A Cadenza for Caruso (7 page)

The tenor headed west on Fourteenth. He passed imposing Tammany Hall, the west wing of which was given over to Tony Pastor's variety theatre. American vaudeville had been born in that little theatre; but by this time next year both the vaudeville house and the rest of Tammany would be gone. A demolition notice posted on the wall told Caruso the new Consolidated Gas Company Building would be going up in their place.

Next door to doomed Tammany Hall stood the still-struggling Academy of Music. Once Manhattan's leading opera house, the Academy had switched to straight drama some twenty years back when the newer, more splendiferous Metropolitan had stolen its audience—deliberately. Caruso didn't know it, but David Belasco's first New York hit had been staged at the Academy, a melodrama called
The Girl I Left Behind Me
. Now a billboard heralded the virtues of the theatre's current production, the American Civil War drama
Shenandoah
.

Caruso could glimpse the façade of Steinway Hall a little farther along East Fourteenth, just past Irving Place. A handsome building with pillars in front, Steinway Hall used to be the classical music center of the country. Used to be. Everything about this neighborhood was used-to-be. Feeling depressed, the tenor turned into Irving Place.

And was not encouraged by what he saw. Two German-language theatres had managed to hang on, and a second-story window sign in a grubby-looking building proclaimed the existence of a school of elocution and dramatic art. But Irving Place had been invaded by a rash of small stores, most with living quarters over them and all of them run-down and neglected. George Wlasenko, Banner Painter. O'Reilly's Straw Goods and Giambelli's Music Publishing, sharing the same building. Dr. Cohen, Painless Dentistry. Certainly a mixed neighborhood, in more ways than one.

Caruso passed a Finnish cabinetmaker's shop and came to the number he was looking for. It was a three-story brown building, every bit as shabby as its neighbors. Not a brownstone, just … brown. He didn't want to go in. But he'd never be able to concentrate on that night's performance if he failed to confront Davila. A woman in the street recognized the tenor and tried to tell him about her out-of-work husband and her sick mother and the overdue rent and this nagging pain she had in her back; Caruso was so absorbed he didn't even hear her. He climbed the brown building's six steps without answering, thus losing a fan forever.

The door of the brown building had a cracked glass panel; inside, the place even smelled brown. The tiny entryway was dingy and contained no directory that Caruso could see. He opened a door marked
JOS. PEARS, WATCHMAKER
and asked the man inside where Luigi Davila's office was. Second floor.

Caruso carefully picked his way up the dark, narrow stairs, as leery of dirt as of tripping and falling. The first door he came to on the second floor bore the legend
DAVILA CONCERT BUREAU
. Caruso stood for a moment or two in front of the door rehearsing what he was going to say. When he was ready, he tried the door; it opened to his touch.

The “concert bureau” consisted of one scantily furnished office room—a battered desk, a couple of chairs, a lamp, and three wooden apple crates stacked on top of one another in lieu of a filing cabinet. Another room was curtained off at the back. The office was cold; the small gas heater was not turned on. “Davila!” Caruso called out. “Are you here?”

There was no answer. But the door had been unlocked; surely no one would go away and leave a door unlocked in a neighborhood like this one. Perhaps in the back room?

He pushed aside the separating curtain—and hastily withdrew when he saw the back room was Davila's private living quarters, and Davila himself was lying on the floor. He was torn between calling out again and leaving when it occurred to him to wonder why Davila was on the
floor
. And he'd only assumed it was the man he'd come to see; he hadn't really looked at the face. Cautiously he opened the curtain again.

It was Luigi Davila. And he
was
lying on the floor. With a long-handled knife protruding from his side, a pool of blood discoloring the linoleum on the floor.

Caruso had never moved so fast in his life. He stumbled down the dark stairway without thought of danger or dirt. He burst into the room of Jos. Pears, Watchmaker, his eyes popping and his arms waving. “Gack gack gack gack gack gack!” he croaked, making stabbing motions toward the ceiling with both forefingers. Alarmed, the watchmaker snatched up a tiny tool to defend himself.

No help there. Caruso rushed out into the street and grabbed the lapels of the first man he saw. “Gack gack gack gack!” he informed the man earnestly. He was sweating now, fear pouring out of every pore.

“Take yer hands off me, yuh looney!” the man snarled unsympathetically. Caruso let go of him and started croaking at two passing women. They screamed and ran away.

“Polizia!”
Caruso was finally able to shout.
“Commissariato! Uno poliziotto!”
He seemed to have forgotten all his English.

A small crowd was beginning to gather, attracted by the sight of a well-dressed stranger going noisily bonkers in their midst. Try as he might, the tenor could not make a single one of them understand. “Luigi Davila!” Caruso cried, frantically pointing to the second floor of the building.
“È morto!”
Wouldn't you know, he thought in despair, never an Italian anywhere when you needed one!

A small boy tugged at his sleeve. “Ain't you feeling right, Mister? I'll fetch a doctor fer a nickel.”

Tears running down his cheeks, Caruso lowered himself shakily to the steps of the building. The watchmaker was in the doorway, cautiously peeking out. Caruso made his hands into fists and beat his knees in frustration. The crowd energetically discussed Caruso's condition among themselves.

“Here, now, what's all this?” At the sound of the commanding voice Caruso looked up to see an enormous policeman astride a massive horse. “What's going on here?”

“It's Enrico Caruso,” someone said. “I think he's having a fit.”

The policeman dismounted and tied his horse to a lamppost. “Enrico Caruso, is it?” He came over to the steps and bent down until his face was level with the tenor's. “What's the trouble, Mr. Caruso?”

Caruso swallowed, took a deep breath, and said in perfectly clear English: “A man named Luigi Davila has been murdered. He is in his rooms on the second floor.”

A gasp ran through the crowd. “Poor man,” a woman's voice murmured, and Caruso wondered whether she meant Davila or himself; they all thought he was crazy.

“Murdered, you say?” The policeman stood up straight. “Well, now, let's go up and have a look, shall we?”

Caruso shuddered. “No, thank you, I have already had a look. You go. Second floor.” Weakly he pointed upward, to show the policeman what direction the second floor was in.

The policeman considered a moment and then said, “All right, you stay here. I'll go see. What was that name again?”

Caruso told him and the policeman went into the building. The tenor lowered his head into his hands, letting the tension start to drain out now that Authority had arrived.

The policeman's thundering footsteps sounded on the stairs behind him; then the piercing shriek of a police whistle hurt his ears. Soon other policemen were there, the crowd of gawkers grew larger, and Enrico Caruso found himself being marched off to a police station.

“Now tell me why you went to see this Luigi Davila, Mr. Caruso.”

“I have already told you why,” Caruso said in exasperation. “Fourteen times I have told you! Maybe fifteen!”

“So tell me again. Why did you go see him?”

“I want to talk to him about arranging a concert tour for me.”

When Caruso had first arrived at the station house, he'd been kept waiting for over an hour before anyone got around to questioning him. He'd sat there looking at the high ceilings and the oversized dirty windows and he'd had time to think. It had gradually dawned on him that whoever killed Luigi Davila had done Giacomo Puccini an enormous favor. Puccini was free now; his life was no longer in the hands of an unscrupulous blackmailer. No one need ever know—so long as Caruso didn't make a mistake and let it slip out why he had really gone to see Davila.

“A concert tour. Mr. Caruso, do you expect me to believe that? You are a big star. Luigi Davila was a penny-ante operator. Why would you switch from your regular agents to the likes of him?”

“No, no, you misunderstand! I am not changing agents. Davila was going to arrange
additional
engagements for me. Little extras, you see.”

Caruso knew his interrogator; the man's name was O'Halloran and he was a New York Detective Bureau lieutenant. He had been one of the men responsible for capturing two of the Black Hand members who had threatened the tenor's life earlier in the year. O'Halloran was a lanky, second-generation Irishman who thought John McCormack was the greatest tenor who ever lived. Caruso had never seen the police detective without a derby perched on his head, not even indoors.

“Lieutenant O'Halloran, how much longer do you keep me here?” Caruso asked. “I sing
Pagliacci
tonight. I must prepare.” He was getting worried; he'd been at the station house all afternoon. He'd done no vocalizing, he wanted a bath, his stomach was growling, and he was out of cigarettes. And it was almost time to go to the opera house.

“Just a little longer,” the police detective said. “Now tell me—”

“At least let Mr. Gatti know where I am.”

“Who?”

“Giulio Gatti-Casazza. The general manager of the Metropolitan Opera.”

“That's right, I met him—that last time. Well, I suppose we can do that.” There was no telephone in the office they were using, so O'Halloran left the room to make the call. He came back immediately and the questioning resumed.

Not more than twenty minutes later Gatti-Casazza rushed in—followed, Caruso was happy to see, by Barthélemy. “Lieutenant O'Halloran!” Gatti-Casazza roared. “What are you doing? Why are you keeping Mr. Caruso here? I demand you release him immediately!”

“Mr. Gatti,” Caruso sighed in relief.

“Release him?” O'Halloran said. “He's not under arrest, sir. He is helping us with our inquiries.”

“Oh, is that what you call it? Helping you with your inquiries?”

Caruso's accompanist was obviously awed at finding himself inside a bastion of law enforcement. “We were so worried about you, Rico,” Barthélemy said. “Martino said you went out to buy a hat.”

“Mr. Gatti-Casazza,” O'Halloran said, mangling the pronunciation, “it was Mr. Caruso here who discovered the body. We have to ask him questions.”

“But surely this can wait until tomorrow,” Gatti-Casazza said in a frantic tone of voice. “Mr. Caruso has a performance tonight. The house is sold out. He
must
sing. You have got to let him go!”

While Gatti-Casazza worked on Lieutenant O'Halloran, Barthélemy started his usual chore of calming Caruso down before a performance—a bigger job than usual this time, as the events of the day had not exactly contributed to a sense of composure. The general manager continued arguing with O'Halloran until the police detective finally agreed to let the tenor go to the opera house. “I think I'll tag along,” O'Halloran said.

“Why? Do you think I am going to run away?” Caruso asked indignantly.

“Now, Rico, he meant nothing by that,” Barthélemy soothed. “It is his job.”

“Is it his job to treat me like a criminal?” Caruso was too wound up by now to be stopped. “All afternoon he keeps me here—asking questions, questions, questions! Do you think I killed Luigi Davila? Do you?”

“Now, Mr. Caruso, I didn't say that.”

“Ha! You do not have to say it! Do you think I plunge a knife into his side and then run down to the street to tell everybody about it? Is that what you think?”

“We know it didn't happen like that,” O'Halloran said carefully. “The coroner's physician says he's been dead since yesterday.”

“Oh.” Caruso thought that over and decided it meant he was in the clear. “Well, then, why are we still here? Let us be on our way!”

At the opera house a couple of dozen concerned men and women swarmed over Caruso the minute he entered; word had spread fast. Gatti-Casazza disappeared backstage, exhorting everyone to concentrate only on the performance that was due to begin shortly. O'Halloran followed Caruso and Barthélemy up the stairs to the tenor's dressing room.

Martino was there, laying out the clown make-up. “Rico, are you all right? We were so worried—”

“Yes, yes, I mean no, I mean where is the throat spray?”

O'Halloran lounged in the doorway listening to Caruso warm up as he got into costume and make-up. The tenor was jumpy and high-strung and yelling at Martino and Barthélemy every few seconds. The man was a nervous wreck; O'Halloran didn't see how he could possibly get through a complete performance. The detective began to feel a little guilty.

Finally Martino and Barthélemy had Caruso ready and the three of them hurried down the stairs, O'Halloran trailing. Again Caruso was surrounded by people, everyone jabbering away in Italian. O'Halloran didn't know the language, but it was clear all those people were concerned about their tenor—they were trying to help.

A sudden silence fell. Out in front of the closed curtain, the baritone was singing the Prologue. O'Halloran could feel the tension backstage; he didn't know whether it arose from Caruso's involvement in a murder or whether that tension was normal for the opera house. One thing he was sure of, though; and that was that Enrico Caruso was
loved
. All the time the tenor was waiting to make his entrance, singers and stagehands alike kept coming up to him, patting him on the shoulder, trying to reassure him. O'Halloran was impressed in spite of himself.