Death in The Life

by Dorothy Salisbury Davis

  25

  JULIE AND MAY WENT down in the elevator together, the black Cinderella, back in her street clothes, short pants, boots, and a fake fur jacket, cursing everybody in gutter jargon, interrupting herself now and then with sniffs and sobs. The weeping whore, Julie thought. She could file that one with Magdalene’s daughter. The romance of the street had lost its allure. Madame Allure, she had said to Pete before Friend Julie took hold, and he had told her she was in the neighborhood for it. She offered the girl a Kleenex.

  “Keep your fucking rag, little white cow.” She gave a swipe at her nose with the fur cuff. Little white cow: May was the same girl she had seen Mack slapping around outside Mr. Bourke’s. Same girl, different wig.

  In spite of everything, or maybe because of it, Julie felt sorry for her. “Come on, they’re not worth crying over. I’ll buy you some breakfast if we can find a place open.”

  “I ain’t crying over them. I’m crying over me.”

  “Okay, that makes it worthwhile.”

  They walked out through a deserted lobby. The white Cadillac sat where Goldie had left it, a bleached hearse.

  “How about breakfast?”

  May chose a greasy joint where she felt safe. Julie took one look through the window, a derelict drunk, trying to get his mouth and the coffee mug together. “To hell with that. Let’s go to Howard Johnson’s.”

  May trudged alongside her, muttering still, half-aloud, her invectives against her persecutors. It was dawn, the whore’s twilight, a cold, dank mixture of Jersey smog and the riled Hudson at low tide. Julie caught the drift of May’s wretchedness as it turned on Mack, not taking care of her the way he promised. Not even calling her. Then suddenly, stopping in her tracks: “White girl, you don’t want to go in Howard Johnson’s with me.”

  “Call me Julie.” Julie linked her arm through May’s and bore her along.

  May ate like a truck driver: two eggs, a slice of ham, two orders of raisin toast. Julie had a grilled cheese sandwich and orange juice. Whatever the other patrons thought, those get-up-and-get-out-in-the-morning travelers, she didn’t care. She could hardly blame them: she and May did make an odd couple. But when a scrubbed, ruby-cheeked cat pushed up against her and asked a rotten question, she swung around on him and said, “Yeah, miscegenation.”

  May gave a crackle of laughter. Julie wouldn’t have thought she knew the word. Maybe she didn’t.

  When they were ready to go, Julie said, “Want to talk, get it all out of your soul?”

  “I got to go home,” May said.

  “In case Mack calls? What are you going to be able to tell him?”

  “I got to be there.”

  “No, you don’t. You don’t have to be anywhere. Don’t you know that’s the first step toward freedom, not having to be anywhere?”

  “Fuck freedom.”

  “Okay, but let’s go to Friend Julie’s Place and talk about what you’re going to do without Mack.”

  In the next two hours Julie got the story of May’s life, eighteen years of degradation. Sixteen, and then two years of cashing in on it. She had been in The Life for two years.

  “Why Mack?” Julie wanted to know.

  “He just whup, he don’t screw.”

  All right. She’d had about all she wanted or needed to know of The Life. Then she wondered: had she just learned why Rita also was with Mack?

  “You never did like Rita, did you, May?”

  “She treat me like dirt.”

  “That’s a good reason. Were you with Mack when she came into the family?”

  “Uh, huh, but don’t go thinking I was jealous.”

  “I won’t.”

  “I was still number one, don’t care what them others say.”

  “I believe you. If you weren’t he wouldn’t have trusted you to call me, would he? And he did trust you, May. You were the only one.”

  The black girl nodded. “Number one.”

  “Did the police question you?”

  “I couldn’t tell ’em nothing then. I ain’t going to tell ’em now.”

  Russo was waiting, Julie thought, waiting for Mack to contact her.

  If May was not exactly bright, she was shrewd. Julie had to hide the real direction of her next question in that illusion May chose to hang onto: “What I don’t understand, May, if you are number one, why is Mack so anxious to find Rita?”

  “He got to find her right away. They could frame him for that John’s murder.”

  “Who could frame him?”

  May shrugged.

  “The police?”

  “Mack don’t say. He don’t tell me nothing I don’t have to know. He don’t want to get me into trouble.”

  “Sure,” Julie said. She had nothing to lose that she could see in putting the big question to May: “Did you know Mack when he was working for Sweets Romano and pimping on the side?”

  “I don’t ever hear that name, not ever in my whole life.”

  It seemed like a heavy answer; the trouble was Julie didn’t know how heavy the question was.

  A few minutes later she proposed to treat May to the taxi fare back to her apartment.

  “No. Thank you just the same, but I just think I’ll walk.”

  The lure of the street: the early money. She watched May put herself together and then went outdoors with her. The morning traffic was in full rush. She was turning back to the shop, stopping for the morning word with Juanita, when she heard a familiar voice from a passing car.

  “Good morning, Julie.” Detective Russo saluted her. The driver of the unmarked car picked up speed, hugging the curb, until they were alongside May Weems. Russo got out, showed his identification, and took the black girl into custody.

  Friend Julie, yeah.

  She ran the penthouse and May Weems scenes through the typewriter, mostly typos. When she came to the whip business, she knew what she had to do. She was waiting outside Mr. Bourke’s shop when he opened for the day.

  “Well, Julie, what can I do for you?”

  She waited until they were in the shop. “I want to know how to get in touch with Sweets Romano.”

  “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

  “I think so. Your moonlight customers make porn films, don’t they? He’s the big distributor. Couldn’t you get one of them to arrange an introduction for me?”

  “I’ll try,” he said without enthusiasm.

  A few minutes later he had an unlisted phone number for her. “Better call from here, Julie. I want to know what happens.”

  “Thanks.”

  When Julie dialed the number and asked for Mr. Romano, the male voice said, “Mr. Romano will call you back. Let me have your number.”

  Julie gave him her name and the shop number and then said, “I have to go out for a few minutes, but I’ll be right back.” She hung up.

  Mr. Bourke admitted her quick-wittedness. “You do know how to handle yourself. But be careful all the same. And leave me that phone number, just in case.”

  Julie didn’t ask, In case what? She didn’t want to know. She had only let herself into the shop, her own shop, when the call-back came. “Mr. Romano is sending his car for you, Mrs. Hayes.” He gave the address on Forty-fourth Street.

  “That’s it,” Julie said. The Romano outfit was even more quick-witted.

  “Inside a half-hour.”

  She looked up Mr. Bourke’s number, phoned him and promised to call him as soon after the interview as she could get to a phone.

  “If I don’t hear from you by noon, Julie, I’ll call Detective Russo.”

  “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

  “There are rumors on the street,” Bourke said.

  Julie walked up and down outside the shop. She thought of phoning Doctor’s service and decided against it. She had a couple of hours before her appointment.

  The limousine that pulled up was black with heavily tinted glass. There had to be two men, for one stepped out on her side before the car had quite halted.
Julie scarcely came to his shoulder. A bruiser, but polite, he opened the back door for her and then got in beside her. Whether to reassure her or to be sure of her staying was hard to say.

  It was a green world she saw, looking out the window. A black one to anyone looking in. Sitting where she was, the president of the United States could ride through the city unrecognized. Or Yasir Arafat.

  They sped up Eighth Avenue, surrounded by music, through Columbus Circle and on to cross the park at Sixty-fifth Street. Julie noted the telephone in the car. There was probably a liquor cabinet. No doubt they were bullet-proofed. And yet she didn’t feel any great fear. Having had so little sleep, she wasn’t even sure it was actually happening. Something hallucinatory; a trip or a ride? The man beside her was humming along with a heavenly choir.

  They pulled into the circular drive of a new apartment building where, while one doorman opened the car door another opened the door to the building. As Julie and her guide moved along to the elevator, she knew for sure that she was headed for another penthouse.

  But the difference: it was like walking into a museum. Sweets Romano was a patron of the arts as well as hospitals. Left to herself for a long time to wait and wander between the foyer, which was more a gallery, and the sunken living room which was a solarium as well, she moved from painting to painting, Picasso to Vuillard to names less familiar, but painters quite as sure of themselves. The sculptures included Giacometti and Manzu and an exquisitely sensuous nude infant of white alabaster to which Julie felt compelled to put her hand the second time she came around to him.

  Her host seemed to have waited for that moment. “Do touch it,” he cried, coming down the steps. “It is the greatest tribute. I am Romano.” He padded across the rich carpet. Julie thought he might offer his hand, but instead, coming up to her, he tucked both hands into the sleeves of his velvet jacket. She could see why Rudy had called him The Little King. He was round and graceful and smoothly soft looking, except for the cold blue eyes. She could not begin to guess his age. Even his voice, while high-pitched, was cultured and authoritative: I am Romano.

  “I am Mrs. Hayes.” No Julie here.

  “Yes. I hope you will forgive the ceremony of transportation, but when somebody in whom I am interested seeks me out, they deserve to find me. It so happens, I was about to get in touch with you.”

  “Okay.” Julie said. “So here we are.”

  “I want to share the memorial to Peter Mallory.”

  “Oh.”

  “Are you surprised?”

  “Not exactly. Only there isn’t much to divide, a memorial Mass.”

  “We must do something more than that.”

  “How did you know about it? I mean there hasn’t been an announcement yet in the papers.”

  “But an announcement.”

  On the Forum bulletin board. “Yeah. I hung it myself.”

  “I am not uninterested in the theater, Mrs. Hayes. So I have numerous informants.”

  “That figures,” Julie said.

  “I had in mind a luncheon afterwards—something at which his friends could gather and drink a toast. Would Sardi’s be appropriate?”

  “I don’t think his friends would mind,” Julie said.

  “Then you will arrange it and I will give you a check to cover. I prefer anonymity where it can be managed. Please, where would you like to sit?” He swept the room with an open palm.

  “Opposite that old man.” Julie said and pointed to the Vuillard.

  As he moved among his sculptures, Romano laid a caressing hand on a figure reclining on a couch. Julie looked at her watch. He had kept her waiting for more than an hour, a deliberate ploy, she thought, to gain a psychological advantage. It was as much to establish some kind of leverage as the import of the call itself that she said, “Mr. Romano, could I make a phone call? I’m going to be late for an appointment and I ought to phone.”

  “I’m so sorry,” he said, and indicated the chair. He brought a phone to her and jacked it into a floor connection. “I shall wait in the next room.”

  “It’s all right,” Julie said.

  He went out nevertheless while she dialed and, opening the door, gave her a brief glimpse of a library in leather.

  Doctor Callahan answered before her service could pick up the call.

  “1 may not be able to keep my appointment, Doctor. I didn’t know in time or I’d have called you.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine. Only it’s important.”

  “Do you want me to call the police?”

  “No. It’s all right… I think. It is all right. Only crazy.”

  “Naturally.”

  “Could I call you later today?”

  “Call me at two.”

  When Romano returned he said blithely, “A psychiatrist.”

  “Yes.”

  “And a woman.” He had listened in and did not mind Julie’s knowing it. “If you didn’t want me to hear you, you would not have said I could stay, now would you? Is she capable?”

  “For some people.”

  Romano smiled puckishly. “Or is it that you wouldn’t recommend me as a patient.”

  “Well, Mr. Romano, that isn’t how it goes generally.”

  “I suppose not. I was joking. I am much too well adjusted to take the chance of upsetting the balance.” He maneuvered a chair closer to Julie’s and sat down. “I do sometimes think that the greatest charitable contribution I might make would be to give myself to science.”

  “You can,” Julie said.

  “I meant while I am still alive. Do you know”—and he examined his hands while he spoke—“these hands have not touched another human being in twenty years?”

  Julie could think of nothing to say except, “How interesting.”

  He tucked them into his sleeves again. “I am the ultimate voyeur.”

  This time Julie didn’t say anything.

  “Will your doctor call the police?”

  “No.”

  She’s very sensitive to your voice. Or was there a signal in what you said?”

  “She’s very sensitive.”

  “It would be a needless gesture. I have only the best of motives. And the police are helpless. In this case, entirely inadequate.”

  “You mean in Pete’s death?”

  He nodded.

  “They’re trying,” Julie said.

  “Are they? No one has come to see me.”

  “Do you know who killed him?”

  “Oh, yes. I’m quite certain of it.”

  “Then why don’t you go to them?”

  “As you said about recommending me to your doctor, Mrs. Hayes, that isn’t how it goes.”

  “Were you and Pete friends, Mr. Romano?”

  “You might say I was his silent patron.”

  “Would you mind talking to me about him?”

  “My dear girl, isn’t that why you are here? I’ve been expecting you ever since your visit to The Guardian Angel.”

  “You certainly keep well informed,” Julie said.

  “It is one more of the little luxuries I can afford. I could play you a tape of your conversation with that young clown Rudy. The Little King… that did amuse me.”

  “What about the rest of the things Rudy said?”

  “Equally amusing, but more out of his style than mine.”

  Julie thought about it. “I don’t follow.”

  “Couldn’t you tell that he was in love with Peter?”

  “I guess it crossed my mind,” Julie said. “Who was Pete in love with?”

  Her host smiled, the saddest smile in the world. “Laura Gibson. But then, so was I.”

  That was the stunner. Romano sat back and watched her. Recovery came slowly and she had no way of disguising her surprise. “I guess I’ve been on the wrong track,” she said quietly.

  “When you get over the shock, you will want to know who Laura Gibson was in love with, and I can only say it was not me. So I have spent half a li
fetime in adoration and vicarious pursuit I backed every play she was ever in and I even followed her around the streets of New York.”

  Oh, boy. “Was she worth it?” The question was out before Julie weighed it. “I mean from certain impressions I’ve gotten, I don’t think I’d have liked her much.”

  “Yes, for me it was worth it. I have become a connoisseur of the unattainable.” He was staring at—or through—the Vuillard.

  “It seems to me you’ve attained a lot,” Julie said.

  “Of the otherwise unattainable,” he amended.

  “You mean Miss Gibson,” Julie said, not at all sure he did mean her at the moment.

  “It’s hard to understand, isn’t it?”

  “She’s hard to understand. I mean living at the Algonquin, then at the Willoughby. All the old ladies there adored her. It’s a seedy place, really.”

  “When all this could have been hers?” Mr. Romano chortled.

  “All right.”

  “She didn’t want it. She would have turned to stone. She wanted exactly the life she lived, and where she lived it. And so, by the way, did our young friend Mallory.”

  “That I understand,” Julie said. “Did Pete know about you, I mean the way you felt about Miss Gibson? What was the whip business that Rudy told me about?”

  “That disgusting young man missed the point entirely: That gesture was ritualistic—out of ancient Sicily, in fact. It was Mallory’s ultimatum to me, keep out, and if I am right, it made him her lover before the night was over. At least, that is the way I have lived it.”

  “Okay,” Julie said.

  “I don’t know what is okay and what is not. Something else this Rudy missed was the significance in that scene of John Maccarello, one of my bodyguards, at the time. I suppose you know him as Mack the pimp.”

  “Let’s talk about him,” Julie said.

  “He’s not worth it, but if you wish. He has not been in my service for many months now. It was all too much.” He made a gesture of distaste.

  “He liked Pete—is that how it goes?”

  Romano nodded.

  “When I began to put things together,” Julie said, “maybe the wrong things in the right places, one of the big scenes was at St. Jude’s Hospital… where they seem to think of you as Mr. Big.”

  “They should. I would have bought that hospital to see that Laura’s last days were the best possible. I came out myself in order to make sure. I was afraid Mallory wouldn’t have sufficient… ah…”