Downtown Strut: An Edna Ferber Mystery (Edna Ferber Mysteries) (13 page)

She held up her hand, a traffic-cop stop. “You know, Miss Ferber, I hate Pop but I still don’t want to see him strapped to an electric chair.”

Chapter Eleven

“Love and jealousy,” I remarked as Rebecca, Waters, and I walked back into my apartment.

Rebecca smiled. “It never changes, does it?”

“I don’t get it,” Waters said.

“Well,” I noted, “those young friends of yours, Waters, are filled with rivalries, fierce and potent.”

“Roddy was like a lightning rod,” Rebecca suggested. “A gentle boy, though I guess he could get angry and strike out at folks. Those spurts of violence. But pushing folks away did nothing more than attract folks to him. Ellie with her late night talks with him, though she wanted more. Bella, the
femme fatale
who probably never looked at Roddy until Ellie shared her infatuation. Even Harriet, so intense in her dislike. Her father…”

“And then the murder that same night when things were coming to a head,” Waters said. “Maybe.”

Rebecca was nodding her head. “Everyone lingering around the building while Roddy slept alone in his bed.”

“I don’t know if any of this intrigue has to do with murder, Waters.” I added, “But there
was
a lot of activity at the apartment the night he died. Ellie, maybe. Bella in the shadows, maybe. Freddy lurking in the back alley. And no one was there during the murder.”

“Do you think Ellie lied to you?” Rebecca asked me.

“Yes, but why come to my apartment and fashion such an elaborate lie? Maybe she’s being truthful that she wasn’t at Roddy’s, but Freddy saw her in the neighborhood, so clearly she was nearby. But was she in his apartment? Was she sneaked in through the back? Who knows?”

“The killer came through the front door,” Waters said. “The broken lock.”

“Did you look closely at that?” I said. “A simple screwdriver could snap that old lock and splinter the wood. The killer still could have come in through the back. The broken lock could be a deception.”

Waters smiled. “So I’ve convinced you, Miss Edna, that something else is going on.”

I smiled back. “I don’t know that, Waters. But something else happened there. What reason does Ellie have to lie? Her visit to me bothers me. It seems so…unnecessary. And what about Bella hiding in the shadows, even though she says she wasn’t there.”

“Love and jealousy,” his mother repeated my words.

“How’s Lawson doing now?” I asked Waters.

“Better, I think. Living way out in Queens isn’t helping his spirits, though. He misses the excitement of Harlem.”

“He travels to his job there every day? It’s quite a trek by subway.”

Waters grimaced. “He’s been missing quite a few days. But he’s getting better. In fact, I got him to go to a poetry reading at the Hobby Store later tonight. It took a little arm-twisting but he agreed.” Waters looked at the clock. “I’m meeting him in two hours at Columbus Circle.”

“Tell him to meet you here,” I said suddenly. “I’d like to talk to him.”

Waters grinned. “The detective.”

“Well, maybe,” I acknowledged, “but I’d like to get the events of that night clear in my head. We’ll give him supper.” I looked at Rebecca. “Possible?”

“Of course.”

“I’ll phone.” Waters went into the kitchen and I could hear him talking to someone. Then I heard him dialing another number and reaching Lawson. When he returned, he looked content. “Yeah, he’s coming. I called his work first, but he was home, getting ready to get on a subway. Some errands. I promised him food.”

Rebecca stood up. “He’s getting back to normal. Lawson always was a big eater.”

***

Lawson sat in my living room, pensive, shoulders hunched, his eyes darting around the room, at times narrowing and staring toward the window, as though searching for something out there. He may have been getting better, if I believed Waters, but he still looked like a bony cadaver with those huge sunken eyes and that ashy parchment skin. That Broadway smile now was wan and melancholic.

“Love and jealousy,” Waters said out loud, and Lawson shot him a quizzical glance.

“We think Ellie and Bella were both at your apartment that night,” I started. “This is none of my business, Lawson, but ever since Ellie made a point of visiting me and proclaiming what now seems to be a lie, I’ve become curious. Why involve me?”

Lawson locked eyes with me. “Maybe Ellie was there that night, but not Bella. She was with me.”

“Well, tell us what you remember about that night.”

He hesitated, squinted. Silence in the room. All of us zeroed in on that stark, unreal scene, the body in the bed, the contorted face, that knife thrust into the chest. I swear Lawson shivered.

Gently, I said, “Just tell me
your
story. I’m trying to place people…”

“No,” he answered too quickly, “you’re trying to catch either Ellie or Bella in a lie.”

“Neither one seems to need my help, Lawson. They both rattle off comfortable stories that are immediately countered by eye witnesses.”

“These are my friends, Miss Ferber.”

“I know,” I told him. “I’m sorry, but we have to have this conversation.”

He spoke in a rush of words. “This is all about the killing. I know that, no matter what you say. I just don’t see Ellie or Bella hurting Roddy. Yeah, we all get angry at each other. We got arty temperaments, we flare up, we argue, we stop talking to each other for months; but the bottom line is that we
like
one another. That’s why we get together as a group. Look someplace else.”

Waters jumped in. “Lawson thinks it was Mr. Porter. That’s one reason he won’t go back to the apartment.”

Lawson shot him a harsh look. “For God’s sake, Waters, isn’t any of my conversation private?” For a second he closed his eyes and seemed to drift off.

I repeated myself. “Tell me what happened that night. To you.”

He settled back into the cushions of the sofa, breathed in. His head shook, and I thought I saw tears seep out from the corners. His stare was vacant, faraway.

“Well, it was our usual Saturday night.” A pause. “Except it was different. You know, I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. I’m not sure what I mean by that, except…well, Bella seemed real edgy, like she was ready to pick a fight. We fight all the time, of course—it was what held us together—but the way she was curt with me told me she was angry from the start. She’d been sniping at me ever since I got back from my job and told her I’d bumped into Ellie—and Ellie was going to see Roddy. Earlier her brother hinted that she was leaving me for good. I knew he was tired of me sleeping on his sofa.” He smiled. “Bella had left me many times before, but I’d seen this coming. Bella was getting into new people.”

“New people?” I broke in.

“She saw herself moving up and out of…her old world. And I was the old world. She was socializing with…with more white folks. Downtown.” He shook his head. “Anyway, I thought we’d make it one last fling. One more big night on the town. I got a little depressed because I figured I’d be forced to come back to my apartment.”

“You didn’t want to live there? With Roddy?” Rebecca asked.

“Well,” he stretched out his words, “I knew Roddy wasn’t happy with me. Not that we argued or anything, but I didn’t pay my share of the rent. I don’t make much as a janitor, and I go out to the clubs. Sometimes Bella requires good bootleg gin.” He grinned. “So do I.”

“Did you know Roddy was thinking of leaving the apartment?” I asked.

He stared into my face. “I had a suspicion. When I came to get a change of clothes or whatever, sometimes to get a bite to eat with him, his talk was strained. But I didn’t think he’d thought it through. Where would he go?”

“But you didn’t pay your own way,” I emphasized.

He frowned and dipped his head. “I thought I’d catch up.”

“He told Ellie he was going to move.”

That surprised him. “You sure?” He waited. “Well, I didn’t think he had the nerve to go.”

“He was afraid to tell you.”

His eyes moistened. “That sounds like Roddy.”

“Then what happened?” I went on.

“Nothing much. Bella and I got all dressed up. She wanted to hear Kid Chocolate’s early show at the Spider Web, then go dancing. She insisted we go.”

Waters wandered to the window, staring down into the street. For a moment, Lawson paused, watching him.

“Go on,” Rebecca said.

He furrowed his brow. “She loves to dance. So do I.” He grinned. “The turkey trot. Everyone wants to dance.”

“I don’t,” I spoke up. “If I did the Charleston, I’d gather a crowd.”

He looked at me strangely, but went on. “We got drunk, the two of us. Real drunk. We knew people at the club, so it was easy.” Doubt suddenly swept across his face. “But, you know, even though I was pretty loaded and Bella got wild and funny, I felt that she wasn’t nearly as drunk as I was.”

“What do you mean?” Waters walked away from the window to stand next to Lawson’s chair.

“I’m not really sure. When you get drunk with a woman lots of times, well, you sort of know how they act—the silliness, the foolishness. Well, Bella was out of it. I can’t really put my finger on it, but it was the little things. The way I caught her watching me when she thought I didn’t notice. The way she staggered too much, grabbed onto me. Of course, it may just have been the fact that when we got back to her place—early, too, just after eleven because she said she was tired—she picked the fight she’d been leading up to all night long.”

“And she told you it was over?” I asked.

He nodded. “And she told me it was over.”

“Yet you stayed.”

“I was drunk. It was late. And she told me to stay. That’s what I thought was strange. Get out of my life, but stay over tonight. On the sofa. I didn’t plan to go home anyway. We ended up drinking some more, and I got real dizzy. I fell asleep on her sofa. I don’t remember much after that.” A pause. “I do remember reaching out to her, you know, to fool around, but she brushed me off.”

“That’s it?” Waters asked.

He bunched up his face. “Oh, I remember something we fought about. Earlier. On the way back from the club, she talked a blue streak about Ellie and Roddy—how Ellie was making believe she was Roddy’s friend for late night talks, but really she was trying to seduce him.” He got quiet.

“And?”

“Well, as I said before, I’d met Ellie just that afternoon—she was walking by the building where I work and I was leaving—and she told me about going to Roddy’s that night. Bella brought that subject up again—like she couldn’t leave it alone. We were walking back to her apartment.”

“And?” Waters prodded.

“I thought it was funny. But that news drove her crazy. She kept saying that she was much more beautiful than Ellie. I asked her— what does that have to do with Roddy?”

I was flummoxed. “But Roddy never showed any interest in Bella, right?”

“She was
my
girl,” Lawson insisted. “Why would he?”

“But Bella flirted with him,” Waters added.

Lawson sighed. “Bella flirted with everyone.” He swallowed. “And Roddy
teased
her—and Ellie. He flirted, he flattered. It was all an act. Not because he was cruel but because he didn’t know how else to be.”

“He was playing with fire,” I noted. “Bella and Ellie, eyeing each other across a table. Weapons drawn—sharpened.”

“Anyway, walking back that night, drunk, she brought it up again. Leave Roddy and Ellie alone, I told her. It made her furious. ‘You don’t know your own cousin!’ she screamed. We were walking on the sidewalk in front of her apartment. And she turned and slapped me hard in the face. It surprised me. We went inside and she said she was leaving me. Next thing I knew it was morning.”

“You woke up before her?”

“No, she was banging around the apartment, trying to get me on my feet. I had to get to work and I overslept. I had a wicked hangover. It felt like my head was cotton. I kept staggering around, couldn’t find my shoes. She stood there, laughing. ‘What’s the matter with you? Can’t you hold your whiskey?’ But I’d never felt like that before. So when I got to my apartment and you all were there and then there was Roddy, it was like I was not even awake yet.”

I changed the subject. “You said Bella was socializing with new folks…white folks. I think you mean a particular white man, no?”

“Oh my God. That’s another thing we fought about that night.” He spat out the words. “Jed Harris.”

“Jed Harris,” I echoed.

“Your friend. “ The name hung in the air like a foul curse.

“Well, hardly,” I insisted. “A business acquaintance.”

“Not to hear him tell it.” He smiled. “We knew he was the producer of
The Royal Family
. We all talked about it. It was a little awkward, meeting last summer in your living room. It’s a very small world. Everyone knows he is the man who can make or break a career.”

“Why didn’t you say something to me?”

“What could we say?” He shrugged his shoulders. “You can imagine how surprised we were when he showed up at your apartment last week, standing there, staring from Bella to me…and the others.”

“But why?” I looked at Waters.

Sheepish, Waters answered, “I guess because of his relationship with Bella. It was…a touchy subject.”

“And what was that about?” Rebecca wondered.

“Mr. Harris likes the Harlem jazz clubs and spends time there. He’s got a weakness for beautiful women. Even Negroes. Some folks do. Especially when they look like Bella, light-skinned, gorgeous, sexy, flirtatious…ambitious. Somehow Jed met Bella—uptown at a club, I figure, or at an audition. Bella wouldn’t tell me. I’m not sure where. Maybe even at some speakeasy where the races mingle. He seduced her. It was an opportunity for her—maybe, and she saw a rosy future downtown. The fact that she was seeing
me
didn’t amount to much.” The last words, spoken bitterly, hung in the air.

“It must have bothered you.”

“Well, yeah. Sure. But nothing surprised me with Bella. She loves money more than men.” He closed his eyes a moment. When he opened them, I saw hurt. “They used each other. I knew she’d mentioned me to him— to make him jealous, but I don’t think Mr. Harris gets jealous. She told him about my play. I
asked
her to. I was drunk with the possibility of success, and he said to go ahead, send it to him. He’d read it. He’d meet with me. Now I don’t believe he was serious, he was playing games, but I sent the play and a month or so later I called at his office. He hadn’t returned my calls.” He stopped and bit at the corner of a nail.