Day of Wrath (17 page)

"Why couldn't they just cut her off without a cent?" I
said to Marcie.

"She's got her own trust. Iron-clad millions. And, to
be honest, she's fairly shrewd about money. After all, she is a Croft.
What she spends, she spends wisely. On art and on budding artists."

"Which artists?"

"Oh, she's gone through quite a few. Some of them are
famous now; She sets them up. Promotes them. And when she gets bored, she
moves on to someone new. But she never forgets to get her money's worth—in
paintings and in guarantees of future work. Like I said, she's a shrewd
lady."

"Who's her protégé at the moment?" I asked.

Marcie shrugged. "I don't know. Could be anybody. Sometimes
Irene bankrolls a loser, simply because he is as strange as she is. I think
it's her way of making friends." Marcie eyed me shrewdly. "She's got some
pretty kinky tastes, Harry. The kind you've got to pay to indulge."

"You mean kinky sex?" I said, thinking of Rudy and Sophie.

"Drugs, too, from what I hear."

"Does the name Theo Clinger ring any bells?"

"No," she said. "But it's a full-time job keeping up with
Irene. Is he her newest find?"

I said, "He might be."

Marcie stubbed out her cigarette in an ashtray, brushing
the butt back and forth against the glass as if she was dabbing paint on
a canvas. "I might be able to use that," she mused. She dropped the butt
delicately into the tray and asked, "What does he do?"

"He plays the guitar," I said. "Jazz."

"
That's a new one. Where can I find him?"

"I don't know," I said. "Why don't you ask Irene? And
if you find out, give me a call."

"I might," she said lazily.

I got up from the chair and said, "Thanks."

Marcie leaned back and gave me a frank look. "You still
haven't forgiven me for Leo, have you, Harry?"

"There was nothing to forgive," I said. "What happened
was between you and him."

"No," she said with a wistful laugh. "I think this argument
is between you and the world." She leaned forward again and smiled affectionately.
"You're like a kid, Harry. That's your charm. You're still living in a
place where good and bad are something more than scary little words from
the past. I've never really understood that."

"I know," I said.

Her eyes veiled and she stared at the ashtray on her desk.
"You're all alone, Harry. just like the rest of us. And no one cares."
She dipped a forefinger in the ashes and stirred them listlessly. "No one
cares, so why should you?"

I started to tell her, but she held up a hand and waved
goodbye with her fingertips. "I don't really want to know," she said.
 

ON MY WAY BACK DOWN VINE I STOPPED AT THE Cricket's front
window again, and this time went inside, into the dark tap room, and treated
myself to some of that beef and dark German beer. I felt as if I'd earned
a break after talking to Marcie Shaeffer, whose bitchiness seemed untempered
by the years. Still, I'd felt a bit sorry for Marcie that afternoon. Perhaps
because she seemed worried that I disapproved of her. Perhaps because I
did disapprove. I sat in one of The Cricket's dark wood booths, eating
noodles and roast beef and thinking of Marcie and of Irene Croft—two
spoiled women without a talent for anything but the easy art of self-indulgence.
They just got their kicks in different ways—Marcie by bitching and tattling
and Irene by indulging in gilded depravities. But then I didn't really
have the right to point a finger at either one because I could use what
Marcie had told me, and I was beginning to think I could use Irene, as
well.

If the Croft woman did, in fact, have a patron-client
relationship with Theo Clinger, it would go a long way toward explaining
the look on her face in the photograph and the throb in her voice when
she'd mentioned his name. If he was her newest "discovery," it might have
given her a reason to steer me away from him. Which wasn't to say that
she'd been lying to me when she'd said that Robbie Segal had been nowhere
near Clinger earlier in the week. ]ust that she could have had a reason
to lie—an investment to protect.

I stared out the diamond-shaped windows at the snowy glare
of sunlight reflecting off chrome bumpers and shop doors, and decided to
pay Irene Croft another visit, after I'd talked with Dino Taylor. I swallowed
the last of the beer, which had begun to taste like sweet beef tea, paid
my chit at the cash register, and walked back out into the day. I ambled
through the sunshine to the Parkade. Picked up the Pinto and headed north
again—to Clifton and WCUC.

It was almost three when I got to Central Parkway, and
a quarter past by the time I pulled into the cool, multilevel concrete
garage of the College Conservatory of Music. WGUC was the University of
Cincinnati's radio station. Unlike most college stations, it was a very
classy  operation, run by professionals for the most part rather than
by students, and geared exclusively to the NPR crowd. It seemed an odd
place for an old-fashioned DJ.

I like Dino Taylor to be working. But in spite of his
top-40's voice and sleek good looks, Dino was almost an academic when it
came to the music he loved. His daily jazz show was as classy as the rest
of the CUC operation—a pleasant combination of old standbys and new wave,
spiced with the affectionate patter and personal anecdotes of a man who'd
spent his whole life among musicians.

I'd first met him at a reception I'd been hired to chaperon.
But I hadn't ended up doing much chaperoning that night, mainly because
the rock group for whom the reception was being given didn't show up until
the wee hours of the morning and by then the boys were too drunk and fagged
out to cause any mischief. I spent most of the evening talking with Dino,
or listening to him talk about the music he loved. We'd bumped into one
another a couple of times since then, and, although I didn't consider him
a friend, I thought I knew him well enough to ask him about Theo Clinger.

I took the elevator from the garage to the ground floor,
followed a series of arrows through wandering corridors full of pretty
girls in tights and toe shoes and thin, bearded, serious looking young
men carrying buckram instrument cases, and eventually wound up at the GUC
complex in the north end of the building.

A secretary sitting at a desk inside the plate glass door
directed me to an empty office. And a few minutes after I'd sat down, Dino
stepped into the room.

"Only got a minute, Harry," he said in his smooth announcer's
baritone. "Have to go to some goddamn meeting at the Convention Center."

He seated himself behind the desk and gave me a grin that
was as smooth and pally as his voice. He was a bit of a con man, Dino.
But then most D.J.s were. In a business where you have to make your voice
smile and caper for three to four hours every day, it's hard not to develop
the thin, theatrical mannerisms of an actor. The fulsome warmth and instant
rapport grated on me a little, after the time I'd spent with Marcie Shaeffer.
So did Dino's razor-cut good looks, which struck me that afternoon as being
too controlled and too varnished, like a brand new toupee. They were the
perfect match for his facile voice and easy air of intimacy; and for that
very reason seemed vaguely phoney, like Marcie Shaeffer's brand of sophistication.

"
C'mon, Harry," he rasped. "Time's awastin'."

"What can you tell me about Theo Clinger," I said to him.

He folded his hands behind his immaculate gray hair and
smiled benignly. "Ah, Theo. Hell of a musician. He could have been something
else, ten years ago. That is, if he hadn't gotten stuck in this jerkwater
town."

"What kept him here?"

"He didn't have the guts to leave, for one thing. Tremendous
talent, no ambition. It's an old story. And for another, why be a little
irish in a big pond when you can have the little pond all to yourself.
Theo's owned the avant-garde jazz scene in this city for the last decade.
He is new wave in Cincinnati. The king. He's got devout followers all over
the Midwest."

"I've heard about them," I said. "He likes them kind of
young, doesn't he?"

Dino grinned. "Sure, he has his groupies. Every musician
has. But he treats them a helluva lot better than most musicians do." Dino
unlocked his hands from behind his head and leaned toward me with the air
of a car salesman closing a deal. "I don't know why you're asking me about
him. I don't think I want to know. But understand, Harry, I like this man.
To me, Theo Clinger is the sixties incarnate. Free love, communal living,
dope, spiritual raps, a willingness to experiment. He's got it all. He
treats his groupies like a family. They share in everything—work and
play. And they live the kind of life that most of us only dreamed about
when we were twenty. Hey, I'm not saying it's for everyone. But it's one
way to go."

"Opting out?" I said.

Dino shook his head. "Theo's no dropout. He lives the
sixties dream, all right. But the sixties had its pragmatic side, too.
Let me tell you a story: the other day I was shopping lower Clifton and
I came across a new shop on Ludlow—a fancy boutique specializing in imported
jewelry. Heal nice set-up. I walked in and looked at the guy behind the
counter and did a double take. He's got long hair, wears wire rims, muttonchops.
Like ]ohn Sebastian at Woodstock, you know? I said to him, 'Didn't you
used to make beaded belts up in Clifton in the days of peace and love?'
And he just smiled. It was the same guy, Harry.

"Old hippies aren't drop-outs, they're drop-ins. Theo's
no different. He plays at Eden. But he sells tickets at the gate. His talent
was great at one time. He was a real innovator, in the Cage mold. But the
days of Cage are dead and gone. And Theo's no youngster any more. He hasn't
got what he once had, and he knows it. In fact, he planned for it, like
a Yankee farmer. Back in his salad days, he bought up properties all over
Mt. Adams and Clifton. Bookstores, small shops, clubs. Over the years,
he's rehabbed most of them. He used to be one of the bigger property owners
in the city. They weren't prime lots, but they turned a profit. Or at least
they did up until a few years ago. I heard he's been having some problems
lately. I guess inflation and tight money hit him as hard as it hit everyone
else. I know for a fact that he had to sell his bookstore and restaurant.
But he'll fix things up. He's a good businessman. To be honest, that's
one of the reasons he takes such good care of his family—it's a cheap
source of labor.—"

"You're telling me he's an entrepreneur?" I said with
a laugh.

"Damn right. Theo'll do just about anything for a buck.
Hell, when you have an empire to protect, you've got to be shrewd. And
Theo likes being emperor?"

"Does he have a central office?" I said. "One place that
he lives in or works out of`?"

"He used to have a place in Mt. Adams," Dino said.

"But I hear he's moved to the country. To Kentucky, I
think. Don't ask me where."

"You do like him, don't you, Dino?"

He leaned back in the chair and stared dreamily at the
wall behind me. "Sure, I like him. Who wouldn't like the life he leads?
He makes music and he lives in paradise. Who wouldn't like that?"

Free love, music, the communion of like-minded souls.
It not only sounded like the sixties, it sounded like an adolescent's dream
of freedom. It hurt me a little to think that, all along, the two might
have been one. But it made me that much surer that Clinger's family was
where Robbie Segal had been headed from the start. A world that seemed
to be the moral and emotional opposite of Eastlawn Drive. And yet, if what
Dino said were true, the two worlds weren't as far apart as they appeared
to be. Even paradise had to be paid for in cash. And trailing behind money-making,
like its very own shadow, were all the doubts and uncertainties, all the
fears and debts that made Eastlawn Drive such a nervous, conformable street.
Every lifestyle has its price tag, and the cost is always figured in the
same compromises. If the responsibilities of kingship had turned Clinger
into a capitalist, he'd bought some capitalist values, too. Otherwise,
there would be no way for him to turn a profit. The more of those values
Clinger had bought, the closer to Eastlawn Drive paradise must have come.
And hard times had probably brought them even closer together.

I wondered whether it would break Robbie's spirit to discover
that she wasn't a high-flying angel, she was cheap labor. I also wondered
why an entrepreneur like Clinger would need a patroness like Irene Croft
behind him. Perhaps it flattered his vanity to think that a very rich,
very influential lady thought he was God. It was a reasonable assumption.
Only Dino had emphasized that Clinger was a shrewd businessman, too. And
Irene Croft was apparently no philanthropist. If he'd taken up with a woman
who was going to end up costing him something, I figured he'd done it for
a good reason. Maybe some trouble in paradise that had to be paid for in
hard cash. The possibility made talking to Irene Croft seem an even better
idea than it had before. While I was thinking it over, Dino got up and
walked to the door.

"Gotta go, Harry," he said cheerfully.