The Girls in the High-Heeled Shoes (22 page)

Junior nodded dolefully. “That’s what Monica said.”

“She’s right. I’m surprised it hasn’t happened already.”

“All right.” He stood up. “First thing in the morning.”

“Now,” Brass told him.

He looked at me.

“Now,” I told him.

He shrugged. “I’ll get a cab.”

* * *

After Junior left, Brass swiveled around and stared out the window. This was usually a sign that he was hard at work, but I had no idea what he could be working on; so maybe he was just staring out the window. I waited awhile in respectful silence to see whether he was working or staring. After a couple of minutes, I cleared my throat once or twice, but Brass didn’t even tell me to shut up, which probably meant that he was working. When he is on the track of an idea, he becomes hard of hearing and unresponsive to those around him.

I was working up to stretching and yawning and announcing that I supposed I would go home now. Going home was no problem; supposing I’d go home, however, was surprisingly difficult. Somehow Brass always made me feel that I was deserting him in his time of need, and that I was about to miss something incredibly fascinating.

Brass turned back to the room before I had a chance to do my supposing. “What time is it?” he asked.

I pulled out the hunter pocket watch I had inherited from my Uncle Matthias—who had been editor of the weekly paper in a small town in Ohio but, as far as I know, had never hunted a day in his life; but it was an elegant watch—and snapped it open. “Quarter past seven,” I told him.

“Let’s go downstairs and see if we can catch Jonn Sturdevant in his office,” Brass said. “I’d like to talk to him.”

Sturdevant was the drama critic for the
New York World.
He spelled his first name “Jonn,” but whether he was born that way, or had attained greatness, I know not. He had two assistants—who liked to call themselves associates—and a few other journalists might occasionally write reviews or pieces on the condition of modern drama here or elsewhere; but Sturdevant was the voice that mattered. His review alone couldn’t make a hit out of a real dog, but praise from him could keep a play afloat long enough to at least break even, and a pan could kill a new production dead in the water. And if Brooks Atkinson of the
Times
or Richard Watts Jr. of the
Herald Tribune
agreed with Sturdevant that the show was good, it could count on a guaranteed six-month run.

He knew everything and everyone and was treated like a conquering general; that is, fawned upon in his presence and despised behind his back. But with all of this he kept his perspective, his sense of humor, and his objectivity. His opinions might not always be right, balanced, or completely fair, but they were his honest opinions. He had even been known to print a retraction or revised estimate when later events showed that he was wrong.

He was also the Queen of Gossip about the show business, although he could use little of it in his reviews, and he was always eager to trade good stories over demitasse cups of the sweet, black Turkish coffee he brewed on a gas ring in his office.

There was no desk in his fifth-floor office, a medium-sized aerie separating the religion editor from the fashion editor; merely a small table against the wall where he wrote out his reviews longhand before passing them to some menial to be typed out. That and piles of books, play scripts, magazines, and notebooks, and a variety of prizes, awards, and mementos scattered about like leaves on the Strand. “Hello, dear boys,” he said as we came into view around the corner that shielded his office from the elevator. “You’re scant moments too late.” He was sitting like Buddha on a small camp stool with a stack of manuscripts on his lap.

“Too late for what?” Brass asked.

“The immortal Yankee Doodle man himself has just skipped off down the stairs.”

“George M. Cohan?”

“Indeed. He is in from his place in Connecticut to discuss a new musical with Messieurs Rodgers and Hart. Now won’t that be an American classic if it comes off? I ask you.”

We arranged ourselves in the doorway of Sturdevant’s office, since there was no place to sit unless you cleared a spot on the floor. “I’m sorry I missed him,” Brass said. “Anything I can use in my column?”

“Not yet, dear boy,” Sturdevant said. “It’s all tenuous and gossamer, and the Cohan doesn’t want any publicity until it’s decided. Except for the merest mention—which I’m going to do myself. The idea is”—he leaned forward conspiratorially—“a musical about Franklin D. And George is going to play the president! How’s that for a god-awful notion? Franklin Roosevelt in tap shoes!”

“The best kind,” Brass said.

“I said to him, George dear boy, it’s all very well, but is the New York theater audience ready for a singing, tap-dancing president? And he said to me that if Gershwin could do it, he could damn well do it, too. Which is a distinct point. So, with much trepidation, I added ‘George, you’re getting a bit long in the tooth for such strenuous activity night after night, aren’t you?’ So the immortal Cohan stripped off his top coat, hitched up his pants, and did five minutes of energetic buck and wing for me right in this hall. I tell you, the sound of tapping feet reverberated like thunder. It was thrilling! As he dropped, scarcely sweating, into his seat, I swore never to doubt his terpsichorean vitality and endurance again. And he must be nearing sixty, if he’s a day.”

I looked around. “What seat?”

“I brought a bentwood chair over from religion for him to sit on while we talked. Would you like one?”

“No thanks, John,” Brass told him. “Just a couple of quick questions, if you don’t mind if I pick your brain.”

“Mind? Not a bit, dear boy. Reciprocal brain-picking is what journalism is all about. What secrets may I lay bare for you?”

“Tell me about
Lucky Lady.
”

“The musical?” Sturdevant stared up at the ceiling, which I noticed was covered with some sort of white gauze draping. “At the Monarch Theater, opened March twelfth, which was a Tuesday. Producer: K. Jeffrey Welton, the wonder boy. An epithet he made up for himself, by the way. Directed by Kapofsky, who has a modicum of talent if he sticks to fluff. Music by Jimmy Sillit, lyrics by A.S. Lucas, book by Saddler. From an idea that was already stale when the pyramids were Pharaoh Ramses the Second’s WPA project. Boy meets girl. Girl wins Irish sweepstakes, leaves boy to collect money. Girl meets sharper who is only after the money. Everybody knows this but the girl. Boy has taken job as tap-dancing steward on ship girl is also on. Why is never said. Girl thinks she has lost all the money. Fights with sharper, who is about to throw her overboard when boy appears from behind smokestack and saves her. Sharper falls overboard. Girl says, ‘I’ve been such a fool!’ And falls into his arms. They dance. Money is recovered.”

“That’s it?” I asked.

“That’s it,” Brass agreed. “Boy meets girl. Boy loses girl. Boy gets girl. The universal plot. Love will find a way; put your money on love.”

“There are a couple of songs that are hummable,” Sturdevant said. “‘Keep Your Eyes Where They Belong’ and ‘Dance Along with Me’ are probably the best. Judith Perril does a decent job as the ingenue, although ingenues do seem to be getting older with each passing season, don’t they?”

“How’s the show doing?”

“Well, it’s hard to tell, old boy. It must be doing all right; they haven’t posted closing notices. But the management does seem to be papering the house on occasion.”

Brass nodded. Papering the house—giving out free or really cheap tickets to make sure the theater had few empty seats—had probably been going on since the days of Shakespeare. It might be done on a night an important critic was coming, or just to make sure the cast plays to a full house. The laughs are always better that way. It was also a way to build an audience in the face of bad reviews if you think word-of-mouth is going to be good. Since it effectively costs the theater nothing extra to play to a full house, many producers thought it was the cheapest, most effective advertising they could do. But if it didn’t work, pretty soon the cast would be playing to an all-paper audience; and where would the money for their salaries come from?”

“You think they’re not doing as well as they say?” Brass asked.

“Would you be shocked, dear boy? I doubt whether any production has done as well as the producer claims.”

“Have you heard anything about Billie Trask and the missing money?”

“Rumors, dear boy; rumors and gossip is all.” Sturdevant shifted the pile of scripts off his lap and onto the floor. “My ear is always to the ground, but I’ve learned not to trust what the groundlings tell me. Some of her compatriots from the chorus say she took the money for her lover, and the two of them have fled to Cuba—or was it British Guyana?—where they can presumably live like king and queen for ever and ever on two days’ box-office receipts. Some others say she took the money to get away from her lover, or just to get away from the evil, heartless big city. I have heard that she fled for some other reason entirely, and someone else took advantage of her flight to remove the money. Some say she ran off with your favorite do-gooder, Two-Headed Mary, either with or without the money. What’s your bet?”

“If I was a betting man,” Brass said, “I’d give this one a pass. None of the guesses really makes sense. And none of them explain what happened to Lydia Laurent.”

“The girl who was killed?” Sturdevant peered at Brass, his eyes glittering. “You think there’s a connection? I know they were roommates.”

“You may choose to believe in coincidence, if you like,” Brass said.

“That’s good of you, dear boy,” Sturdevant replied, “but I learned a long time ago that when anyone says ‘You’ll never believe what just happened,’ I should take him at his word.”

“Have you heard anything about Lydia Laurent?” Brass asked.

“Not a thing,” Sturdevant said. “Except that she had nary a stitch covering her, and DeWitt’s card clutched in her hand when she was found. And she’d been tied up. But then, some people like being tied up.” He looked at me. “I understand she missed her appointment with you. Do you suppose she could have been killed to prevent her talking to you in the future?”

“I’d rather not suppose anything of the sort,” I told him. “I was asking about Two-Headed Mary. I can’t see that there’s any information about her that would be worth killing for.”

“Ah, dear boy, that’s because you don’t know what it is that she knew; what tidbit of information she was going to cast upon you. Perhaps Mary is no longer with us, and Lydia Laurent knew the cause of her sudden demise. And perhaps the killer thought that she might, ah, ‘spill the beans,’ as it were.”

“That would mean that she was involved,” I said.

“Not necessarily. Perhaps she knew something that she didn’t know she knew, if you can follow that.”

“If Two-Headed Mary is dead, the killer hid the body very carefully,” I said, just to be argumentative. “Why wouldn’t he have done the same with Laurent’s body?”

Sturdevant waggled an explanatory finger. “It is an unnecessary complication to hide a body,” he said. “You should ask rather why he would have gone to the trouble with Two-Headed Mary. What is he trying to conceal?”

“That’s a very interesting thought,” Brass said. “You may have something there.”

Sturdevant beamed. “I knew reading detective stories would come in useful some day.”

I went home early for me; it was about nine-thirty when I took my hot potato knish and container of milk from the little cafeteria on 72nd and Broadway up to my room and settled down to continue the adventures of “Sindbad the Unconquerable.” Or perhaps, “Of Sorcery and the Sea: An Adventure of Sindbad the Sailor.” I wrote three more pages and got him up to thirteen years old, and then sat down on the edge of my bed and reread the whole thing. I was overcome with waves of doubt; which usually doesn’t happen until I reach page twenty or so, and I was only on page seven.

The plot line I had worked out in my head involved Sindbad commanding a trireme or quinquereme, or one of those remes, on a voyage of mystical discovery, with lots of fighting and mythical monsters and gods and goddesses and treasure and beautiful princesses. The sort of adventure any boy of advanced years would love to read. Then why did I spend the first chapter of the book with him as a child? Why? I think that much of the planning of a piece of fiction is done by the subconscious mind, and the conscious just fills in the nouns and the grammar. I might be writing a piece of brilliant evocative fantasy or a piece of pap for the pulps, and I had no idea which. Or I might be just leading myself further and further into a blind alley from which there was no reasonable escape.

Well, I thought, I might as well let my subconscious do what I’m paying it for and figure out what Sindbad’s next move is while I get a good night’s sleep. I loosened my tie and hung it carefully with its three mates on the closet door.

The phone rang.

I am the proud possessor of a telephone in my own room, the only private phone, I believe, in the whole building. Even Mrs. Bianchi, the landlady, uses the pay phone on the first-floor landing. Brass had me put in a phone, even paying for the installation, so he could reach me when he needed to. So, as it was after eleven o’clock of a weekday night—

It was Brass. “You awake?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Good. Take a cab and come by and pick me up.”

I replaced my tie, combed my hair, shrugged back into my jacket, put on my top coat and hat, and headed downstairs. A chill drizzle had started since I got home. I turned up the collar of my top coat, pulled my hat down firmly, and flagged a Checker cab. I directed the driver to 33 Central Park South, where Brass has his penthouse apartment. He was waiting outside when we pulled up, long black raincoat buttoned to his chin, dark gray felt hat pulled down over his eyes, looking grim.

“Where to?” I asked.

“The Royal Theater,” he said, climbing in.

The cab pulled away from the curb. “Has something happened?” I asked.

“Yes,” Brass said.

“Another murder?”

“No,” Brass said.