Poor Butterfly tp-15

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  He began to fidget with the rings on his fingers. He stopped fidgeting and reached for a cigar in the humidor on his desk.

  “I don’t smoke in front of the Maestro,” he said. “Would you like one?”

  “No,” I said.

  He lit up and felt better. It wasn’t an El Cheapo. I could take the smell for a while.

  “We begin,” I said, “with a list of everyone connected with this opera, everyone who might be a target.”

  “Then you believe …”

  “No,” I said. “But I’m being paid to act like I believe.”

  “The list is long,” he said. “Contractors, musicians, office staff, cast, costume shop, set construction, lighting engineers. I’ll get it for you.”

  “Put a check in front of the names of everyone who was here when Wyler fell,” I said. “How many people were in the building that morning?”

  Lundeen thought about it, looked at his cigar, belched out smoke.

  “I don’t know. A few dozen perhaps,” he said. “No, more. The orchestra, but they were together in the auditorium when it happened. I remember …”

  “Cross check,” I told him. “Give me the names of everyone who was in the theater.”

  “I see. Whoever was with us rehearsing couldn’t have killed Wyler.”

  “Unless more than one person is involved,” I said. “The Erik note said, ‘We are watching.’”

  “The royal ‘we,’ perhaps,” Lundeen said, pointing the cigar at me. “Or an allusion to his belief that he represents more than himself.”

  “Put a few people on it. Ask who was here. Ask them who they remember being here. See if someone remembers someone being here who claims he or she wasn’t here.”

  “Elimination will lead us …” he began with enthusiasm.

  “… probably nowhere,” I said. “But that’s where we start. And we’ll need people here twenty-four hours a day watching and protecting while I look for our playmate Erik. That’ll cost.”

  “Since we stand to lose over two million dollars if we do not open Butterfly to reasonably good sales,” he said, “we’ll pay for protection. Do you have a service in mind?”

  “I could bring my staff up from Los Angeles,” I said, rubbing my chin, thinking about a bonus.

  “Fine.”

  “We’re a little unorthodox,” I warned.

  “So is an opera,” Lundeen said, now rubbing his rings while he continued to puff at the El Perfecto.

  “Let’s say one week through opening night. Flat fee of five hundred dollars above what you’re already paying me. If we have to go longer, we’ll talk about it later.”

  “Sounds most reasonable.”

  “I’ll get on it. Now I’d like a tour and an introduction to anyone around.”

  Lundeen walked me through the dark palace, through closed-off wings, into dark rooms filled with racks of costumes, props, and ancient light stands. Rows of dressing rooms, rehearsal rooms, offices, rooms filled with books, walls covered with paintings and posters demonstrated the master touch of old man Keel, who never knew when too much was too much. We passed some people working, painting, sweeping, but the dozen or so of them were lost in the vastness of the place.

  “Impressive,” I said.

  “Expensive,” Lundeen sighed. “It’ll take years to fully restore it. The last opera performed here was La Forza Del Destino in 1904.”

  “Al Capone liked that one,” I said as we walked.

  “Al Capone?”

  I didn’t elaborate. I changed the subject.

  “What was your specialty?” I asked as we moved into a hallway behind the stage that seemed to be in good shape and well lighted.

  “Rossini, Massenet, Bizet, some Mozart, Puccini,” he said. “I did a very credible Pinkerton in Madame Butterfly on a national tour in 1934, but I was considered too light, my voice too popular, for Wagner or even Verdi. I regretted the loss of Verdi, but not of Wagner. That I considered a blessing. Here.”

  We stopped in front of a dressing room door. There were voices behind it. Lundeen knocked. A woman said, “Come in.”

  In we went.

  Vera Tenatti was seated in front of a mirror on a dressing table, one of those mirrors with bulbs around it. Almost all the bulbs were working. A copy of Woman’s Day lay on the table in front of her. Two cute white dogs looked up at her from the cover. The opera diva wasn’t looking at the dogs. She was staring at herself, and she didn’t look pleased by what she saw. An older woman in a dark suit, slender, blond-the woman who had led Vera off the stage-sat next to her, petting the little dog, who began yapping at me.

  “Lorna Bartholomew, Vera Tenatti,” Lundeen said, closing the door behind him. “This is Toby Peters, the investigator we’ve hired.”

  Lorna stood with a cool hand and a smile. She was polite, handsome, and somewhere else. The dog snapped at my hand.

  “I talked to Mr. Peters on the phone,” she said, releasing my hand. “I’m glad you could come. This is Miguelito. He’s a miniature poodle with a very delicate temper.”

  “Charmed,” I said.

  “Vera?” Lorna touched the young woman’s shoulder. The touch woke Vera from her fascination with her image and she turned.

  “I’m fat,” she said.

  “I’m Peters,” I said. “And you’re not fat.”

  She looked at herself in the mirror again and repeated, “I’m fat.”

  “Occupational hazard,” sighed Lundeen. “It takes a strong body, lungs to project. The body must be maintained like a fine instrument. There are no thin cellos. A thin cello would have no depth.”

  “It would be a violin,” said Vera. “I would rather be a violin than a cello.”

  “I think you’re cute,” I said. “And you’ve got a great voice.”

  She turned from the mirror to look at me. I was telling the truth. She knew it. The smile was grateful.

  “Mr. Peters simply wants to meet everyone,” Lundeen explained. “And to know if you remember where you were and who you saw last week when that workman died.”

  I pulled my pencil and small spiral notebook out of my pocket, ready to start putting things together.

  “We were here,” said Lorna, reaching for a black purse on the dressing table and fishing out a pack of Tareytons. “Stoki was here. A few plasterers, the orchestra, the principals. No chorus.”

  “The crazy old man,” Vera added.

  “Crazy old man?” I asked.

  “Raymond,” Lundeen said. “He came with the place. Caretaker. Knows where everything is. He was here before the place closed down in 1905. Makes little sense. He was with Lorna and me when Wyler fell. The three of us saw the man in the cape.”

  “I’d like to meet Raymond,” I said.

  Lundeen nodded. Since Lorna was standing and smoking, Lundeen took the opportunity to sit in the chair she and Miguelito had vacated. The wooden piece cringed under his weight but held.

  “There were others,” Lorna said. “But who remembers? We were rehearsing.”

  “Vera was in the middle of her second act solo,” Lundeen added. “And Martin was …”

  “Martin?” I asked.

  “Passacaglia, the tenor,” Lundeen explained. “He was in his dressing room, I think.”

  “He wasn’t on stage,” Lorna confirmed. “But neither was Pepe, the … who remembers?”

  I put my notebook away.

  “Do you need me for anything more?” Lorna said, looking into my eyes as she petted Miguelito. It was a Lana Turner line. She handled it so well I couldn’t tell if she was being polite or encouraging.

  “Not now,” I said. “I’d like to talk to Miss Tenatti first.”

  Lorna shrugged a suit-yourself shrug. “John knows how to reach me,” she said, putting out her cigarette in a glass ashtray near Vera’s elbow.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow, Vera.”

  She touched the girl’s shoulder. Vera touched the older woman’s hand and patted Miguelito’s head. The dog liked
it. Lorna departed.

  “I do not like that dog,” Lundeen muttered.

  “He’s a sweet dog,” Vera said.

  “I can pick it up on my own from here,” I told Lundeen.

  “Good. I’ll be in my office most of the night,” Lundeen said, moving to the door. “Do you think you can find your way back there?”

  “I’m a detective,” I reminded him.

  He smiled and was gone.

  “I’ve got some questions,” I said to Vera, sitting in the now available chair and taking my notebook out again.

  She shrugged and looked at me. Her eyes were wide, brown, and very deep.

  “Yes.” She gave me her attention.

  “How old are you?”

  “Twenty-nine.”

  “Twenty-nine,” I said, writing in my notebook.

  “Thirty-two,” she amended.

  I nodded, erased and wrote.

  “How old are you?” she asked.

  “Fifty.”

  “Fifty,” she repeated.

  “Forty-six,” I said.

  She laughed. It was a solid, beautiful, musical laugh.

  “Where did you learn to sing?”

  “St. Louis,” she said. “I’ve been singing since I was four. You want to know my real name?”

  “Sure.”

  “Vera Katz.”

  “Mine’s Tobias Pevsner.”

  “Really?” she said, showing interest. I nodded and she went on. “My mother was a singer. Local, light opera. My father was, is a music professor at Washington University. That’s my life. Sing and get fat.”

  “You’re not fat,” I demurred. “You’re very pretty and voluptuous.”

  She blushed.

  “Brothers, sisters?”

  “I was the only one. You?”

  “A brother,” I said. “Big, mean, a cop. You know what’s going on here?”

  “I’ve heard,” she said with a shrug.

  “You afraid?”

  “No. Yes. A little. This is my big chance.” She looked at herself in the mirror again. “Are there pudgy … voluptuous Japanese women?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “Maestro Stokowski says I should eat health food. I don’t like health food. I like to cook. Look.”

  She opened the Woman’s Day to a page with a folded corner.

  “There are these great recipes for inexpensive cuts of meat,” she said with enthusiasm, holding up a spread with six black-and-white pictures of plates of food. “Breaded fried tripe. Liver loaves. Brains in croustades. Heart patties.”

  “Let’s get a cup of coffee and a carrot sandwich someplace,” I suggested.

  She looked at me differently now. “My father’s fifty-two,” she said.

  “How old’s your husband?”

  “Don’t have one.”

  “Boyfriend?” I asked.

  She shook her head no, but the no was not emphatic.

  “Martin has taken me out to dinner twice,” she said.

  “The tenor.”

  “Yes,” she said. “But I don’t think it’s … and he has a wife in New York.”

  “How about that carrot sandwich?”

  She nodded and smiled, a smile like the full moon.

  It was a great moment. It would have been nice to hold onto it for a few seconds longer, but the scream ended it-a scream that seemed to cut through a dream, like the sound that wakes you from a deep sleep, a sound you’re not quite sure is in the room or in your imagination. I looked at Vera. Her eyes had gone wide. She’d heard it, too.

  I got up and went out the door. Vera came after me.

  I needed another scream to know which way to turn. It came. From my right. I went after it. Vera was doing a good job of keeping up with me. There wasn’t much light, and workmen had set up shadowed booby traps-piles of brick, boards, planks, tools-for us to trip over. Another scream guided us.

  We hit the mezzanine corridor, which had no light but did catch some of the sun from the lobby. No more screams, but someone was running, shoes clapping on marble, heading up stairs, sobbing. When I reached the stairway with Vera a few steps behind, Lorna Bartholomew plowed into me, clutching her throat. I staggered backward. Vera caught us. We all went down. A white ball of fur scuttled across the floor and landed on my face.

  “He … he …” Lorna gulped, looking back over her shoulder in the direction of the lobby.

  I got to my knees, pushed Miguelito off my face, and helped her up. The shoulder pads in her suit had shifted. She looked like Joan Crawford doing Quasimodo. I reached over to help Vera, but she was up before us. Lundeen and another man came thundering along the mezzanine lobby behind us.

  “He … he …” Lorna tried again.

  “What’s she laughing at?” the man with Lundeen asked.

  “She’s not laughing,” said Vera. “She’s frightened.”

  Vera moved past me to put an arm around Lorna’s misplaced shoulders. Miguelito was yapping at her feet. Vera reached down, picked up the dog, and handed him to Lorna, who buried her face in his white fur.

  “Are you all right?” Lundeen asked. He was panting. He looked worse than Lorna.

  “… tried to … He grabbed, put something around my neck,” Lorna said, touching her neck with her fingers. Her neck looked bruised, marked with purple, yellow, and red. “I think Miguelito bit him.”

  “Something’s there, all right,” volunteered the old man with Lundeen.

  “Where?” cried Lorna, looking around in fear.

  “Round your neck,” said the man. “Red mark. Snakelike.”

  I looked at the helpful old man. He was thin, with a mane of white hair over a surprised, chinless Slim Summerville pale face. Under his faded overalls he wore a reasonably clean white shirt and a yellow tie. He moved in close to examine Lorna’s neck.

  “Nasty, nasty,” he said, shaking his head. “Saw things like that in the war against Villa. Mexes’d come up on us at night from behind like and take this wire around a neck and …”

  “Raymond,” Lundeen warned, trying to catch his breath.

  “… like a salami,” Raymond trailed off.

  “Get her some water,” Lundeen ordered. “Get me some water.”

  Lorna was hyperventilating now.

  “Make sense,” Raymond snorted, shaking his head. “Water’s not turned on up here. Got to go downstairs, find some glasses, clean ’em out, fill ’em up, juggle ’em up here. I’ll lose most of it. You could get over to the Longshore Bar before I’d be back.”

  Lorna groaned and rubbed her cheek against the little dog. Vera helped her toward a marble bench against the wall.

  “Get the water, Raymond,” Lundeen insisted, moving to help Vera with Lorna.

  “I’ll miss something,” Raymond complained.

  “I’ll bring you up to date,” I promised.

  Raymond shuffled off, hands plunged deeply into his overall pockets.

  Lorna was sitting on the bench leaning against Vera when I reached the three of them. There was enough room for Lundeen, but he was standing.

  “He came up behind me,” Lorna gasped. “I was … from under the staircase. From the right. No, the left. I didn’t hear … well, maybe I heard … something. Then it, something was around my neck. My purse. I dropped my purse.”

  She looked around for her purse. Vera showed her it was still on the strap around her neck.

  “I screamed,” she said. “I could smell his breath. Sickening. Sweet. My head bumped against his face.” She shuddered. “His face was … hard. I think Miguelito bit him. Then he was gone.”

  “I’ll call the police,” Lundeen said, turning.

  “The police,” Lorna cried. “What will they do? They’ll say I did it myself, that we’re looking for publicity. If they wouldn’t believe Leopold Stokowski, they certainly won’t believe me. The only thing that would make them believe is my dead body.”

  Anger was taking over, masking the fear. I’d seen it before. It was safer to be
angry than frightened. She would turn into attacker instead of victim.

  “You,” she said, looking at me. “You’re supposed to protect us.”

  “Lorna.” Vera said, “Mr. Peters has only been on the job a few minutes.”

  “I’m telling the Maestro,” Lorna said, pulling at her purse, snapping it open with shaking fingers and finding her cigarettes. She pulled one out without noticing that it was bent and accepted the light from Lundeen’s instantly produced lighter.

  “Good idea,” I said. “Miss Bartholomew is right about the police. They’ll ask questions and go home. You need a clear felony to capture their interest.”

  “Shouldn’t we lock the doors. Search the …” Vera began.

  Lunden was doing better with his wind now. “Too many exits. Too many places to hide,” he said, shaking his head. “Too many people with a reason to be here.”

  At first I thought the sound was a workman humming. I wasn’t sure when it started. It got louder, closer. Lundeen kept talking, gesturing, expounding on the futility of any defined course of action.

  Vera heard it now. A voice, a man’s voice, singing.

  Lorna looked up. “What’s that?”

  “What?” asked Lundeen.

  “The voice,” Vera said.

  Lundeen listened now. The voice was loud.

  “It’s him,” Lorna cried, standing again, looking around. Vera comforted her. Miguelito growled.

  “It’s just a workman, a …” Lundeen started, but the voice grew louder.

  “What’s he singing?” I asked, trying to figure out where the sound was coming from. I moved toward a men’s room door down the hall.

  “It’s from Verdi’s Un Ballo in Maschera. Renato’s lament after mistakenly killing his friend Richard,” Lundeen said.

  “Where is it coming from?” I shouted, and the music stopped instantly, mid-note.

  I sensed someone behind me in the shadow. I went down low and started to come up with a right. Raymond jumped back, dropping a glass and sending a splash of water over my pants.

  “I’m not going for more,” he said, stepping into the dim light.

  I opened the bathroom door. A small, temporary light bulb dangled from the ceiling. All the stalls but one were open. I wasn’t carrying my gun. I usually didn’t. It nestled in my glove compartment, where it couldn’t hurt anyone. I’m not a particularly good shot anyway; I’ve been shot by that gun more than anyone else. I moved slowly, back to the wall. Outside the door I could hear Lundeen giving Raymond a hard time. Inside the bathroom I was giving myself a sweat.