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

by Ed Ifkovic

  I stared into a hostile face, the petulant child, confused and bursting. “No, Harriet, I’ve never met the woman. And I’m certainly no one’s patron.”

  Harriet ignored me. “Freddy and I are different from you, Waters. And from Lawson and Bella and…” She stopped when she heard Freddy grunt. He wanted no part of this. “I grew up here. I look out my window and see an alley. You look out and see a prep school.”

  Waters sputtered, but his mother laid a gentle hand on his wrist.

  “The new generation,” Harriet went on, “has to have a Negro voice. Everything else is dead now.”

  Silence in the room: the kitchen clock ticked too loudly.

  “Well,” I said, “we have to be going.” I nodded at Rebecca.

  Then Harriet thundered, “Freddy, these people think somebody else killed Roddy. Or helped Skidder. Or paid him. Or…I don’t know.”

  Freddy sat straight up and the brown bag of sandwiches slid off his lap to the floor. “So what?”

  Harriet laughed. “Do they know something?”

  Freddy now looked directly at me. “Forget it. Yeah, Harriet and I talked about it. I mean, the nonsense Waters has been mouthing off about. Just because everybody showed up that night and now lies about it.” He stopped, uncertain of his own words.

  “Everyone?” I asked.

  He backtracked. “I didn’t mean ‘everyone.’”

  I followed up. “So far we’ve only heard about Bella hiding in the shadows, which she denies. And Ellie, who says she never got here.”

  Harriet grumbled. “Of course, Bella denies it. It makes her look bad, sneaking and spying on Roddy, hiding like that. But I know Bella—I told you I could even smell the gardenia perfume she slathers on. I caught a glance of her shadow. She was here. Maybe midnight or so.”

  “But she says…” Waters began.

  “I know what she says, Waters. Bella can never be trusted, folks. This here is an evil woman, out for number one. Her looks are her curse. Like Lawson. Good looks stop the growth of character in children.” She grinned. “Write that down. Words of wisdom. She and Lawson with their ofay skin think they can be honorary white folks. But it doesn’t work that way. Dark black folks like me”—and she pointed at Freddy—“and him, well, we’re the lampblacks and we learn the truth early on.”

  “What is the truth?”

  “Miss Ferber,” she responded, her voice softening, “you’re a nice lady and all. I’m sure of it. I know that. The fact that you’re sitting up here now in Harlem—and I don’t mean listening to jazz at Connie’s Inn—says something good about you. But you’ll never understand this.” She waved her hand around the room. “That afternoon when I was in your apartment—the grand piano and the thick carpets…the…eighteenth century writing desk you’re proud of…and the view of the treetops of Central Park. Your living room is longer than my life. I felt…lost there.”

  “You can’t let a grand piano intimidate you, Harriet.”

  “It’s worth more than I am…in some eyes.” She breathed in. “So, yes, Bella is a liar who was outside the apartment that night. But, as much as I dislike her, I’m not calling her a killer. She was hiding in the shadows here because she’s jealous of Ellie, not because she was waiting to kill Roddy. That makes no sense.”

  “But Roddy had rejected Bella,” Waters said.

  She laughed. “Roddy rejected everyone.”

  “You, too?” Waters asked.

  “He had no interest in me. One time a drunken flirtation. Men get drunk and they gotta flirt. I’m the super’s rebellious daughter. Roddy was all soft edges; I’m hard as glass. And I like it that way. He’s…he was…”

  “What?” From Waters.

  “Nothing. I don’t know.”

  “Freddy,” I asked, “So you didn’t mean that everyone was here that night. But I suspect you were.”

  Harriet laughed derisively. “Of course he was. Maybe Freddy’s right. Everyone was here that night.”

  Freddy squirmed. “Shut up, Harriet.”

  “Come off it, Freddy. The Upper East Side Detective Agency will find out sooner or later. Tell them why.” Freddy bit his lip while Harriet settled back in her seat. “It’s because Ellie was here that night. Supposedly. Even though she denies it now. She told everybody, it seems, that she was going to see Roddy, no matter what. She was an angry woman.”

  I tried to recall Ellie’s exact words. “But Ellie swore to me that her plans changed, that she never came here after she finished at the club.”

  Again Harriet scoffed. “Poor little Freddy,” she began, though there was some affection in her voice, “has an unrequited crush on Miss Ellie Nightclub, and, though she looks right through him because she’s part of the high-yeller club herself and he’s inky-dink, the boy can’t help himself. No lie. He follows her everywhere, supposedly to ‘protect’ her from evil, but, more likely, to catch a view of her as she moves through the street.”

  “Shut up, Harriet,” Freddy muttered.

  “I think it’s kind of charming,” she added.

  “What about Ellie?” I asked. “Did she lie to me? Was she here?”

  Silence.

  Harriet waited, and then looked at Freddy. “Tell her, for God’s sake. You spend enough time looking at Ellie with mooncalf eyes, Freddy. Tell her.”

  Freddy was fidgeting in his seat, his foot kicking the dropped paper bag.

  I spoke up. “Freddy, I saw you outside my building the day Ellie visited me—when she swore to me that she went home after singing that night. You were by the bus shelter.”

  Freddy looked embarrassed but he nodded. “That was stupid of me. Yes, I was there—to see what she was up to. She was supposed to meet me for coffee, but broke it off. I saw her on the subway platform, so I trailed her. Yeah, I was there. Real stupid. Not good, let me tell you. You don’t get a lot of Negro boys hanging out at bus stops in your neighborhood. I didn’t look right. I had to deal with a cop for an hour before he let me wander off.”

  “Tell her,” Harriet said again, irritated.

  Freddy sighed. “I saw Ellie that afternoon. I stopped in at my sister’s for a bite and Ellie lives next door with her grandfather. She was coming out of a grocery as I left my sister’s apartment. She called me over, which surprised me. Lots of times she saw me on the block and looked away. She was in a real crazy mood because, I guess, she had made plans with Roddy but he broke them at the last minute. I guess he’d done it to her before. She was yelling she’d show up at his place after her club act, just see what he was up to. She was boiling. She’d already told Lawson she was going. I guess he told Bella. You know, she suspected Bella was gonna be there. Then she said she was going home after the club. That it wasn’t worth it. I think Lawson told her the same thing. So that night I was hanging out with some buddies, nothing to do, hanging outside a coffee pot a block away from the 135th Street subway. Hanging out on the cold street. I was smoking a cigarette and then, out of the corner of my eye, I see Ellie walking up the stairs from the platform.”

  “What time?” I asked.

  “After midnight.” He waited a bit. “She was coming from the club. I suspected she was headed to Roddy’s after all. Okay, so I was jealous, surprised, but by the time I started after her, she was gone, lost in the crowd that turned the corner.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I went past Roddy’s, but everything looked quiet. But I knew Roddy would sneak Ellie in by the back door so Harriet’s father couldn’t hear. So I went down the alleyway to the back, but nothing. Roddy was home—the lights were on, I could see—but everything was quiet. So I figured…well, I don’t know what I figured. I went home.”

  “Where is that, Freddy?” Rebecca asked.

  He didn’t answer her.

  Harriet was smiling. “So everyone was here that night. Including me, sleeping in m
y lowly bed.”

  Freddy spoke through clenched teeth. “It doesn’t mean she killed Roddy, Harriet. It doesn’t even mean she came here. You know that. We talked about it already. I didn’t say anything because Ellie wasn’t here. I was.”

  “At midnight,” Waters mumbled.

  Freddy went on. “She was probably going to one of the clubs. Not to Roddy’s.”

  “But she was angry with Roddy,” I said.

  “Yeah, so what? We all get mad at each other.”

  Harriet grumbled. “Maybe she was meeting Bella in the shadows. A meeting of the Roddy Veneration Society, Harlem chapter.”

  “She wouldn’t kill Roddy,” Freddy insisted. “She loved him.”

  “All the more reason to kill him. He didn’t love her back.” But she paused, drew in her breath. “I’m not serious. None of us killed Roddy, Miss Ferber. Skidder Scott did it for a few pieces of silver on Roddy’s bureau.”

  “You didn’t like Roddy,” I said to Harriet.

  She pursed her lips and looked toward the street window. “I don’t suppose I did.”

  “Why?”

  She rolled her tongue into the corner of her mouth. “Well, if you gotta know, he thought he was better than us. I mean, Lawson acted that way, Mr. I’m-Gonna-Make-It-Big, but Lawson would knock on my door, we’d go to a rent party together, dance. He may have been bored, but he could be nice. He’d even read my poetry—seriously read it.”

  “And Roddy didn’t?

  “Roddy lived in his own world, and you had to pick a number to come into it.”

  “What about you, Freddy? Did you like him?”

  Freddy fidgeted. “He was all right.”

  “Tell her!” Harriet screamed.

  “Christ, Harriet,” Freddy said. “What’s with you?” He swore under his breath. “I didn’t get along with him, okay? One time, you know, he sort of made a…pass at me.” Harriet burst out laughing. “I think it was, but it was hard to read, and he, well…”

  Harriet roared. “My God, Freddy, you were furious at the time. Right outside in the hallway, and my father watched it all. He saw Freddy shove Roddy into the wall. And Pop told me to stay away from him—and even Lawson—and when Pop told Roddy he didn’t want him in the building, Roddy shoved him.” It was a furious rush of high-pitched words, and Harriet, her head bobbing nervously, finally stopped.

  “I don’t like this conversation,” Rebecca murmured.

  “Well, I’m sorry,” Harriet said. “You know why Pop didn’t want the cops crawling around here any more? Yeah, his prison record, sure thing. But when Roddy hit him, Pop yelled that he was gonna kill Roddy, so loud that one of the tenants upstairs, drugged out though he was, came running down the staircase.”

  “If he’s innocent, what does…” I began.

  She held up her hand, a traffic-cop stop. “You know, Miss Ferber, I hate Pop but I still don’t want to see him strapped to an electric chair.”

  Chapter Eleven

  “Love and jealousy,” I remarked as Rebecca, Waters, and I walked back into my apartment.

  Rebecca smiled. “It never changes, does it?”

  “I don’t get it,” Waters said.

  “Well,” I noted, “those young friends of yours, Waters, are filled with rivalries, fierce and potent.”

  “Roddy was like a lightning rod,” Rebecca suggested. “A gentle boy, though I guess he could get angry and strike out at folks. Those spurts of violence. But pushing folks away did nothing more than attract folks to him. Ellie with her late night talks with him, though she wanted more. Bella, the femme fatale who probably never looked at Roddy until Ellie shared her infatuation. Even Harriet, so intense in her dislike. Her father…”

  “And then the murder that same night when things were coming to a head,” Waters said. “Maybe.”

  Rebecca was nodding her head. “Everyone lingering around the building while Roddy slept alone in his bed.”

  “I don’t know if any of this intrigue has to do with murder, Waters.” I added, “But there was a lot of activity at the apartment the night he died. Ellie, maybe. Bella in the shadows, maybe. Freddy lurking in the back alley. And no one was there during the murder.”

  “Do you think Ellie lied to you?” Rebecca asked me.

  “Yes, but why come to my apartment and fashion such an elaborate lie? Maybe she’s being truthful that she wasn’t at Roddy’s, but Freddy saw her in the neighborhood, so clearly she was nearby. But was she in his apartment? Was she sneaked in through the back? Who knows?”

  “The killer came through the front door,” Waters said. “The broken lock.”

  “Did you look closely at that?” I said. “A simple screwdriver could snap that old lock and splinter the wood. The killer still could have come in through the back. The broken lock could be a deception.”

  Waters smiled. “So I’ve convinced you, Miss Edna, that something else is going on.”

  I smiled back. “I don’t know that, Waters. But something else happened there. What reason does Ellie have to lie? Her visit to me bothers me. It seems so…unnecessary. And what about Bella hiding in the shadows, even though she says she wasn’t there.”

  “Love and jealousy,” his mother repeated my words.

  “How’s Lawson doing now?” I asked Waters.

  “Better, I think. Living way out in Queens isn’t helping his spirits, though. He misses the excitement of Harlem.”

  “He travels to his job there every day? It’s quite a trek by subway.”

  Waters grimaced. “He’s been missing quite a few days. But he’s getting better. In fact, I got him to go to a poetry reading at the Hobby Store later tonight. It took a little arm-twisting but he agreed.” Waters looked at the clock. “I’m meeting him in two hours at Columbus Circle.”

  “Tell him to meet you here,” I said suddenly. “I’d like to talk to him.”

  Waters grinned. “The detective.”

  “Well, maybe,” I acknowledged, “but I’d like to get the events of that night clear in my head. We’ll give him supper.” I looked at Rebecca. “Possible?”

  “Of course.”

  “I’ll phone.” Waters went into the kitchen and I could hear him talking to someone. Then I heard him dialing another number and reaching Lawson. When he returned, he looked content. “Yeah, he’s coming. I called his work first, but he was home, getting ready to get on a subway. Some errands. I promised him food.”

  Rebecca stood up. “He’s getting back to normal. Lawson always was a big eater.”

  ***

  Lawson sat in my living room, pensive, shoulders hunched, his eyes darting around the room, at times narrowing and staring toward the window, as though searching for something out there. He may have been getting better, if I believed Waters, but he still looked like a bony cadaver with those huge sunken eyes and that ashy parchment skin. That Broadway smile now was wan and melancholic.

  “Love and jealousy,” Waters said out loud, and Lawson shot him a quizzical glance.

  “We think Ellie and Bella were both at your apartment that night,” I started. “This is none of my business, Lawson, but ever since Ellie made a point of visiting me and proclaiming what now seems to be a lie, I’ve become curious. Why involve me?”

  Lawson locked eyes with me. “Maybe Ellie was there that night, but not Bella. She was with me.”

  “Well, tell us what you remember about that night.”

  He hesitated, squinted. Silence in the room. All of us zeroed in on that stark, unreal scene, the body in the bed, the contorted face, that knife thrust into the chest. I swear Lawson shivered.

  Gently, I said, “Just tell me your story. I’m trying to place people…”

  “No,” he answered too quickly, “you’re trying to catch either Ellie or Bella in a lie.”

  “Neither one seems to
need my help, Lawson. They both rattle off comfortable stories that are immediately countered by eye witnesses.”

  “These are my friends, Miss Ferber.”

  “I know,” I told him. “I’m sorry, but we have to have this conversation.”

  He spoke in a rush of words. “This is all about the killing. I know that, no matter what you say. I just don’t see Ellie or Bella hurting Roddy. Yeah, we all get angry at each other. We got arty temperaments, we flare up, we argue, we stop talking to each other for months; but the bottom line is that we like one another. That’s why we get together as a group. Look someplace else.”

  Waters jumped in. “Lawson thinks it was Mr. Porter. That’s one reason he won’t go back to the apartment.”

  Lawson shot him a harsh look. “For God’s sake, Waters, isn’t any of my conversation private?” For a second he closed his eyes and seemed to drift off.

  I repeated myself. “Tell me what happened that night. To you.”

  He settled back into the cushions of the sofa, breathed in. His head shook, and I thought I saw tears seep out from the corners. His stare was vacant, faraway.

  “Well, it was our usual Saturday night.” A pause. “Except it was different. You know, I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. I’m not sure what I mean by that, except…well, Bella seemed real edgy, like she was ready to pick a fight. We fight all the time, of course—it was what held us together—but the way she was curt with me told me she was angry from the start. She’d been sniping at me ever since I got back from my job and told her I’d bumped into Ellie—and Ellie was going to see Roddy. Earlier her brother hinted that she was leaving me for good. I knew he was tired of me sleeping on his sofa.” He smiled. “Bella had left me many times before, but I’d seen this coming. Bella was getting into new people.”

  “New people?” I broke in.

  “She saw herself moving up and out of…her old world. And I was the old world. She was socializing with…with more white folks. Downtown.” He shook his head. “Anyway, I thought we’d make it one last fling. One more big night on the town. I got a little depressed because I figured I’d be forced to come back to my apartment.”