Shattered Glass Read online

  Well, in for a penny…“I’ll be right back.” I took the stairs two at a time, unearthed my precious but pathetic clues and raced back down with the playbill.

  “This is one of the only clues I have about who I am, see.”

  Grady held the purple playbill at arm’s length and squinted at it. “Yeah, Willa’s was in the Village, all right, but it is no more. My second husband owned a lot of those clubs. Not that one, but a lot of them. I see where you got the idea your dad’s a musician though.”

  I was still licking my wounds over Mr. Tyson, but my curiosity about Grady momentarily trumped my disappointment. “Second husband? Uh, how many…?” I cleared my throat.

  “Four, but who’s counting? Like I said, I’m a bad influence.” It looked like she was going to say something, then changed her mind. “I need a refreshment.”

  “But it’s only ten thirty,” I called after her.

  “Hair of the dog, kid.”

  What? But Grady came back brandishing a tall glass of tomato juice, so I relaxed.

  “I never paid much attention to my husband’s club scene in those days,” she said, settling back into the chair. “I was too busy restarting my film career. Ha!” She rolled her head back in the chair on the ha.

  “Grady, it’s important. It could be that my father—okay, not Mr. Tyson, I see that now—but I bet my real father played there or worked there or was there, you see? All I’ve got is this playbill, my hospital-release form and a restaurant menu. It’s a real clue, Grady.”

  She took a gulp of her tomato juice and softened. “Sure, I can see how you’d think so. But Gerrard Village doesn’t exist anymore. It’s just a bunch of seedy bars, users, hookers and players. No place for you to go poking around. It would make Tyson look like a walk in the park.”

  She had lost me again.

  Grady took another gulp. She must’ve been dehydrated from the hangover thing.

  “You know who might know? Brooks! Brooks was into the scene in the late forties. He was just coming up, but he would been around those clubs.” She was nodding to herself. “Yup, Ethan was a baby and Brooks was scrambling for gigs. It pissed off his old lady, Janice, something fierce until she came right around and then…” She shrugged. “You know Brooks is actually a lawyer?”

  Two things hit me at once. Maybe that was why Ethan wanted to be a lawyer, and, much more important, the coloring was exactly right. Not Ethan’s, Mr. Goldman’s.

  “Actually, Janice stepped up big-time. Looking back, it couldn’t have been easy. She had this kid and, poor thing, she marries a lawyer and ends up with a musician, you know?”

  He was the right age. Sure, his hair was gray now, but you could tell it must have been brown, and the eyes were right. Bright blue. Ethan was dark—dark eyes, dark skin, dark hair. He must take after his mother.

  “But man, she hounded him at the start.”

  Hmm…Troubled marriage. I’d read about this kind of thing in the True Romance magazines Tess had sneaked into the orphanage. It happened all the time in your big cities.

  Mr. Goldman must have played at Willa’s.

  “So talk to him.”

  She was nodding. “Yeah, Brooks might have something for you.”

  He’d been real nice to me right off the bat, fatherly-like. Mr. Goldman? Yes? No? Maybe. I argued with myself as I stood there until I wore myself out. It was an intense exchange. It made way more sense than the whole Ian Tyson thing, after all.

  But wait. Would that make Ethan my stepbrother? Or, worse, my half brother?

  “Yeah.” Grady nodded dreamily. “Brooks knew the scene back then. Hell, he was the scene.” She drained her glass and looked much comforted until she saw the look on my face. “What is it?”

  I couldn’t tell her about my hunch. It was too new, still brewing. They were friends, after all. I needed more information. I was going to be sensible this time. Yup. Wait. Wait! Did this mean…?

  Holy mother of God, I was Jewish!

  “Bits and Pieces”

  (THE DAVE CLARK FIVE)

  OF COURSE, I looked at Ethan in a whole new light. A very uncomfortable one. I mean, he was my brother, and I had all these confusing feelings that were, um, confusing. Since the very beginning, I’d gotten this kind of panicky, fluttery feeling in my stomach whenever he came near me. It must be a long-lost-sibling type of reaction. Or something.

  I avoided him for the next two shifts.

  This was relatively easy because it seemed that he was busy avoiding me. It was like we were in a contest.

  Who cared? Not me.

  I got busy obsessing about where I could buy a Star of David. Did Jewish churches sell them? It wouldn’t be big or gaudy, just a discreet little one that I would wear all the time to help me connect to my people. Maybe the pawnshops would have one. I also pledged to go to the Yorkville Library and read up on my new faith. But all that would have to wait until I found out more about my immediate family. If Mr. Goldman was my father, maybe he had met my mother in the clubs in the late forties. But I couldn’t very well ask him. I promised myself that I wasn’t going to go all Tyson on him, not even in my head. I needed hard evidence before I tackled my potential father. That left Big Bob.

  I came in an hour early on Wednesday afternoon and tracked him down in the storage room.

  “Hey, what’s up?” He was moving sacks of coffee beans from one pile to another. Was he exercising? Maybe the beans needed jiggling.

  “Uh, could we talk, uh…”

  “Call me Bob. You get all tortured-looking when I see you fumbling around for a name.”

  I must have looked stricken.

  “Okay, Big Bob then. You can do it. Look, I know they must have had crazy-ass rules about manners at the asylum…”

  “Orphanage.”

  “Orphanage.” He nodded. “But a coffeehouse is a different species, toots. Even some of the customers have seen you choke when you want to get my attention.”

  “I’m sorry, uh, Big, um, Bob.”

  “It’ll get easier.” He sighed. “So what do you want to talk to me about?” He dropped a sack at his feet. “Is Grady okay?”

  “Grady?”

  “She’s not drinking too much, is she?”

  Grady tended to over-refresh most days, sometimes with the professor but usually alone. Today, however, she had been clear-eyed and drinking coffee when I came down to say goodbye, so I went with that. “She was just great when I left her.”

  He flashed his tooth at that. “So what is it? You need to get off early?”

  “No, sir, Big Bob.” I grabbed a sack of beans from one pile and threw it onto the other. “The thing is, I’ve been sort of searching for my roots.” I kept piling the sacks. They were heavy, but it made the talking easier. “And I got this clue that maybe my dad worked in a club called Willa’s, in Gerrard Village, back in the day, you know?” Big Bob stopped heaving sacks. I did not. “Grady said that Willa’s isn’t there anymore, but I was hoping that there might be another place with staff or patrons who might have a connection to it and I could—I don’t know—ask questions, find a clue…”

  He took a sack out of my hands. “You’ve had it rougher than most. I keep forgetting that, what with your uptown manners and all. Look, give the Bohemian Embassy on St. Nicholas Street a try. It’s the spot now, and they’re good people in there. If anyplace would have any of the old crew that really knew the scene back then, it would be there. It’s a cool soup of old-timers and beats.”

  “Beats?”

  “Beatniks.”

  “Oh,” I said. Was there, like, a dictionary somewhere for this kind of stuff? “Thanks. Maybe I’ll go tonight after my shift.” I must have been staring at him.

  “Anything else, Toni?”

  “Well, Grady…”

  “Is a gem of a lady, a precious jewel. You can tell just by looking at her. Always was, always will be.”

  “Yes, for sure. She’s been really good to me, but sometimes she seems to need
to refresh a…a fair bit. I want to be understanding, but…I don’t understand. I know that there have been four husbands.”

  Big Bob sat on his pile of coffee-bean sacks, and I followed suit on mine.

  “She told you, huh?” He was nodding. “Yeah, she digs you.” He crossed his massive arms, which made the tattoos flicker and twitch. “We were all kids together. Mario, her first husband, me and Grady. We were going to be unstoppable. Grady was destined for Hollywood, Mario was going be in business, and I…” He shrugged.

  “Where is Mr. Vespucci now?”

  “Well, that’s no secret. He’s in the Kingston Pen, manslaughter. Mario ended up working in his father’s business sometime in the early fifties. That’s when the Mafia really started making inroads in this city. He divorced her, you know.”

  “He did?” What kind of business organization was the Mafia? Big Bob had made a face when he said it. Was it a department store, a new bank?

  “I think it’s one of few decent things old buddy Mario ever did, actually.”

  “And the others? I mean, the other husbands.”

  “Well, the next one was quick. He was older and dropped dead of a heart attack in his fifties, but at least he left her 75 Hazelton and a nice cushion, you know?” Big Bob repositioned himself on the biggest pile of sacks. “Then there was Bad News Norton; he owned a pile of clubs here but came up from Detroit. He was rough on her, if you get my drift, and she finally divorced him. And then there was Philip, all good manners and elegance but made Norton look like a choirboy. He put her in the hospital a couple of times before we got rid of him.”

  We? Where was Big Bob in this? It was clear as glass that he was crazy about her. Why didn’t he marry her? This was so grown up—and desperately exciting, but it made me feel like I’d been raised in a cupboard.

  “Through it all, Grady quietly seeded half the clubs and shops in this village. She was better than a bank. Hollywood’s loss was Yorkville’s gain.” He shook his head. “But it was her loss too.”

  “I guess that explains a lot.” I didn’t know what else to say. I cared about these people. But I didn’t understand them. I probably didn’t understand Mrs. Hazelton or Miss Webster or any of the teachers either, but things were a whole lot simpler there—their lives seemed simpler. Time to change the topic. “I’m also wondering about a whole other thing, if you don’t mind. I’m researching the old jazz clubs, and I was wondering if Mr. Goldman would ever have played at Willa’s.”

  Big Bob seemed to come back from wherever he had gone to. “Good old Willa’s! Sure, Brooks had gigs there, good ones too.”

  My heart beat faster. That was it—bull’s-eye! I didn’t need anything else. But then I surprised myself by asking, “Have you ever maybe heard of a Halina Royce?”

  “Halina? Halina Royce? Maybe…can’t be sure. Little blond thing? Yeah, she was sort of…” He shook his head. “But there were all kinds back then. Don’t know what happened to her. I think there was a kid…wait. What’s it to you?”

  “Her name is listed on my hospital-release form as my mother.”

  “Whoa, I keep tripping over the orphan part. I wish I knew more to tell you. Sorry, but I can’t be any real help on that one. Lots of changes around here since then. Not that many of us old-timers left, you know.”

  “No, no, that’s okay. Thanks, Big Bob.”

  “See?” He smiled.

  “What?”

  “Didn’t that come easier?”

  “Yes. Sir.” I smiled. “I better start my shift.”

  She was kind of what, Big Bob? Insane? The kind to try to kill her child? I got a record three orders wrong that night. I could feel Ethan’s disapproving eyes on me the whole night. Wouldn’t he be sorry when he found out he’d been treating his sister so badly?

  My shift ended at eleven, but I didn’t get to the Bohemian Embassy until almost midnight. Even with Bob’s directions, I got lost three times. Each time I fumbled, the area got sketchier and the streets got blacker. It’s the new me, and the new me is going to find the real me. I whispered it as a mantra, and that sort of worked until I got the sense that someone was following me. At one point a gentleman in a red Chevy rolled down his window and yelled out, “Fifteen bucks!”

  I walked faster, but he kept on right beside me. “Come on, chickie, you’re not going to get a better offer!”

  I stopped breathing.

  Then a voice came out of the darkness. “Get lost, jerkface!”

  The car took off, and so did I.

  “Wait, Toni! Slow down—it’s me!”

  Ethan? He got to me in three strides. “Ethan, what are you doing here?”

  “You’re welcome, Toni.” He crossed his arms. “No problem, Toni. I live to scare off johns.”

  “You knew his name?”

  He groaned. “I keep forgetting you were raised in an incubator. A john is a…oh forget it. What are you doing here?”

  “Never mind. What are you doing here?”

  “You first.”

  “No, you.”

  “Why are you here?”

  “Why are you here?”

  Why were we always locked in mortal combat? Why was I always so uppity around him? No, wait, why was he always so uppity around me?

  “I was following you. Toronto’s not some sleepy little village. This is a big dangerous city, and you go waltzing off into the night. I’ve followed you a couple of times, especially when we’ve locked up really late, just to make sure you got home okay.”

  That stopped me cold. That he cared enough…that he…my head spun. “It’s just what a big brother would do.”

  “Huh?”

  Oh no! I’d said that out loud? Again? I’d been spending far too much time alone. I couldn’t seem to keep a decent secret. Now what? Well, we were kin, after all. “Okay, so don’t go all holier than thou on me, because this time isn’t like the last time.”

  “What, Toni?”

  “It’ll actually make sense when you think about it.”

  “Toni!”

  “Well, Ethan, I have credible evidence that you are my half brother. I believe that your father is probably my father too, and I’m just going to—”

  “What? I’ve got nothing to do with Tyson!”

  “No, no, no. That was absolutely ridiculous. I see that now. It was a fantasy, just like you said. Point for your side.” My hands were flailing all over the place, and Ethan was tracking them. Get a grip, Toni. “Look, Ethan, please don’t tell him yet, but I think Mr. Goldman, your dad, is my father as well, and I’m going to collect some proof at the Bohemian Embassy. People in there might remember the connections. I am your sister, Ethan—well, half sister, but you know…”

  Ethan just stood there, hands on hips and mouth open. “And what kind of harebrained evidence do you have for that? There is no way that my old man stepped out on my mom, no way!”

  “You don’t have to get so heated about it.” I crossed my arms to hold them still. “I think your father played at Willa’s.” Then I realized that this rather seminal fact would mean nothing to him. “Plus, I’ve got this major thing for music. My radio is on all the time, and there is an undeniable resemblance. You can’t argue that. There is no use fighting it, Ethan. I am probably your sister.” I said the last bit as gently as I could.

  Instead of nodding his head thoughtfully, Ethan shoved his hands into his pockets and just up and walked away, muttering the whole time. “Let it go, Ethan, just let it go.”

  Okay, sure, it was a lot to take in all of a sudden. “Wait, Ethan! Where’s the Bohemian Embassy?”

  “You’re standing in front of it, third floor.” He obviously couldn’t get away fast enough.

  Well, all siblings have their rough patches.

  “The House of the Rising Sun”

  (THE ANIMALS)

  WELL, WHAT A disappointment! This was the Bohemian Embassy? Shouldn’t it be fancier? I had to climb up two flights of really narrow stairs that didn’t even have a ba
nister. They were dark and dingy. Just as I was going to head back down, I heard singing and then applause. It was the tail end of the Animals’ big hit “The House of the Rising Sun.” Joe loved that song, thought it was “all that baby, just all that.”

  I had to wait for my eyes to adjust when I got to the doorway. The club was even smokier than the Purple Onion, and that was saying something. Still, it got better inside. The actual room looked like the inside of a barn, but the patrons sat around tables with cheerful checkered tablecloths. Candles were stuck in wine bottles on each table. I made a mental note to talk to Big Bob about improving our decor. I scanned the room, looking for old people. I spotted a couple of “geezers,” as Big Bob called them, at the table farthest from the stage. I steeled myself and made my way over.

  “Good evening, gentlemen. Do you think you would mind if I joined you?”

  “Sure, sugar, take a load off and brighten our table.” His voice reminded me of Joe. Joe. It was like he was with me tonight. The man, whose name was Buddy, motioned for the waitress, who was way cooler than I was. In fact, all the waitresses were. Each and every one was beautiful, and each and every one looked bored out of their skulls. Is that why they looked so cool? I vowed to cultivate that look.

  “Isn’t it a little late for you to be out, young lady?” asked Buddy.

  I explained that I had just come from my shift at the Purple Onion. Without any effort at all, we got to talking about the Yorkville scene versus Gerrard Village “back in the day.” They both knew of Grady and Big Bob. Buddy said that after a time everybody knows everybody. I took that as my cue and asked if either of them remembered a woman named Halina Royce.

  “Can’t say it rings a bell,” said Murphy, who had been Buddy’s best friend “since God was a boy.”

  Buddy frowned. “Sure it does. Halina. Cute little blond number floated around Gerrard. Kind of out of it at times, but harmless. A sweet thing, ya dig?”

  Kind of out of it. Didn’t Big Bob say something like that?

  “Oh yeah.” Murphy stroked his chin with gnarled fingers. “She worked the clubs, dished drinks, cleaned, did just about anything short of the johns. I’m pretty sure she didn’t roll that way. Man, she hasn’t been around forever. Maybe she went back to where she came from. That’d be good. Yup.”