Poor Butterfly (19 page)

“It will be a disaster,” Lundeen protested, throwing charts and graphs on the floor.

“Consider the alternative,” said Jeremy.

Lundeen stopped ranting and appeared to consider the alternative.

“Yes,” he said.

I finished the sandwich and went to work on Charles the Chauffeur’s apple.

“That’s settled,” I said.

“Perhaps,” said Lundeen, “but there is more to this hoary tale.”

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a crumpled piece of paper. He handed the paper to Jeremy, who handed it to me. I uncrumpled it and read:

If she sings tonight, at midnight she will be the third to die
.

Erik    

“It was pinned to my office door when I arrived this morning,” Lundeen said.

“What does it say?” Vera said, reaching for the note.

I considered keeping it from her but it was her life, her choice. I held it out and she took it. She read it quickly and then read it again.

“Do you think he …?”

“I don’t know, Vera,” I said. “But you sing and we’ll see that no one touches you.”

“Can you guarantee that, Toby?” she asked, her large brown eyes looking down at me.

“No.”

“I’ll sing,” she said.

“There’s a good chance we’ll have the Phantom before the performance,” I said. “Gunther’s following up a lead I got from Miguelito.”

“The dog?” Lundeen asked.

“The dog.”

Lundeen shook his head in disbelief.

“Ruined,” he said. “Vera, we must get on stage. We must rehearse. I’ll have to go over the blocking.”

“Jeremy,” I said. “Stick with her.”

Jeremy blinked once to show me that he understood. I left the room, closing the door behind me. I could hear Lundeen’s voice through the closed door calling on the phone for the costume shop.

Something was bothering me, but I had too many pieces to put together.

C
ap back on my head, stomach not quite full but satisfied, I made my way back to old Raymond’s tower. He wasn’t there. The door to the room was off its hinges and the furniture, what was left of it after Ortiz and Jeremy’s best-out-of-one match, was one step away from kindling.

I looked around but there was nothing much to find. No clues to Raymond’s past, present, or future. I gave it up and headed back down the steps. I hit the first level down and heard a creak from behind. I looked up in time to see a barrel tottering at the edge of the top step. Someone was behind it, but I couldn’t see more than a dark shape.

“Hold it,” I said, but he didn’t hold it. He let it go and it started klomping down. The steps were narrow, the landing a few feet across. I jumped down two steps hoping the barrel would break up or stop at the landing. It didn’t. It did pop open and begin to spit out nails.

I tore down the stairs pursued by the barrel and a laugh above me that I didn’t like at all. I got halfway down the second narrow flight and tripped, which probably saved my life. I fell on my shoulder and tumbled faster than the barrel. I went flat at the next landing and tried to hide under the bottom stair. The barrel bounced and sailed about an inch over my head, crashing past, raining nails.

I got to my knees and touched the parts of me that might be broken. I was still operating. Charles’ uniform was dead, punctuated by flying nails and splintered stairs, but I wasn’t. I was damned mad. The laughter above me had stopped, but I went up. I was hurting, but the hell with it.

“Laugh, you clown,” I shouted. “I’ve got one for you that’ll put you in stitches.”

I could hear the barrel come to a crash somewhere. I stopped. Silence. And then the sound of footsteps above. I went up the steps two or three at a time. Whoever was above me was scrambling now. I kept coming. When I made it to the landing in front of Raymond’s sanctuary, I stopped. There was no one in the room, no place to hide, no place to go.

Listen, I told myself. Don’t even breathe. Listen. Out on the bay a foghorn blew. I waited and then heard a creak to my right, near the window in Raymond’s room. I moved to the dirty window and saw that it was open a crack. I pushed and leaned out in time to see a cape disappearing around a corner of the tower. If he could do it, so could I. I climbed out the window, found a foothold, a narrow brick-width stone ledge, and started after the Phantom. I held tight to the bricks, kissed them, and didn’t look down, but I knew down was a long way off. A piece of ledge cracked under my foot. I told myself to take it easy. I turned the corner. No one was there. I kept inching and found another open window. I was about to plunge through when a flying bust of some Greek came sailing past my nose. I ducked, holding onto the window ledge, expecting someone to cut off my fingers. Instead, I heard footsteps moving away from the window. I went over the edge and back into the building, tumbling onto my side. I sat listening, letting my eyes get used to the darkness again, and then I got up and went after the sound of heels hitting wooden floors. I didn’t know where the hell he was going, but we weren’t going down. My hands touched curtains, metal rails. Sounds echoed and the guy in front of me hummed.

“You want singing?” I shouted. “I’ll sing.”

I bellowed out “The Love Bug Will Get You If You Don’t Watch Out” and what I could remember of “Minnie the Moocher” and bumped into a door. I shut up, found the handle, stepped through, and almost fell a hundred feet to the stage below. I teetered on the edge of a small platform beyond the door, looking for something to grab. I was reaching for a rope and going forward when he pushed me from behind. My hands caught one of the ropes and held. I turned my head for an instant to see a flash of cape as the door I’d tripped through closed.

I considered calling for help. Someone might hear me, but I didn’t think anyone could get up here before my grip slipped. I started down the rope, not knowing where it would end. I found out fast. I ran out of rope with a forty-foot fall below me. The red velvet stage curtains were touching my face. I grabbed for a fold, caught it with one hand, and did the same with the other. There was nothing to climb, nothing to use, and not much strength left in my fingers.

I closed my eyes, felt my stomach go, and a musty breeze brush my face. I had time to think that I had either let go of the curtain and was falling, which I didn’t believe, or that the curtain had torn from my weight and was falling with me, which I did believe. I stopped with a jerk, lost my grip, and fell backward on the stage.

When I opened my eyes, I found myself looking up at Raymond Griffith.

“That is one dangerous way to have yourself a good time,” he said. “I can tell you that. I didn’t let you down you’d have been creamy mushroom soup.”

I sat up and looked at him. He was bedecked in overalls and a clean shirt. A cardboard suitcase sat next to him.

“You are going somewhere?” I asked, trying to stand but shaking too much.

“Distant horizon,” he said. “Time I moved on. Forty years is enough to spend in one place, my mother used to say.”

“Why would your mother say that?” I asked.

“Maybe she said four years,” he answered with a shrug.

“I don’t want to be ungrateful, Raymond,” I said. “But I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to stay till after tonight’s performance.”

“I’ve seen
Madame Butterfly
,” he said. “Think I saw the U.S. of A. premiere. Didn’t like it much. I’ve seen a lot.”

“I’ll bet you have,” I said. “Ever see
La Fanciulla del West?
”

Raymond’s idiot yokel mask dropped. “Sorry you saved me?”

“No,” he answered in a voice I’d never heard from him. “Sorry you ask too many questions.”

He picked up his suitcase, turned, and headed for the far wings.

“Hold it,” I called, rising on wobbly legs.

“Peters,” he said, “I’m not staying around to get myself killed or spend the remainder of my life behind steel bars. I’ve spent my life playing everything from minstrel shows to third-rate opera. It’s kept me alive, and that’s the way I want to stay. I signed on for this role, but the play’s getting too serious for me.”

“Cherokee, Texas,” I said.

“You’ve got all the pieces,” Raymond said.

I took a couple of unsteady steps toward him when the door at the back of the auditorium started to open. Instead of crossing the stage, I rolled behind the fallen curtain and duck-walked to the wings. I looked back to see Preston, Sunset, and a pair of uniformed cops moving down the aisle toward the stage, I got up, took off my shoes, and ran into the darkness.

Vera’s dressing room was close by. I went for it. The door was open. The lights were out. I left them that way and felt along the wall for the curtained-off closet to the right. I pushed back the curtain, went in, closed the curtain, and sat on the floor behind hanging clothes. I felt around on the floor and found a plaster head with a wig on it. I moved the head carefully, took off Charles’s frayed jacket, put it on the floor under my head, and with a groan curled into an aching ball.

I fell asleep. I don’t remember the dream very well. Koko was there. So was Winston Churchill. Raymond was dressed as a Japanese cowboy. That I remember. Then the sound of voices awoke me and then the light went on.

It wasn’t exactly bright in the closet, but I could see Raymond clearly. He sat in the corner about three feet away, looking at a spot just above my head, his suitcase in his lap. He was definitely dead. I could tell that even without the sword sticking out of his stomach.

“… so Osa Johnson said,” a woman’s voice came as I tried to quietly sit up, doing my best to ignore or overcome the pain. “She said, ‘I’ll bet the cannibal natives are wondering why we’re killing so many Japs. They know we can’t possibly eat all of them.’”

I made it to something resembling a sitting position.

“That’s very funny, Gwen,” Vera said.

“Actually,” answered Gwen, “I thought it was when I read it, but it just seems a bit stupid now.”

I could see the out lines of the two women against the cloth curtains draping the closet. Vera appeared to be sitting at her dressing table.

“It’s all right,” said Vera. “I appreciate your helping me. I … we’d better get ready. My first-act costume and wig are in the closet.”

I was propped in one corner, the dead Raymond in the other when Gwen threw back the curtain and pushed the clothes back to reveal us.

“You know what time it is?” I asked.

Gwen looked at us and gasped. Vera heard her, turned in her chair, saw me and the sword sticking out of Raymond, and screamed.

A knock at the dressing room door. Vera jumped from her chair, closed the closet curtain, and said, “Come in.”

The door opened and I heard Sunset’s voice.

“You all right?”

“I was rehearsing,” said Vera. She went up and down the scales to prove her point.

“You’re all right?” Sunset repeated.

“Fine,” she said. “I’ve got to get made up and dressed. Mr. Butler, could you stay and give Gwen a hand with my costume?”

“I’ll be outside,” said Sunset.

The door closed. Footsteps. The cloth curtain was pulled back and I looked up at Vera, Jeremy, and Gwen.

“I did not do it,” I said, nodding at Raymond. “I came in here to hide and fell asleep. When I woke up, there he was.”

Jeremy helped me up.

“I believe you,” said Vera. “Can we … I’d rather not look.…”

I stepped out of the closet and Gwen closed the curtain.

“What time is it?” I asked.

“Just before six,” Gwen said, looking at her wristwatch. “Dress rehearsal is at eight.”

“We can’t leave him in there,” Vera said, pointing at the closet.

“Call the cops and I’ll be up for two murders, and spending the night with Detective Sunset, who would probably use my head for batting practice,” I said.

“I’m afraid you can’t get out of here, Toby,” Jeremy said.

I looked around the room. There wasn’t much to see.

“Dress rehearsal is at eight,” said Gwen again, looking at the closed curtain.

“Maestro Stokowski is not pleased with the compromise of using John Lundeen as Pinkerton,” said Jeremy.

“It looks as if Martin Passacaglia will be all right for opening night,” said Vera, taking Gwen’s hand. “If not, the Maestro found a tenor in Los Angeles who can be down here in a day.”

“Wouldn’t the new guy have to rehearse, block, whatever?” I asked.

“It helps,” said Vera, “but featured singers sometimes come in the afternoon of a performance, go through simple blocking, and then do it. It’s not the best way, but it’s done.”

“Looks like I’m done, too,” I said.

“No,” said Vera, touching my cheek. “I think I have an idea. Gwen, we need makeup, costumes, wigs, and men.”

“That’s always been my philosophy,” Gwen agreed.

Vera explained her plan. I’d heard better, but it wasn’t bad.

“Jeremy,” I said. “Gunther and Shelly are in Lundeen’s office. Can you get them down here?”

Jeremy nodded and moved to the door. Gwen went with him. I went back behind the curtains while they opened the door and went out. When I heard Vera lock it, I came out.