The Kind One

by Tom Epperson

  “I had a little bird

  And its name was Enza.

  I opened the window

  And influenza!”

  “What’s that?”

  “Something us kids used to say in Nebraska City. During the flu epidemic.”

  “You know Dulwich? My neighbor? His best friend died of the flu. On Christmas.”

  “You really like Dulwich, don’t you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Is he married?”

  “No.”

  “Does he have a girlfriend?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Is he a fairy?”

  “No. Of course not.”

  “Anyway. I’m glad you have a friend. You should have lots of friends.”

  So Darla and I danced, us and the zombies, beneath the eyes of the painted peacocks. If we could have danced forever like that, it would have been fine by me. I felt the delicate knobs of her backbone under my fingertips. I smelt her Mitsouko. I could feel the warmth of her body through the sheer chiffon of her dress and on my neck the warmth of her breath and then the song was over.

  We went back to the booth. Bud said: “You looked pretty good out there, kid. You been taking lessons from Arthur Murphy?”

  I laughed and shook my head.

  Darla took the olive out of her latest martini and put it in her mouth and chewed on it slowly and looked at me.

  Nello looked morose. “You know what I seen in the mirror today? Three gray hairs. I can’t believe my hair’s turning fucking gray already.”

  “You ever try Grey Gone?” said Darla.

  “Naw, what’s that?”

  “A hair dye. Bud uses it. It works great.”

  Everybody looked at Bud’s hair.

  “You dye your hair?” said Moe.

  Bud looked steamed. “It’s none of your fucking business. And you talk too much, baby,” he said to Darla.

  “First you don’t want me to sing, now you don’t want me to even fucking talk.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Why can’t I start singing again, Bud? When I was singing, every night this place was packed.”

  “And you think that was all ’cause of you?”

  “I think I had something to do with it, yeah.”

  Armilda Lee Keddy walked up in a tiny skirt with a tray of cigarettes.

  “How are y’all doing tonight? Anybody need some cigarettes?”

  “Gimme a pack of Spuds,” said Moe, addressing her legs. He gave her a five for the smokes but when she started to make change he said: “Keep it.”

  “Oh, thank you, Mr. Davis.”

  “Moe.”

  “Moe. You know, you’re the first Moe I ever met.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m from Oklahoma, and I guess Moe ain’t a Oklahoma kind of a name.”

  “You like working here?” asked Darla.

  Armilda Lee smiled at Bud. “You bet I do! It’s the best job I’ve ever had.”

  “That’s good. I just hope things work out better for you than the last girl that worked here.”

  Armilda Lee’s smile faltered a little. “What do you mean?”

  “Her name was Betty. She’s dead now. Somebody killed her.”

  “Oh. That’s terrible.”

  “Get lost,” said Bud to Armilda Lee.

  Armilda Lee sashayed away, looking happy to escape.

  Bud glowered at Darla. “What was that all about?”

  “What was what all about?”

  “You seemed to be inferring something. About Betty.”

  Darla lit up a Lucky Strike.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I just know I’m sick of you. Sick of this place. Sick of these fucking peacocks.”

  “Get the hell outa here then.” He turned to me. “Danny, take this whiney bitch home.”

  “I’ll go home when I’m good and ready.”

  The waiter put down a fresh basket of bread in front of Moe.

  “Don’t make a scene,” said Bud.

  “Why don’t you share some of that fucking bread, you greedy pig?” said Goodlooking Tommy.

  “Fuck you,” said Moe, and: “Fuck yourself,” said Darla, as Goodlooking Tommy suddenly leaned across the table, reaching for the bread.

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw a gleam of metal, then there came a deafening bang and a flash of light.

  The bullet went in one side of Goodlooking Tommy’s head and out the other, blowing blood and brains all over Bud and Darla.

  Time seemed to slow down. I saw right in front of me a big revolver with a long barrel. It was pointed at Bud. It felt like I had all the time in the world to reach out and slap down the barrel just as the gun fired again. The bullet blew a hole in the table.

  I looked up, and saw a little balding big-nosed guy standing over me; he was wearing a red bowtie and had a bandage over his left eye. He was looking at Bud and screaming: “She was the only thing I ever loved!”

  I knew right off it was Vera Vermillion’s husband. I lunged at him and wrapped both arms around him and we went to the floor as the gun fired again and the bullet lodged in the ceiling. And then I saw Nello twisting the gun out of Mel Goldberg’s hand, and he screamed again: “SHE WAS THE ONLY THING I EVER LOVED!” But he didn’t quite finish the last word because Nello shoved the barrel into his wide-open mouth and all the way down to the back of his throat and pulled the trigger. I could feel his body jump like he’d just got a jolt of electricity, then he was still.

  The orchestra had stopped playing and I could hear people running and shouting. I pushed myself up off Mel Goldberg and came to my knees. His unbandaged eye was open and staring up at the ceiling at the peacocks painted there, as a pool of blood, a darker red than his bowtie, began rapidly growing behind his head.

  I looked back at the booth. Goodlooking Tommy was slumped across the table, one hand still extended toward the bread. Moe Davis’s mouth was ajar and filled up with half-chewed bread; he was gazing down at Goodlooking Tommy, but now he looked over at me and slowly started to chew again. Bud was using one Kleenex after another to wipe the splatters of blood and brain off his face and clothes; he was moving really fast, as if the blood would start burning holes in him if he didn’t immediately get it off.

  But most of the blood seemed to have landed on Darla. The lustre of her blonde hair was dimmed with blood, and the lit cigarette she was holding in her right hand had actually been extinguished by the blood.

  She was sitting there still as a statue. Nothing moving at all except her wildly blinking eyes.

  Chapter 3

  THE SUNSET STRIP is on county land between Hollywood and Beverly Hills and thus under the jurisdiction of the Sheriff’s Department. Two homicide dicks from the Fairfax station drove up to investigate the killings.

  They wore loud sports jackets and powerful cologne; I’d seen them before at the Peacock bar. They barely gave the bodies a glance, told everybody still left in the club to stick around, then disappeared into Stan Tinney’s office. Bud and Darla were already in there.

  A police photographer, a daffy-looking guy in a derby hat and a green tweed suit, showed up and took some pictures of the bodies. I didn’t see him for a while and thought he had left, but then flashes started coming out of the bar, and I saw he was in there with Armilda Lee. She was sitting on a barstool with her pretty legs crossed, and making big dimples for the camera.

  After about twenty minutes, the homicide dicks returned. They asked me a few polite questions, and I told them what happened. They had notebooks, but didn’t write anything down. Then they said I could go.

  I walked out of the club fast. I was in the parking lot and nearly to my car when I heard: “Hey! Danny!”

  It was Bud.

  He’d changed his clothes, and was all spic-and-span again. He walked up, then solemnly held his hand out. I knew a handshake was a big deal for him.

  “Thanks, kid. I owe you.”

  “What for?”
r />   “You kidding me? You saved my life.”

  I hadn’t really thought of it that way until now. What had happened had just been a reflex. But it was true: I’d helped Bud live and Goldberg die.

  “How’s Darla?” I said.

  “Ah, she’ll be all right. She’s so soused she probably won’t remember a goddamn thing in the morning,” and then he smiled a little and gave a puzzled shake of his head. “That Goldberg guy, huh? Getting so worked up about some two-bit stripper.”

  An ambulance from the coroner’s department drove up. Two guys took two stretchers out of the back.

  “You got some blood on your clothes,” said Bud. “Send me the cleaning bill, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Get a good night’s sleep. We’ll talk tomorrow.”

  I got in my car, and as I pulled away he yelled: “I got big plans for you!”

  I looked in my rearview mirror. Saw him take his handkerchief out, and try to wipe away my handshake.

  Instead of turning left, toward Hollywood and home, I turned right, toward the ocean.

  It was about a twelve or fifteen mile drive. I highballed down Sunset with all the windows open and the cool night air rushing in and cleaning me like water.

  You could tell right where the Strip stopped and Beverly Hills began because all the neon nightlife ended and suddenly great mansions were vaguely visible back in the darkness beyond towering palm trees and high stone walls. Past Beverly Hills were more tony communities, Bel Air and then Brentwood and then Sunset got very hilly and twisty for several miles and trees flashed past in the headlights as I pushed the Packard hard on the curves and the tires squealed and then the road straightened out and I was in Pacific Palisades and I smelled the ocean and then I saw it.

  I turned south on the Coast Highway, drove a bit, and then pulled over. I got out, and walked toward the water.

  I saw four Mexicans sitting around a fire. They were passing around a bottle of wine. They looked pretty down and out. One of them had a guitar, and was strumming it and softly singing, and you didn’t have to understand Spanish to know he was singing one of the saddest songs in the world. He fell silent when I appeared, and all four watched me, a guy in a suit with blood on it limping across the sand, but as soon as I passed out of the flickering circle of firelight I could hear the singer start up again.

  I walked down to where the waves had polished the beach and made it slick and shiny. I was glad to get out of my clothes. I waded naked out into the water. It was colder than I expected. I plunged headlong into a wave and came up gasping, but it felt good.

  The sky was moonless but stupendously starry. There was one particularly bright star, or maybe it was a planet, hanging just above the rim of the ocean. I swam toward it. It looked pure, sad, and beautiful. It looked like the song had sounded.

  After a while I realized that I wasn’t much of a swimmer, and that I was fortunate the ocean was pretty calm tonight, and that if I didn’t stop swimming toward the star soon I’d never make it back to the beach.

  When I got back on terra firma, I couldn’t find my clothes. I was thinking maybe I’d been dragged by the current and I’d returned to a different part of the beach, when I saw a dark, oval shape on the sand that I recognized as my hat.

  I brushed the sand off, put it on my head, and looked around. The fire was still burning, but the Mexicans had vamoosed.

  Not only had they gotten my clothes and shoes but also my wallet and my Smith & Wesson revolver along with its holster. I wondered why they had left the hat. Decided it was probably a reflection of a sly sense of humor.

  I looked down Santa Monica ways and could see the lights of the pier and the circling jewel-bright Ferris wheel and I thought about Bombina; then I trudged across the sand back to my car.

  Luckily I’d left the keys in it. I drove south on the Coast Highway, then took Santa Monica Boulevard back into Hollywood.

  It was interesting driving naked. It was like the dreams I had sometimes of being naked in a public place, except the dreams were always filled with anxiety and shame but tonight it felt just fine. In a way it was more like another type of dream I had, my dreams of flying. I felt exempt from the rules of life as I glided steadily east in my gleaming yellow car.

  I was stopped at a red light when a motorcycle cop pulled up beside me. He looked me over, but I guess as far as he could tell I was just a somewhat eccentric fellow wearing a fancy fedora but no shirt, and when the light changed he tipped the bill of his cap to me and roared away.

  I turned down La Vista Lane and parked in front of the bungalow court. The street was deserted. No one saw me get out of the car and pad barefooted up the seven steps, but as I was walking between the rows of bungalows I heard someone discreetly clear his throat.

  It was Dulwich. He was sitting outside his door on the stoop, smoking his pipe.

  “Hello, Dulwich,” I said.

  “Hello, Danny. Nice night, isn’t it?”

  I nodded. I didn’t stop to chat. Dulwich, for his part, was careful not to let his face register the least bit of surprise as he watched me and my hat pass by.

  Chapter 4

  I SAW THE postman walk by outside, with Sophie skipping along beside him. She was shouting: “I’m a hit, Abner, I’m a hit!”

  “Aw, lemme alone, you crazy kid,” said the postman. “And my name ain’t Abner!”

  I was sitting on my tattered davenport in an undershirt with the Times. Matilda, the colored woman that worked for Mrs. Dean, was in the kitchen scrubbing the sink. I’d hired her to come in once a week to clean house and do my laundry.

  We’d had several days of very hot weather and I’d gone out and bought a box fan, which was cooling me off but wreaking havoc with reading the paper.

  The story I was reading was headlined: “MURDER AND SUICIDE ON SUNSET STRIP,” with two smaller headlines: “PEACOCK CLUB SCENE OF HORROR,” and “SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT BELIEVES LOVE TRIANGLE TO BLAME.” It was written by John Hobbs.

  “A crazed gunman entered a popular nightspot on the Sunset Strip Thursday night, shot to death one of the customers, then, as hundreds of people looked on in horror, turned the gun on himself. The victim was Thomas McPartland, a 32-year-old life insurance salesman, who was having dinner at the Peacock Club with several friends. Witnesses say the club was packed with patrons when, a little after eight, Mel Goldberg entered the premises, walked up to McPartland’s table, screamed ‘She was the only one I ever loved!’ and shot McPartland through the head with a revolver, killing him instantly. Goldberg then put the gun into his mouth and took his own life.

  “Goldberg, 53, was reportedly despondent over the recent death of his wife, Susie, who worked as a strip dancer under the name Vera Vermillion. Goldberg was a self-styled ‘talent agent,’ though the voluptuous and much younger Vera Vermillion was thought to be his only client. Vera, or Susie, had been ill for many years with a heart damaged by a childhood case of rheumatic fever, and passed away last week.

  “‘It looks like the oldest story in the world,’ said homicide detective Roy Foster of the Sheriff’s Department sadly. ‘Mr. McPartland evidently met Vera recently when she tried to buy a life insurance policy from him because she was concerned about her health. It appears that she and the handsome young McPartland then struck up a relationship of an amorous nature. Goldberg found out about it. He went crazy because of jealousy and grief, and the unfortunate young McPartland had to pay the piper.’”

  It was the bee’s fault. If the bee hadn’t flown in the car window and stung Mel Goldberg in the eye, he would have gone up to Lake Arrowhead with Vera, and been able to look after her, and she’d probably still be alive. Him, too. And Goodlooking Tommy. The bee killed all three of them.

  Somebody knocked. I looked up from the newspaper flapping in the fan and saw a guy on the other side of the screen door.

  “Sorry to bother you, mister, but you think you can spare something to eat?”

  He was holding his hat in a
humble way by the brim with both hands, and looked tired and scruffy.

  “Matilda?” I called, and she stuck her head out of the kitchen.

  “Yes suh?”

  “Would you make this fella something to eat, please?”

  “Yes suh.”

  “Thank you kindly,” said the hobo.

  He put his hat back on and moved away from the door as Matilda got his food. In a minute or two I heard a sharp female voice: “What are you doing there? You get a move-on or I’m going to call the police!”

  Now I saw through the window Mrs. Dean’s pinched features and her eyeglasses glinting savagely in the sun. The hobo was attempting to stammer out a reply when Matilda came out of the kitchen holding a plate with a sandwich and an apple on it and a glass of milk. “Tell Mrs. Dean it’s all right,” I said.

  Matilda went to the door and said: “Miz Dean, it’s all right. Mr. Landon he tell me to fix him some food.”

  “Well, Matilda, I’m sure Mr. Landon’s not aware that when you start feeding one tramp you only encourage others to come around. They have a way to secretly mark houses to let each other know which ones are hospitable to them and which aren’t,” and now she addressed the hobo. “And I can assure you the Orange Blossom Bungalow Court is not hospitable.”

  “Okay, okay, lady, keep your shirt on, I’m going,” said the hobo, and he started to walk away, but Matilda had pushed through the screen door and it banged shut behind her and she said: “You ain’t going no place!”

  The hobo and Mrs. Dean both stared at Matilda. She was maybe forty or forty-five, with a pretty but worn-out face, bloodshot brown eyes, and a big behind. She always wore a faded dress and falling-apart men’s shoes and a white apron and a green scarf over her hair. I’d seldom ever seen her open her mouth except to mumble some version of yes or no and so I could hardly believe it now when I heard her say: “My grandma that raised me she told me never to turn away nobody that come to your door a-wanting food ’cause it might be a angel in disguise or even Jesus hisself, and even if it ain’t, even if it’s just a old hobo, you still gotta feed ’im ’cause that’s what the Good Book tell us to do. And Miz Dean, you can fire me if you want to but I’m still giving him this here sandwich and this glass of milk.”