by Gary K. Wolf
On the bottom of Gable’s heap was a medical bill from a Doctor Wallace Ford. Five hundred eighty-six bucks for unspecified services rendered. Arnie Johnson came a lot cheaper, but I bet Gable’s problems didn’t result from fleas, ticks, or a porcupine quill in the snout.
Fortunately for my bank account, this case wasn’t over yet. I could milk this cow another day or two easy. Thank God for closet queens, jealous rabbits, and philandering wives.
Time to smell the rest of the roses cooking on my burner. I hauled out my phone message.
Charley Ferris, the day manager, backed out of the walk-in freezer cradling a half-gallon carton as tenderly as a mother would her child. He wore Blondie Bumstead’s white apron, Mary Worth’s sensible shoes, and Steve Canyon’s slit cap except Charley’s came in white paper instead of khaki twill. Charley eats, breathes, sleeps and sneezes ice cream. To him, Heaven’s a frozen cloud of moo juice and Hell’s a busted churn. He turned around and saw me sitting in my accustomed spot.
“Hey, you, Valiant,” he shouted, so enraged he threatened me with his armload of hand-packed. I shivered at the thought before I calculated the odds. Let him conk me to his heart’s content. His bludgeon would melt to slush a good half an hour before I went senseless. “Quit using my establishment for an auxiliary office. I ought to bill you rent for the booth. And your phone calls! One more bookie, one more loan shark, one more bazoomie rings my number looking for Eddie Valiant, and I start charging you secretarial rates.”
I toasted him with a sip of seltzer. “Sure, sure. Add it on my tab.”
Charley slammed his flavor of the month on the table and drew his stainless steel ice cream packing spoon out of his apron string. “Your tab. You mean the one you didn’t pay last month, or the one you’re not going to pay next month?”
The first rule of a private eye. Never let them see you sweat, a procedure which got a lot easier once I started wearing my shoulder pads under my arms instead of over. “Live and let live, Charley. Hermie Schwab pays you fifty simoleons a week, and you act like you own the place.”
He stuck his spoon under my beezer. I caught a deliciously nutty whiff of pistachio, my favorite. If I had to die at the end of a scoop, at least I’d expire happy. “Yeah, yeah, wise guy,” taunted Charley. “How much did you make last week? Come on. Tell me. I’m waiting.” He waved his spoon around the room. “Tell everybody. We’d all like to hear.”
Charley knew how to hurt a guy, but I was born wearing cast-iron underwear. “I got potential.” I fluttered my phone message at him like it mattered a hill of beans.
With surprising speed for a guy with frostbitten fingers, Charley snatched the note out of my mitt. “Oh, yeah? Big, important shamus. Hotshot private dick. Peeper to the stars. Let’s measure the vast amount of potential you got.”
I tried to grab it back, but he smacked my hand with his spoon.
I relieved the sting with a slug of tonic as Charley read my note out loud. “‘I must see you immediately,’” he said. “‘I have a mystery which only you can solve. Cost is no object. I’ll pay anything. Please. Help me. You’re the only one I trust.’ Signed…” At this point Charley lost his voice. He tried to talk, but only a harsh, froggy croak came out.
Every eye in the place was on us. You could have heard an egg cream plop. I slid out of the booth, heisted the note away from him, and read the name he couldn’t. “‘David O. Selznick.’” I folded it up real tiny. “Selznick, Selznick, where have I heard that name before?” I slid the wadded note across his extended spoon to soak up some flavor. “Oh, yeah. I remember. He’s only the most powerful producer in Hollywood.” I stuffed it into his open mouth. “So, Charley. You were asking me to take my business elsewhere?” I headed for the door.
Charley gulped hard and swallowed my message. He ran after me and caught me by the arm. He elbowed a paying customer off her stool, wiped it clean with his sleeve, and forced me to sit.
He motioned for Skipper to whip me up a Schwab’s Special, the double banana split.
“Right, boss,” said Skipper, hauling out his steam shovel and building a four-mounded creation to rival the Pyramids of Giza. He dropped it in front of me. It registered six point one on the Richter scale. If he ever served two of these at once, his customers would have to eat them in the basement because the combined weight would drive the counter straight through the floor. Skipper used his fan magazine for a place mat, fulfilling my lifetime fantasy: to lick butterscotch syrup off Betty Grable’s face.
“Thanks,” I said.
“No problem,” Skipper responded with his usual, stupid grin.
I’m not much for health food, and the special came loaded with it—bananas, pineapple, strawberries, cherries, nuts—but I’m also not one to turn down a free lunch. I ate it left to right, saving the chocolate end for dessert.
As I spooned down the last bite, Charley leaned in real close. His breath reeked of peppermint, the schnapps, not the chewing gum. “You like it, Eddie? If it’s not made right, I’ll do you another myself.”
“It’s fine, Charley. Perfect.”
He handed me a paper napkin, an extraneous gesture since I’d already wiped my mouth on my sleeve. “You want anything else?” asked Charley. “Maybe a malt to wash it down? Or something stronger?” His voice dropped. “Promise me you won’t tell Hermie, but I keep hootch in the freezer.”
No kidding. “You’re angling me for a favor.”
“Your bill.” Skipper laid down my check.
Charley grabbed for the tab, not that he had any competition, rolled it into a ball, and dropped it into an ashtray.
“Eddie. Eddie, my friend,” he said, lighting my leafer and giving me his matches to keep. “I got a niece on my wife’s side. Trudy Hammerschlemmer’s her stage name. The old lady keeps pushing me to introduce her to a big-time producer. As if one would ever come in here. No self-respecting mogul’s gonna hang out in a drugstore. That Lana Turner thing? That was pure publicity eyewash. Just between us girls, Hermie slipped Metro a wad to say they discovered her here.” Charley peeled off his paper cap. A piece of the front end tore loose and stuck to his sweaty forehead. He worried it loose with his fingernail. “If you could maybe give Mr. Selznick Trudy’s portfolio, I’d personally make sure that you never paid for another soda as long as you live. “
This was taking on all the aspects of big potential. “No more complaints about Skipper fielding my calls?”
He crossed where his heart would be if he had one. “As God is my witness.”
Being the only rider on the merry-go-round, I had my best chance ever at grabbing the brass ring. “I want one of those cardboard reserved signs left permanently on my booth.”
His face flashed dark. Who pushed him harder, me or his missus? No contest. He nodded. His wife’s a woman I’d hate to meet in a dark alley.
I wiggled my fingers. “Gimmee the goods.”
He reached over the counter and grabbed a leather book he kept at the ready beside the frozen frappe glasses.
I took a gander at her eight-by-ten glossy. Surprise, surprise! Long, silky hair. Big brown eyes. Soft nose. Wide mouth. Plenty of teeth. Chariey’s niece had a future in the movies, all right.
Whenever Lassie needed a double. Woof, woof. “I’ll do what I can.”
Always one to push my luck, I stopped at the cash register and helped myself to a stogy.
Charley smiled and presented me with the whole box. In my town, in my business, it’s all in who you know.
5
I tugged open the heavy, green-painted door at Joe Bazooka’s Gym. A terrific wind belted me in the face, nearly hard enough to bowl me over. For a minute I thought the janitor had replaced the ceiling fans with airplane propellers, but the breeze came from Joe’s lightning jabs as he shadowboxed the opponent provided him by the hundred-watt bulb shining over his shoulder.
Wham
, bam! He flattened the shadow with a combination too quick for the human eye to see.
Joe Bazooka, the one and only retired, undefeated, heavyweight champ of the world. I took a seat on an overturned spit bucket and watched a genius at work.
Joe spotted me and gave his shadowy opponent a final bang-on-target one-two flurry. The shadow doubled over. Joe spared him the indignity of total collapse by reaching overhead and turning out the light. The shadow froze in place. Its edges crinkled and lifted, and it peeled slowly off the wall. Joe scooped it up and tossed it into a large wheeled cart half full of wet towels. “Hey, uh…”Joe scratched his tousled blonde head. After three hundred fights, the ink in Joe’s well didn’t flow easy anymore.
“Eddie,” I reminded him.
“Yeah, Eddie.” His large, solid, punching-bag-shaped balloon hung motionless in the air. I rapped it, none too gently, with my knuckles. It arced away, though in true championship tradition, it came right back for more.
Joe extended a hand the size and color of a baked ham. “I’m Joe Bazooka.” As if I didn’t know.
He turned to the wall and eyeballed the levelness of a photo already aligned with a transit. He rapped the bottom right side with his fingertip, moving it a gnat’s eyebrow closer to perfection. “This is me and Jersey Joe Walcott. Madison Square Garden, June 16, 1934. That’s the night I won the title.” Joe sunk into a crouch. Left arm slightly out, right tucked into his chin. “I came out hard at the opening bell…”
If I don’t have much of a future, I don’t mind reliving the past, but right now I had a paying customer. “Great fight. I saw the newsreels on the Cavalcade of Sports.”
Joe’s arms dropped to his side, his face not far behind them. “Right,” he said in a balloon so low it scuffed my shoes. “I guess you know, then. About the night I won the crown.” He dusted the picture with his sleeve. “This your first visit?”
If you didn’t count twice a week for the past five years. “Yeah.”
“Glad to have you.” He pointed proudly around. “We got a full range of weights. Light and heavy body bags. Incline boards. Speed bags. Weighted jump ropes. You here for a workout or you planning to take up boxing as a career?”
Boxing could get me hurt, I’d recently been told. “Strictly exercise. “
He sized me up. “Just as well.” He peppered his stomach with his fists, duplicating the sound of twin woodpeckers beating against a steel flagpole. “Try to remember. You are what you eat.”
Given my diet, that made me a beer nut.
Joe looped his arm around my shoulders with enough reach left over to do it again. “You need help, holler. I’m always around. “
Joe cocked a cauliflowered ear toward the silent wall phone. “I better answer that.”
He handed me a shadow from out of the cart and picked up the telephone’s earpiece, surprised to find nobody on the other end. He jiggled the hang-up hook. I left him telling the operator about 1934, the glorious night he decked Jersey Joe in two.
I went into the locker room and stripped to my underwear. I tightened my thigh garters a notch, slipped back into my steel-toed black brogans, strapped on a pair of Everlasts, and went looking for a fight.
I found it in the person of Joe’s ancient, white-haired manager, Knuckles Woburn.
We climbed into one of the gym’s two practice rings. Normally, I sparred without headgear, but, out of respect for Arnie Johnson’s cranial quilting, I strapped on a leather helmet. Knuckles gave my basted noggin and my battered face the onceover. “Don’t tell me. I oughta see the other guy. Who was it this time? A client, a cop, a husband, a bouncer?”
“How about one of those evil, no-good lawbreakers I’ve sworn to eradicate?”
“Cut the hooey. This is the old Knuckler you’re talking to.” He exhaled an empty balloon, crushed it into grit, sprinkled the residue on the floor, and shuffled it into the soles of his shoes. “Let’s have the straight poop.”
We touched gloves and squared off. I quick-punched him hard in the kisser. “You want the truth? OK. A Toon came at me out of the dark and hit me when I wasn’t looking.”
“That’s what they all say,” said Knuckles. He faked a left.
I took my eyes off him to read his chatter. I’d done it a million times before with never a problem. Two maybe three hundred rounds he’d never laid a glove on me. This time, his right cross walloped my chin with the force of a sledgehammer.
“Looking then?” taunted Knuckles.
Nobody, for sure no Toon, does that to Eddie Valiant and gets away with it. I waded in swinging. “Ever hear the phrase `Box, and you could get hurt’?”
“Regularly. From my dear, departed mother.” Knuckles foiled my efforts to end it quick by hiding behind his balloon. “I should have listened.”
When I reached forward to brush his balloon away, he ducked out, came in under my arm, and socked me with another powerhouse right. It staggered me. I backed off and jabbed at him, waiting for my head to clear.
“Gable still coming around?”
“Pretty much.” Knuckles popped me with another potent right. “He does the circuit. Goes a few with Joe. Ought to make a prizefighting movie, he should. Terrific build on him. Fast hands, too. He’s a game cock, he is. I remember once Joe bopped his nose. Broke it clean. I offered to straighten it out. Gable told me not to bother. Said the studio kept a high-powered doctor on special retainer for him. Said he’d let the sawbones earn his fee. Walked out of here calm as you please with a swollen honker that would have had a lesser man screaming for an ambulance. You gotta respect his moxie.”
His right stung me again. One more like that, he’d win by a KO, and there goes my undefeated record. “Gable mention this medic’s name?”
“As I recollect, he had the same moniker as Gable’s car. Dusenberg, Stutz, Bugatti…”
“Not Ford?”
“Right.” He smacked me another good one. “I remember thinking, here’s a star can drive whatever foreign jobbie he wants, and he buys American. A regular guy.”
I was fading fast. Time to put the old-timer to sleep, by hook or by crook. “Hey, Knuckles.” I pointed at the canvas. “Your shoe’s untied.”
He backed away and glanced down. “So’s yours.”
“What kind of boob you take me for?”
He shrugged. “Don’t come crying when you trip and fall.”
We traded shots, nothing major. “Hear any gossip about Gable?” I asked.
“He’s stepping out with Jessica Rabbit.”
“Deeper than that, and darker.” I blocked his right with my forearm and lost feeling to my elbow.
“Don’t tell me Gable’s a crossover Toon!”
“Not that bad.”
“What, then?”
“How about a poof.”
Knuckles laughed. “We talking about the same Gable? Clark? Tall guy, big side flaps? Eddie, I’ve seen this guy in the showers. He’s got half the women in town tattooed on his chest. He’s as straight as the train track through the Valley.” Knuckles dropped his guard.
I stepped in close, cocked my arm, and tripped on my untied shoelace. As I fell backwards, Knuckles rapped me with his last balloon.
I woke up with rosin on my back and ammonia in my nostrils. Knuckles pulled me to my feet.
“You sandbagged me. That’s illegal.” I used my teeth, thankful that I still had them, to unloosen my gloves.
“You got a beef, take it to the boxing commission.” Knuckles unlaced his left glove and pulled it off. “Gable a poufah. Don’t that beat all.” He removed his right glove. His clenched fist gripped a roll of quarters. He held them up between his thumb and forefinger and winked.
“That is illegal.”
“So’s beating up on an old man every week.”
“What are you talking about? You’re a Toon. You like it.”
“Sure. Same way Joan of Arc enjoyed a good barbecue.”
I slipped my suit back on and went into the steam room. Since I had it all to myself, I cranked the temperature up to the level that percolates out bad food and worse whiskey.
I sat on the lowest bench and watched myself drip down the drain.
The door opened and closed. Young Harry the Hedgehog waddled in and tugged at my pants leg. “Swab job, Eddie?” He rolled his chocolate-pudding eyes. I’m a sucker for chocolate-pudding eyes.
“Sure, sure, why not?” I told him. I penciled his two-bit charge into my expense book. But how to itemize it to score it legit? “What do you hear, Young Harry?”
Young Harry hopped up on my lap. “Uuuuuh, not much.”
Reliable informant. I closed the book and returned it to my inside breast pocket.
Young Harry chinned his way to my shoulder, inched around to the back of my head, grabbed my collar in his tiny paws, and draped himself upside down over my noggin. As he tick-tocked side to side, his furry stomach swabbed my forehead.
A cold breeze rattled my kneecaps as the steam-room door opened and stayed that way.
“You born in a barn?” I complained to the newcomer without thinking that around here the answer could be yes. “Come in or get out before the hot stuff leaks away.”
The door closed. I couldn’t see a thing. Squishy, menacing, rubbery footsteps moved in my direction. “Who’s there?” I said.
I didn’t get a response.
Young Harry ceased his swabbing. The footsteps came closer.
Young Harry scampered over my shoulder and ducked behind my back. He knew my business and wanted no part of it. Right about now I couldn’t say I blamed him.
I moved against the side wall and checked out the ceiling. In the six inches of clear air between the steam and the roof, a pointy pair of great white shark fins headed straight for me. My heart pounded louder than the overture to Moby Dick.