A Chorus of Detectives Page 22

  “He’s a private bodyguard. Mr. Ziegler hired him himself.”

  Amato inhaled quickly and then exchanged a long look with the police captain. But before he could say anything, someone called “Silenzio!”—it was time to begin.

  The tenor and several singers playing servants opened the opera. Before long Scotti entered, and the men had the stage to themselves for a while. Then the moment for Butterfly’s entrance arrived, an aria plus chorus that required much concentration aside from that devoted to the placement of feet. Fifty-one nervous women took deep breaths and began.

  O’Halloran was enchanted. Never before had he seen or heard anything so delicately exciting; he promised himself that as soon as he could, he’d come back and see it all properly, from out front. He watched Geraldine Farrar turn herself into a different person as she successfully negotiated the bridge and stepped down on to the stage. About a dozen choristers stepped down behind her.

  C-r-a-a-a-c-k.

  “What is that?” Amato cried.

  O’Halloran knew immediately. “Get off the bridge!” he yelled, elbowing his way through the guards. “Get off—now!”

  Only a few of the choristers heard him. They glanced offstage uncertainly.

  C-r-a-a-a-a-c-c-k. The bridge swayed.

  “Jump!” O’Halloran roared to make himself heard above the music. “Keep them off!” he yelled to the men guarding the choristers at the end of the line who’d not yet stepped on the bridge. The guards obeyed instantly, pulling the women back out of the way. Now Amato and the other guards joined O’Halloran in yelling at the women onstage to jump off the bridge.

  Five or six of them did. O’Halloran broke the fall of one woman and they tumbled unhurt to the floor. Amato jumped up and grabbed the ankle of a woman still on the bridge, forcing her to leap off. Then came the loudest c-r-r-a-a-a-a-a-c-c-k-k of them all, followed by the chilling sound of terrified women screaming as the bridge swayed one more time—and collapsed.

  The splitting timbers made sounds like rifle shots as the bridge and its remaining passengers crashed to the stage floor. O’Halloran could hear the audience screaming and Gatti and Ziegler both yelling for someone to close the curtain. The captain jumped to his feet and started tossing aside the bridge debris to get to the women caught in it. The curtain closed.

  The screaming stopped, to be replaced by the sobs and moans of the injured women. The debris was quickly cleared away and O’Halloran made a hasty count of the injured. “Call for an ambulance,” he instructed one of his men. “Tell them we’ll need more than one—we have at least fourteen injured here.” The man nodded acknowledgment and hurried away. “But no deaths,” O’Halloran added half to himself. Miracle of miracles.

  Suddenly two fists grabbed his lapels and O’Halloran felt himself being shaken like a schoolboy. “When do you stop this madman?” The normally placid Antonio Scotti deafened O’Halloran with his rage. “Why do you not catch him? Why do you permit this to happen?”

  “Easy, Mr. Scotti. We’re all upset—”

  “Upset? Do you say ‘upset’? Sì, I think it is safe to say we are upset! Do your men not watch? Do they not see someone tampers with the bridge? Captain, Gerry is first one across that bridge!”

  O’Halloran understood. “Mr. Scotti,” he said quietly, “if you’ll let go of me and let me do my job—”

  Scotti released him with a shove. “Do your job? When do you ever do your job? All this time, and you do nothing! Nothing!”

  The captain felt his face and neck turning red, but his anger died as quickly as it had arisen. All around him men and women were shouting instructions, checking on one another. O’Halloran turned away from Scotti without answering—because the baritone was right. All his time and all his effort, and he had accomplished exactly nothing.

  Gatti-Casazza had quickly decided that when you fall off an opera, the best thing to do is climb right back on again; the performance would continue. He’d sent Ziegler out in front of the closed curtain to make the appropriate announcement to the worried and frightened audience and ordered the remains of the bridge cleared off the stage. The ambulances arrived and carried away the injured choristers. Quaglia decided at what point in the score the performance would resume and informed Setti and the soloists accordingly. Geraldine Farrar was strangely quiet throughout the uproar.

  Setti gathered up those uninjured choristers whose costumes had not been ruined and gave them their instructions on how to finish the act. A few of the women protested at being expected to go on after what had just happened, but the majority of them were grimly determined to finish the performance. In fact, a new resolve was making itself evident on the stage. The bodyguards hired to protect the choristers sensed a change taking place in their charges: anger was replacing fear. The collapsing bridge had been the final straw.

  That change in attitude was not limited to the chorus; it was as if the entire company united in a quiet determination not to let themselves be defeated by one man’s madness. That new determination was reflected in the performance; Geraldine Farrar sang with a deliberation and a crispness that the audience had never heard from her in that particular role. This time the lushly romantic love duet that ended the act had an edge to it that didn’t really belong there but that somehow satisfied all the same.

  The Metropolitan Opera had had enough.

  Backstage, O’Halloran and his men sifted through the bridge debris and found what looked like saw marks at the beginnings of the worst splits in the bridge’s wooden underpinnings. With the help of the stagehands they reconstructed the bridge’s layout and determined the sawing had been done high up on the braces, in spots that would be concealed by the bridge’s side overhang. The wooden braces had not been sawed all the way through; they’d been left strong enough to support the weight of a few people but not the twenty or so who were on the bridge when it collapsed.

  O’Halloran was at his wit’s end. How in the world could anyone crawl under the bridge and saw away at the top of the braces without being seen or heard? The men assigned to watch the stage swore vehemently that no one had gone near the bridge since the time the stagehands had moved it into place that morning. So the damage was done before the bridge had been moved on to the stage?

  It was Gatti-Casazza who solved that mystery for him. “It comes directly from the warehouse,” he said in answer to O’Halloran’s question. “This is first Butterfly of season, and the bridge is not used since last spring. Sfortunatamente, anyone could break into warehouse and saw up the scenery—at any time, I think.”

  O’Halloran rubbed his chin. “Because there are no police guarding the warehouse.” It was the first he’d heard that the Metropolitan Opera House did not have the room to store scenery. “Did you have a break-in at your warehouse recently?”

  “The warehouse is only leased,” Gatti answered darkly. “The owner, he could simply replace lock or whatever is broken and never tell us. He lies to me before, about other things.”

  “What about the scenery for tonight’s opera?”

  “It is stacked outside on Seventh Avenue, waiting until Butterfly scenery is removed.”

  O’Halloran immediately teamed some of his men with a few of the stagehands and ordered them to check every inch of the scenery waiting outside in the snow. The captain was hoping the killer would be satisfied with the spectacular destruction he’d already caused that day and not go for a double-header, but he couldn’t afford to gamble on it. And tomorrow was Christmas Day; he might just strike again then.

  Madame Butterfly finished to strong applause. Emmy Destinn had meant to leave after the first act, but she was still there. Pasquale Amato was still there. Those two joined Antonio Scotti and Geraldine Farrar in the latter’s private dressing room where they agreed to stay through the dinner hour. No one was hungry.

  Quaglia, Gatti, and Ziegler left, the latter two to return within the hour. Setti stayed with the choristers. On stage, the world of the Orient gave way to fifteenth-centu
ry France as the carefully inspected first-act scenery for La Juive was moved into place. The cast for that night’s opera began to arrive.

  And immediately precipitated a new crisis. Enrico Caruso was ill.

  He’d come in walking like an old man, holding his side and shuddering. He was accompanied by his wife, his physician, and two valets, all of them fussing over the tenor and none of them really helping. Caruso made the painful climb up the stairs to his dressing room, where he collapsed into a chair, breathing heavily.

  Dorothy Caruso immediately went in search of any of her husband’s friends who might be there and found four of them in Geraldine Farrar’s dressing room. “You must talk to him!” she pleaded. “I didn’t want him to come in tonight, but he wouldn’t listen to me! You know how stubborn he is.”

  “But what is it?” Amato asked, alarmed. “What is wrong?”

  “Oh, the doctor is still saying neuralgia, but it has to be something more serious than that! And on top of everything, he caught a chill when he went out motoring in Central Park with you and Emmy. He should be home in bed—or in a hospital!”

  The four singers rushed to Caruso’s dressing room and were shocked to find the tenor’s face contorted with pain. But he simply refused to listen when they told him to go home.

  “But this is foolishness, Rico!” Scotti protested. “No one expects you to sing when you are hurting so!”

  “Eh, but they do, Toto, they do! All those people in audience, they choose to spend their Christmas Eve listening to me. I cannot disappoint them.”

  “They will understand,” Gerry said.

  “No, no—I sing, I sing.”

  “Is Gatti back yet?” Emmy asked. “He should know about this.”

  “Do not bother Mr. Gatti,” Caruso gasped. “I sing.”

  Amato became angry. “Rico, you are killing yourself! What you do is not intelligent. One performance—it is not that important!”

  “To me, it is important. The doctor, he tapes up my side so I can sing. Mi faccia questo piacere—go. All of you, please go. The make-up, it takes long time to put on. We must start.”

  Reluctantly, the others withdrew. Amato drew Dorothy outside with them. “You must call in consultant. A specialist. Do not listen to this doctor any longer.”

  She nodded. “I’ve already made up my mind to do just that. If we can get him through tonight, I’ll call someone in tomorrow.”

  By the time Gatti-Casazza returned to the opera house, Caruso was feeling better. His step was firmer and he no longer kept pressing his hand against his side. Under the heavy make-up and curly beard of the elderly Jewish goldsmith he was playing that night, he didn’t even look ill. The role of Eléazar in La Juive was one Caruso loved, even though he had to sing it in French. He’d hired an actor from the Lower East Side Yiddish theatre to coach him in the part. He was sure of himself in the role. It was Christmas Eve. He wanted to sing.

  The Carusos had known nothing of the bridge that had collapsed during Butterfly. “Oh, this is dreadful, dreadful!” Dorothy cried to Geraldine Farrar when she heard. “Fourteen of them hurt? How seriously?”

  “We’ve been told there was no permanent damage,” Gerry said. “A few broken bones, some sprained ankles and knees, and a lot of scrapes and bruises. Quite painful for them—but nothing that won’t heal in time.”

  “Thank heaven for that! I wondered why everyone was looking so grim when we came in. It just goes on and on, doesn’t it? Will it never stop?”

  “It will stop,” Gerry promised her.

  That evening’s audience knew all about the bridge that had collapsed during the matinee performance—but they hadn’t actually seen it happen, and that made all the difference. This was a different crowd tonight, one full of energy and holiday spirit and high expectations for the elaborate combination of stage spectacle, ballet, and great singing that had been promised them. Join your friends at the Metropolitan! Spend Christmas Eve with your favorite tenor! Happy holidays to everyone!

  Maestro Artur Bodanzky took his place on the podium. The opera began, and within minutes Caruso entered. The listeners backstage were relieved to hear that the tenor’s tone was firm and his articulation clear. He didn’t sound like a sick man.

  At first.

  La Juive has five long acts and the role of Eléazar is an especially demanding one. From the orchestra pit Maestro Bodanzky scented danger and hurried backstage during the first intermission to suggest cuts in the lengthy opera. Caruso refused.

  The performance resumed. Captain O’Halloran roamed the backstage area, frankly worried. This opera of which O’Halloran had never heard was a busy one in terms of the choristers’ appearances. They were courtiers, servants, soldiers, Jews at the Feast of the Passover, Christian townspeople. There was some doubling, involving lightning-fast costume changes. O’Halloran was amazed at Giulio Setti, who was able to keep track of who was singing what in which scene without any kind of written list to help him. One hundred forty people, and Setti knew where every one of them was supposed to be! One hundred forty minus fourteen, O’Halloran reminded himself.

  He paused for a moment to listen to Caruso. The man was a marvel; O’Halloran didn’t know the music, but Caruso made him feel as if he did. The captain asked Edward Ziegler what La Juive was about and was told it was an opera about anti-Semitism, performed on this most Christian of holidays.

  O’Halloran’s men had checked the scenery for all six stage settings the opera called for and had found nothing. There was a platform that a few of the choristers and soloists would be standing on in the last act, but O’Halloran himself had made sure no one had sawed away at the platform’s underpinnings. Not that it was likely, he thought; the maniac they were looking for didn’t like to repeat himself.

  He caught sight of that afternoon’s stars peering anxiously out toward the stage. He walked quietly up behind Geraldine Farrar and Antonio Scotti and said, “Why are you still here? Why didn’t you go home?”

  Gerry waved her hands vaguely. “I’m not really sure, Captain. We just felt we ought to stay. And now Caruso is sick—”

  “He is?” O’Halloran was surprised. “He sounds wonderful to me.”

  Scotti said, “But while he is sounding wonderful, he is feeling terrible. The doctor, he should not let him sing.”

  O’Halloran looked out on the stage and saw Caruso leaning heavily on one of the choristers. But although the body was suddenly weak, the voice was as strong and glorious as ever.

  “What a tremendous effort he’s putting into this performance,” Gerry murmured softly. “Foolish, foolish … but heroic, too.”

  The performance proceeded without incident. Every time Caruso came off the stage he was bathed in sweat and his face twisted in pain. The stairs to the dressing-room level were too much for him, so he made a costume change in the wings—assisted by four friends, two valets, and one wife. Then they all stood agonizing while the tenor went back out to enchant his Christmas Eve audience; Gerry wondered if they knew what a generous gift he was giving them. His fourth-act aria Rachel, quand du Seigneur brought down the house. They knew.

  “One more act,” Amato said to O’Halloran. “Just one.”

  “Will he make it?”

  The baritone’s mouth twisted into a wry grin. “Sì, he will make it. The fool.”

  On stage for the last act, Caruso sang with an intensity and poignancy that had his backstage listeners all holding their breaths. The act was to end with Eléazar mounting the platform from which he would be hurled to a grisly death in a boiling cauldron. Gatti-Casazza arranged for the curtain to close just as Caruso made his way toward the platform so he wouldn’t have to climb the steps. Timing was all-important.

  It worked. The curtain closed just as the tenor reached the foot of the steps. The chorus sang its final phrases from behind the closed curtain; the orchestra played the chords that ended the opera.

  And Caruso collapsed.

  12

  The Christmas Da
y matinee performance of Mefistofele was marred by nothing more serious than a late lighting cue, but the police turned up something interesting right before the evening performance was about to begin. Fifty of the men choristers were scheduled to carry long poles to which brightly colored banners were attached. But eight of the poles had been booby-trapped; someone had driven carpet tacks through them, the sharp points sticking out just far enough to tear up the pole-carrier’s hands. Emmy Destinn gazed calmly at the banner pole Captain O’Halloran was holding gingerly, said “Good for you,” and marched out on the stage to sing a flawless Aïda. The Triumphal Scene was performed with slightly fewer banners than usual that night.

  O’Halloran wondered if their elusive madman had crossed over into still another stage of his dementia; no one had died when the Butterfly bridge collapsed, and murder-by-carpet-tack was ridiculous. Did he, whoever he was, now want to maim instead of kill? O’Halloran decided it was more likely that he’d simply been prevented from killing by all the protection surrounding the choristers. The carpet tacks were just a mean-spirited gesture, a reminder that ‘he’ was still there.

  When O’Halloran showed up backstage Monday night for I Pagliacci, he was disappointed to learn that Caruso had cancelled.

  “He has pleurisy,” Gatti-Casazza told him. “His wife calls in consulting physician who says Enrico’s illness is misdiagnosed.” Gatti pulled at his beard meditatively. “Dorothy is right all along … she says that Enrico’s doctors do not know what is wrong.”

  “I’m surely sorry to hear that,” O’Halloran said. “He’ll be all right, won’t he?”

  “Sì, in time. When he collapses after La Juive—that frightens him, you understand. Now he listens. The new physician says rest, Dorothy says rest, I say rest—he rests. It is hard for Enrico to admit he is ill, but now he faces truth. He comes back in, eh, perhaps a month? It is better this way.”

  O’Halloran nodded. “Yeah, it won’t hurt him to take it easy for a while. He’ll be missed while he’s gone, though.”