Death of a Showman

by Mariah Fredericks

  An eruption like that of a small volcano or Peanut coughing up a rat’s tail sounded from the back of the theater. I turned to see Detective Fullerton looming.

  “Detective!” called Leo. “Do you have good news?”

  “I … do not.” The cumbersome detective made his way down to the front of the theater; no seat would accommodate him, so Leo invited him to sit on a nearby chair. The detective wondered if Leo would prefer that I not be present; what he had to say was of a private nature.

  “Jane knows all my worst secrets,” said Leo cheerfully. “Well, most of them. No, stay. Please.”

  I had gotten up to leave. But Leo’s request was serious and I sat back down.

  “Does Mr. Hirschfeld need a lawyer?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” said the detective. “Do you need a lawyer, Mr. Hirschfeld?”

  “Why don’t you tell me your bad news and then we’ll decide?”

  The detective adjusted himself on the chair. “It has come to my attention that the deceased, while a married man, engaged in several dalliances.”

  “I would think ‘several’ is putting it low,” said Leo.

  “Mr. Warburton took his position as a license to abuse the trust of young ladies hoping to enter the theatrical profession. He also engaged the attentions of several married women.”

  Leo nodded.

  “Including, I am sorry to say, your wife.”

  A man so musically gifted, it was rare that Leo Hirschfeld missed a beat. He missed one now. Then recovered. “Yes, I know that they enjoyed each other’s company in the past.”

  I looked at him; had he known this?

  “Would you consider the week before Mr. Warburton’s death the past? A waiter reports seeing the two in a compromising position outside Mr. Warburton’s apartment.”

  My jaw fell. No wonder the rest of the cast was so contemptuous of Violet: not only was she Leo’s wife, she was the producer’s girlfriend.

  For his part, Leo smiled, seemed to withdraw. I had the feeling he was addressing his thoughts to the dead man. And words. None of them pleasant.

  I said, “Detective, maybe we could continue this conversation at another time. You can appreciate this is a shock…”

  “I can.” The little eyes flicked between me and Leo; I had the sudden ugly sensation of assessment. “And you can appreciate, I hope, that I have more questions.”

  Leo crossed one arm around his middle and massaged his forehead. “I think Miss Prescott is right, I’m not…”

  The detective rose from his seat in a fit of prosecutorial fury. I had never seen an actual grizzly bear unfold itself from all fours to its full height, but now I imagined it would look something like Detective Fullerton as he went from wheezing buffoon to terrifying threat. Still seated on the piano bench, Leo looked six years old.

  “You were seen arguing with the deceased on the night of the murder,” he bellowed. “Several people have reported your business dealings as acrimonious. You wished to be rid of his interfering, both with your wife and your work. You cannot account for your whereabouts at the time of the murder…”

  “On the contrary,” I said, “Mr. Hirschfeld accounted quite vividly for his whereabouts. And his wife confirmed it. As for acrimonious dealings, you could say the same of any number of people. Mr. Warburton was not a well-liked man.”

  “But he was a powerful man. Many people depended on him for their livelihood.”

  “Including Mr. Hirschfeld…”

  “Except that recently, he had brought in another investor. Hadn’t you, Mr. Hirschfeld? Buoyed by Mrs. Tyler’s riches, you no longer had to endure a man who berated you, cuckolded you, humiliated you…”

  It was at this point that Leo did the worst possible thing: he smiled. Instantly, he put a hand over his mouth. But from his eyes, you could see that he was beaming with suppressed laughter.

  “A man is dead, sir!” Fullerton thundered. “Do you find this amusing?”

  I could see Leo weighing a criticism of Fullerton’s dialogue and wisely deciding against.

  “No,” he said. “I don’t find it amusing. I don’t find it especially tragic either—of course, my wife may feel differently.”

  His quip made me recall Violet’s tears in the aftermath of Warburton’s murder, her ludicrous statement that he had committed suicide. Did she suspect Leo of murder? Certainly, she had been very ill-tempered toward him.

  Just then we heard the squeak of hinges and the muted thud of a padded door as Louise and the Ardens returned from lunch. At the sight of the detective, they stayed warily at the back row.

  “Are you arresting me, Detective?” Leo wanted to know. “Because we have to get on with the second act.”

  What one might call a dramatic pause followed. Then the detective rumbled, “Not at the present time, Mr. Hirschfeld. But I would appreciate it if you did not leave the city.”

  “How can I leave the city? The show opens in two weeks.” Then waving to the cast, he said, “It’s all right. The detective here was just letting me know I’m a suspect. Can we start with ‘The Gutter’s Good Enough for Me’? Oh, Vi’s not here. Fine, let’s go with the club scene.”

  12

  “How can Mr. Hirschfeld be so calm?”

  It was the sixth time Louise Tyler had asked this question as we waited for Horst to bring the car around to the front of the theater. I had tried a variety of answers ranging from “I don’t know” to casting doubts on Leo’s sanity. Now I tried what I believed to be the truth.

  “If the detective had threatened to shut down the musical, then you would have seen Mr. Hirschfeld agitated. I don’t think anything is real to him beyond that opening night. If they put him in handcuffs at the final curtain, he’ll be perfectly happy.”

  “But you don’t really think he killed Mr. Warburton?”

  “No, I don’t.” Although why I didn’t, given the many motives Fullerton had listed, was puzzling.

  Louise said, “Mr. Hirschfeld’s right. It could have been anyone at the restaurant that evening. I don’t know why Detective Fullerton is so focused on him. It seems very lazy to me.”

  This struck me as loyalty bordering on delusional. But then I remembered that Leo had not chosen to share with the cast the precise reason he was a suspect, leaving them to assume it was the argument and thrown glass that spurred the detective’s suspicions.

  I said, “Apparently, Mr. Warburton and Mrs. Hirschfeld…”

  It took Louise a moment. She showed all the appropriate signs of shock: dropped mouth, wide eyes, the swiftly exhaled, “No!”

  “A waiter at Rector’s saw them in circumstances less than ideal.”

  “Oh, poor Mr. Hirschfeld!”

  Louise’s faith was such that I felt it impossible to note that this gave “poor Mr. Hirschfeld” a very good motive, save for the fact that he had been keeping intimate company with his spouse at the time of the murder—and he himself could be free with his attentions, which argued against possessive jealousy of said spouse.

  The Ghost pulled up to the curb and Horst got out to open the door for Louise. She stepped inside, then looked confused when I did not follow.

  “Oh, you have the evening off, don’t you?”

  “You were kind enough to give it. I’m meeting my friend for dinner quite near here.”

  “Have a lovely time.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Tyler. I hope you have a nice evening as well.”

  I was by no means sure I was going to have a lovely time. For days, I had been certain that I would feel better if I could spend several hours with my oldest friend, picking apart recent events. But I was also aware that my time with Leo had caused a rift and it might be better to start with something less fraught. So I had asked if she would like to see a movie. To my surprise, she said yes and so we met just a few blocks from the Sidney Theater.

  I could not remember a time I had seen Anna above Houston. As I saw her walk out of the subway at Forty-Second Street, I realized that
I had hoped for glad cries, outstretched arms, and overlapping questions: How is? No, you, I was going to ask … I did get a smile when she saw me. And she walked faster to reach me. There was a long embrace. But when we agreed we were glad to see each other, there was a touch of awkward relief, as if we both knew that might not have been the case.

  I said, “I haven’t seen you in so long, I feel terrible.”

  She nodded. But she did not say that she too had been busy.

  I don’t know whether it was provocation or appeasement that I chose the movie about assassination in Russia that Rodolfo had claimed to be in. But Anna was particular about how she spent her time; a movie about nihilists, I reasoned, would appeal more than one of Mr. Chaplin’s comedies.

  As we took our seats in the theater, I realized I had never seen a movie in this way; in all former viewings I had been looking up from the orchestra pit while Leo played the score. To put it politely, I had been caught up in other things. Now as the house lights dimmed and the whole world became a spectacle of light and shadow, I forgot everything else, even myself. I had the odd feeling that I was the one who had become insubstantial; only the images on the screen mattered.

  Part adventure, part love story, My Official Wife told the story of Arthur Lennox, a New Yorker who traveled to Russia and fell under the spell of the “so infamous Helene Marie.” The beautiful Helene Marie tried to assassinate the czar with the tiniest gun I had ever seen, then duped another man into helping her escape. When her new lover tried to embrace her, she sneered, “Love you! I? You poor fool! I loathe you and all your kind. Yet you are useful sometimes.” The lover, perhaps feeling it was not enough to be useful, killed her. The ending was quite spectacular, with a ship blown up by torpedo. Sadly, I did not see poor Rodolfo in any of the crowd scenes.

  As we left the theater, Anna said, “Well, that felt very realistic and true to life.”

  Widening my eyes in imitation of the film’s star, I said, “‘Love you? I?’”

  Anna tossed her head. “‘You poor fool!’”

  “Still, it was sad she had to die in the end.”

  “She insulted her comrades and failed in her mission. She deserved to die.”

  Our habit had been to eat at her uncle’s restaurant, where the food was excellent, abundant, and served without charge. That evening, as we were far uptown, we ate at Maxl’s, which served up schnitzel, pickled cabbage, and boiled potatoes in large quantities on thick white plates. Anna asked how the trip to Europe had been, but nervous about irritating her, I just said that the houses were cold and the trains smoky. In return, I asked the questions I always asked. How were her aunts? Were her brothers working? Business at her uncle’s restaurant was good? She answered, but the brevity of her response communicated more than the words. I tried to think of feints around our stiffness, teasing, shared memories, inquiries about people she would not think I’d remember. But nothing worked.

  Finally, I said, “Where are you living now? Your uncle didn’t tell me.”

  “I had to move. I’m staying with friends.”

  Taking in her wording—had to move—I thought to ask why, but amended it to, “When?”

  “Last summer.”

  The words left silence in their wake; if I was going to settle the matter of last summer, now was the time. Picking at my veal, I said, “And I didn’t know. I didn’t know, because I didn’t ask.” I looked her in the eye. “I wasn’t a good friend last summer. I’m sorry.”

  “Why are you sorry?” She sawed at her veal with her knife and fork. “I told you to go dancing, you went dancing.”

  This was true. Anna had been the one to say I should dance with Leo Hirschfeld as long as I enjoyed his company and stayed clear-eyed. She was my oldest friend, I thought with a trace of resentment. She should have known that might not be so easy for me as it was for her.

  But resentment was not what the situation required. “I was hardly dancing so much that I couldn’t have talked to you.”

  She shrugged, leaving me in the position of feeling my presence hadn’t been missed—and yet I had still wronged her.

  “Well, no more dancing.” I offered a smile. “As a matter of fact, he got married.”

  I waited. If she gave me another shrug, I would call for the check.

  Anna frowned. “I thought he said marriage wasn’t for him.”

  “Funny, that’s what I remembered, too.”

  It all came spilling out, in far greater detail than anyone should have patience for. As I spoke, I was aware that I was boring my oldest friend with the very thing that had led me to neglect her. And yet I couldn’t help it. I wanted so badly for someone to take the jumble of feeling and regret, and find some sort of … hope. Or redemption at least, for me.

  Anna was quiet throughout my rambling account. When I finished with a weak apology for talking so long, she said, “So you told him to go get married.”

  “If he couldn’t go more than a few days without seeing another girl, I wasn’t going to hope he could wait nine months.”

  “So you told him to get married.”

  “I said that he could…”

  “And then you’re horrified when he does. How dare he?”

  “If he had married Clara, I would have been perfectly happy.”

  “Ah. If he had married the girl his mother chose for him, you could feel he was being a dutiful son, and consoled yourself with the knowledge that in his heart”—she laid a hand over hers—“you were his one and only love. The girl who got away, the one he couldn’t have, whom he would never forget. He would lie awake at night, wondering, Why, why did I let her go?”

  My stomach knotted. Sullenly, I pushed my plate away.

  “Admit it.”

  “I will not.”

  “It’s true.”

  “I didn’t say it wasn’t true. I just said I wouldn’t admit it.”

  Anna laughed. “I’m sorry. I’m sure sometimes, at night, he feels like a complete fool.”

  She tore off a piece of bread. “Then he makes love to the chorus girl and forgets all about it.”

  It was meant as a joke. I was supposed to laugh. I tried—and failed. Remorseful, Anna reached across the table. “I went too far. My aunts always tell me, Anna, after I’m sorry, close the mouth. Really? It hurts that much?”

  “Perhaps I just feel like an idiot.”

  “Well, love makes you stupid.”

  I was about to remind her we weren’t talking about love, just one of its flighty cousins. Then I realized a more interesting subject had been raised.

  “Why do you say that?” I asked.

  Anna drank her wine, pointedly not giving an answer.

  “It’s not very kind, leaving me to feel foolish all alone.”

  “Maybe someday you’ll introduce me to Mr. Hirschfeld. I would like to meet the man who made Jane Prescott feel foolish.”

  This was deliberately obnoxious; she was trying to throw me off the subject. But it worked. I had wanted to talk about the shooting of Sidney Warburton, have her assure me that Leo might be guilty of being exactly the man he said he was, but not of murder. Now it seemed best to drop the subject of Leo entirely. Dispirited, I asked where she was working these days. In an equally subdued voice, she said, “The same.”

  “The IWW?”

  “… in some things.”

  Here it was again, that tactic of allusion without admission. I will not tell you things, but I will tell you I am not telling you. Frustrated, I turned to the matter I had vowed not to raise and asked what she had heard about the Lexington Avenue disaster.

  “Why do you call it a disaster?”

  “Four people dead? I don’t call it a success.”

  “If you mean that it didn’t work…”

  “Well, a bomb is meant to kill people, it achieved that, I suppose.”

  “It was meant for one person, not four,” she said quietly.

  “And if it had killed that one person, it would be a triumph?”
r />   “It would have been justice.”

  Justice—the word landed like a massive block of marble: inarguable, implacable, so weighty and pure, it banished all doubt, all questions. In my experience, causing someone’s death, or what some might call murder, was never so clean, its motives as chaotic and disturbing as the bloody aftermath.

  Sensing my mood had turned, Anna said, “You weren’t here. You don’t know what it felt like.”

  “Then tell me. Talk to me.”

  “The talking doesn’t work.”

  “And the alternative does?”

  Anna cried, “Rockefeller has killed two women! And eleven children. But because he is rich enough to pay other people to do it, you are disgusted with people who try to hold him accountable.”

  “I am disgusted by killing, Anna.” My voice had risen, as if struggling to pass the knot in my throat. “I want answers other than killing.”

  “And we have tried to find them. But this is where we are.”

  That left us with nothing more to say and I asked the waiter for the bill. When he brought it, I worried that Anna would slap her money on the table and leave. But she waited.

  “Where are you going now?” I asked when we left the restaurant.

  She said she was getting the train. I said I would walk with her, even though I knew ultimately, we would go in opposite directions. Heartsore at how at odds we were, I said, “Because I’m stupid, just tell me…”

  That you weren’t one of the plotters the police are still looking for. Tell me you have no idea who Michael Murphy is. Or where he is.

  Anna asked, “What do you want me to say?” I opened my mouth to say the truth, but she cut me off. “If I say no, you won’t believe me. Why, you will think, didn’t she say that before?”

  “Say it now and we’ll see.”

  “And if I say yes, then what? Speeches about peace and the sanctity of life?”

  Just such a speech had been sounding in my head. But now I said, “No.”

  “Then what would you say? If I crossed that river and went where you think I should not go. If I am that person that it frightens you to think I might be, what then? What do you say to me then?”

  Taking two quick steps, I put my arms around her and held on. My head to hers, fingers to the sharp blades of her back, I breathed in the smell of my oldest, dearest friend.