Poor Butterfly tp-15

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  My car was probably still parked in front of Lorna’s apartment building if the cops hadn’t taken it in. I could have found a cab or hopped a bus if I had money, but I didn’t have money. The cops had my money, my wallet, my pencil, my notebook, my old man’s watch, and my keys in a paper bag. I curled up and closed my eyes. I can’t say I slept. I discovered one thing. A man with a bad back shouldn’t spend the night on the floor of a Plymouth.

  When I thought the first light of dawn was promising to hit the street, I crawled out of the car and looked around. The street was empty.

  I slouched into an alley heading south, looking up at the sky every few seconds to watch for the first sure signs of dawn. I must have been tired but I didn’t feel it. I must have been tired, because I didn’t hear the patrol car turn into the alley behind me. I was moving along close to the fences and garages on the right. The beam of the car’s headlights bounced in front of me, catching an early morning cat who stared, eyes glowing for a second, and then ran off. I ducked into a yard and crouched down behind a bush.

  The patrol car came slowly, so I knew they hadn’t seen me. A small spotlight scanned yards and garbage cans.

  The cops in the car didn’t have the heart for hard looking. They were probably at the end of a shift and tired or just starting a shift and not yet fully awake. I knew the feeling. I’d gone through it as a beat cop back in Glendale. The car bounced slowly past me, pausing for an instant to scan the yard and bushes. The beam caught my face momentarily. I closed my eyes and they passed on. I stayed crouching while the car rumbled past, and then I got up. I was about to continue on my way when the headlights of the cop car sent twin white probes down the alley again. They had turned around and were moving slowly back. I was next to a garage. I tried the door. It was locked, but it was a lock that should have been ashamed of itself. In the gray light of dawn, I found a rusty nail. Now I could hear voices from the returning cop car. I used the nail to open the garage door and threw the nail away.

  There were two windows in the garage, both covered with curtains. I closed the garage door behind me and made my way to one of the windows, following the gray light that seeped through the dirty curtains. I banged my ankle against something hard and felt the skin break under my pants. The patrol car had stopped just outside the garage. I could hear the engine. I could hear the voices as the cops got out.

  “Right there, by those bushes,” came a voice.

  “So why didn’t you say so when we came past?” came a rasping complaint.

  “I … I just wasn’t sure, and you were talking,” the first voice said.

  A flashlight beam scanned the curtains of the garage and footsteps moved across the grass.

  “Well,” sighed the raspy cop.

  I held my breath and waited. And then they stopped, and one of them started to try the door.

  “Maybe I just …” he began.

  “Maybe you just,” the raspy voice agreed. “Let’s get over to Mel’s and have something to eat.”

  The car doors closed and the engine hummed away, but I didn’t move for a few seconds. I pushed back the curtain and found myself looking into the eyes of an alley cat who was perched on the ledge outside. San Francisco was filled with cats. I’d have to tell Dash about this.

  Then I turned around. This was not the simple one-car garage of a happy family with a mom and pop and a couple of fat kids. The place was full of bicycles and parts of bicycles. Tires and wheels hung from hooks on the ceiling. Biking helmets and handlebars were mounted on one wall like a hunter’s antler trophies. A table in one corner was lined with cans of paint. Either Santa Claus lived here or I’d stumbled on a stolen bicycle shop.

  My heart soared like a bird. I could be a self-righteous thief. I could steal a bike and feel like MacArthur liberating stolen property and giving it to a deserving peasant, me. I picked the nearest bike, a man’s bike with a bad paint job. I didn’t have time to go quietly through the pile. It would have to do. I found a dirty white painter’s cap with the word ZOSH printed across the brow in nail polish or something else red, and plunked it on my head.

  I wheeled the bike to the door, opened the door, and went outside. Dawn was coming fast. I could see light from the sun. I looked into the alley. No cop car. I looked back at the house behind the garage and something caught my eye. A man was standing in the second-floor window looking out at me. He was big, bearded, and naked, and he did not like what he saw. He threw open the window as I ran the bike into the alley and jumped on.

  “You goddamn thief,” the man hissed, but he didn’t yell, which confirmed my belief that this bike and the others weren’t kosher. The man wasn’t shouting for help or running after me with a gun. The man was a thief, and he was taking his losses rather than draw attention to himself and his vocation.

  I was pumping like crazy just in case the man in the window decided not to take his loss easily. I sailed into the street and felt a gentle push of wind off the ocean. It was a cool morning, but I took off my shirt as I rode and stuffed it under the handlebars. An overaged morning biker, head down, racing against a stopwatch in his mind.

  I decided to stick to side streets. People were getting up and out of their houses and apartments. Kids were slouching bleary-eyed out to the curb to catch school buses. A truck inched past me and the guy inside hurled a bundle of San Francisco Chronicles past my head onto the front steps of a brownstone house.

  I don’t know what time I hit downtown. I had no watch. I biked straight up the street, head down, pumping as hard as I could, not looking right or left. I asked an old black woman with a shopping bag how to get to the Trocadero Hotel. I found it at the bottom of a hill right next to a cable car turnaround. A couple of men and a woman were pushing a cable car to point it back up the hill.

  I parked the bike against a tree. There was a good chance the bike would be stolen, but the bike was accustomed to that by now. I shoved the Zosh hat in my back pocket and put my shirt back on. It was a wrinkled mess. I looked at myself in the window of a drugstore. I was a mess of wild hair, sticking straight up from wearing the cap, and bristly gray hair on my face from not shaving. What the hell. I walked into the lobby of the Trocadero Hotel as the cable car clanged behind me to let people know it was ready to roll.

  The hotel was small, the lobby narrow. A skinny old man in a dark suit was standing behind the counter drinking a cup of coffee and going through a stack of cards. He looked up at me and stopped.

  “Miss Tenatti’s room,” I said.

  He didn’t move.

  “It’s been a tough night,” I said, reaching over to shake his hand. “I can see you recognize me. We’ve been shooting down by the wharf.”

  “I …” the old man began.

  “Buster Crabbe,” I said, showing my profile. “Haven’t had time to get out of costume.”

  “I don’t …” the old man said, looking around for help.

  “Just give Vera a call and tell her Toby is here,” I said, leaning over confidentially. “That’s our private name. You understand.”

  “Private … yes, Mr. Crabbe,” he said, and picked up the phone, keeping his eyes on me.

  I grinned and looked around as if I were considering buying the place.

  “Miss Tenatti? Yes. Mr. Buster Crabbe is …”

  “Tell her Toby,” I interrupted.

  “Toby,” he corrected. “Yes. Of course.”

  He hung up and looked at me.

  “She said you should come right up,” he said. “Room four-fourteen. You look much different in your films.”

  “Makeup,” I said, taking a step toward the elevator.

  “Now or in the movies?” he asked.

  I laughed falsely and stepped into the elevator. The elevator woman glanced at the desk clerk, who nodded that it was all right to take me up.

  Vera was waiting for me at the open door. She was wearing a silky pink nightgown.

  “You look terrible,” she said, putting her hand to her mouth and st
epping back to let me in.

  I went into the room, looked around for Passacaglia, and plopped on the unmade bed. From nowhere Miguelito leaped onto my chest and tried to eat one of my shirt buttons. I petted him. He didn’t bite.

  “The police are looking for you,” Vera said.

  “I know,” I said, my eyes closed. “You have anything to eat?”

  “No … yes, some doughnuts,” she said. “But I’m starting on health food to … Lorna’s dead.”

  I pushed Miguelito away and sat up as Vera handed me a dish with two doughnuts.

  “She’s dead,” I agreed.

  “They think you killed her,” Vera said, touching her beestung lower lip with her thumb. Her pink silk gown opened slightly at her breasts.

  I downed the doughnuts.

  “Anything to drink?” I asked.

  “Water?”

  I got out of bed and moved into the small bathroom. I filled a glass and drank five glasses of not-quite-cool water. Vera and the dog watched me. I looked at her in the mirror. She looked soft and fresh. I looked at myself. I looked like a hairy, overripe avocado.

  “You have a razor?”

  “Yes, in the cabinet. Fresh blades are … you’ll see them.”

  I took off my shirt, opened the cabinet, found the razor, put in a blade, and shaved as we talked.

  “Who would kill Lorna?” she asked.

  “Rance, Johnson, and Minnie,” I said. “She told me before she died. You know them?”

  “Rance, John … They’re characters in La Fanciulla del West,” she said.

  “Interesting. She also told me to shave,” I said. “I’m shaving.”

  I finished, found some toothpowder, rubbed it on my teeth, washed my face, and ran my fingers through my hair. I looked in the mirror and saw something that resembled a tired me.

  “I’m supposed to go to a rehearsal,” she said. “At ten. With Lorna dead … I don’t … I don’t belong here. Martin came here last night. He tried to … I shouldn’t be here. And what am I going to do with Miguelito?”

  I turned to Vera. She came into my arms, her pink nightgown coming open.

  “I’ll find him a home,” I said.

  “Thank you. You need a little rest and I need a little comforting,” she said, starting to cry. “Would you lie down with me for just a few minutes?”

  I was tired and she was far from home and she reminded me of Anne and I don’t know who I reminded her of but that’s why it happened. It was fast, sweet, soft, and interrupted by Miguelito, who didn’t know what was going on and probably wondered when Lorna was coming to get him.

  I slept and dreamed of Snick Farkas sitting in Santiago’s gas station dressed in a cape and wearing a white mask. Farkas was trying to sing something to me. He was saying a name, but I couldn’t make it out, and then as I slept I remembered: He said he had seen Samson going into Lorna’s building.

  When I woke up, Vera was gone and Miguelito was lying on the bed looking up at me. His ears rose when my eyes opened. I found a note from Vera saying she had to go to the final dress rehearsal, that I was welcome to stay in the room and wait for her, that I should take care of Miguelito.

  It was a nice offer, and I considered room service when I couldn’t find any cash, but I had a killer to find and my neck to save. I put my shirt back on, found a leash for Miguelito, and came up with a plan.

  The desk clerk pretended to ignore me when I stepped out of the elevator, but even cleaned up and shaved I didn’t look much like Buster Crabbe. I gave him a smile and moved Miguelito’s paw in a wave. The clerk pretended not to see.

  The bike was where I had left it, though a seedy-looking wino was circling it slowly. Lorna had either been delirious, making sense, or both. It wasn’t me she wanted to shave. It was Miguelito.

  12

  I tied Miguelito’s leash to the handlebars, put on my Zosh hat, and started to pedal down the street slowly so the dog could keep up. He was well fed and having a good time. We were pals. The streets were alive now and the morning was showing signs of getting hot. I turned a corner, moving away from downtown.

  Three kids were throwing a football around on the street. An old man with no teeth and wearing a hat with a wide brim used his cane to make his baggy-pantsed way down the sidewalk, and a fat woman with a pretty face leaned out of a second-story window to call down to a thin man who looked up at her, sweat forming under the arms of his tan suit.

  I put my head down and pedaled. I went slowly so Miguelito could keep up, but he wasn’t used to this sort of thing. After two blocks he stopped suddenly. Just stopped and sat down. I had a choice of holding on to the leash and taking a fall or letting him go and risk having to chase him around the neighborhood.

  I let go of the leash. Miguelito didn’t run. He sat panting on the curb. I coaxed, pleaded, threatened, but Miguelito had had enough. He wouldn’t even look me in the eye. The old man with the hat and cane caught up to us, looked at the dog, and said, “Shoot him.”

  He held up his crippled hand to form a pistol with his fingers and feigned shooting the dog, but Miguelito ignored him.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “Between the eyes,” the old man said, pointing his finger gun between his own eyes. “Dog that don’t do as he is told should be shot as an example to others.”

  “What others?” I asked.

  “Shoot him,” the old man repeated.

  “I’ll think about it,” I said.

  “Think about it,” the old man said with contempt. “We’d be up to our gazoonkis in Nazis and Japs if Patton and MacArthur sat around thinking instead of shooting. Think about it.”

  The old man gave up and headed for a bar on the corner.

  Miguelito had stopped in front of a pawn shop. RUDOLFO CASTILLO’S TROPIC PAWN SHOP, the sign said. The shop was steel-gated but an old man had stopped in front of the gate and was pulling out a key. I picked up the dog, held him propped against the handlebars, and wheeled toward the shop.

  The man, who I figured was probably Castillo, looked as old as the mountains of hell. He was a brown, wrinkled man, wearing a wrinkled herringbone suit with no tie. The suit was about two sizes too big for him. He opened the padlock on the steel gates that protected the door to his shop and looked at me and the dog as if this were the start of another bad day. I waited till he pushed the gates open and then followed him inside. The place brought back a childhood memory, triggered more by the smell than by the familiar line-up of guitars, portable radios, watches, rings, necklaces, harmonicas, trumpets, and weapons. The smell made a special tug at my memory.

  I grunted in with the dog in my arms.

  “Rudolfo Castillo at your service and open for business,” said the little old man as he moved slowly behind his counter, pulled open the little window marked CLOSED, and adjusted his glasses.

  “You got any hair clippers?”

  I put the panting dog down on the floor.

  Castillo looked at me blankly.

  “Clips, for the hair.”

  He grunted and then disappeared into the dark depths of the shop.

  And then I placed the smell. My father had bought me a saxophone in a North Hollywood pawn shop when I was a kid. It didn’t have all the parts and couldn’t make all the notes, but I spent a summer and a good part of a winter loving the thing. The case it had come in smelled like Castillo’s pawn shop.

  Castillo returned, puffing from the burden of the box in his arms. He dropped the box on the counter and continued to pant heavily while I fished through the box of hair clippers till I found an old black one that looked as if it might still have teeth and wasn’t too rusty.

  “I’ll take this one,” I said.

  “Two dollars,” the old man said.

  “What? It’s not worth a quarter.”

  “Yesterday it was a quarter,” Castillo said. “Today two bucks.”

  “What happened between yesterday and today?” I asked, watching Miguelito nose around behind a guitar-shaped
box.

  “Yesterday the police weren’t looking for someone who looks like you,” he said.

  “I don’t have any money …” I began, but Castillo spoke over me.

  “Bicycle and the hat,” he said.

  “You can have them,” I said.

  “And the dog,” Castillo added.

  “You want that dog?”

  “Si,” said Castillo. “Para mi esposa.”

  “Okay. Give me the clipper to shave the dog. After I shave him, you can have him, but you have to throw in a shirt for me.”

  He handed me the clipper and came up with a small can of oil.

  “I get the bike, the dog, and the clipper back,” Castillo said readjusting his glasses as I oiled the clipper. “You get a shirt.”

  What the hell. I picked up the clipper and pulled Miguelito out from between the feet of a slightly chipped, full-size ceramic pig on which someone had written MONROE in nail polish. I shaved Miguelito, who simply watched with curiosity as I put the razor to his back.

  The clipper wasn’t bad. After a few false starts, I found a patch of fur that looked shorter than the rest and worked on in for a few seconds. Pay dirt. I could clearly see the lettering on the dog. I got down to bristle, read the names, and kept going. When I’d finished, Miguelito’s back was exposed right down to his white skin.

  “You got paper and a pencil?” I asked.

  Castillo came up with them, and I copied what Lorna had written on her dog. It didn’t make a hell of a lot of sense. Three names I didn’t recognize-two men and a woman-a date, and a place: Cherokee, Texas.

  “Without the hair he looks like a fat chihuahua,” said Castillo. “I don’t know if my wife wants a fat chihuahua. And who knows if we can get that ink washed off?”

  “Then take him on trial,” I said.

  “Fifteen days,” he said, making out a receipt. “You don’t come back for him, my wife don’t like him, I sell him. Fifteen days.”

  “Okay,” I said, handing him the clipper, the hat, and the dog. In turn, he handed me a white shirt that looked a little large, but that was better than too small.