by Ed Ifkovic
An angry voice erupted from behind us. “You ain’t being fair to him.”
Millie Glass rushed up the aisle from the lobby. The actress planted herself feet from us, her jaw set, one fist pummeling the air. “The man is hurting real bad.” Her rough, brassy voice flattened. “Damn you all. Goddamn you all to hell. I mean it—goddamn you all.”
“For God’s sake,” I said to her, “calm down, Miss Glass. He was the one who asked us to come here.”
She glanced back to the lobby, and snarled, “I told him it was a mistake. Busybodies, the two of you. Famous, yes—but Dougie’ll never listen to you. A mistake.”
“And why is that?”
“And frankly, Miss Ferber, he asked him.” She pointed to Noel. “Why are you here?”
Noel found his voice. “And you are?”
“Millie Glass,” I answered for her. “One of the featured players. We were introduced last time.”
“Hah!” she yelled out. “Featured player, my ass.”
Noel’s eyes widened, delighted. “We haven’t had the pleasure. Pleased to meet you, Miss Glass.”
Millie was having none of it. “You’re here to bring down these walls.”
“What?” I asked, startled.
“This theater got one feeble breath left in it, and that’s Jackson. He loves…”
I broke in. “Yes, we heard from him—his love of theater, the stage in his soul, the classic muse of theater whispers.” I sighed. “The litany that’s repeated in this place more than Hamlet’s soliloquy, I imagine.”
“Don’t mock me.”
“I’m simply being descriptive.”
She stared at us. “Dougie killed Belinda, and that’s the end of the final act. The curtain can come down now.” She stamped her foot. “Jackson and me—we now gotta keep this place afloat. I’m telling you the truth—I got tired of blinking my eyes like a lapdog at that rich fool. Jackson devoted every ounce of his blood to Belinda’s career. He made her.”
“And he won.”
“Did he? I suppose so, but not so’s you’d notice.”
“What?”
“Belinda got greedy.”
“How so?” I asked.
For a moment she looked away, a nervous catch in her throat. “Simple. Not greedy for money. For—for attention. The adulation of rich men. A string of them. The small-town girl with a history of mindless infidelities, according to her brother. And he should know. This heart broken, that one. She wouldn’t listen to Jackson when he cautioned her. Instead, she ignored us—she even refused his calls.”
Her mouth twisted. Without stage makeup, her face was drab, flat with a wide mouth under a pixie nose, and hazel eyes that someone probably told her were her best feature. Last time, meeting her, she glittered with rouge and lipstick, a line of kohl under her eyes so that she look vampish. Theda Bara from a silent era. The It Girl.
A decade too late.
“So you think Dougie killed her because she was unfaithful to him.”
“What else?” She laughed harshly. “We heard she found a richer man.”
“But who?”
“Dunno. Rumor only tells you so much. Jackson even heard it from her chatty girlfriend—whatever her name is—and he pushed Belinda but she played coy. ‘I only love little Dougie.’ Some prattle like that. ‘You don’t understand. I’m not that girl.’ But Jackson warned her—stop these idle flirtations. You’re a star now.’”
“And she was a star,” I told her. “She did the impossible—made it big on Broadway. The start of riches, fame. A lifetime of…”
She jumped in. “What are you saying? I’m not a star?” A pause as she clapped her hands together. “I had to take a backseat while she strutted and preened and bowed.”
“Millie, we’re not talking about you.”
Her voice broke. “God spreads talent around, you know.”
Noel quipped, “But some players always drift at the end of the line.”
She eyed him, her lips twitching. “I’m doing okay. You hear me?” She stepped away. “All right. Enough. Just leave Jackson alone. Leave us alone. Call off Dougie. He’s giving everyone nightmares. We’re rehearsing and he’s—there. In back. Watching. Just watching. This—one time there was like this high-pitched keening coming from his throat. Lord, it’s like Banquo’s ghost visited on us.” She shook her head back and forth. “I hid in the dressing room. Jackson don’t want to shut the doors of this theater for good.”
“But will he have to?” I asked.
“You’ll have to ask him.”
I looked toward the wings. “Where is Chauncey Waters today?” I turned to Noel. “You met Kent, or, at least, heard him. But last time there was another featured player. A young man who had a lot to say.”
“None of it good,” Millie said.
“Is he around? Perhaps a few words with him…”
“Gone.”
“He left?”
She shared the news. “The day after Belinda was killed, he comes in and says, ‘I have to leave you all now.’ Like that. Like a line he rehearsed. Said in his phony stage voice, the fool. Probably grieving for his lost moment with the available-for-parties Belinda.”
“No reason given?”
“I told you. Gone.” She snapped her fingers and laughed. “Pouf. Like that. Oh, yeah, his parting shot at Jackson: ‘This place is a tomb. I don’t wanna be buried alive.’ Imagine that? A freak of nature, he is.” She smirked. “Don’t know which way to shoot his arrows, if you know what I mean.”
Noel grumbled, “You do have a way with words, dear Miss Glass.”
“Sorry, I never liked the guy.”
Noel turned away, his voice filled with sarcasm. “We’ll give Dougie your best.”
Her voice rose. “You just tell him to stop these scary visits.” She thought a second. “Lord, a day ago I walk onstage, getting ready to rehearse my silly monologue about a dumb blonde in a typing pool who dreams of a dance marathon—stolen from Damon Runyon’s Guys and Dolls or somebody like that—and there he was. Standing in the middle of the aisles. Like where we are.”
“We know,” I said, impatient. “You’ve already told us.”
“No, no. But that ain’t the crazy part. What makes it nuts was that suddenly I spot that old fool, Cyrus Meerdom, you know, the coot she left for Tommy Stuyvesant—the one she ditched for Dougie Maddox. I mean, the old fool mooning after her. Everybody talks about it—like…following her, that sad sack face of his. There he is, sitting in the back row. And there’s Dougie right about here. I actually cried out—so scared I was.”
My heart raced. “What happened?”
“Well, nothing. Dougie spots him, panics, and rushes out. I’ll tell you—the look on Cyrus’ face was something else. Murderous, I’ll say. Even from the stage I could see the hatred there. Lord, folks. Belinda is dead—yet her lovers still haunt this damn theater.”
Noel was anxious to leave, tugging at my sleeve, making mouth noises that sounded vaguely digestive. Millie rolled her eyes.
Suddenly Kent LaSalle’s deep baritone sounded from offstage.
“According to Saint Sullivan, the world’s greatest magazine writer, a psalm for all of us:
Hoover is my Shepherd, I am in want.
He maketh me to lie down on park benches,
He leadeth me by the still factories,
He restoreth my doubt in the Republican Party,
He guides me in the path of the Unemployed for his party’s sake,
Yes, though I walk through the alley of soup kitchens,
I am hungry.”
We waited, looking at each other, nervous.
Then, a sad, sad line: “Out, out, brief candle.” Then, in an arch, mocking falsetto he mimicked Jenny Lind’s annoying treble. He sang out: “She was only a bird in a gilded cag
e.”
The front house lights suddenly shut down. Then the stage lights. The theater was plunged into darkness.
Chapter Twelve
James, the doorman at my building, opened the front door, a deferential bow, but paused, uncertain. He quietly greeted me but nodded over my shoulder. I was tempted to ignore him, tired from my morning stroll up Park Avenue and down Lexington, but something in his expression gave me pause.
“Miss Ferber, a visitor.”
I turned to face Chauncey Waters rushing toward me from a few doors away, maneuvering between two parked cars, his breath bursts of icy clouds as he hurried. “I’ve been waiting and…I couldn’t wait inside.”
“It’s not a hotel,” I smiled at him. “And James is very protective of the expensive residents who hide from the world.”
That stopped him, but he laughed out loud. “Are you hiding from the world, Miss Ferber?”
“No, I hope not.” I waited a moment. “But I am an expensive resident. How might I help you, Mr. Waters? Do you often lurk on sidewalks, ready to assail folks doing their morning constitutional?”
We both glanced at the sidewalk where a white-gloved houseman was walking two miniature poodles, maneuvering around the two of us.
He looked back at me. “I was hoping to have a few words with you. I mean, I knew where you lived. Everyone read that article in Stage about your life in this building. Your grand piano. The thick-pile carpet. Pictures of your terrace, your apple-green walls, your favorite pewter candlesticks, even…”
I laughed out loud. “I knew I shouldn’t have been interviewed by that pesky reporter. I’m one who values my privacy.”
“Then you shouldn’t let photographers click through your rooms.”
“I agree, but too late now.” I smiled thinly. “You’re here.”
He drew in his breath. “But I mean you no harm. I talked to the doorman who turned me away.”
“I’m tempted to do the same thing, Mr. Waters. I haven’t had my coffee yet, so chances are I’m not a good conversationalist.”
He eyed me, grimly. “I’ll do all the talking, ma’am.”
***
We found a Child’s coffee shop on Lexington and sat in a booth by the front door. Seated, he lost the cockiness of the street encounter, his fingers drumming the table, one leg going up and down like a mechanical hammer. Under the overhead light, his clothes looked frayed, shabby. An average-Joe eatery, this familiar coffee shop, but filled now with businessmen in double-breasted dignity and feathered fedoras, glowing cigars held between manicured fingers. Women chatted in fur caps and two strands of cultured pearls.
“All right, Mr. Waters. Why this early morning intervention?”
He squirmed in his seat, his eyes perusing the menu. “Miss Ferber, I have to tell you.” An embarrassed smile. “I’m broke—Jackson stiffed us all—so I can’t…” He tapped the menu.
“Mr. Waters, I invited you.” I smiled at him. “Actually, you invited me, but don’t worry about it. Order, please.”
And he did—toothsome buttermilk pancakes with Vermont syrup, a side of crisp bacon, steaming coffee. I did the same, though I insisted my coffee be served with real whipped cream. “A bad habit I acquired in Vienna,” I told him.
“Miss Ferber, I’m leaving Manhattan at noon today. I walked away from that failed theater, as you know, and I can’t afford to stay in the city. A friend got an old Ford jalopy, a million miles on it, enough money for gas to Erie, Pennsylvania. His uncle got a truck farm outside the city, promises work when spring comes. Grubbing work, backbreaking. But it’s better than standing in a breadline on Eleventh. Or living under a Hoover blanket in Central Park. A whole lot of folks there at night. Cold. Scary.”
“A Hoover blanket?” I was confused.
He laughed. “Cardboard.” He twisted in his seat and pulled out the lining of his pockets. “Hoover flags.”
“Good Lord.”
“Hoover leather.”
“Let me guess—cardboard in your shoes.”
“The current style, ma’am.” An infectious smile, charming.
“No more acting?”
He shook his head. “In a time of despair and want?”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“I was never any good, anyway. Jackson paid us pennies—told us to eat at soup kitchens. He told us we had no talent.” He paused. “But I thought I’d take a chance—to see you. Maybe. Talk to you.”
“And here we are.” I looked into his face. “What is so important, Mr. Waters?”
He locked eyes with mine. “Because when you were at the theater, they…lied to you. They’re afraid of something, afraid you might stumble onto something they’re hiding. I mean, this was before poor Belinda’s murder.” He sucked in his breath. “And last night I stopped at the speakeasy over on the docks on Hudson, a grimy hole in the wall, and there was Kent, who almost lives there, drunk as a skunk on that rotgut swill they serve. But then he usually is.”
“Yes, we saw him at the theater. He seemed…overly dramatic. He spouted a parody of the Twenty-third Psalm.”
“Yeah, he loves that bit, but drink has withered him, ma’am. That, and age and want and a dreaminess about a life he believes he once had.”
“And he told you about Noel and my visit to the theater?”
He nodded, took a sip of coffee. “Yeah, he mentioned how you asked about me. I liked that—you remembered me.”
“He eavesdropped?”
“Yeah, he doesn’t miss anything.”
“And then he plunged the theater into darkness.”
“What?”
“No matter. Talk to me.”
He swallowed a forkful of pancakes, a contented look on his face. “I never trusted Jackson, ma’am. Even from the beginning, before everything bad happened, I always felt he was harboring some secret—a big secret.” He looked into my face. “No one has ever allowed you a true picture of who Belinda was.”
That line startled. “I’m not following you.”
He gulped down hot coffee. “The fact of the matter is that Belinda had changed lately, and Jackson didn’t like it one bit. Schemers, the two of them, yeah, but I always felt Belinda was more an unwilling creation of Jackson’s plans. Here you got this real talented girl, beautiful, a singer, dancer, God’s blessed one, and Jackson knew it—figured she was the key to paradise. His gold-plated meal ticket. And she was. At first. I think she went along with his plans.”
“Which were?” I interrupted.
“Come to the city, showcase her wonderful talent, get her to Broadway—and that’s the way it’s supposed to be, actors, that persistent dreaming—but he wanted money. Craved money. Greedy, that man. For himself, really. I heard them whispering all the time—hook her to some rich boy’s rising star.”
I sat back. “Dougie.”
“Or someone else. Tommy, Cyrus, you name it.”
“And it worked.”
He bit his tongue. “It didn’t really.”
“Why not?”
He sat back. “That’s my point. Because Belinda changed. That’s what they didn’t talk to you about. That’s the lie—at least one of them. You see, she had a falling out with her brother. Real violent, the two of them in the dressing room behind closed doors. Then she wouldn’t even go back there after a while—ever. Even a knock-down-drag-out fight with Millie Glass. Belinda wasn’t planting her feet in the spots they drew for her.”
“They?”
“Millie Glass looms large in this story.” He smiled dreamily as he forked a slice of bacon.
“She struck me as someone jealous of Belinda.”
“Wow, yeah, to put it mildly, Miss Ferber. She ran to Jackson with all sorts of stories, most, I figured, she’d just made up moments before. She knows stagehands at Tommy’s Temptations, and so gle
ans bits and pieces of information—all negative, of course. She bad-mouthed Belinda while telling the world that she trained the young girl, readied her for stardom. Baloney!”
“When did she get involved romantically with Jackson?”
He waited a while, considering what to say. “The day Belinda moved to the Claremont, Millie moved her things into the apartment. What was hidden before suddenly became open. A rotten shame, I figure.”
“Why? Jackson has a right to his own life, no?”
“When his sister was living in the apartment, they kept apart. We suspected something was going on, but…tensions between Belinda and Millie…”
“I see.” I drummed my fingers on the table. “But I still don’t see why we’re sitting here.”
“Secrets, Miss Ferber. Belinda was pulling away from her brother, ignoring him, refusing his visits, going through some changes that made him furious. The times he did see her were screaming matches. He’d go the New Beacon, but she wouldn’t let him backstage into her dressing room. ‘You’re not doing what I told you to do.’ A favorite line. ‘Do you want to jeopardize everything we’ve worked for?’ Or: ‘You owe me.’”
I looked into his face. “You never liked Jackson?”
His voice thick with anger. “A man impossible to like. He barely paid us decent wages. He ran the theater like a fiefdom. He ridiculed us. Stagehands quit. The crew hates him. He always thought he was one step ahead of the world. ‘People in this miserable city think they can pull a fast one on me. Nobody tricks this savvy city boy.’ Dumb lines like that thrown in our faces. And he’d beat his chest like that ape in that O’Neill play. ‘I was an acrobat in vaudeville. I balanced a dozen plates on poles.’ Big deal! He got obsessed with his own success but knew he had little talent, something that made him bitter.” A weary smile. “Money filled the cracks. But lately he got afraid—he was like looking over his shoulder.”
“What was he afraid of?”
“Belinda turned her back on him—his theater. She stopped playing his game. He got panicky. The well was drying up. Being with Dougie changed her. Jackson got nuts. You own the golden goose—you expect the gold coins to keep flowing out, right?”
