Everything but the Squeal (14 page)

He caught me staring twice and smiled in happy misunderstanding. I smiled back. We were getting along great. The phone rang a few more times, and he weeded out the unwanted from the wanted callers in a voice that had all the regret of a funeral director learning that the client was dead. Finally, his phone buzzed discreetly, and he rose the four inches that marked the difference between his sitting and standing heights and rubbed his hands in the best Uriah Heep imitation I'd seen in months.

“She'll see you now,” he said.

“Just don't tell us to walk this way,” Jessica said unwisely. “I don't think I could do it.”

“Honey,” Birdie said, but this time he said it to me, “you're going to earn your money.” We followed him through the Flash Gordon door.

Mrs. Brussels stood up to greet us. Her suit was brilliantly tailored, but it had nothing on her manner. “Mr. Ward,” she said, echoing the name I'd given to Birdie, “and this is Jewel. Jewel Ward?” she asked.

“Not actually,” I said, choosing the larger of the two chairs in front of her desk. The other was sized for a child, and Jessica climbed grumpily into it. “Jewel Smith,” I said.

“Smith,” she said, sitting down. “Jewel Smith. We'll have to do something about that. If we come to an arrangement, of course.” She gave me a radiant smile, and I gave her the best I had in return.

“How did you get my name, if you don't mind my asking?” she asked, beaming with democratic impartiality on both Jessica and me.

“Through the
Actors'
Directory
:
’

The smile went a little rigid and her gaze wavered. “How ingenious. How did you ever think of doing that?” She was sitting up straighter than she had been a moment earlier.

“A friend suggested it.”

“A friend,” she said with the same smile fixed in place. It did nothing to her eyes. “Is he in the business?”

“He's a teacher,” I said.

“What level does he teach?” It was a question I hadn't anticipated.

“College,” I improvised.

She blinked at me. For the first time since we'd entered the room I felt that she was at a loss for words. Something, for her, didn't add up, and she didn't know where to go next.

“It makes good sense,” I said, to fill the silence. “Where else could you go through pages of kids and get their agents' names and addresses?”

“At least,” she said, relaxing slightly, “you can find out who's active.” I still had the feeling that she was watching me, but I had no idea why.

“And you can see what kinds of kids they've got and how good the photographs are,” I said, trying to figure out what was going on. “You can see whether you've heard of any of their clients. It can tell you a lot.”

She sat back in her chair. “I suppose it can,” she said noncommittally. “Of course, many of my clients are featured in the directory. Most of them are doing very well indeed. I must say, fortune has looked favorably on our little enterprise in the last three or four years.” Whatever had caused the uncomfortable moment, it had passed.

“That's why we're here,” I said. I had placed the emotionless smile. She had something of the third-grade teacher about her, the one who could smile at you while she was explaining why you weren't going to see fourth grade within your expected lifetime.

“It's unusual,” she continued, as though I hadn't spoken, “for me to see anyone who hasn't made an appointment. But Birdie explained your reasoning to me, and he also told me what a remarkably beautiful little lady you've brought with you.” She glimmered at Jessica, who gave her a cool nod. Jessica, as I was beginning to realize, had good taste. Dismissing her lack of responsiveness, Mrs. Brussels said, “She reminds me of the young Margaret O'Brien.”

“She has skills,” I said, “that Margaret O'Brien never heard of.” Jessica gave me a quick, evil look.

“I'll stipulate that she's talented,” Mrs. Brussels said comfortably.

“What's ‘stipulate’?” Jessica said suspiciously. She still hadn't gotten over being called a thespian.

“It's lawyer talk, sweetie,” Mrs. Brussels said. “It means that I'm willing to believe that you've got talent.”

“You haven't seen me do anything,” Jessica said, dimpling again. It had been her least attractive skill at the age of four. I hadn't seen it since.

“Mind of her own,” Mrs. Brussels observed.

“You don't know the half of it,” I replied.

“At any rate, talent is mainly a matter of training. It can be learned. What can't be learned, what's much rarer, is beauty and, of course, presence. This little girl has a great deal of presence.” She gave Jessica a look that dared her to voice a contradiction. Mrs. Brussels had little mid-forties laugh crinkles around her eyes, fine bones, a full lower lip, all topped off by a mass of auburn hair held up by a few pins arranged in an oddly Victorian fashion. Wisps of fine hair framed her face. She looked like Colleen Dewhurst playing Colleen Dewhurst. There was a little too much flesh under the skin, but not so much that it kept swinging back and forth after she'd finished shaking her head. Once I got past the image of the terrible third-grade teacher, she reminded me of nothing so much as the prettiest of all my elementary school friends' mothers. I had gone to his house largely to see her.

Jessica acknowledged the challenge with a disdainful sniff. Maybe she just resented being called a little girl.

“She's very special,” I said. I paused before the word “special.”

“And you're her what?”

“She's my ward,” I said.

“Like your name,” she said brightly. “Ward.”

“Exactly,” I said. “Isn't that a coincidence?”

“It certainly is,” she said, watching me with an entirely new expression.

Jessica, feeling excluded, began to fidget.

“You're legal?” Mrs. Brussels said.

“Well, Mommy and Daddy aren't here.”

“They could show up,” she said, one hand under her chin. “Where are they, anyway?”

Jessica heard her cue. “They're dead,” she said.

“Is that so?” Mrs. Brussels said, her face turning into a postcard of sympathy. “That's terrible.”

“Oh, golly,” Jessica said, “you don't know how I cried.” I was proud of her; she resisted the impulse to wring her hands.

“And now”—Mrs. Brussels in her most motherly tones— “you have no one but Mr. Ward, here.” Her eyes, when she turned them to me, were older than rocks.

Jessica looked at me proudly. “He's all I need,” she said. “He's wonderful.”

“They died in Idaho,” I said. “A car wreck.”

“What a sad story,” Mrs. Brussels said perfunctorily. “And you said you were her legal guardian?”

“Legal enough,” I said.

“Because there are contracts,” she said.

I looked at Jessica, who had withdrawn into herself. She was sitting on her hands like Wayne Warner.

“And are you willing for her to travel?” Mrs. Brussels said in the tone I would have used to ask if it were sunny. And why not? If I was right about her, and I was sure I was, all we were talking about was the Mann Act.

“I'm a frequent flier,” Jessica said remotely.

“What a delightful child,” Mrs. Brussels said. Her voice sounded like a knife being sharpened on a whetstone. “So precocious. I'm sure we can work something out, Mr. Ward. There are the standard papers, of course. Nothing special, all to your benefit and little Jewel's. Perhaps we could draw them up overnight and you could come in tomorrow and sign them. You and Jewel, I mean.”

“Sure,” I said. “Be delighted. Call me Dwight.”

“And where are you staying? Since you've just come here from Idaho, I mean.”

“The Sleep-Eze Motel,” I said, “on Melrose.”

She gave me the crinkly smile. “Nice place,” she said. She directed a glance toward the computer terminal on her desk, which had just whirred and beeped. Eyes on the screen, she tucked a wisp of hair behind her ear. “And now,” she added, “I have work to do.” Without looking up from the computer, she extended a hand to me, ignoring Jessica completely. “We're going to do just fine,” she said. “Great career. Come tomorrow, tennish? Birdie will show you out.”

“Tennish,” I said.

Birdie showed us out.

In the parking lot, Jessica tugged at my hand. “That woman is a snake,” she said. “What was the big deal about the
Actors'
Directory
? She acted like you'd goosed her.”

“Jessica,” I said, “I think you've got a future in this line of work.”

She got into the car, sat back, and glowed.

14 - Through the Keyhole

“W 
hat's the name this time?” asked the old bat at the Sleep-Eze as she took my money. I had told her that we'd be expecting phone calls.

“Ward,” I said, “Dwight Ward. And this is my little ward, Jewel.”

She glared down at Jessica. “There ought to be a law,” she said, dropping the bills into a drawer.

“There is,” I said, “and you're breaking it.”

Jessica had stopped glowing by the time she got home. I dropped her, figuratively kicking and squealing, at her parents' house. Annie leaned in through the car window long enough to ask whether she was okay.

Jessica dispelled whatever doubt there might have been. “Hey, Mom,” she said, stomping toward the house as though she weighed a thousand pounds, “count my arms and legs, would you?” She didn't want me to go anywhere without her.

At home, I spent several damp hours making notes on the Sleep-Eze's purloined stationery and then painstakingly tapping them into my computer. The roof was leaking. There was something about the sight of my notes on paper that reawakened my collegiate faith in the much-vaunted and probably overrated human ability to solve problems. I flipped off the computer, tossed the stationery onto the floor, and went out and watered the garden, which didn't need it. Time passed slowly. I was waiting for dark.

On the drive into town, I indulged my latest crankiness by dialing from station to station to listen to what the traffic reporters were doing to the English language. Where, I wondered, was the linguistic equivalent of the antivivisectionist league? Motorists who were “transitioning” from the Hollywood Freeway onto the Five would find an accident “working” in the right lanes. Working at what? I’d seen accidents, and as far as I could tell, they were just accidenting. CHP was “rolling,” and the whole mess would, I was told, cause slowing “for you.” And only for you, apparently. Who says we live in an impersonal world?

I got off the freeway and cut north into Hollywood. Even on a Monday night Santa Monica Boulevard was cramped and crawling, due largely to scavenger driving as solo male motorists eyed the kids on the street. I angled up onto Fountain so I could pass the Oki-Burger, and slowed down, along with most of the other male drivers, to take a look. No Aimee.

I hadn't expected her to be there, of course, or on the curb near Jack's either, although that's where Junko was. Her black hair spilled over her white blouse as she divided her attention between a parked and bearded biker and the oncoming traffic. Keeping her eye on the main chance, wherever it might come from. She looked jumpy, trying for alluring. Her pimp was nowhere in sight.

I stopped at Computerland and bought a bag full of blank disks, both the five-and-a-quarter-inch versions and the little three-and-a-half-inch ones. I had no way of knowing which I would need. I hadn't paid enough attention. I also bought a DOS diskette, just in case I couldn't find Birdie's. Then, to kill time, I drove past both Jack's and the Oki-Burger again. No Aimee this time either, and no Junko. She'd gotten a customer.

At precisely nine-fifteen I walked briskly into the lobby of Mr. Kale's building, nodded in a businesslike fashion at the night guard, an undersize specimen with a telltale scarlet nose that Jim-Beamed up at me beneath the visor on his cap, and headed for the elevator.

Some years back, when I decided to ignore everyone's advice and go into this line of work, I did something that many a smart crook has done before and since: I apprenticed myself to a locksmith, a lovely old guy named Zack Withers. In four months I'd learned that most locks aren't worth the space they take up in a door, and that the bigger and more massive they are, the less they're usually worth.

Mr. Kale's were worse than most. A careful man, he'd installed three. I could have unlocked, relocked, and unlocked them again all evening long without being able to decide which was the most worthless. I felt like the Big Bad Wolf. Even if I hadn't quit smoking, I could have blown the door down.

Once inside, I closed the door behind me and took off the World War One aviator's scarf I had draped jauntily around my neck. I stuffed it against the crack at the bottom of the door and then turned on the lights.

Except for the fact that I had no real idea what I was looking for, I was in fine shape. The office, without a little sunlight shouldering its way through the two dirty windows, was even tinier and more depressing than I remembered it. I started with the desk and had gotten through most of it when the phone rang. I watched it with the attention I usually reserve for poisonous snakes until, on the fifth ring, a cheap machine on the desk emitted a click, and Mr. Kale's voice wormed forth.

“You've reached the headquarters of Kale International,” it said. “We're sorry, but all our offices are closed. Please leave a message at the tone. If this is urgent, call 555-1366.” So I had Mr. Kale's home phone. As I wrote it down I listened to a disgruntled parent complain that when his little Jeannie went to her audition that afternoon she'd been told that it had been held a week ago. “I could have read
Drama
-
Logue
” the man said, “and learned that. What are we paying you for, anyway?” Wondering what
Drama
-
Logue
was, I finished with the desk and went to the files.

The files were an archaeological theme park of pederasty,
Kiddie
World
, full of bits and pieces of the curling fringes of twentieth-century life, the disconnected fragments and potsherds of a peculiarly twisted version of the American dream. It was like F.A.O. Schwarz in reverse; for more than two hundred years people had been coming to America to make it big, but not until recently had they hoped to make it big on the backs of their children. Before I opened the second drawer, I went to the photocopier and turned it on. I copied the most perverse documents and photographs out of sheer acquisitiveness, even though they contained nothing about Aimee Sorrell. By the time I left, I was carrying a stack of photocopies that was thicker than the West Hollywood Yellow Pages' section on florists.

There was a burglar alarm at Brussels' Sprouts, but it was junkier than Kale's locks. It required a short walk to a Seven-Eleven on Sunset, run by a family of Thais, for a little Scotch tape to keep the terminals together. The youngest daughter of the Thai family sold me the tape with a blinding smile. If an Anglo tried to duplicate that smile, he'd sprain both cheeks.

The tape was older and less sticky than I might have wanted it to be, but it, plus about two feet of copper wire out of Alice's trunk, did the job. With the alarm silenced, I opened the door in less time than it takes a twelve-year-old to shave. Stuffing my scarf under the door and feeling like I'd just won the lottery, I fumbled around in the darkness for the light switch and failed to find it. Using a flashlight instead, I went to Birdie's desk and pressed the button on its underside that opened the Flash Gordon door.

No deal. No access to Mrs. Ming the Merciless.

So why was it no deal? There had to be a master switch somewhere, and it had to be on my side of the door. Otherwise, Mrs. Brussels, whoever she might actually be, couldn't have gotten in in the morning.

I looked everywhere. Squinting along the flashlight's beam, I lifted the cushions of the couch. I pried up the corners of the rug. I even risked going back outside and peeling up the doormat. Then I ran my hands over the wallpaper, looking for a little bulge. The one or two I found, I pressed without any payoff. Probably cockroaches caught in the glue.

When you can't get what you want, I reasoned, settle for what you can get. I went to Birdie's desk and looked at his phone. It was a technological miracle, full of what the people who sell you phones like to refer to as “extra features.” Down its right-hand side were sixteen auto-redial buttons. In other words, jackpot.

Touch-tone technology has turned the telephone system into music: every number that you press sounds a different note. A phone number is like a musical snowflake, in that no two are alike. I pressed a pocket tape recorder against the earpiece of the phone and pushed each of the redial buttons in turn. When the beep pattern had sounded, I hung up and went to the next button. After about a minute I had them all on tape. Then I turned my attention to the reason I had come in the first place.

The computer was nothing special, an IBM clone. I pulled it around so I could fool with the keys and switched it on. A little bit late, I thought about disks, nonsystem disk or drive error, the screen signaled me. insert system disk

AND PRESS ANY KEY.

A disk holder was stashed in the third drawer down on the right. I pulled out the DOS diskette I'd bought and put it in. When the A Prompt blinked at me, I put another of the disks into the B drive, dir b: I typed.

The machine whirred and the screen lit up with a long list of meaningless file names. I pulled the DOS disk out of drive A and inserted one of my own, one of the ones I'd bought at Computerland, in its place. Then I typed copy b:*.* a:. In human talk, that meant copy everything on the disk in the B drive onto the disk in the A drive.

After some whirring and some beeping, the machine told me that the disk I'd inserted wasn't formatted. I should have known that. A computer disk is like a long-playing record without any grooves until you format it. Only then can it figure out into which grooves it should place the information you're copying onto it. I put the DOS diskette back into drive A and formatted all the disks I'd bought at Computer-land. Then I repeated the steps that told the machine to copy everything on disk A onto disk B.

It took nine of the ten disks I'd bought to copy the contents of Birdie's diskette file. Then, just to make sure, I copied his DOS diskette, which I found in the back of the holder, as well. DOS doesn't take up an entire diskette, and who knew what else he had hidden there? I finished up by labeling all the diskettes. Birdie had just numbered them, one through nine plus DOS, so I copied his system. Then I put back everything I'd touched.

With the diskettes tucked back into the box I'd bought them in, a thick square of cold hard cardboard pressing up against my stomach beneath the belt of my jeans, I went over the office again in search of the secret passkey to the Flash Gordon door. Still no deal. Feeling defeated, I went back out through the front and into the fog of the evening.

L.A. glittered at me like the jewels in the Seven Dwarfs' mine as I drove back west toward the ocean. Somewhere out there, socked away among the semiprecious stones, was Aimee Sorrell. Or maybe not. What had Mrs. Brussels asked me about Jessica? Was she free to travel? Something like that. Travel how far? I wondered. Rio? Japan? Saudi Arabia? The white slave trade, I knew, extended into all the black, brown, yellow, and coffee-colored countries. And into the white countries as well.

Great, I thought as I killed Alice at the foot of my driveway and climbed up the hill, I'd eliminated none of the world's continents except Antarctica. And if anyone lived on Antarctica, it would still be on my list. Good work.

When I opened the door of my house, it was just as I'd left it, only colder. I pulled a sixteen-ounce bottle of Singha out of the refrigerator, and sat down in my only chair, feeling sorry for Aimee, and a little sorry for myself. Coyotes howled in the distance, and I went out onto the deck and howled back. The clouds had cleared briefly and the full moon shone down like a cue for Lon Chaney Jr. to appear and start mumbling. I was
absolutely
getting a little old for all this, I thought. I'd gone back inside to put the diskettes into the computer when I noticed that the light on the answering machine was blinking. If Eleanor had been in America, or anyplace closer than Nanjing, China, I would have noticed it earlier. I always checked the machine when Eleanor was around.

I pushed the button marked Replay. First came some garbage: a tape-recorded voice asking me whether I had ever thought about gold futures, followed by a kid who asked me if my refrigerator were running. I skipped the part where he (or she) told me that I'd better go out into the street and chase it, and got Mrs. Sorrell's voice.

“Mr. Grist?” it said. “Are you home?” The voice waited, and in the background I could hear horns honking. “If not,” she said, “just listen to me. Stop looking for Aimee. Don't do anything more. Just forget it. Send me a bill. If you have to talk to me about this, don't call at night. And don't do
anything
, do you hear me? It's all going to be all right. I've paid the ransom, and it's all going to be all right.”

She hung up. I took the plastic box of diskettes out of the front of my pants and tossed it onto the floor, next to the wadded-up motel stationery. So she'd paid the ransom, I thought, knocking back about three inches of Singha. So it's going to be all right.

Somehow, I didn't think so.