Death in The Life (19 page)

“Twelve noon. I’ll attend to the newspaper notice and I’ll inform his sister.”

“All right.”

“I brought along an envelope for the offering. You can mail it to me any time.”

Julie thought of Madame Tozares and leaving the ten dollars on her table. “Okay.”

“Is there anything from a poem or a play you’d like me to incorporate in my memorial—something especially fitting to his life work?”

“He was fond of the poet Yeats,” Julie said. “I’ll have to think about it, Father Doyle.”

“I’m a simple man, remember. I don’t speak with the tongues of angels. But I would like to pay tribute.”

Suddenly there were a hundred things Julie would have liked to talk about with this man who was missing a tooth and who wore a suit going green about the cuffs. But not a word would come to her lips.

He took her to the door of the rectory. “I’ll expect to hear from you by the end of the week, shall I?”

Julie nodded and on impulse extended her hand.

He gave it a brief, warm shake. “Come around and see me any time you want. If I’m not here, I won’t be far.”

Julie walked along Eighth Avenue and thought of the whore singing hymns; she imagined Father Doyle throwing back his head and laughing if she told him about it. Oh, boy. Now she was romanticizing a priest. Well, Doctor…

As she neared Bourke’s Electrical Shop she caught sight of Goldie prancing across the street in advance of the oncoming traffic, apparently intent on catching up with her. Okay. She stopped and retied a lace on her sneaker: non-commital cooperation. When she straightened up there he was, his feet spread, his chest out, the cap perched on the back of his head and his very white teeth gleaming.

“You’re back,” she said.

“Did you miss me?”

“You wouldn’t know where Mack is?”

“Now, Miz Julie, you know better than that. We’re competitors.”

“All the more reason.”

“Fact is, I’d like to see him on the street. His ’ho’s begging me to take ’em. I got more girls now than I can take good care of. I’m not talking about fresh talent, of course.” His tongue explored his cheek.

“Was Rita fresh talent when Mack picked her up?”

“Oh, honey, I could’ve plucked that chick any time I wanted. I smelled trouble the first time I laid eyes on her.”

A police car cruised by, close to the curb, the two cops looking straight ahead, but seeing sideways. Goldie tipped his cap to the receding car.

“You might as well come in out of the cold, Miz Julie. You is just been stamped Goldie’s girl.”

“All right. Let’s talk.”

“You’re putting me on.”

“Let’s say I’m using you. I’m inviting you to my shop.”

“Let’s go. If you don’t mind walking with Goldie, it sure don’t make no mind to him.”

It was quite a performance, Goldie’s strut down Eighth Avenue. He did elaborate little dance steps around the plain folks on the street and tipped his cap to every prostitute they passed. Neither Juanita or her mother was in sight when Julie turned the key in the shop door. She put water for coffee on the electric plate in back. Something had changed. Or she had. She was no longer afraid of him. While she was making the coffee, he perused her books on the occult and allied industries. His comment, putting the last of the collection back on the shelf: “This is horse shit, baby. It’s got nothing to do with real life.”

“Are you an expert on real life, Goldie?”

“If I don’t dig it, it ain’t there.”

He drank his coffee, flashing the diamond beacon he wore on his little finger. It would have been a great time for Mrs. Ryan to drop in.

“What do you know about Rita, Goldie?”

“You in cozy with the fuzz, Miz Julie?”

“The police? No. I’m listening from now on. I don’t say I won’t tell them what I know if they ask me, but I’m not going to volunteer. And I give you my word, the source is sacred.”

“Put your hand on Jesus,” he said, opening wider the yellow silk shirt to expose the silver cross.

Julie touched it with her fingers. “I swear.”

“That doll is a man-eating shark. I’ll bet she cut her teeth on somebody’s balls. Her old man’s maybe. Or her old lady’s. Yeah. Didn’t she make a pass at you?”

“No way.”

“Don’t say no way. That lost little girl crap? That was a pass even if you didn’t know it.”

“Okay. Tell it the way you see it.”

Goldie stared at her, the eyes going needle sharp. It was as though he was trying to hypnotize her. She wanted his trust and made herself stare back at him. The very concentration it took was a distraction from what turned out to be the main action: he brought his feet up under the low table and upended it, sending the Tarot cards, the Friend Julie cards, the lamp, and her notebook flying. The crystal ball bounced off Julie’s knee: the pain was dazzling. Goldie set his coffee mug on the floor and examined the underside of the table. Miraculously the light bulb hadn’t broken.

“What the hell are you looking for?”

“A bug. When you said Okay that way, I got the feeling I was being set up for The Man.”

“Oh boy.” Julie rubbed her knee. “Everybody’s bug-crazy. Where do you want to go and talk? Name it and I’ll go along.”

“I apologize.” Goldie put the table back on its legs, picked up the lamp, and started gathering the cards.

“Leave them. I’m not using them much these days.” She had spilled coffee all over her sweater and jeans. “What a mess.”

“I didn’t spill a drop on me,” he said, looking over the golden shirt and cream-colored slacks.

“You bastard.”

“That’s what all my girls say, but they love me. Now I got three more moving in. They don’t figure Mack to be around for a while. Want to change your clothes? I won’t look.”

“Oh, shit,” Julie said. She got her coat and put it on. It was chilly in the shop anyway.

“Did you hear what I said, Miz Julie? I got three of Mack’s girls, Rita’s wife-in-laws. Now the funny thing is all of them act like she was Jesus’s little lamb. Except maybe one chick. Could be that one’s stooling for Mack. Goldie could have a viper in his bosom.”

“May Weems?”

Goldie arched his eyebrows. “Julie, chile, you and I are going to be able to do business.”

Julie saw no reason not to pass along to Goldie Detective Russo’s opinion that May Weems was indeed still Mack’s girl, trying to pump Julie for information on where Rita might be. She gave him pretty much verbatim the telephone conversation with the person who had identified herself as Rita’s wife-in-law.

“You went to the cops,” Goldie said. First things first with Goldie.

“I did. I was afraid I was dealing with Mack when I read the note, and I didn’t feel up to him on my own.”

“Which means The Man is going to bust little May and screw her for info on Mack.”

“Probably.”

“Or already has done,” Goldie added, thinking. Then: “Won’t do him no good at all. Mack’s too smart to tell her where he is. He’d call
her.
He’d have to figure a straight like you was going to the cops either before or after talking to May. Miz Julie, do you know where Rita is?”

“No.”

“If you did would you tell the cops?”

“No.” She wasn’t as sure as she made it sound.

Goldie grinned, not altogether pleasantly. “What about Mack, if you knew where he was?”

“You bet.”

Goldie played his fingers over the cross. Again, she thought of the polished nails as drops of blood. “Miz Julie, how would you like to go to a party?”

“Where?”

“My place. Wouldn’t it be something to get all you Rita fans together?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll pick you up at five
A.M.”

“I’ll be here,” Julie said. She could feel her heartbeat drum out some sort of warning.

Goldie finished his coffee and got up. “Be smart now, but not smart-assed. Just fall in with whatever I say when I introduce you.”

“Is May going to be there?”

“Unless she’s detained elsewhere. By which I mean Midtown North.”

“Is she black?”

“How’d you guess?”

“I think I saw Mack beating up on her once.” But that wasn’t it: the voice on the phone had suggested it, and the point to the question was a further probe of May’s credibility. Julie did not think Rita would confide the halfway house bit to a black. “Goldie, I want to know something: What’s in it for you?”

“Kicks, baby. It’s like for the time being, I’m straight. Five
A.M.”
He looked down at her. “Don’t you ever wear makeup?”

“Not often.”

He touched her chin with the tips of his fingers, turning her face one way, then the other while he studied it, or pretended to. He chuckled. “Those ’ho’s are going to have a ball.”

Julie returned to the back room and gathered the cards, personal and Tarot. The worn silk handkerchief which she had got with them from Mr. Kanakas had been torn almost in two. She sat at the table and buried her face in her hands, trying to think. For someone determined not to go off in all directions, she wasn’t exactly zooming in. Yet nothing seemed irrelevant, not at the moment. You couldn’t pull in until you pushed out. And the number-two item listed in her pocket notebook was “See Goldie for Rita’s first days on street.” Okay. She gave herself a half-hour to concentrate on the implications and possible consequences of doing business with Goldie. Who the hell was Nero Wolfe? A detective. A fat detective she had heard of, of course… Yeats for Father Doyle. Zooming in. Yeah. She set up the typewriter and inserted an original and two carbon sets.

GOLDIE:

Knew Rita was trouble from first time he saw her. Could have copped her if he wanted. (Rita: “I might go with Goldie, because I don’t think I could fall in love with a black man.”) So why Mack in the first place? Goldie right—a man hater. But a man-eating shark? Lesbian? According to Goldie. By me, no way.

How do I dress for 5
A.M.
party at a pimp’s pad? Find out: Rita’s age, how Mack got her, where she came from, who she told about halfway house—about me. Why? Does anybody there know Pete? Sweets Romano? No. Might turn off informants. Yes. But ask at end of session. What if ladies won’t talk? Stay on good terms with Goldie. He does know
something.

What if police raid Goldie’s at five
A.M.?

Doctor, I need somebody to post bail…

She put the Goldie file with her original letter to Jeff and turned to number one: Mrs. Ryan, from whom she hadn’t heard in two days. Fritzie was probably sick.

“O
H, JULIE, I WAS
so sick I couldn’t get my head off the pillow, and poor Fritzie with no one to walk him.”

“You should have called me.”

“I might have, but Mr. Bourke called for me to pick up the lamp he’d repaired, and when I told him he came around at once and fixed me a lovely cup of tea and took Fritzie out. You know he’s been here a half-dozen times since, and he has to pay someone to stay in the shop when he leaves it.”

“I thought he was put out of your building,” Julie said.

“They’re a dirty-minded lot! I’m starting a petition. You shouldn’t be able to put a man out of his home after all these years. Not on hearsay.”

“Good for you,” Julie said. “How about our get-together with Miss Brennan?”

“I didn’t want to ask her while I was sick for fear she’d think I was taking advantage of her. Everybody does. You’d think she was nurse in residence to the Willoughby. She’s coming after work today. I don’t think I can go out yet, but if you’d stop by the deli and bring something, we could have a bite here together. A nice bit of ham maybe, or corned beef, and they have lovely stuffed cabbage…”

“Okay.”

“And you might bring a six-pack of lager.”

Julie stopped at the Forum during the afternoon and duplicated her complete file on the machine there, a copy of everything for Doctor Callahan. She put a large notice of the memorial Mass on the bulletin board.

Nurse Sheila Brennan, as Mrs. Ryan introduced her, was a plain, solid woman, freckled-faced with quick blue eyes and a laugh that banged around the cluttered one-room apartment. She could change the sheets under an elephant without straining her back. Julie and she had no trouble getting acquainted.

“That’s Laura Gibson,” Mrs. Ryan said and pointed to the wall above her. Mrs. Ryan lay on the studio couch, wrapped in a flowered dressing gown, Fritzie asleep at her feet, his head on his white, aging paws. “Show her which one, Sheila.” The wall was a montage of photographs of theater people.

“I recognize her,” Julie said. A long neck and a tilted chin, the tilt of which almost pulled its double out of sight. A sensual mouth. Never would Julie have said she was Pete’s type.

“You know what I was thinking yesterday, lying here looking up at her? She was out of her time. She belonged in the days of class. There isn’t a one on the stage today if you met in the laundromat you wouldn’t think belonged there.”

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

“When Miss Gibson and Pete used to play scenes for you, do you remember anything from Yeats they liked especially?”

“They only played what they liked, and they played for themselves. Something heroic. She liked the heroic parts.”

“There were other things I remember,” Miss Brennan said. “She could play a fine whore if she wanted.”

“If it was an O’Casey whore maybe,” Mrs. Ryan said defensively.

“You needn’t be so shocked,” the nurse said. “I was talking about playing, not being. Or was I? To my mind there are
whores
and there are whores. I always had the impression that Laura Gibson wanted you to wonder about her.”

Julie remembered her talk with Rudy and said aloud, “Her three Bs—Bed, Booze, and the Boards.”

“Where did you hear that?” Mrs. Ryan said.

“From someone who worked with her.”

“Is that the best they could remember of her?”

“Sorry,” Julie said. When Mrs. Ryan went thin at the lips there was no use questioning even her logic which was particularly vulnerable at the moment. She had herself mentioned the affairs of Miss Gibson’s youth with something close to admiration. Beauty wasn’t the only thing in the eyes of the beholder. Julie turned to the nurse. “The reason I wanted to talk with you, Miss Brennan, I wanted to ask about the time Miss Gibson was in the hospital.”