Honky-Tonk Girl (9 page)

She had given up all attempts to hold her robe together. It was all she was wearing, Johnny saw, and there was no longer any question about her platinum hair—it was dyed that way.

She blew at a strand of the hair again and leaned closer to him. Her eyes were half-closed. “I'm lonesome, Johnny,” she whispered. It was an invitation, there was no mistaking it.

But Johnny wasn't having any. All he wanted from her was information. If Miff really had been getting blackmail money, maybe it was from her. He was going to try and find out.

“You and Miff—you were pretty good friends?” he asked.

She frowned. She wasn't that drunk. Immediately she clammed up. “Stop talkin' about Miff. It makes me sad—” She slid off the arm of the chair, into his lap. He had to play along with her to keep her talking. It wasn't really hard to do. He slipped his hand inside her robe.

Just then a back door clicked and she scrambled off his knees, hurriedly pulling the robe together.

Norman Norman, looking greasier than ever from the heat of the day, came in, mopping his forehead. Seeing Johnny, he stopped with a scowl.

“What the hell are you doing here, Nickles? You know I don't talk business up here.” He frowned. “What happened to your face? Looks like you got in a fight.”

“That's what I came to see you about. I won't be able to play for a couple of nights. I'll have a substitute down to front the band.”

Norman took a cigar out of his pants, bit the tip off and studied the frayed end closely. “Well, I don't think that will be necessary. I've decided to cut down expenses and let the band go anyway. You know, things have been slow as hell. Figured I might run a jukebox downstairs for a while, sorta cut down on my expenses.”

The room was absolutely silent for a moment.

Then Johnny came to his feet, his eyes narrowing. “That's for the birds. You fat bastard, you've made a mint off my band! When we started here six months ago you weren't drawing flies. Now you're filled every night!”

“Now listen, this is my place. If I don't want to run a band, I don't have—”

“You haven't got brains enough to know what you want!” Johnny swore. “But Sam Cowles has!”

Norman's face turned a dirty yellow.

“Yeah, Sam Cowles,” Johnny went on, playing a shot in the dark for all it was worth. “He told you to fire my band. Didn't he?”

The look on Norman's face told Johnny he'd hit a bull's-eye. “I—I don't know anything about that. Listen, get out of here, will you? I got to work on my books. I'm busy.”

“Not half as busy as you're going to be if you try to fire my band without notice.” Johnny took a fistful of Norman's shirt and pushed the fat, panting nightclub owner against the wall. Hazel gave a little shriek, pushing her fingers into her platinum top knot. “I'm not even going to bother turning you in to the union. I'll take two weeks pay out of your hide myself!” Johnny promised him.

The cigar fell from Norman's fat fingers. “W-wait a minute, Johnny, he protested shakily. “You damned musicians are too hotheaded. You don't think I'd do anything like that,” he whined. I've got the money right here in my safe. Sure, I'll give you two weeks' advance pay.”

Johnny let go of the quivering, whining man. He felt like washing his hands. While Norman scuttled off to his safe, he looked at the frightened Hazel. “You sure got yourself a bargain, honey.”

She said she was well aware of that and blew again at a loose strand of blonde hair. Then she added quietly, “If you boys are leaving town, let me know. You might have an extra passenger.”

Norman came back and handed Johnny a roll of bills which he pocketed without a word, before turning and walking out.

Out in the street, Johnny checked the count for the third time and stuffed the bills into his wallet. In the billfold, he noticed a scrap of paper stuffed under the celluloid flap. It was a penciled address. He remembered it was the address he had found in the streetwalker's purse last night. On a hunch, he took it out, glanced at it briefly, and hurried down the street to where his car was parked.

* * * * * * *

He located the address in a quiet, residential section of town. He didn't have the slightest idea of whom he'd find when he rang the doorbell of the small, pretty bungalow. Maybe one of her customers, for all he knew. Anyway, he certainly wasn't prepared for the shock that awaited him at that address.

He went up the walk and pushed the bell. Somewhere inside the house, a chime sounded. Johnny looked at the well kept grounds as he waited. In the driveway, he noticed a new Oldsmobile.

At length, the door opened. A pretty, fresh-looking housewife stood behind the screen door, looking scrubbed and unsophisticated in a starched apron. “Yes? I—”

Then her voice choked and her fingers went to her lips. Her eyes were wide and black.

It took a moment for Johnny to get it. Then it hit him with the force of Hargiss-Jones' right fist. “Well, I'll be damned,” he muttered softly. He pulled the screen door open. She retreated before him, moving backward into a neat living room furnished expensively with deep carpets, a grand piano and an elaborate television set.

“If it isn't my little playmate, Jean,” Nickles grunted. “Well, I'll be damned. I'll just be good and damned!”

Quite a layout she had, he thought. Housekeeper by day, whore by night. He wondered how many beds she had warmed to pay for this cozy little setup.

“Johnny, God damn you, shut up!” she whispered. “Shut up and get out of here!” She spit the words at him through her teeth.

She seemed less frightened than angry. Her throat worked and her black eyes blazed.

“Jean?” It was a man's voice calling from the rear of the house. “Who is it, honey?”

“Nobody,” she answered. “I—”

She stopped abruptly as a man entered the room. For a frozen second they all stood motionless like a scene in some kind of idiotic play where everybody forgets his next cue and waits in acute embarrassment for somebody else to pick it up.

For Johnny, it was like hitting middle “c” on his horn and hearing high “g” coming out. It didn't make sense. It just didn't make sense. Nothing about this whole setup was rational. It was crazy. Maybe he'd been drinking too much. Guys on bennies and tea saw weird things. Maybe he was getting that way after his six months' drunk.

“Well, Johnny Nickles!” the man said. “Say, I'm glad to see you, but how did you find your way out here?”

Johnny tried to say something, but his throat was paralyzed. He looked from young Dr. Ed Nathan to Jean, the prostitute Jean, the Honky-Tonk Street whore.

“Oh, I'm sorry,” Nathan apologized. “Of course, you didn't know my wife. Honey, I want you to know Johnny Nickles, a good friend of Ruth Jordon's. Johnny, my wife Jean.”

Johnny stared at the young psychiatrist. “No,” he said. “I didn't know her....”

CHAPTER TEN

DOWN THE HILL

Thursday Afternoon, 3:00 P.M.

Johnny drove around in circles in the warm California sunshine. His brain felt like coffee bubbling in an electric percolator.

He stopped at a bar, hoping it would be the quiet place he felt he needed in order to get his mind back on an even keel. He ordered a drink and sat there cuddling it in his fingers, staring over the bar at the mirror behind it. Gazing back at him was an unshaven face, swollen and bruised, one eye nearly closed.

He was still trying to make himself accept the fact that Jean was Ed Nathan's wife. It was a weird, unnatural situation.

He had managed to get out of the house without letting Ed know why he had really gone there. At random, he'd snatched at a mumbled excuse about hunting up Nathan's address in a telephone book and driving out to get the latest dope about Ruth Jordon. Apparently, Nathan bought that. He'd acted perfectly normal and had told Johnny that Ruth was much better and they were releasing her from the hospital that afternoon.

Johnny was more certain than ever that Jean had some of the answers to why Miff was killed. But how could he say, right to Ed Nathan's face, “Your wife's a Honky-Tonk Street whore. I think she was with Miff Smith the night he was murdered!”

It would have been a whole lot easier to push a knife into the guy. Johnny simply didn't have the heart. Somebody else would have to tell Ed Nathan about his wife's extracurricular activities.

Somewhere in the dark back corners of the smelly bar, a jukebox began to thump wildly. The place was subdued and hushed, somnolent at that early hour. In a booth, a drunk huddled over his beer, snoring quietly and drooling down his shirt front.

Johnny listened to the music and heard himself playing on one of the recordings out of the
Ghost Album
. This one was the ghost of the great King Oliver, come back across the years to play for the people again. The critics said Johnny had done a remarkable job of imitating the tonal quality and phrasing of the early New Orleans trumpet man.

The melody told the musicians' old legend of how one night King Oliver stood on Iberville Street in the French quarter of New Orleans, aimed his horn first across the street to
Ped Lafa's Café
where Freddie Keppard played his cornet, then down the street to the bar where the famous Perez blew his. That night, King Oliver's notes rang out clear and powerful through the streets of the
Vieux Carré
, and when he'd finished playing the blues, he'd shouted, “That'll show 'em who's king!” And from that time on, he was the king...King Oliver.

That was the story told on this ghost record, with the chorus sung in Christine's husky, sexy voice. Hell, she had sounded good on that one!

Through the twilight gloom of the bar, Johnny could see her again—Christine, up in front of a mike, barely touching the mike stand with her finger tips, her red mouth opening around the words, caressing the vowels in an almost indecent way. Then he remembered her later, at night in a hotel room after a job, going through her ritual. First the evening dress, tugged off over her head. She always hung it up carefully. Then she shrugged out of her slip and bra and peeled her stockings and girdle down and left them in a pile on the floor. After that she'd sit in front of a dressing mirror, naked, and carefully remove her make-up with cleansing cream.

Johnny used to lie sprawled in a chair, still in his tux, to watch the ritual. He would compare the flawless symmetry of her white body to a smooth, flowing musical composition. Something Debussy might have dreamed up in a garden on a moonlight night.

She was beautiful—but she was a bitch. She'd had Johnny's number, and she knew it. She used to flaunt her unfaithfulness in his face in her temper tantrums.

Well, he was better off without her. He didn't want her back. It was just that he associated her with the days before all the trouble had started, when the band was still intact, all together and good—and when he was Johnny Nickles, the greatest horn in town. He wondered what they were saying about him now, after the night he'd played such stinking horn in the old
Hesperus
Club
with blind Mamba?

He swallowed his drink.

He had to forget about that now and concentrate only on the present. There were still some things he had to get out of the Jean Nathan wench—and he would, too, even if it meant he'd have to strangle them out of her. But he'd wait until he could get her alone.

Ruth Jordon, of course, could be the key to the whole mess, if only her mind cleared up.

But would she live that long? Would the killer let her stay alive to identify him—or her?

And what could Johnny do to help Ruth? How long, he wondered, could he stay in this town before Sam Cowles would turn to more impressive ways—say, a bullet—to get rid of him?

You're on top with a band, a reputation, a girl, a big car and money. Then you make a lousy bad luck record album and you start going downhill. And at the foot of that hill you're lying in a gutter in Honky-Tonk Street, broke, no band, laughed at by all the other musicians, and bleeding from a half-dozen bullets in your guts
, he told himself.

Sweat ran down Johnny's face. He swallowed his drink quickly but it stuck in his throat.

Then he saw another picture. Ruth Jordon, sprawled out the same way, her fresh young body broken, spurting blood...and her wonderful voice stilled forever in her throat.

He paid for his drinks, went out and climbed into his car and drove to the hospital. He parked out front and went up to Ruth Jordon's room.

Her room, he discovered on entering, was now occupied by a very fat woman engaged in sitting on a bed pan. She glared at him and opened her mouth to scream.

Johnny made a quick exit. At the desk, a freshly starched twentieth-century Florence Nightingale looked up at him briefly, picked up the phone and asked to be connected with the emergency ward. It took some talking for Johnny to convince her that he wasn't a patient. But when he had finally managed to do so, he asked her about Ruth Jordon. She consulted her records hastily.

“Miss Jordon. Yes, here it is. She was released early this morning.”

“Early—”

Little ants walked up and down Johnny's spine. He pulled his tongue from the roof of his mouth and asked if she had noticed whether a police guard had left with Ruth.

“I'm sorry, sir, but I wasn't on duty at that time.”

Johnny found a telephone booth. He dropped a coin three times before he got it in the slot. Then he remembered he didn't know her number. He wasted more time looking through a telephone book. Finally he spun the dial. In a moment a woman's soft voice said, “Yes?”

“Ruth?”

“Yes. Oh, is that you, Johnny?”

He breathed a couple of times. “You okay?” he asked stupidly.

“Oh, yes.” she answered brightly. “I was feeling much better this morning after I'd finally slept off all that dope Dr. Nathan has been shooting into me the last few days. They decided I was disgustingly healthy and told me to go home.”

“You're home by yourself?”

There was a moment's surprised silence. Then her chuckle came over the wire, very low and musical. “Why, Johnny!” it said.

“Stop flattering yourself again,” he swore. “Stay inside and keep the place locked up tight until I get there.”

“Johnny, why—”

He hung up and left the hospital on the double. He broke several traffic regulations as he drove and a few minutes later pulled up before her apartment building.

Ruth came to the door quickly in answer to his ring. She was dressed in a starched white summery-looking dress that left a lot of her uncovered. Her blonde hair was gathered at the nape of her neck with a blue ribbon. Incongruously, she also wore a pair of red tennis shoes. The patch of gauze bandage covering the powder burn on her cheek was smaller than it had been last night and was taped down tightly in place with white adhesive.

She opened the screen door. “Hi, Johnny, I—oh—”

Her face turned the color of the white gauze bandage. She came out of the doorway fast. “Johnny...what happened to you?”

He tried to smile reassuringly, but with his face in the condition it was, he managed only to produce a ghastly leer.

She looked cute. She had been doing things to her nails and lips. They glistened like red dye in the sunlight. The front of her summery dress was invitingly low. She looked as cool and crisp as a dish of sherbet and twice as delectable.

Her eyes worried over his swollen face. It had been a long time since a woman had fussed about him that way.

“You might say I had a little argument,” he told her finally.

“What kind of argument, Johnny?” She asked falteringly.

“I'll give you the gory details later. What happened to you at the hospital?”

“What do you mean? Nothing happened—they just let me go home.”

“But the police—they had a guard on you there. I thought you said they had the idea you might have killed Miff.”

She waved it off. “They asked me a lot of silly questions. Routine stuff. They saw I couldn't have done it. I had no earthly reason for wanting to hurt Miff. And they haven't found the gun that killed him or anything...Johnny, why are you looking at me like that?

She couldn't see it. It was spelled out in letters ten feet high, like a neon sign. But she couldn't see it.

“They—they just let you go home? No more police guard or anything?”

“Of course not. Why should I have a police guard, silly?”

“Your mind is still a blank about that night?”

She touched her right temple with her lacquered fingertips. She looked very young and puzzled. “It's—it's still mixed up, Johnny. I can remember going up to Miff's room. He was talking to me about the styles of different drummers. I remember he got out some records and then—” She shook her head, frowning. “Nothing.” She sighed. “Dr. Nathan said it might just come back to me all at once in a rush, like—”

And then she got it. Two little patches of cotton appeared high on her cheeks and she looked suddenly sick.

Okay, so she was scared. Maybe it was better that way. She might live a little longer.

“Oh—” she whispered in a very small voice.

“Yeah,” Johnny grunted. “Right now, only two people in the world know who shot Miff the other night. You—and the person who did it. Only right now, you don't know because of a mental block that might disappear any minute. And when it does, the killer's name will be mud. You think he's just going to sit around twiddling his thumbs, waitin' for your mind to get back on the track?”

She tried to smile, but didn't quite make it. “It's kind of like sitting on a can of dynamite, isn't it, Johnny?”

He swore. “I don't see why Dr. Nathan let you go home this way. He knew what the score was. We talked about it last night. He knew you were in danger.”

“I guess he thought the police would send a guard with me. He signed my release papers this morning and when he left there was still a policeman on duty outside the door. But then a man from Headquarters, a lieutenant or something, came in and asked me if I wanted a police guard home and I said of course not. I thought it was silly then—” She shivered a little.

Then she brightened. “But you're here now, Johnny, to protect me.” She grinned mischievously. “Only it looks like you need a guard more than I do. Come in and have a drink and tell me what happened.”

They went through the small foyer into a comfortably furnished living room.

“You live here alone?” Johnny asked her.

“Yes,” she called back from the kitchen. “My folks are in the East. I spend my winters here, going to college.” There was an interlude punctuated by the slamming of the refrigerator door, the clink of ice cubes and the closing of a cupboard door. Then she came into the room carrying two glasses on a tray. She gave him his and sat down on the sofa, curling her long legs under her, catlike.

She looked young, well cared for, intelligent...and highly vulnerable. Strictly the college campus type, the Nice Girl from Good Parents genre. She would probably marry a skinny, impotent son of a banker and sit up nights discussing Plato with him. Johnny felt a sudden irrational flash of jealousy for the hypothetical guy.

She was studying his face over her drink. Her eyes were hazy, dreamy. “The first night I saw you, Johnny Nickles, you practically told me to go to hell. I don't understand this sudden solicitude.”

He sipped at his drink. “I just don't want you to get yourself killed.”

She fell silent, contemplating him. The way she was sitting, her skirt hugged her hips and thighs. She was breathing harder. Suddenly she put her drink down and looked away. A slow flush crept up over her throat. “I...I want to tell you something I've never said to any man before, and this is a lousy time to do it.” She picked nervously at the arm of her chair, looking anywhere but at him. “I—I think I'm in love with you, Johnny,” she said huskily.

Just like that.

Johnny jumped a fraction, sloshing out some of the drink. Little warning bells went off in his head.

The flush spread to her cheeks. “Take me somewhere away from this ugly mess for a few hours. There's a little place just over the border in Mexico that serves wonderful
enchiladas
....”

Say no in a hurry and scram, Nickles
, a voice inside him warned. That bedroom look in her eyes is as old as Eve. But she's just a kid. And she's quality stuff. Not the kind you have a few hours of fun with and then forget the next day. She's been saving it for the guy who will marry her. Don't spoil a lot of innocent young ideals.

He said no and tried to make it sound as if he meant it.

But she moved to the arm of his chair, leaning over and smiling with her clean young lips only inches away. “Please, Johnny. Just a couple of
enchilada
s between friends. I won't cause you any trouble.”