The Hour of the Cat (17 page)

“Cross my heart, Professor, I'll stick with sin.”

The music was swallowed by a frenzy of shouting and whistling. The Professor joined Dunne at the dressing room door, stumbling as he approached. He steadied himself on the door. Monique sashayed down the hallway from the stage, naked except for a turban, high heels, and a wedge of spangled satin in the V between her legs. Her ample breasts bounced jauntily against her chest, up and down, like wave-riding buoys. She waved and smiled broadly. “Okay, Jack,” she said, “time to get back to our poetry.”

“Ah, yes, our poetry,” the Professor said.

 

 

The front door of the Hackett Building was bolted from inside. Dunne banged on it until Hubert, the Negro porter, came by steering a wheeled pail with the handle of a mop. Hubert peered though the glass. The minute he saw who it was, he pulled on the chain attached to his belt and fished a thick knot of keys from his pocket.

“People askin' where you are,” he said.

“Nice to know I'm missed.”

“Wouldn't go that far.” White-haired and dignified, Hubert grew old trying to keep the building clean and shiny as it slid toward decrepitude. At night, the sound of his saxophone drifted up from the basement through the building, sometimes happy notes, an April day filled with the hope spring would stay forever; other times, it was solitary and haunting, memory of a voice, a face, a rainy winter morning. Nobody complained.

“Looks like they're sprucing up the place,” Dunne said. The hallway was half-covered with scaffolding. The receptionist's station had been demolished.

“Today was Miss Marlene's last day. Landlord says the tenants can answer their own phones. Put her out to pasture, if that's where they put she-cats the likes of her.”

“Place will never be the same.”

“That's what the landlord hopin'. He thinks he can get a better class of tenants. Least he's sure he can't do worse.” Hubert rode the elevator with Dunne. “You know, the cops been here lookin' for you. Wanted me to let 'em in your office but told 'em you changed your lock and never give me a duplicate. Mind yourself. What I seen of 'em, they'll kick your ass good, they get the chance.”

“Trick is, don't give 'em the chance.”

“A trick for the white man, a miracle for the colored one.”

The mail that Dunne found stuck beneath his door included several bills and a notice from the landlord announcing the receptionist's termination, the start of the Hackett Building's refurbishment, and an upcoming rent increase. There were also three phone messages, two from Elba Corado, one from Roberta Dee. He took off his suit, hung it in the closet, and lay down on the couch beneath the thin blanket he stored for nights like this. He was almost asleep when he heard the faint but distinct music of Hubert's sax waft up the elevator shaft. A reminder of lyrics he'd rather not recall:

He rolled over on the couch, face against the cool, worn leather, and pulled up the blanket till it almost covered his head. Two years ago, the last night he spent in Lily's apartment, the singer next door practiced those lyrics over and over, her voice mingling with other sounds, traffic, sirens, the rattle of the El, all one melody. Lily undressed in the bathroom, as she always did, and got into bed naked, her handsome body exposed, that scent of hers all around. Sweet. The singing next door continued.
There is nothing for me but to love you.
When they were finished, he draped his arm over her.

“It's about time, Fin, isn't it?” she said.

He looked over at the alarm clock. It was nearly midnight. “Time for what?”

“We're running out of it.”

“I guess.” He took away his arm and went to sleep.

On a sleeting December day, she left on a week's vacation from her job as the choreographer at the Diamond Horseshoe and went home to Perry, Iowa, a town he'd promised to visit with her but never found time. He escorted her to Penn Station. Kissed her goodbye in front of a poster touting a vacation in Nevada. In it, a cowboy stood beside a cactus, open space all around, the sky innocent of clouds. She laughed and went on about how they could start over in a place like Nevada. Life would be easier than in New York. Open roads, no crowds, no snow.

“Give me a home where the taxi cabs roam,” he said.

“It's a big country, Fin.”

“I got small ambitions.”

“Add mine to yours, they'll be big enough.”

“Subtract mine from yours, they'll be small enough.”

Just before the train left, Lily dashed upstairs to get a magazine. He followed the obtuse angle of her thigh and calf, leg against impressionable silk, faint outline of her undergarments. His unspoken thought:
I'm no good at holding on to things. Never have been. But we'll talk about it as soon as you get back. Promise.

She kissed him hard, pressing her lips onto his. The taste stayed a long time. A week turned into a month. A postcard arrived from Quebec. She was on her honeymoon. The taste of goodbye.
P.S. Sorry, Fin, I grabbed it before it passed by. Afraid it was my last chance. Au revoir, Lily.

Au revoir.
French for what?
Time, Fin: we're out of it.

He missed her most in this moment, on the edge of sleep, and in the one that followed, waking up and realizing she wasn't next to him. What he remembered: angle of her leg, her kiss, laughter, that sweet smell, same as her name. Fleur-de-lis. The Signature Perfume of the House of L'Espere. In the Catholic Protectory, Brother Flavian lavished attention on his African lilies, dug them up each fall, and stored them in sand, in a corner of the dining hall he turned into a makeshift hothouse. “Lilies are the only flower Our Lord ever spoke of,” he said. “‘Behold the lilies of the field.' Theirs is a holy scent.” Hers: the sweetness of succulent fruit, luscious. No hint of holiness.

Just after dawn, he got up, shaved, and washed in the bathroom down the hall. He put on the clean shirt and tie he kept in the bottom drawer on his desk. He took the elevator to the basement, where Hubert maintained a small, meticulously neat living area. Up to now, given the landlord's neglect of the Hackett Building, Hubert had been allowed to reside where he worked. Pretty soon, Hubert's quarters would probably follow the receptionist's stand into oblivion.

Hubert sat on the edge of a neatly made cot, reading last night's
Standard
.

“There a phone I can use?”

“What's wrong with the one you got?” Hubert didn't look up from the paper.

“Only good for wrong numbers.”

“Afraid it's tapped?”

“Crossed my mind.”

“There's a phone by the delivery entrance. Need a nickel, use this.” Hubert put down the paper, took several slugs out of his pocket, and handed them to Dunne.

“Slugs are illegal.”

“You complainin'?”

“Not if you cut me in next time you get some.”

“Not likely.”

The phone down the hallway was on a wall covered with phone numbers and the odds on races at different tracks. A bookie's station. Mingled in was the name Linda. It was repeated several times, always with a different phone number. Good bet that whatever Linda was riding it wasn't horses. Dunne was about to hang up when Elba answered. She went on for a minute about how upset her brother had been by his visit to the death house. He cut her short.

“You drive?”

“Why, yes.”

“Own a car?”

When she answered yes, he gave a corner and time to meet. If he wasn't there, he said, keep driving. He'd call that evening. He went out the delivery entrance, rode the subway to Rostoff's, and arrived at the tail end of the morning rush. A short time earlier, it would have been packed, Rostoff urging the tray boys to grab every empty dish and banging a rolled-up newspaper on the table to remind the lingerers that if they wanted to sit and read, the city had gone to great expense furnishing its parks with benches.

For now, the cafeteria had the quiet repose of a library. Dunne spread the newspaper in the space that the tray boy had cleared. The Babcocks were already off the front page, replaced by Sudeten-German civilians battling Czech police. On the Society Page were the usual pictures of the usual crowd in the usual poses in the usual clubs. Gent in a satin-collared tux, cigarette in one hand, the other on the shoulder of some smartgowned debutante, or some American rich girl hanging on the arm of a defunct aristocrat, or vice versa. Stalwarts of the café set, the Babcocks were gone from these pages too. Those left behind were doing their best to carry on. From the looks of it, they were doing just fine.

The tray boy came back down toward the kitchen, cart piled high with dishes. He drummed a spoon on a steel handle, the short percussions accompanied by his falsetto. He sang about the man who lusts for fame and money and
lives a life that ain't necessarily sunny.
It was a song that Dunne recognized from the radio, catchy tune that even if you weren't crazy about, once you heard was hard to get out of your head.

Jules Rostoff looked up from the newspaper atop his idle cash register, took the cigar out of his mouth and yelled, “Rudy, shut the mouth, please.” The tray boy cleared a nearby table of cups and yolk-streaked plates, cigarette butts crushed into the hardened yellow goo. He hummed loudly, then resumed singing about
the only work that really brings enjoyment
, the labor that goes into wooing, the amorous business
for girl and boy meant
, the work communist and capitalist alike yearns to do,
and if you can get it won't you tell me how.

A loud repeat of the tattoo seemed a prelude to more singing. Rostoff came out from behind the cash register, into the aisle. “For the last time, Rudy, shut up!”

The tray boy shrugged. “Durante started this way.”

“Durante got talent!”

The mild, windless morning convinced Dunne to walk to the building where Mary Catherine Lynch had lived. A kid of about twelve in a felt cap, its brim turned up and serrated like a crown, sat on the front steps. He bent over so he could tighten his skates with the key hung around his neck.

“Hey, champ,” Dunne said, “where can I find the super?”

The kid stopped tightening his skates and glanced up. “Maybe across the street in Murtagh's Bar or maybe sleepin' it off on the roof. Then again, could be in the basement playin' ring-a-lievo with the cockroaches.”

“What's your best guess?”

“What's it worth?” He held out his hand, gimme-style, palm up.

Dunne pulled him to his feet. “There, I helped you up. We'll call it even.”

“Nothin' more than a bum's handshake?”

“You're below the minimum age for shakedown artists.”

“Try the basement.”

“What's his name?”

“Henry Draub. We call him ‘Heinrich the Slob.' Last super was a spic, but clean. Go figure.” He crouched and began to skate with short, hard motions. In an instant, he disappeared around the corner. Dunne followed him as far as the alley, passed a row of badly dented garbage cans, and ducked into an open entranceway. Down the hall was a battered metal door, SUPERINTENDENT stenciled on it in cracked white letters. A balding man answered. Slob was a good description. Or schlub. He looked as though he'd just got out of bed. He didn't talk. His scowl did it for him.

“The Lynch apartment been rented?” Dunne asked.

“You ain't no cop.”

“Who said I was?”

“Who are you?”

Dunne tucked a folded bill into the super's shirt pocket. “Dick Tracy.”

“Ain't rented but ain't ready to be shown.”

“Need a look, that's all.”

“How bad?”

“Look in your pocket.”

The super kept his eyes on Dunne. “Ain't enough.”

“Add this to what's already in your pocket.” Dunne waved a bill in front of the super's face. “That's all you're gonna get.”

The super lifted the bill from his shirt pocket, then shoved it back in and snatched the other out of Dunne's hand. “I'll get the key.” He tried to close the door.

Dunne held the door open with his foot. “I'll make sure you don't forget to come back.” He followed the super into a square room that contained an armchair and a sofa, both in the process of disgorging whatever, long ago, they'd been stuffed with. The only light struggled through a dirt-streaked basement window set high in the far wall. Beneath, looking forlorn and out of place, a tall, regal-looking chest of drawers stood on skinny, delicate legs. It was topped by a curbed, graceful pediment.

The super turned left, down a dark, narrow hallway. He switched on the light in a small kitchen. Half a dozen cockroaches zigzagged into the stove. He fumbled at a rack covered with keys draped on hooks, removed one, and held it up to a light fixture from which dangled a coil of yellow fly-studded adhesive. He examined the soiled, wilted cardboard circle attached to the key, which had the apartment number inscribed on it. “I'll tell you right now, place was cleaned out a long time ago.”

Dunne ducked to avoid the coil of dead flies. “Just need a look, that's all.”

“Let's go.” The super stuck the key in his pocket and brushed past.

Dunne took another look around. Lawyer and professor, raised in sun-drunk Havana, Walter Grillo ended up here, endlessly pestered with complaints, not enough heat, too much heat, the water's too cold, too hot, perpetual whiners yapping in a language he only half understood. Drive anybody to the edge. Maybe over.