Davidian Report (13 page)

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.

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:

Oh, have you seen the popcorn man, the popcorn man, the popcorn man,

Oh, have you seen the popcorn man who lives in Hollywood …

Albion had lived south of the boulevard. It was another of the relic sections of Hollywood, a half-dozen frame houses left behind when business moved in. The address he had been given was the tall house next to the corner. There were signs of life, plenty of them; the parlor lights were bright behind undrawn shades, the voices were loud and merry. In one of the foolish coincidences of the everyday, the radio was singing the same old song of the Prague duet,
My darling … my darling
…

He walked up to the open screen and he found the bell. The man who appeared smelled of beer. He was just a man, maybe a shoe clerk or an electrician or a cop off duty. He said, “Come on in. Party’s not over yet.” He didn’t wait for Steve to explain himself as a stranger, he held open the screen and Steve followed him into the parlor.

There were several men who might have been the host’s brothers, there were women to match, and there was a fat old woman billowing over the best chair. And there was the reason for the party, a teen-age girl who’d marched in the parade. She was still wearing her brief red satin skirt and her soiled, high white boots. Her satin top hat was on the table with the beer. The girl—she couldn’t have been more than fourteen, all knobs and angles—was leaping in excited dance steps until Steve’s entrance halted everything. Everything but the radio moaning its song of heartbreak.

He began, “I’m sorry to bother you.”

The fat woman came out of the chair. Her face was flushed from the beer, one strand of her scant gray hair hung over her ear. “You are looking for a room?” She pushed at the strand but it fell again rakishly over the little fat ear.

He was sorry to bring remembrance of death into this celebration. But death had been here; it was not his doing. He said, “I wanted to ask about a man who used to live here, Frederick Grasse.”

The silence was even more silent. These people had known him better than anyone had known him in his last months. They had lived with him.

The man who’d admitted Steve asked bluntly, “Are you from the police?”

He’d never been taken for a cop as often as tonight. “No,” he said, “I’m the man he went to the airport to meet. My plane was late.” And he asked, “The police have been here?”

“Been here!” The teen-ager wagged her frizzy hair. It was bleached almost white. “We’ve had tons of them! They keep coming!”

It must have been her mother who spoke petulantly, “Don’t exaggerate, Melba.” She had the same rabbit nose of the young girl and whining lines about her lips.

Steve said, “I suppose the police took all of his belongings.”

The old lady was suspicious.

“I’m an insurance man from New York,” Steve explained to her. “Mr. Grasse was making out a report for me.”

Insurance was something she could understand. “You won’t find it here,” she told him. “They took everything.”

“They tore the room apart,” Melba exaggerated further. The soft song had died, some noisy cacophony had replaced it making all of them shout. No one turned off the radio; they were accustomed to its competition. Melba rounded her eyes. “Do you think he was murdered?”

“Melba!” her mother complained. “Where do you get such ideas?”

“Well, the police don’t tear a room apart when a man dies of heart failure, do they?” Having made her point, the little girl grabbed a cookie and crunched it between her crooked teeth.

“The kid’s got imagination,” her father said proudly. “And she’s got a point,” he told the roomful, gesturing with his beer bottle. “Do the police move in when a man dies natural? When Pa had his heart attack, did the police move in?”

They’d been over this time and again, making the same points, the same rebuttals. It was in their faces. The old woman was the only one not amused by the untoward excitement. She glared at them but she didn’t say anything. When she looked at Steve there was a spit of fear behind her washed-out eyes.