The Kind One (30 page)

I noticed Bud’s Lincoln behind us, creeping along, keeping its distance. We were approaching the lake. Next to it was another mausoleum, which Bud gestured at.

“Guess who’s in there.”

“Who?”

“Rudolph Valentino. We’re gonna have a pretty famous neighbor, huh?”

I felt terribly tired all of a sudden. It was hard to walk, as if the asphalt of the road were melting and sticking to my shoes.

“Lots of famous people buried here,” said Bud.

A black crow winged over the blue lake, its shadow skimming along beneath it.

“It’s great to finally get that off my fucking chest,” said Bud.

He regarded the world with a relieved smile. He slapped me on the back.

“Well, how you feel, now you know I’m your old man?”

As often happened when I was talking with Bud, I couldn’t think of a thing to say.

   BUD DROPPED ME off at my car in the hospital parking lot, but I didn’t feel like going home. So I went to the movies.

Mickey Rooney was an orphan named Blackie Gallagher and he became best pals with another orphan and then he grew up to become Clark Gable. And Clark Gable was a charming gangster and the other orphan was the D.A. but even though they were on opposite sides of the law they were still best pals but then they both fell in love with Myrna Loy.

It was a good movie, but I had trouble keeping my mind on it. I started thinking about Clark Gable and his gallbladder, and how we must have been at Cedars of Lebanon at about the same time. Maybe we’d even encountered each other at some point; maybe buried somewhere in my battered brain was a memory of his big ears and cocky grin as he wisecracked with a nurse, and maybe he remembered how the sight of me being rolled down a hallway, drooling and glassy-eyed, had made him feel lucky all he had was a bum gallbladder.

I sat there in the theater’s semi-dark, and thought about how I’d been practically kidnapped by Bud Seitz. He hadn’t created a fictitious life for me because he wanted to spare me any troubling truths about my real life, but because he knew the natural thing for me, as soon as I was well enough to travel, would be just to go back home. To try to pick the pieces up of who I used to be.

“Young man?” I heard, then I felt a gentle touch on my shoulder. “Are you all right?”

I turned around. A middle-aged woman was sitting behind me. The gigantic images of Clark Gable and William Powell were miniaturized in her spectacles. She and her husband were looking at me with concern, and I realized, to my embarrassment, that I was crying.

“I’m okay. Sorry.”

I turned back around, and tried to stop crying, and tried to figure out why I
was
crying. Because my mother was dead? Because my fiancée was lost? Or because
he
was dead,
he
was lost? That absurd young man working in the shoe-polish factory who thought he might be the mayor of New York someday.

I got up and stumbled toward the aisle, stepping on the toes of a sailor who had his arm around the shoulders of a girl. “Hey, watch it, mac!” he said, as up on the screen Blackie Gallagher said: “Say, everything’s just hotsy totsy!”

It was all too much. As I’d gotten out of Bud’s car back at the hospital, he had said to me: “By the way, them guys? That beat you up? There was four of ’em. Now there ain’t any of ’em.”

   THAT NIGHT I barely slept. When occasionally I did begin to drift off, it was like the air around me became filled with swirling whispering ghosts that would vanish when I opened my eyes. About two a.m. a violent-sounding cat fight broke out right under my window. I hoped Dulwich’s cat wasn’t involved.

Finally daylight began to filter into my bedroom. I felt a little hungry. All I’d eaten yesterday was the chocolate at the hospital. I went in the kitchen and had a bowl of stale cornflakes. Then I went in the living room and sat down on the davenport and turned on the radio.

At some point Mrs. Dean came over with a slice of coconut-cream pie. I asked her how she knew it was my favorite, but all she did was smile at me. She wasn’t wearing her false teeth, so it was a gaping empty jack-o’-lantern kind of smile. I felt bad that I hadn’t ever played checkers with her housebound husband, and I tried to apologize, but she just kept smiling bigger and bigger, she was scaring me to death, and then I woke up.

I was soaked in sweat. I got up to turn on the fan. The radio was still playing and the news came on. The newscaster announced that Bernice Seitz, wife of mobster Bud Seitz, had drowned in the swimming pool of her house on Bedford Drive in Beverly Hills.

“According to Captain Chuck McCumber of the Beverly Hills Police Department,” said the newscaster, “the body was discovered last night by the maid. It was her night off. When she came back to the house at about eleven o’clock, she found Mrs. Seitz’s body floating facedown in the swimming pool, clad in a bathing suit. McCumber said the death appeared to be accidental. When asked if foul play was a possibility, he replied: ‘Are you talking about murder? This is Beverly Hills. We don’t have murders in Beverly Hills.’”

I knew I had to see Darla. I got dressed and got in my car and drove to the hospital.

Her room was empty. A Negro woman with a polka-dot scarf over her hair was mopping the floor. I asked her if she knew where Darla was.

“Who?”

“Darla. She’s a blonde girl. This is her room.”

She shook her head and kept mopping. “Don’t know nothing about no blonde girl.”

I went to the nurses’ desk. They told me Darla had checked out that morning.

I headed up La Brea toward Bud’s house. I tried to fight down the panicked sense that Darla was slipping beyond my grasp. That she had fallen through the ice, or was dispersing like smoke, or had never been real to begin with.

I tooted my horn at the front gate. I was relieved to see Dick Prettie in his usual cheap suit and silly tie waving at me and opening the gate.

“Hi ya, Danny,” he coughed.

“Is Darla here?”

“Yeah. Bud brung her back this morning.”

“How is she?”

“She wasn’t doing so hot when I seen her. Nello and me nearly had to carry her up the stairs.”

“Is Bud here?”

Dick shook his head. “He had to go and make plans for the funeral. For his wife. You heard about that, right?”

“Yeah. So what happened to her?”

“She drowneded to death.”

“Yeah, I know. But the radio said it was an accident. Is that what you think?”

Dick took a drag on his cigarette.

“I dunno. What do you think?”

“Probably same as you.”

“Lookit. Here’s all I know. Around eight last night, Willie and Nucky and Bo come driving through here. Nucky and Bo was soaked to the skin. There was puddles around their fucking shoes. And Nucky’s face was all scratched up.”

“How come you think Willie wasn’t wet?”

“Maybe he was the lookout. While Nucky and Bo drowneded that poor bitch to death.” He flicked his cigarette through the gate. Watched it roll down the drive. “I’ve had it, Danny. I’m getting out for sure. I’m just looking for the right time.”

I drove up to the house. Anatoly met me at the front door.

“The boss, he is not here, Danny.”

“I know. I came to see Darla.”

“Sorry. The boss says no visitors.”

“I just want to see her a minute.”

Bo Spiller appeared behind Anatoly.

“You heard him, Danny. Get outa here.”

“Please, Danny,” said Anatoly. “She is very tired. She is sleeping. Let her rest.”

Now Anatoly closed the door.

I went back to my car. Started to get in. Then changed my mind, and walked around to the back of the house.

The sun wasn’t far from setting; it was flooding the garden with golden light. I looked up at the second-story balconied bedroom of Bud and Darla. The curtains were drawn. She seemed like a princess imprisoned in a tower.

“What are you doing, Danny?”

It was Nucky.

“Nothing.”

Four vivid scratches diagonally crossed his cheek. He strolled up beside me then put his hands on his hips and gazed up at the bedroom, as though we were trying to puzzle through a common problem.

“I seen this movie once. This guy was gonna elope with this dame. So it’s the middle of the night, right? And he’s throwing little rocks up at the dame’s window to let her know he’s there.” He giggled. “But he’s got the wrong fucking window! Her old man sticks his head out and gets a fucking rock right in the eye. I’m telling you, Danny, I nearly laughed myself sick.” Then he looked me over with his lifeless eyes. “Now beat it, kid. Before I fucking kill you.”

   I stopped off at Healy’s Bar on the way home. I always found something comforting in the befuddled company of George and Sonny and the Kid; maybe it was the feeling they gave you that life was something that had happened to them a long time ago and thus was no longer a source of fear or worry. But they weren’t here tonight. Neither was Henry, the regular bartender.

I climbed on my usual stool and ordered a beer from the new bartender, a skinny guy with a nervous, rabbity mouth.

“Where is everybody?” I said.

He looked around and sniffed: “I don’t know who you mean by ‘everybody,’” like I was belittling both him and his two or three seedy-looking customers.

I drank that beer and then, as I pondered the lessons of the Custer massacre, had a couple more. When I went back out on Vine Street it was dark.

Searchlights swept the sky, advertising the grand opening of a hot dog stand.

I drove down La Vista Lane, and parked. Went up the seven steps. As I opened my door and reached for the light switch, I smelled cigarette smoke.

Teddy Bump was sitting on the davenport, blinking mildly at me in the sudden light. He was holding a gun in his lap, which he didn’t bother to point at me.

Beside Teddy was Vic Lester. The guy I saw at the lake with Teddy’s dick in his mouth. Vic was obviously just waking up. He looked confused. “What’s going on?” he mumbled.

“Asshole’s here.”

Vic yawned at me. “Hello, asshole.”

“You got a piece?” Teddy said to me.

I nodded.

“Get rid of it.”

His gun drifted in my direction now. I took my gun out and placed it on the coffee table in front of them.

They stood up.

“Okay, Danny-boy,” said Teddy. “Let’s go.”

“Where we going?”

“No place special.”

   MY HEAD BANGED on the roof as I was shoved into a maroon Hudson. Teddy got behind the wheel. I was jammed in between him and Vic as we pulled away from the curb.

The headlights lit up Dulwich walking down the sidewalk. He wasn’t paying any attention to us. I wanted to yell out to him but didn’t, and he was swiftly left behind in the darkness.

Vic pushed in the electric lighter on the dashboard. Teddy started fiddling with the radio dial. The lighter popped back out, and Vic puffed a cigarette into life.

“What’s this all about?” I said.

I didn’t get an answer. I wondered if Teddy knew it was me that had ripped his false eyebrow off and dropped it in his mouth and now he was about to get even with me.

“I’ve saved up some money. A whole lot of money. If you guys let me go, it’s yours.”

“Shut up,” said Teddy. “I love this song.”

It was “The Carioca.” He started singing along with it in a cracked falsetto—

“Now that you’ve done the Carioca
You’ll never care to do the Polka…”

We went south then headed east on Beverly. Vic put his hand on my knee. I stared at it. Now it started sliding up my thigh. When it neared my crotch, I jerked my leg away and slapped at it. He giggled, and blew some smoke in my face. He put his hand back on my knee. I slapped it away again.

“Give it up, kid,” said Teddy. “Trying to keep this guy away from your dick’s like trying to keep a mouse away from a piece of cheese.” Then he let loose with his hyena laugh and Vic joined in.

I considered making a desperate lunge for the door handle and throwing myself out of the car. But then Teddy turned onto Alvarado then a short distance later pulled off the street. In the sweep of the headlights I saw THE PINK RAT painted in peeling pink letters on the side of a deserted-looking brick building.

Behind the building in a small parking lot two fancy cars were parked: a sky-blue Cadillac and some kind of long black limousine. Teddy stopped his car. He and Vic got out. I stayed put. Teddy reached in and grabbed my arm and dragged me out.

The night was loud with crickets. There was a vacant lot behind the parking lot filled with high weeds, and I wondered if I was about to be marched into it and murdered, but Teddy led me over to the limousine instead. The windows were tinted and I couldn’t see inside. He opened the back door and said: “Get in.”

I ducked my head and entered. Teddy shut the door behind me. I found myself in a spacious rear compartment with seats facing each other at either end. I saw two shadowy shapes on the back seat and one on the front. I crouched in the middle like a captured, frightened animal. Nobody said anything. Somebody coughed. Then a dome light came on.

On the back seat were Max Schnitter and Loy Hanley; on the front was Jack Otay. Past Otay, on the other side of a glass partition, I could see the backs of the heads of two guys in the driver’s compartment.

Everybody was looking at me in a friendly, interested fashion.

“Come on over here, Danny,” said Otay.

I sat down beside him on the gleaming red leather seat; the whole interior of the car was red.

“Would you like a drink?” asked Schnitter.

“Yeah. I could use one.”

Schnitter smiled, showing his sharp eye teeth. “Jack, pour Danny a drink.”

“Scotch all right?” said Otay.

I nodded. He poured some scotch out of a crystal decanter into a glass. I saw they all had their own glasses of scotch already. They watched me as I took a drink. They noticed how my hand was shaking.