“A few aches.” Bodge held up his bandaged fingers. “Nothing serious.”
“Good.”
Palmer engaged the gear and set off smoothly.
“You’re driving us there?” Bodge asked.
“Why not? It’s my car.”
“I thought…”
“He thought I was the driver,” Jimmy Stewart said, smiling at Bodge.
“See?” Palmer said, adjusting the rear view mirror. “I said you have that chauffeur look about you.”
“I’m a master of disguise.”
“Gee, look. I’m sorry,” Bodge said. “I didn’t…”
“My friend, Denholm here is with the police, Bodge. More importantly, he’s a New York City detective.”
“Denholm Deets,” the detective said and held out his hand to Bodge who shook it gingerly.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Oh, I figured once you climbed in the back seat you’d already pegged me as menial staff.”
“Don’t embarrass him any more than he already is,” Palmer laughed.
“Don’t worry about it, Bodge,” Denholm said. “I’ve been taken for a lot worse over the years.”
Being told this man was a New York cop didn’t make Bodge believe it any better. He’d seen a lot of cops over the years and this tall streak of lard didn’t look like any one of them. He was too…too neat, too gently spoken. Working cases in the city usually beat the niceness out of a guy and left a lot of rough edges. But he could hardly ask to look at his badge.
“For what we’re about to do,” Palmer said. “I figured we’d need Denholm here on the team.”
“What brings you to DC?” Bodge asked. He noticed a slight hesitation, a brief look down at the dashboard before the cop answered.
“I’m on leave,” he replied. Smiling at the road ahead through the windshield. “It’s been good. I haven’t had a real break in ten years. I’m starting to wonder if I should make it permanent.”
They took Interstate 95. It wasn’t busy. The three men discussed the new Studebaker, the imbecile who’d just brained himself going over Niagara Falls in a truck inner tube, and Doris Day’s figure. Bodge didn’t get enthusiastic for the conversation until they got onto how the Giants had gone from the cellar in April to a half game behind leading the National League.
It was a guy drive and Bodge momentarily forgot that Palmer was a question mark on his list. He even got to the stage where he forgot he was his boss. It was time to find out something about him — give himself some background of a potential enemy. He started with a question that had been puzzling him. He felt the ice had broken enough to bring it up. He wanted to know how someone with the old man’s sophistication could get involved in all this agency cloak and daggery. Of course he couldn’t ask it that straight.
“What brought you into the organization, Mr. Palmer?”
Palmer looked to his right. “He asks a lot of questions, this boy.”
“It’s like driving with a Times’ reporter,” Denholm smiled watching the suburbs get thicker as they neared the city.
“I’m sorry,” Bodge said.
“Oh, it isn’t a criticism,” Palmer assured him. “As long as you remember to temper all the information you get out of me with the fact I’m a spy.”
“I’ll bear it in mind.”
“My father had a factory that made baseballs up in Massachusetts. He fell in love with one of the Boston bankers’ girls.”
“Banks and baseballs. It doesn’t sound like you’d be in a hurry to work for the government.”
“See why I picked him, Denholm? Rude bastard. Direct as hell.”
Bodge looked at his fists. “I’m sorry if I overstepped—”
“Jesus, boy. Will you stop saying you’re sorry? Those that don’t ask don’t learn. The fact is I was put into Yale with precise instructions to come out a banker. But I guess I did a little too well in the exams and the IQ tests. One day a man in a rain coat sidled up to me and asked me if I’d be interested in joining the secret service. He hit me with that old “national pride” routine.”
“That used to get us every time,” Denholm said.
“Unfortunately I loved my country more than life, so it worked,” Palmer went on. “I never did get to finish a degree. Never saw the inside of a bank vault. And I couldn’t tell you the first thing about how they make baseballs. Suddenly I belonged exclusively to the United States. They’ve owned me ever since.”
“How does that work with things like family — kids?”
“Family? You mean my own?”
“Yes.”
“Hell, Bodge. You’ll soon understand how this life precludes all that. You have to take your pleasures where you can, when you can. You might start off thinking about a home and nine to five, but pretty soon the energy of the work takes you over. Even men who enter ops with that special gal waiting back home soon get seduced by the mistress we know as excitement. You hate much of what you’re doing, but even hate becomes an aphrodisiac.”
“You don’t ever get a need to watch your own kids grow up?”
Palmer laughed. “A curiosity, sometimes. But never a need. This vocation lets you sample too much, see too much, and because of that, your priorities change.”
Bodge was surprised to hear his boss speaking so openly. He had no doubt the Boston story was true. Denholm meanwhile sat nodding ruefully like a man with school fees and a mortgage to pay. The NYPD wasn’t renowned for its mistresses of excitement. Most of the men he knew in the department had to rely on a wife to help pay the bills.
As they came off the Brooklyn Bridge his admiration for Palmer had somehow renewed itself, which paradoxically caused Bodge to trust him even less. ‘A good spy’, he’d read somewhere in the literature, ‘can cry real tears with you at your mother’s funeral then slide a stiletto between your shoulder blades at the wake’.
The smog of the city hung around the buildings like it was up to no good. It turned Manhattan into a pencil sketch that had been trodden under foot. Bodge had never seen his city look so threatening — so much less of a friend. Palmer slid in and out of traffic as if he’d driven a cab for half his life. He pulled up at the curb, crunched the handbrake and switched off the engine. The car purred, and sighed and fell silent.
The three of them stepped onto the sidewalk, glad to be out of the car at last. Bodge realized where they were. The sign above the door had a slinky cat curled around a martini glass. A drowsy valet in a wool beanie came down the steps to park the car. When Palmer waved him away he turned round and went back inside without saying anything. It wasn’t his job to welcome guests, just park their vehicles. In the late-afternoon, not a lot of people came to the Black Cat. The bar was open and they had counter snacks, but the lunch waiters were setting up for dinner and the band was rehearsing a new tune. The late staff didn’t come on till six, but there was one man, Mister Lucoz, who was always there; breakfast, lunch, dinner and closing.
He was Maitre D’ come manager, and Bodge wondered when he ever slept. He’d known him for years but never saw him anywhere other than in the shadows of the Cat. He was a dark man with the build and profile of a crow. His nose seemed better designed for pecking than for breathing. His formal tail coat curled up at the bottom like tail feathers. Bodge had no idea where he or his accent were from. Even the man’s friends called him Mister so it might have been his name.
“Mr. Leon,” Lucoz hopped towards Bodge and was about to shake his hand when he saw the bandage. “Oh, dear. We have had an accident?”
“Well I have,” said Bodge, not bothering to explain what that accident was.
“I can’t recall ever seeing you in the daytime before.” It didn’t matter much at the Cat as no light got in from outside. Lucoz nodded politely at Bodge’s guests but didn’t get an introduction.
“Mister, do you remember I was in here with some friends on Friday night?”
“Of course.” There was very little Mister Lucoz didn’t notice. Bodge and Palmer sa
t on the stools with their backs to the bar. There were one or two drinkers who appeared to be cemented there like gargoyles. Denholm remained standing. Bodge got straight to the point.
“Did I act, I don’t know, strange that night?”
“Strange? Well you are usually quite pickled by the time you reach the Black Cat.”
“That’s true.” Bodge was a little embarrassed to be caught out as a perennial drunk in front of his boss. “I mean stranger than usual.”
“You and your friend were so drunk on Friday I must confess I don’t recall ever seeing you so…out of it.”
“Were we being raucous?”
“On the contrary, you were both extremely…how can I put it? Numb.”
“Numb?”
“Like mental retards. Everything seemed to be playing in slow motion. There was no conversing with you. I was surprised at Mr. Lou because he always seemed so in control with his drinking. Only your young friend had any life in him.”
“Do you have any idea where we went after we left here?”
“You don’t remember?”
“No. I was… on medication...” He looked sideways at Palmer. “…for a cold. I don’t think it gelled very well with the alcohol.”
“Interesting that you and your friend should be sharing…medication,” the manager said with a slight ‘I’ve heard it all before’ smile. “Champagne and Aspirin are poor companions.”
“We were drinking champagne?”
“A quite expensive one. The young man paid for everything. He and I had to virtually carry you and Mr. Vistarini out to the cab. I strongly recommended you call it a night but the boy insisted you still had life left in you.”
“Did you notice where…?”
“Somewhere off Broadway and 41st.”
“Thanks, Mister.
12.
Lake Lac
Hong sipped her last gin. That afternoon she’d smoked her final pipe. She worked out that in two or three days her head would begin to clear. There were two ways to escape and she’d chosen the wrong one. She’d opted for the type of escape where she didn’t actually go anywhere — where all the running and hiding happened inside her. Her body remained imprisoned.
She was smart. He wouldn’t have chosen her if she weren’t. She decided the combination of a barely used brain and endless hours of free time had to be enough to extricate her from her shitty situation.
“Hey ugly. Have another one?”
Lan wasn’t an ally at all. She was a friend, a dear friend, but she wasn’t on Hong’s side. Friends rarely helped. Their advice invariably solved the immediate but made the long-term even more unbearable.
“No, I’m not feeling so great. I think I’m coming down with something.”
Lan was in her underwear lying on her back with her pudgy legs akimbo, drunk as a loon. Hong looked down at her from the bed. She’d been her friend since high school. Like Hong, she was loveless. When the selection was made and Hong was escorted to the palace, Lan was the only relic from her past they allowed her to bring along. In a household of maids whose servitude had been passed down through generations, Lan’s shortcomings as a servant stood out like the proboscis of a mosquito. As every item, every person in the heady Vietnamese bureaucracy had to be invoiced, Lan was indexed as ‘personal assistant/companion to the second consort’. She accompanied Hong everywhere: to all the functions, on all the trips.
But the drinking and smoking had left poor Lan good for nothing else. In the beginning she’d joined Hong in her over indulgences like a friend on a dark night walking her home through a dangerous neighborhood. But soon Lan had learned to run through those dark suburbs alone. Hong felt responsible. She’d turned her friend into an addict and was about to leave her alone in her addiction.
“Come on.” said Lan. “You gotta help me finish this bottle, blossom. There’s a cellar full to get through before it pickles us.”
“Perhaps tomorrow.”
“Chicken shit.”
Hong wouldn’t share her new plans with Lan because confidences were slippery in the grasp of a drunk. Lan had become the gossip columnist for the imperial news network. The cellar maids drank with her and passed on her tattle to the eunuchs. They, in turn, shared their findings with the Chamberlain who decided what was important enough to tell the emperor. Hong was sorry for what she had done to Lan, and one day she would lash her to the rack and wring the evil juices from her. But before then, she would use her friend’s innocent leaks of faith to her own end. Two or three more days and Hong could begin to plot her own escape.
As a partial believer in karma and the complicated interplay of omens, Hong knew that a sign would be necessary to confirm her choice of path in this matter. It came almost as soon as the decision was made. With Lan asleep on the parquet, Hong walked from the room clutching her new resolve to her chest. She was returning to her chamber when one of her handmaidens stopped three yards before her.
“What is it, Phoung?”
“Your Highness, it’s the girl. She’s at the outer gate.”
“Girl?”
“The servant from the missionary’s villa — Bet. She came yesterday and asked to see you.”
“I wasn’t told.”
“The Great Master said she was probably looking for a job now the Americans have deserted her and moved into town. He told me to send her away and not disturb you.”
“And she’s back?”
“No, Your Highness.”
“What? You said she was here again.”
“I said she was here. She’s still here. She didn’t leave. She spent all night at the gate, waiting.”
“That doesn’t sound to me like a girl in need of a job. Did she say anything to you?”
“She won’t talk to anyone else. Just keeps repeating your name.”
Hong had befriended Bet, one of the three Montagnard maids at the neighboring villa during her regular visits there for English lessons. The hill-dwelling Montagnards, more commonly known by the derogatory term moi by the Vietnamese, had long been put down and abused by the ruling classes. With what limited influence her position afforded her, she had endeavored to champion their rights whenever possible. Hong hurried down the steps to the ground floor. She walked past the Royal Guards on either side of the front door, went along the path that wound through the sharpened stakes and barbed wire, and banged on the outer gate. The perimeter guards pushed in the heavy wooden doors and saluted at the sight of the consort.
“Where’s the girl?” she asked.
“Over there, Your Highness.” They pointed along the perimeter barricade to a bundle leaning against the fence. Hong ran to her. The guards followed.
“We gave her water,” said one.
“She wouldn’t take food,” said the other.
“And she won’t speak.”
13.
Medallion Yellow cabs operated out of two terminals. The yellowness of Friday’s cab was the only thing that had stuck in Bodge’s mind. There were renegade taxis of every hue and shape, but they all had to register under the Medallion legislation. This gave the public a little security and reduced the number of well-to-do passengers who found themselves taken for a ride they hadn’t asked for. One or two of these companies used the yellow that was popular in Chicago, but Mr. Hertz’s organization was the biggest.
The nearest of their bases to Times Square was on Ninth. That seemed as good a place as any to start. The controller was a cocky Irishman with a sarcastic streak so wicked it was obvious why they’d thrown him out of the old country. He went by the name of Longhurst.
“You’re looking for a cabby in New York City with short dark hair and a big nose? Sure, there can’t be many of them around.” He smiled and looked again at the rear door.
“He had a Brooklyn accent,” Bodge added hopefully.
“There then. If that doesn’t solve it. You’d be looking for Al.”
“Really?”
“Well, it might not give you the exact per
son, but you’d have narrowed it down to no more than four hundred cab drivers.”
Given the squalor of the surroundings, Palmer had opted to sit outside with the heater on and keep an eye on the car. Denholm sat on the corner of the controller’s desk. Bodge was wondering why, in the two calls they’d made so far, the detective hadn’t once flashed his badge. The cop glared at the man who worked the cab center from seven to seven.
“Mr. Longhurst,” he said calmly. Let’s go at this another way.”
“Two eyebrows? Born of a mother?”
“Mr. Longhurst. Do your drivers keep a record of fares they’ve taken — addresses — names, anything like that?”
“They’re supposed to.”
“But?”
“It’s hard to keep grabbing the tails of all of them.”
“I see. So despite the fact that the new law insists on records, you don’t actually check. What about the ones that phone in?”
“Oh, sure, those we have in our ledger. Marjory takes them all down. There’s nothing that girl wouldn’t take down for a smile.”
“Good. So, do you think Marjory would mind if we took a look?”
“Ah. I’m sure she’d be delighted.”
With so many cabs on the street, not a lot of people bothered to call in. But Denholm went through the neatly written ledger with Marjory leaning over him. Her earrings jangled and her perfume wafted. Meanwhile, Bodge had the ominous task of going through a large cookie tin full of the twins of every driver photo used on the company ID cards. The original was displayed, by law, in the cab. The spare with the driver’s name written on the back was tossed into this old tin.
Thirty minutes later he emerged from the file room with half a dozen possibles but not one he was sure about. Given that he’d been half dead and hadn’t seen much more than the driver’s nose in the rear view mirror, coupled with the fact he wasn’t even certain they had the right company, this was a long shot. Bodge showed Longhurst his catch. The Irishman shuffled through them.
“Well,” he said, “these two only work days, and this fellow’s having the old sing song in Sing Sing. So that leaves you with these three potentialities.”
Bleeding in Black and White Page 7
