Poor Butterfly (18 page)

“What happened?” I asked.

Charles pulled off his right driving glove and revealed a hand with a thumb and two fingers.

“Went back to England,” he said. “London bomb patrol. War turned me into a driver. Got a son in the RAF and another on bomb patrol. Truth is, Stoki’s not that much fond of the British. His mum was Irish, but he made an exception in my case. Got me a job driving here in Frisco. He asks for me whenever he comes to town. The Maestro’s trying his best. I’d hate to see something happen to him.”

“Nothing will happen. I look okay?” I asked.

“Smashing,” he said with a smile, moving to the curb and pulling a newspaper from his pocket.

I got in the driver’s seat, pulled the cap over my eyes, made a U-turn and headed back for the Opera. It took no more than three minutes. The boys and girls of the Church of the Enlightened Patriots were back in business, even the fat lady, though she no longer had her bottle of RC and was sitting on the steps conducting the camp meeting rather than participating.

I pulled up to the curb, got out, winked at Stokowski, who gave me a small salute and said, “For some reason, I am hearing the Brahms First Symphony, which I have always found plaintive.”

“Shelly, find Snick Farkas,” I said. “Gunther, I’m counting on you to find out what happened in Cherokee, Texas.”

“I’m on the job,” said Shelly.

Gunther simply nodded.

I turned and started up the steps, head down. I got through the main doors and out of the corner of my eyes spotted Sunset in a corner, showing a uniformed cop who looked about twelve the proper stance to take against a right-handed pitcher. Sunset glanced over at me as I walked quickly toward the corridor. Then he went back to his batting clinic.

I went through a side entrance to the auditorium. A crew of women was dusting the seats and sweeping the aisles. On stage, about twenty men and women in overalls were putting up a Japanese house set. No Vera. No Lundeen. No Passacaglia. A few musicians were in the orchestra pit adjusting their instruments, playing a few bars.

I moved to the stage, cap still covering my eyes, went up the steps, and moved toward the back of the stage.

“Hold it,” a voice I recognized called from the rear of the auditorium.

I stopped and turned, pretending to shield my eyes from the light to cover my face.

“What the hell you trying to pull?” called Sergeant Preston.

He stepped out of the shadows under the balcony and pointed at me.

It had been a good try but I hadn’t made it. I considered running, but decided I was twenty years too late to make that a reasonable option. I reached up to take off the cap as Preston took another step forward yelling, “You, take that cap off!”

Since I was obviously in the process of doing just that, I paused. It was enough of a pause to realize that he wasn’t pointing at me but past me, at a workman about my size in overalls and a painter’s cap.

“Get out of the way,” Preston said, this time to me.

I stepped out of the way. The workman took his cap off. He was Oriental.

“All right. All right, put it back on,” Preston said. “Jesus, I should have been the second-rate crooner my mother never wanted me to be. And you,” he went on, pointing directly at me. “Stokowski says he wants you to hurry up.”

I nodded, touched the brim of my cap, and hurried into the wings.

Jeremy was standing, arms folded, leaning against the wall next to Vera’s dressing room. He glanced in my direction. His eyes seemed focused on a distant planet, but he took me in.

“Are you all right, Toby?” he asked.

“How’d you know it was me?” I asked, stepping in front of him.

Jeremy shrugged.

“The walk, the change in pressure on the backs of my hands, a sense of you.”

“Touch of the poet,” I said.

“It’s there for all of us to take,” he said, “It is the feminine within each of us we fear to explore, even women.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” I said. “What happened to Ortiz?”

“Following his hospitalization, he faces extradition to Mexico for a variety of crimes,” said Jeremy.

“How’s your back, where he bit you?” I asked.

“I’m directing my energy to it. It will heal.”

“Good. Vera all right?”

“She is fine,” he said. “The tenor is in there with her. There are police in all directions.”

“I know,” I said. “If they come by, keep them out if you can.”

“I can,” said Jeremy with a gentle smile.

“I know,” I said, knocking at Vera’s door.

Her “Come in” had an undertone of urgency. I went in and closed the door.

Passacaglia had Vera pinned to the wall. They didn’t recognize me.

“Get out,” said Passacaglia.

“Stay,” cried Vera. “Call the big man.”

“Out,” Passacaglia insisted. “You are intruding on a lovers’ quarrel.”

I stepped forward and put my hand on Passacaglia’s arm.

“Old man,” he said. “You are about to be embarrassed.”

I took off my cap, put it on Vera’s head, and showed Passacaglia my face.

“Toby,” Vera said with relief.

Passacaglia pushed away from the wall and hit me across the bridge of what was left of my nose with the back of his hand. It was a reasonably powerful clout. I didn’t reach up to check for blood. I didn’t want to mess up Charles uniform.

“Killer,” hissed Passacaglia. “Killer of women.”

I grinned and took a step toward him. He backed up.

“Do not hit,” he warned, with one hand up. “Do not touch my face or my diaphragm.”

I pushed his hand out of the way. He tried another backhand. I caught that with my shoulder and threw a short right to his stomach. He doubled over. Vera gasped behind me. Passacaglia held one hand on his stomach and threw another backhand at my face. I stepped back and slapped at his face. He turned away from the slap and it caught him on the neck. He went down gasping.

“I told you no face, no diaphragm,” he moaned. “Are you deaf?”

I helped him to his feet and looked at Vera. The chauffeur’s cap sat at a rakish angle on her head. She looked cute as hell. I told her. She touched my cheek.

“My throat,” croaked Passacaglia. “I … you fool. I won’t be able to sing tonight.”

“You’ll recover,” I said.

“Not in time,” he said, “You’ve damaged a delicate instrument.”

His voice did have a sandpaper rasp.

“You sound better,” I said.

“I’ll sue you,” he said, pointing a finger at me.

“Fear is striking my very soul,” I said. “The police are looking for me for murder and you threaten me for temporarily cancelling a tenor?”

“Remorse,” he tried, looking at himself in Vera’s mirror. “Contrition. Apology. Is this too much to ask?”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I couldn’t think of anyplace else to hit you.”

“The shoulder,” he said, voice going quickly, pointing to his shoulder. “Or you could have kicked me in the ass. Peters, you may be assured that this incident ensures that there is no way we can ever be friends or that I can even be cordial to you. I am leaving.”

His voice was just about gone now.

“Martin,” Vera said. “I’m sorry, but you did …”

Passacaglia had one hand on the doorknob, the other at his neck. I knew where he was heading.

“Martin,” I said. “We may not be friends, but we are going to make a deal. You don’t tell the cops I’m here, and I don’t make a call to your wife and tell her you’ve been trying to do some extra rehearsals with Vera.”

Passacaglia sneered in my direction.

“Traitor. Robber. Scoundrel. Imposter,” he rasped and left, slamming the door.

“I think the exit line was from the chorus of
Gianni Schicchi
,” Vera said.

“Puccini?”

“Yes.”

I kissed her. She tasted like the memory of lilacs.

“Maestro Stokowski will be upset,” Vera said, in my arms. “We have no understudies.”

“Let’s see what we can do about it,” I said, leading her to the door, taking my cap back and planting it on my head.

“Which way did he go?” I asked Jeremy.

Jeremy nodded to the left, down the corridor toward an exit sign.

“Let’s find big John,” I said, and led the way to the stairway just outside the backstage door leading inside the auditorium. There was no one in the darkened corridor. The three of us went up the stairs and made our way to Lundeen’s office. We didn’t hear anything inside.

I stepped back and Vera knocked.

“Come in,” Lundeen boomed, the weight of the opera on his broad shoulders.

He was not alone in the room. The Reverend Souvaine stood next to the broad desk facing Lundeen, who stood behind it. They were almost eyeball to eyeball—teeth, fists, and stomachs clenched.

“Now get out,” Lundeen shouted at Souvaine, who had the best of the moment sartorially. The reverend was wearing a near-white Palm Beach suit with a ruffled white shirt and a powder blue tie. Lundeen was wearing baggy slacks and a sloppy brown wool sweater too large even for him.

“I came in peace to talk reason and righteousness,” bellowed Souvaine, without looking back at us.

I hid behind Jeremy, which was easy to do.

“You came to dictate pious lies!” shouted Lundeen. “You came like a Wagnerian Nazi in the night to stifle art.”

“At least,” said Souvaine, “we agree about Wagner.”

“Out,” Lundeen said, his hand sending a pile of charts flying across the room.

“If you try to open,” said Souvaine, standing erect, “God will surely strike you with the lightning staff of the flag of the nation which he loves above all others.”

“Fool!” bellowed Lundeen, coming around the table. “Mixer of metaphors!”

“Overweight blasphemer,” said Souvaine softly.

Jeremy stepped between the two men, leaving me exposed. I pulled the cap farther over my eyes and moved behind Vera. Lundeen tried to reach past Jeremy to get at Souvaine, who stood his ground.

“Pompous swindler!” cried Lundeen.

“Cartoon,” said Souvaine.

“Fart!” screamed Lundeen.

“Fart?” echoed Souvaine. “Is that the height of your creativity?”

Lundeen growled and pleaded with Jeremy. “Let me kill him. Just a little.”

“You have my prayers, my pity, and my warning,” said Souvaine, who paused at the door and turned to Jeremy. “And you will suffer both the wrath of the Lord and the law for the unprovoked attack you made on the Reverend Ortiz. ‘The Lord is far from the wicked; but he heareth the prayer of the righteous.’ Proverbs Fifteen, Verse Twenty-eight.”

“It’s Verse Twenty-nine,” Jeremy corrected. “Verse Twenty-eight is ‘The heart of the righteous studieth to answer, but the mouth of the wicked poureth out evil.’”

“You are wrong about the verse,” said Souvaine, his face turning pink.

I wanted to put up the forty bucks in my pocket on Jeremy’s being right, but I kept my mouth shut and Souvaine went out, slamming the door. Lundeen moved back behind his desk and sat with his head in his hands.

“Peters,” he said without looking up. “What are you doing here? The police are fluttering around the place like bats.”

“Great disguise I’ve got here,” I said, taking off my cap. “Only the police don’t recognize me.”

“I’m an actor,’’ said Lundeen. “Or I was. I can see through a costume, a mask.”

With that he looked up at the three of us and swept his hand in an arc. “All these papers,” he said. “That little man and Gwen spent the night. And what was the result? Everyone still has an alibi.… Listen to me. I’m using dialogue from cheap radio shows. That’s what my life has come to. Everyone has an alibi for either the workman’s death or the attacks on Lorna. No one was unseen by someone else for at least one of the incidents. The more incidents we get, the more charts we do and the less sense it makes.”

“Maybe it was more than one person,” Vera said.

“Ah,” sighed Lundeen, pointing at her. “Suddenly sopranos can think. Yes, it’s a conspiracy. I’m beginning to agree with you.”

He laughed without enthusiasm.

“Let’s see,” he said. “Souvaine, Raymond, and I have conspired with the police. Everyone is in on it, perhaps even Lorna, who was not killed by our Mr. Peters but committed suicide because she couldn’t stand the guilt and the complication.”

“Lundeen,” I said.

“And,” Lundeen went on, “Gwen tells me she is leaving after
Butterfly
, assuming we actually get to perform. I think she is running off to Los Angeles with your German midget.”

“Gunther’s Swiss,” I corrected.

“Swiss,” sighed Lundeen. “This is as bizarre as a Mozart opera.”

“It gets worse,” I said.

Lundeen looked at me and went silent.

“There is nothing worse,” he said after a moment.

“Martin Passacaglia can’t sing Pinkerton tonight,” I said.

“They killed him, too?” Lundeen’s mouth fell open to reveal a limp red tongue.

“I hit him in the neck,” I admitted.

“You …” he began.

“… hit him in the neck. He was mauling Vera,” I said.

“Mauling Vera,” Lundeen repeated, looking at Jeremy.

Jeremy had no answer.

“Toby has an idea,” Vera said softly.

“You are a tenor who knows the part of Pinkerton?” he asked calmly, folding his hands on the desk.

“No, but you’re a baritone who knows the part,” I said.

“I … me … sing Pinker … You’re mad,” Lundeen said, suddenly standing.

“You’ve got a better idea?” I asked, moving to a chair and sitting. I pulled Charles’ lunch out of my pocket, opened it, and fished out a sandwich. I think it was Spam and ketchup. I didn’t care. I was hungry.

“I haven’t sung on stage in years,” he said. “And it’s not written for …”

“You know the role, Mr. Lundeen,” Vera said. “And this is only the dress rehearsal. By opening, Martin will be fine.”

“If you don’t go on, you may be kissing
Butterfly
good-bye,” I said.

“The Maestro would never …” Lundeen began.

“I think he will,” I said. “He wants this to go on. He’s a patriot, remember.”

“A patriot who is getting a generous fee for his services. The costume would never fit me,” he tried, his eyes on Jeremy.

“Call in your costume people,” said Jeremy. “I’ll help. Sewing is a meditation with which I am familiar.”