The Girl From Nowhere (14 page)

I had a presentiment that the pieces would soon begin to snap into place, but for the moment everything was frustratingly inconclusive and, once again, I had no clear notion of what to do next. I walked west on 57th Street, past the Russian Tea Room and Carnegie Hall, as far as the old Hearst Building. There I turned south and headed down 8th Avenue, some half-formed notion dragging me toward Aladdin’s Alibi. I was mildly curious about what the scene there was at that time of day. Did a strip club get a lunchtime crowd?

I approached from the far side of the avenue to get the lay of the land. The Alibi was open, though it looked forlorn in the sunlight. A different Yul Brynner stand-in was guarding the door. As I watched—smoking a Gitane in a shady doorway—I saw a handful of customers arrive in threes and fours, all male and with that cookie-cutter, out-of-towner-dressed-for-the-Big-Apple look—probably playing hooky from the Gift, Games, and Hobbies Expo or the Corrugated Paper Goods Fall Fair.

As I contemplated such matters, a succulent brunette in a tight miniskirt asked for a light. For a moment or three, I took her for a hooker offering a blow-n-go quickie—a service readily available in that neck of the jungle—but the outfit, though sexy, wasn’t quite raunchy enough. There were no flags flying, no sartorial signals reminding the sucker where he’s supposed to put it.

“You a friend of Joey’s?” she asked.

“Joey being who?”

“The same Joey you went to see last night.”

“Oh, that Joey?”

“Yeah, that Joey. I brought you a drink last night when you were sitting ringside with your nose up Betty Boobs’s ass, and then I came to fetch you when Joey was ready to see you.”

“I remember. The cocktail concierge with the baubles in her belly button. I thought you looked familiar. You knocking off or clocking in?”

“Picking up my paycheck, if you must know. Now, about Joey . . .”

“What the hell is this? Did I forget to tip you?”

“Matter of fact, yes, but that’s not what I’m hitting you for.”

“I didn’t know you were hitting me
for
anything. Hitting
on
me, perhaps . . .”

“Like I look like I’m that kind of a girl?”

She had the sneer down pat.

“So what’s the deal?” I asked. “You just want to make small talk?”

“It’s not good to be seen together around here,” she said. “I’m going to buy you a drink.”

I was trying to remember which movie that line came from as she hustled me into a side street and into a bar called Paddy’s Wagon. The place was buzzing with lunchtime traffic, but the hostess apparently knew my take-charge companion and quickly found us a booth—ahead of the waiting line of honest Jonahs who complained loudly but ineffectually. We were no sooner seated than a waitress appeared and the brunette told her, “He drinks Dewar’s, and I’m taking a cola with a slice of lime.”

I remarked that I didn’t have her pegged for the Pepsi Generation.

“I’m on duty,” she said.

Now this began to make sense. The only question was which agency she was working for.

“So let’s talk about Joey Garofolo,” she said.

“Are you going to show me your shield?”

“Hey—this is not a well-known television show sponsored by the Ford Motor Company. You don’t imagine I carry ID at the Alibi?”

“But I take it you’ve just identified the bureau you’re associated with?”

“Take it any way you want.”

“Do I get to call you by a name? Agent Kefauver, or whatever?”

“You can call me Darla.”

“Like the cute girl in the
Our Gang
movies?”

“My mother wanted me to grow up to be just like her—eight years old.”

I was beginning to like Darla. She wasn’t Sandy Smollett, but she had a lot going for her—a sense of humor, green eyes, lips that looked edible, shiny blue-black hair out of the Sunday funnies, and legs that reached all the way down to the linoleum. I wasn’t too sure how she felt about me.

“Last night Garofolo sent for you,” she said.

“You seem to know everything.”

“He sent his car to your apartment?”

“Why don’t you ask me what you don’t already know?”

“What did he want to see you about?”

I was trying to figure out the playbook here. She hadn’t admitted that she was FBI, but that seemed a good bet. She could have been feeding me disinformation, of course, but I figured I had nothing to gain by dwelling on that possibility. If she was a Fed, then there were plenty of reasons why she might be working undercover at the Alibi. Money laundering would be a leading candidate. Then it hit me. There were no women agents in the FBI. J. Edgar Hoochenheimer didn’t permit nylons and garter belts in his corner of the Department of Justice Building unless he was wearing them himself. I’d heard of instances, however, when women from other agencies—including the NYPD—were loaned out to work undercover alongside G-men. That opened the possibility that Darla might be affiliated with the NYPD’s Organized Crime Control Bureau, or maybe the pool of spooks that down the pike would become the Department’s Intelligence Division.

Whatever the explanation, it seemed apparent that Darla had been hanging out at the Alibi for more than a couple of days. What interested me was how Sandy Smollett fit into her picture. I calculated I had nothing to lose by bringing up the subject.

“Joey wanted to talk about Sandy Smollett,” I said.

Darla just nodded.

“Does that suggest anything?” I asked.

She shrugged.

“I’m a private detective,” I began.

“Tell me something else I don’t know,” she yawned.

This wasn’t helpful. It meant either that some agency had been keeping tabs on me since I drew a moustache on a poster of Barry Goldwater, or that Darla had had a search run on me when she got off work at the Alibi the previous night.

“Sandy Smollett came to me because she was being stalked,” I told her. “I’ve been trying to help her.”

“And did you get anywhere?”

“Not really.”

I told her the story of how I met Sandy. If she had heard it before, she didn’t let on.

“And so,” Darla said, “Joey Garofolo sent a car for you last night because he wanted to express his eternal and paternal thanks for you looking after his little girl?”

“Something like that. He did mention family.”

“I’ll bet he did,” said Darla. “Listen, Novalis—from what I’ve been able to check out, you’re not totally dumb. But dumb enough to get mixed up in things that are what my bosses like to call ‘inappropriate’ for some little PI working on his ownsome.”

“Garofolo mentioned something along those lines too.”

“So why don’t you level with me? What’s in this for you?”

“You may find this tough to believe,” I told her, “but I’m just trying to find out why somebody is trying to scare Sandy Smollett out of her pants.”

“Oh God,” she said. “Don’t tell me you’re another sucker who’s fallen for the Sandy Smollett wholesome allure routine?”

Darla knew how to hurt a guy.

“Like who else?” I said.

“Like any number of johns who schlep to the Alibi to gawk at her on stage, then hightail it to the men’s room at the Port Authority to jack off, and come back again and again, and send her bouquets like she’s some frigging diva in a corset and a helmet at the Metropolitan Opera. Other strippers men want to fuck—Sandy Smollett they want to take home to mom. Even the other strippers fall in love with her. Well, that’s not unheard of—but with Sandy Smollett it’s different. They want to babysit her and change her diapers and feed her Gerber banana goop on a silver spoon, or better still have her lick it off their pussies. I don’t want to hurt your feelings, Novalis, but Sandy Smollett is some kind of a freak.”

“How well do you know her?” I asked.

She thought about that, which I liked.

“Personally? A little. She’s okay. But she’s still a freak. I’m telling you to be careful because she’s potential dynamite.”

“People keep warning me about Sandy, but nobody will say why.”

“Who else has warned you?” Darla asked.

I wondered how much I should risk telling her. My instinct was to trust her but not her organization—whichever one it was.

“That depends,” I said. “Why are
you
warning me?”

She was quiet for a moment.

“If you’re smart,” she said, “you’ll take my warning seriously.”

“Thanks—for nothing. Tell me one thing—is she Garofolo’s main squeeze or something?”

“If she was,” said Darla, “you’d be swimming against the tide in concrete Speedos.”

She was conciliatory now.

“Listen,” she said, “we could help each other.”

“You want to babysit me? I’m not keen on mashed bananas. I prefer the puréed rutabaga with a dollop of
dulce de leche
, but you can feed it to me any way you like.”

“You want to treat this as a joke?” she said. “Your loss.”

“So is there anything more you can tell me?” I asked her. “About anything? Or anyone? About Yari Mendelssohn maybe?”

She shook her head.

I chose to take it as significant that the name Yari Mendelssohn had not provoked more of a response.

“So do we stay in touch?”

She tore the cover off a book of matches decorated with a cartoon paddy wagon, wrote a number on the flip side, and handed it to me.

“It’s a service,” she said. “I check in.”

Sure, I thought, and how many other people? Jolly J. Edgar? Efrem Zimbalist, Jr.? I took out my wallet and felt for a business card.

“Don’t bother,” she said. “I know where to find you.”

SIXTEEN

I desperately wanted
to see Sandy. I felt as if my life
depended on it. Maybe it did. I hailed a Checker and gave the driver my address. He suggested avoiding traffic by taking the West Side Highway, which sounded okay at the time. We found out the hard way that a section of the decrepit elevated roadway had collapsed earlier in the day, so we ended up crawling downtown on surface streets. I would have gotten out and walked to a subway, but I was blocks from the nearest station. So I just sat there and smoked and tried to ignore the cabbie as he droned on about the Mets, and the motherfucking mayor, and the faggot students who didn’t have the balls to do their patriotic duty and nuke those fucking Vietcong commies and fuck the brains out of their skinny cocksucking women. When we reached the Meatpacking District, I got out and tipped him with some Canadian coins somebody had slipped me earlier in the week.

As I crossed Gansevoort Street, he yelled through the open window, “I know your fucking type, pinko cocksucker. Got a fag boyfriend up in Toronto, huh? Fucking draft dodger asshole faggot! I had you down for a pansy a fucking mile away. Look at your fucking hair, for chrissakes! I bet you’re wearing a butt plug and lace panties.”

It took me a couple of minutes to walk to my apartment. In my demented state, I pictured Sandy being there at the door to greet me with open arms, moist lips, and so much more. There was no sign of her. I called her name. Nothing. Maybe she was in the bathroom? Empty. As far as I could tell, most of her belongings were still there, but she was gone. I went to the front stoop and checked the corner where Garofolo’s heavy had been stationed. No sign of him or a replacement. Maybe Sandy had just stepped out for some air, but somehow that didn’t feel too likely.

Back in the apartment, I noticed that the door to the walk-in closet was half open. I knew what I was going to find even before I saw the scrap of paper on the floor. Scrawled on it was a sequence of numbers—the key to the combination of my safe. Presumably Sandy had been watching me as I opened it earlier that day and had taken notes. I removed the loose floorboards. The safe itself was still there, so I opened it. The cash that had been there earlier was gone, and more worryingly, so was the .38 and my small cache of ammunition. Written on a page torn from a diary was the single word: “Sorry!”

In a few seconds my longing to see Sandy had been transformed into rage. What the fuck did she think she was doing? And, most of all, how could she do this to me? But then the rage was overwhelmed by concern. Why had she taken the gun? Was she thinking of self-protection, or of using it in anger? Or even on herself? Where could she have gone? Once again an overload of unanswerable questions.

The phone rang. Sandy.

“Where are you?” I demanded.

“I just wanted to apologize and explain,” she said.

“I said, where are you?”

“Best you don’t know.”

“What the fuck is going on? Why did you take my gun?”

“I’m sorry about that—and the money. If everything works out, you’ll get that back. I had to take it as an insurance policy.”

“Against what?”

“In case I need to disappear.”

The idea of her disappearing was terrifying. I tried to stay focused.

“But what are you doing with the gun?”

“There’s something I have to take care of. I can’t tell you.”

“Do you even know how to handle a gun? They’re not toys, you know.”

She giggled, which put me in a weird place.

“I could probably teach you a thing or two,” she said. “I have a Distinguished Expert rating—officially certified by the NRA. That’s what it’s called, honest. My dad is an NRA Master Training Counselor. Before that he was a weapons instructor in the military. I knew how to handle sidearms before I learned to ride a bike.”

Again she giggled. She was probably biting her lip too.

“For someone who’s walking around armed,” I said, “and with a score to settle, you sound pretty loose.”

“I had a drink. I didn’t mean to, but I did anyway. It happens when I get nervous. Just a couple of little ones.”

That was great news.

“Tell me where you are,” I said. “I’ll be there right away.”

“Can’t do that,” she said. “I have to handle this on my own. I don’t want you to get hurt. That’s why I left.”

“Don’t worry about me,” I began, but she had hung up.

I called Ma Bell to see if they could put a trace on the number she had called from. No go. Then I went over the places there was some reason to think Sandy might have gone. There were a couple of obvious possibilities—the Alibi and Stewart Langham’s. For all I knew, she might have a reason to put a bullet into Joey Garofolo’s brain, or Langham’s for that matter. I called the Alibi and was informed by a woman that Sandy Smollett would not be appearing that evening. When I pressed further, I was told she had called in sick, and also that no, Mr. Garofolo was not available. Then I rang the number Langham had given me. The phone was answered by his daughter, Reina. I explained who I was and asked if Sandy was there. She told me she hadn’t seen Sandy, but that her father had said he was worried about her when he returned from his meeting with me. I asked to talk to him, but she said he was at the dentist. Then I thought of a third possibility. Sandy presumably still had keys to Jilly Poland’s loft.

I didn’t want to tip my hand by calling Jilly’s number, so I called Carol Dove, her girlfriend. Jilly answered the phone. I told her I was trying to track down Sandy. She said she hadn’t seen Sandy in days, though she’d called a couple of times to thank Jilly for everything and to tell her I was a great guy.

“Could she be at your loft?” I asked.

“She has keys,” said Jilly. “Have you tried calling?”

“Yeah—before I called this number,” I lied. “No reply.”

“Then I can’t help you,” said Jilly. “I won’t be home for a while. Carol and I are on our way out to catch a movie.”

Having no better plan, I decided to check out Jilly’s place anyway, though I had no idea how I’d get in unless Sandy was waiting on the loading dock, which didn’t seem likely. Before I left, I returned to the safe in the walk-in closet. What Sandy hadn’t known was that it had a false bottom—under my passport and my divorce papers and all the personal crap. In that little compartment was another .38—a Ruger—a more compact semiautomatic that was a souvenir from another case. I should have turned it in to the cops but I’m sentimental, and anyway I had always thought it might come in handy in an emergency. I put on a leather jacket in which the gun could be stashed without attracting attention, then headed out to the subway.

It was getting to be the time of day when the main drags near Jilly’s building were beginning to clog with commuter traffic headed for the Holland Tunnel but the side streets were dead. I left the train at Canal and walked to Jilly’s block. A gang of hard hats had been digging up the roadbed right outside her place but had quit for the day, leaving an orange tent over their excavations and a cluster of plastic cones to prevent passing winos from taking a nosedive into the underworld. One such lush with discolored patches of skin under his eyes, like shoe polish, was picking through a dumpster and, at the far end of the block, men were loading a grand piano into a moving truck. Otherwise everything was quiet.

I reconnoitered Jilly’s building from the far side of the street. There were lights on in a couple of windows, though not on Jilly’s floor. It was still daylight, so that didn’t mean much. The building was one of those loft structures that was going through a mixed-use phase. Businesses still operated on a couple of floors, while others were used for storage and still others were occupied by artists living there illegally. I looked over the names alongside the doorbells. Apart from Jilly’s, there were none I recognized, but I had noticed that “Con Ed” was stenciled on the side of the tent over the excavation site. That gave me an idea. I rang the buzzer labeled Shoshanna Novelty Tops, which had been retrofitted with an intercom system. A raspy male voice asked me what I wanted. I identified myself as Gregor Samsa, a Con Edison employee.

I was informed, “You fuckers have been driving us crazy with that racket outside.”

“Yeah—well there’s a reason,” I said. “Are there artists in this building?”

“Artists, dykes, drag queens, hippies—you name it.”

“That’s what our intelligence told us. We’ve reason to believe that at least one of them is tapping directly into the Con Ed mains. That’s costing us money, and it’s costing customers money. It’s going on all over downtown and we’re aiming to put a stop to it before the whole neighborhood is crawling with bleeding-heart faggots with Chairman Mao’s
Little Red Book
stuffed up their ass.”

“Amen,” he said. “So what am I supposed to do about it?”

“I need to get into the building to check the meters in the basement.”

“How do I know you’re legit?”

“Take a look out the window and I’ll show you my badge.”

I had a World War II Army medic’s badge that I carried for just such occasions, so now I stepped out onto the sidewalk and flashed it toward the face I saw in the window. Back at the intercom, the guy at Shoshanna Novelty Tops was still suspicious.

“Don’t you people wear uniforms anymore?”

“Not when we’re trying to bust some thieving, dumb-fuck artist. This is strictly undercover.”

“Okay,” he said, buzzing me in, “but leave us out of this. We’ve gotta coexist with these freaks—y’know what I mean?”

The lobby of the building, if that’s not too grand a word, provided access to a freight elevator and a stairwell. Having told Mr. Novelty Tops that I was going to the basement, there was no question of taking the elevator, so I quietly made my way up the stairs to the fourth floor.

I was confronted by the door to Jilly’s loft, unmistakable because she had painted its metal-reinforced exterior with one of her razzle-dazzle op art designs. I listened and could hear nothing. Very carefully, I tried the handle and found, unsurprisingly, that the door was firmly locked. I recalled from my previous visit that it was fitted with a Fox Police Lock—the old-fashioned kind with a heavy bar that fits into a metal plate set into the floor—so there was no point in playing games with the edge of a credit card the way people do to trip latches in movies. My common-sense choices were to bang on the door, yell Sandy’s name, or just go away. For all I knew she was on a Greyhound bus headed back to Nowhere. But that viral hunch was acting up again. My mother once had shingles on the brain and it drove her temporarily insane. That’s the way the hunch was manifesting itself now. It was a long shot that Sandy was inside that loft, and yet this relentless presentiment was torturing me with what seemed like the certain knowledge that she was in there, and maybe in trouble.

There was a window on the landing, blocked off with heavy, folding wooden blinds fastened with a padlock. Padlocks I can manage. Soon, I had picked it open. The blinds themselves looked like they had been closed since Mayor La Guardia was down the street in City Hall, reading
Little Orphan Annie
over WNYC. They creaked like crazy as I folded them back to reveal a double-hung window so caked with dirt you could barely see the other side of the street. Getting it open took some effort, but it finally submitted. I leaned out to discover that the fire escape was out of my reach, unless I wanted to try a Flying Wallendas routine.

The next step was to see if I could get access to the roof. This proved to be easy enough, and I was about to let myself onto the fire escape a floor below when I heard the sound of horses’ hooves on cobblestones and looked down to see two mounted cops on their way to the police stables on Varick Street. I waited till they had passed, then dropped to the fire escape and headed down to the fourth floor, hoping not to attract too much attention. Nobody tried to stop me, and I stepped onto the slatted metal landing just outside the sightline of the nearest of three windows.

At that moment I noticed someone across the street, at a window one story higher than me—a bearded man in jeans and a black shirt. Next to him was something on a tripod that could have been a rifle. That gave me a momentary scare, but it turned out that his toy was a high-powered telescope. The guy had no more interest in me than in the garbage cans on the sidewalk. Probably waiting for some chick to come home from work and take her clothes off.