Free The Apostrophe Thief by Barbara Paul

twenty.”
    Marian groaned. “Okay, ten percent. Do you think you can get a line on Reddick’s copy?”
    â€œI have no idea. But I can put the word out, and we’ll start with the Zingones.” He wiped his mouth with a paper napkin. “Do you want me to leave the tip?”
    Marian took care of it, and they left the restaurant to head up Seventh. “This Ernie Nordstrom,” she said as they walked, “does he have a partner? Younger, tall, wears his dark hair in a ponytail, doesn’t talk much?”
    â€œNo-o-o-o,” Augie said. “Can’t say I ever heard of one. Ernie tends to work alone.”
    â€œWhat about another younger fellow, hunk-type?”
    â€œNo. Where are you getting these descriptions?”
    â€œFriend of mine. The one time she talked to this Ernie Nordstrom, if it’s the same man, these other two guys were with him.”
    â€œHere we are,” Augie said. “Upstairs. It’s a sort of unofficial clearing house for show biz collectibles. They know everything that goes on.” He pushed a bell; after a moment something unintelligible squawked over the intercom. “Augie Silver,” he said back. The steel door buzzed open. “What’s your last name?” he asked as they climbed the stairs.
    â€œLarch.”
    The Zingones turned out to be four siblings—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and Janet. Their place of business was jammed full up to the ceiling with props, stacks of souvenir programs, posters, rack after rack of costumes, shelves filled with books, trinkets, photographs, gewgaws, memorabilia of all sorts. There was a beer tray decorated with one of the Marilyn Monroe calendar nude photos. And a Charlie McCarthy bank; the dummy’s mouth opened to receive the coin. Another oral knickknack: a Geraldo ashtray, with a widely gaping mouth as the place to put the butts. There was even an Antoinette Perry Award statuette locked away in a showcase.
    â€œWhose Tony?” Marian asked.
    One of the Zingones pronounced a name she didn’t recognize. “It’s for scene design.”
    Augie made the introductions, stressing that Marian was a writer and not a collector, and that he was acting as her agent. Marian translated that as: This is my pigeon; you want in, you’ll have to deal through me .
    â€œNot a collector.” All four Zingones immediately lost interest—not exactly dismissing her, but not eager to get acquainted, either.
    Marian made a point of looking around her with an awe that was not totally affected. “No, I’m not a collector—but I’m beginning to think I’m missing something. Look at all this great stuff! This … staff, is it?” She bent over a locked display case and read an index card. “Did James Earl Jones really carry this in King Lear ?”
    â€œHe really did,” Matthew Zingone said with a smile. He was the only one of the four who wore glasses and was thus easy to distinguish from his two brothers. “The Delacorte in Central Park. That one was used in only the first two performances—it was too heavy. They made Jones a lighter one.”
    â€œYou didn’t have to tell her that ,” Janet said with a laugh.
    â€œEveryone knows about it,” drawled either Mark or Luke; all three brothers looked so much alike they could pass for triplets. “As long as we’re on a truth kick today, Jones stopped using a staff altogether before the end of the run. But the two are remahrkably alike,” he continued in his affected drawl. “You have to scrutize them quite closely to tell them apart.”
    Scrutize ? Marian looked at a white silk muffler that the index card said may have been worn by Edward Woodward in The Equalizer. “May have been?”
    â€œIt was,” Janet declared firmly.
    â€œWe’re pretty sure it was,” Matthew said. “Production companies aren’t always careful about labeling