Pipsqueak (8 page)

Peppy, contemporary swing music is to my liking, and I must say that I was pleased to see it come to the fore, especially as swing seems to be edging out the seventies revival. So I have a gut appreciation for this swing craze. But I have to say that the music coming from the stage at the Gotham Club had a dark element that was both alluring and sinister.

The Swell Swingers finished their set a few numbers later, trombones swaying and horns blaring. Angie and I barely had time to quiz Dudley and Carmela about their wedding plans before a pair of hands grabbed my shoulders.

“Hey ho, whadda ya know?” Vito came around from behind me, grinning, and pulled out a chair.

“Hey, nice set, Vito.” I stood, shaking his hand. “Angie, this is Vito.”

“This is your woman? Can it be true?” Vito the charmer.

Angie put out a hand; Vito kissed it.

“You know the swankiest people, Garth,” Angie quipped.

Vito turned to Carmela. “And can this flower of loveliness be Carmela?” She stared balefully up at Vito’s waxed head. Without hesitation or pensive blink, he took her hand and squeezed it. “I get to be flower girl, am I right?”

Dudley guffawed. “Oh, siddown, you cad!” He waved over a waitress, who replaced the empty bottle.

After some reminiscing about jury duty, what Angie and I were up to, a sentence on Carmela’s job at the DMV, and what Dudley was into, we got around to Vito.

“So, come up with any innovations in the glass eye?” I asked. “I’m in the market for some goat eyes.”

Vito pointed at me. “You know the new contoured eyes with the offset scleral band, with the corneo-junction?”

“Scleral band?” Angie said.

“With the white around the side,” I explained.

“Have you seen any prerotated, with exaggerated veining, using powdered production gold?” Vito thumped the table for emphasis. “Can you imagine how stunning that is for photography, the way the eyes light up instead of looking like black glass? I suppose you’ll be looking for some slot-pupil models that would work for a goat. What size?”

“Maybe twenty-seven millimeters? Maybe not even that big.”

“Call me, I’ll see what I’ve got. Would you believe how busy I’ve been with the music scene that I haven’t filled any orders lately?”

“Swing?”

“Yeah, swing has got every horn player in high gear. Used to be, I’d have three solid gigs in a good week, but now? Forget about it.” His fingers tapped out a triumphant drumbeat on the table. “Would you believe that if I wanted to work more rent-a-band shindigs, this big bad wolf would be blowing down the piggy’s house seven nights?”

“So you play in more than one band?” Angie asked.

He nodded gravely. “Doesn’t everybody? I mean, you got your main gig, but you sit in with other guys, pickup bands, you know? A few studio musicians, a couple fellas from the symphony, we pull up chairs, and what have you got? A band, so what do you name it? I play in the Buddy Phelps Hepsters, the Hell’s Kitchen Irregulars, Pistol Pete’s Mob . . . Sometimes we make up the name when we get to a club or when we put in at an agency for a listing to play private parties.”

“All swing?” I asked.

“Variations. One bunch does twenties stuff, another is very zoot suit, while another may be more jump, rockabilly, or traditional. How many flavors fit on a snow cone?”

“Gawth wants to know about retros, Vito,” Dudley interjected.

Vito nodded thoughtfully, waiting for me.

“Well, I guess I’m curious about these people back up at the bar. I understand that this isn’t just dress-up.”

Vito pursed his lips. “I’d say not.”

“What’s behind it?”

He shrugged. “A fad, a craze? Maybe in two years I’ll be back to playing Dixieland.”

“That’s it, huh? I was listening to the lyrics in that first Scuppy number. Not the usual crooner fare.”

Vito suddenly looked impatiently at his watch. “They gotta write songs about the war, you know?”

“War?” Angie injected.

Vito stood up, looking toward the bandstand, where one musician was working spit from the valves on his horn. “Before: Hitler, Vietnam. Now? Would I say it was like lifestyle wars? Technology will be the ruin of us all. Hey, nice seeing you guys. Gotta get backstage for the next set.”

Angie and I exchanged glances, but Dudley didn’t seem to register anything from Vito’s sudden departure.

“You didn’t get to ask him about Cola Woman,” Dudley noted. Angie and I exchanged a different kind of glance.

Candle flicker made Angie’s sly look menacing. “Now, why would Garth want to ask Vito about Cola Woman?”

Dudley drummed his pinkies on the table and looked at the ceiling, realizing he’d goofed. Carmela stirred her soda with a finger, mollified, I think, by the tinkling sound and golden-brown flash of ice light.

Now, some people believe you should share every thought with your mate, and under ordinary circumstances, I’m one of them. But as I’ve intimated before, some pretty extraordinary circumstances have presented themselves over the last couple of years. More specifically, dangerous circumstances, those that I don’t necessarily go looking for but seem fated to encounter. Obviously, I knew that looking for Cola Woman—a de facto murderer—had certain risks. At this point, I was just nosing around to see if I might be able to spot her while filling a social obligation to my friend Dudley and taking Angie out on the town. You know, based on Nicholas’s hunch.

I’m sure that in a lot of relationships, it’s the gal who frequently bemoans her man’s predilection for dangerous activities. You know, like “You’re not going to try to fix the roof yourself!” or “Skydiving? I don’t think so!” Yeah, but Angie ain’t that kinda girl, which is just another reason I love her so. The trade-off is that she is an inveterate puzzle person. Crosswords, Jumble,
Win Ken Kleine’s Money
, and even TV whodunits, like that. And she’s good at it too, whipping through the
Times
crossword over a cup of coffee and unwinding movie plots while the title credits are still rolling. Penetrating tenacity is her hallmark. She gets hold of a crossword and won’t let go until it’s done. Forget about breezing past an incomplete jigsaw in a bed-and-breakfast parlor. Something about her psychology drives her to pounce on and unravel a puzzle. In the past, she’s injected herself into my “extraordinary circumstances,” and despite my better judgment I stuck my neck out to satisfy her quizzical reflex. In the process, she’s nearly been shot and blown up. I’ve nearly been assassinated and crushed by a boulder.

Call me overprotective if you must, but I didn’t want Angie getting involved with Cola Woman or my burgeoning Pipsqueak search.

Nicholas was one puzzle she’d already got hold of, and I didn’t think she’d really let go of the T3 incident, either. God forbid she saw a connection. Of course, it was too late now, about Cola Woman anyhow.

“I just mentioned to Dudley that since Cola Woman was dressed kind of old-fashioned that, you know, there might be some kind of outside chance that we might see her here.” I must have shrugged ten times. Darnedest thing about cohabitation is that you become so transparent to your mate.

“Ah.” Triumph curled on her lips. Angie saw a pattern and was starting to stir jigsaw pieces in earnest. I wouldn’t hear any more about this until later, so I excused myself to the gent’s room before the band started up again.

As I ascended the plush steps from the tiers to the gallery, I kept my eyes peeled for Cola Woman—not that I really expected to see her. She certainly wouldn’t be dressed Elly May–style at the Gotham Club, so I probably wouldn’t recognize her anyway. Then again, as I looked around, she might not be so out of place at that.

It was much more crowded in the gallery than when we entered, the late-night crowd filling up the joint for the second set. And the fashion demographic was becoming proportionately wackier. I noted a pair of black-leather rockabilly boys sporting giant pompadours and cigarettes behind their ears. Variations on the jive costumes were myriad, ranging from men in coats with palm-size triangular buttons and string ties to women in their grandmas’ flowing black nightgowns with matching marabou slippers. I was beginning to detect direct themes and influences to ensembles too. Blaze-orange capri pants and silver-sequined camisole: Laura Petrie goes deer hunting in Vegas. Sharkskin suit, black shirt, crew cut, and El Presidente cigar: Dobie Gillis morphing into Jerry Lewis. There was the woman with the Veronica Lake hair, red flannel shirt, porkpie hat, baggy pants, clodhoppers, suspenders. Her girlfriend was in a black suit, white shirt, narrow black tie, Debbie Reynolds hair. It was all making me a little woozy. I made a point of not looking too closely at the gals in line for the powder room as I made my way to the men’s room.

As usual, the men’s room wasn’t that crowded, and I took my place at the urinal.

I don’t know about the rest of the country, but New York has gotten out of hand with advertising. Walk four blocks and take every handbill for porn or cheap suits. You’ll have a full ream. Leave your car parked on the street for a couple of hours, and the windshield is covered not only with parking violations but handbills: Zoom Lube, Go-Go Moving Company, and Barney’s Fried Chicken. Enter your apartment and the entryway is carpeted with Chinese, Indian, and sushi menus. Messenger bikes now have tiny billboards on the back of the seat. Whole sides of buses shill for TV. Mobile-billboard trucks drive the street hawking vodka, and taxis are painted up as ads for the latest Broadway show. Every mundane item that might hold your eye for a millisecond—cups, fudge-bar sticks, cocktail stirrers, bottle caps, gum wrappers—assaults you with an important message about another consumable. And how could you help but notice the two-fers? Cola cups/bottle caps that promote not only the cola brand but the latest blockbuster or the NBA with some lame “peel-off” game. I challenge anybody to find a soda container from a fast-food chain—or most other places, for that matter—that doesn’t cross-promote.
Sorry, try again!
I don’t think so.

And some Madison Avenue Einstein recently decided that public bathrooms are the “it” venue. As you wait in line, there are racks of free postcards that are actually liquor or car ads. At the urinal, I was faced with a foot-square billboard for Fab Form, that soapy health drink. And then there’s the plastic cage for urinal cookies. Commercials are found posted on the bull’s-eye, so now (particularly if you’re male) you can piss on the product they want you to buy. This one, though, had a good-cause message, perhaps a belated warning for many.
Say No to Drugs
. I don’t know about you, but I think in their avarice, the Larry Tates of this world have so inundated us, so overstimulated us with their blaring flash-frame TV spots, that we no longer see any messages at all. Really take a hard look around at how thoroughly immersed your life is in ads, and you’ll feel like you’ve been snapped out of a trance.

I noticed that the images of the healthy couple chugging Fab Form had been scratched (using keys, I guessed) with messages from fellow whizzers.
Access Is Submission. Black & White. No Codes. Smoke & Degauss. Who’s monitoring whom? Hello, dick breath.
Except for the last, I found them more interesting than whether I could measure up without Fab Form. Unlike ads, cryptic sloganeering is at least thought-provoking.

I gave myself the once-over in the mirror—just to make sure my wayward hair was still frozen under the spell of ULTIMATE CONTROL, Level 6, hair gel—and made my way out past the women’s room line. I squeezed my way through the gallery of jive lost boys and was just taking a step into the tiers when I turned. I’d passed someone I thought I recognized, but now she was gone. I turned forward again, saw Angie giving me a curious look from our table, then decided I wanted to see who it was I’d maybe recognized.

As I approached the bar, my eye zeroed in on a figure over by the hatcheck. I saw a red dress, small stature, full figure, and yellow beehive hair, but it was the chunky legs that had been imprinted on my memory. She was talking to that Bing Crosby wannabe while collecting her wrap. He put a hand to her flabby elbow and they moved off into the red velvet folds of the exit. Dodging Feather Lady and a zoot suit, I got to the hatcheck just in time to see Bing and the Red Lady step outside. They paused, him offering her a light from his Zippo. I zoomed in on her profile. I knew her from somewhere. Then it hit me like Moe’s fingers in Curly’s eyes. As the door closed, I heard her kvetch: “This better not take all night.”

Angie’s hand grabbed my wrist. “Garth, what’s going on?”

“It was her!” I handed over my hatcheck stub.

“No way!”

“Definitely.”

“Cola Woman?”

“What? No, no . . .” I grabbed my hat and guided Angie to the front door.

“Who?!” Angie implored.

“Marti. Marti Folsom. You know: the owner of Tiny Timeless Treasures.”

Chapter 12

I
hid my face with my hat as we exited, as if I were checking my head size or something equally absurd. But the blind was unnecessary. They were halfway down the block and stepping out between parked cars. Bing’s hand shot in the air, and brake lights flared on the back of a passing cab.

“Marti?! I don’t get it, Garth. Are you sure?”

I gave her a cross look instead of an answer. “They’re getting a cab, dammit.”

Angie and I darted into the one-way street, searching the oncoming traffic. No white For Hire lights headed our way. “C’mon.”

With Angie holding my arm, I started hustling toward the intersection where Bing and Marti’s cab had come to a stop at the light.

“Hang on!” Angie yanked me to a stop, plucked off her shoes, and dashed ahead of me, her trailing velvet wrap flapping in my face. I had no idea how we could hope to follow them and, if so, what we would do when we caught up with them. My only thought was to grab the next available taxi and give the driver the line every cabbie yearns to hear: “FOLLOW THAT CAB!”

The light turned green, and the cab went straight across the intersection. We dashed across too, but Angie suddenly veered, hopping into the back of an available cab. Only this taxi wasn’t the prerequisite yellow, and it didn’t have a NYC Taxi & Limousine Commission medallion. What it had was a tall, sandy-haired man in Italian cyclist hat, spandex racing jumper, and Tevas poised over the engine. It was no ordinary cab; it wasn’t even a hansom cab. It was a bright green pedicab. You know, like a tricycle on steroids, the modern rickshaw and latest addition to New York’s traffic snarl.

“Get in!” Angie gestured frantically at me. I hesitated.

“Where’s the fire, guys?” The sandy-haired cyclist drawled.

“Follow that cab!” Angie pointed.

“Sure, toots. Mind telling me which one?”

Of course, like any midtown avenue and side street on a Friday night, the roads were chockablock with yellow cabs, all hired.

“Make a right, it’s halfway down.” I jumped in. There were about a dozen cars between our target and us. “Twenty dollars says you can’t keep up with it.”

Sandy gave me a scorching look, bit his lip, and said, “They’ll eat my dust, buster.”

His bell ringing madly, Sandy pumped the pedicab up the pedestrian ramp and onto the sidewalk, yelling, “Pregnant lady! Out of the way! Pregnant and in labor! One side!”

Angie—always the quick study—rolled her velvet wrap into a ball, tucked it under her dress, and fitted it onto her abdomen. She assumed the last-trimester slouch and gripped her belly, moaning loudly.

Chinese-food delivery boys on bikes wobbled from our path, herding scurrying pedestrians onto car hoods and into doorways. That’s not uncommon in and of itself, mind you, except that for once it was the result of someone
else’s
recklessness.

“I think you’re overdoing it a little, Sugar,” I yelled to Angie.

“Keep it up, girl! We’re gaining,” Sandy growled over his shoulder, his bell jangling like that of a Good Humor man during a grand mal. “Pregnant, one side! Move it, mister: baby on board!”

The next intersection loomed. Bing and Marti’s cab turned right, heading downtown. Sandy was closing.

“Hang on, Pregnant Lady!” Sandy leaned on an air horn; it was so loud I almost blacked out. Folks crowding the street corner froze, stagger-stepped, and ultimately dove from our path as the pedicab parted the pedestrians, jumped the curb, and careened right onto Broadway after our target. Another jounce and we came back down on all three wheels.

Sandy ran the light, zipping past Bing and Marti’s cab.

“You’re ahead of them!” I prodded.

“Cool it, Pinstripe. We’re on Broadway. The cabs only use Broadway up here when they mean to go downtown, way down. Gotta stretch it out here a bit, may need the extra furlongs in the home stretch.” Sandy glanced back at Angie. “Okay, sweetheart, cool it with the moaning. Give birth to your wrap like a nice girl, and I don’t want no velveteen placenta messing up my cab,” Sandy cackled.

Sure enough, we played leapfrog with Bing and Marti’s cab all the way downtown, me with my hat over my face like I was sleeping and Angie with a disinterested look. We went all the way to Houston Street, a busy crosstown boulevard, where they hung a left. We followed about a block behind, Sandy having worked up a considerable sweat despite Broadway’s gentle downgrade. Way east, past the usual club areas, pool halls, and a famous kosher deli, Bing and Marti’s taxi made a right into a commercial area that’s deserted at night. But they didn’t penetrate far before pulling over, which gave us the opportunity to hang back at Houston Street.

Sandy groaned, drawing an arm across his forehead. “Whew! So, Pinstripe, what’s that worth to you?”

Angie and I climbed out, and I gave the cabbie four ten-dollar bills. “Nothing but tens from the judges. You get the gold medal.”

Sandy pocketed the bills. “Just the gold, thanks.” We left him at the corner sucking on his water bottle as we turned down the side street in time to see the yellow cab zoom away. A beacon wedge of doorway light folded into black as Bing and Marti disappeared into a building. Angie put on her shoes and we assumed the pace of any normal retro couple on a late-night stroll through a desolate part of town.

“I don’t like this.” I scanned our perimeter: just a sparse archipelago of streetlight atolls in a sea of urban gloom. “We note the building they went into, we go home. Tomorrow, in the daylight, we maybe come back and explore.”

Angie nodded, and I hoped she meant it. I figured we could sprint back up to the bright lights of Houston Street in a trice should things get scary, though we’d probably be sacrificing Angie’s shoes in the process.

It was a canyon of grimy, defunct storefronts on the ground floors of old redbrick buildings.
Goldfarb’s Millinery. East Side Remnants. Lenny’s: MATZOH, GEFILTE. Max’s Haberdashery—We Steam Felt. Moshe Trucking. Bederman’s Wholesale.
To a height of four stories above the storefronts, windows were boarded, shuttered, or dark behind the black zigzag of fire escapes. Traffic, radios, shouts, and honks—New York’s equivalent of waves at the shore—faded as we walked, beckoning us back to the relative safety of urban bustle.

The building they’d entered was obvious by the seam of light under the door.
Gunther’s Thread
was spelled out in peeling gold on the store glass, specks of light visible where the black paint had flecked. The hubbub of voices, of a crowd, was audible within, but deep within. In fact, our ears directed us toward the metal sidewalk cellar door, where the crowd was louder.

“They’re in the basement.” Angie pointed, getting down on her knees to put an eye at the latch hole.

“C’mon, let’s get out of here.” I snapped my fingers.

“Wow. I can’t see much except a few elbows and some folding chairs. Sounds like quite a crowd.”

“Angie: time to go,” I whispered. “We can’t crash this shindig. Marti will definitely spot me.”

Angie stood, brushing off her knees. “So what if she does?” she whispered back.

“I dunno. What if she thinks I’m following her? I mean, it seems pretty obvious that somehow she’s mixed up in Pipsqueak’s kidnapping.”

“Theft. Assuming this isn’t just some kind of coincidence.”

“How about ‘squirrelnapping’? ‘Puppetnapping’?”

Angie rolled her eyes. “What’s she going to do about it? There’s a whole lot of people down there. I can’t see her pulling a gun. Besides, you’ve caught her off guard. She’ll probably think it’s coincidence or something. But she’ll have to think about it awhile before she does anything.”

Light suddenly poured from the front entrance. Like possums in the headlights, Angie and I squinted at the forms of two men standing in the open door. A retro man in a wide-striped suit stepped past us, gave us the once-over, and moved on up the block. The big silhouette in the doorway boomed, “Well?”