Appearances like this were intended to put Eddie and Marian in the gossip pages. Eddie always thought seeing his name in print created an illusion of fame he wasn’t quite sure he lived up to.
They checked their coats, which revealed that Marian had put on a long, slinky gown covered in tiny silver beads. It caught the light in a way that made Marian sparkle and she looked exceptional in it. He held out his elbow for her and she tucked her hand into it.
“You look lovely tonight, dearest,” he said, loud enough for people around him to hear.
“Why, thank you, darling.”
Eddie held out a chair for Marian at a table near the dance floor, ideal for being spotted at. She played along, demurely sitting and then gently caressing Eddie’s shoulder as he sat. Eddie had to tip the waiter generously, too, in order to get a drink with some giggle water in it.
At the next table, there was a Jane hanging all over some fella in a pinstripe suit, both of them the picture of fashion and elegance. The woman looked like she was genuinely interested in the man—in a way that Eddie and Marian weren’t interested in each other—but who knew? Here Eddie and Marian were drumming up attention for their husband-and-wife act, and yet they weren’t really married and both were sleeping with other people.
Eddie had been wanting to confront Marian about Blanchard but didn’t quite have the heart yet. This might be a good venue to at least mention that he knew what was going on, but then his attention got snagged by the couple at the next table.
“I’ll level with ya, doll,” the man said in a gravelly voice with a thick Brooklyn accent. “You got gams forever, but I can’t get you a job at the Riviera. That’s Epstein’s joint.”
Hearing the name Epstein made Eddie think of Lane, although it didn’t take much to make him think of Lane lately. Suddenly, Eddie felt like a moll, a gangster’s girl, and that was a strange position to find himself in. But that was the situation, wasn’t it? He was Lane’s. They belonged to each other. If Eddie couldn’t bring himself to leave Lane even when the stakes were as high as they were, he was hooked. He realized, thinking about Epstein, that it was probably dangerous getting involved with a man like that; Lane’s life seemed fairly free of trouble, but how well did they even really know each other? Lane was still part of the Mob. He was a club owner, a bootlegger, potentially a killer. It was easy to forget that when they were in bed or having a quiet drink at a bar. But that was the real truth at the end of the day.
“What’s eating you, Eddie?” Marian asked.
“Ah, nothing. Just thinking about . . . things.”
“Jimmy was right, wasn’t he? You got someone you’re stuck on.”
Eddie shook his head. “I’m not stuck on anyone.”
“That man who comes to the theater after the show. The fella with the expensive shoes who smokes near the lamppost. He’s waiting for you often enough. I thought maybe you had something going with him.”
That Marian knew about Lane was alarming. So much for discretion. “Who else has seen him?”
“No one, as far as I know. But I see him there all the time and figured he must be waiting for someone. I thought it was one of the chorus girls. Then, last week, I left just after you and saw you talking to him. I just wondered.”
“It’s nothing.”
“It would be fine with me if it were. I understand about you, Eddie.”
“No.”
Marian sat back in her chair a little and shrugged. “All right.”
“You and Jimmy Blanchard are an item.”
Marian huffed. “That’s hardly news.”
“Well, then use your keen sense of sight to see what’s right in front of you.” Eddie took a deep breath and tried to calm down. He wasn’t really angry at Marian and he didn’t want to take his frustration out on her. She didn’t deserve that. Quietly, he said, “Your Jimmy has been looking for an excuse to fire me. I know he has. You can’t say anything about the man you’ve seen outside the club. Not a word. This would be Blanchard’s excuse.”
Marian frowned. “He doesn’t want to fire you.”
“He does. He wants you to be his star. And you deserve it, Marian, you really do. That new song, it’s wonderful, and Blanchard probably doesn’t think you need a ball and chain like me hanging around your ankle.”
“That’s not what you are. The act doesn’t work without both of us.”
“Blanchard doesn’t see it that way. But I want this, Marian, I want our act to succeed. You know I love to dance. So you can’t . . . you can’t tell Blanchard you think I’m sweet on some fella because then that’s it for me. He’ll let me go.”
Marian reached over and placed her hand over Eddie’s. “I won’t say anything. And for good measure, I will play the doting spouse right now to better convince all these people that we’re an item. That’s what Jimmy wants. For us to get people in those seats.”
Eddie turned his hand over and squeezed hers. “Thanks, Marian.” But how sad was it that a lie was safer than the truth.
Chapter 12
“The Song Is Ended”
J
ulian came into work—and, he thought fondly, this was work, legitimate work, work he didn’t have to spread his legs for—and took in the scene of the Marigold with sunlight streaming through the windows. The brightness made the place look dirtier and shabbier than it did at night when the lights were low. He caught sight of Lane speaking to someone in the corner and wondered about that, too, about how a man like Lane came to work in a place like this. Or, given what Julian knew of Lane’s proclivities, perhaps the nature of the club was not so much of a surprise as its ownership.
Still, Julian liked Lane, and not only because he’d set Julian up with a job and a place to stay. Well, the boardinghouse on 16th Street left something to be desired, but it had a bed and it was clean and Julian didn’t have to pay for it, either with money or his body. He suspected the boardinghouse was owned by the same people who owned the Marigold, and there were a number of shady characters occupying the other rooms, but what Julian appreciated was that his room had a door that closed, so he could shut out everyone else. It had been years since he’d had such a luxury.
So he was happy, if still a little sore. Makeup covered the bruises well enough and Lane let him hide out in the office when the pain from his injuries became overwhelming. But now Julian whistled a tune he thought might have been Gershwin—or a bastardization thereof—as he walked to the kitchen. He felt good today.
When he came through the door, he saw one of the other waiters sitting on a chair in the corner, flipping through the newspaper. “Oh, hey,” the waiter said. “I think I seen this guy here before.”
“Who?” Julian asked, walking over. He held out his hand. The waiter handed over the page he was reading. The paper—the
Evening Graphic
, Julian noted—was open to Walter Winchell’s column, which decried the firing of the gentleman in a slightly grainy photo on the right side of the page: Eddie Cotton.
Too surprised to speak, Julian read the column. Apparently, Doozies producer Jimmy Blanchard had decided that Marian France was to become a star on her own, and that Cotton and France would no longer be a duo. Which meant that Jimmy Blanchard had no use for Eddie Cotton.
Julian ran back out into the club proper, paper still in hand. He hesitated when he saw that Lane was still speaking to the fellow he’d been talking to before, a greasy looking man in a dark suit. They appeared to come to some sort of understanding, both nodding their heads. They shook hands and the besuited man put his hat back on. Lane then turned his attention to Julian. “Did you need something?”
“You should see this,” Julian said, handing the paper over to Lane.
Lane frowned, and then his face crumpled. “Oh, no,” he said. “No, no, no. This is terrible. I . . . I have to find him.”
Julian followed after Lane as he walked through the kitchen and to his office in the back. The first thing Lane did was pick up the phone. He tried to connect to several different people before he slammed the phone in its cradle and groaned in frustration. “Where could he be?” Lane asked.
Julian was surprised to see all that anguish on Lane’s face, the way his eyebrows knit together with worry, the frown lines suddenly more prominent. Julian racked his brain. “I don’t know,” he said honestly. “It’s not like we were friends. He used to come find me under the elevated tracks on Sixth Avenue, next to Bryant Park, or else sometimes we’d meet by the
Times
building, or at the Astor. Otherwise, I don’t know where he goes when he’s not at the theater.”
“Train tracks?” Lane said, his eyes going wide. “No, not again. This can’t happen again.”
Julian wanted to ask what couldn’t happen again, but Lane pushed him aside and half-ran out of the office. By the time Julian got outside, Lane was already at the corner. He turned around and shouted, “Raul is in charge. You got that?” Then he turned onto Broadway and was gone.
It was like a slide show or a bad nickelodeon movie. Scott’s face, smiling, the last night in Waukegan. Eddie dancing. The Brooklyn Bridge. The Sixth Avenue El. Eddie smiling but trying to hide it. Eddie’s face when he was in Lane’s arms. Eddie’s sadness. Scott’s body being pulled from the East River. Scott’s face bloated. Eddie’s face shining. Eddie dancing. Eddie singing. Eddie. Eddie.
Lane knew he could have been wrong. He was probably wrong. But something—instinct, intuition, fear, Lane didn’t know—propelled him forward.
As a token, he tried the Hotel Astor first, and then the James Theater, and then he tried Eddie’s room at the Knickerbocker, but he knew that Eddie would not be in any of those places. So he ran down 42nd Street to Bryant Park. He jogged a lap around the park, but didn’t see anyone besides the usual transients loitering near benches and a few men that he was pretty sure would offer him sex if he stopped running. Instead he ran back to Sixth Avenue and looked up at the elevated tracks. He didn’t see anyone up there, so he ran up the stairs to the platform. A few people stood, waiting for a train, but there was no sign of Eddie.
At a loss, Lane stood and stared. Why had he felt the conviction that this was where Eddie would come? He clearly wasn’t here. And yet . . .
Lane ran back down the stairs to the street. He considered his options, whether to go north or south, and figured he’d start by going south. He’d keep running if it took him all afternoon to find Eddie, all night, all week. He could not lose Eddie, and he was sure beyond any doubt that Eddie meant to do himself harm. He remembered that look on Eddie’s face when they’d talked the week before, when Eddie had assumed his days in the Doozies were numbered, how sad and desperate he had looked.
Lane took off down Sixth Avenue, moving swiftly but keeping his eyes open, looking everywhere for where Eddie might have gone. When he got to a station, he’d run up the stairs and check the platform, and when he didn’t see Eddie, he’d run down the stairs again and keep running south.
He’d gone almost a full mile when he nearly collided with a newsboy who tried to sell him a copy of the
Post
. “Doozies fires Eddie Cotton!” the kid shouted. “Read all about it!”
Lane tossed the kid a few coins and took a paper. He scanned the story, still not seeing any rhyme or reason for Blanchard firing Eddie besides a quote near the bottom of the story: “Marian France is the biggest star on Broadway!” Blanchard had apparently told the reporter. “She’ll be bigger than Fanny Brice! Bigger than Ethel Barrymore! Bigger than Sarah Bernhardt! She’ll be a household name!”
Lane tucked the paper into his jacket then hurried up to the platform at 23rd Street. And there, at long last, was Eddie, standing at the edge of the platform, swaying on his feet.
Lane whispered his name. Worried about startling him and sending him falling onto the tracks, Lane approached slowly, murmuring “Eddie” and hoping to draw his attention. When he was within five feet, Eddie turned.
The utter devastation on his face was heartwrenching. His hair was mussed and his eyes were red and his forehead was creased with hurt and shame. “Good God,” he said. “Lane. What are you doing here?”
“I heard about what happened. I’ve been trying for more than an hour to find you.”
“Well, here I am!” Eddie said. He swayed on his feet, more with what Lane was realizing was serious drunkenness than with a lack of balance. As Lane got closer, he realized that Eddie reeked of alcohol, that he must have been very drunk.
Lane gently curled a hand around Eddie’s arm and tugged him away from the edge of the platform. Eddie acquiesced easily enough. “Where did you find alcohol at this time of day?”
“Speakeasy on Twenty-fourth. They’re open all day. The hooch was awful, tasted like cleanser, but it did the job, didn’t it?”
“Certainly seems that way.”
Eddie wriggled away from Lane and looked down. He reached into his pocket. “Why did you come to find me?”
“I couldn’t let you—” Lane stopped abruptly. He considered how best to say what he wanted to say. “Someone at the Marigold had the paper. Walter Winchell wrote about you. He said in his column that he thought Blanchard was a fool for letting you go.”
“That was nice of Wally.”
“I thought so, too. But I saw the column and I thought about what you said last week about how important this job was to your life, and I wanted to stop you before you did something too foolish.”
Eddie’s facial expressions were all comically exaggerated, and Lane would have laughed if the situation hadn’t been so troubling. His jaw dropped. “Why does it matter? It’s not like anybody cares about me at all.”
“That’s not true.”
“It is true.” Eddie started walking back toward the tracks. “No one would notice. If I jumped on the tracks, if the next train ran right over me, it’s not like anyone would notice I was gone.”
“Plenty of people would notice.”
Eddie shook his head. “You’re a fool, Lane, to have come after me.”
Lane took a step toward him, hoping to grab his arm again and pull him away from the tracks. Eddie seemed determined to teeter there right on the edge.
The platform started to vibrate, indicating a train was on its way. In horror, Lane watched Eddie stand there and lean over to peer down the platform. Lane could hear the train before he saw it, a great heavy thing, painted dark green, rumbling toward them. For a few seconds, Lane was completely convinced that Eddie would jump, and when he moved to grab Eddie and pull him away, Eddie shoved him so hard that Lane fell, landing on his ass. He scrambled to his feet again as the train moved through the station. Its brakes squealed as it came to a stop, and Lane noticed that Eddie just stood there, staring at it, as the doors rolled open.
The train was gone again before Lane had a good handle on what had happened, but he did know one thing: Eddie was still among the living, and he stood right there on the platform, watching the train leave the station with his jaw loose and his eyes open wide.
“You can’t do it, can you?” Lane asked.
Eddie looked back at Lane. He didn’t say anything, but something at his side caught Lane’s attention, something that sparkled. Lane realized it was a gun, the slick metal of the barrel glittering in the sunlight.
“Eddie,” said Lane.
“I’m a coward,” Eddie said. “I can’t jump. It takes too long to think about how to do it. But this.” He raised the gun and pointed the barrel toward his temple. “This will be fast.”
“Killing yourself is the coward’s way out,” Lane said.
Which got Eddie to falter enough that he pointed the gun away from his head.
“Eddie, please don’t do this.”
Eddie dropped his hand, still holding the gun. Lane saw that his finger was curled around the trigger. There was a brief awful moment where he thought Eddie might turn the gun on him, but it remained pointed toward the ground. “Blanchard thinks I’m useless and he’s right. I’ll never be good enough to be in a better production than the Doozies.”
“What are you talking about?” Lane considered how to end this. Stalling Eddie meant that Eddie might sober up enough to realize what a ridiculous decision he was making. “You’re great. You’re so much better than Blanchard’s production. You could audition for other shows. Walter Winchell—
Walter Winchell,
Eddie—said in his column today that Blanchard was a fool for firing you. Isn’t that a hell of an endorsement?”
“Why does it matter? No one cares about me.”
Well, now this was getting tiresome, but Eddie still had the gun. “I care about you,” Lane said. He took a step away, trying to get a hold on his emotions. It wouldn’t do for him to lose control when Eddie was so fragile. “The thing men never think about when they kill themselves is who they leave behind. If you do this, you won’t just be hurting yourself. You’ll hurt me, too. And Marian, and all of your friends, your family, everyone who cares about you.”
“I don’t have any family.”
Lane grunted. “Don’t do this. Please don’t. Stay. Stay here. Stay with me.”
Eddie stood very still for a long moment. He turned and looked back at the tracks, and then he looked at Lane. “I can’t.”
It wasn’t clear what Eddie couldn’t do, if he couldn’t jump or if he couldn’t stay. The platform started to vibrate again. As the train got nearer, Lane shouted, “Don’t.”
It was like a flash of lightning. One minute, Eddie was facing away from Lane, toward the platform, the gun clutched in his hand, and Lane imagined that gun blowing Eddie’s brains out before Eddie toppled onto the tracks and was bowled over by the train. When Eddie’s arm moved, Lane lurched forward and shouted, “No!” but was helpless to do anything but watch. Eddie tossed the gun and then it was flying through the air, creating the most beautiful arc through the sky, curving until it crashed onto the tracks, rattling against the rail and settling in the rail bed. The train plowed into the station and stopped. Passengers got out and pushed past Lane and Eddie as if they weren’t there.
When the train rumbled away, Eddie and Lane were left alone on the platform again. Eddie turned back to Lane, his face registering his distress, his features twisted in pain. Before Lane could catch him, Eddie collapsed on the platform, like his legs had just stopped working. Lane scrambled to his side, sitting on the hard, rough platform and pulling Eddie into his arms, not caring about who saw them or who cared.
He realized that Eddie was sobbing.
They sat there for a long time, though Lane wasn’t sure how long; it could have been five minutes or it could have been an hour. The light in the sky started to change as the sun lowered. Eventually, Lane helped Eddie stand and said, “Come on, let’s get away from trains.”
Eddie let himself be hoisted up. “Where will we go?”
“My apartment is not far from here,” Lane said.
Eddie nodded and let Lane help him down the stairs, back down to the street. He wiped his eyes and looked around. Lane was aware they were back in public, dozens of people moving about on the sidewalk. He handed Eddie his hat. Eddie took it and pulled it down low on his head, hiding his tired eyes from onlookers. “I’ve never been to your apartment,” Eddie said, perfectly calm, as if he hadn’t been about to kill himself, as if he hadn’t been crying.