Halo in Brass, Page 2

  They went with me into the tiny front hall, its air heavy with the smell of furniture polish. I took my hat off the old-fashioned combination wall rack and mirror and went over to the door. We said good-by and the old man gave me a hand the color and texture of Billy the Kid's saddle and mumbled something I didn’t catch. I moved the hand up and down and returned it to him and went out to the vine-covered porch where a green porch swing crouched crossways on the narrow planks. It seemed the right place to spend the long summer evenings listening to the crickets and watching the snails whizz past.

  The Fremonts said good-by a second time and Clara closed the door with its thin white dimity curtains behind an oval of glass. I walked slowly down the three wooden steps and on out to the curb of the quiet sun-baked street where the Plymouth waited.

  I leaned on the car door and dropped my cigarette into the nice clean gutter there. I ran the nails of my left hand lightly along one cheek and looked back at the neat square little house among its rose bushes and freshly cut lawn.

  Two nice old people in that house. I wondered what I’d have for them the next time I came to sit in their parlor and fill the draperies with the smell of my cigarettes. If I ever did.

  I crawled in behind the wheel and drove away.

  CHAPTER 2

  IT WAS getting on toward three o’clock. The sun was very bright and very hot, although this was nearly the end of September, and there was no breeze to speak of. I drove slowly on, sniffing at the strangely pleasant odor of what I finally decided was fresh air. They didn’t have air like that in Chicago. They hardly had air there at all—just gas fumes with soft-coal smoke to give it body.

  I spent more time than I intended, rolling along the clean wide streets, looking out at tall trees with leaves beginning to turn colors and at neat picket fences that might have been painted yesterday for all I could tell and at street markers that were legible and not bent at impossible angles.

  And along the streets were houses. Houses instead of apartment buildings like the side of a cliff, and a flunky in uniform to open your car door and sneer at your taste in clothing, and a potted evergreen on each side of the entrance to furnish a touch of the forest primeval. Clean cool-looking houses with people in them who would know the people next door and go over and visit with them evenings and talk in a leisurely way about things beside money.

  At Sixteenth and O streets I parked alongside a drugstore and went in and asked the clerk at the cigar counter for a telephone book. He said pleasantly that there was a booth at the rear and I walked back there between rows of sparkling display cases and found the book dangling at the end of a chain.

  Nobody named Rehak was listed in it. I entered the booth and dumped a nickel in the proper slot and tried Information. She didn’t have the name on her records either, but she was so nice about it I wanted to drop in a quarter just for her.

  I came back to the front of the store, took a stool at the soda fountain and drank a malted milk while I listened to the soft whir from a pair of overhead fans. I wondered if a reasonably respectable private dick could make ends meet in a town like this. It hardly seemed possible.

  I took my fountain check over to the cash register and a tall thin man who looked as if his father might have been a farmer rang it up and gave me my change.

  “You wouldn’t know a family named Rehak, would you?" I asked.

  He chewed the name over silently, looking past me, a prominent Adam’s apple twitching under the loose skin of his throat. “Well now, it don’t seem so. Not right offhand.”

  “Is there such a thing as a city directory around?”

  He went off on another thinking spree, elbows on the counter, the front of his white jacket bunched up. The gnawed barrel of a black fountain pen hung from the lip of an upper pocket.

  “B’lieve there is,” he rumbled. “Old one though. They ain’t been puttin’ ’em out lately. War and all.”

  “An old one might do the trick,” I said. “Could I take a look at it? If it’s no trouble.”

  “Why, no trouble at all.” He straightened up and sounded cordial. “Might take a minute to find it. If you don't mind waitin’.”

  I said that was good of him and to take his time. He ambled down the store and out of sight behind a partition. I leaned a hip against the counter and tried reading the fine print on a Lydia Pinkham carton on one of the wall shelves.

  Presently the druggist came back and handed me a not very robust volume between hard covers. I carried it over to one of the tables and leafed through to the R section. Halfway down one of the columns a Stanley Rehak was listed as owning a residence at 322 South Twentieth. He was the only Rehak shown.

  I copied down the name and address and left the book next to the cash register and went on out into 0 Street. From what little I’d learned about the way Lincoln was laid out, the 300 block on South Twentieth should be a short drive from where I was now.

  It was the only thread I had, really. Laura Fremont’s last known address was nearly a year behind her. A trail that ancient could be as cold as a barefoot Eskimo. Chicago was six hundred miles away—not as far as the moon but too far for coming back for something I could have picked up the first time out.

  I winked at a passing blonde, just to be neighborly, and got back into the Plymouth.

  They had a dairy on the east side of South Twentieth—a low, tan-brick building that ran the full length of the block. A slow-moving mechanic in coveralls was fooling with the electric motor of a cream-colored home-delivery truck in one of the driveways. From the open windows behind him came the grind and rattle of a bottling machine.

  Across from the dairy was a row of ancient frame dwellings of one and two stories, all of them empty of pride since a long time past. I pushed open a wire gate held shut by a rope weighted with scrap iron and went along the walk to the porch of a moldering gray bungalow. A rusted tin mailbox, once black, was nailed next to an equally rusted screen door that had long since stopped being a problem to the flies. No name on the mailbox and no mail in it. But tacked to the wood underneath were three shiny tin numbers that said this was 322. It seemed unlikely that anyone would care.

  I tried the screen door, found it hooked from the inside and pounded the heel of one hand against its frame. A piece of the stripping flew off and hit the porch at my feet. Nothing else happened, nobody answered my knock, nobody peered out from behind the drawn roller shades at the windows.

  I rapped again. This time a thick voice from inside the house bellowed words I didn’t understand. A full minute later the door opened and a man was standing in the thin gloom looking out at me. He was barefoot, wearing trousers with baggy knees, no shirt and from the waist up gray underwear with half-length sleeves.

  I said, “Mr. Rehak? Stanley Rehak?”

  His face was a Slavic face, hardly any meat on it, heavy cheekbones and a pinched-in jaw. The mouth hung open a little from long habit, loose-lipped. Blue eyes that were sunken and dull; coarse black hair standing up in tufts. More hair stuck out of his ears, like miniature fans.

  “Yeah,” he grunted. Phlegm rattled in his throat. “Wha’ya want?"

  “A couple of questions I’d like to ask. Okay?”

  He took awhile making up his mind. A thumb came up and dug into the underwear above his right hip. The sunken eyes sorted out the muscles of my face. His scowl was sleepy, neither friendly nor unfriendly.

  The eyes shifted. He lifted a squat-fingered hand and fumbled off the screen’s hook. “Yeah. You come in. I was sleeping.” He made it sound tough and reproachful at the same time.

  I stepped in and followed him through a square arch into a small living room. The furniture was as mismatched as furniture can get and hardly any of it. The floor was bare, the wood’s original color long since lost under layers of ingrained dust. A floor lamp with a dime-store paper shade leaned at a drunken angle next to a maple settee with stained plaid upholstery that looked as comfortable to sit on as armor plate.

  He went
over and snapped up one of the shades, flooding the room with harsh light. He jerked a thumb at an unpainted kitchen chair and dropped onto the settee. I sat down where he had pointed and revolved my hat between my palms and breathed in the damp odor of decay that filled the room.

  He clawed at his hair and wiped his nose with the back of a hand and eyed me with as much curiosity as he would ever have for anything.

  “Hot like hell, hah?” he said thickly. He hawked suddenly, making it sound like a dirty sheet being torn, and spat on the floor. He was polite about it, turning his head first. “I don’t wake up yet for maybe two hours. I am night watchman over to Strayer’s.”

  He didn’t say who or what Strayer’s was. I didn’t ask him. “Sorry I woke you, Mr. Rehak. It is hot. I’ll ask my questions and run along and let you get back to bed.”

  He sat with his legs wide apart, wrists resting limply against his thighs, hands drooping between his legs, bare feet flat against the floor. They were gray feet with a slight crusting of dirt around the thick tendon above the heel. His face held all the interest and animation of a butcher’s block. He was waiting for what I had to say.

  “It’s about your daughter,” I said.

  “Gracie?” A spark moved in his eyes. “I don’t hear about her for long time now. Bertha Lund send you over, hah?”

  “Who’s Bertha Lund?”

  He stared at me dully, not hearing the question or not wanting to hear it. I blew out my breath and said, “I hear Gracie’s in Chicago these days.”

  One of the hands moved slowly up along a thigh, scratched, moved as slowly down again. “Maybe. I kick her ass out long time ago. She’s no good, mister. All the time men. Anything in pants. You a cop, hah?”

  “Nothing like that, Mr. Rehak. There’s another girl. She’s missing and her folks want her found. I thought maybe Gracie might know where she’s at.”

  He clenched and unclenched his toes. They moved slowly as if doing it gave him a secret kind of pleasure. He seemed to have forgotten me. I started to say something, but before I could get my mouth open he spoke.

  “Cops used to call up all the time after the old lady died. ‘We got your girl, Mr. Rehak,’ they say. ‘Selling herself on the street again, Mr. Rehak. You want a come down bail her out?’ I get her home and beat hell outa her. No good. Start all over again.”

  He wasn’t talking to me, really. I put my hat on my knee and got out a cigarette. He watched me light it, uncaring, not actually seeing me. He might have been suffering or he might have been dozing. I couldn’t tell which, if either.

  I said, “I don’t know a thing about Gracie, Mr. Rehak, and I don’t have to. She may be in a position to clear up a small matter. If you could tell me where she’s living in Chicago, or give me the name of someone who might know, I’d appreciate it.”

  Nothing changed in his face or in the dull way his eyes were watching me. But slowly the hands resting against his thighs began to knot into fists.

  “Go away,” he mumbled in a voice that matched his eyes. “I don’t talk about her no more. Go the hell away, mister. I don’t know who you are. I don’t care who you are. She ain’t here, mister. If she come here I kill her. Just go away, mister. Quick.”

  He closed his eyes and something glistened on the coarse skin below them. He sat like that, not moving, carved out of stone, while the knives of memory cut him apart inside.

  I stood up silently and put on my hat, went into the hall and out the door.

  CHAPTER 3

  AT A quarter past four I wandered into the lobby of my hotel, picked up the key at the desk and rode up to the room they'd given me when I arrived in town early that same morning.

  I locked the door and shucked of? my coat and hat and dropped them on the green-and-white candlewick bedspread. Cold air coming in through a vent high up in one wall had chilled the room beyond comfort. I closed the screen on it and went into the shining bathroom to strip down and stand awhile under a luke-warm shower, thinking about nothing at all.

  The malted milk had buried what little appetite I might have had earlier. I got into trousers and a shirt, leaving the shirt unbuttoned and hanging, sat down at the phone and asked for Room Service.

  I got the bell captain instead. His was a young voice and not loaded with the cynical grade of boredom common among bellhops.

  “There’s water in the tap,” I said, “but I’m still thirsty. What can be done about it?”

  “You want some hard likker, sir?"

  “I accept your invitation," I said. “Bourbon will be fine. Soda and ice—and now.”

  He took my room number and said he would do what could be done. I stood up to lean against the window frame and watch the trickle of traffic along Twelfth Street. The town’s skyscraper, twelve floors of dark-gray stone, stood tall and solid almost directly across the street. Behind one of the windows an elderly dentist in a white coat was pushing tools into a patient’s mouth.

  A knock at the door—a discreet knock, as though the party behind it was up to something not quite legitimate. I crossed over and turned the catch. A youngster about college age came in with an aluminum tray covered with a white cloth. I pointed to the writing desk and he let the tray down on it and took off the cloth. A pint of bonded bourbon, two bottles of charged water, ice cubes in a glass bucket, an opener for the bottles, two highball glasses in case I had company.

  “Very pretty,” I remarked. “Do I sign something?”

  “Yes, sir.” He slid a freckled hand under the lapel of his natty gray-blue uniform coat and brought out a ruled square of cardboard with amounts stamped in purple ink. I wrote my name across the bottom with his pencil and gave them back to him, with half a dollar.

  He thanked me and was on his way to the door when I thought of something. I said, “Hold it. What’s the penalty in Nebraska for contributing to the delinquency of a minor?"

  He stood there with his arms hanging down and his eyebrows trying to climb into a thatch of reddish hair. He tried out a smile but the corners sagged on him. “Well now, I wouldn’t rightly know, sir. That’s quite a question.”

  “It only sounded that way,” I said. “I was thinking of offering you a drink but I wouldn’t want to be arrested for it.”

  “Oh.” His weak smile became a shy grin. “Why, that’s all right, sir.‘ I was twenty-one nearly two months back.”

  That gave me twelve years on him. But at fifteen I had been older than he was now. “Congratulations,” I said. “Now you can run for alderman.” I pointed the neck of the bourbon bottle at the easy chair. “Sit down. This calls for a celebration.”

  He came slowly back to perch on the chair’s edge, watching me open the whisky and remove the cap on one of the soda bottles. I put together a pair of modest drinks, handed him one and sat on the bed. We lifted the glasses and drank. It wasn’t the best bourbon, yet adequate for a man of my simple tastes.

  He refused a cigarette but struck a match for mine. His hands had a scrubbed look and the nails were filed to the quick. I leaned back against the headboard and drew up my bare feet. I had soaped them twice while under the shower. Especially around the ankles.

  I said, “I came across a name this afternoon. The way I heard it makes me think it might be more than just a private party. Maybe hearing it would mean something to you.”

  He nodded in an expressionless, man-of-the-world manner and tossed off another gulp out of his glass. It didn’t quite come off the way he had hoped. His homely face twisted a little as the bourbon went down. He took his nose out of the glass and gulped some air, his eyes watering.

  ”It might, sir,” he said gravely. “What was the name?”

  ”A woman’s name,” I said. “Bertha Lund.”

  His cheeks burned suddenly and some of the friendliness left his face. “I’ve heard about her,” he said tonelessly.

  I waited for more. He sat turning his glass and looking everywhere except at me. After an interval of that, I set my glass on the floor and got out my wal
let. I removed a couple of limp-looking dollar bills and held them loosely in one hand where he could see them. “Tell me about Bertha Lund a little,” I said.

  He stared at the money. Not in a way that said he wanted it. “She owns a tavern,” he said softly. “Out on Thirtieth and Merrill.”

  “Uh-hunh,” I said when he stopped there. “That’ll do for a starter but it’s not two bucks’ worth.”

  “You don’t have to give me a cent,” he retorted with a quiet dignity. “All I know is what I’ve heard, and you’re welcome to it. They say Bertha Lund runs a house—if you know what I mean. But that’s only part of it. You hear all kinds of talk. I heard stories that things go on out there I wouldn’t even talk about. And I been around, too.”

  I stared at him until patches of color began to burn in his plain and artless face. “And this seemed such a nice town,” I said. “Clean air and shimmering stone and a big blue sky. Empty jails and very little garbage and no roaring traffic's boom. I ought to punch you one right in the nose.”

  His mouth was open. “What’s the matter with you, mister?”

  “Matter? Nothing’s the matter. How can you say that? Everything’s right. As right as two left feet in a wall bed on a purple-tinged morning in May. What were you saying?”

  He seemed to be retreating deeper into the chair and his glass shook a little in his hand. He wanted to be up and away. Away anywhere as long as it was away from this room. I got off the bed and went into the bathroom and threw my cigarette into the bowl.

  When I came out again he was standing in the center of the rug, holding his half-filled glass like it was too heavy for him. I went over and pushed the two dollars into his unoccupied fingers. His character got in the way and he said, “Thank you,” before he realized he was saying it.