Goodey's Last Stand: A Hard Boiled Mystery (Joe Goodey) (12 page)

“I’m Jim Barton,” he said, giving me a tough old hand to shake. “I didn’t know Olga at all. Only met her once just short of a year ago. But what can we do for you out here?”

“I met Mrs. Barton at the funeral,” I said, “and on the way back here she mentioned that she might know the name of a man Olga lived with in the early years when she first left here for San Francisco. I’d find it useful to have that name.”

“That right, Maggie?” Barton asked, turning his eyes on her. She wriggled under them like a schoolgirl. I swear she even blushed.

“I used to know that fella’s name, Jim,” she said, “but it’s been a lot of years since then. If I’ve still got it around, it’ll be in my box.” She didn’t seem to be too eager to produce it.

“Well,” he said, “you just go up and root through that box until you find it. And while you’re at it, make some tea. I’ll entertain Mr.
Goodey while you’re gone.”

We watched her climb up the iron steps into the main body of the caboose and disappear from sight. Then Barton gestured to a low bench, and we both sat watching rubbish float downstream in the murky brown canal water.

“You like being a private detective, Mr. Goodey?” Barton asked, relighting his big pipe with a puff of gray smoke.

“It’s hard to say so soon,” I answered, “but I don’t think I will. There’s too much uncertainty in it.”

“Well,” he said, “that may be, but let me give you some advice. No matter how much you don’t like your job, it’s better than being retired. When the time comes that somebody wants to retire you, you take that gun of yours—you’re not wearing one, I see, but you’ve got one, I imagine?”

“Somewhere around,” I said.

“You take that gun of yours and blow your brains out first before you let them retire you. That’s my advice.” He spat into the slow-moving canal.

“That’s how much you like being retired, is it?”

“Yep,” he said. “They gave me a watch, they gave me a fair little pension, and they even gave me this old caboose. But it don’t make up for not having a job. Not half.”

“And you don’t have a gun?” I felt
shamed to ask.

“I’ve got a gun, all right, a big,
hawg-leg thing of a pistol. But I haven’t got the guts to use it. And that’s a hard thing to live with too.”

“You’ll manage somehow,” I said, “and so will I when the time comes. Let me ask you something, Mr. Barton. What did you think of Olga?”

“Not much. As I say, she came out here maybe a year ago to see her mother. Seemed to me she was all tits and seventy-five-cent words. Tough as day-old hardtack on the surface and not much softer underneath. One thing stuck in my mind about her.”

“What’s that?”

“Ambition. She was maybe a hundred and twenty-five pounds of walking, talking ambition. She had the gimme’s and gotta’s so bad she couldn’t sit still. She wasn’t here any more than three hours before she was up and off. Wasn’t any way at all that hanging around this dump was going to get her where she wanted to go.”

“Where’s that?”

“Somewhere, anywhere. You know, I told you I only met her once, but I’ve seen her since. About six months ago I was in San Francisco, and I found myself down in North Beach. I had some time to kill before I caught the bus, so I went into The Jungle for a drink and a peek at Olga at work. There wasn’t much of a crowd, it being a Tuesday night, so I sat right up at the bar, and some girl with no shirt on took two dollars off of me for a shot of bad rye and a beer chaser. After a while Olga came on.”

“And?”

“It wasn’t worth the buck fifty, not even if I was half my age.”

“Did she see you?”

“I doubt it. As far as I know, all she could see was herself in those big mirrors.”

Just then, Maggie Barton came down the steps of the caboose with two mugs of steaming tea balanced on top of a rosewood writing box. She’d changed to an old pair of blue jeans and a checked cotton shirt and looked more like herself.

Old Barton and I took the mugs and made appreciative noises over the good, strong, milky tea. “Did you find the name?” Barton asked.

“Yes,” she said, but she wasn’t rushing to give it to me. She had her arms wrapped around the box as if it contained atomic secrets.

“Well?” said Barton impatiently. I couldn’t have said it better.

“It does seem to me, Jim,” she said, “that we ought to get some
thing for it. This guy’s probably making a fortune.”

“Give it to the man, woman,” he said in a voice that didn’t take to argument.

“Oh, all right,” she said, opening the box narrowly and throwing a pale-blue envelope in my lap. “This is fifteen years old, and he might not even be alive now.”

That’s logic for you: try to bargain a good price and then when you fail to get it, knock the merchandise. I picked the envelope out of my lap and saw that it was addressed to Miss Olga
Dombrowitz at an address in West Pittsburg. I turned it over and in a fine Italic hand faded to a whispery gray was the name Antonio Scarezza.

She was right. I didn’t know if
Scarezza was still alive, either. But when I was cutting my teeth on a nightstick, he was the biggest man in the dock rackets. Only then he was called Tony Scar.

14

It was late afternoon by the time I’d driven back to San Francisco. It seemed just about the right time to go see Doc Irving, the weeping physician. His office wasn’t hard to find. It was in the heart of the Ocean Avenue shopping district in an anonymous, chlorine-green building set back from the sidewalk and guarded by two sick-looking palm trees. A small brass plate next to the bell told me his name was still Fletcher Irving, M.D., and that he saw patients By Appointment Only. That’s all.

I gave the bell a discreet push, and after a short interval a woman’s fuzzy voice came out of a small grille at about Adam’s apple level: “Yes? Who is it?”

“The name is Goodey,” I said, stooping slightly. “I have an appointment with Dr. Irving.”

There, was a short, muffled consultation about that, and then a man’s voice said, “This is Dr. Irving, Mr.—?”

“Goodey,” I told the grille, “Joe Goodey. I’m the detective you met earlier today at Holy Martyrs Cemetery. You said to come see you.”

Doc Irving switched off, and I could tell that he was wondering how to get rid of me. He didn’t have a chance.

“Mr.—ah—Goodey,” his voice crackled, “couldn’t you—”

“No, I couldn’t, Dr. Irving,” I said in a very loud voice, “and there’s a crowd of people out here on the sidewalk beginning to wonder why I’m yelling at your front door.” There really wasn’t much of a crowd, but I could guarantee to get one in a hurry.

After a short pause for thought, he said, “Very well, come up then.” A buzzer sounded, and the thick, oak-veneer door cracked open.

The staircase going straight up from the front door was carpeted in something like cashmere, and the wallpaper was that nubby stuff rich doctors and society matrons seem to favor. The stairway lamp was a discreet fleur-de-lis shape with a soft light which would be flattering to less-than-perfect complexions.

Standing at the top of the stairs was Dr. Irving. He was wearing a smart, off-white surgical coat and looked considerably improved over the last time I’d seen him. His eyes were only slightly red at the edges, and his homely, youthful face with its cartoon-button nose looked most professional and even suave. He gave me a shy smile. I didn’t know what to do with it, so I gave it back to him.

“Mr.
Goodey,” he said, blocking the door behind him at least semi-intentionally, “what can I do for you?” He put out a hand in a gesture which was half greeting and half stiff-arm. I took his hand, smiled winningly, and, without being too obvious about it, maneuvered it and him through the doorway and into the anteroom of his offices. It looked as plush as the stairs, maybe a little better, and a girl was sitting in it on an expensive leather sofa looking at us.

She was perhaps twenty-seven years old, dark-haired, and well-built in a modest way. She had the face of a girl who’d lived a lot but hadn’t let it get her down. There was something in her eyes—I couldn’t make out the color in the dead light of the anteroom—that
said she knew what she wanted. She didn’t say anything. Neither did I, but I filed her away for future reference.

Irving didn’t look too happy to have me cluttering up his place, but he didn’t offer to throw me down the stairs, either. So I quietly stood there waiting for his next opening. Pretty soon the tension got to him.

“What do you
want
, Mr. Goodey?”

“I want to know what your relationship was with Tina
D’Oro and why you were so broken up at her funeral today. And if she meant so much to you, why didn’t you join us at the graveside instead of lurking out there in the bushes?”

That was a lot all at once for him, and he reddened up and looked as though he was going to brim over again. But he swallowed in
stead, raised up on his toes a little and did his best to look me in the eye. That’s not really a very big job, but the doc wasn’t up to his best form.

“I was Miss
D’Oro’s doctor,” he said, making the job sound like a combination of royal physician and grade-A wizard.

“So?” I said in my most obtuse manner. Nothing brings out the blabbermouth in some people like a dumb, uncomprehending cop. I shifted my position slightly so that I could watch both Irving and the girl at the same time. Her face, not conventionally pretty but handsome in a slightly aquiline way, was calm enough, but she wasn’t missing a thing.

The doctor cleared his throat portentously. “Mr. Goodey,” he said, “did you ever see Tina D’Oro dance?”

“Once or twice.”

“What did you think of her body?” He asked the question casually enough, but there was a lot behind it. Any way you look at it, it was a queer question for a doctor to ask. I didn’t want to rush into an answer which might put him off, so I tried to look as if I were carefully phrasing my reply. He couldn’t wait.

“I mean,” Irving said, “do you think she had a beautiful body?”

He couldn’t have given me the answer more plainly without using ventriloquism, so I said: “Of course. She had the most beautiful body I’ve ever seen.” Which was a lie, but a useful one. As far as Dr. Irving was concerned, I’d spoken the magic words. I was in. His face lost a lot of tension and relaxed into what must have been his usual, slightly dopey expression of friendliness. And behind it in his doggy eyes was the gleam of the true believer, the holder of truth. He was going to let me in on something.

“Mr.
Goodey,” he said, “I created Tina D’Oro’s body.”

I was working overtime trying to get an expression of amazed incredulity on my face when he followed up with: “Of course, Tina was an early effort, in some ways quite a primitive effort—almost crude—but nonetheless I am proud of my creation. As you may have guessed, I am what is popularly called a plastic surgeon.” I had guessed, actually. “I created Tina’s body just as surely as Michelangelo created ‘La
Pietk.’”

“Surely,” he went on, “you can understand how I felt this after
noon when Tina was lowered into her grave.”

I looked understanding, but this was wasted on the mad doctor. He was caught up in his own enthusiasm. He put an urgent hand on my sleeve. “Come,” he said, “would you like me to show you how I made Tina
D’Oro what she was?”

Now there was a question that had only one possible answer. “Yes, please,” I said, like a good boy.

But Doc Irving had already taken my answer for granted. He signaled the girl to follow and turned to open the door to the inner sanctum. “Follow me,” he said, “and I will show you something truly remarkable.”

I politely let the girl go first, for which she didn’t show much grat
itude, and followed. If I’d been expecting Dr. Frankenstein’s laboratory with flashing lights and gurgling test tubes, I’d have been disappointed. Dr. Irving’s wonder factory turned out to be a large, smooth, pastel room like the conference room of a successful advertising agency. It featured a large, round slab-of-marble table surrounded by four bucket chairs on pedestals and a wall lined with brass-handled cabinets and drawers of various sizes. There was no sign of an operating table.

Irving motioned me and the girl, who hadn’t said a word since we’d had that chat over the intercom, into two of the bucket seats and opened a large cabinet door on the slightly curved wall. A six
teen-millimeter projector slid out on a hinged platform, and the doctor rummaged through a low drawer, full of things which clanked metallically. The recessed lights began to dim, and a patch of white light sprang to a flat, beige wall across from where we were sitting. Movies.

Irving expertly threaded a reel of film, pushed a button, and a jumble of numbers flickered on the screen. Then the hand-lettered title: “Miss Tina
D’Oro—February 1968.” The doc ought to get together with Fat Phil. They could make a fortune. But the Tina who flashed on the screen, looking nervous in front of a dead-white wall, wasn’t the Tina I’d known or the one they’d buried that day. She didn’t look much younger, perhaps even a little older in a strange way. The eyes weren’t exactly dewy with innocence, but there was something softer in them that had since crystallized. The face was vaguer, less formed, and her mouth hung a little slackly in contrast with the lush tautness we all knew. It might have been another girl entirely, but one thing told me it wasn’t. There was a flickering hunger in the face that was unmistakable.

I was looking at the screen past the girl’s face, and there was enough light for me to see that what she was seeing was hitting her hard. Some of the control had gone out of her face. She was blinking fast, but couldn’t take her eyes off the screen.

“This was Tina D’Oro the first day she came to me,” Irving said behind us in a narrator’s voice. The camera zoomed up on Tina until from the waist up she filled the small screen. The color of the image was hard, slightly brighter than reality, and Tina’s crudely applied make-up made her look like a slightly depraved doll. A pointed pink tongue touched the comer of her mouth. There was doubt in her eyes.

Then, obviously responding to an order from behind the camera, Tina reached down with disembodied hands and began to pull a frilly, green blouse up over her head, revealing a black lace brassiere that was in no danger of overflowing. She shook her short, bleached hair as the blouse came off, and the hand carrying the blouse dropped off the screen. Her eyes responded to another command. She reached up behind her with both pale arms. The black brassiere started to fall, retained only by thin shoulder straps.

“Stop!” The voice was a pain-filled shriek, and it came from the girl who’d been sitting at the table with me. But now she had jumped up between table and screen, blocking the beam of light from the projector. The mottled image of Tina dropping her brassiere flickered wildly on her face, neck, and blouse. “Stop it!” she repeated. “Turn it off!”

The image died, the ceiling lights came on, and Doc Irving was revealed standing next to the projector, looking startled and scared.

“Now, my dear,” he said in a shocked voice. “I’m only—”

The girl turned on him. “Can’t you just leave her alone?” she demanded. “She’s dead. Isn’t that enough?” She looked ready to brain Irving with his own projector. I’d expected to see tears, but her eyes were as dry as moon dust, with a dull glint that was more pain
ful than tears.

“Now, Miss
Springler,” the doc said, “now—”

Irma
Springler. A piece of the puzzle slipped into place.

“No,” she said with finality, raising her arms slightly as if to block further attempts at projection. Some of us were going to have to ask for a refund.

“Leave Tina alone,” she continued. “If you’ve got to show this”— she shot an unloving look at me—“this man your art, show him on me.” She reached up behind her neck, did something to the collar of an apricot-colored, tailored silk blouse, and pulled it smoothly over her head. She wasn’t wearing a brassiere, but the effect wasn’t so much sexy as clinical. She dropped her hands to her sides, wrists turned slightly toward Dr. Irving, and waited passively, looking at nothing.

Irving cleared his throat of something only slightly smaller than the Boulder Dam and generally got a grip on himself. “Perhaps,” he said, as if it had been his own idea, “that would be a better method. After all, the techniques of today bear no resemblance to those of 1968.” Professionalism was flowing back into his voice and manner. He turned the ceiling lamp up bright and stepped toward Irma
Springler, moving to her side like a professor of anatomy. She could have been a mannequin for his purposes.

“As you can see, Mr.
Goodey,” he began, “there is nothing basically wrong with Miss Springler’s breasts.” He put a small, neat hand under one breast and handled it as a good grocer would a ripe avocado. I was watching Irma’s face, but she didn’t know he was there. “They are well-formed, erect, of a size generally consistent with the rest of her body. Many a girl would consider herself blessed to have such a pair of breasts.”

Or even one. I couldn’t argue with him so far, but I was sure that the nugget was yet to come. It did.

“However,” he continued, “they are hardly adequate for the line of endeavor which Miss Springler now intends to undertake. As you may not know, I have been asked to enable her to carry on where Tina left off as the starring topless dancer of The Jungle Club.”

That I didn’t know. I looked at Irma
Springler questioningly, but she was not giving any answers. She was somewhere else.

“And so,” Irving said, “I am going to use my skills as a surgeon to create for her perfect breasts—no, magnificent breasts. As you may have gathered,” he said, his voice going a bit lumpy again, “I was very proud of what I had done for”—he rolled his soft eyes at Irma, but she didn’t flinch—“Tina
D’Oro. But that is past history. As beautiful as Tina’s body was, it was achieved with technology which is now as dated as the piston-powered airplane.”

He was off and running now, a stereotypical mad scientist itching to get down to the nitty-gritty of his black art but wary of giving away his holy secrets.

“Of course,” Irving carried on, his left hand still holding Irma’s right breast as if it were a laboratory beaker, “I can’t expect you to understand the fine points of reconstructive surgery. But basically I will begin just as I did on Tina.” He was free and easy with the name now. Irving was the complete pro, as if he were describing past triumphs with a few of the boys at the Surgeons’ Club.