Day of Wrath

by Jonathan Valin

  “I guess I’ll have to hear him play some time.”

  “You must,” she said. But her voice had shifted again—back into its cynical, blasé mode. “You really must, Mr. Stoner.”

  “Where does he play?”

  She smiled knowingly, as if I’d suddenly begun to speak her idiom. “You don’t know who Theo is, do you?”

  “Just the name.”

  “Don’t try to con me, Mr. Stoner. I’ve been conned by the best. You didn’t know his name until I mentioned it a moment ago.”

  There was no sense in lying, because I figured she was right. A woman with her tastes had been conned by the best. Or the worst. I told her the truth. “No, I didn’t.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said with a toss of her head. “Everyone lies. Theo Clinger plays in Mt. Adams. At The Pentangle Club in Hill Street. There’s no reason you shouldn’t know that.”

  “Is that where the photo was taken? At The Pentangle Club?”

  “Why do you want to know?” she said curiously, as if she were anticipating another lie.

  “I told you. Robbie’s run away and we’re worried about her.”

  “We?”

  “Her mother,” I said.

  I pulled my wallet out of my coat, slipped the photostat of my license out, and handed it to her.

  “My, my, my,” she said with just a touch of resentment in her voice. She handed the license and the photograph back to me. “Your nose is going to grow two inches, Mr. Stoner, for all the little fibs you’ve told me. I have nothing to hide. Why didn’t you tell me you were a detective right away?”

  “Some people don’t like talking to detectives,” I said.

  “Some people?” she said. “Or this particular person?”

  “I came to you to talk about Robbie. Nothing more. At the moment you’re the only lead I have. You and that photograph.”

  “Well, she’s not here. I can assure you of that. And as far as I know she’s not with Theo, either. To be uncharacteristically honest with you, I met her only twice. Once on the occasion that the picture was taken. And once at The Pentangle. Both times she seemed a sweet, intelligent young thing. Stunningly attractive, although I don’t think she realized it. She seemed preoccupied with her mother. Life was apparently too restrictive at home.” She glanced out the window again and said, “I could certainly sympathize with that. She was with a boy on both occasions. I don’t remember his name, although I’m sure that Theo would. He played the guitar and Theo seemed to think he had real talent. I remember that the young man seemed very attached to Robbie.”

  “And how did she behave toward him?” I asked.

  “Quite lovingly, I would say. But then I’m no expert on love, Mr. Stoner, as you may have heard. I had the feeling that she was more mature than he was, despite their difference in age. She seemed quite taken with the people she met at The Pentangle. The boy seemed a little jealous of that. But then I was a little jealous of him. If I were you I’d be looking for that boy. Robbie’s probably with him.”

  “I hope not,” I said. “The boy’s name is Bobby Caldwell and he was murdered yesterday.”

  “Good God!” the woman said and put her hand to her mouth. “I see now why you came to me. You must be very worried about Robbie.”

  “Worried enough,” I said with a sigh. “You’re sure that she didn’t run to Theo?”

  “Positive,” she said. “I was with him yesterday. Besides, he has a family of his own to look after.” She made a strange face, but I didn’t know what to make of it.

  “Irene?” someone called from behind us.

  I jerked around in my chair and the woman jumped to her feet with a furious look. The voice came from the entryway. A naked boy was standing on the stairs leading down to the living room. He was eyeing us with a sort of vain insouciance—one hand cocked on his hip and the other resting on the banister. He was about eighteen or nineteen, with hair the color of gun metal and a thin, cold, copper-colored face as pretty as a brand new penny. He was tanned from head to foot and built like a weight lifter.

  “I told you to stay away,” the woman said through her teeth.

  “You tell me a lot of things,” the boy said and ambled into the room. He sat down on one of the chairs and stared at us with a pleased, naughty look—like a kid who’s just gotten away with murder. “Who’s the dude?” he said, nodding toward me.

  Irene Croft sat back down and shook her head woefully. There was anger on her face. But it was mixed with a number of other feelings. A touch of pride, I thought, as if in spite of it all she couldn’t help admiring the kid’s bravado. And a bit of laughter at my expense and at the expense of all the other straight arrows in the city. And something else. Something that brought her dead eyes to life for the first time since I’d met her. Something that filled them with fire and cunning. Something, I thought, very much like lust.

  “Rudy, meet Mr. Stoner.” She turned to me and said, “This is Rudy—my pet.”

  I nodded to the boy and he grinned foolishly.

  Irene Croft got out of her chair and walked over to where the boy was sitting, and knelt down in front of him. “I think you better leave now, Mr. Stoner,” she said, staring at the boy’s body. “Unless you want to join us.”

  “I’ll take a rain check.”

  “Then I hope you won’t mind if I don’t show you out.”

  “I don’t mind.”

  I got up and walked to the door. I looked back once from the landing. Rudy had his legs draped over the arms of the chair and Irene Croft’s head was buried between them.

  14

  MAYBE IT was the aftershock of having met a cultivated monster like Irene Croft, but I felt buoyant and alert as I walked back to the car. I was on to something. For the first time in a couple of days. Whether that something would lead me to Robbie Segal, I didn’t know. Irene Croft had assured me that it wouldn’t. But then Irene Croft was a fundamentally dishonest woman. If she had told me the truth about Robbie, I figured she’d done it for a reason that had nothing to do with concern for the girl’s safety. She’d done it to help herself, because, at bottom, that was the only reason she really understood. I got in the car and drove up to Hill Street. A few stragglers were staggering along the sidewalks—drunk and melancholy, weaving lonely patterns through the April night. Most of the buildings were closed up—the houses, the shops, the groceries. But here and there, a bar door stood open and through it came a sudden roar of life—guitars, drum sets, voices, all mixed together with the clanging of pinball machines and the tinkling of glass. A hundred feet farther on, the street would go quiet again, except for the muttering drunks and the occasional sightseers, still wandering arm in arm up the steep, windy sidewalks.

  I found The Pentangle Club on Hill, where it intersected St. Gregory. It was located on the first floor of a made-over, three-story Victorian, with twin gables and a long front porch. A sign hanging from the porch roof read Pentangle. There was a placard set up beneath it, with the names of the artists who were performing there that night. Theo Clinger wasn’t among them. I decided to go inside anyway—just to nose around.

  I parked the Pinto on St. Gregory and walked up to the corner of Hill. From the outside, The Pentangle Club seemed very different than the raucous bars farther up the street. For one thing, there was no roar coming out the open door. Just the sweet, recorded sound of a woman’s voice—Billie Holiday, I thought—singing wistfully of lost love. The wind blew her voice out to me, swallowed it up in a sudden gust, then brought it floating back again, as if it weren’t a record I was hearing but a real woman, singing softly through a window, unaware she was being listened to.

  Oh why, oh why is love so strange?

  Why you want me? Why you come back again?

  You say you leave me, but you never let go.

  You say you love me, but you hurt me so.

  The woman’s voice—gravelly, sweet, resigned—was shrewd and laconic. She sang the lyrics as if she were thinking them out
as she went along, as if she were discovering for the last time that love was strange.

  I listened to her until the song was over, then stepped onto the porch. It didn’t look at all like the porch in the photograph. In fact, this one was more of a veranda—a broad, plank deck with a pitched roof overhead. I walked across it into The Pentangle.

  A teenage girl was sitting on a rocking chair just inside the door. She was dressed like one of the Pointer Sisters, in a tight, print, hand-me-down dress, black high-heeled shoes, and silk stockings with a dark seam down the back of each leg. She had a black straw hat cocked on her head with a long ostrich feather stuck in the band. She smiled at me and I smiled back.

  “Who was that singing just now?” I asked her.

  “That was Billie Holiday,” she said. “Did you like her?”

  “I have for years,” I said.

  “Lady Day,” she said blissfully.

  She was a pretty, blonde kid with very pale lashes and brows and very pale skin. Her emerald eyes and pink lips were the only spots of color in her face. I figured she was no more than eighteen or nineteen. But I could have been wrong. From the way she’d outfitted herself, she seemed to have a well-developed sense of style; and that wasn’t something she could have picked up overnight.

  “I’d show you to a table,” she said. “But we’re getting ready to close.”

  “Do I have time for a beer?”

  “Sure. Tell Joey it’s on the house.”

  “Why so generous?” I said.

  “I don’t know,” she said with a giddy laugh. “Because you like Billie Holiday.”

  “Thanks,” I said to her.

  The bar was on the far side of the room. Tables and chairs were set up between it and a small, spotlit stage near the door. The stage was empty, but a few kids were still sitting there staring at it with devotion, as if it might suddenly come to life and make music again. I wondered who’d been playing there that night.

  I asked the bartender and he said, “Jim Tuttle. Jazz sax. He’s great, man. Great.”

  The jukebox started to play—Charlie Parker. I leaned up against the bar rail and looked out across the room.

  “We had coffee houses in my day,” I said to the bartender—a young, red-headed giant with razor-burned cheeks, a sparse red moustache, and pale blue eyes.

  “Great, man,” he said.

  I laughed and turned back to him. “How about giving me a Scotch? Johnny Walker Red Label. Straight up.”

  He turned to the liquor shelf and picked up a quart bottle with a chrome spout. “Can’t see how you drink this stuff,” he said flipping the Scotch into a shot glass. “Tastes like medicine to me.”

  “Give me my medicine,” I said.

  He smiled and set the glass in front of me, as daintily as if he were building a model ship. He pulled a bar rag from a metal loop and began to polish glasses.

  “Coffee house, huh?” he said as he worked.

  “Well, that’s what we called them. But all I remember drinking is tea. We were just hippies imitating the beatniks.”

  “Everybody’s got to believe in something,” he said. “You had Woodstock and we got Iggy Pop.”

  “Here’s to Iggy Pop,” I said. “And all that he stands for.”

  I downed the Scotch and put the glass on the bar. “One more.”

  He poured me another Scotch. I picked up the glass. “Who are we drinking to this time?”

  “To peace and love,” he said with a grin.

  “To peace and love.” I swallowed half of it and began to feel good. “Who’s the girl by the door?” I asked him.

  “Her name’s Grace.”

  “She work here?”

  “On weekends,” the boy said. “Mostly she hangs out. She’s a jazz freak. Goes to CCM. Or used to. She actually has a pretty nice voice. She sings here when The Count plays.”

  “Who’s The Count?”

  He looked at me with surprise. “You don’t know who The Count is, man? The Count is God.”

  “That’s a hard act to book,” I said.

  He laughed. “You don’t know the half of it.”

  “When’s The Count playing again?”

  “Theo?” he said. “Next Monday, I think.”

  I took another sip of the whiskey and said, “Theo? I thought you called him The Count.”

  “Oh, that’s just bullshit. He calls himself the Lost Prince, too. His real name is Theo Clinger. And he’s a helluva musician. A little weird, but first class. Maybe the best in the city.”

  “What’s he play?”

  “He plays the guitar,” the bartender said in a hip voice. “But you better get here early if you’re thinking about coming to hear him.”

  “He’s got a big following?” I said.

  The boy said, “Following is the word. Theo’s practically got a family of worshippers.” He said it a little sourly, as if he preferred to worship somewhere else.

  “Is she part of his family?” I nodded toward Grace.

  “A charter member. She lives with him, but then a lot of the chicks do.”

  I gave him a surprised look, although I wasn’t very surprised.

  “Oh, yeah,” he said coolly. “The Count loves the little girls. And the little boys, too, from what I hear. He’s got a devoted following. And they do what he says.”

  His voice had soured again. It made me wonder if he’d lost a little girl of his own to The Count’s troupe. It also made me wonder about Robbie Segal. I took the photograph out of my pocket and tossed it on the bar.

  The boy’s face darkened and something in his eyes—some spark of amusement that had kept our conversation loose and amiable—blew right out. “You’re a cop, aren’t you,” he said. “Yeah, you’re a cop. I guess I should have known that.” He slapped the wet towel against the bar, as if he were flogging himself for his stupidity.

  “I used to be a cop,” I said. “I used to be a hippie, too.”

  “Just exactly what are you now, mister?” he said, staring at me coldly.

  “Now, I’m a private detective, looking for the girl in this picture. She’s a runaway and her mother wants her back.”

  He swiveled the picture around with one finger and eyed it casually. “I don’t want any trouble with the cops,” he said. “We’re on probation with the State Board right now.”

  “There won’t be any trouble. I just want to find the girl.”

  He nodded, but he didn’t look as if he believed me. “I don’t think I’ve seen her before.”

  “Think again, Joey.”

  He looked up at me quickly. “How did you know my name?”

  “Grace told me.”

  “Well, why don’t you take your photograph and your Scotch and go talk to Grace? I never saw this girl before in my life.” He turned to the shelves of liquor bottles and began dusting off their caps. Somewhere along the line he’d been pushed too hard by someone in blue serge, and he wasn’t going to be pushed again. It irked me a little that he’d automatically lumped me together with whoever that was. To be honest, it irked me that he lumped all cops together in the same bin.

  I downed the rest of the Scotch and laid a ten-dollar bill on the bar. “Keep it,” I said to him.

  “You keep it,” he said under his breath. “And keep the fuck out of my bar. I don’t like cops.”

  “I don’t like bartenders,” I said.

  He whirled around and planted his hands on the mahogany rail. “You want to make something out of it?”

  “Just a point,” I said. “Cop or bartender—it’s only a job.”

  “Well, I don’t like your job,” he said between his teeth.

  I picked up the photograph and the money, stuck them in my coat pocket, and walked over to the front door. Grace had apparently been watching us from where she was sitting.

  “What happened?” she said as I came up to her.

  “Joey decided that he didn’t like my job,” I said with disgust. I was angry, and I knew that I shouldn’t
have been. Not with a twenty-three-year-old kid with a red moustache and a chip on his shoulder. Only it had been a long day; and I was beginning to feel the weariness inside me. It and the liquor and the lost girl. The booze had killed off the remainder of that buoyancy I’d been feeling, and now I just wanted to go home.

  “What job is that?” she said curiously.

  “I’m a private detective,” I said. “Want to make something out of it?”

  She grinned and I found myself smiling back at her.

  “A private detective? I don’t think I’ve ever met one of those before.”

  “Well, now you have.”

  As I started through the door, she picked up a black straw purse and followed me out.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” I asked her.

  “With you.”

  “Why in the world would you want to do that?”

  She thought it over as we stepped onto the porch. “Because you’re the first private detective I’ve ever met who liked Billie Holiday.”

  15

  THE WIND whipped Grace’s dress about her legs as we walked up St. Gregory to where I’d parked the Pinto. Out on the river a barge horn sounded one long, melancholy blast. The girl hooted back at it in a graceful, jazzy soprano, pirouetted on her high heels, and flapped her long arms like a water bird taking flight. She came back to earth with a carefree laugh, planting a hand on her hat and looping the other through my arm.

  When we reached the car, I took a critical look at her. She stared back at me with a loose, gum-cracking grin—one leg shifted forward and bent at the knee, one hand planted on her bony hip. In that long-sleeved, high-necked print dress, she looked a little like a tough, brassy broad from a forties melodrama. Of course that was the way she’d wanted to look. But even though she’d dressed the part to a tee, her face wasn’t right. It should have been fleshier, less chalky and delicate. She should have had more meat on her bones, too. She looked tough, all right, and cocksure, but she just didn’t look full grown. If she’d been five years older, she would have been tacky and pathetic. As it was, she baffled me. I didn’t know why she’d picked me up. Or what in the world I was going to do with her later that night. But, somewhere in the back of my mind, I was thinking that she belonged to Theo Clinger’s circle and that that was reason enough to play along.