“Andrea, dear, you are of course entitled to your views, but most people think Cassidy is very good—just the sort of bravura young blood the Company needs,” Frost said. “Certainly Clifton thinks that.”
“I know Clifton thinks that. And Clifton is wrong. That boy is not promising, and neither you nor Clifton can convince me otherwise. I think Clifton and he must have something going, if you ask me.”
Frost was able to ignore Turnbull’s sexual innuendo by turning—eagerly—to greet Adelaide Simms, who had come up beside him. Mrs. Simms, who had married into a major perfume fortune, was a cheerful lady of goodwill who had been a friend of the Frosts for many years. Reuben got to his feet and kissed her on both cheeks (or, more precisely, made a vaguely kissing sound as he rubbed against each of her cheeks).
“How are you, Adelaide?” Frost asked.
“Wonderful, Reuben. Couldn’t be better. Are we in for a treat this afternoon?”
“We shall see,” Reuben answered. “But you know Clifton can always produce surprises.”
“He certainly can,” Andrea Turnbull chimed in. “I was just telling Reuben what stupid judgment Clifton is showing by pushing that Cassidy boy.”
Neither Frost nor Simms had a chance to reply, as other members of the Board began arriving. Frost took the occasion to leave his seat and greet the newcomers, leaving Adelaide Simms to listen to Mrs. Turnbull’s latest grievance.
As the assembled group talked, a dozen members of the Company filed onto the dimly lit stage. As always at a ballet rehearsal, they appeared in various types of motley, carefully and thoughtfully selected to suggest insouciance: a Rolling Stones sweat shirt here, flaming pink leg warmers there; a torn and dirty T-shirt on one boy, an exotic turban on another girl. Only Veronica Maywood and Laura Russell, who would rehearse the lead part, wore any semblance of a costume. Both wore identical green chiffon shifts designed for the performance. Aaron Cassidy and Roy Irwin, their male counterparts, were by contrast wearing sweat shirts and warm-up pants.
Kirk Drinan, one of the Company’s pianists, nervously picked out difficult passages from the piano transcription of Chávez’ dissonant work. Frost could not help hearing them as he returned to his seat. He had more than a little apprehension about Clifton Holt’s latest undertaking. He was unfamiliar with the music, but Cynthia had heard a record of it and had pronounced it undanceable. Part of the interest in Holt’s ballets was watching the resolution of difficult problems the choreographer created for himself; if Cynthia was right—and the excerpts Frost was now hearing indicated that she was—Holt this time had set himself the ultimately impossible task of making a ballet to ferociously difficult music.
Frost had another feeling of foreboding as well, after his brief encounter with Hailey Coles. Ever since the premiere of Paganini Variations, Veronica Maywood had been Holt’s favorite ballerina (and, for a period in the late 1970s, his mistress). In virtually all Holt’s works since, and certainly the major ones, the leading female parts had been made on her. But now, for the first time, Holt was rehearsing two dancers—Maywood and Laura Russell—and had not indicated which of them would dance the premiere. There was no question that Russell was outstanding, dancing at nineteen with a maturity that one expected only in a more seasoned performer. But Maywood had always been the favorite and was thought by many to be dancing exceptionally well during the current season.
Frost knew that Maywood was both strong-willed and temperamental. He hoped, as he took his seat beside Andrea Turnbull, that Holt’s decision would not create fireworks; he knew from long experience that fireworks within the Company had a way of throwing off sparks and burning others, creating unwanted morale problems in the process.
“I see he has Cassidy in this one too,” Turnbull grumbled. “I’m not sure that I paid the money for this ballet as a vehicle for that pretty-boy.”
“Andrea, we’ll have to talk about this later. Right now I think Clifton is about to begin.”
Holt had come on stage. Although he had long since given up dancing, he maintained a slim, wiry profile. Never a danseur noble, never a handsome prince, he nonetheless had an immediately recognizable air of authority—one, Frost reflected, that would have been as effective in a corporate boardroom as on the stage of the Zacklin. Something about his manner and his brisk, choppy and decisive movements said Don’t cross me, don’t tread on me.
After talking briefly to Maywood and Russell, Holt came down the steps leading from the stage into the orchestra. He seemed oblivious of the Board members seated behind him. He had apparently told Veronica Maywood and Roy Irwin to dance the rehearsal, as Laura Russell and Aaron Cassidy moved to the side of the stage.
All the dancers, except Russell and Cassidy at the side, left the stage, and Holt signaled Kirk Drinan to begin playing. The music that emerged could best be described as prickly. It was reminiscent of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, but without Stravinsky’s undeniable inventiveness and with a decided Latin overlay. Twelve corps dancers—six girls, six boys—entered from the wings, forming rapidly dissolving patterns to the complex music. Then Maywood and Irwin came out and started a pas de deux. They had scarcely begun when Holt stopped them. He went forward to the edge of the orchestra pit and spoke to them in a voice inaudible to those in the auditorium. Maywood dramatically shrugged her shoulders, but did not speak.
The pas de deux resumed. This time Holt allowed it to continue only slightly longer than before. Again Holt talked to the dancers. This time Maywood could be heard saying from the stage that she was “uncomfortable doing the steps that way. It’s simply too awkward.”
“You mean too hard?” Holt said, this time in a mocking voice that could be heard.
“No, Clifton, not too hard. Just too damned clumsy and awkward. I don’t feel right doing it.”
Holt did not respond but only beckoned to the pianist to begin the passage again. This time the duet of the dancers continued for five minutes. Maywood had said the steps were not hard; to the spectator they nonetheless seemed extraordinarily complex—sharp, jagged, syncopated movements executed in unorthodox positions—and both dancers were sweating hard when Holt again stopped the music.
This time the choreographer went back up the steps to the stage, took the dancers aside, and talked to them quietly, his arms and legs outlining the movements as he wanted them executed. Russell and Cassidy came closer to hear the conversation, anxious to avoid similar problems when they rehearsed.
From the auditorium, the talk did not seem agitated, though what was actually being said could not be heard. The clustered group on the stage appeared to be a quintet of professionals discussing a technical problem. Then the atmosphere changed. Veronica Maywood stepped back away from Holt and her partner and began shouting.
“Clifton, this music is impossible, and you know it. I refuse to go on with it. I feel like a goddamn Mexican jumping bean, doing the goddamn Mexican hat dance! These steps are just plain clumsy and designed to make us—or at least me—look weird and ungraceful. Let Laura do it if she wants to. You’re being perverse, Clifton, and I’m not going to be a part of it!”
Maywood grabbed her towel from the side of the stage and walked off. The corps members, peeking out from the wings to see the excitement, looked stunned, as did Roy Irwin, watching his partner disappear. Only Laura Russell seemed serene, as she stood staring at her slippered feet.
Clifton Holt was furious. What would he do? Go on with Laura Russell? No, he turned to the small group seated in the audience. “Ladies and gentlemen, I apologize. We do not seem as far along as I had hoped with our ballet. I think we should cut our losses and call this rehearsal off. Thank you for coming, and better luck next time.”
“See what I mean, Reuben?” Andrea Turnbull said to Frost in great excitement. “The man is a monster. Trying to do the impossible and torturing his dancers. We’ve got to do something.”
“This is neither the time nor the place, Andrea,” Frost answered. “Let’s get upstairs to the Board meeting. I have
a feeling it’s going to be interesting.”
2
BOARD MEETING
The unknowing might think that NatBallet’s Board of Directors, as the governing body of one of America’s leading cultural institutions, would meet in comfortable, rarefied and beautifully furnished surroundings. The reality was quite different. The Board met in a cramped, oblong room in the Zacklin Theatre, two floors above the stage and on the same level as the principal rehearsal studio.
Today there were twenty-six members of the Board (out of a total of thirty-five) present for the spring meeting. As they filed into the room after Clifton Holt’s disastrous rehearsal, they seated themselves on wooden funeral-parlor chairs arranged around four portable metal tables, pushed together in a long rectangle. Although new, the room was narrow and windowless; there was no aura of corporate grandeur, no echoes of J. P. Morgan or John D. Rockefeller, let alone Otto Kahn or Mrs. Belmont.
The room and its arrangements—the hard wooden chairs, the bare gray tables, the legal pads and pencils and the collection of duplicated materials distributed at each place—made a statement. The statement said: Yes, we will provide you with a seat, a sharpened pencil and a pad (one each), and a certain amount of information about NatBallet (the duplicated material). But don’t expect food or drink, or comfort that would make you want to linger. In other words, we welcome you, but don’t stay too long (and don’t get too deeply involved in our affairs). The ambience was closer to that of a criminal-court jury room than to that of the Cabinet Room at the White House.
The unknowing might also think that the purpose of this Board of Directors was to give patrician, thoughtful artistic advice to Clifton Holt and his colleagues. Such was not the case. The Board did, as it would today, go through the motions of ratifying decisions made by Holt about promotions in the Company. And if anything happened to Holt, the Board would appoint a new Director. But as long as Holt was in place, the artistic operations of the Company—the aspects of the Company’s existence that were seen by the public—were almost entirely his responsibility.
Although never spoken too loudly, the central purpose of the Board was to raise money, to find the wherewithal to pay dancers and musicians and stagehands and wardrobe mistresses a living wage, to provide money for scenery and costumes, and to buy roughly thirty thousand pairs of ballet slippers each season (at $25 a pair). And all without raising ticket prices to a level that would make admission to Nat-Ballet performances affordable only by arbitrageurs and rock promoters.
Other companies over the years had made the mistake of allowing board members to make artistic decisions; with the rarest exceptions, these attempts had been disastrous. The directors could, and did, express their opinions—often in very strong terms—to Holt. And the financial reins held by the Board imposed practical limits on what he could do. But Holt, shrewd enough to recognize the budgetary limits—which were lenient as such things went—had never had a serious dispute over money with the Board. Its members, in turn, had never overruled his artistic policies and judgments.
Some cynics might have said that the Board was deliberately inflated in size to reduce its decision-making efficiency. Other cynics (and they were right) realized that the larger the Board, the greater the contributions that could be exacted from its members. The unspoken rule was that each director was responsible for donating or personally raising at least $25,000 a year. Of course appropriate exceptions were made. Monsignor Joseph Carroll, the president of a local Catholic university, was excused. So was Bartlett Empson, a gentleman, a snob, an encyclopedic source of information about ballet history and an astute critic—and an aging bachelor of modest means. But most of the others had large bank balances, or their spouses did, or their fathers did, or the foundations they headed did. Or failing direct access to wealth themselves, they were sufficiently well connected with the rich to make them effective fund-raisers.
The fact that most Board members were rich or regularly associated with the rich did not necessarily make them genteel and couth. Mrs. Turnbull was not. Nor was Hugh Warner, whose real estate enterprises were under the protection of the bankruptcy court much of the time (though this did not seem to affect his personal generosity toward Nat-Ballet). Nor was Kenneth Franklin, a wealthy Wall Street commodities broker whose political contributions had enabled him to serve as an American ambassador in Europe, whence he had returned as (forevermore) Ambassador Franklin, though diplomatic he was not.
Privately, Reuben Frost was particularly contemptuous of Franklin. He regarded him as a vulgarian, a man singlemindedly devoted to making money and one whose pretensions as “the Ambassador” in no way masked his avarice and lack of taste and intellectual polish. Frost conceded that taste and intellect were probably not necessary in the commodities business, but thought they would have been useful to Franklin in his pose as a devoted patron of the arts. Pushed by his second wife, a former stewardess with pretensions even grander than her husband’s, Franklin had feigned sufficient interest in the dance to be named to the NatBallet Board. (His feigned interest, needless to say, being bolstered by frequent and generous contributions.)
Franklin was at Reuben’s side when he entered the meeting room. “That Maywood is quite a spitfire, isn’t she?” Franklin said to Frost. “What did she say to old Cliff—‘Mexican-jumping-bean music’?”
“Something like that,” Frost coolly replied.
Franklin seemed quite amused at the piece of living theatre he had just seen downstairs in the Zacklin auditorium. None of his colleagues shared his amusement, appalled as they were by Maywood’s behavior (if they were especially fond of Holt) or Holt’s (if their loyalties were with the ballerina) or the behavior of both (if they were objective about the matter and concerned above all about the Company).
In general, the assembling group was a subdued one. Monsignor Carroll, more used, as a former pastor, to scenes of grief and disaster than most, tried to cheer up Adelaide Simms and David Weiss, the elegant designer of equally elegant women’s clothes, by an insistent conversation about the City’s erratic spring weather.
Others were glum and silent, including Jack Navikoff, a blond, deeply tanned overgrown beachboy of fifty-odd. Navikoff had been the producer of Holt’s last three movies and in the process had become Holt’s close friend and confidant (and, more than likely, his lover). Holt by choice did not serve on the NatBallet Board—not out of any sense of artistic purity, but because its proceedings quite frankly bored him. Instead Navikoff had been named as a director at Holt’s insistence.
Those within Navikoff’s hearing did not overtly criticize Holt for his part in the set-to with the Company’s leading ballerina. For they had learned from experience that Navikoff was not only Holt’s mouthpiece, but his eyes and ears as well. Only Andrea Turnbull, extending the tirade she had started with Frost downstairs in the orchestra of the theatre, continued to broadcast her negative views of the Company’s Artistic Director.
“I think Clifton is around the bend,” she said to Hugh Warner. “Veronica Maywood was absolutely right. He is trying to do the impossible with that crazy Chávez music. And I am paying for it!” she said loudly, leaning into Warner’s face.
“Well, I agree with you that it all seems terribly messy,” Warner replied in his oleaginous baritone. “But she said herself the steps weren’t difficult. I think she feels threatened by Clifton’s interest in Laura.”
“Perhaps, though I don’t think Veronica is like that,” Turn-bull replied, with some petulance. “But if his stupid ballet—my ballet—ever sees the light of day, it will be very good for Roy. He is twice the dancer that Aaron is.”
“To each his own, Andrea,” Warner answered. “Time will tell.”
Frost, overhearing the conversation, marveled at Warner’s highly perceptive judgment, so aptly expressed in cliché. But it was time for business, and Frost took his customary seat at the head of the table. On his left was Jeanine Saperstein, a culture maven whose aggressive energy had battered
down the doors of several artistic institutions in the City—doors that in many cases would probably have been closed to one of such acutely deficient intellect, but for her brassiness and shamelessness. (There were some limits to what money could buy, and Ms. Saperstein, possessor of the proceeds of a large and messy divorce settlement that had permitted Mr. Saperstein to marry a pretty, young, intelligent—and quiet—museum assistant, came perilously close to them.)
The woman was the nominal secretary of the Board and, at each meeting, read the minutes in dramatic tones more suggestive of a bad tragedienne than of an efficient secretary. Next to her was Jocelyn Taylor, a bright young Smith graduate, passionate balletomane, and all-purpose Girl Friday on NatBallet’s staff, who actually kept the minutes and wrote them up after each meeting. (This was a task quite beyond Ms. Saperstein’s capabilities. As Cynthia Frost had once observed to Reuben, Jeanine had clearly been told by her mother before she started school that she must participate in each of her classes—that is, make herself heard even if she had nothing to say. This habit from school had continued into later life and was evident at the numerous board and committee meetings she now attended; she still raised her hand and talked whether or not her contributions were pertinent. Framing her words—one could not really say framing her thoughts—and seeking attention from the “Chair,” as she trendily called Reuben, would have left little time for taking minutes.)
At Frost’s right was David Weiss, Vice Chairman of the Board. A multimillionaire from his successful career as a high-fashion couturier—and perfume seller, jeans maker and (most recently) men’s designer—Weiss was a handsome, asexual (as far as anyone knew or could speculate) and utterly charming man. He was particularly useful in beguiling the latest Texas millionaire who had discovered the “bal-lay,” or the Upstate Assemblyman responsible for NatBallet’s New York State Council on the Arts’ appropriation—or more particularly, in beguiling their wives who (in the case of Mrs. Texas) wore his dresses or (in the case of Mrs. Assemblyman) had seen pictures of them.
Murder Takes a Partner Page 2
