Dancing in the Dark Page 4

  “See,” said Shelly triumphantly. “She’s fine.”

  “I’ve got to go, Shel,” I said.

  “Tell Violet I need her in here.”

  In the reception room of Minck and Peters, I told Violet that the good dentist needed her in surgery. Violet inched her way from behind her desk and through the narrow space between it and the wall.

  “I’ll call later,” I said.

  She popped out from the side of the desk and said, “Ortiz, and it won’t go the distance.”

  I was out the door and into the hallway outside our office. Still plenty of time, though I couldn’t check it on a reliable watch. Six floors below, the voices of two men were echoing loud and dirty. I moved along the railing toward the stairs and looked down. The bald head and the burly body told me that one of the three men below was the Farraday’s owner, Jeremy Butler. I didn’t recognize the two men with him, at least not from this angle, but they were big and standing close to Jeremy.

  I started down the stairs, unable to sort the words of anger from their echo.

  Jeremy is pushing sixty-five, or maybe pulling it. He’s an ex-wrestler who saved his money and wound up with a second-rate office building and some scattered third-rate apartment buildings. He was now a landlord with time to devote to his passion—poetry—and to his family, which included his wife, the former Alice Pallis, who nearly matched Jeremy in size and strength, and their one-year-old daughter, Natasha, a curly-haired beauty who bore no resemblance to either of her parents.

  By the time I made it down to the lobby, I could see the two men shouting in Jeremy’s face. One was young, no more than thirty. Giving him the benefit of the doubt he looked a little like a crazed John Garfield. The other was in his forties and looked a little like a pig. The pig held something in his right hand, something metal.

  “You’ll pay,” the older one was saying. “You hear me?”

  Jeremy didn’t answer. He looked from one to the other with his hands at his sides.

  “Everybody’s paying, up and down the street,” the younger one shouted.

  “I will advise them not to do so,” Jeremy said softly.

  “There are bad people around the city,” the older one said. “Vandals. People who destroy other people’s property for no reason. They break windows and … I’ve told you this already. You’re not listening.”

  I paused at the bottom step, fairly sure they couldn’t see me. Then I saw that the object in the older guy’s hand was a small crowbar. I took a step out of the shadows. The younger one spotted me and nudged his partner, who looked toward me.

  “You a cop?” he asked cautiously.

  “No,” I said.

  “Then stay out of this,” he warned, holding up the crowbar. “This is a business discussion with the old man.”

  “I was just going to ask for the time,” I said.

  “It’s eleven-twenty, Toby,” Jeremy said.

  The crowbar came up in a streak. So did Jeremy’s left hand. He grabbed the older guy’s wrist and twisted. The one who looked like John Garfield started to throw a punch. Jeremy swooped the arm he was holding right at the younger guy, and the crowbar, still in the hand of the pig, hit John Garfield in the face. The younger guy staggered back with a yell, his hands covering his eyes. Jeremy let go of the wrist of the other man, who went down on his knees in agony. The crowbar clattered to the floor and the man’s wrist hung limp and possibly broken.

  I watched while Jeremy advanced on the man who had taken the crowbar across his face, now backed up against the wall. He took his hands down, blood streaming from his nose, a look of panic in his eyes.

  “Don’t touch your nose,” Jeremy said, reaching up for the man’s face. “This will hurt but the bone will be back in place, and if you don’t touch it, it will heal and look quite natural.”

  Before the man could mount a protest, Jeremy put his left hand behind the man’s head and pinched his nose between the thumb and fingers of his right hand. The man squirmed, let out an anguished “Ahhhhhh,” and sank to the floor.

  Jeremy turned to the man with the injured wrist, who was trying to stand.

  “Hey, enough,” the man said. “Me and Twines are just trying to make a living here.”

  Jeremy moved toward him.

  “The truth is nobody on the block gave us money,” the man said. “The truth is we’re no damn good at this and getting pretty goddamn frustrated. Twines is my sister’s kid. How am I gonna explain his broken nose?”

  Jeremy didn’t answer. He grabbed the man’s shoulder and held up the damaged arm. The man tried to pull away.

  “It’s not broken,” Jeremy said. “Sprained wrist. Go.”

  “I want my crowbar.”

  “I suggest you listen to the man,” I said.

  The man with the sprained wrist winced his way to his nephew, who was trying to get up from his knees. He put his good arm around Twines and said, “This is a goddamn hard life, let me tell you.”

  “Go, now,” Jeremy said gently.

  The two men slouched to the door, went into the outer lobby, and out onto Hoover in search of a new line of work.

  “This is no longer a safe neighborhood,” Jeremy said as he bent to pick up the crowbar.

  “It’s not a safe world,” I added.

  “I have a wife and child,” he said, looking around the vast lobby of his office building and up toward the offices on the eighth floor he had converted to a rambling apartment for his family.

  “Might be a good idea to … I’m on my way to a real-estate dealer I know. You want me to? …”

  “No, thank you, Toby,” he said, surveying the trail of blood from Twines’s nose. “I have other property.”

  “I’m late, Jeremy,” I said.

  “If you have some time later, I have a new poem.”

  “Later, promise,” I said, en route to the door.

  It was still a good day.

  I went out the rear exit of the Farraday and headed for my car. The open lot was covered with gravel; trash, which Jeremy cleaned up once a week, thrown from the windows of the Farraday; and the wreckage of two abandoned cars in which, depending on the season, a homeless alcoholic or two resided. This season’s resident of the alley was Vince. Vince was standing in front of my Crosley. I had paid Vince a quarter, the going rate, for watching my car. The possible dangers to my car were theft, stolen tires or hubcaps, broken windows, and Vince.

  Vince looked somewhere near sixty but was probably closer to forty-five. He had a reasonably clean-shaven face with a few nicks and healing cuts. I had given him a Gillette razor, a pack of Blue blades, two of my old shirts, an antique pair of pants I found in the back of my closet, and a pair of university oxfords that had always pinched my toes. I had also suggested to him that he put on the clothes, shave, and make the rounds of the local restaurants in search of a pearl-diving job.

  It had worked for the last keeper of the alley.

  Vince had solemnly promised he would make the rounds, but when it came to actually going into a diner and asking to see the boss, it was too much for him, or so he had told me with a shrug.

  “A man’s nature is a man’s nature,” Vince had said with a sigh.

  Vince said he had been a history teacher in a high school in Chicago until he fell or was pushed down a school stairway between classes. The world had gone blurry, and only a drink or twenty could make it seem clear again. He had been fired in the middle of a semester and, since he had no family, Vince had packed his bag, got into his car, and driven out in search of a cave or hole to hide in. That, Vince said, was “five or six or eight years ago, certainly long before this war and long after the last one.”

  I handed Vince two quarters and said thanks.

  He looked at the two quarters and handed one back to me.

  “My fee was a quarter,” he said. “This is business, not charity.”

  “You might want to raise your rates a little,” I suggested, opening the Crosley’s door. “Prices
are going up everywhere. I think your customers would understand.”

  “You are my only customer,” Vince said, pocketing the quarter in what used to be my pants. “Now, if you want to put me on an exclusive retainer and continue to pay at the current rate …”

  I turned awkwardly in my seat, fished a dollar bill from my wallet, and handed it to him. It followed the quarter into his pocket.

  “We should have a written contract,” Vince said.

  “Write it up. I’ll sign it.”

  I closed the door, waved good-bye, turned on the radio, and drove out of the alley. I took Main the few blocks to Washington, where I made a right turn and went straight to Highland.

  Morton Downey sang me down the street with Raymond Paige’s Orchestra backing him up. Downey finished a tearful chorus of “Danny Boy” and then tried to sell me some Coca-Cola. Pepsi’s my drink and, once in a while, a beer or two or three, but I’d almost cried at the end of “Danny Boy,” so I promised Morton I’d have a Coke with lunch.

  I had no trouble finding a parking space on Fifth and I walked into Roth’s with about two minutes to spare, according to the clock on the wall. It was lunchtime for the insurance companies, lawyers’ firms, shopkeepers, and clerks in the neighborhood. The place was noisy, crowded, and smelled of hot pastrami.

  Anne sat at a small table near the kitchen door. Her hands were folded in front of her. Her eyes met mine. No smile. All business. Not what I wanted to see. I weaved my way through the tables, pulled out a chair across from Anne, and sat. She was wearing a brown twill suit, and she had lost some weight. She was dark and more beautiful and serious than I had remembered.

  “Thanks for coming, Toby,” she said.

  A fizzing glass of dark liquid sat in front of me, a cup of coffee in front of Anne.

  “My pleasure,” I said, meaning it.

  “I ordered you a Pepsi,” she said, gesturing at the drink before me.

  “Thanks,” I said, making a note to keep my Coke pledge to Morton Downey in the very near future.

  “I ordered you a pastrami on rye with ketchup,” she said. “If you …”

  “Sounds perfect,” I said over the clatter of trays and dishes and the ramble of voices around us.

  “First,” Anne said, looking at me with her warm brown eyes, “I want to thank you for keeping your promise.”

  I shrugged and drank my Pepsi.

  About six months ago, give or take an hour, I had promised Anne I would stop dropping in at her apartment at all hours of the day or night, would not call her unless I had a real emergency, and would stop sending her poetry which, she said, was “obviously not written by you.” I had, with the agony of a four-year-old who can’t sit still for dinner, stayed away.

  “You’re looking good, Toby.”

  “You’re looking beautiful, Anne.”

  “Thank you.”

  A skinny waitress in a wilting Betty Crocker of a uniform plunked our lunches in front of us and hurried away. Anne had vegetable soup and a salad. My hot pastrami came with a stack of fries. I should have been happy, but I knew something was about to be served that I wouldn’t like. I took a bite of the sandwich. It was hot and piled high with thin slices of spiced meat. It didn’t taste half bad for Los Angeles pastrami.

  “How are Phil and …” Anne said after a nibble of lettuce.

  “My brother is fine,” I interrupted. “His wife and kids are fine. Sheldon Minck is fine. I’ve got about four hundred dollars. My back is holding up well. I’m seeing the cashier at Levy’s. Her name is Carmen. She reminds me of you, without the smarts. I’m still in the boardinghouse. I still go to the fights when I can and …”

  It was her turn to interrupt.

  “Enough,” Anne said, putting down her fork and meeting my eyes.

  I took a determined third bite of my sandwich and washed it down with Pepsi.

  “I’m going to get married,” she said.

  “Congratulations,” I said. “Anyone I know?”

  “You’ve seen him,” she said, watching me eat. “I sold him a house. He made me laugh.”

  That hurt more than the news that Anne was getting married. I had made her smile a few dozen times when we were married, but no laughs. And I was sure there had been no laughs with her second husband, Ralph.

  “Open the envelope and read the winner’s name,” I said between furious attacks on phase two of the sandwich.

  “Preston Stewart,” she said.

  I didn’t feel like eating any more. Preston Stewart was a contract player at M-G-M. Preston Stewart had been in about two-dozen movies and had starred in two low-budget ones, one a Western, the other a melodrama. He was blond, good-looking with lots of teeth, and, worst of all, he had to be a good ten years younger than Anne.

  “Toby? Say something.”

  “I heard on the radio that the Chinese have begun translating the Encyclopedia Britannica. News came straight from Chungking. Middle of a war with Japs running all over their country and they’re translating an encyclopedia. You can’t beat people like that. You can only kill them.”

  “Toby, please,” she said, gently but firmly.

  “What am I supposed to say? I said congratulations. I love you. I want you back. I’m never going to get you. You’re marrying a kid movie actor with … with teeth, lots of teeth, big white ones. And he can make you laugh.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, pushing her salad around with her fork, not eating.

  “And that’s why you called me?”

  “I thought I should tell you face to face,” she said.

  The skinny waitress was back.

  “Everything okay?” she asked, not much caring and reaching for my empty plate. The fries were gone. I had eaten them without knowing it.

  “Fine,” I said.

  “Coffee?”

  “Another Pepsi,” I said.

  “Just ran out of Pepsi. Coke or Royal Crown.”

  “Coke,” I said.

  “Coffee,” Anne said, looking at her watch. “Black.”

  The waitress nodded and headed through the door to the kitchen.

  “Would you like to know about Preston? It might make it easier if you knew what a …”

  “No,” I said, holding up a hand. “I don’t want to know how kind, loving, rich, and funny he is. Call me a sore loser. Call me childish, which you’ve been known to do. My guess is I’ll avoid Preston Stewart movies for a year and then I’ll start going to all of them, looking for signs of decay or melting, wondering how you two hit it off in bed and if he’s still keeping you laughing down on the beach in your tans.”

  “I didn’t think you’d be this bitter,” Anne said.

  “You caught me by surprise. I didn’t have time to fake it or tell a bad joke or two. The truth just came out.”

  The waitress was back with my Coke and Anne’s coffee. She put the check in front of me. Anne reached over the table for it.

  “I invited you to lunch,” she said.

  “Do me a favor,” I said. “Let me come out of this with a little dignity. The bill’s only two bucks and change.”

  Anne sat back, looked at her coffee, tucked away a wisp of hair behind her left ear, and looked back at me.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “You deserve a break. I hope Preston Stewart is it.”

  “Thanks, Toby,” she said.

  “When’s the wedding?”

  “Soon. When … if you ever feel better about this, I’d like you to meet Press.”

  “One condition,” I said. “I don’t have to call him Press.”

  Anne almost smiled.

  “His real name is Asher Cahn.”

  I nodded and finished my Coke. Anne hadn’t touched her coffee.

  “Thanks for caring enough to tell me face to face,” I said, picking up the check.

  “I don’t think it would be a good idea to invite you to the wedding, Toby.”

  “It would be a very bad idea.”

  Anne dabbed at the corners
of her mouth with her napkin and rose. So did I.

  “I’m a little late,” she said. “I’ve got to hurry.”

  I nodded and got up.

  Anne came around the table, touched my hand, and kissed my cheek. I think she was crying. At least I like to think there was a tear or two. Then she was gone.

  I left a big tip and was turning toward the cash register when the skinny waitress appeared, picked up the tip, and said, “She dump ya?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Figures. She didn’t eat and you leave a big tip.”

  “You should be a detective,” I said.

  “Helps to have a little knowledge of human nature in this job,” she said. “Go get a little drunk. I do when I get dumped.”

  “I don’t drink,” I said.

  She shrugged and answered the upheld hand of a distant customer.

  Less than twenty minutes later I was at the Y.M.C.A. downtown on Hope Street. I looked for Doc Hodgdon or someone else for a handball game. No luck. So I got my stiff light gloves from my locker, loosened them up, and attacked the heavy punching bag in the corner of the gym, near an old guy with dyed red hair who was steadily shooting free throws.

  After twenty minutes of punching and a shower, I felt tired and a little better. There was a Loew’s theater a few blocks from the Y. I walked over and saw a March of Time about the New Canada and They Got Me Covered with Bob Hope. It was only a little after four when I got out and closed my eyes against the afternoon sun.

  I got in my car and drove to the Roxy, where I saw He’s My Guy with Joan Davis, Dick Foran, and the Mills Brothers. There was also a musical short with Borrah Minevitch’s Original Harmonica Rascals. I remember the little guy, Johnny Puleo, wearing cowboy chaps and trying to muscle his way into the act. That’s all I remember of what I had seen in the dark that day. Joan Davis and Bob Hope had gotten a few smiles out of me but that was it.

  The sun was still up but not as bright and there was a chill in the air. I headed home. It was about dinnertime, but I wasn’t hungry.

  I found a space on Heliotrope about half a block down from Mrs. Plaut’s boardinghouse, walked down the street and up the three steps of the white wooden porch.

  Mrs. Plaut was just inside the screen door waiting for me, arms folded across her tiny twig of a body, clutching what looked like a tattered ream of paper to her slender bosom. Mrs. Plaut was somewhere between seventy-five and ninety, with the constitution of Primo Camera and the energy of Ray Bolger. Her hearing had long ago begun to fail her, but she more than made up for it with eyesight and determination.