Shadowtown

by Lutz, John

  Tobin moved away from the bank of mailboxes and buttons and looked up. A frail Chinaman in his sixties, with hooded eyes and a thatch of white hair over his forehead, was peering down at him. He had a scraggly little beard that looked like a handful of bean sprouts he’d pasted on the point of his chin.

  “I’m police,” Tobin said. “How’d you know?”

  The Chinaman smiled. Silly question. Tobin smiled back.

  “I’m Sam Lee,” the slender little man said. “The building super. I saw you talking with Mr. Egan other day. Ah, I knew you were police.”

  “And you’re nosy,” Tobin said. “You want to know what’s going on.”

  “Yes and no.”

  “Don’t be inscrutable,” Tobin said. “Out with whatever you have to say.”

  “Mr. Egan’s gone.”

  “I figured that. I’ve been ringing his doorbell and not getting an answer. But thanks for telling me he’s not home, saving me some steps.”

  “I don’t mean not home,” Lee persisted, with a concerned expression that remotely alarmed Tobin. “I mean gone. Mr. Egan’s gone.”

  “Gone how?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “Gone where?”

  “Don’t know.”

  Damn! Tobin thought. What did this guy know?

  “He wanted me to put a new washer in his sink faucet. I was supposed to do that this morning. I knocked on door, no one answered, so I let myself in with the pass key. Mr. Egan never minded that, honest.”

  “I believe you,” Tobin said. “Go on.”

  Lee nodded, bobbing his head and smiling, as if he’d seen too many Charlie Chan movies. “I go into the apartment, see no one home. Food still on the table, half eaten, cold. No one home, though. And Mr. Egan hasn’t come home.”

  Tobin scratched his head. “Why’s that so alarming? Maybe he went out for a walk.”

  “No. Not without his shoes.”

  “Huh?”

  “Mr. Egan isn’t a rich man. Only pair of shoes he has is still on the floor by the bed.”

  “Could be he bought another pair you don’t know about.”

  “No,” Lee said. “Not likely. Mr. Egan has other things to spend his money on.”

  That’s for sure, Tobin thought. Like cocaine or heroin or bargain booze.

  “You going to check?” Lee asked.

  “Let’s take a look,” Tobin said, and started up the stairs.

  Marv Egan’s tiny apartment smelled almost as bad as the vestibule. But at least there was no graffiti here. Only faded paint and peeling wallpaper.

  Tobin saw what Lee meant. The brown dress shoes by the bed were old but had recently been resoled and heeled. And Egan wasn’t the sort to have that done and then rush out on impulse and buy new Nikes for jogging.

  “You ever seen him in any other pair of shoes?” Tobin asked.

  Lee, standing a few feet inside the door, shook his head no. “Mr. Egan always dress the same. Small wardrobe.”

  An understatement, Tobin thought, glancing in at the tattered garments visible beyond the closet door that was hanging open. Egan probably hadn’t been to Saks Fifth Avenue in weeks.

  A soft dripping sound caught Tobin’s attention and he stepped to the side and peered into the kitchen. Water was oozing relentlessly from the faucet into the sink and striking more water.

  Tobin walked into the kitchen. The dripping faucet was a lot louder in there; he could see why Egan had wanted it repaired. There was a half glass of orange juice, an entire egg fried sunny-side up, and a whole piece of toast and full cup of coffee on the table. The meal had been there awhile. Roaches were over everything, scurrying madly as if they’d never had it so good and couldn’t believe their luck. Bug heaven.

  Tobin touched the back of his knuckle to the toast and egg, dipped his forefinger into the coffee. Everything was at room temperature and might have been there for a long, long time. The margarine had soaked completely into the cold toast. The yellow in the egg was unbroken; it looked like a fake egg of the sort sold in magic shops for sight gags. A roach crossed the egg white and skirted the yellow, as if obeying traffic rules on its way to the other side of the chipped plate. Tobin looked away.

  “Mr. Egan ever leave suddenly before?” he asked.

  “Never,” Lee said. “And he told me for sure he’d be home while I fixed faucet. We were supposed to meet.”

  Tobin delicately peeled a loose shred of flesh from his lower lip. “You two good friends?”

  “Pretty much, yes. We talk all the time, play backgammon every now and then. Mr. Egan taught me; he’s good at backgammon. I’m worried about him, the way it looks like he just got up and walked out. I haven’t seen him all day, and he’s never gone for more than a few hours at a time.”

  Somebody walked across the floor of the apartment overhead. Out in the hall, an infant began to scream. A woman cursed in Spanish at the child. Doors slammed, and the building got quiet again. “Well, maybe there’s nothing to worry about,” Tobin said. He glanced at his watch. “It’s just two o’clock, and he’s only been gone since breakfast.”

  “No, no,” Lee said. “Mr. Egan never eats breakfast. This his supper. He always eats an egg for his supper. He says it’s the easiest way to keep his strength up, but I know it’s all he can afford. Egg cheaper than meat. And the bed, he hasn’t slept in it. He left last night and never returned.”

  Tobin stared at Lee. “Why didn’t you tell me that in the beginning?”

  Lee shrugged and said nothing, being inscrutable again.

  Tobin curled his upper lip and walked around the apartment. Egan had gone suddenly and unexpectedly, all right, and hadn’t left a note. That was for sure. But there might have been a logical and innocent reason. Maybe he’d been about to sit down to supper when the phone rang and he was told a relative was sick and in the hospital. Maybe he’d won the state lottery and was out considering Rolls Royces. Maybe.

  Tobin pulled open a few drawers. Egan didn’t own much. He probably really was too poor for a second pair of shoes, even without the drugs and liquor that drained his meager finances.

  In one of the kitchen drawers under the sink, Tobin found where Egan kept his paperwork. A few receipts for groceries, an unpaid electric bill, threats of legal action from a department store unless Egan settled his account, some old letters.

  Tobin read a couple of the letters. They were all from a theatrical agent named Ruthley and were dated in the early seventies. Business letters. None of what was written interested Tobin.

  He tossed the letters back into the drawer and began looking through some yellowed old business cards. The usual thing: a card from a liquor store over on West Forty-seventh, one from an insurance agent in Jersey, another from a writer named Collins who’d scribbled that he was interested in doing Egan’s show-business biography as soon as he was finished with a biography of one of the Three Stooges. Tobin smiled at that one; he liked the Stooges. And a biography didn’t have to be dull just because it was about someone relatively obscure. Egan might make it as a subject. After all, he’d put in sack time with Lana Spence. Some world it was. Not quite real at times.

  Tobin was about to turn away when he noticed that the liquor-store card had something scrawled in pencil on the back. The writing was faint and barely legible. It was a phone number, nothing more.

  But it was a number Tobin had seen before. Phone numbers were something he seldom completely forgot.

  He stood staring at the card, flicking its edge on the sink counter, listening to the little snapping sound it made.

  Then he remembered.

  It was Harry Overbeck’s home number.

  Tobin stopped playing with the card on the chipped porcelain and stood watching the water drip into the puddle in the bottom of the sink, creating ripples. Overbeck and Egan, Egan and Jardeen, Jardeen and Lassiter. Moe, Larry and Curly. And Lana Spence.

  “Christ!” he said softly. He stuffed the card in his pocket and hurried from the apart
ment, almost knocking over Sam Lee.

  “About Mr. Egan—” Lee called behind him.

  “I’ll take care of it,” Tobin said. “I’ll take care of it.”

  He broke out onto the street at a fast walk and crossed in the middle of the block to get to his car. He hoped the tie-in between Overbeck and Egan meant what he thought it might. The way to get a better reading on that was to talk to Overbeck.

  This was Saturday. Shadowtown Productions would be shut down, but maybe he could catch Overbeck at home. Tobin didn’t want to phone first to make sure; he wanted Overbeck surprised to see him.

  He ignored a horn blast by a furious cab driver who’d almost run over him, then he slid behind the steering wheel of the department car and started the engine. The cabbie had pulled to the curb and cranked down the taxi’s window and was swearing at him, but Tobin was barely aware of it.

  He didn’t use the cherry light or siren, but he drove fast toward Overbeck’s Central Park South apartment.

  Arthur Sales—1:15 P.M.

  Sales strode down the block and entered the Clover Lounge. Except for a young couple in a back booth, there were no other customers. Sales mounted a stool near the front of the bar, away from the early-boozing lovers, and tapped a quarter on the side of a pretzel bowl.

  Irish Jamie swiveled his head around and smiled. “Hey, Mr. Sales!” He ambled behind the bar in Sales’s direction. His dark hair was particularly stringy and greasy today, and he had a complexion that made the surface of the moon look smooth. Yet Sales envied him for his youth. “Early for you, ain’t it, Mr. Sales? Come to think of it, I ain’t ever seen you in here before on a Saturday. Special occasion?”

  “Not hardly, Jamie.” Sales and Wendy had arguments all too often these days for them to be called special occasions. Though this morning’s had been especially cruel and mutually destructive. It would never be the same for Wendy and him, Sales had realized. She’d never be able to forgive him for his affair with Lana Spence. Lana had destroyed his marriage as surely as if she’d poured acid on it, and it had eaten away for months and then struck something vital.

  “Mr. Sales?”

  Sales snapped out of his bitter remembrance of the morning.

  “Here you go, Mr. Sales.” Jamie set the usual Scotch-on-the-rocks in front of Sales, centering it on its coaster. “You okay?”

  “Couldn’t be better,” Sales said, flashing Jamie his best actor smile. The dashing grin he’d used in a hundred leading roles. Jamie bought it and moved a few feet down the bar to assume an attitude that invited conversation but at the same time accepted silence.

  Sales had been better. Much better. Wendy had accused him of drinking too much lately. She’d harped at him, as if he were disgustingly ill. As if he were some kind of mental case or genuine alcoholic.

  Sales had snapped back at her. The argument had gotten nasty then, and they’d both known they were on the familiar track toward loathing and exhaustion. There was no stopping or turning around as they traded accusations, recriminations, insults, and ugly threats. The interaction of their lives had produced something grotesque and unquenchable. And impossible to kill.

  Today’s argument had been about Sales’s drinking, so naturally he’d left the apartment and come straight here, to dimness and comparative anonymity and expensive Scotch.

  “Jamie?” Sales said.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “You ever known me to drink way, way past my limits?”

  Jamie wiped his hands on a red towel and stared innocently.

  “’Course not, Mr. Sales.”

  Good lad, Jamie. “Notice me looking kind of old lately?” Sales asked. Notice me dying by inches?

  Jamie grinned. “You? Old? Come off it, Mr. Sales. Guys like you don’t really get old till they hit eighty.”

  Sales glanced at his reflection in the back-bar mirror and found that his vision was partially blocked by the cash register. He caught only a glimpse of flawlessly groomed hair over an ear, the curve of his right cheek. Good bones in that cheek. He still had that; flesh eventually sagged, but good bones were forever. And ever and ever.

  He knocked down the rest of his Scotch and ordered another. The lounge was soothingly dim, but the sun was bright outside. He didn’t like the idea of going back out there. He decided he’d nurse his next drink along slowly and not leave for a while.

  Maybe not for a long time.

  He’d just sit here and soak up good Scotch.

  The public wondered what soap-opera stars did with their real lives on weekends, Sales had read somewhere. Well, this is it, baby, he thought, propping his elbows on the bar.

  This is it.

  Lana Spence—1:00 P.M.

  It had become a Saturday ritual. A few lines of coke, a warm bubble bath, that was what unwound Lana and built confidence when she really needed it. And God knew she needed it now, after yesterday’s conversation with Sy Youngerman. After what she’d learned they were doing to her. She’d been awake most of the night and had slept only fitfully this morning, dozing from vision to vision. It was depressing. Dreams; she hated to dream. Write her out of the show, would they? Make that flat-chested, brush-headed Jean Richards the “Shadowtown” vixen, a sexy female vampire. How implausible! How unfair! But that one was no dream; it was real. The bastards!

  But Lana knew they could do what they wanted with her part. With her. It was a crock of shit, but that was the way it was. How the business went. The creative people were at the mercy of the incompetents who ran the show. What a pity that was for the fans as well as for professionals like Lana. Maybe it wouldn’t be that way for her if Manny Brokton were still alive.

  Lana told herself to relax. It was an easy instruction to follow in the private, quiet bathroom.

  She slipped deeper into her bubble bath and felt the warm water engulf her breasts. The suds touched the tip of her chin. She extended her tongue and tasted soap.

  Right now “Shadowtown” seemed important, but it wasn’t the sun her world revolved around. She had to admit there was even a certain modicum of sense in what Sy had said about emphasizing the occult aspects of the show. That’s what the viewers wanted, after the vampire murders. The media, friend and enemy, having their effect, playing the occult and real-life murders for everything possible. And a hell of a lot was possible with a story like that.

  For a moment the water seemed cool, and Lana shivered as she remembered the dark figure that had appeared outside her door and obviously intended to kill her. With effort, she rejected that image.

  Then she felt safe again. Her police protection was down in the lobby. Hortensia, her part-time maid, was cleaning the apartment while Lana relaxed in the tiled sunken tub. If anyone tried to kill Lana they’d surely murder Hortensia first, and Hortensia would no doubt scream. Lana would be alerted. She couldn’t help but smile, even in her sudden distress, when she realized exactly what that meant. She’d at least be able to climb out of the tub and die with her robe on rather than be turned into an obscene spectacle for the tabloids, photographed dead in her bubble bath. Soap star meets soapy end.

  Morbid thoughts, she told herself. But who could blame her for thinking them, the way things had gone for her lately?

  There was a knock on the door. “Miss Spence?”

  Lana turned her face toward the voice in alarm, then felt her heartbeat slow. Only Hortensia.

  “Miss Spence?”

  “Come in, Hortensia.”

  The door eased open and the maid stepped in, not shyly. She’d been in the large bathroom before when Lana was bathing. To ask about having the next week off, as Lana recalled.

  Lana noticed Hortensia staring at her. The maid had been with her almost a year now, and had been recommended by her previous employer, a female country-western singer who was a well-known dyke. Lana was sure something had gone on there.

  Hortensia was a tiny, dark-eyed Puerto Rican woman in her thirties, with lean hips and perfect brown skin. Lana watched the maid lick her l
ips. Deep, Latin eyes and delicate features took on a fixated expression.

  Lana had occasionally toyed with the idea of making it with another woman. Why not? Anything for escape.

  Maybe someday, she thought, and raised her body slightly so her nipples became visible through the suds.

  “Well, what is it, Hortensia?” Precisely the right tone of detachment and impatience in her voice. Her secretary voice from the light comedy with Gig Young too many years ago.

  “Uh, Mr. Youngerman was on the phone.”

  “Was?”

  “I told him you couldn’t come to the phone right then and he said to just leave you a message.” She was staring at Lana’s exposed breasts as the bubbles settled.

  “What was the message, Hortensia?”

  “He said he’d be doing some work in his ‘Shadowtown’ office, and if you can, will you come to see him in an hour.”

  “Thank you,” Lana said, and slid back down the gentle curve of the tub, deeper into the warm bubbles.

  “Is that all?” Hortensia asked.

  “Yes. Please close the door as you leave.”

  Alone again, Lana mulled over Youngerman’s message. It could be that Sy and Harry had a change of heart. Or a change of mind about what would make them the most money. Anyway, if Youngerman wanted to see her, it might very well be to take back what was said about writing her out of the show. Maybe Manny had protected her with fine print in her contract. Fine print had been Manny Brokton’s specialty. They should engrave his headstone that way, Lana thought, with letters chiseled so tiny and fine anyone would need a magnifying glass to read them.

  Lana sat up straight and began climbing out of the tub. She slipped on the smooth tile and dropped back down onto her bare ass, causing quite a splash. Very undignified. Hell with it.

  The door opened again; no knock this time. “You okay, Miss Spence?” Hortensia asked, sticking her head in and doing a good job of looking worried.

  “Just fine,” Lana said. She flashed her wicked Delia Lane grin. Hortensia could probably get off on Delia, all right. Delia had no scruples whatsoever.