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

by Ed Ifkovic

  I looked at Waters, then back at her. “So Roddy was alive then. You didn’t tell this to the police?”

  “They never talked to me.”

  “But you could have volunteered the information.”

  She looked surprised. “For what reason? It had nothing to do with Roddy’s murder. He certainly wasn’t talking to some homeless person who just broke in. That must have happened right afterwards. Skidder Scott must have come into the hallway right after I got out of there. I wanted to stay far away from the police, you know. It wouldn’t look good, me there so late…so close to the…you know…murder. The next day they nabbed the bum and that was that.”

  “But now perhaps it’s not so easy as that.” I tapped my finger on the table. “Perhaps there’s more to the story.”

  “How?” Freddy asked. “Ellie said she didn’t see Roddy.”

  “I don’t like to get messed up with the police,” Ellie reiterated. “I have a career. So I went home.”

  “And then Roddy was murdered,” I said. “Probably within minutes.”

  Fear swept through her pretty features. “If he’d opened the door, I might have been a victim, too.” A heartbeat, the face wide with alarm. “But no one could know I was there. Or people would think I killed him.”

  “Is that why you lied to me? Came to my apartment with the express purpose of lying to me?”

  She bit her lip. “Foolish, that. I just thought, in case anyone asked, you would…you know…” She stopped, then blurted out, “I wanted it to be true. I wanted not to have gone there then.” She shrugged her shoulders. “I’m sorry, Miss Ferber. It was stupid, but…I didn’t want you to think I killed Roddy.”

  “It’s a possibility.”

  Ellie said nothing for a moment, then stood up, turned swiftly and fled the room.

  ***

  That evening, encouraged by Rebecca who fretted and tsked, I got ready for the Show Boat opening. Much too early. Hammerstein and Kern had sent a bushel of flowers, including the gaudy orchid I’d wear. I’d be sitting between the two men, third row center, as the curtain rose. But, though Rebecca kept nudging me, imploring, I couldn’t budge: a lumpen in the wing chair, an exotic bird frozen in her elegant cage. The purple orchid pinned to my dress.

  “Miss Edna. Joseph just called. The cab is here.”

  I didn’t answer.

  “Miss Edna…”

  The cab in which Jerome Kern sat, waiting. Or was it Oscar Hammerstein? Or my editor at Doubleday? I couldn’t remember who would be squiring me to the theater.

  I waved Rebecca away. “Tell Joseph to make my apologies.”

  Baffled, Rebecca didn’t question, but I could hear her on the phone, her voice puzzled and a little annoyed. This just wasn’t right, she was thinking. And she was right, of course. I should be there, my mouth positioned into a happy grin, my eyes blinking from the flash of the photographers.

  But almost immediately, as though I were a sleepwalker moving through murky waters, I draped the ermine over my shoulders, nodded at Rebecca, and headed for the elevator. Joseph, surprised at my showing up in the lobby, sputtered that Jerome Kern and the waiting cab had left. I shook my head. “A cab, Joseph.” Nodding, he hurried to the curb.

  Of course, I was headed to the opening, but somehow I knew I’d never get there—or want to be there. I didn’t need to sit in a darkened theater, especially one that introduced my melodramatic characters to the world. No—I needed to be out on Manhattan streets, the spit and juice and pulse of the workaday city. People around me, getting me thinking, jazzing me, pushing. A flow of walkers would tell me something I needed to know.

  I directed the dour cabbie down Fifth Avenue, now jam-packed with cars, bumper to bumper, and we idled there. Wispy steam rose from manhole covers. Buses belched out blue-gray spumes of thick smoke. People laughing, talking, yelling to others, watched their breaths form little clouds. Sleet was falling, and the sidewalks glistened with reflected light: splashy shafts of translucent gemstone. The sleet beat against the cab’s windows as the wipers slapped an irregular rhythm. Fifth Avenue, garish with red and green and silver Christmas garlands, store windows roped with twinkling lights, evergreen boughs laced with rainbow lights. A parade of eager tourists probably in the city for New Year’s festivities in Times Square. A parade up and down Fifth Avenue. Here Manhattan sang out.

  Suddenly the sleet stopped. A chain reaction as umbrellas closed and people stopped rushing for shelter. Folks huddling in store entrances moved now out onto the sidewalk. As the cab signaled to turn, headed toward Central Park and toward the West Side theater district, I tapped the driver on the shoulder. “Let me off here.”

  “Ma’am?” He hesitated, his backward glare taking in the gaudy purple orchid on my breast.

  Standing on the sidewalk, I was immediately disoriented. Uptown? Downtown? Where to head? My mind sailed to that old tune—all around the town…East side, West side…boys and girls together…

  Boys and girls together…Bella and Roddy and Lawson and…

  A young man in a hurry brushed against me, turned to face me, and apologized. I didn’t answer. I stood there on Fifth Avenue and thought, crazily, of the celebrated Easter Parade. I’d never attended that wonderful spectacle of flowered hats and springtime bonhomie. Winter is over…April showers…

  Walk, I told myself. Move. So I began walking downtown with purpose, my strides confident and sure. Not a strut, truly, but the swagger of a determined woman. A city of walkers, my beloved Manhattan, cement landscape navigated by the longitude and latitude of cross-town streets and long avenues that covered the length of the island. New Yorkers walked as though they knew where they were going, a performance not always believable, but necessary. I walked. As I expected, no one paid any mind to the fussy lady in the open coat, buffeted now by the breeze and a slight annoying mist. The purple orchid was squashed into unlovely torn petals. But I walked. The crisp winter air invigorated me as I strode through slicked-over puddles on cracked sidewalks. Everything glittered now under the thin layer of sleet: a fairyland of flickering light and mother-of-pearl reflection. Wispy haloes circled the streetlights. There were few shadows here, only the wash of yellow and white that reflected off the cars and buses, off the plate-glass windows with their luminous Christmas displays. Fifth Avenue: every day is a parade.

  Fifth Avenue didn’t end. No, not true. It was Broadway that never ended—the storied avenue went on and on, up through Morningside Heights, through the Bronx, through Harlem, then into the nether sylvan lands until it got lost in everybody’s dream world. The boulevard of broken…schemes.

  ***

  Jigsaw puzzle: Ellie’s admission. Two in the morning at Roddy’s apartment. That rattled me. Bella’s admission. Lawson and Bella and Roddy—dead-end dreamers. The element of chance, removed. What is guaranteed every human being on this earth—chance. We all suffer chance, though we all don’t have a chance. But taking away chance was itself chance—the chance we all take. My thoughts got muddled, foggy. Chance removed. Blotted out. Cancelled. Nullified. Something else: Roddy’s notes, those scribbled observations. What? What?

  It was starting to sleet again, ice crystals that tingled on the skin. I didn’t care. I stopped to tighten the collar of my fur, buttoned it close to my neck, and glanced into the doorway of the Godiva shop. A stooped old Negro, dressed in faded denim trousers and a railroad cap, was hauling a bundle of bound cardboard to the curb. He nodded at me. I watched as he lumbered with the trash: a pitch-black wrinkled face, sparse curly white hair, and a scar at the corner of his mouth. Wildly, I swung around. The parade of folks pushed past me: white folks all, dressed for dinner or theater. Across the street, at the Concord, a residential hotel with a Gothic façade, a middle-aged Negro doorman stood with his arms at his side, unmoving. Dressed in a brilliant red beefeater jacket with gold braid epaulettes, with an absurd ornate cap on his head,
he stared idly into the busy street, at attention, a statue. A frolicking white couple sauntered past, laughing. Honeymooners perhaps—the way they clutched each other. The man’s sleeve brushed the doorman, but nothing was said. For a second the doorman flinched, his head flicking toward the offender, but then he resumed his stoic stance.

  Suddenly a blast of chilly wind swept across the avenue as a spray of rare hail covered the sidewalk. A boom of thunder in the sky. For a moment everyone stopped, a stage double take. Then someone near me laughed and rushed under an awning. The parade shifted as folks scurried and hid, everyone staring at the bouncing hailstones, though I remained planted there, my coat ruined, my shoes sodden, my eyes tearing from the cold.

  What I saw were quick, static snapshots: that old man with the cardboard bundle looked up. The doorman looked up. Next door a young ashy man in a white apron sweeping an entrance paused. A bosomy woman in a maid’s uniform stopped walking. All black folks, dotting the street, frozen there. Seismic, the shift of the earth’s axle. They waited. Around them swirled the bustling, frantic white people. A curious portrait, that, and I realized who could not march in any Easter parade.

  Wet now, bedraggled, I stumbled to the curb and hailed a taxi.

  I gave him the address of the theater but then I snapped, “Cabbie, turn back.” A policeman on a horse crossed in front of us. Staring up at him, I started to tremble. I knew I couldn’t face the crowds, the well-wishers, the friends, even my family. It couldn’t be done. “Cabbie,” I sputtered, “turn back.”

  Turn back: home. Turn back: something in my apartment. Something. Turn backwards. That night.

  Around midnight I slept, though off and on. Yet I must have fallen into a deep, rumbling sleep because at four o’clock—I glanced at the alarm clock on my nightstand—I struggled awake and stared into the shadowy darkness. I closed my eyes, rested my head down on the pillows. But at that moment, with the jackhammer force of an awesome epiphany, it was there: the answer.

  So palpable, tangible…I could reach out and touch it in the dark.

  ***

  In the morning I forced myself to take my walk before breakfast, though I avoided the kiosks where the Times, the Herald Tribune, and the other papers were temptingly suspended. But at the apartment, bathed and refreshed, I sat with breakfast as Rebecca laid the reviews before me: Show Boat was an unqualified success. An instant classic. A singular this and a spectacular that…Kern’s score…Ol’ Man River…cakewalk…Brooks Atkinson called it epochal…lines of people waiting for tickets. Bill…Can’t Stop Lovin’ Dat Man…Cap’n Andy and Parthy…Make Believe…

  All morning, I fielded calls, telegrams, and bouquets of flowers. Jerome Kern: You were missed last night, dear Edna, but you were obviously present throughout the glorious evening. Oscar Hammerstein: Your words touched every heart last night, and for generations to come.

  So I was happy, in my fashion.

  But my mind was elsewhere: a kaleidoscope of fragments. Something there: my reporter’s instinct, never diminished, the curious fact sheltered in the corner of my brain.

  ***

  The evening of The Royal Family opening. Again, Rebecca, the mother robin, fluttered, hovered. A quick call from George Kaufman, who’d meet me in the lobby of the Selwyn with his wife Bea. The late-night supper afterwards at Enrico’s downtown. Guests included the stalwarts—Dorothy Parker, Robert Sherwood, Robert Benchley—as we waited for the early editions, word of mouth, suggestions of failure or success. I refused a call from Jed, and Rebecca announced that he sounded furious, harried, a man not happy with the night to follow. Again, the dressing up: my stunning pearl-colored dress. The pungent gardenia that made me dizzy.

  Bella…with the cloying gardenia perfume…the alley, dark and…

  Somewhere in the vast, dreadful city was a murderer, and it wasn’t that hapless hobo, Skidder Scott.

  The long black Lincoln town car idled in front of my building, the dapper chauffeur standing at attention, his cap pulled rakishly low over his forehead. The doorman Joseph, perhaps anticipating a reprise of last night’s equivocation, hesitated as he nodded toward the young man, who then rushed to open the back door. “Mr. Harris sends his regards,” the driver said evenly. Of course, it was Jed’s idea to send such a lavish car for me. Doubtless George and Bea Kaufman were being squired from their apartment in a similar monstrosity. “My name is Howie, ma’am.” He bowed. “At your service. A pleasure, Miss Ferber.” It was almost comical, his earnest delivery, though his voice cracked when he told me his name. A fair-haired farm boy, this Howie, thirtyish, red cheeks and a gigantic Adam’s apple.

  On the rain-slicked streets the car moved seamlessly into traffic, headed toward a cross street to the West Side.

  “A change of plans,” I said to his back, and I noticed his neck stiffen, the fair skin darkening.

  “Ma’am?” The car slowed.

  I waited a heartbeat. “I need to go elsewhere.”

  “But…”

  I ignored that impudence. Instead, leaning forward, I told him, “At my service, didn’t you say?” He winced. I gave him the address of Roddy’s old apartment, up off Seventh Avenue, deep into Harlem.

  He hesitated, uncomfortable, doubtless dreading Jed Harris’ blown-fuse wrath, but he smoothly maneuvered the town car onto a cross street, then turned north on Lexington Avenue.

  “Miss Ferber…Harlem?”

  “I’ll explain it to Mr. Harris. He won’t understand, but he’ll not crucify you. If he does berate you, they’ll be witnesses. He likes to do all his torture in public.”

  He turned his head slightly, a sliver of a smile on his impassive face, and I realized, triumphantly, that I’d unwittingly found my Sancho Panza for the night’s questionable adventure.

  “Howie,” I said to his back, “I’m not certain what I’m up to. I’m not going to a jazz club up there, certainly not, but I’m probably going to make you a little bit crazy.”

  The car stopped at a red light, and Howie’s head swung around to face me. A wide boyish grin, feckless. A strand of blond hair escaped the chauffeur’s cap, dangled over his forehead. Huckleberry Finn and me. Tom Sawyer. Maybe even runaway Jim on the inevitable raft down the Mississippi. He hesitated. “Mr. Harris warned me.”

  That tickled me. “Warned you? Tell me.”

  “He said you’re…fierce.” He leaned back toward me, warily. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to…”

  But I laughed out loud. “I am that. Especially so when I’m on a mission.”

  The light changed and the car slinked forward, moving up Lexington, past busy storefronts—Clark’s Luncheonette, Andy’s Automat, Freddy’s Steak and Chophouse, a pawnshop. Idlers hung in doorways, red dots from their cigarettes shining in the dark. I didn’t know Lexington Avenue this far north, this ragtag neighborhood.

  Howie was enjoying himself, I could tell. “We’re on a mission.” He stressed the word, savoring it. His hand slipped off the wheel and fiddled with a pack of Lucky Strikes on his console.

  “Yes, we are.” I smiled. “I do like your use of the word ‘we.’”

  But my spirits flagged as we drove into Harlem, cruised up Seventh Avenue, and then turned onto 138th Street. Roddy’s block was dark and shadowy at night, closed up, a horn blaring one street over, a woman screaming at a crying child. At the end of his block, we sat behind a cab dropping off a young couple, and, leaning to the side, I spotted Roddy’s old building. No front stoop lights on, the first floor dark, an upper apartment with one light on. Silent. Dead.

  A line from Shakespeare haunted me. Night and silence. Who is here?

  “Pull over here,” I directed. We were still several buildings away, but I wanted to watch the dead apartment building.

  “Ma’am?”

  “It’s all right,” I insisted, and he got quiet.

  What did I expect? I had no idea, though
I believed my being on the street, approaching that somber entrance, peering at that dark alley where Bella hid, would somehow let me understand something. Nighttime: I’d only been there during daylight. At night the street relaxed, sagged, seemed to fold into itself. A few cars sputtered by, but only now and then. A man in work dungarees clutching a lunch pail dragged himself by the car, stopping to stare into the fancy town car that should not be on his street, especially with a white woman’s face pressed against the window. Yet there was no curiosity in his face—just a lazy boredom, something to do as he walked to work.

  “Have a cigarette, Howie.”

  He quickly lit one. “You, ma’am?”

  I shook my head. “No thanks.”

  As he smoked, his head went up and down, and I surmised he was playing a jukebox tune in his head. His fingertips tapped the steering wheel.

  I started when a light popped on in Harriet’s apartment—Mr. Porter’s apartment—a rectangular block of murky yellow that looked menacing and even revelatory, though of course it wasn’t. For a second I saw a shadow move past, pause, and then the light was switched off.

  Perhaps this was how the street looked the night of the murder, I told myself: dark, shadowy, and still.

  “Pull up across from that building,” I told Howie.

  He stopped the car directly across the street from Roddy’s building, and I faced that dreaded dark alley. At night, I realized, it was pitch-black there—impenetrable, threatening. Or, rather, it seemed threatening to me, so forbidden, this black hole of Calcutta that loomed at the heart of the murder. I was convinced of that. Bella hid there, albeit for a short time. Ellie would sneak down the alley to the back. Bella, too. Others? The murderer must have gone that route—I refused to believe the murderer entered by the front door. No, the alley was the channel to that hideous stabbing. An unlocked back door, most likely. Roddy perhaps left it open—but not for Ellie. For whom? A tapping at the window. I’m here. Let me in. No, I told myself—no. Roddy lay in bed, sleeping. Someone stealthily moved down that alley. Someone who knew…