Yesterday's News - Jeremiah Healy

by Jeremiah Healy

  I raised my voice. "Thanks for backing my play, Mr. Jones."

  He said, "First name's Emil. What're you doing for dinner?"

  * * *

  "John, now that's a good name. Strong, but common enough, you don't start folks laughing when they hear it. Ever known anybody named Emil?"

  "Not till now."

  "Didn't think so. Growing up, other kids gave me hell to pay on it. One squirt, thought he was tough, called me Emily in front of a couple of girls."

  "And?"

  "And he found two of his teeth right off. Probably swallowed the third one."

  I laughed politely and reached for another Killian's Irish Red ale on the kitchen counter. Jones had bought some barbecued chicken from a local place that did a terrific job on the sauce and the skin. While he heated it up, I drove to the liquor store for a couple of six packs. His dinette set just about filled the floor space between refrigerator and stove.

  Emil said, "This Killian's is pretty good stuff. Come out of Boston?"

  "No. I think it's part of Coors. Our breweries are trying to make a comeback, but they're kind of boutique operations so far."

  "Back in the service, I got a taste for the stronger beers. German, mostly. "

  "That where you were stationed?"

  "Right. Air Defense Artillery. Near transferred to Field Artillery once I found out not many of us were going to Nam."

  "You didn't miss much."

  Jones said, "Figured you were there."

  "That why you stood up against Schonstein and Cronan?"

  "Nah. Them two shits, the one's a jerk and the other a bully boy. I just liked the way you didn't let them push you. You don't stand against them every time, there's ten more like them next week, like they multiplied or something."

  "Still, you piss them off, they could let you down when you need them."

  "Not really, least not in this business. It's not the detectives ever do you any good. The uniforms, they're the ones you gotta keep happy, 'cause they're the ones put it on the line if twelve bikers all of a sudden decide to homestead in one of your units."

  I picked up a wing. "You know Schonsy? The father, I mean."

  "Yeah. He was a uniform, and a good cop. Tried not to crack any heads less he had to, but the best I ever seen once he got started. More chicken?"

  "Please."

  Jones carved the second leg off and said, "White meat or dark?"

  "Whichever you like less."

  "Married?"

  "Me?"

  "Yeah."

  "Not for a while," I said. "Why?"

  "You seem to have awful good manners for a husband. Usually the wife wears it out of you."

  "You ever married, Emil?"

  "Once. Bad idea." He set the platter back on the table. "Didn't really want a wife. Really wanted somebody just to be thinking about me when I wasn't around. No kinda reason for getting hitched."

  "I've heard worse."

  "Maybe. But my case, it soured me. You know, you give a hundred orders a day to troopers denser than the ammo they're loading, it's kind of hard to break that when you go home to the missus. She wants to get her two words in, and they ain't always 'Yes, dear."'

  "Kids?"

  "Nah. Just as well. Had a puppy once when I was little, really got a kick out of watching him grow up. Then once he hit a year or so, I kind of lost interest. Always figured the same would happen with a kid. Plus, the Big Green Machine ain't no place to raise kids right, even if you love the hell out of them."

  "How do you mean?"

  "Well. . ." Jones put his fork down and took a swig of ale.

  "The military's a good life for somebody like me. No skills, no college or nothing, enlisted right out of high school. You grow up beginning at age eighteen, but you already had another life. Things get tough, you can look back on it. Kind of, I don't know, draw strength from it or something. You get raised on an army base, though, you lose that .... I don't know what you'd call it."

  "Perspective?"

  "Yeah. Perspectives a good word for it. You lose that, or I guess you don't have it to start with, your whole world's been the army, you don't ever appreciate there's another one out there, maybe's got some good ideas going for it you oughta know about."

  "How'd you end up here?"

  "Wife's family was from Nasharbor, and we spent some holidays here. They're mostly dead now, but I kind of liked this part of the country. They aren't quite as crazy around here as other places I've been."

  "Why the motel business?"

  "Saw the Crestview was for sale the last time I was back here burying one of the wife's relatives. She'd bugged out on me by then, but the funeral was a good excuse for an emergency leave. Day before I had to head back, I come out and talked to the owner. He'd been navy, and he was dying, fixing to go into a VA hospital his last couple of months. He gave me the feeling this sort of job would be interesting."

  "Was he right, Emil?"

  "Depends on whether you find bankruptcy interesting."

  "That bad?"

  "No, but it depends. Everybody thinks these little places are gold mines, you know? They count the units, let's say it's twenty like I got here, and they do the figures in their heads and come out to twenty rooms times twenty or so bucks which is four hundred a day times seven days is near three thousand a week. That's a hundred fifty thousand a year, and they hgure to pay the place off in two, maybe three years, then roll in the gravy."

  "But what's your occupancy rate?"

  "That's where you gotta start, alright. I think nationwide the average is something like 65 percent per night, but that includes all those resorts run 90, even 95 percent in season. Place like this, no tourists staying reliably for weeks at a time,25 or 30 percent's more like it. So, right away, your intake's way less than the max."

  "And expenses?"

  "You wouldn't believe it. Insurance? Off the scale since that singer won the case saying the motel should have kept that guy from attacking her. Then there's air conditioners, mattresses and springs, new TV's, you name it. Every year something major needs replacing. And that's with me doing all the electrical and plumbing and the building inspector doing some winking. "

  "Think you'll stay with it?"

  "Hard to say. The really tough part's you never get a day off. You're here twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, and boy, that gets tiresome." He crossed his knife and fork on the plate. "I got some cherry vanilla in the freezer, and the Red Sox are going to be on the cable."

  "Thanks, but I'm stuffed, and I've still got work to do tonight."

  "Work? Where?"

  "Couple of places called the Strand and Bun's. Know them?"

  Jones winched the Fu Manchu up over his front teeth. "Work, huh?"

  10

  The directions Jones gave me were excellent, but even without them I wouldn't have had any trouble Ending The Strip. I joined four other cars cruising it north to south, then made a U-turn and came back south to north. The movie theaters had old-fashioned marquees showing as many bulbs dead or missing as lit. The windows of the strip joints had publicity photographs of women even a feminist would call bimbos, the hairdos dating from the mid-sixties. The bookstores advertised peep shows and prices in hand-printed signs.

  The Strand was in the second block, Bun's diagonally across the street in the third. Parking spaces were plentiful, most of the patrons seeming to be pedestrians. I left the Prelude in front of the Strand and approached the ticket window.

  A faded, fat woman obliterated all of what must have been a cocktail stool under and behind her. She looked at me through a streaked and scratched glass window thick enough to be bulletproof. She said, "Three features, seven bucks, no repeats."

  "I want to see Mr. Gotbaum."

  "Can't help you."

  "Can't you call him?"

  "Mister, I just sell tickets here. I look like an executive secretary to you?"

  "Somebody tried to stick you up, there a buzzer or something you can p
ush?"

  She gave me a different kind of look. "I don't want no trouble."

  "I'm not trying to give you any. Just call somebody who can get me to Gotbaum."

  After thinking it over, she put a hand under the ticket counter, pressed twice, and brought it back. We waited for thirty seconds. Then the blacked-over door to the theater opened and a tall, skinny kid came through it. He had dirty blond hair made to appear dirtier by being slicked back, and his double-breasted, chalk-stripe suit was a size too large for him. As he got closer, I put him nearer to thirty than twenty, but he still looked like his mother had been scared by an early Richard Widmark film.

  "This guy giving you trouble, Connie?"

  I said, "No trouble. I just want to see Mr. Gotbaum."

  "Mr. Gotbaum, he don't see many people"

  "It's about Charlie Coyne and Jane Rust."

  He smirked. "What, you think you hit a magic button or something?"

  "I look like a cop to you?"

  He stopped smiling. "You got ID?"

  "Yeah." I showed it to him. "But I'm not a cop."

  "You're not a cop."

  "No."

  "Then why the fuck you ask me whether I thought you was or not?"

  "I asked you if I looked like a cop. I think I do. I think your customers, probably all five of them, will think so too. Especially if I walk up and down the aisles a few times and stare them in the face a minute or so each. Then maybe I'll stand out here, on the nice public sidewalk by the ticket office, and stare for a minute or so into each face that comes to Connie here. I think maybe I could do that for two or three days, and Mr Gotbaum will want to talk to me."

  He said, "That's pretty good, you know?"

  "So, how about we save my time and Mr. Gotbaum money and see him now. Together."

  "You carrying?"

  "I'd play it that way. "

  "You gotta leave it with me."

  "Not a chance."

  He smirked again. "Even better. "

  Turning, he walked me to the door, holding it open for me.

  "Dy name's Duckie. Duckie Teevens."

  * * *

  Bernard "Bunny" Gotbaum sat like a Buddha in a large judge's chair behind a desk piled high with paperwork. Obese, his sausage-like lingers played with the collar of a long-point sports shirt that bulged at each vertical seam. Wearing a toupee the color of cream soda, overall he gave the impression of a man who hadn't burned twelve calories since kindergarten. The teeth, however, earned him the nickname. The upper two front ones bucked out far enough to open beer cans.

  The office carpeting didn't match the walls, and the walls didn't match the furniture. A second man, timid and short, was sitting in a subservient chair reading from what looked like an invoice. From somewhere behind the rear wall, I could hear the projected sounds of a woman faking ecstatic and somewhat extended groans.

  Gotbaum glanced up at me and said to Duckie, "The Law?"

  Duckie said, "Uh-unh."

  "Just a second then." Gotbaum addressed the little guy in the chair. "So you figure we can get I Only Have Thighs for You and The Shape of Things to Come for the same rental?"

  The man said, "Yes, Mr. Gotbaum."

  "I like that second title. Any lezzie shots?"

  "Just the one, ten minutes before the gang bang."

  "Good. That's where they should put all of them. The Shape of Things to Come. The guys who come up with these titles. You'd think somebody would have used it already."

  Duckie said, "Somebody did, boss."

  Gotbaum looked over at him. "They did?"

  "Yeah."

  "Who? I don't want no product confusion here."

  "Old book, boss. Don't worry, none of our customers read it."

  "You sure?"

  "Positive."

  Gotbaum turned again to the guy in the chair. "Okay. That's it then. Call me if the shitheads give you any problems."

  The little guy said, "Right, Mr. Gotbaum," and left the room. Gotbaum sized me up. "So, who are you?"

  "My name's John Cuddy. I'm a private investigator looking into Jane Rust's death."

  "The tw. . . the one from the newspaper?"

  "That's right. "

  Gotbaum tossed a pencil against the plastic in-box on his desk and said, "Sit down. Tell me what's on your mind."

  I sat while Duckie shifted over to the wall, peripherally in sight but well out of reach.

  "I'd like to know what you think happened to Charlie Coyne."

  Gotbaum said, "What I think happened to him? Dead is what I think happened to him. That it?"

  "Not exactly. Coyne worked for you, and Rust said he was a confidential source for her. Now they're both dead, and I'm wondering if you see any connection."

  "Connection. Duckie, that's a nice word there, 'connection,' isn't it?"

  "Sure is, boss."

  I said, "What do you mean?"

  Gotbaum said, "You never knew old Charlie, did you?"

  "No."

  "He was a broad-jumper. World cham-peen."

  "Coyne was a track star?"

  Duckie said, "The boss means jumping broads."

  Gotbaum said, "He saw more ass than a toilet seat, right, Duckie?"

  "If cocks was brains, Charlie woulda been Einstein."

  "All of which had to do with what?"

  Gotbaum said, "Coyne. He looked like a piece of shit. I mean, you saw a photo of the guy, you woulda burned it. Skinny like the Duck here, but no class. Scrungy little beard, one eye green, the other brown, pygmy ears. Nothing. But the broads, I never seen him around one who could keep her hands off him."

  "So Coyne was popular. So what?"

  "So what? So what if this Rust broad was duking him. Like nightly."

  "Maybe twice on Sunday," said Duckie.

  "Wait a minute. Coyne and Jane Rust were lovers?"

  "Lovers!"

  Gotbaum nearly choked on a laugh, Duckie giggled behind me.

  Gotbaum said, "I don't know they heard bells ringing or what. Though maybe they was like that. She's the only one I know he was doing he never bragged about it. Even had to drag it out of him. Not like that broad he was living with."

  When Duckie didn't add anything, I said, "What's her name?"

  Gotbaum said, "His shack-up?"

  "Yes."

  "I dunno. Duckie, you knew her, right?"

  "Don't think so, Boss."

  "Oh sure you did. She couldn'ta been more'n a coupla years behind you in school there. Cleary, wasn't it? No. Like that, though. Fearey, right?"

  "Maybe," said the Duck.

  "Yeah, yeah. Fearey, Gail Fearey. Lives in her folks' house up on Grantland." Gotbaum rested his chins in his hands, drumming fingers on his cheeks. "I'm telling you, pal, Charlie, he would have fucked the crack of dawn, he could get up that early. "

  "This Coyne used to work for you, right?"

  "Kinda. I try to help the unfortunate by offering them jobs."

  "What kind of jobs did Coyne do for you?"

  "Simple shit. Drive things around for me. Deliver here and there."

  "He was busted in a raid next town over, right?"

  "Charlie got caught in some kind of net the cops had out that I night. I don't know the details."

  "I understood he got caught with some movies the Supreme Court says we're not supposed to have."

  Gotbaum said, "The Supreme Court. Let me tell you something. I got a lawyer up to Boston, he's a fuckin wiz. He can split hairs a barber couldn't comb. But he tells me, I don't show no kid stuff and no snuff stuff, even fake snuff stuff, and I check ID's, and I can do whatever the fuck I want. Personally, I think it's fuckin crazy. I mean, you know these shows, some of them on TV they have the little boxes or something for the dummies?"

  "You mean close captioning?"

  "Yeah, like that. They've got these things so the dummies can find out what the normal people are saying, right? Well, they oughta have little boxes for the guy in the street when the liberals come on the air. The
y oughta have this little window with a guy telling them that the libbie doing the regular talking is fulla bullshit, because he is. What the hell kind of difference is there between my fuck films and the kiddie stuff, huh? You think fucking or sucking is any different because somebody hits so many years on this earth? The libbies are the ones let me keep open, but they're so fulla shit, I can't stand them!"

  Teevens said, "Easy, boss. Take it easy."

  "You're right there, Duckie. I shouldn't get so worked up. What else you wanna know?"

  "Coyne told Rust that you were paying off some cops to let you stay in business here."

  "Paying off. Paying off, huh? You have a blindfold on when you come up here?"

  "No."

  "Duckie, he keep his eyes closed coming through the lobby and up here?"

  "Wide open, boss."

  Gotbaum said, "I'm making maybe, maybe, my costs here plus 3 percent. You know why?"

  "Why?"

  "The fuckin Vee—Cee—Are. Videocassette recorder. Used to be, you wanted to see my kinda shit, you have to come to the theaters here. Aw, you'd come maybe with a ski mask on, nobody could recognize you on the way in. I had a Linda Lovelace double feature on once, you'da thought the fuckin terrorists' union was having a convention on my ticket line. A guy wanted privacy, though, he'd have to have a whole fuckin projection system to see films at home. How you gonna hide that from the wife, huh? Or set it up when she's out, she comes in the front door, what do you say, 'Hey, honey, I was just watching the pictures of little Susie's birthday party. What're you doing home so early anyways?'"

  Gotbaum really started to fire up. "Now, with the VCR things, any yutz wants to can watch anything. He hears the old lady pulling in the driveway, the cassette's out and back behind the workbench in the basement before she turns the key in the fuckin front door."

  "Boss," said Duckie, caution in his voice.

  I said to Gotbaum, "So what's your point?"

  "My point is, I don't gotta pay off the cops because what I show is legal. And I don't got the money to pay off the cops because I'm barely making a living here with the poor old fucks ain't got the brains or the cash or the house to have a VCR in. Without me, you'd have the poor guys out trying to get laid instead of getting off in here. It's like that football coach used to say. "

  "What?"

  "That football coach. He used to say there are three things can happen when you throw the ball, and two of them are bad. Well, same thing with sex. There are three things can happen: one, you can come; two, she can get pregnant; three, you can get the syph or AIDS or something. And two of them are bad. So, I provide like a public service here. Keep all that from happening to the guys."