He gave his name a sour twist and for a long moment, sat with his loss. Then said, “Sidney was brutal to a lot of people, make no mistake. But he knew my only home was this”—he gestured to the stage—“and he found a way for me to keep it. Some people might say he got what was coming and maybe he did. But from some of us, me, at least, he deserved enormous gratitude. He literally saved my life.”
“The night he was killed, you said someone at the table did it.”
He waved a podgy, red-veined hand. “The night he was killed, I was drunk.”
“Being drunk makes us indiscreet, not fantasists. You were headed to the washroom, weren’t you?” He nodded. “Mr. Warburton was killed there; perhaps you saw the murderer.”
Closing the book, he handed it back to me. “I will only say that on that night, I saw an individual who had very good reason to want Sidney dead.”
I showed him the group photo, and I said, “He wouldn’t be in this picture, would he?”
I watched as recognition came into his eyes.
“When Miss Biederman saw this photograph, she became very upset. Why?”
“Well, you must see the resemblance.”
I looked at the scowling violinist, the only performer who did not smile for the camera. “Is it … her father?”
Mr. Harney nodded, then leaned back in his chair. “I only worked one tour with Erich Biederman. Unpleasant man, and that’s putting it kindly. Came to this country full of himself and expecting to join an orchestra. Dragged poor little Harriet all across the coast looking for one that would take him. The wife ran off. Still, he refused to take any job that wasn’t classical. He took pupils, lost pupils. She worked so he could pursue music. Sidney heard him playing outside a train station one night, gave him a job playing in the band. But a steady job wasn’t enough for the great Erich Biederman. He kept nagging Sidney, ‘Let me perform real music.’ One night, the magician went sick and Sidney let him perform.”
“It didn’t go well.”
“A record amount of produce was flung onto the stage. It took Harriet ages to get the tomato stains out of his ratty old tails.”
“Did he quit?”
“Quit? He and Harriet would have starved. No, Herr Biederman performed Bach for the masses for the next two weeks—every night with the same results. I suggested something a little more popular, a jig perhaps. No, no, wouldn’t hear of it. Then in Boston, Sidney took on a new act to replace the magician. A performing baboon. Guess what instrument it played?”
“Oh, no.”
He nodded. “The audience loved it. The beast took five curtain calls. I spent the entire night’s performance wondering when the explosion would come. But Biederman made it through the evening without complaint. As we left for the rooming house, he said he’d left something in the theater. When he didn’t come back, we sent Harriet to find him. He’d hanged himself from a heating pipe.”
“My God, how old was she?”
“Fourteen. Now, to his credit, Sidney took her on. Gave her a job keeping track of the luggage and hotel bookings. That was Sidney’s gift, you see. He knew talent, knew how to put it to work.”
I did not think it to Warburton’s credit that he humiliated Erich Biederman to the point of despair, then hired his daughter to work tirelessly on his own behalf. I knew Harriet Biederman placed great value on art; there was nothing she admired more and she readily forgave those who created it, even for the worst of crimes. But what must she have felt all those years? Where had she put the grief and rage?
Just then there was a swift knock at the door. I opened it to find Louise.
“Jane, would you come with me, please?”
Puzzled by her urgency, I followed her up the stairs. Louise had put on her hat and jacket. Clearly we were going somewhere. Under her arm, she carried a paper envelope. My suspicions were confirmed when she led me to the lobby and asked me to fetch Horst. She was uncommonly brisk, a manner that did not invite questions.
When the Rolls arrived, she said, “We’ll be stopping by Rector’s.”
The stop at Rector’s was brief. Louise sent me inside, telling me to give her name and they would know why I was there. So instructed, I presented myself to the maître d’ and was given a brown paper bag, redolent of seafood and garlic. I made my way out through the famous revolving doors—they seemed less magical without the twinkling lights of Times Square at night.
As I came out, I caught sight of the shaggy old tramp who frightened us all that night. In daylight, he, too, looked average. Small. Sad. Mumbling and waving an agitated hand—he was talking to someone, but no one that I could see—he swung his ruined leg as he rounded the corner.
A sharp knock on the window reminded me I was needed. Careful to hold the bag upright, I got in the car. Then Louise gave Horst an address—the same one Roland Harney had given the taxi driver.
As we rolled out of Times Square, I said, “May I ask what’s in the envelope?”
“Something for Miss Fiske,” was the reply.
17
Onstage, Nedda Fiske might play the average woman, but she did not choose to live like one. Her apartment was in the controversial 998 Fifth Avenue, a new luxury building that offered apartments to wealthy New Yorkers who no longer cared to manage an entire house—especially given the shortage of skilled domestic staff. A former governor of New York was said to live there, as well as one of the Guggenheims. The building had been created with instructions to the architect to do whatever necessary to lure the fantastically rich to the property, and there were those who resented 998 Fifth Avenue as offensively expensive.
When we arrived, I suggested to Louise that I stay behind in the car. As the groped party in the uproar that had ended in Mr. Lombardo’s banishment, I wouldn’t evoke any happy memories for the actress.
“No,” said Louise. “But you could serve as a reminder that Mr. Lombardo doesn’t deserve such prolonged grief.”
At first the point seemed moot; the maid who answered the door told us that Miss Fiske was not receiving visitors.
“Oh,” said Louise and looked sadly at the package she had given me. “I brought her soft-shell crabs, perhaps we could leave them. I worry they’ll get cold, though…”
Another thing she had learned from the show: how to subtly pitch her voice so that it would carry.
The maid was expressing sincere regret when Nedda Fiske appeared. A week after Floyd Lombardo’s death, she was very nearly the woman I remembered from the early days of rehearsal. She wore a lovely day dress, her hair was styled, and the rubber face was no longer slack with grief.
“I’m not at home to people,” she said. “Crustaceans are a whole different story.”
The ladies ate in the dining room with its formal table for eight. The maid—whose name was Tess—briskly laid the table with two place settings. Miss Fiske noted that Louise had brought an awful lot of crab; would Tess and I like some? Tess declined, saying she had wash to do if she wasn’t needed. Having never had crab, I didn’t know if I’d like it. But I did very much want to hear the conversation so I said yes and took my plate to the kitchen, which happened to be just a few yards of hallway away from the dining room. If I stood close enough to the swinging door, I could eat my crab—which looked far too much like the original animal for my comfort—and listen to the conversation, which began by Louise asking how Miss Fiske was.
“Terrible.”
I waited for the customary but: But I am managing. But every day is better. But I realize I am better off without him. It did not come.
“Of course,” said Louise, wading bravely into the silence. “Such a horrible way to lose someone you care for so deeply. The shock of it…”
“It wasn’t a shock. Or it shouldn’t have been. I knew Floyd was in trouble. I should never have let Warburton push me into that fight with him.”
Interesting, I thought, that she blamed the producer.
“He was just trying to protect you.”
“I did
n’t need protecting,” she said sharply. “Floyd did. And if I wanted to do it, that was none of Warburton’s business. He cost me the only man I ever loved.”
Now the silence was pained, weighty. I could sense Louise struggling to absorb the intensity of Nedda Fiske’s feelings, much less the idea that a woman could take care of a man. A willingness to listen despite her distress must have showed because Miss Fiske’s voice was gentler as she said, “You don’t understand, do you, Mrs. Tyler?”
“I’m trying to. But I think a woman of your gifts deserves a gentleman.”
“You like how I sing?”
“I do. Very much.”
“Well, when you perform, you give. A lot. Everything you feel, it all goes over the footlights and out to the audience. After a show, I don’t have a drop of blood left, not a thought in my head. All I want to do is fall over.”
This was true. I remembered marveling at her energy onstage, how she employed every limb, every feature to keep people entertained. But the moment she came offstage, her face went blank with exhaustion and she barely seemed to register people around her.
“And when you give all that to people, you have to have something that is yours. And if other people don’t understand, well, that’s almost better. It’s not for them to understand, it’s for me. Look, I know to some people, what I felt for Floyd was crazy. I know he wasn’t always a gentleman. But then I’m almost never a lady, so that was fine. I knew Floyd. In this business, you have a little success, you’re surrounded by people who want to make a meal of you. A lot of times, they don’t even ask—even the people you pay to take care of you. My very first manager, he loved me. It wasn’t just business, I was a daughter to him. He always said, anyone who tried to cheat me, he’d break his neck. I don’t have to tell you he ran off to Canada with my money—and my furs and some very nice shoes—do I?”
From the way Louise gasped, I knew she was sitting, gloved hand to mouth, eyes wide, torn between horror and an appalling desire to laugh.
Nedda Fiske did laugh, saying, “Now, for your information, Mrs. Tyler, there’s something about someone stealing your shoes that makes you see the world in a different light. A man who’s getting paid good money leaves you flat broke in a lousy hotel room, bill unpaid, in the dead of winter with no coat and no shoes. You’re standing at the front desk in your nightgown, barefoot, trying to explain and nobody cares, because who listens to a woman dumb enough she gets taken that badly—that’s when you decide I’m never going to be that woman again. The world takes, Mrs. Tyler. Not because it’s bad, not because it’s good. We’re animals, it’s what we do.”
“I can’t believe that, Miss Fiske. I don’t believe you do either.”
“That’s because you never had your shoes stolen.” I could hear the grin. “Floyd was a mooch, I knew that. But I knew how far he would go and he knew how far I would go. Most men you can’t be honest with. I could be honest with Floyd. And he was a good time. Was I happy about the other women? No. But waiting for the star gets dull real fast. A man’s got to keep himself amused, I understand.”
Remembering Nedda Fiske’s reaction to the news that Floyd Lombardo had grabbed me, I doubted she was always so sanguine about Mr. Lombardo’s infidelities. On the other hand, there were couples who couldn’t exist without conflict. Perhaps part of the thrill for Miss Fiske was losing Mr. Lombardo—and then getting him back.
“Have the police given you any idea who might have killed him?” Louise asked.
There was a long pause. “Sidney Warburton killed Floyd, the minute he made me give him up. I guess I did, too, because I let him.”
“You were in a very difficult position.”
“Floyd had already blown one show for me, I didn’t need him blowing another. After the Follies, I warned him. Money or girls, you need to quit grabbing everything in sight. And when he couldn’t stop, I played it Sidney’s way and sent him away for a while. Teach him a lesson. I thought he could make it a few days without me—that was my mistake. I never thought they’d move so fast.”
… so fast. Again, the tickle of something missed about Floyd Lombardo’s death. For a moment, I went back over what I knew, stopping at the memory of Jimmy Galligan, sour and rotting in the Nag’s Nose. The broken hand. Belmont. Galligan. Debts. That was where it ended, I should leave it there.
“Perhaps work would be a good distraction,” said Louise.
“Maybe it would, but not in that snake pit. Too many vipers with their fangs out. The Ardens want this to be their show. I already told Mr. Harney: I can’t go back and be fighting them for everything, not without friends. Say this for Warburton, he knew what he had with me. The Ardens kept at him to cut me out, but he never did because he knew I would make the show a success. Now they’re both gone and I don’t know who to trust.”
She was plaintive, sincere. But to my ear, there was an unmistakable note of bargaining. I remembered Mr. Harney: She wants something that is not in my power to give. I had thought he meant the return of her lover. But it was something much less sentimental: she wanted assurances that the Ardens would not be allowed to diminish her.
“You can trust me, Miss Fiske.”
Nedda Fiske observed that Louise was rather new to show business and that—no offense—she did not look skilled in the breaking of necks.
“No, but I won’t steal your shoes either. The show needs you.”
A silence as that was mulled. Nedda Fiske asked, “What’s in the envelope?”
“Nothing you’ll need if you’re not coming back,” said Louise.
“Well, I can tell from the shape it’s not a diamond necklace.”
“No, it’s better than that.” The rustle of paper being slid across a table. “It’s a song. Mr. Hirschfeld wrote it for you.”
Another long agonizing pause. Then the flap of paper as Nedda Fiske examined the contents.
“‘The Things Everyone Says.’ I like the title.”
My heart did a hard little twist.
“If you play it, you’ll see…”
“I can read music, Mrs. Tyler. I see. What about Mrs. Hirschfeld?”
Yes, indeed, I thought, and leaned in to hear.
“Mr. Hirschfeld wrote the song for you, that’s all I can say.”
Almost to herself, Nedda Fiske hummed the opening melody; it was the same sad, tentative tune Leo had wrestled with the night we danced. I could already hear her breathing warmth and strength into it.
Then she asked, “You don’t worry that I killed Floyd?”
Agog, I wondered how fast I could get to Louise if Nedda Fiske attacked her. Were there weapons in a living room: Letter openers? Lamps? Throw cushions?
“I mean, who would have a better chance to steal his gun? Come to think of it, maybe I killed Warburton, too.”
“It seems to me you would have killed one or the other,” said Louise with astonishing calm. “But I happen to know you did not kill Mr. Lombardo. And if you didn’t, you couldn’t know he was dead. And I think revenge for his death would have been the only thing to compel you to kill Mr. Warburton. Who, as you say, knew your value and was your ally. In his way.”
This was an excellent analysis and I pulled an appreciative face at the remains of my crab.
Then I heard the rustle of paper again. “He’s a smart fellow, Mr. Hirschfeld.”
“I can’t tell you what I’d give to hear you sing that song.”
“Well,” said Nedda Fiske, “you did bring me soft-shell crabs.”
I took it as a good sign that Nedda accompanied Louise to the door. Joining them, I did my best to be inconspicuous and hoped we would depart without delay. But Louise paused, looking from me to Nedda Fiske. There were amends to be made and she expected Miss Fiske to make them.
The actress turned to me. “I guess I owe you an apology. I’m sorry Mr. Lombardo grabbed you. But he was scared. When Mr. Lombardo got scared, he went wrong. I’m also sure he wasn’t the first man to grab your behind and he won’t be the
last.”
Louise glanced at me: Was I satisfied? For her sake, I thanked Miss Fiske. But to myself, I vowed that Floyd Lombardo would be the last—at least the last to grab and keep his hand.
Then Nedda Fiske said, “Careful, Mrs. Tyler, you’re turning into a producer. I’ll see you at the theater tomorrow.”
* * *
That night as she got ready for bed, Louise announced, “I have come to the conclusion that I do not understand people in the slightest. How can a woman as talented as Nedda Fiske still cling to the memory of that blackguard?”
“People fall in love, Mrs. Tyler. You’re producing a show about that very phenomenon.”
“All marriages should be arranged. When people ‘fall in love’ nothing good comes of it.”
“Oh, but didn’t you fall in love with Mr. Tyler?”
I felt confident in my impertinence. Before their marriage, Louise had spent many evenings regaling me with the wonders of William Tyler. But my observation was met with distressed silence.
“Mrs. Tyler, please forgive me…”
“No, no,” she said, looking at the hands in her lap. “But perhaps it proves my point. When things are arranged, you don’t expect so much to agree. It doesn’t seem so important to … like the same people or enjoy the same things. I can’t remember the last time I saw Mother and Father talk to each other. Or even be in the same room for very long. They seem to manage.”
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