A Farewell to Legs: An Aaron Tucker Mystery - By Jeffrey Cohen Page 0,49
boom microphones hanging from what appear to be bathtub pipes. Still, like all the other times I’ve been on a television or film set, I felt perfectly at home. Now if I could just convince someone else I belonged there.
“He came on to talk about his 23rd Psalm in the Schools thing,” Suarez said. “You know, the shorthand for ‘religious schools getting government money and blowing the separation of church and state out the window.’ Gibson comes on, all smoke and mirrors, and gets himself bent out of shape when I call him on it.”
“I hear he took a swing at you.”
“Yeah. I told him he was working against family values by trying to make the schools only for kids who come from certain families, and he, um, took exception to that.”
“I’m told you got mad and threw him out, told him never to come to your studio again.” Suarez made sure his chair, and not his guest’s, had a bottle of Evian water on a small table next to it. “I hear you actually had to be held back by your producer. I hear you told Gibson you’d kill him if you saw him again.”
“That’s right.” There was a rundown sheet on the table next to the Evian water. It was stamped “preliminary,” because this was Thursday, and the show would air live Sunday morning. I guess the water was preliminary, too.
“May I see a copy of the tape?”
“I’ll make sure my assistant gets you one on the way out,” said Suarez, who never stopped smiling.
“Aren’t you concerned that a guy whom you threatened on live television turned up dead six days later?”
“Why should I be? I had no motive to kill him.”
“You were mad at him for hitting you on your own show,” I tried.
Suarez laughed. “Mr. Tucker, are you in show business?”
“I have my aspirations.”
“Who doesn’t?” He looked heavenward for a moment, deriding amateurs like me as a reflex. “Well, you need to learn one thing about the TV business,” Suarez said, taking on an air of condescension only those with disproportionate self-esteem can muster. “You don’t ever kill someone who gets you ratings like that. Geraldo got hit with a chair, and nobody remembers what the argument was about, but they remember him with the broken nose. You can’t buy publicity like that. It was the same thing with Gibson.”
“You mean. . .”
“Absolutely. It was great television.”
Chapter
Four
I took a long shower when I got back to the hotel, and then Abby and the kids came in from the hotel pool. My wife, demurely covering up with a pair of sweat pants over her bathing suit, was still enough to melt the fillings in my lower molars.
“Did you cause cardiac arrest in any of the men down there?” I asked her.
“Only one,” she said. “Luckily, there were paramedics standing by. Had you warned them I might be swimming today?”
“Yes, I felt it was my public duty.”
“Well, it’s a good thing I brought the one-piece. They revived him without even using the paddles.”
I kissed her, then got the exciting run-down on a day spent looking at a large statue of a man in a chair, then swimming indoors.
“It was spooky, Daddy,” Leah said. “I thought he was going to get up and walk toward me.”
“I know, Puss,” I said. “But he was such a nice man. He wouldn’t hurt you.”
“It would be cool, though,” my son chimed in. “Like a monster movie.”
Asperger’s Syndrome kids like Ethan—and other children on the autism spectrum—reach a level of maturity during their pre-teen and adolescent years that approximates about two-thirds of their chronological age. Ethan, at twelve, was about as mature as the average eight- or nine-year-old. So he was very much into monster movies right now, as long as they weren’t too scary. He loved the original Dracula, although he was also addicted to the Mel Brooks version, Dracula: Dead and Loving It, which has not yet achieved “classic” status. Mel is a genius, but I’ll take Young Frankenstein over Dracula any day.
Stephanie had insisted we have dinner at her house that night, so we got into our “good” clothes (the only one who looked classy was Abby) and took the Metro to a stop near her brownstone.
I had been prepared for the fact that Steph lived better than I did (I’m prepared for that fact with most people I know), but I wasn’t ready for the three-story, original brick, 1800’s-era home with Stephanie Jacobs Gibson standing in the doorway.