MOST OF THE STORIES AND NOVELS of James Yaffe (1927–2017) have featured his most popular detective character, Mom, a Jewish widow who lives in the Bronx. A true armchair detective, Mom solves cases for her son, a detective, merely by listening to his accounts of the evidence during their traditional Friday-night dinners. These stories were frequent winners in the annual Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine contests and spawned five novels, beginning with A Nice Murder for Mom (1988).
Born in Chicago, Yaffe moved to New York City at an early age and wrote his first story while still in high school. That effort, “Department of Impossible Crimes,” was published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, launching a series of stories about Paul Dawn and the fictional division of the NYPD that he heads. The clever plotting garnered Yaffe a following deeply devoted to his exceptional narratives of fair-play detective fiction.
After Yaffe graduated from Yale, he served in the navy and spent a full year in Paris before launching his writing career. A book of non-mystery stories, Poor Cousin Evelyn (1951), received good reviews, followed by Nothing but the Night (1957), a fictionalized version of the famous Leopold-Loeb murder trial. He wrote several plays, the best known being The Deadly Game (1960), an adaptation of Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s Traps; it was the basis for a 1982 television movie with George Segal, Trevor Howard, and Robert Morley. With Jerome Weidman, Yaffe wrote the drama Ivory Tower (1969), in which an American poet in 1943 calls for soldiers to lay down their arms in the face of the Nazi onslaught and is accused of treason. Yaffe wrote for numerous television series, including Studio One, The U.S. Steel Hour, Suspicion, and The Alfred Hitchcock Hour.
“Mom Sings an Aria” was originally published in the October 1966 issue of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine; it was first collected in My Mother, the Detective (Norfolk, Virginia, Crippen & Landru, 1997).
Mom Sings an Aria
JAMES YAFFE
IT WAS ONE OF THE GREATEST disappointments of my mother’s life that I never turned out to be a musical genius. For a couple of years, when I was a kid, Mom made me take violin lessons. At the end of the first year I played a piece called “Rustling Leaves.” At the end of the second year I was still playing “Rustling Leaves.” Poor Mom had to admit I wasn’t another Jascha Heifetz, and that was the end of my musical career.
Mom has always been crazy about music herself. She did a little singing when she was a girl, and might have done something with her voice—instead she got married, moved up to the Bronx, and devoted herself to raising a future Lieutenant in the New York City Homicide Squad. But she still listens regularly to the Saturday afternoon broadcasts of the Metropolitan Opera, and she can still hum along with all the familiar arias. That was why—when my wife Shirley and I went up to the Bronx the other night for our regular Friday dinner—I knew Mom would be interested in my latest case.
“You’re a music lover, Mom,” I said. “Maybe you can understand how a man could love music so much that he’d commit murder for it.”
“This is hard to understand?” Mom said, looking up from her roast chicken. “Why else did I stop your violin lessons? Once, while you were playing one of your pieces, I happened to take a look at your teacher, Mrs. Steinberg—and on her face was murder, if I ever saw it!”
“You don’t mean that literally, do you, Mother?” Shirley said. “A woman wouldn’t really feel like murdering a little boy because he played the violin badly.”
“People can have plenty feelings that were never in your psychology books at college,” Mom said. “Believe me, in my own family—my Aunt Goldie who thought the pigeon outside her window was actually her late husband Jake—”
Mom went into detail, and her story was fascinating. Then she passed the chicken a second time, and I was able to get back to my murder.
“Have you ever seen the standing-room line at the Metropolitan Opera House?” I said. “Half an hour before every performance the box office sells standing-room tickets at two-fifty each, on a first-come first-served basis. The opera lovers start lining up outside the house hours ahead of time. They stand on their feet for three hours before the opera just so they can stand on their feet for three hours during the opera! Talk about crazy human motives!”
“People with no ears in their heads,” Mom said, “shouldn’t be so quick to call other people crazy.” And she gave me one of those glares which has been making me feel like a naughty little five-year-old ever since I was a naughty little five-year-old.
I turned my eyes away and pushed on. “Well, there are certain people who show up on the opera standing-room line night after night, for practically every performance throughout the season. These ‘regulars’ are almost always at the head of the line—they come earlier than anyone else, wait longer, and take the best center places once they get inside the house. And since most of them have been doing this for years, they know each other by name, and they pass the time gossiping about the opera singers and discussing the performances. You could almost say they’ve got an exclusive little social club all their own—only their meeting place isn’t a clubhouse, it’s the sidewalk in front of the Met. Anyway, you couldn’t imagine a more harmless collection of old fogeys—the last group on earth where you’d expect to find a murderer!”
“Even an opera lover has to have a private life,” Mom said. “He enjoys himself with the beautiful music—but he’s still got business troubles or love troubles or family troubles waiting for him at home.”
“That’s just it, Mom. If one of these standing-room regulars had gone home and killed his wife or his mother-in-law or his business partner, this would just be a routine case. But what happened was, he killed one of the other people in the standing-room line.”
Mom was looking at me with her eyes narrowed—a sure sign that I had her interested. “The two oldest regulars in the standing-room line,” I said, “the charter members of the club, are Sam Cohen and Giuseppe D’Angelo. Cohen used to be a pharmacist, with his own drugstore on West Eighty-third Street. He retired fifteen years ago, after his wife died, and turned the management of the store over to his nephew, though he went on living in the apartment above it. As soon as he retired, he started going to the opera almost every night of the season.
“D’Angelo was in the exterminating business out in Queens—insects, rodents, and so on—but he retired fifteen years ago too. His wife is alive, but she doesn’t care for music, so he’s been in the habit of going to the opera by himself—almost every night of the season, just like Cohen.
“The two old men met on the standing-room line fifteen years ago, and have seen each other three or four nights a week ever since—but only at the opera, never anywhere else. As far as we know, they’ve never met for a drink or a lunch, they’ve never been to each other’s homes, and they’ve never seen each other at all in the summer, when the opera is closed.
“Opera is the biggest thing in both their lives. Cohen’s mother was a vocal coach back in Germany, and he cut his teeth on operatic arias—D’Angelo was born and brought up in the city of Parma, which they tell me is the most operatic city in Italy—”
“I’ve read about Parma,” Mom said. “If a tenor hits a bad note there, they run him out of town.”
“How horrible!” Shirley said. “It’s positively uncivilized!”
Mom shrugged. “A little less civilization here in New York, and maybe we wouldn’t hear so many bad notes.”
I could see the cloud of indignation forming on Shirley’s face—she never has caught on to Mom’s peculiar sense of humor. I hurried on, “Well, the two old men both loved opera, but their opinions about it have always been diametrically opposed. So for fifteen years they’ve been carrying on a running argument. If Cohen likes a certain soprano, D’Angelo can’t stand her. If D’Angelo mentions having heard Caruso sing Aida in 1920, Cohen says that Caruso never sang Aida till 1923.
“And the old men haven’t conducted these arguments in nice soft
gentlemanly voices either. They yell at each other, wave their arms, call each other all sorts of names. ‘Liar’ and ‘moron’ are about the tamest I can think of. In spite of their bitterness, of course, these fights have never lasted long—before the night is over, or at least by the time of the next performance, the old men always make it up between them—”
“Until now?” Mom said.
“I’ll get to that in a minute, Mom. Just a little more background first. According to the other regulars on the standing-room line, the fights between Cohen and D’Angelo have become even more bitter than usual in recent years. They’ve been aggravated by a controversy which has been raging among opera lovers all over the world. Who’s the greatest soprano alive today—Maria Callas or Renata Tebaldi?”
Mom dropped her fork and clasped her hands to her chest, and on her face came that ecstatic, almost girlish look which she reserves exclusively for musical matters. “Callas! Tebaldi! Voices like angels, both of them! That Callas—such fire, such passion! That Tebaldi—such beauty, such sadness! To choose which one is the greatest—it’s as foolish as trying to choose between noodle soup and borscht!”
“Cohen and D’Angelo made their choices, though,” I said. “D’Angelo announced one day that Tebaldi was glorious and Callas had a voice like a rooster—so right away Cohen told him that Callas was divine and Tebaldi sang like a cracked phonograph record. And the argument has been getting more and more furious through the years.
“A week ago a climax was reached. Callas was singing Traviata, and the standing-room line started to form even earlier than usual. Cohen and D’Angelo, of course, were right there among the first. Cohen had a bad cold—he was sneezing all the time he stood in line—but he said he wouldn’t miss Callas’s Traviata if he was down with double pneumonia. And D’Angelo said that personally he could live happily for the rest of his life without hearing Callas butcher Traviata—he was here tonight, he said, only because of the tenor, Richard Tucker.”
“That Richard Tucker!” Mom gave her biggest, most motherly smile. “Such a wonderful boy—just as much at home in the schul as he is in the opera. What a proud mother he must have!” And Mom gave me a look which made it clear that she still hadn’t quite forgiven me for “Rustling Leaves.”
“With such a long wait on the standing-room line,” I said, “Cohen and D’Angelo had time to whip up a first-class battle. According to Frau Hochschwender—she’s a German lady who used to be a concert pianist and now gives piano lessons, and she’s also one of the standing-room regulars—Cohen and D’Angelo had never insulted each other so violently in all the years she’d known them. If the box office had opened an hour later, she says they would have come to blows.
“As it turned out, the performance itself didn’t even put an end to their fight. Ordinarily, once the opera began, both men became too wrapped up in the music to remember they were mad at each other—but this time, when the first act ended, Cohen grabbed D’Angelo by the arm and accused him of deliberately groaning after Callas’s big aria. ‘You did it to ruin the evening for me!’ Cohen said. He wouldn’t pay attention to D’Angelo’s denials. ‘I’ll get even with you,’ he said. ‘Wait till the next time Tebaldi is singing!’ ”
“And the next time Tebaldi was singing,” Mom said, “was the night of the murder?”
“Exactly. Three nights ago Tebaldi sang Tosca—”
“Tosca!” Mom’s face lighted up. “Such a beautiful opera! Such a sad story! She’s in love with this handsome young artist, and this villain makes advances and tries to force her to give in to him, so she stabs him with a knife. Come to think of it, the villain in that opera is a police officer.”
I looked hard, but I couldn’t see any trace of sarcasm on Mom’s face.
“Those opera plots are really ridiculous, aren’t they?” Shirley said. “So exaggerated and unrealistic.”
“Unrealistic!” Mom turned to her sharply. “You should know some of the things that go on—right here in this building. Didn’t Polichek the janitor have his eye on his wife’s baby sitter?”
Another fascinating story came out of Mom, and then I went on. “Anyway, for the whole weekend before Tosca, D’Angelo worried that Cohen would do something to spoil the performance for him. He worried so much that the night before, he called Cohen up and pleaded with him not to make trouble.”
“And Cohen answered?”
“His nephew was in the room with him when the call came. He was going over some account books and didn’t really pay attention to what his uncle was saying—but at one point he heard Cohen raise his voice angrily and shout out, ‘You can’t talk me out of it! When Tebaldi hits her high C in the big aria, I’m going to start booing!’ ”
Mom shook her head. “Terrible—a terrible threat for a civilized man to make! So does D’Angelo admit that Cohen made it?”
“Well, yes and no. In the early part of the phone conversation, D’Angelo says he and Cohen were yelling at each other so angrily that neither of them listened to what the other one was saying. But later on in the conversation—or so D’Angelo claims—Cohen calmed down and promised to let Tebaldi sing her aria in peace.”
“Cohen’s nephew says he didn’t?”
“Not exactly. He left the room while Cohen was still on the phone—he had to check some receipts in the cash register—so he never heard the end of the conversation. For all he knows Cohen might have calmed down and made that promise.”
“And what about D’Angelo’s end of the phone conversation? Was anybody in the room with him?”
“His wife was. And she swears that he did get such a promise out of Cohen. But of course she’s his wife, so she’s anxious to protect him. And besides she’s very deaf, and she won’t wear a hearing aid—she’s kind of a vain old lady. So what it boils down to, we’ve got nobody’s word except D’Angelo’s that Cohen didn’t intend to carry out his threat.”
“Which brings us,” Mom said, “to the night Tebaldi sang Tosca?”
“Cohen and D’Angelo both showed up early on the standing-room line that night. Frau Hochschwender says they greeted each other politely, but all the time they were waiting they hardly exchanged a word. No arguments, no differences of opinion—nothing. And her testimony is confirmed by another one of the regulars who was there—Miss Phoebe Van Voorhees. She’s in her seventies, always dresses in black.
“Miss Van Voorhees came from a wealthy New York family, and when she was a young woman she used to have a regular box at the opera—but the money ran out ten or twelve years ago, and now she lives alone in a cheap hotel in the East Twenties, and she waits on the standing-room line two nights a week. She’s so frail-looking you wouldn’t think she could stay on her feet for five minutes, much less five hours—but she loves opera, so she does it.”
“For love,” Mom said, “people can perform miracles.”
“Well, Miss Van Voorhees and Frau Hochschwender both say that Cohen and D’Angelo were unusually restrained with each other. Which seems to prove that they were still mad at each other and hadn’t made up the quarrel over the phone, as D’Angelo claims—”
“Or maybe it proves the opposite,” Mom said. “They did make up the quarrel, and they were so scared of starting another quarrel that they shut up and wouldn’t express any opinions.”
“Whatever it proves, Mom, here’s what happened. On cold nights it’s the custom among the standing-room regulars for one of them to go to the cafeteria a block away and get hot coffee for the others—meanwhile they hold his place in the line. The night of Tebaldi’s Tosca was very cold, and it was D’Angelo’s turn to bring the coffee.
“He went for it about forty-five minutes before the box office opened, and got back with it in fifteen or twenty minutes. He was carrying four cardboard containers. Three of them contained coffee with cream and sugar—for Frau Hochschwender, Miss Van Voorhees, and D’Angelo himself. In the
fourth container was black coffee without sugar—the way Cohen always took it.
“Well, they all gulped down their coffee, shielding it from the wind with their bodies—and about half an hour later the doors opened. They bought their tickets, went into the opera house, and stood together in their usual place in the back at the center.
“At eight sharp the opera began. Tebaldi was in great voice, and the audience was enthusiastic. At the end of the first act all of the standing-room regulars praised her—except Cohen. He just grunted and said nothing. Frau Hochschwender and Miss Van Voorhees both say that he looked pale and a little ill.
“ ‘Wait till she sings her big aria in the second act,’ D’Angelo said. ‘I hope she sings it good,’ Cohen said—and Frau Hochschwender says there was a definite threat in his voice. But Miss Van Voorhees says she didn’t notice anything significant in his voice—to her it just sounded like an offhand remark. Then the second act began, and it was almost time for Tebaldi’s big aria—”
“Such a beautiful aria!” Mom said. “Vissy darty. It’s Italian. She’s telling that police officer villain that all her life she’s cared only for love and for art, and she never wanted to hurt a soul. She tells him this, and a little later she stabs him.” And in a low voice, a little quavery but really kind of pretty, Mom began to half sing and half hum—“Vissy darty, vissy damory—” Then she broke off, and did something I had seldom seen her do. She blushed.
There was a moment of silence, while Shirley and I carefully refrained from looking at each other. Then I said, “So a few minutes before Tebaldi’s big aria, Cohen suddenly gave a groan, then he grabbed hold of Frau Hochschwender’s arm and said, ‘I’m sick—’ And then he started making strangling noises, and dropped like a lead weight to the floor.
“Somebody went for a doctor, and D’Angelo got down on his knees by Cohen and said, ‘Cohen, Cohen, what’s the matter?’ And Cohen, with his eyes straight on D’Angelo’s face, said, ‘You no-good! You deserve to die for what you did!’ Those were his exact words, Mom—half a dozen people heard them.
The Big Book of Female Detectives Page 142