The Packard was running rough. Maybe she could get it into Czmanski’s garage this week, maybe it would take only a minute to fix, if Joe kept his mind on it. She squeezed the steering wheel, steered around the corners, heading vaguely toward the tall stick of the Liberty Memorial looming up on the hill above Union Station, then turning along the park, south down Main, wandering. She knew where she was going—it wasn’t far—but forward movement through the night air was necessary for a few minutes more.
Past Linwood Boulevard. She should turn now. She kept checking her rearview mirror, but there had never been a sign of a tail. The smart-talking intruder must have been bluffing. On the corner of Armour Boulevard was the six-story apartment building made famous by the gangster’s murder five years before. Thugs with tommy guns had cut down John Lazia right there in the circle drive, while his wife watched.
Reggie Vanvleet’s drunken intimacies bothered her. Did he really have information? She doubted it. What was he up to, then? Should she report his interest in Georgie to his father? Maybe he was just trying to insinuate himself into the old man’s good graces. He’d been doing a bang-up job today.
She turned right, made her way back up through the hilly streets, up Summit, then over to Mercier. She parked under a spreading oak tree, turned off the rattling engine. Lights burned on the first floor of the brick house. Now that she’d told Herb who Iris was, this was her last chance. The cops would be here tomorrow.
The old man answered her knock. Stoop-shouldered but bright-eyed, he might have been waiting just behind the door. Lennox went with the sister Florence story.
He took in her flowered summer skirt and plain white blouse, the anklets and slippers that made her look like a track coach who drank Coke or a girl who sold wall-to-wall carpet. The deaf wife was out of sight.
He led her toward the back, crashing through the bushes. “There’s a path from the driveway. She always parks over there.” He gestured left. “Quiet girl. Never gives us a lick o’ trouble. Girls these days are plenty wild, had us one who took up flying, and roller-skating and bicycle racing, too. Always coming and going in short pants that scared my missus half to death.”
He unlocked the door at the top of a long flight of wooden stairs up the back of the house. The old man stood panting at the door, holding it open for her.
A hot, musty smell, a space closed up on these scorching summer days. The old man flicked the switch to an overhead fixture with a harsh bulb. The apartment was spare, small, with a single room for eating and sitting, an alcove bath. Lennox walked to the only door, pushed it open. A single bed with an iron frame, neat and tidy, covers taut against the thin mattress.
“You talked to her recently?” the old man said behind her.
“Last week, I guess.” Lennox walked to the bathroom sink, opened the cabinet. Hairbrush, peroxide, cold cream, used-up bottles of makeup. She shut it and fingered the yellow bowl on the sink, dried residue clung to the edges. Turning to the kitchen, a single linoleum-topped counter in pebbly gray, she ran her hand along the edge, wishing she could open cupboards. The wooden table by the window was bare except for an empty blue vase. Iris had arranged things. The apartment felt dead. One apartment, one bridge, one corpse.
“And you?” she asked.
“Middle of the week. She was supposed to bring by the rent check on Friday, but she never showed. I came up Saturday morning and knocked. Her car never was here.” He glanced around. “All her things, though. She wouldn’t just take a powder without her things.”
Lennox took in the room, walls covered in faded cabbage roses, a sprung brown upholstered chair, two dog-eared magazines on the rickety table, a framed picture of mountains next to a tottering lamp, a rug with a hole. All what things?
“Is this a furnished apartment?”
“Oh, yes,” the man said. “Me and the missus keep it nice for the girls.”
“So nothing’s gone, nothing’s missing?”
The old man opened his mouth to answer when a shriek came from downstairs. After the third shriek it was apparent the wife was summoning him. Before he clomped back down the stairs, he gave Lennox a shrug and told her to stay as long she wanted.
Lennox went to the cupboards then, finding green glass plates and bowls, the kind they gave away free at the pictures. Two of each, and a well-used saucepan. A little cheap flatware. A scorched pot holder, can opener, rusty potato peeler.
In the squatty old refrigerator, a jar of mayonnaise, a butcher’s wrap of bologna, sweet pickles, a hunk of hardened yellow cheese, half a loaf of white bread, a bottle of Muehlebach’s. And a moldy smell.
Downstairs, the old woman was shouting at her husband, requesting something. Lennox moved to the sitting area, checked the magazines and the cushions, under the chair, behind the picture frame.
On the table, an ashtray held three dead butts with red lipstick. She pulled out the table’s drawer, found matches, a pack of Camels with one left, a white linen handkerchief, and a torn envelope. She pulled out the envelope and turned it over in her hands. Addressed to Iris Jackson, here on Mercier, postmarked August 3, Kansas City. No return address. Why keep an empty envelope? Still, it proved she lived here.
Lennox put the envelope back for the cops and flicked the switch in the bedroom. Behind the door was a plain pine dresser with four drawers. Lennox slid them open one by one, feeling through lingerie, brassieres, panties, and girdles. Amos would be proud of her now, picking through the knickers. What we do best.
The undies were fancy, the kind of frilly stuff a rich woman might wear, or a rich man gives his girl, to compensate for living in a dump. Most from Emery-Bird-Thayer, with the department store’s house tag. But shabby, long since worn-out, elastic stretched and rippled, lace torn and frayed.
In the next drawer, a couple blouses, a pair of shorts that would give Mrs. Faron apoplexy. Then, farther down, winter pajamas of a style inconsistent with the lingerie. In the bottom drawer, three pairs of white socks, balled.
She turned to the bed and saw the envelope propped on the pillow. Large, plain, white. Downstairs, the old man was telling the wife about the radio program. “It’s Mr. Roosevelt,” he hollered. Time for the fireside chat, to reassure the nervous populace that he wanted to stay out of the war, despite his wish to send many tanks, guns, and planes to England.
She picked up the blank envelope, turned it over. It was sealed. Outside, the streetlight shone through the oak tree, freckling the window glass and the wool blanket on the bed.
She broke open the seal with her thumbnail, took out the paper. It was folded in thirds on cheap paper, written in a childish but careful hand. Signed at the bottom. Above, Iris explained that her life was meaningless and she meant to end it. She blamed no one, and had no one. She was estranged, she said, from everyone she loved and had no wish to go on living.
In a last paragraph, she wrote to someone in particular.
Wherever you are, my lost lamb, there will be stars burning. And one of them, twinkling high above your head, is me— my love that sputters and flares but never goes out. Steady, love. Take care, my lamb, and we’ll be together soon.
A chill went through the stuffy room. It was what Lennox had been looking for, without knowing it. A confirmation that what had happened on the bridge was fate, what no one had any right to stop. Not her, not anyone. That Iris wanted to end her life, and had taken full responsibility.
She put the letter back in the envelope, smoothed the flap, set it back on the pillow. The red wool blanket pulled snug against the bed looked too cheery. And too hot for summer. But maybe Iris put on her best linens, knowing that her room would be searched. Suicides had the strangest ideas.
Switching off the lights, Lennox went back downstairs. Old man Faron came to the door, Mr. Roosevelt’s sonorous voice booming in the room behind him.
“I was wondering,” she said, “how long my, um, my sister lived here.”
Mr. Faron scrunched his eyebrows. “Since the Fourth of July.
”
Lennox made a sad smile. It was something she was good at. “We haven’t been too close these last few years. I was hoping things would change.”
Mr. Roosevelt sounded strong and apologetic and wise. She could only do apologetic. “The Fourth, you say?”
The old man nodded, worry on his face. “She went away for the weekend, is that it?”
EIGHT
Two YOUNG BUCKS with cigarettes hanging from their lips played a lazy game of eight ball in the back of the Chatterbox. Along the long wooden bar, a line of empty stools gathered dust. The lights were too bright, illuminating the dull wax of the bar.
A middle-aged woman washed glasses in soapy water behind the bar, chatting with a weathered old man hunched over a beer. Lennox took a stool halfway down the bar. She wished she wasn’t wearing the coed clothes. The billiard players made cooing noises in her direction.
The barkeep wiped her hands on a dirty towel pinned to her dress as an apron and made her way to Lennox. “Drink, miss?”
She ordered a draft. It arrived lukewarm. She let the bartender go back to the old man for a while, sipped the piss they called beer, then caught her eye.
Lennox slid her card across the bar. The woman squinted at it. She looked tired, her dark hair going gray. A wariness on her once-pretty features.
“Were you here on Friday night?”
The bartender nodded.
“Do you remember a woman who came in around twelve-thirty? Pretty, twenty-five, maybe thirty, with platinum hair.”
“Twelve-thirty? I went home. Most of the crowd is gone.”
“Somebody else, then?”
“He’s not here tonight.” The woman shouted down the bar. “Alfie! You here late on Friday?”
The old fella startled, sloshed some piss on the bar. “Friday, yah, sure.”
Lennox slid down. “A girl came in late, about twelve-thirty. A bleach blonde.” The man wore a black sailor’s cap and a once-white waiter’s jacket, his face wrinkled and dark but his eyes bright.
“Blonde, like Sylvia?”
“Wouldn’t be her,” the barkeep said. “A customer, Alfie.”
He continued shaking his head.
“Maybe I could talk to the bartender who was working late that night.”
“That’d be my Davy. Gave him today off. Had to run somebody down.”
Lennox said she’d return the next day to talk to Davy. She laid a buck on the bar and stepped back out into the pink glow of the neon sign, ignoring the cat calls.
Halfway to her ride, she spotted the Nash. Just where it was on Friday, directly across the street from the Chatterbox. If it’d been a snake, it would have bitten her. Crossing Fifth, dodging a earful of picnickers, she approached the rusty jalopy. Behind her, in the liquor warehouse, the dog began a rhythmic howl.
The car looked empty. She flipped the door handles on the sidewalk side. Moving to the back, she opened the trunk. It creaked, revealing a bald spare, a tire iron, a pair of greasy towels. Shutting it, she tried the streetside handles, also locked.
Back at the Packard, she pulled the thin metal strip from under the seat. She tucked it in the folds of her skirt and walked back to the Nash, giving the tool the quick wrist movement that had begun her career. The door unlocked.
Inside, she ducked to feel under the seat, found a sticky Coke bottle. In the glove compartment were a set of keys, sunglasses, a gooey chocolate bar, two receipts from a grocery store on Main. She put everything back. The keys tempted her; what did they open? She put them in her pocket, knowing they would probably be a heartbreaker.
She took a last look at the blue Nash as it turned purple in the neon wash. How long till the local boys beat in the windows, took a joyride? Around here, it should’ve been yesterday.
Louie Weston leaned against a baby blue Oldsmobile under the streetlight in front of the boardinghouse. He was smoking a cigarette, looking at his shoes. Lennox saw him from the corner, a wave of heat flushing through her. She cursed under her breath.
He looked up and dropped his cigarette in the gutter. He wore a loose open-necked patterned shirt and brown pants, his hair less neat than at the office. He smiled, waited for her to approach.
“Take a wrong turn?” she said. The car was brand-new, chrome shining in the streetlamp. He pushed himself off it.
“Didn’t even get lost,” he said. “This your place?”
She glanced up at the lighted windows. “What are you doing here, Louie?”
He grinned. “So you remembered my name, too. I like that.”
She stepped back. “It’s late.”
“How is your boss?”
“He’ll survive.” He damn well better.
Louie nodded. “Listen. Tomorrow morning, I’m going flying. I rent a little Luscombe. Why don’t you come with me.”
She stared at him. Was he teasing her? Wouldn’t put it past him. What did he want? Was it his old weakness for the female—or was this about Vanvleet?
Louie cocked his head. “I’m good. You’ll be safe. I got my license last month.”
She examined the dimple in his chin. Christ Almighty, he was good-looking. But she didn’t trust him as far as she could throw him. It would be foolish to go up with him.
“How come?”
“Just for fun. I love to fly, to see—”
“No. Why me?”
He smiled. “This is dumb, but after we met I was thinking about you and the old days. I remember a skit you did in fifth or sixth grade, about Amelia Earhart. You made big cardboard wings and strapped them on your arms.”
She looked at the purple streaks in the darkening sky, glad of the shadows. “You remember that?”
“You said you wanted to fly around the world.”
“Didn’t work for Amelia, either.”
“You been up?”
“Sure, a couple times. Barnstormers, that sort.”
“Not in a long time, right?” He tugged her sleeve, made her look at him, and she knew her answer. “Come on.”
Her worst decision, ever. In the Luscombe, high above the city, the rivers, the fields and hills, the hum of the engine hard in her ears, she didn’t even think about him. About what he might want in return. No, the sky overtook her. Now she would dream about taking control of her own plane, of flying up here where the air was still and calm and filled with a rosy light.
A horrible idea. She grinned and couldn’t stop grinning, so she clasped her hand over her mouth.
To the east, the view was hazy against the sun. To the west, the rolling prairie glowed gold with finished crops. Olathe and Lawrence were postcard towns, tiny streets crisscrossing, railroad tracks like strings of bailing wire. Up here, things were free, trackless, beyond the mentality of here to there, east to west, north to south, above the petty concerns of just getting somewhere. No grid, no one way only, no traffic at all.
Amelia’s words came back—that the love of flying was the love of beauty. That the sky up here, the view of the earth, were more beautiful than anything she’d known. How did you know about beauty if you were from Atchison? But up here it was all so clear, so perfect. Up here, there was a plan—and it was a magnificent plan. Down there the plan might stink. But up here, it glowed.
Lennox felt her heart fill and wondered if she could ever see the world the same way again. It was so beautiful, so ordered. Everything was so large, so heavy, down there.
His touchdown was a little bumpy but fine. They climbed out of the plane. Her feet felt like bricks, no longer wild and free in the air. Louie started lessons, he said, just before Congress started the new civilian pilot program, so he got to take the rest of his lessons for next to nothing.
“For men only,” she said.
“But that makes sense,” Louie said, driving the Oldsmobile up on the Hannibal Bridge. “They need pilots, or will if we go to war.”
“And women can’t be pilots.”
“Not combat pilots.”
She looked at his profile
against the morning sun. “Why not?”
“Because women can’t be in combat. They can’t kill. It’s against their biology.”
A couple of girls at Beloit would be surprised to hear that. “You mean to enlist?”
His grip tightened against the steering wheel. “I do. If we go to war.”
“You’re not running off to Canada?”
“I don’t have that great a need to fly.”
A need to fly. What were the signs of that? If you never piloted your own plane, how could you know? She closed her eyes for a second and was airborne again. All the problems of the present, all the wounds of the past were just tiny specks far below, hardly even noticeable in the sweet golden light that held up the shiny metal wings.
Louie was saying, “You should take lessons. It’s not expensive. About three hundred dollars over six months. And you pay it little by little, every week.”
She squinted at him and felt such a sudden lurch, she put her hand on the dash. But it wasn’t the car. She’d just been grounded.
“Three hundred?”
They stopped at the streetlight at the end of the bridge. He looked at her for a moment and she felt his eyes graze her white duck trousers, red blouse, bare arms. She glanced at him and he looked away. Atchison. She could almost hear the word in the car. As if he’d just remembered who she was, who he was.
What was she doing here, with him? What would Arlette think? She felt a flash of shame. She was on the ground, not in some dreamer cloud where everything turned out well and true and fair. Hadn’t she found that out after Beloit? She clenched her jaw. She couldn’t trust anyone. Men hurt women; they take advantage wherever they can. No, no, that was Verna talking. I’m not like Verna. She shivered. Atchison was over. As long as she didn’t have to see Louie Weston, she could forget it.
At Charlotte Street, Lennox jumped out of the car. He nodded when she said to say hello to the old man at golf. She watched the car drive away and let out a breath of relief. In Steiner’s grocery, she bought a Star, a pack of Luckies, and a prune kolache. It was good to be back in the neighborhood, with its dirty gutters and bums and kolaches. She’d been blinded by a Luscombe and a nice haircut, but now her eyes were clear.
Swing Town Mysteries Dorie Lennox Box Set Page 8