Lady in the Lake

by Laura Lippman

  “Tell me about her. I mean Cleo herself. What was she like?”

  Something went soft in his face. To say he was not a handsome man would be generous. His skin was bad; his hair, while thick, was clearly receding; his nose was bulbous. But he had the bartender’s way of inviting confidences, and not just in patrons. It seemed likely that Cleo would have chattered to him. He probably knew more about her than her mother did.

  “She was nice,” he said. “Smart. Big personality, bubbly. She deserved better than she got in this world. Most people do.”

  “The man she saw that night—”

  “I didn’t know him. There’s nothing more to say.”

  “But there has to be. I want to know who she was. I want to know what she dreamed about, what she wanted.”

  “Whatever it was, it died with her.”

  A thin, feral-looking man, a Negro, entered. Just as the barmaid had been able to interpret the bartender’s look, the bartender seemed to know immediately what was on this man’s mind.

  “She says she’s a reporter, Mr. Gordon. I didn’t want to give her the bum’s rush.”

  So this was Shell Gordon.

  “Why would a reporter be in my club? Nothing to report on here.”

  He had directed his question to the bartender, but the bartender didn’t answer and Maddie felt bold. “I’m from the Star. I’m working on a human-interest piece on Cleo Sherwood.”

  “Leave that girl be,” he said. “Hasn’t she done enough harm?”

  Maddie did not miss his turn of phrase. What harm had Cleo done? She was dead, after all. Had she caused her parents’ grief? Clearly. Had she abandoned her babies? Yes. But no one had come to more harm than she had.

  “How much do you pay your girls?”

  “You’re too old to work here,” Mr. Gordon said. “Among other things.”

  “I ask because Cleo Sherwood had such fine clothes. I’m surprised that she could afford them, working here behind the bar. Cocktail dresses, furs.”

  Only one fur that she knew about, but furs sounded better, more substantial.

  Mr. Gordon walked to the bar, took Maddie’s glass of vermouth. “On the house,” he said. “If you leave now. If you stay, you won’t be able to afford it. You cannot afford to stay here.”

  She knew he was a powerful man. But as a white woman, she believed she trumped him, even on his own turf. He wouldn’t hurt her. “And if I don’t leave?”

  Mr. Gordon turned to the bartender. “Spike? Please see her out. Now.”

  For the first time, the bartender, Spike apparently, seemed discomfited. He had probably escorted many men, even a few women, from the premises. But he did not know how to approach Maddie, how to touch her. Perhaps the expectation was that she would be cowed and leave on her own. If so, then she was proud to call their bluff. Shell Gordon had put her drink back on the bar. She picked it up and sipped it.

  Spike sighed, flipped up the pass, and crossed to her side of the bar. He was tall and powerfully built. He could drag her from the stool easily. But he seemed reluctant to put his hands on her. He reminded Maddie of a cartoon dog, maybe one she had seen when Seth watched Donadio. Fang, the dog was called, or something like that. Fang had a raspy voice, like this man.

  “Miss—”

  “Mrs.” It seemed more formidable, being married. Besides, technically, she was.

  “You have been asked to leave.”

  “I don’t think you have the right to refuse someone service.”

  “I most certainly do,” Shell Gordon said.

  “Then call the cops,” Maddie said.

  “You think I won’t?”

  “Oh, I think you will. I’d love to know what the complaint is.”

  “We don’t serve unescorted women at the Flamingo. It’s not that kind of place.”

  Maddie laughed, and this seemed to infuriate Shell Gordon more than anything she had said.

  “The Flamingo is a club with standards,” he said, the color rising in his skin, which wasn’t much darker than Maddie’s. “It’s a place for gentlemen—and gentlewomen. Some of the best acts in America have played the Flamingo. It is my club and I make the rules. You want to come see one of our fine musical acts, you come back with a gentleman. Assuming you know any.”

  Maddie assessed the situation. She could stage her own sit-in, but to what end? “I’m happy to leave, if Mr.—what was your last name, sir?—will walk me to my car. It’s not the safest neighborhood these days.”

  “Take her out, Spike.”

  Outside on Pennsylvania Avenue, the sky still light, the weather warm and sultry, Maddie doubled down on her lie: “It’s some blocks away. Sorry.”

  He grunted. She let a block pass in silence, then said: “Did you like her?”

  “What?”

  “Cleo. Did you like her?”

  “Sure. Everybody did.”

  “Except the man who killed her, obviously.”

  Silence.

  “Would you tell me one thing about her, anything? A detail I can’t know from reading things.” She waited a beat. “And going to the morgue.”

  Another long silence, until she despaired that he would ever speak. But then: “She was like a poem.”

  “What?” She hadn’t expected any response, much less an answer that was at once tender and provocative.

  “There was a poem they made us memorize when I was in school. I never understood it. But it was about a woman, whose looks went everywhere.”

  “‘My Last Duchess.’”

  “That sounds right.”

  “‘She looked on, and her looks went everywhere.’”

  He shrugged.

  “She had a date the night she disappeared. That’s not up for dispute. You told the police that she had a date. You described him, described her, in great detail. But there was another man, right? A man you saw more often, just not that night?”

  “Look, you’ve got it all wrong.”

  “I wish you’d tell me how.”

  “You’re picking up rocks, but there’s nothing under them. The other man she was seeing—he didn’t have anything to do with this.”

  “How can you be so sure?” She figured she had two or three more blocks before she had to confess she didn’t have a car. Maybe she could pretend ownership of one on the street, fumble for keys. “Look—when I was young, much younger, I had a secret. There was a man, a married man. He could have ruined my life. He almost did but I got lucky. If her married boyfriend’s not part of her story, then that’s that. But there is a boyfriend, isn’t there? And everyone seems terrified of people knowing that. Why?”

  “Just leave her be. Please.”

  “Tell me one thing that no one knows about her. Just one.”

  He thought for a moment. “She wouldn’t want you to be making trouble for him. She cared about him.”

  “Was she in love with him?”

  “I said what I said. You think about words too much. They’re just—words.”

  Maddie could have said she cared about Milton, still. It wasn’t the same as love. It was barely in the same universe.

  “I feel like you know more than you’re telling me.”

  “Everyone does.”

  “You mean, everyone knows more than they say or everyone knows more than I do?”

  “Both. You don’t have a car, do you?”

  “Nope.” She felt giddy with deceit.

  “I’ll hail you a cab and pay the fare if you promise never to come back.”

  “I’m not going to make any promises.”

  “Figures. I’ll pay the fare anyway.”

  He found a cab quickly. When she was in the backseat, he leaned in and said: “You’re going to hurt people if you don’t stop this. Maybe even yourself.”

  Madame Claire had said much the same thing. But Madame Claire, Maddie reminded herself, was full of shit.

  The Bartender

  The Bartender

  I can spot trouble. You might say it’s
what I do for a living, my real job, with the drink-mixing just something to keep my hands busy. I’m here to make sure that if trouble walks in, it walks right back out. Mr. Gordon doesn’t have the best rep, but he’s been good to me, and I do my best to be loyal to him.

  But anyone could tell she was trouble. Even the dim bulb we have on table service figured it out. And Mr. Gordon, he doesn’t miss a trick. Anyone who tries to put one over on him is asking for trouble.

  I used to work for a guy named Maguire, who did business at the port. Nice fencing operation, nothing too big, but he overreached, decided he wanted to have this retail operation as a legit way to move money. Borrowed to buy a big warehouse in Southwest, was going to sell architectural salvage, got in way over his head. Got to the point where even a bust-out couldn’t square what he owed. But Mr. Gordon is a businessman, his eye always on the almighty dollar. They had a sit-down, talked about what could be done, Mr. Gordon as nice as any bank manager although it was understood that the penalties would be considerably higher if payments were not to his satisfaction. He took the warehouse, everything in it, got the debt down to something Maguire had a shot of making good on. Over the course of the meeting, Mr. Gordon asked if Maguire would give me to him, sort of a marker, until he was paid up. I think it amused Mr. Gordon to buy a white man, in a sense. Or maybe he was trying to say he’d kill me if my boss didn’t make his payments.

  My boss didn’t think twice, said, “Sure, you can have Tommy.” Mr. Gordon said, “Tommy’s a boy’s name, I’m going to call you Spike ’cause you look like a dog I once knew, a spaniel named Spike.” Again, I think it amused him, deciding to take me, rename me, compare me to a dog. We all pretended it was only temporary, but I knew that if I was good at my job, Mr. Gordon was going to want to keep me.

  And if I wasn’t good—well, I didn’t want to find out what happened if I ever disappointed Mr. Gordon.

  Back then Shell Gordon made most of his money on gambling and running whores, but, yeah, he’s moving into drugs. There’s just too much cash to be made to ignore it. Yet he loves the Flamingo, wants it to be a really classy joint. It’s like he’s at war with himself. He wants to be legit, but there’s too much money on the other side. And he needs the crooked money to be legit. Maybe in his head, he believes he’ll get out of the rackets one day, but it’s never going to happen. He has too many secrets. If you’re smart, you don’t talk about them, ever.

  Behind the bar at the Flamingo, I keep the drinks going, but my principal job is to manage the girls, help them find that sweet spot between hosting and serving. It’s important to Mr. Gordon that the Flamingo be respectable. He has plenty of other places to run girls, and truth be told, that’s how a lot of Flamingo girls end up, but he won’t tolerate any of that stuff at the club itself. He knows people say it’s a poor imitation of the Phoenix, but then, at this point, almost everything on Pennsylvania Avenue is a poor imitation of what it used to be. The shops, the houses, even the people are droopier, dirtier. If the girls want to date the guests, that’s okay, but it has to be on their time, in their own clothes. We’re not running a whorehouse. It’s a respectable place that books the second-best acts available—the Phoenix gets the best, no reason to pretend otherwise—a place where gentlemen and ladies should feel at home.

  Ezekiel “EZ” Taylor is Mr. Gordon’s favorite guest. He just loves that guy. A big man, shy, not much for talking. He comes for the music. Hardly ever drinks. Orders a port to keep others company, nurses it all evening, then picks up the tab. He’s polite that way. He always wants everyone around him to feel good, be comfortable. That’s what Mr. Gordon sees in him, his give-and-take with others. That and his mind for numbers, almost as good as Mr. Gordon’s.

  I asked him the onct— What’s with the dry cleaners, Mr. Taylor? That doesn’t seem like a way to get rich.

  He said, “Think about it, Spike. Who buys clothes that have to be dry cleaned?”

  “Rich people,” I said. “But—” I was embarrassed to finish my thought.

  He smiled. Again, that was his way. He wanted people to feel comfortable, always. “You were going to say, ‘Negroes don’t have money.’”

  “I mean, some do. You do, obviously, Mr. Taylor. And Mr. Gordon.”

  “Plenty more as well. More than you know and the number’s just going to keep going up, up, up. But the thing is, all you need is people who aspire. Say there’s a lady, she teaches school, saves up for a nice coat, a fur even. Where is she going to take it when it’s time to be cleaned and stored? You think she wants to drive out to a store way out north? No, she wants to take it to somewhere in her neighborhood. That’s why EZ Kleeners has—”

  “‘Five convenient locations in the Baltimore metro area. EZ does it!’” It was one of those commercials that everyone in Baltimore knew, up there with “Mommy, call Hampden” or “More Parks sausages, Mom—pleeeeeeeze.” Ray Parks was Willie Adams’s ticket to respect; Shell Gordon thinks that EZ Taylor can be his.

  “People like to keep their money in their neighborhood, when they can. And you know something else, Spike? Names are destiny. I was born Taylor. Taylor—tailor. Get it? I started at Hamburgers, in alterations. But the thing is, a man gets a suit altered only once. He has to get it cleaned over and over again. That’s all I had, one idea, but it was all I needed. Offer the thing that everybody needs, all the time. Opened the first EZ Kleeners six blocks from here right after the war. What’s your one idea, Spike? Maybe it’s in your name. Maybe you should be running a knife store or a security company.”

  I smiled because Spike isn’t my name. I’m Thomas Ludlow and I can’t figure out what my destiny is. I see myself as a knight, looking for ladies to save, but my name suggests a person who can’t rise above his station. Ludlow? Laid low.

  Yet who was I to argue with EZ Taylor? He’s rich. I’m a kid from Remington who worked for a two-bit criminal who ran up a gambling bill with Shell Gordon, then sold me. Anyway, I liked EZ. Everybody does. Nicest, gentlest guy you ever met. He doesn’t deserve to have some reporter digging in his life. He didn’t do anything, that’s for damn sure. EZ is entitled to coast, not knowing what’s going on beneath the surface of things. That’s one of the best things about being rich. You get to coast.

  I still liked EZ even when he started to fall for Cleo Sherwood. Lots of men took a shine to Cleo. I’m one of them. Not that there was ever anything between us. Cleo required one of two things to be interested in a man—good looks or a healthy wallet. I know I don’t have either. Never going to have the first and it’s not looking too good for the second.

  But that was okay. Then I saw her falling in love with Mr. Taylor, which I didn’t expect. I mean, really falling, not just taking him for the gifts he handed out. Oh, she didn’t tell me anything, but I could see the shine on her. He took her places she had never been before. Restaurants, trips out of town even. I kept thinking, This has to be for show, she can’t love an older man like that, no matter how much money he has. Soon, the shine on the two of them was so bright that Mr. Gordon couldn’t help noticing. He was not happy.

  “That’s gotta stop,” he said to me. I just nodded. I’m not Cupid. I don’t decide who loves who. But we put Cleo behind the bar with me, didn’t let her circulate in the club when Mr. Taylor was there.

  Mr. Gordon also had a little talking-to with EZ. He said yes, yes, yes, he understood, he needed to be a happily married man if he was going to help Mr. Gordon realize his dreams. Then Mr. Gordon had a sit-down with Cleo and she promised she would break off with him, gentle like. But all Mr. Gordon achieved was to drive them deeper into hiding, which made it more exciting. Now they were going behind everyone’s backs, not just Mrs. Taylor’s. Cleo’s eyes glowed like emeralds. It was a contest and she was sure she was going to win. She couldn’t have told you what the prize was if you asked her. I know. I asked her. All she wanted was to win. She talked about going to Mrs. Taylor, telling her everything.

  Then a day came when Mr. Gordon asked
me to do something terrible. I said I couldn’t. He said if I didn’t do it, he’d ask someone else, someone who wouldn’t care how it was done. Cleo had to go. Didn’t care how, didn’t care when, but it had to be me. And if I wasn’t willing to do it, then maybe I wasn’t someone he could depend on. Maybe I needed to go, too. It was crazy, what he wanted. It wasn’t even good business. It wasn’t business, period.

  Do I have to paint you a picture?

  After I put the reporter lady in the cab, I don’t want to go back to work. My heart is sore and lonely, as it’s been every night since December 31. I remember asking Cleo questions about her clothes. “Whatta you call a coat like that, open in the front? What’s the point of gloves with holes in them?” Because I knew I had to be able to give a very specific description later.

  I miss her. I miss her every day. I might miss her more than anyone else in the world. I didn’t mind that she didn’t love me.

  The other thing—well, I try not to think about the other thing.

  Oh, Tommy.

  Oh, Tommy. I was the only one who called you that, remember? Not Spike, never Spike. Tommy. Spike is a dog’s name and you were nobody’s pet. Not even mine. I underestimated you, Tommy. But so did everybody else.

  But look at me, apologizing to you. Your life might not be much, but it’s still yours, you still have it. I don’t blame you, but I’m not going to feel sorry for you.

  Tommy.

  July 1966

  July 1966

  “They’re very . . . vibrant,” Judith said, looking at the fabrics displayed on the counter at the Store.

  “I’ve got my sewing machine back from the house,” Maddie said. “I could run up a summer dress for you, no trouble. That Butterick pattern I used for this shift I’m wearing—I think it would work for you, with just a little alteration.” Judith was broader through the hips than Maddie, narrower in the bust, but not by much and the pattern was a forgiving silhouette.