Trouble in Rooster Paradise (23 page)

“
No, no, Walter. It sounds just fine
the way it is now. It’s realer somehow,” said Mrs.
Berger.

“
But consider your potential
audience, Nora.”

“
Why, Walter Pangborn, no girl I
ever knew would have said ‘mainhead’ to a police commissioner and a
bunch of flatfeet. As for ‘hymen,’ I doubt one stripper in a
thousand knows the word exists even.”

Walter reluctantly conceded the point and
resumed picking at a half slice of cantaloupe. He definitely had a
hangover.

I hadn’t gotten plastered, so except for a
little grogginess, I felt pretty good. At least I thought so until
a plate hit the floor with a jarring crash that united us all in a
moment of keen misery.

My temples felt like they were
imploding.

Walter winced.

Mrs. Berger moaned at the loss and scolded her
nephew for breaking the plate.

Sten just held his head in his cigarette hand
as he reached for the broom with the other.

“
Help yourself to some cantaloupe,
Gunnar. Shurfine had ’em two for thirty-nine cents,” said Mrs.
Berger.

I was working up to a bowl of Rice Krispies,
but I did as she suggested and sat down at the table. Sten joined
us after he swept up the debris.

“
Walter, if a woman you loved were
to innocently flounce into an opium den, how would you
feel?”

“
Nora, wouldn’t it be better to
stick with what
you
personally know?” Walter
asked.

“
Nonsense, Walter. What’s the fun in
that?”

“
Well … we at least need to
have a smoother transition. I really think we should go back and
rework the last two scenes of act one.”

“
Oh, those scenes are perfect,
Walter. They’re just fine.”

“
But Nora, there are a few details
that I fear will shatter your audience’s suspension of disbelief.
And—”

“
Hell’s bells and whistles, Walter.
The people watching will know it’s just a play. We’re not fooling
nobody. Besides, there’s nothing we can’t fix up later. Remember,
it’s supposed to be a love story and adventure both. We got to keep
it moving. And you got to agree that if a shapely little bombshell
like Penny flounces into a den full of drug-crazed Chinamen and
assorted white riffraff, something exciting is bound to explode.
The audience will love it. Trust me, Walter.”

Sten winked at me and chimed in, “I don’t know,
Aunt Nora. I think a bunch of opium-eaters would be too hopped up
to even take notice of a dollface like Penny. Why not keep her with
the white slavers a little while longer?”

“
Sten Larson, if we left our pretty
Penny with those hard guys one moment longer, it’d be ground
rations for her for sure.” She went on for a few minutes rehashing
Penny’s past, her innocence, the mistakes she’d made, the doctor
who treated her for the clap, the luck he brought her.

How the virgin Penny got gonorrhea was a
mystery I never asked about. Some things you just accept as is.
It’s easier that way. At times it seemed like Penny was real—at
least as real as Betty Grable or Rita Hayworth.

Mrs. Berger gingerly daubed the corners of her
mouth with a napkin. Having finished her toast, she put a
Chesterfield in her ivory holder and lit up.

“
You know, you really need to slow
down and chew your food more, Gunnar,” Mrs. Berger said after I’d
gobbled down half my cantaloupe. “You’ll live a longer, more vital
life. And it’ll keep lead in your pencil,” she added with a
salacious grin.

I humored her as usual. I slowed my intake down
to a bare nibble and began chewing rapidly. I noticed Walter
ruminating with careful precision. He was a devoted Fletcherite,
but only when our landlady was in the room.

Sten relished in his dissent, unblushingly
bolting his scrambled eggs. After each forkful he’d quickly mash
away with his tongue before each shameless gulp. He winked at me
defiantly. His cigarette smoldered on the edge of his
saucer.

“
You’re looking mighty relaxed this
morning, Gunnar,” Sten whispered between gulps. “Did you get your
ashes hauled last night or
something
?”

“
Or something,” I said through a
mouthful of orange pulp.

“
Sten, that colon of yours is going
to clog up and explode one of these days,” his aunt said, getting
up to pour herself a cup of coffee.

Sten puffed up his cheeks like a blowfish.
Walter and I tried not to laugh. Mrs. Berger playfully whacked Sten
on the head as she came back to the table, causing him to let out a
blast of air.

“
It’s no joking matter,” she went
on. “Had your Uncle Otto listened to me and chewed his portions
better, he’d still be alive today. I’m certain of it.”

No one argued the point. Not even Sten. But he
continued to shovel and gulp, unaffected by his aunt’s withering
look—that look a zealot reserves for the unabashed nonconformist.
Even though Walter and I were mere
nominal
Fletcherites, it
kept us safe for the time being. Walter had accurately summed up
our situation on an earlier occasion:

“
Thomas Jefferson wisely wrote, old
top, that uniformity and coercion made half the populace fools and
the other half hypocrites. When it comes to Fletcherism, I’m afraid
you and I are, undeniably, hypocrites.”

Most of the time I just felt like a
fool.

As Walter and I got up from the table, Mrs.
Berger beamed up at me, saying, “I made a batch of taffy yesterday
afternoon, Gunnar. Be sure to grab a handful before you head out
the door. Pass ’em out to people you know. Just tell ’em to eat
around the little strip of paper. That idea about stuffing each
piece with a fortune didn’t work out like I hoped.”

As we headed to the stairs, I heard my landlady
ask, “Sten, are you sure you weren’t ever in an opium den? Not even
once?”

“
There’s a couple dens down on King
Street in Chinatown,” Sten said. “Hell, I’ll take you down there
some night if you want to do a little research for the
play.”

“
I’d love that. Yes. Research for
the play.”

Walter and I went upstairs. I figured he’d
spend the day in his room, reading, soldier-painting, or doctoring
the perils of pretty Penny.

But the muse was not with Walter.

I slapped some cologne on my face, put on my
hat and coat, and was making ready to leave when Walter’s door
opened. He was wearing his dark raincoat with the collar pulled up
and his slouch hat in its usual position.

“
Walter. You’re dressed to go
out.”

He saw the surprise on my face. “I am indeed,
Gunnar. You did me a kindness last night. I wish to repay it. I’d
like to accompany you. Perhaps I can be of some small service.” He
patted his left side, where I guessed his Lebel revolver was
holstered.

“
Thanks, Walter, but you don’t owe
me a thing.”

“
Oh, but I do.”

I knew how much he hated to venture out during
daylight hours. But he had a sort of pleading look in his eyes. He
wanted to come with me. Maybe he even
needed
to.

“
Come on,” I said.

Meredith Lane lived in the Capitol Hill
district.

The Ivy Lane Apartments might have had ivy
growing around them at one time, but no longer. Not unless you
counted a sickly looking vine on a rickety trellis curled over the
front door. But the lawn was trim, and all in all the building was
well-kept and nice enough to look at.

It had drizzled during the night and it was now
foggy. The sun struggled to peek through the haze, but the feel in
the air told me the rain would probably win out in the
end.

I parked my Chevy out in front. The sidewalks
were still wet. I got out of the car on what my grandpa Sven would
have called an
uff-da
note. As my feet took their first
steps on the concrete I stopped short and half-skipped to avoid
stepping on a slug making his slimy escape. In the process I lost
my fedora. I’d done this slug dance before. It was either dance the
dance or go directly from
uff-da
to
ish-da
. The
Greeks aren’t the only ones with a word for it.

“
Ever thought of dance lessons at
Veloz and Yolanda?” Walter asked. “I see in the paper that their
summer rates will be low.”

“
Very funny.”

“
Light of feet, light of heart, old
socks.”

“
Yeah, and you should write Burma
Shave ads,” I said, picking up my hat. It had just missed the
glossy trail left by the slug.

Meredith’s apartment building was a four-story
rectangular box on a side street off Cherry and smack-dab in a
residential area. Built about 1900, it had probably seen some
hodgepodge remodeling each decade thereafter. Its two large units
per floor during its Victorian heyday had been converted to six
smaller ones. It had a front and rear entrance and a staircase at
each end.

Walter and I entered the front lobby and were
immediately hit with that stale fug no amount of paint, wallpaper,
or Lysol can overcome and which residents become inured
to.

“
Oh, the landlord is missing out on
an opportunity here,” Walter said.

“
How’s that?” I asked as my nostrils
relaxed their pucker.

“
He really ought to bottle and sell
this aroma. I’m confident he could find a market for it among
innovative museum curators—or perhaps vacationing archaeologists
lonesome for their digs.”

We passed the bank of mailboxes along the wall
and made our way up rubber-treaded stairs.

Walter’s scars were mostly covered, but he kept
close to the wall on his right. We only passed one tenant—a chesty
woman in early middle age who shot Walter a curious glance after
giving me a friendly nod.

Walter whispered, “It sounds like Miss Lane has
been through quite a bit lately. Are you so sure this is a good
idea?” By “this,” he meant his face. He’d wanted to stay in the car
as a lookout.

“
Don’t worry. It’ll be fine,” I
said. “Once I’ve explained you to her, and she gets past the
initial shock, I think your bedside manner might actually help get
her to open up.”

I figured the third floor was mainly occupied
by single women; feminine door decorations and competing wisps of
perfume in the hallway presented a definite womanly
character.

I rapped on the door marked 304.

No answer.

I knocked again. No sound.

I eagle-clawed the prismatic glass doorknob. It
turned easily and I let us in and shut the door behind us. There
was no sign that the lock had been jimmied or the door forced open.
The light was on in the small foyer that was directly neighbored by
a tiny bathroom.

I called out for Meredith.
Stillness.

I drew my gun.

I led Walter into the living room. We could
readily see inside the kitchen and bedroom. They were average-sized
rooms with high ceilings and walls that owed their shiny patina to
countless layers of paint.

Britt had told me Meredith lived alone. Small
as her apartment was, I was a little surprised she could afford it
on a salesgirl’s salary. I was more surprised by the expensive
furnishings that didn’t exactly suit her digs. But I was downright
shocked at the aftermath of the small tornado that had struck the
place.

Neither one of us moved from our spot. I made a
quick visual sweep. In the living room, only her combination
television-radio console was still standing—though it had been
shifted from its location. A new armchair was overturned, and its
jute under-fabric torn from the springs. The matching sofa had been
similarly violated. Several books had their backs broken and their
pages ripped. Pictures had been torn off the walls and the frames
broken open. Vases and other knickknacks helped clutter the floor.
The rug had been rolled up and flung to a corner. The kitchen was a
jumble of dishtowels, silverware, plates, two pots and a pan, all
tossed on the linoleum. From my glimpse of the bedroom it appeared
to be a heap made up of clothes, a mattress, sheets, pillows, and
down.

“
What do you make of this?” Walter
asked. He’d drawn his Lebel but was putting it away.

“
I’d say the place was ransacked.
Either that or Meredith’s housekeeper quit on her with a
vengeance.”

“
Have you been imbibing the humor
vapors, old thing?”

Walter spotted her foot in the bedroom.
Actually he saw a few toes peeking over the top of a big pillow.
Our eyes followed the toes down a long, well-turned leg.

The leg led us to Meredith.

M
eredith was on the other
side of the chaotic heap. Like her friend Christine, she was in
that familiar puppet-with-its-strings-cut position. She’d no longer
be worrying about losing her looks with age. The nylon stocking
cinched tight around her neck had seen to that.

She was lying on the floor near the tasseled
border of her bedroom carpet that had been rolled up against one
wall. Her legs and arms were sprawled and bare. All she had on was
a red satin chemise that had been torn wide open in front. Her red
hair was tousled and tangled. Her full lips were parted and her
eyes looked through and beyond us. Her face had the smoothed
features that come with slackened muscles. There was no
blood.