 Broadway's My Beats, combined work at the Lumber Circle, the Gaudium, the most violent, the lonesome-est mile in the world. Broadway is My Beats with Larry Thor as Detective Danny Clover. The time comes to Broadway when the August night summons its mists, its trumpets, its banners of neon, departs the avenue littered with its conquests, and the defeated, the once-brave revelers gather in the draining light of the spectaculars to compare wounds to grub in the now-silent gutters. Find only the refuse of pain, the neon-stained memories, the scraps and bones of illusions, and you tear up the embrace of your own shadow, try to move away, but you can't. You belong to it, kid, to all of it. And at headquarters, stack the violence of the night past in a neat pile on the left-hand corner of the desk. Check the drawers for a cigarette for the rose, find none. Turn out a light with no last look around. Open a door. Close it. Walk a corridor whose walls are moist now with the first thin coat of dawn. And where it turns, hear a voice. And in it a quality that a policeman hears in his sleep. A voice tuned, whittled to penetrate shock. Listen a minute. Don't worry, ladies. Walk to it. Care of everything. You'll be all right, ladies. You just come with me. What's wrong, you know? Look at this lady, Danny. She wanders in off the street, says she's looking for help. She saw the police. My Lord, please. I want to go home. Take me home, someone. Don't be frightened, will you? I hate it. It's ugly and dirty. And they laugh at a woman, wouldn't you? All I wanted was to make friends. I bought new things, paid their way. Why? I shouldn't have to pay for things. Back home, they say. Where is your home, Miss? They say that, Mrs. Price. That Elizabeth... She's a deep one, more than meets the eye. You could light marsh fires with Elizabeth. Where do they say that, Mrs. Price? In Vermont. In a village when I walked down Main Street to shop, put in provisions. I hear their whispers, so loud. You'll be all right, lady. You are now in Danny Clover's hands and for an out-of-counter, lost, unhappy... Please, please. What's the matter? My heart is not strong, still. Catch them after I get it. Sure. Quickly. Water, Gina, please. Roger, we'll go. Your first, Mrs. Price, give it to me. Don't hold on so tight. That's it. Let me help you for you. Please? Yes. Give them to me. Here. Thank you. What if you're out of Danny? We'll give it to her, Gina. Oh, sure. Sally, Mrs. Price, here. Both looks so pale. Don't look like that. There's nothing to be afraid of. They have no from these attacks. They come, go. Mrs. Price, it's... Danny, she fainted. Shall I go yell for Dr. Souski? Shall I...? What, what, what can I do, Danny? Tell me, what? Nothing, Gina, nothing. She's dead. Somehow it held the attitude of a lost woman never to be found again. Dead now. A policeman standing over the two of us holding a paper cup of water yellowed by the pale over headlight. The silence has scurried out of their secret places, surrounded us, and only time moved to the big-faced wall clock in the corridor. It held, held until it was included upon the car outside that burned the corner and set away. The festive car with festive people. Then I got up, and I carried the woman to a cold room and put her on a cold bed. Dead labeled for honesty. And leave instructions. Go home. Sleep. And return to headquarters. Return hellos. Shake a hand. Wave at somebody. Finally get to your office. And report on your desk. Elizabeth Price, honestly performed upon. Death by poisoning. Poisoned? Consider that. Then read on. Name of poison not to be pronounced. Question mark neatly written in blank opposite suicide. Another opposite homicide. And in blank labeled remarks, the key was found at Mrs. Price's effect. Stamp region hotel. Go there. And in a flush office, off of flush lobby, you get a flush greeting. Danny. Danny Clover. How are you, Danny? Hello, Shaw. What are you doing here? Me? You're kidding? You didn't hear? You ain't even been whispered to your Danny? Got to be told to you, Shaw. Your name hasn't been mentioned around headquarters. Since I walked in and threw my badge on the captain's desk. It happened that way, huh? What other way could it happen? But it had been whispered to Danny. What are you doing here, Shaw? Security service, kid. How about that? Employed by the region hotel to keep the security. House man, huh? Security service. Yeah. Did you know a woman named Elizabeth Price? Sure. Checked in a couple of days ago. What about it? Dead. Ah, she's dead. Stumbled into headquarters early this morning. Said she was lost. Had a heart attack. She took a pill out of her purse. Poison. A poison pill mixed in with other pills. Good for her. For whatever reason. Hey, that's dramatic, Danny. What do you know about her? A dramatic lady from Vermont, I think. Come down from the Rockwood Coast to go dancing. What are you talking about? Come to me the other night. Want to know where a girl could enjoy herself in the city. A girl, 45, I'd say. What would you say? Let's get off it, Shaw. So I give her a book, courtesy of the region. Things to see and do in New York City. She tells me that's not exactly what she had in mind. What she wanted. Shaw. Mrs. Price. Who is it? I'll take her call. What? I'll take it. Here. Hello? Who's this? There's the police. Lieutenant Danny Clover. I asked to speak to Mrs. Price. What's her name? Who is this? I'm her stepson. I'm Johnny Price. What's going on? Where are you calling from? Middlesex, Vermont. Look, will you answer my call? Your mother's had an accident, Johnny. Get down here right away. Accident? Get the next train, Johnny. Ask the headquarters for Danny Clover. Poor kid. I don't know. You did that real well. What else about Mrs. Price, Shaw? What else is nothing? What else is... Yeah, there's a fact I arranged an appointment with her for the hotel notary tweak you room 412, Danny. I'll get back to you, Shaw. I'll get it when I finish up. Police, Mr. Miller. Open up. Police, why? I thought you were the room service friend. Little strategy I use. Make them leave the mess kid outside the door. Saves me scrounding in my pockets for a tip. Well, I'll chew on a peppermint life-saver. It'll chow time, avoid embarrassment. Tell me about it inside, Mr. Miller. Wherever it's joyful for you, come on in. Maybe you hit the wrong room, friend. I'm just a notary here. I've got to serve you guys can get for free. Like almost anything a hotel has to offer. That makes you better. Look, friend, I'm a boy fresh out of law school. Went night studied hard at the job placement bulletins. Wand up with this, with you, all I thought was my lunch tray. Why shouldn't you disappoint me like that? Elizabeth Price. That, um, that Mrs. who asked me to call her another name? You can tell, huh, friend? She tagged you, too. She's dead. Why not? Poisoned. Took a pill for her heart. It didn't work like she thought. It's a way out. You study these things in school. That's why you'll understand- I'm only here. You'll understand why a policeman works on the possibility of murder. Lots of things about you, boys. I understand, friend. Others confuse me. Like, what has a hungry notary got to do with the dying of, uh... Oh, let's call her a guest. How come a house detective arranges appointments for a notary with a woman like Mrs. Price? Because a woman like Mrs. Price glimpses said notary loitering under a hotel palm. Trice exchange glints of the eye. Arranges a conference through a third party. Show her the house ticket. This makes it formal, a matter of pure, unadulterated business. Look, I- Let me finish the phone, huh, friend? So, Ruth's the old girl from Vermont uses that she needs some paper stamps. Notarized. So you called on her and did that for her? There were papers, friend. Trusted on a farm in Vermont. Last will and testament, et cetera, et cetera. She showed me. Only I, uh, ever got around to embossing them with my stamps. Well, stop it, Liz. That's the way she asked me to call her, Liz. Liz says to me, let's postpone the doll papers. Then she goes to a part of the room where the light is more friendly on her. Runs a hand through the new upswept hairdo. Stretches a pleat and says, any remedies for boredom, Mr. Norris? And you wrote out a prescription. I started telling her. Then she said she wanted to go someplace alone. I said, if that's what you want, go ask the cabbie at the hotel hack stand. Now, there is a doctor with ideas for whatever a- One of the drivers up front. Someone will point out the one, friend. Get in your case. They could help even you. The lady you described, the very one. What did the paper call? Will I ever forget? This cab of mine has seen sights that would chill and thrill. Characters of every shape, size, and characteristic. And this lady clicks into the type. Where did the paper- Where did- Oh. Uh, join on Greenwich Village, uh, Club Domino. She looked at type. Like I said, and me, a store-enough psychologist. I know just where to- Avoid the customers, that one. Avoid them? How? Buy and drinks for whoever. Well, all they want to do is listen to the music. Buy and drinks at such a holy moment as for a force to spree. Pays places for drink buyers. Tears to the music. Sure, we got into mission. Then the cats can laugh. They told you to come in here to Georgia's? Why? Look, friend, I explained it to you twice already. Next time, downtown. Downtown means cop. Downtown means cop. Yeah. Well, the thing was here. See, good spenders. Like the merchandise a lot aided. Dracula's Glee. She left with Billy. Billy who? Billy, Billy. Bailey sings here, ballads, you know. Where is he? He ain't showed tonight. Left with this woman you're telling me about. About one yesterday morning. How's her been back? Where does Billy live? Glad to oblige. I'll write it down for you. Billy, Billy. Come on in, man. Nothing's gonna keep you out. Sit here by the bed. You all right, Billy? You know me? Been entertained by me? I got a message for you, man. Tell everybody it's a happy time. It don't hurt hardly at all. Billy, you get used to it. It don't hurt. What are you trying to say, Billy? I'm talking about how it feels. I've been feeling it all day and can't get to a fall to tell anybody. How the man walks in, sticks a knife in you. What? I was privileged. I saw the man with a knife. Oh, who was it? Tried, man. It's a kick. It's a kick. His body twisted off the iron cot, shuddered, lay still. The cigarette he'd been holding rolled out of his fingers, gleamed briefly, cast out in the leavings of an overturned shot glass. And from the building across the street, the spinning electric sign flung its colors over Billy's face. Blue, red, green, blue again. And Billy was right. There was no hurt in him anymore. Billy was dead. You're listening to Broadway's My Beach, written by Morton Fine and David Bridgen, and starring Larry Thor as Detective Danny Clover. In September, just a few calendar spaces to the right. Broadway keeps on dancing. Nothing seasonal on Broadway. It's the street that blinks color and riot and night sounds, mottled gold from the spectaculars that drips over the pavements. Walk it, laugh at it, bloody your hands against it. Your name's written on gutter water. Nobody knows you're there. Even when there's violent death, Broadway mourns with a shrug. The cold whisper of it is the flipping of a million newspaper pages at column two, page three. Death of village singer linked with poisoning of Vermont woman named Elizabeth Price. What else can you do but shrug? If you're a policeman assigned to the case, if a boy from Vermont has just seen his stepmother in the morgue, if he has leaned against you and you've seen his tears, there are things you can do. Wait for him. Offer him silences and sometimes talk. Walk with him. Sit beside him. Mostly it's a matter of waiting for him. Glad you brought me out here to the park, Mr. Kover. Feeling better, Johnny? I guess. You want to talk? About what? Whatever you want. About you? About your stepmother? There's nothing. Okay. There's a lot. There always is. A boy grows up to be seventeen. It's a long time. There's that much to tell. We've got as long as you want. A boy grows up on a farm in Vermont. His mother dies when he's dead. During the school, being in love with your fourth grade teacher and sleigh riding, snow and crops. Watching your father marry again and die. How old were you when your father died? Last year. I was sixteen. My father was... There was never anyone like my father. I just want to be like him, that's all now. Let me show you what to say to you. It's happened before, but other people... Who cares? I'm not other people. I'm me. Sure. I guess no one thinks of seventeen-year-olds as being orphans. Orphans as being very young and not having parents. I wasn't even supposed to cry, was I? At seventeen, I'm supposed to... Cut it off, Johnny. I want Elizabeth back. Ridiculous, huh? Not being mature. How else am I going to say it? I want her back. Let's go across the street, Johnny. We can have some... Just happening to me. Orphans. Alone, nobody. Nothing. Dead. Words like that. It happened to me. What am I going to do, right? What am I supposed to do? I don't... Johnny, come back here! I want her back! Take him away from the place where he wanted his dying. And at headquarters, wait for the man into whose gentleness you've so many times given the care of the stricken. Wait for him. Watch the door open slowly, tentatively. Listen to the quiet voice, say what it has said so many times before. It'll be all right, Danny. Just don't look like that. I tell you, it'll be all right. He's a kid, Dr. Szynski. I had to tell him I had a shore to him in a marble slab. He's a strong boy, Danny. He'll walk out of here in three hours, strong, young. I gave him a sedative. Together, all these things will take away this much grief from him, a pinch. You hop in your work, Dr. Both of us, Danny, like larks. Here, take a cigarette. Thanks. What do we talk about, Danny? There's humidity to talk about. There's Corny Island on a hot day. There's, uh... What? I've been checking on Billy Bailey. He was well thought of. No one wanted him dead. No one I talked to. Uh, violence, death, sorrow. Conversation that never stops his flow between us, huh, Danny? Elizabeth Price, killed by a capsule, it was meant to... There's no way to kill Danny. To take a little box of pills that were meant to give relief from pain, put among them a few poisonous pills. Then, when they... Danny Clover speaking. And a shot, Danny. Get down here. Security service at the regional hotel's got goodies for you. Give them to me over the phone. I haven't got time, Danny. Be good to me. Get here quick. You going out, Danny? Yeah. Let's have another nice talk sometime, huh, Doctor? I'll show the Danny clasp his palm, because I turned a new leaf. It hardly shows. The way that I tell you. You heard me down here to tell me you found salvation? You can give it to me, Danny, and return for the good thing I get for you. Last time I saw you. Last time you saw me my back first stood on edge because you were still on the force. You, not me. Get to it, Shaw. It's an apology, Danny. You got to know when you meet one that we can't be friends. We can't get together on this thing about how Mrs. Price had a visitor the first night she guested at our hotel. A guy. A man carried boging shoulders right to her doorstep. Comes late, huh, Shaw? This bright day I beat it out of the night click because I wanted to make a good impression around. On you. On my friends in the force, because... Who was it? The night clerk didn't ask her name. Don't remember the face. Just the broad shoulders saying which way to Mrs. Price, please. I want to talk to him. The clerk? Don't bother your time, Danny. I went over him good. Let them hold my cold compress. So anything he's got to say, he's already told me and I tell you. A little goody, huh? About the late visit, eh? Not much, eh? We'll check up. Leave anything else out, Shaw? I knew it would register. You got a fine brain, Danny. Then you'll tell me why you got Mrs. Price's telephone call. A woman like her, Danny, like Mrs. Price, I worry about her. Alone in this big alley of ours, I worry. Honest. That's why when I saw her go out that night, I gave an order. Refer close to me. Got the only one you took for her? Yeah. For the reason I told you, Danny, honest. Danny, I thought a good thought. Did you a good deed? Getting back in the force, huh? I'll do what I can. Thanks, Shaw. Don't bother to get up. Do you know? What have you got? What I've got is, we of the police have been able to ascertain nothing as to what man visited the deceased Mrs. Price. Uh-huh. What? Nothing, I just said, uh-huh. Such interruptions are forth-scattering, Danny. We will mind this in the future, won't we? Sorry. Forgiven. The second matter, I wish to place at your disposal concerns middle sex. What about middle sex? What do you mean? Middle sex, Vermont, our department which concerns itself with checking such matters, check. No record of a phone call has been found as yet of a call being placed from middle sex, Vermont to New York City. The last known phone call from these points was made last June by Calvin Mierk with the middle sex. An issue on all points, bulletin. Person was wanted for double murder. A person I'd talked to. So issue his name, weight, height, coloring, all the details necessary, and weight. Fidget, walk down to the corner, hamburger stand for 25 cent delight with onions and coffee. Come back, stop in communications, after a while be handed a slip of paper. Fugitive spotted in Club Domino, Greenwich Village. Issue orders to stick with him. Weight. Another slip of paper. Fugitive walked across the street to Faye's place is being followed. Then at three in the morning, Faye's place closes. Fugitive leaves. Goes to a place one block down. According to the pattern, I got a squad car, went there. You back again, cop? Just getting ready to close, Tim. At the corner table, I'll sweep him out. Don't let anyone else in here. Johnny? I'm not drinking, Mr. Clover. Having a big night, huh? I would have drank if they'd have served me. No one would. We've got to talk some more, Johnny. All right. You think you can get him to give me a drink? I want to see what's in it. Johnny, I... There must be something in it. Let's get out of here, Johnny. If there isn't, why do people come here? Places like this. All those places. Why did you kill Bailey, Johnny? I followed him. She, him, drunk. I've never heard her laugh like that before. That's why you killed him? Then they stopped under a lamp post. Men laugh for a long time. In a cab game, she went away. She went away. And you followed Billy? How do people who live in places like that, like the room he lived in, drunk, knocked on the door and he let me in. He told me who I was. He laughed. He was drunk. And then you stabbed him? No. Not right away. We talked. I wanted to see what kind of a man he was. You want to hear something funny? What? I liked him. I had to fight him. I didn't want to like him. He came over and touched me on the shoulder. That's when I stabbed him. Come on, Johnny. Okay. Hi, George. Quad car's over there. Let's stand here a minute. I don't see what she wanted all this for. None of the things you did were very clever, Johnny. You know that, don't you? The poison tablets and your stepmother's medicine eventually should take one. You didn't know when. You didn't know when she was going to die. Then the fake call from Vermont. You know, I thought that was clever. The long distance call station to station, the operator never tells the other party where the call is coming from. You're put right through. You were here all the time. Your stepmother was here, weren't you? Followed her. Wherever she went, you followed her. Even went to her hotel room. Got her to go home. You understand, don't you? Your father died. You had to take care of what was his. My father would have done the same thing. Your stepmother didn't do anything except look for a relief or a loneliness. You should have known that. You were fond of your stepmother. Yes, I was. You understand that too, don't you? Get in the car, Johnny. Get in. Mr. Culver. This afternoon you saved my life when I tried to run in front of a car. Funny isn't it? Now? It bothered me before, Johnny. You think I didn't need to die? Thanks for saving me anyhow. Get in, Johnny. I like you, Mr. Culver. You like my father so much. The way you handle me. I like it. Just like my father. The way against the time of morning until the sky soaks up the pain. She's been listening to some of the best in radio drama. With Fibber McGee and Molly in Broadway is my beat. Join us again Monday evening at the same dock, 9.05 when Epi-N presents DRAGNET and Escape.