Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. Vol. 49, No. 1 & 2, January/February 2004

She’d been there one minute, gone the next, on the day she shot her last scene for what nobody suspected at the time would be her last movie for United Artists, for anyone — Street Corner Sinners, back in the early eighties.

She was never heard from again.

After seven years, she was declared legally dead, but—

Mickey hadn’t just drawn Diana Demarest’s name out of the hat and made her next in line for the Absolutely Live in Person treatment. He’d actually been thinking about a show that paired Lemmon and Matthau, “One More Night with The Odd Couple,” but—

He’d fallen into proof Diana Demarest might still be alive.

Even dead she would provide good value, only slower, over the long haul, especially if he could score the London Palladium for two nights, but—

Alive? Diana Demarest back among the living?

That’s what had gotten the adrenaline pumping and made him hop the American to JFK and round one of this gamesmanship with Forbes Coopersmith, Esq.

Mickey was certain finding Diana Demarest could mean the biggest payday of his career.

She would be his General Tom Thumb, his Jenny Lind, “The Swedish Nightingale,” his Jumbo the Elephant — the same kind of international attraction that had helped make his great-great-great grandfather, the great, the one-and-only Phineas T., rich and famous and an icon in his own right.

It was the rich that interested Mickey most. For all the success of Absolutely Live in Person and his other shows, his ultra-expansive lifestyle routinely kept him teetering on the brink of bankruptcy. Not that he didn’t enjoy being there.

Living on the edge was his drug of choice. It helped him to keep his engine recharged, as it had his father, his grandfather, and all the other family members who had devoured challenge as soul food.

They’d managed to survive, better than survive, come out on top, live happily ever after. Most of them, anyway, so he wasn’t going to be the one who defied Barnum tradition by conforming to the Average Joe Code of Conduct: a job and a weekly paycheck, a mortgage, a ten-year-old car in desperate need of brakes, braces for the kids. Clipping discount coupons and shopping at BuyCheap U.S.A.

Truth be told, he admired the people who lived that way and sometimes wished he could be one of them. He had even tried it once or twice when he was younger, but he had failed. The failure had pushed him back on a course that dictated a million-dollar bankroll before the age of thirty-five.

He had accomplished that.

He had scored it by the age of twenty-five — nine, almost ten years ago — and he’d lost most of it by the age of twenty-six. On and off the Golden Chariot.

Damn, what a rush.

And here he was making another charge.

Mickey could feel the invisible sweat washing his scalp and the roots of his thick, curly, coal black hair, collecting in his armpits, beading in the deep trenches of his broad forehead. In show business they called it “flop sweat.”

If Forbes Coopersmith noticed, he wasn’t saying, but maybe that’s what made him rear back in his cushy executive chair, fold his legs, lock his fingers on his lap, and tell the space between them, “Truth is, you don’t have seventy-five Gs to pull me in, much less a hundred thou, isn’t that so, Mickey?”

“What’s so, counselor, is that my offer of five thousand up front is what good faith is worth to me in this situation. Any dollars after that go into development, getting a Diana Demarest Absolutely Live in Person up and running and on the road.”

“I thought not,” Coopersmith said, as if he had answered the question. He removed his wire-rimmed frames, steam cleaned the lenses with his breath, and dried them with the patterned silk handkerchief he pulled from his shapeless Armani jacket. “Why don’t you come around and test your luck next time you have a hundred thousand to go with your five thousand up front. Then, we can talk about it again, though I can’t promise it won’t be more the next time, inflation being what it is.”

“You said plus-seventy-five would make the deal today.”

Coopersmith shrugged and flashed an insincere smile.

“The clock ran out on seventy-five, Mickey.”

“So, a hundred thousand and we would have a deal? Exclusive rights to a tour and all that goes with it. A souvenir program, posters, calendars, a book, maybe even a movie, and—”

“You’re dreaming pretty large, but why not? Yes. A hundred and five out the door, but I fear it’s only you heading for the door right now.”

Coopersmith started to rise, but Mickey pushed out his palm like a traffic cop.

“Not necessarily,” Mickey said. “A hundred-five and we can shake on it?”

Coopersmith challenged him with a puzzled look, but after a second added a discreet nod.