Stuart Kaminsky - Show Business is Murder

“What the hell are you doing here? You’ve got a for-chrissake half hour for chrissake.”

Kenny shrugged.

“Staying warm,” he said flexing his shoulders. “Being ready. Never know, do you?”

“You always know,” said Alf turning to Vogel and asking, “What’s wrong with you?”

“Shtomack,” said Vogel, hand to his gut. Vogel wore blue tights with a black sash. His black dyed hair was parted in the middle. He had once had a mustache, but had shaved it last year. No one knew why. Vogel didn’t say.

The Bronte Sisters danced off the stage right past Vogel and Kenny. Their huge smiles ended. The applause behind them wasn’t bad, especially for a frozen night in Chicago.

Vogel rubbed his stomach, made a face, and watched the curtain come down. Then he wheeled his low, flat cart full of weights onto the stage and nodded at Alf. Alf waved at the stagehand who lifted the curtain.

Kenny stood watching, waiting for Vogel to die on stage, ready to dance in to save the show. But Vogel didn’t die. He lifted bars, bent pipe over his head, held a reluctant volunteer from the audience over his head with his right hand and then moved the terrified man to his left hand. Applause. Vogel bowed in dignified silence. The curtain came down.

One of the Bronte sisters, probably Lizzy, screamed from the women’s dressing room upstairs,

“Alfie, somethin’s wrong with Corrine. Get up here.”

“Corrine’s on now,” Alf said. “Tell her. She’s on. Chrissake.”

Kenny looked toward stairs. Lizzy was standing at the top.

“She’s not movin’,” Lizzy said.

Corrine was a ventriloquist, the World’s Greatest Female Ventriloquist, but they didn’t put that in the program. There were already too many “Greatests” in the show and besides, anyone who saw Corrine’s act could tell that she was far from the greatest. She was the bottom of the bill, below Kenny. Corrine’s dummy was Fifi. Fifi was supposed to have a French accent, but when Corrine had been drinking, she forgot the accent or used an Italian or Spanish one instead. When Corrine had been drinking, which was frequent, she also sometimes forgot to move Fifi’s mouth when Fifi spoke. Corrine was over seventy, and her false teeth clacked. She forgot most of her punch lines. She wasn’t a bad sort, but she wasn’t much of a mingler.

“I’ll go see,” said Alf. “Kenny, you go on. You’re ready. You go on. Tell Al and Spitzer in the pit.”

Al was the piano player. Spitzer played clarinet, trumpet, sax, whatever was called for. Spitzer of all trades. Versatility and mediocrity combined to make one perfect inexpensive musician.

Kenny moved past Vogel and asked,

“How’s your stomach?”

“Not good. Couldn’t even eat my sandwich.”

“You gave it to Corrine didn’t you?” Kenny asked.

Vogel nodded seeing nothing meaningful in the question.

Kenny stuck his head through the curtain and signaled to Al and Spitzer that he was going on next. They both shrugged. Made no difference to them.

They started his music. Chinatown . The Dancing Fool came tapping out. No applause. He didn’t expect any. Not yet. If he were lucky, the few dozen people out there would clap out of sync when he finished. Kenny was determined to wow ’em. He doubled the tempo. Al and Spitzer had a hard time keeping up with him. Al frowned. Kenny Poole danced like a fool trying not to think about Corrine. There was no point killing Corrine. It wouldn’t move him up in the bill. First he kills the wrong poodle and now the wrong person. But maybe she wasn’t dead.

Kenny sweated through three fast-paced numbers and then did his special, hands-in-the-pocket slow dance to Silver Threads Among the Gold . The trick was, the skill was, not to tap, to defy the metal cleats. It took work, practice. Only the pros knew how hard it was. Audience’s almost never got it. Once in Rochester a woman had applauded wildly after he did the slow dance. He had tried to get a good look at her, but she was in the back of the house. That was five, maybe eight years ago.

He ended the act with the lean-forward kick and double back arm swing to the slightly flat rendition of Stars and Stripes Forever . You had to be unpatriotic not to applaud, especially when Kenny stopped dancing and pulled the flag out of his jacket pocket.

He tapped offstage, smiling over his shoulder, exhausted, tucked the flag in his pocket, and wiped the sweat from his forehead. He’d have to get the soaked costume cleaned. Two bits, maybe half a buck. Cost of doing this kind of business. The seals were sitting there already barking, being fed fish from a bucket.

“Corrine’s dead,” Lizzy Bronte greeted him, tears in her eyes.

The seals and Sandy Scrimberger moved onstage to the pit duo playing The Battle Hymn of the Republic that they played because Sandy was dressed in a Union uniform and the seals were going to play the song on their horns.

Scrimberger and the seals were number five on the list. Few would mourn a pair of deal seals.

Kenny allowed himself to stand panting and comforting Liz Bronte.

“It’s the drink what did it,” she wept. “We tried to tell her. Doctors tried to tell her. Would she listen?”

“No,” said Kenny.

Alf came down the stairs shaking his head.

“Doctor’s coming,” he said. “But she’s gone.”

Liz Bronte ran up the stairs where her sister stood at the top. They hugged.

“Between you and me and Charlie Chaplin,” Alf said. “Corrine’s breath smelled like she’d been drinking some thousand proof.”

Alf hurried off behind the flat of a Civil War battlefield.

If the doc said Corrine had a heart attack, he couldn’t kill Vogel and make it look like a heart attack. There are coincidences and coincidences, but… Kenny got an idea.

No Bronte sister act with only one Bronte sister. One Bronte sister with a broken leg and no act. Show business tradition. “Break a leg, girls,” someone would say when the house was good and they remembered.

Kenny would find a way to break a Bronte leg, probably Charlotte’s. Charlotte was stronger. She’d recover faster. Not fast enough to get back in the season. And Kenny wouldn’t have to kill her. So, get rid of the seals and one Bronte and Kenny would make the cut.

When? The sooner the better. Why not now?

Risky, but look at it this way: Corrine’s dead. Charlotte’s distraught. She comes down the steps crying her eyes out. She trips, with a little help from Kenny hiding under the stairs. It shouldn’t kill her. With luck, a broken leg, especially if he hits the leg hard when he trips her. Hit the leg, duck into the janitor’s closet under the stairs, go through the window, close it, back around fast to the stage entrance, to the sound of people screaming about the double tragedy. Get a chance to feel Liz leaning against him again. Bonus.

He moved under the stairs, hid in the shadows, picked up a broom leaning against the wall.

The seals on stage were blowing their horns. He could hear the Brontes coming, comforting each other.

“Maybe one of us should stay with her,” Liz said.

“Go on,” Charlotte said. “I’ll be right up.”

Perfect. Liz was heading back to the women’s dressing room. Charlotte was already coming down the stairs. He heard her at the top step. Then the second. Saw her ankle. Nice ankle. She was moving slowly. Kenny was sweating even more now. Life or death. Kill or be killed, but he wasn’t going to kill her.

He thrust the broom handle between the steps and swung it hard against Charlotte’s ankle. Charlotte screamed, maybe she reached for the metal railing. She tripped and tumbled down the last nine stairs, but Kenny had already put the broom back and was closing the closet door behind him.