The Girls in the High-Heeled Shoes (23 page)

“Something about Sandra Lelane?”

“Yes,” Brass said.

I took a deep breath. “Are we playing twenty questions?” I asked him. “Animal, vegetable, or mineral?”

Brass scowled. “Miss Lelane got a phone call from her mother. Wait a few minutes and let her tell it.”

Well. So Sandra Lelane’s mother had resurfaced. So Two-Headed Mary wasn’t dead after all, as we had all silently feared. That was good news, but a little confusing. Where had she been? Where was she now? Why didn’t I just wait five minutes and find out?

Sandra Lelane was waiting for us in front of the theater, by the large poster advertising her play. Hatless and coatless and clutching a brown scarf around her head for protection from the rain, her skirt whipping in the wind, she looked like she was posing for a
Saturday Evening Post
cover. The only thing missing was a small, rain-soaked dog staring up at her. The story illustrated would be about a young actress trying to decide between taking the lead in a Broadway play or going back to Ogallala to the boy who loves her.

She led us down the alley to the stage door, and we followed. “Thank you for coming,” she said. “Let’s talk in my dressing room.”

“You look tired. Have you eaten?” Brass asked. “We could go to one of the little supper clubs in the area. Maybe Pietro’s or Jimmy’s Chop House. They’re fairly quiet, and we could talk over a steak, or a bowl of soup.”

“Maybe after,” she said. “I need to know we can’t be overheard.” She took us backstage and excused herself for a moment to talk to the night doorman. I walked out to the middle of the stage. The work lights were on, and a cleaning crew was at work in the orchestra.

“So this is where the magic happens,” I said, that being the tritest thing I could think of on the spur of the moment. “One day you’re an unknown in the back of the chorus, and the next day you’re a star.”

“Don’t laugh,” Brass said. “Americans have few dreams, and that is one of their favorites.”

Lelane came back and led the way to her dressing room. “Everyone from the cast and crew has gone home,” she said, “except the wardrobe mistress and she’s on the other side of the stage, so we can talk in here.”

The star’s dressing room was actually a small two-room suite, with a bathroom about the size of an upended shoe box stuck in one corner of the inner room. Both rooms held racks of costumes, presumably all the changes that Sandra needed during the course of the show with a few extras in case of emergencies.

Sandra sat on the wooden chair in front of her makeup table. She took off the scarf and began toweling dry her hair. Brass removed his overcoat and hat, hung them on a hook by the door, and lowered himself into the easy chair that filled one corner of the room. I likewise shed my outer garments and was about to toss them on the daybed, when I saw the look of alarm on Sandra’s face and remembered: a hat on the bed or couch in a dressing room is bad, bad luck; almost as bad as saying the name of “The Scottish Play” inside a theater. So I hung them up next to Brass’s, straddled a wooden folding chair, turning it so I was facing Sandra, and awaited developments.

“Okay,” Brass said. “Tell me about it.”

Sandra peered outside just to make sure the corridor was empty, and then closed her door. “I’m scared,” she said.

“Your mother called?”

“Yes. I didn’t want to tell you any more over the phone. I don’t have my own phone in here; I hate getting calls during a show. So I used the stage manager’s phone, and it’s not very private.”

“Is that the one your mother called you on?”

“No. Her call came in on the house phone. I took it in the front office. It was during the second-act intermission. I dialed you right after curtain calls.”

“What’s the problem?” Brass asked. “Why isn’t this the best news in the world? She’s okay, isn’t she?”

“I guess so. I hope so.”

Brass leaned forward in his chair. “What do you—” He paused and shook his head. “No, I apologize. Asking questions just slows things down. Just tell the story your way and we’ll listen.”

“All right,” Sandra said. “One of the ushers came back here to tell me that my mother was on the phone in the office just as intermission began. Of course I threw on a robe and ran to the office as fast as I could.”

Brass nodded.

“I thought it might be some sort of joke, but it was Mom.”

Brass raised his hand. “One second,” he said. “You’re sure it was Mary? You’re certain you recognized her voice?”

“I am,” she said. “But I wouldn’t have had to. It was also what she said.”

“Again I apologize for interrupting,” Brass said. “Go on.”

“I’ll give you the conversation as closely as I can remember it. Then you’ll see—well, let me tell you first.”

“Good,” Brass said.

“I said, ‘Hello?’

“Mom said, ‘Is that you, Lucille?’ A good sign that it was her, even if I hadn’t recognized the voice; because nobody in the business knows my real name.”

Brass nodded again and made an encouraging sound. I stared expectantly and tried to guess what was coming, the way you will when someone is telling a story or a joke. Nothing came to mind.

“I said, ‘Mom? Are you all right?’ or something like that.

“She said, ‘Lucille, listen closely, darling, I only have a few minutes. First, I’m perfectly all right. I just have to stay in seclusion for a while longer.’

“I kind of yelled into the phone, ‘Mom, we’re so worried about you! Where have you been? Where are you?’

“‘Now listen and don’t interrupt your old mother,’ she said. ‘There’s something you have to do for me, and it’s very important. Like in the old days. Okay, honey? Okay?’

“Now that chilled me, because—well, let me tell it all first, then I’ll explain.”

“Go on,” Brass said.

“So I said, ‘Sure, Mom, whatever you want.’

“And she said, ‘I can’t get a hold of your Uncle Andrew. I’ve been trying for days and days, and I have an important message for him. Could you find him for me?’

“And I said, ‘Sure, Mom, I’ll find him. Any idea where he is?’

“And she said, ‘Now if I knew where he was, I wouldn’t have to ask you to find him, now, would I? Ask around. I can’t do it myself, or I wouldn’t bother you. But it’s very important. Very.’

“So I said, ‘Okay, Mom. I’ll find him. Where can I reach you when I do?’

“And she said, ‘Just give him a message. Tell him I’m fine, and I’ll be in touch with him soon. Tell him that you talked to me, and that he should hang on. You got that?’

“‘Sure. You’re okay, and he should hang on. Hang on to what?’

“‘Never you mind. Just tell him. He’ll know.’

“‘Okay,’ I said.

“She said, ‘I’ll call you in a couple of days, make sure you found your uncle. Thanks a lot, honey. I’m sorry I’ve worried you.’

“‘Wait!’ I said—I yelled. ‘Tell me where you are. When are you coming back?’

“‘I don’t know exactly,’ Mom said. ‘Listen, honey—take care of yourself!’ And she hung up.”

Sandra paused and looked at each of us. “That’s it?” I asked.

She nodded. “That was it. I stayed on the line hoping the operator would come on. Then I could say something like ‘Operator, I was accidentally cut off. Could you give me the number of the person I was just speaking to so I can call them back?’ But the phone went dead, and no operator came on the line.”

“A good try,” I said.

Brass stirred like a lion waking from its sleep. “So your mother didn’t tell you where she was, what she was doing, or how long she was going to be away?” he asked.

“No.”

“Who is your Uncle Andrew?” Brass asked.

“I have no idea,” she said. “As far as I am aware, I don’t have an Uncle Andrew.”

“Oh,” Brass said into the silence.

“The only Andrew I know is Andrew Ffalkis, the character actor; and Mother doesn’t know him.”

“Then what on earth was your mother talking about?”

“I have no idea—and I’m scared!”

“Maybe she has some sort of amnesia,” I suggested. “The sort of thing that makes her confused about the past. Maybe she’s at some sort of rest home where they’re taking care of her until she recovers, and she doesn’t want to alarm you.”

Sandra looked at me. “Do you believe that?”

“No,” I admitted. “But it’s possible.”

“Not likely,” Brass said. “What exactly,” he asked Sandra, “is it that’s frightening you?”

Sandra folded her hands on her lap like a little girl preparing to recite in class. “We used to have signals, Mom and I,” she said in a soft voice. “When I was a kid and we were on the con.”

“You mean like giving the office,” I said, ostentatiously adjusting the knot on my tie.

Brass observed my gesture with a faint smile. “‘A little learning is a dangerous thing,” he said.

“Like that,” Sandra agreed. “Except the office is a sort of general gesture; everyone in the grift knows it. These were little signals that Mom and I made up between us. I used to think it was a great game.”

“What sort of signals?” Brass asked.

“Well, there were the visual cues like the brush-off”—she brushed an imaginary spot off her skirt—“and the ‘you don’t know me’”—she patted the back of her right hand with her left hand. “And there were verbal cues. ‘On Monday’ was the signal for ‘go home.’ If Mom was working a mark and didn’t want me around, she’d say, ‘We’ll go to the store on Monday’ or ‘I’m going up to see your teacher on Monday’, and I’d think of some excuse to leave and go back to wherever we were staying.”

“But supposing she actually wanted to do something on Monday?” I asked.

“Then she’d say ‘Monday’ and not ‘on Monday.’ She’d leave off the ‘on.’ ‘We’re going fishing Monday,’ she’d say. The whole point of the signals is that they have to sound as natural as possible.”

“I can see that,” I said.

“And if she ever says ‘okay,’—a natural thing to say, ‘okay’—that means that everything that follows is not true.”

“And she said ‘okay’ in the phone call.” Brass said.

“That’s right, she did.”

He took a deep breath. “How long has it been since you and your mom used this code?”

“Maybe ten years. I’ve been out of the grift for about that long.”

“You don’t think it could have been a mistake? Could she have forgotten?”

“She said it twice,” Sandra said. “She hasn’t forgotten. She was warning me that she was about to tell me a story that I shouldn’t believe. And that means…” Sandra paused.

“That means,” Brass finished, “that someone else was listening.”

“Why—” I started to ask, and then stopped. It was obvious: Two-Headed Mary would only have to use the code if a third person were listening. Silly me.

“But I don’t get the point,” Sandra said. “If she was trying to tell me something, she didn’t get it across.”

“Well,” Brass said thoughtfully. “If you’re right, she wasn’t trying to convey information to you, beside the happy fact that she is still alive and all right. She was telling the story for someone else’s benefit. So what is it she said? You’re to find this mythical Uncle Andrew and tell him—tell him what?—that your mother is fine. That he should hang on. Hang on to what?”

“That’s what I asked,” Sandra said. “She didn’t answer.”

“It’s an interesting puzzle,” Brass said. “And is there anything in the conversation to give us a hint as to where she was, or where she has been? Any other coded messages?”

“Unfortunately not,” Sandra said. “But there was one other thing—”

“What’s that?”

“What she said right before she hung up. ‘Take care of yourself,’ she said.”

Brass nodded. “Yes? Sounds like a motherly sentiment. Is it another code-word?”

“It is,” Sandra said. “We’ve always thought it was rather subtle, since it means exactly what it says.”

“Take care of yourself?” I repeated.

“Yes. It means that there is danger and to watch out. It may mean to flee—to get out of the situation, whatever it is.”

“What situation?” Brass asked.

Sandra’s face flushed and she raised her arms to the sides of her head, her hands balled into tight fists. “How should I know?” she wailed. “I’m only her daughter, why would she tell me anything?” After a second her hands dropped back into her lap and she continued in a very calm, very controlled voice: “I don’t know what’s happened to her, and I don’t know what she is warning me about. I don’t like it and I am afraid.”

Brass pursed his lips and nodded. “There seems little doubt that it was your mother who called you,” he said. “She was trying to get you to do something, or to make someone else think that you were going to do something. And she was trying to warn you; but of what danger, and from where?”

Brass stared off into the middle distance, his eyes focused somewhere beyond the makeup table. After two minutes of silence, he turned to her and asked, “Do you live alone?”

“Yes,” she said. “I ditched my roommates as soon as I could afford to. A girl likes to have some privacy.”

He rose to his feet. “Come with me!”

“Where?” Sandra asked.

“I want to think this out and I’m hungry,” Brass said. “We’ll go to Jimmy’s and I’ll have a steak. If you two aren’t hungry, you can watch me eat.”

I got up and put my coat on. Eating steak is one of the things I do best.

* * *

Jimmy’s Chop House was a late-night bistro on 50th west of Seventh that stayed open until two or three in the morning and catered to late-night people: reporters, actors, producers, song writers, cabaret performers; all the people that the rest of the world considers “interesting” until they try to take out a bank loan.

It was quarter past midnight when we settled into the table in the far corner of Jimmy’s. Brass excused himself to make a phone call and to say hello to Laverne Taylor, who was singing her usual mix of show tunes and the blues, sweet and low and smoky, and accompanying herself on the piano by the bar. She broke into “Hard-Hearted Hanna,” as Brass made his way back to the table, paused for a sip from the glass of bourbon she kept on the piano, and then took up “You’re Getting to Be a Habit with Me.”

Brass and I both ordered a steak and fries and the house salad; Sandra went for the ris de veau, which are sweetbreads and which are a house specialty. Jimmy has a French chef for everything but the steaks. Brass got into a lengthy discussion with Jimmy about wines, and finally ended up ordering a Château Latour-Pomerol, which turned out to be a red wine from Bordeaux. Which turned out to go well with steak—or, I’m sure, without steak.