by Ed Gorman
The Avanti blazed in the dark December night. There had to be two million dollars worth of cars in the parking lot. In the yellow overhead lights, snow blew furiously on the tundra of the macadam. The kid who parked my car was buried inside his parka. His eyebrows and mustache were white, snow frozen to them. He did not look happy to see the driver of a five-year-old Toyota. I could see him calculating his tip. He probably thought I'd leave him twenty-five cents.
The lobby was packed with women in minks and men in tuxedos, even a few double-breasted ones of the sort favored by Adolphe Menjou in gangster pictures. A maitre d' in a double-breasted tux himself looked slightly frazzled with all the business. He dispatched waiters like a German general sending soldiers into a battle against overwhelming odds.
It was hard to believe this was the same place I'd been in before, the place of piled chairs and muddy tracks across the dance floor. Night, and indirect lighting, changed everything.
The art deco motif, all glass and chrome, lent the place a lively decadence. It looked like the sort of place where William Powell would have picked up Jean Harlow and that was fine by me. On the dance floor three dozen snotty night people tried to catch glimpses of themselves in the wall-length mirrors, and at the dinner tables any number of fat men were sampling the vintage while waiters stood by anxiously.
I told the maitre d' a lie, saying that I was to meet Mrs. Coburn in the bar. He looked as if he didn't quite believe me but was afraid to challenge me nonetheless.
I pushed my way into place at the bar just as the ten-piece orchestra went into "Love Walked In." The average age of the band members had to be mid-twenties but they had a sure and loving feel for the music they were playing.
I'd had two scotches and water when I saw him. Or rather when he saw me. I was under the impression he'd been staring at me for some time. Tom Anton, one of Richard Coburn's partners.
He wore, of course, a tuxedo and his sleeked-down hair still made him look like a road company Dracula and his face was still too pretty by half and his glossy dark eyes still cocaine dead.
But what was most interesting was the woman on his arm. Or girl, really. Tall, slender, got up in a simple white gown, her face regal but without even a glimmer of arrogance, she was dreamy in her youth and innocence, a princess in a corny 1950s movie about a coed who discovers she's really an heiress. She did not look at all dismayed about dating somebody Anton's age.
Everybody leaned eagerly forward to touch her and say hello, lending a definite aura of celebrity to the simple act of her walking down the length of the bar. Old men grinned and young men lusted. We're so accustomed to the hot and oversold sexuality of television that we forget how devastating grace and subtlety can be.
And how Anton enjoyed being at the center of it, even if it meant basking in her reflected glory. From a gold case, he took a cigarette without a filter. He had scarcely put it to his mouth when a smiling woman of fleshy charm brought from nowhere a tiny gold cigarette lighter and flamed him up. He smiled back at her. They were like two vampires sharing a private joke.
He turned his attention abruptly back to me. He eased from the girl's arm, whispering some sort of explanation or apology, and came over to me.
"My man at the front door tells me you're meeting Deirdre."
I nodded.
"You're a liar."
I forced a smile. "Are you this pleasant to all your customers?"
"Just the deadbeats."
"I do seem to be about the only guy here tonight not in a tuxedo."
"That's not the only thing you lack, Dwyer, believe me." He dragged deeply on the cigarette the woman had lighted for him. "I'd appreciate it if you'd leave."
"Mrs. Coburn hired me to find out who killed her husband."
"I know who killed her husband. Earle Tomkins."
"She doesn't seem to believe that."
"She's a very emotional woman."
"As long as you don't say sentimental."
"Richard wasn't easy to get along with, believe me. Deirdre may not be a saint but Richard was even less so."
"You don't look like much of a saint, either."
"Do you really think I give a damn what you think of me?"
I nodded to the girl, whose crowd of admirers was now three deep. "She's a little young for you, don't you think, Anton?"
He smiled. Sneered, actually. "What an ass you are, Dwyer. Mignon is my daughter. She's sixteen." He shook his glossy head. "Now finish your drink and get the hell out of here."
With that, he turned back to the excitement behind him, the shy, elegant girl who was making all the men a little crazy.
"You walked right into that one," a voice said to my right. "Never give Tom an advantage like that."
At first, I didn't recognize her. When I'd seen her before she'd been dressed sensibly for work. Tonight her dark hair was upswept into something so fancy I wasn't sure it had a name, and her gown was dark blue and wonderfully cut so as to reveal cleavage. She was still fifteen pounds overweight and it was lovely.
"Do you remember me?" she said.
"Now I do. Jackie."
"Right." She made a big production out of saying the word, dragging out the single vowel, and hinting that I'd probably just won some sort of prize or something. She was the senior girl you always had a crush on when you were a sophomore and not quite sure how to handle yourself. "Oh. Listen."
I wasn't sure what I was listening to. Or for.
"'Laura.' The band."
"Ah," I said. "Right."
"I love that song."
"Actually, so do I."
She held white arms out to me. "Why don't we dance?"
"You'd dance in public with the only guy not in a tuxedo?"
She laughed. She had a slow, curiously weary laugh that made me like her. "I'd love to dance with the only guy not here in a tuxedo. I'm the only woman here not wearing real diamonds."
"Well, if you put it that way," I said, and we went out to the dance floor.
In seventh grade the nuns taught us how to do what they called the box step. You would stand embarrassed while a Sister of Mercy took you in tow around the gymnasium floor, showing you the art and etiquette of slow dancing, which mainly consisted of being a "gentleman and not a roughneck, Jack" and making sure you kept a ruler's worth of space between your chest and your partner's.
So tonight, on the dance floor with Jackie, I put the old box step into action.
"Ow," she said.
"Pardon?" I said. The orchestra was loud and I hadn't heard exactly.
"I said 'Ow.'"
"'OW’?"
"'Ow.' You stepped on my foot. Twice, in fact."
"I'm sorry." And I was. And I felt embarrassed. I said, "I'm Fred Astaire's illegitimate son."
"Too bad you didn't get any of his talent."
I laughed. "Or his money."
She was short enough to put her head against my shoulder. Her hair smelled wonderful. Her fleshiness was warm and abundant and erotic in my arms. She took her head from my chest and looked up at me and said, "Why don't we just kind of hold each other and move around? That box step can be hell on a woman's instep. Who taught you anyway, your mother?"
"Sister Mary Rosalinda."
"Oh. Nuns. That explains it."
With that enigmatic remark, she placed her head against my shoulder and we did what she suggested, just held each other and moved around on the floor. It was a long number and during it I thought of a lot of things, everything from how I'd have to get a tuxedo someday to what I was going to get the kids for Christmas to how good it would be to see Donna again. I even thought of Richard Coburn and how his ego had dominated this place. I kept thinking of him as Jay Gatsby, the poor boy trying so uselessly to be something he was not and never could be, destroyed ultimately not by the mendacity of others but by his own self-indulgent naïveté.
"Are you hungry?"
"Sure," I said.
"They have great food here."
"I'm
ready."
She made a yummy expression with her wide, tasty mouth. "So am I."
* * *
They had great goulash. I ate two bowls. Both times I cleaned my bowl out with my bread. Real truck driver stuff right here in the middle of all these society cokeheads.
"How're your feet?" I said.
"The nuns turned out some great football players, didn't they?"
"Wait till you see me dance fast."
"Is that a threat?"
She had a cigarette. She smoked as if she genuinely savored the taste. Apparently in café society, they had yet to hear of the surgeon general's anxiety.
Three stiff scotches and water had brought me some peace. I looked out over the restaurant, at the diners in their finery eating so politely, and for once I didn't dislike them, decided indeed that I was at least as much a snob about rich people as rich people were about working people. From my years as a policeman, I'd learned that malice and evil come in all sizes, shapes, colors, and social levels. It's tidy to divide the world into the evil rich and the noble poor but it doesn't work that way. I'd arrested a foundry worker who when sober and sane had beaten his wife to death because he didn't like the way she'd ironed his good white shirt for mass the next morning. As far as I know, he'd never expressed the slightest remorse during the trial, and went to the slammer still calling her a bitch. And I knew personally of a rich man who spent three Saturdays a month working at a soup kitchen.
I wasn't sure when the commotion started or even what it was all about.
"Oh, God," Jackie said.
I looked up from my drink and my thoughts. Somewhere near the lobby area, in the midst of a crowd, a scuffle or brawl of some kind was going on.
"Maybe I'd better see what's going on," she said. She sounded very proprietary. It made sense. She'd bought into the restaurant.
The orchestra continued to play, and play well, but you could see that everybody in the place was attuned to the problems at the front door.
At first, all I could see was three bulky men in tuxedos going around in a furious black circle, sort of like the Tasmanian Devil in Loony Tunes. Somewhere in the center of the circle was a gray form they were trying to wrestle out the door. The men in tuxedos were cursing and shouting. The gray form was saying something keening and incomprehensible.
The onlookers looked both excited and horrified, women clutching men, men trying to look brave about it all. But it was sordid and frightening as all violence is sordid and frightening—the worst aspect of the human animal—and merely witnessing it you are diminished.
Finally, they pressed him to the wall, his arms spread crucifixion-fashion, and I got my first look at his madness and sorrow.
He was perhaps fifty, emaciated inside the filthy rags that fell from his sharp frail bones, all gaunt cheekbones and chin and ominous messianic gaze. He was one of the urban zombies, the poor and homeless there are so many of these days, the people we in equal parts so pity and despise.
One of the men hit him hard in the stomach and he doubled over and cried out.
In two steps I had the tuxedo man in a hammerlock and slammed him hard enough against the frame of a door to break his nose. For good measure I gave him a sharp kidney punch. Then I turned him around and slapped him once hard across the mouth. The fight went fast from him.
Jackie grabbed my arm. "Jesus Christ, Dwyer, calm down." So I calmed down. It came in stages. I just stood there letting my heart and lungs find their natural levels. People stared at me. I felt embarrassed, a big stupid animal who hated violence so much that it made him violent. I suppose that didn't make any less sense than anything else in a world that makes no sense at all.
One of the tuxedo guys came up to Jackie. "Who is this asshole?" he said, jabbing a big thumb in my direction.
"A friend of mine," she said. Then she nodded to the doorway through which the homeless man had vanished. "There was no reason for Ken to hit him."
"He just got carried away."
"Well," she said. "That's what happened to Dwyer here. He just got carried away." She said it with a certain humor that the man refused to acknowledge.
He scowled at me and went over to where Ken was feeling his nose, blood having bloomed in his nostrils like tiny red flowers. Ken looked back at me and glowered and then the three men walked away.
"You need a drink," Jackie said.
"Two at least," I said.
By now people had lost interest. The band played "Tangerine." I let the strains of it bring me at least momentary peace as I sat back down at our table and Jackie obligingly ordered me a double.
"Why three bouncers?"
"For problems just like tonight. It's just how the city's laid out. Two blocks from the best section of restaurants is one of the worst areas for homeless people. They drift up to the front door and badger our customers. Occasionally they even get violent. That's why we have the bouncers."
I recalled the man in a Roman collar in the alley. The sad, crazed voice reciting Bible passages by rote. A short-sleeved shirt in the subzero temperature. In this city, as elsewhere, they were everywhere, bad and tawdry enough in daylight, but seeming to double in numbers and desperation at night. There was no money left for the homeless, and there were too many of them.
"I lost it a little there," I said, feeling the remorse that usually follows my violence. "I'm sorry."
She smiled into the candle glow. Each table was a tiny island tossing frail light against the crushing shadow. "What a perfect Catholic you are. Guilty guilty guilty."
"I take it you don't much like Catholics?"
"I distrust any religion whose leader is a man who wears a long white dress."
I finished my drink. The bouncers, including Ken, came to the small balcony on the west wall and stared down at the clientele. When their eyes settled on me, their faces grew tight and grim.
"He shouldn't have hit him," I said.
"Now you're going to rationalize."
"I overreacted but so did he."
"What children men are. All of you."
"Including Richard Coburn?"
"I knew we'd get to that."
"It's a fair subject."
She made a small, inscrutable gesture in the direction of the stiff-backed waiter. He nodded and began moving faster toward the bar.
"The word around the restaurant is that I killed him because we disagreed on how to run this place. Apparently I'm not only greedy but very important."
The waiter came. Given his obvious distaste when he was forced to serve me my drink, I assumed he was a good friend of Ken's.
I drank the scotch and water faster than I should have. I wasn't quite sure why. Maybe it was prolonged exposure to tuxedos. I am told that they can make certain types of people crazy after a certain amount of time. Maybe I'm one of those people.
"You don't look happy," she said.
"Am I supposed to look happy?"
"For what it's worth, I really do—did love him."
I watched her there in the soft candle glow. Just watched.
And waited for her to speak again.
"He was a big, violent child who was almost psychotic about getting his own way. He had very specific goals and they mostly had to do with money and power and he didn't let anything stop him from reaching those goals." Instead of sounding critical about all these shortcomings, her voice was melancholy, even husky with loss. She smiled at the cool golden epicenter of the candle there beneath the red glass casing. "He was a wonderful lover." She glanced up. "I'm sure Deirdre told you he was impotent."
I didn't quite know how to answer that.
"Well, he was. With her." Her gaze fell again to the candle. "She's a real castrater. Always reminding him of his background, always telling him what a failure he was. She had a very public affair with Tom just to hurt him. This was right after he started having trouble in bed."
"With Tom Anton? His partner?"
"Ducky, eh? As she would say."
"So
Coburn knew about it?"
"As I said, everybody knew about it. It only made Richard's sexual problems worse. That's why he turned to me. At least initially. Because I was nonthreatening. We didn't make love for the first five months. He was afraid to and I didn't want to push him. But the first night we tried, he succeeded. And he was wonderful. He really was."
She paused and said, "You're really getting potzed."
I stared down at my drink. Apparently I wanted to levitate it. I felt dizzy. "Jesus, but I'd like to go stand outside in the cold and snow for a while."
"Why don't you? I'll bring my car around."
"Are we going someplace?"
"You mean you haven't figured it out yet?"
"I guess not."
"I'm going to have you come over to my apartment for a dancing lesson."
I grinned. I felt fifteen. A slow, stupid, graceless fifteen. "You've never been hustled before, Dwyer?"
"Not that often."
"You look like a big dumb kid."
"Thanks."
"That was supposed to be endearing, you oaf."
"You sure you didn't put anything in my drink?"
She smiled: "Nothing permanently damaging."
Chapter 7
Snowplows with the electric yellow eyes of insects came up the center of the wide avenue, gauzy behind blowing snow. I thought of this boulevard in my boyhood days, when an interurban car had run down the middle of the wide brick street. A bell always clanged pedestrians out of the way and the people aboard looked happy about being there. I used to take quarters from my paper route and ride the interurban all over the city, even out to the rolling hills west of the city limits.
Now freezing wind whipped silty snow in my face, sobering me. The cold made me feel alive again.
Limousines and Lincolns, sports cars and cars wanting badly to be sports cars, appeared and disappeared, disgorging passengers and picking them up. Even given the temperature and the wind and the snow, people were festive, smiling white privileged smiles at the tall black livened doorman who had no smile at all.
