The Girls in the High-Heeled Shoes

by Michael Kurland

“Everybody is scamming somebody on Broadway,” Brass said. “That’s part of the romance that is this city; just ask Damon Runyon.”

  “Mom takes a wider view,” Sandra said. “She says that everyone in the world is trying to con you or fight you, and that what separates us from the barbarians is that we’ve mostly taken up conning instead of fighting.” She stood up. “I have to get to my matinee. Will you help me?”

  “What is it that you’d like me to do?” Brass asked.

  “I’ve been trying to call Mom’s apartment for the past two days, and I keep getting a busy signal. The operator says the phone’s off the hook. I’m worried. Come with me to Mom’s apartment after the matinee. Maybe we can find some hint about where she’s gone. I’d go by myself, but in case something, you know, has happened to her, I’d rather not be alone. And there’s no one else I can ask.”

  “I’ll go that far,” Brass agreed. “I’ll pick you up after the performance and we’ll head over. Brooklyn, you say?”

  “We can take the subway,” Sandra suggested. “I go everywhere by subway.”

  “I don’t,” Brass said. “I have a perfectly good car. We’ll use it.”

  “Whatever you say,” she agreed. “I’ll see you then.”

  She departed, leaving behind her an odor of lily of the valley and a puzzled Morgan DeWitt. “Will you explain that conversation to me?” I asked Brass, “and don’t say, ‘What conversation?’”

  Brass gazed at me mildly. “Of course,” he said. “Let’s see now: a ‘big store’ is a con game invented at the end of the last century by the Gondorf brothers. It involves setting up an establishment, appropriate to the con, that looks so real and uses so many people that the sucker—excuse me, the ‘mark’—can’t even begin to think that the whole thing is a phony put-on just for his benefit. If the gang is trying to peddle paper-that is sell phony stock certificates—then the ‘big store’ will be a stockbroker’s office, complete with ticker tapes, a tote board, ringing telephones, brokers, clerks, customers, messengers, and a security guard or two. If the con is a ‘golden wire,’ which is a sort of race-track scam, then the store will be a bookmaker’s parlor, with the races being called on a loudspeaker, racing results being written on great big blackboards, customers eagerly betting, and so on.”

  “I get the idea,” I said. “What about ‘two shoes’ and ‘off-the-wall’? I can guess ‘flim-flam.’”

  “A ‘two-shoes’ is a phony charity, probably from ‘Goody Two-Shoes.’ An ‘off-the-wall’ or ‘stand-up’ con is one that is done by one or two people ex tempore, as it were, with few props and no advance preparation. A flim-flam is a con game.”

  “That’s what I thought. My mother would sure be proud, the things I’m learning.”

  “The badger game—”

  “I know about the badger game,” I told Brass. “Man, woman, hotel room, woman’s ‘husband’ bursts in—man pays off.”

  “A classic,” Brass said.

  “Who’s the Professor?” I asked.

  Brass leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling. “The Professor is the master of the big store con,” he told me. “He’s a small, dapper man with, last time I saw him, a neat spade beard. He can look like a college professor, a diplomat, a bank president, a scientist, or whatever he wishes, and do it well enough to fool other bank presidents or diplomats or whatever. He’s been around for at least thirty years, so he must be getting old and I don’t know whether he’s still in business. Legend has it that he has taken a couple of senators, an ex-governor of Ohio, J.P. Morgan and lesser tycoons of every description, at least one king Leopold of Belgium is mentioned—and several chiefs of police.”

  “What’s his name?” I asked.

  Brass shrugged. “The police believe his birth name to be Arthur Vincent Leidenburg, but he denies it and seems rather amused when the subject is brought up. Whatever his real name is, I doubt if he has used it in decades.”

  “You met him?” I asked.

  “He was selling a friend of mine some stock,” Brass explained. “I suggested that he find another mark. He was very nice about it. He said he was just bilking my friend as a sort of finger exercise, to keep in practice and keep his troupe busy while the heavy mark came back from Saint Louis or Sioux Falls or some such place.”

  “You didn’t turn him in—have him arrested?”

  “No,” Brass said. He gave me a look that suggested that I should not follow that line of questioning any further.

  Gloria came in, a stack of books under her arm. “I just passed Sandra Lelane in the hall,” she said.

  “She wants us to help find her mother,” Brass told her.

  “Oh,” Gloria said. “Of course.” She put the books on the desk in front of Brass. “The pages are marked.” She nodded to me and went back to her office.

  I stared after her. “Isn’t she even curious?”

  “The Swiss psychologist Carl Jung has a theory about something he calls the ‘collective unconscious.’” Brass said, meditatively playing with the small ivory Chinese god he keeps on a corner of his desk. “Gloria seems to be tapped into that, or something very much like it. She regularly knows things that she has no way of knowing. Haven’t you noticed?”

  “I think she’s just too stubborn to ask questions when she doesn’t know something,” I said.

  “There’s that possibility,” Brass admitted.

  4

  Garrett was downstairs with the La Salle sedan at three. A large, ebullient man with a convoluted mind and a fondness for elaborate rhymes, bad puns, the Plantagenet dynasty, and things alcoholic, Theodore Garrett could have been a success at anything he put his mind to, but he refused to put his mind to anything more complex than the Times crossword puzzle or a few pages of doggerel verse. He worked for Brass as butler, chauffeur, bodyguard, and general factotum; a relationship based on a friendship that went back many years. Someday I would have to ask Brass how they had met. I had asked Garrett several times, each time getting a different and more fantastic answer. Once he claimed to have been sergeant-major of the relief column sent out to rescue General Gordon at Khartoum. They arrived too late to help Gordon, but Sergeant-Major Garrett personally saved a young street urchin who was about to be killed by the Mahdi’s troops. “And, would you believe, that lad grew up to be Alexander Brass.” Although the story was told with much verisimilitude, the fact that the massacre of the garrison at Khartoum took place in January 1885—I looked it up—would have put Garrett in his mid-seventies, and he looked to be no more than half that. Of course he had an explanation for that, too: “In my researches in the Himalayas I came across several strange and exotic herbs, which…”

  Garrett threw himself into each of his roles with enthusiasm and an eye for detail. Today he was wearing a well-pressed chauffeur’s uniform, well-polished black shoes, and his chauffeur’s demeanor. He saluted us, two fingers to the brim of his gray cap, as we came out the door of the New York World building, and ran around to open the door. When we were seated, he ran back to the driver’s seat, brought us smoothly into traffic, and headed down Eighth Avenue. At about 48th Street, we were slowed by the onslaught of cabs heading in to pick up the matinee theater crowd as they headed home. So it was a full fifteen minutes before we pulled up in front of the Royal Theater just as the last of the matinee audience staggered out the row of doors.

  Among the things that mark the true New Yorker, as those of us who have lived here for more than two years are called, is the way certain place-names are pronounced. Houston Street in Greenwich Village, which is not named after Sam Houston, but Custis Houston, a gentleman of color who was a Revolutionary War hero, is pronounced “How-stun.” The Royal Theater, named after Lillian Royal because her husband thought she should have a theater named after her, is pronounced “Roy-AI” with the emphasis on the “Al.”

  A four-by-six billboard to the right of the doors spread the title: FINE AND DANDY over a John Held Jr. drawing of a flapper and her beau energ
etically dancing what was certainly the Charleston. Over the title was MUSIC & LYRICS BY MAX OGDEN, under it STARRING JOHN HARTMAN & SANDRA LELANE. Below the dancing couple a blue banner said: SUCH SONGS! SUCH DANCING! THE TWENTIES ROAR AGAIN!!!! For almost two hours the show would take you back a decade to when everyone had money, or the hope of money, and the most pressing social issue was the length of the flappers’ skirts. It was doing very well.

  Garrett set the brake and turned to us in the backseat. “Queen Elizabeth,” he announced, taking his cap off and running his fingers through his thinning hair, “was twice as good as Joan of Arc.”

  Brass chuckled. “I know you’re an Anglophile, Mr. Garrett,” he said, “but that seems a bit arbitrary and extreme.”

  “Oh, I’ll grant you that Joan of Arc was a wonder, Mr. Brass,” Garrett announced, “but Queen Elizabeth”—he raised two fingers in the air—“Queen Elizabeth was a Tudor!”

  It hung there for a second. Brass leaned back in his seat and stared at Garrett, who had turned to face the front, his shoulders shaking with silent laughter. I snorted, feeling that peculiar mixture of admiration and disgust brought on by an outrageous pun. Why this should be, I do not know. Brass took a deep breath. “You are either a very troubled man, Mr. Garrett,” he said, “or the most untroubled man I’ve ever known.”

  A couple of minutes later Sandra Lelane came from the alley leading to the stage entrance. She wore a brown knit dress and a large red head scarf or shawl, tied under her chin, and she looked as unassuming and unpretentious as only a truly talented actress can. The matinee crowd had disappeared by then, but by some strange mesmeric process, as she emerged from the alley a group of fans appeared and surrounded her, waving various objects for her to autograph. Most of her fans were young and female, and they had the energy and eagerness, as well as the simple wool skirt and sweater uniform, of would-be actresses. The few men—boys—in the throng had a similar, although gender-modified, appearance of apprentice thespians. Sandra chatted with them, laughed with them, nodded sympathetically with them, and signed whatever they thrust in front of her. It was about ten minutes before she made it into the backseat of the car. I moved to the front seat to give her more room.

  “Hello, all,’ she said. “I must be back at the theater by six-thirty. Will that be a problem?”

  “No, mum,” Garrett said, turning to smile a wide smile at her. “I’ll see to it, mum, I will.” He faced front and moved the car away from the curb.

  Sandra stared at him for a moment then leaned back in her seat. “Can you find Eastern Parkway?” she asked. “The Brooklyn Botanical Gardens?”

  “Yes, mum,” Garrett said.

  Two-Headed Mary lived in an apartment building across the parkway from the Botanical Gardens, which is cheek-and-jowl with the Brooklyn Museum; a fine institution of which most New Yorkers—that is Manhattanites—are unaware. Garrett pulled up to the awning and a doorman in the full-dress uniform of a captain in the Ruritanian Guard leaped out from the building to greet us. The wind tugged at his fancy dress-coat and almost blew off his buskin or taskit or whatever those high, fancy hats are called, but he clutched at it with his left hand while he held the door open for us. We decarred and staggered through the wind into the building. A small placard on a stand right inside the entrance informed us that this was OLMSTEAD TOWERS; 2, 3 AND 4 BEDROOM APTS and that there was NO VACANCY.

  “I brought my key,” Sandra said. “I think it’s the right key. I haven’t been here in two or three years.”

  I paused to stare in wonder about me. The lobby, a combination of rich, dark wood and gleaming white tile, with little niches along the wall for plaster busts of ancient Romans, stretched off a good distance to the left and right, uncertain as to whether it belonged in an English country home or Caracalla’s baths. Four rococo-gilded chandeliers, each with a cluster of small round lightbulbs, distributed light and shadow along its length. Approaching us was a portly man with a walrus mustache who, by the coils of gold braid on his uniform, was at least a field marshal in that same Ruritanian Guard. His normal post, from which he presumably directed his troops, was behind an ornate Gothic gilt-filigreed lectern to one side of the door. A palatial lobby with attendants out of a Rudolf Friml operetta; we did not have such things in Manhattan apartment houses. “The glory that was Greece,” I muttered to Brass, “the grandeur that was Brooklyn.”

  “May I assist you, madam?” the field marshal asked. “To whom do you wish to see?”

  “Mrs. Bain, apartment seven-E” Sandra told him.

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Bain is not at home.”

  “That’s all right,” Sandra said. “I’m her daughter. I have a key.”

  A look of surprise crossed the field marshal’s face, and was immediately suppressed. “Your name, please,” he said.

  “Sandra Lelane. The super knows me. That is if Norman is still the super. Is he around?”

  The field marshal’s expression now could have been either indignation or indigestion. “Madam, is this a jest?”

  “Jest?” Sandra did her best not to look alarmed. “What do you mean?”

  He took a step back and a deep breath. “Never mind. Mr. Schreiber is somewhere about the building. If you will wait here, please.” He left in a scurry for the distant left side of the lobby where they kept one bank of elevators.

  “What do you suppose—,” I said.

  “I don’t suppose,” Brass replied.

  Sandra clutched Brass’s arm. “You don’t think something has happened to Mother and they don’t want to tell me?” she asked.

  Brass freed his arm and put it around her. I wish I’d thought of that first, but then he outranks me. “Let’s wait and see,” he said.

  About ten minutes later the field marshal reappeared with a small man in a wrinkled brown suit. “Normy!” Sandra said.

  The brown-suited man held out both hands, which Sandra took in hers and squeezed. “Miss Lelane,” he said. “It’s truly nice to see you again.”

  “Normy, what’s going on? Is my mother all right?”

  “Yes. It’s not that. Well, I don’t know, I haven’t seen Mrs. Bain in a couple of weeks. But—you see—well—”

  Sandra tightened her grip on his hands. “A couple of weeks?”

  “Well, something like that. But, I mean, she’s been away a lot recently, so we didn’t worry about it.”

  “What do you mean ‘a lot’?” Sandra demanded.

  “She told me she was staying with her sister who was sick,” Schreiber explained. “Which is why I wasn’t surprised.”

  “Surprised at what?”

  “When you came by yesterday—but it wasn’t you. Was it?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  The field marshal interrupted. “It’s my fault, Miss Lelane. This young lady came by yesterday and said she was you. She said Mrs. Bain had asked her to drop by and pick up some belongings.”

  “And you let her go up?” Sandra asked Schreiber. “Normy, really!”

  Schreiber gestured with his shoulder, his hands being occupied. “Ponce, here, Ponce the brilliant, passed her through.”

  Field Marshal Ponce lowered his head. “I’m real sorry, Miss Lelane. Mr. Schreiber wasn’t around, and I’d never met you, and she seemed right. I mean, I knew you were a glamorous Broadway star, Mr. Schreiber talks about you all the time, and this lady was certainly glamorous. And she said she had a key.”

  “Let’s go upstairs,” Brass interrupted, “and see what this glamorous star was up to.”

  Schreiber led the way to the elevator, leaving Ponce to return to his gilded lectern. The elevator operator, a short, thin elderly man with big ears, stared intently at the front of the cage while he manipulated his gilded levers. The discreet elevator man is the employed elevator man.

  “Could your mother be staying with her sister?” Brass asked Sandra.

  “She doesn’t have a sister,” Sandra said, glaring at Schreiber’s ear as the super studiously avoi
ded her gaze.

  Brass examined the outside of the door to Two-Headed Mary’s apartment carefully before he let Sandra put her key in the lock. Then she opened the door and stepped into the small entrance hall, the three of us close behind her.

  Sandra paused in the doorway and sniffed the air. “Perfume,” she said. “Cheap perfume. Eau de tart. And that comic-operetta Falstaff downstairs thought the dame was me!” She clicked on the light switch by the door, took two steps forward and stopped. “What the hell?”

  The clothes closet in the entrance hall had been emptied, and coats, hats, galoshes, and umbrellas had been strewn about the hall floor, along with a darts set, a Shirley Temple doll, and a croquet mallet. Past the entrance hall was the living room, which would require some work before it could be lived in again. Books had been pulled off the bookshelves that took up the wall to our left, cabinets had been opened and emptied onto the floor, cushions had been removed from the oversized couch along the back wall and tossed in a corner, closets had been dumped. The telephone, one of those ornate instruments called a “French phone,” was on the floor in front of its little table inside the living room door; the body sprawled to the left and the handpiece to the right. Brass picked up the phone, united its two halves, and replaced it on the table. “I take it this is not an example of your mother’s housekeeping,” he said.

  “Mom is fanatically tidy,” Sandra told him. She crossed the living room to another door and disappeared down a hallway. After a moment she reappeared in the doorway. “They’re all like this,” she said, “all the rooms. Why the hell would anyone…” She disappeared back down the hallway again.

  Schreiber stood in the living room doorway and was staring angrily down at the mess in front of him. “This is an outrage!” he said firmly. He raised his voice. “An outrage!” He bellowed into the other room, “Don’t worry, Miss Lelane, I’ll call the police. Then I’ll send a crew up to clean this mess. Don’t worry about a thing.”

  “Not just yet, please, Mr. Schreiber,” Brass said, coming over and putting a hand on Schreiber’s shoulder. “No police yet. We’ll tell you when. And please, as a favor to Miss Lelane and her mother, don’t tell anyone about this. We’ll keep it our secret for now.”