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

by Ed Ifkovic

  I described the stack of typed sheets and the notebooks sitting on a side table in my workroom. “His friends want some posthumous publication.”

  “I’ll tell you, Miss Ferber, I felt some…pulse, in the Lawson quote of Roddy’s verse. Just a few lines, out of context.” And then he quoted them from memory:

  “‘Saturday morning Harlem says nothing at all

  Yet the hum and whisper of night lingers

  The echo of a midnight saxophone

  The jazz poet sits in shadows

  And waits for Truth…’” He stopped. “Are there more like this?”

  I was nodding furiously. “I’ve been meaning to…”

  “Perhaps we can work together. After New Year’s, maybe.”

  He walked me to the door and we shook hands. “You are a Christmas surprise.” I held his hand in both of mine.

  My remark obviously amused him because he stepped back, threw back his head and laughed, choking out, “The surprise is that you and I find ourselves chatting together in this doorway.”

  “Is it untoward?”

  “It would have been impossible just decades ago.”

  “Perhaps the world is finally changing.”

  “So slowly, Miss Ferber. So slowly.”

  ***

  Back home, content now to sit in the quiet rooms, I found myself pleased at Langston Hughes’ reaction to Lawson’s novel, but more so to his eagerness to review Roddy’s untouched work. Those few lines of poetry, quoted by Lawson, seemed a gateway into Roddy’s imagination. Something good had to come from this nightmare—for Lawson and Roddy. I played the lines over and over in my head until, perforce, the words became a melody that seemed set against a jazz piano.

  I remembered the night Jerome Kern stopped at my apartment, the newly penned score of Show Boat in hand, and quietly, with his usual humility, he played his music. Despite his toneless voice, the words soared. “Ol’ Man River” and “Only Make Believe” and “Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man” filled the room. My spine tingled, and I wept. Now, repeating Roddy’s few lines of verse—that I paid little mind to until Langston Hughes quoted them to me against a backdrop of tinkling champagne glasses and cigarette smoke—I fairly lost my breath. I lamented the loss of that young talent.

  The words filled my apartment. I felt Harlem, still the outsider perhaps but somehow, through Langston Hughes’ smooth and rich recitation, I became privy to a world I never understood…nor could, really. I walked to my windows, the huge eight windows that gave me a breathtaking panorama of Central Park and the taxi-jammed streets below. There was a different rhythm here than that of Harlem, this rich man’s elegant stomping ground. What music was here? I wondered. I thought of Browning: What of soul was left, I wonder, when the kissing had to stop?

  In the kitchen I brewed a pot of strong tea and then sat by the windows, my mind drifting. I thought of Rebecca, away for the evening, celebrating the holiday with her family, and with my family gone, I was glad to have the place to myself. I changed into my robe and slippers and then tucked myself into bed, but not before I’d carried the ungainly mass of Roddy’s work to the nightstand. I contemplated the shifting heap of manuscript, previously so uninviting, but now, as though by magic, illuminated by a magician’s powerful wand. Reaching into the nightstand, I withdrew a pack of cigarettes, a forbidden and infrequent pleasure. Now, inhaling the slightly stale Camel, I felt a little dizzy, suppressed a cough, but watched, enthralled, as the wisp of blue-gray smoke drifted upward. It took me, that image, to Small’s Paradise where the blue velvety clouds hovered over the packed tables.

  I started reading the folder of poems Roddy had organized, caught now by Langston Hughes’ contagion, moving through the twenty or so poems, a tapestry of Harlem vignettes. A Spoon River Anthology for Harlem, miniature portraits of life: street vendors hawking peanuts, nightclubs decorated in jungle or plantation motifs, street crooners raggin’, folks at rent parties dancing to the Texas Tommy, crapshooters at the subway stops, Madame Rosa’s brothel, a pimp crowing from a cruising Duesenberg, an ode to Florence Mills, imagined afternoons with the writers at the Niggerati Manor on 136th Street, echoes of an Old South he didn’t know but had heard so much about, a bitter lyric about a lynching in Tennessee. Each poem moved seamlessly into the next, a weaving in and out of mood, emotion, color. A glimpse of a corner cigar store moved quickly into a night poem—a jazz club. A run of jazz lyrics, fragmented lines, broken images, wailing words that dipped and shimmered on the page. When he described a young Negro flapper reaching for a cigarette, her red-painted lips quivering, I found myself doing the same, so appealing was his imagery, so authentic the moment.

  Roddy had obviously culled the poems from his writings, for the larger stack of notes consisted of crude earlier versions of the poetry, jottings, scribblings. But there was also a folder of first drafts, tentative poems or paragraphs, wide-ranging in theme. He’d jotted down notes about the history of the Negro, some lines about slavery, about the power of Negro spirituals. A number of lines dealt with the Civil War and the idea that the horrific war had stunned the black man forever—and, he noted, the white man, as well. Tucked into the paper was his library card for the Harlem branch of the New York Public Library on Lenox Avenue, frayed and bent and obviously much used. Some lines caught my eye: They gave us a violent past, so the modern Negro expects violence. Our father…give us our daily violence.

  What did these words mean?

  But I immediately discovered the reason. Roddy had been working on an essay in the form of a letter: “A Letter to Mr. P.” Sketchy, with many cross-outs and marginal insertions, the piece posited the view that people like “Mr. P.,” an earlier generation of Negro, inhibited the vision of the young Negro American of the post-Great War era. It talked, vaguely and superficially, to Mr. P. about the older generation’s simmering anger and hatred of authority, particularly of white culture, and its distrust of Negro achievement, a resignation to a life of second-class citizenship. Roddy then expanded on W. E. B. Du bois’ notion of the “Talented Tenth,” that percentage of the Negro world born with singular gifts and voice. Mr. P., it turns out, mocked this generation of Negroes, deriding a society that “sissified” the artist. He mentioned exile in France. Josephine Baker. “Glory in France, isolation at home.” “You can exile yourself, but you come back to find yourself a ghost.” “You die and they still won’t bury you.” On and on, bits of thought and heart. “Oh, the sad parade past the white folks who smirk and spit…home to Mr. P’s world, where the old Negro kneels before the white man, then stabs him in an alley. The blame is on the uppity Negro…the young writer, the artist….” The essay talked of psychological violence—the crushing of the artist who dared defy custom. The essay then petered off, unfinished.

  Was “Mr. P” the superintendent of his building? Mr. Porter? Harriet’s curmudgeon father, and Roddy’s enemy?

  It made little sense to me, this random scribbling. Roddy was clearly trying to fashion some treatise on the difficulties facing the young renaissance writer, dealing with white indifference and old-Negro derision. A penciled-in note: “Pick up Fire!! Langston. Zora.”

  Then: a few lines I recognized from an old eighteenth century Phillis Wheatley poem:

  ‘Twas mercy brought me from my pagan land,

  Taught my beknighted soul to understand

  That there’s a God, that there’s a Savior too:

  Once I redemption neither sought nor knew.

  Some view our sable race with scornful eye,

  “Their color is a diabolic dye.”

  And the notation: “Ha! God had nothing to do with it. Maybe the devil…”

  Then, a line in French, a quotation from La Fontaine:

  “Rien ne pèse tant qu’un secret.”

  I translated it in my head: Nothing weighs more than a secret.

  Then random words: “Exile.” “Violen
ce.”

  Perhaps none of it made sense, just late-night scribbling of a troubled young man.

  But at the bottom of the heap was a small spiral notebook, pocket-sized; and inside Roddy had penned a few lines in thick black ink, blotted and filmy, as though he were in a rush. Only three pages had words, all underlined. The first page had one line: It was not a good idea talking about it…coveting is a sin against a God that doesn’t exist.

  Page two had the notation: I don’t trust him.

  Page three amplified the idea, filling the entire page: I think Mr. Porter comes into the apartment when we’re not here. What shall I do? My stuff is touched, moved, searched. I watch…will watch. He wrote the date: December 10, 1927. The first day I noticed. Then a couple of blank lines later: I caught Mr. Porter standing by my door, guilty looking, probably having just left. When I asked him why he was rifling through my stuff, he flew into a rage. ‘You and Lawson are leeches.’ But that can’t be the reason, can it? Why? Then a series of words: why? why? why? why?

  A last line: He threatened me. I’ve never been threatened like that before.

  I placed the notepad on the pile, stared at it. When I reached for my cup of tea, it was cold. I’d forgotten to drink it.

  My mind reeled, but one persistent thought rankled: Waters and Lawson were right. Skidder Scott, now languishing in jail and still protesting his innocence, was not involved—or, at least, was just a pawn—in the murder of Roddy. Perhaps I was being irrational, making too gigantic a leap here. But evident in Roddy’s scribblings was fear, distrust, anger. Something was going on. This was not simply a burglary gone wrong: this was premeditated murder. Someone planned his death. I sensed it to my soul.

  Mr. P? Mr. Porter?

  Night wind slapped my bedroom window, and I stared out into the dark winter night. In the elegant cocoon of my apartment, I shivered. Murder. I felt it to my marrow. Someone I’d talked with had stabbed the doomed Roddy.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Rebecca, Waters, and I sat in the back seat of a yellow cab, headed uptown.

  Earlier that afternoon, munching on reheated leftovers Rebecca placed before me, I reread the aborted “Letter to Mr. P.,” as well as the personal entries in the small notepad. From the grave, Roddy was telling me something. But what? In the morning I fielded calls from Hammerstein’s publicist about tomorrow’s Show Boat opening; I took calls from Jed Harris’ office about The Royal Family. Yet, though I chatted about Show Boat and The Royal Family throughout the morning, it was as though I remained removed from them. I was the stranger from out of town, maybe Keokuk, Iowa, someone mildly interested in both highly-touted openings. Instead, I ran my fingers over Roddy’s papers, and one awful word echoed in my head like a refrain from Edgar Allan Poe: murder murder murder. I closed my eyes, saw flashes of lightning, blood red and dark blue and sunburst yellow. Blackness.

  When Waters stopped to drop off something for his mother, I caught him as he readied to leave. “Waters,” I insisted, “help me understand this.” I spread the papers before him, and he read them, his face screwed up and his tongue licking his lips.

  “I don’t understand,” he muttered. “Mr. Porter?”

  “Well, we do know that Harriet’s father had a problem with Roddy.”

  Rebecca sat down next to her son. “I’ve always thought it odd that Harriet badmouths her father so much, yet she stays in his apartment.”

  “Well, according to this, Roddy was a little frightened. He didn’t trust him. Why would Mr. Porter go through Roddy’s things?”

  “Looking for money?” Waters wondered. “Or evidence?”

  “Evidence of what?”

  Waters shrugged his shoulders. “I never liked him. I only met him a couple times when I went to visit Harriet. Freddy was there, those times. He’s always there. And the old man made a lot of noise about rabble invading his apartment. We thought we’d hold our writing meetings there—or in Lawson and Roddy’s apartment. But one time we asked him—I was there—and the old man said no. He didn’t trust what we were up to, he said. Harriet told us to ignore him, and, a little tipsy, he disappeared into his bedroom. We heard him snoring so loud, a drunkard’s bad sleep, and Harriet made fun of him.”

  At that moment Rebecca suggested a cab ride to Harlem. “Answers,” she stressed. “Maybe it’s about time.”

  ***

  But we were thwarted in our attempt to talk with Mr. Porter. When his apartment door opened, Harriet stood there, clad in her waitress uniform, and the look on her face was a mixture of surprise, anger, and annoyance. The three of us were shivering from the ride up in an unheated cab. Harriet’s eyes took in Rebecca who was dabbing her tearing eyes with a handkerchief; Waters, rubbing his cold cheeks with the palm of his hand; and me, the novelist, undoing her scarf and adjusting her fashionable Marie Perelli hat. We stared back, as though Harriet were the unwanted visitor, the interloper.

  “Am I missing something?” she asked in an icy tone. She glanced behind her into the apartment, and I heard the tap-tap-tap of hurried steps. Suddenly Freddy stood beside her. Freddy, so often there. Freddy, who had no address—or any he’d gladly share. A mysterious lad about whom I knew so little, other than his fiery racial proclamations.

  “Is your father home?”

  She glanced at Freddy. “No.” A long pause. “Why?”

  “We have some questions. Going through Roddy’s notes, I found…well…” I faltered.

  Harriet looked ready to slam the door because she stepped back and raised her arm; but, in a curiously submissive gesture, she half-bowed and stepped aside. “I suppose you gotta do this. Ask your questions. It must make you feel good to crucify a man whose only pleasure—or is it a vice?—is a hip flask of bad gin and the word of God. So, come on in. Ask me. Pop’s not here.”

  “Don’t let them in, Harriet.” Freddy’s voice was fierce, and she turned to face him.

  “What?”

  “Why let them accuse your Pop of murder?”

  I shot back, “We are not doing any such thing. Roddy mentioned problems with your father and mentioned that he rifled through Roddy’s possessions.”

  Harriet bit her lip. “Is this Lawson’s idea, this interrogation?”

  “No,” Waters spoke up. “It’s ours.”

  “I don’t buy that. Lawson never liked my father, even though he played nice with him, sat on the stoop with him, friendly, unlike Roddy, who was always sarcastic and miserable to him. Lawson is a phony, a charming boy who wants”—she hesitated—“that Roddy’s murder be more than a random blunder by a homeless man. He wants it to make some sense. You all do. And Pop is a convenient target.”

  Rebecca interrupted. “Lawson has nothing to do with our visit.”

  Freddy spoke up. “If he won’t step back into this building, I just assumed he sent his Bwana missionary and the house slaves.”

  Rebecca froze, and Waters sputtered.

  Harriet giggled, but she also stepped toward the door. “Freddy’s right. Pop’s a fool but not grist for your assassin’s mill.”

  With that, she stepped back and slammed the door shut in our faces. We stood there in the hallway. Rebecca fumed, Waters grumbled, and I was simply amazed. I had little patience with such puerile behavior; but in this case, given the reason for our unannounced visit, I had the feeling this was more than a young woman’s rude shenanigans. From behind the closed door, Harriet and Freddy’s hysterical laughter swelled, as though they’d executed a delicious prank on some attendant fools: Harriet’s laugh was shrill, while Freddy’s was raspy and broken, the roar of a man not used to indulging in hilarity.

  “Well,” I announced in my Jack Benny vaudeville voice. But neither mother nor son laughed.

  We stood on the front stoop, and I questioned my rash decision to hop into that uptown cab. The door swung open behind us, and we stepped aside as a sloppily dre
ssed man, fortyish and stringy with a gaunt, hollowed-out face, pushed past us, brushing my sleeve unapologetically. If he seemed surprised to see a middle-aged white woman perched on that crumbling stoop, he displayed no reaction. With his unbuttoned overcoat and a scarf slipping off his neck, he looked as if he’d just tumbled, willy-nilly, out of an odorous bed. He stepped onto the sidewalk and fiddled in his pockets. I heard the jingle of loose coins.

  “Wait,” Waters suddenly called out to him, and the man swiveled, his eyes wary. He said nothing. “You live upstairs, right?”

  The man nodded, but I noticed he was looking at me, as though seeing me for the first time. “Yeah?”

  “Could we talk to you?”

  Hesitant, the man stared up the block, his feet shuffling as if ready to move. He stiffened, danced around. But he stayed there, pulling his tongue into the corner of his mouth. “Yeah?”

  “We were friends of Roddy Parsons, the guy who was murdered.”

  Again, the furtive look, the glance up the street. A battered delivery truck lumbered by, choked out black fumes, and the man jingled the coins in his pocket. “Yeah?”

  “Did you know him?” Waters asked. All three of us moved onto the sidewalk now, approaching the man, who moved back a step.

  “I seen him, sure. Never spoke a word.” I noticed his face twitched, nervous, and the cavernous eyes, deep-sunk, glazed over. This, I told myself, was not going to be good. “A couple times I spoke to his roommate, the Romeo guy, I guess, but I ain’t know him either. A rude bastard.”

  “Lawson?” I asked.

  “Looked through me like I was nothing. Couple times he shoved me out of the way, always rushing in and out.”

  “But you didn’t talk to Roddy?” Rebecca asked.