet. It took every ounce of self-restraint to keep from physically barging in.

  He’d left the theatre after being rebuffed by the secretary and had spent the afternoon in Harry’s, downing scotch with beer chasers until he was sufficiently drunk to anesthetize the pain. A cab delivered him to his apartment building where Morris, the doorman, helped him through the lobby and into the elevator. He slept for fifteen hours. When he awoke at noon, he was confused as to where he was. But as the room, indeed his life, came into focus, he could see nothing but the past, his performances on British regional stages as a young man, his days at Stratford-upon-Avon, the applause, the adoring women, shooting films in exotic locations, the parties, the applause, the excitement of signing a new contract, and the applause, always the applause.

  He consulted a small card on which the order of acts had been written. After someone named Diana Krall, it would be one of President Nash’s favorite performers, Washington’s venerable political satirist, Mark Russell, with Alan King functioning as MC between acts. It was noted on the card that King would do a six-minute standup routine toward the end of the evening, and those words seemed to be magnified as Bancroft stared at them. Alan King, funnyman, guaranteed to generate loud laughter with his one-liners and sage observations of love and life. Prior to him, Clarise was scheduled to say a few words.

  He looked across the backstage area, saw Klayman staring at him, and stepped behind a flat to move out of the detective’s line of vision. The presence of the officers who’d questioned him was disconcerting; he wished they weren’t there. He took in others in his proximity. No one seemed particularly interested in him, for which he was grateful. It had been that way at Ford’s Theatre since Clarise hired him, disinterest in Sydney Bancroft, dismissive of him, scornful, snickering behind his back. Who did they think they were? Ford’s was a pathetic excuse for a theatre, mounting pedestrian plays with mediocre talent. He, Sydney Bancroft, had tasted what real theatre was meant to be, British theatre, great actors and actresses performing the thoughts and words of the world’s best playwrights. He hated every one of them at Ford’s Theatre, although that emotion had not been extended to Clarise Emerson—until now. She was worst of all, with her sophisticated facade and glib ease while mingling with the money people and bureaucrats.

  Others backstage who obviously didn’t belong there exaggerated his unease. Uniformed police, and men in drab suits and with nondescript haircuts, were there to protect the vice president, Clarise’s friend, another politician, just another whore.

  What was happening onstage was irrelevant to Bancroft. The music, and the audience’s reaction, originated from another place, vague and muffled, unconnected to the moment. He realized he was sweating, and felt light-headed. He made his way to an exit door guarded by two Secret Service agents and a uniformed D.C. cop. Bancroft lifted the large badge dangling from his neck, validating that he was entitled to be there. “Feeling a little woozy,” he said, forcing a smile. “Some fresh air will do the trick.”

  The officer opened the door, and Bancroft stepped into the night air, where a contingent of police and agents were posted outside the theatre. Tenth Street was cordoned off at both corners, but the Star Saloon across the street was open, sans customers. Bancroft displayed his badge as he crossed the street and entered the bar where the thoroughly bored bartender lounged behind the bar. “Working tonight, Sydney?” he asked.

  “Alas, yes. Only have a minute, need something to tickle the old throat.”

  “The usual?”

  “If you please.”

  Bancroft consulted the list of acts again as he downed the first scotch placed in front of him and indicated he wished a refill.

  “How’s it going over there?” the bartender asked.

  “What? Oh, splendid. Yes, just fine.” Bancroft placed money on the bar. “Keep the change, old boy. And remember me. Remember Sydney Bancroft.”

  The bartender laughed. “How could I ever forget you, Sydney?”

  Bancroft retraced his steps to the theatre’s rear door. A display of his pass gained access to the backstage. Mark Russell was finishing his performance, standing at the piano and delivering a final satirical ditty about Washington and its politicians.

  Klayman had taken advantage of a break in the action to cross behind the sets to the opposite side of the stage, leaving Mo Johnson where they’d originally stood. He’d been looking for Bancroft but hadn’t seen him. Now, he saw the actor come into the theatre and wondered where he’d been. Across the street at the Star Saloon? Like John Wilkes Booth fortifying himself before shooting Lincoln? That fanciful notion came and went as he observed Bancroft disappear inside a room; PROPS was crudely written on a sheet of paper and taped to the door, which closed behind the actor.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the wonderful Natalie Cole.”

  Klayman turned to see the singing star begin a song associated with her late father, Nat “King” Cole. He forced himself to redirect his attention to the prop room door, which was now open. He went to it and peered inside. No Bancroft. He scanned the myriad boxes on shelves. The boxes were neatly stacked, one atop the other, floor to ceiling, each carefully labeled. His eyes went to one box that sat on a small table wedged in the corner. He looked up to an empty space where a box had been. A few steps closer allowed him to read the label on the box on the table: FIREARMS.

  He lifted the cardboard lid and saw the array of fake weapons piled inside. Why hadn’t the Secret Service noted this when they’d swept the room earlier in the day? He looked up again. The box had probably been up there, high off the floor, when agents examined the room. Still . . .

  Natalie Cole’s voice singing “Route Sixty-six” reached him in the room. A Secret Service agent looked in. Klayman motioned him to look in the box.

  “Where’d these come from?” the agent asked, going through the array of stage props.

  “Up there, I think,” Klayman said, indicating the space at the top of the shelving.

  “All phonies. Plastic.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’ll take them.”

  The agent placed the lid on the box and carried it from the room, presumably to place it under the control of other agents until the evening was over. Klayman stayed behind for a few minutes, trying to put his thoughts in order. Although every weapon in the box was an obvious replica, why had that particular box been taken down from the shelf? Had Bancroft removed it and placed it on the table? If so, why?

  He left the room and took in his backstage surroundings. He spotted Johnson at the other side and gave him a wave, which was returned. Bancroft came into view. He stood
alone by the light panel, his back to the lighting technician, head lowered, fingers pressed against his temples as though to push a headache from his head, or a particularly onerous thought.

  Bancroft turned and saw Klayman. He appeared to want to want to say something, but spun and disappeared behind a heavy vertical curtain.

  “. . . Someday my happy arms will hold you, and someday I’ll know that moment divine, that all the things you are, are mine,” Natalie Cole sang to conclude her set. The audience applauded enthusiastically as she took her bows and left the stage, to be replaced immediately by Clarise Emerson. She stepped to the mike, flashed a wide, dazzling smile, and began her scripted one-minute speech.

  Alan King stood in the wings, poised to follow.

  Bancroft stepped from behind the vertical curtain and followed the contour of the backstage wall to a position immediately to Clarise’s stage left, out of view of the audience. Klayman saw the aged Brit make his move, reaching into the front waistband of his trousers.

  Klayman narrowed his eyes and leaned forward to see better: “What’s he doing?” he wondered.

  Clarise was about to deliver her final line when she saw Bancroft out of the corner of her eye. She froze for a second, the smile sagged. But she delivered the line, smiling again, and finished with, “And now, ladies and gentlemen, one of America’s comedy treasures, Mr.—Alan—King!”

  As King strode to the microphone, Klayman looked into the audience. Vice President Maloney sat front-row center, flanked by two Secret Service agents. To her left, next to the agent on that side, were vacant seats President Nash and the first lady were to have occupied.

  King launched into his monologue and immediately had the audience laughing. Police officers behind Klayman laughed, too, and a barbed comment about the nation’s first female vice president adding Martha Stewart to the cabinet caused Klayman to chuckle, but only for a second. He watched as Bancroft, seemingly transfixed, his eyes boring holes into the front row, again reached into his waistband. This time, his hand emerged holding a handgun.

  The sight froze Klayman for a moment, enough time for Bancroft to bolt from where he stood just offstage and take a series of stutter-steps to King’s side. At first, the audience laughed at the sight of another person barging in on the comic’s act. King turned, faced Bancroft, and said, “Who the hell are—?” The sight of the weapon silenced him in mid-sentence. King backed away as Bancroft faced the house, weapon raised. The audience now saw the gun, too, and gasps, mingled with female shrieks and male voices shouting, “No!” filled the theatre.

  Klayman broke free of his inertia and rushed at Bancroft, and Johnson did the same from another angle. One of the Secret Service agents seated next to the vice president flung himself over her as Bancroft raised the weapon in two unsteady hands and squeezed off a shot. It was far off the mark, whizzing ten feet over Maloney’s head and striking the front of the balcony.

  “Sic semper tyrannis!” Bancroft shouted.

  Klayman beat Johnson by a step and tackled Bancroft, sending him facefirst into the orchestra pit, where he landed on the percussionist’s drum set, scattering its pieces in every direction, cymbals crashing, drums hitting other orchestra members.

  Panic and fear filled the theatre. Some people tried to run from it, but the aisles were clogged. Others raced to the front to better see what was happening. The Secret Service valiantly tried to extricate the VP from the mob but found it virtually impossible to move her to safety. Eventually, a corps of agents and uniformed police formed a V-shaped wedge and pushed people aside on their way to the lobby and out into the street.

  Johnson, gun drawn, had scrambled down into the pit and had pinned Bancroft to the floor, a knee in his back, his weapon pressed against the back of the actor’s neck. Klayman, with a uniformed cop, joined him, and Bancroft’s hands were cuffed behind his back. Klayman saw the gun the actor had used jutting out from beneath a snare drum, pulled a handkerchief from his pocket, and retrieved it.

  “You stupid bastard,” Johnson growled at Bancroft, who whimpered beneath the big detective’s weight, and the pain in his arms and wrists caused by having been handcuffed.

  Mac’s and Annabel’s initial reactions were like everyone else’s in the audience: shock, disbelief, then a need to take action. They stood at their seats while the chaos around them developed and kept their attention on the stage where the bizarre, unrehearsed scene had played out before their eyes. There was as much bedlam on the stage as in the house. Some huddled together and cried; others came to the stage apron to peer down into the orchestra pit, where Johnson and Klayman had pulled Bancroft to his feet and were leading him into the hands of a dozen other officers.

  “I don’t see Clarise,” Annabel told her husband, standing on tiptoe in search of her friend.

  “She’s probably backstage.”

  “No, I don’t see her. I want to find her.”

  They left the area in which they’d been seated, and threaded a path through people in the direction of the stage. The front of the theatre was relatively empty now, most audience members having headed up the aisles toward the lobby. The Smiths skirted the orchestra pit in which musicians packed their instruments while discussing what they’d just experienced, came up an aisle that paralleled a far wall, and reached doors linking the theatre to the building in which Ford’s Theatre Society’s offices were housed. Before the incident, the Secret Service and MPD had been stationed at the doors, but had abandoned their posts in the aftermath of the shooting. Annabel opened one of the doors and prepared to go through it.

  “Mac!”

  The voice belonged to Dean Mackin, Mac’s boss at GW.

  “I need to speak with you for a minute,” Mackin said.

  “I’ll go up to Clarise’s office,” Annabel told her husband, “and see if she’s there.”

  “I’ll be up in a minute,” he said.

  Annabel closed the door behind her. The turmoil in the theatre hadn’t spilled over into the small, three-storey building that was home to Ford’s Theatre Society. The short hallway in which she stood was dark, although lights from the street, many of them flashing, pierced the glass on the front of the building, creating a crazy quilt of light and shadow.

  She walked in the direction of the entrance and was confronted by the park ranger who’d gotten up from his small desk and was looking out on the activity on Tenth Street. She’d seen him a number of times previously when she’d visited Clarise at her office. Her arrival startled him.

  “What went on in there?” he asked.

  “A long story,” Annabel replied.

  “Secret Service was here until they got a call to go outside. Something about somebody trying to kill the vice president?”

  “I’m afraid so,” she said. “Do you know if Ms. Emerson is upstairs in her office?”

  “I think so,” he said, his attention more on the street than on Annabel.

  “I can go up?”

  “Sure, Ms.—”

  “Annabel Reed-Smith. I’m on the board.”

  “I know. I recognize you. Go ahead.”

  The stairs were illuminated only by ambient light coming from the street, and by lamps burning in offices off the landings. Annabel went up slowly—sirens, walkie-talkies, and shouts from the street punctuated the solitude of the staircase. She reached the first landing, the second floor, and paused, cocked her head, and listened. “Clarise?” she called. There was no response. She looked back down the stairs in search of Mac. No sign of him yet.

  She crossed the landing and ascended to the third floor, where Clarise’s office was located. She reached the top. Directly in front of her was the office. The door was wide open; every light in the office burned bright. She called Clarise’s name again. A few steps brought her to the doorway. Her gasp was involuntary and loud. Clarise was in her chair, leaning back, arms akimbo, mouth open, her head flopped to one side.

  “Oh, my God,” Annabel mouthed as she entered, came around the desk, a
nd examined her friend more closely. There was an ugly bruise on her left temple; the force of whatever caused it had broken the skin, and blood oozed from the wound. Annabel also saw blood forming in one of Clarise’s ears. She didn’t bother reaching for a pulse. She grabbed the phone and was about to dial 911 when Bernard Crowley, his girth filling the doorway, said, “Put it down, Mrs. Smith.” When Annabel didn’t immediately respond, he crossed the short distance between door and desk and ripped the phone from her hand, followed by a sharp yank that separated the cord from the wall.

  “What have you done?” Annabel said, trying to control her breathing.

  He was sweating profusely, and his round face was mottled, blotchy red. He took a step back, the phone still in his hand, and stumbled, back against the wall. His sudden loss of balance startled him, but not to the extent that he couldn’t recover quickly and block Annabel’s attempt to flee. She ran into him, a human wall. He grabbed her hair, pulled back her head, and looked down into her eyes. “I’m sorry,” he said in a voice on the verge of breaking.

  “Let me go,” Annabel demanded. She tried to drive her knee up into his groin, but before she could, he released her, pushing her back across the desk. For a dreadful moment she thought he was about to throw himself on top of her. Instead, he retreated to the doorway, breathing labored, wiping perspiration from his brow with the back of his hand.

  “I’m sorry,” he repeated.

  Annabel slid off the desk and circumvented it so that she was next to Clarise. She wasn’t sure how to deal with him. Mac would be coming soon, she hoped. She had to placate Crowley long enough for him to arrive.

  “You just don’t understand what it’s been like,” Crowley said.

  Annabel’s mind raced. She knew she was face-to-face with a possible murderer. Her conversation with Clarise at the gallery had been sobering, and frightening. According to Clarise, the outside auditors of the theatre’s books had uncovered a series of misdirected payments to a fictitious small company that never existed, except for Crowley. He’d been issuing checks to the company and cashing them, using an alias.