Lullaby of Murder (21 page)

“I wish my mind would clear,” Fran went on. “There must have been hatred between those two. I remember Tony’s saying there wasn’t much difference between fox and skunk when it came to smell. You have to take into account what the country was like at the time—just before World War Two, isolationism, patriotic and religious fervor—not that I was paying that much attention myself, not at the age of three. But I think we can get the best idea of it if we think of the ‘moral majority’ closer to our own times.”

“Got it,” Julie said.

“Tony had already tried to strike out on his own—to get away from Albion. I may be wrong on dates, but I know it had to be earlier because on that occasion he got as far as Pittsburgh and went broke. This is a story I heard many times: he partnered with a hymn-singing girl from Cheyenne, Wyoming, in a dance marathon. Tony always said she prayed them through the horrors. The rowdies in the audience taunted them—‘Ride ’em, cowboy!’ That sort of thing. They won two hundred dollars, but Tony’s health broke down and he went back home. I think that’s when he got the job on the newspaper. He swept floors, made coffee, even set type—Tony the ‘gopher.’ I suppose that’s why he wanted a fancier name for his by-line.

“About Jeremiah Fox—the way I remember hearing it—with his fundamentalist preaching and showcase baptisms (Tony’s words, but not at the time, of course), he emptied the churches that summer, all except the Roman Catholics. And there weren’t many of them in Albion. I won’t go into why Tony distrusted Fox—I’m not sure I know its origins—but he wrote a story, and set it in type himself, which he called an exposé of religious fakes. I think he probably said there was more true religion in the girl from Cheyenne. But Fox was very popular and he struck back. It got the publisher into real trouble. Tony lost his job. He went back to work on the farm. His brother had been drafted by then, the one who later died at Guadalcanal.

“Then something happened with the Reverend Fox that turned things around. He was given a baby to baptize and he accidentally drowned it. The town turned on him like that.” Fran snapped her fingers. “Tony said he’d never forget the child’s father carrying his body up from the river and saying over and over, ‘He killed my sweet little baby boy.’”

“Oh, boy,” Julie said.

“The Reverend Fox left town without even waiting to take down his tent. After a while Tony was offered his job back on the paper, but by then he was ready to leave for good. He packed his typewriter, books and clothes into his 1931 Chewy and drove to New York. He sold the car for eighty dollars when he got here and lived on the money for three months. I don’t think he left Manhattan again.”

“Did he ever talk about meeting Jay Phillips, the press agent, back in Albion?”

“No, Julie. He did not,” Fran said emphatically.

Julie dropped the subject. “Any word from the police?”

“Only to check this morning to be sure that she’s still at hand.” Fran indicated the figure on the terrace. “Are you going to tell them about Jeremiah Fox?”

“Unless you want to.”

“I have nothing to gain but more heartache by seeking them out,” Fran said. “Do what you think you must.”

J
ULIE TOOK A CAB
crosstown to the Ninth Avenue Studios where she was supposed to pick up Patti Royce at six. People were leaving the building in bursts, frantic for taxis. Julie kept the one she had. Six o’clock passed; five minutes, ten minutes, and no sign of Patti. The cabbie grumbled even though the meter was on his side.

Patti Royce drifted out of the far door looking back as she left the building and again before getting in the cab.

“Let’s go,” Julie said to the driver.

His acceleration rocked them back in their seats. Then he adjusted the mirror to get a better look at his new passenger.

“I don’t know why they don’t make me wear mufti or a sari or whatever it is the Arab women have to wear when they go out in public.” She mimed a swirl of something around her head.

“They?” Julie said.

“I’m supposed to crash onto the scene next week an instant winner.” She temporarily ignored Julie’s question. “Money, money, money.” She laid her fingers with blood-red nails on Julie’s wrist. “Don’t get me wrong, I love money.
They
are my manager, the producers and my agent. Does that make a conglomerate? It used to be fun, like a game: You make this move and Patti goes ahead six places. Only it’s not fun now without Tony.” She turned and looked out the rear window. “I’m not supposed to give interviews unless they okay it.”

“It’s not as though I work for
Hustler
or
The Daily Worker
,” Julie said,

“It’s not you. And ordinarily I don’t mind playing hard to get to, but I’ve been dying to sit down and talk to someone who knew Tony. I just wish they’d get me out of this fucking soap opera.” Her adjective had the impact of the word coming from the mouth of a child, something she knew the effect of but not the meaning. An illusion which she had intended, Julie realized. Patti was a long way past innocence.

“Were you in love with Tony?”

“We were going to be married. I called him daddy. That kind of tickled him. In love, honey? What does it mean?”

Julie took a chance. “Any thoughts on who killed him?”

“Well, yes now. I do have.” She turned and looked gravely at Julie. “We haven’t begun the interview yet, have we?”

“If that’s the way you want it, no.”

The cab turned into Forty-fourth Street and Patti was distracted, looking out the window. “That’s the Actors Forum, isn’t it?”

“That’s it. Ever been there?” They’d have had to break off in any case, about to arrive at the shop.

“Once. An actress I was in a play with took me there.”

“Madge Higgins?” Julie said, naming the actress who had first called her attention to Patti: she had played her mother in
Autumn Tears.

“Do you know her?”

Julie nodded. “I saw her the other day. She’s working in something at the Forum.”

“Will you give her my love? I was such a brat and she was just as nice as she could be. My mother hated her.”

“Let’s talk about
Autumn Tears
when we get inside,” Julie said as the cab drew up to the curb. “This is it, my office away from the office.”

Julie was quick but Patti was quicker. She whipped twenty dollars out of her pocket and stuck it in the cabbie’s cash box. She didn’t wait for change. Julie would have liked to, but she didn’t. “I just got my allowance,” Patti explained.

Mrs. Rodriguez practically dropped both breasts over the windowsill, leaning out to get a better view while Julie opened the shop door.

As soon as Patti saw the crystal ball, she said: “Is that what I think it is?”

“The last tenant was a fortune teller, among other things.”

“Can you read it? Tell my fortune, Julie. There’s things I’ve just got to know.” She sounded in earnest.

“I’m strictly a phony,” Julie said.

“I don’t care. I need to be told something I want to hear.”

Julie motioned her toward one of the chairs. “How about a cup of tea?”

“I’d adore a cup of tea.”

“You don’t mind if I call you Patti?”

“I wouldn’t answer if you didn’t. I don’t like the name Royce, but Mum changed it from Roczinski before there was a Polish pope. I wanted to shorten it to just Rosen, but Mum said there were too many Rosens already. Besides…” She decided against finishing the sentence.

Julie filled the kettle at the bathroom sink and returned with it. “What about your mother? A strong lady, right?”

“Until she died and went to heaven. Or someplace.”

“Let’s turn on the tape recorder,” Julie said. “Then after I write it up, I’ll show it to you before publication. Okay?” She added the qualification at a startled look from Patti.

“We’ll have to get Ron and Ted’s okay.”

Julie set the machine rolling. “Ron and Ted: they sound like a team.”

“Ron’s my manager. Ted’s my agent.”

“Do you need both of them?”

Patti shrugged. “They need each other.” She kicked off her pumps and put her feet up on the coffee table. Her red toenails shone through her hose.

“How did they get along with Tony?”

A mistake: Patti looked up at her and then away with a downward sweep of her head.

“Strike that,” Julie said, “and let’s take the next question.”

“Can’t we just talk, and maybe you take notes the old-fashioned way?” Even as she spoke, Patti got up and went in her stocking feet, to the tape recorder. Near-sighted, she bent close until she found the right button and switched it off. No problem making that decision, Julie thought. Patti said, “Ooooo,” as she went back to the chair and put her feet up. “Don’t your feet get cold on this floor?”

“Yes,” Julie said.

For some reason that struck both of them as funny.

“What was it you asked me?” Patti said. “How they felt about Tony? They were jealous of him, and I don’t think it bothers them much that he’s gone. As long as nobody asks them questions about it.”

“Has anyone asked them questions?” Julie said carefully.

“What I mean is they’re the kind of people who don’t want to get involved. I don’t always say things the way I mean. Ron thinks I’m dumb, but I’m not. It’s sometimes better to play dumb. The police asked
me
questions…about where I was and all that.” I was home, waiting for Tony to call me and say everything was set.”

“Everything,” Julie repeated.

“I’m speaking about the divorce,” Patti said with a chilly directness.

“Remember what you said in the cab about having an idea who might have killed him?”

“It could’ve been his step-daughter and if Tony was alive he’d say so too. She was in love with him, and when she was younger she was so jealous of her mother they had to send her away.”

Oh, boy.

“Did Tony believe that?” Julie asked and tried to turn herself around in order to evaluate the situation from that perspective. Was it Doctor Callahan who had also suggested that possibility?

“I don’t know why he’d say it to me if he didn’t.”

“So that it wouldn’t bother you that he was forty years older than you?” Julie suggested.

“I adored him being forty-two years older.”

“How did you feel about Fran?”

“I didn’t feel anything about her. If you got a man and you want him, you try and hold him, and if you can’t hold him, you might as well let him go, ’cause he’s going anyway.”

“That’s one way of looking at it,” Julie said.

“You think I’m not very moral, don’t you?”

Julie shrugged. “I’m a great suspender of judgments.”

Patti thought about that. “Meaning you can’t afford to have an opinion that gets in the way of work?”

“All right,” Julie said and got up. The kettle was coming to a boil. And it was time they got to the more conventional interview materials—childhood, school, home, pets, hobbies and when first did you want to be an actress? Oh, God.

“Even a secret one?” Patti was still on the subject of opinions.

Julie brought the tea. “I do have opinions I keep to myself.”

“I have lots of them,” Patti said, “but that’s because I need to keep changing them.”

“You really did want to marry Tony, didn’t you?”

“Yes.” The lower lip shot out. “But don’t ask me why because if I tell you it probably won’t be the real reason. I met Tony first when he came to the Irving Theater to interview me during
Autumn Tears,
but you know I don’t remember that time at all?”

“Do you know why you don’t? I mean when somebody as young as you draws a blank it often means they wanted to forget. Say, you hated the play or the part or somebody in the company…”

Patti gazed at her over the top of the steaming mug. “Sweetie, you have to be just about the smartest woman I ever met.”

Julie shook her head. “In a court of law it would be called the witness. I did a lot of homework. Let’s get off the main track for a few minutes and talk about Jay Phillips. All right?”

“I don’t want to much, but if you say so…. He’s dead and Mum’s dead and that poor awful wife of his…and now Tony. And in a way, I almost died. My career, I mean, and I don’t mean that’s more important than human life. But you could look at it one way and see how unlucky I am to people. I don’t suppose Mr. Phillips would ever have wanted sex from me if I wasn’t the way I am, and that was what he wanted.”

“He might have,” Julie said.

“That’s what Tony said: it was like a disease and he’d had it for a long time, as long as Tony ever knew him. I used to think my mother gave me to him—like in exchange for all the publicity he could do for me, and she wanted him to show a play to his money contacts before I got too old for the part.”

Julie harked back to Eleanor’s conviction that Tony had given her to Jay. Did it go with the violation? A way to alleviate the guilt? “Did you feel guilty?”

Patti thought about it. “About doing what I did with him? No. I’d have felt more guilty if I hadn’t done it. But that’s me. Julie, what was your mother like?”

“Well…she’s been gone for years and I’m only beginning to understand her. I used to think she steered me into marriage with Jeff because she wanted him herself.”

“Isn’t that interesting?” Patti murmured, fascinated. “Did she teach you how to flirt with him?”

“No…she went to the other extreme—trying to make sure I hung onto my virginity till my wedding night.”

“Oh, wow.”

“It was already too late,” Julie said. “But not by much.”

“Tony would say virginity is out of style.”

“After one wearing,” Julie said. “What about Jay’s poor awful wife?”

“She was about as creepy a person as I ever met, and you got to believe I meet a lot of spooky types. Mum and I had an apartment in the East Fifties during the run of the play, and you know what she did? She came to see Mum and me to beg our forgiveness for what Jay did to me. Honest to God, Julie, the man went home and confessed to his wife and here she comes.”

“Had you told your mother before?”

“Never, but like I said, I felt she’d planned it. And when his wife was saying how he felt so terrible and was going to take treatment and about how she’d forgiven him…. Oh, gosh, it was awful. And what did my mother do? She turned around and told the silly woman she was going to make such a stink. In other words she was going to take advantage of what happened to get what she wanted. You got to know—my mother was the pits.”