Authors: Day Keene
“Cold?” Cade asked sarcastically.
Mimi shook her head and tried to smile. “No. Scared.”
Cade whistled down a cab.
“The Royal Crescent Hotel. It’s on Royal Street.”
The cab driver looked from Cade to Mimi and grinned knowingly. “Yeah. Sure. I know where it is.”
Cade didn’t like his grin. It stamped the hotel. Obviously Janice wasn’t as choosy as she had been when he was paying her bills. Then nothing but the best had been good enough for her.
Mimi looked straight ahead. “I haven’t much time to thank you. You have been kind, ver’ kind.” She put her right hand to her left breast. “And I will always remember it here.”
The cab stopped for the light on Canal Street.
Mimi continued quietly, “I have been beeg problem to you, I know. You are a man. I am a girl. But this I cannot help. I am also married woman. I am no longer free to give what I might like to give. And deep down inside you, you would not have wanted it to be any different than it has been. Some men are not like that. But you are that sort of man.”
Even in his bitterness, Cade was amazed by the depth of her perception.
Mimi found and squeezed his hand. “Anything else but as it was would have cheapened both of us.”
Cade played with her fingers. “You think Moran has been true to you?”
“That is another matter.”
“What if he doesn’t want you?”
“That is my problem.”
“Yeah. Sure,” Cade said, dryly. He leaned back against the leather seat of the cab, fighting a mild headache, wondering how Mimi was going to react when she found out that her “husband” was living with his former wife.
It could be an interesting scene.
The hotel was much as he had imagined it would be. There was a dimly lighted cocktail lounge off the foyer. The rusted ornamental wrought iron needed painting. Both the ornamental mosaic tile entrance and the glass doors looked like they could stand a good washing.
As Cade started to pay off the driver, Mimi put her hand on his arm. “Thank you. Thank you ver’ much for everything. But you do not need to come in with me. After all, it has been a year and I would prefer to be alone when I meet Jeem.”
Cade gave the driver a five-dollar bill and waited for his change. “Uh uh.”
Mimi was puzzled. “Uh uh?”
Cade tipped the driver, put his change into his pocket, then tucked Mimi’s hand under his arm. “That’s American for nothing doing. How about my money?”
“Money?”
“Yeah. For the gas it took to run up here and the clothes I just bought you.”
“Oh, yes.” Her small chin jutted. “Jeem will be glad to pay you.”
Cade tightened his hand on her arm. “Could be. Anyway, we’re going in together.”
Mimi glanced at him hotly from the corner of her eye but said nothing. The lobby was in keeping with the outside of the hotel. A half-dozen artificial palm trees grew out of sand pots. The chairs were covered with pastel leather and looked new. It wasn’t the chairs in the Royal Crescent that took a pounding. It even smelled like the sort of a place it was.
The clerk was young and glib. He looked at Cade’s white captain’s cap and water-stained white shirt and pants and white top-siders, then at Mimi’s ample bosom. “Yes, sir, captain. A room with a bath, I presume? Say something around eight dollars?”
Mimi blushed. “No. You have a misunderstanding. We do not weesh for a room. I am looking for my ‘usban’.”
The clerk’s eyes turned opaque. “Oh.”
“A Mister Jeem Moran. He comes here from Bay Parish.”
“Oh, yes,” the clerk said. “Mr. James Moran.”
Mimi steadied her trembling fingers by holding on to the counter. “Would you be so kin’ as to call heem and tell heem that Mimi is here.”
The clerk was mildly amused. “I’m afraid that would be a little difficult, miss.”
Mimi looked at the house phone on the counter. “Why would it be
dificil?
”
“Because Mr. Moran isn’t stopping with us any more. He checked out a little better than two weeks ago.”
She gasped. “He moved to some other hotel? Here in New Orleans?”
“That I wouldn’t know, lady. Mr. Moran didn’t take me into his confidence. After all, I’m only the clerk.”
Mimi pounded on the counter with her small fists. “But you must know where he is. I have come all the way from Caracas.”
The clerk wasn’t impressed. “Look, lady. I don’t care if you came all the way from St. Louis. I don’t know where the guy is. Like I said. He moved out a little better than two weeks ago and he didn’t leave a forwarding address.” The clerk pointed to an envelope-choked slot in the key rack. “In fact, if you locate the guy, I’d appreciate it very much if you’d tell him to come pick up his mail.”
Cade leaned an elbow on the counter. “How about the blonde in the adjoining room? Did she check out, too?”
Caught off balance, the clerk asked, “You mean Mrs. Cain? Yeah. She and Moran — ” The clerk realized he had been trapped and stopped talking.
Mimi transferred her anger to Cade. “You knew! You knew all the time my Jeem was weeth some other woman, some she no-good. Who ees thees Mrs. Cain?”
It was an effort for Cade to speak. “My wife. That is, my former wife,” he told Mimi.
The barman in the cocktail lounge off the foyer refused to go on record. “Five feet four. One hundred and fifteen pounds. Blonde. Gray eyes. Very pretty. The right side of thirty.” He shook his head. “No, I really couldn’t say, mister. They come and go. Believe me. Good-looking blondes are thirteen to the case in here.” He picked up the glass he’d been polishing and looked at Mimi. “So are big six-footers with black hair. If they drank in here, I undoubtedly seen them. But their descriptions don’t ring no bell.”
Mimi gnawed at her lower lip.
Cade sipped at the rum in his glass and realized that he was hungry, that he hadn’t eaten since morning. “You serve food?”
The barman put the polished glass on the back bar. “The best food in town, not barring Antoine’s or Arnaud’s. But only in the booths, mister. The waitress will take your order.”
Cade carried his double rum and Mimi’s untouched brandy to one of the booths. Her eyes slitted and sullen, Mimi followed him. “You knew.”
Cade waited for her to sit down. “I don’t know now. But I was told that they left Bay Parish together, after a fight between Moran and Tocko.”
“Over your wife?”
“My former wife.”
“Your former wife then.”
“So I was told.”
“Tocko is the fat man who suggested the postmistress could give me Jeem’s address?”
“That’s right.”
“The man who was running up the levee when you put out into the river?”
“That was Tocko.”
“Maybe he’d just learned Jeem’s new address. Why didn’t you wait for heem?”
“With a dead man on my boat?”
“Even so.”
“Then, let’s put it this way. Did you notice a man with Tocko?”
“Yes. A man in uniform.”
“The uniform of the U.S. Immigration Service.”
Mimi sucked in her breath and held it for a long time. Then she exhaled slowly. “Oh, I see. Again, I have to thank you.”
Cade debated telling her the obvious reason for Tocko turning informer and decided not to. The girl was keyed to the point of breaking. She had enough to worry her as it was. He said, “After all, a girl as pretty as you are can’t suddenly materialize in a town as small as Bay Parish, especially a point of entry into the country, without having someone wonder where she came from.”
Her eyes still sullen, her lower lip thrust out in a pout, Mimi sat toying with her glass. Cade was glad when a bored waitress spread menus in front of them. What happened from here on he didn’t know, but that could wait until they had eaten.
The menu was in French. He ordered for both of them, one of the meals of which he had dreamed during his two-year diet of fish heads and rice: Pompano en Papillote. Poulet Rochambeau. Fond d’Artichaut. Glacé a la Vanille, Café au Lait.
When the waitress had gone, Mimi asked, “What are we eating, Cade?”
Cade told her. “That’s easy … Fish baked in paper. Chicken. A salad. Ice cream and coffee.”
Neither of them spoke again, both preoccupied with their own thoughts. The food, when it came, was good. It wasn’t as good as Antoine’s or Arnaud’s or Mamma Salvatore’s, for that matter, but it was the first meal of its kind that Cade had eaten in years and he enjoyed it.
Mimi’s anger and disappointment seemed to spice her appetite. As the various courses were served, she ate everything on her plate with exquisite manners and Latin enthusiasm. Cade enjoyed watching her eat. Everything Mimi did, she did well. He thought of her as he’d seen her lying nude on the bunk of the forecabin and shook his head.
“No man in his right mind.”
Mimi licked the last of the Glacé a la Vanille from her spoon. “I beg your pardon?”
“Just thinking out loud,” Cade said.
He ordered a package of Turkish cigarettes and two liqueurs to finish off the meal. It had been a good meal. He’d enjoyed it.
Mimi sipped at her anisette. “It was nice, ver’ nice.
Gracias
.”
Cade lighted a cigarette for her. He wished he knew what to do with Mimi. He couldn’t leave her alone in New Orleans any more than he could have left her alone in Bay Parish. Mimi was a problem. Cade leaned his forearms on the table. “Look, little honey.”
“Sí?”
“Now we’ve failed to locate Moran how about you changing your mind and going back to Caracas?”
Mimi blew smoke through her nose. “No.”
“But Moran isn’t registered here. You heard the clerk. He checked out two weeks ago.”
“There is more than one hotel in New Orleans. I will go from one to the other.”
“But we don’t even know they are still in New Orleans.”
“They?”
“You heard that, too. Seemingly, Janice cheeked out with him. At least, at the same time.”
Mimi laid her hand on his. “Thees girl to whom you were married.”
“What about her?”
“You love her?”
“At one time I thought I did.”
“How long have you been divorced?”
“According to the date on the final decree, about as long as since you’ve seen Moran.”
“You knew she was divorcing you?”
“No.” Cade tried to keep the bitterness from his voice. “They didn’t serve divorce papers where I was.”
“Where was that?”
“North of the Yalu River in Korea.”
Mimi was incredulous. “She divorced you while you were in a prison camp?”
“Yeah. I slept with the final decree on my first night back in Tokyo.”
Mimi’s breasts rose and fell with her anger. Cade watched them, fascinated. “I am right in what I say in the lobby. Thees woman, thees Janice, is a she no-good. Even if, how you say, I hated hees gots, eef my man had been a prisoner, eef he had been fighting for me, he would nevair have known. I would have been waiting weeth all the love in the world.”
“I believe that,” Cade said.
“What did you do to her to make her want thees divorce?”
“Nothing. Except perhaps not make enough money.”
“You are colonel.”
“Ex-colonel. But a colonel’s pay was chicken feed to Janice.”
“And now she ees weeth my man.”
“So it would seem. Moran has money?”
Mimi’s full lips twisted in wry smile. “If so, he nevair sent me some. If he had sent me money I would not have to hide under the canvas of a lifeboat.”
Cade glanced casually around the bar. It was beginning to fill with early evening trade. “Not so loud,” he cautioned Mimi. “You never can tell who might be listening in a joint like this.”
A pleasant-faced waitress appeared in front of the booth with a silver thermos jug. “How’s the coffee situation?”
“Thanks. I can use some,” Cade said. He made his cup more accessible, then looked at the waitress again. “Are you the girl who served us?”
“No,” the girl said. “That was Annette. I just came on shift. We change shift at five.”
“I see,” Cade said.
The waitress hesitated and said, “Say, Charlie, that’s the day barman, said you were inquiring about a good-looking blonde and a big black-haired man who were stopping at the hotel but checked out about two weeks ago.”
“That’s right. James Moran and Janice Cain.”
“You aren’t a cop, are you?”
“Do I look like one?”
“No,” the waitress admitted, “you don’t. Still, a girl can never tell. You want to locate this couple, is that the idea?”
“Yes,” Mimi said, “ver’ much.”
“How much?” the waitress asked.
Cade laid ten dollars on the table. “Say, ten dollars’ worth.”
“Let’s say, twice ten dollars.”
Cade laid a second bill on top of the first.
The waitress was fair. “First, let’s make sure we are talking about the same people. She’s a blonde, blue-eyed, this side of thirty, with no need of falsies? Looks and walks and dresses like she might be a model?”
“She was a model,” Cade said.
“He’s a big good-looking black Irishman. Curly hair, gray eyes. A cleft in his chin. A heavy drinker who laughs a lot. Has something to do with flying.”
Mimi nodded. “That ees a good description.”
The waitress fingered the bills on the table. “Then we’re talking about the same people. The reason Charlie didn’t remember them is because he never works the night shift and they always came in around this time, maybe even a little later. And always with two or three pollys in tow.”
“Pollys?” Mimi puzzled.
“Politicians,” the waitress explained. “You know, state representatives and senators and the like, the slickers we, the people send to Baton Rouge to raise our taxes so they can pry somebody’s Uncle Benny into the poor house and build roads for the ducks. So help me. While the couple we’re speaking of were here, the joint was practically an annex of the state capital.”
Cade shook his head. “I don’t get it.”
“Neither did I,” the waitress admitted. “But the tips were good while it lasted. It was almost as if Huey had come back to life and the town was running wide open again.”
“But where are they now? Where did they go from here?”
The waitress continued to finger the bills on the table. “Well, don’t come back and sue me if I’m wrong and I haven’t the least idea how to get there, but I gathered from what snatches of conversation I overheard, that when they left here they were going to some swank resort or fishing camp that this blonde is building on a big piece of undeveloped acreage she owns on Barataria Bay.”