Downtown Strut: An Edna Ferber Mystery (Edna Ferber Mysteries) Read Free Page A

man was a destructive imp, slick and devious. Meshugenah , George Kaufman insisted. Plain crazy.
    Jed pushed the papers at me, but made no move to leave.
    You saw a small man standing there, wiry and compact, slender as a pencil but with the suggestion of taut, high-strung muscles. Looking at him, you sensed that he was hairy, some simian creature loosed on fashionable Broadway. His dark face, that chiseled chin, and the perpetual grainy beard stubble, cast him as a faintly dissolute speakeasy dandy from a Damon Runyon tale, a man whose sartorial splendor was always impeccable, the creases in his trousers just so, cascading over his shoes just so; the shirt collar crisp; the fedora worn with the jaunty calculation of a Broadway prima donna, inclined on the small head so that it suggested an appendage acquired at birth. Worse, the hooded eyes possessed no humor, though he’d wisecrack like a smart aleck schoolboy. Not only that but, frighteningly, those black onyx eyes had a hard quartz-like polish, as though squinting at a sun no one else saw. They were the eyes of a man who was purposely evil—or just plain mad. Which didn’t matter because the result was the same. “To be sexy,” he once purred at me, “you’ve got to have menace.” You avoided men like Jed. I, on the other hand, looked forward to his visits, though I hated to admit it.
    He was just twenty-seven. I…well…wasn’t.
    While I was glancing at the typed sheets he handed me, something was happening in the room. Waters and his friends had become quiet, slipping back into their seats though most now wore their overcoats. Of course, I figured they all knew who Jed Harris was, his ferocious power on Broadway, this golden boy—but Waters, a gutsy seventeen-year-old, said something to him about seeing Coquette —how much he loved Helen Hayes, how much…
    He stopped, sputtered, and I looked up, bothered.
    Jed’s icy expression stopped him cold. I found myself looking from Jed to the young folks. Jed’s eyes swept over their faces, and there was nothing welcome about the look. I said something about the group of young writers and actors, talented men and women, but I realized something was wrong. A raw buzz of electricity hummed in the room. No one moved, yet everybody seemed to be in motion. Facing them, rigid, this small man took them all in. As I watched, Jed’s glare moved from Roddy to Lawson to Ellie, but finally caught the eye of the beautiful Bella, tucked into a side chair, her presence partially obscured by Lawson, who was leaning forward. A tense moment, Jed and Bella holding eye contact for a brief moment—and I knew at that second that the two of them knew each other.
    “Have you met…” I began, but Jed backed up, swagger in his step, and turned to leave. “Jed?”
    Without saying a word he was gone, the door slammed.
    The mood of the room shifted. When I glanced at Bella, she pushed herself back into the cushions of the chair, folding her body in, her long arms wrapped around her chest as though she were a child defending herself. Her striking face was flushed. She was staring across the room, seemingly fascinated by the German pewter candlesticks on my fireplace mantel. What she was doing, I realized, was avoiding Lawson, who’d turned his body so that he now faced her. His lips were drawn into a straight, disapproving line, yet when he raised a hand to his face, I noticed his fingers trembling. And the look in his eyes was both sad and curious.
    At that moment Roddy stood up and hurriedly buttoned his overcoat. He glanced from Lawson to Bella, sarcasm lacing his words. “Ain’t you the brave guy though?” For a moment I was confused. Yes, it was a line from the popular play Broadway , a tag line with faddish currency among theatergoers. Cartoon characters used it in the funny papers. It made everyone laugh. No one laughed now.
    Odd, I thought, that quotation coming from this young man, and said so bitterly. A pause. Then he