Calypso (11 page)

    Meyer said he hated to interrupt, but he wanted to get back to the city at a decent hour, and also he didn't want to cut in on Bones's television viewing, which he understood-

    "No, that's okay," Bones said, "television stinks anyway, all cops-and-robbers shit," and went on to conclude his story about this woman he'd met in Pasadena, big tennis-playing California-type woman, long legs and great tits, pearly white teeth, took her to his room back at the motel, showed her how a black man aces a serve in there, yessir, showed her a few little tricks she hadn't picked up out there on the Coast.

    "Well, that's fine," Meyer said, "but about Santo-"

    "I'm only saying," Bones said, "that there's a certain kind of woman can easily be classified as a
California
woman, do you dig?"

    "I dig," Meyer said.

    "It's a
type,
man, you fathom me?"

    "I fathom you," Meyer said. "You're saying this woman who was hanging around the bandstand that night was a California
type,
I get you. Blond and tall and-"

    "Big titted."

    "Yes, and long legged."

    "Right, and lots of white teeth. California, man. That's what that
is,
man, a California
type.
Do you understand me now?"

    "Yes, I do," Meyer said. "So what happened with this woman? You wouldn't remember her name, would you?"

    "Her name was Margaret Henderson, she was married to a man named Thomas Henderson, who happened to be chairman of the dance they were throwing at the tennis club out there, where Margaret had won the women's singles."

    "That's in Pasadena, you mean."

    "Yeah. Margaret Henderson. Big tall blond lady with gorgeous gams and the biggest set of-"

    "I meant the one here at the Shalimar."

    "No, not as big as Margaret's. Nice, you understand, full, very nice-but not like Margaret's."

    "I meant her name," Meyer said.

    "Oh. No, I wouldn't know her name. It was Santo who spent all the time with her."

    Bones went on to say that the way Santo had spent his time with the mysterious blond lady who had no name was by dancing very close to her while the relief band (Bones seemed to think the
other
band was the relief band, whereas Barragan believed just the opposite) played these very slow tunes that could put a person to sleep. Didn't put Santo to sleep, though, not with this gorgeous California-type no-name lady in his arms dressed all in white, slinky white satin gown slit almost to the thighs, suntanned tennis-player legs showing on both sides of the gown, gold bracelets on her arms, flashing those white teeth at him, long blond hair falling to her naked shoulders, sweet California lady, mmm, sweet.

    "Man, she had him in her spell from minute number one," Bones said.

    "What do you mean?" Meyer asked.

    "Dragging him around the floor like he was hypnotized."

    "Uh-huh," Meyer said, and looked up from his notebook. "Did he ever
leave
the ballroom with her? Where
was
this, anyway?"

    "The Hotel Shalimar, I told you."

    "Yes, I know, but any particular ballroom?"

    "The Moonglow Ballroom."

    "Did he ever leave with her? Did you see him leaving with her?"

    "Once. Well, let me correct that, man. I didn't see him
leaving
with her, but I saw him
outside
with her."

    "Outside where?"

    "In the hallway outside. I was going to the men's room, and I saw Santo and the blonde coming up the stairs."

    "From where?"

    "From the floor downstairs, I guess," Bones said, and shrugged.

    "When you say he looked hypnotized-"

    "That was just an expression."

    "You weren't suggesting-"

    "Dope?" Bones said. "Dope, yes."

    "I don't think Santo was doing dope."

    "Not even a little pot every now and then?"

    "No," Bones said, "I don't think so. Not Santo. No, definitely not. He respected his body too much. Whenever we had a rehearsal-we used to rehearse in the basement of the First Episcopal in Diamondback-Santo used to go in the ladies' room and-"

    "The ladies' room?"

    "Yeah, cause there was a mirror in there, a full-length mirror. There were mirrors in the
men's
room, too, you understand, but they were over the sinks, and Santo wanted to see his gorgeous body in full living color, you dig?"

    "Yes, mm, I dig," Meyer said. "So he went in the ladies' room, right?"

    "Well, there was no danger of anybody walking in on him. I mean, we were down there all alone, rehearsing. This was in the basement of the church, you fathom, man?"

    "I fathom. What was he, a weight lifter or something?"

    "How'd you guess? Wait a minute, you done some lifting yourself, didn't you?"

    "Once upon a time," Meyer said.

    "Did you used to go in the ladies' room and admire yourself?"

    "No, not the ladies' room."

    "You look pretty good for a man your age," Bones said. "How old are you, anyway?"

    Meyer was reluctant to tell Bones how old he really was because then he'd have to explain further that bald-headed men sometimes took on an appearance that belied their true youthfulness, sometimes in fact appeared stodgy and stuffy when their hearts were really in the highlands-and then he remembered that he had not taken off his Professor Higgins hat. It was still sitting there on top of his head, hiding his baldness and causing him to wonder what
else
there was about him that might prompt a casual observer to refer to him as "a man your age."

    He decided to ignore Bones's question, decided also to sidestep any further discussion of those days when he was but a mere lad pumping iron in his bedroom, lest some inadvertent clue-like mentioning the emperor's name, for example, or making reference to the chariot races that week-would enable Bones to pinpoint his decrepitude more precisely. Instead, and solely because a
femme fatale
now seemed to have entered the picture in a very healthy, long-legged, full-breasted California-type way, and seemed to have cast a spell upon Santo the moment she slithered across the floor of the Moonglow Ballroom to perch herself upon his shoulder as he bonged his bongos, Meyer asked the question that-properly answered- might at least have brought up the curtain on the three-act drama known as
Santo's Disappearance
(to be retitled
Rashomon
as soon as Meyer compared notes with Carella), and the question was this:

    "Tell me, Mr. Bones, is it possible that Santo
left
the hotel with this woman? After the job, I mean? Is it possible he simply
left
with her?"

    Anything was possible, of course, but the question-on the face of it-was patently absurd. If Bones had seen Santo leaving the hotel with the mysterious blonde (who would become even more mysterious later on when Carella revealed that Barragan hadn't once mentioned her), if indeed Bones had even the faintest suspicion that Santo and the blonde had vanished into the stormy night together, under the same umbrella perhaps, why wouldn't he have mentioned this to the late George C. Chadderton? And wouldn't this noble gentleman (a prick, according to Barragan and Bones alike) then have limited his search to only those ladies of California-type, long-legged, big-breasted persuasion? Of course. Even recognizing this, Meyer waited breathlessly for Bones's answer.

    "Yes," Bones said, "I think that's exactly what happened."

    "Would you elaborate on that?" Meyer said.

    "I think he split with her."

    "And then what?"

    "I don't know what," Bones said.

    "When's the last time you saw him?" Meyer said.

    "During the last set."

    "Then what?"

    "He went down the hall with Vinnie."

    "Vinnie?"

    "Vinnie Barragan."

    "By down the hall…"

    "To take a leak," Bones said.

    "Then what?"

    "Georgie and me packed up and went downstairs to wait for them."

    "Where'd you wait?"

    "Under the canopy there. The hotel canopy."

    "Yeah, go ahead."

    "We saw Vinnie coming out of the elevator, so we started running for the van. Coupla minutes later, Vinnie came over to the van, but there was no Santo with him. So we go back in the hotel looking for him, but he's gone."

    "And you think he left with the blonde, is that it?"

    "Isn't that what
you'da
done, man?"

    "Well," Meyer said, and let the word dangle. He frankly did not know
what
he might have done had a beautiful blonde in a slinky white gown come around casting spells on him, but he sure as hell knew what his wife Sarah would have done if ever she'd spotted him leaving the Hotel Shalimar or
any
hotel with such a blonde on his arm. Within minutes, the cops of Mid-town North would have been investigating the strange and baffling death of a bald-headed detective whose skull had been crushed by a stale bagel. "Did you mention this to George?" he said. "That his brother might have left with the blonde?"

    "Nope," Bones said.

    "How come?"

    "Fuck him," Bones said, summing up quite simply how he'd felt about the late George C. Chadderton.

    "This blonde," Meyer said, "I wonder if you can describe her a bit more fully."

    "Gorgeous," Bones said.

    "How tall would you say she was?"

    "Five ten at least," Bones said.

    "How old was she?"

    "At first I'd have said her twenties, but I think she may have been older than that. Her early thirties, I'd say."

    "What makes you say that?"

    "You can tell by the way a chick carries herself, you dig? This one was older. Maybe thirty, maybe even a little older than that. Healthy, you understand, all these California types are healthy as hell, man, they can fool you with all that healthiness, you can think they're twenty when they're really fifty."

    "But this woman looked to be in her thirties, is that right?"

    "No, she
carried
herself that way."

    "I don't understand," Meyer said, puzzled. "Did she
look
thirty, or did she…?"

    "Well, how would I know
how
she looked, man?" Meyer blinked. "What do you mean?" he said.

    "She was wearing a mask," Bones said.

    "A mask?" Meyer said, and blinked again. "At a wedding?"

    "Oh," Bones said. "Yeah." He blinked, too. "Maybe I got something mixed up, huh?" he said.

    

    

    Carella and Meyer, on the telephone together at eight-thirty that night, agreed that somebody-either Barragan or Bones- had sure as hell got something mixed up. It was Meyer's guess that
Bones
was the man with the faulty memory, and Carella agreed that perhaps the tall slinky blonde had indeed been a figment of the musician's imagination since she seemed to have gone completely unnoticed by Vicente Manuel Barragan, who was otherwise possessed of total recall when it came to anything that had happened that night seven years ago, dredging up even snatches of dialogue such as Bones's remark about the hotel swallowing up the whole Chadderton family. It seemed further odd to Carella that Bones's tennis-playing lady in Pasadena appeared to be an exact replica of the blonde who'd lured Santo first onto the dance floor, where they'd danced cheek to cheek to the strains of the Harvey Cooper orchestra (amazing that Cooper was an orchestra leader in Barragan's story but the
groom
in Bones's story), and later went out into the night, where together and respectively (if not respectfully) they had proceeded to exorcise
his
pubescent passion and
her
oncoming menopause, afterward disappearing from the face of the earth forever. In Barragan's story, the band had been playing at a fancy-dress ball, which seemed more likely than the wedding Bones remembered, especially since the blonde-if she existed at all-suddenly began wearing a mask when Bones thought about her a bit further. Barragan seemed certain that the affair had been a benefit for multiple sclerosis or muscular dystrophy. Was that where Bones had come up with the notion that Harvey Cooper was not only the groom but also someone who had recently been graduated from medical school? And was it the Stardust Ballroom or the Moonglow Ballroom? Or neither? Or all of the above?

    "I think we'll have to do some further work on this in the morning," Carella said judiciously. "In the meantime, they're waiting for me back at the table."

    "Who's they?" Meyer asked.

    "Teddy. And Bert and his wife."

    "Some people get to eat in nice restaurants," Meyer said, "while other people eat in prisons upstate."

    "I'll talk to you in the morning," Carella said.

    "Yeah, good night," Meyer said.

    "Good night," Carella said.

    

    

    In bed with Teddy that night, holding her close in the dark, the rain lashing the windowpanes, Carella was aware all at once that she was not asleep, and he sat up and turned on the bed lamp and looked at her, puzzled.

    "Teddy?" he said.

    Her back was to him, she could not see his lips. He touched her shoulder and she rolled over to face him, and he was surprised to see that there were tears in her eyes.

    "Hey," he said, "hey, honey… what:..?"

    She shook her head and rolled away from him again, closing herself into her pillow, closing him out-if she could not see him, she could not hear him; her eyes were her ears, her hands and her face were her voice. She lay sobbing into the pillow, and he put his hand on her shoulder again, gently, and she sniffed and turned toward him again.