A Cat in the Wings: (InterMix) Page 4

  “Thank you so much, Mr. Brodsky,” I said, “but I’m not hungry.”

  Chapter 7

  “What’s going on, Swede? You pick me up in a cab and whisk me here to glamour city. Since when can you afford this kind of restaurant?”

  Basillio was hunched over, glaring at the people at the other tables. He may have been a little embarrassed at being underdressed. I had “whisked” him to a new, hyper-chic restaurant in the West Twenties. Nouvelle American, cum Southwestern, cum junk-bond traders was the way it had been described to me.

  We were sipping our Zinfandel and inhaling the appetizer that had just arrived at the table—tiny braised scallops, each one covered with a dot of green paste and placed oh so artfully on the plate in a miniature forest of herbs. It was breathtaking. It cost seventeen fifty.

  “Okay, Swede,” Tony said, fixing me with a smirk. “I got it all figured now. You swallowed your pride and finally took a part in a soap. And you just picked up the advance on your salary. Right? And realized at the same time that your recent coolness toward me is absurd. So now you’re trying to buy my affections. You’ve finally admitted you’re mad for my body—right? This is, plain and simple, a seduction dinner.”

  “Wrong on all counts, buddy,” I said, after I’d ingested one of the scallops, which was pleasingly hot. “I have been retained to investigate the murder of Peter Dobrynin.”

  He stared at me incredulously. “You mean that crazy—the dancer who was shot over the holidays?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why you?”

  “I was there at the ballet when it happened—Christmas Eve. And an old friend, Lucia Maury, is about to be charged with the murder. Unless I can turn up something to clear her.”

  “Lucia . . .” Tony turned the name over on his tongue. “I don’t know her, do I?”

  “You may have met her once at my apartment, years ago. When I was living on the West Side.”

  I then told him all that had transpired: finding the body . . . the search of Lucia’s apartment . . . the gun taped under her desk . . . my meeting with the lawyer Frank Brodsky.

  He finished the scallops one by one, fastidiously, as he listened.

  “And you want my help with the investigation?”

  “Yes, Tony, I do. I think you ought to take a rest from seducing those young actresses . . . for reasons of health.”

  He laughed and finished his wine. An emaciated young waiter started toward the table to refresh our glasses, but Tony waved him off and did the job himself.

  “I also thought,” I said, “you might be able to use half of my fee—twenty-five hundred dollars. Less, of course, what this silly meal is going to cost me.”

  He stared at me slyly. “Now, isn’t that odd, Swede? In fact, I am in a bit of a financial bind. The character who bought the copy shops from me seems to be going belly-up. That means the notes he gave me will probably turn out to be worth about ten cents on the dollar after the bankruptcy court finishes with him. And I’m two months behind on child support; my ex is threatening me with a long prison term. Plus, that Brecht production at the University of Texas at Austin, which has all kinds of grant money, is not going to use me. So twenty-five hundred for my body seems reasonable.”

  “Not your body, Tony, your brain.”

  “Six of one . . .” he let his voice trail off.

  We had delayed ordering our main courses. But now the time was at hand. Tony called for a spicy stew of wild rabbit. I ordered brook trout with dirty rice and peppers.

  We continued to drink while we waited for the food.

  “I’ve got to be honest, Swede. I’m not a big ballet fan.”

  “Irrelevant,” I assured him. “It’s a murder investigation, Tony. Not a culture quiz.”

  “It’s not that I dislike ballet, mind you. On the contrary. I love it.”

  “I think you’ve lost me, Tony. The logic of that escapes me.”

  “I’m not surprised, Watson. I’m a very subtle guy. Look—the last ballet I saw was about seven years ago. My wife had friends who used to take us. We saw Antony Tudor’s Dark Elegies. You ever catch it, Swede?”

  “No.”

  “Well, it was mesmerizing. I was totally overwhelmed. Literally the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. And as I watched it, I realized I was seeing the absolute definition of beauty. The music. The steps. The scenery. The mix. And then, as I sat there watching this gorgeous thing, I began to loathe myself. Because I had to admit that I could never in my life, under any circumstances, even approximate the intensity and scope of what was going on on that stage. I loved it as much as I’ve ever loved anything that happened on a stage. But it made me profoundly depressed. Like I said, it made me loathe myself. So I never went again.”

  Like most of Tony’s exegeses, this was a bit much. And like all of his explanations, it held a kernel of shining truth—maybe.

  We were both hungry. So when the food arrived we fell upon it and ate in happy, lusty silence. Everything was excellent. We mopped up the good juices left on our plates using hunks of (very inventive) sourdough with flecks of jalapeno. Yes, it was all excellent, we agreed a little grudgingly—even the chairs and the table and the low-key Georgia O’Keeffe colors, even the track lighting, which I usually hate—it was all excellent—and expensive as hell.

  When we’d finished our desserts—I couldn’t pass up the Bananas Foster and Tony had the Mexican chocolate soufflé, then we switched—we ordered coffee and brandy. We sat back in our chairs and looked around at the other diners, soaking up the ambience of the place because we knew we’d never be back here again.

  Then I had to turn to serious matters. I told him what would happen next. “I want you to go to the Performing Arts library tomorrow. I’ll get over to the Mid-Manhattan. What I need is a biography of Peter Dobrynin.”

  “You mean somebody wrote one?”

  “No, no. I mean we have to construct one. The Mid-Manhattan Library has all the back issues of The New York Times on microfiche—all the news magazines, too. What you’re going to do is go through the back issues of the dance journals. We need any and all information that will help us to flesh out the obituary.”

  “I’m with you, Swede. Know the character before you interpret the role. In other words, prepare.”

  “Exactly. And we’ll meet tomorrow evening at that place on Seventy-second. You know, the one near West End.”

  “Right. At about seven?”

  The check came then. Involuntarily, I whooped. And then I sneezed.

  ***

  I spent seven heady hours at the library, armed with a large yellow legal pad and three ballpoints with different colors of ink.

  There were hundreds of Dobrynin references in the various indexes. And why not? After all, he had been a star once, in the truest sense. But information on his life—other than the roles he had danced and the parties he had attended and the women he had bedded or been seen with—was very scarce.

  When I arrived at the All-State Café, Tony was already there. He was seated at a table, not at the bar, and he seemed to be flushed, oddly excited.

  “Research turns you on, Mr. Basillio?” I inquired, joining him and asking the waitress for a Bloody Mary without ice.

  “Swede,” he said, his eyes bright, “ballet critics are mad as hatters. Real perfume-on-the-handkerchief stuff. Know what I mean? They make drama critics sound like minimalists. Just listen to this effete, mumbly-mouthed crap. It’s a description of Dobrynin by a critic who caught one of his early appearances in Swan Lake. Just listen!”

  He flipped open his pad and read in mock-stentorian tone:

  “‘Dobrynin was a revelation. The other male dancers displayed a pervasively forced tone that misconstrued energetic presentation for one-note pushiness. The gifted Dobrynin, however, danced l
ike no one else onstage, gliding through long, lean, and fine tours jetés, and spiraling through pirouettes that stopped and finished and posed in buoyant fourth-position lunge. His moves are effortlessly silken; those of his fellow dancers, contrastingly hidebound. Fine-boned nearly to the point of slightness, powerful in his exquisite musicality, he is also blessed with a face so handsome it seems to be painted on porcelain.’ ”

  Tony paused, his face gleeful from the recitation. “Wait! There’s more. There’s one other sentence that you must hear, Swede.” He searched frantically through his notes, then came up with what he’d been seeking:

  “‘Dobrynin’s only visible weakness during this performance was that it was obvious his double tours en l’air were less than secure.’ ”

  Exhausted, Tony collapsed back in his seat.

  “I’m glad you enjoyed yourself so much, Tony.”

  “It’s priceless stuff, Swede. Priceless.”

  I remained silent, letting his macho energy exhaust itself. Maybe on another day I’d point out to Tony that what he’d just read sounded far from “mad” to me. In fact, it had been a great deal more to the point than a lot of the twaddle we’d both read about the theater.

  “Hmmm, yes,” I murmured in agreement. “Now, tell me, did you get any facts, Tony? Which is why you were there. Have any of those to quote?”

  “A few.”

  Over drinks and hamburgers and shared French fries, we traded what we’d each learned that day. We went back and forth, trying to reconstruct a simple resumé of the main facts of Peter Dobrynin’s life.

  What we came up with was more or less this:

  Dobrynin’s father had emigrated from Russia to England in the 1920s. He married an American woman and then returned to live in Russia for many years as a translator for the British consulate in Leningrad. Peter, as a child, was sent to the Kirov ballet school, and became the first foreign national to be invited to join that most distinguished company.

  When the family was transferred back to England, Peter danced for a while with the Royal Ballet before coming to America.

  He lived in Manhattan for several years before he began his meteoric rise. And that sudden infusion of money and fame obviously unhinged—deranged—him.

  Finishing his coffee, Tony ordered a brandy and said: “Well, we did a very creditable job, I think. You’ve got your bio.”

  “Not really. An aborted bio, maybe.”

  “In what way?”

  “The three years prior to the murder are a cipher. Did Dobrynin really become a derelict? What happened to him? He knew dozens of wealthy people. If he was in trouble, why not go to them for help? Were there any warning signs that he was not just a carouser and a womanizer but an emotionally disturbed man? Who knew him best? All his fears, his intimate thoughts, his secrets, assuming he had any. You see what I mean? Dobrynin wasn’t a riveter who lost his job and had to go on welfare because he could no longer support his family. There’s got to be a very special story behind his winding up on that balcony with matted hair and no shoes.”

  “Well, yeah,” Tony said. “All that’s missing. But you don’t expect to find that kind of stuff in the library, right? You find that out from people who knew him.”

  “Agreed, Tony. Very much agreed. That’s why you and I are going to visit Lucia tomorrow. We’ve got to dig a little deeper. People usually know things they don’t even know they know.”

  “Murderers make me nervous, Swede.”

  “That isn’t funny!” I retorted angrily. “Lucia is not a murderer!”

  “Okay, okay! Calm down, Miss Sherlock! You know I’ll do anything . . . say anything . . . to get you to hold my hand.”

  I stared deeply at him then, thinking so many thoughts about crazy Basillio, worrying about him, too. Once again, I was astonished at the notion that he and I had actually been lovers. Oh, there was a lot I planned to tell him—and soon. But not now.

  Chapter 8

  Lucia was seated on her large sofa when Basillio and I entered her apartment. However brief her imprisonment, the trauma of it was there in her face for all to see. Her skin was stretched tight and white. Her hands were restless in her lap, the fingers seeming to search for a dancer’s gesture.

  Across the large room sat a stranger: a handsome, diminutive black woman of middle age. She was reading a French-language newspaper.

  I introduced Lucia to Tony. When she did not in turn introduce the black woman to us, my hasty assumption that the woman was a nurse was confirmed. She had been hired, I guessed, by the Maury family to keep an eye on Lucia during these stressful days.

  “Your friend really looks like someone in trouble,” Tony stage-whispered to me, as I left his side to join Lucia on the sofa.

  I don’t think Lucia heard what Tony had just said, but she looked distinctly discomfited by his presence. He remained standing, rocking back on his heels and smiling. He was wearing a nondescript sweatshirt and the kind of dark-colored trousers a bus driver might wear. It seemed that more and more these days Tony made people uncomfortable. It wasn’t so much his clothing as his grin that nearly always struck one as inappropriate.

  Lucia reached out for me and I nearly flinched from her touch—it was deathly cold.

  “Yes, that’s right, Alice,” she said. “Come and sit by me, the way Splat used to do. I can just see that old thing sitting here cleaning himself.”

  I nodded. “Lucia, did Frank Brodsky tell you about our talk?”

  “Yes, he did. I’m so grateful for your help, Alice.” And her voice suddenly rose a notch. “I need your help, Alice! It isn’t mine, that gun! I don’t know how it got there, I swear! It isn’t mine!”

  “Listen to me, dear,” I said firmly. “There’s no need to convince me of any of that. But right now I have to find someone who knows where and how Dobrynin spent his last few years. After he . . . dropped out, lost it, if you can call it that. After he threw everything away.”

  “He became a derelict, obviously.”

  “I understand that. But he may have maintained some minimal contact with people he’d known. Even if he spent most of his time under the West Side Highway.”

  “You don’t understand, Alice, the state he was in. He was impossible to deal with. He was mad.”

  I paused for a moment there. “But how do you know how it was to ‘deal’ with him? If you lost contact with him, how do you know he was mad?”

  “I know!” she spat out, with such desperate force that the woman across the room half rose from her chair.

  “Lucia,” I said slowly, “you told me you never saw Dobrynin again after the affair ended. Is that the truth or not?”

  Lucia looked away from me. “No,” she said grimly. “I saw him once more after that.”

  “After he’d dropped out of the ballet scene?”

  She nodded, seemed to be fighting for composure. Tony, who had gradually come closer to us while we talked, now moved back a bit, as if to give Lucia air.

  “He caused a terrible scene here,” she went on. “It was awful. He came into the building demanding to see me. The doorman tried to question him, to reason with him, and finally to throw him out. It was just an insane coincidence that I happened to come home from the office while he was in the lobby.”

  “Why had he come?”

  “He wanted to stay here, for a few nights, he said. He was crazy, though—shrieking and prancing about the lobby. His clothing was soiled and he smelled like—” She paused to catch her breath. “I refused him. We fought. Someone telephoned the police.”

  She stopped the story again, leaning forward as if she were experiencing stomach cramps.

  “And then what happened?” I asked, trying my best to ignore her distress.

  Lucia was crying now. “He said—after calling me the predictable names—he
said I was just another in the long line of people who had loved him when he was on top, sucked the life out of him, and betrayed him now that he was on the bottom.”

  “Anything else?”

  “No. No. He left seconds before the police car pulled up.”

  “Did he mention the names of the others who he thought had betrayed him?”

  “I guess so.” She blew her nose on a tissue the nurse had brought over to her. “I don’t know—maybe.” She shook her head. “He was in a rage at all of us. He probably named Melissa. And Betty Ann Ellenville. Louis Beasley. People I pointed out to you at the service.”

  Lucia pulled herself up from her seat on the sofa as if she weighed three hundred pounds.

  The other woman approached quickly and noiselessly, then stopped at a discreet distance to wait for Lucia’s next move. Close enough to assist her if she stumbled, far enough away so as not to hover or give the impression that Lucia was a cripple. I envied her her timing and tact.

  “I’m tired, Alice. So tired,” Lucia said. “Is there anything more now, or can you excuse me? I must sleep.”

  “No, go right ahead,” I said. “I . . . we’ll be in touch.” I nodded good-bye to the other woman.

  Lucia left the room at a snail’s pace, the nurse matching her steps.

  “She’s trancked to the gills, Swede,” Tony observed when they’d gone.

  Of course. I’d been talking to a heavily sedated woman.

  We let ourselves out and waited in the hall for one of the magisterial elevators.

  “Is the game afoot, then, Sherlock?” Tony asked flippantly. “Are we about to roll up our sleeves and get en pointe?”

  “What?”

  “The game, Swede. The hunt. You know. Deduct-and-detect. Seek-and-find. Search-and-destroy. You’ve got the old bloodlust, girl. I can see it in your baby blues.”

  “Enough mixed metaphors, Tony. And you know I don’t have baby-blue eyes.”

  Ignoring me, he tried, ridiculously, to execute an ambitious ballet leap right there in the hallway. He announced it as he jumped: “Double tour en l’air!”