by P. N. Elrod
Instead, he put the word out I was a friend of his to keep away the inevitable parade of shakedown artists wanting pieces of the club. Like it or not, to open so much as a hot dog stand in this town you had to give certain people their cut. Usually it was added in with the price of the permits or liquor or labor or deliveries. Gordy told me not to worry about it, so I didn’t and just got on with the work.
There was a hell of a lot of it. No one had been near the joint for nearly five years. With its violent history, boarded-up windows, and the beginnings of serious dilapidation, I couldn’t blame people for staying away. It looked like it should be haunted, but I figured fresh paint and some neon lights would fix that, maybe even a fancy canvas awning going out to the curb . . .
As Escott and I pulled up to its redbrick front, he noticed the big sign above the door declaring: “Coming Soon: Lady Crymsyn.”
“I thought it was going to be ‘Jack Fleming’s Club Crymsyn,’” he said.
“It was, until I figured that more than enough people in this town already know me.” For fame, I had fond hopes of becoming a writer—hopes thus far not shared by those editors to whom I’d sent stories. Since it looked like I wasn’t going to make any bucks in that direction in the near future, I needed the income from the club to keep my wallet filled. “I don’t want the notice, just the money,” I told him.
“Most wise. It is rather improved from when I was last here.” The boards were off, and the broken windows replaced by diamond-shaped panes of red surrounding squares of clear glass in the center. The inside lights shone through them, bright and warm. Not a necessity in the summer, but come winter I hoped it would be an inviting sight to customers.
“You ain’t seen nothing yet,” I promised. He’d only been to the place once before, and then just after I’d closed the deal. At that time, my future top-of-the-tops club looked like an outhouse pit. Escott had kept diplomatically quiet.
We walked through the wide front doors to the lush lobby area. It was all finished, with pale marble floors, a substantial bar made of the same material, and a few discreet touches of chrome. Empty shelves made of inch-thick glass awaited their future stock of booze bottles and glassware. The lights underneath cast interesting shadow patterns on the walls and ceiling. It looked great, but they shouldn’t have been on. I went behind the bar and found the off switch.
“What? No mirror?” Escott questioned, indicating the padded wall behind the glass shelves.
“Patent leather’s got more class,” I told him with a straight face.
“And safer for you. Are there any mirrors here at all?”
“Only in the public johns and dressing rooms.” I’d just avoid them.
A double doorway sporting red velvet curtains led into the main club area. We went through, and Escott stopped cold.
“My God,” he said. He was rarely awestruck. I enjoyed the moment.
On the wall opposite the entry was a larger-than-life-size painting of Lady Crymsyn herself, meant to be the symbolic personification of the club. I’d commissioned it from Alex Adrian—yeah, that Alex Adrian, the world-famous artist who could pick and choose his work. The Lady had only existed in my head, but his vision of her in oils made me believe her to be real.
A full-length portrait of a woman in a sweeping red gown, she looked down upon lesser mortals with a sultry, striking face that expressed both mystery and seductive glamour. Yet her eyes sparkled with a kind of not-so-secret humor, making her approachable. The idea was for every man to want her and for every woman to want to be like her. Alex Adrian had outdone himself so far as I was concerned, and I judged the painting to be well worth the bundle I’d spent for it.
“You wouldn’t happen to have gotten the model’s phone number?” Escott asked after a moment of slack-jawed shock.
“I think Alex made her up, but on opening night I’ll have a look-alike dressed exactly the same acting as hostess. You can try your luck with her.”
“I shall do so,” he solemnly promised.
We pushed on to the main area. What had been a one-story room was now two stories high since I’d had the crew demolish a large section of ceiling. Three broad tiers of deep, half-circle booths rose to fill the space with chrome divider rails between each level. The main color was dark red, of course.
I’d borrowed the idea of a multilevel horseshoe seating arrangement from Gordy’s club. But instead of entering at the top tier and walking down to the dance floor, I’d reversed it. When you came in you could look up and see nearly the whole place. Anyone seated at the dozens of booths above also had the advantage of being able to check out new arrivals. I figured this might appeal to a certain type of customer who preferred not to sit with his back to a door. This place could easily seat about three hundred of them, four with the spare tables. A bar on each side of the room would serve them all.
The big dance floor had a pattern of different kinds and colors of wood, and the stage two feet above it sported the same motif. It was thirty feet wide and almost as deep, which would allow space enough for nearly any act I cared to book, from a full band to a solo singer. In the center stood a white baby grand piano, protected for the time being by a canvas dust sheet. I’d already had in a special stage crew to set up the lights and microphone system. Because of it, there wasn’t a bad seat in the house.
“My God,” Escott repeated. He’d noticed the liberal use of red velvet upholstery, polished white-and-black marble tabletops, crystal chandeliers, and wall sconces. Gordy had also recommended a decorator.
“Class all the way,” I said with a grin.
“I had no idea you were taking things this far. Most impressive.”
“And this is with the dust still in the air. Wait’ll opening night, when everything’s cleaned up.”
“I’ll mark my calendar. What is Miss Smythe’s opinion of it?”
“She’s been helping. I let her have her way with the backstage dressing rooms. The performers are gonna think they died and went to heaven. She can’t wait to sing here.”
“There can’t be that much space, though.” Escott had been onstage himself once, and had an appreciation for the hardships of show business.
“I’ve got four good rooms with showers for the headliners up on this level and cellar dressing areas for anyone else. We’re still working on getting that cleared out so the plumbing can go in.”
“You have thought it through quite nicely.”
“Not me. Bobbi. The talent has its own entrance up top, and I’ve had a door cut in the backstage wall so we can haul in big things like scenery or that piano—”
“Mr. Fleming!” Leon Kell emerged from the service door behind the bar on the far side of the room. Since it was impossible for me to supervise anything during the day, I had to hire people to do it in my stead. Leon seemed the brightest and had the right kind of experience, so he was put in charge of hiring others and making sure things went smoothly. Every night I’d stop by to check the progress as his crew started from the top and worked their way down, giving Lady Crymsyn the works and then some. “You sure got here fast.”
He was right on that. I hadn’t stopped to shave. I shifted from being the proud entrepreneur to serious problem-solver. “What’s going on?”
“This way.” He motioned for us to come over.
I’d asked what, not where, but followed him downstairs.
The harsh glare of the unshaded bulbs strung along the cellar’s exposed ceiling rafters showed the labor yet to be done. Rubble was scattered over the floor, along with shovels and wheelbarrows to carry it away. Dust hung lazily in the close air, and behind me Escott gave in to an enormous sneeze.
The original cellar had been divided up—unnecessarily, I thought—by several thick brick walls, creating a number of tiny rooms and alcoves. At one point in the building’s forty-year history those dismal holes were servant quarters. And I thought times were tough now. I replaced the walls with metal columns and cross beams to hold up the building.
The basement gained floor space and lost rats’ nests and other undesirable leftovers from previous occupants. Once the cleanup work was done, in would go a layer of cement to even out the floor and walls. It would still be a basement, but it wouldn’t look like a medieval torture chamber.
Along with the lesser dressing rooms, the area would be used for storage and take deliveries via an alley doorway and ramp at the back. That door was wide open, and clustered near it were the idle workmen, smoking on my time as I’d expected. They watched us come down the stairs, but didn’t bother to move. It must have been a long day—most looked tired—but there was also a wariness to them as they frowned in my direction.
“It’s over here,” said Leon, guiding us across the room. He was short and wide, and moved with a stumping kind of gait, but covered ground fast. His attitude seemed to be halfway between relief and agitation at my arrival, indicating he wasn’t sure how I’d take his news.
The rubble got worse at the other end of the room. Leon picked a path to a corner where the last alcove still stood. Part of the divider was torn down, but there was something odd about the back wall it butted up against.
“You see it, Mr. Fleming?” he asked, pointing. “This here outer part goes right to the building’s wall about twelve feet, but the room inside only goes back about nine.”
“I see it,” I said, doing my best to ignore the cold-pit feeling trying to situate itself in my gut.
There was a dank smell in the air I noticed while speaking. I don’t breathe regularly and took an experimental sniff. It wasn’t unbearable, only a musty mix of decay and dust. I’d known it once before about twenty years ago when I was serving in France. Me and a few of the boys in my unit got a furlough in Paris, and on one of our too-short days instead of getting drunk and enjoying female company as usual we took a tour of some old catacombs. We didn’t stay long. The depressing sight of those endless dark tunnels and piles of ancient bones reminded us too much of what we’d seen on the battlefields. We got out fast and spent the rest of the day and night in a roaring alcoholic fog. The memory came back to me all over again here, razor-sharp.
“Jesus Christ,” I muttered, not knowing if it was a prayer or a curse. Escott’s face was serious, and he shot me an uneasy look. He’d have picked up on the smell, too.
Leon continued. “With all the crap down here and it being so dark and crowded with the other walls up, you wouldn’t notice it so much. But after we got the lights in a couple of us wondered why this one wasn’t as deep as the others. The bricks are a little different in color, too. Not as old as the rest. When we started this part of the job, we found out.” He pointed to a black opening in the newer brickwork about a yard above the floor. It was the right height for someone to swing a pick. A couple of courses had been pried loose and now lay with the rest of the rubble. The hole wasn’t more than two feet across and half a foot high, and was the source of the musty smell.
Leon unhooked a flashlight from his tool belt and handed it to me, then stood back. From his manner and Escott’s morbid suggestion I already knew what would be there, but I’d have to take a look. I was the boss; it was expected of me.
The flashlight beam was faded from use. Leon must have let the other guys have a good view, too. I angled it around, reluctant to get too close. The uncertain light at first revealed only that there was a space beyond the hole that stopped abruptly about an arm’s length in. The opposite wall. The real one.
Now I aimed the beam downward and caught a glimpse of naked bones. I was half-prepared to see a grinning skull, but it wasn’t visible. After a few seconds I realized I was looking at the regular knobby march of a spine. The body was lying facedown, then. Amid the pale bones was an incongruous glitter and matted twists of what had been bright red fabric.
Dear God. A woman. The glitter came from the sequins clinging to what was left of her evening gown. I stepped back and gave Escott a chance to look. He kept his expression impassive the whole time, but when he turned around, all the blood had drained from his face. His eyebrows and the thin line of his mouth stood out against the gray flesh as though they’d been drawn on.
“Damn, but sometimes I hate being right,” he said. His voice had a brittleness to it that I rarely heard. Only when he was deeply affected by something did he sound like that.
Couldn’t blame him. I got the light and steeled myself for another look. There wasn’t much more to see because of the narrowness of the opening, and I didn’t care to pull any more bricks out. During my time in New York as a reporter I’d learned the cops get real annoyed when civilians disturb a crime scene.
The one new thing I did find out from this second glimpse turned me cold and sick. I could just see the hands—what was left of them. They’d been secured together behind her with handcuffs. Also, some stuff that looked like electrical cord started at her wrists and went up to the elbows. Whoever had done the job didn’t want to risk her getting free, because a heavy chain led from the handcuffs to a thick bolt set into the inside wall.
“You noticed?” Escott was at my shoulder.
“Yeah,” I whispered, with hardly enough spit in my mouth to talk. Dear God in heaven.
“I may be speaking without benefit of absolute proof, but from that and the odd positioning of the body—”
“Yeah. When they put her in there . . . she was still alive.”
2
As nights go, I’ve had worse, but I could have easily done without this one.
None of the work crew had much to say about their find, especially the one who’d broken through the wall with his pick. A few were worried about the law, indicating that they probably had records. No surprise there, since I never questioned Leon about whom he hired. So long as the work went without a hitch, he had a free hand. Those men I took aside for a private little interview. I had an ache behind my eyes before finishing, but my hypnotic interrogation only confirmed that they knew nothing about the body. I gave them each five bucks severance and told them to come back to the job when the fuss was over. They thanked me and vanished like smoke.
I told Leon and the others to keep back from the alcove for the time being, then Escott followed me upstairs, where I could call things in to the cops.
He hitched one hip on an old table that served as a temporary desk and let his gaze wander over the plain room that was to be my office. It was big, but empty of nearly everything but the smell of fresh paint and new plaster. Fancy trimmings would come later. Right now the prospect of running a club didn’t appeal to me very damn much anymore. Through no fault of my own, things had gotten tragically complicated.
“You look like someone just pulled one of your teeth without benefit of an anesthetic,” he commented after I hung up.
“That’s just about how I feel.”
“Yes, that poor woman.”
“Yeah. Jeez, what a way to go.” I’d seen (and been subjected to) more than my share of horrors in life, but to think of anyone being bricked up like that gave me the cold sweats. Shut away in perfect silence, no one to hear her screams for help . . .
In my own way, I knew exactly what that was like.
“Awful. She must have died of thirst and hunger, rather than lack of air.”
“How do you figure that?” The question was out before I realized I really didn’t want to know the answer.
“I spoke to the man who cracked through the wall. He said the quality of the air released was distinctive enough to notice, but not poisonous, so there must have been some small amount of circulation going on over the course of time. There certainly had to be openings into that chamber sufficiently large enough to admit—” He broke off with a grimace.
“Admit what?”
He unhitched himself from the desk and paced around, peering out one of the wide uncurtained windows that overlooked the front of the club. This was as uncomfortable as I’d ever seen him. “To admit rodents. I n-noticed some of the bones showed signs of gnawing.”
“Charles,
I could have lived the rest of my life without knowing that.”
“As I could as well, but it’s knowledge, and you never know what might be useful in an investigation.”
“You thinking about looking into this?”
“Only if you feel I should.” He sounded less than enthusiastic. Because of the gruesome nature I couldn’t blame him for being reluctant, but I also knew he was busy with some paying projects. One of them was pretty important and could land him some steady and lucrative work.
“You’ve got three things going at once, don’t you?” I asked.
“Yes, as it happens, I do—”
“Then you don’t need this on top of ’em. This is cop work. Let them do their job.”
“But who is she, how did she come to be here?” He was a lean silhouette against the window, hands in his pockets, shoulders bunched with tension. I suddenly realized I’d not turned on the room light. He hadn’t bothered with it, either. Probably so he could better watch the street below. “Are you not curious?”
“I’m still in shock; gimme some time to get over it.”
“You’d best do so straightaway. A police car just pulled up.”
“That was quick.”
“It has a radio antenna. They must have been very close.”
We went downstairs. The two uniforms who’d been sent to check things had already pushed their way into the outer lobby and were gaping at the scenery, but covered up their initial awe pretty fast. For the first of several times that night I gave my name, where I lived, my occupation, and told them the problem. Escott did the same, but since he’d just come along for the ride and wasn’t the owner of the joint, they weren’t as interested in him.
