The Skelly Man

by David Daniel

  I did.

  The building had been run-down when I used to borrow my old man’s Falcon and sneak dates inside. SILVERADO LOUNGE it was called now; half the lavender and green neon in the sign had fizzed out long ago. LIVE MUSIC * ALL NUDE REVIEW. But that was its current identity. Back when the hat I wore was standard equipment on men, the Canal Club used to feature some of the best jazz north of Boston.

  I pulled into a parking lot full of pickup trucks. Inside the entry, facing us as we went in, was a sign: Shirts and Shoes Required, under which someone had written: “Bras and Panties Optional.” Chelsea glanced at me. “I can still take you back to the hotel,” I said.

  She shook her head.

  “Better take my arm, at least.”

  “I can look out for myself.”

  “Not you,” I said. “Me. I don’t want to get hit on.”

  The darkened room was smaller than I remembered it. Of course I was a beardless youth when I sometimes used to go there to watch the bands that blew through Lowell. The art deco was gone, too. The walls were flat black, speckled with sequins, to give the place the look of a silver mine, I guessed. There was a bank of poker machines and a pool table on one side. In back, a partition wall cut off some of the area for an office and restrooms. A sour fog of smoke and perfume circled our heads.

  As we started in, a man slid off a high stool and shuffled over. “T’ree dollar cover charge, folks,” he said in a voice that squeezed its way through mashed cartilage.

  I knew the voice, like I knew the face under the gray scali cap with the little shamrock on it. “Kid,” I said to its owner.

  He leaned close to study me. “Hey, I didn’t rekanize ya.”

  It wasn’t mutual. His face looked like a pie plate that had been run over by a dump truck and banged back into shape by a tin-knocker with the d.t.’s. I was accustomed to seeing him in baggy sweats and work boots, shadowboxing his way along the esplanade when I ran there, calling the rounds in his Andy Devine voice. Old habits die hard.

  “I didn’t know you worked here, Kid,” I said.

  “Doorman.” He grinned at the euphemism; he could dribble any gate-crasher like a rubber ball.

  He looked at Chelsea like maybe he should ask for some ID, but he didn’t. I gave him a ten and showed an open hand that said keep the change. “Matty Silver still above ground?” I asked.

  “So’s the Bunker Hill monument.”

  “I thought that was you.”

  He grinned. “Get a table. I’ll send a waitress over.”

  He shuffled off, and Chelsea asked the question with her look. “He won some Golden Gloves titles a lot of rounds back,” I said. “He had a pro career under the name Kid Sligo—most of it spent having his face turned to hamburger because he wouldn’t go down.”

  “Is he okay?”

  I shrugged. “What’s okay? In his ear, the final bell has never rung. He’s friendly.”

  We made our way to a little Formica circle held up by stainless-steel legs. The pickup trucks in the lot weren’t for show. The place was busy, mostly with people at the bar which ran parallel to a runway where some women were performing. In the colored spotlights cutting the air it took me a moment to realize the group was a band: a half-dozen women in red-and-black-satin teddies, net stockings, cowgirl boots, and cowgirl hats, playing and singing what might pass for country-and-western music if you’d never heard Patsy Cline. A pair of bartenders in red vests were shagging drinks. They weren’t pouring any Fuzzy Navels that I could see.

  A waitress appeared, almost as overdressed as the band members. One hand was a banking operation, bills curled over her fingers like green rings. Chelsea declined; I ordered a beer. Five bucks. Good deal. At the end of the runway was a sign, PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH THE PERFORMERS WHEN THEY ARE WORKING. Afterwards was maybe another story.

  “What’s any of this got to do with Jerry?” Chelsea asked over the noise.

  Before I could figure that out, Kid Sligo said close to my ear, “Okay, c’mon wit’ me.” Even his whisper sounded hoarse.

  * * *

  Matty Silver hadn’t changed, except to turn sixty. With his chin lifted slightly, as if listening to things only he heard, he sat behind his desk: shades on, gray goatee, white shirt with blue suspenders. The deck of Chesterfields, one burning in a tin ashtray, spinning smoke up into the cone of light from a desk lamp, lay in ready reach. He was rolling coins on a little pull-out tray meant to support a typewriter. There were posters on the walls, and old playbills, as yellow as March snow around a city hydrant. When Four Roses quit distilling, it was a sad day for this place. Kid Sligo said, “Okay, Mr. Silver. I brung him.”

  Silver sat in a blue haze. I forgot and gestured with my head to the room beyond the wall, where the music was. “What happened, the costume trunk get hijacked?”

  Sligo gave a wheezy laugh. “You don’t pay no attention to how bad they play though, right? Sorry, miss.”

  Silver had not moved. I don’t think he had breathed yet. I said, “I’m trying to get some information.”

  He plucked a dime from a pile and set it with a soft click on the edge of the desk. “There’s a booth down the street where it’s quiet. Stick it in and dial four-one-one.”

  I ignored the dime. I could have said something about having done him a favor a few times when I was on the cops and there were people in town who would have liked to have seen him shut down. But he knew that. I said, “I saw Mingus play here once. I had to sneak in. Cedar Walton I remember another time. Dave Brubeck. Jazz is still alive last I checked, but I didn’t look here.”

  I heard Sligo move his feet behind me. Chelsea touched my arm. Silver said, “How’s the front gate, Kid?”

  The ex-boxer shuffled out. Silver felt for the cigarette in the ashtray and sucked at it, and I saw from Chelsea’s look that it was only then that she realized he was blind. “What kind of information?” he asked.

  “Conjure with a name that goes back awhile,” I said. “Betty Crown.”

  Chelsea glanced at me and stepped closer to the desk. Silver smoked, puffing it out in small rings that shimmered on the air in front of his dark glasses like ectoplasm. “Sit down,” he said.

  There were two wooden chairs that probably had more history than most in the city. We took them. Silver said, “We’re talking twenty-five years.”

  “Maybe more,” I said.

  “She wasn’t the sweetheart of Sigma Chi—I’ll tell you that.”

  “What do you mean?” Chelsea asked.

  He made a slow production of stubbing out his cigarette. “She was a tough cookie. A townie. But could sing like a young Rosie Clooney. I don’t know if she could’ve gone far with it or not. She flaked.”

  “Flaked?” Chelsea said.

  “Made like a tree. Took a walk. Split.”

  “You know what became of her?” I asked.

  “What became of Jackie Jensen?”

  It was a point.

  “Was that her real name?” Chelsea asked.

  “If it wasn’t, I don’t know what was.” Silver faced me again. “What is this, gas-from-the-past week? I hear Jerry Corbin’s back in town.”

  “Did he used to come here?” Maybe it was the screen of smoke, but Chelsea seemed to have gone a little pale.

  Silver lit another weed. “Why not? Plenty of the college crowd used to. Buff up their saddle shoes and stick on a tie. In those days there were always cats and kitties, beer, good music. It wasn’t El Morocco or the Hi Hat, but we drew some names. Tell her, Rasmussen. Weekends the place swung.”

  “What about Betty Crown?” I asked.

  Silver smoked. “She was a looker. With hair the color of a brass horn.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I’m blind, not stupid. She waitressed days at a lunch counter in Cupples Square, sang here after hours. Probably wasn’t nineteen yet. She got good enough so I gave her a steady date, one night a week, three, four sets with a piano player. She filled in between the acts that b
ooked weekends. For her it was a little under-the-table bread, not a living. But I never got the feeling it had to be. She just loved to sing. Ballads, torch songs, a little scat. She couldn’t sing the blues, though. She had the range. Maybe she didn’t have the pain.”

  “Or maybe not yet,” Chelsea said.

  Silver and I both turned toward her, but she said nothing more. I said, “You wouldn’t have an old photo?”

  “Nope.”

  “Did Corbin go with her?” I said. I didn’t ask if he’d planked her.

  Silver’s shrug was minimalist, like all of his gestures. “Big J was a handsome kid, quick smile, a mile of malarkey. Chicks liked him.”

  “Did Betty Crown like him?” Chelsea asked.

  Smoke moved, like shifting layers of memory. “Other way around, I’d say. He used to come around to dig her act. Others did, too. Like I said, she looked and sang good. Corbin got to be a regular stage-door Johnny. Crazy sonofagun. I gather he’s had his chick troubles over the years. In town trying out a new show, huh? He should. Get a new bag. Leave the late hours to someone young. That stand-in cat they got is where the show’s goin’.” Silver ventured the first expression that could be construed as merry. “I’m not knocking him; he swung for a lot of years, gave people a good time. Now he’s getting the gong. Hey, when a gig ends, you hustle and book the next one.”

  “Cowgirl striptease?” I said.

  He didn’t waste a reply. He dragged his Chesterfield a long moment, then said, “I remember the night Jack Teagarden blew here. His horn sounded like it was filtered through midnight and silk stockings. Sure, jazz is big still, but what is it? People sit around in a dinner theater and sip wine, listen politely to music-school kids in tuxedos. Improvisation means it isn’t coming from a machine. The sweat and funk’ve gone out of it. Kerouac used to fall by when he was in town, beat a tabletop or a brandy jug. This joint was happening. But it all started to turn to sand after Charlie Parker died. And Billie, and Trane … There’s no soul in it anymore. We got trouser rousers posing as musicians, we push light beer…”

  The tally went on, and we listened awhile. But his was a bluesy valentine to the old days, and the old days were gone. We left him there shaking his head. Kid Sligo opened the outside door for us, cuffing my arm and kissing Chelsea’s hand with a touching gallantry. As we drove back to the hotel, windows down to air out, Chelsea said, “Don’t you feel sorry for him?”

  “Silver? It’s a choice,” I said. “He could’ve retired years ago and gone north, south. Wherever. Those coins added up.”

  “Was he always blind?”

  “He used to like saying he’d taken a beating from some of Lucky Luciano’s boys—it made a better story than childhood scarlet fever.” I glanced over at her. “You seemed pretty intent back there.”

  “Was I? Just thinking, I guess. Wondering what those days must have been like.”

  “Let me buy you coffee somewhere, and I’ll tell you all about them. Secondhand, of course.”

  “I have to get back. It’s late, and tomorrow’s a big day. Last rehearsal before the show.”

  “And good old Jerry likes to know where his people are at bed check.”

  She didn’t rise to it. She sat looking out at the city night, and I considered confronting her with what Ed St. Onge had told me about the old quiz bowl possibly having been a fix, but something made me wait. My cop training maybe—holding a detail back, as a measure for future truth. At the hotel elevator, she touched my arm. “Thanks for taking me along.”

  I nodded. “Any time, lady.”

  As I got back in my car, the sweet smell reminded me I still had the bag of apples. I was about to take them in to leave at the desk when I saw someone whisk out past the doorman and get into a waiting cab. Only his lower half caught the light as he crossed the sidewalk, and only for an instant; but I’d bet that in all of Lowell there wasn’t another pair of ostrich-skin boots.

  19

  THE TAIL JOB wasn’t a tough one. The cab flowed through the evening traffic with its dome lighted and a Day-Glo sign across the rear deck touting a brand of smokes I’d never heard of. An octogenarian with cataracts might have had trouble. We went out Merrimack, past the Wannalancit Mills and across some of the old canals.

  Once the power lines for the country’s first industrial city, the canals had brought the river’s energy in to run dozens of mills and prompted Charles Dickens to call Lowell the Venice of America. They were dormant now, the mills and canals (and some would say the local politicians)—national and state park attractions, catch basins for flotsam. The vast buildings housed what industry they could and kept arsonists working, and once or twice a year the city would drain the canals to find bodies. But there was life here, too, whirring away at every level. At times like tonight, a glitter of autumn mist took the moonlight and neon, old cobblestone and brick, and spun fascination.

  At University Avenue the cab went across the bridge, across Pawtucket Boulevard, and all at once I felt smart. My heart drummed a little faster. Sure, Ross could have been prowling for ribs and pinto beans, or bound for the college auditorium to make certain everything was set for tomorrow, but my gut told me otherwise. I dawdled several hundred feet back and when the cab stopped and Ross got out, I parked and waited until the cab left.

  There were students out, couples walking back from study dates at the library, no doubt, heading over to the union to sip an ice-cream soda through two straws and groove to Pat Boone records on the jukebox. I stayed well behind Ross. And even when he rounded a corner and I didn’t see him I didn’t fret. I knew where he’d be.

  Canterbury Hall was unlocked, the linoleum corridors night-lit and bright as old amber under their half-century of wax. I climbed the stairs. On the third floor, at the far end, I saw Ross in a fan of light as he opened an office door and went in. I got close enough to smell cigar smoke and hear Ross say, “Thanks for waiting,” before the door was closed.

  I went nearer. There was an open transom window above the door. Ross said, “We need to talk.”

  Footsteps and a squeaking noise behind me made me turn. A guy in gray coveralls was wheeling a mop bucket my way, carrying a pair of yellow signs. He set up one of his signs. In the office, a reedy voice said, “It’s goddamn late. Sit down.” Professor Emeritus Alfred Westrake.

  “Passing in a term paper,” I told the janitor, advancing several steps toward him, not wanting my voice to carry through the open transom.

  He gave me a wary eye. “Kind of old for a student, aren’t you?”

  “You’re not the world’s youngest custodian,” I said.

  He shrugged and set up his other yellow sign. “Yeah, well, watch your step.”

  I tried to figure a way to hang around and eavesdrop, but short of doing chin-ups on the doorjamb, there was none. I left the janitor swinging figure eights with his mop and went back to my car and waited. Ten minutes later Justin Ross came to the street and stood there a moment until a cab appeared and he got in. I followed. The cab parked briefly outside a sub shop, and Ross went in and emerged shortly with a long paper bag. Moët and caviar went only so far. Last stop was the Riverfront Plaza.

  Driving back to my apartment, I scripted variations of what might have gone on in Professor Westrake’s office. Heated confrontation; sinister conspiracy; sober powwow: ending with “Let me use your phone to call a cab,” or “Hold the anchovies.” None of them played better than the rest. At home I made a cheese sandwich, which I ate with an apple. Then I sat in the dark with a beer. Moonlight threw patterns on the scabby wallpaper. Somewhere a train hooted forlornly. I thought about the case for a time, then put it to bed.

  Sometime after I’d been asleep, the telephone rang. I practiced once to get the frog out of my voice, then picked up and said, “Hello?”

  There was a span of silence, then a soft shrill whining, like a faraway siren, and at last a voice—at least, I think it was a voice. I couldn’t tell if it belonged to person or an animal: the sou
nd was deep and rhythmic and distorted. Nor could I tell what it said. There were a lot of slow explosive f noises … fuh, fuh, fuh … the way an insect might sound if it could speak German at low speed. I sat up. “What?”

  A thin, whispery laughter locked my vertebrae in ice.

  I reached for the bedside lamp. “Who is it?” I asked, like I expected an answer.

  More soft laughter, trailing away to a tiny click.

  Shaken, I set the receiver down and took what comfort I could from the small circle of lamplight in my two A.M. apartment. When I finally put out the light, I lay with the strange guttural voice in my mind, replaying sounds I might have heard, anticipating the phone again. But it didn’t ring. My mind supplied the effects, though: the sirening, the insect voice—fuh, fuh, fuh—and the laughter that made my room a pit of snakes.

  20

  WHEN I GOT to my office at 8:45 Friday morning, I telephoned the Riverfront Plaza and got Chelsea. Before I could do much more than say good morning, she said, “I got chatty there yesterday. I said some things I really hadn’t meant to get into.”

  “That’s okay. I—”

  “Just so we’re clear. I’m not looking for a confessor, or anything. I’m here for the show.”

  “Chelsea, all we did was—”

  “Two more days, then it’s over, and on to the next place. I’ve got to stay focused.” There was a knock in the background, and I heard her call out, “Be right there.”

  I said, “I want to ask you something. Can we meet?”

  “Today’s the final rehearsal.”

  “Pick the time.”

  “Besides, Jerry is getting the honorary degree this evening. I’ve got arrangements to make around town today.”

  “Is Jerry there?” I asked.

  “No. Alex, listen, I have to go.” And she did.

  There had been a thaw between us yesterday afternoon, but it was gone now, refrozen. I had wanted to ask her about Justin Ross’s foray to Westrake’s office, tell her about the late-night phone call I had received, but that would have to wait. The telephone rang. It was Judy Bishop at the Harvard alumni office.