Читать книгу Reason To Kill - Andy Weinberger - Страница 12

Chapter 5

THE NEXT AFTERNOON a woman named Cynthia from Malloy’s office calls. Well, actually, she doesn’t say she’s from Malloy’s office. I don’t recognize the phone number, so she could be calling from Mars. All she says is that she has some information that a Mr. William Malloy asked her to pass along. He also asked that I please be very discreet with what she’s about to tell me. Hey, discretion is my middle name, I say. That’s swell, she answers. That was a joke, I say. Ha, ha, she goes. Though she doesn’t come right out and declare it, there’s something in her voice and manner that shouts Texas at me. Or maybe it’s just that she seems way too chirpy and polite for the job she’s in, and I wonder how many months she’ll last in a severely buttoned-down labyrinth like the LAPD. They pull in all kinds of people to work there, I suppose, and if they pass the lie detector test and all the other psychological hoops they put them through, hell, what can you do? But even so, Cynthia is an odd bird.

David P. Markowitz, she says, was incarcerated in a cell in Tijuana over the weekend and charged with public intoxication. This is nothing to be concerned about, however. The good news, she tells me, is that he has paid his debt to society, and according to the Mexican authorities has now been released on his own recognizance. She also thinks I’d be interested to know that someone named Arthur J. Kaplan took an 11:05 p.m. United Airlines flight to John F. Kennedy three nights earlier, and that last night someone with that name departed John F. Kennedy for LAX. We assume it’s the same individual, she says, but you ought to bear in mind that there is a whole heap of Kaplans in the phone book. That’s probably so, I say. As to Pincus Bleistiff, she continues, he has no criminal past, although, you know, nobody’s perfect and maybe there were a few vehicular violations over the last forty years. She thought these might have been expunged from his record, but if I would like her to dig a little deeper and tell me what they were, she would be happy to double-check with Mr. Malloy and see what he says.

“No, that’s okay,” I tell her. “You’ve been a big help, Cynthia. Please give my regards to the lieutenant. Er, I mean Bill.”

“I certainly will,” she says. “Oh, and by the way, I couldn’t help but notice that the first two gentlemen you inquired about, Mr. Markowitz and Mr. Kaplan, are members of a band here in town. They’re called Dark Dreidel. Strange name, right? That’s what I thought, too. Well, it turns out that a dreidel is a little top—you spin it—and Jews, I guess, play some kind of gambling game with them during Hanukkah.”

“Really?” I say. “How very peculiar.”

And then before she hangs up, she gives me the dates and places the band will be playing this month, just in case I’d like to see what they sound like.

I jot them down on a yellow legal pad in front of the phone, along with the name CYNTHIA in big block letters.

Omar has a serious date with Lourdes the night I want to go check out the band, so I end up sitting alone in a corner, nursing a cardboard cup of scalding hot and barely drinkable coffee at a white-linen-table at the Jewish Community Center on Olympic. I’ve been here before, it seems to me, although it doesn’t matter, and it could easily have been a dozen other places like this. I glance around at all the shiny faces. Tonight’s event is Simcha Torah, the annual celebration of the Torah, and even though it’s early, the bright lights are bearing down overhead, and the social hall is already starting to feel crowded. A few gray old men in ill-fitting suits are bending over, setting up metal folding chairs around the perimeter, and ladies of a certain age are toting trays of gefilte fish and challah and cheap red wine in little plastic shot glasses to some prearranged locations. Near the entrance there’s a table with store-bought cookies and fruit for the kids, some of whom have already started to zero in on it. The wine disappears behind a golden curtain, which is a good thing, in my opinion. Because you’d have to drink several bottles’ worth to do any damage, and it’s so tasteless, who the hell would want to? The room is full of happy families with young cherubic children wandering around under their parents’ watchful eyes. I notice several hand-knit, multicolored yarmulkes and a few dazzling and irreverent prayer shawls that would have caused my grandparents from the Old Country to frown. That was then, I think; this is now. There is a parquet dance floor in front of a slightly raised stage, and six aging musicians in black vests and Greek sailor hats are tuning up and arranging their charts. There’s also an elegant, rakish woman with hollow eyes in her fifties. She’s wearing a long flowery dress and darts around very quickly, like a hummingbird. I watch her operate for a few minutes. She seems to know almost everybody. One by one she’s pulling her lady friends and their reluctant husbands off to the side, organizing them into straight lines and showing them the basics of Israeli dance, which is not that hard, but still you have to have some idea which foot goes where. I can’t tell if she is being paid to do this, but she is very determined and focused, almost militant in her commands. She doesn’t want to overlook anyone who might be willing to try their hand as soon as the music begins.

Which it does, with a sudden crash and roll from Dave Markowitz on the drums. The dance instructor looks up. Her face says it all: No, no, no, she wasn’t ready yet, this is not the way it was supposed to happen. But, apparently, she is the only one feeling that way. The audience applauds, the well-formed lines dissolve, and all at once people are dancing—or not dancing, but giving themselves up to wild, untutored movement of arms and legs. It’s a fast tune they’re playing—an upbeat version of “Oy Mame, Bin Ich Far Lieb” (“Oh Mama, Am I in Love”). Which is something the Barry Sisters made famous when my parents were courting. I close my eyes and listen. Whatever it’s called, I heard it a million times growing up. It’s in the blood.

They follow this with a slower, more mournful piece where the violins take charge, then a medley of freylachs—zippy dance stuff from Romania and Bulgaria and Poland that leaves the audience in one big collective pool of sweat. There’s nobody who doesn’t respond to a freylach. I find myself tapping my foot to each one. I probably couldn’t give you a single title, but if I hum a few bars I’m suddenly ten years old again in my parents’ living room, and it all comes roaring back to me.

An hour later the rabbi takes the mic and shepherds the crowd toward the tables laden with food and wine on the far side of the room. The band members sit back in their chairs. They’re all perspiring. Someone has brought them bottled water from the fridge. Somebody else mumbles something about a cigarette, and five of them stand up and head slowly toward the open metal doors on the side. Only Art Kaplan remains seated with his violin. Which is fine with me. He’s the one I wanted to talk to, anyway.

“You guys are pretty tight,” I say as I approach and offer my hand.

He nods.

“I mean, a lot of those tunes could use a singer. They’ve all got lyrics, right? A shame you don’t have someone who could belt them out in Yiddish.”

“You wanna sit in with us?”

“No thanks,” I say. “I’m just a critic. And whoever built a monument to a critic, right? Nobody.”

“Actually,” he says, “we do have a singer. Only she—she just couldn’t be here tonight.”

“She any good?”

His shoulders go up and down. “She’s all right, I guess. Not the best torch I’ve ever played behind, but I’m not complaining, far from it. We’ve been lucky to get as many gigs as we have.”

“I hear you,” I tell him. “I used to be a musician myself. We did standards mostly. Cole Porter. Sonny Rollins. Monk. I can’t tell you how many bars I dragged my sorry ass out of at 3 a.m. Had to stop when I got married. Get a real job, that’s what my wife said.”

“I know what you mean,” says Kaplan. “But this klezmer stuff is pretty specialized. And LA’s a good town. If you get yourself a good manager you can work three, four nights a week. Bar mitzvahs, weddings, all the Jewish holidays….”

“Except Yom Kippur,” I say. “Not much to cheer about then.”

“Okay, forget Yom Kippur. But you get my point.”

“So when’s your crooner coming back? I’d like to catch the whole group in action.”

Kaplan pulls out a rag from his back pocket and starts wiping down his violin. “That’s a good question. The truth is, she’s kind of vanished.”

“Vanished? Really? As in nobody knows where she is?”

“Nobody I know, brother.” He leans in closer. His voice drops. “And between you and me, I’d be just as happy if she didn’t return. We were a good solid crew before she came along, and she doesn’t add that much. Okay, she’s prettier than anyone on this stage, but how much is that really worth, I ask you?”

“Why’d you let her join, then?”

Kaplan frowns. “I’m not in charge of this band, buddy. Our manager is. He gets the gigs, he pays us, and he’s the one who told us to. What are you going to do? She auditioned. Afterward a couple of guys made some noise, said she really wasn’t up to snuff.”

“And?”

“And nothing came of it. Pinky—that’s our manager—he told us point-blank, she’s in the band. We can take it or leave it.”

“So you’re telling me I shouldn’t make a special trip to see you guys again when she’s in front of the mic?”

Just then the metal doors open and the other five musicians start filing back in.

“No,” Kaplan says with a tinge of sadness. “I’m not saying that at all. She’s a nice kid. She’s beautiful. She’s like—she’s like the cherry on top of the hot fudge sundae. You gotta have it, don’t you? Otherwise it’s not a sundae.”

I nod and return to my lonely linen table in the corner. There’s still some coffee in my cardboard cup, but it turned cold long before.

Most of the following week I spend at Loretta’s bedside on the third floor at Cedars-Sinai. I thought it was some kind of urinary tract infection at first, but then I discovered that she flushed all her prescriptions down the toilet one afternoon and had just been pretending to take them after that. Which worked all right until one afternoon when she passed out in the living room.

“I know you don’t like to take that stuff, honey,” I whisper to her while she’s lying there sleeping with a saline drip in her arm and the soft autumn sun filtering in through the blinds. “But you don’t want to end up here, do you? That’s what those drugs are for. To keep you out of here.” I’m whispering because there’s another woman in the bed next to hers watching television; her name is Alice, she has blond frizzy hair, and the one and only time she spoke to me I found out she’s a makeup artist at Disney and she’s recovering from a burst appendix.

They keep Loretta for three days and nights, until they think she’s stabilized. Then she belongs to Carmen and me. Sometime during all that I see an article in the Times about how cowboy music is catching fire in Russia and the Ukraine. That’s when I remember to call Omar back and ask him what he’s learned.

“I thought I liked all kinds of songs” is the first thing he says. “But you know what? It’s not so. I really hate country-western. It’s the same goddamn story over and over and over. Not only that, it’s the same three fucking chords.”

“I’m guessing you’ve been to a lot of bars, Omar.”

“You’re damn right I have. I’ve lost count. But I did find your boy, I think. Raymond Ballo, also known as Ray Ballo, also known on Facebook as Pretty Boy Ballo. He’s in a band called Tumbleweed.”

“You’ve seen him?”

“No, not yet. But they have a regular Saturday gig at a joint in Tarzana. I figured we should go together. You know what you want to ask him, and I’d kind of like to tag along, just in case things get rowdy.”

“What makes you think that, Omar?”

“Just a feeling. Like you said, I’ve been to a lot of bars lately.”

We go together. I pick him up at his home in Boyle Heights. I’m dressed down for the evening—blue jeans and my old leather bomber jacket. I debate whether or not to keep my Dodger cap on. Depending on your viewpoint, it could be dorky or it could fit right into the landscape. On the plus side, it covers my gray hair, and in a poorly lit club I could pass for twenty years younger. Omar, who’s wearing black pants and a black felt jacket, says to keep it on, so that’s what I do.

The place Ray Ballo appears at is called Jingles. It’s on Tarzana Boulevard, and it has a large, garish neon sign with a pair of purple spurs blinking on and off in quick succession. The spurs are attached to two green neon boots, which feed into two provocative pink neon legs that seem to straddle the entrance. I count six gleaming Harleys in a row. A flyer outside advertises LIVE GIRLS TUESDAYS AND FRIDAYS. “We just missed them,” I say to Omar as we push through the door. “Damn.”

Inside it’s dark and woodsy. Once upon a time, I think, this place was probably organized around one simple theme—I don’t know what, naked girls, cowboys, hunting; now it’s just vaguely masculine. There are a few ancient stuffed animals peering down from the walls—deer and elk—and each table features menus with reproductions of wanted posters from the nineteenth century. Laminated pictures of Billy the Kid and Doc Holliday, that kind of thing. At the far end there’s a small raised, unoccupied stage. Everything is there, waiting. A drum set, mics, amplifiers, monitors. Most of the crowd is lined up studiously at the bar, however, their eyes fixated on the silent Rams game being shown on four separate television screens overhead. Most of the crowd is tense and middle-aged and male. They’re following the flow. They want someone to win, or at least to score. Women are few and far between. They’re also watching the game, but they don’t take it nearly as seriously as the men do. It’s just a game, boys running around, chasing a ball. I can see it in their eyes. Meanwhile, everyone is working overtime to soothe their pent-up feelings. They’re holding manhattans and margaritas. A few sturdy buckos down at the end are staring at shot glasses of something even stronger. We find an opening and ask for beer.

“What kind?” the bartender asks. He’s a paunchy bald guy. He leans in close to take our order. He’s got pockmarks on his cheeks and watery blue eyes and a general expression that says he’s been working here too long and doesn’t much like what he does.

“What Mexican beers do you have on tap?” asks Omar.

The bartender scowls. “Nothing Mexican. Coors. Bud Light. Miller. Take your pick.”

“Okay, then,” Omar says. “Miller.”

I hold up two fingers to indicate the same. The bartender nods and goes off. It’s too early to look at the dinner menu, but when he comes back, we take our beers and little white paper coasters and find a table near the stage. A few minutes later, the band members file in from a door off to the side. There are five of them. Four guys dressed in well-worn jeans and boots and silk shirts from Hollywood’s finest consignment shops. The drummer, who’s black, wears a Panama hat and shades. The one girl—their torch—is almost a foot shorter than the lanky men behind her. She looks about nineteen. Beautiful and sure of herself, but who isn’t at that age? She’s got corkscrews of way-out-of-control ash blond hair, and for tonight she has squeezed herself into a tight pink crinoline dress that doesn’t quite reach her knees. Hard to tell what that’s all about. “I think she’s the leader,” I lean in and whisper to Omar.

“I think she’s the reason they call themselves Tumbleweed,” he replies.

One by one they tap their microphones to make sure they’re live. They tune up. A golden spotlight hits the stage and dances around until it centers itself. The singer rushes off and returns with a large clear-glass gallon tip jar, which she sets down carefully in front of her. Someone has already dropped a few dollars in to grease the pot.

A waitress arrives and we order two more beers, a couple of BLTs, and, at the last moment, a side of guacamole.

“You don’t want to try the Rodeo Burger?” she asks. “That’s the house special.”

“No,” I tell her. “We’re fine. Maybe you could bring out the guacamole first, though. That’d be great.”

She wanders off, and Omar stares at me. “I wouldn’t have gotten guacamole in a place like this,” he says. “They don’t know what the fuck they’re doing.”

“Hey, it’s on the menu,” I say. “And besides, who do you think does all the cooking around here? Norwegians?”

“Good point,” he says. “My people are everywhere.”

Without any fanfare, then, the show starts, and the girl, who introduces herself after the first number as Phoebe, welcomes the audience. That would be me and Omar, but then, like I say, it’s early. Surely the rest of the bar will migrate over and make an evening of it. I glance back hopefully at the clot of what now seems to be scruffy overweight men in motorcycle jackets. They’re still drinking. In any case they aren’t quite ready. The band is oblivious. As far as they’re concerned, they could be playing in their living room. They run through an easy medley of Patsy Cline tunes, one after another, and they’re surprisingly good at what they do; I say “surprisingly” because for all intents and purposes, it’s just me and Omar following along. We’re like voyeurs, clapping appreciatively at the end of each song, although, really, what kind of enthusiasm can four hands put together generate? Not much.

Even though she’s young and strangely decked out, Phoebe has a nice, practiced, mellifluous voice. And more than that: She’s serious. You can tell by the way she talks about herself in between tunes and what she says she’s learned from the example of her hero, Patsy Cline. She has hopes and dreams that don’t include working in clubs like Jingles the rest of her life. You can also tell by her demeanor—the way she closes her eyes and drifts like a passing breeze into each number. By how she wraps her fingers lovingly around the mic while the boys unpack the tune, how she waits patiently for the last note of the lead guitar to fade before she ever opens her mouth. You believe in her, I guess. That’s what it’s all about.

Another older couple shows up and grabs a spot closer to the stage. Then a group of five women take a table in the corner. They’re all in their forties or fifties. Married probably or on their way to being divorced. All wearing tight jeans and T-shirts and running shoes, ladies’ drinks jiggling in their hands. Laughing nervously, talking past each other. The table is too small for everyone. They cram in anyway, which makes them uncomfortable, which in turn makes them raise their voices. A pair of them look around to see if anyone else has noticed. I tip my Dodger cap.

Onstage, the lead guitar leans back and turns down the volume on his amp. Their first set is coming to a close. The spotlight dims. I give Omar a twenty-dollar bill, tell him to stick it in the tip jar and see if he can persuade the bass player to come talk with us for a minute. He returns with Ray Ballo, who offers his sweaty hand. He takes the empty chair opposite me.

“You’re pretty good with that thing, Ray,” I tell him. “Buy you a beer?”

“Oh gee, thanks,” he says. “I don’t usually ever drink, at least not until we’re done for the night. But ask me again in two hours.”

He’s a tall lanky kid in his late twenties, long dark hair that he keeps tucking restlessly behind his ears. There’s an earnestness in his brown eyes, coupled with a sweet, genuine smile. He talks slowly and deliberately, almost like he’s a farm boy and new to city ways. I can see why Risa might find him attractive.

I hand him my business card. “Actually,” I say, “I have to confess I didn’t come clear out to Tarzana to hear you play. Though, like I say, you’ve got a nice sound. I was in a couple bands once upon a time—before you were born—so I know what I’m talking about.”

He looks at my card. His smile fades. “Okay,” he says. “So what are you talking about, Mr. Parisman?”

“Risa Barsky.”

“Oh, yeah? And what about her?”

“I’ve been hired to track her down. She’s disappeared, did you know that?”

Now he’s taken aback. He pushes a few errant hairs from his forehead. “No, I—I haven’t seen Risa in—God, it’s been nearly a month. We broke up. I mean, she broke up with me. I was still in love—”

I nod. “I get that, Ray. But you haven’t had any contact with her in a month?”

“I called her a few times. I tried. We talked some on the phone. I thought she would come around and we could start over. She did this once before and that’s what happened.”

“But not this time, huh?”

“No.”

“What’d she say?”

“This time? This time she said she’d given it some thought. Weighed it out. According to her, we just weren’t right for each other.”

“How come?” Omar asks. I glance over at him. I didn’t think he was going to say anything at all tonight, but every so often he surprises me. Maybe he quit the academy too soon. Or maybe there’s a tiny space in his heart where he still wants to be a cop.

“She’s going to be thirty-five in another month,” Ray Ballo says, “and I’m twenty-seven. We’re just too far apart. We think about different things. We have different priorities. She even had a special word for it. A Yiddish word. Said it was beshert. You know what that means?”

“It’s fated,” I say, “meant to be. Or in your case, not to be. Nothing you can do about it.”

“That’s right,” he goes. “She didn’t say anything specific. Maybe she didn’t want to hurt my feelings, but I’ve thought about it a lot and now I’m pretty sure all along she was desperate to have a child. Not so strange, really, when you put it like that.”

“And you’re not ready for that yet, are you, Ray?”

He lifts his hands. “At some point, sure, I guess, why not. I like kids. Kids are great. I’d like to get married, have a family. But someday, not now. You know how it is, the life of a musician.”

“Wasn’t Risa a musician, too? Isn’t that how she paid the rent?”

“She sang in this klezmer group in Hollywood, and they got some pricey gigs now and then. Nothing very steady, though. Mostly she worked as a temp at this agency in Reseda.”

“You remember the name?”

“I do. But before I tell you, who’s paying you to find her? What’s this whole thing all about?”

“I told you. She’s missing. There are people out there who care about her.”

“I care about her.”

“You didn’t pay me to find her, did you.”

He frowns but keeps his silence “You’re going to have to trust me on that stuff, Ray. My client wants to be anonymous.”

“Yeah, well, how do I know you are what your card says you are?”

I give him a long stern fatherly look, the same kind of look my dear old dad gave me years ago when I told him I wanted to drop out of high school and go live in the woods like Henry David Thoreau. “Listen, Ray. Risa’s neighbor gave us your name. She said you were the last boyfriend she truly cared about, that you were a real gentleman, and that if Risa were ever in trouble, she might turn to you. That’s what the neighbor said.”

“Terrific,” he says. “Only she didn’t, did she? If she’s not in her apartment in Van Nuys, I don’t know where she is, man. I’m sorry.”

“What about her parents?” Omar asks. “Are they around?”

“I dunno. She wasn’t tight with her folks. I know that much.”

“You’re sure about that.”

“No, I just sorta figured it out. She barely mentioned them.”

“So you don’t know their names? Where we might find them?”

“No, man, nothing.” He shakes his head and lowers his voice to what passes for a whisper. “They were like—they were difficult people—communists, intellectuals. I think they lived on the Upper West Side in New York. That was years ago. She told me once they made a shitload of money in the market and then felt bad about it. I couldn’t understand that. What kind of communist plays the stock market, I wanna know? Anyway, by the time Risa came along they were back to being straight arrows. Except for her name.”

“Huh?”

They named her Emma. For Emma Goldman. That’s still on her birth certificate, she said. Pretty awful, if you ask me. She dropped that, naturally, the minute she landed in LA.”

“I used to date Emma Goldman,” I say.

“You did? Really?”

“No. Not really.”

Ray Ballo studies my face, shakes his head. “How old are you, Mr. Parisman?”

“Never mind,” I say. “Just give me the name of the temp agency in Reseda, will you? That may get us somewhere.”

“Fishman Referrals,” he says, rising out of his chair. “I hope you find her. If you do, tell her I’d like to see her again, will you? Would you do me that favor? Tell her it’s not too late. I gotta—I gotta get back onstage for the next set.”