The Best of Robert Bloch (26 page)

And it was natural for Morgan to talk about how disappointed he was in New Orleans, about wishing he'd been here to see the Mahogany Hall and the Ivory Palace—

"Storeyville," the old man said. "I can tell you all you want to know about that. Said I was a
professional
Southerner." He wheezed again, then recovered himself. "Had six chickens on the block," he said. "Wouldn't think it to look at me now, but I was a mighty handsome lad. And I made out. Had my own rig, nigger coachman and all. When autos came along, I got me a chauf
feur
. Wore spats every day of the week." He lifted his glass. "Six chickens, a high-class house. Professor in the parlor, mirrors all over the walls in every room upstairs. Bartender on duty twenty-four hours a day, and the biggest call was for champagne. Customers came from far away as Memphis, just to see the oil paintings."

"No air-conditioning?" Morgan mumbled.

"What's that?"

"Never mind. Go on."

"Called it the Palace," the old man murmured. "And it was. When the girls came down in their evening-dresses, with their hair done up and their eyes kind of sparkling behind their fans, they looked like queens. And we treated our customers like kings. Things were a lot different in the trade, then. Us fancy operators, we knew how to show a man a good time. We didn't hustle 'em for a quick trick and push 'em out again. Gave a sociable evening, a little refinement, a little refreshment, a little romance."

He sighed. "But the army closed Storeyville. Jazz bands went north, Professors got jobs in shoe-shine parlors, and I sold the oil-paintings. Still, I was luckier than most. I'd made my pile. Even hung on to the Palace, but closed everything up except for my own room downstairs. Nobody around today except me and the Red Queen."

"The Red Queen?"

"Told you I was a professional. Just because the lid clamped down, that didn't mean all us old-timers got squashed. I've kept going, on the q.t., understand? Sort of a sentimental gesture, if you follow me. Never more than one chicken now, but that's enough. Enough for the few who still appreciate it, who still want a taste of the old days, the old ways—"

Morgan burned his throat on the drink. "You mean to tell me you're still—in business?" he asked. "You've got a girl, the same kind who used to work in Storeyville in the old days?"

His companion nodded solemnly. "Trained her myself," he murmured. "Wears the old dresses, old-fashioned stuff, not like the chippies over in the big houses. Got her room fixed up like it was forty-five, fifty years ago. Like stepping into the past, and she treats you right, you know? I'm pretty careful who I let in these days, but there was something about you, I said to myself when I saw you—"

Morgan stood up. "Come on," he said. He produced his wallet, flung a bill on the table. "I've got dough. Been saving it up just for this trip. How much is this going to cost me?"

"She'll set the price," the old man told him. "For me this is only—well, you might call it a hobby."

Then they were out in the night again, and it seemed to Morgan that the fog was thicker, the streets darker and narrower than before. And the absinthe burned, and he alternately stumbled forward and hung back; eager for the past recaptured and wondering why he was seeking a nameless destination with a drunken old pimp.

Then they came to the house, and it looked like any other ancient house in the fog, in the absinthe haze. The old man unlocked the door, and he stood in the dark, high-ceilinged, mahogany-panelled hallway while the gas-jet sputtered on. The old man's room was off to the right; the big double-doors of what used to be the parlor were tightly closed. But the huge staircase loomed ahead, and Morgan blinked as his companion reeled over to it and cupped his hands, shouting, "Company!"

His voice echoed and re-echoed down the long hall, reverberating off the walls and the doorways, and Morgan got the feeling they were all alone in the dim circle of light from the gas-jet, that the old man was crazy, that this was indeed the land of dreams.

But, "Company!" the old man shouted again, his face contorted, his voice angry and insistent. "Damned woman," he shrilled. "Sleeps her life away. I've had trouble with her before about this. Thought I'd taught her a lesson, but maybe I'll have to teach her again"—and once more he shouted up the stairway.

"Company!"

"Send him up."

The voice was soft, musical, and thrilling. The moment Morgan heard it, he knew he hadn't made a mistake. Crazy old man, crazy old house, crazy errand—but there was the voice, the warm and wanton invitation.

"Go ahead," the little man urged. "Right at the head of the stairs, her room is. You won't need a light."

Then he went into his room and Morgan climbed the stairs, feet moving over frayed carpeting, eyes intent on the doorway looming above the landing. When Morgan reached the door he fumbled for the knob in the darkness, standing there for a long moment as he tried to enter.

Quite suddenly the door opened inward, and there he was in the big bedroom, with twenty crystal chandeliers tinkling their welcome, twenty velvet carpets offering cushioned caresses to his feet, twenty ornate vanities spreading a pungent powder-and-patchouli perfume from their littered tops.

Twenty great canopied beds straddled the center of the room, and twenty occupants waved him forward. The light blazed down on the redness; the rich, reflected radiance of twenty Red Queens. They had red hair and red lips and red garters and red nipples. Twice twenty white arms opened to enfold him in an embrace that was all illusion.

Morgan reeled forward through a thousand rippling reflections from the mirrored walls and ceiling, trying to find the real bed and the real Red Queen. She laughed at him then, because he was drunk, and she held out her hand to guide him, draw him down beside her. And her touch was fire, and her mouth was a furnace, and her body was a volcano gushing lava, and the mirrors whirled wildly in a long red dream of laughter and delight.

He must have put on his clothes again and tiptoed downstairs around dawn; he couldn't remember. He didn't recall saying goodbye or paying the girl or seeing the old man again, either, nor could he recollect walking back into the Quarter. The absinthe had left him with a splitting headache and a bitter aftertaste in his mouth, and now he moved like an automaton, turning into the first place he saw.

It was a small Oyster Bar, but he didn't want the traditional dozen raws—he needed coffee. The fog was gone from the morning streets, but it lingered inside his skull, and Morgan wondered vaguely how he'd managed to find his way back to familiar surroundings. He stepped up to the counter and reached for his wallet.

His pocket was empty.

His hand began a search, up and down, forward and back. But his wallet was gone. His wallet, his identification, his license, his three hundred dollars in cash.

Morgan couldn't remember what had happened, but one thing was obvious. He'd been rolled. Rolled in the good old-fashioned way by a bad old-fashioned girl.

In a way it was almost funny, and in a way it served him right. He knew that, but somehow he failed to see either the humor or the justice of it all. And when it came to justice—

Morgan gave up all thoughts of coffee and went to the police. He started to tell his story to a desk sergeant, told a little more of it to a polite lieutenant, and ended up telling the whole thing over again to a plain-clothes detective as he walked with him down Rampart Street, heading east.

The detective, whose name was Belden, didn't seem to be polite at all.

Morgan freely admitted he'd been drinking last night, and even found the first little bar he had patronized. The bartender Morgan had talked to was off-duty, but the day man gave the detective his home phone, and Belden called him from the tavern and talked to him. The bartender remembered seeing Morgan, all right.

"He said you were drunk as a skunk," the impolite Belden reported. "Now, where did you go from there?"

"St. Louis Cemetery," Morgan said. But to his chagrin, he couldn't find his way. In the end, Belden led him there.

"Then what?" Belden demanded.

"Then I met this old man—" Morgan began.

But when Belden asked for an exact description, Morgan couldn't give it to him. And Belden wanted to know the old man's name, and where they'd gone together, and why. Morgan tried to explain how he'd felt, why he had agreed to drink with a stranger; the detective wasn't interested.

"Take me to the tavern," he said.

They prowled the side streets, but Morgan couldn't find the tavern. Finally he had to admit as much. "But I was there," he insisted. "And then we went to this house—"

"All right," Belden shrugged. "Take me to the house."

Morgan tried. For almost an hour he trudged up and down the winding streets, but all the houses looked alike, and their sameness in the sunlight was different than their distinctiveness in the darkness. There was nothing romantic about these shabby old buildings, nothing that savored of a midnight dream.

Morgan could see that the detective didn't believe him. And then, when he told him the whole story once again—about the old man training his girl in the Storeyville tradition, about the mirrored room upstairs and the red garters and all the rest of it—he knew the detective would never believe. Standing here in the bright street, with the sun sending splinters into his reddened eyes, Morgan found it hard to believe himself. Maybe it
had
been the liquor; maybe he'd made up the part about the old man and all the rest. He could have passed out in front of the cemetery, someone might have come along and lifted his wallet. That made sense. More sense than a journey to the land of dreams.

Apparently Belden thought so too, because he advanced just that theory as they started walking back.

Morgan found himself nodding in agreement, and then he turned his head suddenly and said, "There it is—that's the tavern we went into, I'm sure of it!"

And it
was
the tavern. He recognized the pockmarked man who had served them, and the pockmarked man recognized him. And, "Yes," he told Belden. "He came with the old one, with Louie."

The detective had his notebook out. "Louie who? What's his last name?"

"This I cannot tell you," the bartender said. "He is just old man, he has been a long time in the neighborhood. Harmless but—" The bartender made a twirling gesture close to his forehead.

"Do you know where he lives?" Belden asked.

Surprisingly enough, the bartender nodded. "Yes." He muttered an address and Belden wrote it down.

"Come on," he said to Morgan. "Looks as if you were giving me a straight story after all." He uttered a dry chuckle. "Thought we knew what was going on down here, but I guess the old boy fooled us. Imagine, running a panel house undercover in this day and age! That's one for the books."

A surprisingly short walk led them to the building, on a street scarcely two blocks away. The house was old, and looked untenanted; some of the front windows were caved in and the drawn green shades flapped listlessly in the hot morning breeze. Morgan didn't recognize the place even when he saw it, and he stood on the doorstep while Belden rang the bell.

For a long while there was no answer, and then the door opened just a crack. Morgan saw the old man's face, saw his rheumy red eyes blink out at them.

"What you want?" the old man wheezed. "Who are you?"

Belden told him who he was and what he wanted. The old man opened the door a bit wider and stared at Morgan.

"Hello," Morgan said. "I'm back again. Looks like I mislaid my wallet." He'd already made up his mind not to enter charges—the old boy was in enough hot water already.

"Back?" the little white-haired man snapped. "What do you mean, you're back? Never set eyes on you before in my life."

"Last night," Morgan said. "I think I left my wallet here."

"Nonsense. Nobody here last night. Nobody ever comes here anymore. Not for over forty years. I'm all alone. All alone—"

Belden stepped forward. "Suppose we have a look around?" he asked.

Morgan wondered if the old man would try to stop him, ask for a search warrant. Instead, he merely laughed and opened the door wide.

"Sure," he said. "Come on in. Welcome to the Palace." He chuckled again, then wheezed. "Throat is dry," he explained.

"It wasn't so dry last night," Morgan told him. "When we drank together."

The old man shook his head. "Don't listen to him, Mister," he told Belden. "Never saw him before."

They stepped into the hall and Morgan recognized it. The dark panelling looked dingy in the daylight, and he could see the dust on the floor. There was dust everywhere, a thick coating on the wood of the double-doors and lighter deposit on the small door leading to the old man's room.

They went in there, and Belden began his search. It didn't take long, because there weren't many places to look. The old man's furniture consisted of a single chair, a small brass bed, and a battered bureau. There wasn't even a closet. Belden went over the bed and mattress, then examined the contents of the bureau drawers. Finally, he frisked old Louie.

"One dollar and fourteen cents," he announced.

The old man snatched the coins from the detective's hand. "See, what'd I tell you?" he muttered. "I got no wallet. And I don't know anything about the mark, either. I'm clean, I am. Ask down at the station house. Ask Captain Leroux."

"I don't know any Captain Leroux," Belden said. "What's his detail?"

"Why, Storeyville, of course. Where do you think you are?"

"Storeyville's been closed for almost forty-five years," Belden answered. "Where do you think
you
are?"

"Right here. Where I always been. In the Palace. I'm a professional man, I am. Used to have six chickens on the block. Then the heat came on strong, and all I had left was the Red Queen. She sleeps too much, but I can fix that. I fixed it once and I can fix it again—"

Belden turned to Morgan and repeated the twirling gesture the pockmarked bartender had made.

But Morgan shook his head. "Of course," he said. "The wallet's upstairs. She has it. Come on!"