“Well — the thing goes back a bit. To the time when Ned and Leila were headliners on Pantages and Polis and Keith-Orpheum. The five-a-day is the hard way to come up, don’t let anybody tell you different. One-night jumps from the tanks to the sticks. Playing every whistle-stop in the timetables and some that weren’t even on the map. There were plenty of times when they had to hock their overcoats so they could have coffee and cakes. And they did their share of tenting on the old camp ground before they got the breaks. But they finally got ’em. They were never next-to-closing but they were good enough to get by — partly because Ned was terif as an eccentric hoofer, partly because Leila’s looks put over the act when her pipes couldn’t. She hasn’t much of a voice, you know.” She studied Pedley to see if he thought she was being disloyal.
“I wouldn’t be any judge of that,” he said. “But she has something.”
“’Deed she has, suh. ’Deed she has. That’s the point. Lownes & Lownes hit the jackpot by getting a fill-in job on one of those Broadway legstravaganzas. It wasn’t such a much of a spot but they made the best of it. The crix went wild about Leila. Not her singing; she had only one number. Just — her freshness, her figure — you know what I mean.”
“Sexcess story.”
“Sure. That’s the way she affects you, across the foots. Not all of it comes across on the radio, of course. But enough.”
“Where’s Kelsey come into this?”
“Her radio show’s big-time stuff. Top rating. Premium price. They print her pictures in the country weeklies, name bras and race horses after her. So the band that backs her up gets in on this great white glare of publicity. ‘Luscious Leila Lownes with Hal Kelsey and the Gang.’ It’s gone to Hal’s head. He’s had a taste of the big dough for the first time in his lousy life — and now he wants the whole piece of cake. He’d like it to be ‘Hal Kelsey with Luscious Leila,’ instead of the other way ’round.”
“Then by-and-by it would be ‘Hay Kelsey with Trixie-So-and-so’?”
“Sure. I know that’s what he’s after. Because he told me so one night when he was high and tried to sell me his idea of romance. I was to come along and help him ease her out of top billing. Step one — to kill Leila’s throaty mike-style — kid her that she can sing anything the gals in the Met can. She’s half ready to fall for it, believe me. And it would ruin her. She’s no Lily Pons. Then Hal might be able to step in and replace her with someone he could control.”
“Step two?”
“Ned. He was in Hal’s way, if Hal was to put it over. You can say what you like about brother Edward and I’ll agree with all of it doubled and redistilled. But Neddie knew show biz. He knew how to handle Leila. On the stage, I mean. Off it — well — what’s the use of calling a dead dog names!”
“Why didn’t she ditch her brother, if he treated her so scummy?”
She looked at him sideways. “That’s for her to say, isn’t it?”
“It’s for you to say, if you know. He was holding something over her head, wasn’t he?”
“He might have rattled the family skeleton around in the closet a little.” She opened her handbag, dabbled around in it, laid coins on the counter. There was a pucker of perplexity between her eyes. “Maybe Hal Kelsey knew about that, but I don’t think so.” She finished the sentence slowly, as if doubting it herself.
“I guess I’m the only person besides Leila who knows, now Ned’s about to push up the daisies. She’d cut my throat for telling you.” Kim did things with lipstick, compact and puff; Pedley forced himself to be patient. Eventually she completed the prettying process. “Promise me you won’t use it any way that’ll hurt her?”
“If she isn’t the guilty party.” He nodded.
“I don’t know why I should take your word for it. But you couldn’t be so hardboiled and a two-timer to boot. Well — four or five years ago — five, I think — Leila was—” She had been preening herself with the aid of the mirror back of the fountain — now she stared fixedly at it.
Abruptly she spun around on the stool, bumping into the marshal, spilling him off his perch and back against a pyramid of display cartons which toppled down around his head.
As he was freeing himself from the cardboard clutter, he wondered if that sudden movement of hers had been intentionally awkward. That expression of mingled alarm and apology as she peered out the store window might be the McCoy — or not.
“I’m terribly sorry.” She whispered so the soda jerker couldn’t hear what she was saying. “But there was a man out there on the street! With a gun!”
“Where?” Through the window, Pedley couldn’t see anyone. He slid out the door. The street was empty except for a taxi driver reading a tabloid behind his wheel.
Pedley sprinted to the corner. Nobody there but an old woman wrapped in a shawl, huddling over a pile of newspapers on the curb.
He went back to the cab driver. “See a guy standing at the drugstore window there, a minute ago?”
“There’s always somebody hangin’ around this corner, Mac.” The taximan rattled his newspaper. “I don’t pay no attention.”
Perhaps there hadn’t been any man. The arranger might have been putting on an act. But why? He went back inside.
Kim Wasson wasn’t there.
“Where’d the babe disappear to?” he asked the counterman.
“Side door.” The man slapped the cartons back in place aggrievedly. “Like to know why she tore out in such a dither, without helpin’ pick up these things.”
“Don’t ask me. I haven’t an idea. Not a glimmer.” Pedley went out the side door, but he didn’t expect to see Kim.
He was right about that.
Chapter Thirteen
A Violent Difference of Opinion
The marshal used the phone in the drugstore booth to call Barney, gave instructions to dig up the Wasson girl’s address. Then he went out on the street, waited a minute or so on the corner. There was an outside chance Kim might come back when she got over being scared. If she had really been scared. If it hadn’t been a put-up job to get away from Pedley so she wouldn’t have to make good on the inside story of Leila’s past.
He pulled up his coat collar and watched the snow eddying around the towers of the Waldorf, across the avenue. Maybe he was wasting time, trying to pin down the motive behind the firebug. There were too many motives, too many people who had personal and private reasons for wanting Ned Lownes below ground:
Terry Ross, who’d knocked Lownes out, there at the theater. Ross would be taking over the managership of a piece of talent that could earn up to half a million a year. He’d do better, now Ned was out of the way.
Bill Conover — Bill had threatened to push the button on Lownes; if Leila’s brother could have blocked her marriage to Bill, or made it difficult, that might be enough reason for a youngster whose nerves had been shot to pieces by what he’d been through in the war.
Chuck Gaydel’s position wasn’t quite the same, but the producer had been close to Leila — he still thought enough of her to make a try at getting back that Florentine box — and he would have been able to get around the theater better than almost anyone else. And that was probably one of the keys to the answer, familiarity with the Brockhurst.
Wes Toleman? Pedley wouldn’t have any data to go on, there, until Ollie checked in with something. And this Hal Kelsey. Kim Wasson had done her best to point the finger at the band leader, but that might mean nothing more than that the arranger was mixed up in it herself. Or that she held a grudge against Kelsey and had picked this time to put him in wrong.