Jimmy and Fay (28 page)

I walked back to the Chelsea.

Tommy was not behind the desk. I went up to my room and found my best black suit, the one I wore at funerals. The invitation didn't say anything about dress, but I remembered Bobby saying something about black-tie and costumes and masks. He also said his crowd was the carriage trade, but considering that the event wasn't exactly going to be listed on the social register, I figured nobody would say anything to a guy who had an invitation.

I went with a fresh white shirt and a black silk tie and finished off by putting a quick shine on my black crepe-soled brogans. After considering the fancy black cane with the silver head, I decided to stay with my everyday stick. It was heavier and you could do more damage with the crook. I thought about breaking my rule and putting the sixth round in the Banker's Special but decided, no, if it came to that and Connie was there and guys started shooting, I'd grab her and we'd hide.

I went up to Connie's room on the fifth floor and knocked, hoping like hell she'd answer and this whole damn foolish thing would be over. I'd ask her,
beg
her to tell me what was wrong and she would and we'd work it out. But, no, nothing. No answer.

I went on up to the sixth and paused outside 624, Bobby's Rudolph Valentino room. I could hear dance music from the Victrola and a man and a woman laughing. Sounded like Tommy and Honeybunch hit it off over the ice cream and the hash.

Down the hall, I unlocked the door to the workroom and turned on the lights. If anybody had been there in the last couple of hours, I couldn't tell. I took the stack of masks from the shelves and spread them out on the table where I could get a better look.

Some were painted in bright shiny colors, and some were made to look like animals or birds trimmed with fur and feathers and ribbons. I picked two with big eyeholes that only covered the top half of your face. The brown was a dog. That was for Arch. Mine was black and white. I couldn't tell if it was a cat or a skunk. Seemed right either way.

Arch was waiting at the Ford coupe. He was keyed up, bouncing a little as I opened the door. Once we were inside the car, I saw he was wearing a tuxedo.

As we headed downtown, I said, “If Bobby's having his premiere tonight, Wilcox must be back from Washington.” I was trying to sound calm and logical and not let the crazy jealous part show.

Arch said, “Perhaps Mr. Wilcox is ready for a change of pace. After all of his work on the campaign and the New York side of the transition and the public celebrations, he's ready to reward himself with something more carnal. He took his own railway car to the inauguration, so he wouldn't have any trouble getting back quickly.”

“The invite says we're going to see the premiere of Bobby's
Kong
and there will be a performance by the stars. I think that means Nola Revere and a guy in a gorilla suit.”

Arch said, “If this stag film is any good, a fifty-foot-tall monster would just get in the way, wouldn't it? That's not what these gentlemen are paying to see.”

“Right. That was Bobby's thinking, too. I saw them setting up. There's food and drink, and a couple of goons are keeping the riffraff out. Now, here's the part I haven't told you. This guy can be a real charmer, and he left a note for Connie last night.” I didn't mention how she smiled when she read it. I couldn't stop thinking about that, and it made my stomach hurt. “And I kind of pissed him off by breaking into his studio a little. But, really, he's just one of those guys that—”

“That thinks he can bed any woman he meets.”

I turned down Broadway. “Yeah, that's Bobby. So maybe he asked Connie to work there tonight just so he could get back at me and try to hustle her into the sack and maybe she said yes not knowing what he was up to.”

“I think you're misjudging Connie there. She may be young, but she's dealt with men like that before.”

“You know that, huh?” I cut my eyes at him as we went around Union Square and traffic thinned out.

“We talk,” he said, smiling. “You know, I almost hope you continue to be a great lummox and she sees that she needs the patience and guidance that only a more mature man can provide. Ah, don't look at me that way, I'm joking. The last thing she wants is another father in her life, she's got no use for the one she has, the miserable bastard.”

“What the hell do you know about her father?” I didn't know a damn thing. I didn't even know she had a father. I mean, I knew but she never said anything about him to me.

“Like I said, we talk. Her old man is as big a bastard as mine was, but you were about to tell me why you think we need to be here, and I have made a bet with myself that it has something to do with the slaughtered goat and then shooting the pistol at the globe.”

“Yeah.” I was glad I didn't have to explain that part.

“And we think the young fellow is responsible for both, and he's somehow associated with the Wilcox family. He might be Peter Wilcox Jr., or he might believe himself to be Peter Wilcox's brother.”

“Right.”

“And that suggests a possibility we have not considered. He could be a bastard sired by Learned Wilcox. If half the stories told about old Learned are true, he is a cocksman of the first order, a rake who'd put your friend Bobby to shame.”

“He's still alive? I thought Peter Wilcox took over when he died.”

“No, there was something, a broken hip, I believe, and then a series of illnesses that kept Learned away from the business. By the time it was announced that Peter Wilcox was officially taking over as head of the bank, he'd been doing the job for more than a year.”

“How do you know all this stuff?”

He shrugged. “You asked me to look into it. I have my methods.”

“Okay, well, yeah, that's what I'm worried about. If this guy has it in for Peter Wilcox and he knows about this soirée, there's a good chance he'll be here. You know I don't give a damn about the Wilcoxes, but I'm not going to let anything happen to Connie. That's the long and the short of it.”

“So,” he said, “the first thing we do is locate her. If she's there.”

“Right, then there's the other two guys, the ones you saw Thursday night, a kid and an older horse-faced guy. Name's Trodache.”

“Yes, I remember them.”

“He was there when I made the payoff and I gave him the business. Nothing serious but he won't be happy to see me. And I spotted the kid watching the place earlier tonight, so he's still around, too.”

I turned south off Delancey on a dark side street so we could come up behind Bobby's place. “Oh, and there's one other guy, too, the chauffeur who's driving a big Oldsmobile, one of the fancy ones with four headlights. Saw him earlier tonight, too.”

I cut the lights and parked a block down on Monroe Street. “So there's those three guys.”

“Four, counting the goat killer.”

“Right. That's who we're worried about.”

“But really,” Arch said, “all we care about is Connie.”

“Yeah, if we see her, we try to get her out.”

“And if we don't?” he asked.

“Then we eat and drink and watch the world's greatest stag film.” I picked up the masks and handed him one. “Here, you're the dog.”

Chapter Twenty
-
Four

Arch and I rounded the corner at Corlears and saw that the street was clogged with long dark cars and taxis. A small crowd of men jostled on the brick sidewalk at the front doors, some of them in silk toppers and opera cloaks, most wearing masks. I couldn't make out much of them in the faint gaslight. As we got closer, we could hear jungle jazz from a band, and I saw moving lights inside. The idea came to me then that I might have pissed Bobby off so much that he told his goons to look out for a short guy with a cane, so I held the stick close to my leg and a little behind it. Didn't matter. The two goons weren't checking names on a list. If you flashed the square card with blue lettering, that was enough. Chances were they couldn't read anyway.

We went through the door into a big square room with gaslights on the wall, a wooden floor worn smooth, and a heavy haze of tobacco smoke. Looked like most of the men there were leaving their hats and cloaks with a hatcheck girl off to one side of the door and then heading straight for a bar at the back. The fat guy who was right in front of me doffed his cloak and revealed a bright blue military coat with gold epaulets, braid and fringe, and a red sash. When he turned toward the bar, he put on a mask and a peaked cap with more gold braid. He had a chest full of medals and ribbons. The hatcheck girl, who wasn't Connie, had two stacks of masks on her table. I'd seen them in Bobby's workroom.

Figuring there was a chance we'd be making a fast exit, Arch and I had left our overcoats in the car. We moved out of the way of the guys heading for the drinks. I still couldn't get a good look at the room, but I saw that there were at least three tables with eats, all surrounded by men. It was a hungry, thirsty, happy crowd. Lots of laughing, some of it nervous and uncomfortable, some way too loud. Guys doing something dirty. Breaking the rules. Together. They were ready to see something new. Hell, that part of it got to me, too.

I said to Arch, “You work that side. I'll take this one. If we find her, we'll meet up, figure out what to do next.”

He nodded and left. I made my way around the other way and that's when the pure foolishness of what we were doing hit me. I thought,
She's a grown woman. She can do whatever the hell she wants. Where do you get off trying to ‘rescue' her from anything?
And then the jealous crazy part said,
Screw that. She shouldn't be here. This is dangerous for a girl like her and you've got to take care of her
. But it was too late for that, anyway. I was there. I'd see it through.

First off, I headed for the closest food to see if anybody was serving. Nobody was, and the trays of meat, cheese, and bread had been picked clean. I moved on and checked the room more closely. Most of the men wore tuxedos and masks. I couldn't tell if they knew each other or not. I saw four guys with women, working girls by the amount of pale white flesh they were showing off. Two guys drinking beer were wearing old Roman or Greek outfits, one in a toga with a bunch of branches and leaves on his head, and the other in a skirt and sandals and armor and a metal helmet with a big crest on top. Another man was wearing a blue mask and a full dress police uniform. And there was a guy in a black suit like mine, not a tuxedo, with gray hair and heavy jowls. I was pretty sure it was the Olds chauffeur because when he saw me looking at him, he stared right back, like he knew who I was. I tried to get closer, but he ducked into the crowd.

The band was six colored guys with piano, drums, and a lot of brass. They were playing hard and loud on a stage in one corner near the front door, really growling out jungle jazz. They wore some kind of leopard-skin outfits. I guess Bobby wanted them to add to his atmosphere. The women moved close to the stage. When they couldn't get their guys out onto the floor, they danced with each other.

Not far away from the bandstand, there was a big square moving picture screen on another dais, with about sixty or seventy chairs arranged in rows in front of it. On the opposite wall was the projection booth, a big box made out of plywood and painted flat black. It had the same handmade look as the shelves in Bobby's workroom and studio.

I'd got about a third of the way around the room when I saw the first waitress. She was a young blonde with heavy makeup and a smile that didn't look quite right. I figured her to be new to this. She was collecting empty glasses and taking orders for booze and beer. She kept shifting her tray from hand to hand and reaching up to fiddle with her brassiere under a tightly buttoned pink blouse. She moved away before I could get to her, so I headed for the bar.

Being short, as I was and am, it's easy to move through a crowd of big guys, but I couldn't see over them to get a good look at the whole room. It got harder to maneuver as I edged closer to the booze.

I shouldered up to the table and saw that a man and a woman were handling the hooch. She was a tall, harried brunette. Not Connie. I could tell by the big bottles without labels that it was the cheap swamp water they peddled at second-rate speaks. When I got the brunette's attention, I asked for a glass of seltzer and left a quarter in the tip glass. She was surprised. It was the first of the night.

As I pushed back through the crowd, I saw that there was a staircase to the second floor in a corner. It was roped off and dark.

Moving back to the middle of the room, I guessed the crowd at less than a hundred with guys still coming in. Most of them were puffing Havanas and knocking back the booze. I saw a flash of pink at the edge of my vision, but it was gone before I got a good look so I went that way. Trying not to look like I was hurrying, I moved around toward where I thought Arch might be. A lot of guys got in my way, and I was almost back to the hatcheck girl when I saw the back of a woman in a pink blouse taking a tray of glasses through a door near the end of the bar. She was short and had dark hair. I was about to pull the door open, but the guy working the bar said, “Staff only.”

Before I could do anything, the blond waitress hurried out with a tray of drinks. The bartender gave me a hard look. I tried to give him a hard look back, but I was wearing a cat mask. He was not scared.

I went back out into the room and kept moving until I came upon another waitress, another blonde but not the first. This one knew the score. The band was cutting loose so I had to lean close to talk to her.

“Is there a girl named Connie working tonight?”

She looked confused for a second, then shook her head and said, “I don't know any of the girls' names.”

“She's short, black hair, dark complexion. Real cute.”