Too Sweet to Die

by Ron Goulart

  CHAPTER 12

  THE FAT MAN FINGERED his pearl necklace and asked Easy. “What’s your favorite show tune, dear heart?”

  Easy had just stepped through the tufted red leather doors of Superpop’s bar. “You doing a survey?”

  “God bless your ready wit,” said the fat man, shifting on his bar stool. He poked two plump fingers into the bosom of his evening gown to fetch out a large business card. “No, I’m going to do my ten o’clock set at any moment, dear heart, and I’m nothing if not a crowd pleaser.”

  “ ‘Mr. Evelyn Jazz, World’s Leading Female Impersonator,’ ” read Easy from the scented card. “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Jazz.”

  “Contrariwise, dear heart.” The blond-wigged fat man snatched his card back, stuffed it down his lacy front. “I specialize in famous stout ladies, past and present. I’m best known for my Sophie Tucker. You look almost old enough to remember the late great Sophie, God rest her soul.”

  Superpop’s was about the size and shape of two railroad cars laid end to end. The dominant smell was that of the soap they used to disinfect the urinals. None of the five customers looked to be Poncho. “Has Poncho been in tonight?” Easy asked the female impersonator.

  “Oh, him,” said Evelyn Jazz, tugging at his necklace. “You’ll also love my Kate Smith. I jazz it up a little, living up to my name, and throw in a few bumps and grinds while I render God Bless America. It’s a real show stopper.”

  “Let’s hope,” said Easy. “What about Poncho?”

  The fat man lifted his powdered shoulders. “Ask Superpop.” He reached out and caught Easy’s hand. “Who’s your very favorite plump lady? I’ll put her in the next set especially for you, dear heart.”

  “Amy Lowell,” said Easy, moving free.

  “God bless you, dear heart.” Evelyn Jazz swung around to face his drink.

  Behind the long bar a small weathered old man leaped up and grabbed a rope hanging from the ceiling. A boat whistle went off, the cash register lit up yellow and green. The old man let go the rope, picked up a hammer and a tin pie plate. He whanged the plate several times and shouted, “Happy days are here again!” Dropping the plate and hammer he came toward Easy. “Welcome to Superpop’s. We’re always having a good time here.”

  “I noticed,” said Easy, taking a stool. “You Superpop?”

  “You can bet your ass I am,” replied the old man. He was wearing a stained gray sweat suit and sneakers, with a white apron tied around his waist. “Would you believe I’m eighty-two years old.”

  “Yes,” said Easy. “Do you have any dark beer?”

  “This isn’t the Mark Hopkins. The best I can do you is a Bud.”

  “Okay.”

  The man reached into a wooden-doored ice box behind him for a bottle of Budweiser. “Wait a minute.” He trotted down to the rear end of the bar, put a bugle to his thin lips and blew a few shapeless notes. “Happy days are here again!” Back facing Easy, Superpop said, “There’s little enough joy in life. We have to snatch it where we can. Am I right?” He opened the beer bottle on an opener mounted over the bar sink, letting the foam run down his wrist where it stained the cuff of his sweatshirt. “Want a glass?”

  “It would add to the joy of the occasion, yes.”

  After clunking the bottle near Easy’s right elbow, Superpop reached down under the bar. He came up with a glass and held it toward one of the pink ceiling bulbs. “Almost pristine, I’d say.” He stuck the glass between his knees and wiped a trace of white-orange lipstick off the rim with his apron. “There you go.”

  Easy let the glass sit next to the bottle. “I’m looking for Poncho,” he told the gnarled old man.

  Superpop trotted down to Mr. Evelyn Jazz’s end of the bar. He snatched a tambourine off the floor, gave it a half dozen vigorous shakes high above his wrinkled bald head. “Happy days are here again!” Back at Easy, the old man asked, “I know all the narcs. You aren’t a narc?”

  “I’ll tell you the truth,” said Easy. “But I don’t want this to get around. I’m a friend of an actress named Nada …”

  “Beanpole spade chick,” put in the old man. “I know her. She’s an exceptional representative of her race. If I was looking to change my luck, I might think about dipping the wick thereabouts. Did you know I can still get a hardon at my age?”

  “No, it wasn’t in the papers,” said Easy. “What I’m planning to do is give this Dean Constance guy a little competition …”

  “Gimpy fellow,” observed Superpop. “Some dames go for crips. One time in Panama I was living with a Portugee floozie and what really turned on her water was …”

  “So I’d like to hire Poncho. Nada tells me he’s a potential star.”

  Superpop dived back to tug the rope again. After the whistle and the colored lights, he yelled, “Happy days are here again!”

  Easy said, “I understand you can help me get in touch with Poncho.”

  A lean man in a khaki jacket and work pants came over and sat on the stool next to Easy. “Give me a dollar,” he said in a low polite voice.

  “Go away, Slim,” Superpop told the lean man.

  “I’m Sonoma Slim,” the lean man said to Easy. “I intend to use the dollar to bail my only daughter out of a Spanish prison.”

  “That’s a bargain price.” Easy handed Sonoma Slim four quarters. “What about Poncho?” he asked the old man.

  “I’ve got to take a leak now,” said Sonoma Slim. “I’ll be back in a short while to express my gratitude.”

  When the lean man had swayed off, Superpop said, “Eleven dollars.”

  “For what?”

  “One buck for the beer, ten bucks for your boy’s current address.”

  Easy took the money from a supply in his inside coat pocket. “Here you go.”

  Superpop took the bills, trotted down to the bugle. He tooted out three sour notes, spun the silver horn over his head, shouting, “Happy days are here again!”

  “The address,” reminded Easy.

  “Your boy is at the Pearl Hotel. You know it? It’s just over on Eddy, a block up from the bowling alley. Poncho is calling himself Phil Tucker at the Pearl.”

  “You going to drink that beer?” asked Sonoma Slim.

  “No, it’s yours.”

  “Thank you. This’ll help me forget my poor imprisoned daughter.”

  “Let me know when I can see one of your films,” said Superpop as Easy left the bar.

  “Aren’t you sticking around for my set, dear heart?” asked Evelyn Jazz at the doorway.

  “Reluctantly,” said Easy, “I have to go some place else.”

  “Try to get back for the midnight show,” suggested the fat man. “That’s when I really let my hair down.”

  Easy pushed out into the night street.

  CHAPTER 13

  SIX OLD MEN SAT in the small brown lobby of the Pearl Hotel. The dim movie unwinding on the battered television set was flecked with black snow. Some of the slumped old men were watching it, others were facing the night street beyond the lobby window. Out there two platinum-haired boy prostitutes in leather clothes were hustling a Negro sailor.

  Easy cut across a thin lobby rug that looked like discarded camouflage. Dusty plastic ferns in a cracked urn stood in front of the hotel desk in the corner of the lobby. A fifty-five-year-old man with an eyepatch over his left eye was behind the knotty pine counter reading the green sports pages of tomorrow’s Chronicle.

  The one-eyed clerk looked up, asking, “Who won the game?”

  “Our side,” said Easy. “Is Phil Tucker in?”

  “Whom?”

  Easy produced his flat wallet. “Phil Tucker. We call him Poncho. Dean Constance sent me over with some money for him.”

  “Poncho you say?”

  Taking a five out of the wallet, Easy said, “We’re very anxious to settle this debt.” He dropped the bill next to the green sheets.

  The one-eyed man placed a gloved hand over the money. “I know you can’t be a cop
. Or you’d be asking me for money. Why do you want Poncho?”

  “He did some acting for us and we still owe him two hundred bucks.”

  The one-eyed man picked up the five dollars with his ungloved hand, dropping it into the pocket of his faded Hawaiian shirt. “Poncho is out.”

  “Out where?”

  “Out, out.”

  An old man in a loose double-breasted suit began to laugh and point at the window. “Son of a gun.”

  One of the boy hustlers was kissing the black sailor on the mouth.

  “Takes all kinds,” observed the clerk.

  “Poncho does have a room here at the Pearl?” asked Easy.

  The one-eyed man tilted his narrow head in the direction of the mail cubbyholes behind him. “That he does.”

  Easy leaned an elbow on the registration desk. “Maybe I can leave the money then.”

  “I’ll see he gets it.” The clerk held out his ungloved hand. “My name is Onesy LaChance. Anybody around here can vouch for me.”

  Shaking hands, Easy asked, “Onesy?”

  “A nickname,” explained Onesy. “Due to the fact I got only one of everything. One eye, one arm, one leg, one nut, et cetera.”

  Easy was still holding his wallet. “I tell you, Onesy, I’d feel better if I could leave the dough right in his room for him.”

  The clerk’s single blue eye narrowed. “I don’t know that’s quite kosher.”

  The old man in the limp brown suit said, “You old coots won’t see anything like that on the TV.”

  Easy put another five-dollar bill on the counter.

  Onesy put his false hand over it. “I guess you’re legit.” His good hand went into a pocket of his sharkskin slacks. “Here’s a passkey. Room 204. One floor up, you can use the stairs over there. If you’re there more than five minutes I’ll come up for you.”

  The second floor corridor had once been painted a delicatessen green. It smelled of unchanged sheets and dying old men. The phone in 204 was ringing as Easy approached the room. No one answered and it stopped. Street laughter drifted up through the half-open window at the corridor’s end.

  After standing in front of the green door for a moment, Easy used the passkey. He pushed the door in hard, let it stand open. Finally he stepped across the threshold.

  The empty room had two windows covered with brittle lace curtains. There was a metal frame bed, painted a flat white. The neon glowing out on Eddy Street illuminated the room.

  Easy closed the door and walked toward the lopsided wood bureau which held the phone.

  Across the room a closet door snapped open. Someone muttered, “Bastard.”

  As Easy spun a big dark-haired young man in Levis and a T-shirt leaped over the bed and grabbed him in a crushing bear hug. “Hold off, Poncho,” said Easy.

  “Bastard,” repeated Poncho, tightening his hold. “Dean told me some pig was nosing around. I been halfway expecting you all day. Superpop said you looked tough, but that must of been bullshit.”

  “Okay,” said Easy. He strained and flung his arms out sideways, breaking Poncho’s grip. While the big man was still stumbling back toward the bed Easy stepped after him and slammed him three times in the stomach.

  Poncho sat down on the bed and the springs whanged. He bounced upright. “Don’t like nosing bastards.” He dodged Easy’s grab, threw himself to the floor. He kicked hard at Easy’s calf with one booted foot as he rolled by.

  Easy dropped to one knee.

  Hopping to his feet, Poncho dived forward to try to give Easy a knee in the face.

  Easy was up and away in time to avoid that. He caught Poncho’s rising foot, twisted, flipped the big young man over.

  Poncho’s curly head twanged against a metal bedpost. The bed jumped three feet to the right. “I’m in good shape,” warned Poncho. “I can knock the shit out of you.”

  “Except tonight.” Easy rushed the stumbling actor. Clutching him by elbow and wrist, Easy twisted Poncho’s arm up behind his back. He jerked hard.

  Poncho cried out, trying to jog himself free of Easy’s grasp. He got a few feet, then hit the wall.

  Putting more pressure on the twisted arm, Easy pushed Poncho hard against the calcimined wall. “Where’s Jill Jeffers?”

  “Kiss my ass.”

  Easy pulled Poncho to him, slammed him against the wall again. A Maxfield Parrish print of dawn fell off its hook. “You brought her here Saturday.”

  Poncho tried to clutch at Easy with his other hand.

  The big detective forced him to the wall again. “What did you do with her?”

  “The same thing you would of, man.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  His broad face against the wall, Poncho said, “You from her father?”

  “No,” said Easy.

  “He’s somebody important, isn’t he? She kept talking about him.”

  “Where is she?”

  “I don’t know, man,” insisted Poncho.

  “When did you see her?”

  “Saturday night.”

  “You brought her here to the Pearl?”

  “Not here,” said Poncho. “You can’t make that kind of noise here. We used a guy’s place over on O’Farrell, couple blocks away.”

  “What happened?”

  “What do you think,” said Poncho. “We took down her pants.”

  “How many of you?”

  “Oh, shit man,” said Poncho. “Hardly two of us got a turn. She was too crazy. By the time the third guy tried she was talking all out of her head and it wasn’t much fun.”

  “What did you give her?”

  “I don’t understand what you mean.”

  “Drugs I mean,” said Easy, twisting Poncho’s arm tighter.

  “Oh, maybe a little speed is all,” said Poncho, starting to breathe through his dry mouth. “It didn’t seem to work right for her. She started talking strange before we even got her over to this guy’s place. And, you know, after we started fooling around with her, she wouldn’t quit talking.”

  “Talking about what?”

  “Everything. She said she remembered now about her mother. About her mother had been murdered or something. She kept screaming, ‘It wasn’t suicide. I knew that all along.’ Very spooky stuff. Then she said something about she knew where the money was, too. They’d tried to make her forget but now she remembered.”

  “Who did all that to her?”

  “She didn’t say,” said Poncho. “Or maybe I didn’t hear. I took the first go at her and I don’t listen too clear at times like that. You know?”

  Easy said, “Where is Jill now?”

  “Who knows. We put her clothes back on her and got rid of her.”

  “Got rid of her how?”

  “Just tossed her out, man. I took her down in the street and told her to take a jump for herself.”

  Easy leaned harder against the pinned Poncho. “When was that?”

  “I don’t know. Sunday morning sometime, five o’clock in the morning or so.”

  “Nobody’s seen her since, Poncho.”

  “I tell you, man, I booted her out. That’s all. She was okay and on her feet then.”

  “You don’t know where she went?”

  “I didn’t care. She didn’t say.”

  “You’re a nice guy, Poncho,” said Easy. “I wish you well.” He let go of him, then gave him three chops at the side of his neck.

  Poncho went a foot up the wall before he began to slide down. His wrists flapped a few times as he went down, as though he were gently swimming.

  When Poncho telescoped onto the floor Easy was at the door.

  Onesy raised one eyebrow when he saw Easy. “All is well?”

  Easy stepped in front of the desk. “It turns out Poncho was at home after all.”

  “Oh, good.”

  Reaching out Easy got a grip on the top of the clerk’s narrow head. He pushed him back from the desk and took the two five-dollar bills out of the breast pocket of Onesy’s dim fl
owered shirt.

  “Son of a gun,” said the old man in the brown suit.

  CHAPTER 14

  A DRUNK MAN IN a Midwestern business suit was trying to tell Mitzi Levin a dirty joke. He was bent far over, talking into the little money hole in the glass front of the ticket booth. “Did you catch that last part?” he was asking. “After the duchess farts …”

  Easy lifted the pink-faced drunk out of the way by catching hold of his suit coat in two places. “I want to talk to you,” he told the chubby girl.

  “I haven’t even come to the punch line yet,” complained the drunk.

  “I can’t leave the booth for another half hour, Mr. Easy,” said Mitzi. “Besides I’ve talked myself out on the subject of Jill Jeffers.”

  “You left out Poncho,” said Easy.

  Mitzi glanced away, caught the eye of a thin blond boy standing next to the naked man cutout in the lobby. “Teddy, take over for me.”

  “Nobody has any sense of humor any more,” said the Midwest drunk as he drifted away.

  “Come around inside to my office,” Mitzi said.

  The office was behind the ticket booth, a small room walled with publicity photos of forgotten actors and actresses. The pictures had all been inscribed to someone named Charlie with affection.

  Easy waited until Mitzi was seated on the edge of her desk. Standing with his back to the door, he said, “This time tell me everything.”

  Mitzi rolled a Flair pen across the desk top with her middle finger, saying nothing.

  “When Poncho and his buddies finished with Jill and tossed her out,” said Easy, “she was only a few blocks from here. She must have come to you.”

  “I’ve had a very troubled life,” said the chubby young girl, still rolling the blue pen slowly back and forth. “I try to minimize the amount of new trouble I take on.”

  “Jill did come here Sunday morning.”

  Mitzi gave a small nod. “Yes.”

  “You’ve been telling me everything but the truth. That’s got to stop now, Mitzi.”

  “Okay, I know,” said the girl. “She got here sometime around 5 A.M. on Sunday. My luck being what it is, I was alone. I made up the clean-cut Jewish lawyer. Jill and I went over to Dean’s party in my car and Jill left her Porsche out on the street here.” Mitzi pushed the pen too hard and it rolled over the edge of the old desk. “Right at first she didn’t talk about Poncho or what they’d tried on her. I didn’t know about it right away, but I could tell something lousy had happened. From her clothes and her face. I’m not as casual about sex as this trap might lead you to believe. Things like Poncho shake me up.”