He pulled onto the shoulder and stopped. She hopped out and ran around to the driver’s side. Off to the left the Pacific lay, broad, blue and passive under the sun. The beach, rippled like another ocean, sloped down from the road to end fifty yards away where a few delicate whitecaps nibbled at the sand. A few houses, shacks really, dotted the ocean side of the road. Through the wide gap between two of them Horn saw a group of young people lounging on blankets. Spotting Addie, one of them waved.
“Well?” she asked, resting her hand lightly on his arm.
“Just one thing,” he said. “If we spot him, I’ll probably try to follow him. I’ll have to put you in a cab.”
“No! I’d miss out on the fun.”
“It’s too dangerous, Addie.”
“Tommy? There’s nothing dangerous—”
“I know something about him you don’t. We have to do it my way, or I’m afraid you can’t come.”
Her face turned sour. “All right, then. But I think it’s silly.”
From far off, he heard someone call her name. “Your friends are waiting,” he said. “Seven o’clock tonight. Do I call at your door, like a date?”
“You must be kidding,” she said. “I’ll be waiting outside.”
* * *
Horn drove home, where he fetched a beer from the fridge. It was too hot to sit outside, so he took off his shoes and lay down on the couch/bed, sipping and reflecting on what he’d learned. Fairbrass’ story of his man Sykes’ encounter on the road had made Horn’s stomach churn.
He was drowsy from the heat and allowed himself to drift off to sleep. When he awoke, the front porch was in shadow, and the heat had eased a little. Around six-thirty, he washed up and laid out his good suit. It was time to go nightclubbing.
Addie was waiting for him on the sidewalk outside the apartments. When she got in, he took a good look at her, marveling at her appearance. She was wearing an emerald-green silk dress, tightly belted, with black, ankle-strapped high heels and a small hat perched at a precarious angle.
“You look very nice, Mr. Horn,” she said animatedly, arranging herself in the seat. She tilted the rear-view mirror in her direction and checked her lipstick and makeup. He had to admit to himself that the transformation was impressive.
“So do you,” he said as they pulled away. “But I hope you’re not thinking about ordering any drinks tonight.”
“Oh, don’t be that way,” she said happily. “I’m eighteen. I know you don’t believe it, but it’s true. I had some problems in grade school, and they held me back a year. I’m a year older than just about everyone I know. As soon as I graduate, I’m getting my own place.”
“That’s wonderful, but you’re still not old enough to drink.” Thinking of Addie as a young woman was a stretch for him, but the way she was dressed was helping him adjust. He caught a whiff of a sweet scent and noticed that she was wearing a fresh gardenia at her waist.
“If we spot Tommy, will he recognize you?” he asked.
“I don’t think so. He’s never seen me like this. Besides, I’ll let this down,” she said, indicating the light veil rolled up over her hat. “I’ll be the sophisticated lady, the one in the Duke Ellington song.” She turned on the car radio and began dialing through the stations.
“What’s wrong with your radio?”
“Hmm? Oh, you mean the static? It’s not much of a radio. This is an old stunt car.”
“A what?”
“A stunt car. From the studio where I worked. It’s restored now, but it was used for rolling over and crashing and things like that. You know, for serials and gangster movies. Also for driving very fast. It has a Mercury engine and a heavy-duty suspension. The head of the motor pool at Medallion thought it had enough mileage on it, and he sold it to me cheap when I. . . when I needed a car.”
She found a good station, one that pulled in a dance band from somewhere, and the sound of a ballad from the war years filled the car, a story about a love gone away, and the tenor saxophones told it in a voice ripe with longing. As he turned onto Sunset Boulevard, the air was beginning to cool. “I heard about your troubles,” Addie said. “All of us at school did. The divorce and all the rest. I’m very sorry.”
“I appreciate that.”
They talked about random subjects, mostly things that interested Addie. She joked about the day he had “rescued” the two girls from the motel up the coast, “just like in one of your movies.”
“Except I wasn’t exactly on horseback.”
“Didn’t matter,” she said. “We were both glad to see you. I was getting sick from all those cigarettes.”
She told him about some of the singers the girls liked, some of the new dances. She said she hoped they could dance tonight, and he said he’d see about it. He steered the car down Sunset into downtown, where he picked up Broadway and headed south. They passed the Million Dollar Theater, one of the movie palaces built before the Depression. “My mom was an usher there once,” Addie told him. “She says movies were more exciting back then. Her favorite was Clara Bow. You didn’t know her, did you?”
“I’m not quite that old, Addie.”
“I know,” she said quickly. “I just thought that since you—”
“I was never a real movie star, either. Not like the kind your mother remembers.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“I’m not sure you’d understand.”
An old memory surfaced. Years ago, just after he and Iris were married, Horn had stopped by the bar at the Hollywood Palms Hotel, which was then owned by Scotty’s father. The bar was a famous watering hole and often attracted tourists who waited in line to get inside in hopes of a celebrity sighting. Horn was with a wrangler friend who worked on some of his movies, both of them still in their western gear. Before long, Horn found himself entertaining some of the tourists with stories of movie stunts, location shoots, and rodeo rides.
Standing there in his dusty chaps, signing an occasional autograph, he felt himself very much the center of that particular universe. Until, that is, William Powell entered the room. Nick Charles himself, of the Thin Man movies. A little past his prime, perhaps, but there was no question that a movie star was among them. Little by little, those in Horn’s audience drifted away and soon had assembled around the latest arrival. Horn drank too much that evening, and once at home, he quarreled with Iris over nothing.
He considered telling the story to Addie, then thought better of it. If she wanted to think of him the way she did, why not?
At 40th, he turned left. The sky was almost fully dark when, a few blocks later, he turned south on Central.
The street was ablaze with lights. As far as they could see, Central Avenue teemed with people and nightclubs, bars, theaters, lunch counters, barbershops, drugstores. Many of the night spots’ doors were open to the street, and they could hear snatches of jazz. As they passed a cafe with its windows open, he caught the smell of grilled meat.
“Isn’t this something?” Addie said excitedly. “It’s like Hollywood, only more so. Let’s stop.”
He pulled into a lot around the corner on 42nd Place, across from the Hotel Dunbar. On the sidewalk, the faces were every hue of the colored spectrum, and almost everyone was well-dressed, the men in sharp suits, the women in fancy dresses and showy hats. He spotted a few zoot suits, holdovers from the war years, tucked and pleated into an outrageous style. Now that the war was over and material was more available, women’s skirts were longer, a development Horn had often noted with some disappointment. Yet the way the women of Central Avenue wore their clothes had nothing to do with skirt length and everything to do with flair. Free of their day jobs as housemaids or dishwashers, they promenaded on the arms of their men, wearing an attitude that said Look at me.
Horn guided Addie toward the Club Alabam, on the corner
next to the Dunbar. As the biggest and best-known of all the nightclubs on Central, it was a good place to start.
Inside they were shown to a table. Across the dance floor, where he and Iris had danced once, a band was playing How High the Moon. Even on this week night the crowd was large and enthusiastic. Everyone was drinking, and the place had a familiar, heady smell that combined alcohol, pomade, perfume, and cigarette smoke—and the occasional reefer. When the waiter arrived, Addie started to order, but Horn interrupted her. “Planter’s punch for the lady,” he said. “Heavy on the fruit, easy on the rum. For me, bourbon and water.”
She made a face at him but appeared too excited to hold a grudge. “Look over there,” she said, nudging him. “That’s a movie star. Isn’t she?”
“I don’t know,” he said without turning. “Listen, Addie, remember why we’re here.”
“All right.” She sighed, adjusted her veil, and looked intently around the room for a few seconds. Her hat resembled a miniature version of the cap Errol Flynn had worn in The Adventures of Robin Hood, complete with jaunty feather, but on her it looked cute and feminine. “I’m afraid I don’t see him. Does that mean we have to leave?”
“Not right now. You can sample your drink if you want to. But we have a lot of territory to cover.”
Twenty minutes later, they were out on the street again. One by one, they looked in on one spot after another—either going in and sitting down or, if the place was small, looking around from the door. The places came and went—the Down Beat, the Last Word, the Memo, the Oasis, even the lounge in the Dunbar. All pulsed with music and the electricity of the crowd, but none of them had Tommy Dell.
Coming out of a luncheonette, where they had stopped for sandwich and milkshakes, Addie pointed across the street. “How about that one?”
It was a joint called the Dixie Belle, and it looked small and shabby next to its brightly lit neighbors, but Horn was running out of ideas and beginning to regret the excursion. “Why not?”
Inside, the Dixie Belle held a long bar on the right, a small bandstand against the far wall, and no dance floor. The band was a combo fronted by a round-faced man the color of mahogany who stood, head back and eyes closed, working an alto sax. The tune was My Funny Valentine, but Horn took a while to recognize it through the horn man’s playing—complex, introspective, almost tortured. The crowd seemed rapt, but Horn’s ear was used to melody, and he found the music grating.
It was too gloomy to see much of the interior from the door, so they asked for a table. When they were seated, Addie turned to the waiter and said quickly, “I’d like a whisky sour, please. And bourbon and water for the gentleman.”
He gave her a look but decided not to press it. “That’s strange music,” Addie said.
“That’s called bebop, ma’am,” the waiter said. “You like it?”
“Not particularly,” Horn said before she could answer. Satisfied with her small victory over the drink, Addie lit a Pall Mall and grinned at him. Then, suddenly aware of how her veil would interfere with the cigarette, she rolled it back onto her hat. “I almost set fire to this thing,” she said. “Be glad you’re not a woman.”
“Look around,” he told her.
She did so, scanning the room from left to right, then back again. Suddenly she stopped, grabbing his arm. “Over there.”
“Don’t point. Just tell me.”
“Against the wall, in the booth next to the bandstand.”
He turned casually. Four men sat in the booth, two white and two colored, all wearing dark suits. The mustached white man on the far left appeared to be in his mid-thirties, with high cheekbones, a muscular neck and an expressionless face. The man who sat next to him was slim and almost aristocratic, with slicked-back hair and features that just missed Valentino’s. He was talking animatedly to the colored man next to him.
Horn turned his back to the booth. “Hello, Tommy,” he said under his breath.
CHAPTER TEN
“I need to get a closer look,” he said to Addie. “Will you be all right for a while?”
“Sure.” Her eyes shone with excitement. “Let me know if I can help.”
He picked up his drink and headed toward the bar, which was somewhat closer to the booth. On the way, he intercepted their waiter, laid a hand on the man’s shoulder, and said, “Keep an eye on the lady, will you? Get her whatever she needs.”
He found a place at the bar that was about twenty feet from the booth, leaned his back against the scarred wood and pretended to idly gaze around the room. He worked over his rough-hewn plan. His car was a block away. If Tommy left, he’d pick up Addie and exit with her—just another couple having a good time. If Tommy went to another club, they’d follow. There were enough white couples in the Central Avenue clubs tonight to ensure that the two of them would not stand out too much. If their quarry got in a car—Horn prayed it was the oh-so-visible Chrysler convertible—he’d slip her taxi money, make it to his car as quickly as he could, and try to pick up the target on the street before it got too far. The plan was ragged at best, but it was all he could devise. The alternative was to confront the other man, and Horn quickly rejected that notion. With his prison record, even a minor incident could put him in jail.
“Hey there.”
A young waiter holding an empty tray stood next to Horn, looking at him quizzically. He had a wiry build and an amused expression. “I know you,” the man said. “I used to wait tables over at the Alabam. You and your lady—”
“Sure,” Horn said. “I remember you. It’s Gene, isn’t it?”
“That’s me. Eugene. You Mr. Horn. You give me an autograph once.”
“I don’t give autographs any more, Eugene.”
“I know that. It was in all the papers. I don’t mind. You give me some good tips too.”
“I’m afraid I don’t do that any more either.”
“Well, goodbye to you, then,” the man said, swivelling on his heel into a kind of pirouette, tray held aloft, turning gracefully all the way around to finish facing front again, a huge grin on his face. “Just kiddin’. I do a dance routine now, with my brothers. We over at the Lincoln Theater every weekend. I do this job in between. Uh oh—” He peered across the room. “Somebody wavin’ at one of my tables.”
Eugene sped off to take the order. In a moment he was back, waiting as the bartender mixed the drinks. He took them to the table and returned. “So how you been?”
“Not too bad. Could I ask you something? Do you know that white man in the booth over there? Second from the left?”
Eugene looked briefly. “Him? Sure. Don’t know his name, but he’s here a lot, maybe once a week. Sometime for fun, sometime for business, like now. He talk to the Creole—that’s my boss, next to him. He buys, he sells, I don’t know. You don’t ask, know what I mean?”
“Sure.”
“When he on business, he with his friend there, the one look like you don’t want him mad at you. They have one drink, they leave. Other times, he come with a lady, he stay longer.”
Something chilled him. “A lady?” He pulled the class photo of Clea from his coat pocket. “Does she look anything like this?”
Eugene studied it. He whistled. “Pretty. Well, I don’t know. One time, he come here with a blonde lady, but she didn’t look as young as this one. It’s hard to tell. Other times, different ladies. That one you with tonight—” He gestured toward the table where Addie sat. Through the smoky haze, Horn could see her in conversation with a good-looking young colored man, part of a group at the next table. She was laughing.
“What about her?”
“One of his ladies look a little like her.”
“Really?”
“Well, you know. Hard to tell in a place like this, with this light. And she got that veil. Besides, a lot of white ladies look a
like to me.” He made a tentative grin. “That’s a joke.” He looked across the room. “Table wants me.”
Horn nodded, only half hearing. “Thanks, Eugene,” he said, laying four bits on the tray as the man walked away.
He was turning that last bit of information over in his mind when he saw the mustached man get up and move aside to let his companion out. Tommy Dell headed for a curtained doorway just to the left of the bar and went through it. Squinting, Horn could make out a sign on the wall that read Ladies and Gents. He waited. After five minutes, he began to get nervous. He glanced over at Addie, saw she was still happily involved in conversation with the young blade at the next table. She also had a fresh drink. He wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or concerned.
Making an abrupt decision, Horn crossed the room and pushed through the curtain. Inside was a dimly lit corridor about twenty feet long. To his immediate left was a door marked Private. At the far end were three doors. Two faced each other; the third, at the end, stood open, apparently to let in some fresh air. He entered the men’s room, the one on the left, and saw quickly that it was empty. Stepping through the end door, he saw a row of trash cans and found himself in an alley illuminated only by a lamp some fifty feet away, where alley met street.
Tommy Dell stood not far away, leaning against the near wall, hands in his pockets, staring at his shoes. He seemed lost in some kind of reverie, listening to the muted wail of the sax inside the club. The song was different now. It might have been Stella by Starlight, but Horn wouldn’t have put money on it.
He had a second to decide what to do. I’ll be a drunk who wandered out the wrong door. He looked around aimlessly and muttered a few words, as if to himself.
Tommy noticed him. “Hot in there, huh?” he said. “I swear those spades water their drinks. I don’t care, though. It’s fun to come down here, don’t you think?”
“You bet,” Horn said, slurring his words just a little. “Fun place.”
“You like that alto sax?” Tommy wore a snappy-looking pin collar, and the small knot in his tie stuck out above the pin like a flag on the prow of a yacht. On the toes of his well-shined black shoes, the lone streetlight showed as twin pinpoints of light.
Clea's Moon Page 11
