Nightmares and Dreamscapes, Page 69

  Vern retiring?

  It wasn't possible. It just wasn't.

  "Vernon," I asked, "what kind of joke is this?"

  "No joke, Mr. Umney," he said, and as he brought the elevator car to a stop on Three, he began to hack a deep cough I'd never heard in all the years I'd known him. It was like listening to marble bowling balls rolling down a stone alley. He took the Camel out of his mouth, and I was horrified to see the end of it was pink, and not with lipstick. He looked at it for a moment, grimaced, then replaced it and yanked back the accordion grille. "Thuh-ree, Mr. Tuggle."

  "Thanks, Vern," Bill said.

  "Remember the party on Friday," Vernon said. His words were muffled; he'd taken a handkerchief spotted with brown stains out of his back pocket and was wiping his lips with it. "I sure would admire for you to come." He glanced at me with his rheumy eyes, and what was in them scared the bejabbers out of me. Something was waiting for Vernon Klein just around the next bend in the road, and that look said Vernon knew all about it. "You too, Mr. Umney--we been through a lot together, and I'd be tickled to raise a glass with you."

  "Wait a minute!" I shouted, grabbing Bill as he tried to step out of the elevator. "You wait just a God damned minute, both of you! What party? What's going on here?"

  "Retirement," Bill said. "It usually happens at some point after your hair turns white, in case you've been too busy to notice. Vernon's party is going to be in the basement on Friday afternoon. Everybody in the building's going to be there, and I'm going to make my world-famous Dynamite Punch. What's the matter with you, Clyde? You've known for a month that Vern was finishing up on May thirtieth."

  That made me angry all over again, the way I'd been when Peoria called me a faggot. I grabbed Bill by the padded shoulders of his double-breasted suit and gave him a shake. "The hell you say!"

  He gave me a small, pained smile. "The hell I don't, Clyde. But if you don't want to come, fine. Stay away. You've been acting poco loco for the last six months, anyhow."

  I shook him again. "What do you mean, poco loco?"

  "Crazy as a loon, nutty as a fruitcake, two wheels off the road, out to lunch, playing without a full deck--any of those ring a bell? And before you answer, just let me inform you that if you shake me one more time, even a little shake, my guts are going to explode straight out through my chest, and not even dry-cleaning will get that mess off your suit."

  He pulled away before I could do it again even if I'd wanted to and started down the hall with the seat of his pants hanging somewhere down around the level of his knees, as per usual. He glanced back just once, while Vernon was sliding the brass gate across. "You need to take some time off, Clyde. Starting last week."

  "What's gotten into you?" I shouted at him. "What's gotten into all of you?" But by then the inner door was closed and we were headed up again--this time to Seven. My little slice of heaven. Vern dropped his cigarette butt into the bucket of sand that squats in the corner, and immediately stuck a fresh one in his kisser. He popped a wooden match alight with his thumbnail, set the fag on fire, and immediately started coughing again. Now I could see fine drops of blood misting out from between his cracked lips. It was a gruesome sight. His eyes had dropped; they stared vacantly into the far corner, seeing nothing, hoping for nothing. Bill Tuggle's B.O. hung between us like the Ghost of Binges Past.

  "Okay, Vern," I said. "What is it and where are you going?"

  Vernon had never been one to wear out the English language, and that at least hadn't changed. "It's Big C," he said. "On Saturday I catch the Desert Blossom to Arizona. I'm going to live with my sister. I don't expect to wear out my welcome, though. She might have to change the bed twice." He brought the elevator to a stop and rattled the gate back. "Seven, Mr. Umney. Your little slice of heaven." He smiled at that just as he always did, but this time it looked like the kind of smile you see on the candy skulls down in Tijuana, on the Day of the Dead.

  Now that the elevator door was open, I smelled something up here in my little slice of heaven that was so out of place it took a moment for me to recognize it: fresh paint. Once it was noted, I filed it. I had other fish to fry.

  "This isn't right," I said. "You know it isn't, Vern."

  He turned his frightening vacant eyes on me. Death in them, a black shape flapping and beckoning just beyond the faded blue. "What isn't right, Mr. Umney?"

  "You're supposed to be here, damn it! Right here! Sitting on your stool with Jesus and your wife over your head. Not this!" I reached up, grabbed the card with the picture of the man fishing on the lake, tore it in two, put the pieces together, tore it in four, and then gave them the toss. They fluttered to the faded red rug on the floor of the elevator car like confetti.

  "S'posed to be right here," he repeated, those terrible eyes of his never leaving mine. Beyond us, two men in paint-splattered coveralls had turned to look in our direction.

  "That's right."

  "For how long, Mr. Umney? Since you know everything else, you can probably tell me that, can'tcha? How long am I supposed to keep drivin this damned car?"

  "Well . . . forever," I said, and the word hung between us, another ghost in the cigarette-smokey elevator car. Given a choice of ghosts, I guess I would have picked Bill Tuggle's B.O . . . . but I wasn't given a choice. Instead, I said it again. "Forever, Vern."

  He dragged on his Camel, coughed out smoke and a fine spray of blood, and went on looking at me. "It ain't my place to give the tenants advice, Mr. Umney, but I guess I'll give you some, anyway--it being my last week and all. You might consider seeing a doctor. The kind that shows you ink-pitchers and you say what they look like."

  "You can't retire, Vern." My heart was beating harder than ever, but I managed to keep my voice level. "You just can't."

  "No?" He took his cigarette out of his mouth--fresh blood was already soaking into the tip--and then looked back at me. His smile was ghastly. "The way it looks to me, I ain't exactly got a choice, Mr. Umney."

  III. Of Painters and Pesos.

  The smell of fresh paint seared my nose, overpowering both the smell of Vernon's smoke and Bill Tuggle's armpits. The men in the coveralls were currently taking up space not far from my office door. They had put down a dropcloth, and the tools of their trade were spread out all along it--tins and brushes and turp. There were two step-ladders as well, flanking the painters like scrawny bookends. What I wanted to do was to run down the hall, kicking the whole works every whichway as I went. What right had they to paint these old dark walls that glaring, sacrilegious white?

  Instead, I walked up to the one who looked as if it might take a two-digit number to express his IQ and politely asked what he and his fellow mug thought they were doing. He glanced around at me. "Hellzit look like? I'm givin Miss America a finger-frig and Chick there's puttin rouge on Betty Grable's nippy-nips."

  I'd had enough. Enough of them, enough of everything. I reached out, grabbed the quiz-kid under the armpit, and used my fingertips to engage a particularly nasty nerve that hides up there. He screamed and dropped his brush. White paint splattered his shoes. His partner gave me a timid doe-eyed look and took a step backward.

  "If you try taking off before I'm done with you," I snarled, "you're going to find the handle of your paint-brush so far up your ass you'll need a boathook to find the bristles. You want to try me and see if I'm lying?"

  He stopped moving and just stood there on the edge of the dropcloth, eyes darting from side to side, looking for help. There was none to be had. I half-expected Candy to open my door and look out to see what the fracas was, but the door stayed firmly closed. I turned my attention back to the quiz-kid I was holding onto.

  "The question was simple enough, bud--what the hell are you doing here? Can you answer it, or do I give you another blast?"

  I twiddled my fingers in his armpit just to refresh his memory and he screamed again. "Paintin the hall! Jeezis, can't you see?"

  I could see, all right, and even if I'd been blind, I could smell. I hated
what both of those senses were telling me. The hallway wasn't supposed to be painted, especially not this glaring, light-reflecting white. It was supposed to be dim and shadowy; it was supposed to smell like dust and old memories. Whatever had started with the Demmicks' unaccustomed silence was getting worse all the time. I was mad as hell, as this unfortunate fellow was discovering. I was also scared, but that was a feeling you get good at hiding when carrying a heater in a clamshell holster is part of the way you make your living.

  "Who sent you two dubs down here?"

  "Our boss," he said, looking at me as if I were crazy. "We work for Challis Custom Painters, on Van Nuys. The boss is Hap Corrigan. If you want to know who hired the cump'ny, you'll have to ask h--"

  "It was the owner," the other painter said quietly. "The owner of this building. A guy named Samuel Landry."

  I searched my memory, trying to put the name of Samuel Landry together with what I knew of the Fulwider Building and couldn't do it. In fact, I couldn't put the name of Samuel Landry together with anything . . . yet for all that it seemed almost to chime in my head, like a church-bell you can hear from miles away on a foggy morning.

  "You're lying," I said, but with no real force. I said it simply because it was something to say.

  "Call the boss," the other painter said. Appearances could be deceiving; he was apparently the brighter of the two, after all. He reached inside his grimy, paint-smeared coverall and brought out a little card.

  I waved it away, suddenly tired. "Who in the name of Christ would want to paint this place, anyway?"

  It wasn't them I was asking, but the painter who'd offered me the business card answered just the same. "Well, it brightens the place up," he said cautiously. "You gotta admit that."

  "Son," I asked, taking a step toward him, "did your mother ever have any kids that lived, or did she just produce the occasional afterbirth like you?"

  "Hey, whatever, whatever," he said, taking a step backward. I followed his worried gaze down to my own balled-up fists and forced them open again. He didn't look very relieved, and I actually didn't blame him very much. "You don't like it--you're coming through loud and clear on that score. But I gotta do what the boss tells me, don't I? I mean, hell, that's the American way."

  He glanced at his partner, then back to me. It was a quick glance, really no more than a flick, but in my line of work I'd seen it more than once, and it's the kind of look you file away. Don't bother this guy, it said. Don't bump him, don't rattle him. He's nitro.

  "I mean, I've got a wife and a little kid to take care of," he went on. "There's a Depression going on out there, you know."

  Confusion came over me then, drowning my anger the way a downpour drowns a brushfire. Was there a Depression going on out there? Was there?

  "I know," I said, not knowing anything. "Let's just forget it, what do you say?"

  "Sure," the painters agreed, so eager they sounded like half of a barbershop quartet. The one I'd mistakenly tabbed as half-bright had his lefthand buried deep in his right armpit, trying to get that nerve to go back to sleep. I could have told him he had an hour's work ahead of him, maybe more, but I didn't want to talk to them anymore. I didn't want to talk to anyone or see anyone--not even the delectable Candy Kane, whose humid glances and smooth, subtropical curves have been known to send seasoned street-brawlers reeling to their knees. The only thing I wanted to do was to get across the outer office and into my inner sanctum. There was a bottle of Robb's Rye in the bottom lefthand drawer, and right now I needed a shot in the worst way.

  I walked down toward the frosted-glass door marked CLYDE UMNEY PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR, restraining a renewed urge to see if I could drop-kick a can of Dutch Boy Oyster White through the window at the end of the hall and out onto the fire-escape. I was actually reaching for my doorknob when a thought struck me and I turned back to the painters . . . but slowly, so they wouldn't believe I was being gripped by some new seizure. Also, I had an idea that if I turned too fast, I'd see them grinning at each other and twirling their fingers around their ears--the looney-gesture we all learned in the schoolyard.

  They weren't twirling their fingers, but they hadn't taken their eyes off me, either. The half-smart one seemed to be gauging the distance to the door marked STAIRWELL. Suddenly I wanted to tell them that I wasn't such a bad guy when you got to know me; that there were, in fact, a few clients and at least one ex-wife who thought me something of a hero. But that wasn't a thing you could say about yourself, especially not to a couple of bozos like these.

  "Take it easy," I said. "I'm not going to jump you. I just wanted to ask another question."

  They relaxed a little. A very little, actually.

  "Ask it," Painter Number Two said.

  "Either of you ever played the numbers down in Tijuana?"

  "La loteria?" Number One asked.

  "Your knowledge of Spanish stuns me. Yeah. La loteria."

  Number One shook his head. "Mex numbers and Mex call houses are strictly for suckers."

  Why do you think I asked you? I thought but didn't say.

  "Besides," he went on, "you win ten or twenty thousand pesos, big deal. What's that in real money? Fifty bucks? Eighty?"

  My mom hit the lottery down in Tijuana, Peoria had said, and I had known something about it wasn't right even then. Forty thousand bucks . . . My Uncle Fred went down and picked up the cash yest'y afternoon. He brought it back in the saddlebag of his Vinnie!

  "Yeah," I said, "something like that, I guess. And they always pay off that way, don't they? In pesos?"

  He gave me that look again, as if I was crazy, then remembered I really was and readjusted his face. "Well, yeah. It is the Mexican lottery, you know. They couldn't very well pay off in dollars."

  "How true," I said, and in my mind I saw Peoria's thin, eager face, heard him saying, It was spread all over my mom's bed! Forty-froggin-thousand smackers!

  Except how could a blind kid be sure of the exact amount . . . or even that it really was money he was rolling around in? The answer was simple: he couldn't. But even a blind newsboy would know that la loteria paid off in pesos rather than in dollars, and even a blind newsboy had to know you couldn't carry forty thousand dollars' worth of Mexican lettuce in the saddlebag of a Vincent motorcycle. His uncle would have needed a City of Los Angeles dump truck to transport that much dough.

  Confusion, confusion--nothing but dark clouds of confusion.

  "Thanks," I said, and headed for my office.

  I'm sure that was a relief for all three of us.

  IV. Umney's Last Client.

  "Candy, honey, I don't want to see anybody or take any ca--"

  I broke off. The outer office was empty. Candy's desk in the corner was unnaturally bare, and after a moment I saw why: the IN/OUT tray had been dumped into the trash basket and her pictures of Errol Flynn and William Powell were both gone. So was her Philco. The little blue stenographer's stool, from which Candy had been wont to flash her gorgeous gams, was unoccupied.

  My eyes returned to the IN/OUT tray sticking out of the trash can like the prow of a sinking ship, and for a moment my heart leaped. Perhaps someone had been in here, tossed the place, kidnapped Candy. Perhaps it was a case, in other words. At that moment I would have welcomed a case, even if it meant some mug was tying Candy up at this very moment . . . and adjusting the rope over the firm swell of her breasts with particular care. Any way out of the cobwebs that seemed to be falling around me sounded just peachy to me.

  The trouble with the idea was simple: the room hadn't been tossed. The IN/OUT was in the trash, true enough, but that didn't indicate a struggle; in fact, it was more as if . . .

  There was just one thing left on the desk, placed squarely in the center of the blotter. A white envelope. Just looking at it gave me a bad feeling. My feet carried me across the room just the same, however, and I picked it up. Seeing my name written across the front of the envelope in Candy's wide loops and swirls was no surprise; it was just another unpleasant
part of this long, unpleasant morning.

  I ripped it open and a single slip of note-paper fell out into my hand.

  Dear Clyde,

  I have had all of the groping and sneering I'm going to take from you, and I am tired of your ridiculous and childish jokes about my name. Life is too short to be pawed by a middle-aged divorce detective with bad breath. You did have your good points Clyde but they are getting drownded out by the bad ones, especially since you started drinking all the time.

  Do yourself a favor and grow up.

  Yours truely,

  Arlene Cain

  P.S.: I'm going back to my mother's in Idaho. Do not try to get in touch with me.

  I held the note a moment or two longer, looking at it unbelievingly, then dropped it. One phrase from it recurred as I watched it seesaw lazily down toward the already occupied trash basket: I am tired of your ridiculous and childish jokes about my name. But had I ever known her name was anything other than Candy Kane? I searched my mind as the note continued its lazy--and seemingly endless--swoops back and forth, and the answer was an honest and resounding no. Her name had always been Candy Kane, we'd joked about it many a time, and if we'd had a few rounds of office slap-and-tickle, what of that? She'd always enjoyed it. We both had.

  Did she enjoy it? a voice spoke up from somewhere deep inside me. Did she really, or is that just another little fairytale you've been telling yourself all these years?

  I tried to shut that voice out, and after a moment or two I succeeded, but the one that replaced it was even worse. That voice belonged to none other than Peoria Smith. I can quit actin like I died and went to heaven every time some blowhard leaves me a nickel tip, he said. Ain't you picking up on this newsflash, Mr. Umney?

  "Shut up, kid," I said to the empty room. "Gabriel Heatter you ain't." I turned away from Candy's desk, and as I did, faces passed in front of my mind's eye like the faces of some lunatic marching band from hell: George and Gloria Demmick, Peoria Smith, Bill Tuggle, Vernon Klein, a million-dollar blonde who went under the two-bit name of Arlene Cain . . . even the two painters were there.