"No, by God!" he said suddenly. "What have I got to be afraid of? They're all afraid of me."
When he got out of the cab at the stage door he was no longer tremulous. He was again the Jake Lennox we all knew, sardonic, hostile, unyielding. He poked a dollar at the driver for the fare, and another dollar for a present. "Merry Christmas, Mac," he said, not unkindly, and walked into the theater. His feet left black prints on the sidewalk. The city too was covered with sleet.
It was 9:31-30. The show was two minutes off the air. Lennox pushed through the crowd of wives and friends that crammed the backstage corridor and reached the wings. Instantly, he halted. He smelled trouble, and the prospect recharged him with energy. He stared around with quick, guarded eyes.
The house was emptying out. The two glass control booths at the back of the orchestra were filled with gesticulating agency men who might or might not be berating Raeburn Sachs, the director, and Sol Eggleston, the network camera-director. Jake's nostrils dilated. The stage was in a turmoil. Six dancers in snow-crystal costumes dashed past him with their duck-footed gait, whispering nervously.
"Angie ... Flo ... Ruthanna!" Lennox called. They were his favorite pipe-lines to the backstage. They glanced at him with frightened eyes, looked away and scampered up the iron stairs to the dressing rooms on the balcony overlooking the stage. In a corner book-fold set representing Santa's workshop, Oliver Stacy was snarling at Kay Hill, a thin, attractive girl with acid eyes and a slack mouth.
The camera crews and stagehands were striking equipment and sets in silence. There was no chatter or laughter despite the fact that the Grabinett office had slushed them with Christmas graft and it smelled as though the graft had been sampled. Lennox turned and looked across the house to the right boxes where the musicians' platform was built, searching for his friend, Sam Cooper, the rehearsal pianist. The musicians were leaving. Sam was nowhere in sight. Lennox mustered himself for another fight. Carrying his naked weapons ready for quick murder, he strode to the star dressing room on stage, knocked once and entered, prepared for attack or defense.
The star stood in scarlet Santa costume with half a beard clinging to his lantern jaw. Mig Mason was thin, dark, young, with a good hairline and a bad nose-job. He was sobbing hysterically. His wife, Irma, in a mink coat, wearing Christmas orchids, a bad platinum dye and a good nose-job, was trying to soothe him. The producer, Mel Grabinett, blinking and jerking, was roaring at Tooky Ween, Mason's agent. Diggy Dixon, the dummy, in gnome's costume, sprawled on the dressing table alongside the door and regarded the scene with a wooden grin.
"I don't care how much you're worth," Grabinett stuttered. "I don't care how much goddam billing you handle. What the hell are you trying to do? Bury my show?"
"What are you trying to do?" Ween rumbled. "Bury my property?"
"It ain't bad enough you gouge my budget for three grand. Three Almighty Grand for that special skyscraper set so he can crawl around like a cowardy cockroach and drop the dummy and turn my show into a trappisty—"