Lawrence Block: Out on the Cutting Edge

“Jesus,” he said. “You’re a cheap bastard, anybody ever tell you that?”

She wasn’t in a hospital, not in the five boroughs, at any rate. I hadn’t expected she would be, but it was the kind of thing that had to be checked.

While I was learning this through Durkin’s channels, I was walking down other streets on my own. Over the next several days I made a few more visits to Florence Edderling’s rooming house, where I knocked on more doors and talked to more tenants when I found them in. There were men as well as women in the building, old people as well as young ones, New Yorkers as well as out-of-towners, but the bulk of Ms. Edderling’s roomers were like Paula Hoeldtke — young women, relatively new in the city, long on hope and short on cash.

Few of them knew Paula by name, although most of them recognized her picture, or thought they did. Like her, they spent most of their time away from the rooming house, and when they were in their rooms they were alone, with their doors closed. “I thought this would be like those forties movies,” one girl told me, “with a wisecracking landlady and kids gathering in the parlor to talk about boyfriends and auditions and do each other’s hair. Well, there used to be a parlor, but they partitioned it years ago and made two rooms out of it and rented them out. There are people I nod to and smile at, but I don’t really know a single person in this building. I used to see this girl — Paula? But I never knew her name, and I didn’t even know she’d moved out.”

One morning I went over to the Actors Equity office, where I managed to establish that Paula Hoeldtke hadn’t been a member of that organization. The young man who checked the listings asked me if she’d been a member of AFTRA or SAG; when I said I didn’t know, he was nice enough to call the two unions for me. Neither of them had her name on their rolls.

“Unless she used another name,” he said. “Her name’s not utterly impossible, in fact it looks good in print, but it’s the sort of name a great many people would mispronounce, or at least be uncertain about. Do you suppose she went and changed it to Paula Holden or something manageable like that?”

“She didn’t say anything about it to her parents.”

“It’s not always the sort of thing you rush to report to your parents, especially if they have a strong attachment to their name. As parents often do.”

“I suppose you’re right. But she used her own name in the two shows she was in.”

“May I see that?” He took the playbills from me. “Oh, now this might be helpful. Yes, here we are, Paula Hoeldtke. Am I pronouncing it correctly?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Actually I can’t think how else you would pronounce it, but one feels uncertain. She could have just spelled it differently, H-O-L-T-K-Y. But that wouldn’t look right, would it? Let’s see. ‘Paula Hoeldtke majored in theater arts at Ball State University’—oh, the poor darling—‘where she appeared in The Flowering Peach and Gregory’s Garden.’ The Flowering Peach is Odets, but what the hell do you suppose Gregory’s Garden might be? Student work, that would be my guess. And that is all they’re going to tell us about Paula Hoeldtke. What is this, anyway? Another Part of Town , what a curious choice for a showcase. She played Molly. I barely remember the play, but I don’t think that’s a principal role.”

“She told her parents she had a small part.”

“I don’t think she exaggerated. Was there anyone in this? Hmmm. ‘Axel Godine appears with the permission of Actors Equity.’ I don’t know who he is, but I can furnish you with his phone number. He played Oliver, so he’s probably well up in years, but you never know in a showcase, the casting sometimes tends to be imaginative. Does she like older men?”

“I don’t know.”

“What’s this? Very Good Friends . Not a bad title, and where did they do it? At the Cherry Lane? I wonder why I never heard of it. Oh, it was a staged reading, it only had one performance. Not a bad title, Very Good Friends , a little suggestive but hardly naughty. Oh, Gerald Cameron wrote it. He’s quite good. I wonder how she happened to be in this.”

“Is it unusual?”

“Well, sort of. You wouldn’t have open auditions for this sort of thing, I wouldn’t think. You see, the playwright very likely wanted to get a sense of how his work would play, so he or the designated director got hold of some suitable actors and had them walk through it onstage, possibly in front of prospective backers, possibly not. Some staged readings these days are fairly elaborate, with extensive rehearsals and a fair amount of movement onstage. In others the actors just sit in chairs as if they were doing a radio play. And who directed this? Oh, we’re in luck.”

“Someone you know?”

“Indeed,” he said. He looked up a number, picked up a phone and dialed it. He said, “David Quantrill, please. David? Aaron Stallworth. How are you? Oh, really? Yes, well I heard about that .” He covered the mouthpiece and rolled his eyes at the ceiling. “David, guess what I’ve got in my hand. No, on second thought don’t bother. It’s a playbill for a staged reading of Very Good Friends . Did that ever get past the staged reading stage, as it were? I see. Yes, I see. I hadn’t heard. Oh, that’s too bad.” His face clouded, and he listened in silence for a moment. Then he said, “David, why I’m calling is there’s a fellow with me now who’s trying to find one of the actors from the reading. Her name’s Paula Hoeldtke and it says here that she read Marcy. Yes. Can you tell me how you happened to use her? I see. Well, look, do you suppose my friend could come and have a word with you? He’ll have some questions to ask. It seems our Paula has vanished from the face of the earth and her parents are predictably frantic. Would that be all right? Good, I’ll send him right over. No, I don’t think so. Shall I ask him? Oh, I see. Thank you, David.”

He put the phone down, pressed the tips of two fingers against the center of his forehead, as if trying to suppress a headache. With his eyes lowered he said, “The play hasn’t been performed because Gerald Cameron wanted to revise it after the reading, and he hasn’t been able to do so because he’s been ill.” He looked at me. “Very ill.”

“I see.”

“Everyone’s dying. Have you noticed? I’m sorry, I don’t mean to do this. David lives in Chelsea, let me write down the address for you. I assumed you’d rather ask him questions yourself than have me try to function as an intermediary. He wanted to know if you were gay. I told him I didn’t think so.”

“I’m not.”

“I suppose he only asked out of habit. After all, what difference could it make? Nobody does anything anymore. And it’s not as though you have to ask who’s gay and who isn’t. All you have to do is wait a few years and see who’s still alive.” He looked at me. “Have you been reading about the seals?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You know,” he said. “The seals.” He pressed his elbows against his ribs, clapped his hands together like flippers, and tilted his head to mime a seal balancing a ball on its nose. “In the North Sea, and all along the European coastline. The seals are dying and nobody knows why. Oh, they’ve isolated a virus, but it’s been around for ages, it’s the one that causes distemper in dogs, and it’s not as though some rott-weiler’s been racing around biting seals. The best guess seems to be that it’s pollution. The North Sea is badly polluted, and they think this has weakened the immune systems of the seals, leaving them with no defense against whatever virus comes along. Do you know what I think?”