Davidian Report (5 page)

Steve hadn’t been followed from Oriole’s. He couldn’t be sure that he wasn’t picked up on Hollywood Boulevard. He was conspicuous in his hat and gabardine. The grayness of sky didn’t matter to these people; they didn’t wear hats, men or women, and the only coats were on older women. After this morning, Steve was certain that Schmidt would decide to put a dog at his heels. Schmidt didn’t go in for unorthodoxy. It was possible that he might be deterred by orders to let Steve Wintress alone, but this depended on how strong New York had made them. You couldn’t count on Smithsky not to promise one thing and perform the diametric opposite.

Steve knew where to start without Albion’s findings. He alone knew where Davidian had first holed up in Los Angeles, he hoped the knowledge remained his alone. He had intended to bypass the seven-month-old trail, it had been Albion’s job to bridge those months. But it was all he had now.

He accepted the off chance that a dog was already at his heels. Better to smell him out and elude him now rather than attempt it in the heavier traffic of downtown L.A. He walked towards his hotel leisurely, but he kept his eye peeled for an approaching trolley. He timed it to double back and be the last man on board. Two stout women and a soiled youth in a school jacket had boarded ahead of him. They appeared harmless enough. At the next stop it was women and kids. He checked a half dozen stops and checked off these passengers at various points along the boulevard. Not one of those he’d noted was left on board when the car clattered through the tunnel into the subway terminal.

The ride had been an hour long, a typical ride to the downtown area of a city, the shops growing more shabby in neighborhoods left behind as the crocodile metropolis crawled westward. The only off-beat sights were the dirty white round of once-glittering Angelus Temple, and a small lagoon with swans rising out of the placid water.

It was after two when Steve came out of the terminal into the crowded downtown streets. This far from the ocean the overcast was thinned, the sky created an illusion of a watery sun. His coat was a burden. He knew the city well enough; he’d had plenty of leaves here in the old war, the one to end war. He walked the half block to Fifth, turned the corner and moved on up to the corner of Olive. The park called Pershing Square was boarded up, behind a wooden fence excavators had plowed up what once had been the refuge of old men and pigeons.

From caution out of experience, Steve didn’t continue directly to Bunker Hill. He stopped first in a small drugstore across from the Biltmore Hotel and shut himself into a phone booth. He faked a call, waited what seemed long enough. No one had come into the store after him, no one was loitering outside when he left the booth and continued his climb up the hill. This had been an elegant part of town. What remained was beyond pride or even remembrance of the past. The dull smear of cement covered where once there had been flowering lawns and the benediction of trees.

Unlike its sister back streets of New York, this one was near to deserted. No housewives squabbled amiably as they rocked their baby carriages; no children ran under heels into the traffic. There was no traffic, not even a passing car. Nor was there curiosity evinced in a stranger, and he well knew a stranger was as recognizable in this isolated sort of community as on a village green. And as little welcomed. One thing was definite. He had not been trailed; he was alone on the block.

He found the number he was seeking, a big broad house, three fine stories of once-white frame, standing on a high-cut back terrace. There was a wide porch where the family would have rocked on a summer’s night, looking out upon the quiet hills beyond. When the house was young. A flight of run-over cement steps led to the top of the terrace, a cracked cement walk to the house. He climbed sagging wooden steps to the porch and crossed to the front door. No one appeared to challenge the intruder. The knob turned loosely under his hand and he entered the murky hall. There were defiantly closed doors on either side of a large center staircase. A pay phone against the wall reiterated a nervous jangle. He didn’t linger below, but began to climb the footworn stairs. Somewhere a baby wailed, somewhere a radio sang about a lovesick girl, somewhere a man and woman quarreled in short ugly spats.

On the second floor he walked a length of more closed doors, noisome and silent, and continued on up the back staircase. Three F was on third, the poorest location, without light from front or rear. He rapped on the dirty wood. When there was no response, he rapped again more sharply. He heard the loud out-thrust of a door from the floor below, a man yelling perdition at a shrilling woman. The man’s heavy shoes clattered down the stairs. And Steve rapped a third time, hard, under cover of the confusion.

The door came open an ell. In the aperture there was a segment of an old face, wrinkled past recognition. Only the kerchief wound about the head gave indication that the face belonged to a woman. The eyes were black and small as black buttons. And. malevolent. The mouth spat, “Nah.”

Steve put his shoulder against the door before it could close. He didn’t expect her to understand, but he said, “I am looking for a friend.”

“Nah,” she repeated.

She pushed at the door but he was stronger. “I know that he lived here.”

She muttered an unintelligible stream of sound. And from within he heard a sharp command in what appeared the same tongue. It could have been Czech. The order must have been to admit him because her grudging hand opened the door. Not wide enough to walk through but he could sidle inside.

It was a rather large room, it might have been the nursery in those older, gentler days. But it was diminished by dirt and time, by the big brass bed, and the stove and rusted sink, the cretonne-covered wardrobe, the oversized round table and motley chairs. There was a narrow window against the far wall, in front of it in a teetering rocker an old man wheezed in his sleep.

These things Steve saw, but only in suspended memory. For there was only one thing he knew he was seeing, the girl who had spoken the command. She was sitting upright on the tumbled cot against the farther wall, her short dark hair tattered about her face. She was wrapped in a kimono of purple cotton with giant pink chrysanthemums blooming over it. Her bare feet curled under the purple hem. Her hair was sleepy but her eyes were as big as the old woman’s were small, and were as black and hard. He had never dreamed of finding her here. The one person he would not seek; the one person he didn’t ever want to lay eyes on again. It was Janni.

His voice was as hard as her eyes. Only by keeping it so did he dare speak. “What are you doing here?”

“Did you think I should be in Beverly Hills or maybe Bel Air?” She held the kimono tight across chrysanthemum breasts.

He was without an answer; afraid lest he cry out to her, more afraid lest he move towards her.

She demanded, “What is it you want?” She loosed one hand, pushed it through her hair in the old familiar gesture.

Because he didn’t know what to say, he asked stupidly, “You were asleep?”

“I work nights.”

At the sudden anger that flared into his face, she laughed out loud. “You think you will find me in the cinema? The new Marlene Dietrich perhaps?” She laughed again, that short brutal laugh. “Yes, I am with the cinema. At night I sell tickets on Main Street. It is a fine job.”

He too could be brutal, to hide his relief and his agony. He said, “I’m looking for Davidian.”

The mockery went out of her. The old lady hardened in the background, the old man slept on. Janni said, “He is not here.”

“Where is he?”

“I do not know.”

“He was here.”

She flamed, “Haven’t you made enough trouble for him? For all of us? Get out and leave us alone.”

He didn’t move. “I’m looking for Davidian.”

“You think we have hidden him?” Her voice burned. “Look under the bed. Look in the stove. Look in Grandfather’s pants. Look! He is not here.”

“I know he is not here,” he said distinctly. “But I know he was here. Where did he go when he moved on?”

Her mouth was insolent. “If I knew I would not tell you. But I do not know. When he went away, I told him I must not know. Because of such as you.”

“Her?” His shoulder gestured to the old woman.

“She knows nothing. Not even her name.”

“If you see him, will you tell him I am looking for him?”

Her eyes hated with cold, bleak hate. “Why should I? To send him running again?”

He forced it on her, from across the room. “Will you tell him that?”

She shrugged and she tightened the cheap kimono about her. Beneath it there was nothing but her body, the curves and planes that came alive in a man’s hands.

“Tell him that. Let him know. It’s better for him to know.”

She gave no response at all, only the width of her blank, black eyes. He didn’t know what she would do. She would decide. He turned on his heel. The old woman had the door open for him. There was a curse on her blanched lips.

He wasn’t noiseless leaving the house; he defied its ugliness. At the front door he paused briefly before stepping out into the city. If a tail had caught up with him, it wasn’t visible. He went on down the hill to Pershing Square. He rode the trolley back to Hollywood, to his hotel. Blanking the memories from his mind, mocking at desire. A street girl; maybe she was selling movie tickets on Main Street and maybe she wasn’t. Maybe she was singing the little song again, dancing the dance. She had been fifteen when they first met, five—six years ago. He’d been too old for her then; he was too much older now.

Reuben was stretched out on the bed, perusing the comic strips in the evening news. He said, “What do you think? We’re asked to a cocktail party.”

“Who?”

“Feather Talle. She’d called about a million times before I got in so I called her back. She was calling you but she asked me to come along.”

Steve lay down on his own bed. “Forget it. Trolleys don’t run to her ritzy dump. Or buses. And I’m too old to hitch.”

“She’s sending a car.” Rube was slyly triumphant. “Haig Armour’s car.”

Steve frowned. He didn’t get it unless two and two were actually four and she was one of Haig’s little helpers.

Rube continued. “She said Haig said he’d be delighted to pick us up. He’s invited too.”

He would be. Haig and his damn car and damn driver.

“How the hell did she find me?”

“She said it was easy. She just started calling Hollywood hotels until she found this one.”

“You go,” Steve decided. “Say you couldn’t find me.”

“I couldn’t do that. It was you she wanted.”

It wouldn’t hurt to go; wouldn’t hurt to find out for sure what Haig Armour expected to get out of him. He yawned, “Okay, you win. But you take on whats-her-name.”

“Feather,” Rube admitted sadly.

“My God.” He climbed off the bed. “I’ll take on the cocktails. What about your pals? Find them?”

Reuben was embarrassed. “I found where they used to be. They’ve already shipped out.” He went on quickly. “I’m getting out of here, don’t worry about that, Steve. Only I’d sort of like to take in that cocktail party first.”

Steve laughed. “I’m not trying to get rid of you.” Maybe there’d been pals, maybe not; maybe Reuben St. Clair was a dog on his heels. It was better to have him underfoot than to have to spy out a stranger. If he was just a soldier with no place to go, he’d come in handy to keep Schmidt’s boys out of the room. “You might as well stay on with me as long as you’re parked here. We don’t seem to get in each other’s way.”

“You mean it?” The boy was appealingly grateful. “It’s a lot better kicks than being alone. I don’t like to make out alone. I wouldn’t want you to think I’m sponging. I was kind of rocky last night but I cashed a check today.” He darted to the jangling phone, said happily, “I sure thank you,” and into the phone, “Yeah, we’ll be right down.”

It was Wilton again. In lobby light he looked like any human being. Not much different from Steve, same build, about the same height, same average face. Same deadpan. He stated, “The car’s around the corner,” and let them follow him. Haig wasn’t in it; Haig had gone on ahead to set the stage.

He put them in the back seat, took his place at the wheel. He drove out Selma, there were lights upstairs and down behind the lace curtains of Mr. Oriole’s. It would be worth a penny to see Oriole’s face if he beheld Steve Wintress in a Fed car.

Early dusk covered the Strip. Reuben wasn’t talkative; he was sight-seeing out the window, getting his kicks out of the scrawled signature of Ciro’s, the awning of the Mocambo. Peering into passing Cad convertibles for movie stars. The car followed the old bridle path on Sunset into Beverly. They didn’t hesitate at the hotel, yeah. Haig had gone ahead. They rolled up the Canyon and through open gates tonight to the front steps of French Provincial grandeur. The grandeur was sustained. Feather wasn’t at the door; a white-coated Philippine boy, twin to the Balboa’s elevator operator, took their hats and whispered, “This way, please.”

The hall wasn’t so much, it only smelled of money with its icy candelabra and polished rosewood. The library, to which they were escorted, was something else. A vastly warm room of books in maple, of soft-patterned couches and deep chairs, of winter roses in silver bowls; a room of giant eucalyptus logs burning in a mammoth white brick fireplace. Haig Armour stood by the fire at the far end of the room, Feather jumped up out of the pillows on the elongated primrose couch. She was dwarfed by the enormity of the room and she looked childlike in the white satin shirt, the slender trousers of blue-black velvet. She’d discarded her horn-rims, her face lifted like a crystal flower out of the satin ruff at her throat.

“I’m so happy you could come,” she recited, her pale hair swinging against her cheeks. She didn’t say it happy.

Haig was as easy as she was rehearsed. “Hello, Steve. Hello, Reuben. You boys get rested up today?”

Steve said, “Hello,” and turned his eyes on the low table with setups of the finest silver and glass.

Feather said, “Won’t you help yourself? I’m not good at mixing.”