“Can’t you tell?” He pointed to a door. “My studio’s in there. I’m just getting started, see. So far I been specializing in cheesecake in between ratty little commercial jobs. You know. Layouts of girls from all angles.”
“How did you know I was staying at the Moreland? And what do you want with me?”
“Well,” Layne said, lighting a cigarette, “it was no trick finding you. It was all over the street that the Lost Man’s brother was in town, going from one joint to another asking questions. And what’s heard on the street, see, finds its way to me. As for finding you—I had a hunch you’d be at the Moreland. That’s where your brother stayed. So I called and asked, and sure enough, that’s where you were.”
Betsy returned, a tall drink in each hand. She gave me mine and padded to Layne with his. Maybe Layne was accustomed to her near nudity at close quarters, but I wasn’t. I raised the glass and took a deep swallow. I nearly gagged. I was drinking warm, cheap bourbon.
Betsy curled into the other cleared chair, her hands hugging her bare tummy.
“I think it’s wonderful,” she said. “I read about you in the paper this morning, Mr. Kolchak. I never had a little sister, but if I did and she got lost, I’d do the same thing. I’d go look for her no matter what.”
“Thank you.” I set the glass down. No more of that.
“I,” Layne said, “have a proposition.”
“What kind?”
“I want to shoot you. With the camera, of course.”
“I’ve already been photographed. By guys from the newspapers.”
“That’s not what I meant.” Layne leaned forward, smiling, his drink in hand. “I want to follow you around, see. On Clay Street. Everywhere you go. I’ll be right beside you, working with fast film and miniatures. So I can use natural light. I’ll get real arty stuff. Interiors and everything. Smoke-filled dives, strip joints, queers, the whole bit. A picture story about you looking for your brother on the street of lost men. It can’t miss. You give me the exclusive right to shoot you, see, and after a week, I ought to have enough prints to sell a layout to Life, or Look, or the Saturday Evening Post. They’ll pay a mint for a dramatic picture sequence like that. It’ll be a real boost for me, too. It might get me some decent commercial jobs, so I won’t have to mess around with this girlie crap. So I’ll tell you what. We make this arrangement, see, and I’ll pay you twenty-five percent of whatever I get.”
For a moment I was too stunned to reply. Then I rose.
“No thanks.”
Layne refused to believe me.
“Why not? What can you lose? You do what you’d do anyway, see. Only I’m there taking pictures of you doing it. You don’t have to pay attention to me. You won’t even hear the shutter click. And you’ll rake in a couple hundred bucks at least.”
“Sorry.”
The photographer took a big swig from his drink.
“Awright. I’ll make it fifty percent. And it’s like you’re stealing from my back pocket, because I’ll be doing all the work, paying for the film and developer out of my share. But I’ll do it for the prestige.”
“Mr. Layne,” I said slowly, “I came to this city for one reason only. To find my brother. Not to build your reputation or fatten your bank balance. The last thing I want is you or anyone else at my elbow, taking pictures of me and everyone I talk to. If this is what you made me come all the way up here for, I suggest you go back to your cheesecake and stay out of my path.”
“It’s a free country,” Layne replied defensively. “If I want to follow you and shoot you anyhow, you can’t stop me.
“You do that and I’ll knock your block off.”
“I can take care of myself.”
He was right, too. Maybe I could lick him and maybe I couldn’t. He had a slight edge in weight, he was all muscle, and he was maybe ten years younger.
“In addition to which,” I said, “I’ll tell my good friend Lieutenant Doyle at the Clay Street Precinct that you’re hiding obscene photographs in here. His vice squad will put you under surveillance. They might even stage a raid.”
It was an accurate stab in the dark. Given a man of Layne’s unashamed greed, it stood to reason he’d earn a few extra dollars with pornography. The girlie prints strewn around the room came pretty close to pornography as it was.
“You don’t scare me,” Layne said. But his tone indicated I did.
“Mr. Kolchak,” Betsy said, gazing up at me with wounded eyes, “I hope you don’t think I’m that kind of a model.”
I smiled. “Of course not. If I’ve offended you, I apologize.”
I walked out, slamming the door behind me.
A little after 6 p.m., I watched myself on television.
I perched on a stool in a small cocktail lounge at 1613 North Clay, nursing a beer. The few other customers ignored me. I’d already questioned the bartender, who’d been civil but unenlightening.
Films and commentary on the Moreland press conference occupied much of the local telecast. I was shown holding up my brother’s picture and displaying the ring. I described the watch. I offered the reward. I pleaded for anyone with information about my brother to contact me at the Moreland Hotel.
When the telecast ended, the bartender gazed at me in a thoughtful way. He came over with another bottle of beer.
“I didn’t order that,” I told him.
“That’s all right. On the house.”
“Well thanks.”
I hadn’t intended to drink another beer. But since he was the first bartender on Clay Street to do me a good turn, I refilled my glass.
“Tell you what,” the bartender went on. “If you’d like to stick around in here all night, that’d be okay with me. You could have that table there. After the television show, when word gets around you’re here, the joint will be packed with people wanting a look at you. You could question all of ’em. While you’re doing it I’ll give you anything you want to drink, free. I’ll even send out for food. How about it? It will save you a lot of shoe leather.”
The urge to bring the bottle down over the bartender’s shiny skull was overpowering. But I resisted.
In a cafeteria across the street I got all the way through the food line before I was recognized. I found a back table. While I ate sausage and sauerkraut, people stared. More people came in and they stared too. I didn’t enjoy eating with those eyes on me, but reflected that in a few days people would stop staring. I had sought publicity by holding a press conference and this was the price.
I was about to tackle dessert when Bill Totten, the Beacon reporter, and his photographer joined me.
“What’s with you guys?” I asked. “The press conference is over.”
“Follow-up,” Totten explained genially. “A feature on your adventures tonight.”
“How the hell do you expect me to accomplish anything with you hanging around?”
I said that in a jocular way, though. I’d expected further attention from the press for a while. But it would decrease quickly to nothing. And if I tried to avoid the press, the press would hound me anyway.
The photographer brought coffee for himself and the reporter. The three of us made small talk while I wolfed my pie.
As I pushed my plate back, a stooped old woman slipped through the tightly packed tables and stopped in front of us.
I’d seen her before, in one of the dives on the 1400 block. A black shawl covered her head. Over her shoulders she’d strapped a box of pencils. Apparently, she made her living selling pencils to sentimental drunks. I’d bought a pencil from her the night before, and asked her if she knew anything about my brother. She told me then she hadn’t.
Now her bleary eyes viewed the reporter and the photographer with suspicion.
In a croaked voice she asked, “Who are they?”
“Friends of mine,” I replied ge
ntly. “Don’t be afraid. But I really don’t need any more pencils.”
She pulled up a chair. She sat down.
“It’s not pencils, Mr. Kolchak. I’ve got your brother’s watch.”
I blinked. I said, “You do?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“With me.”
“Where did you get it?”
“I found it. In the alley, behind the mission, a long time ago. But I didn’t open it up until tonight, after you talked about the watch on television. When I opened the watch, your brother’s name was inside.”
“Let me see it.”
“Do you have the hundred dollars?”
“Not on my person. I don’t carry that much money on Clay Street. I’ve only got about forty dollars in my pocket. But I could take you to the hotel and get it. Or write you a check.”
“I don’t want a check. You get the money and come back.”
Totten cleared his throat. In an over-casual voice the reporter said, “I cashed my paycheck this afternoon. I could let you borrow the other sixty.”
“There you are,” I said. I hauled out my wallet and counted out forty-one dollars. Totten added fifty-nine. I put my hands over the pile. “Now let’s see the watch.”
The woman opened a purse and fumbled inside. She pulled out a watch. “See? The kind you said. A Time-O.” With trembling hands and a bobby pin, she pried the back off. “Your brother’s name is scratched in there.” She held the watch up and waved it. The inside had been engraved all right. Quickly she closed the watch. “Here.”
She slid the watch across the table and reached for the money. I grabbed her wrist.
“Just a minute.” I turned to the reporter. “Open that again.”
Totten opened the watch with a table knife. The name “Ed Kolchak” had been crudely scratched inside. But not by my brother. Even as a ten-year-old, Ed could print better than that. The watch was a fake.
“That’s not my brother’s watch,” I said.
“His name’s in it,” she replied stubbornly. She put her wrinkled face up against mine. I smelled liquor and I didn’t know what else.
I released her wrist. She pulled back.
“You keep the watch,” I said. “I don’t want it.”
“You said on television you’d pay for it.”
“But not that one. Only the real one.”
“How was I to know that wasn’t the real one? You ought to give me something for it. For my trouble. Five dollars, maybe. Or at least a dollar.”
I said, “I’m not going to give you a cent. You tried to swindle me. I’m not going to reward swindlers on Clay Street or anywhere else.”
She turned to the crowd. She shouted, “He won’t pay! He said he’d pay and he won’t pay! Not even a dollar! He won’t pay!”
She was still hollering when the manager shoved her out the door.
I gave Totten his fifty-nine dollars back.
“Thanks,” I said. “It’s a nice world, isn’t it. That telecast was less than an hour ago. Yet somehow that woman managed to get her hands on an old Time-0 watch and scratch my brother’s name inside the lid.”
“How much,” the photographer asked, “did those old Time-0 watches cost?”
“Two dollars.”
“And how many did they make?”
“I dunno. Millions, probably. Back then, you could buy ’em at every drug counter and dime store.”
“You know,” the reporter observed thoughtfully, “I got a hunch some more people might show up with engraved Time-0 watches. After all, you’re offering a hundred-dollar reward for a two-dollar item. And all a guy has to do to qualify is scratch Ed Kolchak on the inside. I hope you got some other way to identify that watch, in addition to the engraving.”
“I see what you mean,” I said lamely.
“How about the ring? How much did that cost?”
“No problem there. It couldn’t be reproduced in this country for less than a hundred.”
But the reporter had a point. I recalled, in a general way, how Ed had scratched out that name. But any casual forger could probably come up by accident with a job reasonably similar enough to fool me. I hadn’t seen the inside of that watch in four years.
BOOK TWO: JULY
CHAPTER 4.
When I awoke, Lorene Heineman Powers stood beside my bed, bare arms folded over her chest. Her inscrutable blue eyes gazed into mine. Lorene and her father owned the building on Clay Street in which I now maintained an apartment. On the lower level, the Heinemans ran a restaurant called The Dugout. The apartment was the second I had occupied since leaving the Moreland in April, three months earlier.
How long Lorene had been standing there I did not know. Her white sleeveless blouse was smudged in places. Brown cotton pants, tapered snugly at her calves, encased the lower part of her body. A few beads of perspiration hung on her brow and in the cleft of her chin. Her pale blond hair, appealingly disarranged, stirred slightly in a warm breeze from the open window.
Lorene said, “Good morning. Or rather, good afternoon. It’s twelve thirty.”
I looked down. A sheet covered me. Moreover, I wore pajamas. I didn’t recall going to bed. But if I had stopped to undress and don pajamas, I could not have been in too bad shape.
I looked back at Lorene.
“You,” I said, “are one of the prettiest women I have ever viewed before breakfast, even if you are my landlady. Your nose is a little too long and has a slight bump on it. Your mouth is perhaps too wide. But for a thirtyish widow, you’re remarkably well preserved.”
Lorene was not amused.
“Aren’t you curious,” she asked, “about how I got in here?”
“I imagine you had a yen for me. And broke the door down.”
Her low voice was curt. “I didn’t have to break the door down. The door was open. You didn’t close your front door last night. You must have been really loaded.”
“It was that damn Harry Bagwell,” I said. “He and some of his cronies were downstairs at the bar when I came in from my rounds. They asked me to have a drink with them. And one thing led to another.”
“You don’t have to drink with Harry Bagwell. Anyone who drinks with Harry Bagwell is courting delirium tremens.”
I pulled the sheet aside. I swung my feet to the floor.
“I know. But the man fascinates me. Like a snake. Only he’s more articulate.”
Lorene moved toward the door. I loved to watch her move. Effortless. Covertly sensual. Like the slim, well-bred ladies she admired in fashion magazines.
“Hey, where are you going?”
“Down to the restaurant.”
“Stick around. I’m just getting my strength back.”
“I have work to do. I only came up here to be sure you were still alive. When you didn’t show for coffee by noon and didn’t even answer your doorbell, I thought I’d investigate. But I’ve seen men with hangovers before, so I think I’ll leave now.”
“What are you so sore about?”
“You. And what you could do to yourself. In your search for your brother.”
“I don’t get you. Will you be at the restaurant tonight?”
“No,” Lorene said. “I’m going home where I belong. As far from Clay Street as I can get. To be with my son.”
Despite the breeze, the day was hot. I showered. I knew very well why Lorene had been angry with me. Her anger had been inspired by her hatred of Clay Street. Lorene had been trying to get away from Clay Street all her life. The street’s poverty dismayed her; its viciousness frightened her. But while she lived in a suburb now, she still worked on Clay Street.
I had experienced a touch of that anger the first time I saw Lorene, three weeks after I’d moved from the Moreland Hotel to a small apartment on Jackson. I had covere
d both sides of Clay ten blocks to the north of Jackson and had started south. I wore old clothes that day, since most of the signs to the south indicated workingmen’s bars. I hadn’t shaved. At four in the afternoon, I reached The Dugout.
To enter the restaurant you go down a short flight of stairs. After you pass the outer door you face two inner doors. One leads to the bar, the other to the dining room. Unknowingly, I picked the door to the dining area.
I found myself in a silent, screened foyer adjoining the cloakroom. The walls were decorated with World War I relics: a helmet, a gas mask, a doughboy’s uniform in a glass case, campaign ribbons, and framed front pages with headlines about the Lusitania, the big battles, and the Armistice.
But what drew my attention was an oil painting, a portrait of a young woman. Illuminated by a recessed light at its base, the portrait hung under a bayoneted Enfield rifle. The woman’s nose had a slight bump on it. Her face was long and somber; her mouth curved in the hint of a smile. She wore a French peasant girl’s costume, the blouse cut almost to her nipples. The warm skin tones of her face, bare shoulders and arms, and the swell of her breasts shimmered in vivid contrast to the dark, murky background. Her eyes were wide and intense. Her expression was knowledgeable, inviting, and entirely serene. I thought her one of the most beautiful women I had ever viewed. In a moment of reverie, I forgot who I was, where I was, and what I was doing there.
A tray of glasses crashed to the floor.
I turned. I stared eye-to-eye with the woman depicted in the portrait. But a towel covered her hair; she wore pedal pushers and a sweat shirt. The tray lay at her feet.
“What,” she asked unsteadily, “are you doing here?”
“It’s a long story…”
“I know you,” she went on, her composure returning, “and all like you. You must be new on Clay Street. Didn’t they tell you? The Dugout is off-limits. It always has been, it always will be. This is a decent place. Clay Street bums don’t come in here. So get out, before I call the police.”
I began to say, “I’m looking for my brother…” Then I realized how boorish the statement would sound. I looked no different than what she had taken me for: an unshaven, poorly dressed Clay Street derelict. Venturing into her restaurant in old clothes had been a breach of good manners. If I’d taken the trouble to glance at the prices on the menu tacked to the front door, I’d have known better. Clay Street was like that. A few establishments designed for the rich thrived even near the heart of skid row.
The James Michael Ullman Crime Novel Page 4
