Boldt (3 page)

“The bar,” Murdock agrees, and we go to the bar.

The bar is not quite as lively as the lobby. The air conditioning is pretty rowdy and the noise we make on the thick piled carpet as we cross to the bar is quite spectacular. The bartender shifts from one elbow to the other as we approach. The bar is all dark stained paneling and green leather, so that if the guys who drop into the bar want to, they can pretend for an hour or two that they're the Lord of the Manor with a couple of lurchers stretched out in front of the fake log gas fire. Even at this hour of the day, the bar has an after-dinner atmosphere, with its dimmed candelabras and mounted tartan cloths centered on the wood paneling. We slide onto the stools and the bartender strolls toward us at just the right pace to allow us to make our minds up about what we're going to have. Murdock decides on scotch whisky—which isn't much of a decision because he never drinks anything else. I ask for a vodka (?) rocks with lemon and the bartender, even though he knows we're cops, is polite and good and quick with the drinks. He's in his mid-forties, tall, a little overweight, but he moves like a dancer, well-groomed, the kind of guy who always looks as though he's only recently stepped out of the bathtub. When he's set the drinks down in front of us, he wanders away to leave us alone without looking as though that's what he's doing.

“You know,” I say to Murdock, “this place wasn't even built last time I saw my brother.”

“It had Florian behind it.”

“Yeah, and look at it now. A beautifully designed tax loss. As if he needs one, legitimate, I mean. His mattresses are stuffed with thousand dollar bills.”

Murdock calls the bartender again and orders the same. The bartender gives it to us and Murdock takes his in one go.

“How's your brother-in-law?” I ask him.

Murdock puts his glass down on the counter.

“My brother-in-law's fine,” Murdock says. “He's great, as always. He uses me as practice for the Elks. He makes one of his speeches last night. He says, ‘Look, do you realize what a strain your presence is putting on our marriage?' Christ, Jean hates his fucking guts; she likes having me around so he can make his speeches at me instead of her for a change. So he goes on, he says, ‘You realize Jean is likely to break down if you're here much longer?' So I say, ‘Fine, I'll get out now. If you loan me the kind of money they're asking for apartments these days, then I'll walk straight out the door.' So then he says, ‘Why not move back in with Joyce, on a business basis? You're both adults. Until you're settled,' he says. I'm about to tell him that Joyce has got tanks in the driveway in case of any such eventuality when Jean comes out of the bathroom where she must have been listening, and she lays into the prick and reminds him of where the money came from for the down payment on their place. He says, well that's not exactly the point -- he didn't expect me as part of the interest, and she says, ‘The man I married, Mr. Wonderful.' He asks her to cut out the crap but before he's halfway through telling her, she hauls him one and he goes like stone, you know, like Buster Keaton? He holds the pose for a minute or two, then swings around and goes out the door and out of the house, and Jean looks at me and I look at her and she bursts out laughing and so do I. Then she says, ‘I hope the bum never comes back. But he'll be back,' she says, and of course he is, about one A.M. just in nice time to wake the whole fucking household. Of course he's tanked, and him and Jean slug it out on the landing. The kids wake up and start crying, so I go onto the landing and drag him off Jean and give him a couple of neat ones that send him straight to dreamland. Then Jean tries to pacify the kids who've seen the whole fucking affair and then after that she, of course, turns on me, because I'm standing there, and says why did I do a thing like that, laying out her old man with the kids looking on. So I go into the bedroom and pick up my stuff and bye-bye.”

“Where'd you go?”

“Yeats. I got a room with Yeats.”

“Yeats? Jesus, why'd you go to Yeats?”

“It's not so bad. I get the room free. I don't even have to tell him I'm getting the room free, he's so fucking scared when I show up.”

“It's a wonder you didn't empty the place. I mean, just by showing up.”

“I told him, I wasn't interested in the other patrons. Just a room, I tell him, and coffee in the morning, then I'll go away.”

“Why didn't you call me? You could have come over to my place.”

“It was only for one night. It was two A.M. by the time I left Jean's.”

“You could still have phoned.”

“I see you the rest of the time.”

“What about tonight?”

“I may go back. My stuff's still there.”

“Move in with me.”

Murdock shakes his head.

“No, I may go to the Westerby for a few days. The manager thinks I know something about him. I would have gone there last night if it'd been earlier. I'll go there tonight.”

Murdock taps the counter with his glass and the bartender makes up two more. While he's doing that, there is the sound of voices behind us, and as I look into the mirror beyond the bar, I'm faced with a charming scene--- a double date. It's perfection, straight out of a Coke ad. The girls first, they're marvelous. Fashion marches on, but after all, fashion only reflects life and in the case of these two girls, life 1966 style is as far as they want to go. Now today, if they were dressing like everyone else their age, they'd be in long skirts and the charcoal tops and the crinkle-cut hair and they wouldn't be laughing—not in the way they're laughing, anyway. With these two there's no smell of musk, no feeling that they change their underwear maybe once a week, no feeling that makeup has been put on top of makeup. Sure, they're in a certain kind of fashion, a fashion acceptable to whoever might be employing them; they've got leather and they've got cheesecloth but it's conservative and even the one with the bubble-cut wouldn't look out of place in a Disneyland outfit. And they look clean; you can almost smell the talcum, and they're not anonymous broads from the campus. They're like daughters, like you imagine daughters ought to be like. Through them you can almost visualize the kind of parents they might have, the kind of love, rightly or wrongly guided, those parents might have given these girls.

And the guys, the two guys, one of them could play the lead in The
Tab Hunter Story
, and the other one could be his faithful friend who gets the hand of Tab's girl's confidante. They're even wearing ties.

The four of them spill into the silence of the bar, full of life, apparently only conscious of their own immediate situation. The girls allow the guys to shepherd them to a booth and there's a lot of stuff about deciding what they're all going to have. Then the one who looks like Tab Hunter detaches himself from the group and comes over to the bar to order. But of course his name isn't Tab Hunter; for all his blondness he's called Harold Schwarz, and I know him very well. And he knows me and Murdock, but he's not aware of either of us until he's two-thirds of the way to the bar and then, when he realizes that Murdock and Boldt are sitting where they're sitting, it's too late for him to do anything else but complete his approach. The bartender glides into a serving position and Schwarz orders four draught beers. The bartender goes to work and Schwarz begins to go back to the booth but as he turns from the bar Murdock says to him, “Hello, Harold.”

Schwarz pretends he hasn't heard and keeps on going but Murdock says, “Talk to me Harold, will you?”

I look toward the booth. None of the others is taking any notice of what's going on at the bar and Harold takes this in too, so it's easier for him to turn around and look at me and Murdock.

“Never knew you worked this ground, Harold,” Murdock says.

“There's nowhere he doesn't work, is there, Harold?” I say.

“Join us,” Murdock says, sliding off his seat and leaving room for Schwarz to get between the two of us. “Have a drink.”

“I just ordered one,” Schwarz says.

“Have a drink,” I tell him, so he climbs onto the stool and sits between us glancing over his shoulder at the booth. I say to him, “Don't worry, Harold. Your partner won't be leaving without you.”

“What would you like, Harold?” Murdock asks. “Not beer, hey? Something a little stronger?”

“A Bacardi and Coke,” Harold says. “Some ice.” Murdock passes his order.

“So,” I say to him, “it's looking good today, hey? Nice merchandise. Should work out good, something classy. A collector's piece for buffs. Only make sure the dog isn't a little mutt, huh? You need at least let's say, a Borzoi; I mean, it'd be a real shame to penny pinch on production costs, you agree?”

Schwarz shrugs and gives a faint smile. The bartender sets the drink down in front of him but Schwarz makes no move to touch it.

“What I can never figure,” I say, “is not the pick up, not the act, because I can see how that would work, you looking the way you do and all. No, what I can never figure is the transition, the pitch; where you go from this to getting them to do what you always manage to get them to do.”

“That's right,” Murdock says. “How's it done, Harold? Paint the picture for us.”

I look over my shoulder toward the booth. The two girls can't see what's going on but Schwarz's partner has picked up the scene and he's trying to figure whether to sit tight or make for the exit. Schwarz picks up his glass and takes a sip.

“You guys sure never let a guy get bored,” he says. “I mean, how can a guy get bored trying to figure out what the guys he's talking to are talking about?”

“You don't know what we're talking about?” Murdock says.

“That's right,” Schwarz replies.

Murdock leans away from the bar slightly, makes a right- angle of his arm and punches Schwarz hard in the kidneys. Schwarz arches his back and I grab his tie and pull hard so that Schwarz's face crashes against the counter, in the process overturning his glass so that a mixture of rum and Coke seeps into the lapel of his white sportscoat. I keep my grip on Schwarz so that he can't lift himself up from the counter. The bartender has already turned his back on the scene and is now bending down below the level of the counter to attend to some stock-taking he's overlooked. I look over my shoulder again and now the girls are into the scene but they don't know what the Christ to make of it. The guy with them doesn't want to have to think of how to express the essence of the situation to them so he gets up and begins to wander across in the direction of his partner.

“You don't know what we're talking about?” Murdock says.

Schwarz can't answer for the moment, so Murdock punches him in the kidneys one more time.

“Hey,” says Schwarz's partner, a little unsure, and who wouldn't be. I turn around on my stool and face Schwarz's partner.

“Yes?” I say to him.

Schwarz's partner is not as good-looking as Schwarz but he's of the same mold and he even has creases in his pants.

“What gives?”

“You want some of it?” I ask him.

He doesn't answer. Murdock says to Schwarz, “You still don't know what we're talking about?”

Schwarz manages to nod his head.

“That's good,” Murdock says. “Because now I don't have to embarrass myself by going into details.”

“Like I always say,” I say to Schwarz, “my partner's too sensitive for this job. That's why he gets angry with people like you. You bring him face to face with his problem.”

Schwarz breathes out and with the breath comes the word “Florian.” I smile and close my fist over a piece of his hair turning his head so that he's looking up at me.

“Florian,” I say to him, still smiling. “Oh, yeah. He'll look after you. We wouldn't dare because Mr. Florian would take care of it, and there'd be no point. But Harold, I've got to tell you, you're wrong. Because if you got trouble from us we could make it stick because basically Mr. Florian wouldn't even get his secretary to get the number for him. It'd be too much trouble because he doesn't care enough. He'll just get somebody else, even double their pay, and if that annoyed you and you decided to talk to us about Mr. Florian,, you wouldn't be telling us something we didn't already know, and basically, we don't care about you either. We could take you down now, but you don't interest us today. We don't care about you today. We just wanted to say hello. Another day, we'll want to talk to you, but not now. So why not live a little, Harold? Enjoy life. George, buy Harold another drink. His other drink got spilled.”

Murdock calls the bartender and I release my grip on Schwarz's hair and my grip on his tie. He straightens up as best he can and the bartender sets down three more drinks in front of us. Murdock and I lift our glasses but Schwarz slides off the stool, bumps into his partner and makes his way back over to the booth, his partner following after him. The two girls are open-mouthed. Schwarz says something to them and they get up very quickly, all four of them hustling out of the bar in a tight bunch, not one of them ever once looking back.

Murdock says, “He's one I'll enjoy, one day.”

“Maybe,” I say. “But Florian'd never let us make it stick.”

Murdock shrugs. “It depends. Maybe one day it'll suit Florian to wave goodbye to Harold.”

“And you think he'll have us to hold the flags? You're crazy. Harold would get whacked and even the devil'd have a hard time finding the corpse.”

The bartender drifts back up the bar toward us.

“Two more,” I tell him.

He gets us two more.

“You get busy here these days?” I ask him as he sets them down.

“No,” he says, keeping a straight face, “but we get plenty of action.”