by John Harvey
A laugh rose up from one of the tables, a man’s laughter, raucous and loud, fading quickly into the more moderate amusement of his companions. Almost without interruption, ‘On Green Dolphin Street’ segued into ‘Autumn Leaves’ and then ‘My Heart Stood Still’. MacGregor was stockily built, ten years, perhaps, off Sloane’s own age, with a full head of greying hair, which swayed side to side as he played; bassist and drummer, younger black musicians paying their dues, carried the rhythm with restraint and thought about the rent. More laughter. After a short, whispered conversation MacGregor slid into ‘Waltz for Debby’, the drummer sitting out; Bill Evans he wasn’t, but he’d been drinking water from the same well long enough for it to show. Sloane signalled the bartender and eased his empty glass an inch or two forward. A ballad in three-four time: delicate and sweet.
This time the roar was part and parcel of an alcohol-fuelled tirade of humour and invective, which all but drowned out the filigree figures MacGregor was coaxing from the upper register.
Almost without knowing it Sloane was on his feet and striding back among the diners, one hand clamping down on the offending man’s shoulder, the other reaching for the front of his suit jacket, hauling him to his feet with such force that his chair skidded out from underneath him and he stumbled forward, his face, startled and flushed with drink, finishing inches from Sloane’s chest.
‘Listen,’ Sloane said.
The man raised a hand towards him and, contemptuously, Sloane knocked it aside.
‘I’m just going to say this once. There are people here who want to listen to the music, who want it treated with respect. Nobody, nobody except perhaps your friends, wants to listen to you.’ Sloane stood back, holding the man at arm’s length. ‘Shut up. Sober up. Or leave. Understood?’
Water dribbled from one side of the man’s mouth as he nodded his head. When Sloane released him he lurched back on his heels, caught hold of the table edge, wobbled, then collapsed back into the chair one of his friends had providently retrieved and slid into place.
It was only in the instant before turning away that Sloane recognised the red hair and pale, now angry face of Rachel Zander, the dealer he had briefly met in the café bar in Jake Furman’s building. A couple of waiters shepherded Sloane back to the bar from a safe distance. Without being asked, without speaking, the bartender freehanded more Scotch into his glass. The trio, who had fallen silent, launched into an up-tempo version of ‘Hallelujah’.
When the party, six or seven of them, collected their coats some twenty minutes later, Rachel Zander peeled off from the group to confront Sloane at the bar. Sensing her approach, he swivelled round on his stool.
‘Is that the way you normally behave?’ Her voice was firm but clear.
‘It depends.’
She reached past him and picked up his glass. ‘On how much of this you’ve had?’
Sloane shook his head. ‘It wasn’t me who was out of control.’
‘No?’ Resisting the temptation to slam the glass down with a bang, she set it back carefully. ‘Maybe you should think about that.’
She shot Sloane a final glance, turned on her heel and walked away.
The man behind the bar was cashing up; the youngest of the waiters, cigarette between his lips, was setting up for lunch. Sloane and Eddie MacGregor sat at one of the tables close to the piano: Sloane had secured a large espresso before the machine was switched off for the night; MacGregor was practically chain smoking Marlboros and nursing a club soda with ice and lemon, about all his liver would allow.
‘I met her in Detroit,’ MacGregor said, speaking of Connie, ‘winter of eighty-four. Weather like to freeze your dick off. I was in the pit band for this touring production of Pajama Game. Mitzi Gaynor, can you imagine that? Cursing all the time in Hungarian and eyeing up the chorus boys. City to city, we’d pick up local musicians for the band, just the rhythm section stayed the same.’ He paused for a drag on his cigarette. ‘Anyway, there was this kid, played clarinet, tenor, you name it, talked a few of us into going along to this club after the show, regular jam session kind of thing.’ He shook his head, remembering. ‘I heard Connie’s voice before I saw her. “Ghost of a Chance”. You know, the old Billie Holiday tune. Voice sounded fresh, strong, maybe a little untrained. And to look at …’ He waited till he was sure he had all of Sloane’s attention; lit a new Marlboro from the butt of the last. ‘Connie, in those days – she was what? Twenty-six? Twenty-seven? – she was a real looker. Flesh on her, not too much but where, you know, it counts. Sweet face. By the time she’d got to the end of the number I’d tipped the piano player the price of several drinks and slipped into his seat. Connie, she noticed right off, gave me this full-on, drop-dead smile. We got together pretty soon after that, made plans; I went out on the road with her, supper clubs, one-night stands. We got married, July of eighty-five. Philadelphia. Her mother, Jane, she came over for the wedding. Europe, that’s where she lived, maybe still does.’
Sloane shook his head. ‘She died. Not so long ago.’
‘Sorry to hear that.’ MacGregor sipped at his club soda. ‘You knew her?’
‘A little.’
‘Then you know what a fine-looking woman she was. For her age. Any age. Her and Connie together, they could be sisters, give or take.’ He shook his head again. ‘Great-looking girls.’
A few more lights around them went out.
‘The marriage,’ Sloane said. ‘It didn’t last.’
‘Six years, close on seven.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Yeah.’
‘What happened?’
‘The usual things. Boredom. Booze. Other women. Other guys.’
‘Nothing else?’
‘What more d’you want?’
Sloane looked at him and waited.
MacGregor reached over on to the table behind for a knife, edged his glass aside and brought the blade of the knife down in quick, short strokes on to the space in front of him. ‘That sound, somebody once said it was the sound of the eighties. Connie was a cokehead before she could turn around.’
‘You didn’t approve?’
MacGregor gave a wan smile. ‘At first I tried to keep up, you know, play along. But I realised pretty soon I didn’t want to go where she was going. When she missed a date, third time in a row, I baled out.’
‘You keep in touch?’
‘Not really. Used to run into her once in a while. This feller she was hanging with back then, Delaney. Looked out for her, managed her, I guess you’d say, he made it pretty clear he didn’t want me butting in, talking about old times. I kept my distance after that.’
‘You saying he threatened you?’
‘Not in so many words.’ MacGregor lifted the lemon slice with finger and thumb and set it between his teeth.
‘And Connie, you really don’t know where she is?’
MacGregor dropped the curve of lemon rind back inside his glass. ‘The night after the divorce finally came through, she called me long-distance from Seattle. From all the background noise she was phoning from some kind of club; I don’t know if she was working there or not. It doesn’t matter. “You celebrating, Eddie?” she asked. “You celebrating, ’cause you should be. And you know what, Eddie, there’s just one thing I want to say in honour of this occasion and that’s fuck you. Fuck you, Eddie!” And that’s the last conversation my ex-wife and I ever had.’
Sloane read the backwash of pain in Eddie MacGregor’s eyes and wished he had never asked.
17
John Cherry, vestiges of sugar round his mouth from the doughnut he’d just breakfasted on, ambled, loose-legged, towards Catherine Vargas’s untenanted desk. A leather jacket, well worn, hung over the back of her chair. Her coffee cup was two-thirds full and faintly warm.
‘Anyone know where Vargas is at?’
Of the half-dozen detectives present only one responded and that with a negative shake of the head.
‘Vargas,’ he tried again, giving it a little
volume, ‘she around?’
‘Who knows?’ called one.
‘Who cares?’ called another with a laugh.
‘She’s out back,’ offered Brian Phelan, levering his chair on to its hind legs. ‘The little girls’ room. Anointing her tush.’
She was not. Catherine Vargas had stepped back into the room in time to hear Phelan’s remark and now she stood well inside the door, fixing him with her stare. In the current climate she could have reported him for that remark, inappropriate language, seen Phelan relieved from duty pending disciplinary charges. And both of them knew it.
‘Tell you what, Phelan,’ she said, ‘next time you can come with me, lend a helping hand.’
The laughter was general and on Vargas’s side; Phelan, reddening, called her a name beneath his breath and tried for a smile.
‘John,’ she said, back at her desk, ‘what can I do for you?’ She didn’t know him well, John Cherry, not yet, but he seemed nice enough. Quiet. He was younger than her, twenty-nine, thirty at most, four or five inches taller. Brown hair neatly cut and a tendency to wear loose-fitting suits in grey or blue. Today it was grey.
‘You know the six-by-eights? The Jane Doe. West Side Highway.’
‘What about them?’
‘I was taking a look.’
‘And?’
‘I think maybe I know who she is.’
Vargas’s pulse quickened its pace. ‘You just think or you’re sure?’
‘Pretty sure.’
Vargas had to stop herself taking a Kleenex from her pants pocket, wiping the sugar from his lower lip.
It was a short drive down Seventh, hang a right on West 19th, Vargas at the wheel. On the cross street they got stuck behind a high-sided van with New Jersey plates unloading sheets of bevelled glass.
Cherry leaned to one side and liberated a pack of cigarettes from his jacket pocket. ‘You mind?’
Vargas shrugged. ‘Your lungs, not mine.’
With a sigh he slipped the cigarettes back from sight and, from his top pocket, drew a stick of gum. ‘It’s my last or I’d offer you one.’
‘Be my guest.’
Behind them horns blurted and rasped as the traffic backed up on to the Avenue.
‘How long ago d’you say it was you saw her? This Diane.’
Cherry nodded. ‘Four or five months, could be more.’
‘She was good?’
‘She was okay. In a Peggy Lee sort of a way.’
Vargas resisted asking him what he was doing, a guy his age, relating to Peggy Lee. Unless it was one of those gay icon kinds of thing. Julie Andrews. Petula Clark. Long gloves and loud voices. Show tunes and chiffon. Liberace, for God’s sake.
She looked across at Cherry as he peered out through the car window. Maybe he wasn’t gay at all. Another rumour bent out of shape. Living with his mother out on Park Slope no more than a way of saving on rent. As the truck in front lurched forward and she released the brake, she gave him another glance. Just as well, she thought, he wasn’t sporting a moustache.
The associate manager of the Manhattan Lounge was sitting up to the bar in shirtsleeves, supervising morning cleaning from behind the pages of the Daily News. Disinfectant and last night’s stale cigarette smoke hung on the air. The radio playing Bill Withers’s greatest hit was a millimetre out of tune.
He looked at their shields without surprise, gave his name as Howard Pearl; half listened to Vargas’s question and looked at Cherry when he replied. ‘One night she’s here, the next she’s gone. A no-show. I’m stuck with a band, no singer. Like fries and onions, no fuckin’ steak.’
‘She didn’t call?’ Vargas asked. ‘Give a reason?’
‘Didn’t I just say?’ Pearl replied testily. ‘Didn’t I just say?’ he asked Cherry over her head. ‘Vince, he was pissed as hell.’
‘Vince?’
‘Delaney. Vincent. Vince Delaney. They were shacking up together, him and Diane.’
‘And when she didn’t turn up, you thought what?’ Vargas persisted. ‘That she was sick?’
‘I’m her doctor?’
‘It didn’t occur to you something might have happened to her?’
‘Happened? What d’you mean, happened?’ He looked past her at Cherry. ‘What’s she mean, happened? Happened how?’
‘An accident,’ Vargas suggested. ‘Maybe something worse.’
‘Hey, you!’ Pearl called over his shoulder. ‘Yeah, you. Luis, whatever your name is. You think that’s what I’m payin’ you for? Push the dirt around, one side of the floor to the other. And somebody turn that radio off, s’gettin’ on my fuckin’ nerves.’ Deliberately he folded the newspaper closed, then folded it again. ‘You want to know what I think? I think she went off with this guy.’
‘Which guy is this?’
‘This guy been showin’ up every once in a while, coupla months now. Out of town, had to be. Sends flowers. Front-row table. Champagne. Wife, doesn’t, you know, understand him. Don’t put out no more, either. You know the kind. Expects Diane to blow him while he shows her pictures of his kids.’
‘He’s got a name, this other guy?’ Cherry asked. ‘Flowers and champagne.’
‘I can get it for you, sure. All the times he called.’ Pearl climbed down off his stool and set off towards the office, shirt sticking in damp patches to his back.
‘The manager,’ Vargas called after him. ‘Delaney? We’ll need his details as well.’
‘Luis,’ Pearl shouted as he crossed the room, ‘will you for Christ’s sake stop waving that mop around like it’s a fairy fuckin’ wand and apply some fuckin’ force.’
Delaney was sprawled out on the couch in his apartment with the blinds half drawn, watching a movie on TCM. Dark Corridor. One of those cheap quickies, black and white, likely got turned around in ten, twelve days. Gail Russell reading the warning signs a little too late as usual, anyone with half a brain knowing the only reason Albert Dekker’s in the movie is to scare all kinds of shit out of her, frighten her off to the funny farm where her straitjacket awaits.
Delaney thinking he’d make a fresh pot of coffee, watch the movie through to the end then take a shower, walk, maybe, over to the park, stretch his legs some. Time enough later to make a few calls.
He was in the galley when the doorman rang, letting him know there were two police detectives on their way up to see him. Delaney tipped more coffee into the filter, added water and turned up the heat.
Delaney held open the door and stood back to let them enter. Cherry at her shoulder, Vargas’s eyes passed quickly over the apartment. There was a kitchen area to the right, dining table and chairs beyond it, close by the window that ran all the way along the far wall. A half-glassed door on to the balcony. Left, a hallway led to what she assumed were bedroom and bathroom. On the wall behind the couch hung a framed photograph of a singer she failed to recognise. A film was playing, soundlessly, on the TV.
‘Coffee’ll be just a few more minutes,’ Delaney said.
She looked at him steadily: artfully tousled hair, dark pants tight across the hips, bare feet, pink shirt with the top three buttons undone. Enjoying her gaze.
‘You’re obviously busy,’ Vargas said. ‘We don’t want to take too much of your time.’
Delaney smiled. ‘Irony. I like that in a woman.’
Cherry crossed behind her and feigned interest in the apartment block across the street.
‘Cream?’ Delaney asked. ‘Sugar?’
‘Diane Stewart,’ Vargas said.
‘What about her?’
‘How would you describe your relationship?’
Delaney grinned. ‘In a period of change.’
‘Meaning?’
‘You ain’t gonna find her toothbrush in the bathroom any more; I cleared the closet of her clothes. Haven’t seen her in eight or nine days.’
‘Which?’
‘Eight.’
‘And that was where?’
‘Here. The apartment. Here.’
‘Wh
at happened?’
‘Happened?’
Delaney’s eyes angled again towards Cherry, who was trying to read the titles on the bookshelf. Why Sinatra Matters. The Sound of the Trumpet. A biography of Dean Martin. A couple of encyclopaedias of film.
‘Doesn’t say much, does he? Your friend. Leaves most of the questions to you. Seniority, I guess that’d be. Experience.’
‘What happened?’ Vargas asked again. ‘Between you and Diane.’
Delaney gestured outwards with the both hands, palms up. ‘We had a fight.’
‘A fight?’
‘She’d been seeing somebody else. I found out. Confronted her. After a lot of screaming and shouting, she storms out. Since when, nada. She didn’t call, she didn’t come by. The end.’
‘You hit her,’ Vargas said.
‘No.’
‘Of course you did. You hit her.’
‘No.’
‘You said, “We had a fight.”’
‘So?’
‘A fight.’
‘It’s just an expression. A word.’
‘Which means hit, which means slap.’
‘Which means argue, which means disagree. Ask your pal. There’s a dictionary, get him to look it up.’
‘What did you fight about?’ Vargas asked.
‘I told you, she was seeing someone else. Screwing him in his hotel, then sneaking back here.’ Delaney’s eyes were diamond hard. ‘I didn’t hit her, but there’s not a man’d blame me if I had.’ He was looking at Cherry now, a look then away. ‘The coffee,’ he said, turning towards the galley. ‘It’ll be brewed to hell.’