Reinhart in Love (19 page)

“‘Dee following named purr-son is licensed under dee lows of deez state to prectice as a private detective … Nicholas Graves,' which is how yours truly was undersigned at birth.”

“I never knew a man who had so many professions,” said Reinhart, “but—”

“In spite of which,” the Maker interrupted, “I ain't got a brown bare-ass penny I can call my own. What ain't grabbed by them ex-wives is et up by a houseful of relltives. I mean to take a gun after them any time now. And them hoors. Now you never hear nobody give a good word to a procurator, but I tell you it far from easy. You got to keep after them girls for holdin' back their cash, and then they always comin' down sick and needin' a quick fix and I tell you horse ain't gettin' cheaper. Tellphone alone run into money: you don't call them fwequently, they get sulky. ‘Sweet man, mah feet hurt god-awful.' ‘Awright, baby, you get yoursel a new hat.' ‘Green, with a little bit of lace.' ‘Sure, anythin' you want, so long as it don't run past 1.98.' Trouble is, you give in like that and they won't cruise all week.”

“I'm sorry,” said Reinhart, “but that's your problem. Mine is that I don't like the idea of you spying on me. Who hired you?”

“Hunred dollars a day and expinses is what I generally get,” said the Maker, “but I'll tell all I know for a picture of George.”

Reinhart gave him a dollar bill, in return for which the detective revealed: “Your daddy. He worries you'll be a bum.”

“You haven't told him about me coming over here?” Reinhart could have bitten off his tongue. What an insulting thing to say to the Maker, who had no other bailiwick! But the informer set him at ease without prejudice.

“It's a weakness of mine that I always report good about everbody. I never flipped a lip towards him since you sold that tinement house.”

“So,” said Reinhart. “Much obliged. You're a good fellow, Nicholas.”

“I try,” answered the Maker, blinking off his flash in modesty. “But I sometimes wonder if I ain't batty in the bell tower.”

“That's occurred to every good fellow since the dawn of man,” Reinhart said pontifically.

“And what been decided?”

“No decision. But one may be forthcoming at any moment.”

“Man,” cried the Maker, “could I only talk like you, I'd be the meanest sonbitch ever drawn breath. Why be good if you can say ‘forthcoming.'“

Now he was getting invidious, so Reinhart laid a responsibility on him: Where might the missing Splendor be found, or, failing that, where was the store-front house of worship?

“You standin' in the door,” said the detective.

Reinhart felt about him, and it was quite true that he stood in some entranceway, flanked by plate glass or, rather, the cardboard surrogate for the same.

“But it must be almost eight o'clock. Where are the lights? Where is Splendor? Where are the people?”

“Now nobody can say I done a bad job,” the Maker protested, too much. “But you ain't gonna get off the ground on a expense account of seven dollars eighty cents. There's twenty-nine dollars alone owing on the lectric power, and my cousin's in stir.”

“What's he got to do with it?”

“She
. That there is Big Ruthie, who had a nice policy trade but the bulls closed her up, which left the store empty, and she not going to pay the Power & Light and not get no use from it in stir. And as to the audience, well how many marks you gonna draw on seven-eighty? Hunred handbills, soon lost. No posters, two-colored or otherwised. No public-dress system to scream your message. No big fat soprano on the back of a truck, accompanied by horn men playin' ‘I Look Over Jordan and Whut.' No ads in the
West Side Bugle
, bearing pichers of the Reverend or whatever Splendor G. Mainwaring call hisself. I tell you, man, he no more likely to go aloft than a i-ron paperweight.”

“Poor guy,” said Reinhart. He struck out in pity and inadvertently knocked the cardboard from the window and what was left of the glass. “Well, we've got to do something.” He heard the Maker prepare to flee, and grabbed him. The private eye went through several Protean transformations, monsters, serpents, the bounding sea, but Reinhart held fast, saying: “That's right, you and me. Because we're good fellows. Put on your light and look here. I've got fifty-two dollars in this billfold. What can that do for us by nine o'clock?”

The Maker showed the yellow of his eyes and skillfully plucked through the wad while holding the flash in the other hand. “By nine? I can deliver maybe three-four my girls if the meeting won't last beyond eleven, when business pick up.”

“How about your boys that hang around the drugstore?”

“That would be Winthrop and the Prince and Webster Small and Little Clyde. Frenchy got cut up lately and Baby Al got extadited to Dee-troit. Man, why don't we pick another night?”

“Got to be now.”

“Got to be,” the Maker muttered. “Hmm. I could cruise a few saloons, but I tell you, don't look for much. They be a audience all right, but I can't guarantee they be human beans. And you get a cigar box at the door with a sign readin: ‘Check weapons here,' and put another one on the wall like the city bus, sayin: ‘No spittin', chewin', talkin', cussin', going to the toilet, jazzin', or nothin' else while the vehicle in motion, especially with the driver.' Meanin' your friend Splendor G. Mainwaring. Man, he's nowhere.” The Maker opened his clothes at the neck and put the bills inside his undershirt, snorting: “Seven dollars eighty!”

Reinhart said: “That's all he had.”

“It ain't up to me to destroy your faith in human nature,” said Nicholas Graves. “But I'll get you the audience, I'll get you the lights—”

“God,” cried Reinhart, “I'd forgotten about that. It's too late now even if we paid the bill; the Power & Light offices are closed.” In the interest of symmetry, he knocked the cardboard and glass from the left-hand window.

“You worryin' about the only thing I ain't. We just tap into the line of the dry cleaner next door; both got the same cellar. Little Clyde do that in his sleep; he was lectrician in the Navy.” Reaching high as he could, the Maker patted Reinhart on the shoulder. “Now don't worry, Daddy, we going to come out all right. I just wish
you
was the preacher. Got to be by nine? I'm in motion.”

“One more thing, Nicholas. I wonder where Splendor is.”

“Take my flash,” said the Maker, “and go in the back of the store behind the partition. If you don't find him there passed out cold on Big Ruthie's davenport, then the angels done carried him off to the Isles of Bliss.”

Reinhart followed the suggestion and found the man of many callings was right, as he had begun to suspect he always was.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Reinhart began, drunk as a lord, and then brayed in laughter, for their titles might be many, but never those two. He began again to himself, while the persons of the audience stirred respectfully: “Whores, pimps, cutthroats, degenerates, and fiends,” an address that better suited his drunken compulsion towards the truth. “Uh,” he went on, “you may smoke.” Several people instantly lighted brown-paper cigarettes that exuded a sweetish aroma, and two felonious types, propped against the left wall, took the liberty to drain a flat pint of maroon liquid.

Reinhart bowed slightly from the waist, which motion caused the turban to pitch forward and strike the top rim of his sunglasses. He adjusted the headdress, being careful not to brush the fake mustache attached to his upper lip with library paste, which was pulling his mouth into a sneer as it dried—a purely physical phenomenon, for this was the first time he had been the cynosure of a roomful of moral lepers and consequently had never felt less disdainful.

The Maker, priceless man, as good as his word, had given a hundred cents' value for every dollar; not only had he collected an audience and, tapping the cleaner's power cable, brought light; he also found boxes, kegs, stacked newspapers, stools, and even a chair or two, for there had not been a seat in the house. He posted the wall-notices he had earlier characterized as essential, adding one that read:
GOD
IS
WACHING
YOU
. He directed his scouts in a quick policing-up of the store: there were rats to rout, fallen plaster to sweep, and a grocery counter, dating from Big Ruthie days, to find under a Matterhorn of trash. It was behind this counter that Reinhart now supported himself, knee against the lower shelf where stood his half-empty fifth of gin, another provision of the Maker's.

Splendor, who was personally responsible for Reinhart's debut as orator, had proved a complete washout.

“Splendor, Splendor,” Reinhart had called down to him on the couch. “Are you sick?”

The nonchemical interne had revolved agate eyes in the light of the torch, moaning “Very.” He rolled against the wall, face to it, the way people show defeat in novels. His turban lay in the debris of the floor.

“You don't have stage fright?” asked Reinhart. “Not you. Why, I can recall your Debating Contest speech before the whole high school. I believe you defended war, while that little skinny girl Angelica Slimp took the opposing view.”

“I cribbed most of that from Henry Five, by William Shakespeare,” Splendor admitted with a faint smile. “‘Once more into the breach, dear friends.' Ah, but I feel very grisly at present.”

“Hey,” Reinhart cried, “you can't sleep now. It's after eight and the people will be coming soon.” He took the light off Splendor's face and directed it upon the leprous wall.

“Nobody's coming, Carlo. Nobody cares. You strive, and for what? You find the electricity turned off.”

“But we're fixing that, and the Maker's collecting an audience, and you'll be just great. I thought your idea was pretty punk until tonight. Now I'm enthusiastic. Really! Hahaha.” Reinhart turned and kicked an old carton through the back window.

With the flashlight on him again, Splendor said irrelevantly: “You don't know what it's like not being respectable. Your mother didn't run off with Henry Bligh.”

But in sympathy Reinhart fervently wished she had, and he said, “I'm sorry.”

“My parents used to play cards every Friday night. One evening Seneca Bligh and my father sat there three hours waiting for their partners—who actually had long departed to St. Louis by Greyhound bus. Well, you've seen my father.”

“I've met Mrs. Bligh as well,” Reinhart answered. “But it was fortunate that you are grown up and not a little child on whom such a thing would be crushing—that you have your plans and ideas and can't be fazed.”

“True,” Splendor said very weakly. Big Ruthie's sofa had very high ends, and he hung between them like a vacant hammock.

“Anyhow,” Reinhart went on, “what is respectability? Pretty boring if you ask me and furthermore a false category. What we want is a celebration of life, because we've only got one.”

“True. But now Dr. Goodykuntz writes that the tuition fee I already paid doesn't cover the genuine parchment diploma with seal of fourteen-carat gold.”

“How much?”

“Twenty-five dollars, and it's unethical to practice without it. Why can't we postpone the meeting until next week?”

“Splendor, Splendor,” chided Reinhart. “Are you losing your faith in Dr. Goodykuntz? I must say you're disappointing me, my dear fellow. Remember that the weather's sure to be far worse in Pocatello and if Dr. Goodykuntz has contracted to give an address tonight, he is already at the auditorium, pouring out inspiration and healing multitudes of sufferers.”

Splendor sat up and groped on the floor for his turban. “You've shamed me, Carlo. Disregard the foregoing negativism. It's quite true that I am very ill. I may indeed have cancer. No”—he threw a hand towards Reinhart—“no demonstration. I'm not whining. If this burning pain in my solar plexus gets worse, I may have to go to Pocatello for treatment. You see, the pity is that the physician cannot heal himself; the conjunction of two life forces is called for. But first, my work is cut out for me.”

He rose to his feet, and at the same moment the lights came on—one ceiling bulb behind the partition and several out front.

“There you are!” cried Reinhart. “The balloon is going up.”

Soon they heard noises of the arriving audience. Now that he had called Splendor back to duty, Reinhart again became reluctant to associate himself with the project. His reluctance turned to terror when, spying around the partition, he saw the Maker's confederates bring in seating facilities and the Maker's chattering girls prepare to use them. The truth was, whores disturbed Reinhart; turning down their solicitations always made him feel like a great swine. In London during the war, he had frequently been almost moved to counter sidewalk propositions with an offer of marriage. Instead of desire, he felt guilt; for the likes of him and a handful of silver, such a woman would recline and accept penetration. This was the female principle reduced to absurdity.

When he turned back to assure his friend that prospects were bright, he saw only an empty turban rolling across the floor from the open window; the bee had fled its hive.

“So what do we do now?” asked the Maker, when that person appeared a moment later from the front of the store.

Nicholas Graves was uproariously pleased at Splendor's flight. He chortled so strenuously that he choked, and one of his whores called from beyond the partition: “Baby, you dyin'?”

He ordered her not to embarrass him, and said to Reinhart: “I tole you, I tole you! He never been with it, man, like you and me. He simply run back to noplace.”

“Then I guess that does it,” Reinhart said. “Tell everybody to go home—and you can keep the money, you earned it. Too bad. I think he's got something, though it's clogged. And you hardly ever run across anybody who believes in anything nowadays. So you can't exactly call him yellow, since a coward wouldn't have had the idea in the first place. I suppose he's just normal, poor guy.”