Narabedla Ltd Read online

  “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.

  CHAPTER

  5

  Well, time passed.

  You know how it is. You let things slide. You come to a block of some kind. Then you don’t forget the things, exactly—God knows I didn’t forget either Woody or Henry Davidson-Jones—but you put them aside for the moment, because it’s really hard to see how to take the next step, even if they’re important. Other things come up. The old ones sort of slide into that stack of things that you damn well know you have to get around to, real soon now.

  Only you don’t.

  I didn’t get around to doing anything more about Woody’s death because I ran out of ideas, and besides it was vacation time.

  Once we get the sixty-day deferments out of the way on June 15th, then it’s pretty light work until the sluggards with the four-month deferments come due in August. There aren’t many of them, either, because if you need four months you probably need six, which is the most the I.R.S. will give you without much misery befalling, and so June and July are our best getaway times.

  I got away.

  Marlene and I each take a couple of weeks then, and my turn came first. I had airline tickets to Milan, with a return from London-Heathrow, and a Eurailpass to get me around betweentimes. That’s the best way to do it, I’ve found. Europe isn’t all that big, and you can get almost anywhere from almost anywhere else by rail overnight, and with the pass you don’t have to make reservations. You get on the train. You go.

  My “vacation” is also business, of course. I mean it really is. I’ve defended it successfully in two audits, one of them really bloodthirsty. I have an arrangement with most of my artists’ representatives to split a commission now and then, and so I turn up bookings for some of the artists as I travel. I had dinner with some of the people at the Teatro Lirico in Milan, went down to Rome for a day, then on to Naples to the Teatro San Carlo, then back to Milan just in time to buy a ticket to La Scala when I saw that it was Trovatore that night. One of my sopranos was to sing in that production later in the year. I don’t often pay for an opera ticket, but as I had made up my mind at the last minute I didn’t bother to get comped. In the intermission I wandered around the sparsely filled theater, looking at the busts of Verdi and Leoncavallo, with nothing more on my mind than whether to head for Paris or Vienna the next morning.

  The thing was, I was feeling pretty good. I promised myself that I would get up early enough the next morning to run a mile or so before the Milanese were abroad to gape at me. I didn’t even feel the usual heartburn when the baritone got a solo curtain call; I had made up my mind I was past all that, as well as other things I once had enjoyed a whole lot, and the renunciation was bittersweet but no longer painful.

  When I got back to my room in the Albergo Termini I checked the time and called my office. It was nearly six in New York, but Marlene was still there.

  “How’s business?” I started as usual; and as usual Marlene said:

  “You shouldn’t ask. Jack Pershing came in today with the return and a check for the balance due.”

  “That was due on the fifteenth!”

  “
What a memory,” she said admiringly. “Listen, Nolly., I told you we shouldn’t let somebody like him mail it himself. Oh, and I forgot to say, the check’s postdated two weeks.” I didn’t say what I wanted to say. Marlene wouldn’t have minded, but sometimes the overseas operators listen in. I just said, “So now we have to figure penalties and interest—”

  “It’s already done, Nolly. Don’t holler on Jack; he’s got wife troubles. How’s Italy?”

  “I sat in the royal box at La Scala tonight,” I reported. “Same place Mussolini used to sit, before they hung him upside-down.”

  “Don’t let it give you ideas. Nolly? Listen.” Then a pause. There’s always that bit-of-a-second delay in transatlantic telephone calls, while the voices go to the satellite and back; it makes conversations sound a little strained. But Marlene was sounding a little strained on her own, too. “That Irene Madigan woman.”

  “Who?” I said. Then I remembered. “Oh.”

  “Yeah, that one. With the cousin. Well, she came into the office looking for y6u last night. She figures that this guy—you know who I mean? I don’t want to say the name. ”

  “I know who you mean.”

  “Well, she figures he knows something about her cousin.”

  “He swore to me he didn’t.”

  “I know, I told her all you said. But she still thinks so, and she wants to do something about it.”

  I swallowed. What in the world could an unknown woman from some place in Texas do about Henry Davidson-Jones? “Are you still there, Nolly?”

  “Sure. What’s she going to do?”

  “Well, for openers she’s following him around. She said he was on his way to Nice in his yacht. By now she’s probably there, too. In the Holiday Inn. The one at the airport.” Then she stopped talking. The satellite bounced silence back and forth between us.

  “You think I should talk to her,” I said.

  “Me? Nah, Nolly. I don’t know what you ought to do. I’m just telling you. But, you know, you could be going that way anyhow, couldn’t you? And, listen, Nolly, she’s not a nut. She’s a nice goyische kid, real worried about her cousin Tricia.”

  “Who is, I suppose, a soprano or something.”

  Marlene giggled. I hadn’t expected that. “Soprano, huh? You want to know what Tricia is? She’s the Texas state champion baton twirler.”

  There was, after all, no reason I shouldn’t go to the Côte d’Azur. A lot of my clients performed there now and then. Especially dancers, although I didn’t have many of those. The Coast isn’t what it used to be, but, after all, where did the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo come from?

  So I checked out of the Termini just in time to catch the late-night train to Nice.

  It didn’t have a real sleeping car, nothing but couchettes, but miraculously I managed to get a first-class one. So the only other person in my compartment was an elderly Spanish woman on her way to Port Bou. She snored, even above the noise of the train, but I slept well until the porter shook me awake.

  Irene Madigan wasn’t in the hotel. But she had checked with the reservations clerk to find out I was coming, and left a message that said she would phone me at noon. That was fine. After the train ride I needed to get the juices flowing again. So I worked out for an hour, not pressing very hard, in the Holiday Inn’s exercise room. I didn’t mind loafing a bit. I ate a very decent breakfast out on the sun deck, watching a Concorde take off from the airport just beyond the road, splashed around in the tiny pool for a while, and was in my room when the phone rang.

  “Mr. Stennis? I’m Irene Madigan. I really can’t thank you enough for coining here.”

  Nice voice. Nice manners. I said, “That’s all right. Where are you calling from?”

  Half a laugh. “Actually I’m in Monaco right now. I’ll be back at the hotel tonight—rather late, I’m afraid. I was thinking—I mean, well, I don’t suppose you’d like to come over here?”

  In for a penny, in for a pound. I wasn’t really sure I liked to. But I did it. I arranged to meet her at four o’clock in front of the Grand Casino.

  There was no problem about getting there. The Nice airport was a five-minute walk away from the hotel, and there was a direct bus. At half past three I was standing in front of the plaque the Société des Bains de Mer had put up to Sergei Diaghilev, wondering how I would recognize Irene Madigan when I saw her, when she came up behind me. “Please tell me you’re Knollwood Stennis,” she said, “because I don’t want to be arrested for soliciting strange men in Monaco.”

  “They don’t arrest you here for that. They might tax you,” I said, shaking her hand. “I’m Nolly.”

  She looked at me with a kind of good-natured surprise. “I was afraid—I mean, I thought you might be more like, you know, an accountant instead of, well, I mean, with muscles and all.”

  I gave her a neutral smile. (Or should I say a “neuter” smile, meaning let’s don’t go so fast into any boy-girl thing.) I said, “Do you mind telling me what you’re doing here?”

  The pretty smile left her face; what was left was stubbornness. That went with her hair, which was red, but the face was still pretty. She said, “I’ll go wherever he goes, and he’s somewhere around here. See that big white yacht by the breakwater? That’s his. Only he isn’t on it, I think.”

  “You think?”

  She unslung a pair of field glasses from around her neck and thrust them at me. “See for yourself.”

  Without much interest I followed orders. The yacht was certainly a beauty, easily a hundred-footer. A couple of small, Oriental-looking sailors were touching up the varnish on the railings, but no one else was in sight.

  “How about your cousin?” I asked.

  “I haven’t seen Tricia, either. Don’t you think I would have told you if I had? All I did see was—well, I don’t know, but 1 think it was a little old man. He came on deck this morning. One of the crew came running over and made him go back below—he could have been another kidnap victim.”

  “He could have been Henry Davidson-Jones’s father.”

  “I don’t think so, Nolly. He was an awfully ugly little old man. But,” she said, resigning herself to my dogged skepticism, “you’re right, he could have been anybody at all. There’s only one way to find out.”

  That had a sound I didn’t like. I took time to think that over, looking at her. Irene Madigan was worth looking at. About my age, almost my height, wearing white slacks and a silk blouse. I observed that she had C6te d’Azur eyes that were almost the same color as the sea. “Why did you come here, Irene? Why didn’t you just go to see Davidson-Jones in New York?”

  “He won’t see me in New York. Last time I tried I was thrown right out of the World Trade Center,” she said grimly, and then lightened. “Listen, I owe you. Can I buy you a drink or something? Maybe lunch? I’d actually rather lunch, if it’s all the same to you, because I’ve been hanging around watching that yacht all day and I haven’t had anything to eat.”

  So we found a place on top of that garish American hotel they’ve cut into the rock in front of the Grand Casino, and she told me the story of her life.

  Her missing cousin, Tricia, was from the poor side of the family. Still, they’d grown up close. Then Tricia went off to start her own life, the big ambition of which was to be a Dallas Cowgirl and make it with every player on the Rams.

  Then she discovered baton-twirling. That looked like the first, best step to her goal. “Only,” Irene said, “she got kind of mixed up with some guy. Then she got into the Hare Krishnas. Then we lost touch for a while.” Meanwhile Irene herself had married young, moved to California, divorced almost as young, and spent five years trying to make it in the movies. I could see that she might come very close. She had; but never a really decent part. And the rich side of the family, I judged, wasn’t all that rich, because she had supported herself with odd jobs in Hollywood. “Checker in a supermarket. Travel agent. I even drove a cab for a while,” she said. “I had my little trust fund, but I didn’t
want to touch it until I had to. But now …”

  She paused, with a forkful of shrimp halfway to her mouth, looking out at the sea. She finished uncertainly, “Now I feel as if I have to. Do you think I’m a nut?”

  I reassured her. “You can’t be a nut, because Marlene doesn’t think you are.”

  So then I had to tell her all about Marlene, and my business, and why I was an accountant rather than a lead baritone at the Met, although I didn’t tell her all of that. I couldn’t tell her all of that. She was too pretty and too nice, and maybe a little bit too sad, and I didn’t want to discuss mumps with her. So I jumped ahead to Woody Calderon.

  And so we came to Henry Davidson-Jones.

  She told me her story. Tricia had come out to Hollywood, too, hoping to convert baton-twirling into at least an occasional walk-on in a bikini. Never got off the ground. Went back to Beaumont to start over; but meanwhile the two cousins had picked up again, and when Irene decided she wasn’t going to get discovered in Hollywood, being then thirty-one while the maximum discovery age was about twenty-two, she went back to Beaumont herself.

  Tricia was all excited. She’d had this wonderful offer. She called Irene one evening to tell her about Mr. Henry Davidson-Jones and his promises of half a million tax-free dollars spread over a period of four years, and Irene had wished her well and got down to the serious business of washing her hair.

  “And about five o’clock that morning,” Irene told me, “the phone rang again. It was the Port Arthur police. They said Tricia had been in a car accident. She was dead.”

  I felt a chill grazing the center of my spine. “And the car went into the water and they never recovered the body,” I guessed.

  “Oh, no, it wasn’t that way. They had her body in the morgue, and I identified it.”