A Cat in the Wings: (InterMix) (11 page)

Chapter 18

“You really think Basil did it?”

Tony went on to answer his own question. “The guy seems more tragic than dangerous. More victim than assassin.” Suddenly he sat up straight and snapped his fingers. “You know, actually he looks like a man who’d be happy designing sets for prison plays.”

I was seated cross-legged on my living room rug, close to Bushy. We were playing one of our games—S & G, for “stare and glance.” There really was no purpose to the game. No one won or lost. It was just a playful way to pass the time. We would stare at each other. Then turn away. Then just glance at each other. Turn away. The idea was for one to catch the other giving a look out of sequence. A mindless game. But I know that Bushy knows I’m playing a game with him, and that’s good enough for me.

Tony had started to pace. I took my shoes off and noticed that the bottoms of my jeans had become frayed.
And in the role of Raggedy Ann, ladies and gentlemen, may we introduce Miss Alice Nestleton, the forty-one-year-old vagabond-manqué. Tonight’s episode: “Ragamuffin on the Run.
”

“What are you smiling at, Swede?” Tony had been observing me while I was spinning out that fantasy.

“Nothing.”

“Well, get your mind back on the case,” he said teasingly. “I’ve been thinking about that stupid message Basil had to write on the building. What does it mean? And why always on
that
building? You think maybe the woman in the car lived in the neighborhood?”

“I don’t know. But at least we know how Dobrynin supported himself in the style he was accustomed to. He was blackmailing someone.”

Tony objected. “You can’t make that assumption. In fact, it seems more like some kind of drug deal was going down—or maybe payment for stolen merchandise. The graffiti could have been a signal that he had the goods, and the mysterious lady could have been paying off.”

“Ah, but when and where was the merchandise—or drugs, or whatever—delivered? Why wouldn’t Lenny have had Basil deliver that? Basil said he was a
collector.
He never said he
delivered
anything.”

“Well, I guess,” he agreed.

Tired of S & G, Bushy ambled away. I lay down flat on my stomach.

“You want to hear a very odd coincidence, Tony?”

“They’re my favorite kind.”

“I’m pretty sure that 1407 Broadway is at Fortieth Street.”

He considered it for a minute. “Yeah, it is. I know because when I used to gamble some, before I became a born-again set designer, I went there once or twice when I won a big bet at OTB. The main administrative offices of New York City OTB are in that building.”

“That’s nice to know,” I said sardonically. It wasn’t very likely that I would ever have to visit the off-track betting offices. “But the coincidence is that I believe 1407 Broadway was built on the site where the old Met Opera House once stood, before Lincoln Center was built.”

“Yeah . . . so?”

“Well, of course the old Met is said to have been one of the great stages of the world, and virtually every major foreign ballet company that visited the States would appear there.”

“Right. But Dobrynin wasn’t old enough ever to have danced there.”

“I realize that. But his mind was so strange, he may have chosen that building simply for its nostalgic value.”

Tony halted his pacing near the window. He turned around and made an expansive gesture with his hand, as if he were putting the final flourish on a painting. Then he began to laugh. “Imagine the numbskull, big-budget musical somebody’s bound to do a few years from now. They’ll call it
Lenny
—no, that title’s already taken—they’ll call it
Dobie!
And they’ll hire me to do the sets.

“I can see it now. Think on this, Swede. The curtain opens on a darkened stage. A single spot illuminates the wooden backdrop. There’s canvas, miles of light yellow canvas, stage left. And on it is painted an enormous erect phallus emerging out of a bed of toe shoes.”

Tony whooped with laughter.

“What’s the matter?” he asked me when he’d calmed down a little. “Don’t you approve?”

I hadn’t really joined in the laughter because Tony’s mythical set for
Dobie!
came too close to what I had been feeling about the life and death of the great dancer and satyr.

“I like the idea very much, Tony,” I said. “As a matter of fact, I think it’s rather brilliant. And it
is
believable. I think Dobrynin was murdered because of sex . . . or rather, love. Love denied or love perverted or love skewed. And I think Melissa Taniment may have had him murdered.”

“But wait. You believe that she loved him, you said.”

“That’s right. I do. I also believe that he was blackmailing her, threatening to tell her husband about the affair.”

“But if he was blackmailing her all that time, why would she keep going to him? Week after week after week, for years. How do you make love to someone who’s extorting money from you? It makes no sense.”

“Maybe sense has nothing to do with the kind of passion she had for Dobrynin,” I countered.

“Well, it definitely is true that this case isn’t long on sense. But from what you’ve told me about Melissa she’s too desperate, too fragile to do something like that. Sounds like she spends her time pressing flowers into books. Isn’t that what happens to ballerinas, anyway? Too much deprivation, too much discipline, too many hours of practice—it cooks their brains.”

He paused, then added, “Besides, we have no evidence.”

“Yes, we do. We’ve got the videotape,” I said forcefully.

“That’s not evidence. That’s just soft porn.”

“Maybe not. Maybe there’s more in it than we realized. Maybe we didn’t watch it carefully enough.”

He cocked his head and stared suspiciously at me. “Wait a minute, Swede. Are you telling me you want to watch that tape again right now?”

“I am.”

“We’ve got a few problems with that. First of all, the tape’s back at the hotel. Second, we would need a video-player to watch it on. And third, you don’t even have a TV.”

I stood up, walked over to him, and gently stroked him behind one ear, as I would Bushy. “Wrong on all three counts, dear Basillio,” I said gently. “First of all, your hotel is a short cab ride away. Second, we can rent a VCR at the video store on Third Avenue. I did it once before, so I know how to connect it. And last, I do have a television. It’s in the kitchen, on that small rolling table, with a dish towel draped over it.”

He grumbled, thought for a moment, screwed his face up in martyrdom, cursed under his breath, looked around for help . . . but didn’t actually say another word until he had his coat on and was halfway out the door.

“Here,” he said. “This is for you. I found it a few weeks ago and keep forgetting to give it to you.”

He handed me an old color Polaroid print, then closed the door behind him.

I looked down at the snapshot. It was almost twenty years old. It had been taken at some sort of party. Three people appeared in the photo—Tony, me, and Saul Colin, then director of the Dramatic Workshop, where Tony and I had studied. Colin stood between the two of us, holding on to each of our arms.

In the photo, I wore an ankle-length black velvet dress cut very low in front, with puffy sleeves. Around my neck was a choker made of jet. My hair was long and golden and very shiny. I stared at the camera straight on, playing the role I always played back then—mysterious, profound, daring, available, distant. At the time that photo was taken, many men were in love with me. I tried to recall whom I’d been in love with then. I couldn’t.

That poor snapshot made me terribly uneasy. I didn’t know why. I took it to the hall closet and buried it deep inside one of the shopping bags that held the family memorabilia my grandmother had bequeathed to me.

***

Tony came back with the rented equipment and the videotape just as it was beginning to get dark. We watched the tape in the kitchen, standing close together.

The entire dance sequence was only eight minutes long. Because this time I was watching with a purpose, I picked up on various things about the production that had escaped me the first time around. Why, for example, had they decided to dance without music? It seemed almost willful, as if they wanted to disassociate the steps from music.

The tape was just as erotic as ever. In fact it sent a funny kind of chill down my body . . . tentative . . . expectant . . . tactile. After all, the two naked people on the tape were two of the finest dancers in the world at one time—and while age had diminished Melissa’s skill as a dancer, and debauchery hadn’t helped Dobrynin’s, they were still remarkable. And they were dancing one of the loveliest pas de deuxs in ballet, roles that had made them famous.

Yet . . . yet . . . yet . . . as one watched, as one waited, one had the sense that they were mocking themselves, sometimes slowing down, sometimes speeding up, sometimes flagrantly touching in a form of lewd burlesque.

We watched it three times. Tony was silent all through each screening. It was obvious that he was fascinated. It was a form of high-art perversity, if such a thing existed.

“Well?” Tony asked at the end of the third showing.

“I see more each time I watch,” I said. “But it means nothing. I can’t analyze what I see. I can’t tie it to anything real.”

“You know,” Tony said thoughtfully, “I’ve never seen him dance except on this tape.”

“What do you think of him?”

“He doesn’t dance the way I thought he would. I thought he would be more explosive. But maybe that injury was bothering him.”

I looked at him, startled. “What do you mean, ‘injury’? He looks in fine shape to me.”

“I mean the finger, the dislocated finger.”

“What are you
talking
about?” I asked in a demanding tone.

Tony shrugged, rewound the tape, and hit the
PLAY
button. “Look there; look at the last two fingers on his right hand.”

I followed Tony’s pointing finger. All I saw was what seemed to be a small bandage, around the pinky and the finger next to it.

“When they tie two fingers together like that,” Tony explained, “it means that one of them has been dislocated and put back into place. The trainers always tie the two fingers together to keep the dislocated one out of trouble—a kind of support. If the finger was broken they would have splinted it.”

“That’s not a common injury for dancers, is it?” I asked him.

“I doubt it. More common for basketball or baseball players. And drunks who throw a punch at the wrong guy in a bar.”

“Imagine,” I was thinking out loud, “if the man who murdered Dobrynin was just another anonymous barroom brawler.”

“Crazier things have happened.”

I had to follow up on this. I went into the other room and called Melissa Taniment, who was very accommodating now that she’d had time to dwell on the fact that I held the tape. I asked her if she knew anything about the injured finger. She told me that Dobrynin had indeed dislocated a finger just before he’d dropped out of sight three years ago. He had told her that he’d hurt it in a fight in Winnipeg, when he was up there dancing as guest soloist with the Winnipeg Regional Ballet. The finger had never healed properly, Melissa said, but he had refused to seek further medical help.

I hung up and told Tony all that Melissa had said. It was odd how that dislocated little finger was beginning to balloon, resonate. I hadn’t spotted it when I viewed the tape for the first time. Why? I suppose it was because I had been too obsessed with my theory about love denied. Now, who was to say what else I had missed?

“You look upset,” Tony noted.

“I am.”

“What about?”

“Tony,” I said, changing the direction of the conversation, “do you know anything about the Winnipeg Regional Ballet?”

“Let’s see. I assume it’s in Canada.”

“Yes, it is, on the Canadian Great Plains. Wheat country. It’s practically unique in the ballet world. No one can really explain how this very small, provincial company in a culturally deprived area has produced such talented dancers and choreographers year after year. The company’s productions are world-class. But I never knew Dobrynin had danced with them.”

“He must have danced with a lot of companies.”

“Yes, but he hurt the finger in a fight in Winnipeg.”

“So?”

“Tony, the finest dancer in the world doesn’t get into brawls. Dobrynin did a lot of crazy things. But dancers go to great lengths to avoid physical confrontations, injuries. Like surgeons. Like racehorses—a tiny bit of pressure exerted the wrong way can break a leg and destroy them.”

“But apparently he
did
get into a fight.”

“Yes, I’m betting he did. So there must have been something big at stake. Something worth fighting about, taking a risk over. But Dobrynin cared about nothing except self-gratification, right?”

“Well, no. He fed cats.”

I picked up one of the felt cat toys and turned it over and over in my hands.

“Tony,” I said, “you’re going on a little trip.”

“Please, Swede. Please have mercy.”

“Come now, Tony. Canada’s not far. Only a few hours.”

“How? By dogsled?”

I pulled out the massive Manhattan white pages, flipping the pages until I had found the reservations listing for Air Canada. I handed the heavy book to Basillio.

“Is this necessary? Is it really bloody necessary?”

I kissed him on the nose. “I have to find out what happened up there,” I whispered. “You are supposed to hang in there with me. Remember?”

Tony took both my wrists and slid my arms up his chest and around his neck. He whispered something of his own.

“Oh,” said I. “Okay.”

Chapter 19

“Twas a chopt’ time,” as the poet puts it.

I imagine he meant “choppy” or “ragged.” Yes, “ragged” was better. Time seemed ragged as I waited for Tony to return from Canada. For some reason, for some odd reason, I continued to watch that videotape of Melissa and Dobrynin dancing. And when I wasn’t looking at that, I was returning to the overstuffed shopping bag in the closet to retrieve and stare at that old photograph in which I appeared as the siren Alice Nestleton, so worldly yet so innocent-looking with that flaxen hair. I looked like some Edwardian incarnation of Baby Doll. I wondered what Dobrynin would have made of me then. Would I have fallen like the numberless others? Lucky I hadn’t been in the ballet world. Lucky our paths hadn’t crossed. In the intervening years I had come to appreciate just how exquisite male dancers can be.

It was strange that, while I felt I had conducted myself during this case in the most professional of manners, it was only after I had seen the bandage joining two fingers on Dobrynin’s hand that I became fully engaged. Bubbles were beginning to pop into my consciousness.

Visual bubbles, like in the comics. One bubble encircled Betty Ann Ellenville, another Louis Beasley. There was a bubble for each of them. I could see them and then burst them. A bubble for all the rogues and non-rogues. And then a bubble for poor Lucia, awaiting her fate. And, oh yes, a bubble for Mr. Brodsky, the attorney—half-gentleman, half-piranha—sitting among his valuable paintings.

Twenty-four hours had passed. No word from Tony. I’d eaten every Pepperidge Farm cookie in the house—a very bad sign. I often found myself muttering under my breath, “Stay close, Alice. Stay close.” It was a phrase my ex-husband had used a lot when I was playing housewife. He’d taken it from his favorite movie, John Ford’s
The Searchers.
When John Wayne speaks the words to his younger brother in the film, you know the Duke is alluding to Comanches. I never knew
what
threat my husband was referring to when he spoke them.

But I did stay close. Close to home. I didn’t leave the apartment at all. I don’t know how long that isolation might have lasted if I hadn’t found in a bureau drawer one of those absurdly elongated shoehorns, which someone had given me as a gift many years ago. I stared at it, remembering Louis Beasley’s spiel about Dobrynin—how he had used women as shoehorns—and burst out laughing. Not all shoehorns are alike. I went out then to buy some badly needed items.

When I returned, groceries in tow, the phone was ringing. It was Tony. He was at LaGuardia. And he was out of cash. Could I meet him downstairs and pay for the cab he was about to take? Yes, of course.

The cab made it from the airport in forty minutes. I rushed down when I heard the horn blasting, paid the driver, and was starting back toward my building when Tony grasped my arm and pointed toward the avenue. “A brandy, Swede. You owe me one.”

He was flushed, happy, almost triumphant. We walked to a bar on Second Avenue and I bought the drink for him.

“First let me tell you this, Swede,” he said, with growing excitement. “It’s not that small a place! It’s a city! And it’s not all that provincial. There’s all kinds of people up there in Winnipeg. Italians and Jews and Indians—American Indians and Indian Indians and West Indians—and Armenians . . . and God knows who else.

“But, man, is it cold! That wind is something—like in your native land.”

So now he was making the logical but crazy jump from calling me “Swede” to referring to Sweden as my “native land.” I made a silent vow to say something to Tony about his drinking.

Then he got more serious. He leaned in toward me in one of his poor impersonations of a coconspirator and said, “Very strange happenings up there, Swede. First thing I did was walk into the library and go through back editions of the two biggest newspapers published there, between three and four years ago. And what we were looking for was all over the local papers.” He took a long pull on the brandy and looked around the bar, proudly, as if wanting the other patrons to pay homage to his great feat of research. There was, alas, only one other customer at the bar, and he looked far from interested.

Tony smiled at me. “Well, not exactly what we were looking for. But here it is. About three years ago the director of the Winnipeg Ballet, Alexander Luccan, was physically assaulted. He was beaten so bad he had to go to the hospital and stay there for several days. The newspaper stories said that a young dancer in the company had been drinking and had assaulted the director over some grievance—a part he didn’t get. Anyway, this dancer wasn’t named and no one was charged with the assault.

“The people on the staff at the ballet were decidedly unfriendly when I called on them. And as for Alex Luccan himself, his secretary said he’d be out of town on business for several weeks.

“I did buy lunch for a reporter for one of the papers. He says he was pretty sure at the time that Luccan’s assailant was our guy Dobie. But nobody would confirm it.”

“So he never put his suspicions into print,” I offered.

“Right. And Alexander Luccan decides not to press any charges whatsoever. End of story.”

“Was Dobrynin’s name ever mentioned?”

“No,” Tony said emphatically. “Not in connection with the beating. Only the expected stuff about his appearance with the company. Which you know about from Melissa.” He finished his brandy, looked at me with imploring eyes, and then pushed the glass toward the edge of the bar so that the bartender would refill, which he did.

“So, Swede, there you have it. A cover-up. It was probably Dobrynin who gave Luccan that beating, during which he dislocated a finger. But what I don’t understand is why they covered it up. I mean, why not say Dobrynin did it? I thought when there’s a scandal involving a celebrity that it’s good for ticket sales, not to mention newspaper sales.”

I didn’t respond. The importance of the information that Tony had brought back from Winnipeg was beginning to overwhelm me. His findings had created the possibility of a number of wholly new scenarios. It was now conceivable that the murder of Dobrynin had not necessarily been about his personality or his erotic adventures or his persistent betrayals of those who loved him. It could very well have been about the dancer’s place in the world of international ballet—a world of glamour and rivalry and big money and constant deception at all levels. A world that had created the very concept of an international star. A world that has always been marked by financial chicanery—since no ballet company in the history of the world has ever turned a profit.

“Did you hear me, Swede? Why would they cover up?”

I answered him this time. “Alexander Luccan would cover it up if the fight was
not
about alcohol or sexual jealousy or career problems.”

“Okay. So what was it about?”

“How about extortion? Or blackmail. Or revenge. Or torture.”

“Torture!”

“I mean, if Luccan was beaten because Dobrynin was trying to extract information from him.”

“Information about what? This is starting to sound like an espionage plot.”

“Oh no, Tony. I don’t think it was that simple.” He allowed his head to fall heavily into his hands.

“Where do we go from here?” he moaned. “Will you be sending me to Timbuktu—for the waters?”

“Follow the honey to the hive,” I said. A strange turn of folksy speech, I realized, but it had just popped out.

“I hope that’s your grandmother talking, and not you,” Tony said, laughing. “Tell me, where’s the honey? And who’s the hive?” He found his own question even funnier. “God, now I’m doing it, too!” he chortled. “That misanthropic old bat gets under your skin, doesn’t she?”

I raised a fist to him.

“Just kidding, Swede, just kidding.”

“What I was trying to say, Tony, is that the only logical thing to do—the only way to unravel all these knots—is to find the young woman who was paying Lenny to keep quiet.”

Tony slammed his palm down on the bar. “Sold!” he said lustily. “Agreed! We follow the money trail; we find the blackmail victim—the blackmailee, I guess; we find the killer.
But how?”

“A trap,” I replied. “Baited with lots of sticky sweet honey.” I stood up and paid the bartender.

“Where to now, madame?”

“Not to worry, Basillio. You’re not going to Timbuktu. Only as far as the post office on Twenty-third Street.”

“That
I can handle,” he said, and gallantly took my arm.

Once inside the bustling post office, I bought three prestamped postcards and carried them over to a counter, to which several cheap ballpoint pens had been chained. One of them actually worked.

I printed the name
LOUIS BEASLEY
on the front of one card, then his address, then consulted the monstrously big, well-thumbed directory, also riveted to the counter, to obtain his zip code.

The next card I addressed to Betty Ann Ellenville.

The final one was going to Melissa Taniment.

“Okay, Tony,” I said, passing the pen on its chain and the postcards over to him. “Your turn now.”

“My turn for what?”

“Write exactly what I tell you on the back of each card. You have such a wonderful hand.” This was true—Tony has studied calligraphy. I love the bold, beautiful script he writes in.

He waited for my instructions, pen in hand.

“Anna Pavlova Smith,” I said.

“Come again? That’s what you want me to say?”

“Correct. Write the same thing on the back of all three.”

“And that’s it?”

“That’s it. Want me to spell it for you?”

“No, I can manage the spelling,” he said, but he didn’t begin to write. He simply looked at me, waiting for my explanation.

“Listen, Basillio. If you had been the victim of Dobrynin’s blackmail in the past, and you received a postcard with nothing written on it but ‘Anna Pavlova Smith,’ how would you react?”

“I’d be confused—because I’d know that he was dead. And I’d probably be pretty scared as well.”

“Um-hum,” I said, nodding. “And why would you be so scared?”

“Because I’d thought the threat had vanished. While he was blackmailing me, this was the contact signal he used. Now he’s dead. So where’s the signal coming from?

Somebody else may be planning to pick up where he left off.”

“Very good,” I said. “You get this card. You’re pretty shaken up. What would you do next?”

“I’d probably haul ass over to 1407 Broadway. To check if the old handwriting was on the wall again. Because if it is, I’m in trouble—again.”

“Brilliant, Mr. Basillio.”

“No, it is you who is brilliant, Miss Nestleton.”

“No,
you
, Mr. Basillio.”

“No. I insist, Miss Nestleton.” Tony gave me a courtly bow. “’Tis you. In fact,” he said admiringly, “you sometimes partake of that soufflé called genius.”