by Craig Rice
It was an exit line so I played it right down. Fastening my kimono with a dramatic gesture, I brushed past him and made tracks for the door. It isn’t often I get a chance to clinch an argument. This was no exception.
I no sooner had my hand on the knob than the door opened, not slowly, but with force. It staggered me first, then hit me on the nose. Or was it the other way around? It doesn’t matter. My big moment was shot to pieces. Biff started to laugh. Then he saw who was on the other side of the door.
A vision in deep purple with gold braidlike epaulets on the military coat, and purple boots to match! Slinky Stinky, otherwise known as Princess Nirvena, had come back to the Old Opera.
Without a glance at any of us she approached Sammy. “I haff just spoken to Mr. Moss.”
The “Mr.” was definitely sarcasm, but Sammy took it calmly, the kind of calm before the storm. “Slow burn” is what the actors call it.
“Yes?” He waited for her to go on.
She did, after gazing at herself in the mirror for a full minute.
“Yes. And in the next show my specialty will be joost before the finale of the first act.”
This was a choice bit of news. The next-to-closing spot was mine. I should have made a scene right then, but I thought she was lying.
Dolly, sitting in the far corner of the room, took care of it for me. “Where does Gypper’s number go, then?” she asked.
Sammy was coming out of his trance. “I can always depend on you, can’t I?” The “can’t I” was a full tone higher than his normal voice.
“Well, you don’t have to scream at me,” Dolly said peevishly. “I wanted to know because it affects my changes.”
Sammy threw the scripts on the shabby carpet before he realized what he was doing. They scattered all over the room and he sank to his knees to gather them up.
“Gyp does her audience number there and it runs longer than …” Dolly was afraid to go on. I didn’t blame her. Sammy had turned an unhealthy blue.
“Damn your changes! Damn show business! Damn Moss!”
I thought he looked a little funny down on his hands and knees like that but Dolly was insulted. She got up to leave and Sammy screamed again.
“When the day comes that a strip teaser tells me how to run a theater, that’s the day I open a hot-dog stand.” He pounded on the floor with both fists.
“You run a theater!” Dolly sneered. “Stage manager hell!”
With that she really left. The door slammed louder than Sammy’s screams. I’d seen him angry before but not like that. For a minute I thought we’d have to pour water on him.
During the excitement, the Princess had draped herself over one of the wicker chairs. She carelessly flicked her cigarette ashes on the carpet.
With a satisfied smile on her exotic face she said, “She has quite a temper, that Baxter person.” She wet her lower lip with a long, thin tongue. “The sort of tempers murderers have; is that not so?”
Biff whistled softly; then he made a grimace. “You ought to see her when she’s really sore.”
The Princess left shortly after the fireworks were over. We went on with the rehearsal. I don’t know how I remembered what went on but I’d done the scenes so often I guess I could have walked through them in my sleep.
It rained all day and all night. The downstairs room was flooded and before the matinee of the new show the Princess moved in with us. She took the place near the window, not by choice, but because we had arranged it that every other space was taken.
There were a few opening remarks to make her feel at home, like “Funny what comes out of the ground after a rain,” and “They use water to flood rats out, too.”
She had the thickest skin of any woman I ever knew. And I did know her. I was getting warmed up to tell just how much I knew when it happened!
With all the nonchalance in the world, she let her robe drop to the floor. Everyone in the room stared at her until their eyes popped. The long, stringy breasts she had flashed the day before were standing straight out! They were the most voluptuous breasts I’d ever seen. Sandra, with all the ice and cocoa butter, could never hope for such a result.
The Princess knew she was causing a sensation. She paraded around, showing off. Then she stared at her image in the cracked mirror. She was humming the first eight bars of Bublitchka as she admired herself.
Gee Gee, stretched out on the army cot, looked up from her crossword-puzzle book, and watched the show intently. After a while she asked, “Hey, Gyp, what’s a four-letter word for paraffin?”
I saw the Princess pale but the reason hadn’t struck me yet.
“Lard,” I suggested.
The Princess stopped humming. She turned a furious look at Gee Gee. “Vot are you insinuating?” she demanded.
Gee Gee glanced at the brown breasts with the rosebud nipples. “Nothing,” she said innocently, “nothing at all. Only I knew a guy once that had paraffin pumped in his face because it sagged so. Looked good, too—for a while.”
The Princess covered her breasts with a robe. She hurried so that she put the wrong arm in the wrong sleeve.
Gee Gee went on unsympathetically. “Yep, sure looked swell. Until one night he stood near an open fireplace and damn if the stuff didn’t melt!” Gee Gee laughed gaily. “You shoulda seen him. His face fell down right over his collar!”
The Princess unconsciously put her hands to her breasts and Gee Gee went back to her crossword puzzle with a contented sigh.
I knew then why the Princess had missed a performance.
The second matinee had been as rough as second matinees usually are, perhaps a little worse. Two of the show girls were out; the scenery fouled twice; the Gazeeka Box still wasn’t finished and we played the scene in front of a palace set; Russell got tight and blew half his lines, and I walked out. Union or no union, I packed my make-up and quit.
This time I really meant it. They had switched my number to the second act. The Princess not only had my featured spot, but she came on last in the finale.
Moss caught me in the alley. I wasn’t going to stop. My bag was packed, and as far as I was concerned the Eltinge had a new strip teaser. But there was something compelling in his manner when he opened the door that led to his office, the office just off the stage-entrance side of the alley.
It was really a cubbyhole, with room for a desk and two chairs, and even so it was crowded. Although Moss had an office uptown, complete with switchboard and oil paintings, he preferred transacting his business in this little room. “Because I got my start in burlesque here,” he explained.
On the walls were framed program and newspaper clippings from a show called Whirlwind of 1921. Moss had invested thousands in the show and it ran for three performances. He said he kept the clippings around as a reminder to mind his own business—burlesque.
I didn’t pay any attention to office or clippings then, though. I was mad, I was packed, I was through. But I followed him into the room.
He leaned back in his swivel chair and gave me a quizzical look. “Now, what’s all this I hear about you giving your two weeks’ notice?”
“No two weeks’ notice. Sue me,” I said, refusing the chair he offered. “I’m not taking second billing to anyone, especially a broken-down dame like that Princess!”
He didn’t answer me and for a moment I felt uncomfortable. He could sue me, but I hadn’t thought of it until I told him to go ahead and do it! I was uncomfortable standing, too. I felt so tall and my bag was getting heavy. But I knew if I sat down I was lost. Once I got settled he could talk me into anything. It had happened before.
Moss had taken off his glasses. He wiped them carefully with a little pink cloth. There was something graceful in his movements and without his glasses he had a sort of esthetic appearance. But he looked so tired, more than just tired—worried.
I suddenly thought of all the good things he had done for me. I remembered Toledo and how broke I had been, the meal ticket with one punch left. He h
ad kept his word with me; I was a star. I didn’t have diamonds in my hair, but I did have an annuity. I, well, I sat down.
“I don’t suppose I’d mind it so much if she wasn’t such a gloater,” I said.
Moss put on his glasses and stared at the tidy desk top. His legs weren’t long enough to touch the floor when he sat back in his chair and they dangled like a kid’s. A kid sitting in a swing, I thought.
Then the Princess came to my mind and I was in a fury again. “She’s running the whole theater! Misses a show and nobody had the nerve to even ask her where she’s been! Walks around the place as if she owns it, looks down her nose at us. I tell you I can’t stand it! If I hung around her much longer, I’d wind up maiming her. I didn’t give her a chance to gloat today, though, believe me. I got out of that dressing room so fast that anybody standing next to me would get pneumonia from the draft. And what’s more, I’m not going back!”
I had to bite my lip to keep from crying. That always happens to me when I try to stand up for my rights. I miss all the important things in my argument and knock myself out bringing up stupid issues like the Princess looking down her nose at me. Who cares?
Moss sat quietly and let me wear myself out. He was used to listening to complaints and his silent system was usually successful.
I changed my tune completely. “I don’t want to leave, Mr. Moss,” I said in a very businesslike manner. “All I want is for things to go along smoothly. I want my same spots in the show. I don’t want to have her follow me in the finale. If the rest of the women can make their entrance to Happy Days, so can she. Sixteen bars of Beautiful Lady for her finale entrance indeed! And as far as her stripping is concerned, I don’t care if she takes her teeth out for a finish. I just don’t want to follow her. And, I won’t dress in the same room with her!”
With that off my chest, I sat back and waited. I didn’t feel that I had been unreasonable, but Moss still didn’t speak.
“Oh, you don’t know how awful she is,” I blurted out. Then suddenly I remembered, and when I remembered I realized why Moss didn’t speak.
“I … I’m sorry, Mr. Moss. I …”
“You recognized her, huh?” he asked quietly, and I nodded. “It was so long ago and she’s changed so much. She was pretty then, wasn’t she?”
It hadn’t been so long ago. Two years isn’t long, and I couldn’t say I thought she had been pretty either. She was a blonde then and everyone knew Moss was in love with her. Not like he loved his wife and two grown boys, but a nice kind of love anyway. Certainly more than she deserved. I’d worked with her in Toledo. She was in the chorus and after a while she quit. Moss rented an apartment for her, I heard.
“She went to South America, you know.” Moss’ voice sounded hollow. He adjusted his glasses and fumbled with some papers on his desk.
“Now she’s back,” I said.
“Yes, she’s back,” he said wearily. “Letters, canceled checks, and copies of hotel registers. She’s …” He looked up at me and a slow smile crossed his face. “She’s stage-struck.”
I didn’t understand him. “Stage-struck?” I repeated.
“She wants to get out of burlesque and she wants me to produce a show for her. I told her to wait, and she’s waiting.” He crossed his hands on his fat stomach and dropped his head.
I could understand her wanting to get out of burlesque, but a show! What could she do? She couldn’t even talk, and with that weird shape of hers they wouldn’t want her in the back of a road-show chorus. I told Moss what I thought.
“She doesn’t want to be in any chorus. She wants I should star her! I gotta tell her tomorrow or she’s going to my …”
“Your wife?” I helped him finish.
He nodded slowly and mashed his cold cigar in an ash tray. His eyes stared at the framed clippings. There was deep loathing in them. I didn’t know if he was thinking of his Broadway failure or if he was thinking of the Princess.
I got up. “I’ll tell Sammy I’m staying,” I said and left the room, closing the door quietly behind me.
Chapter Thirteen
The Princess Nirvena’s body was found that night. She had been strangled with a piece of dental floss. Under her right ear the rhinestones of a G string glittered!
Jake found her. He had pulled the Gazeeka Box out of its place in the prop room and was hurrying to get it finished so we could use it for the rest of the week. He said later that he thought it was a little heavier than usual but, because it had rollers on the bottom, it wasn’t very noticeable.
He had painted one side of it a bright red and had started on the front panel. He said at first he thought the paint had run; there was a stream of red pouring out of the bottom where the door was. When he opened the door of the box, the body fell out. The blood came from an arm wound. It was a deep gash running from the shoulder to the elbow.
I didn’t see the body. In fact, I didn’t know she was dead until the police asked me to go upstairs to the men’s dressing room.
The Sergeant sat at the same table. The room still smelled of sweat and comedy clothes. The questions were the same. It was as though we had rehearsed it; La Verne’s death and now the Princess’!
La Verne’s was a dress rehearsal, I thought; this is the real performance.
The banter of the first investigation was missing. Gee Gee wasn’t playing Madame X and Jannine wasn’t telling the Sergeant how to run the show. Their faces were tense and no one looked at each other. The police hadn’t given us time to take off our make-up. The cosmetic smeared on Dolly’s cheek and Mandy’s putty nose was dented in the middle.
The Sergeant spoke to Biff. “You say that the property man called you when he discovered the body.”
Biff nodded.
“Why did he call you?”
“Maybe because I was just, sort of, walking by,” Biff replied. “You see the finale was just over and the others had gone upstairs. I was going in to tell Jake to hurry with the Gazeeka Box because the scene was stinking up the theater without it. You can’t play a scene like that without your props.
“Anyway, I get going on my way. I was about ten, fifteen feet away from the prop room. I hear him. He doesn’t call me at first, you see. He sort of gasps. ‘Migawd,’ he says. Then he sees me and he tells me to hurry. He’s standing there with his paint-brush in his hand and it’s dripping red paint.
“I think he’s hurt himself until I see it ain’t paint that’s got him; it’s terror. The guy was petrified. He couldn’t say a thing, just stood there with his mouth and eyes wide open. Then I saw her sprawled out in a puddle of blood.”
Biff stopped talking. The only sound for a moment was a loud ticking. I suddenly realized it was a watch. He held it in his hand and looked at it.
“If it’s right about her being killed around five-thirty, six o’clock, that means she’s been dead about six hours,” Biff said.
The Sergeant glanced at him. “How did you know about the medical report?” he asked.
Biff smiled. “I made it my business to find out,” he said innocently. I noticed that Jiggers looked embarrassed.
Then: “I don’t know much about dead bodies and stuff like that, but that blood, doesn’t it congeal or something?”
The Sergeant didn’t answer him. He was looking at Jiggers.
Biff, unaware of the byplay, went on. “I tell you why I got so curious. All this blood and everything; well, I figured it was sort of dammed up at the bottom of the box. When Jake moves the thing he maybe opens the door—just a crack, ya know. So, while he calls the cops—I mean the police—I take a look at the body. The hand is flopped over to the side with the palm up. Naturally I see the cut. It was a long one, right near the thumb. Only it’s dry. It ain’t new and sticky like the cut on the arm.”
The Sergeant looked intently at one of the papers on the table. “We have a report on that mark. It is a jagged tear, but it occurred a day or two ago; nothing to do with the case at all. What else did you ‘look at’ while
you were alone with the body?”
The sarcasm was wasted on Biff. He scratched his ear and thought hard.
“I noticed the G string, of course.” He added quickly, “but I didn’t touch it. I didn’t touch anything.”
“Isn’t it unusual for one of the featured performers to miss his act?” The Sergeant had spoken to Sammy, who had been leaning against the door.
He jumped when he realized the Sergeant had asked him the question. “Huh? I mean what?”
“How is it that no one missed the Princess during the show?”
“She’d missed one before and, to be absolutely frank with you, I was damned glad she was out.” Sammy spoke bitterly. “She caused more trouble. Not that I care, ya know, only, well, of course everyone missed her. I just told ’em all that she was resting.”
“A good, long rest,” Jannine mumbled, almost to herself.
The Sergeant asked her what she had said.
“I said she was going to get a good, long rest,” Jannine snapped. “And, by God, I want one, too. What’s the idea of holding us all here? If she was killed at dinnertime, how could any of us have done it? We all eat, and we all eat together. Gyp and Biff and Dolly ate with me. They know I didn’t leave the restaurant; I know they didn’t leave. Ask the others who they ate with and stop wasting time! Not that I want you to hurry on my account. Hell no. Far as I’m concerned you can fiddle around until we’re all murdered.”
No one tried to stop her as she flounced out of the room. At the door she turned.
“Only I won’t be here to get it,” she said. “You’ve waited for your double feature, but if you think I’m going to be the encore, you’re nuts.”
The Sergeant let her leave. I guess he thought he’d give her time to cool off.
After a pause Jake cleared his throat. “I’d like to say something,” he said hesitatingly. “It’s about the Gazeeka Box.”
“Yes, that interests me,” the Sergeant said. “Very ingenious place to hide a body. The property room is cool; it would have taken some time for decomposition to take effect. The body might have remained concealed until …”
