Chapter 4
It is not my nature to go skulking around like Sam Spade. I don't have a talent for it.
On the other hand, I was curious.
Curiosity wasn't the only thing. I really was concerned about Woody Calderon. I didn't like his being dead. He was sort of a friend as well as a client, and, besides, he was a hell of a fine cellist, no matter how many critics had decided not.
All this being true, I am ashamed to admit that I was actually enjoying myself. An accountant's job is not unrewarding, but nobody ever called it thrilling. If I couldn't be an opera star, it was at least an interesting change to be a private detective for a while. So I did twenty push-ups to clear my head, and when I was good and aerobic, I went the whole distance. I sat down and wrote a note to Henry Davidson-Jones:
Dear Mr. Davidson-Jones:
I don't know if you will remember me, but years ago you were good enough to offer me a tour as a singer.
Unfortunately, illness damaged my voice. However, since then my voice has come back. I am contemplating trying to return to singing, and I would be honored to audition for you.
Of course that wasn't really true. The kindest thing you could say about my singing voice was that just a little bit of it was still there, maybe. Enough so that singing in the shower, with the water splashing on my head and the tiles of the shower stall bouncing the sound back to me, sometimes didn't sound bad at all. It was the kind of voice that people at a party might think pretty wonderful when everybody was gathered around the piano, especially after a few drinks. It would never be a star's voice, but Henry Davidson-Jones might not realize that.
So a week later I was down in the World Trade Center, eighty-odd stories up, talking to a woman who looked like. a photographer's model, seated at a gilt table with a bud vase and a telephone and nothing else. I showed her my letter from Mr. William Purvis, secretary to Mr. Henry Davidson-Jones, saying that Mr. Davidson-Jones was willing to receive me.
She took me right in.
Mr. Davidson-Jones's office was not a bit like my own. Mr. Davidson-Jones's office was something like a private sitting room off the lobby of a really first-class hotel and something like heaven. It was furnished in Rich. It had a clump of palm trees growing out of a tub in the middle of the room, and flowering vines—hibiscus, maybe?—climbing the far wall. I won't even talk about the furniture, which was mostly antique couches. I won't talk about the ceiling, or not exactly, because it didn't have one. What it had was a sky.
I don't mean it was a real sky, because even if the ceilings were glass you couldn't look out of the top of the World Trade Center without seeing a lot of upside-down Japanese tourists in Windows on the World. But what it was could fool you. There must have been some sort of planetarium projector somewhere, because Mr. Henry Davidson-Jones's ceiling gave every appearance of being studded with actual stars. I could even recognize some of the constellations. The easiest ones, anyway. About the easiest there is is Orion, with its three stars in a row for the belt, and there it was, flanked on one side by Sinus and Procyon, on the other by Aldebaran and the Pleiades. Behind a scattering of flowering vines on one of the side walls was a ceiling-high tank of tropical fish. It was illuminated from within, beautifully lighting a bunch of two-dimensional angelfish, and a lot of bright red and green and orange tetras.
And all this on the eighty-somethingth floor of the North Tower of the World Trade Center. He was not only a very rich man, Mr. Henry Davidson-Jones, he was also one willing to spend money to indulge himself.
The other kind of man he was was a relaxed and self-assured one.
He opened the door for me himself. He shook my hand warmly, and he greeted me by name. Actually, by my nickname, which showed either a grand memory or an even better filing system. "Nolly, my boy, what wonderful news about your voice! Come in, sit down, would you like a drink?" You could feel the warmth and charm soaking into your pores. He was projecting that cordial intimacy that makes careers for actors and politicians, and con-men.
I let him lead me to a leather armchair that had a table next to it containing both a whiskey decanter and a silver coffeepot with a clean cup. I expected him to say, "Name your poison." He didn't say anything more, so after I had sat down and gazed around I offered, "You've redecorated your office since the last time I was here."
He allowed himself a smile of pleasure. "Crazy, isn't it? But I admit I love it. It was a present from the board for my twenty-fifth year with the company."
It was not much of a challenge to my arithmetical powers to figure out that that made him at least fifty. He didn't look it. He didn't look any older than the last time I'd seen him, a forty who could pass for thirty-five in a nightclub, and maybe twenty-six on the squash court. He had one of those expensive tans, and no thin spots anywhere in his hair. Although he was no taller than I, he had a lot more presence.
"Will you sing for me, please?" he asked, as though that were the thing he had been waiting for to make his day. I assured him I would. He spoke into a telephone on the desk—well, I guess it was a desk. It looked like a drawing-room table with four different vases of flowers, but there turned out to be a phone somewhere among them.
Almost at once a door opened. A nice-looking elderly lady came in and smiled at me. She lifted the lid of a kind of secretary-looking thing and revealed a keyboard. "Miss Harfst will accompany you. It's only electronic," Davidson-Jones apologized, "but it has a good tone, I think."
It did. It took me a moment to get used to the idea that even a millionaire can keep a recital accompanist on premises for whenever he may take a notion to hear somebody sing, but when I suggested to the woman that we try the "Champagne Aria" from Don Giovanni, she nodded and began to play immediately. She played through it once, beautifully, and the tone of the piano was all Davidson-Jones had promised.
The "Champagne Aria" is a delightful, fast-paced piece, not too hard if you watch yourself on the breathing. I sang it, really, fairly well. Davidson-Jones listened with full attention, but without comment.
"Would you like another?" I offered. "Pagliacci, perhaps?"
"No, you've done well," he said, giving the accompanist a smile that meant she could go. She did. "My congratulations, Nolly," said Davidson-Jones. "I never thought I'd hear you sing like that again. Are you ready for some coffee, then?"
I let him pour me a cup of Marlene's recipe for dealing with everything, and took the difficult plunge. "I don't suppose that offer is still open after all these years, Mr. Davidson-Jones, but what made me think of it was what happened to Woody Calderon."
He didn't spill a drop of the coffee. He didn't even look surprised. "Ah, Woody," he said sadly. "What a pity. What a terrible loss to music. Yes, Nolly, I had hoped to help his career on a bit, and I am deeply saddened that it can't be done now."
"He told me about your deal," I said. "It was funny that it was so much like the offer you made me all those years ago, I thought."
He nodded in agreement. "Rich people are all pretty much the same, aren't they? They do have their functions, but as a class they're simply inordinately secretive."
"Yes," I said, wondering whether to ask him if he thought he was like that. It didn't seem a good idea. Then I took the plunge on what also didn't seem like a good idea, but maybe an essential one. I took a deep breath. "And then there was the young woman from Texas who had a similar offer from you, I believe."
He looked polite. "A young woman from Texas?"
"Her name was Madigan. I think her first name was Tricia."
"Tricia Madigan," he repeated to himself, listening to the sound of the name as he spoke it. He shook his head. "Excuse me a moment, Nolly." He picked up the phone again and spoke quietly into it. After a moment he put it down. "I'm sorry, Nolly, we don't have any record of any woman named Madigan. In fact, I'm not sure we've been able to do anything for any young woman artists at all for some time. I do remember a black girl with a wonderful contralto voice, but that must have been a year or more ago. Oh, and there was Louise Cerregon. A harpist. She was from Oklahoma—Tulsa, I think—but that was a good many years ago, I'm afraid. I believe she gave up concert performances to raise a family." He shrugged deprecatingly. "Often enough, artists have more interest in their personal lives than in their art. I'd be the last to blame them, Nolly, but it is a pity. I always have a personal sense of loss when someone turns down one of these tours, or, as in your case, is unable to take it. But believe me, I accept those decisions. I'm only an amateur impresario. When I can help, I do, but I'm not God—why, I said that to your friend Woody, now that I think of it, when he declined my offer."
Then he sat back and looked at me seriously. "So now, I think, it's time to tell you what you want to know. Whether or not the offer of a tour is still open for you," I stumbled. "Well, I didn't really expect—" He cut me off. "The particular group who was interested in signing you is no longer available, of course. But I think I should be candid with you. You've established yourself in a good career, isn't that true? Money can't be a problem; you're grossing better than half a million dollars a year, even though you overpay your staff. You could do more if you wanted to go after more billings. Apart from not having married, you're really pretty much settled down, wouldn't you say? So I can't believe you'd be willing to give all that up, just for a tour that wouldn't net you any more than you're getting now, and certainly could not by its very nature lead to the sort of reviews and future bookings that could build a career."
"Well . . ." I said, swallowing; he was very well informed on me.
"Also," he continued soberly, "although your voice has certainly improved to a considerable extent, I wonder if it would be up to the demands of an operatic career. You can't always pick and choose your roles, you know. You could do your voice great harm in just a few engagements. And there's not much demand for concert appearances for someone who is not a star . . . and could you, do you think, really make it back to the Met? I'd be afraid not, Nolly."
The old son of a bitch hadn't missed a thing.
I said sullenly, "Maybe not."
"Or maybe yes," he contradicted brightly, catching me thoroughly off guard. "Tell you what. Would you like to try a small part just to see how it feels to you? I'm helping to organize a gala for the Philadelphia Academy of Music. We're doing Beethoven's Ninth, and we will be needing soloists for the final movement, if you want to try out. No need to decide now; just give me a call if you like the idea, any time in the next month. And thank you, Nolly, thank you very much for coming in to see me!"
So in the express elevator, dropping breathtakingly back to the real world, I was morose, worried, and wondering.
Morose because, in no time at all, Davidson-Jones had recognized and told me truths about my voice that I already knew . . . but had hoped an outside observer might not.
Worried because he had lied to me about Woody Calderon. Calderon hadn't turned him down, I was sure of it. Woody might not have accepted (but if not, where did he get the thousand dollars?), but he surely would not have refused.
And wondering because something about Davidson-Jones's office was sticking uncomfortably in my mind. I couldn't quite swallow it down, and I couldn't quite diagnose what it was. Perhaps it was, I thought, something about his starry ceiling. Certainly that was a quaint and unusual thing for the chief executive officer of Narabedla Ltd. to have in his private office.
I went back to my own place discouraged and dubious.
It's funny that it didn't ever occur to me to spell "Narabedla" backwards.