“That’s it?” I asked.
“That’s it,” Brass agreed. “Boy meets girl. Boy loses girl. Boy gets girl. The universal plot. Love will find a way; put your money on love.”
“There are a couple of songs that are hummable,” Sturdevant said. “‘Keep Your Eyes Where They Belong’ and ‘Dance Along with Me’ are probably the best. Judith Perril does a decent job as the ingenue, although ingenues do seem to be getting older with each passing season, don’t they?”
“How’s the show doing?”
“Well, it’s hard to tell, old boy. It must be doing all right; they haven’t posted closing notices. But the management does seem to be papering the house on occasion.”
Brass nodded. Papering the house—giving out free or really cheap tickets to make sure the theater had few empty seats—had probably been going on since the days of Shakespeare. It might be done on a night an important critic was coming, or just to make sure the cast plays to a full house. The laughs are always better that way. It was also a way to build an audience in the face of bad reviews if you think word-of-mouth is going to be good. Since it effectively costs the theater nothing extra to play to a full house, many producers thought it was the cheapest, most effective advertising they could do. But if it didn’t work, pretty soon the cast would be playing to an all-paper audience; and where would the money for their salaries come from?”
“You think they’re not doing as well as they say?” Brass asked.
“Would you be shocked, dear boy? I doubt whether any production has done as well as the producer claims.”
“Have you heard anything about Billie Trask and the missing money?”
“Rumors, dear boy; rumors and gossip is all.” Sturdevant shifted the pile of scripts off his lap and onto the floor. “My ear is always to the ground, but I’ve learned not to trust what the groundlings tell me. Some of her compatriots from the chorus say she took the money for her lover, and the two of them have fled to Cuba—or was it British Guyana?—where they can presumably live like king and queen for ever and ever on two days’ box-office receipts. Some others say she took the money to get away from her lover, or just to get away from the evil, heartless big city. I have heard that she fled for some other reason entirely, and someone else took advantage of her flight to remove the money. Some say she ran off with your favorite do-gooder, Two-Headed Mary, either with or without the money. What’s your bet?”
“If I was a betting man,” Brass said, “I’d give this one a pass. None of the guesses really makes sense. And none of them explain what happened to Lydia Laurent.”
“The girl who was killed?” Sturdevant peered at Brass, his eyes glittering. “You think there’s a connection? I know they were roommates.”
“You may choose to believe in coincidence, if you like,” Brass said.
“That’s good of you, dear boy,” Sturdevant replied, “but I learned a long time ago that when anyone says ‘You’ll never believe what just happened,’ I should take him at his word.”
“Have you heard anything about Lydia Laurent?” Brass asked.
“Not a thing,” Sturdevant said. “Except that she had nary a stitch covering her, and DeWitt’s card clutched in her hand when she was found. And she’d been tied up. But then, some people like being tied up.” He looked at me. “I understand she missed her appointment with you. Do you suppose she could have been killed to prevent her talking to you in the future?”
“I’d rather not suppose anything of the sort,” I told him. “I was asking about Two-Headed Mary. I can’t see that there’s any information about her that would be worth killing for.”
“Ah, dear boy, that’s because you don’t know what it is that she knew; what tidbit of information she was going to cast upon you. Perhaps Mary is no longer with us, and Lydia Laurent knew the cause of her sudden demise. And perhaps the killer thought that she might, ah, ‘spill the beans,’ as it were.”
“That would mean that she was involved,” I said.
“Not necessarily. Perhaps she knew something that she didn’t know she knew, if you can follow that.”
“If Two-Headed Mary is dead, the killer hid the body very carefully,” I said, just to be argumentative. “Why wouldn’t he have done the same with Laurent’s body?”
Sturdevant waggled an explanatory finger. “It is an unnecessary complication to hide a body,” he said. “You should ask rather why he would have gone to the trouble with Two-Headed Mary. What is he trying to conceal?”
“That’s a very interesting thought,” Brass said. “You may have something there.”
Sturdevant beamed. “I knew reading detective stories would come in useful some day.”
15
I went home early for me; it was about nine-thirty when I took my hot potato knish and container of milk from the little cafeteria on 72nd and Broadway up to my room and settled down to continue the adventures of “Sindbad the Unconquerable.” Or perhaps, “Of Sorcery and the Sea: An Adventure of Sindbad the Sailor.” I wrote three more pages and got him up to thirteen years old, and then sat down on the edge of my bed and reread the whole thing. I was overcome with waves of doubt; which usually doesn’t happen until I reach page twenty or so, and I was only on page seven.
The plot line I had worked out in my head involved Sindbad commanding a trireme or quinquereme, or one of those remes, on a voyage of mystical discovery, with lots of fighting and mythical monsters and gods and goddesses and treasure and beautiful princesses. The sort of adventure any boy of advanced years would love to read. Then why did I spend the first chapter of the book with him as a child? Why? I think that much of the planning of a piece of fiction is done by the subconscious mind, and the conscious just fills in the nouns and the grammar. I might be writing a piece of brilliant evocative fantasy or a piece of pap for the pulps, and I had no idea which. Or I might be just leading myself further and further into a blind alley from which there was no reasonable escape.
Well, I thought, I might as well let my subconscious do what I’m paying it for and figure out what Sindbad’s next move is while I get a good night’s sleep. I loosened my tie and hung it carefully with its three mates on the closet door.
The phone rang.
I am the proud possessor of a telephone in my own room, the only private phone, I believe, in the whole building. Even Mrs. Bianchi, the landlady, uses the pay phone on the first-floor landing. Brass had me put in a phone, even paying for the installation, so he could reach me when he needed to. So, as it was after eleven o’clock of a weekday night—
It was Brass. “You awake?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Good. Take a cab and come by and pick me up.”
I replaced my tie, combed my hair, shrugged back into my jacket, put on my top coat and hat, and headed downstairs. A chill drizzle had started since I got home. I turned up the collar of my top coat, pulled my hat down firmly, and flagged a Checker cab. I directed the driver to 33 Central Park South, where Brass has his penthouse apartment. He was waiting outside when we pulled up, long black raincoat buttoned to his chin, dark gray felt hat pulled down over his eyes, looking grim.
“Where to?” I asked.
“The Royal Theater,” he said, climbing in.
The cab pulled away from the curb. “Has something happened?” I asked.
“Yes,” Brass said.
“Another murder?”
“No,” Brass said.
“Something about Sandra Lelane?”
“Yes,” Brass said.
I took a deep breath. “Are we playing twenty questions?” I asked him. “Animal, vegetable, or mineral?”
Brass scowled. “Miss Lelane got a phone call from her mother. Wait a few minutes and let her tell it.”
Well. So Sandra Lelane’s mother had resurfaced. So Two-Headed Mary wasn’t dead after all, as we had all silently feared. That was good news, but a little confusing. Where had she been? Where was she now? Why didn’t I just wait five minutes and find o
ut?
Sandra Lelane was waiting for us in front of the theater, by the large poster advertising her play. Hatless and coatless and clutching a brown scarf around her head for protection from the rain, her skirt whipping in the wind, she looked like she was posing for a Saturday Evening Post cover. The only thing missing was a small, rain-soaked dog staring up at her. The story illustrated would be about a young actress trying to decide between taking the lead in a Broadway play or going back to Ogallala to the boy who loves her.
She led us down the alley to the stage door, and we followed. “Thank you for coming,” she said. “Let’s talk in my dressing room.”
“You look tired. Have you eaten?” Brass asked. “We could go to one of the little supper clubs in the area. Maybe Pietro’s or Jimmy’s Chop House. They’re fairly quiet, and we could talk over a steak, or a bowl of soup.”
“Maybe after,” she said. “I need to know we can’t be overheard.” She took us backstage and excused herself for a moment to talk to the night doorman. I walked out to the middle of the stage. The work lights were on, and a cleaning crew was at work in the orchestra.
“So this is where the magic happens,” I said, that being the tritest thing I could think of on the spur of the moment. “One day you’re an unknown in the back of the chorus, and the next day you’re a star.”
“Don’t laugh,” Brass said. “Americans have few dreams, and that is one of their favorites.”
Lelane came back and led the way to her dressing room. “Everyone from the cast and crew has gone home,” she said, “except the wardrobe mistress and she’s on the other side of the stage, so we can talk in here.”
The star’s dressing room was actually a small two-room suite, with a bathroom about the size of an upended shoe box stuck in one corner of the inner room. Both rooms held racks of costumes, presumably all the changes that Sandra needed during the course of the show with a few extras in case of emergencies.
Sandra sat on the wooden chair in front of her makeup table. She took off the scarf and began toweling dry her hair. Brass removed his overcoat and hat, hung them on a hook by the door, and lowered himself into the easy chair that filled one corner of the room. I likewise shed my outer garments and was about to toss them on the daybed, when I saw the look of alarm on Sandra’s face and remembered: a hat on the bed or couch in a dressing room is bad, bad luck; almost as bad as saying the name of “The Scottish Play” inside a theater. So I hung them up next to Brass’s, straddled a wooden folding chair, turning it so I was facing Sandra, and awaited developments.
“Okay,” Brass said. “Tell me about it.”
Sandra peered outside just to make sure the corridor was empty, and then closed her door. “I’m scared,” she said.
“Your mother called?”
“Yes. I didn’t want to tell you any more over the phone. I don’t have my own phone in here; I hate getting calls during a show. So I used the stage manager’s phone, and it’s not very private.”
“Is that the one your mother called you on?”
“No. Her call came in on the house phone. I took it in the front office. It was during the second-act intermission. I dialed you right after curtain calls.”
“What’s the problem?” Brass asked. “Why isn’t this the best news in the world? She’s okay, isn’t she?”
“I guess so. I hope so.”
Brass leaned forward in his chair. “What do you—” He paused and shook his head. “No, I apologize. Asking questions just slows things down. Just tell the story your way and we’ll listen.”
“All right,” Sandra said. “One of the ushers came back here to tell me that my mother was on the phone in the office just as intermission began. Of course I threw on a robe and ran to the office as fast as I could.”
Brass nodded.
“I thought it might be some sort of joke, but it was Mom.”
Brass raised his hand. “One second,” he said. “You’re sure it was Mary? You’re certain you recognized her voice?”
“I am,” she said. “But I wouldn’t have had to. It was also what she said.”
“Again I apologize for interrupting,” Brass said. “Go on.”
“I’ll give you the conversation as closely as I can remember it. Then you’ll see—well, let me tell you first.”
“Good,” Brass said.
“I said, ‘Hello?’
“Mom said, ‘Is that you, Lucille?’ A good sign that it was her, even if I hadn’t recognized the voice; because nobody in the business knows my real name.”
Brass nodded again and made an encouraging sound. I stared expectantly and tried to guess what was coming, the way you will when someone is telling a story or a joke. Nothing came to mind.
“I said, ‘Mom? Are you all right?’ or something like that.
“She said, ‘Lucille, listen closely, darling, I only have a few minutes. First, I’m perfectly all right. I just have to stay in seclusion for a while longer.’
“I kind of yelled into the phone, ‘Mom, we’re so worried about you! Where have you been? Where are you?’
“‘Now listen and don’t interrupt your old mother,’ she said. ‘There’s something you have to do for me, and it’s very important. Like in the old days. Okay, honey? Okay?’
“Now that chilled me, because—well, let me tell it all first, then I’ll explain.”
“Go on,” Brass said.
“So I said, ‘Sure, Mom, whatever you want.’
“And she said, ‘I can’t get a hold of your Uncle Andrew. I’ve been trying for days and days, and I have an important message for him. Could you find him for me?’
“And I said, ‘Sure, Mom, I’ll find him. Any idea where he is?’
“And she said, ‘Now if I knew where he was, I wouldn’t have to ask you to find him, now, would I? Ask around. I can’t do it myself, or I wouldn’t bother you. But it’s very important. Very.’
“So I said, ‘Okay, Mom. I’ll find him. Where can I reach you when I do?’
“And she said, ‘Just give him a message. Tell him I’m fine, and I’ll be in touch with him soon. Tell him that you talked to me, and that he should hang on. You got that?’
“‘Sure. You’re okay, and he should hang on. Hang on to what?’
“‘Never you mind. Just tell him. He’ll know.’
“‘Okay,’ I said.
“She said, ‘I’ll call you in a couple of days, make sure you found your uncle. Thanks a lot, honey. I’m sorry I’ve worried you.’
“‘Wait!’ I said—I yelled. ‘Tell me where you are. When are you coming back?’
“‘I don’t know exactly,’ Mom said. ‘Listen, honey—take care of yourself!’ And she hung up.”
Sandra paused and looked at each of us. “That’s it?” I asked.
She nodded. “That was it. I stayed on the line hoping the operator would come on. Then I could say something like ‘Operator, I was accidentally cut off. Could you give me the number of the person I was just speaking to so I can call them back?’ But the phone went dead, and no operator came on the line.”
“A good try,” I said.
Brass stirred like a lion waking from its sleep. “So your mother didn’t tell you where she was, what she was doing, or how long she was going to be away?” he asked.
“No.”
“Who is your Uncle Andrew?” Brass asked.
“I have no idea,” she said. “As far as I am aware, I don’t have an Uncle Andrew.”
“Oh,” Brass said into the silence.
“The only Andrew I know is Andrew Ffalkis, the character actor; and Mother doesn’t know him.”
“Then what on earth was your mother talking about?”
“I have no idea—and I’m scared!”
“Maybe she has some sort of amnesia,” I suggested. “The sort of thing that makes her confused about the past. Maybe she’s at some sort of rest home where they’re taking care of her until she recovers, and she doesn’t want to alarm you.”
Sandra looked at me. “Do you believe that?”
“No,” I admitted. “But it’s possible.”
“Not likely,” Brass said. “What exactly,” he asked Sandra, “is it that’s frightening you?”
Sandra folded her hands on her lap like a little girl preparing to recite in class. “We used to have signals, Mom and I,” she said in a soft voice. “When I was a kid and we were on the con.”
“You mean like giving the office,” I said, ostentatiously adjusting the knot on my tie.
Brass observed my gesture with a faint smile. “‘A little learning is a dangerous thing,” he said.
“Like that,” Sandra agreed. “Except the office is a sort of general gesture; everyone in the grift knows it. These were little signals that Mom and I made up between us. I used to think it was a great game.”
“What sort of signals?” Brass asked.
“Well, there were the visual cues like the brush-off”—she brushed an imaginary spot off her skirt—“and the ‘you don’t know me’”—she patted the back of her right hand with her left hand. “And there were verbal cues. ‘On Monday’ was the signal for ‘go home.’ If Mom was working a mark and didn’t want me around, she’d say, ‘We’ll go to the store on Monday’ or ‘I’m going up to see your teacher on Monday’, and I’d think of some excuse to leave and go back to wherever we were staying.”
“But supposing she actually wanted to do something on Monday?” I asked.
“Then she’d say ‘Monday’ and not ‘on Monday.’ She’d leave off the ‘on.’ ‘We’re going fishing Monday,’ she’d say. The whole point of the signals is that they have to sound as natural as possible.”
“I can see that,” I said.
The Girls in the High-Heeled Shoes Page 18
