I needed a drink. I needed a lot of life insurance. I needed a vacation. I needed a home in the country. What I had was a coat, a hat and a gun.
—Raymond Chandler, Farewell, My Lovely, 1940
Broadway
New York City
November 1947
“I TOLD YOU before. The name’s Jack Shepard. Miss Syble Zane is expecting me.”
The balding man at the stage door chewed on his worn stogie while he gave Jack Shepard the fisheye. “A lotta joes say that about Miss Zane.”
“I’m not a lotta joes. I’m Jack. Jack Shepard, private detective.” Jack flashed his license.
With sluggish deliberation, the doorman at the Martin Beck Theater stared down his nose at a handwritten list on the wall, grunting when he came to Shepard’s name. He slid the metal door wider and jerked his thumb over his shoulder.
“You can wait for Miss Zane in front of her dressing room. Take the stairs. When you hit bottom, make a left. You can’t miss it. Her name is on the door.”
“Okey-doke, Saint Peter. And where is Miss Zane now?”
“Still onstage.” The man rolled the door closed and threw the bolt. “She won’t be long. They just brought out the snakes.”
“Snakes?” Jack blinked. “Real snakes?”
The doorman nodded and suddenly Jack was sorry he’d missed the show’s climax. He wasn’t an admirer of the Bard—frankly, he needed a translator for all the thys and thous and forsooth what-ho yonders. But he was familiar enough with the story of Antony and Cleopatra to follow the plot.
Only Jack reminded himself that he wasn’t here for amusement. He was here on business—good-paying business, the private eye hoped. For tonight’s meeting he sported the navy suit he reserved for court dates and had dug out his favorite tie—a broad swath of silk as red as spilled blood and dotted with little blue clocks. His fedora was tucked at a jaunty angle, and the fresh shave of his rugged face showed off his square-john jaw, though it failed to hide the dagger-shaped scar on his anvil chin.
In truth, Jack was feeling pretty chipper for a guy who hadn’t earned two nickels in as many weeks. Until he bumped into this mug.
He always got a kick out of show business jobs. The pay was good, they were easy, they didn’t involve fists or knives, and no one ever flashed a gun. Plus, he always met a few interesting characters—like the ventriloquist who accused his partner of talking out of the wrong side of his mouth. He’d claimed the man stole his prop dummy along with his act. Jack recovered the dummy okay, but he couldn’t do much about the act. In the end, he convinced the two men to reconcile. They got a new comedy routine and nowadays seemed as happy together as Martin and Lewis at the 500 Club.
Then there was the case of the magician who vanished—a neat alimony dodge, or so he thought. Nor did the seasoned PI forget the embezzling escape artist who didn’t manage to escape an extended stay at Sing Sing, courtesy of Jack’s bloodhound act.
As he reached the stairs, thunderous applause erupted in the theater with the players taking their final bows. When he hit bottom, Jack hung a left, entering a corridor that seemed longer than a Tom Mix serial.
Finally, he located Miss Zane’s dressing room, nestled between doors marked anthony randall and charlton heston.
Jack was about to knock when a whiff of perfume teased his nostrils, and a sultry, breathless voice blew warm air into his ear.
“The door is unlocked, Mr. Shepard. Go on, open it.”
He felt the heat of her presence behind him, and when he turned, Jack couldn’t help but blink in surprise. The striking brunette standing close wore full Egyptian regalia, from her sandaled feet to her scarab necklace.
“I wasn’t aware you were the star, Miss Zane.”
“Don’t be droll, Mr. Shepard. My part is small. If I were a man I’d be carrying a spear.”
“Yet your name is on a door?”
“Making the right friends comes with fringe benefits.”
As they entered the cramped dressing room, Syble Zane yanked the dark wig from her head and tossed it onto the makeup table.
“For this production, the benefits are pathetic,” she said as she unpinned her blond mane and shook it out with irritation. “In my sad little role, I deliver the asp to the Queen of the Nile. It’s a real snake, but not poisonous, unfortunately.”
“A real snake. Imagine that.”
“You see, Mr. Shepard, our director insists on realism, but our poor, pathetic Cleopatra is terrified of snakes.”
The woman curled her red lips into a cruel grin. “Thrusting a live reptile at our star six nights a week is the only jolly I get from this lousy job.”
“I’m sure you didn’t ask me here to complain about your gig,” Jack replied.
Syble Zane turned away from her reflection in the lighted mirror. Her gaze fixed on Jack, hitting the detective like a loaded .38.
“I want you to find someone, Mr. Shepard. He’s a truly horrible man. A thief, a liar, a two-timer, and a criminal.”
“I hate to let you in on this, Miss Zane, but the cops iced Dillinger thirteen years ago.”
“Very funny,” she replied, like it wasn’t. “I want you to find Harry Amsterdam.”
“The Broadway producer? What did Amsterdam do to you that he hasn’t done to any other wide-eyed ingenue in this burg?”
“He stole something that belonged to me, and he gave it to somebody else.”
Jack sniffed. “Like I said—”
“Oh, I know what you’re thinking, Mr. Shepard, but it’s not a role in a play or a Hollywood picture. It’s more important than any part.”
“He stole money?”
Her head moved slowly from side to side as if her eyes were following a hypnotist’s watch. When Syble Zane spoke again, her voice was cold as a slab in the city morgue.
“Tears, Mr. Shepard. That man stole my tears.”