Umney's last case nad-21 Read online

  Blondie's closed? Blondie's gone? Impossible, you would have said – more likely that the Statue of Liberty should have disappeared from her barren lick of rock in New York Harbor.

  Impossible but true. The window which had once held a mouth-watering selection of pies and cakes was soaped over, but the job had been done indifferently, and I could see a nearly empty room through the stripes. The lino looked filthy and barren. The grease-darkened blades of the overhead fans hung down like the propellers of crashed airplanes. There were a few tables left, and six or eight of the familiar red-upholstered chairs piled on them with the legs sticking up, but that was all... except for a couple of empty sugarshakers tumbled in one corner.

  I stood there trying to get it into my head, and it was like trying to get a big sofa up a narrow flight of stairs. All that life and excitement, all that late-night hustle and surprise – how could it be ended? It didn't seem like a mistake; it seemed like a blasphemy. For me Blondie's had summed up all the glittering contradictions that surround L. A. “s essentially dark and loveless heart; I had sometimes thought Blondie's was L. A. as I had known it over the last fifteen or twenty years, only drawn small. Where else could you see a mobster eating breakfast at 9:00 p. m. with a priest, or a diamond-decked glamorpuss sitting on a counter-stool next to a grease-monkey celebrating the end of his shift with a hot cup of java? I suddenly found myself thinking of the Cuban bandleader and his heart attack again, this time with considerably more sympathy.

  All that fabulous starry City of Lost Angels life – do you get it, chum? Are you picking up this newsflash?

  The sign hung in the door read CLOSED FOR RENOVATIONS, REOPENING SOON, but I didn't believe it. Empty sugar-shakers lying in the corner do not, in my experience, indicate renovations in progress. Peoria had been right: Blondie's was history. I turned away and went on up the street, but now I walked slowly and had to consciously order my head to stay up. As I approached the Fulwider Building, where I've kept an office for more years than I like to think about, an odd certainty gripped me. The handles of the big double doors would be wrapped up in a thick tow-chain and held with a padlock. The glass would be soaped over in indifferent stripes. And there would be a sign reading CLOSED FOR RENOVATIONS, REOPENING SOON.

  By the time I reached the building, this nutty idea had taken over my mind with the force of a compulsion, and not even the sight of Bill Tuggle, the rummy CPA from the third floor, going inside could quite dispel it. But seeing is believing, they say, and when I got to 2221, I saw no chain, no sign, and no soap on the glass. It was just the Fulwider, the same as ever. I went into the lobby, smelled the familiar odor – it reminds me of the pink cakes they put in the urinals of public men's rooms these days – and glanced around at the same ratty palm trees overhanging the same faded red tile floor.

  Bill was standing next to Vernon Klein, world's oldest elevator operator, in Car 2. In his frayed red suit and ancient pillbox hat, Vernon looks like a cross between the Philip Morris bellboy and a rhesus monkey which has fallen into an industrial steam-cleaning machine. He looked up at me with his mournful basset-hound eyes, which were watering from the Camel pasted in the middle of his mouth. His peepers should have gotten used to the smoke years ago; I couldn't remember ever having seen him without a Camel parked in that same position.

  Bill moved over a little, but not far enough. There wasn't room enough in the car for him to move far enough. I'm not sure there would have been room in Rhode Island for him to move far enough. Delaware, maybe. He smelled like bologna which has spent a year or so marinating in cheap bourbon. And just when I thought it couldn't get any worse, he belched.

  “Sorry, Clyde.”

  “Well, you certainly ought to be,” I said, waving the air in front of my face as Vern slid the gate across the front of the car and prepared to fly us to the moon... or at least to the seventh floor. “What drainpipe did you spend the night in, Bill?”

  Yet there was something comforting about that smell – I'd be lying if I said there wasn't. Because it was a familiar smell. It was just Bill Tuggle, odoriferous, hung over, and standing with his knees slightly bent, as if someone had filled the crotch of his underpants with chicken salad and he'd just realized it. Not pleasant, nothing about that morning's elevator ride was pleasant, but it was at least known.

  Bill gave me a sick smile as the elevator began to rattle upward but said nothing.

  I swung my head in Vernon's direction, mostly to get away from the smell of overbaked accountant, but whatever small talk I'd been meaning to make died in my throat. The two pictures which had hung over Vern's stool since the beginning of time – one of Jesus walking on the Sea of Galilee while his boatbound disciples gawped at him and the other of Vern's wife in a buckskin-fringed Sweetheart of the Rodeo outfit and a turn-of-the-century hairdo – were both gone. What had replaced them shouldn't have been shocking, especially in light of Vernon's age, but it hit me like a barge-load of bricks just the same.

  It was a card, that's all – a simple card showing the silhouette of a man fishing on a lake at sunset. It was the sentiment printed below the canoe that floored me: HAPPY RETIREMENT!

  You could have doubled the way I felt when Peoria told me he might see again and still have come up short. Memories flickered through my mind with the speed of cards being shuffled by a riverboat gambler. There was the time Vern broke into the office next to mine to call an ambulance when that nutty dame, Agnes Sternwood, first tore my phone out of the wall and then swallowed what she swore was drain-cleaner. The “drain-cleaner” turned out to be nothing but crystals of raw sugar, and the office Vern broke into turned out to be a high-class horse parlor. So far as I know, the guy who leased the place and slapped MacKenzie Imports on the door is still receiving his annual Sears Roebuck catalogue in San Quentin. Then there was the guy Vern cold-conked with his stool just before he could ventilate my guts; that was the Mavis Weld business again, of course. Not to mention the time he brought his daughter to me – what a babe she was! – when she got involved with that dirty-picture racket.

  Vern retiring?

  It wasn't possible. It just wasn't.

  “Vernon,” I asked, “what kind of joke is this?”

  “No joke, Mr. Umney,” he said, and as he brought the elevator car to a stop on Three, he began to hack a deep cough I'd never heard in all the years I'd known him. It was like listening to marble bowling balls rolling down a stone alley. He took the Camel out of his mouth, and I was horrified to see the end of it was pink, and not with lipstick. He looked at it for a moment, grimaced, then replaced it and yanked back the accordion grille. “Thuh-ree, Mr. Tuggle.”

  “Thanks, Vern,” Bill said.

  “Remember the party on Friday,” Vernon said. His words were muffled; he'd taken a handkerchief spotted with brown stains out of his back pocket and was wiping his lips with it. “I sure would admire for you to come.” He glanced at me with his rheumy eyes, and what was in them scared the bejabbers out of me. Something was waiting for Vernon Klein just around the next bend in the road, and that look said Vernon knew all about it. “You too, Mr. Umney – we been through a lot together, and I'd be tickled to raise a glass with you.”

  “Wait a minute!” I shouted, grabbing Bill as he tried to step out of the elevator. “You wait just a God damned minute, both of you! What party? What's going on here?”

  “Retirement,” Bill said. “It usually happens at some point after your hair turns white, in case you've been too busy to notice. Vernon's party is going to be in the basement on Friday afternoon. Everybody in the building's going to be there, and I'm going to make my world-famous Dynamite Punch. What's the matter with you, Clyde? You've known for a month that Vern was finishing up on May thirtieth.”

  That made me angry all over again, the way I'd been when Peoria called me a faggot. I grabbed Bill by the padded shoulders of his double-breasted suit and gave him a shake. “The hell you say!”

  He gave me a small, pained smile. “The hell
I don't, Clyde. But if you don't want to come, fine. Stay away. You've been acting poco loco for the last six months, anyhow.”

  I shook him again. “What do you mean, poco loco?”

  “Crazy as a loon, nutty as a fruitcake, two wheels off the road, out to lunch, playing without a full deck – any of those ring a bell? And before you answer, just let me inform you that if you shake me one more time, even a little shake, my guts are going to explode straight out through my chest, and not even dry-cleaning will get that mess off your suit.”

  He pulled away before I could do it again even if I'd wanted to and started down the hall with the seat of his pants hanging somewhere down around the level of his knees, as per usual. He glanced back just once, while Vernon was sliding the brass gate across. “You need to take some time off, Clyde. Starting last week.”

  “What's gotten into you?” I shouted at him. “What's gotten into all of you?” But by then the inner door was closed and we were headed up again – this time to Seven. My little slice of heaven. Vern dropped his cigarette butt into the bucket of sand that squats in the corner, and immediately stuck a fresh one in his kisser. He popped a wooden match alight with his thumbnail, set the fag on fire, and immediately started coughing again. Now I could see fine drops of blood misting out from between his cracked lips. It was a gruesome sight. His eyes had dropped; they stared vacantly into the far corner, seeing nothing, hoping for nothing. Bill Tuggle's B. O. hung between us like the Ghost of Binges Past.

  “Okay, Vern,” I said. “What is it and where are you going?”

  Vernon had never been one to wear out the English language, and that at least hadn't changed. “It's Big C,” he said. “On Saturday I catch the Desert Blossom to Arizona. I'm going to live with my sister. I don't expect to wear out my welcome, though. She might have to change the bed twice.” He brought the elevator to a stop and rattled the gate back. “Seven, Mr. Umney. Your little slice of heaven.” He smiled at that just as he always did, but this time it looked like the kind of smile you see on the candy skulls down in Tijuana, on the Day of the Dead.

  Now that the elevator door was open, I smelled something up here in my little slice of heaven that was so out of place it took a moment for me to recognize it: fresh paint. Once it was noted, I filed it. I had other fish to fry.

  “This isn't right,” I said. “You know it isn't, Vern.”

  He turned his frightening vacant eyes on me. Death in them, a black shape flapping and beckoning just beyond the faded blue. “What isn't right, Mr. Umney?”

  “You're supposed to be here, damn it! Right here! Sitting on your stool with Jesus and your wife over your head. Not this!” I reached up, grabbed the card with the picture of the man fishing on the lake, tore it in two, put the pieces together, tore it in four, and then gave them the toss. They fluttered to the faded red rug on the floor of the elevator car like confetti.

  “S'posed to be right here,” he repeated, those terrible eyes of his never leaving mine. Beyond us, two men in paint-splattered coveralls had turned to look in our direction.

  “That's right.”

  “For how long, Mr. Umney? Since you know everything else, you can probably tell me that, can'tcha? How long am I supposed to keep drivin this damned car?”

  “Well... forever,” I said, and the word hung between us, another ghost in the cigarette-smokey elevator car. Given a choice of ghosts, I guess I would have picked Bill Tuggle's B. O.. .. but I wasn't given a choice. Instead, I said it again. “Forever, Vern.”

  He dragged on his Camel, coughed out smoke and a fine spray of blood, and went on looking at me. “It ain't my place to give the tenants advice, Mr. Umney, but I guess I'll give you some, anyway – it being my last week and all. You might consider seeing a doctor. The kind that shows you ink-pitchers and you say what they look like.”

  “You can't retire, Vern.” My heart was beating harder than ever, but I managed to keep my voice level. “You just can't.”

  “No?” He took his cigarette out of his mouth – fresh blood was already soaking into the tip – and then looked back at me. His smile was ghastly. “The way it looks to me, I ain't exactly got a choice, Mr. Umney.”

  III. Of Painters and Pesos.

  The smell of fresh paint seared my nose, overpowering both the smell of Vernon's smoke and Bill Tuggle's armpits. The men in the coveralls were currently taking up space not far from my office door. They had put down a dropcloth, and the tools of their trade were spread out all along it – tins and brushes and turp. There were two step-ladders as well, flanking the painters like scrawny bookends. What I wanted to do was to run down the hall, kicking the whole works every whichway as I went. What right had they to paint these old dark walls that glaring, sacrilegious white?

  Instead, I walked up to the one who looked as if it might take a twodigit number to express his IQ and politely asked what he and his fellow mug thought they were doing. He glanced around at me. “Hellzit look like? I'm givin Miss America a finger-frig and Chick there's puttin rouge on Betty Grable's nippy-nips.”

  I'd had enough. Enough of them, enough of everything. I reached out, grabbed the quiz-kid under the armpit, and used my fingertips to engage a particularly nasty nerve that hides up there. He screamed and dropped his brush. White paint splattered his shoes. His partner gave me a timid doe-eyed look and took a step backward.

  “If you try taking off before I'm done with you,” I snarled, “you're going to find the handle of your paint-brush so far up your ass you'll need a boathook to find the bristles. You want to try me and see if I'm lying?”

  He stopped moving and just stood there on the edge of the dropcloth, eyes darting from side to side, looking for help. There was none to be had. I half-expected Candy to open my door and look out to see what the fracas was, but the door stayed firmly closed. I turned my attention back to the quiz-kid I was holding onto.

  “The question was simple enough, bud – what the hell are you doing here? Can you answer it, or do I give you another blast?”

  I twiddled my fingers in his armpit just to refresh his memory and he screamed again. “Paintin the hall! Jeezis, can't you see?”

  I could see, all right, and even if I'd been blind, I could smell. I hated what both of those senses were telling me. The hallway wasn't supposed to be painted, especially not this glaring, lightreflecting white. It was supposed to be dim and shadowy; it was supposed to smell like dust and old memories. Whatever had started with the Demmicks” unaccustomed silence was getting worse all the time. I was mad as hell, as this unfortunate fellow was discovering. I was also scared, but that was a feeling you get good at hiding when carrying a heater in a clamshell holster is part of the way you make your living.

  “Who sent you two dubs down here?”

  “Our boss,” he said, looking at me as if I were crazy. “We work for Challis Custom Painters, on Van Nuys. The boss is Hap Corrigan. If you want to know who hired the cump'ny, you'll have to ask h…”

  “It was the owner,” the other painter said quietly. “The owner of this building. A guy named Samuel Landry.”

  I searched my memory, trying to put the name of Samuel Landry together with what I knew of the Fulwider Building and couldn't do it. In fact, I couldn't put the name of Samuel Landry together with anything... yet for all that it seemed almost to chime in my head, like a churchbell you can hear from miles away on a foggy morning.

  “You're lying,” I said, but with no real force. I said it simply because it was something to say.

  “Call the boss,” the other painter said. Appearances could be deceiving; he was apparently the brighter of the two, after all. He reached inside his grimy, paint-smeared coverall and brought out a little card.

  I waved it away, suddenly tired. “Who in the name of Christ would want to paint this place, anyway?”

  It wasn't them I was asking, but the painter who'd offered me the business card answered just the same. “Well, it brightens the place up,” he said cautiously. “You gotta adm
it that.”

  “Son,” I asked, taking a step toward him, “did your mother ever have any kids that lived, or did she just produce the occasional afterbirth like you?”

  “Hey, whatever, whatever,” he said, taking a step backward. I followed his worried gaze down to my own balled-up fists and forced them open again. He didn't look very relieved, and I actually didn't blame him very much. “You don't like it – you're coming through loud and clear on that score. But I gotta do what the boss tells me, don't I? I mean, hell, that's the American way.”

  He glanced at his partner, then back to me. It was a quick glance, really no more than a flick, but in my line of work I'd seen it more than once, and it's the kind of look you file away. Don't bother this guy, it said. Don't bump him, don't rattle him. He's nitro.

  “I mean, I've got a wife and a little kid to take care of,” he went on. “There's a Depression going on out there, you know.”

  Confusion came over me then, drowning my anger the way a downpour drowns a brushfire. Was there a Depression going on out there? Was there?

  “I know,” I said, not knowing anything. “Let's just forget it, what do you say?”

  “Sure,” the painters agreed, so eager they sounded like half of a barbershop quartet. The one I'd mistakenly tabbed as half-bright had his left hand buried deep in his right armpit, trying to get that nerve to go back to sleep. I could have told him he had an hour's work ahead of him, maybe more, but I didn't want to talk to them anymore. I didn't want to talk to anyone or see anyone – not even the delectable Candy Kane, whose humid glances and smooth, subtropical curves have been known to send seasoned street-brawlers reeling to their knees. The only thing I wanted to do was to get across the outer office and into my inner sanctum. There was a bottle of Robb's Rye in the bottom lefthand drawer, and right now I needed a shot in the worst way.