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

by Ed Ifkovic

  “You didn’t want to live there? With Roddy?” Rebecca asked.

  “Well,” he stretched out his words, “I knew Roddy wasn’t happy with me. Not that we argued or anything, but I didn’t pay my share of the rent. I don’t make much as a janitor, and I go out to the clubs. Sometimes Bella requires good bootleg gin.” He grinned. “So do I.”

  “Did you know Roddy was thinking of leaving the apartment?” I asked.

  He stared into my face. “I had a suspicion. When I came to get a change of clothes or whatever, sometimes to get a bite to eat with him, his talk was strained. But I didn’t think he’d thought it through. Where would he go?”

  “But you didn’t pay your own way,” I emphasized.

  He frowned and dipped his head. “I thought I’d catch up.”

  “He told Ellie he was going to move.”

  That surprised him. “You sure?” He waited. “Well, I didn’t think he had the nerve to go.”

  “He was afraid to tell you.”

  His eyes moistened. “That sounds like Roddy.”

  “Then what happened?” I went on.

  “Nothing much. Bella and I got all dressed up. She wanted to hear Kid Chocolate’s early show at the Spider Web, then go dancing. She insisted we go.”

  Waters wandered to the window, staring down into the street. For a moment, Lawson paused, watching him.

  “Go on,” Rebecca said.

  He furrowed his brow. “She loves to dance. So do I.” He grinned. “The turkey trot. Everyone wants to dance.”

  “I don’t,” I spoke up. “If I did the Charleston, I’d gather a crowd.”

  He looked at me strangely, but went on. “We got drunk, the two of us. Real drunk. We knew people at the club, so it was easy.” Doubt suddenly swept across his face. “But, you know, even though I was pretty loaded and Bella got wild and funny, I felt that she wasn’t nearly as drunk as I was.”

  “What do you mean?” Waters walked away from the window to stand next to Lawson’s chair.

  “I’m not really sure. When you get drunk with a woman lots of times, well, you sort of know how they act—the silliness, the foolishness. Well, Bella was out of it. I can’t really put my finger on it, but it was the little things. The way I caught her watching me when she thought I didn’t notice. The way she staggered too much, grabbed onto me. Of course, it may just have been the fact that when we got back to her place—early, too, just after eleven because she said she was tired—she picked the fight she’d been leading up to all night long.”

  “And she told you it was over?” I asked.

  He nodded. “And she told me it was over.”

  “Yet you stayed.”

  “I was drunk. It was late. And she told me to stay. That’s what I thought was strange. Get out of my life, but stay over tonight. On the sofa. I didn’t plan to go home anyway. We ended up drinking some more, and I got real dizzy. I fell asleep on her sofa. I don’t remember much after that.” A pause. “I do remember reaching out to her, you know, to fool around, but she brushed me off.”

  “That’s it?” Waters asked.

  He bunched up his face. “Oh, I remember something we fought about. Earlier. On the way back from the club, she talked a blue streak about Ellie and Roddy—how Ellie was making believe she was Roddy’s friend for late night talks, but really she was trying to seduce him.” He got quiet.

  “And?”

  “Well, as I said before, I’d met Ellie just that afternoon—she was walking by the building where I work and I was leaving—and she told me about going to Roddy’s that night. Bella brought that subject up again—like she couldn’t leave it alone. We were walking back to her apartment.”

  “And?” Waters prodded.

  “I thought it was funny. But that news drove her crazy. She kept saying that she was much more beautiful than Ellie. I asked her— what does that have to do with Roddy?”

  I was flummoxed. “But Roddy never showed any interest in Bella, right?”

  “She was my girl,” Lawson insisted. “Why would he?”

  “But Bella flirted with him,” Waters added.

  Lawson sighed. “Bella flirted with everyone.” He swallowed. “And Roddy teased her—and Ellie. He flirted, he flattered. It was all an act. Not because he was cruel but because he didn’t know how else to be.”

  “He was playing with fire,” I noted. “Bella and Ellie, eyeing each other across a table. Weapons drawn—sharpened.”

  “Anyway, walking back that night, drunk, she brought it up again. Leave Roddy and Ellie alone, I told her. It made her furious. ‘You don’t know your own cousin!’ she screamed. We were walking on the sidewalk in front of her apartment. And she turned and slapped me hard in the face. It surprised me. We went inside and she said she was leaving me. Next thing I knew it was morning.”

  “You woke up before her?”

  “No, she was banging around the apartment, trying to get me on my feet. I had to get to work and I overslept. I had a wicked hangover. It felt like my head was cotton. I kept staggering around, couldn’t find my shoes. She stood there, laughing. ‘What’s the matter with you? Can’t you hold your whiskey?’ But I’d never felt like that before. So when I got to my apartment and you all were there and then there was Roddy, it was like I was not even awake yet.”

  I changed the subject. “You said Bella was socializing with new folks…white folks. I think you mean a particular white man, no?”

  “Oh my God. That’s another thing we fought about that night.” He spat out the words. “Jed Harris.”

  “Jed Harris,” I echoed.

  “Your friend. “ The name hung in the air like a foul curse.

  “Well, hardly,” I insisted. “A business acquaintance.”

  “Not to hear him tell it.” He smiled. “We knew he was the producer of The Royal Family. We all talked about it. It was a little awkward, meeting last summer in your living room. It’s a very small world. Everyone knows he is the man who can make or break a career.”

  “Why didn’t you say something to me?”

  “What could we say?” He shrugged his shoulders. “You can imagine how surprised we were when he showed up at your apartment last week, standing there, staring from Bella to me…and the others.”

  “But why?” I looked at Waters.

  Sheepish, Waters answered, “I guess because of his relationship with Bella. It was…a touchy subject.”

  “And what was that about?” Rebecca wondered.

  “Mr. Harris likes the Harlem jazz clubs and spends time there. He’s got a weakness for beautiful women. Even Negroes. Some folks do. Especially when they look like Bella, light-skinned, gorgeous, sexy, flirtatious…ambitious. Somehow Jed met Bella—uptown at a club, I figure, or at an audition. Bella wouldn’t tell me. I’m not sure where. Maybe even at some speakeasy where the races mingle. He seduced her. It was an opportunity for her—maybe, and she saw a rosy future downtown. The fact that she was seeing me didn’t amount to much.” The last words, spoken bitterly, hung in the air.

  “It must have bothered you.”

  “Well, yeah. Sure. But nothing surprised me with Bella. She loves money more than men.” He closed his eyes a moment. When he opened them, I saw hurt. “They used each other. I knew she’d mentioned me to him— to make him jealous, but I don’t think Mr. Harris gets jealous. She told him about my play. I asked her to. I was drunk with the possibility of success, and he said to go ahead, send it to him. He’d read it. He’d meet with me. Now I don’t believe he was serious, he was playing games, but I sent the play and a month or so later I called at his office. He hadn’t returned my calls.” He stopped and bit at the corner of a nail.

  “It’s all right,” I prodded.

  “So I stopped in one afternoon, bold as can be. He was in, but irritated, snapping at me. I sat in his office, and he pushed t
he play back at me. ‘It’s real good. It needs work but you got a story here. I can see this working on Broadway.’ So I got a little intoxicated, but then he stood up and said, ‘But I have no interest in helping you.’ I didn’t know if I heard him right, so I sat there, dumb. Then he said, ‘Why would I help Bella’s pretty Negro boy?’ Just like that.”

  “Jed,” I sighed, almost to myself.

  “So I stood up, flustered, nuts, and yelled, ‘Maybe you should stay away from Bella! She’s mine, not your plaything. You rich white guys come to Harlem and take our jazz and women and…’ I went on and on, everything spewing out of me, and Mr. Harris got real still. Then he said, ‘You arrogant buck. Get the hell out of my office.’”

  “My God,” I breathed in.

  “But I couldn’t move. I realized I’d made a stupid mistake—and then made it worse by yelling at him. He came around to the front of his desk and flicked his finger against my chest. It stung. And I swear he whispered in my ear, ‘No Broadway, no acting, no writing, no career. Your career is over. You just lost your chance for success. You’ll be a…what did you say you were? A janitor? You’ll be a janitor for the rest of your life. No one will ever touch your stuff.’ I stumbled to the door. He followed me into the anteroom. He was sputtering, livid.”

  “Then what happened?” Waters was stunned.

  Lawson stopped. “Roddy was waiting for me. I just remembered that. He came with me. And he’d heard the exchange between us. I must have been pale and barely moving because he rushed over to me.”

  “What did Jed do?”

  I was flabbergasted by Lawson’s story, though not surprised. I’d witnessed other episodes of Jed’s irrational and random cruelty to those he deemed inferior—easy fodder for his venom.

  “Mr. Harris looked from me to Roddy. ‘And who is this boy? Another failed playwright?’ He sneered at him. Roddy was always so quiet, but the guy had flashes of rage in him. So he said to Mr. Harris, ‘You don’t deserve your success.’ ‘Who are you?’ Mr. Harris asked. ‘I’m Lawson’s cousin, Roddy Parsons. Remember that name. In a year you’ll be hearing about me.’ Mr. Harris laughed. ‘Christ, more stupid vanity at work. From the looks of you, I’d say you’d do fine as a busboy in a Harlem eatery. Now get out, the two of you.’ But Roddy wasn’t ready to leave, and I had to push him out. The last thing Mr. Harris yelled at me was, ‘Your career is over!’”

  “Then?”

  Lawson shrugged his shoulders. “Then nothing. I walked out of the building.”

  “What did you think?” I asked.

  “I believed him. I had an enemy now in Jed Harris. And that, I knew, wasn’t good.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Jed Harris glared back at me with those cold eyes, the pupils pinpoints of cut diamond, and as hard. We’d been sitting across from each other at Sardi’s, a lunch he’d requested; but as the minutes passed, Jed simply stared at me with those icy eyes, and he said perhaps ten coherent words, whispering in that annoying, purring voice. Dressed in a splashy pinstripe suit, with his signature fedora with the red feather, and the cigarette glued to the side of his thin lips, he struck me as some stage door Johnny with too much money and too few marbles, an unrepentant yeshiva boy drunk with Broadway chorus girls and blazing footlights. The staff at Sardi’s, used to Broadway royalty, bowed and scraped—and generally irked me.

  “Well,” I said for the fifth or sixth time, “you demanded lunch, and yet you avoid my questions. Am I missing something, Jed?”

  Again, the silence. He turned to the waitress and complained about the tepid coffee. She scurried away, tripping over herself.

  “Last night,” I snarled, “you woke me at midnight and babbled nonsense about your yacht in the Hudson. Not, as I assumed when I answered the phone, some crisis with The Royal Family that couldn’t wait, but a yacht I never was on, nor intend ever to be on.”

  “Nor will you ever be invited, Edna.”

  The waitress, her fingers trembling, refilled his cup.

  I smarted. “A yacht moored in the Hudson is like a canoe drifting down the Nile. Or an elephant squatting in an English garden. Something is wrong with the picture.”

  He studied me long and hard. Then, blowing a circle of blue smoke in my direction, he sputtered, “Boys like to play with boats.”

  “About The Royal Family…” I began.

  I’d had a busy morning at the Selwyn Theater where George Kaufman and I watched the director Burton doing a run-through. Around noon, still rattled by that mercurial phone call at midnight, I watched Jed Harris stroll jauntily into the theater just as the cast was taking a break, and he frowned and stomped his feet as he approached the stage. Beside me, George rose, grunted, and walked out of the theater. I sat there, third row center, and caught Jed’s eye as he shambled by. This was not going to be good. I felt bile rise in my throat, a boulder thrust into my gut. Nothing pleased him, and the director stormed off, leaving Jed standing there, upstage, cool, nonplused. No one looked at him. His quixotic personality and the volcanic bursts made me believe the success of the play was iffy. Maybe doomed was the word I really meant.

  Now, sitting opposite him at the lunch he demanded, he leaned in. “It’s all wrong.” He inhaled his cigarette.

  “No,” I insisted, “it isn’t.” A pause. “I suppose we’re talking about the play?”

  He ignored me. “I’m firing the whole cast. This isn’t worth it.”

  “No, you’re not.” I tapped a spoon on the table. “No.”

  He smiled. “Edna, Edna, you’ll never understand the machinations of New York theater.”

  I bit my lip. “And you’ll never understand the workings of the human heart.”

  He snickered. “Low blow, Edna dear.”

  “I figured I’d descend to your level for the moment.”

  He looked away toward the entrance, annoyed by the sudden ripple of laughter coming from two young women. “Enough talk of this play. We’ve exhausted the topic.” He leaned into me, his eyes dancing. “Helen Hayes is trying to seduce me.”

  “Good Lord, Jed!” I roared. “Do I really need to know this?”

  “Though she failed, she’s been more effective at the attempt than you’ve been…” He was enjoying himself, watching me squirm.

  “Stop…” I interrupted.

  He went on. “But then you’ve had so little practice in the art of love.”

  I half-rose. “So you invite me for lunch with the goal of spouting nonsense about stuff you know nothing about.”

  “Sit down, Edna. People are staring.”

  He smirked and took a sip of coffee, seemed not to relish it, and replaced the cup in the saucer. “Women love me.”

  I sneered as I settled back into my seat. “For some women, money is the only aphrodisiac.”

  He grinned. “We weren’t allowed to use that word at Yale.”

  “What? Money?”

  He laughed. “Edna, Edna.”

  “Jed, are we going somewhere with this conversation?”

  He ignored me. “Do you know why I call myself ‘Jed’? I made up the name, you know. God told the prophet Nathan…anyway, it’s from Jedidiah. Beloved of God. My family still doesn’t know. They’re hidden on the Lower East Side wondering where smart little Jacob Horowitz has gone off to.” He burst out laughing. “I invented myself, Edna.”

  I’d had enough.

  “That’s all very nice, Jedidiah, but…tell me about Bella.”

  He narrowed his eyes. “You’ve been waiting to ask me that.”

  “I think…”

  “Don’t think, dear Edna.” He rolled his eyeballs. “Nosiness is the first word a child learns in the great, unwashed Midwest, the place of your nineteenth century birth, right?”

  “Perhaps. But I prefer the word…curious.”

  “Edna, Edna. Dear, sweet Edna. My non-
involvement with that voluptuous Negress seems to keep you awake nights.”

  “No, but murder gives me insomnia.”

  That stopped him. He sat up. “What?”

  “You heard me.”

  “Edna, what?”

  “Another question, Jedidiah. Why are you so hostile to Lawson Hicks, her boyfriend…or former boyfriend? Whatever he is.”

  He stared at me, his lips drawn into a thin, bloodless line. Finally, glaring, he spat out the words. “If you must know, and clearly you must, Bella was a fling, Edna. A diversion from my wonderful marriage. People seem to forget I’m married…with a wife living…somewhere in this vast metropolis. I forget where exactly. Keep that in mind, dear Edna, whenever you choose to beguile me with your charms. But Bella was a…lark. A lark who willingly and gladly lighted on my bough, Edna. If you know what I mean. Sadly, she believes there’s always a reward for licentious acts. She’s already a chapter in my history.”

  “So you used her.”

  “I use everyone. We all do. That’s the way the world spins.” He sat back against the chair, folded his arms around his chest, and rocked his body. “She’s an incredibly beautiful girl who is taboo. Cleopatra on the Harlem Nile.”

  “Folderol,” I said, though I regretted the word.

  He burst out laughing. “You’re showing your age, Edna. You sometimes sound like a villainess in a Victorian revival of The Drunkard.”

  “Yet the word somehow works with you.”

  His voice became a dangerous whisper. “Edna, this is none of your business…what I do. All over town there are chorus girls. I share them with your randy, homely buddy, Georgie Kaufman. You know that. And, frankly, I’m finding your chatter a tad annoying because you, though a captivating woman in your oh-you-kid dress, you insist on posing as a prudish frump, a starved old maid…”

  I slammed down my coffee cup. “Enough.” But I wasn’t through. “I was told about the way you treated Lawson in your office. Praise, then outright rejection of his play. Such a cruel dismissal, Jed. Why?”

  His voice was clipped. “Ah, a simple answer. If you must know, I enjoy fooling with him. Because he’s Bella’s beau. Here you have this handsome young buck, all swagger and bravado, cocksure, sitting there waiting for me to make him the first major Negro playwright. A talented lad, truly reminding me of myself, though I’m barely a whiter version, and a lot shorter, of course.”