Honky-Tonk Girl (11 page)

CHAPTER TWELVE

DEAD MAN'S MEMENTO

Thursday Evening, 6:00 P.M.

Tizzy Mole was well on the way to becoming blotto.

He sat at the bar with the rest of the band, his shirttail hanging out sloppily, drinking steadily.

It was growing dark. Outside, the neon lights of Honky-Tonk Street were winking on. Nickelodeons were beginning to blare.

“Well, I don't know about the rest of you guys, but I'm going to Chicago.” J. W. Richey said, “I got the hottest little number that ever lived staked out in that town. I can go to work with a hotel band, this chick cooks my meals, keeps my clothes straight. Maybe I'll buy a car. Yeah, I think I'll buy a car. I'm getting too old to play for kicks anyway....”

“Yeah, I think I'll quit the jazz bands,” Eddie Howard agreed. “It's the commercial boys that make the dough. I think I'll go to the Mayo brothers about my colon first. Then I'll get me some quiet little cocktail lounge deal in New York. Maybe I'll even quit music,” he went on recklessly, “and get a regular job.”

Link Rayl laughed without mirth. He swallowed his drink and stared into space. “I want to see any of you guys quit the business. I just want to see it. Hell, it's in your blood like some kind of stinking cancer. You quiet it down in one place and it pops out of you somewhere else. You'll stay with it until it gets you the way it did Biederbecke or Big Sid Catlett.”

“Yeah, or Miff and Zack—” Tizzy Mole stopped and shivered. There was a fine coating of perspiration over his face. He wiped at it with his fingers, smearing it. “Well, I'm gonna quit,” he whispered. “I can't take no more of this. I lay awake nights. I keep hearing that damned
Ghost Album
. I pull the plug out of the record player, but it don't quit. It just keeps going around and around in my brain, all those dead musician's ghosts, playing again. And I hear Miff yelling something at me. I can't make it out. He just keep yelling—”

Eddie Howard shook his head, his owlish eyes grave behind their thick lenses. “You're getting symptoms, Tizzy. Definite psychosomatic symptoms.”

“What the hell's that?”

“I had a friend used to see an owl on his shoulder,” Link Rayl put in. “He'd go around showing it to everybody and talking to it. But, hell, there wasn't no owl there. At least I never saw one.”

Tizzy ordered another drink and lit a cigarette. He was still shivering. Maybe he felt it more than the other guys. Maybe because Miff Smith had been his closest friend. They had knocked around the music business together ever since they'd met. One would get a job on a band, pretty soon the other would follow him. They lent each other money and clothes. Hell, their clothes were so mixed up they had long ago forgotten who owned what.

They had even begun to look alike. People sometimes took them for brothers. But not the women. They always went for Miff. Not many gave Tizzy a tumble.

“Lay off,” he said. “You guys lay off me.”

They all drank in silence for a while, listening to the jukebox. Then Richey said, “Well, anyway, we're breaking up the band. That's decided. We ought to do something about

Miff's stuff though, before we leave.”

“What do you mean?” Eddie Howard asked.

“Well, his stuff. You know, his clothes, music, his horn and all that junk up in his room. We can't just walk off and leave it. He's bound to have someone we can send it to.”

“Yeah, how about that, Tizzy? Miff have any relatives?”

Tizzy Mole brooded over his drink. “He had an old lady. A real nice old lady. He always talked about he was going to write her a long letter because she was all alone. But something always came up and he never got around to writing it, I guess.”

“Well, I guess we ought to pack up his stuff and send it to her,” Richey said. There was a long silence. Everyone was avoiding the other's eyes. “Don't you think so?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Eddie Howard agreed. “I think that's a good idea.”

“Yeah,” Rayl said.

They drank in silence for a while longer.

“Well, you think we all ought to go up and do it?”

Howard put down his drink and rubbed his stomach. “There ain't much sense in all of us going up there, is there?”

“One guy could do it.”

“Yeah.”

They all looked at Tizzy Mole.

He fumbled with the glass that contained his bourbon and water, spilling some on the back of his hand. “We could draw straws or something,” he said sullenly.

“He was your friend, Tizzy,” Richey pointed out.

“Sure, Tizzy,” Eddie Howard chimed in. “You know more about his stuff than we do. We wouldn‘t even know where to send it.”

“Okay,” Tizzy said softly. “Okay, okay. I'll do it. I'll go.”

He stood up. He looked at them for a moment, opening his mouth as if to say something. Then he changed his mind, turned around and shuffled wordlessly out of the bar.

Outside, it was dark. People were beginning to wander along the narrow sidewalks of Honky-Tonk Street, stopping now and then to stare at the girlie pictures out in front of the bars.

Tizzy walked with his head down, bumping into one person after another. He couldn't explain it, but a deep-seated feeling of dread had been growing in him all day. He felt as if he should be running off somewhere. But he didn't know why.

The liquor hadn't had much effect on him. The bleak sensation grew steadily and the drinks he swallowed were just like water. It made him think about the time when he was a little boy and his mother had fallen sick so suddenly. They'd sent for a doctor. And all day long, he'd sat by himself, huddled in a corner of the front porch of their tumbledown house. All their relatives had gone in and out of the house all day long, whispering with grave faces. His father had wandered around with a blank, lost look on his face. And no one had paid any attention to little Tizzy, huddled there by himself. He'd wanted to scream at them, “Don't you know she's going to die? Why do you keep saying she'll pull through? I know better.” His father had wandered about all day long, muttering to everyone who came in, “She'll pull through. She's got a strong constitution.” He kept saying the words over and over again as if they were some kind of magic charm. And when there was no one to listen to him, he came out on the porch and said them over to himself, “She'll pull through...strong constitution....” But Tizzy had known better. A bleak, empty feeling from somewhere deep inside him told him differently. And sure enough, a little after sundown someone inside the house began to cry and Tizzy knew it was all over.

Now he paused and looked up. He was standing in front of the old brownstone building where Miff Smith had lived.

Across the street and down the block was the building—a building much like this one—where Johnny Nickles and Link Rayl lived. Eddie Howard and J. W. Richey lived several blocks away. None of the guys in the band was married. Zack Turner had been married, but his wife lived in New York when he was on tour with a band. J. W. Richey had a wife somewhere, but he never talked about her.

Tizzy walked up the dark stairs slowly, dragging his feet with effort. He stood before the door of Miff Smith's place, feeling through his pockets for a key. The police had told them they were through with the room. So they certainly wouldn't object to his packing Miff's belongings.

Reluctantly, he pushed the door open. Everything was exactly as it had been that Monday night when Miff died. Nothing had been touched. Somebody had even left the bed lamp on. The landlady had evidently been too unnerved by it all to check to see if all the lights had been turned out.

He walked in and stood in the center of the room, a funny little guy with big ears and a crew haircut and a shirttail hailing at half-mast. He looked around the room where his best friend had died. There was a big ugly brown splotch on the rumpled sheets. He tore his eyes away from that. His stomach suddenly turned over in a wave of sickness.

He went over and glanced down at Miff's record player. The machine had been turned off, but the record Miff had been listening to when he was killed was still on the turntable. It was an old Gene Krupa recording. Next to the player, was a glass ashtray heaped high with cigarette butts. Half of them had lipstick smears. Well, that wasn't unusual.

Methodically, Tizzy began to pull out drawers and empty them. First he gathered all of Miff's clothes together and packed them into two genuine leather suitcases. Then he closed the record player, pulled out the plug from a wall socket and wound it around the machine. It was a portable unit with a carrying handle. He placed it on the floor beside the suitcases. Then he went through the music stacked on a table. He decided to send the records back with the record player. But most of the books and music could be thrown away. The bulk of it was just old manuscript stuff, ink-smeared and dog-eared. Arrangements dating back twenty years and more. None of it worth too much. But he looked through it all anyway, remembering the bands they had played in together when these arrangements had been used. Here was an old one by Jimmy Lunceford, in his own handwriting and with his inimitable signature. He delved deeper into the stack.

Then he paused. He took out a sheet of folded paper, opened it and glanced at it before scaling it into a nearby wastepaper basket. Then his hands began to shake. And suddenly he was over and the pounding drums of doom inside him reached a deafening crescendo.

He got out fast and began to walk in circles, going up one street and down another.

It's all so easy, Tizzy: you simply go to the police station.

That's all you have to do.

Or you might even call them.

Yeah, but it wasn't that easy. In a nightmare, you could be on the edge of a precipice, only a foot from safety, but you couldn't stir yourself to move even that single foot.

He paused across the street from a lighted bar. There was a telephone inside. You just had to lift the receiver and you'd be safe again. But, would you be safe? There were people in there. Too many people—

A bullet could come whistling out of a crowd like that. It could crash between your shoulders before you spoke three words into the telephone.

He began walking again. Better outside, he thought. Safe in the dark streets. But lonely. He could see ahead and behind for blocks. He could hear any other footsteps in time. “Go on,” he told himself reassuringly. “You're going to be all right.” He talked that way to himself for a few minutes, telling himself it would be all right.

For some idiotic reason he heard himself say, “I'm gonna pull through...I got a strong constitution—” And he gagged on the words. He looked around, sweating and goggle-eyed. A car was cruising along slowly, coming toward him. A taxi? Yes, that would be safe. A taxi! Taxis had strong constitutions. He stumbled out into the road, waving at it with his arms.

It came toward him slowly. Then it screamed at him with raking gears. It came faster. It grew in size until it was all and everything looming up and hurtling at him.

He just stood there, lips twitching, his eyes fascinated by the way it grew and leaped at him. The scrap of paper in his hand was forgotten. Somewhere in the back of his mind, the
Ghost Album
began to play. It played with a slow, mournful beat, like an old New Orleans parade band playing a dirge on the way to the cemetery....

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

TOO NICE TO LOVE

Thursday Evening, 10:00 P.M.

Johnny Nickles moved slowly along the dark street in the little Mexican village. In a half-crouch, he slid close to the wall, staying well within the heavy, black shadows.

There was no sign of life anywhere. Only the silent, empty streets. A sickly pale moon crept from behind scudding clouds, throwing a faint light over the scene.

He was afraid to stray too far from Ruth. After a couple of blocks he gave up and returned to her. She was in the same doorway, trying to push herself through a wall.

“I was scared,” she admitted blankly.

“There wasn't anybody back there. At least, no one I could find.”

The tequila had died down in both of them. He still felt lightheaded and dizzy, but perfectly sober.

He handed the pistol back to her. “Where did you get that thing?”

“It's an old one of Dad's. I kept it around the apartment, living alone as I do.”

They walked through the streets hurriedly, pausing now and then to listen. But the pursuing footsteps had vanished.

In the car, heading back to town, Ruth let out her breath and leaned back. “It looks like we weren't kidding about that can of dynamite.”

Johnny shook his head. “I don't think so.”

The shadow that stalked his band had fallen over her now, too, as he knew it would.

She kept her eyes straight ahead as she asked, “You...think they'll try again?”

Johnny shrugged. “Maybe. If you give them the opportunity. Can't you remember anything yet? About Monday night?”

She pressed her forehead with her fingertips, shook her head hopelessly. “I'm sorry, Johnny. I keep trying, but—nothing.”

They drove the rest of the way in silence, listening to the radio.

As they entered the city limits, Johnny said, “It won't be very safe in your apartment by yourself. Maybe you'd better spend the night at my place.” He knew it sounded like a line, and she picked it up.

She grinned at him wickedly, “Wheee!”

“Your mind's always in the gutter.”

She laughed.

After another few minutes of driving he suddenly pulled over to the curb, nosed into an alley and parked.

“I just thought of something. You wouldn't be much safer at my apartment. There's a dingy little hotel near here. Would you mind if I got you a room there for the night? I don't think anyone would be able to trace you there.”

When she agreed, they got out and walked for several blocks to make sure they weren't being followed. Then he led her into the dusty lobby of the Royal Palms Hotel. The lobby looked about as bright and clean as the inside of a well-worn vacuum cleaner bag. The furnishings consisting chiefly of a pair of sagging couches and a few small tables, had the verve and sparkle of a tired dish mop.

The decrepit old night clerk behind the desk let a pair of washed-out looking blue eyes trail over Ruth Jordon, cataloguing in this order, the highlights sparkling in the golden ringlets that curled around her head, her wide open azure-tinted eyes, her perky nose, soft red mouth, her breasts that strained impatiently at the hampering, thin dress, and her long, nylon encased legs. Then his eyes checked on the fact that the pair before him had no baggage and finally is gaze came to rest on Johnny disapprovingly.

“All filled up, young feller.”

Johnny placed his hand, palm down, on the register. A corner of the ten dollar bill under his hand drew the oldster's eyes like a puppet string.

“The room is just for my sister, Miss Jones.”

“Sign the register, he grunted querulously.

Johnny took his hand off the ten spot and the old man pounced on it. Nickles signed the book. The night clerk leaned over. “Jest no noise, son,” he warned confidentially. “Have all the fun you want, but don't go bustin' up the furniture and bring the law down on our neck.” He winked. “You want me to bring up some ice and ginger ale?”

“Like I said, Dad,” Johnny swore, “she's my sister.”

The old man settled back, miffed. “Okay,” he muttered sourly. “Jest tryin' to be helpful....”

Walking up the dark stairway, Ruth shuddered. “The way he looked at me! I feel dirty inside, Johnny. I feel like I need a bath to wash his eyes off me.”

“Guys that work in hotels,” Johnny said grimly, “get cynical.”

He found the room on the second floor, unlocked the door and followed her in.

It was the size of a large bathroom. A chipped enamel bed was wedged into one corner. Close to it—so close you'd put your foot in a drawer if it were open—stood an old fashioned dresser. The carpet had long ago been pounded into a threadbare rag. There was one closet almost big enough to hand a necktie in and a cramped bathroom with all the necessary plumbing but in doubtful condition.

“You think you can stand it for one night?”

She smiled up at him brightly. “It'll be fun, Johnny. I always wondered what it would be like to spend a night in a flea bag like this.”

“You're a good sport. I'm sorry I have to put you in a dump like this. But I don't know what else to do. You can't trust anybody, least of all the police in this town. Tomorrow morning, I'm going to put you on a plane headed for your parents.”

She moved a step closer to him, her dress rustling seductively. She straightened his tie and grinned up at him. “I like you when you're domineering and gruff, darling. You make me feel safe. But I won't go.”

She was very near to him. A faint aura of perfume that surrounded her teased his nostrils. She was so close he could look down and see the smooth, clean pores of her cheeks. And by lowering his gaze a half-inch, he could see the provocative neckline of the simple blue dress, baring the shadowy valley of the rapidly rising and falling bosom.

“Johnny...,” she whispered thickly. She slid her arm around his neck and pulled his mouth down to hers. Her lips were warm and moist and they parted readily. He could feel the firm strong young figure pressing against him through the gossamer sheerness of her dress.

The room spun. He dug his fingers into her back, tearing her dress with the urgency of his grip.

She sighed. “You love savagely, don't you?” she whispered dreamily, her eyes closed. “The way you play your horn savagely and drink yourself to hell savagely. The way you hate the person who killed Miff Smith savagely.” She opened her eyes. Don't you ever do anything civilized, Johnny Nickles?”

He relaxed and pulled her arms away from his neck. “You and your big college words. You started this—”

She touched his lips with her fingers. “I like you the way you are, Johnny darling. I wouldn't want anything about you changed. There are too many so called civilized men in he world.” Her voice was suddenly harsh. “Civilized men with their lies and deceits and crookedness....” She looked away from him briefly. Then suddenly she lifted his hand and kissed his fingers. “Don't leave me alone tonight, Johnny.”

It would be easy to stay. A few more kisses like the first one, and her restraint would melt away. She would go limp and he could pick her up and carry her across the room and lay her down gently and make love together.... It would be nice to lie close to her, to kiss the perfumed sweetness of her mouth, her neck, her ears, the soft hollow of her throat. And it would be a special kind of heaven to brush back the hem of her dress and touch the soft white flesh and feel her skin go hot and dry and hear the whispered groans in her throat.

The memory of her drunken abandoned dance in the Mexican café was still fresh in his mind.

Then he pushed her away.
Yeah, it would be too nice. He would want to spend the night here—then tomorrow too, forgetting that their time was running out and the hovering shadows were closing in on them with each passing minute.

“There's a bolt on the inside of the door. Don't unlock it for anyone but me. Remember that.”

“Johnny—”

He hurried out and closed the door after him. He knew if he were to look again at the tearful disappointment in her eyes, he'd never leave. He walked out of the hotel feeling the night clerk's rheumy eyes boring into his back.

He walked back down to Honky-Tonk Street.

It was nearly midnight. He stared curiously at the faces of the pleasure-seeking crowd as it milled around him along the walks. For an hour he tramped along, looking through bars, down alleys and along the sidewalks. He was about to give up when at last he spotted her crossing the street.

Jean Nathan, the two-timing wife of Dr. Ed Nathan, housewife by day, streetwalker by night. The gal who had some answers to the riddle of Miff Smith's death—answers she hadn't given out, not yet.

She was dressed in her shiny black satin dress and high-heeled ankle strap shoes. She was strolling insolently along, swinging the red patent leather bag at her side.

He waited until she was near him, threading through the crowd. Then he grabbed her arm and pulled her into the dark mouth of an alley. She started to yell but then she recognized him and said some unprintable words, instead. “What the hell are you up to, Johnny Nickles? Aren't you a little too old or too young to be grabbing girls in alleys?”

“Shut up!”

He led her through the alley to a dingy bar on another street. They were in the Mexican section of town now. The bar was run by a swarthy scar-faced man who claimed to be a first cousin to one of Mexico's early heroes—Pancho Villa.

Johnny pushed Jean into a dark booth at the back of the place, ordered two drinks and told the waiter to leave them alone. A nickelodeon was playing
La Paloma
.

She said, “You still look like hell. You look like a prizefighter who got hit by a truck.”

“Forget about that,” Nickles said. “Last night—” God, had it been only last night? It seemed like a year ago! “—last night I asked you some questions in a nice, polite way. But that was last night when I had more time and I wasn't too sure of myself. Tonight I'm going to ask those questions again and I haven't any time at all and I'm damned sure of one thing—that you'll answer them!”

Her face paled under her thick make-up and greasy eye shadow. “What do you mean, Johnny Nickles?”

“You know what I mean, you filthy, common, cheating bitch!”

She jumped up and leaped out of the booth. She was shaking all over and her mouth wobbled. Her voice sounded like a parrot's broken squawk. “I'm gettin' out of here. You can't talk like—”

“The hell I can't!” He grabbed her wrist and threw her back into the booth. Her red patent leather purse dropped out of her hand and spilled its contents over the floor. Sobbing, she got down on her knees and groped for the scattered items.

From behind the bar, the bartender glanced at them once, his face a swarthy mask. Then he shrugged and went back to his conversation with another customer.

She put everything back into her purse, then sat in the booth, crying softly. Her eye make-up ran down her cheeks in splotched streaks. “You don't know, Johnny,” she whispered. “You don't know everything. You think I'm pretty lousy. But you don't know. Not everything—”

“I think you're about as lousy as they come. What else am I supposed to think? Does he know? Does your husband know about your little trips down to Honky-Tonk Street?”

She shook her head silently. She wiped her fingers across her face, smearing the wet make-up into grotesque blobs. “...don't understand,” she mumbled. “Not him.... I don't care about him. But I don't want you to think—” she buried her face in her hands. “Oh, what's the use! What the hell's the use of anything...!”

“Tell me about Monday night,” Johnny said through his teeth. “Tell me, dammit! I haven't much time anymore. This thing is closing around me like a steel trap. I've got to know. Were you with Miff Smith Monday night?”

“I already told you. Yes, for a little while.”

“But how long? From when to when?”

“I don't know exactly. From about seven-thirty until nearly nine, I think. Yeah, that was about when—”

He reached over and clamped his fingers around her wrist. “You could scream your lungs out here and nobody would pay any attention to you. Now tell me the truth. Did anybody come in during that time?”

She shook her head. “Don't ask me, Johnny.”

“Okay, you want Ed to know? You want me to go to Dr. Ed Nathan, the respected psychiatrist, and tell him his wife is a Honky-Tonk Street tart?”

“Not yet,” she said numbly. “No, not yet—”

“Then tell me.”

She laughed without mirth. “That will solve nothing. Then it would all come out in the open. I'd have to testify.” She seemed to be talking aloud to herself. And she suddenly smiled. A strange, mysterious smile, like a little girl with a big secret. “Okay. Maybe that would be a good way.”

“I don't know what the hell you're talking about. You sound like a hophead. Just tell me some facts. What happened Monday night while you were with Miff—”

She threw her head back and lifted her long black hair off the back of her neck. “Okay. Sure, Johnny. Sure, I'll tell you.” The corners of her mouth quirked and she started to giggle. She put her fingers over her mouth and laughed louder and louder until she was almost hysterical and Johnny reached across the table and slapped her hard.

But still she giggled. “It was so damned funny, Johnny,” she choked. “There we were—in each other's arms—when she came in. Oh brother, you should have seen her face! She could have bitten the place in two!”

“Who?” Johnny asked carefully, an empty cold fear in him. “Who found you with him? Ruth Jordon?”

“No. Not her. The other one. The society dame. Raye Cowles.”

Johnny slapped his palm on the table. “I knew it. That was her pin I showed you, wasn't it?”