Death in The Life

by Dorothy Salisbury Davis

  “Well, Doctor, if sex is politics…”

  “Sex is not politics. Sex is sex, although undoubtedly it is used as a means to political as well as any number of other ends.”

  “Okay, but politics wasn’t what I had in mind. I mean she’s bright enough, but she isn’t old enough…”

  “Where did the third-world diplomat business come from?”

  “That was fantasy. She made it up.”

  “Fantasy proceeds from awareness.”

  “I was just thinking, sixteen’s how old I was when I went on that peace march I’m always talking about.”

  “She told you she was sixteen?”

  “Going on seventeen, she said.”

  “And you believed her, of course.”

  “Actually, I thought she was even younger.”

  “Which pleased her even more.”

  “I guess it did. She said she’d been away from home for over a year which I figured was supposed to make me think she’d had a lot of life experience.”

  “Or to shock you with the extent of her life experience—for one so young?”

  “Could be,” Julie said.

  “Why would she want to make that particular impression on you?”

  “I don’t know. It would turn most people off.”

  “That’s right,” the doctor said.

  “And I don’t think she could read me all that well. It even turned me off a little when you come right down to it. Which would not have been what she wanted at all. Would it be some kind of masochism, some kind of self-punishment?”

  “Couldn’t it be simpler than that? What was your main, overall impression of her?”

  “I’ve got to say it again, how young she was.”

  “Yes?”

  “Hey, maybe she isn’t that young at all, is that what you mean? Maybe she’s some kind of Peter Pan who isn’t ever going to grow up. Doctor?”

  “I think there is a distinct possibility that she is rather older than she wanted us to believe.”

  “Oh, boy… That throws the merry-go-round into reverse.”

  “It is only conjecture on my part,” Doctor said.

  “I wonder how old that little brother is she bought the teddy bear for. She did buy a teddy bear on Thursday, and she did go to the bus station about five o’clock. Nobody knows if she took a bus.”

  “Did she purchase a ticket?”

  “I don’t think the police know that either. Did she tell you about the brother?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did she tell you he was retarded?”

  Doctor was slow to answer. “No.”

  “I think she made that up too—at the thrift shop. It’s run for the benefit of severely retarded children. What a put-on Rita, I mean.”

  “I’ve been put on many times,” Doctor said. She changed position and the chair creaked. “Have you written to your husband?”

  “Twelve pages, single spaced. From the day I moved into Forty-fourth Street. He already knows about my interest in the Tarot. I didn’t tell him you’d fired me. That’s about the only thing I didn’t tell him.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I think you made a mistake, and I don’t see why he has to know it.”

  Doctor laughed aloud, one of her rare comments. She brought her chair upright. “All right. Friday as usual.”

  “There’s a lot I’ve found out about Pete that I didn’t get to tell you.”

  “I’m not sure it belongs here,” Doctor said.

  “But it does, if I do.”

  “Then we’ll go into it next time, and into why you think it does belong here. What about Paris?”

  “If this adds up the way I think, Paris could be awfully important to me. Have you noticed, Doctor? I’m not just drifting.”

  “I have noticed.”

  “In fact I’m working very hard.”

  “Good,” Doctor said, without even a touch of skepticism in her voice.

  Julie said, “I make a copy for myself of everything I write to Jeff. It’s a kind of log. Would you like it if I made you a copy?”

  “Perhaps you had better, since you’re determined to involve me.” Doctor sounded fairly cheerful about it. At the very least, reconciled.

  “Wouldn’t it be funny if we turned out to be a kind of female Holmes and Watson?” Julie said.

  “Hilarious,” Doctor said without a smile. “Wouldn’t Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin be better models?”

  “I don’t think I know them,” Julie said.

  “That is the most depressing thing I’ve heard today.”

  22

  THE ONE THING JULIE was determined not to do was to take off in all directions at once. She now carried a pocket notebook, and on the bus downtown after her session she added to the things she had already set down to be explored. She decided then to ensure order by numbering them in what she saw as their degree of urgency. She left the bus at Fiftieth Street and while drinking an Orange Julius realized that she was close to St Malachy’s where, she presumed, the Father Doyle Helen Mallory had mentioned was on the staff. She tackled number seven on her list first and composed a hidden logic to the procedure. Seven was the numeral she considered most important to her personally, and it had to mean something that without her having even thought of it at the time, she had assigned the number seven to Father Doyle.

  Father Doyle was a round-faced, high-complexioned man who would have looked like a cherub when he was an altar boy. Now he was forty or so, a little seedy-looking and missing a back tooth. The vacancy showed when he smiled. Which had to be often, Julie figured, since she was so much aware of the missing tooth. He was not the authority figure she had expected. Nevertheless, she remained on guard from the moment the priest joined her in the tiny square parlor furnished with chairs about as comfortable as Early Inquisition.

  “It’s a great mistake,” the priest was saying, “to think the church belongs only to the craw-thumpers, as my mother used to call them.” He gave himself a couple of pats on the chest by way of illustration. “And my own experience suggests that the louder the thump, the more hollow the heart. Mind now, I’m not gossiping. You asked if Miss Mallory was a terribly religious person, and I would say she likes to think herself such, a little of the Christian martyr. To be sure, I’ve had but the two telephone conversations with the woman, that and bits and pieces her brother dropped along the way.”

  “Being lame and all,” Julie said, “maybe religion’s all she’s got.”

  The priest smiled. “It’s no small thing to have. If I’m not mistaken, you’d agree to that, Mrs. Hayes?”

  How in hell had she left herself open to that? “It’s not my thing, but sure, I do think religion’s great for people who go along with it.”

  This time the priest laughed aloud.

  “What?” Julie said.

  “I wasn’t trying to make you commit yourself.”

  “Is Helen younger or older than Pete?”

  “Two years his senior.”

  “Father Doyle, would it be very expensive to arrange a memorial Mass for Pete?”

  “It doesn’t have to cost a cent when you put it that way. I’ll arrange it and you can give what you like. I think it’s a fine idea. I’ve been remembering him in my own Mass.”

  “Twenty dollars maybe?”

  “C.O.D.,” the priest said with gentle mockery.

  “I didn’t mean to be insulting. I know it’s customary to give something.”

  “If you can afford the twenty that will be fine. I’ll go and get the book now. Is there any weekday you would like especially?”

  “Just so there’s time to put a notice in the papers and on the bulletin board at the Actors Forum.”

  “And there’ll be an announcement from the altar on the previous Sunday.”

  While he was gone from the Room Julie took a good look at Pope Paul. You couldn’t exactly call him jolly. On the opposite wall was the jolly one, John the Twenty-third who every Catholic she had eve
r known considered their kind of pope. 1958-1963. It would have been his predecessor who was on the throne when she lost a father. You couldn’t lose a father. He’d lost a daughter.

  Father Doyle returned. “How about Thursday, the twenty-fourth.”

  “That’s fine,” Julie said.

  “Twelve noon. I’ll attend to the newspaper notice and I’ll inform his sister.”

  “All right.”

  “I brought along an envelope for the offering. You can mail it to me any time.”

  Julie thought of Madame Tozares and leaving the ten dollars on her table. “Okay.”

  “Is there anything from a poem or a play you’d like me to incorporate in my memorial—something especially fitting to his life work?”

  “He was fond of the poet Yeats,” Julie said. “I’ll have to think about it, Father Doyle.”

  “I’m a simple man, remember. I don’t speak with the tongues of angels. But I would like to pay tribute.”

  Suddenly there were a hundred things Julie would have liked to talk about with this man who was missing a tooth and who wore a suit going green about the cuffs. But not a word would come to her lips.

  He took her to the door of the rectory. “I’ll expect to hear from you by the end of the week, shall I?”

  Julie nodded and on impulse extended her hand.

  He gave it a brief, warm shake. “Come around and see me any time you want. If I’m not here, I won’t be far.”

  Julie walked along Eighth Avenue and thought of the whore singing hymns; she imagined Father Doyle throwing back his head and laughing if she told him about it. Oh, boy. Now she was romanticizing a priest. Well, Doctor…

  As she neared Bourke’s Electrical Shop she caught sight of Goldie prancing across the street in advance of the oncoming traffic, apparently intent on catching up with her. Okay. She stopped and retied a lace on her sneaker: non-commital cooperation. When she straightened up there he was, his feet spread, his chest out, the cap perched on the back of his head and his very white teeth gleaming.

  “You’re back,” she said.

  “Did you miss me?”

  “You wouldn’t know where Mack is?”

  “Now, Miz Julie, you know better than that. We’re competitors.”

  “All the more reason.”

  “Fact is, I’d like to see him on the street. His ’ho’s begging me to take ’em. I got more girls now than I can take good care of. I’m not talking about fresh talent, of course.” His tongue explored his cheek.

  “Was Rita fresh talent when Mack picked her up?”

  “Oh, honey, I could’ve plucked that chick any time I wanted. I smelled trouble the first time I laid eyes on her.”

  A police car cruised by, close to the curb, the two cops looking straight ahead, but seeing sideways. Goldie tipped his cap to the receding car.

  “You might as well come in out of the cold, Miz Julie. You is just been stamped Goldie’s girl.”

  “All right. Let’s talk.”

  “You’re putting me on.”

  “Let’s say I’m using you. I’m inviting you to my shop.”

  “Let’s go. If you don’t mind walking with Goldie, it sure don’t make no mind to him.”

  It was quite a performance, Goldie’s strut down Eighth Avenue. He did elaborate little dance steps around the plain folks on the street and tipped his cap to every prostitute they passed. Neither Juanita or her mother was in sight when Julie turned the key in the shop door. She put water for coffee on the electric plate in back. Something had changed. Or she had. She was no longer afraid of him. While she was making the coffee, he perused her books on the occult and allied industries. His comment, putting the last of the collection back on the shelf: “This is horse shit, baby. It’s got nothing to do with real life.”

  “Are you an expert on real life, Goldie?”

  “If I don’t dig it, it ain’t there.”

  He drank his coffee, flashing the diamond beacon he wore on his little finger. It would have been a great time for Mrs. Ryan to drop in.

  “What do you know about Rita, Goldie?”

  “You in cozy with the fuzz, Miz Julie?”

  “The police? No. I’m listening from now on. I don’t say I won’t tell them what I know if they ask me, but I’m not going to volunteer. And I give you my word, the source is sacred.”

  “Put your hand on Jesus,” he said, opening wider the yellow silk shirt to expose the silver cross.

  Julie touched it with her fingers. “I swear.”

  “That doll is a man-eating shark. I’ll bet she cut her teeth on somebody’s balls. Her old man’s maybe. Or her old lady’s. Yeah. Didn’t she make a pass at you?”

  “No way.”

  “Don’t say no way. That lost little girl crap? That was a pass even if you didn’t know it.”

  “Okay. Tell it the way you see it.”

  Goldie stared at her, the eyes going needle sharp. It was as though he was trying to hypnotize her. She wanted his trust and made herself stare back at him. The very concentration it took was a distraction from what turned out to be the main action: he brought his feet up under the low table and upended it, sending the Tarot cards, the Friend Julie cards, the lamp, and her notebook flying. The crystal ball bounced off Julie’s knee: the pain was dazzling. Goldie set his coffee mug on the floor and examined the underside of the table. Miraculously the light bulb hadn’t broken.

  “What the hell are you looking for?”

  “A bug. When you said Okay that way, I got the feeling I was being set up for The Man.”

  “Oh boy.” Julie rubbed her knee. “Everybody’s bug-crazy. Where do you want to go and talk? Name it and I’ll go along.”

  “I apologize.” Goldie put the table back on its legs, picked up the lamp, and started gathering the cards.

  “Leave them. I’m not using them much these days.” She had spilled coffee all over her sweater and jeans. “What a mess.”

  “I didn’t spill a drop on me,” he said, looking over the golden shirt and cream-colored slacks.

  “You bastard.”

  “That’s what all my girls say, but they love me. Now I got three more moving in. They don’t figure Mack to be around for a while. Want to change your clothes? I won’t look.”

  “Oh, shit,” Julie said. She got her coat and put it on. It was chilly in the shop anyway.

  “Did you hear what I said, Miz Julie? I got three of Mack’s girls, Rita’s wife-in-laws. Now the funny thing is all of them act like she was Jesus’s little lamb. Except maybe one chick. Could be that one’s stooling for Mack. Goldie could have a viper in his bosom.”

  “May Weems?”

  Goldie arched his eyebrows. “Julie, chile, you and I are going to be able to do business.”

  Julie saw no reason not to pass along to Goldie Detective Russo’s opinion that May Weems was indeed still Mack’s girl, trying to pump Julie for information on where Rita might be. She gave him pretty much verbatim the telephone conversation with the person who had identified herself as Rita’s wife-in-law.

  “You went to the cops,” Goldie said. First things first with Goldie.

  “I did. I was afraid I was dealing with Mack when I read the note, and I didn’t feel up to him on my own.”

  “Which means The Man is going to bust little May and screw her for info on Mack.”

  “Probably.”

  “Or already has done,” Goldie added, thinking. Then: “Won’t do him no good at all. Mack’s too smart to tell her where he is. He’d call her. He’d have to figure a straight like you was going to the cops either before or after talking to May. Miz Julie, do you know where Rita is?”

  “No.”

  “If you did would you tell the cops?”

  “No.” She wasn’t as sure as she made it sound.

  Goldie grinned, not altogether pleasantly. “What about Mack, if you knew where he was?”

  “You bet.”

  Goldie played his fingers over the cross. Again, sh
e thought of the polished nails as drops of blood. “Miz Julie, how would you like to go to a party?”

  “Where?”

  “My place. Wouldn’t it be something to get all you Rita fans together?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’ll pick you up at five A.M.”

  “I’ll be here,” Julie said. She could feel her heartbeat drum out some sort of warning.

  Goldie finished his coffee and got up. “Be smart now, but not smart-assed. Just fall in with whatever I say when I introduce you.”

  “Is May going to be there?”

  “Unless she’s detained elsewhere. By which I mean Midtown North.”

  “Is she black?”

  “How’d you guess?”

  “I think I saw Mack beating up on her once.” But that wasn’t it: the voice on the phone had suggested it, and the point to the question was a further probe of May’s credibility. Julie did not think Rita would confide the halfway house bit to a black. “Goldie, I want to know something: What’s in it for you?”

  “Kicks, baby. It’s like for the time being, I’m straight. Five A.M.” He looked down at her. “Don’t you ever wear makeup?”

  “Not often.”

  He touched her chin with the tips of his fingers, turning her face one way, then the other while he studied it, or pretended to. He chuckled. “Those ’ho’s are going to have a ball.”

  Julie returned to the back room and gathered the cards, personal and Tarot. The worn silk handkerchief which she had got with them from Mr. Kanakas had been torn almost in two. She sat at the table and buried her face in her hands, trying to think. For someone determined not to go off in all directions, she wasn’t exactly zooming in. Yet nothing seemed irrelevant, not at the moment. You couldn’t pull in until you pushed out. And the number-two item listed in her pocket notebook was “See Goldie for Rita’s first days on street.” Okay. She gave herself a half-hour to concentrate on the implications and possible consequences of doing business with Goldie. Who the hell was Nero Wolfe? A detective. A fat detective she had heard of, of course… Yeats for Father Doyle. Zooming in. Yeah. She set up the typewriter and inserted an original and two carbon sets.

  GOLDIE:

  Knew Rita was trouble from first time he saw her. Could have copped her if he wanted. (Rita: “I might go with Goldie, because I don’t think I could fall in love with a black man.”) So why Mack in the first place? Goldie right—a man hater. But a man-eating shark? Lesbian? According to Goldie. By me, no way.