Lait said Alfredo expressed great bitterness toward Vera during the lunch. “He seemed to resent … the consummate professional skill he had imparted to Vera, but which he was now unable to employ.”
Lait was traveling to New York on business the following day. He promised Alfredo he would do what he could to get his story told.
Annie Bruce was the first to be awakened by the rapping at the window. Startled, she roused Vera, who was sleeping in the same bed with her in a motel room in Livermore, California. It was in the predawn of July 26 or 27, 1937.
Vera switched on a table lamp. There were boxes and bags everywhere on the floor, all of them filled with clothing and other items that she had hastily gathered from the Codona house. She threaded her way through the maze and to the window. Her heart was pounding. She pushed the curtain just far enough away from the window frame to investigate. Alfredo’s face, inches from the glass, was backlit by the headlights of his yellow Studebaker, parked directly in front of the motel unit with its motor running. There was a crooked grin on his lips. He appeared crazed. He was waving a revolver.
Vera made a call to the motel’s desk, awakening the owner. She pleaded with him to contact the police. Then she and her mother locked themselves inside a bathroom. In minutes, they heard a spraying of gravel from Alfredo’s car.
Alfredo’s behavior had become increasingly bizarre, unpredictable, and occasionally menacing toward her at least since the time he had been cast from the big top world the year before. Even though the two were now divorced, Vera must have continued to feel threatened by him. Vera and her mother had taken sanctuary in the motel room right after the divorce was granted. Livermore was four hundred miles from Long Beach. Until he had turned up at the motel that night, waving a revolver, she must have thought that she had traveled far enough away from him.
When the police arrived at the Livermore motel in the early morning hours after Alfredo had traveled there and terrorized Vera and Annie, they discovered that all the tires on their car had been slashed. After arranging for their replacement, Vera and her mother checked out of the motel and traveled to Long Beach. There she sent a note, written on the back of an automobile repair order, to Frank McCloskey, who, along with Fanny, was living in the Lenora Apartments in Los Angeles.
Frank,
Am in plenty of trouble. Would like to see you as soon as possible. I am registered at the Hotel Alexander, Long Beach, Locust St., as Verna Bowen. Alfredo and I are divorced, but he is making life a hell for me. Sorry I did not call you today. Hope to see you or telephone the hotel.
Cheerio, Vera
There remained yet one final legal matter to be resolved before she could leave California to return to Clary’s bareback riding troupe and the circus. She and Alfredo had been directed by the court to meet on August 1 in the Los Angeles office of her lawyer, James E. Pawson, to work out an agreement on how the common property of the two should be divided.
Except for the ashes of his beloved Leitzel, kept in a regularly polished copper urn atop the shrine he had erected in his bedroom, Alfredo was now isolated in the family house without another human presence.
July was almost at its end, and now the days lay on Long Beach like a barber’s steamed shaving towel. Whether because of the broiling heat or his profound loneliness, Alfredo often found it unbearable to stay at home nights. Sometimes he would leave the house on Cherry Street at eleven o’clock or midnight and cruise the streets of Long Beach and Los Angeles in the yellow Studebaker. Sometimes he brought along the urn with Leitzel’s ashes and carried on one-sided conversations with her during the nighttime meanderings.
He did not return to the house after all the nighttime wanderings. Sometimes an hour or two before daybreak, he would pull the Studebaker into the driveway of the W. K. Adolph & Codona Co. garage in Walteria. There, he would sleep in his car until it was time to put on his coveralls and go back to greasing axles.
On the morning of August 1, though, Alfredo awoke in his bed in the house on Cherry Street. Those who would talk to him later that day, including Lalo, concluded he must have had a rare night of untroubled sleep. He seemed cheerier than he had been and gave others an impression that he had finally started to figure things out and was ready to put his life with Vera behind him.
Always when Alfredo opened his eyes in his bedroom in the morning, his attention was first drawn to the urn on the bedroom shrine. He would call out a greeting of the new day, “Buenos días, mi muñequita.” On this morning, because he had awakened in unusually good spirits and was excited about the new day ahead, he may even have sung the song he often sang to Leitzel, one of her favorites:
Mexicali Rose, stop crying.
I’ll come back to you some sunny day.
Every night you know I’ll be pining,
Every hour a year while I’m away.
He fixed himself breakfast and afterward made telephone calls to Lalo and Victoria. Neither had heard from him much since the divorce was granted a month earlier, and when they did, he was usually sullen and complained about how Vera had already taken him for almost everything he was worth, and still wanted more. Both Lalo and Victoria were surprised when they heard from him that morning, though. He sounded cheerier than he had in months. He said nothing about Vera, nor, for that matter, anything at all that had to do with the present.
His talks with his brother and sister that morning were long and winding, bumping on topics from the long-ago past when the three were young children, moving through Mexico with Papa and Mama in the family Gran Circo Codona.
“Those were the days, weren’t they, Lalo?” Alfredo said to his brother. “No cares in the world. What I’d give to be able to start them all over.”
Before ending the calls, he told Victoria and Lalo how much he cared about them.
When Alfredo stepped outside the house that day, he was snappily dressed in a cream-colored linen sport coat, blue trousers, and a panama hat. Those who knew him might have guessed he was resuming one of the activities in which he frequently took part before he had sunk into depression—an outing on a yacht with friends, maybe, or perhaps a lawn party at Green Acres, the Beverly Hills home of his friends Harold Lloyd and Mildred Davis.
There was not likely to be much that was to be festive for Alfredo about this day, though. This was the day he was scheduled to meet in the office of Vera’s attorney to arrive at a binding agreement with her on how the two should divide their personal effects. The relationship between the pair would be over once this last bit of legal housekeeping was finished. Then each would be free to go their separate ways.
Alfredo remained bright as he rode an elevator to the offices of Attorney Pawson on the sixth floor of the Security Building in Downtown Los Angeles. Vera and her mother, Annie Bruce, were already in the reception room when he entered.
“Hello, Mother,” he chirped. “Good afternoon, Vera.”
Vera, as always, looked stunning. She was wearing a dress that looked like it might have been selected from one of the shops on Rodeo Drive. It was knee length, a powdery blue, and was printed with what seemed to be a hundred small white flowers. Her hair was cut in a bob that partly covered one eye and fell to her chin.
Alfredo complimented Vera on her appearance. Next, he took his mother-in-law’s right hand and kissed it. Vera instantly folded her arms in front of her and tucked her hands behind them.
In minutes, a secretary appeared and led the three into a conference room. Vera’s attorney was already seated at a table with papers all around him. He directed them to take seats.
Alfredo did not raise any objections as the lawyer read from the sheets listing the jewelry, furs, clothing, and other personal effects that Vera was claiming. Many of the items were gifts Alfredo had made to her, among them some expensive rings, bracelets, necklaces, and hats that had once belonged to Leitzel. All of the articles were still back in the Long Beach house that he and Vera once shared.
Alfredo eyes were lighted throughout th
e meeting. He was smiling. He made small talk about the birthdays, anniversaries, Christmases, and other occasions during their nearly five-year marriage when he had presented her this ring or that pair of earrings. Vera had worried earlier that this meeting with Alfredo could turn out to be especially rancorous. She was surprised, but grateful, that Alfredo remained civil throughout the proceedings. He seemed subdued, maybe even a little sad, but did not challenge a single one of the claims she had made for the items listed on the inventory sheets.
Finally the lawyer ended his recitation of the articles recorded on his sheets and looked up from his papers. He asked Alfredo if he wanted to dispute the ownership of any of the articles Vera said belonged to her. He said no. Pawson then asked if he was ready to sign the papers that spelled out which articles would be going to Vera. He nodded his assent. The attorney pushed the forms to Alfredo’s side of the table, and he reached into his coat for a pen.
When Alfredo finished with the signings, he asked Pawson if it would be all right if he had a private moment with Vera. The attorney looked to her. Vera may have thought Alfredo wanted to apologize for the incident a week earlier when he tracked her to the motel in Livermore, and, after rapping at the window of her room, pointed a revolver at her. Or maybe, Vera may have thought, Alfredo simply wanted to wish her well in the future. She and Alfredo had been wife and husband, and though it had not worked out, she may have wanted to express the same wish to him.
Vera nodded to her lawyer, signaling to him that she thought it would be okay for her to hear what Alfredo wanted to say to her.
Pawson thanked Alfredo for not contesting any part of the afternoon’s proceedings. He shook his hand, wished him luck, and left him in the conference room with Vera and her mother.
Alfredo calmly locked the door behind the attorney. Next, he knelt before Vera’s chair and locked his arms around her lower legs. In an instant, beginning at the hemline of her dress and then moving upward, he started kissing the small, white flowers on the garment, one after another. Vera was startled, disarmed. She sprang to her feet. She opened her purse and fished out a cigarette. Her hands trembled as she fitted an Old Gold into a long-stemmed holder.
Alfredo drew a lighter from his trousers and held its flame to her cigarette.
“Vera,” he said, “you’ve left nothing more for me to do.”
In the next moment, his hand disappeared into his coat. When it was visible again, he was holding a revolver, the same one that Vera had seen that early morning outside the window of the motel room in Livermore.
Alfredo fired four slugs. One entered Vera’s jaw and another went into her chest. He fired two more into her abdomen.
The air was acrid with smoke from the revolver’s bursts. Annie Bruce was shrieking in terror. Alfredo looked at his mother-in-law for a moment, then positioned the revolver’s barrel against his temple, and fired a fifth round. His legs crumpled under him, and he apparently died instantly.
Vera was still alive but unconscious. Blood streamed from her head, and from her chest and stomach. The bodies of the pair were just feet apart on the floor, positioned in a manner curiously similar to the way F. W. Murnau had carefully arranged those of Marion and the Great Cecchi in the love-death scene at the very end of his 4 Devils.
Vera was rushed by ambulance to the Seaside Hospital in Long Beach. She remained unconscious for sixteen hours. Then she opened her eyes and saw her mother sitting beside her bed.
“Are you all right, Mother?” she asked.
Vera closed her eyes again, and then she was gone.
She was buried three days after the shootings in the Calvary Cemetery in Westmore, California. Only her mother, brother, Clary, and Fanny and Frank McCloskey were present.
The services for Alfredo were held the following day at the Mottell Chapel and Mortuary in Long Beach. So many mourners clogged the chapel that dozens of others had to remain outside. A minister said a few words about Alfredo. He mentioned Alfredo’s siblings, Lalo, Edward, and Victoria, along with the nieces and nephews who survived Alfredo. He mentioned that Alfredo had traveled with the circus for years and more recently was employed at an auto garage. He could have been talking about a man who spent all his working years driving a milk truck. He said nothing about the Great Codona’s worldwide renown as the big top’s greatest male artist ever.
As the mourners filed out of the chapel, an organ pealed “The Blue Danube Waltz.” It was Alfredo’s favorite song, one that was often playing as he soared on the air.
Edward Codona Jr., a member of the Long Beach Police Department and a younger brother to Alfredo, had arranged for a group of uniformed motorcycle officers to lead the cortege to Inglewood Park Cemetery just outside Los Angeles.
It was far from the biggest audience before which Alfredo had ever appeared, but it was in the hundreds. Movie producers, circus impresarios, powerful talent agents, aerialists, wire walkers, famous animal trainers, clowns, and film and stage actors were gathered in the cemetery when pallbearers brought his casket out of the hearse. Men removed their hats. Women drew veils over their faces.
A note had been found in Alfredo’s coat after the shootings.
“I have no wife to love me,” he had written. “I am going back to Leitzel, the only woman who ever really loved me.”
His casket was lowered into the ground, within feet from where Leitzel’s ashes lay, inside the locked vault of Reunion. The circus’s queen and king were together again.
Afterward, the mourners broke into different groups of two, four, six, or more people.
Those from the worlds of the movies and the theaters talked about how hard it was to understand what drove the Great Codona to close his life that way, and also to take Vera Bruce’s. The sorrow he must have suffered after losing Leitzel and then becoming a cripple, unable ever to fly again, must have been bottomless. Surely this all drove him to madness. It was all so tragic.
The bareback riders, tight wire dancers, midgets, and clowns who were present listened to all this, but at least some of them thought there could be a different explanation. The circus exists apart from the ordinary world, they believed, and it is one that is governed by its own divines. When Leitzel dropped from the air that night in Copenhagen, it may have been foreordained that Alfredo and Vera would come to their ends, too. Black luck always comes in threes in the big top, the saltimbanques have always held. It is the way of the circus. Because Alfredo and Vera were the two people most intimately involved in Leitzel’s sphere at the time of her death, their sacrifice may have been necessary. It might have been the only way that the planets over the circus could become properly realigned, the only way for the big top’s order to be restored.
One side might have been right in the matter, or maybe both sides might have been partly right and partly wrong. Who can ever know in cases like this?
Only this much might be certain: as an institution, the circus has been around for a long time, maybe almost from the moment a few far-dreamers started wondering about what lay beyond the boundary of what others thought was the absolute limit of the humanly possible. As long as there continue to be such dreamers, the circus, in one form or another, will likely continue to go on and on. In what were just two snaps of the fingers in time’s flow, though, the big top lost not only its two most surpassing artists ever but also its queen and king. The great canvas cathedral was never again quite as magic, wondrous, and even as holy a place as it was when they were its rulers, and, it seems almost sure, it never will be again.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I was the art critic and also an entertainment and feature writer at the daily Milwaukee Sentinel (now Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel) when I first set out to write the story of Leitzel and Alfredo Codona. More punctilious then than I am today, I set a strict deadline for the book’s completion.
I missed it, but only by thirty-plus years.
Actually, except for the last chapter or two, I had completed a first draft of the book by the early 1980s. And I
hated it. Every word. I felt back then, as I do today, that the story of Leitzel and Alfredo was the greatest one the big top has ever had to tell. They presided over an ever-relocating sawdust-and-rainbows-made Camelot where, one after another, wonderments kept occurring. Their love story was epic. Had it played out in the ancient world instead of the first third of the twentieth century, it might have been presented on the stage by Sophocles. Their story moved in the arc of a Greek tragedy, and, I believe, was complete with mischievous fates and vengeful gods.
And yet nothing of this radiated in that initial draft of the story I produced. I stowed that effort in a desk drawer, believing I needed to rethink everything. I thought then that I might return to the pages in six months or a year. But at about this same time, my life started changing in a lot of radical, but good, ways. In 1981, I took a position as a guest curator at the Milwaukee Art Museum. In 1982, I married the love of my life. The academic year of 1985–86 was spent at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor where, with funding from the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, I had been recognized for my critical writing with a Journalists in Residence fellowship. Then, in 1987, I fulfilled a long-held wish: I opened a gallery of contemporary art in Milwaukee, the eponymously named Dean Jensen Gallery that I continue to operate today.
Around 2009, I decided to revisit the Leitzel and Alfredo Codona story. I never took a second look at my first telling, but did regather my research materials, including notebooks, envelopes plump with letters and yellowed newspaper cuttings, and many dozens of tape-recorded interviews, most of them with Alfredo and Leitzel’s fellow travelers with the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus and also members of their families. Soon, I was stabbing at the letters of a keyboard on a new first chapter. For another year and a half or so, in slivers of time stolen from the gallery, I continued to write. Then, Queen of the Air was finished. I do not know if this book is a good one, but I know it is many times better than my early attempt at telling the story of the two greatest stars that ever appeared in the canvas cathedrals.
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