The Song Is You (5 page)

“The point is,” he said, resting his finger on the edge of her sleeve, “I can’t seem to puzzle out what got her so shook up. I figure if I find that out, maybe I can help her.” This wasn’t all true, but it was true enough. Maybe. Hop couldn’t untangle his motives. There was something about covering his own tracks—tracks he thought he’d long ago covered. And sure, there was something else. Something about Iolene’s accusations. And something, too, about the coltish fear in her eyes and the idea that maybe he—the fixer—could make it disappear.

Frannie shook off his finger and speared herself a water chestnut. “Mr. Hopkins, I’d like to help—well, no, actually, I don’t care. But I couldn’t help even if I did. Read my stories. That’s all I know.”

Something in the way she returned so intently to her congealed chop suey, which was among the worst he’d ever tasted, made him more sure of her interest. She had something. He wondered what it could be and how you’d get something like that out of a girl like that.

“How would I get something out of a girl like you,” he said, taking a chance on the honest approach. “And note: I’m not batting my eyelashes.”

She grinned, exposing a chipped tooth. Somehow, the sight of it stirred Hop and a few dozen yards fell away.

“Let me think on some things, Mr. Hopkins.” She set her fork down and grabbed for her purse, the grin slowly giving way to concentration. Slowly.

“Call me Hop.”

“I can’t call a grown man Hop.”

“That’s right.”

At the end of a long afternoon at the studio spent mostly trying to coax a fresh-faced, teenage star out of marrying a Mexican mariachi musician she’d met in Tijuana, Hop drove out to Lincoln Heights to find the address Central Casting had given him for Iolene.

As he got closer, he realized he’d been in this area before, back in his short stint working for Jerry at the Examiner when he first came to town. He’d covered a story about a gambling shop above a Salvation Army. Bettors were strolling in, having some coffee, listening to a little of the gospel, then slipping upstairs to lay down some green on the Cardinals over the Sox in five.

He’d sized up Iolene for classier digs. In fact, he had a vague memory of her saying she shared a small apartment with a girlfriend in one of the sparkling pink and gray high-rises of Westwood. “The manager thinks I’m her maid, but I’m not particular,” Iolene had said with a shrug.

This particular strip of road was a big step down. And when Hop began to get closer, he felt kind of lousy for her. Sure, a Negro girl, no matter how finely turned-out or how talented, was never going to be the next Ava Gardner, but Iolene had always worked steady in the past, small parts singing in supper clubs, dancing in large revues.

When he reached the right number, he saw it was a house, small, with a sagging overhang and split into apartments. One set of windows was covered over with sun-rippled newspapers. An overflowing, rusted metal trash can teetered on the lean strip of brown lawn.

Hop, feeling conspicuous in his pressed linen suit and his lemon-yellow pocket square, dashed up the walk as quickly as possible. A directory, just a faded index card taped beside the door, revealed no clue as to which apartment Iolene lived in, if she lived there at all. Her name didn’t appear.

Hop paused a moment before trying the door, which wobbled open. There were two apartments on either side and an old pine staircase leading to the second floor.

“What the hell,” Hop decided out loud before rapping on the door marked no. 1.

No answer.

He turned instead to no. 2, from which he could hear a faint thrum of bop. He’d barely completed a brisk knock when the door flew open and a petite colored woman in a red wrap stood before him.

“Honey, I, honest, don’t know where he dusted. He could be clearway to Chicago with those stones for all I’ve been made aware,” she said, shaking her head.

Hop stared at her. Had everyone in this building skipped town? “What stones?”

The woman curled her mouth in thought. “You ain’t the fella from Treasury.”

Hop tried a smile. “No, ma’am. Another white guy.”

She laughed, tugging her wrap closer to her chest, hand still on the door. “You ain’t so white.”

“Well, then help a brother out,” he said with a grin. “I’m looking for an old friend, Iolene. She still live here?”

“Oh, you her daddy?” She smirked, shaking her head. “No Iolene here, boy. Another colored chick.”

“Are you sure? Lived with a man. I talked to him on the phone.”

“So why didn’t you ask him where your girl went?” Her eyes slanted, just perceptibly. ‘You sure you ain’t law?”

“So sure it hurts,” Hop said, as lightly as he could. “We worked together, sort of.”

She paused a minute, locking eyes with him. Then, “A man, Barber, lives in number four upstairs. He had a woman here now and again. Name of Louise.”

“Pretty, about so high, light skin?”

She nodded, tilting her head knowingly. “That the way you like’em, Mr. High Yella?”

Hop skipped over her question. He wanted to be sure Louise and Iolene were one and the same. “With a really distinctive voice, low and soft?”

“Oh, man, what you take me for, Arthur Godfrey? Yeah, Louise sang,” she sighed, as if deciding. Then, “At a joint on Adams near Jefferson Park. King Cole is the name.”

Hop felt a ripple of relief. Not a complete dead end. He looked back at the woman, leaning on the door frame. “What’s your name?”

She smirked. “Just call me Gorgeous,” she said, beginning to shut the door.

“Thanks, Gorgeous.” Hop quickly pulled out a five-spot. “You’re swell…”

Smirk sliding away, she tucked her fingers around the bill and the door swung shut.

King Cole

It was a large place with green damask walls, long, narrow tables, and private booths with heavy curtains. On the long wall behind the bar was a smoke-patina mural of a bushy-browed king enthroned with pipe and bowl. It ran all the way behind the small stage, where it depicted three fiddlers looking more like German barmaids than musicians.

A white girl in a spangled gold dress sang Rosemary Clooney style, while a long-fingered Negro played piano. The crowd was just as mixed.

Hop slid into a seat at the bar and ordered a soda to keep things simple. The bartender didn’t quite roll his eyes at the order but perked up when Hop left a two-dollar tip.

“Is Iolene singing tonight?”

The bartender lifted his eyes, pausing a second in wiping a glass.

“Not these days, pal. She doesn’t come around here anymore. Not in weeks.”

“That right? How come?”

“Most people here knew her as Sweet Louise. Guess you’re kind of a friend.”

“I am. Haven’t seen her in a while, though.”

“Not so much of a friend if you don’t know.”

“Know what?”

The bartender set down the glass and pointed, rag still in hand, to a man sitting alone at the far end of the long bar. He looked like he’d been drinking for several hours or years.

“That’s the man you want to talk to. Jimmy Love. Played piano for her when she was on regular.”

Hop thanked him and made his way down the bar. The man spotted the approach and gave Hop a long, unblinking stare the whole way.

‘Tour name ain’t Hippity Hop, is it?” he muttered. And the minute he spoke, Hop recognized him as the man he’d spoken to on the phone when he’d tried to reach Iolene.

“Uh, no, Gil Hopkins. They call me Hop, though.”

“They do, do they? Who’s they?”

Hop smiled. “Just about all the theys.”

“Oh, then you’re the one,” Jimmy Love said slowly. His voice,

coated with drink, still had a funny kind of dignity that made Hop sit up straighter in his seat. “I thought so when you called.”

“The one what?”

“The one Iolene went to see. She said she’d done you a favor, a big one, of the ‘mouth-shut’ variety, and now, with all her trouble, you would step up.” His eyes turned from the mirror behind the bar to Hop.

“I don’t know what…” Hop felt three hairs above sea level, and sinking fast.

“Those boys have been closing in. Boys you don’t want to make unfriendly with, Hoppity.”

“Connected?”

“Hell, ain’t we all?” He shrugged, taking a handkerchief out of his pocket. “You can’t live in this town without it sticking to you like tar paper. But no, these fellas were up some notches.”

Hop lowered his voice. “Cohen connected?”

Wiping a drop of Jack Daniel’s from his upper lip, Jimmy Love shook his head. “What did I just say, greenhorn? You’re much slower than she let on. She acted like you knew a damn thing.”

“She was wrong,” Hop said. Boy, was she.

“More ways than one, looks like. You didn’t help her for jack, Jack,” he said, shaking his head again and slipping his handkerchief back into his pocket. “Now it’s later than you think.”

Recognizing he’d been dismissed, Hop stepped out of Jimmy Love’s way. He was starting to tire of conversations where he only followed a whisper of meaning. Each step into Iolene’s world made him feel like he was pulling away filmy veil after filmy veil and never getting any closer to her honey skin. This was how he’d always felt with Iolene. With some other women, too. These days, he’d come to prefer the ones whose secrets lie only behind a thin layer of nylon, if that.

As he watched Jimmy Love drop a few bills on the bar and walk out without another word, Hop waved over to the bartender.

“Bourbon,” he sighed, pushing his soda aside. “Bourbon.”

“Does that mean bourbon twice or are you playing for emphasis?”

“Do you get extra tips for the Oscar Levant routine?”

“Not from your type.”

Had he even made her any promises? Not that he could recall. He was very careful, his entire life, to avoid making any promises to women at all. He remembered Iolene showing up at the Cinestar office the day after Jean Spangler first went missing, eyes red as grenadine, hands shaking, clattering against the tortoise clasp on her purse. At the time, he was sure the girl—this Jean—would show up. That she’d just gone off on one of these joy rides that these starlets live, breathe, and tramp themselves all over town for.

“Listen, Iolene, what could you tell the cops that would help them find her, really? Stay out of it. You want to end up in cuffs on the cover of tomorrow’s Mirror? Guilt by association, baby. Who needs it? Let me do the talking for us. Fix it real nice.”

And he had. He knew what to do to make it all go away. Drop a few ideas —ideas that were code for “girl of questionable habits.” “Girl running in dangerous circles.” “Girl not long f0r this town.” It wouldn’t take much. He knew that, too. Girls like this turned to smoke every day.

“I guess I’m going home,” Hop told the bartender at the King Cole, pushing the empty glass forward with his two index fingers. His head wobbled and he knew he’d had at least two drinks too many. Fuck me, I’m innocent.

“It’s not even two. King Cole’s booming until four o’clock closing.”

“Maybe so.” Hop threw some bills on the bar, his eyes moving in

and out of focus. “But I got someone waiting.”

“A girl?”

“Sort of. A wife.”

It was only then that, in his bourbon haze, Hop remembered there was no wife. Hadn’t been one for almost a month. The only place to see Midge now was tucked in Jerry’s brown-walled bachelor pad on Bronson. It was the first time he’d forgotten and it made him feel lost, a ship knocking against a dock over and over that no one hears.

That’s the booze talking, he assured himself.

Driving home, he missed a turnoff and ended up heading toward Bronson, anyway. Some small voice in the back of his head whispered, But only if the lights are on. Then he figured, hell, until a few months ago he wouldn’t have thought twice about dropping in on Jerry at this hour. They’d drink brandy, reminisce about the war, talk about Jersey Joe Walcott or anything at all. That was back when Hop would do anything to avoid going home. Kind of like now.

He wasn’t altogether sure what he was going to do when he got there. But that didn’t stop him from leaving his car teetering 0n the curb and running up the drive and the four sets of stairs to Jerry’s door, skidding on the last set of steps so hard he nearly tore a leg off his pants from the knee down. It was something about him wanting to see Jerry, like he always did, but now Midge was there and it wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair at all.

It seemed like he’d only been knocking for a second, but when Jerry’s face appeared he realized his knuckles were already sore.

“Oh boy, you’re soused,” was all his friend said, and before Hop could blurt out whatever it was that was ready to press through from the dark tumult of his head straight out his mouth, he heard that familiar nasal pitch. A voice from behind Jerry, scrambling to make

itself heard.

“Get the hell out of here, Gil. No one wants to see you.”

Midge.

“Oh yeah?” Hop found himself jamming his hand against the door

hard, knocking Jerry back a few feet.

When he heard his own voice, it wasn’t the cool meter he’d imagined in his head as he’d trotted up all those stairs. It didn’t sound like himself at all. It sounded like the Hop only his wife could generate, spontaneously, like a disease.

“Maybe Jerry wants to see me,” he said. Then, struck by his own petulance, he turned nastier. “Maybe I’m not here to take out the trash.” As soon as he said it, he regretted it. This wasn’t how he wanted to be, not in front of them, not now.

Still, he kept going, battering forward. He moved past Jerry, ln a pair of striped pajamas that Midge must have bought—they were just the kind of smooth, shiny thing Midge was always buying.

He pushed through the familiar space, the warm brown room with its wooden turntable and low lights and piles of books, long, tall bottle of scotch and shiny tumblers. And the new pair of acid-yellow

cushions Midge must have purchased to brighten up the place, a garish splash that hurt his eyes, mustard on prime rib.

It was only then that he got a good view of his wife, her arms tugging on the door frame to the bedroom, both hands, one above the other, gripping the edge. And she in a long robe with matching nightgown, black and filmy, like a high-class hooker.

And it was also then that he saw she looked different. Her hair pinned up so tight, like a schoolmarm, a jarring disjuncture with the costume and the mascaraed eyes.

He looked closer, and something clapped loudly in him and unfurled for miles, falling and falling faster still.

“You cut off all your hair, Midge,” he murmured, his voice broken, broken to bits. “What happened to all your beautiful hair,” he said, fumbling across the room toward her, shin hitting the coffee table.

Then, right there, despite her shocked face, he couldn’t stop his fingers from diving into the bright white-blonde curls, curls like spun satin under his nails, in the pockets of flesh between his fingers. Christ, how drunk was he?

“Stop, stop. You ruin … you ruin … ” she stammered, a hand on his chest and then a hard shove.

“All your beautiful hair,” he said, repeating himself helplessly, noticing, with a tremble, the stray platinum strand on his fingertip.

Looking back at him, she said, finally, “You ruin everything beautiful.”

Hop’s hands fell to his sides. “But, baby…”

She pulled her robe together and straightened. “You lost, don’t you see?” she said, shaking her head, voice spiky. “You lost everything.”

“Oh,” Jerry said suddenly, and both were reminded that he was there.

Midge and Hop turned and looked at him, waiting for him to say more. But that was all he said.

When he first met Midge, he thought she was the loveliest thing in the world, her heart-shaped face, pointy chin tilted, bow lips, just like a porcelain doll. But when you touched her skin, she was neither cold nor hard hut all nerve endings, hot and yielding, tensile and charged—two hands around her midriff (you felt you could wrap them around twice) and her back arched tight, and she’d shudder and ripple and undulate like some kind of wired animal. It was a kick, let me tell you. Who knew the price would be so high? Oh, Midge, I was your chump.

“Operator.”

“Yeah, doll. Can you give me the number for, um, Adair, Frannie? A-D-A-I-R.”

“I have Adair, R, 812 Laveta Terrace.

“Good enough.”

He didn’t bother to call. It would slow him down. Out of the booth on Hollywood Boulevard and back into the car. Now no longer just drunk, but drunk and cracked open by his wife’s dainty high heel.

It wasn’t a long drive, which, even in his condition, he could tell was unfortunate because it didn’t give him enough time to think about what he was doing. He just knew that after that bang-up with Midge he couldn’t stomach going home.

When he approached the bungalow, he felt the weight of his own bad behavior, but it didn’t stop him.

He walked up to the door and knocked.

A moment later, a light went on and he could see Frannie’s red hair peeking out the front window at him. He could almost hear her curse through the wall.

She flung the door open.

“I was expecting a satin robe. Or maybe very soft cotton,” Hop said. He had been positive he’d wake her up. It was very late, he was sure. And in fact, he could tell by the long crease on the side of her face and the heavy look in her eyes that she had been sleeping. But she was wearing a wrinkled green shirtwaist dress and a pair of stockings. No shoes.

She looked down at her dress and ran one tired hand through her tangled hair. Then she looked back up at Hop.

“What the hell do I have to explain? You’re the one at my door at …” She looked down at her bare arm. “I don’t know where my

wristwatch is.”

“You wanna alert the neighbors or can you let a fella in?”

“You smell like my old man. How many does that make? Must be at

least four hours of steady bourbon.”

“Yeah? And you?”

“A girl’s gotta have some social life. But I’m straight now. Can you

say the same?” She opened the door wider and walked into her living room. Hop followed.

Sinking down into her sofa, he looked at her, trying to keep steady. Christ, how many had he had? What the hell was he doing here?

She brushed a hand over the wrinkles in her dress.

He was torn between his own private misery and his natural instinct to want to ask her about her night, about the kind of evening Frannie Adair had that sent her to bed before she could manage to unzip her dress.

‘You got your shoes off,” he noted, instinct winning out.

“I think they fell on the floor,” she said, rising. “I’m getting some water. Do you want anything, bright eyes?”

“Pinch of something? Might as well keep going,” he said, leaning back against the cushion for balance.

As she poured the drinks and he had a brief minute alone, he started to feel rotten again, lost his own footing, and remembered the scene at Jerry’s, and the scene before that at the King Cole.

And then she was handing him a short glass of brandy and she was drinking a tall tumbler of water and something happened. Something knocked loose inside him and suddenly he could hear his own voice talking, talking nonstop, about how he’d seen Jean Spangler the night she’d disappeared, about how Marv Sutton and Gene Merrel— yes, that Sutton and Merrel, silver-tongued crooners, fleet-footed dancers, the whole song and dance—had joined them at a little dive called the Eight Ball. And how they’d taken her off with them and how he didn’t know for sure what happened but that he knew everything had turned very bad somehow.

She listened. She listened very closely. She watched the words issue from his mouth in long, taffy strings. She let him hang himself, pull by pull. Then, finally, she said:

“What exactly are you saying? That Sutton and Merrel were involved in her disappearance?”