Death in The Life (16 page)

“Pete came down here when we opened. The act is his kind of theater. I don’t talk. I mime whatever comes into my mind while Hutch strums the guitar and sings his crazy country folk stuff. I took it right out of Pete’s street theater… Oh, Julie. I loved the bastard.” His mouth spread in a wide smile that came to a sad conclusion, his lower lip sticking out. He looked at his watch. “I’m going to start putting on my makeup. I’m a slow dresser.”

“Tell me when you want me to leave.”

“I will. Want to see the show?”

“Yes.”

“I like that about you, Julie. Straight. No sugary crap.”

“Did you know Laura Gibson?”

“Sure. A real trooper, but she couldn’t play the star game. And she couldn’t play with phonies, which when you come right down to it most actors are. I mean when the company was bad, she was lousy.”

“What about her and Pete? Were they lovers, friends, what?”

Those restless eyes of the comic settled on Julie’s. “For private or public consumption?”

“For me. I want to understand.”

He looked in the mirror while he smeared cream on his face and then wiped it off. “I think she brought Pete out. I know, damn well she did. He was hung up on his mother or his sister—some Freudian knot that Miss Gibson took into her clever fingers and dissolved like a cat’s cradle. I was pretty tuned in on the action and old Laura knew it. She played Pete like an instrument, and I don’t think he ever got that from anybody else—or wanted it.

“After she’d get a few drinks in her—she was a great boozer: she used to say, ‘I’ve devoted my life to the three Bs—Bed, Booze, and the Boards’—anyway, after a couple of drinks, she’d sit with her hand on mine and tell me what a wonderful lover he was.”

“I don’t think I like her much,” Julie said.

“She could be a bitch, but she was a lot of other things, too. She was somebody you always had to help get started. Then she was great. She could take over then and pull the whole thing together—on stage and off.”

“Yeah.” It tied in with Julie’s memory of her in
Streetcar.

“Wrap it all up, and I’d have to say that was the best experience I ever had as an actor. The whole package was Pete’s idea—and hers, I guess. He’d just shook loose of Ira Windsor and that old-fashioned formal, fixed idea of design. The
set
piece, you know? Frozen. Money. You want to hear this?”

“You bet-Rudy looked at his watch again. “What he set out to do was a composite of theater—old-style—folk—improvisation. The way he started was by going into the neighborhoods himself—walking, eating, drinking, playing with the kids, talking to cops, the whole scene. Remember, Lindsay was mayor and Fun City hadn’t gone bust. Pete got carte blanche. We did the wedding scene from a play called
The Dybbuk
in Jewish neighborhoods—my God, half the street got into the beggars’ dance. Then there was
Cathleen ni Houlihan
for the Irish.”

“I know that part,” Julie said.

“Laura Gibson, wow.”

“Yeah.”

“And Little Italy—that’s where I came into my own. What you see me do tonight, that’s where it started. It was like a Fellini circus, only… ours.”

“I read a review,” Julie said.

“Pete was the M.C.—a white suit and a whip. Ha! Let me get through here and I’ll tell you a funny thing that maybe wasn’t as funny as I thought it was.”

Julie watched him redden his lips, put dots in the corners of his eyes, and enlarge upon the already large mouth. He darkened his eyebrows and peaked them into a shape of perpetual wonder.

“What a way to make a living, yeah? I say it every night along about now, looking at this damn fool in the mirror. Then I thank God. I make people laugh and it’s the most wonderful feeling in the world… next to sex.”

Julie wondered why he had added that last jarring phrase. Then she thought she knew: he was embarrassed at the admission of wonder at the miracle of his own talent. The cover.

“There was a guy in the audience—it was in a vacant lot on Houston Street—who got a crush on Pete. Mafia, maybe. But from then on, wherever we were playing, this guy would show up with his bodyguards, a couple of klunks you’d just call bodies.’ He had a kind of cherubic look, a little boy face. The night we closed on Houston Street he gave the whole company a party at the Paradise Restaurant. Never said a word to anybody that I know of, just sat and looked at Pete. No advances, nothing. Whenever he wanted anything, one of his boys took care of it. You know, from the waiters—from the limousine, a big black Caddie. We got to calling him The Little King.”

“Who was he?”

“Don’t know. Never did.”

“How did Pete react?”

“He played it cool. Like it was all in the script. Only there wasn’t any script, of course, just the outline which he fed us every night. But let me tell you this. Then I’ll get the boss in and introduce you. He used to walk out through the audience with that whip and this once, when he’d just passed Baby Face, he turned and cracked the whip. You never saw anybody go into such ecstasy as The Little King. Instant orgasm. His boys stood there like bulldogs on leashes, but they never made a move. Pete went straight through the crowd back to the truck and put the whip away. He wasn’t supposed to be through, but he was. When I finished my routine I went looking for Pete and found him with Laura in the portable dressing room. He was on his knees, his head smack against her belly, and her soothing and hugging him and saying it was going to be all right.”

The club was crowded. The manager smiled a lot, but he could not quite conceal his irritation at having to find a place for Julie. “You won’t have a table to yourself, miss. We’re very busy.”

“That’s good,” Julie said. “I mean I’m glad business is good.”

He took a long look at her, his expression suggesting that he might be about to tell her something almost intimate, say, that her lipstick was on crooked. Julie looked at him as frankly. He put her in mind of some of the old-time show people who lived at the Willoughby: you couldn’t guess their age. Which didn’t matter because they weren’t their age anyway, being both very young and very old at the same time. He went off without saying any of the things that seemed to be on his mind.

Julie ordered a hamburger at four dollars and a massive Coke.

When the show was about to start, a man in a dinner jacket slipped into the other chair at the table. He sat with his arms folded, massaging his biceps while his eyes roamed the house. He had to be a watchdog or bouncer of some sort. He and Julie exchanged brief smiles. He spoke to her just as the M.C. came on stage. “Sweets Romano’s the guy you’re looking for.”

Julie repeated the name. She had heard it before, but she could not remember where. “How do I find him?”

He gave an enormous shrug: what a stupid question. “Look him up.”

Having introduced “Hutch and Rudy,” the M.C. came to the table. Julie’s erstwhile companion gave him his chair. It was the house table. The M.C. sat with his eyes closed.

Sweets Romano… the guy you’re looking for. Julie hadn’t known she was looking for any guy. Rita, yes. Possibly Mack. Then she made the connection. Russo had told the Homicide detective in the car that Saturday night that Mack’s record included assault, drugs… and that he was tied up with the Romano outfit. To volunteer this information, these nightclub people had to know she was receptive to it, looking for it. And that had to mean someone had listened in on her conversation with Rudy. Baby Face… The Little King: Sweets Romano. The images matched somehow.

Julie wanted out. But to run was ridiculous. They’d know she would take the message to the police. It was probably what they wanted. Why? She ate her hamburger and tried to keep her mind on the Hutch and Rudy Show. It was no use.

She told Rudy he was marvelous when he stopped after the act and kissed the top of her head. He introduced his partner and then slyly snatched her check from the table. As soon as the comics had left the floor, Julie took off.

The bouncer opened the door for her. “A cab, Mrs. Hayes?”

Mrs. Hayes. Everybody knew everybody. “No thanks. I’ll manage.”

On the street she flagged down the first cruising taxi. She tipped the driver extravagantly and asked him to wait until she had closed the vestibule door behind her.

The more lights she turned on in the apartment, the more eerie and silent it seemed. She had intended to call Detective Russo, but the thought of her own voice reinforcing her aloneness made her put off the call until morning. She went quickly to bed leaving most of the lights on.

R
USSO WAS IN A MEETING
when Julie called in the morning, but he sent word that he would like her to stop by the station house when she came uptown. She arrived in time to see a procession of prostitutes and arresting officers take off for court. Some of the women looked Julie over with a cold eye. New girl in town.

Russo’s meeting broke up a few minutes after her arrival. He came out of the captain’s office with a number of other detectives, Lieutenant Donleavy among them. The Homicide man tipped his hat to Julie and said, “We’re going to have to put you on the payroll, little lady.”

Russo took her upstairs to the room in which he had taped her statement after she had identified Pete’s body. He handed her a flyer smelling of fresh ink. Rita as composed by the police artist.

“Hey.” Julie was impressed by its accuracy.

“I told you,” Russo said.

“Do you still think she’s in New York?”

“No. I think I was wrong about that. Last Thursday she bought a great big teddy bear at F.A.O. Schwarz. How about that? I owe you a drink. Remember? You gave me the tip.”

“I remember.”

“Then along about five that afternoon she was seen at the bus terminal.”

“So she did go home.”

“I’d like to talk to someone who saw her on the bus before I’d say that, but it looks that way.”

“Have you found Mack?”

“We will.”

Julie said, “Am I right that you told Lieutenant Donleavy he was part of the Romano outfit?”

“He used to be, but they’ve been dumping the crude numbers like him since they went respectable. They’re very heavy in real estate nowadays, most of it lawyer-fronted, fancy corporation names. But I wouldn’t be surprised if Mack hustles his whores into family-owned buildings.”

“I think Pete may have had a connection with somebody called Sweets Romano,” Julie said.

Russo thought about it. “It fits.”

“How?”

“Tell me your story first. Shall we turn on the machine?”

“All right.”

When Julie finished he said, “Nobody sees much of Sweets these days. He’s supposed to have gone in for collecting culture. But how about this: he’s also an entrepreneur of Grade B movies. In other words, porn films.”

“Is that what you meant, it fits?”

“Doesn’t it?”

“I can’t see Pete in that scene. I just can’t. He was half-priest, for God’s sake.”

“And the other half?”

She shrugged. “Artist. Yeah, artist.”

“I’m a square cop, Julie, but I don’t think there’s any reason to make those things except for money. Not if the guy’s honest about it, and I know you’re going to tell me he was honest.”

“Pete did need money once, a lot of it. When Laura Gibson was dying, he took care of her. He paid her bills, doctors, hospital…” She stopped: Mrs. Ryan had put Mack into the hospital scene.

“Once.” Russo picked up the word. “Don’t hit me for this, but does anybody ever need money just once?”

“Yeah. Pete.”

“Okay, if you say so.” The detective sped up the tape and when it was run through he removed, boxed, and labeled it. “Donleavy’s going to love this. You should’ve heard him this morning—‘Dig! Goddamn it, dig!’ Family history, the works. Have you been in touch with Mallory’s sister?”

“No,” Julie said, “but I will call her. What about Pete’s body?”

“It’ll go home soon.”

“And the lab report?”

“That doesn’t have anything to do with it.”

“Is it in?” Julie persisted.

He nodded. “Inconclusive.”

“Come on, Detective Russo. What does that mean?”

“There was semen, but that doesn’t prove of itself he had sex. The discharge could have happened during death trauma.”

“Okay.” She had asked for it.

“We just don’t know what went on there. Everything’s screwy—the business of no key, the place as neat as a pin, except for the one area. One set of fingerprints, Mack’s, with all the Johns coming and going? That’s crazy. Mack paid the rent there, even before she moved in. That was two months ago. Mallory lived in the building for five years. Who owns the building? I wouldn’t be surprised now if it was the Romano syndicate. But what was going on between your friend and the little prostitute—I wish I knew.”

“If anything,” Julie said.

“She’s traveling light, wherever she is. She gave most of her clothes to a thrift shop after first trying to sell them there; she made up a cock-and-bull story about getting married to a third-world diplomat, whatever the hell that is…”

“No kidding,” Julie said. She asked the name of the thrift shop. Haven House.

“I’ll tell you one thing, Julie. I’m glad my job is collecting hard, cold evidence. I don’t go in for the psycho bit.”

Julie wondered what had brought that on.

Then: “Donleavy trying to figure out what it could mean, a whore buying a teddy bear. She wanted a present for her kid brother, right?”

“Right.”

He shook his head. “It sure makes you wonder.”

“What?”

“What the brass looks for when they go over the promotions list.”

Julie did not much like that recurring confidence. And Donleavy was more her style, by the sound of it. She made no comment.

Russo returned to business. “What I thought we’d do this morning, Julie, I’d like you to try that phone number from here where we can put it on tape. Identify yourself and see what comes across. The phone is listed to a May Weems on Fifty-second Street. Mack’s her pimp. Or was at the time of her last arrest. Don’t tell her you know her name, of course.”

Julie did not especially want to make the call, but she saw no reason not to. “What am I to say to her?”