Stewart Sterling - Where There’s Smoke

The firemen didn’t bother with hawsers around the bollards. Pedley hustled Ollie over the bulwarks, hollered up to the pilothouse, “Saint George’s, Dan. And cut the corners on those spar buoys!”

They were rolling fearsomely down the ship channel off the tip of Governor’s Island, with the Mitchel taking heavy spray over her quarter as she butted into the cross-chop, before Ollie asked the question that had been bothering her.

“You really believe Leila’s behind this orgy of arson, Ben?”

“Sure, she’s behind it.” He put down the captain’s binoculars; there was no sign of smoke from the cluster of low, white buildings on the hill rising over Saint George’s, but with a wind like this he couldn’t have seen it, anyway. “You saw the Memoirs of a Kilocycle Courtesan.”

“They may not have meant the same thing to a woman they’d mean to a man. She’s been hurt; she’s confused; her morals are those of an alley cat in April. But those pages out of the life of a lovelorn lady don’t tell me she’s a murderess and a firebug. I can’t imagine the girl who’d put those things on paper slashing a man’s throat and leaving his body in the snow in Central Park. What would be her motive?”

Pedley kept his eyes on the nearing piers of the island. “Oh, the motive’s been clear enough, all the way through, Ollie.”

“Blackmail?”

“That’s the method, Ollie. Not the motive. The motive is the half a million Luscious Leila might earn the next twelve months. And the same, or more, the year after that. And so on, ad infinitum. That’s a hell of a lot of jack, even after you deduct taxes.”

The M.P. at the door of the recreation hall tapped a gloved finger against his lips in warning. “We’re on the air,” he murmured. “Sit in back.”

Music blared at them when they went in.

“Goodness!” Ollie whispered in astonishment at the row after row of quiet, intent men in their maroon coveralls, with their arms in splints, or their legs in casts — a good many in wheel chairs. “There must be hundreds.”

“Place holds close to a thousand.” Pedley walked swiftly down a side aisle, toward the apron of the shallow stage at the far end of the hall.

Wes Toleman was at the microphone, his face tilted up like that of a child awaiting a kiss. He waved toward the wings. Leila came out. The roar of cheers, whistles, and wolf-calls drowned out the handclapping, the pounding of canes and crutches on the floor. They followed her every movement as she swayed gracefully to the mike, raising her hand in smiling salute. The great hall became quiet except for the singing surge of the strings.

Pedley saw Shaner squatting on the floor at the end of the first row; jerked an imperative thumb at him.

The brasses softened; the rhythm section brought up the beat. Cliff Etting flicked his white wand at Leila. She threw her head back to flex her throat muscles, pushed the bronze helmet of hair back from her head, began to sing:

She had a marvelous sense of rhythm, Pedley realized. And she was one of those entertainers who somehow manage that magical rapport with an orchestra that makes every musician work with her, for her. The piano was just loud enough so she couldn’t go wrong in pitch, the strings came in with exactly the right staccato, the bull fiddle delayed smoothly on the afterbeat.

Wounded men strained forward in their seats; tension disappeared from haggard faces, lips hung loose, a thousand pairs of eyes devoured her. She had that same magical effect on all audiences — the hall was surcharged with the intensity of her appeal.

She’s something more than a blues singer with a freak larynx that makes her voice husky over the mike, the marshal told himself. She may not be a coloratura but she’s something better, to these vets.

He thought of the way Walt Whitman had put it; it fitted this girl up there on the big stage as nothing else could:

All music is what awakes from you when you are reminded by the instruments… It is not the violins and the cornets, it is not the oboe nor the beating drums… It is nearer and farther than they…

She’s what they haven’t had, he reminded himself — What a lot of them may never have again, except through her. With that figure, those warm lips and friendly eyes, these men wouldn’t care what she’d been or done — not while that voice brought back the memories and held the promise.

Shaner whispered close to his ear, “She ain’t been out of my sight longer than to change her clothes, skipper. Everything’s strictly under control.”

“I hope to God you know what you’re talking about. Who’s in there?” He indicated the makeshift control room, improvised out of wallboard and Plastiglas at one side of the stage; at the angle Pedley was standing, he couldn’t see anything of the booth but a glare.

“There are Three Musketeers cooped up in there with the engineer, coach. Ross and a bird everyone calls Chuck — plus a silver-haired gent with a bandage on his chops.”

“Chuck’s the producer. The other’s their lawyer. Where’s the hospital patrol?”

“I run across a corp’ral who’s been giving the up and down to the sand buckets and the sprinklers and the hoserolls. You want him?”

“Quick. Where is he? Backstage?”

“He was. You got to crawl through the orchestra.”

“Snap it up.”

The hall was a natural draftmaker. Big floor space, high-vaulted composition roof, wartime construction with the beams and girders insufficiently fireproofed. Wood floors. Wood sash. The place would go up like a box of matches. A lot of good those red globes and EXIT diagrams would do if it ever caught.

And there were no steel fire shutters to keep a blaze from spreading horizontally to other buildings, he noticed. He was glad he’d notified the nearby Richmond companies to get “on the box” — be ready to roll at a split second’s notice.

They went Indian file, stooping over, behind the percussion instruments to a tiny door under the stage apron. Above them the voice throbbed on:

“Good grief!” Olive murmured, as they passed into the dimness below stage. “Does she have to sing that?”

They came up out of the half-light into the wings. A group of coveralled men huddled behind the heavy glass-fiber curtain. One wore khaki, with chevrons on the arm.

Shaner sss-ed, “Hey, Corp. Fire Marshal wants you.”

The corporal resented the interruption. “Whatsamatter, Chief?”

“Sprinkler system all right?”

“Yeah. Anything—?”

“Tested the down pipes from your roof tank?”

“They ain’t frozen, if that’s what you’re getting at.” The soldier opened his eyes very wide at Olive.

Pedley said, “You feel her lately?”

“Howzat?”

“Have you felt the walls?” Pedley strode toward the rear drop, turned to look out across the stage and up at the line of bulbs under the proscenium. The illumination which beat down on the singer’s bronze hair wasn’t clear and sharp; it quivered like sunlight over a midsummer pavement. “Hot air up there, buddy. Making the lights shimmy. Better feel her.”

“Sure it’s hot. We keep the steam high on account of our patients.”

Pedley said sharply, “You wouldn’t know if the seat of your pants was burning! Shaner. Take the east wall.” He didn’t wait for his deputy to begin; moved swiftly along the west wall, passing his hands over the calcimined plaster.