Day of Wrath

by Jonathan Valin

  “What kept him here?”

  “He didn’t have the guts to leave, for one thing. Tremendous talent, no ambition. It’s an old story. And for another, why be a little fish in a big pond when you can have the little pond all to yourself. Theo’s owned the avant-garde jazz scene in this city for the last decade. He is new wave in Cincinnati. The king. He’s got devout followers all over the Midwest.”

  “I’ve heard about them,” I said. “He likes them kind of young, doesn’t he?”

  Dino grinned. “Sure, he has his groupies. Every musician has. But he treats them a helluva lot better than most musicians do.” Dino unlocked his hands from behind his head and leaned toward me with the air of a car salesman closing a deal. “I don’t know why you’re asking me about him. I don’t think I want to know. But understand, Harry, I like this man. To me, Theo Clinger is the sixties incarnate. Free love, communal living, dope, spiritual raps, a willingness to experiment. He’s got it all. He treats his groupies like a family. They share in everything—work and play. And they live the kind of life that most of us only dreamed about when we were twenty. Hey, I’m not saying it’s for everyone. But it’s one way to go.”

  “Opting out?” I said.

  Dino shook his head. “Theo’s no dropout. He lives the sixties dream, all right. But the sixties had its pragmatic side, too. Let me tell you a story: the other day I was shopping lower Clifton and I came across a new shop on Ludlow—a fancy boutique specializing in imported jewelry. Real nice setup. I walked in and looked at the guy behind the counter and did a double take. He’s got long hair, wears wire rims, muttonchops. Like John Sebastian at Woodstock, you know? I said to him, ‘Didn’t you used to make beaded belts up in Clifton in the days of peace and love?’ And he just smiled. It was the same guy, Harry.

  “Old hippies aren’t drop-outs, they’re drop-ins. Theo’s no different. He plays at Eden. But he sells tickets at the gate. His talent was great at one time. He was a real innovator, in the Cage mold. But the days of Cage are dead and gone. And Theo’s no youngster any more. He hasn’t got what he once had, and he knows it. In fact, he planned for it, like a Yankee farmer. Back in his salad days, he bought up properties all over Mt. Adams and Clifton. Bookstores, small shops, clubs. Over the years, he’s rehabbed most of them. He used to be one of the bigger property owners in the city. They weren’t prime lots, but they turned a profit. Or at least they did up until a few years ago. I heard he’s been having some problems lately. I guess inflation and tight money hit him as hard as it hit everyone else. I know for a fact that he had to sell his bookstore and restaurant. But he’ll fix things up. He’s a good businessman. To be honest, that’s one of the reasons he takes such good care of his family—it’s a cheap source of labor.”

  “You’re telling me he’s an entrepreneur?” I said with a laugh.

  “Damn right. Theo’ll do just about anything for a buck. Hell, when you have an empire to protect, you’ve got to be shrewd. And Theo likes being emperor.”

  “Does he have a central office?” I said. “One place that he lives in or works out of?”

  “He used to have a place in Mt. Adams,” Dino said. “But I hear he’s moved to the country. To Kentucky, I think. Don’t ask me where.”

  “You do like him, don’t you, Dino?”

  He leaned back in the chair and stared dreamily at the wall behind me. “Sure, I like him. Who wouldn’t like the life he leads? He makes music and he lives in paradise. Who wouldn’t like that?”

  Free love, music, the communion of like-minded souls. It not only sounded like the sixties, it sounded like an adolescent’s dream of freedom. It hurt me a little to think that, all along, the two might have been one. But it made me that much surer that Clinger’s family was where Robbie Segal had been headed from the start. A world that seemed to be the moral and emotional opposite of Eastlawn Drive. And yet, if what Dino said were true, the two worlds weren’t as far apart as they appeared to be. Even paradise had to be paid for in cash. And trailing behind money-making, like its very own shadow, were all the doubts and uncertainties, all the fears and debts that made Eastlawn Drive such a nervous, conformable street. Every lifestyle has its price tag, and the cost is always figured in the same compromises. If the responsibilities of kingship had turned Clinger into a capitalist, he’d bought some capitalist values, too. Otherwise, there would be no way for him to turn a profit. The more of those values Clinger had bought, the closer to Eastlawn Drive paradise must have come. And hard times had probably brought them even closer together. I wondered whether it would break Robbie’s spirit to discover that she wasn’t a high-flying angel, she was cheap labor. I also wondered why an entrepreneur like Clinger would need a patroness like Irene Croft behind him. Perhaps it flattered his vanity to think that a very rich, very influential lady thought he was God. It was a reasonable assumption. Only Dino had emphasized that Clinger was a shrewd businessman, too. And Irene Croft was apparently no philanthropist. If he’d taken up with a woman who was going to end up costing him something, I figured he’d done it for a good reason. Maybe some trouble in paradise that had to be paid for in hard cash. The possibility made talking to Irene Croft seem an even better idea than it had before.

  While I was thinking it over, Dino got up and walked to the door. “Gotta go, Harry,” he said cheerfully.

  “One last question?” I said.

  He leaned against the door. “All right.”

  “Have you heard of a group called The Furies?”

  He pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. “Yeah, I think I might have heard of them,” he said. “Local rock group? Good lead guitarist?”

  “That’s the one,” I said. “Do you know where I could find them?”

  “They play Mt. Adams a lot, I think. Try Corky’s Bar on Hill Street.” He ducked out the door, then stuck his head back into the room. “But don’t try the food,” he said.

  18

  IT WAS four-thirty by the time I got to the Highland House on Celestial Street. The late afternoon sun had already dropped down in the western sky, casting a golden wash of light on the Ohio and burnishing the great, forested ridges of the Kentucky shore. Everything on top of Mt. Adams was bathed in a warm, yellow glow. Sunlight hung in the frosted porcelain globes of the street lamps, burned like candles in each window of the tall, reddish high-rises, and winked from every porch railing and fixture. It was even netted in the green, crooked mulberries and maple trees, turning their trunks to pillars of gold. The day seemed to have caught fire. I stood by the Pinto in the Celestial lot, watching it burn.

  And for a moment, I felt the time of year as strongly as I had when I was a kid—when it had filled me with a leering, mysterious joy. I had to make myself shake the feeling off before I crossed the deserted street to the red-canopied entryway of the apartment house. And being forced to slough it off made me aware of the absurdity of my profession—of a job that was forever out of season, buried always, like some rusted spade, beneath deep, December snow.

  By the time I’d gotten to the lobby—past the doorman with his smiling, rubber face and into the ornate, candlelit stillness of the restaurant anteroom, where the only sounds were the barks of chairs being set up for the evening and the plate noises of table-setting being arranged—I’d sobered up. It may not have been a season for detectives, but it wasn’t the hour for childishness, either. I forced myself back into the job, like a man donning a uniform. Walked over to the house phone and dialed 2201.

  I let it ring several times, rehearsing in my mind what I would say if she answered. What I wanted from Irene Croft was a detailed description of how Clinger and his family lived. What I wanted was a map that would lead me straight to Robbie Segal. Because Dino Taylor had only given me the rough outline of Clinger’s setup, and even that had been colored by his affectionate regard for the Lost Prince and his brave new world. Under different circumstances, I would have found something to admire there, too, since I was as much a child of th
e sixties as Dino or Clinger was. I wanted to believe that Clinger’s Eden was, indeed, a realm of peace and love. I wanted to believe that Robbie Segal was sitting there at that moment, having a good time. Only I couldn’t con myself into thinking that an entrepreneur like Theo Clinger was a saintly Mr. Natural. Or that kinky Irene Croft fit into anybody’s version of Eden.

  The phone kept buzzing, and I kept spinning out scenarios. On the tenth ring, somebody picked up the line.

  “Who is it?” Irene Croft said in her mellow, familiar voice.

  “It’s Harry Stoner, Ms. Croft. I want to talk to you for a minute.”

  “What about?” she said.

  “About Theo Clinger and Robbie Segal.”

  “But I already told you what I knew about them. Or do you want to hear it, again? Theo knows nothing about the girl. Got that? He is a good and kind man—a lot better than the world realizes.” She said the last part with a curious bitterness.

  I had the feeling that she was carrying on an argument that she’d been having with someone else. There was a ripe note of fury in her voice. “That may be,” I said. “But I want to know where to find him.”

  “I told you—The Pentangle Club.”

  “I mean the place where he lives, Irene. With that family of his.”

  She didn’t say anything for a moment. “I already told you that Robbie wasn’t there,” she said coolly. “Or do you think I was lying?”

  “I think I’d like to see for myself.”

  “Well, I don’t think I’m going to tell you, Mr. Stoner. I don’t think I care to see Theo tormented by you.”

  “Don’t make me go to the police and the newspapers, Irene,” I said.

  She laughed bitterly, as if she was tickled to discover that I was just as rotten as the rest of the world—all those philistines who didn’t have the taste to appreciate Theo’s genius. “You’d do that?”

  “I wouldn’t like to. But I want to talk to Clinger.”

  “You’re playing with fire, Stoner,” she said with that same bitter amusement. “And you’re going to discover that I’m a hard lady to blackmail.”

  I thought of what Marcie had told me and said, “That’s probably true. But Theo doesn’t have your connections, Irene. What do you think the cops would say about his stable of under aged playmates?”

  “I take your point,” she said after a moment. “But unfortunately you’ve caught me at a bad time. I simply can’t talk right now.”

  “Make time,” I said.

  She put her hand over the receiver, then came back on the line. “I’ll be down in a couple of minutes,” she said and hung up.

  I sat down on the same plush chair I’d sat on the night before. I didn’t really think I’d shaken the woman up. She was too dry and too cold a character to be shaken by much of anything. Besides, with all the Croft money and power behind her she had little to fear, personally, from newspaper reporters or cops. I didn’t really understand why she’d decided to talk to me, unless she wanted to find out exactly what kind of monster I was or unless she was genuinely worried about Clinger, who didn’t have her money or power to protect him. She didn’t seem the type to show loyalty, even to one of her protégés. But if she was trying to protect her boy, the trick would be to keep her worried—to convince her that I was a dangerous article, without revealing that I had next to nothing in the way of hard evidence that would connect Clinger to Robbie. And if I knew Irene, that wasn’t going to be an easy trick. She had an ear for lies and for self-deceptions—it was her brand of perfect pitch. But telling her I was going to go to the police wouldn’t actually be a lie—I’d already been to them and intended to check in with Bannock before the day was out. And there was no question in my mind that Clinger couldn’t stand up to a full-scale police investigation. His very way of life was against the law. The fact that I didn’t agree with some of those laws made what I was planning to do seem uglier than mere lying, but I didn’t see where I had a choice.

  A few minutes went by, and then a bell went off like the timer on a range and the elevator doors opened. A chunky, bald man, dressed in a brown leisure suit and white dress shirt, stepped out and gazed around the lobby until he spotted me on the other side of the plate glass door. His shirt was open at the neck and a pelt of gray hair curled out of the collar, with a gold pendant hanging in the matted hair, like a jewel packed in creosote. He was about forty years old and had a pleasant, tanned face, creased with laugh lines around the blue eyes and the small fleshy mouth. His forehead rose in wrinkles up to his shiny bald pate. He would have looked like a good-natured insurance salesman, if it hadn’t been for the pendant and the other gold jewelry he was wearing on his hands and wrists. They gave him a bit of the tawdry flash of a lounge lizard. Only he wasn’t good looking enough to be a gigolo. I didn’t quite know what to make of him, except that he seemed to be interested in me. He smiled through the glass door, then unlocked it and walked over to where I was sitting. I could smell his aftershave the moment he stepped out of the elevator room—a smell like rotting bananas.

  “Hi!” he said in a sharp, merry voice. Even his breath smelled sweet, but that was because he was chewing gum—a little hunk of it that he passed from cheek to cheek with the tip of his tongue. The gum made me think of Sylvia Rostow.

  “Jerry Lavelle,” the man said and held out his hand.

  “Harry Stoner,” I said, shaking with him.

  “Let’s go have a drink, Harry,” he said, nodding toward the restaurant door. “We’ll put it on Irene’s tab.”

  I got up and followed him into the Celestial’s bar—a dark, leathery cavern, lit by candles in tall, red glass holders. It was virtually empty at that time of the day. We sat at the rail, on leather-capped wooden stools, studded with brass nail heads. The bartender—a big, ruddy man with sleek black hair—seemed to know Lavelle. He smiled at him pleasantly.

  “What’ll it be, Jerry?” he said in a hushed voice.

  “Bourbon for me, Hal.”

  Lavelle glanced my way and I said, “Johnny Walker Red Label. Straight up.”

  The bartender pointed a finger at us and winked. “You got it.”

  While Hal was pouring the drinks into heavy, beveled shot glasses, Lavelle turned on the stool and gave me a grin. “Nice bar. Quiet,” he said and cracked his gum.

  Hearing the cool note of appraisal in his voice, I suddenly realized who he was. You see men like him in Vegas all the time. Sweet-smelling, tanned, dandified muscle. Not bouncers, exactly. But the guys who are in charge of the beefy boys. Jerry Lavelle was a middle-level hood. A pro. And I couldn’t figure out what he’d been doing in Irene Croft’s apartment.

  “I thought Irene was coming down,” I said.

  “She can’t make it,” he said with that merry grin.

  “Maybe I ought to come back some other time.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t think so, Harry. I think she’s going to be tied up for awhile.”

  “We had some business to talk over.”

  “Yeah, I know,” he said, adjusting himself on the stool. He was packing iron—I was sure of it from the way he moved his shoulders. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”

  “I’m listening,” I said.

  The bartender laid the drinks down in front of us. Lavelle picked his up and took a tiny sip. “You got to leave Irene alone, Harry,” he said, as he put the drink back down. “Stay out of her life. I’m telling you as a friend.”

  I stared at my “friend” and said, “What’s bourbon taste like through bubble gum?”

  He smiled lazily. “Chewy,” he said.

  He took another sip of booze. “You’re a tough guy, aren’t you, Harry? Yeah, I can see it. You’re a big, tough guy.” He cracked his gum again and swirled his swizzle stick through the bourbon. “Look, let’s not waste each other’s time. You want to talk to Irene and she doesn’t want to talk to you. It’s that simple.”

  “I’ll go to the cops, Lavelle,” I said.

&
nbsp; He shook his head, no. “You won’t do that, Harry. First of all, I wouldn’t let you. And second, the Croft family wouldn’t like it. And third, it’s just not in your best interest. Irene doesn’t know a thing about this girl you’re looking for. Trust me on this. I’m not saying the lady in the penthouse is innocent. We both know better than that. Irene’s got her problems. And right now, she doesn’t need any more of them. It’d be too expensive.”

  “That’s tough,” I said.

  “Hey, let’s be honest with each other,” he said cheerfully. “This is a crazy lady we’re talking about. A meshuginah. She’s an embarrassment to her family. And they don’t want to see her name in the papers.”

  “Just who are you working for, Lavelle?” I said.

  “Let’s say I’m a friend of the family’s.”

  I got off the stool, dug a couple of dollars out of my pocket, and tossed them on the bar.

  “I don’t want any trouble, Harry,” Lavelle said. “All I’m asking you to do is leave Irene out of it. What you do otherwise is your business. Just think about it. Promise me you’ll think about it.”

  I brushed past him to the door. As I was walking out of the room, I heard him say to Hal, the bartender, “Look at that. He didn’t even touch his drink.”

  19

  I WALKED to the car and sat behind the wheel for a moment, staring at the apartment building. The sun was setting above the river in a thin orange band, and lamplights were beginning to shine through the curtained windows of Highland House. Street lights had begun to pop on, too, up and down the hill, showering the sidewalks with pale green light. I looked up at the top floor of the high-rise, at Irene Croft’s penthouse, and knew that I wasn’t going to get back up there without a warrant—not with Jerry Lavelle on guard.

  I simply hadn’t counted on a man like Jerry Lavelle, in spite of what Marcie had told me about the Crofts and their clout. I suppose I’d thought that they were above that kind of play—too gentlemanly, too law-and-order decent. After all, they were the Olympians, as Marcie had said. They were the social and political elite, who legislated the rules that the rest of us followed.