A Chorus of Detectives Page 17

  When Gatti first considered reviving the opera, he knew something spectacular would have to be done with the production. They couldn’t count on the music alone to do the job; it just wasn’t good enough. It was sometimes hard to believe that Zazà had been written by the same man who gave the world the dramatic and exciting I Pagliacci. The ultra-lyrical third act, in fact, sounded more like Massenet than Leoncavallo; that distinctive Leoncavallo ‘voice’ was missing in Zazà. The opera needed help.

  Gatti’s solution had been to ask famed theatrical producer and director David Belasco to stage the opera. Belasco had directed for the Met before, to everyone’s mutual satisfaction. He was always welcome in the opera house, in spite of the fact that for years he’d been trying to lure Geraldine Farrar away from opera to the Broadway stage. When Belasco heard the Zazà music, he understood the problem immediately. He decided to direct the opera as if it were a stage play, a play in which all the dialogue just happened to be sung instead of spoken. He set out to make what was going on in the plot so visually enticing that the audience wouldn’t listen to the music too closely.

  So he started off by suggesting that in one scene the star pick up an atomizer bottle, lift her skirts, and perfume her panties. The entire opera company gasped and waited for their volatile soprano to take David Belasco’s head off.

  It didn’t happen. She thought about his suggestion, smiled … and did it.

  Then she went him one better. In the seduction scene in the first act, she dropped her blouse for a moment. Geraldine Farrar, the first singer at the Metropolitan Opera to go topless. The day following the première, one of the critics wrote: “Geraldine Farrar has two excellent reasons for appearing in the role and last night she displayed both of them.”

  That had been the year before, and Zazà was still going strong. Gerry was well aware that if the opera had been staged before the war, she’d never have been able to get away with it. But times were changing—skirts grew shorter and shorter, people were restless, novelty was not only welcome but actively sought after. The timing was perfect.

  Early Monday evening Geraldine Farrar arrived at the Metropolitan on the arm of Antonio Scotti and trailed by her maid. They lingered outside the door a few moments to chat with the crowd of gerryflappers that had already gathered. After the performance the crowd would be so thick and so noisy and so excited that a line of policemen grasping hands would be needed to hold them back; it had been that way since the first performance of Zazà last season. Gerry loved it.

  Backstage, the usual mob of chorus singers, personal guards, and police took up every square inch of floor space. Gatti-Casazza was trying to talk to five people at once and didn’t see them come in. Upstairs, they were surprised to find Emmy Destinn waiting impatiently outside Gerry’s dressing room. She was not dressed for the opera.

  “Emmy!” Scotti exclaimed. “Is something wrong?”

  “Gerry, I’ve been trying to get you on the phone for hours,” Emmy said accusingly.

  “I wasn’t taking any calls today,” Gerry answered as she unlocked the door and went inside. “I don’t like distractions on the day of a performance.” You should know that, her tone implied.

  The others followed her in, and the maid started laying out Gerry’s make-up and first-act costume. Scotti moved a chair three inches and offered it to Emmy, then took his usual seat beside Gerry’s dressing table. The small dressing room was crowded with four people in it.

  “Is Rosa Ponselle coming tonight?” Emmy demanded peremptorily.

  “Rosa? Not that I know of,” Gerry said. “Why?”

  “She thinks Setti is behind the way the chorus has been treating her.” She immediately had everyone’s full attention, including the maid’s.

  “Why does she think that?”

  “That’s what I couldn’t find out.” Emmy went on to explain her talk with Rosa’s apartment-building supervisor and why she hadn’t been able to ask Rosa about it herself.

  Scotti was delighted. “You steal her bicycle?”

  “I borrowed it,” Emmy snapped. “Stop that inane grinning, Toto—it’s not funny.” The maid giggled but broke off when Emmy shot her a dark look. “Gerry, since Setti is your suspect, I’m telling you about it. Do what you like—I wash my hands of it.”

  Scotti couldn’t resist asking, “Does Rosa call the police?” Emmy didn’t deign to answer.

  Gerry was thinking. “You know, Emmy, she could just be looking for someone to blame.”

  “There is one way to find out. Ask her.”

  “I’ll do that. In the meantime,” Gerry glanced at Emmy’s street clothes, “since you’re obviously not going to be out front tonight, how about keeping an eye on Setti during the performance? Try to hear what he tells the choristers.”

  “He’s not my suspect,” Emmy said, annoyed that Gerry wasn’t sticking to the plan. “I just came here to tell you—”

  “Yes, I understand, and I appreciate your taking the trouble and thank you. But as long as you’re here …?”

  “Why can’t Toto watch him? He’s on your team.”

  Gerry went behind an Oriental screen to undress. “Toto,” she said dryly, “has his own job cut out for him. Toto is going to protect us all from scrubladies.”

  “I check with Mr. Ziegler,” Scotti explained, unperturbed by the sarcasm, “and he tells me the cleaning crew finishes before six o’clock. So if Mrs. Bukaitis is even in the building, that means something is awry.”

  “Awry, huh.” Emmy sighed. “Gerry, we are on different teams. But very well, I will help this one time. Hereafter, we stay with our plan.”

  “Ella ha troppa bontà,” Scotti murmured, and kissed her hand.

  From behind the screen, Gerry said, “Hadn’t you two better start your, er, patrols?”

  “Sì, carissima. Come, Emmy—to work!” The two of them left and descended to the stage level.

  At the bottom of the stairs they ran into Gatti-Casazza. He smiled at Emmy and said, “I know why you are here tonight! You look for another bicycle, yes?”

  She sagged. “Rosa complained to you?”

  “Rosa says nothing. But it is all everyone else talks about! The lady who steals bicycles!”

  “I didn’t steal it!” Emmy roared. “Oh, what’s the use?”

  “No use,” Scotti teased. “You are branded for life.”

  “How is Gerry tonight?” Gatti asked. “She is nervous? Worried?”

  “She is very calm,” Scotti assured him. “Nothing happens since Forza, no? The guards, they do good job.”

  “I hope they do good job,” Gatti frowned. “I also hope we do not grow complacent.” On that doubtful note he left them.

  “He is worried,” Emmy remarked.

  “It is his job to worry,” Scotti soothed. “Look—there is Mr. Setti. Now I must go search for my scrublady.”

  They parted. Emmy followed Setti as he darted hither and yon backstage, listening to him listening to complaints from the choristers. Scotti busied himself asking the stagehands and the guards if they’d seen any scrubladies backstage.

  “What do you want with a scrublady, Mr. Scotti?” a voice behind him asked. “Did you spill something?”

  Scotti turned. “Captain O’Halloran! I do not see you there.” He lowered his voice. “I do not look for just any scrublady. I look for Mrs. Bukaitis.”

  O’Halloran knew the name. “The woman who found the chorister hanging in the dressing room?”

  “She is the one. I think she hides truth about herself!”

  O’Halloran pulled a long face. “You too?”

  “Che cosa dite?”

  “You’re playing detective too? Miss Farrar and Mr. Caruso and Miss Destinn and now you?”

  “Sì, sì,” Scotti smiled broadly. “Pasquale and Gatti too!”

  “Pasquale Amato? I thought he had better sense. And Mr. Gatti?” O’Halloran tried to imagine the slow-footed general manager in hot pursuit of clues and couldn’t do it. “What do I have t
o say to get through to you people? Keep your nose out of it! Don’t meddle in police matters. Do you understand?”

  “No, Captain, I do not understand. Surely you welcome help?”

  “I have all the help I need, thank you. Professional help. Mr. Scotti, you’re not a detective. You’ve had no training. All you’ll do is muddy the waters and make things more difficult for me. Now do you understand?”

  Scotti thought about it a moment and then said, “Sì, now I understand.”

  “Good.” O’Halloran clapped the baritone on the shoulder and continued on his rounds.

  “I must avoid muddy water,” Scotti said to himself and resumed his search for Mrs. Bukaitis.

  O’Halloran was checking the deployment of his men. A man was stationed in the fourth-floor chorus dressing room, with two other men in the halls within calling distance. Two were in the greenroom. The others all patrolled constantly, checking the props room, the wings, the substage area, the catwalks above the stage, the wardrobe room upstairs, even the unused rehearsal rooms. Policemen in white tie and tails mingled with the audience. With the personal guards Gatti-Casazza had hired for the chorus singers, the killer would have a hard time getting to anyone now. Maybe we’ve got him stopped, O’Halloran thought.

  The opera started.

  Five or ten minutes into the first act O’Halloran moved to a place in the wings where he could see the stage. He watched Geraldine Farrar move with grace and authority through a role that had defeated all the sopranos who’d previously attempted it. O’Halloran didn’t know anything about opera, but even he could see the lady on stage was in her element.

  “Where does that dog come from?” Gatti’s outraged voice boomed from behind him.

  A shaggy yellow dog had trotted out on to the stage, tail wagging happily, obviously fascinated by this strange new playground he’d found. He sniffed at the furniture, almost tripped one of the singers, and jumped up on a chair where he could see better. Gerry made the mistake of trying to incorporate the dog into the action and patted him on the head—whereupon the dog started following her around the stage wherever she went. When Gerry sang a series of high notes, her new friend decided to make it a duet and howled along happily. The audience tittered.

  But then the dog caught sight of the conductor’s baton. He raced down to the edge of the stage and wagged his tail furiously. Back and forth his head went, then up and down, matching the movements of the baton. He dashed away four or five steps, then came back, then dashed away again. When the conductor failed to throw the shiny white stick for him to fetch, the dog barked at him.

  Gerry had had enough. She grabbed the dog by the scruff of the neck and started dragging him toward the wings. He was puzzled and resisted, but she didn’t loosen her grip. At the side of the stage she thrust the dog straight at O’Halloran and hissed, “Arrest this animal!”

  The audience good-naturedly applauded her action. A stagehand took charge of the dog, and O’Halloran watched as the performance quickly settled into its proper groove once again. There was a lot of coming and going, and then Gerry was on stage alone with the tenor. Someone jostled O’Halloran; he drew his eyes away from the soprano long enough to see he was surrounded by male choristers and their guards, all eagerly watching the stage.

  Out on the stage, Gerry Farrar was as aware of her offstage audience as of the one out front. Zazà was the kind of opera she loved—a seldom-performed piece in which the soprano appeared in almost every scene, virtually carrying the opera alone. Zazà told the story of a café singer who abandoned her career for her lover, only to learn he was already married to someone else. It was an acting opera, a display-case opera; and speaking of displays … it was time for the seduction scene. She performed her mini-striptease and got her usual audible response from the audience. Quickly covered again, she eased downstage right to the acoustically preferred spot on the stage and caught a glimpse of Captain O’Halloran’s startled face staring out at her from the wings.

  The first act was drawing to a close when Gerry became aware of a loud muttering from backstage, and even one or two voices raised in what sounded like anger. A quick glance to the wings on both sides of the stage told her she’d lost one of her audiences. What was going on? She was growing angry—until she remembered the last time this had happened. Carmen. When the chorus woman had been found with a knife in her chest.

  God, not again! she prayed. Out of necessity she forced all thought of what might be happening backstage out of her mind and concentrated solely on her singing. The curtain finally closed and Gerry ran off the stage, almost knocking down the tenor she’d sung the scene with. Stagehands, singers, and guards stood with their backs to the stage, staring at something she couldn’t see. “Let me through!” she cried. The crowd parted just enough to make a path for her. She wriggled her way to the front.

  And saw an unfamiliar woman—Mrs. Bukaitis?—being held by both arms, on one side by Antonio Scotti and on the other by a uniformed policeman. “Toto?”

  He shot her a look of triumph. “I catch her, Gerry! I catch her myself!”

  “You … caught her? Doing what?”

  “Fastening that to platform under stage!”

  That, Gerry now saw, was a box Captain O’Halloran was holding. He removed the lid and showed her the homemade bomb inside. He said, “She was trying to blow up the stage, Miss Farrar.”

  While I was on it. Suddenly her knees gave way and the whole backstage area began to revolve around her. Then hands were gripping her and she felt a chair being pushed against the back of her legs. “Gerry—sit!” Gatti-Casazza’s voice commanded out of nowhere. She sat.

  Then Emmy Destinn was there, forcing her head down between her knees. The floor stopped heaving, and the near-faint passed. Gerry was immediately on her feet again. Emmy murmured, “So Toto was right.”

  O’Halloran handed the bomb to one of the police officers, who gingerly carried it out of the opera house—to everyone’s audible relief. The captain said, “Come along now, Mrs. Bukaitis. You’ve got a lot of questions to answer at the station.”

  Gatti-Casazza held up a hand to stop him; he had a question he wanted an answer to right then. “Why?” he asked Mrs. Bukaitis. “Why you do this terrible thing?” Then he gave an exasperated shrug and said to O’Halloran, “I forget—she speaks no English.”

  “Of course I speak English,” Mrs. Bukaitis said scornfully. “You assume I am ignorant because I scrub floors! It was easy to fool you.”

  “I know it!” Scotti cried. “I say she understands—I am right!”

  Gatti persisted. “But why? Why do you want to kill?”

  Mrs. Bukaitis cursed in her own language. “My countrymen are being killed every day and you do nothing about it!”

  O’Halloran asked, “So how is killing innocent people going to stop that?”

  “It is to make you pay attention! You squander money on luxuries like opera while men and women in my country are being enslaved! Free Vilnius!”

  O’Halloran scowled. “Who’s Vilnius?”

  “It is a place, you fool, not a person! The capital city of Lithuania. Poland enslaves Vilnius, and the rich and powerful United States does nothing! You turn your backs! You do not deserve your safety and comfort!”

  “An anarchist,” Scotti breathed.

  O’Halloran was shaking his head in disbelief. “So you think the best way to get the United States to help you is to blow up the stage of its leading opera house? Did I get that right?”

  “To make you listen!” Mrs. Bukaitis screamed. “To prove we are serious!”

  “I know it is anarchist!” Scotti exulted. “All the time I say it is anarchist! Gerry, do I not say it is anarchist?”

  “Yes, Toto, that’s what you said,” Gerry agreed. She muttered to Emmy, “He’s going to be impossible to live with.”

  “Anarchist—that is your word,” Mrs. Bukaitis objected. “I am a patriot.”

  “A pretty bloodthirsty one,” O’Halloran sa
id dryly. “There was enough dynamite in that box to blow the roof off this place.”

  Scotti was thinking. “Un momento … I think this is not first time she tries. Perhaps first time the bomb, it does not go off? Therefore more dynamite this time?”

  O’Halloran swallowed a laugh. “That’s not the way it works, Mr. Scotti, but what makes you think this is the second time?”

  “Mrs. Poplofsky,” he said promptly.

  “Who?”

  “Poplofsky,” Gatti-Casazza repeated slowly, as if the name should be familiar.

  “You should know her, Mr. Gatti,” Scotti said, “she works for you.” He turned to O’Halloran. “Mrs. Poplofsky is scrublady here in opera house. One time she sees Mrs. Bukaitis trying to do something with mysterious box—by the platform under stage! That is first bomb, yes?” Mrs. Bukaitis muttered under her breath.

  O’Halloran took out his notebook and asked Scotti to spell Mrs. Poplofsky’s name. Scotti made a stab at it. O’Halloran said, “She works here, you say? Where can I find her?”

  Scotti said, “Underneath stage is a room filled with brooms and soap and mops. There is place to sit down and drink coffee. Mrs. Poplofsky goes there about ten-thirty in mornings.” Everyone gazed at him in admiration for possessing this esoteric bit of knowledge.

  Gerry walked over to the scrubwoman and looked her over from head to toe. “You almost killed me. I’ve never met anyone before who wanted to kill me.”

  Mrs. Bukaitis sneered. “You, somebody else—what difference does it make?”

  “What difference does it make?” Gerry screamed. “Did you hear what she said—what difference does it make?”

  Emmy spoke up. “Is that why you murdered the choristers? Because it doesn’t matter to you who dies?”

  “What do I know of your precious choristers?” Mrs. Bukaitis jeered. “They are nothing to me.”

  “I do not understand,” Gatti said. “Do you say you do not murder the choristers?”

  Mrs. Bukaitis spat in the direction of the general manager’s shoes. “You Americans!” she snarled. “You understand nothing!”