Death in The Life

by Dorothy Salisbury Davis

  How do I dress for 5 A.M. party at a pimp’s pad? Find out: Rita’s age, how Mack got her, where she came from, who she told about halfway house—about me. Why? Does anybody there know Pete? Sweets Romano? No. Might turn off informants. Yes. But ask at end of session. What if ladies won’t talk? Stay on good terms with Goldie. He does know something.

  What if police raid Goldie’s at five A.M.?

  Doctor, I need somebody to post bail…

  She put the Goldie file with her original letter to Jeff and turned to number one: Mrs. Ryan, from whom she hadn’t heard in two days. Fritzie was probably sick.

  23

  “OH, JULIE, I WAS so sick I couldn’t get my head off the pillow, and poor Fritzie with no one to walk him.”

  “You should have called me.”

  “I might have, but Mr. Bourke called for me to pick up the lamp he’d repaired, and when I told him he came around at once and fixed me a lovely cup of tea and took Fritzie out. You know he’s been here a half-dozen times since, and he has to pay someone to stay in the shop when he leaves it.”

  “I thought he was put out of your building,” Julie said.

  “They’re a dirty-minded lot! I’m starting a petition. You shouldn’t be able to put a man out of his home after all these years. Not on hearsay.”

  “Good for you,” Julie said. “How about our get-together with Miss Brennan?”

  “I didn’t want to ask her while I was sick for fear she’d think I was taking advantage of her. Everybody does. You’d think she was nurse in residence to the Willoughby. She’s coming after work today. I don’t think I can go out yet, but if you’d stop by the deli and bring something, we could have a bite here together. A nice bit of ham maybe, or corned beef, and they have lovely stuffed cabbage…”

  “Okay.”

  “And you might bring a six-pack of lager.”

  Julie stopped at the Forum during the afternoon and duplicated her complete file on the machine there, a copy of everything for Doctor Callahan. She put a large notice of the memorial Mass on the bulletin board.

  Nurse Sheila Brennan, as Mrs. Ryan introduced her, was a plain, solid woman, freckled-faced with quick blue eyes and a laugh that banged around the cluttered one-room apartment. She could change the sheets under an elephant without straining her back. Julie and she had no trouble getting acquainted.

  “That’s Laura Gibson,” Mrs. Ryan said and pointed to the wall above her. Mrs. Ryan lay on the studio couch, wrapped in a flowered dressing gown, Fritzie asleep at her feet, his head on his white, aging paws. “Show her which one, Sheila.” The wall was a montage of photographs of theater people.

  “I recognize her,” Julie said. A long neck and a tilted chin, the tilt of which almost pulled its double out of sight. A sensual mouth. Never would Julie have said she was Pete’s type.

  “You know what I was thinking yesterday, lying here looking up at her? She was out of her time. She belonged in the days of class. There isn’t a one on the stage today if you met in the laundromat you wouldn’t think belonged there.”

  Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

  “When Miss Gibson and Pete used to play scenes for you, do you remember anything from Yeats they liked especially?”

  “They only played what they liked, and they played for themselves. Something heroic. She liked the heroic parts.”

  “There were other things I remember,” Miss Brennan said. “She could play a fine whore if she wanted.”

  “If it was an O’Casey whore maybe,” Mrs. Ryan said defensively.

  “You needn’t be so shocked,” the nurse said. “I was talking about playing, not being. Or was I? To my mind there are whores and there are whores. I always had the impression that Laura Gibson wanted you to wonder about her.”

  Julie remembered her talk with Rudy and said aloud, “Her three Bs—Bed, Booze, and the Boards.”

  “Where did you hear that?” Mrs. Ryan said.

  “From someone who worked with her.”

  “Is that the best they could remember of her?”

  “Sorry,” Julie said. When Mrs. Ryan went thin at the lips there was no use questioning even her logic which was particularly vulnerable at the moment. She had herself mentioned the affairs of Miss Gibson’s youth with something close to admiration. Beauty wasn’t the only thing in the eyes of the beholder. Julie turned to the nurse. “The reason I wanted to talk with you, Miss Brennan, I wanted to ask about the time Miss Gibson was in the hospital.”

  “Julie’s a friend of the young man, Peter Mallory.” Mrs. Ryan had given up her pique for participation.

  “So you mentioned. What did you want to know, dearie?”

  Dearie. All right. “Mrs. Ryan remembers seeing someone there who’s known on the street as Mack…” She decided that under the circumstances it would be better not to mention his occupation. “He’s a big, gaudy man with red hair. Some people would say he was good-looking…”

  “I remember him all too well, giving orders around as though he was the one paying the bill. A joke of a man, but he was no joke to the nurses on the floor, I’ll tell you that. Trying to seduce the young ones and bullying those of us with more sense.”

  “But how come he was there in the first place?”

  “Well, now, I do know that. I went to Sister Isabella—she’s the superintendent of nurses—to complain about him. After all, I was the one who got Miss Gibson into the hospital in the first place. She said to put up with him as best we could. He was an employee of Mr. Romano who was a benefactor of St. Jude’s. Mr. Romano felt better with him there in case there was anything Miss Gibson wanted outside the jurisdiction of the staff.”

  Mr. Romano the benefactor. “And was there ever?” Julie asked. Then a shot in the dark: “Did Mr. Romano himself ever put in an appearance?”

  “He did. And all while he was in the room, this red-headed oaf and another like him hung outside the door like bodyguards.”

  “Would there have been anyone else in the room while he was there?”

  “Not past those bulldogs,” the nurse said.

  “Only one visit?”

  “I think I’d have heard if there were more. You can imagine the buzz among the staff. Mr. Romano is reputed to be a Mafia figure.”

  “Reputed to be,” Julie repeated.

  “Sister Isabella warned us: reputed.”

  “That way it was all right to take his money.”

  Nurse Brennan gave a little sniff. “I don’t think it’s your place to censor an institution dependent for its life upon charity.”

  “I agree. It’s not my place to censor anyone.” She did feel censorious, but it was not time to alienate Miss Brennan. “Sometimes I say things I shouldn’t trying to understand other things. I know for a fact this Mack person has been around the apartment where Pete was found murdered. I don’t suppose Mr. Romano visited any other patients, did he? What I’m getting at, Miss Brennan: you got Laura Gibson into St. Jude’s, right? It seems to be a whopping coincidence that Mr. Romano happened to be a benefactor of that very hospital.”

  “For all I know, he may give to half the hospitals in New York City.”

  “You’re right again.” But Julie didn’t think so.

  “Or, there’s another possibility,” the nurse said slowly and drew herself up as though to say something not to her liking. “Laura was in twice—the exploratory in September, and then again in November until the end. And I will admit, the hospital’s concern to please Mr. Romano struck me as a bit much.”

  “Like they were wooing him?”

  “Something like it.”

  “In other words, if Miss Gibson had gone to St. Vincent’s or someplace else, that’s where Mr. Romano’s endowment would have gone?”

  “Mmmm.” A noise of assent.

  “That’s it. That would make sense,” Julie said.

  “Do you want me to try a discreet inquiry?”

  “Not necessary, but thank you.”

  Mrs. Ryan said, almos
t blissfully, looking up at the picture, “Isn’t it amazing the variety of men Laura attracted? When I was a girl and first came to New York, it was very fashionable for prominent people to have their own bootleggers. There were all sorts of underworld types invited to theater parties and the very best houses. You’re not shocked, are you, Julie?”

  “No.”

  Miss Brennan rolled her eyes to the ceiling. And hadn’t got them quite back in place when Mrs. Ryan looked at her.

  “I’m surprised with all you see of human nature, Sheila, you’re so out of touch with the world. But I suppose there’s something of the nun in the nurse. Not that nuns are all that unworldly nowadays, God knows…”

  “It’s you and not me that’s out of touch with the world, Mary.”

  Mrs. Ryan wagged her head: right you are if you think you are. “I wonder what he thought of Peter being there all the time, this Mr. Romano. You’ve never said what you thought of it, Sheila.”

  “We’re always short-handed. It was good to have him there.”

  “But what was he to her, do you think?”

  “It was none of my business.”

  “Didn’t she used to call him her nephew?”

  “He was more than that.”

  “I think so too,” Julie said.

  “Julie was half in love with him. Do you mind our talking like this, dear?”

  “No. I don’t know who I was half in love with. I mean I still don’t know Pete.”

  “You’re just as well then.” Miss Brennan leaned over and rubbed one of her legs. “Look at my ankles, the size of cantaloupes. I must go up and put them in a hot tub.”

  “That isn’t fair, Miss Brennan. Please?”

  “I’m not going to sit here and talk about things I don’t know the meaning of. I said before, it was my impression that Laura Gibson wanted people to think she was more in bed than out of it. And God knows, the likes of Mary Ryan here made a great audience. You heard her tonight.”

  “I never said she was bed with him, did I, Julie? The poor boy was queer. He wasn’t faggoty, but I’d swear on my oath he was queer.”

  The color flamed up in the nurse’s face. “Just lie there and be quiet. You wouldn’t know a fag from a fig leaf. Not that I’m such an expert myself. All right, I’ll tell you what I saw, and you make of it what you will. He was an artist, wasn’t he?”

  “Sort of. A scene designer,” Julie said.

  “Oh, these were scenes, all right.” The woman’s face grew even darker as she plunged ahead. “Do you know how he entertained her the last weeks of her life? Drawing dirty pictures for her. I saw some of them myself. I wasn’t supposed to, but I saw them. And sometimes you’d hear the two of them laughing, you’d hear it down at the end of the hall with her winding up screaming with the pain it brought on. And I heard her say it was worth it. So there.” Little bubbles of spit had appeared in the corners of the woman’s mouth.

  “Don’t excite yourself so,” Mrs. Ryan said, sitting up.

  “I’m not exciting myself!”

  Julie said: “I can put this part together, Miss Brennan. And it goes with Mr. Romano. It’s not so awful, really. Pete paid all the hospital bills for Miss Gibson, all her bills, and he needed money. He made pornographic movies or a porn movie—which is one of the Romano rackets, distributing them. It sounds to me like Miss Gibson was a consultant. Don’t you think?”

  Miss Brennan let go the breath she was holding. “I wouldn’t say.”

  Julie wanted terribly not to make her feel the fool. “You couldn’t have known what it was about unless somebody told you, and if they didn’t know, anybody would have thought it bizarre.” One of Doctor’s favorite words.

  “Bizarre, that’s the word.” She sat quietly for a moment, saved from chagrin, and then gave a great boom of laughter that startled Fritzie off the couch. “Oh, my God, my God!” She went into another peal of laughter. “And here I thought they were having some kind of sexual experience.”

  Great, Julie thought, but she sure as hell wasn’t going to say it. All in all, she had learned quite a lot, but it was in the area of facts: Russo’s department. Sweets Romano, Pete, and Laura Gibson. Well, the psychology of it was over her depth. But there was always Doctor. Whores and whores… and ’ho’s and ’ho’s. She was going to be in great shape for her session after a five A.M. party at Goldie’s.

  Mrs. Ryan lay back on the couch. “Pornographic films, and him at the altar every Sunday.”

  “There was something I wondered about at the time,” Miss Brennan said. “He was never long from her bedside except at night. But he did go off to Boston for three or four days. Now, that’s when this Mack person was on hand so much, when the young man was away. Laura tried to drink herself to death while he was gone. I pretended I didn’t know what was going on, but I did. This henchman kept the bottle for her: he was in and out the room twenty times a day. I suppose it was concerned with the film that Mr. Mallory went, and if he did it for the money, God knows he soon needed it. She died within the week and the bills were enormous.”

  “And didn’t he give her a lovely funeral? At St. Malachy’s. You remember, Sheila?”

  “Of course, I remember.”

  Julie said, “There’s to be a memorial Mass for Pete at St. Malachy’s on the twenty-fourth.”

  “That would be Father Doyle who arranged it,” Mrs. Ryan said with the certainty of felt truth. “You’ll like him, Julie, and maybe you ought to go see him yourself. About your own father.”

  “What?”

  “I’ve been thinking a lot about what you told me.” She turned to Miss Brennan and said, “Excuse me, Sheila. It’s a confidence Julie confided to me.”

  “According to the church, I’m an illegitimate child,” Julie said. All right.

  Mrs. Ryan went on persuasively. “Father Doyle is the Hound of Heaven when it comes to tracking down men and making them face up to their responsibilities. Think about it. You might feel better just knowing.”

  “I might.”

  Fritzie was scratching at the door, a welcome sound. “Shall I take the dog for a walk, Mrs. Ryan? Then I have to go.” She shook hands with Miss Brennan and thanked her.

  “You didn’t mind my saying that?” Mrs. Ryan, the dog’s leash in her hand, detained Julie by not giving it to her right away.

  “No. I didn’t even mind saying my lines.”

  Mrs. Ryan pulled her down and kissed her cheek. The woman smelled of beer and dentures and tired perfume. “You’re a funny, brave little thing,” she said.

  Poor old Fritzie, all sniff and belly, and not enough holy water left to sprinkle his domain. She walked him on Eighth Avenue, her own prelude. Twilight. The Twilight Zone. In Boston “the street” was the Combat Zone. Why Boston, Pete? Why anything? She had thought she would know herself, knowing Pete. But getting to know Pete wasn’t any easier. Maybe knowing herself, she’d know Pete. How about that? The Manhattan Hotel: dark, out of business, hundreds of rooms with empty beds, dusty mattresses, and a lobby with a moving stairway that had come to a halt. You heard all the time of streets that were dying, neighborhoods, but here you saw it happening. Building after building with life at the top snuffed out, sex pads and parlors on the second floors, a few cultists, and occultists selling shabby dreams that wouldn’t last the night, sex for men who didn’t want women… Yeah, even those buying the female bodies of women who didn’t want men. The people who were going somewhere went quickly, blindly, mostly to theater, respectable people, like Jeff’s friends, with whom she just couldn’t identify. What were her father’s friends like? She could hardly remember her mother’s friends. What did it mean, this obsession with the street, with life at the bottom? There wasn’t a thing she could fix. Not really. She kept telling herself she cared that Rita make it out of The Life. But if that’s what it all was about, why didn’t she care more for Rita? Gut caring. For whom did she gut care? Julie? Yes. Or why hang around? It wasn’t just to see what happened. No, sir. She wanted in on the
action. Absolutely. But what action?

  She delivered Fritzie back to Mrs. Ryan who, having thanked her, then said, “Julie, wouldn’t you like a nice game of whist? Mrs. Russo’s coming over and Sheila said she’d come down as soon as she gets out of her clothes.”

  “Can’t,” Julie said, and it was the only word she could say on the subject.

  On the street again, debating between the subway and her feet, Julie was struck with the idea that from Columbus Circle to where she stood, there wasn’t a church on Eighth Avenue. On the side streets were all varieties, but not on the street itself. Could that be the reason the street was dying? Just to see how far she would have to go to come to one, she walked. Nobody said God was dead anymore. Or even that he was alive and well someplace else. It had been a great line when she was in college.

  Passing Penn Station without having come on a church, she turned east on Thirty-first Street. In there somewhere the Franciscans had staked out a mission where they could go around in their long skirts and bare sandaled feet. It was the bare feet that had drawn her in the first time. But on the busy steps of the church she remembered that inside there was a figure as large as life—or death—under glass. People prayed there as they did in Europe and waited in line to touch. She had touched Pete. There ought to have been a miracle, but there wasn’t. There had only been herself.

  Home, she read a letter from Jeff written before she had sent him her long log. He did not even mention Paris. Not one word. She checked the date to see if this one had been written earlier and delayed. Not at all. Jeff was being Jeff, going on ahead. His little girl could catch up or not, but she’d have to do the running. It was one of his Olympian letters which she hated anyway, a cross between Ben Franklin and Polonius. Balonius. “Just remember, you are now that marvelous age which people from now on will remind you you aren’t anymore.” She’d have to work that one out with a slide rule.