Murder: The Musical (A Smith and Wetzon Mystery, #5) (9 page)

Ha! So what if orchestra tickets cost upward of $65? No wonder the Theatre was dying.

Her eyes wandered down the first six names and numbers on the list:

Morton Hornberg, director: 4%

Aline Rose, librettist: 4%

Sam Meidner, composer-lyrist: 4%

Carlos Prince, choreographer: 3%

Dilla Crosby, assoc. producer: 2%

Morton Hornberg, producer: 2.5%

When she got to the seventh name on the royalty list, she blinked and looked again. Vaguely, she heard Smith talking behind her, saying something about Mort Hornberg, but it didn’t penetrate.

The last name on the royalty list was Susan Orkin.

Fran Burke, even if you didn’t know better, would never be mistaken for a woman. He’d been christened Francis Xavier, but everyone called him Fran at least as long as he’d been in the Theatre. He was a road manager who specialized in taking out touring companies and tryouts. Although gnarled with arthritis and dependent on a cane, at seventy, Fran was still sharp as a steel blade. It was said that Fran controlled the ice on the street.

Not for the first time Wetzon marveled at the fact that her two careers both were referred to as The Street—one Broadway, the other, Wall. And the similarities didn’t stop there. Both contained producers and managers—stars with tremendous egos. The stalwart reliable Equity actor-dancer could find his like on Wall Street in the honest responsible broker. And Wetzon well knew there were almost as many ways to commit fraud on Broadway as there were on the other Street. Skimming, kickbacks, and padding all came under the heading of “ice.”

Wetzon, lost in her puzzlement about Susan Orkin being on the
Hotshot
Company’s royalty list, didn’t see the man with the cane until she walked right into him. “Oh—excuse—I’m so sorry,” she stammered, and then she realized it was Fran Burke, and he was smiling a big, broad smile, showing receding gums and nicotine-stained teeth.

“Leslie Wetzon! Where you been, girl? Off raising some young ones?” He clasped her hand and chucked her under the chin. Fran wore a rumpled blue suit under his black Aquascutum and no hat covered his thick yellowish white hair, which he combed straight back. Once long ago, when
Company
was in Chicago, he had not docked Wetzon for missing a performance. She’d sprained her ankle when a wagon was off its mark. “You’re family,” he’d said when she thanked him.

“Nope,” she said now. “I’m still single, Fran, just making a lot of money running a business.”

“Come on and walk with me to Shubert Alley.” He didn’t wait for her to make up her mind, but took a firm hold of her elbow. “Yeah, your buddy Carlos said something about it.” Wetzon knew Fran was of the generation that didn’t approve of career women. Oh, it was all right for a young girl to be stagestruck, but once that had worn off, women should marry and have children. Fran had outlived two wives that Wetzon remembered. His third was in a nursing home in Spring Lake, and he was living, last she’d heard, with a woman who had been amanuensis to a Broadway producing team in the 1960s. Now he gave her a thorough once-over. “You don’t look a day older, Leslie.” He walked her along at a fairly brisk pace, considering his condition.

“Fran, you’re a peach. You always were. I loved it when you took us out. A road tour with you as company manager was like being part of a well-oiled machine. There were never any screwups.”

His beefy hand, all dotted with liver spots, clutched the head of the cane. Through his thick fingers she saw a carved wooden skull. “You’re a good girl.”

She found she didn’t mind being called a good girl by Fran, because that’s the way it was. As they turned off Broadway onto Forty-fifth Street, one neon marquee after another testified to the fact that Broadway was enduring, with the active, and hyped, participation of the English, and spectacle musicals like
Cats, Phantom, Miss Saigon,
and
Les Mis.

“Hey, Fran!” Fran was hailed by two hefty stagehands. Both looked familiar to Wetzon.

A bus was loading up in Shubert Alley. Battered suitcases of every variety, color, and condition, from grubby duffels to Louis Vuitton, were piled in a huge mound at the open side of the bus, and the driver, wearing a blue cap with an
X
and a sleeveless down vest over an itchy-looking navy-issue sweater, was arguing with a dancer who had a champagne-colored poodle on a leash. The poodle kept yapping. He was answered by a particularly feisty Yorkie on the bus, who thrust its minuscule nose out of a barely open window.

Fran Burke took charge immediately. Within minutes everything was sorted out and made right. Peace and order descended.

Wetzon watched as cast members and wardrobe people got on the bus, off, then on again, some carrying covered cardboard containers of coffee or tea. She drew a soupçon of nostalgia into her lungs with each breath. The
Hotshot
Company was loading out for Boston, and Fran was taking them. But Leslie Wetzon, girl dancer, was not one of them.

“Fran, listen, Avery wants to take up two seats—” Wetzon recognized one of the actresses who had been with Carlos on Saturday at the theatre. She stopped and stared at Wetzon, and Wetzon thought:
Does she think I’m replacing someone?
She remembered those feelings, too. It was not a part of show biz that she missed.

“Let him.” Fran winked at Wetzon. The actress shrugged, tossed her ponytail, and got back on the bus.

A limousine pulled into Shubert Alley. It edged around the bus, stopping near the door to the Shubert Organization offices. Three men emerged, one of whom Wetzon recognized as Cameron Macintosh, the English producer. They were greeted almost immediately by Bernie Jacobs, president of the Shubert Organization, and headed in the direction of the Shubert Theatre, where
Crazy for You
was still singing and dancing.

“Awful about Dilla,” Wetzon said. She was shivering. Fran took her arm and led her out of the wind and into the outside lobby of the Booth, conveniently on the Forty-fifth Street corner of Shubert Alley.

Fran grunted. He shifted the cigarette to the other side of his mouth with a clench of his lips. Neither sorrow nor joy registered on his florid face. “It’s a wonder it didn’t happen sooner.”

Wetzon’s ears prickled. She couldn’t help it. She kept her tone casual. “Why do you say that?”

A distant look passed over Fran’s watery blue eyes. “She was always playing one against the other.” He shrugged, keeping a wary eye on the activity around the bus. “Oh, what the hell. Dilla always got what she wanted ... until Saturday. Listen, I warned Lenny about her, not to trust her—”

“Lenny?” Who the hell was Lenny? She flipped through her mental Rolodex. Lenny Bernstein?

“Forget it. It was a long time ago. We’ve brought Phil along and he’s a good boy. It’ll be okay now.”

Okay, at least she knew he was talking about Phil Terrace. “Yes, he seems like a nice kid. Do you think he’ll be able to handle the show?”

Fran gave her a grim smile. “We’re all going to help him, you can bet on it.” He patted her on the back and opened the lobby door. “I gotta get the show on the road.”

“I’ll be up for the opening, Fran.”

“Good.” His attention was on the business at hand, getting his company moved out. He opened the lobby door, admitting a piercing gust of wind and a woman in a mink coat and humongous gold earrings, who thanked him and moved on to the box office to buy tickets for
Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me.

The temperature was falling rapidly. Tucking her hands in her pockets, Wetzon followed Fran out into Shubert Alley, watched him do his rolling walk over to the bus. He reached inside his coat and pulled out a notepad. Its pages snapped in the wind. “Anyone missing?” His voice barely carried back to Wetzon.

The driver closed the luggage compartment with a thump and got on the bus. The engine turned over, then filled the Alley with exhaust fumes. Lights came on. Fran climbed the bus steps with some effort, stopped, peered out, and waved at her. The door closed. The bus crawled out of Shubert Alley onto Forty-fourth Street toward Broadway.

Wetzon watched until she lost sight of it. The wind was making her eyes water. Or was it good old
deja vu?
Get a grip, she told herself. It had been fun, maybe more in retrospect because we were all young and talented and each show was going to be The Big One. Had she forgotten the injuries, the tears when a show folded immediately after the
New York Times
pan? Why was it that memories tended to get mushy around the edges with time?

Eager to be indoors, she made haste to Forty-seventh Street and the Edison Hotel, smack in the middle of the block between Broadway and Eighth. The coffee shop had become very popular, particularly with the producers, theatre owners, directors, and choreographers, since the old Gaiety Deli, a longtime Broadway favorite on West Forty-seventh Street, had closed in the late 1970s, reopened, closed, reopened, and closed again. The very uncertainty of its existence proved too hard for the regulars to handle.

On the corner of Forty-seventh Street a derelict picked through a trash basket, opening plastic food cartons and tossing the detritus on the sidewalk. People hurried past, dodging his missiles, ignoring him when a carton sprayed its contents on their shoes or boots, afraid to confront the possibility of deranged violence. Wetzon caught herself—What was the matter with her? She wasn’t usually so cynical. Maybe Silvestri was right. Maybe she ought to talk to someone. Maybe she should just pick up the phone and call Sonya Mosholu. Sonya’s specialty had been bioenergetics, but she was also a shrink, working body and mind. Yes, she would call Sonya when she got home tonight.

She quickened her pace. She wanted to see Carlos before he left town.

The awning over the entrance to the Polish Tea Room said
Cafe
, which always made Wetzon laugh, but then, everyone on Broadway was reaching for the stars, including hotels and restaurants.

A curtain of steam decorated the windows facing the street. Only visible was the notice of the special on a cream-colored signboard:

Cabbage soup

Beef goulash with noodles

$9.95

A bargain, for sure. Wetzon pushed the door open and looked around, shading her tearing eyes. On the right was a cordoned-off area, reserved for theatre notables. The Shuberts, producer Manny Azenberg, and others who were part of the private theatre community, often lunched there on Polish specialties not featured on the menu.

A counter and a smoking section were in the back of the restaurant. On Wetzon’s immediate left were about a dozen tables. Only a sparse few were occupied. Carlos sat at the last table next to the foggy windows. He had a decidedly unhappy expression on his face, and he was not alone.

Silvestri was with him.

Neither Carlos nor Silvestri noticed her; they were leaning toward one another, Silvestri talking intently, Carlos listening, nodding. Like two conspirators. That was an odd switch. She stared up at the arched ceilings that towered over the tacky, greasy-spoon layout. Everything was decorated in uninspired dark browns and beiges. Show posters were scattered without method about the available walls. Sam Meidner was sitting at the counter alone over a bowl of soup, working the London
Observer
crossword puzzle.
Hotshot’s
composer saw her and pursed his lips into a kiss at her. If she ever accepted his overtures, she was sure he would run like the wind.

As Wetzon neared them, she saw the table was a swamp of spilled coffee and soaked and discarded Sweet’n Low packages, in the midst of which sat two grungy mugs. Silvestri was wearing a new tweed jacket over a dark blue turtleneck. Carlos was in black, head to toe. The two were so involved in whatever they were talking about that neither saw her until she stood over them.

“My, my, you boys sure do leave a messy table.”

“Birdie!” Carlos shot out of his seat. Guilt stuck out all over him as he gave her an effusive hug, held her away from him, searching for something on her face, then hugged her again.

She pulled away from Carlos, angry with both of them. “You told him,” she accused Silvestri.

Silvestri had pushed back his chair and was standing, so she had to look up at him. All kinds of emotions churned, tumbled, and bled inside her. She felt as if she’d forgotten to separate the whites from the colors. “It’s not fair, you guys. You have no right.” She was so close to tears she shocked herself.

“Les,” Silvestri said, probably with more gentleness than she deserved, “we weren’t talking about you.” He shoved his hands in his pockets and sat down.

“That’s right.” Carlos’s dark eyes took on some of their old sparkle. He pulled over a chair from an empty table. “Sit, dear heart, and tell Carlos just what it is he’s not supposed to know.”

He sounded so sincere that Wetzon felt bratty and acquiesced. She chewed her lips, conscious that they were already chapped, and began going through her purse for lip cream, getting increasingly agitated and unable to control it. When she found the tube and looked up, she caught Silvestri and Carlos exchanging glances. “Gotcha,” she said. They weren’t talking about her? Sure. Well, she could take care of herself.

“We were talking about Dilla, Birdie.” Carlos glanced at his watch. Parked behind his chair were a buttery black leather carryon and a matching shoulder tote.

“What did the M.E. say?” She caught Silvestri’s annoyance in the stiff tilt of his shoulders. “I’m in this, Silvestri, up to my ears. You can’t keep me out. I know all the players better than you. And I was there when Dilla’s body was found.”

“What damn good will it do if you know? All this stuff only adds more pressure to your problems.”

“I don’t have any problems,” she said haughtily. “And I might be able to help.”

“Oh, yeah? And when did you get your gold shield?”

“Please, children, play nice. Poppa is leaving town for a little while—he has to dance for a living—and he would like to know that his babies aren’t going to kill each other while he’s gone.”