The Girls in the High-Heeled Shoes

by Michael Kurland

  “So what did you want to see me about?”

  He looked puzzled for a few seconds, and then his face brightened. “I need to consult with you. I need your advice.”

  “My advice?” I may have heard something more unlikely, but not in recent memory. “What about?”

  “Do you remember when we came across each other in the back room of Sardi’s?” he asked, staring intently at me, as though he were asking whether I remembered a precious moment from our childhood together in the old one-room schoolhouse. “It wasn’t so long ago.”

  “When you barged in on a private party and made a pest of yourself? Yes, I remember.”

  “Yes, well, of course you would. Well, you see, it’s this way. I was at the Kit Kat with a chorine companion—”

  I stuck an arm out from under the sheet that covered me from neck to toe and patted Junior on the knee. “My gosh, Junior, you’re reasonably sober! You never could have gotten that last sentence out without stumbling if you were as soused as you usually are. You ought to expand on your triumph! Try ‘conspicuously carousing with a crinoline-clad corpulent chorine companion.’”

  “She was not!” he said indignantly.

  “Just for the alliteration,” I explained.

  I had taken him off the subject, and he spent a moment mentally stumbling around for it. He might be reasonably sober, but the habits of cognition and ratiocination were not strong in him. “Well,” he said, “this girl came into the club and tried to talk my date into going to Sardi’s. She gave her this card—your card—and said you wanted to talk to her.”

  I thought that over for a second. “Goddamn! You were out with Lydia Laurent!”

  “I was,” he said. “I was indeed.”

  “And then she was murdered!”

  “Subsequent to my leaving her,” he said. “I had nothing to do with her death. I know nothing about it. Believe me! I wouldn’t have let anyone hurt that little girl.” He shook his head. “Why under the sun would anybody want to kill such a lovely creature? The ways of man passeth understanding. Or something.”

  “What happened that evening? Why didn’t she and Viola come in to join the rest of the group?”

  “Is that the other girl’s name? Well, I suggested that we all go on to Sardi’s and have a little supper and she could speak to you. But we didn’t see you there in the front room, so we ordered food and drink and waited for you to arrive. I gave Viola five dollars to sort of thank her for her troubles. You know. Hoping she’d take the hint and go away. And so she did.”

  “What a prince,” I said.

  He nodded in recognition of his princeliness. “You were already in the back room but I didn’t know that. I didn’t even know there was a back room. I said to Lydia, I said, ‘Well, we’ve looked for him, now let’s finish up and go to my place for a nightcap.’ You understand, old man.”

  “Clearly,” I told him.

  “Well, our waiter said he thought you were in the back room, so I told Lydia to eat her steak and I’d go look. And I did.”

  “And of course you told her we were there with a table full of her friends, and she should join us. Of course you did.” I was annoyed.

  “Well, honestly I thought you had quite enough young ladies all to yourself, so I told Lydia that you were nowhere to be found, and she ate her shell steak and we went off into the night. I feel bad about it, but there it is.”

  The barber’s chair on the other side of Junior swiveled around. “And just where did you go?” Brass asked, as Victor used his little brush to remove the last of the little clipped hairs from where they might have fallen around Brass’s neck.

  Junior did a double-take worthy of Stan Laurel. “It’s the ‘Brass Tacks’ man himself,” he said. “I didn’t see you there.”

  “I wasn’t on view,” Brass said. “I was getting a haircut. Where did you and Miss Laurent go when you left Sardi’s?”

  “We could take bets,” I said.

  “Well, you’d be wrong,” Junior said, sounding insulted. “I took her to her apartment and left her at the door.”

  “She must have been very persuasive,” I said.

  “Insistent,” he agreed. “But, I thought, there’s always tomorrow.” He paused and shook his head as though clearing some bad thoughts. “But I was wrong, wasn’t I? There was no tomorrow, not for Lydia.”

  “What time did you get her home?” Brass asked.

  Junior stared at the floor thoughtfully. “I have no idea,” he said after a minute. “I’m lucky I remember what day it was. Another reason I’m going to stop drinking. I’m losing track of the passage of time.”

  Victor snapped a towel in Brass’s direction several times, as a gesture of finality, brushed his shirt and turned the chair to face the front. Brass stood and shrugged into his jacket. Victor gave the jacket a couple of cleansing passes with the brush, stood back to survey his work and nodded. “All done,” he said. “Perfecto!”

  Brass nodded. “Thank you, Victor. Stick it on my tab.” He turned to Junior Skulley. “So you left her at her door and walked away? She didn’t invite you in? No nightcap?”

  Marcello tilted my head down to do a final bit of snipping at some recalcitrant hairs at the back of my neck.

  “She would have,” Junior said defensively, “but there was someone there in the apartment.”

  My head snapped back up and I almost jumped out of the chair. If Marcello hadn’t been dextrous with the scissors, he would have stabbed me in the neck. “What?”

  “Well, you know, I was ready to come in. Just for a drink, you know. But when she opened the door, there was this man inside.”

  Brass sat back down on the barber’s chair. “Who?”

  “I don’t know. Is this important?”

  “It means that you’re no longer the last person to see Lydia Laurent alive.”

  “Well of course not,” Junior said. “Whoever killed her was the last person to see her alive.”

  “And the police will be glad to discover that it wasn’t you.”

  “The police. The police?” Junior took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Good God!” he said.

  “Perhaps we should go upstairs to continue this conversation,” Brass suggested.

  “I suppose,” Junior Skulley said. “Got any booze upstairs?”

  “I thought you were going to give up drinking,” I said.

  Junior smiled a weak smile. “Not just yet.”

  “Something can be worked out,” Brass said.

  I let Marcello remove the sheet and dust me off, and told him to put it on Brass’s tab, and we laughed about that, and he put it on my tab, which I would clear up as usual at the end of the month, and then we headed for the elevators. Brass unlocked the door to the office suite and flicked the lights on, and we went through to his office. He turned on the floor lamp by the side of the desk and waved me to the closet, which concealed his bar. I mixed a bourbon and soda for Junior, a Cognac neat for Brass, and a scotch and water for myself. Prohibition has been over for about seven hundred days, but I still get a feeling of doing something illicit and faintly wicked when I pour an alcoholic beverage into a glass. I think that the thrill of it was a large part of why people drank so much, and that the consumption of alcohol is going to go down now that it’s legal again. But I could be wrong. Brass says that the bootleggers and the speaks created a sort of countrywide ritual, and that drinking became a great secret that we all shared, like the mystical rites of a church or fraternal order that had the population of the whole country as members. But he could be wrong.

  “Now,” Brass said when we were all settled; Junior and I on the couch and Brass behind his desk, “tell me about this man.”

  “I didn’t see him,” Junior said. “I was standing outside when she opened the door and stepped in. I heard this man’s voice saying something like ‘It’s about time’ and ‘Where have you been?’ Like that. And she said, ‘My gosh, what are you doing here?’”

  “And you did
n’t just barge in to see who it was? Didn’t you feel jealous?”

  “I never feel jealous,” Junior said. “It’s a ridiculous emotion, like you have the right to control someone else’s life. I don’t want anyone controlling my life, after all.”

  “Very noble,” Brass said.

  Junior shrugged. “I don’t have to work at it,” he said. “I just don’t feel jealousy. Maybe that’s no good. Maybe it’s because I don’t really care about anybody. That’s been suggested.”

  “So you didn’t even take a peek at whoever was inside the apartment?”

  “Well, to tell you the truth I thought it was her father, someone like that. There was something in the voice—it didn’t sound like a lover; it was too bossy.”

  “So you just went away?”

  “I said ‘Bye, now,’ and turned and walked away. Just so. I don’t mess with fathers.”

  “How would you describe the man’s voice?” I asked.

  Junior thought about it. “Kind of high, and kind of sharp precise.”

  “How long had you been going out with Lydia Laurent?”

  “As a matter of fact, just that once, that’s all. Most of the chorus girls only let me go out with them once or twice. I buy them a couple of dinners, and we dance somewhere if they aren’t too tired, and I take them home. Sometimes I take them to my flat, but more often I just take them home. And the third or fourth time I ask them out they pat me on the back and say no, thanks; why don’t you ask Susie over there, or whoever. I’m sort of passed from girl to girl like a cold. They think I’m harmless. They think I’m a joke.”

  I didn’t expect such self-knowledge from Junior. “Then why do you do it?” I asked him.

  He shrugged. “Why not? I like to go out with beautiful girls. And I can afford it. And sex is overrated anyway, particularly after six or seven drinks.”

  There was a pause while we stared into our glasses and thought our private thoughts.

  “Why are you telling us about this now?” Brass asked.

  Junior looked unhappy and stared at his feet. “I’ve started seeing a girl, Monica, and I think it’s serious. I mean, we’ve only been out maybe half a dozen times, but we talk to each other about—things. Real things. I don’t know how to explain it, but this feels different. She wants me to give up drinking. And she suggested that I tell the police about this business. She thinks it’s important. I don’t want to talk to the police, they make me nervous. So I told her I’d talk to DeWitt here, because he knows about such things and he’s my friend and would tell me what to do.”

  “I’m your friend?” I may have sounded surprised.

  “Sure,” he said. “Under that, you know, that witty banter that we go back and forth with, we’re pals.”

  “And I’m Marie of Roumania,” I told him.

  “See!” he said. “Witty banter.”

  Brass took a deep breath and restrained whatever comment came to mind. “Is that it?” he asked. “Have you any other information to unburden yourself of?”

  “I have emptied myself of my burdens,” Junior told him, “and am feeling light as a feather.”

  “Well, you’d better just float over to Homicide North on Seventy-seventh between Lex and Third and ask for Inspector Raab. Tell him I sent you, and tell him your story. He will treat you very gently.”

  Junior Skulley looked doubtful. “Must I?” he asked.

  “Do you want someone else to tell them that they saw you out with Lydia Laurent on the evening she was killed before you have a chance to? You’ll spend a long time as a guest of the city explaining that one. Even if the homicide boys don’t think you did it, they’ll be afraid that some hotshot reporter will pick up on the story and suggest in print that maybe your father’s influence bought you a free ride.”

  Junior nodded dolefully. “That’s what Monica said.”

  “She’s right. I’m surprised it hasn’t happened already.”

  “All right.” He stood up. “First thing in the morning.”

  “Now,” Brass told him.

  He looked at me.

  “Now,” I told him.

  He shrugged. “I’ll get a cab.”

  * * *

  After Junior left, Brass swiveled around and stared out the window. This was usually a sign that he was hard at work, but I had no idea what he could be working on; so maybe he was just staring out the window. I waited awhile in respectful silence to see whether he was working or staring. After a couple of minutes, I cleared my throat once or twice, but Brass didn’t even tell me to shut up, which probably meant that he was working. When he is on the track of an idea, he becomes hard of hearing and unresponsive to those around him.

  I was working up to stretching and yawning and announcing that I supposed I would go home now. Going home was no problem; supposing I’d go home, however, was surprisingly difficult. Somehow Brass always made me feel that I was deserting him in his time of need, and that I was about to miss something incredibly fascinating.

  Brass turned back to the room before I had a chance to do my supposing. “What time is it?” he asked.

  I pulled out the hunter pocket watch I had inherited from my Uncle Matthias—who had been editor of the weekly paper in a small town in Ohio but, as far as I know, had never hunted a day in his life; but it was an elegant watch—and snapped it open. “Quarter past seven,” I told him.

  “Let’s go downstairs and see if we can catch Jonn Sturdevant in his office,” Brass said. “I’d like to talk to him.”

  Sturdevant was the drama critic for the New York World. He spelled his first name “Jonn,” but whether he was born that way, or had attained greatness, I know not. He had two assistants—who liked to call themselves associates—and a few other journalists might occasionally write reviews or pieces on the condition of modern drama here or elsewhere; but Sturdevant was the voice that mattered. His review alone couldn’t make a hit out of a real dog, but praise from him could keep a play afloat long enough to at least break even, and a pan could kill a new production dead in the water. And if Brooks Atkinson of the Times or Richard Watts Jr. of the Herald Tribune agreed with Sturdevant that the show was good, it could count on a guaranteed six-month run.

  He knew everything and everyone and was treated like a conquering general; that is, fawned upon in his presence and despised behind his back. But with all of this he kept his perspective, his sense of humor, and his objectivity. His opinions might not always be right, balanced, or completely fair, but they were his honest opinions. He had even been known to print a retraction or revised estimate when later events showed that he was wrong.

  He was also the Queen of Gossip about the show business, although he could use little of it in his reviews, and he was always eager to trade good stories over demitasse cups of the sweet, black Turkish coffee he brewed on a gas ring in his office.

  There was no desk in his fifth-floor office, a medium-sized aerie separating the religion editor from the fashion editor; merely a small table against the wall where he wrote out his reviews longhand before passing them to some menial to be typed out. That and piles of books, play scripts, magazines, and notebooks, and a variety of prizes, awards, and mementos scattered about like leaves on the Strand. “Hello, dear boys,” he said as we came into view around the corner that shielded his office from the elevator. “You’re scant moments too late.” He was sitting like Buddha on a small camp stool with a stack of manuscripts on his lap.

  “Too late for what?” Brass asked.

  “The immortal Yankee Doodle man himself has just skipped off down the stairs.”

  “George M. Cohan?”

  “Indeed. He is in from his place in Connecticut to discuss a new musical with Messieurs Rodgers and Hart. Now won’t that be an American classic if it comes off? I ask you.”

  We arranged ourselves in the doorway of Sturdevant’s office, since there was no place to sit unless you cleared a spot on the floor. “I’m sorry I missed him,” Brass said. “Anything I can use
in my column?”

  “Not yet, dear boy,” Sturdevant said. “It’s all tenuous and gossamer, and the Cohan doesn’t want any publicity until it’s decided. Except for the merest mention—which I’m going to do myself. The idea is”—he leaned forward conspiratorially—“a musical about Franklin D. And George is going to play the president! How’s that for a god-awful notion? Franklin Roosevelt in tap shoes!”

  “The best kind,” Brass said.

  “I said to him, George dear boy, it’s all very well, but is the New York theater audience ready for a singing, tap-dancing president? And he said to me that if Gershwin could do it, he could damn well do it, too. Which is a distinct point. So, with much trepidation, I added ‘George, you’re getting a bit long in the tooth for such strenuous activity night after night, aren’t you?’ So the immortal Cohan stripped off his top coat, hitched up his pants, and did five minutes of energetic buck and wing for me right in this hall. I tell you, the sound of tapping feet reverberated like thunder. It was thrilling! As he dropped, scarcely sweating, into his seat, I swore never to doubt his terpsichorean vitality and endurance again. And he must be nearing sixty, if he’s a day.”

  I looked around. “What seat?”

  “I brought a bentwood chair over from religion for him to sit on while we talked. Would you like one?”

  “No thanks, John,” Brass told him. “Just a couple of quick questions, if you don’t mind if I pick your brain.”

  “Mind? Not a bit, dear boy. Reciprocal brain-picking is what journalism is all about. What secrets may I lay bare for you?”

  “Tell me about Lucky Lady.”

  “The musical?” Sturdevant stared up at the ceiling, which I noticed was covered with some sort of white gauze draping. “At the Monarch Theater, opened March twelfth, which was a Tuesday. Producer: K. Jeffrey Welton, the wonder boy. An epithet he made up for himself, by the way. Directed by Kapofsky, who has a modicum of talent if he sticks to fluff. Music by Jimmy Sillit, lyrics by A.S. Lucas, book by Saddler. From an idea that was already stale when the pyramids were Pharaoh Ramses the Second’s WPA project. Boy meets girl. Girl wins Irish sweepstakes, leaves boy to collect money. Girl meets sharper who is only after the money. Everybody knows this but the girl. Boy has taken job as tap-dancing steward on ship girl is also on. Why is never said. Girl thinks she has lost all the money. Fights with sharper, who is about to throw her overboard when boy appears from behind smokestack and saves her. Sharper falls overboard. Girl says, ‘I’ve been such a fool!’ And falls into his arms. They dance. Money is recovered.”