Then there was Jenny Donovan, better known as Mr. and Mrs. Ballroom, a half-and-half act where she’d dance looking like a lady on one side and a gentleman on the other. Most importantly, she was a tall, skinny thing like Rose. If she doubled her half beard, she’d make a great bearded lady for the night. Then Rose could borrow her costume midway through the party and walk out unnoticed, saving me from finding (or buying) Rose her own costume.
And a gig that paid this much, and had the added bonus of bringing him back to his beloveds, would lure Daddo back to New York, no matter what tour enticed him. There would be no performances by Creak and Eek that night, though. Daddo would be playing a different part: getaway driver, paid to get Rose wherever she wanted to escape.
But tracking down all of these acts would take some work. I needed the help of Daddo’s agent, Harry Brownstein-now-Beecham. I remembered Daddo saying his office was on Twenty-Eighth Street, and with Lady Florenzia’s fervent encouragement (and Ma’s reluctant permission), I left the rags and mirrors behind.
I was headed to Tin Pan Alley.
Chapter
20
The wind was wailing mercilessly off the Hudson, and when I turned off down West Twenty-Eighth Street, I almost lost my footing, along with the tam Ma’d knitted. After a few futile grabs, I let it fly and instead pulled my scarf over my head.
The last time I’d been on this street, it had been a summer day, and I was holding Daddo’s hand. I’d understood immediately why they called it Tin Pan Alley. With the windows all open, the clanging of piano music bounced out of dozens of buildings with dozens of piano rooms hosting dozens of singers and songwriters, all competing to sell the Next Big Hit.
Today the street seemed muffled. Maybe it was the windows shut up against the wind and cold, but as much as I strained my ears, I could only hear a soft, blanketed melody, accompanied by what sounded like a lone saxophone.
I had trouble finding Daddo’s agent’s office, too. Not only had he changed his name to Beecham, he’d taken on new partners and repainted the door to read:
BEECHAM, BEAUCHAMP & BROUGHAM:
VOICE TALENT OF DISTINCTION
The name may have changed, I thought as I climbed the stairs past ringing phones and practice rooms, but it certainly still fit. Everyone knew Daddo’s voice could fill a house up to the rafters. No wonder Harry loved him (even if he didn’t always pay him on time).
Last time I’d visited with Daddo, it was just us and a ventriloquist act in the waiting room, plus an old lady receptionist, asleep at her typewriter. But this time I could barely edge past the door. The room was packed with showbiz hopefuls loosening their ties, making gargling sounds in their throats, and reading from papers they rattled in front of them.
“Blancodent! A whiter smile by a mile!”
“Blancodent! A whiter smile by a mile!”
“Blancodent! A whiter smile by a mile!”
They weren’t as loud as Daddo, but their voices reminded me of Ma’s oldest kid gloves, worn so soft they felt like butter in your hand.
“Yes?” A lady in a snappy suit and a very short bob looked at me quizzically. “Can I help you? The agency doesn’t represent kids, honey.”
I felt out of place in a way I never had alongside tap dancers and ventriloquists. So I yanked the scarf off my head. “No,” I said loudly. Too loudly. “I’m here for my father.”
“Oh!” she shouted before I could explain further. “Go right in, honey, he’s waiting for you.” Her hands flapped me toward the back, and she hollered over my head: “Harry, your daughter’s here!”
“Wait, no—” I started to turn back, but at that moment, one of the hopefuls burst out of Mr. Beecham’s office, flinging his pages to the floor and spitting on them.
“Find another agent then, Shakespeare!” Mr. Beecham called after him, then shouted, “Next up!”
I peeked my head in.
“Wait a second, who’re you?”
“Your daughter!” called in the receptionist, who I was beginning to think was not as sharp as her suit would make you believe.
“My daughter? Whaddaya talking about?” he shouted back over my head. “I’m meeting my daughter uptown—” He started to shut the door in my face.
“Wait!” I pushed the door open again. “I’m not your daughter, Mr. Beecham.”
“Yeah, no kidding.” The door stayed half open, half closed while he looked me up and down. “So what do you want? I’m busy here. I got six more guys to see before supper.”
“I’m Martha O’Doyle, Daddo’s—I mean, my pop is O’Doyle’s O-mazing Spook Show?”
Mr. Beecham knit his fleshy brow like he was doing long division. Then the wrinkles cleared. “Oh, sure, the skeleton act, right? What about it?”
“Well, I know he’s doing an out-of-town run, but I need to track him down. You see, there’s a very big booking here in the city next month—”
“And what do you want me to do about it?”
I took a deep breath. Daddo was right; agents wanted to take their five percent and give you a nickel to call in the booking yourself. “I was hoping you could tell me what theater he’s booked in this week so I could get a telegram to him. And as long as we’re talking, I’d like to discuss a very big opportunity coming up for some of your other acts—”
“Wait, you talking about Billy O’Doyle? He’s not on the road. I just saw him an hour ago at The Crown Jewel.”
“What, here in New York?” I shook my head, the very motion trying to shake loose my understanding. “No, no, he’s down South.”
“Trust me, kid, I just saw him down on Twenty-Sixth Street.”
“What’s he doing here?”
He shrugged and started closing the door. “How should I know? I haven’t represented vaudeville in years. It’s all radio now. Speaking of which—” Mr. Brownstein-now-Beecham squeezed his melon of a head out the door. “Next!” And slammed the door behind him.
—
The Crown Jewel. It wasn’t a theater Daddo’d ever mentioned. As I made my way down the stairs, I tried to wrap my mind around where to begin? That Daddo was around the corner? That he was playing a hall in the city, something he’d been trying to pull off for years? And the big one—that he was here, and we hadn’t heard a word?
Maybe he was just stopping off between trains, I thought between the pounding of my heart and the pumping of my legs as I raced those two blocks down Broadway. Maybe he was taking his act straight to the theater manager, now that—another shock—he didn’t have his agent anymore.
My eyes scanned West Twenty-Sixth Street up and down, but there were no signs, no names in lights, only drab tenement and warehouse buildings, their rickety fire escapes the only marquee. I started hunting door to door—maybe the theater fronted Twenty-Seventh, with only the stage door on Twenty-Sixth—until I found what I was looking for. An unassuming wooden door, down a few steps, with a folding metal grate pulled across it, and a small hand-lettered sign next to the bell: THE CROWN JEWEL.
I rang, and almost immediately a large man opened the first door only as wide as his face, leaving the grate as a screen between us. He considered me for exactly two seconds, then muttered, “No kids,” and began to shut the door.
“Wait!” I banged on the grate. “Wait! I’m looking for Dad—for Mr. O’Doyle. The skeleton act. It’s—it’s urgent.”
The man stepped back. “We got an O’Doyle here?” What dim light existed behind him revealed a sawdust floor and a room of nondescript wooden tables and chairs. The stale smell of beer wafted through the grate. The scene was as familiar to me as a family picture.
A man stood wiping down a bar that ran along the length of the back wall. He stopped just long enough to gesture at one table with his elbow. “There he is.”
A lump of clothing covered the table, a skeleton slumped in sympathy on eithe
r side.
Daddo.
Chapter
21
I knew from experience that it was best to get Daddo up on his feet and walking in the cold.
Ma used to say—back before she stopped saying anything—that Daddo spent too much time at the saloons. But Ma never understood theater folk, see? She didn’t see the bits and gags that Daddo riffed at the bar with his buddies, or the way the men bought Daddo pints when he sang along with the player piano, or the way they all called his name when he walked in the door. In the bar, he was Daddo to everyone.
But yes, sometimes he lost count, and he needed me to get him going again. So we marched up and down Broadway, him stumbling beside me in just a suit jacket and a banged-up top hat. I had Creak and Eek each slung over my shoulders by an arm, dragging their bony feet along the sidewalk.
Even for New York, we got some strange looks.
Still, while I’d found Daddo in plenty of speakeasies, I’d never found him in the wrong state, and I tamped down the furious confusion just under my chest, breathing slowly to keep it from flinging words out of my mouth. I let him get in seven blocks of sobering arctic blasts before saying a word.
“Daddo.”
He jumped as if he’d forgotten I was there. “Oh, my sweet Marty.” He threw an arm around me—which is to say, me and Eek. “How good you are to come and see your pop.”
“It’s a sheer miracle I found you,” I said between gritted teeth. “I thought you were in Alabama, after all.”
“Alabama, yes indeed. ‘Chattanooga, Tuscaloosa, climb on board this train’s caboose-a,’” he began to sing. “I just got back, my girl. Never seen so many grits in my life.”
“Chattanooga’s in Tennessee. And I already know Harry fired you.”
His mouth opened and closed, grasping for words like a fish gasping for air.
I shook my head, and when I caught my reflection in a shop window, I looked just like Ma.
“Vaudeville isn’t what it used to be, my girl, my pearl, my wee O’Doyle.” They all rhymed when he said them. His accent clanged in my ears after those velvety radio voices back in Harry’s office.
“The big houses don’t want the old acts anymore. They just want a laugh, a bit of song-and-dance to open for the picture shows.” He stopped to lean against a brick wall, fishing in his pockets for a cigarette and coming up empty, “Well, you know I don’t open. I’m a headliner, I am.”
“Be honest now. Were you on tour at all? Or were you just on the drink?”
“Now, don’t go begrudging your old man a few drinks, for ‘With a gallon of whiskey at his feet, and a bottle of porter at his head . . .’”
“I’m getting tired of your old songs,” I snapped. “I think I’m ready for you to start singing a different tune.” A blast of cold air blew my skirts around, and I wriggled away from Daddo to hold them down. “Oh, what is Ma going to say.”
“Well, my darlin’, wait till you hear this tune.” He cleared his throat, then got down on one knee, like Al Jolson. “‘Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home . . .’”
I yanked his arm and got him moving past the beat cop who was starting to slow his gait as he passed. “All right, all right. What are you saying, Daddo?”
“Don’t you know why I was in that speak? Why, I was celebrating! Celebrating the new act!”
I looked at him suspiciously. “What new act?”
“The one that’s going to bring me back to New York! You’re right that Harry and I had a parting of ways, but trust me, it was for the best. He’s in bed with radio these days. Doesn’t understand the draw of the stage, and never did.
“But now I’m working on a new act. What d’you think I’m doing in these clothes, sure?” He dusted off the top hat, which was going green on the edges where the black silk had worn thin. “Oh, it’s gonna be grand! It’s me and Stan, see? And we’re gonna call it—well, we’re still working on the name—but I’m thinking something like The Long and the Short of It.”
I chuckled despite myself, because Daddo was tall and lanky and looked like his whole body was hung from a coat hanger, and Stan was short and round and bald and pink like a rubber ball. Put them together, and they’d look like an exclamation point.
“The gist is that we’re two bums, but Stan is the brawn and I’m the brains, and we do a whole comedy routine where he holds me up on a chair while I recite the Gettysburg Address.”
I had to admit, it sounded pretty good. “Yeah, and you could get some good slapstick in there, like the Keystone Cops.”
“Yes, my girl, that’s it!” And as a way of testing it out, he walloped me over the head with his top hat, which just happened to be already broken at the crown. This was the Daddo I loved, the one who’d stop in the middle of the street to work out some footwork, or juggle the groceries, or serenade a newsboy. “So Stan and me are polishing up the act. Now alls we need is a venue. Because if the right people see this, we could be bigger than Amos and Andy. I just know it.”
My foot started tapping, and my mind started racing.
“The right people? How about society and business types, all in one place? Writers, money men, even film stars!”
“Sounds all right, my girl. You got the key to Sam Goldwyn’s office?”
“No.” I smiled as it all came together in my mind. “It’s a party, at Ma’s employer’s house. They need entertainers, circus and vaudeville types. They’ll have all kinds of swells there. And it’s good money!”
He shook his head while he coughed and spit. “You really think your ma would let me come to her precious place of employment? Like this?” Daddo flapped the sides of his shabby suit jacket.
“Trust me, she’s been vetoed on everything from the menu to the dress code. She can’t say a thing.” I stopped on the sidewalk, making him look in my eye. “But look, if you want the gig, there are a few requirements.”
“Sure, sure, Marty. Anything for my new manager!” He swept me up in a waltz, flinging skeletal limbs into the huddled bundles that hastened past us out of the wind.
“This is serious, Daddo.” I stopped him again and slung Eek over his shoulder, making him share the load as we pushed forward down Broadway. “First of all, you gotta get some of your friends to come, pretend to be sideshow freaks for the night. Jenny Donovan especially.”
“Huh.” He rubbed his chin. “Well, I’ll tell ya, I haven’t seen the old gang in a while.”
“It’s nonnegotiable,” I said, my hands on my hips. “No Jenny, no Daddo and Stan. And Jenny’s got to bring a full beard.”
Daddo chuckled. “You drive a harder bargain than Harry. All right, all right, I’ll chase up some freak acts I know.”
“Good. The more circus-y, the better. And I’ll have a job for you afterward. Not a gig, just a favor.” I made my voice sound nonchalant, as if this weren’t the most important piece. “You’ll need to borrow a car for the night.”
“Well, sure. Cloaky McClure owes me a favor, and he’s got a workhorse Model T he’s always bragging about, God knows why—”
“And here’s the last thing.” I stopped and held him at arm’s length. “You come home. You stay off the road, and you take a break from the drink. You stay the straight and narrow and make up all these absences to Ma.” To us.
He squirmed. Squirmed. My heart froze to see that he regarded this as the last straw.
I pushed the thought out of my mind and determined to push it out of his, too. “Think, Daddo. Home-cooked meals, Ma darning your socks, and the boys jumping on you every morning in bed.” He smiled, and I saw his eyes go a bit moist. “We might could even get some money up front, rent a studio, let you and Stan work out your act in peace and quiet.”
“Sounds grand,” he said quietly, pulling Eek’s arms around his neck tighter like a woolly muffler. “It’ll be a new beginning.”
&
nbsp; I put my arm through his, and as we walked toward the R train, I chose to believe him.
Chapter
22
“This is the last thing I have time for!” Ma fretted as Alphonse lugged a large canvas through a swarm of caterers, florists, servants, and servers.
The party hadn’t even begun yet, and Ma was at her breaking point. It wasn’t just the party preparations, with the endless rounds of menus with Chef, and the counting the silver and tracking down the crystal that had Ma aflutter. We’d had to take on two extra maids just to wake the house from its long slumber, plus six new footmen to serve on the night, and a whole brigade of kitchen help to keep the food flowing. We’d gone from a small and reluctantly functional family to a full-blown military operation, and Ma was struggling to keep the battle plans on track.
And she didn’t even have an epic escape to plan. A twinge of panic grabbed at my stomach as I watched the frame make its way toward the gallery. What was Rose up to? Was she making a new plan? I’d already sent up notes with the details of my scheme. I needed Rose to commit to the plan, not change the details by way of some picture of a cupid frolicking with forest nymphs—or whatever it was.
With a glance over my shoulder and assured that Ma was occupied with a dropped tray of oysters Rockefeller, I followed Alphonse to the gallery.
I found him in front of the painting, rocking back on his heels and narrowly missing a tray of crystal champagne flutes and a trombone player looking for the bathroom.
“Funny, no?” He chuckled to himself. “Mrs. Sewell still has her humor.”
The painting looked like any other to me: another god, wrapped in a bedsheet, leaves in the hair, surrounded by fruit, offering a goblet of wine.
The Gallery Page 14
