Symphony of Secrets, page 23
Bern struggled to find words.
“Well?” Michael Amoury said. “What are they and where are they?”
He decided to tell the truth. “They seem to be more Doodles. We’re trying to decipher them.”
“Where are they?” Amoury repeated, his head large and malevolent on the television screen.
“They’re in the Bronx, at Washington Visionaries,” Bern said.
“They’re ours,” Kurt said. “Why didn’t you bring them to us to begin with?”
“We wanted to find out what they were,” Bern said.
“It’s not your job to figure out what they were, son,” Kurt said. “Your job is to prepare a definitive RED for performance. Not to play detective and traipse across the country.”
There it was: son. As condescending as Bern imagined it would be. He wanted to swear at the old guy—I have a fucking PhD from Columbia. I’m not your son—but knew that anger never got him anywhere. He forced himself to pause, to not respond immediately. Delaney was baiting him. “Deciphering the Doodles could impact RED,” he said after a moment. “As you probably know, this version of RED has a lot more Doodles on it. We thought the correlation between them would provide greater insight and accuracy into Delaney’s original intent regarding RED. So naturally we wanted to figure it out as part of my mandate.”
“I don’t really care what you wanted to figure out,” Kurt said. “This has nothing to do with your mandate. These papers are ours. You told the family that these documents were being purchased by the Delaney Foundation. We want them now, Dr. Hendricks. Do you understand?”
27
Open for Business
Fred
The next few weeks whizzed by. Fred’s songs continued to sell. Commissions ramped up, and Ditmars tapped Fred more and more. Could Fred write a tune for this visiting dancer? A special song for a very trendy French singer? A comic melody as an introduction to a play? Fred spent most of his days in the tiny studio, transcribing songs and writing lyrics. He kept trying to get Josephine to just quit Ditmars, too, but she didn’t like change. She’d gotten used to going to Ditmars and that was that.
Two or three mornings a week Fred showed up to present the latest song to the music publisher. The pieces with lyrics were selling well, but, surprisingly, the instrumentals were going through the roof. Even without Fred’s lyrics, people were wanting to dance to or listen to the music that Josephine had written. This made Fred’s job even easier, since then he didn’t have to agonize over rhymes or new subject matter. He could just slap a title on it and license it to Ditmars for seventy-five dollars, plus a dollar and fifty cents royalties.
That Tuesday morning Fred was wearing the lounge suit he’d bought at Bergdorf’s—he’d returned a few weeks after his initial visit to purchase a few more items, including a pair of handmade Italian boots with spats. His dark hair was slicked back, so shiny it seemed silver. He caught sight of Josephine sweeping out the music room but didn’t acknowledge her or anyone else as he paraded up the stairs. Uninvited, he sat down across from Ditmars, crossed his legs. He hoped Ditmars noticed the new suit.
“What have you got for me today?” the older man said, eyebrows lowered. “Where you hiding it?”
Fred wasn’t carrying the attaché case nor any loose sheets of music. “What I’ve got for you today,” he said, “is a proposition.”
From outside came the tinkle of pianos. When this many pianos played, it was always difficult to decipher the tune, but Fred could make out “Little Green Eyes” and “The Cow in the Clover”—both his.
“What proposition is that?”
“I’m going to allow you to make me a partner at Ditmars & Ross,” Fred said.
Ditmars said nothing at first, just leaned back in his chair, looking at him steadily.
Fred continued, “I’ve brought you hit after hit these past few months alone. The name Ditmars & Ross is becoming synonymous with good music. Great music, even. Just think about it. With me on board, you’ll be rolling in hits. I’ve got a million ideas that will—”
Ditmars cut him off.
“I want to make sure I fully understand you, Frederick.”
Had Ditmars ever called him Frederick?
Ditmars went on, “You’re going to allow me to make you a partner? Do I understand you correctly?”
Fred relaxed. Ditmars finally understood his value.
“That’s right,” Fred said. “As I was saying, I’ve got a ton of ideas about how to make this place the number one music publisher in the country. Who knows, maybe even in the entire civilized world. My songs are selling like mad and I’ve got a ton more. Waddya say, partner?”
Ditmars smiled, took the cigar out of his mouth, and stood up. All this seemed to occur in slow motion. Every move seemed to be calculated. Fred instinctively stood and extended his hand.
“You’ve been a good plugger,” Ditmars said. “A little misguided, maybe, but a good plugger. Your songs are okay but you can’t be serious in thinking that you can waltz in here and demand a partnership. If you want to buy into the partnership, that’s a different story. I can talk to Ross and we can figure out what we’d offer you for a junior stake—maybe two percent. Nothing more.”
Fred lowered his hand. Two percent?
Ditmars went on, “Maybe in a couple years we can talk about increasing your stake. We can take the partnership equity out of your royalties.”
“But—I brought in all those swell songs. Don’t you think I deserve something for them?”
“And I paid you exactly what they’re worth. Can’t deny that, can you?”
“Yeah, but I’ve got dozens more songs that are just as good. Dozens. Hundreds, maybe. Better even.”
“That’s my final offer. You’re just a kid, Freddy. You’re what—twenty-three?”
Twenty-two, but Fred didn’t correct him.
“Get some hair on your chest first. You’ve been doing this for just six months. Let’s give it a year. Stick to what you know. You got really lucky with a couple dozen songs; write a couple dozen more. Then we can really talk about a partnership.”
Fred decided it was better to leave with some dignity. Had he gotten too big for his britches? No. Fred was going places. Doing big things. His hit songs were just the beginning. He’d show Ditmars. He’d show everybody.
He took the stairs quietly, one at a time, his lambskin handmade Italian shoes tapping each stair tread as if with special care. He nodded once to Eunice. He didn’t see Josephine.
Outside, he walked around the corner and held on to a lamppost, trembling. Well. That hadn’t gone the way he’d thought it would. What would he do now? Keep selling songs to Ditmars? He couldn’t even imagine it. Take the songs to another publisher? Sure, that might be the ticket. He’d had offers, several of them, especially since he’d gone freelance, but he’d always been loyal. Well, loyalty be damned. He’d sell himself to the highest bidder, as long as the highest bidder wasn’t Ditmars & Ross.
He found himself thinking about Miles Turpin, the fellow composer at Ditmars who’d gone off a few months ago to start his own music publishing business. The music industry was ridiculously corrupt—Fred knew that. He knew that music publishers swindled composers out of what was rightfully theirs all the time. Miles had gotten fed up a few months ago—especially when he’d heard how much Ditmars was paying for Fred’s songs—and had struck out on his own. Maybe Fred should look up old Miles, see how he was doing. Come to think of it, he hadn’t heard any of Miles’s songs of late.
He headed to Penn Station, found a telephone, asked the operator for Miles’s number. In a moment he was dialing it.
Miles picked up directly.
“Hey, old sport, remember me?” Fred said. “It’s Delaney. Fred. How’ve you been?”
Miles was delighted to hear from him and had free time now. His office was right around the corner. Fred should stop by. Maybe they could grab sandwiches.
The address Miles gave him was above a wig shop on the third floor of a narrow office building off Thirty-Second. In the stairwell, the grimy linoleum treads stank of sweat and urine. Fred’s toes curled inside the Italian shoes.
Miles had no secretary; he opened the door himself, pumped Fred’s hand hard. Miles Turpin Publishers, Incorporated, seemed to be one room. Miles’s desk took up a good third of the available space. “Freddy! Good to see you, chum! How’ve you been? How’s ole Ditmars?”
Miles offered him a seat in a secondhand desk chair. Fred shared what little gossip he knew about the publisher and their former comrades; now that he was no longer song plugging or in the office as often, he’d begun losing touch with many of them.
Finally he shifted the topic, looking pointedly around the office. “It’s really great to see you, you know? I think it’s great that you went off on your own to do this. So how’s business?” Fred suspected, just by the look of things, that he knew the answer.
“Well, it’s not as ritzy as Ditmars, but it’ll do for now.” Miles shook his head, and they talked about how tough it was to get songs into rotation, how to get songs discovered. Ditmars was a master at that. “I gotta be honest,” Miles said, “it’s rough out there. Seems every week a new publisher pops up. It’s dog-eat-dog. I’m barely hanging on. You’re doing pretty good, from what I hear. ‘Carnation Celebration’ is everywhere. You really came up with a bunch of winners. Just between us, what’s your secret?”
Fred stiffened, gave Miles a slightly puzzled look. Then decided to play it cool. “The secret, my friend, is talent. Pure talent.”
“Ha, of course. Good ole Freddy.”
A pause. The time had come to explain the reason for his visit. “You know when you just hit a wall and need to try something different? Well, I hit that wall. I quit. Old man Ditmars just doesn’t know what he has—had, I should say. I’ve been thinking about new opportunities.”
“You want to partner up?” Miles said. “You know, really make a go of it? We could be some real competition. With your talent combined with my connections, we could run this town.”
Fred had come planning just that but, looking around the tiny grim office had changed his mind. If Miles went out on his own and this was as good as it was going to get for him, what chance did Fred have, working with him? Miles would always be a two-bit composer. Maybe it would make things easier for Fred at the get-go, but once Fred really got going, he sensed that Miles would just bring him down. Miles could never write lyrics as good as Fred’s—let alone unforgettable melodies as good as Josephine’s.
“Thanks. I haven’t decided what I’m going to do just yet. But I’ll let you know.” He stood up, shook Miles’s hand. “Good seeing you.”
“You too, and good luck. Don’t be a stranger.”
Fred decided to walk home. It was forty blocks—just about two miles—but the April afternoon was cool and sunny, and he had nowhere to be. He calculated when the next royalty check would come: about six weeks from now. The checks he’d received were more than he’d ever made in his life—more than he’d made in a year song plugging—and the next check would be even bigger. The ticket to success, he decided, would be to really get into phonograph recordings. Plugging sheet music already felt antiquated. He’d been hearing, too, about someone in Pennsylvania—Pittsburgh, maybe?—broadcasting music on a crystal radio set. The phonograph business was already booming; if the radio business caught up to it, Fred’s music could go national—international!—in no time. People would be beating down his door for his music.
Pretty soon he found himself near Sixtieth and Broadway. It was a colored section, with colored businesses: a few white faces were sprinkled in, but most were Brown. A woman hanging laundry on a line far above him was singing a minstrel song that Fred himself had plugged last year.
He was thinking about music and phonographs and Josephine’s fat trunk of papers—he’d gone through only about a quarter of them—when he passed a worn brick building with a Rooms to Let sign in the window. The first floor had been some kind of shop, but now the plate glass looked onto a bare floor with only a dusty cabinet and a pile of boxes. He stared long and hard.
* * *
—
Four hours later, when he returned home in the early April twilight, Josephine was sautéing chunks of beef for soup. She glanced up, ducked her head in greeting, and turned back to the saucepan.
“Hello,” he said, hands behind his back.
“Hello,” she said.
“Go ahead. Ask me what I’m holding.”
She didn’t even turn around. “What are you holding?”
Fred whipped out a fat wad of papers printed with tiny type. “Well, for one thing, I decided to start my own music publishing company.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that we’re going to have a music publishing company, like Ditmars. Make money directly, not through him.”
“Are you sure?” she asked.
“Sure as shooting. There’s a lot of money to be made, what with my lyrics and your songs. We’re just pissing it away, giving it to Ditmars. And besides, I’m sure you heard I quit today.”
She nodded. “Why did you do that?”
“There’s more,” he said. “We’re moving!”
“What?” Josephine now turned around, knocking a few chunks of raw beef from the counter onto the floor. She didn’t seem to notice. “Moving? Where? Why? Are you kicking me out?”
“Hey, hey, calm down. Of course I’m not kicking you out. We’re moving together! I just found a place that’s perfect for us. Perfect!”
She stood there, uncertain.
“I did it for us, Josephine. Ditmars didn’t appreciate what I was doing for him. It’s time to strike out on my own. I can do it. We can do it together. I promise.”
Josephine was still for a long moment. Then she said, “Okay. If you think it will work.”
“Oh, I do. I know we can do it. It’s not in Tin Pan Alley, but it’s just ten blocks from here. The neighborhood is swell. It’s that colored area around Sixtieth. There’s music all around—your kind of music. I found us two rooms upstairs, each with their own bathroom. And you can have your own space. I’ll be right next door. And here’s the best part. The first floor is empty—I got it for a song. That can be the offices for Delaney Music Publishing. Isn’t that great? So to get to work all you’ll have to do is walk downstairs.”
* * *
—
The next day he took Josephine to the building: five levels, with a creaky but functional elevator in the back. Carved wooden paneling lined the halls, and the elevator was appointed in brass filigree arranged in geometric patterns. Several rooms on the second and third floors were occupied, but several others—on the fourth and fifth floors, mostly—were vacant. Fred hired a crane to lift a piano to the fifth floor for Josephine and ensconced himself in an adjoining room.
Three weeks, a few coats of paint, some secondhand equipment, and an open moving cart later, the move was complete. Fred and Josephine spent hours transcribing new songs. Fred wanted to make sure that he would have a full set of brand-new music ready to be sold and printed for his customers.
On Monday, June 2, 1919, Delaney Music Publishing, Inc. officially opened for business.
28
Nondisclosure
Bern
After he’d been dismissed from the board meeting, Bern pulled out his phone in the elevator heading down to his subbasement office. He needed to call Eboni.
There was one missed call and two texts from her:
Police here taking evrything
Don’t give anything away. I’ll be in touch
She didn’t reply again. When Bern called, her phone went directly to voice mail. What had she meant, Police here taking evrything? He stared at her message as if it would begin scrolling into a further explanation. None came. By police, could she mean the Delaney Foundation? Did they come to confiscate the trunk? If so, why had they set up the elaborate meeting between the board and him?
By then he was down in the subbasement and didn’t have a signal, anyway. He surrendered his phone to the security guard, charged through the body scanner. He scanned his fingerprint and opened his office door.
The office wasn’t empty.
Stanford Whitman sat at his desk. How had he gotten down there so quickly? Whitman saw him, smiled a forced smile. His eyes were cold.
“Where’s Eboni?” Bern asked him. “Did your goons go to her office? What’s going on?”
Whitman shrugged. “We need that trunk.”
“Where is she?”
Whitman didn’t answer. “I just wanted to go over the NDA with you one more time.” He had a file open on Bern’s desk, flipped a sheet toward him. Bern leaned over. It was one of the documents he’d signed the first night he’d arrived in New York City.
“You do remember signing this, correct?” Whitman asked.
“Of course.”
“And your girlfriend signed one, too?” Whitman opened another folder, slid the sheet in front of him. Eboni, Bern now remembered, hadn’t signed. She’d told him to sign on her behalf, if he felt like he had to; but she’d refused. “Yes,” Bern lied. “There it is.”
“I just wanted to go over with you what it means if you breached this,” Stanford said jovially. “You or your girlfriend. I’m sure you read it, but just in case.”
“Of course,” Bern said. He wanted to correct Whitman—Eboni wasn’t his girlfriend—but that seemed like the least of his worries just then. He’d begun sweating again, and hoped that Whitman couldn’t tell.
“You understand that the NDA applies well beyond all your work with RED. You’ll see here that ‘confidential information’ includes any information that you obtained during your course of affiliation with the Delaney Foundation. So that goes to any and all references to Josephine Reed, as well.”
