Downtown Strut: An Edna Ferber Mystery (Edna Ferber Mysteries)

by Ed Ifkovic

  “The murder has thrown him off balance, I guess. And with Lawson playing Greek chorus to his pleadings, well, it could be a little intimidating.”

  I munched on savory toast and reached for the New York Times. “Never mind, Rebecca. I don’t think Detective Manus, all that male braggadocio and burst blood vessel, wants the Show Boat lady tagging after him, especially now that the police have put a finis to the case.” I paused. “Though Waters and Lawson did get me thinking. With the apartment door wrenched open, splintered, would Roddy still have been in bed? Was he that sound a sleeper? It puzzles me, really. People don’t shift character so casually, like this Skidder Scott character.” I shook my head. “What grown man calls himself Skidder?”

  She laughed. “I suppose the nickname was given to him. No idea what it means.”

  “It means I’m minding my own business. I have a long day ahead of me.”

  Show Boat and The Royal Family:—my one-two punch on Broadway. That should be my concern, not brutal murder up in Harlem. At mid-morning someone from Oscar Hammerstein’s office phoned to apologize for the missed meetings at the theater. No matter, I told the caller, but I noticed that he didn’t suggest rescheduling. Later, reviewing Jed Harris’ last minute changes to the dialogue in The Royal Family, I decided the man liked to tinker with dialogue simply because—he could. His maniacal hand excised some of the flavor and verve George Kaufman and I put into our dialogue. But at this late date I’d lapsed into utter resignation because, truthfully, my protestations, wily or innocuous, brought me nothing but indigestion and sleepless nights.

  When I arrived at the Selwyn Theater, I watched the players wilt under Jed’s surprise noontime visit. “Do you really think you will be ready on December 28?” he screamed at them. Then, blithely, a mischievous smile on his unshaven face and a hum in his voice, he grasped my elbow and said, simply, “Lunch, Edna?”

  I had little choice.

  We settled into a booth at the Double R, a Brazilian coffee shop on West 44th and Sixth Avenue, a chaotic eatery I knew he favored, largely because the I’m-an-actor staff tripped over themselves serving him. It was always packed with theater folks. We sat at the back of the restaurant, with Jed insisting he face the front door.

  “You afraid of armed theater critics?”

  He smirked. “All critics, including your buddy George Kaufman, are congenital sissies. I might get an hysterical slap from Brooks Atkinson, but I don’t think he could even lift a gun without trembling.”

  “You underestimate your foes.”

  “When you only have foes, life is amazingly predictable.”

  “And am I a foe?”

  “No, you’re a maiden lady, twice my age, who’d love a romp in the hay with me.”

  I bristled. “You’re a presumptuous cad, Jed Harris.”

  He grinned. “I am that. But you like me.”

  “I appreciate talent.”

  “That’s an evasive answer.”

  “It’s the only one you’ll get from me.” I sipped my coffee and gingerly picked at my tuna salad. Purposely, I avoided eye contact. I barely listened as he prattled on about a new car he’d just bought—a Marmon, whatever that was, a “nifty” car, he intoned, not some “tin lizzie flivver like you see everywhere.”

  I stared at him.

  A man notorious for his brusqueness and his cruelty, Jed had a keen sense of popular theater that was unrivaled. Yet, sitting there facing him, I suddenly believed his career would be short-lived—he’d burn out from self-congratulation and the ready availability of easy cash. Already he’d bought a yacht he didn’t need. A yacht, mind you. Moored at City Island, it cruised the placid waters of the Rivers East and Hudson. Still, I had to admit—and didn’t he read me well?—that this dark, menacing young man with the beard stubble and wolf’s hooded eyes, with the doomsday East European complexion and slender waist—well, he made my heart jump a bit. Few men did that—and lived to talk about it. But this dapper swell of the theater, so nasty and viral, fluttered my Victorian pulse. He’d be an easy man for me to hate— eventually I would, of course, I planned on it—simply because he was, for me, one of the few men I could actually love.

  But now he was yammering on about The Royal Family and the empty threat of a lawsuit from Ethel Barrymore. Suddenly, he stopped, held his hand suspended in the air—so that I could appreciate his manicured nails, I supposed—and said with a grim voice, “So you begin the Ferber season!” It came out almost a threat, though I don’t know why I thought that. “Two Broadway openings, a day apart, right after Christmas. You will be wined and dined, feted, and will doubtless have more ego than is humanly bearable. This may be the last lunch we share where we can still talk as equals.”

  I smiled sweetly. “Jed, you still have some reach before you’re close to being my equal.”

  He roared. “You do like yourself a bit.”

  “This is foolish talk, all of it. I’m a writer. That’s what I do.”

  “Oh, come off it, Edna. Humility is not a cloak you don well.”

  I’d had enough. “Tell me about Bella Davenport, Jed.”

  My words slammed him back against the booth. He struggled to find a response, weighing, deliberating, and manipulating some elaborate lie he knew instinctively I wouldn’t buy. Finally, he leaned forward, ran his tongue over his lips, and actually winked. An unpleasant gesture that seemed girlish, high school antics. “A beautiful girl, no? Stunning, in fact.”

  “She is that.”

  “She is that,” he echoed.

  “What’s the story, Jed?”

  A sly grin. “I figured you’d bring it up. You’ve been itching to interrogate me. I must say, I was surprised to see that dicty crowd assembled in your living room. Flaming youth in black face. Edna Ferber’s Underground Railroad.”

  “We’re talking about Bella Davenport.”

  “If you’re probing into my sex life, Edna—very unseemly of you, by the way, and I doubt if any of your romantic characters would do so, since your heroines believe in Immaculate Conception—well, yes, love, I’ve seen her. I did see her.”

  “Why?”

  Now he laughed, loud and hearty, and heads swiveled. “I was sitting in on auditions for Lew Leslie’s Blackbirds, watching the young Negro performers stroll in and out, hungry for any part, and there she was, an ambitious young lady, that girl, driven, ready to flatter and preen and beg. She just assumed she’d get the part, even cozying up to the likes of Mr. Bojangles.”

  “For Lord’s sake, Jed.”

  “Well, she’s not a nice person, Edna. A liar, dissembler, manipulator, fabricator. Shall I go on?”

  “But she knew who you were?”

  “Who doesn’t in the world of theater?” A sigh. “She batted those eyelashes and cooed at me. You can’t trust her, by the way. She didn’t get the part because Florence Mills was a softer, less ferocious performer, and more talented, but she agreed to let me take her to Johnny Jackson’s restaurant up on 135th Street. Not surprisingly, she’d written a play.”

  “Which you’ll not produce.”

  “Of course not. I deal with quality plays, the likes of Kaufman and Ferber.”

  I harrumphed, which tickled him. “She didn’t seem happy to see you in my doorway or in that chop suey joint.”

  “I don’t suppose she wanted to advertise that she’s been keeping company with the plantation owner.”

  “That’s crass, Jed.”

  “Come off it, Edna. White or black, these actresses know the game.”

  “Why keep your mouth shut about it? That awful silence that night in Harlem.”

  “Well, I did see her. Past tense. No more. We ended on a sour note.”

  “What happened?”

  “I dumped her.”

  “Why?”

  He shrugged. “None of your business.”

&
nbsp; I went on. “Did you know the young man who died? Roddy?”

  “No.” Said too quickly, I thought, so I didn’t know whether I believed him. Then after a while, “I didn’t know him. Yeah, I saw him at your apartment and then uptown at the eatery. Elsewhere. Once or twice. In Harlem. An insolent, dreadful boy. Bella talked of him too much. Lately she became obsessed with him. I guess he—spurned her.” He smiled, sickeningly. “For a girl as stunning as Bella, no man is allowed to refuse her. I believe some other girl likes him, someone she has contempt for.”

  “Ellie.”

  “Ah, yes, the young torch singer at Small’s Paradise.”

  “Yes, that Ellie. As I suspect you already know. But you do know that Bella was seeing a young man named Lawson, right?”

  “Of course, Edna. I have more of a history with these folks than you do. To tell you the truth. Bella talked nonstop about Lawson and how she was going to dump him. She rattled on to the point of utter boredom. And about her anger toward Roddy, who didn’t love her back. I don’t know why she thought I was interested in the messing around that Negroes do. So, yes, I’d already been through the theatrical wars with young Lawson. He came to some audition for a revival of The Chocolate Dandies. Cocky, too good-looking for his own good. He was perfect for the part because he lived the part. They didn’t hire him. Bella’s lover. Whatever that means. Two people using each other, a symbiotic organism that festers and bleeds. Pus and blood, the two of them. Bella actually arranged for me to read his full-length play, which I read. He’s hoping for Broadway. Downtown. A talented boy, but I’ll have nothing to do with him.”

  “But why?” Exasperated.

  “Ambition in a young actress is good, Edna. It hones the edges of their beauty. Ambition in a young man, especially a handsome Negro like Lawson Hicks, is unnerving and intrusive. Young Lawson has a lean and hungry look—such men are…annoying.”

  “I like him.”

  “Of course you do. He’s one of your romantic heroes, though unfortunately Negro.”

  Jed reached for the check and stood up. Sitting there, my meal half eaten, I sneered, “So lunch is over?” He slapped some dollar bills on the table.

  As he walked away, he looked back at me. “I knew there was a reason I never read any of your novels, Edna.”

  I sat there, steaming.

  ***

  The next afternoon I rode uptown in a cab with Rebecca and Waters, the three of us headed to a memorial service for Roddy at St. Mark’s A.M.E. Church on 138th Street and St. Nicholas. I hadn’t intended on going, though I grieved for his short, aborted life. Waters, phoning in the morning, had such a plaintive, wistful tone as he spoke of the service he and Lawson had organized that I found myself saying yes, of course I would go. When I hung up the phone, I realized he hadn’t asked me to go—I simply found myself saying yes.

  Lamentably, I was the only white person among a smattering of local souls who knew Roddy. The emptiness of the church saddened me. Young people, dying young, usually had hordes of friends attending church—but not Roddy. Bella and Ellie, both dressed in black chemises and weeping, sat apart from each other. Bella wore a dramatic turquoise cloche, which made her stand out. Surprisingly, Lawson wore an old-fashioned black suit that looked like something he’d got from a thrift store. That intrigued me, especially considering he always looked spiffy, polished, the man-about-town from The Smart Set. He sat bent over in a pew, his head buried in his lap. There were a few relatives, I assumed, though Lawson whispered early on that he didn’t know these distant members of his own family.

  “And his father’s not here.” Lawson was furious. “They didn’t talk after he left home, Roddy and his dad.”

  Harriet and Freddy were conspicuously not there. The minister sermonized, though no one eulogized the sad young man. I was tempted to rise and say a few celebratory words, but I rejected the inclination as inappropriate. Bidden by the minister who said twice he didn’t know Roddy, as though to explain the impersonality of the service, Ellie finally walked to the altar, turned to face us, and sang “We Will Meet Him in the Sweet By and By,” her sweet, soprano voice clear and full, only breaking at the end, the last words lost in her swallowed grief. An organ echoed her lovely voice. Sitting on my right, Rebecca was weeping. And then, the minister blessing us, folks filed out.

  Rebecca was in a somber mood. Tearful most of the short service, she kept brushing up protectively against her only son, as though to ensure he was safe, secure. A couple of times, straining against his mother’s smothering hold, Waters pulled away, but only slightly; the bond between the two of them—they only had each other—was too important to violate. I thought of my own mother, currently my housemate and my constant disapproving and censorious eye, luckily now spending the holidays with family visiting from Chicago. She trucked no such physical intimacy; her grip was patently psychological, and thus more destructive.

  As I stepped onto the sidewalk and surveyed the street for a downtown cab, Rebecca was calling out to Bella and Lawson, both walking away, far apart from each other. Neither had said goodbye to us. Then she called out to Ellie, who was also bustling away from us, headed uptown. I thought the behavior unseemly and impolite. Reluctantly, the trio stumbled back to us.

  “After a service,” Rebecca insisted, “it’s only right and proper to celebrate life.” They glared at her as if she’d announced an alien invasion. “We’ll have a bite to eat.” She looked around. “There.”

  She’d spotted a small eatery tucked into the crumbling façade of an old brownstone, a hole-in-the-wall that looked, to me at least, dangerously prone to health code violation. “Hot soup and smothered pork chops.” She smiled. “And sweet potato pie. Not as good as mine, surely, but…” She tucked her hand into Waters’ elbow and moved us all toward the restaurant.

  “I can’t,” Lawson mumbled. “I’m already late to my job. I can’t.”

  Everyone nodded as he scurried off, waving at us in a feeble valedictory, a bittersweet smile on his face.

  “Liar,” Bella muttered.

  Bella seemed ready to leave, taking a few steps away, but Rebecca had already taken her arm. “An hour of your time, Bella.”

  Bella had no choice, though I noticed she cast a furtive sidelong glance at Ellie, who, to my annoyance, was looking over our heads into the sky, as if checking for signs of impending blizzard—grasping for a meteorological excuse for hasty flight.

  Inside the empty restaurant, the fat proprietor, wearing a food-stained apron and an incongruous chef’s hat, nodded toward the window table. Rebecca ignored him and led us to a back round table by the kitchen, a corner of the restaurant lost in shadows. Served bubbly lemon phosphates and root beer and, for me and Rebecca, steaming coffee, we raised our cups and glasses to Roddy’s memory, though Rebecca’s heartfelt toast seemed absurd in the dim, light-speckled room.

  As we munched on surprisingly savory smothered chicken and pork chops, with paprika-laced roast potatoes slathered in gravy, Waters repeatedly caught my eye, and once, without a trace of subtlety, he nodded toward Bella, then noisily drained the last of a root beer through a bent straw. His steely look demanded, emphatically: Talk to her, Miss Edna. Ask her questions.

  Ignoring him, I did remark, “I was surprised that Harriet and Freddy weren’t at the service.”

  Ellie looked up and actually smiled. “Well, Freddy never cared for Roddy and made no apologies for it, the way he is about everything. So it didn’t surprise me, him not coming. But a little tasteless, no? And Harriet, well, I think she has to do a double shift at Clark’s Restaurant. You can’t say no to the bosses there. She would have come.”

  “Why would Freddy not like such an innocent like Roddy?” I wondered.

  Bella laughed. “Just because he comes off as shy and boyish with you—was shy and boyish, I mean—doesn’t translate into innocence, Miss Ferber.”

  “What d
oes that mean?”

  Ellie thundered, “Bella, stop this nonsense. To speak ill of the dead. Poor Roddy. He was innocent. A harmless boy who stayed in his room when everyone else was whooping it up at rent parties and speakeasies, just scribbling on his pad all night long.”

  Snidely, “All night long? How would you know?”

  The words stung Ellie and she sucked in her breath, turned away, and looked ready to cry. “I believe what people tell me.”

  “Even the lies?”

  “I leave that to you, Bella.”

  “Roddy liked to lie to us.”

  Ellie fumed. “How dare…”

  “Stop it, the two of you,” Rebecca pleaded. “What’s the matter with you?”

  “I know things,” Bella sputtered.

  “What?” Waters leaned into her, his eyes wide.

  She shrugged. “Nothing. Nothing at all.”

  Ellie summed up, looking at me, her lips trembling. “Roddy liked to be left alone.” Then she turned to Bella, her voice low. “He told me how you’d chosen him as…as the lunch special of the month. You, stringing along Lawson and casting mooncalf eyes at Roddy.”

  “Frankly, Roddy is more interesting than Lawson,” Bella said in a flat voice, weary, her eyebrows raised.

  “Ridiculous,” seethed Ellie.

  “Well, you chased him, too,” Bella said.

  “Ridiculous,” Ellie repeated. “Roddy and I went to clubs. We talked. We were close…”

  “Were close.” Bella’s words were biting.

  I sat back, listening to this give-and-take nastiness, the gnawing bitterness, all over a dead man who, from all reports, seemed to have no interest in either woman, these two niggling warriors on the battlefield of love. It was interesting how much Roddy’s death had opened the valves of bile. Dead, Roddy exerted a curious power over them, an energy that brought out the worst in both. What was going on here? I caught Waters’ eye. He was blinking furiously, looking from one woman to the other.

  Ellie withered under Bella’s relentless disregard of Rebecca’s pleading, finally tucking her head into her neck, a frightened sparrow, becoming still, though I could see the tension in her neck muscles.