Taco Noir (12 page)

              “Miguel, you look great,” I said, “but there has to be some kind of mistake. I’m here to see a man by the name of ‘Cavendish.’” He almost doubled over in laughter.

              “It’s Kandu!” he said. “I told the young woman that you were to come here to meet “Kandu the Mysterious.”

              I looked at Miguel’s goofy grin as he waited for me to catch up. If there was a joke to be had, I was missing it.

              “So you’re ‘Kandu!’” I said to Miguel’s widening smile. I really was going to have to get a better message service. I shook my head as a tiny, dim bulb went on over my head. “All right, what’s your racket?”

              “I am Kandu the Mysterious, all-seeing and all-knowing. Allow me to be your spirit guide into the realms of the unknown, where all will reveal itself to your humble servant in perfect clarity.” He closed his eyes and raised his upturned palms as he spoke, and my hand instinctively checked my wallet.

              “Did you ever stop to consider for a moment that there might actually be a hell for liars?” I told the fake fakir. When he opened his eyes again, the boyish grin returned.

              “I can’t imagine any higher being finding me anything less than charming,” he said, and if that higher power were anything like the girls in our old neighborhood, Miguel had no worries.

              “In that case, the higher power better guard his billfold. How long have you been running this racket?”

              “You wound me,” said Miguel, with well-practiced sincerity. “I’ve been drawn to the existential my entire life, but let’s be civilized and have a snoot before business. Lulu, down honey!” The evil hen managed to get in a couple more pecks before I shooed her away. I closed the door quickly before the fowl followed me inside, and was surprised to find myself smack-dab in the middle of a posh parlor, complete with red satin curtains, matching rug, chandelier, and a small, round table covered with a heavy tablecloth. In the center of the table was a large crystal ball, resting on a brass holder. The room was intimate, but I had no doubt that there was much more than met the eye.

              “Please allow me to welcome you to my humble parlor,” said Miguel as he pulled a chair out for me. I sat down and Miguel reached behind a nearby curtain and produced, as if by magic, a small bottle and a couple of shot glasses. He poured a couple of fingers into each glass, and we toasted our alma mater, the School of Hard Knocks.

              “Now look, Miguel,” I said, getting down to brass tacks. “It isn’t like old-home week isn’t swell and all, but how’s about running down this little scam for me?”

              “It’s like this,” said the charming con man. “The society swells meet me at a cocktail party or fund raiser, and I dazzle them with a little of the old ‘pulling back the celestial veil.’ Just a taste you, understand. Then I give them a card, have them stop by here, and give them a full reading.”

              “And the show begins,” I sighed.

              “Exactly! And once they get a bit of the song and dance, voila! They’re hooked! Repeat customers!”

              “And the song and dance is…?” I asked. I barely saw him so much as twitch as the lights in the parlor went out. I felt a breeze blow through the room, and I heard music in the distance. An eerie light filled the celling, and a brass trombone appeared to be floating over our table. Our table rose and tilted, even though both of Miguel’s hands rested on the top. After a moment of this, the lights came back on, and all appeared as it was before.

              “Not bad,” I said, honestly impressed with the display. “Can you pull a rabbit from your hat as well?”

              “That stuff’s for suckers,” he told me, the pride brimming over in his voice.  “I’m strictly first class all the way.”

              I held a hand up to cut him off before whatever he was selling started to run downhill. “You can count me out of this racket,” I told Miguel. “I’m strictly legit.”

              “You got it all wrong,” Miguel said, shaking his head. “I’m in love.”

              We retired to the kitchen, bringing the bottle of booze with us to keep the conversation well-lubricated, and Miguel told me about the apple of his felonious eye. Young Kate Worthington came from old-school money and spent her life behind the gilded walls of privilege. She had been raised by nannies and shipped off to boarding school when she was old enough to start being inconvenient. Now of age and coming into her fortune, young Kate was a beautiful young thing with all the world experience of a hot house orchid.

              Miguel had first laid eyes on the young debutante when he was running a scam on the partners in Daddy Worthington’s law firm. He found his way to becoming the pet sooth-sayer for the senior partner, but while young Miss Worthington was on a break from college, Miguel met her and fell head over heels.

              “It’s that old story,” Miguel said, sipping his whiskey as we watched the chickens scratch in the yard. “I took one look, and it was like the rest of the world didn’t exist.” He put down his glass and turned towards me, away from the chicken infestation outside.

              “I’m a changed man,” he said. “I want to marry Kate and she wants to marry me. I bought this house out here so that we could settle down and raise a few kids.”

              “And you outfitted your new home with fake ghosts and rising tables because…?”

              “It’s my old life!” he said, throwing his arm towards the front parlor. “I would give it all up today if we could get married.”

              “As far as I can tell, neither one of you is a child. Why don’t you just tell the old man to stuff it, marry little Miss Ivy League, and raise a brood of ill-mannered chickens?”

              “Because Jasper Worthington has me under his thumb,” he said. “It ain’t a stretch to say that I’ve made some mistakes in my life. I’ve got a prison record, I’m on parole, and old Jasper could get me sent back up the river with a single phone call.

              “And he hasn’t done so yet because…?”

              “Because Kate and I have kept our love a secret,” he said. Myself, I didn’t think that people spoke that way anymore, but here we were. “We’ve lived our lives in the shadows, afraid of what her old man could do. You gotta help me.”

              “And how can I possibly help you?” I asked. A memory flashed through my head, when I was overseas and my unit found itself smack in the middle of a mine field. The feeling was very similar to how I felt right now.

              “I need to get something on the Worthington family,” he said. “I need some insurance so that Kate and I can start our lives.”

              I left Miguel in the front yard, standing among his evil little birds. I promised him that I would at least look into the Worthingtons, and I received a few more pecks and scratches from Miguel’s nasty chickens for my trouble. “I can’t pay you much,” Miguel told me as I closed the gate on the picket fence behind me, “but I’ll make you a batch of my mom’s beef stew when you’re done.” I told him where he could stick the beef stew and went to work.

              I did some light digging on the Worthington family and found that they had indeed battened down their family hatches. What the world at large knew about them was what was printed in the society pages. Daddy Warbucks Worthington was a pillar in the community. Mrs. Worthington took the silver spoon out of her mouth on weekends and used it in a soup kitchen on the East Side. If they had any skeletons in their closet, the closet was padlocked, boarded, and guarded by pit-bulls. Kate, on the other hand, was what we in the trade referred to as colorful.

Little Kate was an only child, and her parents would only have dipped her baby shoes in bronze if they could dip them in gold first. If there was anything she was left wanting for as a child, I couldn’t find it. The parade of nannies, wet nurses, tutors, and baby sitters that made up most of Kate’s young life read like the cast of a Cecil B. DeMille  movie. I could have asked Miguel to give me the rundown on young Kate’s life, but I wouldn’t trust him if he told me the correct color of smog.

              After calling in a favor or two at the DA’s office, I found that young Kate had never been convicted or arrested, but it wasn’t due to lack of trying. My contact, Mike McCarthy, remembered her name right off the top of his head, which was never a good sign. He told me that Kate Worthington spent both money and time like it was going out of style, and made a habit of paying no attention whatsoever to the rules that might slow her down. Everything from jaywalking to narcotics laws were bent or broken, and Kate’s father employed a junior partner in the firm just so he could clean up her nights on the town. It also looked as if the junior partner worked overtime. Miguel had described Kate Worthington with violins and rainbows, but the picture I had of her was hot jazz and bathtub hooch. And that meant there was more to this than met the eye.

              I changed gears by staking out Kate’s apartment. I waited for her to start her evening, and was a little surprised that her evening started around ten. As Kate sped off in a little convertible that was specially equipped to drive on the sidewalks, I hailed a cab to tail her. I had to hand over an extra C-note to the cabbie just so he could keep up. The cabbie, to his credit, managed to keep her taillights in sight, and we tailed her to the Pretty Kitty Night Club.

              The Kitty had a strict clientele policy that was intended to keep out mugs like me. It was the hallmark of a nice club, and I was sure that there was a photo of me hanging up in the coatroom, just in case. In most circumstances, I would have handed the chimp working the door a C-note and chalked it up to my client’s expenses. In this case, the expenses went to Miguel, and I was sure that payment would not be forthcoming. I was afraid that I might just have to dig into my own pocket to gain entrance, but then Lady Luck decided not to spit in my face for once and I caught a break.

              This particular door monkey was one Paulie the Pick, and even though he cut a fine figure as an impassable obstacle on the door, he owed me one from a few months earlier, when I provided him with an alibi for a stabbing in the East End. The big lug was losing money to me in a poker game, but when your nickname is “the Pick,” cops generally look to you first whenever they find a mug that is, shall we say, perforated.

              “Hey, shamus,” said Paulie as I approached the big lug. He grinned, showing off a selection of broken and missing teeth that reminded me that one didn’t get the position of working the door by hitting the books.

              “Hey yourself, handsome,” I said, stepping in front of the swells who were waiting in line for entrance to the Kitty. They were well-dressed society stiffs who made enough to wait in line, but not enough to get to the head of it. The couple I stepped in front of probably spent the last half-hour waiting in line before I cut them off, and they looked a little put-out. The guy started to protest to Paulie, but zipped it up pretty quickly when the Pick snapped open a switchblade and began to clean his nails.

              “So what can I do for a pal?” he asked as nonchalantly as a man picking his nails with a switchblade could.

              “I was hoping for an invite,” I told Paulie. “I’m trying to meet a better class of people.”

              “Well, they’re richer in there,” said Paulie, not bothering to look up, “but I wouldn’t call them better. Heck, I’ve seen kinder souls doing hard time.”

              “Still, I imagine it pays the bills,” I told Paulie, and he nodded, spiriting his switchblade away and cracking open the door for me to enter. From inside, jazz and cigarette smoke spilled out to the hopefuls waiting in line.

              “I imagine that’s what you’re doing here,” said Paulie. I nodded and said that I was working on a favor for another friend. If I still believed the story that Miguel handed me, then young Kate was as fragile as a lily in springtime. If she was a regular here, then Paulie would know.

              “I’m looking for a dame,” I told the Pick, flashing a photo I had dug up from the Society page.

              “So’s every other Romeo in this joint,” laughed Paulie. He took a look at the newspaper clipping I flashed and gave a long whistle. “Her?” Paulie shook his head. “You’re gonna have your hands full with this one, gumshoe.” Paulie had been around the block more times than an ice cream truck, and when a guy like the Pick whistled, it wasn’t because he forgot the lyrics.

              “You know the story on this dame?” I asked Paulie.

              “On ‘Good Time Katie?’” laughed Paulie. “Only that you can find her in her usual corner, holding court by draining her trust fund as fast as she can.” He threw a nod towards the bar. About a half dozen young men with their gears stuck in high surrounded a barstool. I could only guess that somewhere in the middle of the mass of young men was “Good Time Katie.” I patted Paulie on the back and made my way over to the sea of eager fellows. On my way through the crowded club, I drew more than a few stares that led me to think my tie might have clashed with my jacket. I got to the boys surrounding the good Miss Worthington, took a deep breath, and waded in.             

              “Do you mind?” asked one of the young men as I jostled my way through the crowd. I smiled and opened my jacket, letting the young man lay eyes on the snub nose in my shoulder holster. The crowd thinned.

              “Well, do I know you?” slurred a kitten in a full length evening gown. She had raven hair, ruby lips, and the smell of gin was so thick on her breath I was surprised the wallpaper adhered to the walls.

              “Sure you do, kid,” I said, putting a heavy hand on the shoulder of her last remaining would-be suitor. The kid got the message and high-tailed it back to the bar. Kate fished around in her pocketbook and came up with a cigarette. She also managed to come up with a lighter but, after a few tries, the task of lighting it proved too much. I took the lighter and lit her cigarette for her.  I find it’s the little things that help build trust.