While I Disappear

by Edward Wright

  “I know,” he said. “So what happened?”

  “Well, after a while Rosie came in and spoke to the man at the door, and he took her across the room himself, over to a table where a man was already sitting.”

  “Do you know who he was?”

  “Let me just tell it. He bought her a drink, and they talked for about half an hour, very serious, heads bent over close to each other. Then she got up and left. After a minute, the man waved his arm to a man who was sitting not far away, and that guy came over and sat where Rosie had been. They talked for a few minutes and then left together.”

  “Can you describe them?”

  “Sure I can, even though I’m better with numbers,” she said proudly. “See, I made an effort to remember them. First man was thin and not very tall, with kind of a long face, maybe in his late fifties, hair mostly turning gray and combed back. He was well dressed, and he had a pearl stickpin in his tie. Even though I wasn’t close, I could see the light shining on it no matter which way he sat.”

  “Good. And the other man?”

  “Heavier, not as well dressed. He wasn’t much taller than the other one, but he looked a little bit like the strong man in the carnival, the way his clothes fit him too tight. Not fat, but—”

  “Beefy?”

  “That’s right. Beefy.”

  “Good, Madge. Thanks. That’s—”

  “Don’t you want to know who the other man was?”

  He gaped at her. “You know his name?”

  “Uh-huh.” She grinned broadly, showing her darkened and irregular teeth. “It was just a fluke, how I found out. Nothing happened for a week or so after that night. Then I was visiting with Rose one day, and she went down the hall to use the facilities, and, uh….” A look of embarrassment quickly crossed her face. “I was just looking around, you know? Not much, just a little. I guess I was curious, like people say I always am.”

  How about nosy? he thought. But I stole a picture from her room, so who am I to judge you?

  “She has this bedside table, and in the top drawer was a page torn out of the Evening Herald. Part of a page, really. And there he was.”

  Horn waited. He knew there was no hurrying her.

  “It was a story about this doctor who was on trial for hiring somebody to kill his wife. He’d just been found not guilty, and there was a picture of him and his lawyer outside the courthouse. The lawyer was the man Rosie saw at the Biltmore.”

  She paused for effect. “His name was Jay Lombard. The story said he defends all kinds of people, including gangsters, and usually gets them off.”

  Jay Lombard. Horn thought he might have heard the name before. “Did you mention anything to Rose?”

  She shook her head. “I didn’t want her to know I knew his name,” she said. “If she had wanted me to know, she would have told me. I thought it would be smart just to keep quiet.”

  “Thank you, Madge.” He took her hand awkwardly. “You’ve been a big help.”

  “I’m glad,” she said cheerfully. “Now I think I’ll head down the hill to the market. Saw some pretty good-looking pork chops there the other day, and I want to see what they have today. I usually can’t afford pork chops, but….” She stopped, looking at him expectantly.

  Horn understood. “Madge, I’d be real pleased if you’d allow me to treat you to a couple of pork chops,” he said, pulling out his wallet. “And maybe something on the side?” He handed her a couple of singles.

  “Well, if you insist.” She put the money in her purse. “Do you think this man could have killed Rosie?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Right now I think anybody could have killed her.” He felt a stirring of the old unfocused rage. “I want you to be careful. Don’t walk around after dark, don’t let strangers into your room. You hear me?”

  He could feel the tight-wound tension in his voice, along with the sound of hopelessness. He knew his words were addressed to Rose, who could no longer hear them.

  * * *

  Horn half-sat, half-leaned on a liquor crate in the stock room behind Mad Crow’s bar. Cassie had taken the only comfortable spot, a bottom-sprung easy chair the casino staff used when on their breaks. Since Mad Crow didn’t want music in the club— “Distracts the good people from the business at hand,” he would say—the only noises coming through from the main room were the low murmur of voices, the faint click of chips, and the occasional sound of the croupier calling the spin of the wheel.

  Cassie wore her work outfit of fringed skirt with boots, silk blouse, and cowboy hat pushed back on her head. She had the resentful expression she usually adopted when Horn or her uncle was around, and Horn once again marveled at how she could look so sour and so attractive at the same time. Maybe there’s something fascinating, he thought, about a girl capable of dancing close with a man she likes and sticking a knife in a man she doesn’t.

  “I’ve only got a few minutes,” she said. She pulled heavily on an Old Gold and tapped it nervously in one of the casino’s glass ashtrays balanced uneasily on the arm of the chair.

  “Have you found a place to stay?” he asked her.

  “No, but I will.”

  “What about a job?”

  She shrugged. “I’m looking around. Anything where I won’t have to dress like Dale Evans. And my uncle’s got a couple of ideas too.”

  “You need any money?”

  She looked momentarily surprised at the question. “Not right now,” she said. “I’ve saved part of my salary, whatever I wasn’t spending on booze and wild times.”

  He ignored the sarcasm, and refrained from pointing out that she was still a few months shy of legal drinking age. “Just asking. Reason is, Joseph is an old friend, and even though you two aren’t on speaking terms right now, I know he’s concerned about you. So…I am too. And you need every friend you can get.”

  “I’ve got friends,” she said.

  “Sure you have. I’ve seen some of them. The guy you followed out to the parking lot, for one. That’s a real friendly wallop he gave you. And the two boys out at the Dust Bowl. I’ve got a good idea of the kind of friendship they wanted from you.

  “Cassie….” He searched for the words to reach her. “You go looking for a certain kind of man, that’s what you’ll find. But not all of them are like that.” He stopped and laughed suddenly. “If I’m not careful, I’m going to start preaching. Like my father.”

  “Hmm?” Her thoughts seemed elsewhere.

  “He’s the Reverend John Jacob Horn. He never had any doubt about anything—about who he was, about sin and damnation, faith and salvation. He used to beat me and my little brother whenever we didn’t measure up to his idea of goodness. He’s the reason I left home a long time ago.”

  Cassie nodded and looked thoughtful. He wondered if she was thinking of her own father, and he wondered how many fathers in this world showed a face of violence to their children. “Actually….” She began.

  “What?”

  “Actually, you sounded a little like Rose.”

  “Really?” He wondered if she could see how much that pleased him. “I’d like to hear more about what she told you the night you went over to see her.”

  “It really started earlier, in the bar,” she said. “We didn’t get a chance to talk much there, but she asked me what happened to my face, and when I told her, she got this angry look.

  “Then, when I went to see her, she said I should be careful here in big, bad L.A. But I never got the feeling that she was preaching, just that she cared about what happened to me.” She took a drag on her cigarette, stuck out her lower lip, and exhaled a stream of smoke that climbed lazily toward the ceiling. The expression on her face softened.

  “We must’ve made a picture, her in her worn-out clothes and me with bruises on my face. There we were, sitting around a table getting quietly drunk on Uncle Joseph’s Scotch. And her talking like we were old friends and what happened to me was important to her.”

  “Maybe it was
.”

  “She said whatever I’ve been getting into, she’d already done it, or worse. Told me she’d done some wild things herself, and it was too late to go back and change any of it. I asked her for details, but she just shook her head. She said it wasn’t too late for me. That she could tell I was smart—not many people say that—and I could do almost anything I want to.”

  “I believe that too, Cassie. So does your uncle. If Rose were alive today, she’d be a real friend, the kind you’d want to keep.”

  She inclined her head slightly, as if seeing him from a different perspective. “She said some nice things about you. Are you the reason she called me?”

  “Uh-huh. Joseph too. She liked both of us.”

  “Was she your girlfriend once?”

  “Once, a long time ago.”

  “You think they’ll find out who killed her?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, the disgust audible in his voice. “I’ve talked to the police. They don’t look very hard for people who kill women like Rose.”

  Cassie considered his answer. She knocked another Old Gold out of the pack but held it without reaching for a light. “Are you going to look for him yourself?”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “I’ve heard a few things,” she said quietly. She gestured over her shoulder toward a dark corner of the room. “There’s an old tarp on the floor behind some boxes. Good place to relax when you’re on your break. I was lying down there the other day—I think I must have been hung over and needed a nap. I heard my uncle and another man come in. They sat for a while, talking. The other one sounded like my cousin Billy. You know him; he handles security and tends bar sometime.”

  “Billy Looks Ahead. I know him.”

  “I didn’t get all of it, but it was about some men who came after you one night, and Billy and my uncle went to help, and when it was all over, people were dead.”

  “I’m not sure you heard it right, Cassie.”

  “I heard that part just fine. Is that how you got hurt?”

  She was looking at the place on his neck where the tip of the wound showed above the collar, like a writhing white worm. It looked even worse below the collar, he knew, and the memory swept over him again—the jagged glass twisting its way through flesh and muscle and nerve, the screaming pain…. He fought the urge to raise his hand and rub the place. Instead, he sat there silently, staring stubbornly at her.

  The door opened, and one of the other waitresses looked in. “You about ready, Cassie?” she asked. “I’m dying for a break.”

  “I’ll be right there.”

  “I dropped off three orders for table twelve at the bar,” the waitress said. “Be a sweetie and deliver them, will you?”

  “One more minute.”

  The door closed, and Cassie turned to him. “Who did the killing that night?” she demanded. “Was it you? My uncle? Billy? Or all three of you?”

  “This is not something you need to know, Cassie. Nobody’s going to talk to you about it.”

  “All right.” She placed her hands squarely on the wide arms of the chair. The position made her look immovable. “I want to help you find him.”

  “That’s crazy, Cassie.”

  “No, it’s not. I can help.”

  “If you’re about to tell me you’re doing it for Rose, she’d tell you to take care of yourself.” He thought for a moment. “You blame yourself, don’t you?”

  She shook her head, but after a few seconds her defiant expression melted into something that resembled hurt.

  “She said she was tired and wanted to lie down,” Cassie said almost inaudibly, her gaze fixed somewhere on the floor between them. “I said good night and turned out the light. I tried to lock the door. I did try.” She looked at him as if seeking proof that he believed her. “But it was one of those old locks. You can’t lock it without the key. So I just…closed it….”

  “It’s not your fault,” he said forcefully.

  “Maybe not,” she said. “But I’ve made up my mind.” She glared at him. “I’ll keep your secret. And I’ll show you I’m good for something.”

  Shaking his head, he left her there. As he entered the main room, he looked around for Mad Crow. It was well into the evening, and the casino was full of the subdued noise made by people keyed up to win or lose money on the turn of a card or the spin of a wheel. Card players sat around poker tables covered in dark green baize. Some of the men wore suits, but most were in sportcoats or shirtsleeves. The women were similarly dressed, some elegantly in cocktail dresses, others in slacks and blouses.

  The walls and beamed ceiling were of varnished pine. High up, the bright ceiling lights were lightly fogged over by a haze of cigarette and cigar smoke. The interior smelled of tobacco smoke, alcohol, perfume, and nervous energy.

  He spotted Mad Crow’s bulk and distinctive ponytail across the room. The Indian was standing at one of the poker tables, laughing loudly. The man at the table who had apparently told the joke looked familiar, a second-banana comic actor that Horn thought he might have seen in one of the Hope and Crosby movies. He caught Mad Crow’s eye, and they met in the center of the big room.

  “Man named Jay Lombard,” Horn said. “You know anything about him?”

  Mad Crow took his time answering. “Sure. Why?”

  “I hear Rose knew him.”

  Mad Crow looked around, then pointed with his chin. “Upstairs, okay?”

  They mounted the stairs to Mad Crow’s small, pine-paneled office, which looked through a large window down onto the casino floor. Horn sat in a straight-backed chair, and the Indian perched precariously on the edge of the desk.

  “How would Rose know somebody like that?” Mad Crow asked.

  “Don’t know.” Horn related Madge’s story, then asked, “So what do you know about him?”

  “He’s a shyster lawyer who’s very good at what he does, which is mostly defending trash. He’s also an investor who puts a lot of money around, here and there, some of it in real estate. He likes to bet, too. He’s partial to the horses and the fights, but I hear he’ll bet on almost anything. They say he once bet a fifty on which raindrop would make it to the bottom of the window pane first. He’ll give you odds on whether the next woman through the door is going to be a blonde or a brunette, on how long it’ll take for your cigar ash to break off, that sort of thing.” Although he was only imparting information, Mad Crow’s voice conveyed something else, something darker. Horn decided to wait for the rest of it.

  “I get the picture.”

  “He owns an interest in a few downtown buildings. He also owns some fighters, a piece or a whole, and a couple of thoroughbreds.”

  “Sounds like you two sometimes hang out in the same general neck of the woods.”

  Mad Crow shrugged. “Not really. He’s never been in here. He’d consider this place a two-bit operation. If he wanted to bet on cards, he’d head for one of those clubs where everybody wears tuxes and they have to know your name before they let you in.”

  “Is he at all dangerous?”

  “Dangerous how?”

  “Could he kill somebody?”

  “Rose, you mean.” Mad Crow’s brow furrowed. “You’re wondering if he’s anything like my esteemed silent partner, who goes around waving his cute little nickel-plated popgun in people’s faces.” The Indian didn’t bother to hide his distaste for Mickey Cohen, and Horn knew better than to follow this line of conversation. Mad Crow had resisted giving the Mick a piece of the casino until he had no more options. Their partnership was built purely on mutual convenience, not affection.

  “I’d say no,” Mad Crow went on. “Lawyers aren’t dangerous, unless you’re on the wrong side of the courtroom from them.”

  He stared at the floor. “Still….” His meaty fingers drummed loudly on the scarred edges of the desk, which sometimes doubled as a bottle opener.

  “What are you thinking?”

  “Oh, just things. Like a long time before he got hi
s law degree, there are stories that he ran booze down from Canada back in the Twenties, during Prohibition. I never met a former bootlegger who wasn’t a genuine tough guy.” He looked out the window, as if studying the activity down on the floor. “One other thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I tangled with him once. Or with a friend of his.”

  “Uh-huh?”

  “It was a long time ago, before the war. I was pulling down my regular paycheck at Medallion, wearing my eagle feather and blowing smoke signals and using words of one syllable. You remember.”

  “Sure.”

  “But I was starting to put aside money for this business, borrowing whatever I could. Lombard was one of the people I went to. He turned me down, so I moved on. But I found it harder to get in to see people, and I started hearing that Lombard was using whatever influence he had to close doors on me. I asked around, and I learned he owned a small piece of the Rex, the old gambling ship that used to be anchored off Santa Monica. He didn’t want the competition from me.”

  “A business decision.”

  “Right. I ran into him at some watering hole out on Wilshire—this was back when I still had a serious night life, as I believe you also did. I had a few drinks. And I made the mistake of calling him out. Guess I forgot about this hunk of granite he travels around with—”

  “Bad character?”

  Mad Crow nodded. “Willie something or other. Strongest son of a bitch I’ve ever met,” he said soberly. “He got a hammerlock on me. I grabbed hold of a bottle, and I recall hitting him about the head and ears and anything else I could find, and he didn’t seem to feel any of it. I think he would have broken my neck if Lombard hadn’t called him off. And only because there was a crowd. Anyway, I hear those two still travel together, sort of a Mutt and Jeff act.” His lips formed a thin smile. “So does this answer your question?”