Death is the cool night, p.16
Death Is the Cool Night, page 16
My heart now raced.
Not only had Ivan humiliated her—he’d been prepared to give his finest composition to Hans. She must have overheard—just like me. She’d gone to the rehearsal studios that night, too. How she must have felt listening to Ivan talking about her as if she was something he could bargain away!
She’d killed Ivan because he’d betrayed her, not with another woman, but with a man, a man he professed to love more than any other, a man to whom he would give his life’s work, his greatest compositions. He’d make Hans a star in America, and poor Renata would be left as the spurned woman—spurned by her lover for another man. Oh, she wouldn’t bear that. I knew it.
But she’d told me if she were to kill a man, she’d do it face to face. But how had she said it—if I were to kill a man …
A man. She didn’t consider Ivan a real man. Besides, she’d say anything to be free, anything.
I stood from the piano, knocking music to the floor. My heart pumped fast. I had to do something—what? Go to the police. I had nothing, nothing but two bars of music and an overheard conversation.
And Renata would be gone soon—tonight she sang Micaela in Carmen, and then she’d head to New York to start preparing for the Kliegman.
I had nothing, nothing! I groaned with frustration. No policeman would believe me. I had to prove it. Laudanum—she might still have it with her. Yes, another memory—Hans saying something about her bad back. She’d used it! She might still have it if she still had pain, as Hans had said. If I found it…
I ran to the kitchen phone, this time to place a call, not wait for one.
“Sal!” I said, glad he picked up and not one of his family members.
“She call?” he asked, eager.
“No, it’s not that. Look, I hate to ask. Can you come get me? I got a theory …” I explained my suppositions. He sounded doubtful, but was game to give it a chance.
“Be there in fifteen,” he said.
Dear Renata, my darling,
I forgive you. How many times do I need to write it? I will come for you, my love. And we will escape together. We will go to South America. I have booked passage. I will take care of you. I do not hate you for what you have done. You know that I only love you. My love for Ivan was a boy’s fancy, nothing more. I thought I loved him. But I love only you. I know we will be happy together. My heart is free now that I know I can help you.
Your beloved,
Hans
Chapter Twenty-three
“You go on in, kiddo. I’ll park and catch up.”
“You know where the stage door is,” I said, pointing. “I’ll be in the dressing room. Wait for me in the hall.”
I rushed in, the music of Bizet’s most wonderful opera seeping through the floorboards.
The Fate theme tolled the ominous ending about to take place. I had to hurry.
I ran to the first dressing room, threw open the door, saw only men’s clothing. I went to the next and the next, finally seeing her things—the fur she sometimes had worn to rehearsal, the musky scent of her perfume. On the vanity shelf were her purse and ticket. She was to catch an eleven p.m. train. She’d hardly have time to make it. I’d hardly have time to search before she appeared.
I pawed through her purse. Nothing. I opened her small case and rummaged through silks, nylons, jewelry. Nothing!
Wait—my hand grasped a cylindrical vial. I pulled it from the bottom. Disappointment crashed over me. Perfume. I threw it back in the bag, stopped to unlock a suitcase.
Again, I searched, sweat beading on my brow, my eyes desperate to see the bottle of poison. Please, please … she had to have it. She couldn’t have thrown it away.
Each time my fingers grasped something new, I thought I’d found it—the key to my acquittal. Instead, I had absolutely nothing. I searched again, thinking I’d missed something. Still nothing. I went through pockets and felt linings. I looked for secret compartments in her purses, her jewelry case, her make-up box.
Nothing.
I stood, defeated. Shit—of course she would have thrown it away. Her willpower was fanatical. She’d not let an addiction stop her. She’d have done Ivan in and discarded the evidence as soon as the detective came calling—or as soon as she knew Hans was on to her.
I closed the case, stood up, defeated. Sal would be here soon. We’d go home, and I’d have nothing. I heard footsteps and turned, expecting to see my friend.
Instead, she stood there. Renata, in flaming red dress, a flower in her hair, diamonds at her throat. Despite myself, I laughed. She had been singing Micaela, yet she’d dressed as Carmen, deliberately, to upstage the singer who was the real Carmen in this concert version of the great show.
“Gregory, you came to see me off!”
She hurried in, grabbing a gray dress hanging from a peg.
“They are late—the Jose, he takes so much time with his aria. And the conductor—not so good as you. The tempos are too slow. I must change and leave. I will miss the bows, but nothing can be done. They already gave me their love—much applause, Gregory, after Je dis que rien. A taxi is supposed to come for me.”
She stopped, as if realizing for the first time how odd it was that I was there.
“Why did you come to see me, Gregory?” She held the dress in front of her.
I had nothing to lose. “Laudanum—you used it, didn’t you?”
She tilted her head to one side. “Why you ask such a question?”
Emboldened, I pressed her. “You had a bad back. From a fall. Isn’t that what Hans said?”
“Hans,” she whispered. “He says many things. Wrong things.”
“ I know you used it.”
“You know nothing.”
“Why did you kill him—because he didn’t love you any more? Because he loved someone else?”
Her lip curled into a sneer. “You know nothing,” she repeated.
“Because he loved Hans? Is that why? You couldn’t stand that, could you? And he was giving the Kliegman piece to him—to a man!”
She said nothing, but her eyes blazed with fury.
“You must go.”
I stepped forward, grabbing her by the arms, shaking her, forcing her to drop the dress she’d been holding. “Tell me, Renata! Tell me!”
She just stared at me, her dark eyes now like ice, as if she’d been misused by a man before and knew not to give her attacker satisfaction.
When I stopped, she whispered. “You think you can make me afraid? You? When I was a little girl in Sicilia, I hid under a bed while men killed my family. I have never been afraid since then.”
“Then tell me, Renata. If you’re not afraid, tell me! Tell me what you did with the laudanum.”
She said nothing. Her breath brushed my face. She stared. She dared me with that glance to hit her. She dared me to do what she expected all bad men to do. And she wouldn’t care. She’d walk away, bruised, but she’d never admit to this crime.
What would unlock her secret?
“Leave her alone!” A low voice came from the doorway, then a hand clamped on my shoulder and pulled me away. I tumbled into the vanity chair.
Hans stood there. Finally, he’d decided to fight for something. He held a gun and waved it at me.
“Leave her alone!” he shouted. He looked at her. “Get your things together. This is over. I will save you.”
“She’s a killer!” I said. “She’ll do it again if she doesn’t get what she wants. She has the laudanum somewhere—”
“She does not have the poison,” Hans said, staring at Renata. “I have it.”
Renata took a step back. But she said nothing to Hans. She stared at him as she’d stared at me—as if seeing what he would do, what he would say, and not caring.
“Do not worry, my love. I left it in my apartment. The police will find it there and think I am the one they seek.”
For a second, her hand fluttered to her chest. She was relieved!
“They will not seek. They have their criminal.” She gestured toward me, still crumpled on the floor.
Hans shook his head. “I thought about it very much. I thought—when will they come after you, a foreigner, an Italian, the enemy, and me, the enemy also? And I know we must leave. I have left a note, my darling.”
“What is the matter with you? They have their murderer!” Two quick strides forward, and she slapped him. “Stupido! Stupido!”
But I knew why Hans had done it. By planting the evidence, he was binding Renata to him. And by stating her guilt in front of me, a witness, he was sealing her fate.
He did not shrink from her abuse. If anything, it seemed to lift him up. This is what he craved—passion from Renata. He had it back.
***
“We can begin another life. Away from here. Far away. Under a different sky.”
“Is that why you left the note? To trap me? To make me so I must go with you?” She shook her head. “Stupido,” she repeated.
It was as if I wasn’t in the room. Only he and Renata, his precious love. I wondered if I could crawl to safety. But I wanted to hear this, to memorize the confession.
“You ask the impossible,” Renata continued. “You know that.”
“Renata,” Hans begged, his voice sounding wild and intense. “You are all I have.”
“I no longer love you!” Renata spat at him. “Don’t you understand? I no longer love you!”
“Non, ce coeur n’est plus a toi,” Carmen sang. “En vain tu dis: ‘Je t’adore!’ Tu n’obtiendras rien, non, rien de moi, Ah! c’est en vain.”
I thought I could slip out unnoticed and started to inch toward the door. In his distress, Hans was waving the gun this way and that as he spoke. It was a treacherous crawl.
“I know what you did,” he said. “I know you did not mean to do it. You were angry.”
Renata laughed. “Of course I did not mean to do it. You are so idiotic, my dear, so—what is the word—naive.”
“We were happy in Fontainebleau,” Hans said. “When I met you there—”
“You mean where you and Ivan were together at the music festival?”
The chorus sang of the victories of the bull ring in the distance, their muted celebrations sounding as out of place in the hallway below the stage as Bizet intended them to sound in contrast to the confrontation between Jose and Carmen.
From the corner of my eye, I saw Sal coming down the hall. I shook my head at him. He stopped and approached quietly.
Then he did something only he would think of, the rascal. He stepped back, and yelled, “That’s right, officer, this way—something funny’s going on!”
Hans’s voice, shaky with fear, shouted to the hall: “Go away! I have a gun!”
“Give me the gun, Hans,” I said, my hand outstretched. “You don’t want nobody getting hurt.”
Renata laughed. “He won’t give you the gun,” she said, not taking her eyes off Hans. “He is too stupido for that.”
“I know you are afraid, my love,” Hans said. “I will protect you.”
“It was a mistake,” she said, staring at Hans with a mixture of hatred and pity. “You are so blind, you don’t understand. It was a mistake! I didn’t mean to kill Ivan.”
Hans said nothing. I said nothing. Had she meant to kill herself? Someone else…
“I meant to kill you!” she said to Hans. “Ivan was killed by mistake!” Renata spat the words as if she still wished Hans dead, and it was clear she was happy to have an audience for this humiliation of her former lover.
Hans seemed to shrink before my eyes. Dressed in a rumpled gray suit, his shoulders slumped, his mouth hung open, and his blue eyes filled with unshed tears. I thought he would cry.
Renata moved toward Hans, her hips swaying provocatively, her voice low and sultry. What was she doing? I crouched, ready to strike at the right moment, to grab the gun.
“I put the laudanum in your drink! You had the cola, too. You had it in your bag. You did everything like him. You wanted him to love you more, eh? So you drank what he drank. But I put the poison in the wrong drink! Ivan took it by mistake!” she murmured, as if attempting to murder Hans was a form of seduction. “And if you had told the poliziotto I killed Ivan, I would have told them you did it. I will still tell them that. Even with your little note and the poison. You think you are so smart. But who will they believe—the German, the barbarian … or the poor woman he has betrayed with another man? I found Ivan’s letters to you from Fontainebleau. I will show them to the poliziotto.”
I made a move forward but Hans waved the gun at me. “Don’t!” he shouted.
“It was so easy,” Renata said, as if nothing had interrupted her. “Both of you drinking so much of that cola. The bottle was there, open on the piano. But I was the stupido, thinking I was ridding myself of you when it was Ivan who’d left that room!”
Now she laughed at herself.
“Why should I kill him, eh? He would give me everything—staying here, singing his works, money. Everything.”
Silence, and then her voice softer, but still bitter. “And to think I would have given up everything for you. Because I loved you.”
She leaned into him, rubbing her hands up and down his arms. I thought she intended to take the gun away from him this way, seducing it from him.
Breathing in her hair, he whispered, “I still love you.” But his voice sounded unsure, as if her were convincing himself.
Renata couldn’t stop herself. She pulled back and cursed in Italian. “And him—you loved him too!”
The chorus sang “Victoire” above us, masking Hans’s soft reply. Ich liebe dich.
“Ou vas tu?” Jose sang.
“Laisse-moi!” Carmen answered. Let me go.
“For you Ivan wrote that piece,” continued Renata. “I heard it all! And I saw you,” she said lowly, measuring out every word, “I saw you and Ivan—embracing.”
She paused.
“I couldn’t watch! I ran upstairs and saw the bottle—it was so easy to pour the laudanum into your drink. So easy. And when you made love to me later, I thought, why does he not die? Why is he still alive, still tormenting me? I only stayed because I thought you knew I’d done it.”
Hans said nothing. The music of the opera filtered down. The chorus was singing, “Viva! viva! la course est belle! Viva! sur le sable sanglant, Le taureau, le taureau s’elance!” Glorying in the blood of the bullfight, their march-like music was cut short by the ominous Fate theme. I have lost my soul for you, Jose sang.
“I would have let the police believe that I killed him,” Hans whimpered more to himself than to her. “I thought you’d killed him because you loved me so much.”
“It’s over,” Renata said, staring into Hans’s eyes, “I will be free.” Her hands slid up his arms again and toward the hand holding the gun.
Did she intend to take it from him? Or did she intend to have it end here, just as it ended for Carmen outside the bullring when Jose would not let her go?
I didn’t know. I only knew that as I stood to help her grab the gun, a loud pop sounded in the room.
She flinched and shuddered. She slowly slid down Hans’s body, a streak of blood following her. She lay still. Her eyes stared, dead to the world.
“Goddammit!” Sal cried, entering the room. We both grabbed the gun from Hans. Sal pushed him to the floor and held the gun on him.
“Stay put, you murdering Nazi!” He looked at me. “Go call the police.”
The chorus began the familiar refrain from the Toreador song.
Hans sobbed, his right hand touching Renata’s hair, stroking it.
Like a tolling bell, the Fate theme sounded.
Dear Mr. Solensky:
The Reed family has asked me to inform you that you should not contact their daughter again. She is under the care of a doctor and must not be disturbed. My firm will handle the annulment of your marriage, which was clearly made under duress and without proper informed consent on her part.
If you do not stay away from Miss Reed, I will be forced to contact the authorities.
Please call or write my office with the name of your legal representative.
Sincerely,
Thomas N. Small, Esq.
Chapter Twenty-four
My nightmares of killing Ivan Roustakoff were over, replaced now by dreams in which I still had a loving wife, and my future with her was as bright as the sun.
I awoke sweating, my hands cramped from clenching them into fists.
I’d only been asleep a few hours. By the time the police had come, took Sal and my statements, booked Hans, taken Renata’s body away, and let us go, it was nearly four in the morning. Sal made sure Constantine showed up for all this, which meant it probably took longer as he got charges dropped against me. That was a blessing.
Patting me on the back, he’d said, “No more sleepless nights for you, my friend!”
But this was before I’d wandered home—back to the apartment on University Parkway—and before I found the letter waiting for me there, and before I awoke on a Sunday that was to change all my Sundays for four years hence.
When I received the letter from her lawyer—the young man she’d danced with at the Brentwood Club so long ago—I laughed. That was probably why she’d not called. They were tightening their grip. They’d pull her back to childhood with more strength or power than I had to drag her into an adult life with me.
And it probably wouldn’t matter to them that I was cleared of murder. If anything, that would make them all the more zealous in the pursuit of their goal. The only reason Amanda Reed had supported and encouraged our marriage was because she thought her daughter had committed murder and our marriage could protect her!
A mother who thought that—was that love?
So when I awoke at nearly noon, aching in body and spirit, wishing I could get rid of the scent of her perfume, I knew damn well it was over. There had been a slim chance I’d hang on to my wife when the murder case was hanging out there over my head. Now there was no chance in hell. I wondered if she’d gone to the sanitarium already, the rest home, or whatever it was called.
