Free Downtown Strut: An Edna Ferber Mystery (Edna Ferber Mysteries) by Ed Ifkovic Page B

old black man, his hailstone words bouncing off my expensive walls. Cold, cold, yet under the stanza a fire that seared. Stunned, I didn’t know where to look—me, the only white soul in the vast room. Freddy never looked at me. He didn’t care that I was there, that it was the drawing room of Manhattan privilege and wealth and fame. My subdued kingdom, ruled by me from my red moiré armchair. He had something to say. Rebecca had stepped into the room and Freddy kept glaring at Rebecca and Waters, mother and son, back and forth, accusing, harsh, unforgiving.
    When it was done, Freddy backed against the wall, arms folded over his chest, and stared across the room toward the polished windows. Out there was Central Park and yellow taxis and uniformed doormen and…and I felt foolish, sitting there in my expensive shoes and expensive haircut. I felt guilty, and I didn’t savor the feeling. I didn’t believe I was guilty, yet Freddy’s insistent stare and those violent images echoing in my head made me want to apologize.

Chapter Five
    On a brisk Monday morning, sleet slapping the cab window, I headed for the Ziegfeld Theater for the rescheduled meeting with Flo Ziegfeld’s assistant. A waste of time, this meeting, since Show Boat —already pruned and polished and gussied up—was set to open. Crews were already erecting the elaborate Mississippi River scenery onstage. So…a perfunctory meeting at ten, an unnecessary review of last-minute changes, my scribbled suggestions analyzed as though they were ancient unearthed cuneiforms, the out-of-town reviews scrutinized. Window dressing, all of it, more sycophantic posturing, more blather about the musical as masterpiece. I wanted to believe all of it.
    Of course, after rushing under a proffered umbrella to the stage door, I soon learned that the assistant had not arrived from her home in White Plains. Blame the inclement weather. Blame the faulty trains. No one had tried to call me. I told the frightened young man who informed me of the delay that I’d rather blame frail mankind. The young man apologized over and over, took the blame, which made no sense unless he moonlighted as the God of Thunder and Hail, and nudged me toward a coffee pot and a pile of trade magazines. “I am not an ingénue trying out for a walk-on,” I sneered, and he actually trembled.
    “I…”
    “Never mind.” I deepened my voice. “I’ll remain here and stare at the peeling walls.”
    Which is what I did because I was meeting Waters in the lobby at eleven. I made myself an obvious nuisance, pacing the floor of the small meeting room, and the young man—“My name is Jimmy, if you need me”—a rubicund youngster with pink cheeks and a Renaissance cherub’s head of curls, kept appearing at my side. “I did leave a message with your housekeeper,” he said finally, which I figured he’d just done, believing in time machines and the failure of clocks in my apartment.
    “Idle time spent in cramped, moldy theater quarters is a deadly sin,” I told him.
    Luckily, Waters showed up early, ambling in, lingering in the lobby. Jimmy reluctantly led him to me. Overjoyed, I embraced Waters in gratitude.
    “You look unhappy, Miss Edna,” he greeted me.
    “I’ve been marooned on a theatrical island.”
    He squinted. “I thought you had a meeting.”
    “What gave you that idea?”
    I told Waters to sit down, and immediately the Botticelli cherub asked if I needed anything. He eyed Waters with open suspicion, his pale gray eyes narrowing at the sight of the skinny Negro boy chummy with the cranky authoress. Waters was dressed in a creamy off-white Joe College V-neck sweater, voluminous pleated brown trousers over black-and-white tie shoes. He looked ready to play nine rounds of golf at an all-white country club in Bucks County.
    We sat on straight-backed chairs, paint stained, and I sipped coffee while Waters sat opposite me, hands folded decorously in his lap. It looked as if I were interviewing