Poor Butterfly (7 page)

“Gwen,” I said.

She looked up from putting the scraps of paper into neat piles.

“Yes,” she said, giving me her full attention.

“You know what to do?”

“Yes,” she said. “I’m checking alibis. And you want me to see who, if anyone, doesn’t have reasonable corroboration, an alibi, for the period in question. You’d like me to do the same for the period in which Mr. Wyler the plasterer died. In that case, I am to determine who was at the rehearsal.”

Lundeen looked at the girl hopefully. Perhaps she would solve all of his problems. The police had certainly failed to solve any of them.

After Erik had heaved the ax, Lundeen had insisted on calling the authorities. About twenty minutes later a pair of cops were ushered by Raymond into the mezzanine box where Lundeen and I were waiting. On the main floor, about forty people were gathered, waiting to find out why they had been called. The workers weren’t complaining. They were paid by the hour. Some of the opera staff were grumbling. There were no musicians around. Lundeen assured me there was no way he could have kept any musicians sitting around waiting for the police.

The two cops asked who we were, where they could get more light, and why the auditorium was full of people. Raymond shuffled off to turn on the lights.

“Old guy’s nuts,” said one of the cops, who identified himself—when urged by me—as Sergeant Preston. Sergeant Preston had a craggy face and a thin body with a little cop gut. He wore a suit and the suit was clean, but it should have been turned in to the Salvation Army for rags.

“Nuts,” agreed his partner, a big man with a constant smile and rapidly thinning blond hair who introduced himself as Inspector Sunset. Sunset’s suit had a few years left in it.

They listened to our story. Sunset took a few notes, enough to keep us from claiming he wasn’t paying attention. Preston listened but with no real interest. He was looking over the railing at the people below. After he’d listened to our story, Sunset looked down at the ax.

“Never been to an opera,” Preston said.

“I have,” said Sunset. “On the carrier
Forrestall
. Don’t remember what it was. We thought it was going to be scary, about bats. Fat guy sang in German.”

“That fat guy was me,” Lundeen said. He had been sitting on one of the plush but dusty chairs. Now he stood.

Sunset looked over at him as the full lights went on.

“Fact?” he said.

“You can put it in your notebook,” Lundeen assured him. “And I weighed no more than two-twenty when I gave that performance.”

“None of my business,” said Sunset with a smile, looking down at the ax and seeing it now in better light. “Looks like blood all right.”

“Take it in for Grunding,” said Preston, still looking over the railing. “And get their statements. Standing here looking down makes you want to give a speech. You know, I did a little singing when I was just starting on the force?”

“Yeah?” said Sunset with genuine interest.

“Crooning,” said Preston, turning from the railing, looking at Lundeen. “No opera.”

“No opera?” Lundeen said. “Pity. Then we have less in common than I had hoped.”

“Just for the police shows, kids—even got on the radio once.”

“You think we might talk about murder, attempted murder?” I interjected.

Preston gave me a sour look and glanced at Sunset, who shrugged as he picked up the ax with a handkerchief.

“A man named Wyler was killed here a few days ago,” I said. “And today someone tried to kill me with that and strangle Leopold Stokowski’s assistant, Lorna Bartholomew.”

“So you said,” sighed Preston. “Voices, butterflies, phantoms. I saw the movie. Claude Rains, Nelson Eddy. Now that’s a great singer.”

Lundeen groaned. “Nelson Eddy is a flat baritone,” he said.

“Sounds fine to me and the wife,” said Preston.

“You and your wife …” Lundeen started, but I interrupted him.

“You have witnesses, Sergeant,” I said, knowing where we would get before we got there.

“Witnesses,” said Preston, moving back to the railing. “The plasterer fell. No one was there. The Bartholomew woman might be having her period or something and you, you’re getting paid to hear voices and find murder weapons. Five will get you ten that’s not human blood on that ax.”

“It’s not,” Sunset agreed.

“Show business people have imaginations,” said Preston. “I’ll give you that.”

That was about the time Raymond returned and asked, “I miss anything?”

“The 1930s,” I said.

Preston chuckled. “You got a sense of humor,” he said. “I like that Let’s go, Al.”

“Let’s … that’s it?” asked Lundeen, looking at me. “What about protection? Investiga … Why don’t you go down and question everyone?”

“Not the way it works,” said Preston, nodding to Sunset to head for the door. “Put a little evidence together here. A body or two with a bullet or knife wound and we’ll talk business. You,” he continued, pointing at me. “Come with us for a second.”

I followed the two cops out into the hall. Raymond started to follow but was waved back in by Sunset, who closed the door with one hand and held the ax with the other. He didn’t seem to be worrying about blood or fingerprints anymore. He lifted the ax up like a bat and began to swing at pitches from a Yankee down the hall. Preston came close enough so that I could smell his Sen-Sen.

“Peters,” he said. “Cut the shit. Tell these people to get their publicity some other way besides finding phantoms.”

“No shit here, Preston,” I said.

“We wouldn’t even be here if the Captain wasn’t afraid Stokowski would raise a stink,” he said. “And I don’t want to come back. We understand each other?”

“You want a murder,” I said.

“It helps,” he agreed. “Aren’t you a little old for this kind of garbage?”

“Aren’t you a little old to still be a sergeant?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he agreed. “Wife thinks it’s the name. You know, Sergeant Preston of the Yukon. Thinks the Captain won’t put me in for a promotion because he likes making the joke. I don’t contradict the wife, but the truth is I’m a mediocre cop waiting to collect pension. That’s just between you and me, right? I don’t want trouble.”

“Picked a strange profession,” I said.

“Poor vocational counseling,” he agreed. “Sunset should have been a ballplayer.”

We looked at the smiling Sunset wacking an imaginary homer into the right-field stands.

“But he took shrapnel in his shoulder back in the Battle of Midway,” Preston whispered. “He’ll just have to settle for being a cop.”

“Look,” Sunset said. “Mel Ott.” He set his feet wide apart and held the ax up high.

“You see where Branch Rickey just announced that the Dodgers were paying the Phils thirty thousand for Rube Melton? I could hit Melton. I could hit any right-hander last year.”

“I know,” Preston said. “Let’s get back to work. Crime is running rampant in the streets.”

That had been three hours earlier. They left, Lundeen sighed, then found Gwen and went down to interview the company and workmen.

It was a little after four when I left Lundeen, assuring him that the opera company was in good hands.

On the way down from Lundeen’s office I listened for footsteps, butterflies, and music, but heard none.

Raymond caught me in the lower lobby.

“Big nose and beard, little pointy red beard,” he said, stroking an imaginary beard under his chin.

“The Phantom?” I asked, walking on.

“Damned right,” he said.

“I thought you didn’t get out much?” I said.

“Not much,” he said, gangling after me as I hit the doors to the outside.

“That’s the description of the Phantom the opera director gives in the movie,” I said.

“Coincidence,” said Raymond.

“Why you wearing a shirt and tie and overalls, Raymond?” I tried.

He looked down at himself as if this were startling news.

“Want to look my best,” he said. “Make a good impression. Big things going on. Good-looking women. Want to keep working here when they pack up and leave.”

“You don’t think the opera is staying?” I asked, opening the door and looking down. One of the old lady pickets was gone, but the old man and the other woman were still holding their placards high.

“Nope,” Raymond said. “Smell funny in here to you?”

I sniffed.

“Plastery-like,” Raymond went on with a shiver. “Building liked itself the way it was. It was sleeping peaceful. Now they’re waking it up. It’ll get all this dust in its ducts and sneeze everyone out of here.”

“Except you,” I said.

“Probably,” he agreed. “I know places to get a good hold when the sneezing starts.”

“You’re a poet, Raymond.”

“Creativity runs in the family,” he said. “Father was a trumpet player. Got me my job here back when I came back from fighting Villa. Goin’ to rain.”

“Looks like,” I said. Raymond ducked back into the building, and I went down the steps right toward the old man with the placard.

“Got a question,” I said to him when I reached the sidewalk.

He was wary, but any attention was better than what he was getting from the departing workers. The old woman looked at me hopefully and put down her sign.

“Got an answer,” the old man said. “And the answer is quit this place and help convince others to do the same.”

“Wrong answer,” I said. “You mentioned a Reverend …?”

“… Souvaine,” the old woman piped in.

The old man gave her a look of distinct rebuke.

“I am the on-site spokesman, Cynthia,” he said to her.

Cynthia looked properly put in her place.

“I’m sorry, Sloane,” she said.

“The Reverend Souvaine is the spearhead of God in the battle against the godless,” said the old man, looking up to God with a small, knowing smile. God spat a few drops in his face.

“Getting God and politics a little mixed up, aren’t you?” I asked.

“They are, as the Reverend Souvaine points out, inseparable,” said the old man, looking at the woman, who nodded her approval.

“How do I find the Reverend?” I asked.

“He does not hide,” said the man.

“Amen,” said the woman.

A pair of women leaving the Opera looked over at us, then pretended to return to an absorbing conversation.

“Where doesn’t he hide? Where do I find him?”

“Church of the Enlightened Patriots,” replied Sloane. He reached into his back pocket and came out with a crumpled sheet of paper announcing an open meeting at the church. The date had passed, but the address and telephone number were there.

“Think it would be a good idea to get the lady off the street and get her a glass of iced tea?” I suggested. “It’s starting to rain.”

The man cocked his head to one side and looked at me with new eyes. The madness passed.

“The work of the church is Cynthia’s and my life,” he said softly. “It gives us meaning, purpose. Cynthia has not been well and doesn’t have … We will stay till there is no one left in the building whose mind and soul we might still touch by the truth.”

“Sure?” I asked. “I could give you a ride to the church.”

“I’m sure,” he said, and the madness was back. “We are sure. Have we touched your soul? Is that why you wish to see the Reverend?” There was hope in his question.

“You’ve aroused my interest,” I said. “I’d like the Reverend to give me some more information.”

“Amen,” said Cynthia.

“Amen,” I added.

The old man gave me directions to the Church of the Enlightened Patriots and I headed for my Crosley.

I’d left the windows open a crack. The crack had been enough for the Reverend’s trio to stuff through a handful of leaflets. I put them in a pile on the seat next to me, started the Crosley, and went out in search of the church.

I found the Church of the Enlightened Patriots on an intersection just outside Chinatown. I was impressed. It was a red brick building with two sides curving down from a central clock tower. Above the clock was a carillon. At the top of the central tower were four crosses, one facing each direction, and a pinnacle with a bigger cross. I got out of the Crosley, waited for a streetcar to pass, and started up the stone steps before I saw that I had the wrong building. Above the door was written:
OLD SAINT MARY’S CHURCH.
I stopped a Chinese woman who was hurrying down the steps clutching a black patent leather purse to her breasts and asked her for the Church of the Enlightened Patriots. She pointed to the next corner and made a sharp gesture to the right to indicate a turn. Before I could thank her, she was gone.

I went down the street she had pointed to and found the church. It looked as if it had gone through a few changes. It was a wooden two-story building painted white, with a wooden sign with black lettering announcing that this was the church and the Reverend Adam Souvaine was the pastor. There was no parking lot next to the church, which was wedged in next to a second-hand bookstore and a four-story office building whose sign, twice as big as that of the church, announced that there were vacancies.

It was after five and the street was empty except for a few cars parked along the curb. It was raining lightly. I locked the Crosley and found a burger joint half a block away.

The joint was small and clean with white tile floors and swivel stools at the counter, where you could see the grill. A few customers were chomping burgers and downing coffee or cola. I sat at the counter, where someone had left a copy of the San Francisco
Chronicle
. I ordered a Pepsi and a burger from the old Chinese guy in the white cap and apron sweating at the grill and learned that the Allies were repelling new tank attacks in Tunisia and that our planes were hitting Naples, Turin, and Rouen. The British had opened a new drive in Libya, and the Nazis were admitting that their defenses had been pierced.

“Nazis been pushed back more than seven hundred miles from El Alamein,” the sweating guy behind the counter said, handing me the Pepsi.

“Montgomery’s a tough fart,” said a burly guy in a plaid shirt at the end of the counter. “Even if he does talk snooty.”

“British all talk that way,” the grill guy said, turning to my sizzling burger.