Death of a Showman

by Mariah Fredericks

  She nodded. “If I hadn’t caught him mauling you, I was going to say I saw him mauling Blanche.”

  Because she knew Warburton wouldn’t care if Floyd Lombardo mauled her. “So, you told Mr. Warburton what Lombardo did to me.”

  She made a face. “I didn’t have to. I told Leo I’d caught him groping you by the cloakroom. He went straight to Sidney and insisted he get rid of Lombardo. Sidney’d promised Nedda she could keep him like some kind of rabid pet. But Leo said if Lombardo stuck around, he’d send you home, which meant St. John would lose her assistant and Sidney would get an earful.”

  “I can’t imagine that worried a man like Sidney Warburton.”

  “Not too much. But then Leo said he would walk. Apparently, he thinks mauling you is his prerogative.”

  Histrionic proofs of love; even Leo Hirschfeld could succumb to storytelling. I remembered listening at Warburton’s door, how I had heard Leo say, “Well, if she goes, I go.” I had thought he meant Blanche. Or Nedda. But … he hadn’t.

  Here Violet had raised another sensitive point: my connection with Leo. She said she didn’t care, but from her casual insult, it still made her mad. It would make most women mad. But most women would swallow their rage as pointless and Violet was no longer most women.

  “I do feel terrible for what happened.” Choosing words I hoped would mean something to her, I added, “It was unfair and unkind.”

  She had wanted abasement and gotten it. Now she could be generous. “I wasn’t brokenhearted. But I thought if Leo moved on, I could be in trouble.”

  “Because he was your alibi.”

  She nodded. “And I was his. So I went to the police, just to let him know he needed to stay in my good books.”

  “He would never have turned you in,” I told her.

  “Men and promises, doesn’t always work out.”

  Wanting to be off this subject, I said, “So you told Leo what you saw Mr. Lombardo do to me. Mr. Lombardo who was already in trouble with Sidney Warburton—” A thought occurred to me. “Did he steal Mr. Warburton’s cane or did you?”

  She smiled.

  “So, you got Mr. Lombardo banished from the theater, arranging it so that Miss Fiske would be publicly humiliated and feel the need to break ties. But you had to make sure he didn’t come back. Either to the show or to Nedda. But I don’t think…?”

  I trailed off, believing that tact is essential when accusing someone of murder. I still believed Jimmy Galligan had killed Lombardo for nonpayment of debts—and for seeming to be everything Jimmy Galligan wasn’t: wealthy, spoiled, handsome, accepted. But Violet Tempest had far more initiative than I—or anyone—had given her credit for. The question over Lombardo’s death that had nagged at me for weeks came into sharp focus: how had Owney Davis known that Floyd couldn’t pay?

  “I didn’t have to kill him,” she said. “Floyd had no gun, no home in a nice safe building. All I needed to do was call up an old chorus girl pal and say, Gosh, Nedda threw Floyd out and I think it’s for good. Don’t know what he’s going to do, he’s flat broke.”

  Yes, I remembered people’s irritation that Violet was always on the phone. Leo telling his wife to stop gossiping with her friends, many of whom kept company with reporters. She had claimed she had nothing better to do, when in fact, she was signing Floyd Lombardo’s death warrant.

  “Mr. Lombardo was killed. Miss Fiske fell apart. Left the show.”

  “It’s sad.”

  “But then she came back.”

  “She did, but you know, her mind still isn’t right. That song Leo wrote her, it could put her over the edge. She could do herself a terrible harm.”

  So the lye was not to be just the destruction of Nedda’s voice, but a suicide. As she spoke of murdering Nedda Fiske, Violet’s voice was oddly detached. As if she were sincerely worried Nedda would kill herself, even as her hand settled on the lye tin. I would have accused her of acting, but she was not that talented. A part of her did not, could not accept that she intended to kill. In the same breath, she could admit to shooting Sidney Warburton, but insist that she did not mean to, that she had only shot at a closed door and something unthinkable had happened as a result.

  Sidney Warburton had always turned away from Violet when she was angry; no doubt many men had—and women. How callously we had dismissed her fury as petulance, whining, the selfishness of an untalented person who demands center stage. But it was Warburton who had mattered to her. For years, she had felt that if her anger were unacceptable to him, it must be put aside, for her own survival. Disavowed. Never acknowledged, like an illegitimate child. But like children, it had grown, nonetheless. Unrecognized and unchecked. And become lethal.

  Eyes on the tin, I said, “You should write plays. You’re very good at pretend.”

  “Thank you, that’s kind.”

  She was slipping back into pretend now. The sweet, dim, big-breasted girl who didn’t quite understand the effect she had on others. Certainly, she had never meant to cause fuss. Or distress. Or death. She had just … gotten mad.

  Lowering her voice, she said, “I’ll tell you a secret, me and Leo, we’re not really married. I had something in Ohio, never got around to doing the papers. I changed my name so many times, it’s too hard. So, he’s all yours, I won’t tell.”

  Tell—when surely she meant to say “mind.” This I realized was the request: I was to step out, not see, keep quiet. She would not tell and I would not tell.

  There was a knock at the door. Detective Fullerton making himself known. I had told Louise to have him wait—and listen—outside the door.

  I reached for the doorknob. “I don’t think I can do that, Miss…”

  In the agony of the moment, her name again eluded me.

  “But believe me, I am sorry.”

  20

  “New beginning!”

  The Ardens, Mr. Harney, and Miss Fiske gazed wearily at Leo. After Detective Fullerton had marched Violet out of the theater, Leo had ordered everyone back to work. With only a few days to go until opening night, he argued, they couldn’t afford time off. Too stunned to question him, everyone had rejoined rehearsal. When it was over, Louise had approached Leo and tentatively inquired if he wished to stay at her home; returning to his own under the circumstances would be difficult. He said, “That’s very kind, Mrs. Tyler, but I’m staying here tonight. Too much to do.”

  “Oh, but you shouldn’t be alone.”

  His gaze shifted to me for a moment. “Alone is good right now, Mrs. Tyler. Alone is just fine.”

  This morning, the cast had arrived to the news that the show had an entirely new opening number.

  “We’re scrapping the strings, the waltz, all that stuff,” announced Leo.

  “And what are we putting in its place?” inquired Blanche. “A phalanx of policemen? A gallows?”

  Leo ignored her. Instead, he handed Claude a tin pail; I recognized it from the janitor’s closet. Then he handed him a spoon. Louise looked inquiringly at me. I shrugged.

  “What on earth,” said Claude Arden.

  “Bang on it,” said Leo. “Once.”

  If one could strike a pail with sarcasm, Claude Arden did so.

  “Two more times,” said Leo. Nedda and Blanche glanced at each other. Had their director lost his mind?

  Intrigued by Leo’s intensity, Arden banged twice more.

  “Bang … stomp your foot.”

  Arden had begun to see what Leo was after, because he did so in perfect rhythm, then began experimenting. Two rapid, two slow, echoed by his feet. Leo called, “Blanche, you want to join in? Maybe…” He looked around, spotted a broom in the wings. “That.”

  Blanche Arden swiftly inverted the broom, began following Claude’s beats. Nedda stepped forward, adding a foot stomp and hand clap. Leo smiled, pointing to each one to keep time. Then called, “You, too, Harney!”

  Mr. Harney was seated on the couch, and for a moment, he froze, apparently torn between character and the deep desire
to move. Then abruptly, he fell sideways. Then sat up. Fell sideways. Sat up. All in perfect time.

  “This is a ragtime show,” Leo called over the clockwork clatter. “It’s about syncopation. Beat. Step. Rhythm. Yes, it’s a show about love, but love isn’t always melody and harmony. It’s elemental, what you feel here.” He struck his chest. “Beat. Step. Rhythm. Forget the strings, the swooning, the pretty—that’s old. This is new. The audience won’t have seen anything like it before. But they’re going to feel it—in here—and they’re going to love it because it’s true.”

  As if propelled by his energy, the four began to improvise, wildly, joyfully. For the first time, I saw them not as the Ardens or Nedda Fiske or Mr. Harney—but as a genuine company, even though each individual stood out as they never had before. Leo strode in and around them, fist clenched, shouting, “Yes! Good! Great!” From my seat, I leaned forward, inclining toward the dynamic, pulsing energy. I wasn’t sure I didn’t prefer the old pretty beginning. But having seen this, felt this, I knew we couldn’t go back.

  We ended late, but exhilarated. Leo asked Louise if she would mind very much if he took me out to dinner.

  “Anywhere but Rector’s,” I said.

  We ate in a Chinese restaurant. Leo took off his jacket and tie, then ran his fingers through his hair until it doubled its usual height. Then with a sigh, he let his head fall on the table.

  “He’s fine,” I told a concerned waiter. “If you could bring two glasses of beer…”

  We didn’t say much until the lobster and chicken chop suey had arrived, speaking under and around the subject we both knew lay ahead. We speculated as to the number of hairs remaining on Claude’s head, marveled over Nedda’s performance, and made bets as to which tiny Warburton would cause the most trouble at the premiere. I suggested a change be made to Roland Harney’s role. Leo considered, then said yes, he could see it.

  Finally he said, “Okay, go ahead. Ask me.”

  “I don’t have to ask you.”

  “Tell me then.”

  “Leo Hirschfeld never lies.”

  “So I hear.”

  “Except when he does.”

  To his credit, he said, “Except when he has a very good reason to.”

  “Was this a good reason?”

  “Yes.”

  I was surprised at the intensity of his answer. Leo, who never seemed to care very deeply about anything beyond his work, felt very deeply about the rightness of lying about where he was when Sidney Warburton was killed. Which meant he felt deeply about the rightness of killing Sidney Warburton.

  He said, “Remember—I wasn’t the one who told the detective where we were when Warburton was killed.”

  Yes, Violet had been the one to stammer out the embarrassing “truth.” “When did you know?”

  “Around the time Violet found me outside Sidney’s apartment, told me she’d killed him and I had to help her. You can ask why I did, it’s okay.”

  “Well, either you love her more than I think or hated him more. Or—and I think this is most likely—you didn’t want to take time away from the show by dealing with the arrest of your wife.”

  He looked appalled. Opened his mouth to protest. Then sucked on a lobster claw.

  “Well?”

  “All of it? My first thought was this is crazy, I have to get the cops, Vi has to confess, we’ll explain he was a bastard, we’ll think of something. My second thought was, why am I thinking of something, she just killed a man, let her get herself out of it. It’s not like we were the love match of the century. Till death do us part wasn’t supposed to cover the murder of other people.”

  “But then came the third thought.”

  “The third thought. Which was, Right, hand her over. Walk away. Then you can be just like old Sidney Warburton. Which I swore from about two minutes after I met him was never going to happen. Ever. No matter how successful I was or how big a failure, I was never going to treat people like he did. Violet is … well, she killed a man, that’s how she is.”

  Sensing an excuse for Miss Tempest, I said, “Two men, actually.”

  “Two?”

  I explained how Violet had stolen Floyd Lombardo’s gun, then made sure Owney Davis found out Nedda had cut him off. “And in case you’re about to argue that she didn’t do the actual shooting, be aware that she was about to put lye in Nedda’s throat tonic.”

  Leo took a long drink of beer. I thought to say that had Leo not provided an alibi for his wife, she might never have had the chance to murder Nedda Fiske—and that had she been successful, he would have been an accessory to that crime. At least morally. I could tell from his silence he understood.

  “Violet mentioned a father. Does she have family?”

  “I don’t know where they are. But sure—the Flying O’Briens.” He mimicked their pose, arms up, broad grin.

  Stunned, I said, “She was an acrobat?”

  He nodded. “Eileen O’Brien. That was her. Till she was about twelve. Then”—he gestured around his chest—“and her father told her she was too big. Said she didn’t look right, couldn’t be part of the act anymore. That’s when Sidney had a brilliant idea for a new act.”

  Revolted, I said, “He didn’t make her do the stairs when she was twelve.”

  “No, for a while, she was the klutzy girl who dropped stuff. Girl on a swing who flies too high. When she was around sixteen, Sidney dumped the family somewhere in Kansas, brought Vi to New York, and started the Spectaculars. That’s when she became Salome on Stairs.”

  “What did she do as a Flying O’Brien?”

  “I never saw her, but those tumbling acts are something. They throw each other around, jump from each other’s shoulders. Twist themselves in all kinds of crazy ways. Trapeze, if the theater has one.”

  The old song—heard anew—came to me: she flies through the air with the greatest of ease, that daring young girl on the flying trapeze.

  “She was an athlete.”

  “I guess.”

  And her family had rejected her when her child’s body became a woman’s. No use to them, they said, but of great use to Sidney Warburton who had turned her into a joke, claiming he was making her a star. They had stopped her from jumping and flying and made her mince down a flight of stairs, merely displaying her body, when she had once walked on her hands, somersaulted, and proudly balanced atop her sister’s shoulders. Eileen O’Brien had twisted herself into a new shape, one she didn’t even recognize. Violet Tempest.

  “How can she think she loves him?”

  “You’ve never met some of the characters on the circuit. And you’ve never seen how desperate these people are, how they’ll cling on to that one person that can get them work. Everything he did to her, she somehow decided wasn’t that bad. Even him marrying her off to me to hide ‘the baby,’ she saw as taking care of her. It took her a while, but she got there. He never even realized…”

  “Realized what?”

  For a moment, he dug through his chop suey. “You remember that day when we visited Mrs. Warburton? All those little Warburtons? I looked at the second oldest, she’s what, nine? And I couldn’t stop thinking, You had one kid already, another one on the way. Only not with Mrs. Warburton.”

  He let me take that in.

  “But you tell your girlfriend, ‘Get rid of it.’ And she does, because what Sidney says … Sidney’s a little vague about paying for it. A little vague about where to go. It’s not his problem, right? He’s got other things to think about. Violet asks some girl she works with, finds a real gem. She almost bleeds out, gets an infection. When it’s all over, the doctor says, ‘No more worries for you, young lady.’ And that bastard doesn’t even realize she can’t have kids. Never even asked.”

  In many ways, Leo Hirschfeld would be a miserable husband. He would not be attentive and he would not be faithful. And yet I felt sad that Eileen had not realized the wisdom of taking up with him.

  “Will you testify for her?”

 
“Sure. I wouldn’t cast her in a show. But testify? Sure. She should go to jail. But not the chair.”

  Mildly annoyed by his lack of rancor over his ex-wife’s—no, never wife’s—behavior, I said, “And you’re not worried the detective will charge you with helping her?”

  “He has no proof against me. For all he knows, Violet shot Sidney and pounced on me as her alibi.”

  “What if she tells him otherwise?”

  “Why would she do that?” I was about to argue she could lower her own sentence by naming an accomplice when he added, “Look, my bet is Violet isn’t going to spend a long time in jail. The press likes her. The men on the jury will like her. You watch, she’ll say, ‘I didn’t know it was loaded’ and none of them will wonder what she was doing with a gun in the first place. When she gets out, she’ll need a friend.”

  “You’d be her friend?”

  “Why?” He grinned. “You mind?”

  “You know you were never actually married to her,” I said, exasperated. “That there’s a husband out there wondering whatever happened to Eileen … or Violet.”

  “You do mind.”

  “Do you?”

  “Not really. Saves me getting a divorce. It also saves me ever getting married again.” Raising his head, he said in a lofty voice, “I’ll stand by her. No matter what. She’s not really such a bad girl, your honor, more … misunderstood.”

  Planting an elbow on the table, I held up the lobster cracker.

  Meekly, Leo returned to his chop suey. “You, on the other hand, are a real menace.”

  The theaters had not yet let out by the time we left the restaurant. For Times Square, the streets were quiet. As we passed by the Sidney, I looked up at the marquee and said, “In two days, you’ll know.”

  Leo contemplated his name, then said, “You want to go to the movies? I bet I could get the piano player to take the night off.”

  As it happened, I did. The piano player did not take much persuading beyond the dollar Leo gave him. And for one last night, the boy who had predicted he would be the biggest thing on Broadway played the piano for Cruel, Cruel Love, while I thrilled and swooned and menaced just like the shadows above us.