South Wind

Jerry Tracy, maker of wisecracks, cuts in on a bit of Southern tragedy

B
UTCH’S BIG FEET
always shuffled when he was worried or puzzled. As he led the old man into the private Broadway cubby of the
Planet’s
famous columnist, he squirmed his huge shoulders sidewise and his soles dragged like twin ashcans.

He shot a brief glance at Jerry Tracy and resumed his fore and aft scrutiny of the visitor.

In the canny experience of Butch old guys like this worked the novelty grift between Longacre Square and the lobby of the Republic Theatre. They were hired by the Minsky Brothers or maybe Luckyfield cigarettes. Every few yards on their strolling they pressed a button and an electric sign lit up on their shirt-front, or maybe on the seat of their pants. They all wore crummy Prince Alberts like this in the daytime and changed to dress suits with shiny shirt-fronts after dark; and they all sported that white, goatlike whisker under the lower lip. Must be a rule of the union, Butch figured.

Butch waited stolidly to get the office from Jerry—either a discreet scram for himself or a swift bum’s rush for the old bird.

“Mistuh Je’y Tracy?”

A soft, blurry voice. Southern. The columnist looked at the straight back, the mild eyes. Sixty, he guessed. His gaze dropped to the veined back of the hand resting on the knobbed cane. It was puckered and fragile looking, spotted on the skin with faint brown marks like overgrown freckles. Jerry changed his guess. Seventy, at least.

He answered the formal query with a brisk; “Check. What’s the complaint?”

The old man sat down.

“Why, no complaint, I reckon. It’s merely that I’ve been info’med, suh, that you’re in a position by virtue of yo’ knowledge of theatrical matters and Bro’dway, to render me a kindly service—”

Uh, uh! Here comes the bee, Jerry thought He could almost hear it buzz. In a moment it would alight painlessly on his wallet and fly away with a buck. Well, maybe two, damn it! The old fella looked pretty tired; the hand that mopped his face was trembly …

“I’ve come to see you about my granddaughter, Mist’ Tracy. I tho’t—I’ve been reliably info’med—that you could probably help me find her.”

Tracy’s eyes narrowed. Might be the McCoy; might be a build-up. Too hot to speculate. The dead pan of his bodyguard wasn’t much help.

“Outside, Butch,” he suggested curtly.

The old man was fingering the edge of an inner pocket. “I’ve got a photograph—”

“Just a minute, Colonel.”

“Major, suh,” he corrected courteously. “Major Geo’ge Fenn.”

“Okey by me … What makes you think I find women? Somebody tell you I was a private op? And who gave you the address? Been over to the
Planet
office?”

“Yes, suh. I forgot—I saw a gentleman named Hennessey, I believe, and he gave me this yere note.”

“Let’s have a look, Maje,” said the columnist grimly. Dave Hennessey was getting to be pretty much of a lousy nuisance lately! Him and his nose for news! Jerry would put a cover on his can the next time he saw him!

He ripped open the envelope and read the thing with a scowl.

“The attached prise package has been getting under our feet and walking around presses looking for you. He refuses to spill the plot except to Mistuh Tracy, suh. Maybe there’s a gag in the guy. If there isn’t, toss him to Butch. D.H.”

Jerry crumpled the message disgustedly and flipped it into the waste-basket.

“That makes everything as clear as the depression,” he grinned. “Who sent you over to the
Planet
in the first place?”

“The clerk at the hotel. Mr. Collins. A ve’y nice man. Most helpful an’ courteous. When I explained to him that Alice Anne was in the theatrical profession he said that—”

“I know. He said Jerry Tracy, just like that. He’s not Snitch Collins, by any chance, of the dear old San Pueblo?”

“That’s right. That’s where I’m stoppin’. I like it first-rate, suh. Ve’y quiet. No noise. The cab driver recommended it”

His wrinkled eyes smiled.

“New Yo’k is a real homey town. As nice an’ friendly folk as you’d find in the hull of No’th Ca’lina.”

Tracy nodded absently. Friendly, all right … The friendly hackman, cruising around Penn Station in a gyp-wagon, hauling fresh meat to the San Pueblo, pulling down his commission. The friendly Snitch Collins, steering the old guy to the
Planet
on the off chance that his joint might horn in on some publicity for a change. The friendly Hennessey, his Irish nose alert for a cheap hot-weather gag for his lip-reading customers … Just a great big friendly town!

And quiet! You couldn’t find a quieter spot than the San Pueblo Hotel if you started at the Aquarium and walked all the way to Gun Hill Road. The San Pueblo specialized in dense silence. The hard-pan dicks who dropped in for an occasional chat with the guests and the management, did all the loud talking. A month back they had carried out a small blonde exhibit from a room on the fifth floor. The Tabs made an awful noise.
“Dance Hostess Slain by Fiend!”
But the San Pueblo merely said: “Tsk, tsk!” got a pencil and a
Racing Form
and stretched out in its underwear to study the Pimlico results with the shades discreetly pulled.

Tracy said, in a flat murmur: “Yeah, it’s pretty quiet … The granddaughter’s in show bizness, you say—her name’s Alice Anne Fenn and you say she’s been up here—”

“Fo’ years, suh. But I haven’t had any letters since—”

“Let’s see the photograph.”

He studied it with a scowl. The picture was about as helpful as ear-muffs in August. A faded three-quarter pose of a girl about sixteen in a fluffy white dress, with a white ribbon, on her hair and a rolled diploma in her left hand.

“Her graduation picture,” said the old man proudly. “First in her class. Smart as a buggy whip.”

“What’s her stage name? Never told you, eh?”

“No, suh. I always wrote to Alice Anne at general delivery. She wasn’t much hand at answerin’ letters and for the last two years—”

“I know.”

Damn’ right, he knew! An actress, eh? that meant she might be anything. A waitress in Quids, a salesgirl in Gimbels basement. Or she might be demonstrating corn-razors or opening day-beds in a store window. Pounding the sidewalks of Sixth Avenue or doing a strip act in a cheap burlesque show. Hell—for all he knew she might have a coupla kids and be living in the Bronx, married to a shoe-clerk. Try to find a stage-struck kid from the South in this burg! New York was lousy with Southern gentlewomen trying to get their monickers up in the
lights
.

He picked up a sheet of paper, folded it, tore a semi-circle out of the crease. He opened the paper and laid it flat on the photograph with the girl’s face in the hole.

He studied it, looked away with eyes closed, studied it again. There was something vaguely familiar about that isolated head in the center of the white sheet. Add a few years, subtract the schoolgirl simper … Hmm … Lower-lip pout, round face and movie chin; moonlight and honey-suckle in the slow drawl of that famous second act exit …

Behind his own closed eyelids jigsaw letters joined hands and formed a name. Lola Carfax, by ——! Lola …

When he opened his eyes his face was wooden.

“Can’t place her at all, Major,” he said. “Some more dirt, please.”

“Suh?” The old man looked puzzled.

“Details. Dope. Information.”

Major George Fenn wiped his moist face and began tremulously to recollect. Jerry sucked a pencil end and listened.

Alice Anne was the only kin—his only granddaughter—all he had left—he was gettin’ old, powerful lonesome. Smart little tyke; she used to play with his watch-chain an’ call him Marse Geo’ge. The Fenns came from Thunder Run, in No’th Ca’lina. Not much of a place, but pretty, suh … Saggin’ fences an’ houn’ dawgs blinkin’ lazy, with their paws couched in the red dust o’ the road. Thunder Run warn’t much of a crick but it certainly did thunder, by Judas Priest! when the stars made everythin’ else quiet an’ the spray kep’ brashin’ an’ gurgling in the dark over them flat stones. An’ the hills—blue, suh!—with hawks driftin’ like dots an’ fat white clouds that never moved …

“So Alice Anne packed up and left,” Tracy reminded him.

That was correct. She went No’th. Grandpap couldn’t hold her, not after she married that damn’ Jeff Tayloe. Only seventeen, she was. Headstrong as a colt.

Jerry stopped sucking the pencil abruptly. So La Carfax was married! Well, well—and also, hum, hum!

Jeff Tayloe was a scamp, it seemed. A damn’ cawn-pone hill-billy with white teeth an’ a big laughin’ voice—an’ she ma’ied him. Three months later Jeff was in jail and Alice Anne smiled calculatin’ an’ far-away, packed up and went North. Plenty o’ spunk. She wrote letters for a while, then they stopped coming. Never told him her new name—he always wrote to Alice Anne Fenn at general delivery, and after a while his letters came back with big carmine rubber-stamp marks all over them.

“How long since she left, did you say?” Tracy murmured.

“Four years this Fall.”

Humm … Lola Carfax—seventeen and four—check! Three years since Hymie Feldman picked her out of thin air and gave her the juicy lead in “Southern Charm.” A natural! Couldn’t act worth a plugged dime, but her drawl—oh, man! And her luscious innocence in the second act—oh, ma-a-a-an! And her wise, case-hardened persistence in the part after the smash-hit closed. Little Lola knew instinctively what the vise critics didn’t—that Southern Charm was a golden racket in a big evil-minded burg, if you played the role on Park Avenue and met the right people and your voice was as soft and velvety as pollen on a bee’s thigh … A luscious peach from the Southland with a small, rotten pit tucked snugly away in the fruit. Jerry knew the outlines; Patsy would know a hell of a lot more!

He said, absently, “Beg pardon?”

“—my declinin’ years,” the old man was saving in a slow, stately murmur. “The last prop of my house. If you could only find her—”

“I thought you said she had a brother,” Tracy lied in an odd voice.

The old man hadn’t said anything of the kind, yet he nodded.

“Did I mention him? Her brother, Henry Fenn, made the supreme sacrifice in France, suh. She’s all I have left.”

“Check,” said an odd, gasping voice in Jerry’s brain. “No brother to guide her. Then who whelped Buell Carfax? And—holy sweet hominy!—can it be that young Massa Buell has white teeth and a big, laughing voice? Also, how tight are Southern jails, I wonder?”

He was burning with a desire to get to Patsy and soak up her slants on the subject. Patsy could spear a fish like Lola Carfax with a dozen well-chosen words.

He got to his feet, smiled, held out his hand.

“Tell you what, Major. You’ve got me interested. I don’t recognize the photograph but I’ll keep it, if you don’t mind. You wait for developments at the San Pueblo—I’ll have Butch ride you over in a cab. It may take a little time to trace Alice Anne—”

“I was hopin’ you might find her for me in the next fo’ty-eight hours,” Major Fenn said faintly. “Circumstances at Thunder Run make it impe’ative, I’m afraid—”

Busted. The old fella had his fare probably and a small, carefully counted roll …