The Twenty-Year Death (29 page)

I followed. There was nothing but dark all around. The headlights of my car lit the road just far enough for me to see something before I hit it. I kept my eyes on the other car’s red taillights. Pockets of fog sat in the road’s depressions giving the feeling that the woods were closing in. There was a flash, and then a car coming the other direction squeaked by without slowing down. There might have been lights in the distance behind me. Why not? The Carrot-Top did good business.

The Buick slowed and turned off at an angle onto another uneven dirt road. The impression of seclusion was damaged somewhat by the lights from the town now just visible through the woods. As remote as it felt, we were still in civilization. Of course, it had the trappings of exclusivity necessary to make the paying customers feel special. There was probably a secret password at the door. And men in funny hats. And every other word spoken would mean something other than what the word really meant—words like ‘tea’ and ‘horse.’ The cops would want it that way too. I had a feeling they weren’t going to like me.

A clearing opened up where gravel had been put down and about thirty cars were parked in neat lines. I pulled into the first empty spot I saw, while the Buick drove up to the front door and Rosenkrantz and Gilplaine turned the car over to the valet. I waited for them to disappear through the front door before I got out of my car.

The Carrot-Top Club had originally been built as the guest house of a mountain retreat for some new-money oil millionaire who lost the property when his money ran out. Gilplaine had gotten it cheap at auction. It was a two-story frontier home with unpainted cedar shingles and a slate roof. A canopied porch of wooden planks ran the entire length of the front of the house with two rocking chairs still off to the side waiting
for ma and pa. There were two windows to either side of the door and three more upstairs, all blocked by blackout curtains, which left the parking lot shrouded in night, except where the open front door cast a yellow carpet of light leading into the club.

I arrived at the door just as the valet returned from parking the Buick. A dark-haired sharp in a tuxedo stopped me in the doorway and tapped my shoulder clip. “No guns.”

“This? I just wear it out of habit. It’s like my wallet.”

The tuxedo gave me a smile and held out his hand. “I’ll take good care of it for you.”

“Like hell you will,” I said and walked away from the door. I peeled off my coat, unbuckled my shoulder holster, and tucked the whole thing under the passenger seat of my car. When I got back to the front door, neither the tuxedo nor the valet so much as looked at me as I entered.

Inside, the whole first floor was one large open room about the size of a small ballroom, with exposed support beams and a stairway in the middle going up to the second floor. A mahogany bar lined one wall, its mirror doubling the four rows of liquor bottles. That part was all strictly legal now, although the bar was scuffed enough to suggest that it had been dependable through Prohibition too. The bar’s brass edges could have used a shine. That didn’t prevent half of the barstools from being filled with dark-suited men and women in cocktail dresses shouting over one another to be heard.

The other side of the room was where the real action was. There were three blackjack stations, two craps tables, and a roulette wheel. The dealers wore red vests with brass buttons and black bowties. Small crowds of boisterous onlookers partially hid the gaming tables. The sound of the ball skittering
around the roulette wheel could be heard over the noise of excited conversaton. There was no band. No one would have listened to them if there had been one, so Gilplaine probably figured he might just as well save the cost.

I went to the bar first. As I did, a heavyweight champion in an ill-fitting suit followed after me. I leaned against the bar and he leaned against it right next to me. It was an empty space. No reason he shouldn’t lean against it.

I caught the bartender’s eye and ordered a Scotch. I scanned the room while he poured my drink. There was no sign of Rosenkrantz or Gilplaine. I tasted my Scotch. It was too good for me, but the studio was picking up my expenses. I paid and started for the nearest blackjack table. My oversized shadow followed with all of the subtlety of a white suit at a funeral. I watched several hands and for all I know so did he. The house went over once, hit blackjack twice, and paid out to a dealt blackjack once. I thought I’d check on the other tables just to make sure that my new friend got his exercise. At the craps table, he stood so close I could feel his breath on the back of my neck. I turned and looked at him, but he just smiled a closed-mouth smile. I showed him all of my teeth, then turned back to the game.

When I had had enough of that, I went around to the other side of the table, crossed behind the croupier at the roulette wheel, squeezed past a couple leaning against the wall, and hurried over to the stairs. I was only halfway up when the heavyweight’s tread sounded behind me. I turned and was able to look him in the eye from two steps up. “Did somebody stick a candy on my back?”

He grinned again. “I’d’ve thought your mother’d have taught you the golden rule.”

“I know a few golden rules. Which one do you mean?”

“Treat others the way you’d want ’em to treat you back.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard that one,” I said. “I don’t remember following you though.”

This time he showed me that he was missing a few of his teeth.

“Yeah, well,” I said, “then it’s time to switch places. You take the lead and I’ll follow you to Gilplaine’s office.”

The heavyweight raised his chin. “You’ll find it. It’s the second door on the left. I’ll be right behind you in case you get scared.”

I thought of something smart to say to that, but then I remembered I wasn’t smart, so I just turned up the stairs.

Gilplaine’s office looked like a storage room with a desk stranded in the center. Three of the walls were lined with brown cardboard boxes that had been labeled in a scrawl with the titles of erotic pulp novels:
Leslie’s Love
,
I Married a Man’s Man
,
Never Enough
, that kind of thing. The musty smell of old cheap paper filled the room, somewhere between a library and a locker room. There was a couch along the fourth wall, itself half covered in boxes, and three tall green filing cabinets taking up valuable real estate. Rosenkrantz, still dressed as informally as he had been at the house, occupied the free spot on the couch.

Gilplaine sat at his desk, leaning back in a swivel chair, its spring audibly protesting his weight. He was a sharp-faced man, with a head twice as high as it was wide. This had the effect of making his nose seem longer than it was, which didn’t inspire any confidence in his honesty. He had piercing dark eyes that he focused with all of his attention on only one thing at a time. He wore an army-green three-piece suit with a gold chain coming out of the watch pocket and running to the gold watch in his hand. He looked at it, making note of the time, before placing it open on the desk blotter in front of him where he could consult it with a minimum sacrifice of attention. “What do you want?” he said.

“Hold on, I know him,” Rosenkrantz said. The drive must have sobered him, since his speech no longer showed any sign of alcohol.

“You do?” Gilplaine said without taking his eyes off of mine.

“He was at the house before.”

“Yes, he followed us when we left.”

“No, inside the house. He’s the detective they hired for Clotilde.”

“Well, Mister...?”

I handed over a card, and he glanced at it.

“Well, Mr. Foster, you don’t seem to be doing a very good job of protecting Miss Rose.”

“How do you figure that?” I said.

“Right now, for instance, you’re here with us.”

“Maybe you’re the ones she needs protecting from.”

His eyes darted to the watch and then back to me.

“Just throw him out, Hub,” Rosenkrantz said.

Gilplaine moved his mouth like he had just tasted something sour. “My men tell me you tried to bring a gun into my club.”

I shrugged. “I thought I might need it.”

“And what do you think now?”

“I was right.”

“Are you certain you want to make an enemy of me, Mr. Foster?”

“No. But I am certain there isn’t much that’s honest about you. I’m certain you’re a dirty little man who makes his money in dirty things for dirty people. I’m certain that a man like you anywhere near Miss Rose is something to protect her from.”

Gilplaine’s eyes narrowed. The champ shifted behind me and the floor creaked.

“Hah,” Rosenkrantz said. “I should be writing this stuff down.” He patted his pockets for something to write on.

Gilplaine continued to consider me with the scrutiny a mother gives her child before the first day of school. Then his face loosened
and he spoke quickly. “Mr. Rosenkrantz and I are business acquaintances. Mr. Rosenkrantz is a writer, I am a publisher. We are discussing a forthcoming book. None of it has anything to do with his wife. Is that satisfactory?”

I shrugged.

“Not that it’s any of your business. But if we get this straight now, I hope you won’t go on annoying me in the future.” Gilplaine looked once more at his watch and then clicked it shut. “Listen, Mr. Foster. I don’t like cops who think they’re smart when they’re not. I don’t like cops who think they’re clean when they’re not. I don’t like cops who talk out of turn, and I don’t like cops who talk in turn.”

“Since we’re all being so honest here,” I said, “you have any ideas about who’s been following Miss Rose?”

Rosenkrantz had found a notepad and was jotting notes with a golf pencil.

“Why would I have any idea about that?” Gilplaine said. “I’m not involved with the movies, even if my business sometimes involves people who are. I don’t know who’d be following her around.”

“No one’s following her, Hub. Clotilde is imagining it,” Rosenkrantz said. And to me he said, “You’re busting yourself up for nothing. Just sit in your car and watch her and collect your money.”

“That’s what people keep telling me,” I said.

“I have no information about this,” Gilplaine said. He picked up his watch and tucked it away in his pocket. “And you’ve taken up all the time I care to give you.”

The chair squealed as he turned to face Rosenkrantz. “Where were we, Shem?”

The creaking floor warned me to step out of the way before
Hub’s man could get a grip on my shoulder. “I’ll walk myself out,” I told him. “That’s one thing my mother did teach me.”

He grinned that same closed-mouth grin that could have meant that he found me amusing or might just have meant that he had gotten hit in the head one too many times. He opened the door, and I stepped past him and hurried down the hall. I’d been wasting time, like the man said. Gilplaine was a publisher and Rosenkrantz a writer. It made sense that they would be working together, even though the critics would be surprised to find out that Rosenkrantz, the great golden boy, not only had sunk to writing for the pictures but even a step lower, writing for the under-the-counter trade.

Outside I went back to my car and sat behind the wheel without turning the ignition. I had been hired to sit in my car, as Rosenkrantz had reminded me, and Hub Gilplaine’s parking lot was as good a place as any to sit. At the end of the night, Rosenkrantz and I were going back to the same place after all. The Carrot-Top Club wasn’t too particular about what time it closed, but it was late and it couldn’t stay open forever. I lit a cigarette and listened to the crickets buzz in waves, the sound rising and receding. There was a light breeze, offering some relief from the heat in the valley. The smell of the trees was cloying. It made me miss the city.

Laughing groups and couples came out the front door and I watched the valet flitting around the lot. Headlights cut across the trees two by two as people made their way out. After an hour, about half of the cars were left. I could see the Buick several cars over. A breeze swept through the clearing and I shivered. I began to wonder if there was something back at the house that I shouldn’t be missing. Just as I was about to start my engine, Rosenkrantz appeared in the doorway and handed the valet his
ticket. He was alone. The valet ran off, and Rosenkrantz talked to the doorman while he waited. It was ten minutes to three.

I started my engine and backed out of the spot, pointing the nose of my car away from the club. I pulled onto the private back road just ahead of the Buick. Maybe if I was in front of him, he wouldn’t notice he was being tailed. We retraced our route through the endless wall of trees, past the town, up into the mountains and Route 6, and then eventually into the city and Woodsheer. I thought it would be better for me not to go directly to the house, so I drove past Montgomery and turned in the next block. But as I did, I saw the Buick continue west on Woodsheer in my rearview mirror. I hurried around the block, but had to wait for passing traffic before I could follow.

I caught up with the Buick at a traffic signal. If Rosenkrantz was worried about being followed, he showed no sign, and took no measures to shake me. He pulled off the highway in Harbor City, a neighborhood of small one-family homes that had once been prosperous but was now mainly inhabited by people just off the bus who didn’t know any better or people who couldn’t afford to move out. All the windows were dark except for an occasional night owl up clipping coupons or crocheting a doily that couldn’t wait for morning. He pulled into the driveway of the kind of bungalow that you could buy out of the Sears catalog. It had a small front porch, four small rooms on the first floor, and one small room upstairs. I knew that without going in. I’d been in houses like it. There was a Ford that had to be at least ten years old parked in front of him. No lights were on inside. I continued past, pulling along the curb almost at the end of the block.

I watched in my mirror as Rosenkrantz got out of the car, walked around the backside of it and went up the path to the
door. He opened the screen and then let himself in with his own key. Maybe it was a bungalow he kept to do his writing in. Maybe he was an insomniac and could only write at three in the morning, with a pitcherful of liquor inside him. Maybe. I figured I’d give him a few minutes, and then I would go back over to Soso to finish the job I had been hired for. I could always come back and investigate the house during the day.