Downtown Strut: An Edna Ferber Mystery (Edna Ferber Mysteries) (12 page)

Waters grunted.

“Just what do you know?” I cut into a speech she obviously found a pleasure to deliver.

For a moment she swung away, her face closing up. Then, “Nothing.”

“You think Skidder was involved?”

“That’s what
all
the evidence and
all
the police have concluded. The rest is aimless imagination on your parts.”

A tenant from the second floor bounded down the stairs, stopped short when he saw us gathered in the hallway. He eyed us warily as he buttoned his overcoat and slipped out the front door.

“Good,” Harriet announced loudly. “We’re providing entertainment for the winos that occupy the upper floors.” She motioned behind her. “You might as well come in. Pop won’t be back for an hour, if then, so there’s no chance he’ll go into shock at discovering all of you, especially the famous novelist, huddled on his old sofa.” She stood aside and shooed us in, our arms bearing the piles of manuscript.

I took in the apartment: stark white plaster walls cluttered with gaudy knickknacks bunched onto makeshift shelves, so many that the ceramic ivy planters and orange carnival vases and plaster-of-Paris figurines seemed on the verge of crashing to the floor. It was a hoarder’s dreary paradise, a world in which the smallest object that catches the eye, be it a shiny glass snow globe or a tin ashtray stamped Atlantic City Boardwalk, was pocketed, and then duly displayed. Shelf after shelf of tchotchkes, sagging under the burden of utter kitsch. Harriet spotted me surveying the mad bazaar and said out of the side of her mouth, “My mother, when she was alive, couldn’t pass a church rummage sale without adopting the most hideous items offered. And,” she summed up, “my father assumes it is some kind of shrine to her, seven years after her death.”

A quick rapping on the door, and she jumped. Freddy walked in, brown bag in hand and a cloth satchel over his shoulder. He strode in but stopped short, faced us, some fierce judge and jury lined up on the sofa. “What?” he stammered.

“The Inquisition,” Harriet told him. “Come in. You’re a half-hour late.”

“Really, Harriet,” Rebecca admonished.

“Sometimes Freddy surprises me with food. I suspect he works in a restaurant, but he’s taken a vow of silence.” She pointed to the brown bag. “I smell a ham sandwich perhaps.”

He slid into a chair, mouth shut, but his eyes danced about the room. I caught him glancing furtively at Harriet, but then he lowered his eyes, avoiding us.

For the longest time we sat there in awkward silence. I kept adjusting the stack of folders in my lap.

Finally Waters, nervous, spoke. “Guess what, Harriet? Miss Ferber spoke with Langston Hughes at a party and he said he’d meet with us after New Year’s.”

He had barely got out the excited words when Harriet broke in. “Good Lord, Waters. Listen to you. Langston Hughes is not a god. He’s a young guy. What is he? Twenty-five or -six, maybe. So he’s published. So people know who he is. He’s a Negro like the rest of us, a guy who writes poetry while bumming around Harlem.”

“He’s successful, that’s why,” Waters answered.

She drummed her fingers on the table. “And so will we be…without his connections. Think about it, Waters. How did he make it? Didn’t he go to Columbia, a white man’s school? And, like Zora Neale Hurston, he’s got this white woman supporting him, a few dollars here and there, a smile, a biscuit, clothes, some bus fare. Please write me a nice little poem about Uncle Tom and Little Eva. Yes, Massa. Everyone knows about Mrs. Mason, that rich dowager in her Fifth Avenue penthouse. Langston, do this. Zora, do that. Ridiculous.” She turned to me. “Is she your friend, Miss Ferber?”

I stared into a hostile face, the petulant child, confused and bursting. “No, Harriet, I’ve never met the woman. And I’m certainly no one’s patron.”

Harriet ignored me. “Freddy and I are different from you, Waters. And from Lawson and Bella and…” She stopped when she heard Freddy grunt. He wanted no part of this. “I grew up here. I look out my window and see an alley. You look out and see a prep school.”

Waters sputtered, but his mother laid a gentle hand on his wrist.

“The new generation,” Harriet went on, “has to have a
Negro
voice. Everything else is dead now.”

Silence in the room: the kitchen clock ticked too loudly.

“Well,” I said, “we have to be going.” I nodded at Rebecca.

Then Harriet thundered, “Freddy, these people think somebody else killed Roddy. Or helped Skidder. Or paid him. Or…I don’t know.”

Freddy sat straight up and the brown bag of sandwiches slid off his lap to the floor. “So what?”

Harriet laughed. “Do they know something?”

Freddy now looked directly at me. “Forget it. Yeah, Harriet and I talked about it. I mean, the nonsense Waters has been mouthing off about. Just because everybody showed up that night and now lies about it.” He stopped, uncertain of his own words.

“Everyone?” I asked.

He backtracked. “I didn’t mean ‘everyone.’”

I followed up. “So far we’ve only heard about Bella hiding in the shadows, which she denies. And Ellie, who says she never got here.”

Harriet grumbled. “Of course, Bella denies it. It makes her look bad, sneaking and spying on Roddy, hiding like that. But I know Bella—I told you I could even smell the gardenia perfume she slathers on. I caught a glance of her shadow. She was here. Maybe midnight or so.”

“But she says…” Waters began.

“I
know
what she says, Waters. Bella can never be trusted, folks. This here is an evil woman, out for number one. Her looks are her curse. Like Lawson. Good looks stop the growth of character in children.” She grinned. “Write that down. Words of wisdom. She and Lawson with their ofay skin think they can be honorary white folks. But it doesn’t work that way. Dark black folks like me”—and she pointed at Freddy—“and him, well, we’re the lampblacks and we learn the truth early on.”

“What is the truth?”

“Miss Ferber,” she responded, her voice softening, “you’re a nice lady and all. I’m sure of it. I
know
that. The fact that you’re sitting up here now in Harlem—and I don’t mean listening to jazz at Connie’s Inn—says something good about you. But you’ll never understand
this
.” She waved her hand around the room. “That afternoon when I was in your apartment—the grand piano and the thick carpets…the…eighteenth century writing desk you’re proud of…and the view of the treetops of Central Park. Your living room is longer than my life. I felt…lost there.”

“You can’t let a grand piano intimidate you, Harriet.”

“It’s worth more than I am…in some eyes.” She breathed in. “So, yes, Bella is a liar who
was
outside the apartment that night. But, as much as I dislike her, I’m not calling her a killer. She was hiding in the shadows here because she’s jealous of Ellie, not because she was waiting to kill Roddy. That makes no sense.”

“But Roddy had rejected Bella,” Waters said.

She laughed. “Roddy rejected everyone.”

“You, too?” Waters asked.

“He had no interest in me. One time a drunken flirtation. Men get drunk and they gotta flirt. I’m the super’s rebellious daughter. Roddy was all soft edges; I’m hard as glass. And I like it that way. He’s…he was…”

“What?” From Waters.

“Nothing. I don’t know.”

“Freddy,” I asked, “So you didn’t mean that everyone was here that night. But I suspect you were.”

Harriet laughed derisively. “Of course he was. Maybe Freddy’s right. Everyone was here that night.”

Freddy squirmed. “Shut up, Harriet.”

“Come off it, Freddy. The Upper East Side Detective Agency will find out sooner or later. Tell them why.” Freddy bit his lip while Harriet settled back in her seat. “It’s because Ellie was here that night. Supposedly. Even though she
denies
it now. She told everybody, it seems, that she was going to see Roddy, no matter what. She was an angry woman.”

I tried to recall Ellie’s exact words. “But Ellie swore to me that her plans changed, that she never came here after she finished at the club.”

Again Harriet scoffed. “Poor little Freddy,” she began, though there was some affection in her voice, “has an unrequited crush on Miss Ellie Nightclub, and, though she looks right through him because she’s part of the high-yeller club herself and he’s inky-dink, the boy can’t help himself. No lie. He follows her everywhere, supposedly to ‘protect’ her from evil, but, more likely, to catch a view of her as she moves through the street.”

“Shut up, Harriet,” Freddy muttered.

“I think it’s kind of charming,” she added.

“What about Ellie?” I asked. “Did she lie to me? Was she here?”

Silence.

Harriet waited, and then looked at Freddy. “Tell her, for God’s sake. You spend enough time looking at Ellie with mooncalf eyes, Freddy. Tell her.”

Freddy was fidgeting in his seat, his foot kicking the dropped paper bag.

I spoke up. “Freddy, I saw you outside my building the day Ellie visited me—when she swore to me that she went home after singing that night. You were by the bus shelter.”

Freddy looked embarrassed but he nodded. “That was stupid of me. Yes, I was there—to see what she was up to. She was supposed to meet me for coffee, but broke it off. I saw her on the subway platform, so I trailed her. Yeah, I was there. Real stupid. Not good, let me tell you. You don’t get a lot of Negro boys hanging out at bus stops in your neighborhood. I didn’t look right. I had to deal with a cop for an hour before he let me wander off.”

“Tell her,” Harriet said again, irritated.

Freddy sighed. “I saw Ellie that afternoon. I stopped in at my sister’s for a bite and Ellie lives next door with her grandfather. She was coming out of a grocery as I left my sister’s apartment. She called me over, which surprised me. Lots of times she saw me on the block and looked away. She was in a real crazy mood because, I guess, she had made plans with Roddy but he broke them at the last minute. I guess he’d done it to her before. She was yelling she’d show up at his place after her club act, just see what he was up to. She was boiling. She’d already told Lawson she was going. I guess he told Bella. You know, she suspected Bella was gonna be there. Then she said she was going home after the club. That it wasn’t worth it. I think Lawson told her the same thing. So that night I was hanging out with some buddies, nothing to do, hanging outside a coffee pot a block away from the 135th Street subway. Hanging out on the cold street. I was smoking a cigarette and then, out of the corner of my eye, I see Ellie walking up the stairs from the platform.”

“What time?” I asked.

“After midnight.” He waited a bit. “She was coming from the club. I suspected she was headed to Roddy’s after all. Okay, so I was jealous, surprised, but by the time I started after her, she was gone, lost in the crowd that turned the corner.”

“What did you do?”

“I went past Roddy’s, but everything looked quiet. But I knew Roddy would sneak Ellie in by the back door so Harriet’s father couldn’t hear. So I went down the alleyway to the back, but nothing. Roddy was home—the lights were on, I could see—but everything was quiet. So I figured…well, I don’t know what I figured. I went home.”

“Where is that, Freddy?” Rebecca asked.

He didn’t answer her.

Harriet was smiling. “So everyone
was
here that night. Including me, sleeping in my lowly bed.”

Freddy spoke through clenched teeth. “It doesn’t mean she killed Roddy, Harriet. It doesn’t even mean she came here. You know that. We talked about it already. I didn’t say anything because Ellie
wasn’t
here. I was.”

“At midnight,” Waters mumbled.

Freddy went on. “She was probably going to one of the clubs. Not to Roddy’s.”

“But she was angry with Roddy,” I said.

“Yeah, so what? We all get mad at each other.”

Harriet grumbled. “Maybe she was meeting Bella in the shadows. A meeting of the Roddy Veneration Society, Harlem chapter.”

“She wouldn’t kill Roddy,” Freddy insisted. “She loved him.”

“All the more reason to kill him. He didn’t love her back.” But she paused, drew in her breath. “I’m not serious. None of us killed Roddy, Miss Ferber. Skidder Scott did it for a few pieces of silver on Roddy’s bureau.”

“You didn’t like Roddy,” I said to Harriet.

She pursed her lips and looked toward the street window. “I don’t suppose I did.”

“Why?”

She rolled her tongue into the corner of her mouth. “Well, if you gotta know, he thought he was better than us. I mean, Lawson
acted
that way, Mr. I’m-Gonna-Make-It-Big, but Lawson would knock on my door, we’d go to a rent party together, dance. He may have been bored, but he could be
nice
. He’d even read my poetry—seriously read it.”

“And Roddy didn’t?

“Roddy lived in his own world, and you had to pick a number to come into it.”

“What about you, Freddy? Did you like him?”

Freddy fidgeted. “He was all right.”

“Tell her!” Harriet screamed.

“Christ, Harriet,” Freddy said. “What’s with you?” He swore under his breath. “I didn’t get along with him, okay? One time, you know, he sort of made a…pass at me.” Harriet burst out laughing. “I think it was, but it was hard to read, and he, well…”

Harriet roared. “My God, Freddy, you were furious at the time. Right outside in the hallway, and my father watched it all. He saw Freddy shove Roddy into the wall. And Pop told me to stay away from him—and even Lawson—and when Pop told Roddy he didn’t want him in the building, Roddy shoved him.” It was a furious rush of high-pitched words, and Harriet, her head bobbing nervously, finally stopped.

“I don’t like this conversation,” Rebecca murmured.

“Well, I’m sorry,” Harriet said. “You know why Pop didn’t want the cops crawling around here any more? Yeah, his prison record, sure thing. But when Roddy hit him, Pop yelled that he was gonna kill Roddy, so loud that one of the tenants upstairs, drugged out though he was, came running down the staircase.”

“If he’s innocent, what does…” I began.