He had to pass Musso’s to retrack to the magic store. The usual dinner crowd overflowed the small vestibule. Steve pushed through to the head waiter. He gave his name for a table for four, watched it written at the foot of an already long list. It would be at least thirty minutes before he came to the top of the list.
He ducked out, threading through the ever-increasing street crowd towards his second goal. It was a poor edition of the boulevard’s better magic stores but it was busy tonight. Two middle-aged men, much like junior Orioles, were doing their best to take care of things. Steve waited while Tweedlededum sold false noses to five shrieking teen-age girls. The man was giggling as heartily as the girls. He wiped his eyes with a fat little finger as he turned to Steve. “And now, what can I do for you?” His accent wasn’t as heavy as Oriole’s.
Steve said, “For a gag, I need a ruble. Do you have any?”
If the man was uneasy, he covered up. “We do not have any real money. Only the phony, you know, stage money.”
“I hear there’s a fellow in Hollywood making phony rubles. He hasn’t tried to sell any to you?”
“No.” The man tapped his shiny head and thought some more about it. While he was wondering what Steve was truly after. “No, I have not heard about him.” He glanced upward slyly. “I don’t think this man, he’s very smart. This is America, Mister. Rubles are not wanted here, not even bad ones.” He wasn’t going to be caught out by any undercover investigator. “Anything else I can do for you? A false nose, maybe?” He laughed as if he’d made a wonderful joke. He was still laughing when Steve went out.
There wasn’t sufficient time remaining to check the café; it was past seven. He didn’t mind keeping Feather waiting but he’d hate to be pushed down to the foot of the reservation list again. Feather was there, standing just inside the door, trying to peer through shoulders. Steve came behind her and touched her elbow. She swerved a little fearfully.
“Been waiting long?”
She said, “Oh,” before she recognized him. She needed those glasses. “No, only a minute or two. It was terrible getting through traffic. And finding a place to park.” She wasn’t dressed up, just a blue knit and small hat to match, a cream-colored tweed jacket about her shoulders. She’d fluffed her hair a bit, she looked quite pretty.
He said, “Hold it while I check the reservation.” He edged through the crowd. The list showed only two names on top of Steve’s, plenty of others beneath it. He’d timed it just about right. He reported back to Feather. “Not much longer.”
She gave him a quick smile. She would prove tonight that she wasn’t afraid of him. “Where’s Reuben?”
“Coming. Unless he’s already here and holed up in the bar.” He doubted it; there’d scarcely been time for a round trip to town, even without the delay of convincing Janni. “Do you want to shove through for a drink?”
She said no, with a glance at the stolid ranks blocking them,
“Suits me.” He eyed her. “You’re looking very pretty.”
She lowered her eyes. “Thank you.” She didn’t like personal attention, at least not from him.
“Seen Haig today?”
“No. Have you?”
“I had a drink with him here this afternoon. He might still be around.”
She perked up on that.
“I suppose this big parade’s old stuff to you.”
“I haven’t seen it in years. Not since I was in high school.”
“You don’t go for such mundane pleasures?”
She defended herself. “I haven’t been here much. I’ve been studying in New York.”
“That explains the hat. The New York touch.”
She leveled a glance at him. “You don’t like me very well, do you?”
“Because I mention your hat?” He laughed. “Hollywood girls don’t use them, I’ve noticed. Not often.”
“You don’t,” she repeated.
He heard his name called as she spoke. “I’ll break trail.” By pure chance they rated a good semicircular booth midway in the narrow room. She slid in at the left, leaving room for him beside her. He didn’t follow. He sat on the right where he could watch for Reuben. He told the waiter, “We’ll have a drink while we wait. Feather?”
She said, “Just a sherry.”
“Make mine a Manhattan.” He didn’t know why he’d gone fancy, devil-may-care to show Miss Prisms? He picked up the conversation. “Let’s put it this way. I don’t think you go for me. You’re afraid. Why?”
“I’m not!” she denied with heat.
“Maybe it’s this. You don’t go for young men. Not that I’m so young, but Rube is. Most girls would think he was a pretty good shake, nice-looking kid, easy to be with, and if you’re the kind who thinks seriously, the family’s okay, your uncle said so. Instead of making time with him you play up to Haig Armour, who’s old enough to be your father. Why? Because he’s old enough to be safe? Or is it an uncle complex?”
She was furious. “I didn’t play up to Haig any more than to anyone else. And if I did, you of all people—” Her lips pressed into a rigid line.
The waiter set down the drinks. He was old and splay-footed, the waiters here were all comfortably old. “You must order your dinners early if you do not want to go hungry to the parade.” Paternalism was one of the attractions of Musso’s. “At eight the lights will come on. It starts! But it will be eight-thirty,” he confided, “before it gets to us. Even later.”
“As soon as the others get here,” Steve promised. The stem of a cherry curled over the rim of his squat glass. It was the night when Janni foraged the jar of cherries that he’d concocted the Manhattans. Maraschino cherries in the rubble of Berlin. He drank and he told Feather, “Forget it. If Haig’s what you want, go after him. But you’ve got competition, Feather; you’re pitted against the best there is.”
She said thinly, “I don’t want Haig. I don’t want any man. I haven’t time for any man. I have my work.” She sounded like a fifth-grader reciting from memory.
And he couldn’t tell her what a little fool she was. That work was a cold island on which to isolate yourself, while all the warm, beautiful realities surged by. Because Reuben and Janni were pushing past the barrier.
Janni wasn’t expensive like Feather. Her raggedy hair was tumbled, her scarlet dress was cheap, and her coat red, the same red coat. She was lucky to have one coat. But she didn’t need sleek grooming; she was the quickening of your heart and the racing of your blood. The throb of your loins. The anger for her which had strengthened him was no more.
Reuben could have let her go over to Steve. He wasn’t stupid. He slid her into the booth and himself after her, shoving Feather over to Steve. Steve had sent Rube after her, he couldn’t hate the kid for it. He’d known the risk. Rube was young and alive. Steve said factually, “Feather, this is Janni, and vice versa.”
Rube said gaily, “Hello, Feather,” not a kid out of it tonight. The guy with the best girl, sure of his prowess. “What are we drinking?”
“Make mine Manhattan,” Janni said.
For a brief instant her eyes haunted Steve. Or maybe he was just hoping that the curve of a stem on his glass had stirred her memory too. The silly little phrases that returned to slice the heart in your breast. A jar of cherries that lasted a week or was it two? A jar of cherries and a mean attic room.
The drinks came to bridge the moment, to blot out days which were better forgotten. After the dinner order was given, no memories remained. There was no love or hatred, only a job to be done. Steve waited his turn. He waited until Reuben finished making a good yarn out of his adventures in finding Janni’s place. Then Steve tossed it out, as if it, too, were the beginning of a funny story. “What do you think, Janni? Davidian’s in Hollywood.”
The shine left her face, her eyes became flat jet disks.
“You have found him?”
“I’m getting warm. He’s been up to his old tricks.” He confided to the others. “This is a guy we knew
in Berlin. A counterfeiter.”
Feather frowned. “Last night you said you did not know him. When Haig Armour asked.”
Steve told her, “It wasn’t any of Haig Armour’s business.”
Rube echoed, “A counterfeiter.”
“Yeah. Slickest one you’ve ever seen. A real artist. He made the plates for the phony stuff the Nazis intended to plant on us. Fooled plenty of experts.”
“A Nazi.” Feather’s voice crawled.
“And a Commie too,” Steve continued cheerfully. “After the Russians took over, he went to work for them. Getting them ready for their conquests.”
Feather’s disbelief silenced her. Reuben came to the point. “How could a guy like that get into the United States? What’s he doing here?”
“That’s what I’d like to know.” He was sardonic. “Me and the F.B.I.”
Janni flared into the sudden silence, “They can’t hurt him. He hasn’t done anything wrong. I don’t believe what you say!” She hadn’t given him to Haig; she was protecting him from both sides.
Steve asked, “What did I say? Not that he is in trouble. There’s no law against handing out phony bills that I know of, so long as it’s rubles, not dollars. But with the F.B.I. after him, could be—” He let it lie there; maybe she’d change her mind, maybe she’d start considering that Steve wasn’t as big a menace as government officials.
The dinners were being placed and you didn’t spoil good food with controversy. Janni laid Davidian aside to sniff over her plate. Reuben didn’t care about Davidian anyway, he was out for fun. But Feather continued to worry the story. “Maybe I could find out from Haig why—”
Steve cocked his head at her. “Eat your dinner.” Janni was alerted and Steve added, “We’ll talk it over later.”
They finished the meal in spite of the increasing hubbub of excitement from the street outside. A steady exodus of diners warned of the parade’s nearness. Steve waved a bill at the waiter. “Hold our table. We’ll be back.”
Janni ran ahead with Rube. She could lay trouble aside, you learned that in Berlin. Steve was left with Feather. She might not have been sniffing her patrician nose but she wasn’t amused. They reached the street just as the myriad-colored bubbles overhead sprang to radiant light. The voice of the long boulevard answered with a multithroated cheer. The faint sound of a band from Vine Street, blocks below, was an obbligato to the shouting of children. Rube was jockeying Janni into a better position. Steve maneuvered a hole for Feather and himself. Not that she cared, but he liked parades.
The opening was quiet, with a Nativity scene and angel-robed carolers, reminder of the first Christmas before the plunge into holiday merriment. The good humor of marchers and onlookers alike struck Steve anew. This wasn’t a European parade for the purpose of fluffing the ego of a dictator or to flaunt the bristle of military strength. It wasn’t a New York parade, stage-managed by some junior Ziegfeld, precise as the Rockette’s routines. This was small-town in a big town, kid bands, stream upon stream of kid bands with high-stepping girls twirling batons and twisting brief satin skirts; skinny boys in fancy uniforms blowing loud on their shining horns, beating loud on their drums. This was Western, with silver-decked palominos and cowboys in silver-studded chaps, with trick riders and proud horseflesh and the children yelling for more. It was drums and bugles pacing the quick step, dancers and clowns, and the glaring spots of the TV cameras. The glamour of Hollywood was minor, a number of glistening floats, candles on the icing of a cake. Overhead the little lights beamed red and yellow and green on the silver stars and the shiny Christmas trees, far overhead the true stars were pale in a deep cobalt sky. And Steve saw Davidian.
Only the face, the sharp ferret face wedged between a woman’s fur collar and a man’s elbow. Peering out eagerly at the show, directly across the street from where Steve was standing. He might as well have been across an ocean and a continent. Separating him from Steve was a solid phalanx of onlookers; beyond, children pressed from curb to ropes, the police patrolling their safety. In the center the river of prancing bands and horses and trundling floats continued its unending flow.
Steve muttered, “Back in a minute,” to Feather, not caring if she heard. Janni and Reuben didn’t. Steve walked as far as Highland before he was able to dart across to the south side of the boulevard. He retracked then, eeling through the onlookers. It was slow going at best, made slower by the search for one small man. The audience was constantly shifting for better position; there was no promise that Davidian would have remained where Steve had left him.
When he reached that section, he paced more slowly. There wasn’t a chance of pushing through to where he could look into faces; he had to be content with unidentifiable back views. By patient moving with the crowd, he managed at last to catch sight of the fur collar. But no thin, shabby man pressed against it now; on either side were gabbling women.
It hadn’t been an illusion, Davidian had been in this neighborhood. He was here now, lost somewhere in the mass, peering under some other shoulder. With agonizing slowness, Steve continued on, examining coats and shoes and the backs of heads. He walked all the way to Vine and waited out the combined bands of Orange County before he could cut over to the north side again. His eyes followed the montage of faces across the way as he headed back towards the restaurant. He saw fat and thin faces, dark and light faces, faces from Europe and Asia and Africa, all the American faces, Hollywood faces, but not Davidian’s.
He’d forgotten Santa Claus until he saw his face too, the great jolly whiskered saint in his traditional red and white, riding on top of the finest float of all, crying his “Merry Christmas” through the amplifier, while Hollywood snow sifted a benediction over his head. The children and Santa Claus shouted joy to each other. Steve didn’t join the chorus.
3
The onlookers broke ranks quickly after Santa’s float passed, hurrying to reach their cars, to be first in the clog of traffic. Steve jostled his way through the confusion to Musso’s. The three were again in the booth, the vacant place was beside Feather.
“What happened to you?” Rube wanted to know. “We’ve ordered dessert.”
“I thought I saw a friend across the street.”
Janni whispered, “Davidian.”
“I saw him.”
For a moment she was frightened and then she began to laugh. She knew him too well, she could read his failure. “But you could not find him in the crowd!” She slanted her eyes at Reuben and he began to laugh with her. Because he wasn’t an innocent or because her laughter was infectious as a parade and ice cream and youth.
Reuben laughed. “Chocolate cream pie á la mode.”
Feather’s words slit thin and cold. “I’ll find out about him from Haig.” She actually put a hand on Steve’s arm. As if she were sorry for him, as if she wanted to help him.
He covered the hand. He didn’t tell her that Haig didn’t know as much as he did. “Thanks, lady.” Her flesh quivered under his touch.
The old waiter set the desserts. He beamed, “A good parade this year, a real good one. Better than last year.” He said it annually. And meant it.
Reuben and Janni were savoring their pie and ice cream. There was no way to separate her from him. It was always tough to get an occupation army out once it was in. Rube said, “We’re going dancing at the Palladium. Kenton’s there.”
“Janni has to work.”
“She’s taking tonight off.” He grinned. “Why don’t you and Feather come along?” Big-hearted Reuben.
Steve lied, “I’d like to.” He apologized to Feather. “I have a business date.”
“It’s all right,” she assured him defiantly. As if she were pleased that he wouldn’t waste time on a dance hall; that he, like she, was dedicated to work.
They broke up in front of the restaurant. He watched Feather round the corner to her car. He watched Reuben and Janni disappear towards Vine. Over the deserted boulevard, the colored lights were darkened, the ropes and
stanchions were removed, only the litter of torn newspapers remained as reminder of the brightness of parade time.
The Prague, his last address, was only a couple of blocks away. Steve left the boulevard and walked towards it slowly, as if he were tired, but it wasn’t that which made his steps heavy. It was a small café, gimcracked with atmosphere, the usual red-checkered tablecloths, and candles dribbling down the sides of old wine bottles. A fat man with a greasy mustache played a sentimental violin and a taffy-haired lad, who needed a haircut, a balalaika. The music wasn’t Prague, it was a musical comedy piece. My darling … my darling … the violin crooned. And the balalaika tinkled an answer, My darling … my darling … Cigarettes swirled a blue fog around the candle flames. Behind the cash register was a big busty woman in a flowered peasant-style dress; her hair was dyed the color of fresh brass. Steve didn’t try for a table, he went directly to the woman.
“I’m looking for a guy.”
She spoke pure New York. “You a cop?”
“Do I look like a cop?”
“Cops don’t always look like cops.”
“I’m not. That’s why I’m looking for a guy. To tip him off.”
“Maybe you think this is a bookie joint?”
“He isn’t a bookie.” He leaned an elbow on her counter. “He’s a little guy, thin, dark, doesn’t speak English too good. He’s been going around passing counterfeit rubles.”
She gulped, “Nuts.”
“Yeah. Did he hand out any here?”
Words were beyond her.
“To the waiters? Would they mention it if he did?”
“Mention it?” Her tower of brass nodded precariously. “Rubles yet!”
He said, “Thanks,” and he went out of the place. Davidian might have been in any and all of these blind alleys but with a different joke.
There remained Albion’s boardinghouse. Eleven o’clock was too late to pay a call but he could walk by, if there were signs of activity he might inquire. He hadn’t any other lead except to walk the streets looking for the popcorn man. His steps began to take on the rhythm of an old song, abridged to his own needs:
Davidian Report Page 10