“You locked the door?” Eddie asked.
“Yep.”
“Anyone else got keys?”
“Just me and Sal. He gives Bennie, the fill-in guy, his keys on my nights off. And I had both pairs.”
I looked around the joint, took a peek into the front room, which looked like a dark, empty bar—smelled of sour beer and cigarettes.
“So you think someone broke in, moved the body to another part of the bar, then relocked the door on the way out?” said Moo. “Seems fishy.”
He had a point. “You have a point,” I said.
Moo Shoes shrugged. “Well, that was easy. Can you take the taxi back to Milo, drop me at the club? Lois will probably still be there.”
I wanted to say no, that I needed more time to be flummoxed by the situation, that I would like to maybe panic and yell and scream a little, but Eddie has been a good pal and Lois Fong is a dish indeed, so I said, “Sure.”
* * *
By the time I got Milo’s cab back to him and endured the lecture on the hardship I had caused him, the sun was busting up pink over the East Bay. Even the Tenderloin looked like a dream town in that light, like one of those Max Parrish paintings they have behind the bar at the Palace Hotel, where skinny blond kids lounge around in towels like they’re any second going to take a swim. I could have used forty to a hundred winks in dream town myself, but instead of heading home I limped over to the five-and-dime on Polk Street.
The place smelled like comic books and coffee and cedar chips from the cages back in the pet section, which reminded me I needed to buy some rats. A bored, round redhead in cat glasses at the register said good morning as I passed by the sundries counter and I nodded good morning right back at her. I felt a smile coming on as I was rounding the corner into the diner section, anticipating feasting my eyes on the beauteous Cheese, but instead there was only Phil, the skinny, scruffy fry cook, standing at the counter with a coffeepot in hand, lording over two guys at the counter with their hats pulled down like they were hiding from an angry preacher.
No Stilton. I took a seat down from the browbeaten guys.
“We got two things today,” said Phil. “Coffee, scrambled eggs, with bacon and white toast, and just coffee.”
“Can I get my bacon crispy?” I asked, trying to maybe open up the conversation a little, but—
“You can get it the way it comes out, and the toast might be cold.”
“Coffee, please,” I said. Phil spun a cup, no saucer, onto the counter and sloshed some coffee mostly into it.
“Stilton around?”
“Tilly? Nah, didn’t show up today and didn’t call, neither.”
“What about the other one, Myrtle?”
“Also AWOL. It’s just me. So it’s scrambled and bacon, you don’t like it, take a hike. None of that, run a cow through a windmill on a mattress, extra go juice, crap.”
“That a dish?”
“How the hell should I know? Sometimes I think those dizzy broads were just making stuff up to make life hard for me. Not anymore. Today I’m running this place the way it should be. You’ll get breakfast the way I cook it and you’ll like it or you can starve.”
“You remind me of my ma.”
He started to walk away.
“Hey, just coffee is fine,” I said. He stopped. “So, you know where they might be? Your waitresses?”
“They were going on some big ta-do this weekend. Moonlighting. Make some extra money. Like they need it. It gets busy in here, they make extra tips, you know what I get?”
I shook my head.
“I get squat! And then they take a powder on me? Well, I hope they made enough lettuce to hold them over, because when they get back they’re both fired.”
“What if something happened to them?” I said, thinking, WHAT IF SOMETHING HAPPENED TO THEM?!
“Nothing happened except they had too much fun. They’re probably just home sleeping it off.”
“Stilton hasn’t been home.”
For the first time since I came in the anger ran out of his eyes.
“That’s right. You were in here to see her the other day . . .”
“Yeah,” I said, and the scruff must have seen something in my mug, because he put the coffeepot down on the burner and came back.
“Maybe she stayed over at Myrtle’s? Slumber party. You know dames. Myrtle ain’t answering her phone, but that don’t mean—”
“You got an address?”
“In the back. I’ll get it for you.”
I’d go see her. In a while. I needed to eat, shower, and sleep first. When Phil got back I ordered some scrambled eggs and cold toast. I wolfed them down. Phil didn’t charge me. I went to the retail side of the five-and-dime and bought some rats.
13
Rats
When I finally limped up the stairs to my building, dog tired and ready to collapse, the kid was sitting on the landing.
“What’s in the bag?” the kid asked.
“Rats.”
“No it ain’t.”
I opened the bag, a normal paper grocery bag, doubled. I showed him. Inside, six white rats, looking confused, scurried around in some cedar chips.
“Got any brown ones?”
“Nope. Just white.”
The kid shrugged. “I guess they’re okay. Can I have one?”
“I need you to watch ’em.” I set the rat bag on the stoop by him. “Put them in a box or something they can’t chew out of easy. Can you do that? It’s a paying job.”
“I s’pose.” He gave me the skeptical squint, like he smelled a rat. “You in some kind of jam? You on the lam, like some kind of stinkin’ drifter?”
“Nah, I’m fine.”
“You sure? A couple of goons was here looking for you.”
“Yeah?” I said. “Tell me.”
“Yeah,” said the kid. “Couple of mugs in black suits, looked like their moms dressed them alike for church. Sunglasses, like they was blind.”
“So what did you tell ’em?”
“What am I, a squealer? Told ’em you didn’t live here and I never heard of you. Told ’em I been sittin’ here since ’38 and if there was a guy called Sammy around I’d know him, and I don’t. I didn’t tell them nothin’, the dirty marimbas.”
“A marimba is a musical instrument, kid. Like a xylophone.”
“No it ain’t. You’re a stinkin’ liar.”
“Kid, when you learn a new word, you can run it by me, see if it’s legit. You know, the usage. My ma was an English teacher, so I got the skinny on vocabulary and so on.”
“Ah, I don’t need to know that. I only say other stuff ’cause you get jumpy when I call ’em cocksuckers.”
“Oh, well, yeah, that’s true. Thanks, I guess.”
“Right, so I tells these xylophone cocksuckers that I ain’t never heard of you, and if they don’t scram I’m gonna go get my uncle Bert from upstairs and he’ll blast them with his forty-five, ’cause he doesn’t go for strangers asking me stuff, ’cause he’s a cop.”
“And is he?” I perked up a little, not in a good way—a cop in the building?
“Nah, I ain’t got a Uncle Bert, I was just yankin’ their chains.”
“Didn’t they see my name on the mailbox?” My building has six brass mailboxes in the hall.
“They were headed that way, so that’s when I made like I’m going to go get Uncle Bert to blast ’em, so they took off.”
“Good job, kid.” I reached into my folding money and peeled off a buck. “Here, I need you to keep a lookout today. You see these guys coming, don’t wait for them to get here, run up and wake me up. Watch my rats.”
“A whole buck?” The kid’s eyes got as big as coffee cups. “What’s your angle?”
“These are bad guys is all. And stay here, don’t go wandering off to the pictures or to get ice cream. You get hungry, come up to my place and grab something. But be quiet. Wake me up when the church rings noon. Got it?” The bell at St. Peter and Paul
’s down on Washington Square was the kid’s watch. I figured these mooks had already been here today, they weren’t coming back before lunchtime, and I had nothing left.
The kid squinted at me from under his cap. “You in some kind of a pickle? You need a gat?”
“You can get me a gun?”
“I might know a guy.”
“I’ll let you know.” I was really hoping I didn’t need a gun. I’m not afraid of guns, I’d just rather not have to have one. I can shoot. When my foot was on the mend, I passed some time at the shooting range learning various heaters, but I was in no rush to get into a shoot-out.
I limped up the stairs to my place and fell face-first into bed, still in my bartending clothes, and I was out like I was hit with a lead sap.
* * *
There were no English words on the sign on the shop at Stockton and Pacific, but the Chinese characters translated to “Upright House of Harmonious Cabbage.” Vegetables were their trade and they traded a ton of vegetables every day. Mrs. Wong was the matriarch of Harmonious Cabbage, and she did accounts, haggled with farmers and truckers, set up displays along the sidewalk, and barked prices and tales of freshness and flavor at customers from dawn to dusk every day. She was not above sweeping the floor herself when her worthless husband, worthless daughters, and mostly absent sons were too lazy to do it, and that was what she was doing today. Her metal dustpan, most of the black paint worn off, the metal polished by dust, the edge knife-sharp after years of scraping the concrete floor, was as wide as a man’s shoulders (just narrow enough to fit down the aisles of Harmonious Cabbage) and held two quarts of dirt knocked from root vegetables, fallen leaves, the odd carrot top or tomato stem, peels from sampled oranges, and other detritus of the trade.
The pan was full now, so she bumped through the back door to the alley to empty it into one of the trash cans back there, and what did she see but a large gray rat standing up in the top of the can like he owned the joint. Mrs. Wong was accustomed to rats, she was not afraid of rats, and she was, in fact, taking secret joy that this rat was standing so still and not skulking away, because she planned to dump her dustpan and deliver a devastating backhand with its razor edge before the rat had a chance to duck. She made her plan, and wound up slowly, letting the dirt trail out of the dustpan in an arch on the bricks. Then she saw it.
She was not the only one hunting this casual rat. Beyond the trash can was another predator. A shiny-smooth serpent the color of asphalt rose, as steady as running liquid, until it stood like a dark and elegant dingus of death, taller than her, the rat between them. Fear flowed to action and she and the mamba struck at once.
* * *
The phone woke me up. It was Eddie Moo Shoes.
“Where are my rats?” asked Moo.
“I got ’em, I had to sleep.”
“Well I gotta get to work. Can you take them directly to Uncle Ho?”
“You have to work? Wait, what time is it?”
“Almost five.”
“Damn kid was supposed to wake me up.”
“I don’t have time to get there and back before I have to start setting up. Can you do it?”
“Yeah, maybe. Sure. Look, I got some things to do. I will if I can.”
“Do that. It’s the alley off Pacific.”
“I know.”
“Between Powell and—”
“I know! I’ve been there twice.”
“Fine. Gotta go.” Moo hung up.
I had no idea where to find Ho the Cat-Fucking Uncle, so I figured I’d just wander around the back alleys of Chinatown with my sack of rats until I found him. I wasn’t going to give Moo Shoes the satisfaction of giving me directions, though.
I threw open my door, expecting to see the kid there so I could give him a good ass-chewing, but there at my feet was the bag of rats. Except the kid had put a little cardboard box inside the double bags. There were air holes in it, and it was tied with a string. When I opened the box it contained six white rats, who were lounging in some shredded newspaper along with a jar lid full of water and a few cornflakes.
Oh, and a note. You owe me two bits for fixing up your rats.
I gotta give the kid credit, he had fixed up my rats in the equivalent of the Rat Ritz, but he also had taken a powder on waking me up, which reminded me that he was still a horrible little kid. I could deal with rats later. For now I had to get Sal’s open so nothing looked suspicious.
I had Bennie the fill-in guy’s number, and I call him and tell him that Sal was off camping and I had business so I needed him to open the bar and work until closing time. Bennie is what we call a high-level day drunk, which means that he is able to go about pulling off a pretty normal life while always being about half in the bag, except for those times when he goes off on a full bender, at which point he can usually be salvaged from the county jail. He is a pretty young guy, maybe twenty-five, to be so disposed, but he saw some action in Europe during the war, which set him to shaking and screaming sometimes, so he was generally given a pass. Anyway, he was happy to have the work, but didn’t have bar keys, so I arranged to meet him at Sal’s in half an hour.
I was happy to be out of my bartender togs from the previous night, as they were somewhat less than fresh from the evening’s goings-on, so after a shower and a shave I put on the double-breasted gray pinstripe suit I bought for job hunting right after the shipyard closed. I put on a gray linen shirt that I had let steam while I showered and a black silk tie. I topped it all with a wide-brimmed Stetson fedora I won from a guy on a bar bet and I was in the wind. A player. An operator. With my sack of rats.
I wished the Cheese could see me, looking sharp and smelling only slightly of mothballs. The thought of her was a punch under my heart. I tried to shake it off. I just needed to drop off the keys and get back on the trail, a little behind the game, though, because the kid didn’t wake me earlier.
Bennie, the big, blond goof, was waiting for me at the back door of Sal’s. I gave him my keys (I kept Sal’s set) and wished him luck, told him that he was low on change in the register, but nothing he couldn’t work through. Sal walked with most of the cash a lot of the time anyway.
The address Phil the fry cook gave me for Myrtle was over near Fourth and Mission. It’s maybe a thirty-minute hoof, but I caught the cable car at Powell and rode it over the hill, so I got off at Market Street only a block away in ten, and I hadn’t even shaken up my rats.
The building was built in the twenties and had good times and denial written all over it—ten stories with a pink granite façade and bronze Art Deco inlays of streamlined Greek gods dancing across the cornice like the market crash, the Great Depression, and World War II could never happen. It might have started life thinking it was going to be a nice hotel, but now it was cut up into tiny apartments that looked down on a skid row full of broken veterans and low-rent hustlers. Olympus had fallen on tough times.
I rang the bell of apartment number 403. The doorbell was one of those twist jobs in the middle of the door under the peephole, confirming this place was a hotel at one time. It sounded like the bell on a bicycle, and after a minute with no answer or footfalls I rang it again. I was getting a bad feeling and I leaned against the wall, took a breath, and tried not to let my worry over the Cheese get to me. This was my only lead, and if Myrtle was missing, too—ah, maybe Phil the fry cook was right, maybe they were just two girls having too much fun out on the town.
I was failing to console myself and I could even feel my rats getting anxious, when I saw movement in the peephole across the hall—light, then dark—someone looking, then looking away. The sliver of light coming under the door showed a pair of feet there that weren’t moving.
I decided to place my bet, take a chance that what I was seeing was a habit.
I gave the bell another twist, then I gave Myrtle’s door a good pound. “Ah, come on, sis, don’t be like that. Ma needs you. She wants you to come home. She ain’t got that much time.” Another ring. “For the love of
God, Myrt, she’s dying.” I let my voice break on the last bit—it was very fucking sad. My rats wept.
And then there was the beautiful click of the nosy neighbor’s door behind me.
“She is not there,” said an older broad, housedress of dying flowers, support stockings, and slippers, built like she could play linebacker on the tiny European grandma football team. “She is not come home two days now,” said Granny Nagurski. “You are brother?”
“Yeah, yeah. But we been out of contact. Estranged, you know. Some hard feelings. But our ma is sick.”
“She tell me mother is die three years ago.”
“So you can see how it is? Myrt told us we were dead to her. You know how that is . . .”
“Oh I know. Do I know? Oh, I know. Many are dead to me. Many, many.” She started to count on her fingers. “No-good brother. Dead! No-good nephew . . .”
“You don’t know where she went, do you?” Sorry, granny, I don’t have time for inventory. “She leave you a number? Anything? Honest, Ma just wants to make amends before she passes.”
“No. She not say. We are not good friends. Just neighbor. She is bit of floozie, you ask me.”
“Anyone been by? Besides me?”
“Yes. Is one, young man. Thin. Dark hair. He have key. Go in her apartment, come out with things. Clothes, maybe.”
I felt a chill. Thin? Dark hair? “Just one?”
“Yes, one.”
“Tall guy? Black suit, white shirt? Black fedora? Maybe glasses?”
“No, is not suit. Is suit with, how you say? Like bird.” She made a gesture down below her bottom.
“Tails? A tailcoat? Like a tux and tails?”
“Yes, that is it. Tails. Very shiny. Very shiny shoes. Hair slick back.”
“A little guy in a tux?” I took a breath. At least it wasn’t the two guys who were shadowing me.
“I think is actor, maybe.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Lips is very red, eyes dark, like for stage, maybe.”
“Oh.” Well, we weren’t far from the theater district, maybe five or six blocks. “Have you seen this guy in the tux before?”