“You mean Susan Orkin?” Silvestri asked, pen poised.
“Susan? Really?” Wetzon asked. In college, Susan had always been a gentle person, always looking for a fourth for bridge. Actually, Susan had been an aggressive player with a compulsion to win. But then, Wetzon thought, most people played bridge that way. Bridge was an especially popular sport among the moguls on Wall Street.
“I’m not telling tales out of school, but Dilla was a bit of a slut. She was all over the place and sexual persuasion hardly mattered.” Carlos looked down at his nearly empty mug. “To know Dilla was to loathe her. She was trying to get me off the show.” He spread his palm on his chest and lisped, “So even I have a motive.”
“What about Sam Meidner?” Silvestri rose and brought the pot of coffee from the counter to the table. He refilled the mugs, returning the pot.
He was looking very fit and trim, Wetzon was thinking, and then he caught her eye and read her mind. She resented his grin. “Sam’s sitting at the counter,” she said. “So keep it down.”
“He’s going up with us,” Carlos said.
“Go on,” Silvestri prompted.
“He’s a bit of a masochist,” Carlos said with just the right amount of reluctance.
“Aren’t we all?” There was a pause during which Wetzon studied Carlos and he avoided making eye contact.
“Is that so unusual?” Silvestri persisted.
“Only if you like being tied up and beaten by nubile maidens.”
“So all those stories about him are true?” Wetzon wasn’t surprised. The stories about Sam had been around for years.
“Add to that, Sam has sticky fingers.”
“He’s a klepto.” Silvestri rubbed his nose as if he were trying to remember something.
“Let’s just say Sam’s attracted to bright, expensive objects. I bet he has a rap sheet a mile long,” Carlos said.
“Okay,” Silvestri said, making another note. “Let me run some people by both of you.”
“Carlos, baby!”
Carlos jumped to his feet and practically disappeared into Daisy Robera’s voluminous red velvet shawl as she hugged him. “When do you leave?” Daisy was wearing a dancer’s garb of leggings and leg warmers under a short pleated skirt. An aging gypsy, last year she had played Desiree Armfeldt in the City Opera’s revival of A Little Night Music.
“Momentarily. This is Silvestri and—”
“Leslie! I can’t believe it’s you. I have to run now but call me and we’ll have lunch. I can fill you in on how I’m getting all of Angie Lansbury’s old roles.”
Wetzon smiled. “I will.”
“Break a leg, you beautiful boy,” Daisy told Carlos and was off in an energized flurry of frantic blond hair, floating past the waitress carrying Wetzon’s milk shake.
The chocolate turned her mellow with her first thick strawful. Better than Valium any day. She sighed happily and looked up. Carlos and Silvestri were watching her like two goddam mother hens. “You two—” she began, then remembering she was mellow—“Okay, Silvestri, ask away.” She unbuttoned her coat.
“Aline Rose.” He moved on to a clean page.
“Didn’t she and Dilla have something together once?” Wetzon looked at Carlos.
“Aline was married to a garmento with tons of money. She dumped him and moved in with Dilla, the husband divorced her and got custody of the kids—I think there were three or four. Aline got nothing, not even what she left behind in her closet. That was before she had her first show. Dilla dumped her for a big agent, someone who was going to make her a movie star.”
“Hey, I remember now. That was Dilla’s big dream. She would have killed to be a movie star.” Wetzon clamped her hand over her mouth. “Sorry.” She’d only drunk half the shake but felt stuffed and a little high. She pushed it aside. “But I don’t remember any liaison with an agent.”
“You were on your way out of the business, Birdie.”
“I guess she didn’t make it in the movies?” Silvestri looked at the milk shake. “You finished?”
“Yes.”
He dumped the straw on the table and drank what was left in the glass in one elephant swallow.
“The camera hated her,” Carlos said. “And with good reason. The agent moved on. Dilla came back to Broadway and hooked up with Mort, and the rest is history.”
“Who was the agent?” Wetzon wondered out loud.
“The sultan of BAM.”
“What’s BAM?” Silvestri asked.
“Best Artists Management,” Carlos and Wetzon said in unison.
Then Wetzon said, “Wait a minute, Carlos, you don’t mean—”
“You got it, darling. The sunburnt kid himself. Joel Kidde.”
14.
“Carlos! I’ve been looking all over for you. I was afraid you’d left and I want to show you my new design for the finale—”
A string bean of a woman with orange Brillo hair and dead white makeup, her hollow cheekbones unwisely accented by deep blusher, was standing near the door to the Edison lobby, propping up a huge black portfolio with her knee.
Carlos rolled his eyes. “Design number five. I still like the first one. I keep telling her I like the first one. Mort likes the first one. Everyone likes the first one. We’ve made up the first one. We’re opening on Saturday, for Chrissakes. It’s an exercise in masturbation.” He rose and went to meet her. “Darling,” he drawled, and they cheek-kissed elaborately.
“Who’s that?” Silvestri asked Wetzon.
“Costumes. Peg Button.” Wetzon looked at her watch. Twenty after five. She needed to be out on the street looking for a cab in another fifteen minutes.
“Button? Costumes?” He gave her a suspicious look.
“Honest.” She grinned at him and folded her hands in her lap because they wanted to reach out and touch him.
“I suppose she also has a motive?” He jotted Peg’s name in his notepad.
“Probably.”
“Les, how’s it going?” The intensity of his tone forced her to meet his eyes.
She shrugged. She wanted to lay her head in the hollow of his chest.
He shifted in his chair so that their knees touched. “You’re so goddam spiky. You won’t let anyone help you.”
“I promise you I’ll talk to someone. I even know who.”
“First thing tomorrow?”
“Tonight, if she can fit me in.” Their fingers grazed near their knees. “Oh, God.” She closed her eyes.
“Is he still away?”
She opened her eyes. “Yes.” There was so much heat between them they were almost melting down together.
Silvestri put his palm on her knee briefly, then stood and walked to where Carlos was talking to Peg Button. Wetzon watched as introductions were made. On an impulse, she rose and sat down at the counter next to Sam. A bowl of ruddy cabbage soup to his immediate right was hardly touched.
He looked at her through bloodshot eyes. “How’s the world treating you, beauteous Leslie?”
“I have no complaints, Sam. Your score is lovely.”
“Thanks, dear.” He scratched his chin.
“The beard is very attractive.”
That caught him by surprise. “Do you really think so? If the show is a hit, I was thinking of shaving it off.” Moving his eyes away from her, he said, “I need this show, Leslie, or I’m dead.”
She felt an overwhelming sadness. Sam had been so sweet, funny, so nice to her so long ago. “Sam, the show will be a big hit.” She smiled at him. “And Carlos says I’m a witch, so you’d better believe it. I’m even coming up to Boston to make sure.” His writing block, his failure, had become a comfortable companion, even a security blanket. How would he handle success this time around?
“We’ll have our reunion drink then, dear?”
“That we will.” She saw that Silvestri was leaving with Peg Button. He did not look back.
Patting Sam’s hand, she returned to the table, where Carlos was already ensco
nced. “Everyone’s a suspect,” she said.
“Listen, dear heart, we’re practically the whole world of the theatre now. Mort, Sam, Aline, and me. Same with Peg. How many of us are left? And where is the next generation? Where are the Cole Porters, the Jerry Robbinses, the Hammersteins, the Rodgerses, the Loessers, the Fosses?” He took her hand in his.
“I know.” She leaned over and kissed his cheek. “Did you like what Peg showed you?”
“No. At the very least, I want costumes that move. It’s bad enough I’ve got to work with actors who can’t.”
“What’s going on with you, Carlos? Talk to me straight.”
He raised one supercilious eyebrow and tilted his head to look at her. “Darling, that’s hardly possible.” The big diamond stud in his right earlobe caught the light and winked at her.
“Don’t try to weasel out. I know something is wrong, and it’s not just Dilla. Are you and Arthur okay?” She stopped, thinking the worst. “It’s not—”
Carlos reached around and hugged her. “Birdie, I love you for this. I’ve got to work it out. And no, it’s not HIV or AIDS or anything like it.” He sighed. “There’s this beautiful young man ... Smitty ... he’s been turning up at rehearsals, hanging around. Now Mort and Mrs. Mort—Poppy, to you—have adopted him.”
“Uh oh—”
“They’re competing for him. You know how they are. Mort is making Smitty all kinds of promises about jobs and Poppy took him up to Boston with her today. By limousine, no less.”
“How old is he?”
“Twenty-two, he says. But he’s a young twenty-two. He’s a senior at Wesleyan.”
“Don’t worry about him. He probably knows what he’s doing.” She looked at Carlos and saw something.... “There’s more, isn’t there? You like him, too.”
Carlos nodded, not turning away from her.
“You know he’s gay?”
“Unmistakable, dear heart.”
“Oh, Carlos.” She put her head on his shoulder.
“Aren’t we the pair?” He smiled down at her.
Wetzon shifted gears. “Silvestri told you, didn’t he?”
“He loves you.”
“Sure.”
“And you love him. So get it together, will ya?”
“Dearest Abby, I didn’t ask you.”
“Dearest heart, see a shrink about your anxiety attacks. Now.”
“I knew he told you.”
“Fess up. There’s been this funny whine in your voice that’s not the Birdie I know and love. And you’ve turned into Irritable Irma.”
“Thanks, you’re a pal.”
“Of course, if I had to work with the Barracuda every day, I would be much worse....”
“Don’t start.”
He sighed. “I’ve got to get going.” He put a ten dollar bill on the table.
“I ran into Fran Burke on the way over. It was like old times—almost. He thought I should be married with lots of children.”
“He’s good people. He’s taking the company out.”
“I’ll be up on Friday. Okay?”
“God!” Carlos whacked his head with the heel of his hand. “I almost forgot. I got you a ride up on a corporate jet Thursday night. Can you cut your body-snatching on Friday?”
“In a flash!” She’d have to rework her schedule and break it to Smith, who would be absolutely green with envy.
He pulled a scrap of paper from his pocket. “All you have to do is call Janice and set it up.”
“Yum.”
“And you’re at the Ritz?”
“Yup. I requested the same floor as the famous choreographer, Carlos Prince. I told them I was your sister.”
“You are. I’ll book you in for Thursday night when I get there.” He gave her a hard look. “Now I want you to tell me what you’re going to do about these attacks.”
“I’m calling Sonya Mosholu the minute I get home. You remember her, don’t you?”
“Yeah, big girl. Very into the moderns—Merce for a while. I heard she left the business a long time ago.” Merce was Merce Cunningham, perhaps the leading exponent of modern dance after Martha Graham.
“Sonya’s a therapist now. She worked at the Pilates Studio and with Carola Trier, doing physical therapy, then she went back to school and became a shrink.” She looked at her watch. Five-forty. “Ouch, I’m going to be late.”
“Me, too. Phil said he’d have a car pick up Sam and me here at five-thirty. What do you have? A broker?”
“No. Promise you won’t say anything to anyone and I’ll tell you.”
“Oh, man.” Carlos licked his lips and leered. “Delicious gossip. Wonderful! Send me off with something really disgusting.”
She wagged her finger at him. “You’re bad. I’m going to see Susan Orkin. And at her invitation.”
Carlos looked stunned, “How come?”
“She called me. It turns out we were in college together. Only I knew her then as Susan Cohen.”
“My, my, what a coincidence.”
“Well, don’t you always say there are only fifteen people in the world?”
“I do indeed. What does Susan Cohen Orkin want?”
“I haven’t the foggiest.”
“Hmmmm, scrumptious. That ought to be good for a dinner or two in Boston.”
“Oh, listen, before I forget—”
Phil Terrace entered the cafe from the street door, jumping like a hyper-jack, looking around.
Carlos waved. “There’s Phil.”
“Hey, Phil,” someone called. “Going to have a team in the league this year?”
“Count on it.” He smacked his fist into his palm as if into a catcher’s mitt.
“And I suppose you think you can beat us.”
“Count on that, too.”
Carlos got up and reached around for his bags. “What did you start to tell me, Birdie?”
“Forget it. Go on. I’ll catch up with you in Boston.” Wetzon rose.
“Hi, Birdie.” Phil wore a big smile and a cap just like Mort’s. It didn’t take long, Wetzon thought, greeting him, for everyone in the theatre to imitate Mort. Pretty soon, there’d be nothing but beards and caps. Phil took Carlos’s carryon outside to the car. He seemed fully recovered from the trauma on Saturday.
“I take it he’s into the Broadway Show League,” she said to Carlos.
“A real fanatic. He’s lined me up for center field.”
“You? Oh, my God, that I have to see.”
“You mock me. Just you wait.” He patted her on the rear. “Bye, pet. Give us a big kiss and wish us merde.”
“Merde, my love.” She gave Carlos a big hug and a kiss. Then another. She felt chilled. “Be careful.”
She received one of his sardonic winks, but it didn’t make her feel any better. She was scared for him, for herself.
After Carlos left, Wetzon stared at the paper in her hand without focusing on the numbers. Maybe she ought to try to reach Sonya now. She went into the Edison from the coffee shop and found a pay phone. Sonya’s number was in her address book. She put a quarter in the slot and picked out the digits. She would leave a message on Sonya’s answering machine and perhaps there’d be a message from Sonya when Wetzon got home later. She listened to the ring, waiting for the machine to pick up.
“Sonya Mosholu.”
“Sonya! I’m glad I caught you.”
“Leslie?”
“Yes. Is this a bad time?”
“No, you caught me between patients. How are you?”
“Not my usual sparkly self. I need a consultation.”
Sonya’s voice became instantly professional. “When can you come?”
“How about tonight?”
“Oh. Mmmm. Okay. How about eight o’clock?”
“You’re on.”
There, she’d done it. She hung up the phone feeling proud of herself. The phone box chung and clunked, and damned if her quarter wasn’t returned to her in the change well. It had to be an omen. S
he made a gun of her right hand and shot herself in the side of the head. She was getting more and more like Smith.
When she dropped the quarter in her coat pocket, her fingers touched the paper with the phone number. She might as well try it while she was still here and get Thursday squared away. She picked out the number and listened to the phone ring, once, twice, three, four, and was about to hang up when a voice said: “Joel Kidde’s office.”
15.
The cab she’d just gotten out of was captured by the doorman of Susan Orkin’s building for an older couple in evening clothes. The woman had a mink cape loosely over her shoulders, revealing her skeletal frame. Her face had the frozen look of one too many lifts. Her companion was one of those androgynously handsome white-haired men of the flashy tans and fine gold jewelry who often escorted rich widows and divorcees about town.
This was so typical of the East Side that Wetzon had to smile. Her Upper West Side with its actor-musician-dancer-writer and young upwardly mobile professional Zabar-dependent inhabitants was more to her taste.
She paused for a moment listening to the wind snap-slap at the awning overhead, then she pushed hard on the heavy lobby door and crossed a marbled vestibule bigger than the office she and Smith shared. Down two steps was another lobby the size of her whole apartment. The decor was chocolate brown leather sofas and good reproduction walnut tables. Waxy leaved plants filled fat, pebbled brass pots. Floor-to-ceiling windows on the far wall looked out into a winter-blighted garden of brown manicured hedges and walkways.
A second, older, doorman, his face a treasury of broken blood vessels, stood at a telephone board. He waited for her to approach him, blinking faded brown eyes.
“Mrs. Orkin,” she told him.
“Your name, Miss?” His Irish brogue was downright plush.
“Ms. Wetzon.”
He plugged a cord into his tenant intercom box and announced her, actually pronouncing her name properly but giving it a romantic lilt. “Ms. Wetzon here for you, Mrs. Orkin.” He disconnected and nodded to Wetzon. “Go right up. Eighteen C. Elevator’s to your right.”
This building on Fifth Avenue was a full square block, half facing Madison, half facing Fifth. It was legendary for the size and layouts of its apartments. You couldn’t buy in without being connected, and its co-op board was notoriously rigid. Even with the recession, which had severely hurt highflying New York real estate prices, Wetzon knew prices here had not dropped. People were willing to wait for years for apartments in this building to come on the market.
Murder: The Musical Page 8