The War Against Miss Winter (7 page)

Frank shook his head and the slightest hint of fear yanked the color from his face.

She winked at him. “Then be a doll, would you, and step into the hall so Rosie can lock up.” Reluctantly, Frank did as he was told while Jayne and I applied our lids and grabbed our purses. As we dusted, his eyes burned tiny close-set holes in my back.

“Does that answer your question?” Jayne asked as we hit the street.

I struggled to keep pace with her. “What question?”

“What I see in Tony B., silly.”

We walked all the way to Times Square and ducked into Horn and Hardart. The place was plastered with small signs indicating things they were out of and unlikely to be able to create any time soon thanks to shortages: egg salad, roast beef, hamburger. I wrangled my change until I had enough coin for a pair of ham sandwiches, a piece of pie, and two cups of coffee—stretched with chicory—fresh out of the Automat’s machine. After Jayne’s performance, the least I could do was treat her to lunch.

“So who was he?” she asked as we waited for the counter worker to
place a second sandwich behind the glass.

“I’m not sure. He was at Jim’s funeral with the rest of the tough guys and I caught him tailing me the night Jim died.”

Jayne gasped. “You don’t think he killed—”

I cut her off with a wave of my hand. “No. I can’t guarantee he didn’t bump off Fielding, but I don’t think he’s responsible for Jim’s death. I got the strangest feeling he was there because he wanted me to tell him something, but he couldn’t ask me to tell him whatever it was he wanted to know.”

Jayne squinted as if the light were hurting her eyes. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

“I know, but then nothing about today does.” We took our trays to the back and hunted for a free table. A group of soldiers on leave clutching maps of the city rose from one of the two tables they occupied and offered Jayne and me a pair of chairs.

“Thanks,” she said before helping me slide the table out of their earshot. They could ogle us all they wanted, but we needed our privacy. “Do you want me to ask Tony about him?”

“Why? Does he have a leash on every thug in the city?”

She shrugged. “It couldn’t hurt, could it?”

I stared into my coffee, trying to find the best way to express why talking to Tony was a bad idea. If he did know Frank, there was a good chance Tony was involved in whatever was going down and I didn’t think either of us needed confirmation of his activities. And it probably wouldn’t do me good if word got back to Frank that I was snooping into his business. The last thing I wanted was a follow-up visit.

“Sure, it wouldn’t hurt,” I said, “but I’d rather forget about the whole thing. I’m fine, and he should have a pretty good inkling that I know nothing about nothing.”

Jayne pulled the crinkled newspaper out of her bag and smoothed it with her hand. On page one, above an article blaring
NEW YORK OFFICE OF WAR INFORMATION DECRIES NOW IS THE TIME FOR PATRIOTISM
was a death notice for Raymond Fielding, playwright.

“He was a playwright?” I asked.

“I thought you knew,” said Jayne.

“Did you?”

“Well, sure…after I read the paper.”

I pulled the newspaper close to me and scanned the contents. The day before, Fielding’s butler had found the recently deceased with a bullet wound to his head in an upstairs bedroom. In the past month, his home had been broken into twice, though it wasn’t revealed if the thief took anything.

As far as the victim was concerned, he was a playwright. A prolific playwright. An oft written about and discussed playwright who never achieved popular recognition. He had written at least fifty shows, all produced under the moniker “anonymous,” since one of his many theories was that the writer should be invisible to the theatrical experience. There was a partial list of the plays he’d written and not a title among them that I’d ever heard of. He was also deep into theory—he’d written a tome about the modern theater that had become standard for college classrooms. He was closely associated with a number of experimental companies. In addition to being a writer, he was an amateur painter and independently wealthy, the son of a long-deceased man who’d made his fortune in rubber right about the time the Ford Motor Company started operating. Fielding had also fought in the Great War, and had received a Purple Heart after losing his leg. He started his own charity for vets after returning home. In fact, he was such a stand-up guy they couldn’t fit his entire obituary on the front page. It was continued on page twelve.

“Well, I’ll be…” I shook my head. “I knew I should’ve gone to college.” I scanned the first part of the article a second time. “If you were a playwright and you lost something important that happened to be on paper, what do you think that might be?”

“A play?” said Jayne.

“Yes, a play. Why didn’t he say so? Why all the mystery?”

Jayne stared hard at the upside-down article. “If he was known for writing controversial shows, maybe this play had something in it somebody didn’t want to get out.”

“It’s a play,” I said. “How dangerous could it be?” My mind drifted
back to the file of programs I’d found in Jim’s office. Despite their lack of authorship, they had to be Fielding’s shows. If Jim had received the same vague information we had, there was a good chance he was just figuring out what he was looking for right before he died. That certainly explained the Shakespeare quote. But then why, as Fielding claimed, did Jim call him with news that he’d discovered something important?

I plucked off the sugar bowl’s lid, ignoring the hastily scrawled note that begged me not to use any more than was necessary. I took four cubes for now and stuck a handful in my purse for later. “And even if the play was controversial, why wouldn’t he tell me it was a script that’s missing? I didn’t need to know what it was about.” I flipped through the newspaper, hunting for the conclusion of Fielding’s post-mortem accolades. Page twelve was filled with other obituaries, each accompanied by a picture. I searched out Fielding’s puss but couldn’t locate it. I gave that up and combed the text, looking for his name. “Isn’t that funny?”

“What?”

I stabbed the paper with my finger. “They’ve got a picture labeled Raymond Fielding—only it’s not him.” Beside the conclusion of the article was a photo of a man with a head full of white hair, half-moon spectacles, and a dour mustache. I turned the paper so Jayne could get a slant.

“It’s probably a mistake,” she said. “Papers make them all the time. In fact, it always seems like there are more mistakes in the
A.M
. than the
P.M.
I wonder why that is?”

I ignored her and bit into my sandwich. “What if it’s not a mistake?”

Jayne picked up her fork and stabbed a slice of rhubarb. “Then either there’s two Raymond Fieldings or…”

“Or the guy I met was lying from the get-go. That would explain why he didn’t say what he was looking for—he didn’t know.”

Jayne lectured me with her fork, spraying the table with speckles of fruit filling. “You should call the cops. Whoever this guy is, he probably had something to do with Fielding’s death. They’ll want to follow up on
that.” She dropped her fork and fished a coin out of her pocketbook. “Here.” She slid it across the table. “Call them. Now.”

I sighed and abandoned my food for the pay phone in the corner. A sign reminded me not to squander my time on the line since “Joe needs long-distance tonight.” I fed the phone a dime and asked the operator to connect me with the nearest precinct. Two switchboard operators later and I was connected with the homicide division that was looking into Fielding’s murder.

“Can I help you?” asked a secretary whose tone suggested assisting me was the last thing she wanted to do.

“I need to talk to whoever’s heading up the Raymond Fielding murder.”

“You want Schmidt,” she said. “Hold please.”

“Wait!” I stopped her before I was plunged into the electronic journey from one phone line to the next. “This Schmidt you’re talking about—would this be a Lieutenant Schmidt with a big gut and a bad attitude?”

Her contempt evaporated and was replaced by an acknowledgment of kinship. Apparently, Schmidt had many friends. “That’s the one.”

I closed my eyes and put my forehead against the rotary. Schmidt’s overgrown baby face filled my brain with his mocking grin. If I squealed to him about Fielding, he’d either ignore me or find some way to pin the death on Jim. “Is there anyone else I could talk to?”

She laughed and a metallic buzz signaled she had other calls to answer. “Sister, if it was that simple, don’t you think we would’ve gotten rid of him by now?” She didn’t wait for my response. “You want me to transfer you or not?”

“Not,” I said, and I hung up.

When I returned to the table, Jayne had finished the pie and was working her way through her sandwich. “Well?” she asked.

I slid into my chair and returned my napkin to my lap. “They’re looking into it.”

“Good. Now you can wash your hands of this whole thing.”

“I wouldn’t go that far, Jayne. The police are very busy. This is hardly
the only murder they have to concern themselves with.”

Jayne’s large red lips turned into a tiny rosebud. “We’re not going back to Jim’s office.”

I finished off half of my sandwich. “Of course not. We’re going to be far too busy paying a visit to the home of the late Raymond Fielding.”

W
E WOLFED DOWN WHAT REMAINED
of lunch, then hoofed it to Park Avenue and Forty-second Street. There we fought the crowds at Grand Central and boarded a rattler bound for Croton-on-Hudson in Westchester County. From the depot, we hired a hack to take us to the address the paper had listed. Fielding had lived near Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks’s East Coast estate, where the scent of old money wafted through the air like cherry blossoms and where war seemed as if it could exist only at a movie house. Each home had a river view and was set a half acre from the road, buried behind a sea of trees and carefully manicured shrubs. The few buildings we glimpsed were massive brick and stone structures outfitted with porticos and porte cocheres and chimneys that rose from every side like miniature skyscrapers tacked onto the roofs. Despite the solitude, I couldn’t shake the feeling that somebody was following us.

I asked the driver to drop us off at the top of the block and tossed him a few clams from the roll the faux Fielding had given me. The chilly morning had given way to a downright cold afternoon. A white blanket of snow coated the rolling lawns from storms that had bypassed the city. The gray sky muttered a warning that more of the same was on the horizon.

Neither Jayne nor I was dressed for a long walk or a cold day, but I forced us to move at a leisurely stroll in case anyone should be watching. While one of my strides may have equaled two of hers, Jayne’s legs worked like hummingbird wings so that she could outwalk, outrun, out-everything me if I let her.

“This is a bad idea,” she muttered as she passed me on the right.

I grabbed her sleeve and held her in place until I caught up. “Slow down. There’s no fire. We’re two girls out for a breath of fresh air, re
member?”

“I’ve got snow in my pumps. Snow!” Jayne stopped and emptied her shoes. My own feet gravitated from pain to numbness. The only way I could keep moving was if I squeezed my toes together to conserve heat, but when I did I ended up hobbling like a duck.

I concentrated on the house numbers. “We’re almost there.”

Jayne rubbed her gloveless hands together. “And what’s our plan when we get there?”

I suspected she wasn’t asking for the truth. “We’ll invite ourselves in, have a drink, and sit before a roaring fire.”

Fielding’s home was at the top of the hill, set farther back than the ones surrounding it. It looked as if all of New York had used their gas ration coupons to get there. Two rows of cars lined the winding driveway; another lined the street in front of the house.

“What are people doing here?” Jayne asked.

“Maybe it’s a wake.”

Pine trees bordered the property and broke up a monotonous snow-covered yard. Once we reached a clearing, the house loomed before us. It was Tudor and so large I couldn’t take it all in from where we stood.

“Get a load of this place,” I said.

It was the perfect retreat for a writer who valued his privacy. A wrought-iron gate topped with decorative spears demarked the space where lawn met road. A flagstone walkway led from the street to the front door, though it was uneven enough to imply that it was intended to hinder not invite. Lead-glass windows were darkened by heavy drapes. Twin griffins guarded the entrance.

The good thing about our physical discomfort was that it distracted us from the stupidity of what we were about to do.

“Follow my lead,” I told Jayne as we reached the front door. I rang the bell and we both rapidly tended to our harried appearances: lipstick emerged from pocketbooks, fingers served as combs, top buttons were relieved of their duties so cleavage (or whatever passed for it) could join
us at our task. Within thirty seconds we both looked inviting enough to greet sailors at the dock.

A butler in full livery answered the door and silently gestured us inside.

We entered a dimly lit marble foyer empty but for a large gilt mirror and a pedestal containing a bust. Directly in front of us was a study filled with people who were toting cocktails while engaging in animated conversations before a roaring fire.

“What did I tell you?” I whispered to Jayne. “Booze and a fire.”

Hunting trophies dotted the walls, skins lined the floor, and the furniture was a stalwart mixture of deep earth tones and dark woods. The enormous stone fireplace was flanked by bookcases overflowing with volumes in rich leather bindings. To the right of us were French doors leading out to a patio. To the left was a massive carved desk. Additional guests spilled into a doorway that presumably led to the rest of the house.

Jayne elbowed me and I followed her line of sight to the fireplace, above which hung an oil portrait. It was a slightly younger version of the man from the paper. He stood in a fanciful pastoral scene replete with cherubs and a waterfall that could give Niagara a run for its money. A signature decorated the lower left-hand corner. It was a self-portrait.

“That answers that,” I said. “The man I met wasn’t Raymond Fielding. Do you notice anything strange about the painting?”

Jayne stepped back and squinted upward as people at the Met do when they want to look as if they’re serious about art. “It’s not very good?”

“No bum leg.”

Jayne shrugged. “Maybe he was a vain guy. You think Napoleon didn’t ask to be painted a little taller?”

“He started a vet’s charity. I find it hard to believe somebody who lost a leg and made it a mission to help out others would have the ego to paint himself with two good getaway sticks.”

A servant bearing a tray of half-filled wineglasses breezed by and offered us beverages. We each took one and tried to look as if we belonged. “Who are these people?” asked Jayne.

The crowd was an eclectic mix of shoddily attired men and women who seemed better suited for the Bowery Mission than an elite riverfront community. Jayne and I inched closer to a bookcase so we could eavesdrop on a small group huddled in debate.

“Nonsense,” said a man in a tattered sport coat. “
The Long Trip
was clearly a retelling of Homer’s
Odyssey
and nothing more.”

“You have to be kidding me,” said a woman wearing large earrings. “It was a clever dissection of Hitler’s rise to power that used the
Odyssey
as an allegory. Ask anyone.”

Tattered Sport Coat rolled his peepers and elbowed a companion to make sure he was getting the joke of Big Earrings’s ignorance. “You’re putting far too much meaning on the text. I have yet to see a single production that communicated that. Do you want to tell me why?”

Big Earrings tossed her hair over her shoulder. “Because I haven’t done it yet.”

I pulled out my compact and spied the rest of the crowd through my mirror while I pretended to primp. Fat and Smiley, the director from my miserable audition, was standing by the French doors. His partner in crime, Dull and Dramatic, hovered near the desk examining a letter opener. And Ruby’s beau, Lawrence Bentley, sat on the couch surrounded by his court.

I grabbed Jayne’s elbow and pulled her into a corner. “Directors and playwrights here to mourn the loss of one of their own and celebrate what his death will mean for their careers.”

“No actors?” she asked.

I examined the crowd again but nobody, aside from us, had the lean, desperate look of a performer. “Nope. We’re alone. And without our photos.”

“Now what?”

I hated feeling like a lamb surrounded by wolves; I wanted to leave. But I also knew we shouldn’t waste this opportunity. If anyone could tell us about Fielding, it was the directors who worshipped him and the writers who despised him. “Now,” I told Jayne, “we mingle.”

Jayne made a lap around the room and looked for anyone who might
be willing to bump gums. I took a more direct approach and fought my way to the sofa.

“Lawrence? I thought that was you.” I plopped beside him and crossed my legs. His face blared confusion. “I’m Rosie Winter, a friend of Ruby’s.”

“Oh.” His voice was Connecticut country club, his suit handmade. “I’ve never met one of Ruby’s friends before.”

“Well, you know how she is.” I faked a laugh. I could see what Ruby saw in him. Up close he was very handsome, if a bit of a daisy. Every time he gestured, it reminded me of tatting lace—he was that precise. “How is she, by the way?” I asked.

“Honestly? I don’t know.” He sipped the remnants of his drink as though he were tasting it for royalty. I found myself seeking out whatever it was that kept him out of the war. Did he have flat feet, poor hearing, or a daddy with connections? “You know,” he said, “now that I look at you, you seem familiar. Are you an actress?”

I noticed the looks of disapproval on the faces around us and shook my head. Was it better to be a director or a writer? He might find the former more endearing. “No, I’m a director. Just starting out. Off-off-Broadway stuff.”

“We all have to start somewhere,” he said.

“You’re right about that.” I needed something to keep Bentley talking. “I loved
Night Falls
by the way. Brilliant play.”

“Thank you.” His eyes wandered to his entourage.

“It reminded me of Raymond Fielding’s work.”

That did it; I roped him. “Really?” I nodded too enthusiastically. “Which work?”

Stanislavsky, the Russian granddaddy of method acting, boiled each moment in a script (what he called a “beat”) down to three parts: objective, obstacle, and tactic. The objective was what your character wanted, the obstacle was what kept her from getting it, and the tactic, which you could change as needed, was the method you used to overcome the obstacle. To put it in simpler terms, my objective was to learn whatever I could about Raymond Fielding. My obstacle was being none too swift
about the writer and his work. My tactic was to lie through my teeth.

“Uh…
The Long Road
for one,” I said to Lawrence. “And some of his earlier plays. While you may not be as political as Fielding, your work shares many of the same sensibilities, although, to be frank”—I leaned toward him so this comment was his alone—“your work is much more entertaining.”

He matched my lean, recognizing that a man’s wake was no place to be overheard being critical. “I’ve always felt that too. I admired him, of course, but so many of his works were bogged down by his theory. I often thought if he removed his politics and focused on telling the story, he would have been much more successful.”

“True, true.” It took everything in me not to roll my eyes. What Bentley wanted was for every writer to create the same garbage he had. “Did you know him?”

“Nobody did. The man was a hermit. I did correspond with him briefly, but I found him to be surprisingly”—he sought the word with his fingers—“difficult.”

“How so?”

His tongue danced across his upper teeth as though he wanted to make sure they were free of food. “Despite the fact that he was worshipped by so many, he was a very unpleasant man. Rather than responding to my request for assistance with my work, he wrote me a four-page letter full of poison about how the playwright’s ego was destroying the modern theater and we were moving further and further away from what the Greeks intended drama to be. Frankly, I took it as a sign he was mad.”

“So if you didn’t like him, why are you here?”

“To pay my respects, of course. Just because I didn’t like him doesn’t mean I don’t bow down to the incredible contribution he made to the modern theater.” He raised an eyebrow. “If he hated the modern playwright, he despised directors more. Why are you here?”

“The same reason as you, I guess.” I lowered my voice. “And curiosity.”

He gave me a smug smile. “No need to be coy with me. I dare say
every director in this room was hoping they’d find a pile of unproduced manuscripts.”

My brain played catch up. “You’re on to me. I take it nothing’s emerged?”

“Hardly—why do you think people are still here?” He waved over a waiter and replaced his empty glass with a full one.

I cleared my throat and plunged ahead. “I get the feeling, from other people I’ve talked to, that there’s one play in particular they’re hoping to find. Have you sensed that?”

He swirled the liquid in his glass until it kissed the rim. “Ah, yes—the great American play. Rumor is that it was stolen out of Fielding’s house months ago.” His eyes danced around the room, looking for someone more interesting to talk to.

“You seem to doubt that.”

“That’s because I think it’s a fiction created by a mediocre writer who wanted to leave behind a legacy. And all of these people who are so interested in it are going to waste their time looking for it and miss out on the great plays that actually do exist.”

Gee, and I wonder who wrote those? “Let me ask you this: Did somebody invite you here today or did you just decide to show up?” Jayne was huddled in the corner chinning with Fat and Smiley. I caught her eye and let her know the pleasure of her company was requested.

Bentley’s face grew narrow with thinly veiled disgust. “I was invited of course. Weren’t you?”

I plucked a loose thread from the couch. “Of course I was. I just wanted to know
who
invited you.”

His hand inched toward mine. “I’m not sure. I received a simple card announcing the event without a host’s name listed. You?”

“A phone call,” I said. “Though I’m sure your card was very nice.”

Jayne sashayed over to us with her coat thrown over her arm.

“This is my friend Jayne,” I said. “Jayne, this is Lawrence Bentley.”

He rose and delicately shook her hand. “It’s a pleasure.”

“We’ve met,” she said. “I just auditioned for you.” In case Bentley hadn’t been sold on her performance, Jayne removed her lipstick from
her pocketbook. As she applied it, he followed her every move, his face broadcasting that he found it one of life’s great tragedies that he hadn’t been born a cosmetic applicator.

I made a show of looking at my watch. “It was lovely talking to you, Lawrence, but I’m afraid we have to be on our way.”

“So soon?” he said, as though he hadn’t been trying to ditch me for the last fifteen minutes.

“Yes, so soon.” I rose and pulled on my coat. “Say, can you tell me which play of Fielding’s you consider to be the best example of his work?”