Star Song and Other Stories Part 15

"Well, then, maybe it's supposed to be 'Broadsword,' " one of the other wonks said. "The d.a.m.n RebuScope's screwed up before. Maybe he wants to see some sword demos from one of those Medieval-nutcake groups."

"It's 'I want to see a Broadway play,' " Angus said firmly. "I'm sure of it."

Fogerty muttered something vicious-sounding under his breath. Why the amba.s.sador had chosen to use a gadget as ridiculously hard to understand as the RebuScope for his messages to us was a mystery, but most of us had gradually developed a sort of resigned acceptance for the procedure. Fogerty, who dealt with the gadget more than anyone except Angus, roundly hated the thing, and seemed to be running systematically through his vast repertoire of multilingual curses in regards to it. "All right, fine," he said. "We'll take him to a Broadway play.

Smith, get on the horn and find out who the h.e.l.l we talk to about doing that."

I cleared my throat. "You don't need to call the White House, Mr. Fogerty," I said. "I know some people on Broadway."

"We're not interested in pretzel venders, thank you," Fogerty said tartly, gesturing at Smith. "We need a producer or theater manager or-"

"I know all of them."

Fogerty stopped, his gesturing hand still poised in midair, and turned his head to look at me. "You what?" he asked.

"I know all of them," I repeated. "Up until a year ago I was working with one of the top set designers on Broadway."

It was, and I'll admit it, an immensely soul-satisfying moment. The whole bunch of them just stood there, professionals and wonks alike, staring at me like something that had just crawled out of the primordial ooze and asked whetherthe Metro Blue line stopped here. All except Angus, that is, who had a faint but knowing smile on his face. Obviously, he was the only one in the group who'd bothered to read the FBI's rundown on me after I was booted aboard.

Fogerty recovered first, in typical Fogerty fashion. "Well, don't just stand there, Lebowitz," he said, waving Smith forward with his phone. "Let's get to it."

The first step, I decided, would be to figure out which Broadway offering would be the best one to take the amba.s.sador to see. I put in a call to Tony Capello, theater critic, and we spent fifteen minutes discussing the current crop of plays and musicals in town.

Actually, the first twelve of those minutes were spent talking over the old times when I was a lowly carpenter and Tony was chief gopher for a succession of minor ch.o.r.eographers. I would have cut off the reminiscences earlier, except that the delay so obviously irritated Fogerty. When I finally got Tony down to business, his advice was instant and unequivocal: "And Whirred When It Stood Still," currently in previews at the St. James.

"So what's the play about?" Fogerty asked when I relayed the recommendation.

"According to Tony, it's pleasantly harmless froth," I a.s.sured him. "Nothing that'll confuse the amba.s.sador or put human beings in a bad light. At least, not in any worse light than plays typically do."

"a.s.suming he understands it at all," Fogerty growled, gesturing to his overworked secretary. "Lee, better have someone vet it anyway, just to be on the safe side. All right, what about this St. James Theater? It's on Broadway?"

"Well, actually, it's on West 44th Street," I said. "But it's-"

"West 44th Street?" Fogerty echoed. "He wants a Broadway play."

"It is a Broadway play," I told him stiffly. "The St. James is in the theater district, half a block off Broadway itself. It counts. Trust me."

He glowered, but apparently decided he'd shown enough ignorance for one conversation. "Fine," he grunted. "Let's just hope it counts with the amba.s.sador."

The manager at the St. James, Jerry Zachs, was less than enthusiastic about the whole thing. "You must be joking," he said, looking back and forth between Fogerty and me. "Bring that behemoth into my theater? Who's going to pay for the fifty seats it's going to cost me?"

"Oh, do try not to go off the deep end here, Mr. Zachs," Fogerty said, his voice hovering between imperious and condescending. "We won't have to remove more than nine seats at the most to fit him in."

"Sure-to fit him in," Jerry shot back. "What about these seats in front of him you want left empty?"

"That's only another twelve seats," Fogerty told him. "Four rows by three seats-"

"I can multiply, thank you," Jerry growled. "I can also multiply by ticket prices and see I'm already out about a grand and a half. And what about all the seats right behind him where no one's going to be able to see? Huh?"

Fogerty shrugged. "Fine. We'll put his entourage there."

"At full price?"Fogerty lifted his eyebrows. "Don't be silly. They won't be able to see the show from there. How do you expect to charge full price?"

Jerry's complexion was edging into a soft pink, which from my experience with him was a dangerous sign. "I'm sure we can work something out," I jumped in before he could say anything. Fogerty had a virtually unlimited budget to work with, but he could go all chintzy at the oddest moments. "What's important is that the amba.s.sador be treated like the VIP he is."

"That's right," Fogerty said, apparently believing I was on his side here.

"The Fuzhties have a great deal to offer humanity, Mr. Zachs, and the more favors he owes us, the sooner he'll start coming across with some of this magic technology of theirs. This is just one of those favors."

" 'The play's the thing,' " I said in my best soliloquy voice, " 'Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king.' "

Fogerty frowned at me. "What?"

"Hamlet," I said.

"Shakespeare," Jerry added acidly. "He's done some plays and poems and stuff."

"Thank you," Fogerty said, matching Jerry's acid pH for pH. "I have heard of the man. The point is that I can requisition your theater, no questions asked, like it or lump it. So you might as well like it. Anyway, you should be honored to have their first amba.s.sador in your theater."

"Besides, think of the great publicity," I reminded him. "You'll be able to use photos of the amba.s.sador in all your future ads and-"

"Wait a minute," Fogerty cut me off, his face suddenly stricken. "He can't use the amba.s.sador as a cheap come-on. This is a serious diplomatic mission."

"Oh, I don't know," Jerry mused, picking up the cue and running with it.

"When the King of Sweden came here, he let us use his name in some of our promotionals. I don't see how this is any different."

"Of course it's different," Fogerty snapped. "And if you even think about trying to take advantage of him that way-"

"Taking advantage?" Jerry asked mildly. "You mean like a six-hundred pound government gorilla trying to gouge a poor innocent theater manager on ticket prices?"

Fogerty glared daggers at both of us. But he didn't have time for a fight, and we all knew it. "Fine," he bit out. "Full ticket prices for the whole entourage."

"And full payment for the crew handling the alterations?" Jerry asked.

"We'll be doing it all ourselves," Fogerty gritted. "My people are already downstairs, waiting for the green light."

"Well, then, I guess I'd better give it to them," Jerry said, reaching for his phone. "A pleasure doing business with you, Mr. Fogerty."

The alterations took only a few hours, about the same time it took to get the amba.s.sador and the rest of the entourage up from Washington and settled into a hotel a couple of blocks from the St. James. We headed out that evening for the theater in the amba.s.sador's special car, which would have been a majorchallenge to drive in midtown Manhattan if the police hadn't cordoned off the area for us.

I'm sure that stunt made us lots of friends among the local drivers. Probably just as well we couldn't hear what the cabbies were saying.

The theater goers at the St. James, to my mild surprise, seemed to take the whole thing pretty much in stride. There'd been some ha.s.sles at Jerry's end, I.

knew, sorting out the people who'd already bought the seats Fogerty had appropriated, but they'd all been moved or paid off or otherwise placated, and by the time we walked in with the amba.s.sador everyone was feeling cordial enough to give him a round of polite applause. I presume he understood-there'd certainly been enough applause on the TV programs the Fuzhties had pilfered-but if he was either pleased or annoyed he didn't show it. Fogerty showed him to his chair-which had indeed required the removal of a square block of nine seats-and the rest of us filled in behind him. The house lights dimmed, the curtain went up, and the play started. In the reflected light from the stage I saw Fogerty lean back in his seat and cross his legs, the tired but smug image of a man who has faced yet another political brush fire and successfully stomped it out.

He got to be smug for exactly three minutes.

I had given up trying to see anything around the amba.s.sador's bulk when, without warning, he heaved himself to his feet. Someone behind me gasped-the Trinidadian representative, I think-and I remember having the fleeting, irrational thought that the amba.s.sador had realized I couldn't see and was courteously getting out of my way. An instant after that I realized how absurd that thought was, and my second thought was that he must have to go to the bathroom or stretch his legs or something.

He didn't. With a roar that shook the spotlight battens, he climbed up on the empty seat backs in front of him and made a ponderous beeline for the stage.

The actors froze into statues, staring wide-eyed at this pinfeathered Goliath bearing down on them in slow motion. Making his way across the seats and the covered orchestra pit, he made a huge bound up onto the stage, landing with a thud that must have shaken the whole block. He turned around, filled his lungs, and bellowed.

You've never seen a theater clear out so fast. The orchestra and mezzanine both-it just emptied out like someone was giving away free beer outside. It was a miracle that no one was killed or seriously injured; even more of a miracle, in my book, that no one filed any lawsuits afterward for bruised shins or torn clothing. I guess the thought of facing a huge unpredictable alien in court made quiet discretion the smart move on everyone's part.

But at the time, I wasn't convinced any of us would be getting out of the St.

James alive. With the amba.s.sador's second bellow even the actors lost it, scurrying for the wings like they'd spotted a critic with an Uzi. I was cowering in my seat, trying desperately hard to be invisible, unwilling to move until I.

had a straight shot at an exit that wasn't already jammed with people. The amba.s.sador, still bellowing, had begun pacing back and forth across the now empty stage when Angus grabbed my arm. "Look!" he shouted over the hysterical bedlam.

"I see him!" I shouted back, momentarily hating Angus for drawing unnecessary attention our direction. "Shut up before he-"

"No!" Angus snapped, jabbing a finger at the RebuScope monitor he was carrying.

"He's not just roaring at nothing-he's talking to us!"

I looked at the RebuScope... and d.a.m.ned if he wasn't right.

"Fine," I shouted. "So what does it mean?"

"I don't know," Angus said. More pictures were starting to scroll along the screen; punching for a hard copy, he tore off the first part of the message and thrust it into my hands. "Here-see what you can figure out."

I shrank back into my seat, half my attention on the paper, the other half on the amba.s.sador still pacing and roaring. Th-hiss book hiss awl th-hat eye knee-d- None of this made any sense. It really didn't. In the five weeks I'd been with the amba.s.sador he'd never so much as raised his voice.

Howl two howl two drink- And anyway, what in the world could be important enough for him to interrupt a play for? A play he himself had asked to attend?

Drink? No, not drink. Straw? Howl two straw? No. Ah-suck. Howl two suck-see-d...

And then, with a sudden horrible jolt, I had it. I took another look at the rebus-glanced at the new pictures that Angus was getting- "I've got it!" I yelled, grabbing Angus's arm and waving my paper in front of him. " 'This book is all that I need/ How to, How to Succeed.' "

He blinked at me. "What?"

"It's part of a song," I told him. "The opening song from the cla.s.sic musical 'How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.' "

Angus looked up at the amba.s.sador, his mouth falling slightly open. "You mean-?"

"You got it," I said. "The amba.s.sador's not talking to us. He's singing."

It took till after midnight for Fogerty to get the preliminary damage control finished with the St. James management. An hour after that, he held a council of war in the hotel.

A very small council of war, consisting of Fogerty, Angus, and me. I'm still not exactly sure why I'd been included, unless that as our resident Broadway expert I was the one Fogerty was planning to pin the fiasco on.

Not that he wasn't willing to apportion everyone a share of the blame if he could manage it. Fogerty was generous that way. "All right, MacLeod, let's hear it," he said icily as he closed the door behind us. "What the b.l.o.o.d.y-red h.e.l.l happened?"

"The same thing that's happened before, sir," Angus said calmly, letting Fogerty's glare bounce right off him. "The RebuScope made a mistake."

"Really," Fogerty said, turning the glare up another couple of notches. "The RebuScope. Convenient enough excuse."

"I don't think 'convenient' is exactly the word I would have chosen," Angus said. "But it is what happened."

He pressed keys on the RebuScope monitor, pulling up a copy of the amba.s.sador's original Broadway request. "A very simple error, actually, compared with some we've seen. You see this letter C? It should have been a B."

A frown momentarily softened Fogerty's glare by a couple of horsepower.

"What?"

"The message wasn't 'I want to see a Broadway play,' " Angus amplified. "It was 'I want to be a Broadway play.' "

For a long minute Fogerty just stood there, staring down at the RebuScope, a look of disbelief on his face. "But that's absurd," he said when he finally found his voice again. " 'I want to be in a-?' No. It's ridiculous."

"Nevertheless, sir, that's what he wants," Angus said. "The question now is how you're going to get it for him."

Fogerty tried the glare again, but his heart was clearly no longer in it.

"Me?"

"You're the head of this operation," Angus reminded him. "You're the one who talks to the White House, authorizes the expenditures, and accepts the official plaudits. We await your instructions. Sir."

For another minute Fogerty was silent, gazing at and through Angus. Then, with obvious reluctance, he turned to look at me. "I suppose you have the contacts for this one, too?"

With anyone else who treated people the way Fogerty did, I'd have been tempted to demand a little groveling before I gave in. But, down deep, I suspected that being polite to underlings was as close as Fogerty ever got to a grovel. "I know a few people," I said. "There may be a way to pull it off."

"Seems to me there are at least two stage versions of 'Beauty and the Beast'

out there, aren't there?" Angus suggested. "He'd be a natural."

"Wouldn't work," I said, shaking my head. "Too many lines. Too much real acting."

"How about a non-speaking role, then?" Fogerty suggested. "Maybe a walk-on part?"

I snorted. "Would you travel a three hundred light-years for a walk-on part?"

A muscle in his jaw twitched. "No, I suppose not," he conceded. "I suppose that also lets out any chance of using him as part of the set decoration."

"It does," I agreed. "Which leaves only one approach, at least only one I can think of. We're going to have to have a play written especially for him."

Fogerty waved a hand. "Of course," he said, as if it had been obvious all along.

"Well. The phone's over there-better get busy."

"What, you mean now?" I asked, looking at my watch. "It's after one in the morning."