Free The Song Is You by Megan Abbott Page B

what I know? I don’t go straight to Sutton and Merrel’s people. Instead, I work the angles, the curves, the corners. I work the cops on how they missed Spangler’s evening jaunt. I work the Eight Ball. I work me. Hop, that is. Good luck there, Frannie Adair. Last night, you got the biggest piece of me you’ll ever get.
    He decided to call Sutton and Merrel’s manager, Tony Lamont. Hop had met him a half dozen times, had drinks on occasion. Nice guy. Low-key. Not the fly-off-the-handle type.
    “Listen, Tony, there’s a reporter sniffing around an old missing-persons case. A, uh, Jean Spangler. Trying to pull out a story.”
    “What’s it got to do with me?”
    “Nothing, and let’s keep it that way.”
    “You wanna clue me in?”
    “You know, Tony. Jean Spangler.” He knew Tony remembered. They’d made a lot of calls that week following the disappearance.
    Tony paused a second. Then, “You being overly cautious or is there a reason I should batten down some hatches?”
    “Nah, nah. Well, somehow this reporter found out Spangler was at the Eight Ball that night. If she talks to employees there, your boys could come up. You know.” She hasn’t talked to anyone there yet?”
    Hop could hear wheels turning, knocking around, charging faster in Lamont’s head.
    “I don’t think so.”
    There was a click on the other end.
    Three minutes later, the phone rang again:
    “Hop?”
    ‘Yeah.”
    “Problem solved. I renegotiated some arrangements, if you will. Our boys were never at the Eight Ball that night. Or any other night. No one can remember ever seeing them there. Or seeing anybody else, ever.”
    “It’s amazing the place stays open for business.”
    “Ain’t it? Who else we got to remind that there’s nothing to be reminded of?”
    “I’ll do some work on that.” “Hell, yeah. I can’t keep doing your job for you, Houdini. Ain’t that
    what our fat studio contract is for?” He was laughing now.
    “Just in case, where were Marv and Gene that night?”
    “They were with their wives at a show, then a late dinner at Chasen’s, and then a nightcap at my house with my wife and her sister. You can ask Freddie Condon, the maftre d’, Tino, the headwaiter who served them, Loretta, the hatcheck girl they tipped twenty-five bucks, George Thomas, their driver, who deposited them at home at two thirty a.m., at which time Jessie and Iris, their respective servants, greeted them and tucked them into their cozy little beds just about three.”
    Hop smiled. “Nice. Could you run my life, baby?”
    “Some challenges are too great, my friend.”
    After hanging up, Hop paused. How fast Tony was able to make the story. For a night almost two years ago. And how urgent he must have seen the need. Was this an alibi they had prepared.
    Knowing they might one day have to account for that night? Or was this just a ready-made excuse because occasions like this were so profuse, like lipstick on their pillows? How many lost nights in beery roadhouses with prone or pliant or made-pliant B girls? Possibly hundreds.
    He shrugged. This is my bread and butter, after all. Dropping sheets over the Talent’s monkeyshines. If they didn’t have lost nights in beery roadhouses with girls like that, I’d be out of a job. Or still writing about Susan Hayward’s tips for new brides.
    But the thought kept returning: Lamont didn’t even seem that surprised.
    There were only a few possibilities. Either these guys do stuff like this all the time, or they know a little something or a lot about what happened to Jean Spangler. Or they don’t know anything but just don’t want their bedroom high jinks in the public record. That’s really it, of course. Stop thinking so sinister, Hop. Christ.
    So if Frannie Adair is going to hit a rock-hard dead end with Sutton and Merrel, where might she have better luck? He poured himself one last cup of coffee and stared at the cornflowers on the pot. In a flash, he remembered three dozen times