Stuart Kaminsky - Dancing in the Dark

This was followed by the bleating of Beulah the Buzzer and Ralph Edwards saying, “Aren’t we devils.”

I reached over to turn it off but Astaire stopped me. We kept listening. A woman and her husband were asked if a hen sits or sets when she lays an egg. Before the couple could answer and collect their fifteen dollars, Beulah squawked her into submission and a “consequence.” Edwards then sent the wife off and had the husband dressed as a woman. The husband was placed behind a cashier’s window, pretending he was the woman who was going to pay off the wife when she came back on stage. When the wife was brought back, Ralph Edwards offered her sixty dollars if she could find her husband, who was in plain sight in the small studio. The woman lost one dollar for every second she didn’t find him.

“I don’t think-” Astaire said, and then a phone rang, a phone on the tape.

The audience was giggling and then the muffled sound of Luna answering the phone. It was hard to make out her words as the woman on the wire recording got more frantic, the audience laughed, and Edwards egged her on, but Luna’s side of the conversation sounded like, “No. . I’mmot. . look Immot gnn peck to thad. . no. . no fke Tuesdip in any Hollywood stirfunt. . [Laughter and Ralph Edwards too loud to hear this part, and then]. . Yucatan tk yur post age sighs eggs ques fura bllrum and. . don thread on me. Cumner me anfingersll tarut yurhert. . [Phone is hung up].”

“Truth or Consequences” went on with the wife on the radio crying frantically, “Where are you?”

Luna, now closer to the microphone, said something fast and turned off the machine.

The silver spool continued to run with a hum. Astaire reached over and rewound it.

He listened to Luna’s side of the phone conversation once more and turned off the machine.

“Did you understand what she said?” he asked.

“Not much.”

“It’s like doing a bad loop in a cheap studio. She said, ‘Look, I am not going back to that. No fake two-step in any Hollywood storefront. . You can take your postage-size excuse for a ballroom. . Do not threaten me. . Come near me, and Fingers will tear out your heart.’”

“Then she went to the machine,” I continued. “And in answer to the contestant’s question, ‘Where are you?’ answered ‘Where you’ll never have the nerve to find me, Willie.’ ”

“So. .” Astaire began, his hand to his chin.

“Willie may have had the nerve to find Luna,” I said. “Find her and kill her.”

“We’re not sure what he threatened her with or about,” said Astaire.

“And it probably has nothing to do with her murder,” I went on.

“But then again. .” Astaire said.

“I go looking for a Willie connected to a storefront ballroom.”

“ We go looking, and my guess is we’re talking about a storefront dance studio, not a real ballroom. Probably the one where she supposedly taught.”

“I don’t want to argue but. .”

“Look, Peters,” he said, a hand to his chest and the other pointing at me. “I’ve been a police follower all my life, city to city, since I was a kid. Crime is more than a hobby with me. It’s a passion. I’m going to help. It’s my case too, remember.”

“I thought you had a show and a bond tour.”

“I’ve got a few days. When is ‘Truth or Consequences’ on?”

“Sunday, eight-thirty,” I said.

“So Willie called her Sunday at about ten minutes after eight. That means. .”

The door flew open and a woman stormed in, dark and on fire.

“Where is he?” she asked.

She was little, no more than four-ten, pretty, long dark hair brushed straight and to her neck with evenly trimmed bangs across her forehead. She had on too much makeup and too few clothes. What she wore looked like a sarong held up by a pair of very full breasts.

“Who?” I asked as she started across toward the bedroom, suddenly stopped and turned around, red mouth open.

“Fred Astaire,” she said.

“Caught,” Astaire said with a winning smile.

The woman came back toward us.

“I’ve seen all your movies, even the one you did with Joan Crawford. .”

“Dancing Lady,” Astaire said. “Let me guess. You’re Mrs. Forbes and you are looking for your husband.”

“Yes,” she said with a very forced smile. “The police have been asking me stupid, stupid questions for the last who-knows-how-long. And then, finally, they tell me that someone killed the little. . Who are you? What are you both doing in this room?”

“You know Mr. Astaire,” I said. “I’m Toby Peters, private investigator. Your husband wants to hire me to find Miss Martin’s killer.”

She shook her head and went for the bedroom door, throwing it open with a bang.

“He’s not here,” she said after going in, checking, and coming out with a blue-silk robe. “But he was. This is his. I saw her three times. Cheap. Didn’t know how to use eyeliner.”

She looked at Astaire again, who stood there bouncing on his heels, arms folded, looking pleased with the world.

“What do you have to do with all this?” she asked Astaire.

“I was giving Miss Martin dance lessons.”

“That bastard,” Mrs. Fingers Forbes shouted, her red fingernails turning to curled, ready claws.

She bounced to the door, turned, and said, “I’m really not like this. It’s just that. .”

“We understand,” said Astaire.

“If you could teach her to dance, you could teach me.”

“Well, I. .”

“I’ll talk to Arthur about it,” she said in a tone that made it clear that neither Arthur nor Astaire would have a choice in the matter.

“I really can’t take. .” Astaire began, but she was out and gone.

“I suggest we lock the door,” I said. “We check the bedroom fast, take the recording, and get the hell out of here.”

Five minutes later we were out the door and I had stolen a towel from the Monticello. The towel was loosely wrapped around the wire recording. Fred Astaire bounced along at my side. We met no one in the hall and no one in the nearly empty lobby.

When we stepped out onto the street, we finally met somebody: the two uniformed cops who had come with Phil and Steve Seidman. They stepped in front of us, blocking our escape.

“Mr. Astaire,” said the younger of the two-much, much younger, teeth still a bright, natural white. “I’m sorry, but I’ll have to ask Mr. Peters to come with us.”

“I don’t see why you have to apologize to him,” I said, nodding at Astaire. “We’re not together. He was just walking out at the same time. .”

“Now, wait a minute,” Astaire said.

The second cop was much older, much more experienced, and much more stupid than the young one.

“Inside,” he said, taking my arm. “We were told to get you. Mr. Laurel, here, can leave.”

“This’s Fred Astaire, Tim,” the younger cop whispered.

“I don’t care if he’s King Kong. He can dance in the street for nickels and wait out here.”

A crowd was gathering. Some of them clearly recognized Astaire.

“I’ll call you later,” I said.

Astaire nodded and went for a taxi at the curb.

Steve Seidman, gaunt and weary, stood at the end of the lobby near the corridor leading to the ballroom. His hands were behind his back as the two cops ushered me toward him.

“I’ll make a deal with you, Toby,” he said. “You give me the towel and whatever’s in it that you took from Luna Martin’s room, and I’ll give you something in return.”

I handed him the towel and the wire recording. His hands came out from behind his back and he handed me some sheet music.

“One of your extras posing as tough guys says you had an old piano player who may have left these here. They were on the piano.”