The Kind One (21 page)

“That’d be swell,” Latona giggled, then she smoothed her skirt down over her hips and sauntered over to his table.

“Imagine the enormous amount of nookie Gene Autry must be getting,” sighed Nuffer. “But excuse me, Danny. Go on.”

“I’m just looking for someone to level with me. To tell me the truth about me. At least, as far as they know it.”

Nuffer smiled faintly.

“You were kind to me that night, Danny. On the worst night of my life, you were the only one who was kind. Ask me anything you want.”

“Is my name really Danny Landon?”

“I have no idea.”

“What happened that night on the
Monfalcone
?”

“My understanding is it sank after an accidental fire that started in the kitchen.”

“Was it robbed?”

“Not to my knowledge.”

“Was I on the ship that night?”

“I highly doubt it.”

“So the story about me and the two guns is—?”

“Bullshit.”

I felt greatly relieved; it was like I’d actually physically been holding those heavy guns in my hands for month after month, and now I’d tossed them down.

“Who started the story?”

“Our friend Mr. Seitz.”

“Why?”

Nuffer hesitated.

“Danny, everything I’m telling you is obviously in the strictest confidence. The consequences would be dire for me if this conversation became known.”

“Don’t worry, Mr. Nuffer. I won’t tell anybody.”

“This is what I know, in a nutshell.

“A year or so ago, Bud suddenly left town. He was gone for several weeks. When he came back, he came back with you.

“You were taken straightaway from the train station to the Cedars of Lebanon Hospital. You were in very bad shape. You’d suffered a severe beating. You were drifting in and out of consciousness, and you’d lost your memory.”

“So you saw me? In the hospital?”

“No. Nobody except Bud saw you until later. Bud said you were alone in the world, and he’d decided to take care of you. He said he was creating a fictitious identity for you—‘making up a new life for him,’ is how he put it—Two Gun Danny Landon, a tough customer who’d been part of his gang for years. He was expecting everybody to play along with the story or he’d be very disappointed, he said. And he had his reasons for doing what he was doing and they weren’t anybody’s business but his.

“That’s all I know for certain, Danny. Beyond that is just rumors, speculation. It’s believed that Bud brought you here from New York. I’ve heard that you’re the son of an old pal of his who once saved his life and now he’s taking you under his wing to pay off the debt. I’ve also heard you’re the son of his sister.”

“Bud Seitz’s nephew?”

“I wouldn’t put much stock in that particular story. I don’t see much of a family resemblance myself,” then he looked at my face more closely. “I don’t know. Perhaps the nose. And around the mouth.”

I sat there in silence, trying to get my head around all this.

“Danny? Are you all right?”

I nodded. I noticed numbly that Gene Autry was drinking a glass of milk—evidently as wholesome off-screen as on.

“Since I’m already speaking out of school here,” said Nuffer, who all the while had been speedily working his way through his steak, and now was on the home stretch, “there’s something else I think you should know.”

“What?”

“Have you heard of the Combination?”

I shook my head.

“It’s simply the people that wield the real power in the Angel City. Some are elected officials, some are businessmen, some are people like your boss. Some might even consider me to be a modest part of the Combination. So here’s the word.

“Imagine rats. Imagine they’re on a ship. Imagine the ship is sinking. Now I’m not suggesting you’re a rat, Danny, but I am suggesting that the future of Bud Seitz in this town is limited, and the more distance you put between yourself and him, the better for you.”

“What are you saying? The Combination’s gonna have Bud killed?”

Nuffer shrugged. “They’re in the midst of a reorganization, let’s put it that way.” He eyed my plate. “You’re not hungry?”

“No. Want my steak?”

“Well, it would be a shame to let something so delicious go to waste.”

He stuck in his fork and plopped the steak on his plate. Juice splashed up on the starchy front of his white shirt.

“Damn it!” He started rubbing at the spots with his napkin. “It’s always something, isn’t it? Now I’ll have to go back to work looking like a slovenly pig. Oh, to hell with virtue. Latona? Latona? Two more martinis please!”

   As I drove home from Jack’s, a bit of song came into my head, I didn’t know how I knew it—

Mother of Christ,
Star of the sea,
Pray for the wanderer,
Pray for me.

   BUD KILLED TOMMY at about three-thirty on a Thursday afternoon.

It was two days after my lunch with Nuffer. I was sitting around the Peacock with Bud and Dick and Nello and Willie the Coon. The club didn’t open up till six, so we had it to ourselves. Everybody was drinking coffee and smoking and making the usual numbskulled conversation about nothing.

I looked across the table at Bud and thought: Could he really be my uncle? He’d told me he didn’t have any brothers and sisters but he could have lied about that. I wanted to ask him directly who I was but I’d also promised to protect Nuffer. What if I just told him I’d heard a rumor that such and such was the case? Could he figure out somehow Nuffer was the rat?

Bud was telling us about some suits he’d just bought at a new men’s store in Beverly Hills, then Nello said: “’Member Wingy? And them fucking shirts?”

“Oh yeah,” Bud grinned, then he looked at me. “Before your time, Danny. Wingy Nussbaum. They called him Wingy ’cause he had polio or some kinda shit when he was a kid and he had this funny little arm, it was like a little kid’s arm stuck on this growed-up guy. So he had to have all his coats and shirts made special. One time he ordered fifty silk shirts at thirty bucks a pop. So he goes in to pick up the shirts, and the tailor’s fucked up. He’s made the wrong sleeve short. Well, the tailor’s scared to death Wingy’s gonna kill him or something, but I guess Wingy’s in a good mood ’cause he just says: ‘Don’t worry about it. Just make me some new shirts.’ ‘But what am I gonna do with all
these
shirts?’ says the tailor. Well Wingy scratches his chin a minute, then says: ‘Bring me some scissors.’ So the tailor comes back with some scissors, and asks Wingy what’s he gonna do. ‘I’m gonna make you some short-sleeve shirts,’ says Wingy, and he cuts the sleeves off all fifty of them fucking thirty-dollar shirts.”

Everybody laughed and started telling Wingy Nussbaum stories: how he bought an oil well on La Cienega and whenever he went to visit it he’d wear high leather boots and puffy pants and a pith helmet like he was going on a safari, and how he once beat a guy to death with the hand crank of an old Ford, and then I saw Tommy walk in.

When he saw us he got a look on his face like maybe he wasn’t expecting Bud to be here and he turned back around, but Bud saw him and called out: “Hey, Tommy! Where you going? Come here!”

Tommy looked panicky for about a half a second then put a smile on and walked toward us as carefully as a man walking on a tight-rope; of course, that very carefulness was a dead giveaway that he was drunk, then he was at the table grinning and chuckling and blowing out boozy breaths all over everybody.

“Hey, fellas. What’s the good word?”

Bud started wiping his hands off on a Kleenex. He was very slow about it. One finger at a time.

“Tell me something. Is the sun down yet?”

Tommy chuckled some more. “Nope. Not last time I looked.”

“It’s summertime, ain’t it? The days last fucking forever, don’t they? It ain’t even close to sundown, is it?”

Tommy was sweating, and swaying a little; he put out his hand and touched the table to stop himself.

“No, Bud. It ain’t close.”

“Then what are you doing walking in here drunk at”—he checked his watch—“three twenty-two in the afternoon? You know it’s against the rules. I don’t want a bunch of lushes working for me. And don’t try and tell me you ain’t plastered.”

Tommy hung his head, like a little kid in front of the school principal. “I’m sorry, Bud. It won’t happen again.”

“You’re goddamn right it won’t happen again.”

Tommy looked as though he was about to cry.

“It’s just that—nothing’s been the same since Goodlooking Tommy got it. Poor bastard. Just ’cause he was reaching for a piece of bread.”

“If he hadn’t’ve been reaching for the bread, I woulda been the one that got it.”

“Better him than you, Bud, that’s for fucking sure. But I miss the son of a bitch. I can’t help it.”

“Goodlooking Tommy was a prick,” Dick said.

“I thought you guys hated each other anyway,” said Nello. “You was always fighting.”

“Naw, Nello, we was like brothers. It was like brothers fighting.”

Bud finished his last finger, and dumped the Kleenex on the Kleenex pile.

“It ain’t easy losing somebody you care about. I know that. But that don’t mean you just gotta fall to pieces. Right?”

Bud was speaking in such a kindly fashion that I could see in Tommy’s eyes he was thinking he was going to get away with it.

“Right.”

“Now let’s go over to the bar.”

“What for?”

But Bud didn’t answer as we all piled out of the booth and followed Bud toward the bar. The little Chinaman that cleaned up around the club was pushing a broom over the dance floor, and he found himself in Bud’s path. His name was Ching-wei, but everybody called him Chink-wei. Bud said: “Outa the way, monkey!” and Ching-wei jumped aside. His mouth hung open as he watched us pass. He had nubby brown teeth and melancholy seen-it-all eyes.

Bud went behind the bar. “Whatcha drinking, Tommy?”

“Nothing.”

“I said what are you drinking.”

“Scotch. That’s what I
was
drinking.”

“What kinda Scotch?”

“Glenfibbet.”

Nello and Willie snickered as Bud grabbed a bottle of Glenlivet and set it down on the bar in front of Tommy.

“Drink it.”

Tommy eyed the bottle. It was about three-quarters full.

“All of it?”

“Yeah.”

“I can’t drink that much.”

“You got a puppydog craps in the house, you rub its nose in it. That’s what I’m doing with you.” He unscrewed the cap. “So let’s go. Drink.”

Never taking his eyes off the bottle, like he was looking at a mountain he had to climb, Tommy wiped off his mouth with the back of his hand, then raised the bottle to his lips. He took a long drink then, coughing, set the bottle back down. Nello and Willie were looking on with amusement.

“You know what they say, Tommy,” said Willie. “Don’t buy booze if the baby needs shoes.”

“The baby don’t need shoes,” said Tommy hoarsely. “There ain’t no baby.”

“Bottoms up, Tommy,” said Nello.

“This ain’t fair. I ain’t the only one around here ever took a drink during the day.”

“Maybe so, but you’re the one that got caught,” said Bud. “So keep drinking.”

Tommy continued working his way through the bottle. He coughed and gagged and mumbled and laughed and his eyes watered and got glassier and glassier. He nearly made it too—only had about a golden inch of booze to go when he suddenly threw up all over on the bar. Some of it splashed on Bud’s new suit.

Bud was enraged. “You filthy pig!” He took the bottle by the neck and swung it at Tommy’s head. Tommy lifted up his left arm to block the blow and the bottle shattered against his forearm as his right hand dove into his pants pocket for his gun. But Nello and Willie were all over him and easily wrested the gun away.

Now Bud was incredulous. “You fucking see that? Son of a bitch was gonna shoot me!” His face was turning about eight shades of red. He grabbed handfuls of Tommy’s coat at the shoulders and yanked him over the top of the bar.

Tommy’s body went out of sight and I heard it thumping down on the floor. From one of the shining rows of bottles behind the bar that many a long summer afternoon Tommy had gazed at so longingly, Bud snatched a quart of Wild Turkey and started swinging. I heard a couple of dull-sounding thuds then peered over the bar just in time to see the bottle break over the back of Tommy’s head.

He was on his hands and knees trying to crawl away like Wendell Nuffer. He was screaming and Bud was screaming. Bud was left with the jagged neck of the bottle in his fist and he drove it in Tommy’s neck. Blood spurted and he grabbed one bottle after another and pounded away on Tommy’s back and shoulders and neck and head. More puke came gushing out of Tommy’s mouth. There were jets of blood and explosions of glass and booze as Tommy crawled through the tunnel-like space over the broken glass and the slippery floor.

I looked at Nello and Willie; they were leaning over the bar watching, fascinated, smiling. When I looked for Dick, all I saw was his back as he walked away.

“Stop it, Bud! Jesus Christ! Stop it!” I yelled, but Bud just shot me a lunatic look and kept whaling away.

“Mother, help me! Mother, he’s hurting me!” screamed Tommy.

It was a bottle of dark rum that finally did the trick. It crunched into the back of Tommy’s skull without breaking and Tommy dropped on the floor. A croaky sound came out of his throat, and then he was quiet.

The air stank of liquor. Bud was panting; for someone so particular that even when he went in a fancy joint like Perino’s he’d spend two minutes wiping off the silverware with his napkin, it was interesting how often Bud wound up covered with awful stuff. Some slivers of glass were caught and sparkled in the blood on his face. He took out his handkerchief and began wiping at himself.

I saw the white hair and black-framed glasses of Stan Tinney. He was beholding with dismay the scene behind the bar; it looked like somebody had thrown a bomb back there.

“We open in two and a half hours.
Two and a half hours.
”

“More than enough time,” said Bud, and he nudged the corpse of Tommy with his toe. “We just need to get this sack of shit outa here,” and then he looked at me.