The Winter of Her Discontent (28 page)

My eyes landed on a man across the aisle hiding behind a newspaper. I squinted to make out the headlines. An army plane had crashed into Hofstra College, killing the pilot. And starting April 1, the meat ration would be one and three quarter pounds per week.

There was the missing piece. Garvaggio's urgency to pull out of the Bernhardt wasn't because of something that had already happened but because of something that was going to occur. I tapped Jayne on the knee. “Only Tony doesn't have to shut Garvaggio down because the feds have new regulations that are kicking in on April first and nobody will be able to sell mystery meat as beef anymore. Heck, nobody will be able to sell anything since the new regulations
mean the black market meat industry will be finished for good. But why would Garvaggio want to take out Al for that? Even if he found out he was spying on him, he had to know everything was going to change by the end of the month.”

“That's the thing,” said Jayne. “Vinnie found a way to get around the new regulations: he got his hands on the stamps the USDA is going to make the legal dealers use.”

“No!” I felt queasy. As it was, I wasn't sure I was going to be eager to eat meat again, but now there was no way to guarantee that even the stuff the feds approved was what it claimed to be. And what about the soldiers? Who's to say the food we were sending them wasn't pig parts, horse legs, and whatever unfortunate dog wandered into the shop the day the butcher needed to turn over the government's slice?

Jayne barreled ahead with her story. “So not only would Vinnie still be in business come April, he would likely be the only one still making money on meat. Tony couldn't stomach that, so he had Al filch the stamps. Only Garvaggio found out about it. Apparently Vinnie's stamp source dried up. His meat operation's his biggest earner and without those stamps the whole thing was going to be lost come April.”

I shook my head. “So naturally he figured if he put the hurt on Al, he could get the stamps back.”

Jayne nodded. “It was Tony's bright idea to stick Al behind bars. When Paulette's body was found, he told Al to claim the crime and promised him that as soon as Garvaggio cooled down, he'd see to it that he was released.”

“Fat chance that's going to happen. Clearly Garvaggio has been visiting him whenever he can to try and put the squeeze on him.” I felt terrible for Al, who was not only in the bing but being subjected to Garvaggio's constant visits and threats. “Here's what I don't understand: if Vinnie still wants Al's head on a platter and Tony's committed to keeping Al safe, why doesn't Tony clear Al's name, get Al out of there, and stash him someplace Vinnie's not likely to find him?”
And why were they letting Garvaggio in anyway? If Al had the clout to say he didn't want to see me, couldn't he tell the guards that he didn't want to see Vinnie either?

Jayne's mouth remained open, but no sound escaped. It was a question without an answer. For now.

I snapped my fingers. “You know who would know? Vinnie Garvaggio.”

“And how do you propose getting him to squeal?”

“Same way you got Al to do it: tell him you were Tony's girl but you're finished now. Tell him you couldn't take the way Tony was keeping things from you.”

Jayne raised an eyebrow. “You think that's safe?”

“Why wouldn't it be?”

Neither of us could come up with an answer. It wasn't until later that I realized that with Al officially off the hook we still weren't certain who had killed Paulette.

W
E ARRIVED AT REHEARSAL TEN
minutes early. While Jayne went to warm up with the other dancers, I attempted to find a quiet place to look over my script. Unfortunately, Izzie had a different idea.

“We missed you last night,” she said.

“Sorry about that. Neither of us were in the mood for the Canteen after Jayne's boyfriend got through with us.”

She ran a hand through her blond curls. “She told me it's finished.”

“She's said that before. Hopefully she means it this time. She actually wrote to one of the boys she met at the Canteen the other night.”

“Good for her.”

I attempted to return to my script. Izzie was hovering so close she cast a shadow over it.

“And what about you? How are things going with the fellow you met?” she asked.

Zelda was a regular Hedda Hopper. Telling her something was as good as telling it to Izzie. At least I wasn't having to repeat myself. “I'm not sure. I might see him again. He'll be back in a week.”

“What do you mean
might
?”

I was getting tired of her giving me the third. I didn't want to think about Peaches. I had bigger things to worry about. “Look, Izzie: I don't think I want this to go where he wants this to go. He's clearly looking for romance, and all I wanted to do was help lift a soldier's spirits.”

“Because of your ex?”

Even if Jack never existed, I still wouldn't have felt comfortable
plunging into a relationship with a man I'd met twice. I wasn't a woman who fell head over heels or believed in love at first sight; it didn't seem right to take less time choosing a mate than I did ordering a sandwich.

Which reminded me: I was hungry. And I wasn't eating meat.

“You know, Rosie, there's no harm seeing him again. Jack's never going to know about it, and I think the lift you'll give your pilot is worth a little discomfort.”

“But what if he's looking for romance, love, and marriage? I can't give him that.”

“You're an actress, aren't you?”

Lying about your feelings to make the bills was one thing, but this? This was deception. Sure it made someone in a low spot feel good, but was that fair? Did we really want to convince every soldier, sailor, pilot, and marine that everything at home was A-OK and there was a little woman waiting for each and every one of them? Maybe it would help them get through the night, but what would happen when the war ended and they discovered that the dreams they held in their heads at night were nothing but tin painted to look like silver?

I didn't have time to ask Izzie any of this. Walter arrived and we all went to our respective places backstage. As we huddled waiting for our entrances, I became aware of an acrid odor filling the room. The dim space grew even dimmer and through disjointed, light-headed thoughts I finally recognized what I was smelling: smoke.

I turned to the rear of the stage, where a spiral staircase led to the bowels of the building. The smoke was worse there. “Fire,” I yelped, amazed at my own delay. “Fire!”

Everyone ran to the front of the house and pushed out the doors. Thirty seconds hadn't passed before the familiar whine of the NYFD filled the afternoon sky. I counted heads to make sure everyone was out there and was relieved to find no one was missing. We were safe.

The fire, it turned out, looked much worse than it was. Someone had dropped a lit cigar in the costume shop, but rather than spreading, the fire had smoldered, producing a lot more smoke than danger.
The costumes were gray and the building stunk, but otherwise, everything was okay. Had the fire spread and the firemen been forced to delve deeper into the basement, the odds were good that Garvaggio's racket would've been uncovered, a possibility that I'm sure didn't escape his mind when he dropped the cigar to begin with.

“This has got to stop,” said Friday. We were given the all clear and the fire truck pulled away. The girls waved at the men who'd allegedly saved us, and they waved back, admonishing us to give up smoking those nasty cigars before someone really did get hurt. Friday left the street and entered the building as the stage manager announced that that was it for the day. No director—not even Walter Friday—could expect us to rehearse in a smoke-filled room.

While everyone else dispersed, Jayne and I crept back into the building in search of Friday. We found him in his office.

I knocked on the doorframe. He was seated at his desk staring into a glass of clear liquid that I was pretty sure wasn't water. “Mr. Friday? Could we have a word?”

He sucked on a tooth and pushed his hand through his hair. “Now's not a good time, doll. Nobody's supposed to be in the building.”

Jayne tugged on my sleeve and tried to pull me away from the door. I wasn't ready to give up, though. It was now or never.

“I'm sorry, but this can't wait. Someone could've been killed.”

Friday lifted his glass like he was toasting us. “Why do you think I'm drinking?”

“And that's not the half of it. You've had a flood, and so many accidents it seems like we'd be safer overseas than onstage.”

He downed the glass and slammed it onto the table. “You think I don't know that?”

“You've got to give this up. Tell Garvaggio you'll shut down the show.”

“I can't do that.”

“Why not?”

He unsteadily attempted to refill his drink from a crystal decanter. “Because I'll be ruined, that's why.”

“With all due respect, it's not that great a show to begin with. I'd think it would be better for you if it never opened than being torn apart by the critics come opening night.”

He downed his second drink and tipped himself another tumblerful. “This has nothing to do with the play. You think these guys just lend you money and you pay them the interest? It don't work like that. From the get-go, Vinnie's deal said if the show didn't open, he got back twice his investment. I thought he was doing it to make sure I didn't use the money for something else. It didn't occur to me that he never intended for the show to happen.”

And it probably wouldn't have occurred to Vinnie either if the feds hadn't decided to get involved. “Did he kill Paulette too?”

“Why would he?” I had no answer. He wouldn't, clearly, because if he had, then everything he would've done since that point would've been an escalating act of violence to get the show shut down, not these penny-ante annoyances. “Now the press has got hold of what's been going on, and even if I do open, it's unlikely anybody will come see it. I'm damned no matter how you look at it. I'll never earn back the money I owe Vinnie.”

I felt for Walter. Sure he was a drunk with wandering hands and bad breath, but he wanted his career back so badly that he'd made a deal with the devil. It had to be devastating to learn that the risk you took was a poor one.

“Any press is good press,” I said.

He flashed me
The Times
's “News of the Stage”, which began with the lead, “London may have had its Blitzkrieg, but rumor has it New York is about to be hit by an even bigger bomb: Walter Friday's
Goin' South
.”

“I'll never recover from this,” said Friday.

“Maybe you could report him,” Jayne offered. “Get the feds to raid the joint before we reach the deadline.”

“He'd know it was me. He's told me since the get-go that if I breathed one word to the cops I was going to be missing a lot more than money.”

“What if someone else did it?” I asked.

“He'd never buy it.”

“No, what if it was clear who it was, if that person admitted it and everything. If Garvaggio was in the pen, there's no way he'd be able to pull out his money, right? We've got a week to get the show together, and I'm betting with no more accidents or interruptions it just might have some potential.”

He wobbled to his feet. “I guess. But what you're suggesting is suicide. Nobody would cross Garvaggio like that. Any man who did would be dead by Monday.”

I gave him a wide grin. “Then it's a good thing it's not a man who's going to do it.”

 

“I know you feel bad for the horses, Rosie, but you're not going to squeal on Garvaggio, are you?” Jayne and I were on the street, a block away from the Shaw House. We'd waited to confer on what the next step was until we were well out of earshot of anyone who might be an interested party.

“Of course not.”

She looked relieved for less time than it took for a gnat to blink. “You're not suggesting I do it?”

“Don't get your girdle in a knot—neither of us is going to do the deed.” We needed someone who wouldn't have to worry about retribution from Vinnie. There was only one person I could think of who could put the screws to him and walk away unscathed. “I have another person in mind, someone who deserves to see her rat of a boyfriend get his comeuppance.”

“Gloria?”

“The one and only. Vinnie used to work for her pop, so he wouldn't dare hurt her. Not only is the guy stepping out on her, but he deliberately told her she had talent only to use her to bring down this show. That, to me, deserves revenge.”

“But how are you going to get her to do it?”

“That's where you come in handy.” We had two goals: set up a
scenario where Gloria finds out about her no-good, two-timing boyfriend and get Garvaggio to spill about why Tony hadn't bothered to move Al out of Rikers. I was hoping we could accomplish both activities in one fell swoop.

We entered the Shaw House and crossed the lobby with the intention of heading upstairs to plan out our strategy. Before we made it halfway across the room, Norma Peate called out to us.

“I was starting to think you two didn't live here anymore,” she said.

Norma was one of those girls I'd known forever but didn't know at all. She'd lived at the house almost as long as I had, but we'd restricted our conversation to hellos and good-byes, and neither of us seemed to want our relationship to go beyond that.

“You know how it is when you're a week from opening,” I said. I thought we were done, so I showed her my back and started up the stairs.

“Did you get my note?”

I paused and turned around. “What note?”

“I left it on your door two days ago.”

Jayne shook her head at me. Either someone had filched it or the cat had eaten it.

“Let's assume I didn't,” I said.

“You had a phone call,” said Norma. “From a Paul something.”

“Ascot?”

Norma snapped her fingers. “That's the one.”

My heart dropped into my feet. My contact from Jack's unit had called. And I'd missed it. “Did he leave a number?”

“He said there was no point. He was heading out in the next hour. He said he's called before—several times—and was disappointed you hadn't phoned him back.”

“And whom do I have to blame for that?”

Norma showed me her palms. “Don't shoot the messenger. This is the first time I've answered that phone in weeks. He said he'd try again the next time he's in town.”

“So he's gone?”

“That was how I understood it.”

I fought tears. “When did he say his next leave was?”

“He didn't.”

I stomped up the stairs and into my room. I did my best to slam the door, but the wood was so flimsy that it didn't provide the satisfactory bang I was looking for. I collapsed onto my bed, and the tears I'd held back came down hot and angry.

“I'm sorry, Rosie.” Jayne crept back into the room, closing the door much more gently than I had.

“I hate this place,” I said.

She sat beside me and gently combed her fingers through my hair.

“I can't believe I missed him. And what kind of awful, selfish woman wouldn't tell me I had a message?”

“They didn't know how important it was. And we have been pretty scarce.”

I sputtered away her excuse. “And who the hell would take a note off our door like that?”

“It could've fallen off and gotten thrown away.”

I rolled onto my back and stared at the ceiling. “Paulette had the right idea when she left. Nobody looks out for you but you.” I was being melodramatic and I knew it, but I was too upset to care. Someone needed to be blamed for this and for once it wasn't going to be me.

Jayne retrieved a handkerchief from the night table and passed it to me. “You could hire an answering service. Write and give him the new number, that way you won't miss his call next time.”

I blew my nose and mopped my eyes. “Assuming I could afford that, how do we know there'll be a next time?”

“Why wouldn't there be?” I glared at her, and she dropped her face to the bed. “Oh.”

“Oh is right. I don't think we can depend on anyone making it to their next leave.”