The Double Take

by Roy Huggins

  Pretty soon she came back and asked me if I wouldn't please come in. We walked down a short hall, turned and went down two steps into a large living room. She mumbled the name I'd given her and left, taking the stiff dress with her.

  The room had been ordered by catalogue from a firm of interior decorators and then left as they delivered it. There was the current grouping of sofa, chairs, and coffee table about the fireplace. And there was a woman standing in the midst of it. She was wearing blue satin lounging pajamas that buttoned high at the neck, Chinese style.

  “Thanks for seeing me, Mrs. Johnston.”

  “Not at all. Sit down.” She sat in a wing chair upholstered in something designed by a truck gardener, and waved a cigarette at the sofa.

  I sat down and looked at her. About five feet six and at least one hundred forty-five pounds on the hoof. It wasn't bone, she was just healthily plump. In almost any other kind of clothes, you'd have called it voluptuous. Her hair was the kind of ash-brown that happens to people who were blondes when they were kids, and it was done up in no particular fashion. The eyes weren't hiding behind glasses now, but they were the eyes of the picture, dark and steady, and as melancholy as an Irish fairy tale. Her nose was a little broad at the tip, and her mouth was wide and full. She was gazing at me with a thoughtful, remote expression that meant nothing at all. She might have been sizing me up with wary care, or thinking about the menu for dinner.

  I said, “Mrs. Johnston, we're contacting the wives of business leaders in the community to see if we can form a community bond sales group among the ladies. You know, we still want to sell bonds, and we feel that women with go-getter husbands probably have something of the go-getter in themselves.” I smiled at her idiotically.

  She studied me with a quiet repose for what seemed a long time without saying anything. I was glad I wasn't Mr. Flood from the Treasury Department. My day would be ruined. I would need a pep talk. Behind me, in the hall or in another room, I heard a phone being dialed, faintly.

  “Mr. Flood, I'm terribly sorry.” Her voice was low, throaty, but very quiet and very gentle, like her eyes. “But I'm afraid I'm not a 'go-getter.' I know I'd just be a burden on the group. I'm sorry.” She smiled. I could feel that smile down to my kneecaps. It was wide. It was incongruous. It was lovely. But it didn't change the eyes much.

  “I can't agree with you, Mrs. Johnston,” I said. “I think you are just what we're looking for: intelligent, young, of good standing...”

  Mrs. Johnston's smile froze and she leaned forward and knocked an ash from her cigarette into a crystal tray. She did it slowly, deliberately. When she looked up the thoughtful, neutral expression was back again.

  She shook her head and said, “Really, Mr. Flood, you will have to excuse me. The cause is fine...”

  The tall gaunt woman interrupted her, standing vaguely on the stairs from the hall. “Can you answer the phone, Mrs. Johnston?”

  She excused herself and they both disappeared down the hall to the left. I hadn't heard a phone ring and I had heard one being dialed. It didn't have to mean anything. The bell might ring in another room, the kitchen maybe, or the den. Or maybe the maid had put in a call for her.

  She was back in no time at all. She sat down again and pulled the smile up from nowhere, as bright and lovely as ever.

  “Tell me, Mr. Flood, how large a group are you planning on?”

  That tore it. Not hearing a phone ring hadn't really bothered me. But the new lease on the smile and the sudden interest in the size of the group were all wrong. I suddenly wanted to know if anyone was outside looking for the registration card on my steering post. I didn't keep it there but I had license plates.

  I stood up and said, “We need at least one person to a square block, Mrs. Johnston.” I turned and walked toward the hall. I heard her rise and she said, “Mr. Flood, I...”

  I turned at the archway and said loudly, with a wider smile and a cock of my head, “Think it over, Mrs. Johnston. I know you'll be a real addition to our group.”

  She had a hand up and her lips were parted, ready to say something when I stopped.

  I went right on, “I don't insist on an answer now, Mrs. Johnston. Talk to your husband about it...” I turned and started for the front door. “And thanks for your time. I know you're busy...”

  I went out the door. Coming up the flagstoned path was the gray-haired maid. She jumped just a little when she saw me and tried to pull herself into the dress like a turtle as she squeezed past me.

  “You're wasting your time,” I said. “I stole the car from a gray-haired old lady.”

  She hurried into the house without looking at me or saying anything.

  I walked out and drove away. My license plates didn't tell me whether anybody had been looking at them or not.

  Chapter Three

  PORTLAND LIVES ON one side of the deep Willamette River and works and does its shopping on the other, so it is a city of bridges, some of them broad swaggering structures of concrete and steel, and others ancient drawbridges that look as if they are weeping over the city.

  Jefferson High School was far out on the east side of the river, an aged building with little greenery around it and a tired look under the eyes. The halls were empty, and sick with the old odor of schools. The office was of the standard pattern, the long bar-high counter cutting the room in half, the windows on the office side, the relentless glare on the other. There were three women shuffling papers behind the counter. I leaned on it and my foot felt instinctively for a rail. One of the women came toward me and I told her I would like a little routine information on a Miss Margaret Bleeker who graduated in 1937.

  She said I would have to wait until Mr. Dolles, the Vice Principal, was back. He was at a meeting.

  I showed her my buzzer.

  “Los Angeleez, huh? You'll still have to wait.”

  I thanked her and decided to wait outside. I walked out and down the oiled, bitten hallway. I was on the stairs outside when I heard it; “Just one moment, sir!” I turned, and a woman came through the archway and trotted toward me.

  She was forty, a little more, a little less, and thin. She had flat cheeks and a retiring chin that made her face look as if it were in full retreat. Her eyes protruded uneasily, and were the color and brilliance of cigarette smoke.

  She said, breathlessly, “I didn't want to leave the office too soon.”

  “I see.”

  She smiled. She had nice big teeth. “Miss Hurkett doesn't like men,” she whispered. “Mr. Dolles is at a meeting all right—in Seattle.” She giggled and looked over her shoulder.

  “How does she act when she hates somebody?”

  The eyes swelled. “Oh terrible!” she said. “But I can help you. We all remember Margaret Bleeker. What's she done?”

  I had been edging down the stairs. I came back up again now. She was looking at me eagerly, and there was a vague light dancing behind the opaqueness of her eyes.

  “You tell me first,” I said. “What was she like?”

  “Well, she was expelled when she was a freshman for getting terribly drunk at a Hi-Y dance.”

  “But she settled down later, huh?”

  “Oh, no. She learned to hold her liquor.” She clapped her hand to her mouth and giggled again.

  “Quite a young lady.”

  “She was beautiful. When she was a junior she got one of our chemistry teachers in trouble.”

  “You mean one of the chemistry teachers got her in trouble, don't you?”

  She shook her head solemnly and said, “She was perfectly innocent. It was in the laboratory. He made her stay after class... She reported him.” She put a bony hand on my arm, looked over her shoulder again, and hissed, “What's she done?”

  “One more thing. Where'd she live?”

  “Oh, down in Albina, a terrible district.”

  “Can you get me the address?”

  “But she's been gone so long. She sang at Keller's after she graduated—Keller's Hofbrau,
down on Broadway,” she added, when she saw the gleam in my eye. “Now, what happened to her?”

  “A man in Seattle left ten thousand dollars to someone named Margaret Bleeker. We're just running down a lead.”

  Her long face grew longer, and the eyes grayer. “Oh-hhh,” she said hoarsely. She turned and ran into the building.

  It was raining when I got back to the sprawling Willamette Hotel on Fourth Street. I went up to my room and decided to put off going to Keller's Hofbrau until later in the evening—it sounded like that kind of a place. I undressed and hung my coat and pants up to dry and lay on the bed and watched the wet unwholesome twilight creep into the room and huddle in the dark corner.

  After a while I got up and turned on the lights and called the bell captain.

  “I'd like to ease the inner writhing a bit,” I said. “Where can I get something for it?”

  “Huh?”

  “Something to take the sting out of living. You know, whisky, champagne, buttermilk laced with gasoline—whatever you can get me.”

  “Oh. Oh yeah. We got state control here, y'know. It'll cost ya extra.”

  “See if you can find some ice and soda to go with it.”

  It came up five minutes later on a covered tray carried by a pale little man with brown welts under his eyes and a skin like a filefish. He set it down on the dresser, handed me a bill, and silently disapproved of the color of my shorts. He took his money, pocketed a dollar tip, gave me an obscene smile, and went out. It was good bond bourbon and I made a tall one and took it into the bathroom with me and crawled into a hot tub.

  The drink was gone and I was rubbing myself down and wondering if I needed a shave when I heard a door open, and then close. I didn't hear anything else. I put the shorts on and opened the bathroom door.

  She was standing uncertainly in the middle of the room, a damp chubby across one arm, and a blue silk dress doing a nice job of covering but not concealing her round little body. The dress was too short, the heels too high, the legs too white and shaven. She had a wide smile that almost swallowed up her face, and her hair was like autumn corn silk after a rain. She looked about sixteen.

  “Oh, there you are,” she said politely.

  I didn't say anything.

  “Where ja get the nice tan?”

  I said, “Baby, there's been a mistake. I didn't send for anybody.”

  The smile faded and her face reddened just a little. “You didn't? The bell cap...”

  “He jumped at conclusions.”

  “Oh,” weakly.

  “Sorry. It's just that I've got a lot of work ahead of me.” I pointed to the dresser. “There's some makings over there, help yourself.” I climbed into my trousers and picked up a clean shirt.

  “I don't drink,” she said primly. “Thanks, anyhow.” She went to the door.

  I said, “Maybe you can tell me how to get to Keller's Hofbrau?”

  She turned and cocked her head at me. “What would you be doing there?”

  “It's a club, isn't it?”

  She giggled. “It's more a ladies' tea room than anything. I think it used to be a club, long time ago when Keller owned it.”

  I buttoned the shirt. “And Keller and the old management are all cleared out, huh?”

  She came back into the room and leaned against the dresser. “If it's a club you're looking for, Keller is still your man. But his place is kinda hard to get into—it's illegal you know, and they're a little skittish right now.” She watched me tie my tie and waited for me to make an offer. I didn't make one.

  She said, “I might be able to get ya in, though. I got a friend works there. He'd fix it.”

  I grinned at her and took out a ten spot and held it in front of me. “How does it work?”

  “You just go in the reg'lar way and tell the jerk at the desk you're a friend of George's. I'll call'm up.” She took the ten and told me how to get there and how to go in. She went back to the door and opened it and turned around.

  “Thanks for telling me you had work to do.” She went out and shut the door.

  The building was a huge opaque square against the translucent blue of the night sky. The rain had let up, and there was nothing here but wet darkness and the thick chemical smell of the river. A car came up the long narrow street and lit the face of the building faintly, and I could read the legend across it,

  Rudy Milbrunner,

  Warehouse and Storage.

  The car turned into a hole. I walked down the ramp and came out in a dim-lit concrete basement with a few cars parked in neat rows, and white-marked spaces for a few hundred more. To the right there was an open freight elevator, and by the elevator a desk. The desk had a lot of stuff on it that looked like freight receipts and invoices, and there was a man sitting behind it with a greasy hat on his head looking like a warehouse foreman. He watched me sharply as I walked toward him. I said, “I'm a friend of George's.”

  “Where's your transportation?”

  “I came in a taxi.”

  “Friend of George's, huh?” He ran suddenly drowsy eyes over my face and picked up the phone. He looked at me some more. He could hardly keep awake. The eyes stayed on my face like two dull and rusty gimlets. He put the phone back on its cradle without calling anybody.

  “Okay. Go ahead,” he said without moving his lips. There was an old man in the elevator, sitting on a beer barrel reading a Western magazine. We went up two floors and stopped. Double doors of frosted glass slid back and I stepped out. The old man mumbled, “Scares ya half ta death, don't he?” I turned and grinned at him. He winked faintly, closed the doors, and went back down for another load.

  The lobby looked like Los Angeles' Sunset Strip of ten years ago. It was bright, walled in glass brick, and the floors were covered from wall to wall with a heavy sea-foam carpeting. The lighting was indirect except for a colored spot that picked up a uniformed hat check girl and made her look like something you'd like to send to the boys for Christmas. She took my hat and coat and was so nice about it I wanted to tell her she could have them.

  The first room off the lobby was for dining and dancing. It wasn't crowded yet, and empty linen-covered tables were spaced nicely in three tiers around the floor. The walls were glass with murals painted on them limning dancing naked Negro girls, with here and there a check-suited Negro with lacy long white pants holding a banjo. Light came from behind the glass.

  At the back there was a long glass-and-chrome bar. I stopped off there. The bourbon wasn't good, but they were generous with it, as is the way with chip-cribs. After the third drink I noticed that people came in, but they didn't stop in the dining room, or at the bar. They went right on by, down a dim-lit corridor to the right of the bar. One man didn't go on by. He stopped at the bar, and the barkeep fixed him a drink without waiting to be told. He was thick and short, and his clothes were too tight for him. The coat concealed the bulge of his gun with all the subtlety of a school girl's bra.

  He was watching me. Not covertly, just looking at me out of eyes that were the color of gin. I winked at him and his eyes watered at me. I got up and went on down the dark corridor and through a heavy sheet-metal door. This room was different. It was already crowded, and there was a feeling of hot, sweaty tension in the place that the air conditioner wasn't doing anything about. There was black jack. Four games going, and tables for more. Five crap tables with the crowds attached to them like bees. Chuck-a-luck. Two-bit slot machines. And in the back, quiet men under a net of blue smoke at round felt-covered tables. Poker. There wasn't a roulette wheel in the place. Some of the players were noisy, with an overtone of hysteria in their voices and movements; but most of them were quiet, intent, like primitive people engaged in some solemn ritual.

  Someone tapped me gently on the shoulder. It was the little man with the bulge.

  “Well, what d'ya think of the place?” His voice was high, tinny, and it was trying to be cordial.

  “No roulette,” I said.

  “We got wheels. T
hey're in storage. People up this way don't go for roulette.” Three fat, gray-haired women pushed by us, and we moved over, out of the way of the door.

  “What did you expect to get for your ten simoleons, Mr. Bailey? Anything in particular?” He smiled.

  “You work together up here.”

  “We try to.”

  “I wanted to talk to Keller a couple minutes about a very small matter.”

  “Keller. Assuming I knew anyone named Keller, what would the small matter be about?” The smile was getting a little sharp at the corners.

  “A girl. A girl who used to work for him.”

  He looked at my left ear with a slow loss of expression, like a man filling an inside straight. “Uh-huh,” he said softly, “we try to oblige our guests. Wait at the bar.”

  He was back at the bar in about ten minutes and we took the elevator to the third floor. It looked like a warehouse up here. In front of the elevator there was a green-painted greasy door with a long splinter out of it just above the knob. The short man knocked and the door clicked and opened. Inside was more of the through-the-looking-glass stuff.

  The room was large. The walls were inlaid panels of Philippine mahogany, the grain alternating every other square. The lighting was indirect and came from around the wall molding and dropped a soft glow over several overstuffed pieces that looked as if they were upholstered in lambs' wool.

  Behind a blond-wood desk in a high-back executive chair sat a white-haired, benevolent looking old gentleman. He was getting up with a slow and heavy dignity and giving me the kind of warm smile you give to people who have something you want. I was going to hate to disappoint him.

  “Sit down, Mr. Bailey.” His voice was low, and it bumbled out as if he had marbles in his throat. I sat in one of the lambs' wool chairs in front of the desk, and the short man stayed somewhere behind me, silently. The white-haired man took hold of his great belly and sat down again carefully. “My name is Keller, sir. How can I be of service?” He coughed loudly and brought up some marbles. I never knew what he did with them.