The Rib From Which I Remake the World

by Ed Kurtz

  “I dunno,” she whispered back, looking a little annoyed to have been pulled out of the picture show in her head. “Hide out ’til it’s time, I guess.”

  “That’ll be more than an hour, though.”

  “Well, you can go on home if you want to, Scooter Carew. I aim to see what the fuss is about.”

  She would think him a coward if he left. He had to stay, there was no two ways about it. Maybe if he had brought a comic book to read in the stall for the duration, he thought, it wouldn’t be so bad. There was an issue of USA Comics on the trunk at the foot of his bed at that very moment; it had Captain America on the cover, jumping on the wing of some Jap’s warplane. He wanted to kick himself for not bringing it along. He just hoped to God it would all be worth the trouble and the danger and relentless boredom.

  He swallowed hard and leaned over again to tell her it was all right, he would stay with her, but the hand on his shoulder put that kibosh on that.

  “No talking during the performance, please.”

  “I’m sorry,” he whimpered. He looked up at the ghostly white face of the beautiful nurse, how it seemed to fade in and out of existence in the changing light from the big screen.

  “If you have something to say,” she reprimanded him, “you can come out to the lobby and say it to me.”

  She smiled cruelly. Scooter withered.

  “It won’t happen again, ma’am,” he croaked. “I’m sorry.”

  The hand on his shoulder squeezed hard enough to hurt.

  “Give me your hand,” she said. He gaped, wondering if Margie was watching this, why she wasn’t saying or doing anything. He held out his hand, palm up, and the nurse pressed a pair of stiff pasteboard squares into it.

  “If I catch you gabbing again, I’ll take them away,” she warned.

  And with that, she vanished back into the darkness of the auditorium.

  Again, Scooter waited a moment for the screen to brighten up, at which point he examined the strange artifacts in his hand.

  They were tickets to the midnight show.

  They passed the bank a block away from the Palace Theater. The clock jutting from the brickwork claimed it was half past ten. Jojo parked on the street and flicked one of Russ’s cigarettes out of the window. Theodora looked at him, her face failing miserably at masking her apprehension. He got out and slammed the door. She followed suit.

  “Where does he normally go when the picture’s on?” he asked.

  “I don’t really know. His office, I suppose. He certainly doesn’t come home.”

  He glanced across the street at the Starlight. Betty was making the rounds with a pot of sludgy coffee, the spring in her step long gone after several hours on shift. He didn’t see Russ Cavanaugh in there.

  “Let’s check his office, then.”

  Side by side they approached the doors, and Jojo yanked on one of the big brass handles. It did not budge. A girl with a gaudy updo that had big curls and loose bangs smoked a cigarette by the concession counter, a cigarette tray with straps unloaded beside her. He banged on the glass and she exhaled lazily in lieu of reply.

  “Ugh,” Theodora moaned. “I can’t quite recall her name, but that’s the little hussy Russ . . . well, you know.”

  Jojo cranked his mouth to one side—he could believe it. The cigarette girl couldn’t have been a day over twenty-one and she wasn’t exactly hard on the eyes, her attention-grabbing hairdo notwithstanding. He banged on the glass again.

  “No more shows, buster,” the girl called out. “Come back tomorrow.”

  “We’re not here for the show, we’re here to see your boss.”

  The girl laughed a blue-grey cloud. “That right? He expecting you?”

  “This here’s his wife, wise-ass.”

  Her eyes popped as she shot a hard look at Theodora. She tamped her smoke out in a hurry and rushed over to unlock the doors.

  “Gee, I’m sorry Mrs. Cavanaugh. I didn’t realize . . .”

  “Can it,” Theodora growled.

  The girl shut up and Jojo grinned. He was glad to see the woman had some grit to her, after all. Theodora pointed across the lobby to a door marked manager. He wondered if that was where the boss normally stuck it to the rude cigarette girl, or if they were brazen enough to get a room someplace, signing in as Mr. and Mrs. John Smith or some such jazz. He’d have tossed the old letch out on his ass if he tried that shit with him. He made a beeline for the office door with the boss’s wife in tow.

  “He’s not in his office,” the cigarette girl squeaked.

  Jojo flipped around and stared her down.

  “How about telling us where he is, then.”

  She stabbed a trembling finger at one of the two doors behind the snack counter, the one marked projection—employees only.

  “Hey,” she said, her eyes getting wet. “Am I going to go to jail?”

  “What for?”

  “You’re a cop, ain’tcha?”

  “What if I was?”

  The girl gave Theodora a pleading glance, and Jojo caught on: the poor little tramp thought the boss’s old lady had gone and called the cops on an adultery charge.

  “This is a . . . private matter,” he added quickly, hoping to ease her up a little. The fact was he didn’t want anything to do with marital squabbles. All Jojo Walker wanted was to figure out how a guy got impossibly killed and why nobody seemed anywhere near as bothered about it as he was. “Is it locked?”

  The girl shook her head, and the motion shook loose the tears in her eyes. He studied her for a moment, thinking she wasn’t Sarah, but she was in Sarah’s shoes. The other woman. He hoped Theodora had the good sense to just up and leave the bastard, let the girl get on with her life and learn from her mistakes. Let everybody be bitter but not necessarily broken beyond repair. Or dead.

  He twisted the doorknob and opened the door to reveal a dark stairwell going up.

  “Anybody else up there?”

  “The projectionist, of course. Chip’s his name. And Mr. Davis, I think.”

  “Barker Davis, you mean?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Jojo had to laugh at the “sir.” He never disabused her of the notion that he was a cop.

  “Marvellous,” he said. “It’s about time I met this fella.”

  He subconsciously touched his side to feel the hard bulge under his jacket. To Theodora, he said, “Shall we?” She stuck close behind him as he climbed the steps, hoping to Christ he didn’t walk into a dim projection booth painted with fresh blood and strewn with bits and pieces of Chip.

  As it turned out, he did find Chip, though in one, fully functional piece. The kid was changing out a reel and didn’t bother to look up to see who was invading his workspace. The room was hot and cramped with film canisters and sundry equipment that was utterly foreign to Jojo. The walls were papered with torn one-sheets from previous engagements, a few of which Jojo had attended. There was a cigarette burning in a glass ashtray in the little projection window.

  No one else was in evidence. Jojo waited until Chip was finished with the reel before putting the lean on him.

  “You must be Chip.”

  “That’s what they call me.” The kid popped the cigarette back in his mouth and looked up with bored disinterest.

  “The girl downstairs said your boss was up here. Him and a certain Mr. Barker.”

  “The girl downstairs is mistaken.”

  “So they never came up here?”

  “Did I say that? I thought I said they weren’t here now.”

  “So you did.”

  “All right, then. So what’s the problem?”

  Everyone was being a smart-ass, Jojo noted. He frowned deeply and took a step forward. The ceiling was low and the sex picture in the auditorium murmured loudly below.

  “Cavanaugh and Barker w
ere here, then they left—is that is?”

  “You got it, champ.”

  “My name’s George Walker, and you can call me Mr. Walker,” Jojo said acridly. “Call me champ again and I’ll escort you down to the auditorium the hard way.”

  He jabbed a thumb at the window and Chip sat up straight. The kid got the point.

  “I didn’t mean nothing, Mr. Walker. Honest.”

  “That’s better.”

  Theodora stepped out from Jojo’s cover. “Where’d he go, Chip?”

  “Muh . . . Mrs. Cavanaugh?”

  “I’d answer the lady’s question, champ.”

  Chip looked from Jojo to Theodora and then back to Jojo again.

  “I think they went back to wherever Mr. Barker is staying.”

  “And where’s that?”

  “I don’t know. Swear to God, I’ve no idea.”

  “Which leaves us no place,” Theodora said.

  “Look,” Chip began, lowering his voice and adopting a mask of discomfort. “That man . . .”

  “Who, Davis?”

  “He’s . . . well, he’s queer.”

  “Queer how?”

  “I’m not sure I know how to explain it. One thing is he’s got some kind of grip on Mr. Cavanaugh. And not just him, neither—others, too. He says jump and they ask how high, that sort of thing. He’s a real lively sort of fellow, but Mr. Cavanaugh don’t jump for nobody.”

  “Except for Barker Davis,” Jojo said.

  “Except for him. Anybody would, I mean if Davis wanted it that way. I don’t even look him in the eyes.”

  “Why’s that? What’s with his eyes?”

  “It’s when he looks at you—really looks at you. His eyes lock onto you, like. You ought to see that guy they’ve got doing the doctor spiel now. He’s a real head case, this guy. All far away, like he can’t see or hear anything around him until Davis—or that creepy nurse—tells him to. He does the bit better than the last guy . . .”

  “. . . who got dead in my hotel,” Jojo interrupted.

  “Yeah, I heard about that.”

  “Tell me about the nurse.”

  “A real knockout; I reckon she’s a city girl. New York, maybe, or at least Memphis. Colder than a fish’s belly in February, though. Half the fellas come in here crawl all over each other just to say hello to her, but they’d be smarter not to. That one’s lethal, you ask me.”

  “Sounds about right,” Jojo said to Theodora. “I’ve met this broad. She’s staying at the hotel with the rest of them.”

  “Except Barker Davis,” she corrected him.

  “I talked to her right after I found the body. She seemed . . . inconvenienced by it. Talk about head cases.”

  “Far as I can tell,” Chip continued, “she’s his Man Friday. She’s the one who gives the orders when Davis ain’t around, and he really ain’t around that much. She also works the room during the doctor’s big speech, passing out tickets to the midnight show. She’s cagey as hell about it, but you can see everything from up here.”

  “Who gets invited? What are the qualifications?”

  “That I don’t know. Young people, mostly. Not a whole lot of ladies, though some. Some older folks, too. If there’s fifteen to a row? Let’s see . . . I’d reckon about two to a row get the tickets from her.”

  “And I presume you’ve seen the secret show?”

  Chip nodded.

  “Stag film?” Jojo pressed.

  “Not at all. As secretive as they are about it, you’d think that or worse, but the truth is it’s just a hokey silent film about magic. It doesn’t run but two reels, and it’s nothing but some goofy looking magician with a black beard and a top hat doing a bunch of dumb stunts with camera tricks to make it look good.”

  Jojo and Theodora looked at one another questioningly. She said, “Curiouser and curiouser.”

  “What’s Russ got to do with magic?” he asked her.

  “Not a thing. Nothing I know of, at any rate.”

  “Nothing apart from voodoo dolls in his pocket, anyway.”

  She visibly shuddered.

  “It’s the same thing every night?” he asked Chip.

  “It’s only been the two nights so far, but yeah. To be honest, I was pretty damn curious last night—excuse my language, ma’am—but I checked out after about ten minutes. It was silly. Kids’ stuff.”

  “So as far as you know it could be something else altogether after those first ten minutes.”

  “No, sir. I have to change the reel and then shut everything down. It’d be some coincidence if the film was only something crazy when I wasn’t looking.”

  “I guess it would,” Jojo agreed.

  “I’m telling you, it’s just organ music and some old timey magician pretending to raise the dead and float in the air, stuff like that.”

  Jojo ran his fingers across his brow to wipe the sweat away and felt the coarse stubble coming up there. He needed a shave in the worst way, but there wasn’t time for that now.

  “Anything with dolls that you saw?”

  “Dolls?”

  “Do you know what a voodoo doll is?”

  “I think so. But no, nothing like that. Not that I saw.”

  “Fine. You did fine, Chip.”

  Chip smiled tentatively. “Sorry about the whole ‘champ’ thing, Mr. Walker.”

  “Forget it, kid. And call me Jojo.”

  He shook the projectionist’s hand and ushered Theodora for the door to the stairs.

  “Let’s go see about that nurse.”

  They came out of the dark stairwell and into a bustling crowd. The audience was mostly breaking up and hitting the street, disappearing down both sides of the sidewalk or climbing into chrome jalopies. Jojo scanned the throng, looking for faces either familiar or strange. Most were familiar, all of them strange in their way. He didn’t know what to look for. As far as he could tell, everybody looked off most of the time.

  Taking Theodora by the hand, he made his way into the crowd. From the centre of the lobby he had a straight shot through the open doors leading to the auditorium. A dozen or so people remained sitting in their seat. Special ticket holders, he assumed.

  The nurse moved among them.

  He said, “Come on” and gave Theodora’s arm a tug. Along the way, faces turned toward him, looks of recognition and looks of shock. That’s the guy, some were telling themselves. What’s wrong with his face? others wondered. He could practically read their minds, though he didn’t have to. He ignored them all and pushed on to the auditorium.

  A blast of cold air hit him as he passed the doors. He paused long enough to savour it when a man in a doctor’s getup sidestepped him and droned, “Tickets?”

  It was Jake. Jojo gaped.

  “New job?” he asked.

  “Tickets?”

  “Normally a body lets his old boss know when he means to move onto another gig, you know. Mr. Hibbs is gonna give me an earful.”

  “Tickets?”

  His brow descending into a dark shelf over his eyes, Jojo went quiet and looked the ex-clerk over. His heavily-lidded eyes were pink and unfocused, the skin on his face drawn and greyish. He looked to Jojo like a man who had been drinking for two days straight and sleeping none of it.

  Someone else who asked Barker Davis “how high?”

  “You don’t look too good, pal,” he told Jake.

  Beside him, Theodora whispered, “Who is he, Jojo?”

  “Used to sit in the cashier’s cage at the hotel. Now I guess he’s Davis’ doctor.” He swallowed and fixed his eyes on Jake’s. “The last one ended up in five nasty pieces in his hotel room. You ready for that, Jake?”

  Jake said, “Tickets?”

  Jojo frowned. “Sure, pal.”

  He withdrew the wallet from his pock
et and thumbed through it, pulling two pasteboard squares from within and depositing them in Jake’s waiting palm.

  Jake said, “Thank you please enjoy the show.” All the words mashed together with little inflection and no sign that he knew what he was saying. After that, he just froze up like an automaton that had done its job and shut down for the night. Jojo nodded and escorted Theodora to the aisle.

  “Where in the world did you get those tickets?” she whispered.

  “Oaklawn,” he said. “Mar-Kell and Ocean Wave.”

  “What are those?”

  “A couple of slowpoke horses that got us in.”

  He could tell she didn’t follow, but she let it go. Instead, she asked about Jake.

  “What do you think happened to him?”

  “I don’t know. He’s wiped out. I’ve seen guys on hard narcotics get like that, or guys who get shell-shocked, but not overnight.”

  “Something Barker Davis did,” she inferred.

  “All I know is the idea of a guy dying like Pete Chappell did because of a magic doll is seeming a little less nuts all the time.”

  He led the way to their seats—eighth row centre, the way he used to like it. Sitting two rows ahead of them and off to the left was Dean Mortimer. Jojo eyed the deputy, hoping he would go on being ignorant of Jojo’s presence behind him. The guy was a firecracker with bad feelings toward the man whose job he took. Jojo couldn’t see why—his fuck-up gave Dean a good position. He reckoned the deputy ought to be grateful, friendly even, but it just didn’t work out that way. He slouched in his seat and scanned the rest of the sparse group. There was one other person he recognized, apart from Jake and the nurse, and that was Georgia May Bagby.

  “The hell you doing here, Georgia?” he muttered under his breath.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  The clamour from the lobby was petering out. No one among those seated spoke, not even so much as a whisper. Theodora squeezed Jojo’s arm.

  “I’m not so sure this is a good idea,” she said.

  “Maybe you should go,” he said. “Take Dunn’s truck and head on home.”