“I agree with you, Adelaide,” said Beth Allen. Mrs. Allen was a shy, unassuming woman with an intense interest in the ballet and quiet, confident judgment in what she saw. She now overcame her shyness, for Adelaide Simms had struck on an issue about which she too felt strongly. “Gerald is an immensely valuable asset. He’s a quick study and can learn a role in no time. That program you mentioned, Adelaide, was a good example. The three boys who could do the first dancer in Jazz Café were all injured. Gerald learned it overnight and did a very creditable job—along with carrying the rest of the program. I think he deserves principal status.”
“Sometimes I think we’d be better off with the New York City Ballet’s old system,” Jeanine Saperstein interrupted. “You know, no rankings, no principals or soloists. It would certainly save a lot of trouble.”
“That’s a subject for another time, I think, Jeanine,” Frost snapped, annoyed at Saperstein’s irrelevant interruption. “I think you’re right to raise the question, Adelaide, and I think we should discuss it.” Both Cynthia and Reuben Frost agreed with the woman’s assessment. Gerald Hazard was an excellent dancer with only one problem: Clifton Holt did not like him. The question of Hazard’s promotion had come up twice before, but nothing had been done because of Holt’s opposition. He was sure the same would happen this time, but it seemed worthwhile to convey to Navikoff (and thus to Holt) the wide support Hazard had on the Board.
“I know Gerald pretty well,” Peter Howard said. “I know he feels terribly frustrated about being stuck as a soloist; he’s talked to me about it several times. And while I know it’s not relevant to the issue, Gerald, unlike many of the dancers, does have family responsibilities—his wife and two little boys who are just about school age.”
“He’s sort of funny-looking, don’t you think?” Ambassador Franklin asked.
“He has red hair, Mr. Ambassador, if that’s what you mean,” said Adelaide Simms, a flaming (and natural) redhead herself, as the group laughed. “I’ve never found him so. Granted he’s not as handsome as young Aaron or Roy Irwin, for that matter. But there’s nothing especially unusual-looking about him. And he dances so beautifully that you certainly don’t notice any imperfections in his looks when he’s on stage.”
“I was just asking,” said Franklin.
“Does anyone else want to speak?” Frost asked. “Bartlett?”
“I agree with Adelaide and Beth. Gerald is a real asset to us. And I also agree with Peter Howard that he might well leave us if he’s not promoted soon. But …” Bartlett Empson’s voice trailed off. He seemed about to say something, then stopped. He did, however, stare at Jack Navikoff, who now looked increasingly uncomfortable.
“As chairman of the promotions committee, perhaps I should say something,” Navikoff said. “I’m impressed with the depth of support for Gerald you are showing, as I have been in the past. All I can say is that I will report this back to Clifton and perhaps we can review the bidding.”
So there it was. An artistic issue had been discussed, but the Board had not forced the Artistic Director’s hand. And Jack Navikoff, Frost was almost certain, wouldn’t now force it either.
Frost was about to ask if there were any other matters to be brought up when Maria Craig, one of the Company ballet mistresses, burst into the room. The look of distress on her face was evident. She looked around, spotted Frost, and went and whispered in his ear.
“Oh, my God!” Frost called out. After some more whispering with Craig, he turned to his colleagues.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I think we’d better adjourn. Clifton Holt has been stabbed outside the stage door downstairs.”
CONFUSION
3
Frost’s announcement electrified his audience. Some of the directors sprang up and started shouting questions at Maria Craig; others slumped back in their chairs in a state of shock. Frost firmly grabbed Ms. Craig by the arm and propelled her toward the door, moving so fast that the other Board members were left behind.
Still gripping the reluctant young woman’s arm—she wanted to stand still and elaborate on her dramatic tale—he led her to the bank of two large elevators normally used to take dancers to the stage level and decisively banged the call button. Again his companion tried to talk, but Frost’s stern look silenced her. An elevator stopped, its down signal ringing, and Frost pushed the woman into it ahead of him. As the door began to close, David Weiss and Peter Howard were running to catch it. Frost did nothing to keep the doors from closing.
Once the elevator had started down, Frost turned to his companion and looked her straight in the eye. “What happened, Maria?” he asked with intensity.
“I don’t know, Mr. Frost. I was standing in the wings talking to some of the dancers when Hailey Coles came in from the stage door. She was yelling, ‘Clifton has been stabbed! Get a doctor!’ Jeb Crosby—you know, the stage manager—was standing near us and tried to call for help from the phone at the side of the stage. He was shouting and cursing because the house operator didn’t pick up, but then he got through and I heard him asking for the police and an ambulance.”
“But for God’s sake, what about Clifton?” Frost demanded.
“Everybody was too stunned to do anything for a minute; we were all hypnotized listening to Jeb shout at the operator. Hailey snapped us out of it with her screaming. ‘We’ve got to do something—he’s bleeding to death!’ she kept shouting. Then Veronica Maywood, who was standing with me, yelled out and asked if he was dead. Hailey screamed again—she was quite hysterical by then—and said ‘No.’ Veronica and Aaron, who had also been standing there with us, ran outside. Then several people did. And that’s when I came up to get you.”
The elevator doors opened and Frost found himself in the midst of an unsettling scene—some of the dancers and stagehands falling for a doctor and an ambulance, others shouting for the police. Many started gathering around Frost as he emerged from the elevator, his old-lawyer’s dignity in sharp contrast to the dramatic panic around him.
“Jeb!” he cried, spotting the stage manager. “Have you called an ambulance?”
“Yes, Mr. Frost. It’s on its way,” Crosby answered.
“What about a doctor?”
“We’ve called Edwards,” Crosby replied, referring to Martin Edwards, the company’s orthopedist, whose office was around the corner.
“And the police?”
“Yes, I just got through to nine-one-one,” Crosby said.
Satisfied that the necessary had been done, Frost headed for the stage door. It opened onto a long, dimly lit alley that led to Fifty-third Street. He saw the outstretched figure of Holt about halfway down the alley, with Veronica Maywood bent over him. The choreographer was still wearing the clothes he had worn at the earlier disastrous rehearsal, and Maywood had frantically ripped open his shirt. The fiery ballerina was no longer talking about Mexican jumping beans; instead she was desperately trying to stanch the bleeding from what appeared to be a triangle of three knife wounds in Holt’s chest.
Maywood moaned softly as she held her scarf over Holt’s chest. “Oh, Cliff, Cliff, no, no!” she cried. Aaron Cassidy and four or five other dancers stood by, watching helplessly.
“Is he still alive?” Frost barked at the nursing ballerina. One could not tell from looking at Holt’s ravaged, blood-soaked figure or gaunt, alabaster-colored face.
“Yes! But his pulse is getting fainter. Where is the ambulance?” Maywood shouted.
As she spoke, a cacophony of distant sirens grew louder and, within seconds, the blinking red lights of not one but three police squad cars became visible. Four uniformed police officers—three men and a woman—came running down the stage-door alley, their hands on undrawn service revolvers. Two more officers followed them by seconds.
“Okay, get back, everybody,” the first patrolman to reach Holt’s lifeless figure called out. He and a colleague pushed Maywood away.
“Stabbing,” the first one said.
“Yeah,” said
his companion.
Before they could do anything for Holt, an ambulance, its siren screaming, pulled into the narrow alleyway, upending a garbage can in the process. In what seemed a matter of seconds the medics had jumped out of the ambulance and put Holt on a stretcher.
“Tyler Emergency?” the police sergeant who had taken charge asked.
“Right,” one of the medics answered.
“Collins, you go with the ambulance,” the sergeant said, pointing to one of the other officers.
The ambulance was gone as quickly as it had arrived. The sergeant then asked the crowd to move back into the theatre. Cowed and scared, they did so, observing as they went the other police officers securing the bloody area where Holt’s body had rested moments before.
Once inside the Zacklin, the sergeant started asking questions. The group automatically deferred to Frost, who now stood next to the police officer.
“All right, who’s in charge here?” the sergeant asked the stunned group.
“I suppose I am,” Frost replied. He introduced himself to the officer, one Sergeant Peter Madden.
Before he could ask the next question, Madden was interrupted by cries of “Sergeant! Sergeant!” from the alleyway. Two of the other officers burst through the door. “They caught the guy!” one of them said. “He walked right into the arms of two patrolmen around the corner.”
“Good going. How did they get him?” Madden asked.
“This gentleman here”—the officer who was speaking pointed to a visibly winded middle-aged civilian behind him—“was chasing the guy down the street, shouting that he was a murderer. The two patrolmen came around the corner just as the perpetrator was approaching.”
“Sure they got the right guy?” the sergeant asked.
“Yes, indeed, officer,” the civilian witness said, speaking with some effort. “I was coming out of the apartment house next door—I live there—and as I came along Fifty-third Street, I heard a strange sound from the stage-door alley—not a scream, but more like a painful groan. Next thing I knew, this young black kid came into the street with a knife in his hand. I could see a man lying in the alleyway, so I started screaming and chased the kid. He threw the knife in the gutter and then started running.
“He wasn’t all that fast,” the man continued. “So I kept up with him to the corner, when the cops grabbed him.”
“How about the knife?” the sergeant asked.
“Found,” said the woman officer. “Right in the gutter where he’d thrown it. Covered with blood and I’m sure some nice sticky fingerprints. We bagged it and sent it off to the Eighteenth Precinct with the officers who arrested the perp.”
“You say this was a black kid?” the sergeant asked quietly.
“Yeah. Black. Twenty years old maybe. Twenty-two at most. And I’d say a junkie by the way he was acting. Higher than a kite,” the woman said.
“Okay, let me get back to asking some more questions here,” Sergeant Madden said, scanning the mute and fascinated group before him. “Who was the victim? You knew him?” he asked, turning to Frost.
“Yes. Clifton Holt, Artistic Director of the National Ballet Company.”
“Anybody see who did it?”
“I … I don’t know,” Frost answered.
“Who found him?” the sergeant asked.
After a pause Vivian Felton, one of the Company’s smallest dancers (with one of the smallest voices) said that she had. A delicate wisp in the best of circumstances, she seemed, in her grief and nervousness, even smaller and more vulnerable than usual.
“How did you find him?”
“How? Like, what shape was he in?” Felton asked.
“No, how, like how did you happen to be where the body was?”
“I—I—I was going home after rehearsal. I walked out the stage door, and …” She was unable to finish and burst into a flood of tears.
“Okay, miss, just tell me what you saw. Take your time, and don’t be nervous. We just want to know what happened.”
Felton continued to sob; further questioning would have to wait until she regained her self-control. While he waited, Madden turned toward Frost and spoke to him out of the hearing of the others.
“Excuse me, Mr.… um … Frost,” he said. “You said the victim was the director of this theatre?”
“Yes, officer,” Frost answered coolly. “He was one of the greatest choreographers in America—probably in the world.”
“Oh, boy. And stabbed by a street-punk junkie.”
“Officer, is there anything more I can do for you right now?” Frost asked, anxious to get away and make some telephone calls.
“You didn’t see anything yourself?”
“No, I did not.”
“Then I guess not. We’ll want to question the people here, though, who might have seen something.”
“Fine. Shall I ask people not to leave?”
“If you would.”
Frost got the crowd’s attention—no easy task, given the emotionally charged conversations going on through the backstage area—and conveyed the policeman’s request.
“Reuben, surely that doesn’t mean us!” barked Ambassador Franklin, who, with the other directors, had long since joined the backstage group and been briefed in whispers as to what had happened.
“I suspect it probably does, Kenneth,” Frost replied.
“But we didn’t see anything! We were upstairs in the Board meeting!” Franklin pleaded.
“Kenneth, I’m sure all you have to do is tell the police that when they ask you. The crime was committed by a twenty-year-old black junkie who I am sure you do not resemble in any way. Besides, he’s been arrested, so put your conscience at rest.”
“What are you trying to say, Reuben?” the angered commodities dealer/Ambassador shouted.
“Nothing, Kenneth, nothing. Now please excuse me. I have some things to do.” Frost pushed past Franklin, only to run head-on into Andrea Turnbull.
“What is going on, Reuben?” she demanded. “No one will tell me anything!” Jack Navikoff, who was at her side, was visibly shaking and, Frost thought, was pale, in spite of his assiduously cultivated year-round suntan. He said nothing as Turnbull pressed her question.
“Andrea, you know as much as I do. Clifton Holt was stabbed outside the theatre by a young black.”
“Did he kill him?” Turnbull asked.
Frost thought he detected just a bit too much bloodlust in Turnbull’s question, but let the matter pass.
“That’s what I mean to find out right now,” Frost said, moving past Turnbull and the silent Navikoff toward the fire stairs. He quickly went through the fire-resistant door and took the stairs to the basement, where the Company’s offices were located. He found Holt’s office unlocked and went in and shut the door. He sat down in Holt’s beaten-up desk chair—Holt seldom used the office and cared not at all that it looked decrepit and was uncomfortable—and tried to organize his thoughts. He had to call the hospital; no question. And he probably should call Teresa Holt, Clifton’s much-put-upon wife. But first he would call Luis Bautista, the City homicide detective who had become his friend several months earlier when they had worked together in solving the murder of his late partner at Chase & Ward, Graham Donovan. Frost was reluctant to admit that the events of the past few minutes had left him tired and a little confused. Bautista could help him out, whether Holt was dead or not—and Frost’s quick look at Holt’s bloody form had not made him optimistic.
Frost looked through his wallet for Bautista’s private number, which the detective had given him during the Donovan investigation. He retrieved it and dialed the number. His luck was good; Bautista himself answered on the first ring. Frost explained the circumstances and Bautista said he would meet Frost at Tyler Hospital.
Frost next dialed Information (as he resolutely called it, despite the telephone company’s equally stubborn insistence that what it was providing was “Directory Assistance”), got the hospital number and dialed it. A
fter what seemed an unconscionable amount of switching, he talked to the receptionist in the emergency room, who was set to stonewall him.
“Mr. Frost, you are not a relative of the patient and therefore I can’t tell you anything,” she announced.
“That is true, madam,” Frost replied, speaking slowly and deliberately, his voice signaling that the obstructionist to whom he was talking had better pay attention. “I am, however, the Chairman of the Board of the National Ballet Company, where Mr. Holt is the Artistic Director, and I—”
“That doesn’t matter, Mr. Frost—”
“And I am also a friend of Avery Jonas, who I believe is the chairman of your board of directors. If I have to call him I will, if you would be good enough to tell me your name.”
The icy authority in Frost’s voice, and perhaps the substance of his threat as well, changed the woman’s attitude. She asked Frost to hold while she got a report. After three minutes, he thought she had put him into telephone limbo forever, but she came back on the line and reported that Holt was still alive, and that the doctors were working on him in the operating room. She did not have anything additional to tell him.
Frost put down the telephone and dialed Information again, to get Teresa Holt’s home number. It was, as he feared, unlisted. Frost argued with the operator about the necessity of putting a call through; but again resistance was the order of the day. He hung up on the Directory Assistance operator and, as he did so, spotted Holt’s Rolodex on the desk. Thumbing through to “H,” he found, under “Holt,” an entry for “Teresa” and a number. He dialed it, but reached an answering service that informed him that Mrs. Holt was out of town and would not be back until Friday. At this point he did not feel up to penetrating a third security barrier, so he thanked the answering-service operator and hung up. Besides, the most important thing now seemed to him to be to keep a vigil at the hospital and to see Bautista.
Frost turned out the overhead light in the office and went out. He hurried toward the fire stairs and then hesitated—did he really want to confront Mrs. Turnbull, Ambassador Franklin and the other members of the Board? The answer was no, so he stopped, got his bearings and figured out how to leave the theatre through the orchestra. Not entirely sure of himself, he worked his way through dark backstage warrens to the rehearsal stairs connecting the stage with the orchestra. With the grotesque stabbing of Holt fresh in his mind, the dark and unfamiliar territory seemed both sinister and menacing to him. He was glad when he had reached the exit doors on Fifty-fourth Street, and relieved to find that they opened from the inside.
Murder for Lunch Page 26
