The Haunting Ballad (7 page)

“For your leisure reading, young friend.”

Paused before us, the kid mumbled a surprised thanks. My companion nodded and strode on as I hurried to keep up.

“Fear not, Lee,” he said cheerfully. “I'll do nothing to sully our professionalism.”

I actually felt bad for separating him from his funny book. “I'll buy you another one later.”

“No need. I managed to finish the lead story back in the store and now possess a thorough understanding of Batarangs.”

I grinned. “Great. Maybe that'll come in handy during our investigation. In case we run into any rough characters. Thugs hate Batarangs.”

“So goes the common wisdom,” said Mr. O'Nelligan. “Now onward! Onward to adventure!”

 

CHAPTER SIX

 

We stood in front of Minnie Bornstein's store, taking in the name on the large gilt-lettered sign:
TUNES AND PANTALOONS.

“What the hell?” I muttered.

The front door was bordered by two large display windows, each presenting a different assortment of the shop's wares. The one to our right offered a fanned-out collection of sheet music, as well as several instruments including a tuba and what I think was a cello. The left window featured several male mannequins attired in stylish three-piece suits. Entering the store, we saw that the split-themed motif continued inside: music to the right, men's clothing to the left. From behind a rack of music books, out popped a rotund woman in horn-rimmed glasses, her brown bangs framing a smiling full-moon face. She was squeezed into a yellow dress studded with blue and red polka dots—a daring choice considering her size and her age, which I put on the flip side of fifty.

“Oh, hello, fellas!” she said brightly. “We were just closing, but if you know what you want…”

From the clothing area, another figure appeared—a thin, balding man in a crisp gray suit. “Which is it, Minnie?” he asked dryly. “Songs or garments?”

“I'm thinking they're yours, Abe,” the woman called out, her eyes traveling down my rumpled overcoat to the worn cuffs of my pants. “At least the young fella here. Looks like he could use some nice new things. Now,
you…!
” She had noticed Mr. O'Nelligan, he of the natty coat, vest, and tie. “You look fine! I can tell by your deep eyes that you're a man of the arts. What do you play? Piano, right? I've got all the best music, from Bach to Broadway. How about
My Fair Lady
? You look like Professor Higgins himself!”

“Alas, madam, my piano playing is subpar,” my colleague said. “Though, most certainly, I've logged my time on the stage.”

“An actor! An Irish one, right?” Minnie gambled. “If you could make your accent a little more English, I'm
sure
you could play Henry Higgins.”

On the likelihood of passing himself off as an Englishman, the former Irish rebel offered no opinion. Instead he noted, “An interesting enterprise you have here. With an even more interesting name.”

Minnie's grin widened. “You're not the first to say that, mister. See, here's the deal. My Abe here and I came into a bit of money about two years ago, and each of us had always wanted to run a little shop.”

“But not the same shop,” Abe added.

“That's right. I wanted a store where I could sell sheet music and musical instruments. Abe wanted one where he could sell clothes.”

“Men's fine apparel,” Abe clarified.

“Right, but since we didn't have enough money for two shops, we agreed to go with just one and split it down the middle—trousers for Abe, music for me. Tunes and Pantaloons.Get it? The name was my idea.”

“And you're welcome to it,” her husband said in a cranky singsong.

“Oh, don't be such a grumbler, Abe. After all, you could have ended up with a wife who didn't have my creative streak.”

“I should be so lucky.”

“You know I bring panache to the business.”

Abe gestured to his wife's dress. “
Panache
? You call all those polka dots panache? They make me dizzy just looking at them.”

“Hey, you've got to have fun in life! That's why I dress like this. You stick to your grays and browns, Abe. As for me, give me a little razzle-dazzle.”

Abe gave us the stingiest of grins. “Listen to her! At her age she wants razzle-dazzle.” He tossed up his hands. “What do you do with such a woman?”

I felt like I was watching a vaudeville show. Seeing the two of them engaged in their easy, pleasant quarreling made me think of Audrey and me. Or, at least, the “Audrey and me” that I'd known. I wasn't sure exactly what the updated version looked like.

Just when I'd thought that my partner and I had been forgotten, Minnie turned back to us. “So, like Abe asked, what is it—songs or garments?”

As succinctly as I could, I laid out who we were and why we'd come.

Minnie's natural bubbliness subsided at the mention of Lorraine Cobble. Now, aware of our purpose, she gestured distractedly toward the door. “Lock up, will you, Abe, while I talk to these fellas.”

Leaving her husband to his duties, she led us to a small back room where stock from the two halves of the business seemed to overlap. Among stacks of pressed trousers and music books, we sat tightly together in a little circle of folding chairs. Minnie Bornstein expelled a deep, weary sigh and rested her hands in her lap.

“It makes me sad to think about Lorraine,” she began. “Very, very sad. That girl had such promise. I met her when she was still in her twenties, you know, and in a way that's how I still think of her. It's hard to imagine her dead and in the ground.” She gave a little shudder. “Lorraine was so full of life. Not to mention chutzpah! God knows she had chutzpah. Way too much for her own good, if you ask me. Now, I know you're not supposed to badmouth the dead, but honesty's the best policy, don't you think?”

“Yes, indeed,” Mr. O'Nelligan answered for us.

“I mean, why should we pretend that someone's personality was all bells and roses just because they're deceased? I sure wouldn't want anyone to pretty up
my
memory. I've told Abe, ‘At my service, when you're standing by the grave, I want you to step forward and declare,
My wife was stubborn and flighty, and she ate way too many pastrami sandwiches.
' God love him, I know he'll do just that.”

“We understand you share some history with Lorraine,” Mr. O'Nelligan said.

Minnie gave a knowing little nod. “Oh, right. You're detectives. Of course you want to learn all about your suspects.”

I tried to protest. “No, that's not it. We're just—”

“Don't worry, I'm not offended. You just said that Lorraine's death could be suspicious. That means you're looking at people whose feathers she may have ruffled. Certainly, you'd have to put me in that category. Though, to be quite frank, I'm just one among the many.” She paused. “Let me tell you how we met. It was back in '41, just before the war. I'd moved down to North Carolina and was doing some transcribing work for Olive Dame Campbell. I don't suppose either of you know who that was?”

“A prominent collector of American folklore,” said O'Nelligan the Great Know-it-all.

“That's right!” Minnie looked glowingly at my partner. “You
are
a man of the arts. Forty years ago, Mrs. Campbell published a very influential book on Southern Appalachian folk songs. She really was the queen of the songcatchers, so, of course, Lorraine had to ingratiate herself with her. Lorraine had already starting collecting by then. She'd been to Appalachia on her own, and I think Mrs. Campbell saw something of herself in her. She hired her on to work with us.”

“So were you a song collector then, as well?” I asked.

“Yes, I'd done some gathering of old Yiddish songs and such, but once I'd started working for Mrs. Campbell, I got this whole different idea. I wanted to head out west and collect work songs from Navaho and Apache women. Now, I know what you're thinking—what would a roly-poly Jewish lady from New York do with herself out on the plains? Honestly, I was just really keen to take it on.”

My partner unleashed his civility. “I'm sure you'd make the best of any environment, Mrs. Bornstein.”

She dismissed the compliment with a snicker and a smile. “So what happened then is that Mrs. Campbell put me in touch with some well-to-do folks from Arizona who said they'd sponsor my project. I was ecstatic! This was a few months after Lorraine had joined us, and she and I had become friends—or so I thought. She offered to help me follow up on organizing things and ended up being in contact with the benefactors herself. Long story short, Lorraine Cobble somehow talked them into sending
her
and not me out to the reservations. In the end, she didn't gather that many songs, but she sure squelched my dreams.”

“That's real lousy,” I said, and I meant it. “Did you ever call her on it?”

“Of course I did, but she just insisted everyone thought she was the best choice for making the trip—because of her collecting experience and her youth. Anyway, that's the kind of person she was.”

“Did you have much contact with her after that?”

“Not at first. I ended up moving back here not long after and didn't see Lorraine for almost a decade. Then we both found ourselves living in the Village and would run into each other from time to time. I was still dabbling in song collecting, and every once in a while she and I would overlap on some project or other.”

“You'd still work with her after what she did?” I asked.

“Well, I'm the forgiving sort—though I made sure never to put my full trust in her again. To be honest, she was one of the few people around who I could talk with about obscure Ozark ballads or the history of Northumbrian pipes.” Minnie laughed and smoothed out her lapful of polka dots. “Oh, don't get me going on Northumbrian pipes!”

I didn't. “You said there were other people Lorraine Cobble had done wrong to. Such as?”

“Well, you could talk to the gang down at the Café Mercutio. She spent a fair amount of time there and had a number of run-ins, I understand. Talk to Tony Mazzo who owns the place.”

“Mazzo, right.” I remembered him from my last visit.

“He's quite a character,” Minnie said. “Fancies himself a big patron of the arts and a renegade, to boot. He likes to brag how three or four years ago he told the anti-Communist committee to take a giant hike. So, yeah, go talk to Mazzo. Talk to the Doonans, Byron Spires—all those people.”

I revisited my least favorite topic. “About Spires…”

“Sure, he and Lorraine had a run-in or two.”

“There was something about him stealing some Scottish song from her. Did you hear about that?”

“I wouldn't call it
hers
really. That song goes way back, but it's true, she did collect it—at least that particular version. You have to understand that there's no such thing as a single authentic version of a folk ballad. Each time a different singer gets hold of a traditional song, it just naturally undergoes changes. There's one theory that song variations are like Darwin. Survival of the fittest, you know? Over the course of time, as a particular ballad passes from one singer to another, the best lyrics survive and the lesser ones drop away.”

“Leaving the hardiest version?” Mr. O'Nelligan asked.

“Yes, that's it. But despite the changes, the main storyline of the ballad stays intact. What I like to call ‘the spine of the tale.' You can add whatever meat you want—whatever variations—but the main story, the spine, still remains.” Minnie slapped her knee and offered a satisfied grin. “That, fellas, is my own little contribution to the terminology.”

Mr. O'Nelligan smiled back at her. “A fine contribution it is, madam. So, Lorraine had quarrels with Byron Spires…”

Minnie nodded. “Sure. Oh, and ask about … now what was the name? Crimson? Yeah, I think that's it … Crimson Somebody. Strange name. Funny, I can't remember if it was a guy or a girl.”

“Who's Crimson?” I asked.

“A folksinger who Lorraine screwed over—pardon my language. Abe says I curse like a stevedore, but I think that's an exaggeration. Anyhow, the story I heard is that this Crimson person had shared a pile of songs with Lorraine, let her record them and everything. Then one night at one of the coffeehouses—I forget which one—Lorraine signed on to do a set just before Crimson was scheduled to perform. Now, mind you, Lorraine was no virtuoso, but she could strum a guitar and sing a tune well enough. So what she does that night is get up and perform all of Crimson's set. Each and every song! Of course, that left Crimson nothing to do—didn't even bother to take the stage. Crimson confronted Lorraine later, and I guess there was hell to pay. Though, like I've said, this is all just what I've heard. You'd have to ask around to get the full story.”

“Lorraine Cobble sounds like quite the piece of work,” I said.

Minnie shook her head ruefully. “Not exactly a mensch, that lady. I will say this much—there
is
something, in a way, that I owe her. If she hadn't done me such dirt back with the Arizona fiasco, I never would have ended up returning to New York and meeting my Abe. We wouldn't have had our three fine boys, each as sweet as their father.”

Thinking it best not to question the sweetness of Abe Bornstein, I simply nodded. “When was the last time you saw Lorraine?”

The woman's brow wrinkled. “Let me think. A month ago was it? She stopped in here to pick up a book she'd ordered.”

“How was her comportment?” Mr. O'Nelligan asked.

“You mean how was she acting? Like Lorraine Cobble—no more, no less. She was in a hurry. Lorraine was one of those people who always seem to be in a hurry, even when they're not. I do remember she said that she'd just passed someone in the street who looked exactly like Groucho Marx, only much shorter. Funny, isn't it? You know a person and suddenly they're dead, and when you think back on your last encounter, all that sticks out is something silly like that—a tiny Groucho.” Minnie Bornstein paused, a look of contemplation crossing her face. “I guess if I up and died tomorrow, all they'd remember about me is sheet music and polka dots.” Then she laughed gaily. “Hell, it could be worse!”