by Ed Ifkovic
“Thank God!”
“But Harold, humiliated, obviously could not keep still. Part of the reason had to do with Carlotta’s response. He’d obviously fooled her, or fooled himself, but now, angry, she lashed back. She mocked him in public in ways that suggested a problem with his sexual performance. She never said he was one of those men but you know Carlotta—her insinuation, her roundabout snarkiness, her drunken mouth. Well, supposedly she was horrified beyond belief and made his life a living hell. Threatened to expose him. Even to have him arrested, thrown in jail. It is against the law, you know. Told him he would never come near their child when that child was born. That he didn’t deserve to be a father. Or so he told other Broadway hoofers of similar persuasion. So Carlotta fled to Connecticut with little Peter in her tummy. Depressed, Harold hurled himself off the roof of the penthouse.”
“What did Carlotta say?”
“She told the press he was depressed because of his sinking career. He couldn’t dance anymore. She told others: good riddance.”
“Couldn’t dance anymore? Obviously, he could leap over tables,” I said. But I could see Carlotta saying that: Carlotta the prude, the prim, the much-married actress with a severe moral compass. Look how she talked about Martha!
Martha!
“I wonder if any of this has to do with Martha’s murder,” I thought out loud. “Seems farfetched, though.”
“Doesn’t sound like it. But I found it rich and juicy. Perhaps it’s our next collaboration, Edna.”
“Didn’t we take enough abuse from Ethel Barrymore for The Royal Family? Do I need Carlotta Small and her New England world abusing me? I full expect censure when American Beauty comes out. If I ever finish that story.”
“So that’s my story.”
“George, where did you get all this information? I’ve never heard the half of it.”
“Men talk.”
I clicked my tongue. “If it wasn’t for speakeasies and brothels, George, men would not know what’s happening in the world.”
“I don’t know whether you know this, Edna, but men don’t go to whorehouses to talk.”
I hung up the telephone.
The next day, a Sunday, Trooper Wolniak picked me up at noon. I’d called him the night before, at his home, and shared Kaufman’s information. I had an idea, foolish though it might be, but Stas said no, it was worth pursuing. Hunches, he said. That’s all they had left. “Let’s play your hunch.”
That satisfied me. In all my life, I believed, I’d not had a hunch—I called it instinct or intuition—that failed me. I also called it my reporter’s nose. A hound dog nose, quite.
Stas and I, a battalion of two, pulled up in front of Nathan Brosnan’s tight little bungalow, situated on a dead-end road in Greenfield, a narrow, leaf-strewn lane that contained five or six modest homes, all slightly in disrepair—a shingle loose, a brick chimney toppling, and shutters at angles. Brosnan’s home, painted a dim slate-gray that was peeling, sat back under old white pines, some boughs brown and rotten. One in particular, hanging precariously over the front entrance, a wrought-iron door with a hinge missing screws, seemed destined to fall, scimitar-like, upon the head of some unsuspecting visitor. When Stas knocked, I stood aside, watching the limb. Wolniak followed my eye, and grinned. “I’ll protect you, Ferb.”
I hated hearing him say that. I found the facile bravado of most men an irritation, and unnerving at that. I expected more from Stas. “Stas, I’m the one warning you.”
He grinned. “Ferb, I’m the cop.”
I grinned back, liking him again. “But I’m the eagle eye.”
Brosnan, answering the door in a sleeveless undershirt and torn dress pants with splattered dried house paint, was not happy. “We just got finished eating.”
“Obviously,” I said, staring at the dried gravy on his chin.
“A moment of your time,” Stas said, but leaving no room for discussion, already inclining his body forward, compelling Brosnan to take a step back. The man looked over his shoulder, and I could hear laughter from the dining room, children’s excited voices, a woman’s admonishment that they be still. “Daddy’s at the door.”
Daddy stepped aside. “We’ll talk in there.” He directed us to a parlor, where, seated on chairs that looked new but felt as though all the springs had abandoned hope, he closed the door that faced the dining room. For a split second his wife and children stared, mesmerized, at the uniformed cop who filled up the doorway—and at the pint-sized woman with the granite-sized head and the stiff unyielding walk who also stared back with a look that dared random comment.
“Well,” Brosnan demanded, “what is this now? I answered all your questions.”
“A couple of things and we’ll be gone,” Stas said. “Something about your alibi.”
“Alibi? I have to have an alibi?”
“You kept Carlotta Small waiting. You said you were driving around, aimlessly.”
“I was.”
“Tell me about that again. You must have known Carlotta was waiting outside your office. You knew she was coming. Kind of funny, no?”
“I had to think.”
“About what?”
“What to say to her.”
“But it gives you a large window of opportunity.”
“For what?”
“What do you think?”
He drew in his breath. “You’re crazy. I was driving around.”
“Why?”
“I was nervous about dealing with Carlotta. I told you. She was gonna ruin what little crappy life I got left with that book of hers.”
“So you drove around,” I echoed.
“Yes.”
“No witnesses.”
“I was alone, I said.”
“Did you come back here?”
He looked around the room, as if to say—to this dead place? To her in there? To the snot-dripping children snickering behind those closed doors?
“I drove.” He paused. “I stopped for cigarettes but I can’t remember where. Somewhere on the drive. I can’t tell you where.” He was sweating. “I never went into Rawley’s Depot.”
“I don’t think you’ve told us everything.” Stas related the facts as Kaufman related them: the rumors, the Mafia, the blackmail, the divorce. “Did you have any connection with Martha Small?”
“Well, I knew her, my sister-in-law.”
“That’s not what we’ve been told,” I blurted out, and Wolniak, surprised, looked at me.
“What?”
“Martha took some joy in seducing Carlotta’s husband, Jason. We’ve heard that she seduced you, too.”
He looked to the door of the dining room. He bit his lip, and whispered. “Once. Just once, for Christ’s sake. And it was just plain stupid, really. I didn’t even like her. But Martha had a way of working you, make you feel strong and manly and—you know.”
“No, I don’t know, actually,” I said. “Did Carlotta know?”
“Of course. Whenever Martha had a conquest—that’s what they were—she had to crow about it. I begged her to be quiet, but she just laughed and laughed. She was a dreadful woman.”
“What did Carlotta do?”
“She went crazy. That’s what really ended our marriage. Not the Mafia nonsense, or even the Broadway show being in trouble. Me losing my money. She made me leave.”
“But you came back recently, no?”
“I had to. When I met Jason at a bar, he mentioned her book and the Mafia underworld past. Everyone loves the Mafia, he said, it’ll sell millions Well, I had to see her. Stop her. I don’t have much here”—he waved his hand around the small room—“but I got a job. Most people don’t. I’d lose my job. Christ, I work for the town as a zoning inspector. You think they won’t fire me? It’s an uptight world, Connecticut.” He babbled on and on, his voice rising, until I put up my hand.
“Did you visit the Inn recently?”
“Yes, I stopped in again, but Carlotta wasn’t there. Martha was there, a
nd she flirted with me again. Look at me. What am I—Valentino? I said no, and she said she’d see to it that our romance made it into Carlotta’s book. I almost hit her.” He stopped, realizing what he’d said. “But I didn’t. I’m a Christian. I walked away. That’s when I wrote Carlotta that letter.”
“That’s why she met you?”
“We just talked for a minute. She said she had to pick you up at seven. I remember that.”
“And she agreed so quickly to omit the underworld stories from her book?” I asked.
He nodded. “Yes.”
“Why?”
“I told you”—he looked from Stas to me—“I threatened her. I told her, one time long ago, when she was drunk, and I was drunk, we met somewhere, and she told me some nonsense, so I told her I’d reveal it to everyone.”
“But,” Stas said, “you told me you just scared her, suggesting she’s said something incriminating, but really you were bluffing.”
He nodded. Yes. Yes.
I sat up, arched my back. “We don’t believe you, Bub.”
He stared at me, dislike on his face. He mouthed the word: what?
“Carlotta wouldn’t back down unless you had specifics.”
“She doesn’t know . . .”
“I don’t believe you,” I fired back, fiercely.
Brosnan was sweating.
“Did it have to do with Jason Fargo?” Stas asked.
He nodded.
I breathed in. “And Carlotta’s first husband?”
He nodded.
I counted a heartbeat. “And Carlotta’s son, Peter?’
He nodded.
“Tell us,” I insisted.
“I don’t want to.”
“Tell us,” Stas said.
He bit his lip. “She’d told me Harold was a homosexual and that he wasn’t like Jason—or me. Real men. That it was a secret she didn’t want anyone to know. Didn’t want that in the book. It would make her look bad.”
“Did she say Jason was Peter’s father?”
He stood up, uncomfortable. The door opened and his wife, anxious, rushed in. Brosnan leaned forward. “She said Harold couldn’t, you know, do it.”
His wife, overhearing him, screamed. And Brosnan looked at Stas and me. He stood up. “This is all I want to say. Could you please leave me alone?”
Brosnan’s wife stood there with her mouth open. “What’s wrong with you, Nathan?” She spoke through gritted teeth. “I told you never ever to mention Carlotta and her sick world to anyone. You want to go to jail?” She looked at us. “Stop talking, Nathan. Just stop talking.” She glared at Stas and me. “We’re not talking any more. Do you hear me?”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
I made a request to Carlotta, who, hearing me out, said emphatically no. That was impossible, she wailed, hysterical. But when I said Trooper Wolniak thought it an interesting idea—not a good one necessarily, but an interesting one—Carlotta nodded, became antsy, and said she wanted to talk to her lawyers. “What lawyers?” I asked. “Any ones I can find,” Carlotta replied. It was Sunday afternoon, nearing twilight, and she was already complaining of a sick headache. I had heard one empty bottle clinking against another in the trash behind the kitchen. “Still,” I went on, “I insist.”
Even Stas had thought the idea questionable and dangerous. If I did it, it would have to be without official sanction, without state police authority. He had to step aside. We had been talking about the dead-end quality of the investigation, and I said that, while I obviously didn’t know who the murderer was, we could play one person off another. And, of course, the murderer had to be one of a short list of souls already interviewed. Surely, interacting with all of them, assembled in a group, like an ensemble cast of a tryout in New Haven or Philadelphia, would get me thinking in the right direction. Somehow, talking it through with everyone listening, speaking the lines and letting the ideas roll around in my brain, it could become clear. That’s how I worked with Kaufman, the two of us walking around my apartment, talking, thinking, creating. I solved plot difficulties on my feet—why not a murder! Stas said he was not so certain, but why not? It would, if anything, be a revelation.
“But Monday night,” Carlotta screamed. “I just can’t have this . . . this nightmare in my house.”
“Why not?”
Carlotta looked perplexed. “There is no theater on Monday night, Edna. The lights are dim.”
I shook my head, stupified. “This is a rehearsal, Carlotta. Think of it that way. Or,” I added finally, “the third act of the play that is your life. Your third return to Broadway.”
So, giving in, Carlotta and I spent Sunday night inviting folks to the Inn the following night. After dinner, they were told. Edna Ferber had something she wanted to talk about, and each person was told: “She thinks you can help her out.” What did that mean? they asked. Carlotta told them all the same scripted line: “She wants to work out a theory.” About the murder? Peter asked, nervous. “Who knows?” Carlotta said, mechanically, but herself a little curious and nervous. “Edna thinks if we all put our heads together, we can move this investigation along. You can help.” No one believed her. “I’m not liking this,” Carlotta told me. “I don’t understand what’s going on.”
“You don’t have to, Carlotta,” I answered.
“Is she talking about her novel?” Carlotta told me Delia had asked.
“I don’t have a clue,” Carlotta confessed to her in my earshot. “Edna likes her parlor games.” And once said, that became a working title for Carlotta: Parlor Games. Edna loves to play parlor games, she said over and over. Some of those invited weren’t happy with that. “A woman has been murdered, no one arrested, and she wants to play games.”
“I don’t know,” I overheard Carlotta tell someone on the phone. “You know Edna. It’s hard to stop her, like trying to stop a landslide in the Rockies.”
Good, I told myself: I am, indeed, an indomitable force of nature. Mother Nature, if I can indulge a cliché.
Parlor Games, Carlotta mumbled over and over as she and Julia and I straightened the rooms, and Julia made cinnamon doughnuts and heated hot cider on the stove. Halloween, I said. But tonight there’d be no costumes, no masks. No costume drama, this—just bold realism here. Stark, candid, raw. New theater, O’Neill, frank, hard-hitting. Susan Glaspel, the agony in the country kitchen. I sat back, smug.
So, hesitant, they arrived. It seemed no one dared not come, though some were tempted to say no. Especially at first. What if everyone came and they didn’t? How would that look? I counted on that kind of coercive thinking. So be it. Though not all were hesitant, it seemed. Millicent Wright, the housebound dowager who hadn’t left her home in years, told me, outright, that she wouldn’t miss the festivities for anything, and insisted that Eben unearth the wheelchair she’d purchased a decade before and then refused to sit in. “I don’t resign myself to invalid status, Edna,” she informed me. So, pushed by a squeamish and reluctant Johnny Marks—“I don’t see why I have to be there!”—Millicent, regal, covered in a wool scarf, her head topped with a faded yellow lace bonnet, sat by the front window, watching the guests enter. She whispered to me, “I heard you throw wonderful parties. Now prove it.”
Watching the assembled crowd, I was not so sure. This could all be a mistake. Johnny Marks kept casting glances at me. He’d worn his constable’s outfit, he told everyone, because he was the authority in the town. He was happy, he added, that I hadn’t invited Wolniak. Stas, I knew, thought better of being there, given his official role in the investigation. But Stas was not far away. That I also knew. “I’m the law here,” Johnny kept repeating. Boorish to a fault, I told myself, but probably harmless. Though maybe not . . . He munched on doughnuts and sipped mulled cider, served by Julia, who’d been asked to stay late, to be a part of the evening. Julia, resigned, stopped asking why she had to be there. “Because,” I leaned into her, “you’re part of the world of this secluded glen.”
Eben, compelled to a
ttend, stood by the front door, refusing a seat, staring over the heads of the others and avoiding, I noted, any eye contact with his daughter. I noticed Julia offered him no doughnuts, no cider, and, in fact, tried to steer clear of his corner. Likewise Stanley Lupinski, insisting his invitation was a mistake, stood diagonally across from his arch-enemy Eben, and glowered, staring at the floor. So Julia avoided her former father-in-law, which meant she had a limited run of the vast room. I remarked her grace, her poise, her seamless movement through the shallow waters of Eben and Stanley’s Scylla and Charybdis.
By the time Peter and Delia arrived, Carlotta was nearly hysterical, flitting from one part of the room to another, hugging Peter and even hugging Delia, who looked surprised and seemed to find the embrace uncalled for. I noted that both had dressed up, to the nines, Peter in a dapper pin-stripe charcoal suit with black-and-white shoes, with a white carnation in his lapel. Delia in a sleek cocktail dress, her head encased in a sequined flapper cap. I noted that she was wearing just a little more makeup this evening than Carlotta. That took some doing. They could be mother and daughter. “We came from an early dinner with friends,” Peter explained, pointing to his clothing. “Mother said you wanted to talk to us about something.” He stared at me. He whispered, “The murder? This hardly seems like the way to do it, Edna. Really. A parlor game. This isn’t a walk-through of a Broadway play.”
“Why not?” I asked. “I’m trying out a plot. I need you all to help me. My collaborator George Kaufman can’t make it, so you and the others are my co-writers.”
Delia frowned. “I think you’d best keep your mouth shut, Peter,” she said. “I feel there will be accusations hurled this evening. We may need to engage a lawyer.”
“Not if you’re innocent,” I said, smiling.
Delia actually yelped, as though pinched. “You certainly can’t believe that I—and Peter—would hurt Martha or Carlotta.”
“Be still, Delia.” Peter put his hand around her waist.