Murder is a Girl's Best Friend (16 page)

But I didn’t have time for oblivion. Or even just a couple of winks. A murderer was on the loose, and I was the only person on earth (well, the only
sober
person on earth) who was trying to track him down. And tired and frazzled though I was, I knew for a fact that eleven-fifteen was the right and perfect time for me to set forth on my next clue-hunting expedition. The jazz (and, hopefully, the poetry) would be getting into full swing at the Vanguard right about now.

In an effort to boost my energy level (i.e., keep myself vertical for a couple more hours), I gulped down another cup of black coffee. Then I pushed myself up the stairs to my closet, took off my pale yellow sweater set, pulled on my black knit scoop neck, switched my sheer flesh-colored stockings for black, and put on a clean black sheath skirt. Lumbering into the bathroom to splash some water on my tired face, I then wiped off all my red lipstick, powdered my nose, and put on a pile of heavy black eye makeup. I looked as wan and bloodless as Count Dracula before his midnight snack, but I would blend in beautifully with the somber, sooty-eyed bohemians.

I went back downstairs and put on my coat and my snowboots. Then, grabbing my purse off the table and slapping my black beret on my head, I carefully let myself out of my apartment and inched my way down the stairwell, being as quiet as a baby chipmunk walking on tiptoes in slippers made of silk. I did
not
want Abby to hear me. If she came out into the hall and found out where I was going, she’d want to come with me. And God only knew what kind of trouble
that
would lead to.

Opening the door at the bottom of the stairwell as quietly as I possibly could, I slipped out onto the sidewalk, clicked the door closed behind me, then quickly started walking west on Bleecker, toward Seventh Avenue. It was freezing and the street was practically deserted. I pulled my coat collar up and held it around my face, breathing into it, trying to keep my nose warm. Nearly gagging from my hurried pace and the gamey smell of damp camel’s hair, I turned right onto Seventh and pushed northward, ducking my head against the arctic wind and keeping my eyes trained on the sidewalk, cautiously avoiding the most dangerous patches of hardened snow and ice.

There was more traffic on the Avenue—both human
and
automotive—and many more Christmas lights were twinkling, especially in the Sheridan Square area. From West 4th Street on, however, things got a little quieter—and a whole lot darker. Shaking from the cold (okay, my
nerves
were causing some trembling, too!), I walked as fast as I could past West 10th, Charles, Perry, and Waverly Place, until finally—at the ominous stroke of midnight—I found myself standing under the long, red, snow-topped awning stretching from the curb to the entrance of the Village Vanguard.

Striving to be as brave as Brenda Starr (but feeling as spooked as Cosmo Topper), I sucked in a blast of frigid air and blew out a cloud of white steam. Then I pulled the creaky, heavy wood door open and stepped inside.

Chapter 12

THE FAMOUS WEDGE-SHAPED ROOM WAS crowded—packed to the low-slung rafters with groovy young artistic types, all dressed in black, all drinking and smoking, and all listening intently, with half-closed eyes, to the hip, cool sounds of the Negro jazz quartet performing on the slightly raised stage. A few Negroes were sitting in the audience, too, thrumming their fingers on the tabletops, scatting, bobbing their heads and rolling their shoulders in perfect sync with the music. The Vanguard was one of the few public places in the city where Negroes and Caucasians could mingle in easy harmony—and one of the few public places in the world that was likely to be so crowded on a late, wintry Tuesday night (okay,
Wednesday morning
) like this.

I spied a small, empty table at the very back of the room, hurried over and sat down, hoping nobody would notice me. Even in the Village—the most liberal and progressive neighborhood in Manhattan (and probably the whole country)—it wasn’t considered proper for a woman to go out to a nightclub alone. I slipped my coat off my shoulders, folded it over the back of my chair, took off my beret and gloves, and immediately lit up a cigarette. Then I slumped into a boneless slouch, trying to look cool and intellectual, like a beat jazz-lover whose boyfriend had just gone to the bathroom. (It isn’t easy to look cool and intellectual when your heart is banging like a kettle drum and your brain is stuck on the subject of murder.)

Some of the people sitting nearby turned to gape at me—rather suspiciously, I thought—then began whispering among themselves. They probably thought I was a doped-up prostitute on the prowl for a jazzed-up john.

Hunching over till my hair made a wavy brown curtain around my face, I squinted my eyes and scanned the room, searching for a dark-haired, bearded young man with a dog. There were at least twelve dark-haired fellows with beards in attendance, but only one of them had a dog. He (the man, not the dog) was standing and leaning against the bar, watching the show and listening to the music, with one elbow propped on the counter and his fringed chin propped on the shelf of his upturned hand. The miniature dachshund was sitting—in as upright a position as a long narrow dog with extremely short legs can achieve—on the barstool next to him.

My spine snapped to attention. It was Jimmy and Otto. I was certain of it. (Brilliant deduction, right? I mean, am I a shrewd detective, or what?)

I was sitting there straight as a broomstick, staring into space, trying to figure out a good way to approach Jimmy and get him to make a full confession, when one of the waiters—a rangy buck with sandy brown hair and a very broad, decidedly
un
cool smile—suddenly appeared at my table.

“Can I get you somethin’ from the bar, Ma’am?” he said, sounding just like Chester B. Goode, Matt Dillon’s gimpy deputy on the popular radio show
Gunsmoke
. You could tell from the hick accent and the beaming smile he was new in town. Probably a student at NYU.

“Just a cup of coffee, please,” I said. I really wanted another Scotch and water, but I couldn’t afford it (money-wise
or
mind-wise).

“Somethin’ for your date?” he asked, taking for granted I had come with an escort.

“No, he’s not here yet, and I don’t know what he wants to drink. He was supposed to meet me here at eleven-thirty. I can’t imagine what’s keeping him.”

“Snow must have slowed him down.” The open-faced fellow was
definitely
from out of town, I decided. A born and bred New Yorker would have thought I’d been stood up, and said so.

“You’re probably right,” I replied. “I guess I’d better wait for him a while, if that’s okay.”

“S’just fine with me!” he said, with a grin so wide it literally wrapped around the sides of his face. “Sit tight. I’ll get you some coffee.”

He walked away and I sighed with relief, thanking the gods of Greenwich Village for small favors. If this had been an uptown nightspot, I probably would have been asked to leave.

The jazz quartet ended their set and stepped down from the stage, engulfed in a warm wave of finger snapping, handclapping, foot tapping, and low whistles. As the musicians made their way back to their tables and sat down with their friends, a rather large, clean-shaven man walked over to the mike, thanked the quartet for their inspiring performance, and announced they’d be playing two sets a night, at nine and eleven, for the rest of the week. Then he asked if there were any poets in the audience.

One hand went up. Guess who it belonged to.

“Uh-oh!” the man behind the mike exclaimed, peering toward the bar, holding his hand up over his eyes as if shielding them from the sun. “I see Jimmy Birmingham is here tonight—which isn’t so unusual since he’s here almost every night!” There was a round of cordial laughter and a couple of loud guffaws. “And from the serious look on his philosophical face,” the man continued, “I’d say he’s got something important he wants to tell us. Right, Jimmy?”

Jimmy shrugged, then gave a quick, almost imperceptible nod.

“So come on up, boy, and bring your pup with you. You’re both welcome on my stage anytime.” He motioned for Jimmy to come forward, then returned his gaze to the audience. “Let’s hear it for the Vanguard’s resident poet, Jimmy Birmingham, and his sidekick, Otto—or, as we say around here, the cat with the dog. I’ll leave it up to you to decide which is which!”

There was more laughter and another round of polite applause.

Straightening to his full height—which I judged to be about five foot ten—Jimmy turned and picked Otto up from the barstool, tucking the dog’s tiny haunches in the bend of his elbow and bracing the rest of his slim, sausage-shaped body along the length of his forearm. Then, carrying his precious pooch in close to his side, as a woman might carry her favorite clutch bag, he sauntered along the bar to the peak of the pie-shaped room and stepped onto the stage.

As Jimmy moved into the amber glow of the single spotlight, I got my first good look at his face. He was unusually handsome, in a stark, intense, Tony Curtis sort of way, and his dark brown Vandyke beard—as well as the dark brown hair on his head—was sleek and neatly trimmed. He wore a black turtleneck over a pair of charcoal pants. As he grabbed one of the musician’s stools with his free hand and dragged it over to the mike, I saw that his body was strong and thin, and his coordination precise.

Propping one buttock and thigh on the seat of the tall stool and planting the foot of the same leg on the crossbar, Jimmy placed Otto astride his charcoal shank and gave one long, loving stroke from the top of his pointy-nosed head to the tip of his string bean-size tail. Then, seeing that his pet was comfortable and perfectly balanced, he leaned his agile torso forward, grabbed the mike with both hands and—in a surprisingly deep, burnished baritone—began to recite:

A few seconds of silence ensued, then—as Jimmy let go of the microphone, tucked Otto under his arm and breezed off the stage—the crowd broke out in restrained but rapturous applause. Heads were nodding in profound agreement and faces were awash in earnest reverence. Some people rose to their feet and signaled their approval by raising their glasses in a silent toast to Jimmy Birmingham’s verbal brilliance.

Was I the only one in the room who felt like laughing till my sides split open?

I was straining my ears, hoping for a concurring giggle, or at least one poorly stifled snicker, when the waiter appeared with my coffee and set it down in front of me. “Here you go, Ma’am,” he said, putting a small bowl of sugar cubes and a puny pitcher of cream down next to the coffee mug. Then he turned aside, hoisted his drink-laden tray back up to his shoulder, and began worming his way toward other customers.

As the waiter moved away, clearing my line of vision, I saw that somebody else had suddenly appeared at my table. It was a medium-tall somebody with dark brown hair, a dark brown beard, and an adorable dark brown creature nestled in the curve of his arm. It was the cat with the dog. And the way the cat was leering at me, I realized I was the canary.

“YOU LOOK LIKE YOU COULD USE SOME company,” Jimmy said, sitting down—uninvited—in the chair closest to mine. Cradling his little dog against his chest, he gave me a cocksure smile and said, “Otto saw you sitting here all alone, and he thought you were a real gone chick, and he told me he was itching to meet you right away. ”

“Maybe he just has fleas,” I said without thinking.
Aarrrrgh!
For a true crime writer whose main purpose in life, at that moment, was to find out the truth about a certain crime, I couldn’t have come up with a worse (i.e., less enticing and manipulative) reply. Jimmy and Otto had been dropped in my lap like a gift from the gods, and if I knew what was good for me, I wouldn’t make a stupid joke out of it. I would gratefully accept the gift, and use it in good health.