That left the three of us. Bruno was looking interested in Irma and rather pleased with himself. Irma looked as though she didn’t know whether to flee or go for his face with a broken bottle. I don’t know how I looked, but all I wanted to do was keep Irma out of official hands. I knew Johnny Maher was looking for her; Bruno probably knew the same.
“Say,” I said stupidly, “you two probably don’t know each other.” Boring hard into Irma’s eyes with mine, I said, “Alice, this is Deputy Chief of Police Kolchik.” I couldn’t have been more emphatic if I’d gotten up on the table and tap-danced his title in Morse code. “Chief, this is Alice Parsons, a friend of mine.” I only hoped she wouldn’t forget the name.
“How do you do, Alice?” said Bruno with a heavy bonhomie of someone who is sure he’s going to be liked. “Joe didn’t tell me he was going to meet someone as pretty as you here.” Oh, me and Bruno were great buddies, we were.
“And I didn’t expect him to show up with a copper, Mr. Kolchik,” Irma said. “I don’t like coppers.” She didn’t say it quietly, and we were suddenly in the middle of a growing island of silence. Oh, great, a cop hater. Just what the situation called for.
Bruno leaned back in his chair with the expression of a man who’d just been hit in the face with a strawberry waffle: not hurt, but puzzled and just beginning to get sore. Irma didn’t give him a chance. “It’s not just that you’re a copper,” she said in a voice diamond-edged with malice. “Some of them are honest. But you’re a political cop. You got where you are on your brother’s back. Don’t think I don’t know who you are.”
The famous Kolchik ears were turning a translucent carmine. Bruno put both big paws on the table as if ready to vault over it and gritted through his large teeth: “Listen, miss”—he said the word the way anyone else would have used slut—“you may know who I am, but I’d like to know just the hell who you think you are. Who are you, anyway?”
I honestly think she was going to tell him, but just then, in the smoky middle distance, I spotted Phil Franks coming our way. It would be more accurate to say that he was drifting our way like a giant barge cut loose in a choppy sea, with the hapless Sherman acting as guide-cum-scout, apologizing for upset drinks and customers accidentally pushed under tables. Phil announced his impending presence and saved Irma’s bacon by croaking out: “Good evening, Bruno, welcome to The Jungle.” Phil’s not shy.
This cut short both Irma’s answer and The Brother’s likely reaction. Quickly becoming aware that he’d soon be sharing a table with me, Phil—not Bruno’s favorite person—and a hostile broad, Kolchik knew a losing combination when he saw one and looked for a way out. Not seeing one, he decided to make one. Pausing only to glower at me in a very meaningful way, Bruno headed for the other exit with little regard for the paying customers he trampled.
“Hey,” said one of these socialites in the middle of the mob, “who do you think you’re shoving around?” He struggled to his feet.
“You, Buster,” said The Brother, putting the citizen back in a sitting position so forcefully that the chair splintered under him. Another job of soothing for Sherman.
Irma and I had plenty of time to hiss at each other before Fat Phil arrived.
“What the hell,” I said. “Here I am trying to keep you out of the hands of the police, and you practically stick your head in Kolchik’s mouth. What gives?”
“I’ve got my reasons,” she said sulkily. “I can’t stand that bastard. Besides, nobody asked you to save me from anything. I can take care of myself. I was just about to tell your big buddy who I was anyway.”
Any clever answers I might have had were stifled by the arrival of Fat Phil. I gave Irma an I’ll-sort-you-out-later look and turned toward Phil.
He slipped into two chairs as close to the table as he could manage and sat glistening with sweat and looking like a textbook case of cardiac arrest. Sherman appeared with more drinks for us and Phil’s sickly special. Somehow Phil got the glass to his lips a few times, and his green complexion turned several shades lighter.
“So you found her,” he finally gasped, favoring Irma with a proprietary leer. “What do you think?”
“Sensational, Phil,” I said. “You’ll make another million, at least. Your Doc Irving is quite a little miracle worker.”
He frowned. Phil didn’t like his little secrets discovered. But then he shrugged, a massive operation in itself, and turned to Irma. “How did you make out with our friend today?” he asked.
“All right,” said Irma in a carefully controlled voice, keeping it businesslike and cool. “He’s ready to start Monday morning.”
“How about you?” he asked slyly, looking intently into her face. “Are you ready? Are you sure you’re ready?”
I was watching Irma’s face, too, and she handled it beautifully. “I’m ready, Phil,” she said without a tremor of revulsion and without coyness either, “or I wouldn’t have gone to see Dr. Irving today.” She held his eye, not consciously or challengingly, but definitely, until he shifted back to me, apparently satisfied. I’d have to watch that girl. I was no match for her.
“You see, Joe,” he said, “she’s going to be sensational. Would you believe she’s only twenty-one years old?”
“No.”
“Thousands will,” he said with self-satisfaction. “Thousands will. And I’ve got her on an ironclad contract.”
All three of us knew exactly what he was talking about, but none of us said it. And each had a different motive for saying nothing. The ghost of Tina D’Oro sat in the empty chair at the table.
“Only one big problem, Joe,” Phil rumbled on. “I still haven’t got the right name for Irma to use. Can you think of a good one?” I could have made some interesting suggestions. But I had to watch my smart mouth and Irma’s tender sensibilities if she was going to be any help at all. So I just turned my mouth up at the corners in what might have passed for a smile.
“Sorry, Phil,” I said. “I’m not much good on the creative side, but if it will help, I’ll give it a lot of thought.”
I’m sure he was about to thank me profusely when the lights dimmed and the house band began to thrash about in the pit, making noises. But, instead of one of the second-line bimbos coming on, a large motion-picture screen began to descend in the jungle-clearing stage. And Sherman’s anonymous voice said, “And now, friends and gentle customers, as we promised you, The Jungle proudly presents, in living color, in brilliant detail, the one, the only, the Late Great Tina D’Oro!”
The pit band went mad on cue, and I could see Irma instantly go tense. She still had a glass in her hand, and it looked as though she was going to crush it. Her teeth went into her full lower lip, and I knew she wasn’t going to sit through any Tina films. I put a restraining, and I hoped soothing, hand on her wrist and started to my feet. Phil’s eyes were on the screen. His face had taken on an abstract, distant look.
“Sorry, Phil,” I said, pulling Irma woodenly to her feet, “we’ve got a hot date on the other side of town.”
“Sure, Joe,” he said absently. “See you later.”
I started moving Irma away from him as fast as I could, but I heard his fat voice following me: “Take good care of the merchandise, Joe.” I don’t think Irma heard, and I pretended that I didn’t.
Moving Irma through the tightly bunched tables was not easy. My already aching arms were starting to crumble by the time we reached the side door. But outside on the sidewalk, Irma took several long gulps of cool night air and seemed to recover. She moved slightly away from me and supported herself with a hand on a brick wall.
“Thanks,” she said after a moment “I didn’t know what to do in there.” She shook her head and shuddered deeply at the memory.
“Are you okay now?”
“I think so.”
“What now?” I said.
“Now, I’m going home,” she answered. She took a couple of steps as if to demonstrate that she could walk, but then her legs gave way a bit, and
she leaned back against the wall. “It has been a hard day,” she said.
“I’ve got a car a couple of blocks away,” I said. “If you could hold that wall up for five minutes, I’ll bring it here and give you a ride home.”
She looked back toward the side entrance of The Jungle and then at the stream of humanity bobbing and throbbing along Broadway. “I’d rather walk with you to the car,” she said. “I don’t think I could stand five more minutes of this particular location.”
I thought about the most direct route to the Morris, and then about the banditos I might run into on it. It wouldn’t do to meet them again so soon with a slightly woozy girl in tow. That is, unless she carried a palm sap, too. I decided to give that route a pass until I was a bit better prepared. We’d take a longer, safer way.
“All right,” I said, “but we’ll have to walk along Broadway for a bit. Here, let me give you a bit of support.” I put an arm around her waist—a very nice waist with just the right amount of flesh on it—and pulled her away from the wall. I could feel her resist at first, then give up and put her arm around my waist.
We must have seemed like any other happy Saturday night couple, except that one of us looked as if he’d been rolled around in the gutter by a pack of Great Danes. Irma had so far been polite enough not to mention it. Or maybe she hadn’t noticed.
We had only half a block of Broadway to negotiate and made it unscathed. A picket line of young sailors at one point offered to block the sidewalk. But at the last moment they broke up in a welter of sub-drunken giggles and shy looks at Irma. Then we turned off into the small but well-lit street which would lead to the cul-de-sac where the Morris lurked. Nothing jumped out of the shadows at us.
The short drive to the 400 block of Union Street was uneventful. Irma was slumped against the passenger-side door, saying nothing, and I was beginning to feel every bruised and aching muscle, sinew and bone. I leaned the car against a curb in front of her building, flicked the ignition off and went limp. Nobody said anything.
After a decent interval, I said, “Let’s flip a coin to see who carries whom up the stairs.”
“I’ve a better idea,” Irma said, and her voice sounded much more relaxed. “I’ll just sleep here in the car. You won’t mind, will you?”
“Not if you’ll let me wash up and change clothes up at your place. In case you didn’t notice, I’m less than my impeccable self this evening.”
“I did notice,” she said, “but I didn’t like to say anything. What happened? Did that appointment turn nasty?”
“Not exactly. But on the way to meet you at The Jungle I took a shortcut through an alley and met a group of gentlemen who took a dislike to me and weren’t shy in letting me know.”
“I hope you weren’t badly hurt.”
“We won’t know until the post-mortem,” I said. “Do you think we’re ready to attempt the climb to your place yet?”
“No, but if we don’t go now, I’ll never get up the nerve again.” Getting one of my suitcases out of the trunk of the car, I tried to remember exactly when I had put it there. It seemed a long, long time ago.
The stairs up to Irma’s apartment hadn’t gotten any less steep, and the suitcase on my arm seemed to be doubling in weight at every floor. But finally we were standing in front of Irma’s door. Nanny Goat next door stuck her head out, took one look at me and my suitcase, snorted sharply, and ducked back in with a slam of the door.
“There goes your reputation in the neighborhood,” I said.
“It couldn’t be any lower with her,” said Irma, unlocking the door and stepping inside. “She’s convinced that I’m a prostitute, and when I’m out she slips little notes under my door in favor of chastity and against the sins of the flesh. The bathroom is straight through that door on the right. Help yourself.”
I marched, suitcase in hand, toward the bathroom door. Irma’s apartment was almost military in its simplicity. The walls that weren’t painted a flat white were covered with cork or hessian. Paintings or other decorations were few. Bric-a-brac was nonexistent. The couch was a flat slab of foam rubber scattered with a few cushions. A door led to a small kitchen, and beyond that another probably opened onto her bedroom. The apartment wasn’t quite so anonymous as mine, but if it was stamped with a personality, it was a subtle one.
In the bathroom—shower, no bathtub—I stripped off my tatters and admired myself in a long, narrow mirror. I looked like an aerial map of a long, thin peninsula with the elevations marked out in bruises, some blue, some faint mauve. My days as a figure model were over. In the shower, the pins and needles of the hot spray went to work like Torquemada’s stiletto. I wished I’d stayed dirty. But soon the heat began to wash away some of the pain, and I started to feel faintly human again. As I dressed, I debated whether to strap my pistol on again, but decided against it. I left it on top of the clothes in my suitcase, but loaded it just in case.
When I got back out into the living room, Irma had two drinks poured and was sitting on the foam-rubber sofa. She looked fully recovered. She looked better than that. In a relaxed state her face was more than pretty. Doc Irving would have been happy to claim her short, straight nose as his own work. I sipped my drink and enjoyed looking at her.
“Do you always carry suitcases of clothes around in the trunk of your car?” Irma asked.
“Not really,” I told her, explaining as vaguely as possible that through no fault of my own my apartment was full of Chinese delinquents and, possibly, cops. In theory, I said, I had a bed there. But the odds against finding it empty were less than encouraging. I may have said this with a slight ulterior motive, sitting as we were on a couch which looked comfortable enough to sleep on.
Irma’s reaction was mixed. She didn’t laugh in my face, but neither did she melt with sympathy and offer me a place to sleep, although I didn’t give up hoping. For the moment, though, I thought I’d better steer the conversation back into a channel which might lead in the direction of Tina’s murderer. Unless, of course, I was having drinks with her right now. I tried to bear that in mind.
“If it won’t upset you,” I said, “could we talk a bit more about the last time you saw Tina and the events leading up to the night you found her—uh—found her in her apartment?”
“I suppose we’d better,” she said. She looked me dead in the eye. “I want to find out who killed Tina as much as you do, Joe. Maybe more than you do. To you, it’s just a job. Am I right?”
“Yes,” I said. Aside from threats coining from various Kolchiks and their minions, it was just a job. This was a girl you couldn’t bullshit. It made life easier if I didn’t try.
“Well, to me it’s the most important thing in my life. I hate the whole idea, but if I have to, I’ll let Dr. Irving inflate my breasts like footballs. And I’ll shake them at anybody who comes into The Jungle if it will get me closer to knowing who killed Tina.”
“And what if whoever did it has nothing to do with The Jungle? What if it was somebody completely outside North Beach, someone who’ll never come into the club again?”
“Then I’ll have been shaking my tits in vain, won’t I? That’s the chance I’ve got to take. But I have a feeling that I’m not wasting my time. Tina’s world was a small one. She’d never lived any place but North Beach since she came here. I could count on the fingers of one hand the people she knew from more than five miles away from The Jungle.”
“That narrows it down considerably,” I said. “But let’s try to thin the suspects a bit more. For instance, who’s your current favorite?” She didn’t answer right away, and it wasn’t because she was considering the question. Something clouded behind those blue-gray eyes. Little Irma wasn’t being completely candid with her new partner in crime detection.
“Let’s not kid each other, Irma,” I said. “You’ve got a favorite, but you’re not going to tell me who it is. Right?” She did it again—looked me in the eye. A disconcerting habit for a pretty girl.
“You’re right,
Joe. I have. Are you telling me everything you know?”
She had me there.
“All right,” I said. “Every partnership has its little running-in difficulties. Let’s just agree not to lie to each other. That will help. If you want to keep something to yourself, that’s okay by me. And I’ll do the same. Now, just for the hell of it, run once more through the last time you saw Tina.”
Patiently, Irma recounted that last meeting with Tina, the setting of Tina’s hair, what they said, as best she could recall, the parting after making a date for early the next morning after the last show at The Jungle. Then she switched to when she found Tina’s body. Nothing new there, either, until she was telling me, quite calmly, I thought, about the chaos that set in after the door to the apartment had been opened. Then something occurred to her.
“Joe,” she said, “I can’t put my finger on it, but even at a time like that—with Tina dead on the floor—I found myself looking around the apartment, just aimlessly gazing. Maybe to avoid looking at Tina. They tried to get me out of the apartment, but I wouldn’t go. I kept thinking—it’s the strangest thing—I kept thinking something was missing. Something I was used to seeing just wasn’t there. Maybe it’s my imagination, but it’s driving me crazy. I can’t think what it was.” She put long, slim fingers to either side of her forehead.
“Don’t strain,” I said. “It’ll come to you when you least expect it. The harder you try, the more elusive it will be. Let me take your mind off it for a minute with another question.”
She looked up at me under heavy lashes with a look I couldn’t consider completely trusting. Or maybe it was just wariness. “What is it?”
“Why did you have a go at Bruno Kolchik tonight?”
“I don’t like him.”
“That was obvious,” I said. “But you must have some reason. It’s not just because he’s a cop. Or even because he got to the top on his brother’s back. There’s got to be another reason.”
“Does there?”
“Yes. Remember our no-lies policy. How can I trust you if you so obviously don’t trust me?”
Goodey's Last Stand: A Hard Boiled Mystery (Joe Goodey) Page 16
