Downtown Strut: An Edna Ferber Mystery (Edna Ferber Mysteries)

by Ed Ifkovic

  Burton protested. His hand swept over the cast. “But they’re exhausted.”

  Jed was already striding toward me, though he looked back over his shoulder and yelled, “Begin!” His eyes stared, hard and unblinking, yet I swear they were illuminated by the elixir of power.

  Defiantly, Burton called for a fifteen-minute break. Groaning, the troupe bristled, but readied to perform again, some stepping into the wings, others stretching their bodies, yawning. Doubled over, Haidee Wright was coughing. The veteran actress who played the domineering matriarch Fanny Cavendish had been grumbling for weeks about the cold, drafty theater, which, she announced more than once, would be the death of her.

  “You’re not closing the play,” I told Jed emphatically.

  He huffed and lit another cigarette, blew the smoke toward me, creating lopsided rings in the air. “I know.”

  “Then why…”

  “You’re looking radiant this morning,” he interrupted me.

  “It’s not morning,” I said in a curt voice.

  “For me it is.”

  “Jed, you’re a form of animal life best spotted poking its head out of a warren under a midnight moon.”

  “Ah, dear Edna. If only you could interject such venom into the lines of The Royal Family.”

  “I didn’t know you when I wrote it,” I shot back.

  “I want a play that’s fast-paced, hard as nails, rough-and-tumble.”

  “We didn’t write a Buffalo Bill Wild West extravaganza. It’s about a legendary Broadway acting family…”

  “Oy vey iz mir,” he snarled. “Alas, dearest Edna.”

  For a while, the theater was quiet as the players shuffled off for their needed break. He and I sat and talked. He was obsessed with Ann Andrews’ less-than-sophisticated performance, speaking her full name with particular dislike. I kept hoping George Kaufman would show up, though I knew he despised Jed and conveniently tended to forget some of these eleventh-hour encounters with him. His recent comment, famously repeated along Broadway and especially at parties, said it all. “When I die, I want to be cremated and have my ashes thrown in Jed Harris’ face.” The person who enjoyed this bon mot the most, of course, was—Jed.

  Tired of his diatribe against the hapless Ann Andrews, I mentioned that I’d come from the new Ziegfeld Theater where I’d listened to last-minute auditions for the Negro Chorus of Show Boat, and Jed sneered. “Lord, Edna, you and those Negroes.” But he was smiling.

  I fumed. “Yesterday in my apartment you seemed particularly fascinated with Bella, the ravishing beauty on the sofa.” I watched him carefully.

  That gave him pause and he looked over my shoulder, breathed in. “Is she the beautiful girl?”

  “Come off it, Jed. You know she is. You recognized her.” A pause. “And your glance suggested you’d met the others. Lawson, Roddy…”

  “No,” he interrupted. Flat out, brash.

  “I observe the world, Jed.”

  “No.” He turned away. “Not your business.”

  Which was the moment I took from my purse the flyer Roddy had given me and showed it to Jed. “One of my budding writers is a jazz songstress who’ll be singing at Small’s Paradise tonight. Big time. A lucky break for her.” He took the sheet from me and read it. “But you probably don’t remember Ellie, the quiet, unassuming girl in the corner, the one without the splashy lipstick and marcelled hair.”

  Snidely: “I notice all women.” He leaned into me, purposely sniffed and twitched his nose. “I recognize them by the expensive perfume they wear.”

  “I’m not wearing perfume.”

  “You don’t need to. You’re rich.”

  “That makes no sense, Jed.”

  He fingered the sheet. “I’ve been to Small’s Paradise. Wild, thrilling, hubba hubba. Good music, a fantastic orchestra. Good for her. It’s a lively, hopping place. No one sits still there, Edna.”

  I took the flyer back from him. “Well, I haven’t been there, Jed. But I’ve been to the Cotton Club. And I…”

  “Tonight,” he cut in, “you and me. Let’s see if this Ellie can sing. My cab will be at your apartment at eight.”

  I shook my head. “Oh, I don’t think so.”

  But he was standing up, dismissing me, his head already looking up at the stage where the players had started to reassemble. Walking away from me, he turned back. “Dress up, Edna. That dowdy look you favor doesn’t go over in furs-and-satin Harlem. I know my way around up there.”

  I pursed my lips. “I’m not surprised. Jed. I just assumed alley-cat slumming was something you took to naturally.”

  Chapter Three

  At night, 135th Street and Seventh Avenue bustled and throbbed with a cacophony of rhythmic noise and the blur of bodies in motion. The night chilly streets seemed lit by fire as storefront lights popped on and off, and the occasional wisp of sleet or ice in the air evaporated as it met the steam heat seeping up from the smoky manhole covers. There were scurrying crowds everywhere, hopping from club to club. Taxis and limos unloaded beaming, rushing white folks headed for Connie’s Inn or Barron’s Exclusive, expensive venues that speckled the side streets between Lenox Avenue and Seventh Avenue.

  Jungle Alley, they called it.

  And everywhere Negroes crammed into less fancy clubs with shabby canopies and dimly lit windows, sliding past one another, shoulders brushing, thin smiles on their faces. The night cold bothered no one. Everyone was in motion, laughing or yelling or dancing or singing. Nightclub-hopping women, both Negro and white, in red silk stockings and plush feathered hats, in sequined hip-hugging chemises, in garish purple cloches, paused to shimmy or tap or boogie the Charleston. Men watched, and bowed. Everyone roared, happy. Sophie Tucker and her entourage fairly leaped from the taxi that pulled up just before ours slid to the curb. Through the closed window of my cab, I could hear her uproarious, infectious laugh sail across the sidewalk. Fans swirled around her, autograph books open.

  Stepping from the cab, Jed grasped my elbow and snuggled in close. I could smell his aftershave, a musky scent more appropriate for the great outdoors than this sleek and glittery avenue. He’d dressed in a tan cashmere Chesterfield topcoat with his usual fedora worn jauntily on his head. His shoes shone like polished agates.

  “You look ready for a properly seedy speakeasy, Edna,” he’d whispered when I got into the waiting cab back at my building.

  Of course, I’d dressed for the evening. I read Vanity Fair and The Smart Set; I knew how to step into a swank Harlem eatery: a black velvet cloche pulled tight over my unruly curls, a sensible strand of real pearls encircling my powdered neck, and a cerise-and-black dress, low-belted in the flapper mode, cut just above the knee. A mink jacket, snug-fitting, tawny brown, my latest purchase from Gunther’s Furrier on Madison. I’d seen the dancing fools at Roseland. In my bedroom mirror I’d thought: I look like a spangled Floradora girl or a dizzy chorine from a George White Scandals revue. But no matter. I was out on the town.

  Now, pausing on the sidewalk, taking in the hustle of passersby on the jittery street, Jed lit a Lucky Strike and held the pack out to me. I shook my head: no thanks.

  “I don’t trust a woman who doesn’t smoke,” he hissed.

  “I don’t trust a man who lights his own cigarette first.”

  He narrowed his eyes, then nudged me forward.

  Small’s Paradise spilled its abundant life out onto the dense-packed sidewalk. I watched as chauffeur-driven limousines and town cars crawled quietly to the curb, jeweled women and top-hatted men slinking out. A slender woman, dressed for summer in a fringed metallic dress, shiny under the streetlights, reached into her escort’s pocket and extracted a thin silver flask, and surreptitiously, though seen by all, sipped from the container, shivered, and then let out a peel of high unnatural laughter. Standing feet away from her, I caught her eye for a moment; sh
e seemed rattled, as if she’d spotted her judgmental and puritanical mother. Jed was nudging me along, and we found ourselves stepping down into a cavernous cellar, low-ceilinged and shadowy.

  It took me a while to get used to the lights and din of the jumping room, but I did notice Sophie Tucker and her crowd being ushered to a front table, far from where Jed and I nestled ourselves, back by the entrance. We sat at a small, wobbly table, inches from others like it, covered with a pristine white tablecloth. Jed said something but I couldn’t hear it over the wailing wash of saxophone and trumpet. As the five-piece combo played, a few couples danced madly next to the waist-high barrier separating the dance floor from the tables. Jed pointed to the dancers. “Can you shimmy shawobble?” he said into my ear, purposely frivolous. I had no idea what he was babbling about, so I ignored him. Jed read my discomfort. This time, louder, in a pedantic tone: “It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing.” The man was clearly mad. All around us tuxedo-clad waiters—tall starched Negroes, all—danced across the floor, carrying trays held high, filled with ginger ale bottles and disguised gin in innocent cups. One waiter broke into a loose-jointed Charleston—and never spilled a drop.

  It took me a second to realize that Ellie, the modest, shrinking-violet little girl who sat on my sofa and seemed to sink into the overstuffed pillows, was onstage. Jed leaned in again. “I’m afraid we came at the end of her set.”

  “What?” I yelled.

  He put his lips against my ear. “The headliner, in an hour, is Ethel Waters.” He was grinning.

  “So what?” I yelled back. “Ellie looks…amazing.”

  The loud music abated, and Ellie, stepping up to the microphone, began to sing a romantic dirge. Ellie the performer was a creature apart, vivacious, flirty, an alluring chanteuse. As she moved seductively through a haunting “Love Will Find a Way,” her voice played off the saxophone player beside her, their bodies tipping seductively into each other. I was mesmerized: I thought of cool water splashed on the face, the deep intake of breath, the feel of soft velvet against powdered skin. I whispered to Jed, “My God, she’s wonderful.” He didn’t answer, and I turned to stare into his face. His eyes were riveted to the exotic singer on the stage, spellbound, his look displaying a raw covetousness that jarred, alarmed. Immediately I felt deflated, shunned, the pleasure ripped away.

  At that moment, out of nowhere, I remembered the modest love sonnet Ellie had written last summer, which she’d been hesitant to share with her friends in my living room. It talked of a saxophone player in a shiny powder-blue Norfolk suit and the way he wailed his instrument, drunk in an alley, as he watched an orange harvest moon rise over the Hudson. An Elizabethan encomium to a failed love affair. It had given me chills then. Now I understood why.

  “Amazing,” I whispered again, but to myself.

  But that was her last number. She bowed a thank you, back to being a shy schoolgirl. The sax player threw her a kiss as she left the stage. She was followed by a raucous, whoop-di-do combo, a band of rollicking men who shifted the tone of the room, brought the crowd to its stomping feet; shrill whistles of approval burst out across the floor. Sipping the last of the drink that had mysteriously appeared on the table, I signaled to Jed that I was ready to leave. He wasn’t: he was staring off into the wings, where, I noticed, Ellie was having a lively chat with someone.

  Eventually, goading him, I got my way, though Jed fussed and hawed as we strolled back out onto the sidewalk. “The night is so young,” he bellowed.

  “We came to hear Ellie,” I insisted.

  “Maybe you did.” He waved his arm, taking in the busy street. “Christ, Edna, everyone’s waiting for Ethel Waters. You know what I paid to get us in there?” He sighed. “Well, we could go to the Cotton Club or…”

  “There’s a cab that just emptied,” I pointed out, the shrewish party-pooper. “If we rush…”

  But standing a few feet from me, tucked into the shadows of a hardware store but positioned so that I would notice him as I turned, was Roddy Parsons. I was surprised to see him standing there at this late hour, and alone. I motioned him over.

  “Miss Ferber. Mr. Harris.” A pause. “Good evening.”

  Though he’d purposely got my attention, now he seemed hesitant to join us, speaking our names from the shadows while he glanced from me to Jed. Strangely, he was frowning at Jed, which baffled me. But then the frown disappeared in an instant. He smiled at me. “So you came to hear Ellie after all.” He sounded pleased.

  “Yes, I surprised myself, Roddy. But we only caught the last song. Though, I must say, she has a wonderful voice.”

  As he walked close to us, he confided, “She can make it downtown on Broadway, you know. We all say that—her friends. She’s got the real stuff.” He looked at Jed who was then tapping his foot, impatient. “She’s new here, so they’re trying her out. That’s why she only does one early show. And just three numbers. It’s a shame, really.” He breathed in, nervous. “But she said they like her.” Stressing the word, he glanced back to the entrance to Small’s Paradise. “She should be a headliner.”

  “I sense a ‘but’ in your words, Roddy.”

  “She’s so shy. She’s not…aggressive. Singers got to be…you know…pushy.”

  “She’s like one of those women you don’t notice on the street but, once onstage, they seem to come alive.” At that moment I was thinking of Helen Hayes, an unassuming and even mousy woman at a party, but once she stepped before blazing footlights, as in her current hit Coquette, she dominated, soared, seduced, and demanded your attention.

  “I’m waiting to see Ellie home,” he told me. “She lives uptown. Two subway stops. I do it sometimes when she does a show around here. We spend some time together.” He looked over my shoulder, his eyes taking in the marquee for Small’s Paradise. “I’m not allowed to go inside to wait for her.” He looked back at me but immediately looked over my shoulder again, up the block. “Bella’s with me. We were having coffee at Harry Chang’s.” He pointed back to a chop suey joint on the corner, the name “Harry Chang’s” illuminated in blinking red, though the “H” and the “C” were darkened, making the grubby little eatery somewhat comic.

  Out loud I read: “arry hang’s.” Roddy showed me that grin.

  I felt Jed stir at my side, and I sensed his discomfort. I’d forgotten to introduce him, and I didn’t care to.

  “Let me say hello to Bella,” I said purposely.

  An edge to his voice. “Edna, there’s a cab,” Jed pointed. “You said…”

  “It’s New York,” I protested. He turned his body away from us, his back to Roddy. “There’s always a cab, Jed.”

  Roddy didn’t seem happy that we were joining him because his body tensed up and he kept nodding like a broken puppet. Nervously, he strode ahead, walking quickly, telling us over his shoulder that Ellie knew where to find us. When he got to the door of the chop suey joint, he opened but immediately closed it so that the bell clanged, then clanged again, and he stepped back toward us. “Bella’s waiting with me.” Why was he repeating the line? His face drawn, he was looking at Jed, unhappy. Said, the redundant line came across as an apology.

  Inside the tiny restaurant, too brightly lit and too cluttered with stacks of cardboard boxes piled against one wall, Bella watched us approach her table. She didn’t look pleased, stiffening her body and closing up her face. I saw her bite her lip. Not happy, the beautiful young woman. She was dressed in a sea-green spangled dress, something designed for a night club, and her face glowed eerily in the off-light because of the heavy makeup she’d applied: thick glossy scarlet lipstick, circles of peach-colored rouge on her cheeks, her large wonderful eyes lined with a dark shadow. I thought it strange makeup for a person not going onto a stage, though I knew many young girls now liked the excessive look, the fair sex freed from Victorian constraint and small-town girl dictates. Yet somehow it all worked becau
se of her lithe graceful body, her velvety skin, and, I supposed, her assumption that men would naturally look at her. She offered us a faint smile that was, of course, no smile at all.

  As we shuffled into wire ice-cream parlor chairs, circling her, she turned her body away from that of Jed Harris.

  “Have you two met?” I began, glancing from her to Jed.

  Jed spoke quickly. “At your apartment. Yesterday. Don’t you remember?”

  “Oh.” My oracular monosyllable was worthy of an award. Roddy looked at me strangely.

  “We can’t stay,” Jed added, folding his arms around his chest.

  Bella ignored him and asked Roddy, “How was Ellie?” But there was an edge to her voice, hinting not only rivalry, I suspected, but outright dislike.

  Watching her closely, Roddy answered by nodding his head up and down. “From what I could hear from outside the stage door—beautiful.”

  “Of course,” Bella sneered. “Perfection.”

  After Roddy ordered coffee for everyone, he turned to me. “Bella is an actress, you know. Writer…and actress.” But I already knew that, so I figured he was talking for Jed’s benefit, though he never looked at him.

  “A lot of good it does me.” Bella pushed a plate of cold chop suey away from her—it looked as though she’d nibbled barely a corner of it—to rest in front of Jed. He stared at the congealed, unappetizing mess with disgust.

  “In time,” Roddy assured her. I could tell he didn’t know how to maneuver this awkward small talk. The muscles on his neck pulled taut, dark.

  Bella looked into my face. “Everyone promises me the stars, but I seem to get only stardust in my eyes.”

  “Does Ellie act, too?” I asked.

  “No,” Roddy answered too quickly. “But can she sing!”