The Girls in the High-Heeled Shoes by Michael Kurland

Author:Michael Kurland
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Titan

12

I picked up a ham and Swiss on rye toast, lettuce and mustard, no mayo, half a pickle, and a cardboard container of milk at Danny’s and brought them back to the office. After typing a report on our meeting with the Professor and sticking it on Brass’s desk, I settled down behind my own desk with a copy of this morning’s World. Brass’s short piece on K. Jeffrey’s reward was in today’s column, sandwiched between a whimsical description of the tiny performers at Professor Huber’s Flea Circus on 42nd Street and an item headed “A Brief Panegyric to the Silent Screen.” He tries to use at least one obscure word in every column to enrich his readers’ vocabulary. “Brass Tacks” is an educational experience for the reader, will he or nil he.

I draped a napkin about my knees, and mused over the item as I munched my ham on rye.

MATINEE MARY is still among the missing, and her friends on Glitter Boulevard hope nothing evil has happened to her. Jeff Welton, producer of that Broadway boffo Lucky Lady, is offering a two-G reward to locate either her or Billie Trask, the box-office wench who disappeared with the weekend’s receipts a couple of weeks ago. Word around town is that the two ladies know each other and their disappearances may be connected. “I don’t think Billie took the money,” Welton told this reporter. “She isn’t that kind of girl.”

That’s two big ones, boys and girls, for distribution among those with word of either of the absent Broadway ladies. First come, first served. Read the Advert elsewhere in the World for details.

Brass used Broadway slang in his Broadway items to give the reader a feeling of being in the know. Broadway characters tend to speak with a unique kind of careful illiteracy, and the show business had a language all its own; but I’ve never heard this newspaper version of the slang spoken on Broadway, or anywhere outside of Brass’s and Winchell’s columns. As Brass explained it, it was what readers had come to expect so it was what he gave them. I think that Brass and Winchell made it all up between them.

Brass was playing it with a light touch. He could have gone in for dark suppositions: “After the Central Park murder this weekend of chorine Lydia Laurent, friend of the missing pair, fears of foul play have saddened, and perhaps frightened, the close-knit theatrical community…”

Gloria came in around three, carrying two small paper sacks. She went through to Brass’s office and placed them on his desk. He stared at them through narrowed eyes. “Any problems?” he asked.

“I had to go ten dollars higher than I expected,” she said, sounding disgusted. “I must be losing my touch.”

“I doubt that,” he said. “Was there anything?”

“Nothing that shouted out,” she told him. “Maybe on a closer examination.”

He sighed. “Well, let’s take a look.”

“What are we looking at?” I asked, standing in the doorway.

“I’ve just been visiting the apartment on East Fifty-fourth that was shared by the dead girl, Lydia Laurent, and Billie Trask,” Gloria told me.

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