Eighty-nine
Shortly after the curtain came down on Howie Johnson, I received an unexpected request from Addison Ford Babcock. Written in her own elegant hand, Addy invited me to a private meeting to “clear away any and all misunderstandings.”
I accepted. On a cold but bright afternoon, I traveled to Brooklyn Heights. This time there was no long wait amid the potted palms. No formally dressed Addy swanning down her staircase for a grand entrance. Instead, I was given a warm hug by Addy’s beautiful granddaughter.
Blair took my coat and led me up to a sun-room adjoining Addy’s private office. When Addy saw us arrive, she immediately rose from her desk to embrace me. She wore no makeup or jewelry, just a plain pair of slacks and a simple sweater.
Blair stepped out and Addy invited me to sit at the cozy table set for two with my chair facing the wall of windows. As I admired the view of the promenade, the river, and the awe-inspiring Manhattan skyline beyond, Addy poured us freshly brewed coffee from a thermal carafe.
“It’s your excellent Rwandan,” she said with a wink. “It seems I have a new weakness.”
“Thank you.”
“No, Clare. I must thank you. My Ethan is no longer facing a ruined life—or circumstances where he might have taken his own. I can’t commend you enough for what you’ve done.”
“I’m glad I was able to help.”
Addy fell silent for a moment, then said, “I understand when Ethan escaped from custody, he went to you for help. Would you share what he told you that night?”
It was an uncomfortable question, but I answered it. “Ethan believed that you and Blair set him up. That you engineered the death of Joan Gibson and pinned it on him because you were fed up with his behavior.”
Addy looked away. I thought she might be angry, but when she spoke again, I realized she was choking back tears. “I feel terrible that Ethan could think such a thing, though I understand why. You had to know it wasn’t true.”
“I do now.”
“Please believe me, Clare. I would never do anything to hurt my son.”
“Son?” I blinked. “I’m sorry, did you say—”
“Yes, Ethan is my son.”
I sat back, my mind reeling. I’d imagined many secrets that might have been revealed in Mr. Scrib’s still-unseen manuscript. This was not one of them.
“Ethan never knew, but he finally does. I told him last night. You see, my sister and her husband raised him from birth. In gratitude I bought them a beautiful home, made sure Ethan attended private school and a fine university. Even though I couldn’t acknowledge him, I wanted my son to have a good life.”
“I don’t understand. Why couldn’t you acknowledge Ethan?”
“So many reasons. I had planned to tell him eventually, then I married and kept the secret from my husband. I had a daughter—how could I tell her she had a half brother? Then came my granddaughter, and the situation became even more complicated—”
Addy paused. “You see, when I realized I was pregnant, I knew I couldn’t raise Ethan, but I chose to give birth to him because his father would never get another chance to have a child.”
“I don’t understand why—”
“I’m telling you this, Clare, because of something that happened at the very last meeting of the Writer’s Block Lounge decades ago. It’s something you need to hear. Only the core group was there that night. Bobby Briscoe, Ace Archer, Jensen Van Dyne, Peter, and Juliet—”
“So, Juliet was real?” I pressed.
“Yes, Clare, she was,” Addy admitted. “We were supposed to be having a celebration. Instead, terrible things happened.”
“You mean the death of Ace Archer?”
“That, and more…”
Addy went on to tell me that for a year leading up to that night, she’d worked with Ace Archer to develop a special project—a television pilot. The protagonist was to be an American version of James Bond, the secret agent with a license to kill. Once they sold the show, Ace planned to pitch himself as the star.
One of their fellow Writer’s Block Lounge members (Wall Streeter Peter) had a connection with a network executive in LA, which gave them an “in.” Ace and Addy decided to submit their material under a single gender-neutral pseudonym.
Their pilot script and episode outlines relied on clever assassination techniques, and Ace handed Addy the key to making their show unique, a notebook that was left to him by his late father, an old stage magician who performed under the name “The Amazing Stephano.”
“The book was filled with secrets of his trade,” Addy said, “tricks, gadgets, sleight-of-hand techniques, all of which I adapted into unique methods of assassination for the twenty-three script outlines of the proposed full season of our TV show.”
According to Addy, as the work progressed, Ace began to slack off, but she kept on writing.
“Ace was a compulsive womanizer,” she said. “He had dalliances inside the group and out. Joan Gibson was one of his conquests, only she took their tryst as something more. When Ace straightened her out one evening, she fled the group in tears.”
“You and Ace were lovers?” I guessed.
“Not even once,” Addy said. “Ace and I were creative collaborators, that’s all, though because of our late nights working together, the group thought we were more than that. I was never jealous of Ace’s women. What I resented was the time he spent with them instead of on our work.
“Anyway, with Ace off gallivanting, I began leaning on another member of the group for moral support. I cared for him, though he was secondary to my ambition. My focus was on the writing. It never wavered. Finally, I sent the finished pilot script and episode outlines to the network executive under the pseudonym that Ace and I agreed to use.
“Two months later, that pseudonym received a telegram. The network was hot to produce our pilot. Executives wanted to meet with ‘the creator’ as soon as possible. Ace and I made plans to depart for Los Angeles that night.
“I waited at the Village Blend with the group for a final toast and goodbyes. Ace was late—he’d gone to a travel bureau to pick up our tickets for the red-eye out of JFK. I couldn’t wait to leave New York behind. I even had my suitcase with me.
“It was Bobby Briscoe who warned me what was coming. Bobby was a bartender when he wasn’t peddling drugs. He even created our group’s signature drink: an Americano mixed with chocolate liqueur, Kahlúa, and a splash of vodka. He called it a Kismet—”
I tensed, remembering the frantic ranting of Jensen Van Dyne that day in our shop: “Stay away from the Kismet!”
“Go on,” I pressed. “What did Bobby say?”
“He’d overheard Ace ordering only one ticket from the travel agent. Bobby said he was disgusted by what Ace was about to do and he handed me an envelope. He said if Ace tried to ‘screw me over’ after all the work I did, I should ‘mess him up’ by putting ‘a couple of these’ in his drink.
“Inside were dozens of hits of LSD. Windowpanes, they were called, little squares of gelatin, each one laced with a megadose. I never used drugs and I didn’t have a clue what he’d handed me or what they did.
“Minutes later, Ace showed up and completely shattered my world. He informed me that he was going to Los Angeles alone. As he saw it, he’d created the show’s premise and provided his father’s magic manual as the key inspiration.
“Ace pointed out the word ‘creator’ in the telegram, saying the network people expected to meet one person, not two—and since he was going to be the star, that person should be him. He planned to start over in LA with a clean slate. No one needed to know about his bad notices in New York. He even ordered the airline ticket under our joint pseudonym. He said he would find a seasoned television writer to pen the full scripts based on my detailed outlines. He said he’d send me money to pay for my time as a ‘hired writer,’ but Hollywood always rewrites things anyway, so I shouldn’t expect much.”
“What a cruel betrayal,” I said.
“At that moment, Clare, I was broken. For a year, I poured my heart into the writing, and it didn’t matter to this man, who I thought was my friend. Ace treated me like his thrown-away lovers. I was so stupid, so caught up in chasing my dream that I failed to protect myself. I had no contract with him. My name wasn’t on any of the work, and I had no money for a plane ticket to follow him to California—”
“What did you do?”
“I didn’t do anything. I sat there in shock. It was Jensen Van Dyne who stepped in to protect his Juliet.”
“Wait, slow down. Are you saying that you were Juliet?”
“Yes, my name was Juliet, but not for much longer. Ace and Jensen got into a shouting match, and the Village Blend’s big Italian barista ordered them to take their fight to the alley. The whole group went down the back stairs to see the outcome. But I stayed behind; I didn’t care what happened. I decided even death was better than being stuck forever in that soul-sucking law office. I was devastated by Ace’s betrayal, and I hated myself for being so gullible. I decided an overdose would free me from the Circle of Hell I was suddenly cast into. I dumped the entire contents of the envelope—thirty times a normal twelve-hour dose—into a cup of Kismet, but I never got a chance to drink it.
“Jensen reappeared with blood on him. I asked him what happened…” As Addy spoke, tears filled her eyes. “Jensen said he killed Ace. He handed me the airline ticket. ‘This is yours now,’ he said. I’ll never forget that moment. There was blood on that ticket.”
Addy took a ragged breath. “That’s when Jensen reached for the cup of Kismet sitting in front of me. I stopped him. I told him I’d poisoned it, intending to take my own life.
“ ‘Good,’ Jensen replied. ‘Because I’m not going to prison.’
“He swallowed the poisoned Kismet in one gulp.”
Addy shook her head. “I begged him to go to the hospital, but he refused. He told me to go to LA and forget him, forget Ace, forget everything. Then he fled.
“That’s when Bobby Briscoe stepped in. He promised me that he would take care of Jensen and insisted I go. ‘Get out of here while you can, before the cops come,’ he said and pushed me out the door.
“So, I left,” Addy said. “I flew out of New York City using the name on the ticket and on the script. That night Juliet died and Addison Ford Babcock was born. For hours on the plane, I cried. Then I went into a kind of numb state. By the time I arrived in Los Angeles, I was changed, hardened. I decided to be strong and move forward. I legally changed my name, and I changed something else, too. Without Ace pushing to star in our show, I told the network that I wanted to do something revolutionary for the time, turn He Slays Me into—”
“She Slays Me,” I said.
“That’s right, Clare. I turned Steven Slay into Stephanie Slay, and television history was made.”
“Then you never saw what happened in that alley. Or found out who moved the body.”
“Not back then. I only knew what happened to Jensen. Death by LSD poisoning is rare; mental illness is not. Jensen has been diagnosed with hallucinogen persisting perception disorder. HPPD is a clinical term for flashbacks. Jensen suffers recurring bouts of hallucinations and seizures.”
“There’s no cure?”
“None. That’s why I’ve taken care of him all these years.”
“When did you find out?”
“Two months after I arrived in LA, with my career taking off, I discovered that I was pregnant. I would have happily handed the baby over to his father to raise, but I learned that Jensen was institutionalized—as he would be for decades.”
I blinked again. “Wait. Jensen Van Dyne is Ethan’s father? Not Peter? Not Bobby?”
“It was Jensen. Ace had lost interest in our project. He chose to play Casanova. But Jensen cared. He brought me food when I worked all night; he checked my progress every day. Jensen was devoted to his Juliet. Though my feelings were never as strong as his, I always cared about him. I was determined to protect him from harming himself.”
I considered her declaration. “Then all along you feared that Jensen’s memoir was a confession—and he would be prosecuted for it. You were trying to protect him. Not yourself.”
She nodded. “In the end, none of us, not even Joan Gibson, knew the real truth, and that’s where my confession to you today takes another turn…”
Addy handed me the photocopy of a letter addressed to Jensen Van Dyne. The return address was Sicily.
“The DA’s office said this letter was found in the back of Jensen’s notebook. Because Jensen couldn’t recall the details of what had happened in that alley or who moved Ace’s body, he wrote to the two people who were there that night—and still alive.”
I sat back, astonished. “How did he get their addresses?”
“Apparently, Joan’s assistant Kenny tracked down the information. Then Jensen wrote to them, begging them to write back with whatever they could remember. Bobby Briscoe never replied. He lives in Portland now, where he operates a successful marijuana dispensary. Clearly, he didn’t want to stir up trouble for himself. But when Jensen contacted the big Italian barista who served our group, Nero responded.”
With trepidation, I quickly read Nero’s letter…
In his bold handwriting, he confessed that he knew drug dealing was going on in the Village Blend alley. At that time, there were zero tolerance laws, and the discovery of a dead body could have resulted in the Village Blend’s closure.
As someone who’d worked for the Allegro family for years, Nero refused to allow Madame or the coffeehouse to be hurt. So, he called “a friend” in Brooklyn who owed him a favor. This unnamed friend moved Ace Archer’s body, and Nero lied to Madame to protect her.
Nero had one more shocking truth to reveal. He told Jensen that if he was writing a confession about murdering the actor, then he would be wrong. Nero witnessed their clumsy fight, which was mostly wrestling around. Then Ace grew frustrated, wanting to end it, and he swung as hard as he could. But Jensen was smaller and quicker, and he ducked the blow.
It was Ace’s own merciless momentum that sent him careering into a metal dumpster, and it was that crack to the head that killed him.
“Jensen didn’t murder Ace?” I whispered.
“He felt responsible for Ace’s death, but he didn’t kill him. Ace killed himself.”
I sat with that for a long moment, considering all the awful dominoes that fell from one actor’s tragic fall.
“What’s going to happen now?”
“The DA’s office reviewed the original autopsy, which didn’t contradict Nero’s account. And because the statute of limitations expired on the crime of moving a body, they declined to press any charges against him. The case of Ace Archer was officially closed.”
Addy refilled our coffee cups, and she thanked me again for what I’d done.
“There’ll be no more secrets now,” she said before we parted. “And in that spirit, Clare, there’s one more thing I want you to know. What happened to Ace, and my own part in the cover-up, was something I never wanted to face.”
“But the circumstances were extenuating—”
“Don’t try to excuse it. I hid the truth for all these years, even if I did it to protect Jensen. And the fact is, Ace and I were partners in the original creation of the show that launched my career. I was wrong to deny him credit. That’s why I’m fixing it now.”
“How?”
“As I told Joan’s associate Kenny earlier this morning, now that the truth is out and Jensen has been exonerated, I’m giving my approval to the reboot of She Slays Me and to the series of Stephanie Slay novels that Joan wanted to publish, but with one condition: that Ace’s real name be added to all credits as cocreator. Because he has no next of kin, I’m pledging half the profits in his name to the Actors’ Equity Foundation and Broadway Cares. Appropriate, don’t you think?”
Given the tragic end of Elmer “Ace” Archibald Stephano, it sounded right to me.
“So many secrets, so much pain,” I told Mike as we relaxed after dinner that evening.
“Everyone has reasons for keeping secrets,” Mike said. “Sometimes they’re good reasons. But most secrets won’t stand the test of time. Sooner or later the truth will out.”
As we talked, I remembered something Tucker told me in the wake of all the chaos. He said he’d seen plenty of young people come to New York with ambition, but ambition is a dream with a rocket attached. If your aims aren’t pointed in the right direction, eventually you’ll crash and burn—“and I don’t mean as a star,” he said, “but as a human being.”
I thought of Howie Johnson, now destined for a life behind bars. He’d crashed and burned right into Dante’s Inferno. And on the way he took the lives of Joan Gibson, Tony Tanaka, and Mason Dunn.
“I wasn’t able to save them,” I said. “That’s what pains me most.”
“You did what you could,” Mike replied. “That’s what good detectives do. With the help of Tucker and your baristas, you stopped a cold-blooded killer. And in the process you cleared one innocent man of murder charges and another who believed he was guilty of murder.”
“But I couldn’t save everyone.”
“None of us can. But Esther, Ethan, and Mr. Scrib are grateful for what you did. You saved them, Clare. And despite all the troubles ahead, I have faith you’ll save your Village Blend, too.”
“We’ll see,” I said.
And with that, my very long day ended.
It was finally time to get some rest.