Nightlife: A Novel

3

Hugo Poole parked in front of the Hundred Proof Bar and slipped a twenty-dollar bill to the bouncer outside the door in exchange for protecting his car from the tow trucks. The frightening late-night clientele of the Hundred Proof would keep the hot-wire artists away. As he walked along Sheldrake Avenue toward the Empire Theater he looked respectable but tired, like the bartender of an intermittently violent nightclub. He wanted to get this suit off. He would get a shower, put on a clean shirt and a new suit, and feel right again. Hugo Poole never wore a tie, because during his formative years he had watched a fight in which a man had been choked out with his Windsor knot.

He walked under the big, ornate marquee that announced EMPIRE THEATER CLOSED FOR RENOVATION. He stepped into the alcove across the terrazzo inlay of 1920s bathing beauties and stopped beside the ticket booth in front. He stared up and down Sheldrake Avenue. Hugo Poole did not simply glance: he took his time, his eyes narrowed to impart sharpness and definition to distant shapes. When he decided he had outlasted any possible duckers-behind-corners or walkers-the-other-way, he took a full turn and stopped with his back against the door to be absolutely sure he had not been followed. He had not. Hugo Poole unlocked the door to the movie theater, opened it, slipped inside, closed it, and tugged it once to be sure it had locked behind him.

He turned. The dim pink glow of the light inside the candy display case let him see the gilded plaster-cast sconces and the ancient painted murals of women who seemed half nymph and half movie star getting out of long antique limousines. Behind them, aimed upward in the sky, were beams from big spotlights. He heard a noise and turned to the carpeted stairway across the lobby that led up toward the balcony.

“Evening, Hugo.” Otto Collins and Mike Garcia came into the lobby from upstairs. They had been waking up the building, doing the evening walk-around, turning on lights and unlocking the inner doors.

“Hello, guys,” Hugo Poole said. He was not about to forget that the easiest way for somebody to kill him was to pay these two to do it here in the theater, but he had already studied them and acquitted them for tonight. Every night he looked at them for signs that they were going to betray him.

Hugo Poole was not watching for nervous twitches and smiling, sweaty upper lips. These were men. They worked for Hugo Poole, and they could be expected to behave with a certain amount of self-possession. What he was looking for was the opposite: excessive self-control. He had seen it come upon serious men when they were contemplating risky behavior. He knew that on the day when he was going to die Mike and Otto would grow cold and distant.

Hugo Poole knew that he was reputed to be a deep thinker, and it was a useful myth to cultivate. He was only premeditative, but to many people that made him seem clairvoyant. He made his way upstairs to the carpeted upper hallway, past the door marked PROJECTION ROOM, opened a wooden door that seemed to be a part of the paneled wall, and went inside.

Hugo walked to his desk and sat down, then glanced at his watch. It had taken him forty-five minutes to get back here from the Valley, and he judged that to be enough time. He consulted the telephone book on the corner of his desk, picked up his telephone, and called the police precinct station in North Hollywood.

He said, “This is G. David Hunter. I’m an attorney under retainer for Steven Rao, R-A-O. He hasn’t shown up where he was expected this evening. Could you please check to see whether he has been taken into custody tonight?” He listened for a moment, then said, “Shot dead? You did say ‘dead’? I’m shocked. When did this happen?” He listened for a few more seconds, then said, “Thank you. No doubt you’ll be hearing from me in the future. The body? I’m not sure. Let me talk to the family. I’ll have to get back to you. Good night.”

He sat back, stared at the wall, and thought about this evening. He supposed he might have to anticipate some sort of retaliation from the two cops who’d had to shoot Steve Rao. They were certainly smart enough to know why Rao had turned on them. Hugo would have to postpone a few of the schemes he had been prospering on—removing small numbers of items from cargo containers at the harbor and replacing them with stones to keep the weights constant, having women pose as hookers so Otto and Mike could be the vice squad who burst in to confiscate wallets—and substitute a few that seemed a bit less flagrant.

He searched his memory for ideas that were safer. He had recently seen a television program in which a crowd of middle-class people stood in line carrying old possessions so that a team of antique dealers could appraise them. He had noticed that some not particularly prepossessing articles were assigned very high prices.

He had also noticed that in almost every case, the more scarred and damaged an item was, the more likely the experts were to revere it. He had become fascinated by the way the antique dealers talked. No matter what obsolete and arcane castoff the expert was appraising, he could always talk about “the collectors” of that very item.

There was no doubt in Hugo Poole’s mind that there were ways to make money from his discovery. How could he not make money off people who were willing to haul a five-hundred-pound sideboard to a television studio and then stand in line for hours to have some guy with a fake accent look at it?

There was a rap on the door. Hugo Poole automatically crouched low and moved to the left, where the steel filing cabinets full of books and papers would stop a bullet. He eyed the Colt Commander .45 that he kept duct-taped to the back of the cabinet against his day of doom. It was just possible that Steve Rao’s untimely death was not being taken well by somebody. Hugo Poole waited a moment, but nobody kicked in the door.

“Who is it?” he called.

“Just me. Otto.”

“Come in.”

Otto said, “There’s a call for you on the house phone down there, Hugo. It’s a woman who says she’s your aunt.”

Hugo squinted at Otto for a second, then stood up and hurried past him to the stairwell. It was unusual for anyone to call in on the Empire Theater’s telephone number, and during the daytime there was usually nobody here to answer it. When Hugo, Otto, and Mike were here, they were usually asleep.

He went to the small office off the lobby near the candy counter and picked up the telephone. “Hugo Poole here.” He listened. “Hi, Aunt Ellen. How are you? What? Dennis? Oh, my God.” He closed his eyes and listened for a few seconds. Then he rubbed his forehead. “I’m so sorry, Aunt Ellen. I never imagined that anything like this could happen to Dennis.”