Masques IV

by J N Williamson

  Martin signed his name in the register. The pages were deckled with damp. “Anyplace I can get something to eat?”

  The woman peered at his signature. Then she said, “Used to be a diner down the road about a half-mile did good ribs but that closed. Owner blew his head off with a shotgun. Business being so bad and all.”

  She looked up at him, aware that she hadn’t yet answered his question. “But I can rustle you some eggs ’n’ bacon or cornbeef hash or something of that nature.”

  “Maybe some eggs and bacon,” said Martin. “Now . . . maybe I can get myself dried off and use the telephone.”

  The woman unhooked one of the keys, handed it to Vernon. “Number Two’ll do best. It’s closer to the office and the bed’s new.” She unlocked the front door and Vernon led him out into the rain again. The concrete parking lot was awash with floodwater and bright brown silt. Martin heaved his overnight case out of the trunk of the Pontiac and then followed Vernon across to the first row of cabins. Vernon stood hunched in front of the door with his white hair dripping, trying to find the right way to turn the key. At last he managed to open up and switch on the light.

  Number Two was a drab room with a sculptured red carpet and a mustard-colored bedspread. There were two dimly-shaded lamps beside the bed and another on the cheap varnished desk. Martin put down his case and offered Vernon a dollar bill, but Vernon waved it away. “That’s not necessary, mister; not here, on a night like this. So long as you pay before you go.” It occurred to Martin that—almost uniquely for these days—the woman hadn’t taken an impression of his credit card.

  “Food won’t be long,” said Vernon. “You want any drinks or anything? Beer maybe?”

  “A couple of lites would go down well.”

  Vernon frowned around the room. “These lights ain’t sufficient?”

  “No, no. I mean ‘lites’ like in ‘lite beer.’”

  “Lite beer,” Vernon repeated, as if Martin had said something totally mysterious, but he was too polite to ask what it meant.

  “Miller Lite, Coors Lite; anything.”

  “Coors Lite,” Vernon repeated, in the same baffled way.

  He left, closing the door firmly behind him. It had swollen slightly in the downpour and needed to be tugged. With a loud, elaborate, extended sigh, Martin raked back his wet hair with his fingers, lifted off his dark-shouldered coat, and loosened his wet necktie with a squeak that set his teeth on edge almost as much as fingernails on slate.

  He pushed open the door to the bathroom and found dismal green-painted walls and a shower curtain decorated with faded tropical fish. But there were four large towels folded up on the shelf, three of them marked “Holiday Inn” and the fourth marked “Tropicana Hotel, Key Largo.” He stripped and dried himself, and then dressed in clean pajamas and blue silk bathrobe, and combed his hair. He wished that Vernon would hurry up with that beer: his throat was dry and he felt that he might be catching a cold.

  He looked around for the tv. Maybe there was a cable movie he could watch tonight. But to his surprise there was no tv. He couldn’t believe it. What kind of a motel had rooms with no tv? The only entertainment available was a pack of sexy playing cards and an old Zenith radio. Shit.

  He pulled open the cabin door and looked outside. The rain was still thundering down. A rain barrel under the next row of cabins was noisily overflowing and somewhere a broken gutter was splattering. No sign of Vernon. No sign of anything but this shabby huddle of cabins and the dim green light that said acancies.

  He wedged the door shut. He thought of all the times that he had cursed Howard Johnson’s for their sameness and their lack of luxury. But a Howard Johnson’s would have been paradise compared with the Sweet Gum Motor Court. All it was doing was keeping him safely off the highway and the rain off his head.

  He sat down at the desk and picked up the telephone. After a long, crackling pause, the voice of the henna-haired woman said, “You want something, mister?”

  “Yes, I do. I want to place a call to a number in Eufaula—Chattahoochee Moldings, Inc. Person-to-person to Mr. Dick Bogdanovich.”

  “I’m frying your eggs ’n’ bacon. What do you want first, your call or your eggs ’n’ bacon?”

  “Well . . . I really need to make this call. He usually leaves the office at seven-thirty.”

  “Eggs’ll spoil, if they haven’t already.”

  “Can’t I dial the number myself?”

  “ ’Fraid not, not from the cabins. Otherwise we’d have guests calling their long-lost sweethearts in Athens, Georgia, and chewing the fat for an hour at a time with their folks back in Wolf Point, Montana, wouldn’t we, and the profit in this business is too tight for that.”

  “Ma’am, all I want to do is make a single fifteen-second telephone call to Eufaula, to inform my client that I shan’t be able to make our meeting this evening. That’s a little different from an hour-long call to—Wolf Point, Montana.” Thinking: what on earth had inspired her to say “Wolf Point, Montana?”

  “I’m sorry, you can’t dial direct from the cabins; and I can smell eggwhite burning.”

  The phone clicked and then he heard nothing but a sizzling sound. It could have been static, it could have been frying. It didn’t much matter. Frying and static were equally useless to him.

  His eggs and bacon eventually arrived at a quarter after eight. Vernon brought them across from the office building under a rain-beaded aluminum dish-cover. Vernon himself was covered by an Army surplus parka, dark khaki with wet.

  “Rain, rain, goddamned rain,” said Vernon. He set the plate down on the desk.

  “No knife and fork,” said Martin. “No beer.”

  “Oh, I got it all here,” Vernon told him, and fumbled in the pockets of his parka. He produced knife, fork, paper napkins, salt, pepper, catsup, and three chilled bottles of Big 6 Beer.

  “Denise fried the eggs over, on account of them being burned.”

  Martin raised the aluminum cover. The eggs and bacon looked remarkably good: heaps of thin crisp rashers, three big farm eggs, sunnyside up; toast, fried tomatoes, and hash browns; and lots of crispy bits. “Tell her thanks.”

  “She’ll charge you for them, the extra eggs.”

  “That’s okay. Tell her thanks.”

  After Vernon had gone, wedging the door shut again, Martin propped himself up in bed with his supper balanced in his lap, and switched on the radio. It took a few moments for it to warm up: then the dial began to glow, and he smelled that extraordinary nostalgic smell of hot dust that his grandmother’s Zenith had always given off whenever it heated up.

  He twisted the brown bakelite tuning knob but most of the dial produced nothing but weird alien whistlings and whoopings, or a fierce sizzling noise, or voices that were so blippy and blotchy that it was impossible to understand what they were saying. As he prodded his fork into his second egg, however, he suddenly picked up a voice that was comparatively crisp.

  “. . . Eight-thirty, Eastern Time . . . and this is the Song O’ The South Soda Hour . . . coming to you from the Dauphin Street Studios in Mobile, Alabama . . . continuing our dramatization of . . . ‘The Heart of Helen Day’ . . . with Randy Pressburger . . . John McLaren . . . Susan Medici . . . and starring, as Helen Day . . . Andrea Lawrence.

  Martin turned the dial further but all he could find were more fizzes, more pops, and a very faint jazz rendition of the old Negro ballad Will the Circle Be Unbroken.

  “. . . in the same old window, on a cold and cloudy day . . . I seen them hearse wheels rolling . . . they was taking Chief Jolly away . . . He decided that he could do without a funeral dirge, so he turned back to The Heart of Helen Day. This turned out to be a chatty romantic radio-soap about a busybody girl who worked for a tough-talking private detective and kept losing her heart to his clients, even though the tough-talking private detective really loved her more than anybody else.

  Martin finished his supper and drank two bottles of beer and listened to the serial in amu
sement. It sounded incredibly 1930s, with all the actors talking in brisk, clipped voices like One Man’s Family or the Chase & Sanborn Hour.

  “But he’s not guilty, I tell you. I just know he’s not guilty.”

  “How can you know? You don’t have any proof.”

  “I searched his eyes, that’s all.”

  “You searched his eyes but I searched his hotel room.”

  “Oh, Mickey. I looked in his face and all I saw was innocence.”

  “You looked in his face? That’s unusual. I never knew you looked any higher than a man’s wallet.”

  This week’s episode concerned a famous bandleader who had been accused of throwing a beautiful but faithless singer out of the seventh floor window of a downtown hotel. The bandleader’s alibi was that he had been conducting a recording session at the time. But Helen Day suspected he had used a stand-in.

  Martin got up off the bed and went to the door, opened it. The room was becoming stuffy and smelled of food. He put his plate out on the boardwalk, where it rapidly filled with rain and circles of grease.

  “It couldn’t have been Philip, Philip always taps the rostrum three times with his baton before he starts to conduct . . . and in this recording the conductor doesn’t tap the rostrum at all.”

  Martin stayed by the door, leaning against the jamb, watching the rain barrel overflow and the silty mud forming a Mississippi delta in the parking lot, and the distant dancing of the lightning. Behind him the radio chattered, with occasional melodramatic bursts of music, and interruptions for commercials.

  “‘The Heart of Helen Day’ is brought to you by Song O’ The South Soda . . . the fruitier, more refreshing soda that makes the whole South sing . . .”

  Then it was back to Helen Day. She was talking at a cocktail party about her success in solving the case of Philip the rostrum-tapping bandleader. Martin drank his third and last beer out of the bottle and wondered why the radio station had even considered broadcasting such a stilted, outdated radio soap, when there was Get a Life and The Simpsons on tv and wall-to-wall FM. Everyplace except here, of course; the Sweet Gum Motor Court, in Henry County, Alabama, in the rain.

  “He was so handsome. Yet I knew that he was wicked, underneath.”

  Suddenly, there was the sound of a door banging in the background. Then the clatter of something falling over. A muffled voice said, “Get out of here, you can’t come in here, we’re recording!” Then another shout and a blurt of thick static as if somebody had knocked the microphone.

  At first, Martin thought this must be part of the plot. But the shouting and struggling were so indistinct that he realized quickly there must be an intruder in the radio studio, a real intruder, and that the actors and technicians were trying to subdue him. There was another jumble of sound and then an extraordinarily long-drawn-out scream, rising higher and higher, increasingly hysterical.

  Then the most terrible thing Martin had ever heard in his life. He turned away from the open door to stare at the radio with his eyes wide and his scalp prickling with horror.

  “Oh God! Oh God! John! John! Oh God help me! He’s cut me open! Oh God! My stomach’s falling out!”

  A noise like somebody dropping a sodden bath towel. Then more shouts, and more thumps. A nasal, panicky voice shouting, “Ambulance! For Christ’s sake, Jeff! Get an ambulance!” Then a sharp blip—and the program was cut off.

  Martin sat on the bed beside the radio waiting for the program to come back on the air, or some kind of announcement by the radio station. But there was nothing but white noise which went on and on and on, like a bus journey along an endless and unfamiliar highway through thick fog.

  He tried retuning the radio but all he got were the same old crackles as before, or those distant foggy Negroes singing. “I saw the . . . hearse wheels rolling . . . they were taking my . . . mother away . . .” Did they always sing the same dirge?

  Sometime after eleven o’clock he switched off the radio, washed his teeth, and climbed into bed. But all night he lay listening to the rain and thinking of The Heart of Helen Day. He guessed if an actress had really been attacked in a radio studio he’d hear about it on tomorrow’s news. Maybe it had all been part of the soap. But—up until that moment—it had sounded so normal and correct, even if it had been ridiculously dated. Maybe it had been one of those War of the Worlds-type gimmicks, to frighten the listeners.

  Or maybe it had actually happened, and Helen Day had really had her heart cut out.

  He was awakened at seven o’clock by Vernon tapping at the door. Outside it was lighter but still raining, although not so heavily. Vernon brought pancakes and syrup and hot coffee. He set them down on the desk and sniffed.

  “Thanks,” said Martin, sleepily smearing his face with his hands.

  “Don’t mention it.”

  “Hey . . . before you go . . . did you watch the news this morning?”

  “The news?”

  “The tv news . . . you know, like what’s happening in the world?”

  Vernon shook his head, suspiciously.

  “Well . . . did you hear about any radio actress being murdered?” Vernon said, “No . . . I didn’t hear anything like that. But what I did hear, the highway’s all washed out between here and Eufaula, and 54 between Lawrenceville and Edwin’s washed out, too. So you’ll have to double back to Graball and take 51 through Clio. That’s if you’re still inclined to go to Eufaula, can’t stick the place myself.”

  “No,” said Martin, sipping coffee. “I don’t think I can, either.”

  When he had finished his breakfast Martin packed his traveling bag and looked around the room to make sure he hadn’t left anything behind. He stood by the open door listening to the rain clattering from the gutters and stared at the radio. Had he dreamed it? Maybe he would never know.

  He put down his bag, walked across to the radio and switched it on. After it had warmed up, he heard a stream of static; but then—so abruptly that it made him jump—an announcer’s voice said, of Helen Day,’ brought to you by Song O’ The South Soda . . .”

  He listened raptly, standing in the middle of the room with the door open. It was the same episode as last night, the story of the bandleader who didn’t tap the rostrum. Then, the same words: He was so handsome. Yet I knew that he was wicked, underneath.” Then again, the door opening. The shouts. The microphone knocked. Scuffles, screams. And that terrible, terrible cry of agony, “Oh God! Oh God! John! John! Oh God help me! He’s cut me open! Oh God! My stomach’s falling out!”

  Then, nothing. Only crackling and shushing and occasional spits of static.

  Martin swallowed dryly. Was that a repeat? Was it the news? If it was the news, how come there was no commentary? He stood with his hand over his mouth wondering what to do.

  He drove into Mobile late that evening. The sky was purple and there was still a strong feeling of electricity in the air. That day, he had driven on Highway 10 all the way across north Florida, and as he made the final crossing of Polecat Bay toward the glittering water-distorted lights of the docks, he felt stiff and cramped and ready for nothing but a stiff drink and a night of undisturbed sleep. But first of all, he was determined to find the Dauphin Street radio studios.

  It took him over an hour. The Dauphin Street Studios weren’t in the phone book. Two cops he stopped hadn’t heard of it, either, although they asked in a tight, suspicious drawl to look at his driver’s license and registration. Eventually, however, he stopped at a bar called the Cat’s Pajamas, a noisy, crowded place close to the intersection with Florida Street, and asked the bartender, whose bald head shone oddly blue in the light from the shelves, as if he were an alien.

  “Dauphin Street Studios closed down before the war. Nineteen forty-one, maybe nineteen forty-two. But ask Harry. He used to work there when he was younger, studio technician or something. There he is; second booth along.”

  Harry turned out to be a neat, retired character with cropped white hair, a sallow face, and a whispery way of
talking. Martin sat down opposite him. “Understand you worked at the Dauphin Street Studios?”

  Harry looked at him oddly. “What kind of a question is that?”

  “I’m interested in something that might have happened there.”

  “Well . . . the last broadcast that went out from the Dauphin Street Studios was March 7, 1941; that was when WMOB went bust. That was a lifetime ago.”

  “Do you want a drink?” Martin asked him.

  “For sure. Wild Turkey, on the rocks.”

  “Do you remember a soap called The Heart of Helen Day?” There was a long silence. Then Harry said, “Sure I do. Everybody remembers The Heart of Helen Day. That program was part of the reason that WMOB had to close down.

  “Tell me.”

  Harry shrugged. “Not much to tell. The girl who played Helen Day was real pretty. I never saw a girl so pretty, before or since. Andrea Lawrence. Blonde, bright. I was in love with her; but then, so was everybody else. She used to get all kinds of weird mail and phone calls. In those days you could still be a radio star, and of course you got all the crank stuff that went with being a star. One day, Andrea started getting death threats. Very sick phone calls that said things like, ‘I’m going to gut you, you harlot.’ Stuff like that.”

  Martin said, “It really happened, then? She really was murdered in the studio?”

  “Most horrible thing I ever saw in my life. I was only a kid . . . well, nineteen. I had nightmares about it for years afterward. A guy burst into the studio. I never even saw the knife, although the cops said it was huge, a real hog-butchering knife. He stuck it in her lower abdomen and whipped it upwards—so quick that I thought he was punching her. Then her entire insides came out, all over the studio floor. Just like that. I had nightmares about it for years.”

  Martin licked his lips. He didn’t seem to have any saliva at all. “Did they catch him? The guy who killed her?”

  Harry shook his head. “There was too much confusion. Everybody was too shocked. Before we knew what had happened, he was gone. The cops went through the city with a fine-tooth comb, but they never found him. The Heart of Helen Day was canceled, of course; and after that, WMOB gradually fell apart and went out of business. Not that television wasn’t slowly killing it already.”