Downtown Strut: An Edna Ferber Mystery (Edna Ferber Mysteries) (16 page)

What did these words mean?

But I immediately discovered the reason. Roddy had been working on an essay in the form of a letter: “A Letter to Mr. P.” Sketchy, with many cross-outs and marginal insertions, the piece posited the view that people like “Mr. P.,” an earlier generation of Negro, inhibited the vision of the young Negro American of the post-Great War era. It talked, vaguely and superficially, to Mr. P. about the older generation’s simmering anger and hatred of authority, particularly of white culture, and its distrust of Negro achievement, a resignation to a life of second-class citizenship. Roddy then expanded on W. E. B. Du bois’ notion of the “Talented Tenth,” that percentage of the Negro world born with singular gifts and voice. Mr. P., it turns out, mocked this generation of Negroes, deriding a society that “sissified” the artist. He mentioned exile in France. Josephine Baker. “Glory in France, isolation at home.” “You can exile yourself, but you come back to find yourself a ghost.” “You die and they still won’t bury you.” On and on, bits of thought and heart. “Oh, the sad parade past the white folks who smirk and spit…home to Mr. P’s world, where the old Negro kneels before the white man, then stabs him in an alley. The blame is on the uppity Negro…the young writer, the artist….” The essay talked of psychological violence—the crushing of the artist who dared defy custom. The essay then petered off, unfinished.

Was “Mr. P” the superintendent of his building? Mr. Porter? Harriet’s curmudgeon father, and Roddy’s enemy?

It made little sense to me, this random scribbling. Roddy was clearly trying to fashion some treatise on the difficulties facing the young renaissance writer, dealing with white indifference and old-Negro derision. A penciled-in note: “Pick up
Fire!!
Langston. Zora.”

Then: a few lines I recognized from an old eighteenth century Phillis Wheatley poem:

‘Twas mercy brought me from my pagan land,
Taught my beknighted soul to understand
That there’s a God, that there’s a Savior too:
Once I redemption neither sought nor knew.
Some view our sable race with scornful eye,
“Their color is a diabolic dye.”

And the notation: “Ha! God had nothing to do with it. Maybe the devil…”

Then, a line in French, a quotation from La Fontaine:

“Rien ne pèse tant qu’un secret.”

I translated it in my head:
Nothing weighs more than a secret
.

Then random words: “Exile.” “Violence.”

Perhaps none of it made sense, just late-night scribbling of a troubled young man.

But at the bottom of the heap was a small spiral notebook, pocket-sized; and inside Roddy had penned a few lines in thick black ink, blotted and filmy, as though he were in a rush. Only three pages had words, all underlined. The first page had one line:
It was not a good idea talking about it…coveting is a sin against a God that doesn’t exist.

Page two had the notation:
I don’t trust him
.

Page three amplified the idea, filling the entire page:
I think Mr. Porter comes into the apartment when we’re not here. What shall I do? My stuff is touched, moved, searched. I watch…will watch.
He wrote the date:
December 10, 1927. The first day I noticed.
Then a couple of blank lines later:
I caught Mr. Porter standing by my door, guilty looking, probably having just left. When I asked him why he was rifling through my stuff, he flew into a rage. ‘You and Lawson are leeches.’ But that can’t be the reason, can it? Why?
Then a series of words:
why? why? why? why?

A last line:
He threatened me. I’ve never been threatened like that before.

I placed the notepad on the pile, stared at it. When I reached for my cup of tea, it was cold. I’d forgotten to drink it.

My mind reeled, but one persistent thought rankled: Waters and Lawson were right. Skidder Scott, now languishing in jail and still protesting his innocence, was not involved—or, at least, was just a pawn—in the murder of Roddy. Perhaps I was being irrational, making too gigantic a leap here. But evident in Roddy’s scribblings was fear, distrust, anger. Something was going on. This was not simply a burglary gone wrong: this was premeditated murder. Someone planned his death. I
sensed
it to my soul.

Mr. P? Mr. Porter?

Night wind slapped my bedroom window, and I stared out into the dark winter night. In the elegant cocoon of my apartment, I shivered. Murder. I felt it to my marrow. Someone I’d talked with had stabbed the doomed Roddy.

Chapter Fourteen

Rebecca, Waters, and I sat in the back seat of a yellow cab, headed uptown.

Earlier that afternoon, munching on reheated leftovers Rebecca placed before me, I reread the aborted “Letter to Mr. P.,” as well as the personal entries in the small notepad. From the grave, Roddy was telling me something. But what? In the morning I fielded calls from Hammerstein’s publicist about tomorrow’s
Show Boat
opening; I took calls from Jed Harris’ office about
The Royal Family
. Yet, though I chatted about
Show Boat
and
The Royal Family
throughout the morning, it was as though I remained removed from them. I was the stranger from out of town, maybe Keokuk, Iowa, someone mildly interested in both highly-touted openings. Instead, I ran my fingers over Roddy’s papers, and one awful word echoed in my head like a refrain from Edgar Allan Poe:
murder murder murder
. I closed my eyes, saw flashes of lightning, blood red and dark blue and sunburst yellow. Blackness.

When Waters stopped to drop off something for his mother, I caught him as he readied to leave. “Waters,” I insisted, “help me understand this.” I spread the papers before him, and he read them, his face screwed up and his tongue licking his lips.

“I don’t understand,” he muttered. “Mr. Porter?”

“Well, we do know that Harriet’s father had a problem with Roddy.”

Rebecca sat down next to her son. “I’ve always thought it odd that Harriet badmouths her father so much, yet she stays in his apartment.”

“Well, according to this, Roddy was a little frightened. He didn’t trust him. Why would Mr. Porter go through Roddy’s things?”

“Looking for money?” Waters wondered. “Or evidence?”

“Evidence of what?”

Waters shrugged his shoulders. “I never liked him. I only met him a couple times when I went to visit Harriet. Freddy was there, those times. He’s always there. And the old man made a lot of noise about rabble invading his apartment. We thought we’d hold our writing meetings there—or in Lawson and Roddy’s apartment. But one time we asked him—I was there—and the old man said no. He didn’t trust what we were up to, he said. Harriet told us to ignore him, and, a little tipsy, he disappeared into his bedroom. We heard him snoring so loud, a drunkard’s bad sleep, and Harriet made fun of him.”

At that moment Rebecca suggested a cab ride to Harlem. “Answers,” she stressed. “Maybe it’s about time.”

***

But we were thwarted in our attempt to talk with Mr. Porter. When his apartment door opened, Harriet stood there, clad in her waitress uniform, and the look on her face was a mixture of surprise, anger, and annoyance. The three of us were shivering from the ride up in an unheated cab. Harriet’s eyes took in Rebecca who was dabbing her tearing eyes with a handkerchief; Waters, rubbing his cold cheeks with the palm of his hand; and me, the novelist, undoing her scarf and adjusting her fashionable Marie Perelli hat. We stared back, as though Harriet were the unwanted visitor, the interloper.

“Am I missing something?” she asked in an icy tone. She glanced behind her into the apartment, and I heard the tap-tap-tap of hurried steps. Suddenly Freddy stood beside her. Freddy, so often there. Freddy, who had no address—or any he’d gladly share. A mysterious lad about whom I knew so little, other than his fiery racial proclamations.

“Is your father home?”

She glanced at Freddy. “No.” A long pause. “Why?”

“We have some questions. Going through Roddy’s notes, I found…well…” I faltered.

Harriet looked ready to slam the door because she stepped back and raised her arm; but, in a curiously submissive gesture, she half-bowed and stepped aside. “I suppose you gotta do this. Ask your questions. It must make you feel good to crucify a man whose only pleasure—or is it a vice?—is a hip flask of bad gin and the word of God. So, come on in. Ask
me
. Pop’s not here.”

“Don’t let them in, Harriet.” Freddy’s voice was fierce, and she turned to face him.

“What?”

“Why let them accuse your Pop of murder?”

I shot back, “We are not doing any such thing. Roddy mentioned problems with your father and mentioned that he rifled through Roddy’s possessions.”

Harriet bit her lip. “Is this Lawson’s idea, this interrogation?”

“No,” Waters spoke up. “It’s ours.”

“I don’t buy that. Lawson never liked my father, even though he played nice with him, sat on the stoop with him, friendly, unlike Roddy, who was always sarcastic and miserable to him. Lawson is a phony, a charming boy who wants”—she hesitated—“that Roddy’s murder be
more
than a random blunder by a homeless man. He wants it to make some sense. You all do. And Pop is a convenient target.”

Rebecca interrupted. “Lawson has nothing to do with our visit.”

Freddy spoke up. “If he won’t step back into this building, I just assumed he sent his Bwana missionary and the house slaves.”

Rebecca froze, and Waters sputtered.

Harriet giggled, but she also stepped toward the door. “Freddy’s right. Pop’s a fool but not grist for your assassin’s mill.”

With that, she stepped back and slammed the door shut in our faces. We stood there in the hallway. Rebecca fumed, Waters grumbled, and I was simply amazed. I had little patience with such puerile behavior; but in this case, given the reason for our unannounced visit, I had the feeling this was more than a young woman’s rude shenanigans. From behind the closed door, Harriet and Freddy’s hysterical laughter swelled, as though they’d executed a delicious prank on some attendant fools: Harriet’s laugh was shrill, while Freddy’s was raspy and broken, the roar of a man not used to indulging in hilarity.

“Well,” I announced in my Jack Benny vaudeville voice. But neither mother nor son laughed.

We stood on the front stoop, and I questioned my rash decision to hop into that uptown cab. The door swung open behind us, and we stepped aside as a sloppily dressed man, fortyish and stringy with a gaunt, hollowed-out face, pushed past us, brushing my sleeve unapologetically. If he seemed surprised to see a middle-aged white woman perched on that crumbling stoop, he displayed no reaction. With his unbuttoned overcoat and a scarf slipping off his neck, he looked as if he’d just tumbled, willy-nilly, out of an odorous bed. He stepped onto the sidewalk and fiddled in his pockets. I heard the jingle of loose coins.

“Wait,” Waters suddenly called out to him, and the man swiveled, his eyes wary. He said nothing. “You live upstairs, right?”

The man nodded, but I noticed he was looking at me, as though seeing me for the first time. “Yeah?”

“Could we talk to you?”

Hesitant, the man stared up the block, his feet shuffling as if ready to move. He stiffened, danced around. But he stayed there, pulling his tongue into the corner of his mouth. “Yeah?”

“We were friends of Roddy Parsons, the guy who was murdered.”

Again, the furtive look, the glance up the street. A battered delivery truck lumbered by, choked out black fumes, and the man jingled the coins in his pocket. “Yeah?”

“Did you know him?” Waters asked. All three of us moved onto the sidewalk now, approaching the man, who moved back a step.

“I seen him, sure. Never spoke a word.” I noticed his face twitched, nervous, and the cavernous eyes, deep-sunk, glazed over. This, I told myself, was not going to be good. “A couple times I spoke to his roommate, the Romeo guy, I guess, but I ain’t know him either. A rude bastard.”

“Lawson?” I asked.

“Looked through me like I was nothing. Couple times he shoved me out of the way, always rushing in and out.”

“But you didn’t talk to Roddy?” Rebecca asked.

“No reason to.” He smiled and I saw missing teeth, blackened teeth. “Place like this you best hide away and not make nice with the pretty boys in the back apartment.”

“Have you had any break-ins?” Rebecca asked.

He shook his head. “Nah.” A pause. “Ain’t got a dime to steal.”

“What do you remember about the night he was murdered?” I asked.

A long silence, then a quick intake of breath. “Who are you again?”

I pointed at Waters and his mother. “Friends. Seeking justice.”

He chortled at that. “Police done talked to me already. I tole them the little I knows.”

“And that is?” I persisted.

“Not much.”

“Could you tell
us
?” Rebecca asked, politely. And he smiled at her. She was smiling back at him.

“Most times the house is real quiet, you know,” he began, still looking at Rebecca, who kept her beatific smile plastered on, her eyes warm. “But I stepped out a few times that night, it being Saturday night, come back for cash, left, you know, back and forth.”

“And?” I probed, impatient.

He didn’t look at me, his eyes now cast downward. “First time I left, I was coming down the stairs and someone had just rushed by, headed down the hallway. I didn’t pay no mind, and don’t know if she went to Roddy’s apartment, ‘cause it happened so fast. I figured it was one of the tenants in the apartment across from Roddy’s. They got a girl living there. Paid it no mind, but she was
running
.”

“She?” Waters asked. “You sure it was a girl?”

“Yeah, a girl.” He bit his lip. “But don’t ask me to describe her. As I tole the police, I just sensed it was a girl, you know, rushing back there.” He looked up the street, his feet moving. “Up to the club, but I come back fifteen minutes after, forgot my cash, and I seen someone move in the shadows. There.” He pointed to a narrow alley, dark even in broad daylight. “Like someone just stepped then and there into the alley like they seen me stepping out of the house.”

“Some girl?”

He fidgeted. “I tole you, I barely
sensed
the first and the second, well, maybe it ain’t even a girl. I paid it no mind but the police sat me down and made me go over and over it. What can I say?”

I smiled at Waters.
“
Bella in the bushes.” I pointed at the narrow alley, hugging the building, filled with litter, scraps of blown paper, an icy canyon. Waters nodded. “So you were out all night?”

“No, I tole you I was back and forth. The club I go to is one block over. Most times I come back, get me more cash, you know, hallway is quiet like a graveyard. Except the last time. Sometimes some Victrola gospel coming from Mamie Johnson’s in the apartment next to me, old lady can’t sleep at night and Sundays she just play the phonograph when she ain’t in church…”

“Except what last time?” I asked.

Well”—he enunciated the words—“as I tol’ the police, I come home dog-tired after two or so, dunno the exact time, and I’m ready to climb the stairs when I think I hear rustling back down the hall. A noise I can’t make no sense of. So I step back there, real dumb of me, you know, peek around the corner, and it’s real dark, but I seed their door a little bit open, just a foot or so, and I pay it no mind, one of the boys coming or going. After all, it’s Saturday night”—a thin smile, the broken teeth dull in the daylight—“but I realize later, talking to the cops, that there ain’t no light on from inside the apartment. Nobody there, door open, but no light shining in the hallway, like you’d expect. So I figure it ain’t my business and start to walk up the stairs, a little woozy, you know, and then I hear—I think I hear—this rattling around back there.”

“Like?” From Waters, eager.

“Like someone bumping around in the dark, crashing into chairs. Then it stopped. Or—I don’t know—maybe it went on, but I was upstairs in the hallway then, and stumbling to my bed.”

“And that’s it?” I asked.

He ran his tongue over his lower lip. “Ain’t much, but more’n most folks would tell the police.”

“Do you know Skidder Scott?” I asked.

“Everyone round here knows Skidder. Fact is, he was up on the corner begging that night. I seed him, clear as day.”

“What time?” I asked.

“When I come back the last time, when I see the door is cracked open.”

“So he wasn’t down here then?” I asked.

“Not unless he flew.”

“You don’t think that Skidder Scott killed Roddy?” Rebecca wondered.

The man shook his head. “Skidder scared of his own shadow, that one. He was working the crowd coming out of Mambo’s. No time to murder nobody in their bed. I tole that to the police but they don’t count my words.”

With that, his antsy feet shuffled, and the man, bending into the cool breeze, moved away, his hand touching the brim of his fedora.

“What have we learned?” I stared at the departing back.

Waters smiled. “Bella in the bushes and, maybe, inside.”

“Or Ellie actually making it inside,” Rebecca offered.

“Then why didn’t Bella see her?” Waters asked.

“Because, if we can believe the man’s story, the person entered the shadowy alley minutes
after
he sensed the woman in the hallway.”

Someone was crossing the street, weaving between parked cars, and I heard grunting, a slurred curse. “Well, well.” Mr. Porter was returning home, a well-worn Bible cradled under his arm. “My, my, the kind of folks daylight brings to Harlem.”

“Mr. Porter,” I started, “we wanted to talk to you about…”

“Ah, a trio of vigilantes.”

“Hardly,” I said. “Roddy was writing an essay addressed to a ‘Mr. P.’ Perhaps it was you, a piece about the conflict of generations among Negroes and…”

His hand flew up into my face. I sputtered, but stopped. “It ain’t got nothing to do with me.”

“But,” Waters added, “Roddy made notes about not trusting you…about how you went into his apartment…”

“I’m the super and I gotta do things.” A pause. “I check on things.”

“Does that mean rifling through his possessions?” Waters asked.

He looked toward the entrance to his building. “You people are bothering me. I didn’t do nothing. I go to church and I pray for the likes of Lawson and Roddy. Especially Roddy.”

“Why Roddy in particular?” I asked.

He sucked in his cheeks. “Two lost boys, them two. Lawson is a liar and a cocky boy, a boy who hides from me ‘cause he won’t pay his rent. In my house. And Roddy. That sick Roddy. Well, Freddy could tell you some things about him. It was my Christian charity that kept forgiving and forgetting. But even God gets impatient.”