“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 stepping 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
“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
