The Complete Crime Stories (21 page)

Did I get that call? I'm telling you I did. I took the Gilda out twice, and then Parma aimed a kick at me, and then there I was, in front of them all alone, trying to remember how to bow. There's nothing like it.

I went to my dressing room, walked around, and was so excited I couldn't even sit down. I wanted to go out there and do it all over again. It didn't seem two minutes before they called me, and I went down for the last act.

The Gilda and I did the stuff that starts it, and then went off, and Parma had it to himself for the
La Donna è Mobile.
I think I've given you the idea by now that that dumb wop is a pretty good tenor. He knocked them over with it, and by the time the Maddalena came on, and the Gilda and I went out again for the quartet, we were in the homestretch of one of those performances you read about. So the quartet started. Well, you've heard the Rigoletto quartet a thousand times, but don't let anybody tell you it's a pushover. The first part goes a mile a minute, the second part slower than hell, and if there's one thing harder to sing than a fast allegro it's a slow andante, and three times out of five something happens, and many times as you've heard it you haven't often heard it right. But we were right. Parma started it like a breeze, and the Maddalena was right on top of him, and the Gilda and I were right on top of her, and we closed out the allegro with all our cylinders clicking and the show doing seventy. Parma laid it down nice on the andante, and we were right with him, and we brought it home just right. We were right on the end of the stick. Well, that stopped the show too. They clapped, and cheered, and clapped some more, and Schultz threw the stick on me to go on, and a fat chance I could. We had to give them some more. So after about a minute, Schultz played the cue for the andante, and Parma started again.

He started, and the Maddalena came in, and the Gilda came in, and I came in. It seemed to me we got in there with it awful quick, but I was so excited by that time I hardly knew where I was, and I didn't pay much attention to it. And then all of a sudden I had this awful feeling that something was wrong.

I want you to get it straight now, what happened. The andante is the same old tune,
Bella figliav dell
'
amore
, that you've heard all your life and could whistle in your sleep. The tenor sings it through once, then he goes up to a high B flat, holds it, comes down again, and sings it over again. The second time he sings it, the contralto comes in, then the soprano, then the baritone, and they're off into the real quartet. Well, our contralto, the Maddalena, was an old-time operatic hack that had sung it a thousand times, but something got into her, and instead of waiting for Parma to finish that strain once, she came in like she would on the repeat. And she pulled the Gilda in. And the Gilda pulled me in. You remember what I told you about speed? Up there you've got no time to think. You hear your cue, and you come in, and God help you if you miss the boat. So there was Parma and there was the orchestra, in one place in the score, and there were the Maddalena, the Gilda, and me, in another place in the score, and there was Schultz, trying like a wild man to straighten it out. Not a whisper from the audience, you understand. So long as you keep going, and do your best, they'll give you a break, and even if you crack up and have to start over they'll give you a break—so long as you do your best. They all want to laugh, but they won't—so long as you keep your head down and sock.

But I didn't know then what was wrong. All I knew was that it was getting sourer by the second, and I started looking around for help. That was all they needed. That one little flash of the white feather, and they let out a roar.

You can think of a lot of things in one beat of music. It flashed through my head I had heard the bird at last. It flashed through my head, in some kind of dumb way, why I had heard it. I turned around and faced them. I must have looked sore. They roared again.

That whole big theatre then was spinning around for me like a cage with a squirrel in it, and me the squirrel. I had to know where I was at. I looked over, and tried to see Parma. And then, brother, and then once more, I committed the cardinal sin of all grand opera. I forgot to watch the conductor. I didn't know that he had killed his orchestra, killed his singers, brought the whole thing to a stop, and was wigwagging Parma to start it over. And here I came, bellowing out with my part:

Taci e mia saràla cura, la vendetta d'affrettar!

They howled. They let out a shriek you could hear in Harlem. Some egg yelled “Bravo!” A hundred of them yelled “Bravo!” A million of them yelled “Bravo,” and applauded like hell.

I ran.

Next thing I knew, I was by a stairway, holding on to the iron railing, almost twisting it out by the roots trying to keep myself from flying into a million pieces. The Gilda was beside me, yelling at me at the top of her lungs, and don't think a coloratura soprano can't put on a nice job of plain and fancy cussing when she gets sore. The stagehands were standing around, looking at me as though I was some leper that they didn't dare touch. Outside, Schultz was playing the introduction to the stuff between the contralto and the bass. He had had to skip five whole pages. I just stood there, twisting at those iron bars.

Somewhere off, I heard the fire door slam, and next thing I knew, Cecil was there, her eyes big as saucers with horror. She grabbed hold of me. “You go out there and finish this show, or I'll—”

“I can't!”

“You've got to! You've simply got to. You went yellow! You went yellow out there, and you've got to go back and lick them! You've got to!”

“Let me alone!”

“But what are they going to do? You can't let them down like that!”

“I don't
care
what they do!”

“Leonard, listen to me. They're out there. They're all out there, she, and your two kids, and you've got to finish it. You've just got to do it!”

“I won't! I'll
never
go out there—”

They were playing my cue. She took hold of me, tried to pull me away from the stairs, tried to throw me on stage by main force. I hung on. I hung on to that iron like it was a life raft. The bass started singing my part. She looked at me and bit her lip. I saw two tears jump out of her eyes and run down her face. She turned around and left me.

I got to my dressing room, locked the door, and then I cracked. No iron bars there to hold on to. I clenched my teeth, my fists, my toes, and it was no good. Here they came, those awful, hysterical sobs I had heard coming out of Doris that day, and the more I fought them back, the worse they got. I knew the truth then, knew why Cecil had laughed at me that night in Rochester, why Horn had been so doubtful about me, and all the rest of it. I was no trouper, and they knew it. I had smoke, and nothing else. But you can't lick that racket with smoke. You've got to care about it, you can't get by on a little voice and a little music. You've got to dig up the heart to take it when it's tough, and the only way you can find the heart is to love it. I was just another Doris. I had everything but what it takes.

Down on the stage, the bass was doubling for me. He carried the Gilda in, put her on the rock, then picked up a cape, turned around, and did my part. They gave him an ovation. After Parma had taken Schultz out, and they had all taken their bows, they shoved him out there alone, and the audience stood up and gave him a rising vote, in silence, before they started to clap. His name was Woods. Remember it, Woods: the man that had what it takes. But Rigoletto didn't know anything about that, yet. He was up there in his dressing room, blubbering like some kid that saw the boogey man, and looking at himself and his cap and bells. Maybe you think he didn't look sick.

11

Back in 1921, when Dempsey fought Carpentier in Jersey, some newspaper hired a lady novelist, I think it was Alice Duer Miller, to do a piece on it. She decided that what she wanted to write up was the loser's dressing room after it was all over. She had been reading all her life about the winner, and thought she would like to know for once what happened to the loser. She found out. What happened to him was nothing. Carpentier was there, and a couple of rubbers were there, working on him, and his manager was there, and that was all. Nobody came in to tell him he had put up a good fight, or that it was a hell of a wallop he hit Dempsey in the second round, or even to borrow a quarter. Outside you could hear them still yelling for Dempsey, but not one in all that crowd had a minute for Gorgeous Georges, the Orchid Man.

That's how it was with me. There were no autograph hunters that night. There were feet, running past the door and voices saying “I'll meet you outside,” and tenors showing their friends they knew “
La Donna è Mobile
,” and the whistle brigade, but none of them stopped, none of them had a word for me. It got quiet after a while, and the noise outside died away, and I lit a cigarette and sat there. After a long time there was a tap on the door. I never moved. It came again and still again, and then I heard my first name called. It sounded like Doris, and I went to the door and opened it. She was there, in a little green suit, and a brown felt hat, and brown shoes. She came in without looking at me. “What happened?”

“Weren't you there?”

“I had to take the children home after the second act. I heard some people talking, on my way backstage.”

I remembered Lorentz and his real crime at the Cathedral Theatre that day. I was glad there was one person in the world that hadn't seen it. Three, because that meant she had taken the kids out before it happened. “… I got the bird.”

“Damn them.”

She walked around, saying what she thought of them. Cecil never talked like that. She might tell you they were a pack of hyenas, but she never got sore at them, never regarded them as anything but so many people to be licked. But Doris had felt their teeth, and besides she had a gift for polishing them off, you might say, on account of her cobra blood. The cobra strain was what I wanted then. She snarled it out, and I wanted all she could give. Down in my heart, I knew Cecil was right, that it's never anybody's fault but your own. But I was still bleeding. What Doris had to say, it hit the spot.

But it wasn't any consolation scene. That wasn't what she came in there for, I could see that. She seemed to be under some kind of a strain, and kept talking without looking at me. When I started to take the make-up off, she got busy with the towel, and when I was ready for my clothes, she helped me into them. That was funny. Nothing like that had ever happened before. We went out, and got a cab, and I called out the name of my hotel. She didn't say anything. On the way up I kept thinking there was something I had forgotten, something I had intended to do. Then I remembered. I was to sign the contracts. I sat back and watched the El posts go back. That was one thing I didn't have to worry about.

When we got into the lobby, I could see something glaring at me from a chair near the elevators, and I didn't tumble at first to what it was. There had been so many glares coming my way lately that one more didn't make much impression. But then I came out of the fog. It was Craig, my partner, that I hadn't seen since we built the gag chicken coop up in Connecticut, and he had dug in at his place up-state. I blinked, and looked at Doris, and thought maybe that was why she had come around, or anyway had something to do with it. But she seemed as surprised as I was. He still sat there, glaring at us, and then he got up and came over. He didn't shake hands. He started in high, and he was plenty sore. “Where've you been?”

“Why—right here.”

“And why here? What's the idea of hiding out in this goddam dump? I've been looking for you all night, and it was just by accident that I found you. Just by accident.”

Doris cut in, meeker than I ever heard her. “Why—one of the children was threatened with measles, and Leonard came down here so he wouldn't be quarantined.”

“Couldn't he let somebody know?”

“He—it was only to be for a few days.”

That seemed to cool him off a little, and I tried to be friendly. “When did you get to town? I thought you were up there milking cows.”

“Never mind when I got to town, and never mind the cows. And cut the comedy. Get this.”

“I'm listening.”

“You've got just forty minutes to make a train, and you pay attention to what I'm telling you.”

“Shoot.”

“Alabama. You've heard of it?”

“Sounds familiar.”

“There's a big government-aid railroad bridge going up down there, and we build bridges, this here Craig-Borland Company that we've got, even if you seem to have forgotten it. You get down there, and you get that contract.”

“Where is this bridge?”

“I got no time for that. It's all in here, in this briefcase, the whole thing, and you can read it going down. Here's your tickets for the two of you, and remember, you got thirty-nine minutes. When you get there, I'll wire you our bid. I'll put the whole thing on the wire, it's being figured up now. The main thing now is—get there.”

“O. K. Chief.”

He turned to Doris. “And you—”

“Yes sir.”

“Listen to what I'm telling you. This is a bunch of well-bo'n South'ners dat dey grandaddy had slaves befo' de wa', lo's'n lo's o' slaves, and they've got to be impressed. You hear that? You take a whole floor in that hotel, and you roll out the liquor, and you step on it. You do all the things that your bum, sassiety, high-toned, good-for-nothing upbringing has taught you how to do, and then you do it twice.”

“Booh. I know you.”

“For once in your life, maybe you can be of some use.”

“Just once?”

“If you don't put it across, you needn't come back.”

“We'll put it across.”