Читать книгу Double Take - Roy Huggins - Страница 7

PORTLAND lives on one side of the deep Willamette river and works and does its shopping on the other, so it is a city of bridges, some of them broad swaggering structures of concrete and steel, and others ancient draw-bridges that look as if they are weeping over the city.

Jefferson High School was far out on the east side of the river, an aged building with little greenery around it and a tired look under the eyes. The halls were empty, and sick with the old odor of schools. The office was of the standard pattern, the long bar-high counter cutting the room in half, the windows on the office side, the relentless glare on the other. There were three women shuffling papers behind the counter. I leaned on it and my foot felt instinctively for a rail. One of the women came toward me and I told her I would like a little routine information on a Miss Margaret Bleeker who graduated in 1937.

She said I would have to wait until Mr. Dolles, the Vice Principal, was back. He was at a meeting.

I showed her my buzzer.

“Los Angeleez, heh? You’ll still have to wait.”

I thanked her and decided to wait outside. I walked out and down the oiled, bitten hallway. I was on the stairs outside when I heard it: “Just a moment, sir!” I turned, and a woman came through the archway and trotted toward me.

She was forty, a little more, a little less, and thin. She had flat cheeks and a retiring chin that made her face look as if it were in full retreat. Her eyes protruded uneasily, and were the color and brilliance of cigarette smoke.

She said, breathlessly: “I didn’t want to leave the office too soon.”

“I see.”

She smiled. She had nice big teeth. “Miss Hurkette doesn’t like men,” she whispered. “Mr. Dolles is at a meeting all right—in Seattle.” She giggled and looked over her shoulder.

“How does she act when she hates somebody?”

The eyes swelled. “Oh terrible!” she said. “But I can help you. We all remember Margaret Bleeker. What’s she done?”

I had been edging down the stairs. I came back up again now. She was looking at me eagerly, and there was a vague light dancing behind the opaqueness of her eyes.

“You tell me first,” I said. “What was she like?”

“Well, she was expelled when she was a freshman for getting terribly drunk at a Hi-Y dance.”

“But she settled down later, huh?”

“Oh no. She learned to hold her liquor.” She clapped her hand to her mouth and giggled again.

“Quite a young lady.”

“She was beautiful. When she was a junior she got one of our chemistry teachers in trouble.”

“You mean one of the chemistry teachers got her in trouble, don’t you?”

She shook her head solemnly and said. “She was perfectly innocent. It was in the laboratory. He made her stay after class… She reported him.” She put a bony hand on my arm, looked over her shoulder again, and hissed: “What’s she done?”

“One more thing. Where’d she live?”

“Oh, down in Albina. A terrible district.”

“Can you get me the address?”

“But she’s been gone so long. She sang at Keller’s after she graduated—Keller’s Hofbrau, down on Broadway,” she added, when she saw the gleam in my eye. “Now, what happened to her?”

“A man in Seattle left $10,000 to someone named Margaret Bleeker. We’re just running down a lead.”

Her long face grew longer, and the eyes grayer. “Ohhhh,” she said hoarsely. She turned and ran back into the building.

* * * *

IT WAS raining when I got back to the Willamette Hotel on Fourth Street. I went up to my room and decided to put off going to Keller’s Hofbrau until later in the evening—it sounded like that kind of a place. I undressed and hung my coat and pants up to dry and lay on the bed and watched the wet unwholesome twilight creep into the room and huddle in the dark corner.

After a while I got up and turned on the lights and called the bell captain.

“I’d like to ease the inner writhing a bit,” I said. “Where can I get something to eat?”

“Huh?”

“Something to take the sting out of living. You know, whiskey, champagne, buttermilk laced with gasoline—whatever you can get me.”

“Oh. Oh yeah. We got state control here y’know. It’ll cost ya extra.”

“See if you can find some ice and soda to go with it.”

It came up five minutes later on a covered tray carried by a pale little man with brown welts under his eyes and a skin like a filefish. He set it down on the dresser, handed me a bill, and silently disapproved of the color of my shorts. He took his money, pocketed a dollar tip, gave me an obscene smile, and went out. It was good bond bourbon and I made a tall one and took it into the bathroom with me and crawled into a hot tub.

The drink was gone and I was rubbing myself down and wondering if I needed a shave. Through the bathroom door I heard another door open, and then close. I didn’t hear anything else. I put the shorts on and opened the bathroom door.

She was standing uncertainly in the middle of the room, a damp chubby across one arm, and a blue silk dress doing a nice job of covering but not concealing her round little body. The dress was too short, the heels too high, the legs too white and shaven. She had a wide smile that almost swallowed up her face, and her hair was like autumn corn silk after a rain. She looked about sixteen.

“Oh, there you are,” she said politely.

I didn’t say anything.

“Where ja get the nice tan?”

I said: “Baby, there’s been a mistake. I didn’t send for anybody.”

The smile faded and her face reddened just a little. “You didn’t? The bell cap…”

“He jumped at conclusions.”

“Oh,” weakly.

“Sorry. It’s just that I’ve got a lot of work ahead of me.” I pointed to the dresser. “There’s some makings over there, help yourself.” I climbed into my trousers and picked up a clean shirt.

“I don’t drink,” she said primly. “Thanks, anyhow.” She went to the door.

I said: “Maybe you can tell me how to get to Keller’s Hofbrau?”

She turned and cocked her head at me. “What would you be doing there?”

“It’s a club, isn’t it?”

She gigled. “It’s more a ladies’ tea room than anything. I think it used to be a club, long time ago when Keller owned it.”

I buttoned the shirt. “And Keller and the old management are all cleared out, huh?”

She came back into the room and leaned against the dresser. “If it’s a club you’re looking for, Keller is still your man. But his place is kinda hard to get into—it’s illegal you know, and they’re a little skittish right now.” She watched me tie my tie and waited for me to make an offer. I didn’t make one.

She said: “I might be able to get you in, though. I got a friend works there. He’d fix it.”

I grinned at her and took out a ten spot and held it in front of me. “How does it work?”

“You just go in the reg’lar way and tell the jerk at the desk you’re a friend of George’s. I’ll call ’m up.” She took the ten and told me how to get there and how to go in. She went back to the door and opened it and turned around and said:

“Thanks for telling me you had work to do.” She went out and shut the door.

* * * *

THE building was a huge opaque square against the transluscent blue of the night sky. The rain had let up, and there was nothing here but wet darkness and the thick chemical smell of the river. A car came up the long narrow street and lit the face of the building faintly, and I could read the legend across it: “Rudy Milbrunner, Warehouse and Storage.” The car turned into a hole.

I walked down the ramp and came out in a dim-lit concrete basement with a few cars parked in neat rows, and white-marked spaces for a few hundred more. To the right there was an open freight elevator, and by the elevator a desk. The desk had a lot of stuff on it that looked like freight receipts and invoices, and there was a man sitting behind it with a greasy hat on his head looking like a warehouse foreman. He watched me sharply as I walked toward him.

I said: “I’m a friend of George’s.”

“Where’s your transportation?”

“I came in a taxi.”

“Friend of George’s, huh?” He ran suddenly drowsy eyes over my face and picked up the phone. He looked at me some more. He could hardly keep awake. The eyes stayed on my face like two dull and rusty gimlets. He put the phone back on its cradle without calling anybody.

“Okay. Go ahead,” he said without moving his lips.

There was an old man in the elevator, sitting on a beer barrel reading a Western magazine. We went up two floors and stopped. Double doors of frosted glass slid back and I stepped out. The old man mumbled, “Scares ya half ta death, don’t he?” I turned and grinned at him. He winked faintly, closed the doors, and went back down for another load.

* * * *

THE lobby looked like Los Angeles’ Sunset Strip of ten years ago. It was bright, walled in glass brick, and the floors were covered from wall to wall with a heavy sea-foam carpeting. The lighting was indirect except for a colored spot that picked up a uniformed hat check girl and made her look like something you’d like to send the boys for Christmas. She took my hat and coat and was so nice about it I wanted to tell her she could keep them.

The first room off the lobby was for dining and dancing. It wasn’t crowded yet, and empty linen-covered tables were spaced nicely in three tiers around the floor. The walls were glass with murals painted on them limning dancing naked girls, with here and there a check-suited guy with lacy long white pants holding a banjo. Light came from behind the glass.

At the back there was a long glass-and-chrome bar. I stopped off there. The bourbon wasn’t good, but they were generous with it, as is the way with chip-cribs. After the third drink I noticed that people came in, but they didn’t stop in the dining room or at the bar. They went right on by, down a dim-lit corridor to the right of the bar. One man didn’t go on by. He stopped at the bar, and the barkeep fixed him a drink without waiting to be told. The man was thick and short, and his clothes were too tight for him. His coat concealed the bulge his gun made with all the subtlety of a school girl’s bra.

He was watching me. Not covertly, just looking at me out of eyes that were the color of gin. I winked at him and his eyes watered at me. I got up and went on down the dark corridor and through a heavy sheet-metal door. This room was different. It was already crowded, and there was a feeling of hot, sweaty tension in the place that the air conditioner wasn’t doing anything about. There was blackjack. Four games going, and tables for more. Five crap tables with the crowds attached to them like bees. Chuck-a-luck. Two-bit slot machines. And in the back, quiet men under a net of blue smoke at round felt-covered tables. Poker. There wasn’t a roulette wheel in the place. Some of the players were noisy, with an overtone of hysteria in their voices and movements; but most of them were quiet, intent, like primitive people engaged in a solemn ritual.

Someone tapped me gently on the shoulder. It was the little man with the bulge.

“Well, what d’ya think of the place?” His voice was high, tinny, and it was trying to be cordial.

“No roulette,” I said.

“We got wheels. They’re in storage. People up this way don’t go for roulette.”

Three fat, gray-haired women pushed by us, and we moved over, out of the way of the door.

“What did you expect to get for your ten bucks, Mr. Bailey? Anything in particular?” He smiled.

“You work together up here.”

“We try to.”

“I wanted to talk, to Keller a couple minutes about a very small matter.”

“Keller. Assuming I knew anyone named Keller, what would the small matter be about?” The smile was getting a little sharp at the corners.

“A girl. A girl who used to work for him.”

He looked at my left ear with a slow loss of expression, like a man filling an inside straight. “Uh-huh,” he said softly. “We try to oblige our guests. Wait at the bar.”

* * * *

HE WAS back at the bar in about ten minutes and we took the elevator to the third floor. It looked like a warehouse up here. In front of the elevator there was a green-painted greasy door with a long splinter out of it just above the knob. The short man knocked and the door clicked and opened. Inside was more of the through-the-looking-glass stuff. The room was large. The walls were inlaid panels of Philippine mahogany, the grain alternating every other square. The lighting was indirect and came from around the wall molding and dropped a soft glow over several over-stuffed pieces that looked as if they were upholstered in lamb’s wool.

Behind a blond-wood desk in a high-back executive chair sat a white-haired, benevolent looking old gentleman. He was getting up with a slow and heavy dignity and giving me the kind of warm smile you give to people who have something you want. I was going to hate to disappoint him.

“Sit down, Mr. Bailey.” His voice was low, and it bumbled out as if he had marbles in his throat. I sat in one of the lambs’ wool chairs in front of the desk, and the short man stayed somewhere behind me, silently. The white-haired man took hold of his great belly and sat down again carefully. “My name is Keller, sir. How can I be of service?” He coughed loudly and brought up some marbles. I never knew what he did with them.

“I’m looking for a girl,” I said. “She used to work for you.” I stopped and waited.

He nodded heavily and blinked. He was a man who might have been fifty and living too well, or seventy and well-preserved. His white hair was soft and flowing like a senator’s, and his face was round and puffy, and smooth as an inner tube. His eyes were just wet dark gleams deep in soft cushions of fat. They didn’t tell me a thing.

“She may have taken a cozier name for your show,” I went on. “She was born Margaret Bleeker.”

There may have been a change, a subtle release of tension in the room. Or maybe I just thought there was, because I was looking hard for a reaction. The man behind me moved audibly for the first time, and Keller’s shoulders and face seemed to relax imperceptibly. He chuckled softly and said:

“What’s that high-nosed little brat got herself into?”

“She’s just missing.”

Kellar squirmed slightly and glanced at a clock on the corner of his desk. He was bored. “I’m afraid I can’t help you, Mr. Bailey. She left here in 1938 when I sold the Hofbrau. Went to L.A. with a two-bit comic named Buffin.”

“That’s a long time ago. Sure of the date?”

He stood up slowly, painfully, and came around the desk. “I’m afraid so,” he rumbled. “Do you know her, Mr. Bailey?”

I shook my head.

“Private operator?”

“Uh-huh.”

He chuckled again. “She was quite a young lady. Luscious as a pomegranate, and twice as acid. I don’t think anyone ever got to her. Buffin was just a sleeper ticket to L.A.”

I stood up. “Would you know anyone who might have kept in touch with her in Los Angeles?”

He patted me on the shoulder with a hand like a pink pin cushion and said, “Sorry I can’t help you. But six years is a lot of years, sir.”

“Yeah. You wouldn’t have any picures around would you?”

“I might. I have a room full of relics I trucked over from the Hofbrau. Want to go through it?”

“I’d like to.”

He walked over to a bar set in a blond-wood cabinet and began to mix a drink. His hands shook a little.

“You know the room, George. Take him down and let him go through it.”

I walked to the door and turned around. Keller was taking a long, business-like drink. I said:

“Thanks for your time, Mr. Keller. Sorry I had to disappoint you.”

He lowered the glass and looked at me blankly over it. He belched majestically. He didn’t say anything.

* * * *

THE room was large and cold and had a sour smell to it. There was a 100-watt bulb burning fiercely in the high ceiling and throwing a begrudging light on a collection of junk stacked against the far wall. I could make out a few sandwich boards, some broken floodlights, and a collection of cheap silvered shields, the kind a five-man orchestra sits behind.

I left George standing at the door and started through the junk. It was probably forty-five hot and dusty minutes later that I turned over the large rectangle of black cardboard. It was the kind of board that fits into a glass-enclosed box, like those outside some of the Hollywood spots on Vine.

There were nine eight-by-ten photographs glued on the board at meaningless angles. And in the center in fancy gold-leaf that was flaking badly now it said: “Gala show tonight with these popular stars,” and then it listed the names. The fourth name was Peggy Bleeker, the seventh name was Buster Buffin.

Three of the faces were male, so I only had to look at six. She was easy to find. The hair was blonde, but the eyes in their seeming shadows, and the wide smile, were the same.

It was a full-length picture, and the figure was slender as a boy’s, with long trim legs. But there wasn’t any doubt about it. It was Mrs. Ralph Johnston of U.S.L.A and the Hofbrau.

I had to use a knife, to get it off. George had come over from the door and was watching me carefully w’hile I folded it and put it away in an inside pocket.

“Which one of them is Buffin, George?”

He indicated one of the photographs with his foot and said, “Cute, ain’t he?”

It was a studio photograph of a hatchet-faced man with a hungry grin, a cocky straw hat, and a bow tie that might have been somebody’s horse-blanket. I cut it off and put it away with the one of Mrs. Johnston.

George said: “How d’ya know the other one was Peg Bleeker? I thought you said you didn’t know her.”

“You don’t miss anything, do you? But you ought to carry a smaller gun. I saw a photograph of her in Los Angeles.”

“Oh.” He ushered me down to the elevator, left me without saying anything and knocked at Keller’s door. It clicked, and he slipped in quickly.

Outside, the mist was heavy and the street had the echoing darkness of a deserted alley. Strands of fog wandered aimlessly. I had thought I would find a cab, or a place to call one. In ten blocks I didn’t find either. A car passed me, appearing from nowhere out of the night and going nowhere into it. I lost it in the drifting mist and stopped and listened to the night silence. A ship moaned distantly. I put a cigarette in my mouth and lit it. I didn’t really want a smoke, but the bright warmth of the match was pleasant.

Then I heard it. The quiet shush of leather on the wet walk, growing suddenly hurried and confused as I turned. Something glinted brightly and came down across my head. I went down on my hands and knees. Nausea pulsed upward and pounded at my throat, and I pulled myself up and my feet slipped on the wet pavement. I heard a gentle, sighing sound and light suddenly broke into bright fragments behind my eyes. Then there was only darkness stretching away endlessly.