“Sure,” I said, and allowed myself to be guided into the bedroom, where coats and scarves and sweaters seemed to cover every surface.
“It’s a little too noisy to talk out there,” Betty Ann said apologetically.
“Have you been here long?”
“For weeks, it feels like. But I’m not complaining. It’s nice to see so many old acquaintances, and to see Lucia on her feet again. In fact, it sort of reminds me of the party scene in Laura. I’ve always loved that film. But listen, Alice, I have a great favor to ask of you. A pretty big one.”
“I’ll do my best.”
She squeezed my arm then. “I had a long conversation the other day with Melissa Taniment.”
“Oh, really?”
“Yes. We’ve been in touch lately, because I’ve finally decided to write the book I’ve always wanted to write—about the life and times of Peter Dobrynin. Melissa’s not only agreed to cooperate and tell me about her part in his life, but she’s giving me a great deal of important information about Peter when he was a very young dancer, about his first roles, about how they fell in love . . . oh, lots of things.” She paused, looking rather sheepish, and then said: “Melissa told me about Peter’s secret apartment. And about the tape you found.”
“You can tell her to relax. I destroyed the tape just the other day.”
“Melissa suggested that I go over to the apartment. She says she thinks I might be able to find some notes and scores that could be very helpful to me in doing the book.”
“Are you sure that’s all she suggested you look for?” I asked cynically.
Betty Ellen laughed. “Well, no. She was quite honest with me. She told me about the long, crippling affair she’s had with Dobrynin these last few years. She says she’s still fearful there are other things in the place that might possibly compromise her. She asked me, if I go there, to destroy anything like that, so her husband never finds out. I agreed, of course. She suggested that I ask you to take me over there.”
There was an awkward silence. It was the kind of request I hadn’t anticipated anyone making. The case was closed. The videotape had been destroyed. That’s all, folks. But I liked Betty Ann, and she had been helpful to me when I needed information.
“All right. I’ll take you there,” I said. “Just call me at home when—”
She interrupted. “I thought maybe, since this party’s so noisy and the food is so bad, maybe we could go there now.”
“Now?”
“Yes! We can get a cab and just go!” she replied enthusiastically, as if she were going off to plunder the riches of some historical treasure house.
Her enthusiasm was catching. “Why not?” was all I could think to say. We began searching for our coats.
***
The moment the taxi had dropped us in front of the building on West One Hundred and Twenty-sixth Street, I knew something was wrong. There was a huge dumpster out in front, filled to the brim with the residue of either construction or deconstruction: pipes, sheets of soiled fiberglass, ruined carpeting, broken wood. We went into the lobby. It was filled with stacks of paneling that had been ripped from the walls. There were puddles of water and shards of glass all over the floor.
“We came just in time, I think,” said Betty Ann, looking around bewilderedly. “The building may not be here tomorrow.”
I called out, “Hello! Hello!” But there was no answer. There seemed to be no one in the building—neither tenants nor workers nor the superintendent, whose name I couldn’t recall, who had let Tony and me into the apartment. But all the doors were open. It would be easy to get into Dobrynin’s place.
We inched along the wall and up the stairs. Footing was difficult and slippery; all heating seemed to have been turned off, and there were cold drafts whistling through the building. I stopped once during the ascent and asked Betty Ann, “Are you sure you want to do this?”
“Yes, yes! Go ahead.”
We reached Peter Dobrynin’s hideaway. Not only was it open, but the steel entry door had been completely removed. What a mess we found inside! The ceiling had been ripped out, as had most of the plumbing. The glass mirror was still there, but the practice barre had been dismantled.
In the center of the large room was a tarpaulin, and onto it the wreckers had dumped all of Dobrynin’s possessions—records, clothing, posters, everything.
We approached the pile. The objects were thoroughly soaked from dripping water. If there was anything of value in the pile, it was so no longer. All of it had turned into a large glob, particularly anything made of paper.
Betty Ann stared morosely at the mess. Her descent from joy to misery had been a swift one. She took my arm and we wandered about the ruined space, looking for something, anything that might have been left unspoiled. We peered into the small bathroom. The sink was still intact, but all the floor tiles had been removed.
We reached the small galley kitchen. “Well,” Betty Ann noted wryly, “at least Melissa doesn’t have to worry about anything incriminating being found in here!”
The stove had been disconnected, the gas obviously having been shut off. The wall behind the kitchen had been broken through, and it was obvious that the renovation included the removal of all walls on the lower floors.
Only the small refrigerator was functioning. I realized why as soon as I opened it—the workmen were keeping their six-packs in there. The top of the refrigerator was covered in candy wrappers.
“What’s that?” Betty Ann asked, pointing to a small shelf about three feet over the refrigerator. I was just tall enough to reach the three old-fashioned cookie jars that had been miraculously spared from the devastation.
One jar was empty. The second held twistums and a few small pencils. The third jar contained some stale candy.
I brought the last jar down and shook a few of the candies into my palm. “I guess Dobrynin liked M & Ms,” I said, displaying the candy to Betty Ann.
She stared closely at the little candy pieces. “Alice,” she said at last, “those aren’t M & Ms.”
She plucked one of the tablets out of my hand and held it close to one of the wall lights. “What are they, then?”
“Medicine,” she said. “Haldol. A stabilizing medicine for psychotics. And a very heavy-duty one, at that. They use it in mental hospitals. My mother was on Haldol for many years.”
I took one of the pills and twirled it between my fingers. Betty Ann had spoken with authority about the medicine, and I believed her. As I looked closer at the tiny print on the tablet, I could see that it did not say “M & M.”
“Was Peter in a mental hospital, Alice?”
“Not that I know of.”
“How else can you explain these?”
“Maybe they’re Basil’s.”
“Who?”
“The black man who implicated Vol Teak in Peter’s death. Basil stayed here sometimes, from what I gathered.”
She didn’t seem to be listening to me. She had started to pace, agitated, playing with a handful of the pills.
“Why has this upset you so?” I asked. “What does it matter if Dobrynin was in a mental hospital? We know who killed him now, and why. And it had nothing to do with anyone’s mental health.”
She made a disparaging gesture with her hand, as if I just didn’t understand the situation. “Don’t you see, Alice? How can one write a true history of Peter Dobrynin if one doesn’t even know whether he was clinically insane? How can you understand his genius if you don’t understand the source of it?”
It was much too cold and wet to stay there listening to Betty Ann’s intellectual problems. I agreed that it was an important thing to know, I even promised to help her find out. But first I wanted to get both of us out of that creepy building.
***
The next morning, Mond
ay, I called Rothwax and asked the detective for yet another favor. I was becoming a nuisance to him, but for some odd reason he didn’t even protest this time. He didn’t even engage in any of his usual banter. Maybe being assigned to OC cases had affected his personality. He promised to get back to me in a few hours.
In fact, I heard from him in less than two. He told me that according to the computer there had been no hospital admissions of any kind for either Peter Dobrynin or Charles Small (Basil’s real name) in the state of New York over the past three years.
I relayed that information to Betty Ann by phone. She was unhappy to receive it. “You don’t understand, Alice. No one just prescribes Haldol. It’s a major anti-psychotic drug. It’s used in hospitals alone, or in the out-patient clinics connected to them.” I took a few minutes to sympathize with the problem all this posed for the biography, but there was nothing further that I could do.
***
Tuesday was a warmish day. Tony and I decided to have our own victory celebration. After all, while it was Brodsky who had put the final nail in Teak’s coffin by cagily obtaining Basil’s confession, it was Tony and I who had uncovered the extortion that had opened up the whole case and led inexorably to the dropping of all charges against Lucia. Yes, we deserved a celebration, too, and we financed it with the leftover money from the expense account Brodsky had set up for us.
We got into our winter finery and lunched at the Plaza. Then we took in a movie. Then on to Bloomingdale’s, where each of us purchased something frivolous—Tony an expensive sweatshirt, and I a very long scarf made in India. We had coffee and brandy at The Sign of the Dove. Then we went back to the Pickwick Arms, to Tony’s room, and made love.
When I finally stole a glance at the clock it was seven in the evening, and I knew it was time to get back to my apartment. I had all kinds of work to catch up on at home. But it really had been a wonderful day, and I simply didn’t feel like leaving yet. Tony was still lying naked on the bed. As I sat in the easy chair I told Tony for the first time all about the Haldol we had found, and about Betty Ann’s belief that Dobrynin had been hospitalized. I also told him that Rothwax had run a check and found no admission for Dobrynin.
“Betty Ann’s writing a book about Dobrynin, so she’s anxious to find out just how disturbed he was.”
“She’d have to go a long way to find someone as crazy,” Tony judged.
“Well, she’s talking about the clinical kind of craziness.”
“You mean she wants to see it in black and white that someone in a hospital wrote down that he was a paranoid schizo, or whatever?”
“Yes, I suppose it’s something like that. If she’s going to write a book about the successor to Nijinsky, she’ll have to have insanity in the plot.”
“I hope there’ll also be some humor in the plot.”
“Was there anything funny about Peter Dobrynin?”
“What, are you kidding? I mean, when you get right down to it, that vaudeville team of derelicts—Lenny and Basil—was pretty damn funny. Here they go—feeding stray cats chicken Kiev. There they go—getting ready to dance Giselle in the nude. Come on, Swede, face facts. If someone was going to make a movie about that duo it would be a comedy, and Robin Williams would play Lenny. Richard Pryor would be Basil.”
I found his comments oddly disquieting. No, I had never thought that Dobrynin and his companion were funny. Not at all. How strange that Tony should envisage them as a vaudeville team—Lenny and Basil.
“Did I say something wrong?” Basillio asked, suddenly concerned that he might have irritated me or dissipated the glow that still hung in the air between us.
“Not at all, Tony. You’re making me think. It’s just so odd thinking of them as a vaudeville team.”
“Well, they did use stage names, didn’t they? We know ‘Lenny’ isn’t Dobrynin’s name. And Basil’s real name is Charlie Small. Right?”
It was absurd but true. After all, Dobrynin had been in the theater—why wouldn’t he have selected a stage name? But stage names often have some kind of personal or professional significance. Lenny and Basil . . . Basil and Lenny. The two names were linked somehow . . . weren’t they?
“Tony, don’t you think that if Dobrynin chose those names they must have some meaning—some relation to ballet?”
“I would imagine.”
Lenny and Basil. Basil and Lenny. I crunched them in my mind, trying to fit them into every ballet I could think of. No, that wasn’t it. Lenny and Basil weren’t characters in a ballet.
Suddenly the origin of those names became so clear to me that I burst out laughing.
“What the hell is the matter with you, Swede?”
“I know what the names mean now, Tony! I know what they stand for! It’s so simple, it’s almost unbelievable!”
“Well, tell me!”
“Did you ever hear of the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo?”
“Vaguely. I think it’s mentioned in The Red Shoes.”
“It was the most famous company in the world for almost half a century. The last great impresario of the company was a man named De Basil. And the last great dancer-choreographer of the company was Leonid Massine—Lenny, for short.”
“Basil and Lenny,” Tony said. “Well, it fits.”
“How stupid of me not to have picked up on that. It couldn’t be anything else.”
“I think I know a way to doublecheck it,” he said.
“How?”
“If old Dobie was in fact a mental patient, I’ll bet he used the full stage name as a pseudonym: Leonid Massine. Check hospital records under that name.”
“Sometimes, Tony, you’re a very smart man.” I kissed him on top of his head and took a cab home.
Chapter 23
I really don’t know why I asked Rothwax the very next morning to run yet another computer search on Dobrynin—this time under the name of Leonid Massine. I mean, there was no rush. What did it really matter if he’d used that name? Perhaps I was just curious if my theory as to the origin of the stage names, and Tony’s as to the hospital admission, were correct. Or perhaps I really felt obliged to help Betty Ann. Or perhaps I couldn’t let Dobrynin alone. Who knows? But I made the call, and the information that Rothwax provided was unsettling.
A Leonid Massine had indeed been admitted to St. John’s Psychiatric Hospital, in Smithtown, Long Island, seven times during the past three years. Seven times!
The minute I discovered that, I picked up the phone to call Betty Ann Ellenville and give her the news. But then I hung the phone up as quickly as I had picked it up. Why tell her anything yet? Why not first find out how much more I could learn?
One thing was certain: I was going to go out there. I wanted to know. I wanted to play this thing out to the very end. So I called Tony and told him the news, then asked him to rent a car and drive me out to Smithtown.
He resisted at first. He didn’t understand why I wanted to go out. What did it matter if Dobrynin had been psychotic or not? He was dead. His murderer had been caught. What was the point?
“Humor me, Tony,” was all I could say. He hemmed, he hawed, he pleaded, he cursed. Then he rented the car.
***
As mental hospitals go, St. John’s Psychiatric was a breath of fresh air. It was large, freshly painted, rambling, and busy. Patients, relatives, and health-care workers choked the lobby. There was a coffee shop, a newsstand, a cafeteria. There were dozens of bulletin boards scattered everywhere, chockful of notices announcing AA meetings, GA meetings, meetings and parties and prayer meetings of all kinds.
But when we tried to get to see the physician who had treated Dobrynin, we ran into a stone wall of nurses and administrators. They shuffled us back and forth, suspicious, constantly reiterating that patients have rights, and that the hospital could release no information on the
m unless presented with a valid court order.
“Why are we here? Why are we doing this? Who cares?” Tony kept muttering in my ear.
Finally I turned on him in a fury. “Because when everything is said and done and Vol Teak has been convicted of murder, and when all the damn t’s have been crossed and the i’s dotted, we still won’t know a damn thing about Peter Dobrynin! So let’s find out one real thing before we close the case! Okay, Tony?”
My outburst quieted him. We kept on pushing, begging, moving from office to office until finally one administrator relented and sent us to Dr. Arnold Newmark, whose office was deep inside one of the locked wings.
He was a small, kindly-looking man with gray hair. He wore a white clinician’s coat over shirt and tie, and in his pocket were what appeared to be dozens of pens and a large spiral pad.
“Please sit down,” he said. “I understand you are looking for information on one of my patients. And I am sure you realize that there is very little I can tell you, legally.”
We sat, thankfully. I then lied to him outrageously. I said that Tony and I were private investigators, hired by Leonid Massine’s family. Massine had been reported missing three months ago. The police had failed to turn up any leads. All we wanted was some kind of information—any kind—that would help us in our search for this sad man.
It seemed Dr. Newmark was unable to withstand this solicitation of his kindness. “I’ll tell you what I can,” he said.
“Well,” I said, “I think the first thing you can tell us is why Mr. Massine ended up in a mental hospital.”
Dr. Newmark folded his hands on his desk. “Mr. Massine is a bipolar manic-depressive. And he rapid-cycles, which means simply that he moves between mania and depression with great speed and frequency. This disorder is treatable with lithium and antidepressants. The lithium keeps the individual from going through the ceiling, and the antidepressants keep him from going through the floor. But in Mr. Massine’s case, such treatment hasn’t worked. In fact, in about twenty percent of clinical cases of bipolar manic-depression, such treatment doesn’t work.”
A Cat in the Wings: (InterMix) Page 14