Trouble in Rooster Paradise (12 page)

As senior boarder, Walter Pangborn parked his
DeSoto in the driveway. It was a ’36 Airflow coupe—that ill-fated,
nontraditional model, so ahead of its time that time never did
catch up.

I hadn’t seen Sten Larson’s Buick outside, but
the blast of cigarette smoke that greeted me told me he was home.
Sten was one of those match-conserving smokers who lit his next
cigarette with his last one. I pictured him getting out of bed in
the morning and pressing the end of a fresh smoke up against a
light bulb. His
raison d’être
seemed to be keeping that
flame going till bedtime. He was a glowing success if you’ll pardon
the pun.

Sten was sprawled on the porch sofa with an
ashtray on his stomach, the never-ending cigarette in one hand and
a gin and bitters in the other. I recognized one of Walter
Pangborn’s special tumblers. Gin and bitters was Walter’s spring
and summer drink come Saturday night. “The secret is to get gin of
the first chop,” Walter would say. “Distilled
London
Dry.”

“
Walter’s serving drinks on a
Thursday
?” I asked Sten. “What’s the occasion?”

“
When dinner broke up Aunt Nora was
in one of her antic moods and Walter was bit by the artistic
bug.”

“
So, what’s keeping the young and
unsettled housebound?”

“
Kenny’s got my car. He’s picking me
up in a bit and we’re heading to the 211 for some pinochle. But no
reason not to be sociable first,” he said, holding up his tumbler.
“This sucker’s good.”

Sten’s homes away from home were downtown. He
was a devotee of the noisy and dimly lit world of card playing and
billiards, either at the 211 Club or at Ben Paris. Usually it was
the former since it had first-class pool tables, all the better for
a penniless shooter with a little talent to eat and drink to his
heart’s content just for sinking more balls than the other guy. As
Sten put it, “Sinking shots on one of those babies ruins you.
Anything less is like dropping marbles down a drainpipe.” When he
was at his hangouts, heaven was not on his mind.

Sten was in his late twenties and the only son
of Lena Larson, sister to the late Otto Berger. Otto was a
plastering and painting contractor, and before Uncle Sam sent Sten
off to fight in the Pacific, he’d worked with his uncle. Otto died
of a heart attack just after the war. So Sten was working for
Otto’s old partner Sully and boarding at his aunt’s house in one of
the rooms in the basement. The basement entrance suited his comings
and goings.

“
Aunt Nora’s got a kind of hybrid
divinity percolating on the stove.”

“
Hybrid?”

“
No nuts. Cornflakes.”

As I made a move to leave the porch, Sten said
in a subdued voice, “Walter thinks he’s got that
eye
thing
finally figured out.”

Sten and I edged into the living
room-turned-studio.

“
Shall I concoct a refreshing
libation to gladden your heart, old top?” Walter asked, palette in
one hand, brush in the other.

“
No thanks, Walter.”

“
Sten, be a dear,” said Mrs. Berger.
“Go and see how the candy’s doing on the stove. I’m going to call
them Snow Flakes.” She sat in her Boston rocker, posing solemnly
for Walter, a drink balanced precariously on her lap.

Walter was a fair caricaturist and a dabbler at
painting still lifes. But Mrs. Berger was convinced that he was the
ideal person to paint a life-size, posthumous portrait of her
departed Otto sitting beside her. Frankly, if it hadn’t been Nora
Berger who made the request, Walter wouldn’t even have considered
the project.

“
Can I take a quick sip, Walter?”
Mrs. Berger asked.

Walter nodded as he brushed.

The past week Mrs. Berger had been trying to
stop biting her fingernails. She’d put Band-Aids on all her
fingertips as deterrents, most of which looked a bit gnawed on and
frayed.

“
I think it’s hardening now, Aunt
Nora,” Sten hollered from the kitchen.

“
Take care of it, Sten. And on your
return voyage from the kitchen, go ahead and feed Popeye. He’s
looking like he’s about to eat the shredded newspaper again.”
Popeye was Mrs. Berger’s hamster, which had one eye in a perpetual
squint.

Anyway, progress on the portrait dragged at
first, because Walter agreed to paint only when the mood struck
him. And it didn’t strike often. However, recently this had
changed.

“
Not to rush you, Walter, but the
sooner we finish this picture, the sooner we can start the
showpiece,” said Mrs. Berger.

“
Showpiece? What showpiece is that?”
I asked, though Walter had already told me.

“
I’ve decided I want a full-length
picture of me for the shrine. When this picture is done, Walter and
me are gonna rummage through my old valises to hunt up all my
promotion stills of me at my best. You know, to help come up with
the right motive.”

“
That’s
motif
, Nora,” said
Walter.

“
Whatever.”

“
Sounds thorough and even
professional,” I said.

“
Uh-huh. I’m gonna pose in just my
G-string and my fans. You know, to make it … to guarantee
more …. What was that word you used, Walter?”

“
Verisimilitude,” Walter
said.

“
Yeah. To make it more that,” said
Mrs. Berger. “We want it to ring true. Me posing in costume was
Walter’s idea.”

“
I’m sure it was,” I said, with my
back to my landlady. Walter ignored me. His brush strokes had
seemed to quicken lately and his artistic moods had noticeably
become more frequent. Artists get inspiration where they can find
it. It was the “eye thing”—as Sten called it—that was the rub. Mrs.
Berger’s right eye tended to wander, especially when she was tired,
stressed, or tipsy. I learned to look at the bridge of her nose
when we talked.

I walked over to Walter’s side of the easel and
took a look. Walter had finished the Otto Berger portion months
earlier. I stared at the middle-aged, bald-headed, bespectacled
Otto.

“
You’ve definitely captured him,” I
said. “The rascal comes through loud and clear, despite the
puritanical grimace. I think it must be the shine in the eyes. Well
done, Walter.”

“
Why, thank you, Gunnar,” he
said.

When completed, the picture would resemble a
cartoonish version of American Gothic, sans pitchfork. But Mrs.
Berger loved it so far and her belief in Walter’s talents was
unshaken. But the “eye thing” was a real obstacle. It stood between
Walter and the coveted showpiece project.

“
That eye is driving me crazy,”
Walter would confide to me. “I don’t know where to leave it. And
she insists the painting should look life-like.”

“
Maybe she’d agree to pose wearing
sun goggles,” I’d suggested once. Mrs. Berger wore dark glasses
when she had a killer migraine. “It would add realism. You could
call the painting,
The Dead and the Dying
.”

Walter didn’t laugh. He was a bit touchy on the
subject and remained inconsolable.

“
I really think the nightmare is
finally over,” he whispered to me, the left side of his mouth
lifted high to form a big grin.

I told Walter I had a question for him in
private, and if he’d ask Mrs. Berger to take five. Over near the
stairs I said to him, “I’m curious about a local nabob.”

“
Ah yes, ‘nabob.’ A Hindu word
referring to a provincial governor of the Mogul empire of India.
It’s come to mean a man of great wealth or—”

“
Ever hear of an Addison
Darcy?”

Walter nodded. “A Seattle haberdasher.
Very
successful. He’s part of Darlund Apparels. His name and
picture appear in the newspapers from time to time for charity
events—things of that nature. He resembles C. Aubrey
Smith.”

The craggy features of the elderly British
actor came readily to mind. “Know anything about this Darcy?
Anything of a personal nature?”

He shook his head. “Are you considering him for
a client, or making inquiries on behalf of one?”

“
Sort of the latter. I’ll fill you
in later. By the way, fresh greetings from Olga
Peterson.”

“
Duly noted,” he said
graciously.

“
She misses those mesmerizing crumbs
of knowledge you’re so generous with.”

He nodded, but I knew my message left him in a
state of indifference bordering on the narcoleptic.

Mrs. Berger’s back was to the stairs. So,
before ascending, I sneaked a sidelong glance at her three
cheesecake photos. I tried to find my own solution to Walter’s
dilemma—maybe detect what the photographer had done with her
straying peeper.

“
There was no one quite like me,”
Mrs. Berger yelled over to me, causing my spine to tingle. “I did a
fair muscle dance but an exquisite hootchie-cootchie. I worked hot
and did
all
the kicks. The muscle, the hitch,
and
the
fan kick. Those were good times. Good times.”

I vaulted up those stairs.

I grabbed the new Silvertone portable radio I’d
just bought at Sears. I placed it on a shelf in the upstairs
bathroom next to a couple of porcelain swans. The bathroom had
lately taken on a swan theme. It was a veritable swandom, as Walter
put it. There was a swan soap dish, swan-shaped soap, and towels
and dishcloths with interwoven swans. The latest purchase by Mrs.
Berger was a plastic set of shower and window curtains with swans
printed all over them. In our Northwest climate, I rightly
suspected they’d become great mold and mildew-makers.

I ran my bathwater and soaped up with Barbasol
as I listened to the news. As I scraped at my face, the announcer
updated me. Pilfered document case put on hold in 1945 by F.B.I.
finally investigated by Senate committee. Loss of U.S. Navy
Privateer plane in Baltic called “first air victory” by
vodka-sodden Soviet fighter pilot. Shady postage stamp plan probed
by Federal grand jury. Australian minister recalled from Moscow.
Legal secretary in L.A. murdered by employer’s wife.

I’d had enough. My work put enough strain on my
nervous system without me having to borrow the experience. I tuned
to KOL, and heard Hawaiian melodies playing. I let them play. I
usually took showers, but I felt like a nerve-settling soak in
Epsom salts, and I figured a little ukulele and slack key guitar
might help to settle my jitters.

Downstairs again, I saw the empty porch and
knew that Sten’s chariot had swept him away to his hustler’s
paradise. The art studio was still open, but Walter the Sanguine
had become Pangborn of the Dashed Hopes.

Mrs. Berger had ceased modeling and stood
smoking one of her Chesterfields inserted in an ivory holder. Her
eye was beginning to take a drink-induced meander. I got close
enough to her this time to get a whiff of one of her five-and-dime
frangipanis. She was loyal to two fragrances. I called them
Essence of Tawdry
and
Spent Lust
. I envisioned
atomizer instructions that read: “Squirt profusely.”

“
You’d better not be taking out a
girl wearing that suit,” said my landlady.

“
Why? What’s wrong with it?” I was
wearing my new seersucker.

“
It’s a horrible color, Gunnar.
Pathetic. It looks about as cheerful as an overcast day the morning
after.”

“
It’s mottled indigo. I think it’s
sharp.”

“
Hell’s bells and whistles. Whoever
sold you that suit should be drawn and quartered and the parts hung
up by toes and thumbs.”

“
What do you think, Walter?” I
asked, wanting support.

Walter gave me a quick glance and said without
smiling, “Gunnar, you’re a veritable coxcomb. A regular
popinjay.”

Mrs. Berger was pleased. She didn’t understand
Walter’s words. It was his tone and knit brow that convinced her he
was taking her side.

“
What do you think about a profile,
Nora?” Walter asked her. “How would it be if I paint you
facing
Otto? You know, a serene pose of wifely
adoration?”

Mrs. Berger wasn’t buying Walter’s nice try.
“It just wouldn’t be true to life, Walter. You should know that. I
never looked adoringly at Otto.
He
was always
my
audience.” She walked over to scrutinize the canvas.

I left them.

My phone chat with Britt Anderson about Blanche
Arnot got me a little curious. I’d never met an ex-Ziegfeld girl
before. By 6:50 I was in the Chevy headed over to Laurelhurst.
About 7:10 I reached the address Frank Milland had given
me.

Laurelhurst rests on a peninsula jutting out
into Lake Washington. It was what Mrs. Berger called a “snitzy
area.” I suppose it still is.

I negotiated the Chevy through the winding
streets that dissected Mrs. Arnot’s community of junior mansions.
Laurelhurst has its share of waterfront plots. Mrs. Arnot’s wasn’t
one of them. Her house sat inland a bit on a lot tightly linked to
others like squares of a patchwork quilt. Still, it compared to
Mrs. Berger’s place like caviar to pastrami—which is all a matter
of taste.