by Earl Emerson
“Do I know your he asked, in a voice that was gruff and authoritarian. A look of suspicion blackened his thick features. He brooked no guff. His broken, stooped wife bespoke that.
“My name is Black.”
So?
“I’m here to talk about your granddaughter.”
Without taking his hard brown eyes off me, Angus Crowell shouted for his wife. “Muriel! Get the hell in here!”
She came higgledy-piggledy, the original Edith Bunker, a damp dishrag dangling from her hands and a look of wrinkled concern on her face’. “Muriel, why the hell did you let this bum in here?”
Glancing at me in sudden coerced disapproval, she said. “He looked like a nice young man, dear.” She was past fifty, but her life was not her own. She wouldn’t start living until her husband’s body was under six feet of sod. I bet she was counting the days, scratching a wall somewhere with a rusty nail.
“Get Angie to her room! I’ve had enough of this shit!”
Angus was several inches taller than I was, outweighed my one-eighty by a good sixty or seventy pounds, and had the look of a man who had put in years of hard labor in his youth.
“I keep in shape,” he said. “Got my own handball court here. Unless you want to see what sort of shape, you better hustle your ass out that front door, Mr. Thomas Black.”
I hadn’t told him my first name. The gray and reddish hairs on his eyebrows formed an interesting weave, tufted like that of an aggressive baboon. He was in his mid-sixties, I would guess, and imbued with the kingly air of a monarch who held court daily. Behind him, Mrs. Crowell scurried away, pulling her granddaughter by her arm. The frightened tot cast a sidelong look at me and smiled conspiratorially. At least I thought it was a smile.
“Im sure you realize that this whole deal is on shaky ground,” I said. “If the police or newspapers got ahold of this, you’d be forced to give up the child.”
A large, hirsute paw came up and pointed a thick finger, like a gun barrel, at my face. He sighted down it, aiming it at my nose. I noticed a series of ancient, thickened scars on his hand and remembered his sister in Bellingham saying something about a run-in he’d had with a dog in his youth.
“Somebody calls the newspapers on this and Ill hold you personally responsible, Mr. Thomas Black. Got that?
He wouldn’t have gotten sore if I hadn’t struck a nerve.
A jagged scar ran down his left leg as if it had been spilled, as if one could spill hurt. Another series of smaller serrations criss crossed his skull near one temple. He was a man who lived life hard, and yet, he still bore that aura of a commander used to making people hop.
“You know as well as I do that the child belongs with her folks,” I said.
“What folks? Her father sits around on his butt a year at a time and writes poetry. You call that folks? Her mother’s a slut.”
For a moment, I was taken aback by his viciousness. I should have expected something along those lines, but it came as a shock.
“You know where your daughter is?”
“The bitch can be roasting in hell for all I care.”
I began moving slowly toward the front door. “We saw your ad in the Times. You want her back. I’m looking for her, too. Why don’t we get together? Pool our resources.”
“Don’t call me a liar,” he said, threateningly.
“Im not calling anybody anything. You’re the one who’s putting a tag on it. I only want to find her.”
He guffawed. It was loud and brash and phoney as a three-dollar bill. It was a practiced laugh he probably used on somebody new each day.
“I traced the phone number in the ad to Taltro,” I said. “It’s your ad all right. A two-thousand-dollar reward.”
“Now I am getting mad! Who the hell do you think you are?”
“It must be lonely for a kid, raised down in this gully.” “What the hell you doin, sneaking around my life, boy? You’re going to be sorrier’n a rat’s ass.”
I didn’t reply. Turning around, I shambled to the front door and opened it.
“Hell, boy. I could buy your life for the price of one of my wrist watches. You hear me? I’ve got sixteen watches. You listening careful, boy?”
“Stick it up your ass.”
Voice booming, he flailed his arms, jounced the fat on his huge torso in a mad dance and pretended to chase me out the front door. I proceeded at my own pace and noticed off-handedly that he did not catch me, though he easily could have. He slammed the door like a cannon shot, warning me I would never forget this night. No wonder Melissa was screwed up.
Damn, maybe I wouldn’t forget this night. When I climbed into the cab of the truck it was empty. Kathy had vanished. ?
Chapter Nine
PEERING DOWN THE DARK STREET THROUGH THE DRIZZLE, it took me a minute to spot her. She had been skulking in a flower bed alongside the Crowell house.
“Don’t ever do that again,” I said, as she scrambled into the moving truck.
She slammed the door. “You saw her? I looked through all the windows, but I couldn’t see anything.”
“I thought you didn’t believe in snooping.”
After making sure we weren’t being tailed, I dropped Kathy off at one of her friends’ for safekeeping and made her promise to dig up all the information on Angus Crowell that she could the next morning. I wanted to know why he had been so antagonistic toward me with so little provocation. I wanted to know how he knew my first name.
I wheeled the Ford back to Ballard and rapped on Burton Nadisky’s dark front door. No reply. Out of whimsy, I twisted the doorknob. The door popped open. I went in. Nothing much had changed in the dark house. It smelled like the inside of an old coffeepot.
Burton was in the back, in the kitchen, asleep face down on the table, a sheaf of papers splashed out in front of him. A rhyming dictionary was splayed open, its back broken. Groggy and disoriented, he woke up when he heard my footsteps on the crinkly linoleum.
“Oh,” he grunted. “You?”
“Evening, Burton. I just came back from visiting your daughter. She’s not happy.”
“Angel? You saw Angel?”
“Yeah. And I met your in-laws. It was about as thrilling as watching a cat dig a hole. When are you going to get her back?”
He struggled up, went to the sink, elbowed some dishes aside and splashed cold water across his face several times. It had been a while since I’d watched another man do that. He turned around without toweling the water off and looked at me, droplets running off his cheeks and nose.
“I’m afraid of what Mr. Crowell might do. That’s all. I’m afraid.”
“Do you have a reason to be afraid? Has he threatened you?”
“Christ!” Burton shouted. “What do you want from me? He came here and had some goonybird knock the poop out of me. He took my daughter. What more do you want?”
“Maybe you’re right,” I said. “He threatened me a few minutes ago. Maybe you’re right. Let me tell you what I’ve found.”
“Melissa?”
“Im on her trail, but I’m not very warm.” Briefly, I gave him a rundown on Mary Dawn Crowell, how she had sheltered Melissa so many other times, how Melissa had phoned on Tuesday but never arrived.
“Did she sound okay?” Burton asked.
“Her aunt only spoke to her a minute.”
“You mean all those times Melissa disappeared on me, all that worry…She was at her aunt’s all those times?”
“As near as I can tell.”
“God,” said Burton, sponging some of the water off his face using his shirt sleeve. He plunked back down into the rickety kitchen chair, offering me one with torn upholstery. I remained standing.
“What’s in Tacoma?”
Why?
“That’s where your wife phoned her aunt from.” “Nothing.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah. Nothing.”
Burton looked up at me, his pale blue eyes blank and unresponsive. �
�Geez, Mr. Black. I’ve had a rough couple of days here. Would you mind if I crashed now? Ive gotta get to bed.”
“You don’t want me to find your wife?”
“Yes, find her. But I’m bushed now. I can’t talk anymore:”
“Sure, Burton.” I went out the front door without locking it.
The house of the snoopy neighbor across the street was dark, too, but I was convinced the almost phosphorescent light seeping through a crack in the living room curtains was a television. Somebody was doping on an electronic fix.
When he answered the door, it was plain to see he was potted already, and it was only half past seven. Though he was no older than me, he already had the florid face of a drunk. Wearing threadbare socks, rumpled trousers and a’ dingy tee shirt, he invited me inside. He flopped onto a couch, stretching his legs out onto an ottoman.
Balancing a can of brew on his marshmallowy beer-gut, he addressed me the way an overeager salesman might. “What can I do for you?”
“You know the Nadiskys across the street?”
“By the way,” he said, grinning widely and extending a hand without jiggling the Rainier can on his belly, ‘my name is Iddins. Sid they call me, when they ain’t callin’ me other things.” We shook hands.
“Thomas Black.”
“The blondes across the street? That’s their last name? I never knew it. I seen him. Her too. Even trotted my ass across the street one afternoon and fucked her.” His grin ripped wider with each word. I had to pinch myself to be sure I’d heard correctly.
“Don’t shake your noodle,” he said. “She’s a cute little thang, so I walked over there one afternoon, palavered with her for a few minutes, then took her into the bedroom and raised her skirts. Trouble was, the wife got onto it. She put the nix on my return ticket. But once was fine. She’s a sweet-looking little thang but she ain’t all that warm. Matter of fact, she got downright persnickety afterwards. Tried to pretend she hadn’t cottoned to it.” “Did she?”
“Well … I’ve had more cooperative split tails.” Melissa was a woman who may have had sexual relations a mere handful of times with her own husband. Now this buffoon wanted me to believe he had gone across the street and seduced her in a trice? No matter how promiscuous she had been at other times in her life, I found the tale Sid Iddins told highly improbable.
“Sounds almost like rape,” I said, voicing my thoughts. He laughed quietly and put his eyes on the Monday night football game.
“Rape? Hell, you don’t see no bars around me, do you?”
“Your wife around?”
“Helga’s at work. Downtown at the titty palace. On Second?” Sid stared at me in the dim light, trying to gauge how his words affected me.
“She takes tickets, or what?” I asked, trying to be discreet. I was wasting my time.
“Hell, no. She peels. You know, like a banana. That’s where I met her. Used to spend most of my free time down there. Asked her if I could take her home one night. When we got here, I tried to smooch, but she poked a .357 in my ribs. She’s all woman, that gal. I gotta hand her that. ‘Bout a week later-I took her home again.” His grin grew to mythic proportions. “I ain’t never left since.”
“She’s been dancing a long while, then?”
“Oh, yeah. She likes the atmosphere. ‘Sides, she’s got lots of friends down there.”
“She ever talk to the people across the street?”
“The blondes, you mean? I told you she put the nix on me and blondy. She went over there one day to duke it out with her. Didn’t come back for one hell of a longtime. Hell of a long time. Tell you the truth, I thought she’d killed blondy and was tryin’ to dispose of the body.” He laughed at that, grabbing the teetering beer can on his stomach so it wouldn’t topple off. “Wouldn’t that be funny? Have two women fightin’ over Sidney Iddins?”
“A riot. You know where blondy is?”
He shook his head and sucked on the aluminum can. “Nope. Seen the grampa come Sunday morning and take the little one away, though. Helga talked to the guy about it later. They just sashayed right in and then sashayed right out with the kid. The guy’s a ding-a-ling to let ‘em do it.”
“You think Helga might know where the wife is?”
“Fuck, I don’t know what Helga knows. I don’t keep tabs on her. Why don’t you mosey down there and ask her? Or you’re welcome to sit here and wait. She’ll be back around two-thirty or three. Sit down. Have a brew.”
“Later.”
When I went outside, I could see Burton had lied to me. He hadn’t gone directly to bed. His living room light was on, as if he were expecting someone. I waited outside for an hour and fifteen minutes, but nobody showed. And I hadn’t seen any movement inside. He was probably asleep on the kitchen table again. Or maybe he had left while I was talking to Sidney.
It cost fifteen bucks to walk through the door of the converted theater. The place was murky and smelled of cigarettes and Pine-Sol and booze. I found myself checking to see if anyone I knew had seen me going. in. There was a bar in back and ten or twelve tables under a stage. A reedy-looking girl, naked from the waist up except for some pasties, bobbed to an old Three Dog Night tune. It was pitiful.
Eighteen patrons watched her, displaying varying degrees of interest.
“I gotta talk to Helga,” I said to the bartender. He was half bald and looked too good for the joint, as if he were moonlighting from a job in a brokerage house.
“Helga?”
“Helga Iddins. I don’t know what name she dances under. It’s important.”
He didn’t even reply, just rubbed a beer stein with a grubby towel and shook his head. I took a deep breath and slid a dollar bill across the countertop. He glanced down at it and whined, “Are you kidding me?”
I replaced the one with a five, but that was a joke, too. He shook his head patiently, a tight, grim smirk planted on his kisser. It cost a sawbuck for him to reach under the counter and press a buzzer several times in some sort of code.
When Helga swaggered through a door at the end of the bar, a young buck at one of the tables, a Navy boy from the look of his haircut and ill-fitting civvies, ogled her and said, “Nice hooters, baby.” His three buddies giggled and slopped beer over their wrists and avoided Helga’s hard eyes.
“Drop dead, asshole!”
She wore a velour bathrobe, black net stockings and “heels, and apparently nothing else. Her chest quaked when she walked and she folded her arms across herself to hold it still. The stockbroker tipped his head at me and she stopped and said in a smoky voice, Well?”
“I spoke to your husband.”
“Not for long, I hope,” said Helga Iddins. “That sort of activity destroys brain cells.”
“I’m looking for Melissa Nadisky.”
“Who?” The woman onstage was grinding toward her finale. Helga watched out of dispassionate professional curiosity. The three buddies of the Navy guy whistled encouragement. The one she’d rebuked glowered at us mutely.
“The blonde woman who lives across the street from you. She’s missing.”
So?
“I’m a private detective. I’m looking for her.”
Helga’s entire manner altered. She twisted back toward me and tried to arrange the puffball of hair on her head. It was a soft, pleasant color, like dead grass in the middle of the summer. “You’re a detective?”
I flopped my I.D. out of my wallet, hoping the creep at the table would spot it and think it was a badge.
“Come in the back,” she said, starting toward a door behind the bar. She led me down along a dark L-shaped corridor to a cubicle directly behind the stage. The muffled sounds of Three Dog Night rattled the roomful of mirrors. A washed-out brunette was scrunched in a corner breast-feeding a baby. She read from a psychology textbook. With her free hand she puffed on a cigarette. Cute. Suckle the baby with one hand and suck a Salem with the other.
“Hey, Margaret,” Helga said. “This guy’s a detective.”
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Margaret glanced up with bored eyes, covered up her breast With her cigarette hand and yawned. I grimaced and waved. It was nice to be famous.
“I don’t go on for half an hour, so we got some time,” Helga said, sitting before a mirror and brushing her hair slowly. She had never been beautiful, but I could see that up until about five years ago someone might have thought her alluring. Now she was spent, slack fat dragging at her chin. Either Sidney was being pickled in alcohol or he was six or eight years younger than his better half. I preferred the pickle theory. “Now what’s this about the girl across the street?”
A Woman’s Day was folded open in front of her chair. She’d been reading a page of recipes: holiday fruitcakes. “Melissa,” I said. “She’s missing.”
“Missing? She probably ran away from her hubby. Nothing abnormal about that. I’d do it myself, if I had somewhere to go.”
“Somebody posted a two-thousand-dollar reward for information leading to her whereabouts.”
“Two thousand?” She whistled. “Too bad I don’t know where she is.”
“Yeah, too bad. I understand you talked to Melissa?”
“Sidney went over and tried to get what he could. I didn’t know what she was like. From across the street you can’t tell nothin’. So I knew Sid had seen her and I went over with the express intention of breaking her face, know what I mean? Had some trouble with a girl here about six months, ago and I broke her face. I can break a face if I have to.”
“What happened between you and Melissa?”
“I could see right away Sid had taken advantage of her. Right away she starts bawling. Said she didn’t want anything to do with Sid, but he grabbed her and she didn’t know how to get rid of him. It was easy to see she was telling the truth. Boy, talk about a poor self-image. She thought she was the scum of the earth, her with a little girl and a husband who writes poetry. There I was, me, trying to cheer her up! She musta cried an hour. I did my best, but she really needed some sort of professional help. That’s what I told her. I think she got it, too.”
