Contract Null & Void

Chapter Nineteen

Kearny checked the last of the ground-floor windows in the back of the Rochemont mansion. The kitchen had tile floors and two huge ovens where you could roast a lamb, maybe a young steer, also a walk-in freezer a barbershop quartet could have sung in. Two corpses, neatly folded before rigor set in, could have fit into the refrigerator.

He retraced his way through the maze of rooms to the living room where the security post was set up. Giselle was waiting with a thermos and a tray of sandwiches.

“Doped coffee?” he asked.

“Clown around,” she said as she poured.

And then unobtrusively waited before drinking hers until he had raised the exquisitely thin Meissen cup to his lips. He took a sip, nodded his head in appreciation, set it back down on its saucer, suddenly slumped sideways over the arm of his chair.

“Dan’l!”

Kearny sat up and grinned at her. She subsided angrily.

“I didn’t ask ’em to, but the police checked your thermos from this morning,” he said. “The coffee in it wasn’t doped.”

“Then somebody switched it after the attack. Opened the window Nugent got in by.”

“She’s one great little blond schemer, she is.”

“Bottle blond schemer,” sniffed Giselle with a grin.

Kearny settled down with the sports page, rattled the paper, and cleared his throat. “Think you can keep awake for two hours until our next rounds?” he asked innocently.

Turning from the backbar with a bottle of Jim Beam, Bart Heslip caught a stranger’s passing reflection. Hulking dude with a shaved head and no mustache and a ring in his nose, wearing a bright short-sleeved sport shirt to show off his muscular chest and arms. Shades even here in the dim bar.

The composite of Nemesis the cops had brought around last night didn’t fit him worth a damn now. He was going to come out of this all right. Just had to stay still and keep cool. Except for the nose ring, he sorta liked the look. Maybe after this undercover gig was all over...

Man, what was Corinne going to say when she saw him?

He drew another draft, took money from the little pile of bills on the stick beside Boombox Benny’s left elbow. You quickly came to know the quirks of the regulars.

Why did Petrock say Bart should rough him up a little, threaten him at Queer Street? So his enemies in the local hear about it, think Bart is okay, and start talking carelessly in front of him? But if anybody from Local 3 hung out in Mood Indigo, Bart didn’t know about it. All he knew for sure was that Petrock was dead, and Danny Marenne, who might know what game the man had been playing, was missing. Dead too?

His only reason to hang on — apart from waiting for the cops to tag someone else for the murder — was that Petrock had paid him good money and he didn’t welsh on his obligations.

Sleepy Ray Sykes came in, sat down at the far end of the bar near the long-dormant piano. He was a slight narrow brown man wearing an old tan fedora and a tan suit coat, probably his only one. Like Bart he wore dark glasses even inside the dim bar; his round, lined face was younger than his nearly 70 years.

“Evenin’, young man,” in habitual greeting.

So much for disguises. Sleepy Ray had played blues piano with a house band for over a decade at long-defunct Jimbo’s Bop City out in the Fillmore during the ’50s. Now he was a night watchman, happy to have the job.

“Mr. Sykes,” said Bart.

Sleepy Ray slid a five across the stick; ignoring it, Heslip poured him a shot of Seagram’s. It was their evening ritual. The old musician lived in the same cheap hotel where Bart had a room; on the nights he worked he nursed his single shot for half an hour before riding the Muni to his midnight-to-dawn stint punching the watchman’s rounds clocks in a furniture warehouse south of Market.

“Done shaved off all your hair.” Sleepy Ray took off his fedora and rubbed his own balding pate in illustration, broke out his huge infectious grin. “Got the cooties?”

“Got a new lady, she likes it this way.” If Sleepy Ray had so easily recognized him in his new guise, how many others?

The old musician was nodding seriously.

“She like that nose ring an’ things, too?” When Bart didn’t answer, he leaned back and nudged his smoked glasses down to look at Bart through half-closed eyes. “Ax me a question.”

Since Ray liked to talk about the old days, Bart looked up obscure figures and facts from the early history of the blues to try and stump the old pianoman. He hadn’t made it yet.

“Archie Moore,” he said. “One of the blues greats. Barber by trade, but he—”

“Archie Moore wasn’t no blues man. Was heavyweight champeen a the world at one time. Acted in a few films, too — Huckleberry Finn and The Outfit that I recall. ’Twas Willie Moore was the blues great. Recorded eight sides for Paramount in nineteen hundred and twenty eight. I was two years old, don’t really remember ’em all that well. Very upbeat recordings — sorta ragtime. Course that was before the blues got really big. Now, what was his bestest-known song?”

Neatly turning the tables. Bart shook his head.

Sleepy Ray exclaimed, “Ragtime Millionaire!”

Up at the other end of the bar Ken Warren and Maybelle Pernod came in. The door closing behind them blew cold air on Bart’s bare pate, like Adam reminded of his nakedness after the Fall. But Bart was glad of its nudity, and that his eyes were safely hidden behind black glass. Of all the rotten luck!

Across the stick from him, Sleepy Ray said in a very different voice, “You ain’t in no trouble, is you, son?”

“No,” Bart said, back in control. “Why would—”

“You jes like to turned into a white man.” He winked and sipped very carefully from his shot. “Best go wait on them folks, see if they reco’nize you th’way I did.”

Sleepy like a dozing fox. Had Larry blown his cover to Ken? No. No way. Had to be sheer coincidence.

He got a reprieve. Warren pointed at a neon beer sign behind the bar, raised two fingers, pointed at the table closest to the jukebox, then went over to join Maybelle in studying the selections offered. And then a trio of new customers came in.

Bart moved to serve them first; maybe Ken and Maybelle would get pissed at the delay, and leave.

Dan Kearny was once again slumped sideways over the arm of his chair in an uncomfortable position. But this time sounds issued from his mouth, sounds suspiciously like those that had been issuing from Ken Warren’s mouth the night before.

Gnawg-zzz. Gnawg-zzz.

Giselle Marc was collapsed forward over the table where she had been writing, her head on her arms, also asleep, if silently.

Kearny suddenly chuffed, jerked erect, stared around owlishly. The disruption of his rhythmic snoring made Giselle’s eyes fly open. She sat up quickly. Each of them started at the other with false alertness.

They accused each other, “You were asleep!”

“Don’t be ridiculous!” both said defensively.

They were silent. Kearny casually adjusted the newspaper flopped open on his lap so it would look as if he had been reading it. Giselle tapped her pen on the table as if she had been sunk in thought while making notes about their case.

“Quiet as a tomb, all night,” Kearny said.

Giselle nodded. Then frowned. “Too quiet?” she said.

They sprang guiltily to their feet and dashed for the stairs. Upstairs they didn’t even slow down. Kearny twisted the knob, threw Paul’s door open. Giselle hit the lights, they stared at the motionless huddle under the covers. With an almost convulsive movement, Kearny jerked back the blankets.

Paul, wearing an old-fashioned nightshirt not too different from Inga’s gown of the night before, opened his eyes and started mumbling in bad Bogartese. “Yeh... He couldn’t have come far... with those holes in ’im...”

Giselle, relieved and annoyed at the same time, said to Kearny, “He’s okay. Win some, lose some.”

Bogart mumbled in his sleep, “We never sleep...”

They made a round of the downstairs windows and alarms, then returned to their respective seats in the living room. They opened sandwiches and poured coffee.

“Quiet as a tomb,” said Giselle.

“The way I like it,” said Kearny.

Ugliest damn bartender Ken Warren had ever seen, and he’d taken his sweet time bringing their beers. Bald as an eight ball, an actual brass bull ring through his nose, black glasses that totally hid his eyes. Moved like a fighter, or a man who once had been a fighter, in a way that was almost familiar.

“Ahn tahb,” said Ken.

“Whut you sayin’ to me?” demanded the bartender. He must have been hit in the throat once too often; his bellicose voice came out like audiotape fed past dirty playing heads.

Maybelle turned from the juke. “Said we’ll run us a tab.”

“Uh-uh. Cash trade,” said the bartender offensively in his ruined voice. “Don’t like it, go somewheres else.”

Warren simmered, but laid down a twenty. The bartender took it and went away. Maybelle fed in money, pushed some selections on the juke, came back and sat down.

“Don’t you pay him no mind, Kenny. We here to have a good time. They got some mighty fine old tunes on this juke.”

As if in emphasis, Gladys Bently started to sing “Stand.”

Maybelle clapped her hands and exclaimed, “Lord, Lord, my mama used to sing that song in Atlanta!” She sipped her beer, wiped her lips daintily with a lace handkerchief she brought out of one sleeve. Started to hum with the music.

Bart had pushed it as far as he could to get them out of there before they recognized him. Could make it worse with more hostility, some sharp-eyed cat along the stick might see something was wrong and sniff around for any profit in it. Profit was a big motivating factor in the Tenderloin, where almost anyone would sell you out for almost anything.

Maybelle felt the music in her throat, her eyes, her body. Fat now, old, heavy legs, varicose veins. But there’d been a time when her sweet man had loved her, roamed her dark flesh with his electric fingers, between them they’d made her Jedediah.

Sleepy Ray had a beckoning hand raised. Bart went down to him, looking at his watch. “You’re gonna be late, Ray.”

“Never mind ’bout that now. You give me another shot an’ lemme lissen to that woman singin’ along with that juke.”

Bart glanced over. Sure enough, what he’d thought was just a record was also Maybelle, singing along in a deep, rich voice.

Sleepy Ray shoved his five across the stick again, said with dignity, “You give those two another beer an’ you tell ’em it’s from Sleepy Ray. An’ you take it outten this here, hear?”

“I hear,” said Bart.

The song was finished. Ken Warren hadn’t heard Maybelle sing in years — not since she’d been told about Jed. Hadn’t seen her looking so happy, either, come to that.

Two fresh beers were set down in front of them.

“From Sleepy Ray — the gent at the end of the bar,” grated the bartender in his atrocious voice.

They raised the new bottles in acknowledgment, and the old black man at the end of the bar raised his shot glass in salute.

“Sleepy Ray!” Maybelle exclaimed. “Sleepy Ray Sykes? That man used to play the meanest blues piano in the Fillmore!”

Suddenly, after all these years, the old piano on the stage started to tinkle. Sleepy Ray had climbed up there, plunked his skinny butt down on the bench, and his hands had begun caressing chords from the keys as if they were birds finally able to sing again.

“Pretty lady,” he called over his vamping, “you know ‘Move It’? Bertha Idaho recorded it back in the twenties.”

He played. Maybelle, not really knowing what or how or why, was singing.

Sleepy Ray did. Maybelle did. They moved it on away out of there. So far that everyone was clapping, while Bart was calling Sleepy Ray in sick to the warehouse. People were drifting in from the night. People hadn’t heard anything like that coming from Mood Indigo for just a whole lot of years.