The Way Some People Die

Chapter 27

It was midnight when I parked my car under Union Square. A wet wind blew across the almost deserted square, blowing fogged breath from the sea on the dark pavements. Flashing neons on all four sides repudiated the night. I turned down a slanting street past a few late couples strolling and lingering on the sidewalk.

The Den’s orange sign was one of a dozen bar signs on its block. I went down a dirty flight of stairs and looked into the place through a swinging glass door at the bottom. It was a large square room with rounded corners and a ceiling so low you could feel the weight of the city over it. A curved bar arched out from the left-hand wall, making space for a bartender and his array of bottles. The other walls were lined with booths and tables.

In the cleared space in the middle of the room, a tired-looking man in a worn tuxedo was beating the life out of an exhausted grand piano. All the furniture, including the piano, was enameled a garish orange. A sequence of orange-haired nudes romped and languished along the walls under a glaze of grime. I went in.

There were several customers at the bar: a couple well-dressed and young and looking out of place, and a pair of lone-wolfing sailors. A few others, all of them men, were propped like dummies at the tables, waiting for something wonderful to happen, a new life to begin, in more delightful places, under different names. Five or six revelers, all of them women, and hard cases by their looks, were standing around the piano in a chorybantic circle, moving various members in approximate time to the music. One of them, a streaked blonde in a green dress with a drooping hemline, raised what passed for her voice in a banshee sort of singing. The whole thing had the general effect of a wake.

The pianist could have passed for a corpse in any mortuary if he had only stayed still, instead of tossing his fingers in bunches at the suffering keyboard. His batting average in hitting the notes was about .333, which would have been good enough for a Coast League ballplayer. He was white and loaded to the gills, it was hard to tell with what. I sat down at a table near the piano and watched him until he turned his face in my direction. He had the sad bad center-less eyes I expected, wormholes in a withered apple with a dark rotten core.

I ordered a beer from a sulky waitress in an orange apron. When I left her the change from a dollar, she hoisted a long-suffering smile from the depths of despair and offered it to me: “Zizi’s as high as a kite. They ought to make him shut up when he’s so wild, instead of encouraging him.”

“I’d like to buy him a drink.”

“He doesn’t drink.” She corrected herself: “With the customers, I mean.”

“Tell him I want to talk to him when he stops. If he can stop.”

She gave me the twice-over then, and I tried to look as degenerate as hell. Maybe it came easier than I thought. I wanted to drink the beer, but I let it stand on the table, going flat, while Zizi battered his way through half a dozen requests. Moonlight and Roses, the girls wanted. Stardust and Blue Moon and other pieces that brought other times and places into the midnight basement at the bottom of the city. One of the sailors made up his mind and left the bar. Without preliminary, he attached himself to the blonde in the green dress and steered her out, lean-hipped and swaggering. The bartender’s face watched them over the bar like a dead white moon. Happy Days Are Here Again, and Stormy Weather. One of the women tried to sing it and burst loosely into tears. The others comforted her. The pianist struck a plangent discord and gave up. A lone drunk sitting against the wall behind me was talking in a monotone to his absent mother, explaining very reasonably, in great detail, why he was a no-good son-of-a-gun and a disgrace to the family.

A stranger voice, husky and loose, wandering between the masculine and feminine registers, rustled like damp dead leaves in the corners of the room. It was Zizi announcing a break: “Excuse me folks my stint is done but I’ll be back when the clock strikes one to bring you more hot music and fun.” He pushed the mike away and rose unsteadily.

The waitress elbowed through the group of women around him and whispered in his ear, gesturing in my direction. He crossed to my table, a tall middle-aged man who had once been handsome, fixed by that fact in the mannerisms of a boy. Leaning with one hand spread on the table in an attitude of precarious grace, he inclined towards me. His jaw dropped lackadaisically, showing discolored teeth.

“You wanted to speak with me, boy friend? I am Zizi. You like my music?”

“I’m tone deaf.”

“You are fortunate.” He smiled sickly, revealing pale gums above the discolored teeth.

“It isn’t music that’s on my mind.”

“Yes?” He leaned closer, his long frail body half-collapsed against the edge of the table.

I lowered my voice, and plucked at the sleeve of his greening tux in what I hoped was an appealing gesture. “I need a fix real bad,” I said. “I’m going off my stick.”

His thin weeded eyebrows rose towards his thinning hairline. “Why do you come to me?”

“I’ve been getting it from Ronnie in Pacific Point. He said you knew Mosquito.”

He straightened slowly, swaying like a willow, and peered into my eyes. I let them gaze. “For God’s sake, Zizi, give me a break.”

“I don’t know you,” he said.

“Here’s my card, then.” I put a twenty on the table by his hand. “I got to have it. Where can I find Mosquito?”

The hand crawled over the bill. I noticed that its nails were broken and bleeding. “Okay, boy friend. He lives in the Grandview Hotel. It’s just around the corner, a block above Market. Ask the night clerk for him.” The hand closed over the bill and dove into his pocket. “Remember I haven’t the faintest notion why you want to see him. Tee hee.”

“Thank you,” I said emotionally.

“Sweet dreams, boy friend.”

The Grandview Hotel was an old four-story building of dirty brick squeezed between taller buildings. An electric sign over the entrance advertised SINGLE WITH BATH, $1.50. The brass fittings on the front door looked as if they went back to the earthquake. I pulled it open and entered the lobby, a deep narrow room poorly lit by a couple of ancient wall-fixtures on each side. Two women and three men were playing draw poker at a table under one of the lights. The women were bulldog-faced, and wore coats trimmed with the fur of extinct animals. Two of the men were fat and old, bald probably under their hats. The third was young and hatless. They were using kitchen matches instead of chips.

I moved toward the lighted desk at the rear, and the hatless youth got up and followed me. “You want a room?” Apparently he was the curator. He suited the role. Bloodless and narrow, his face was set in a permanent sneer.

“I want to see Mosquito.”

“Does he know you?”

“Not yet.”

“Somebody send you?”

“Zizi.”

“Wait a minute.” He leaned across the desk and lifted a house-phone from a niche at one end, plugging it in to the old-fashioned switchboard above it. He spoke softly into the mouthpiece and glanced at me, with the receiver to his ear. He hung up and unplugged the connection: “He says you can go up.”

“What room?”

He sneered at my ignorance of his mysteries. “307. Take the elevator if you want.” His feet were soundless on the decayed rubber matting as he padded back to the poker game.

I piloted the ramshackle elevator cage to the third floor, and stepped out into an airless corridor. The brown numbered doors stood like upended coffins on each side, bathed in the static red flames of fire-exit bulbs that dotted the ceiling at intervals. 307 was half-way down the corridor to the left. Its door was open a crack, throwing a yellow ribbon of light across the threadbare carpeting of the hallway and up the opposite wall.

Then the light was half obscured by someone watching me from the other side of the door. I raised my hand to knock. The door swung inward sharply before I touched it. A young man stood in the doorway with his back to the light. He was middle-sized, but the great black bush of hair on top of his head made him seem almost tall. “Zizi’s little friend, eh? Come on in.” His voice was adenoidal.

One of his hands was on his hip, the other on the doorknob. I had to brush against him to enter the room. He wasn’t heavy-looking but his flesh was soft and tremulous like a woman’s. His movements seemed invertebrate as he closed the door and turned. He was wearing a soft green shirt, six-pleated high-rise trousers of dark green gabardine, a brilliant green and yellow tie held by a large gold clasp.

His other hand moved to his other hip. He cocked his head on one side, his face small and pointed under the top-heavy hair. “Carrying iron, old man?”

“I use it in my business.” I patted my heavy jacket pocket.

“And what’s your business, old man?”

“Whatever I can knock off. Do I need references?”

“Long as you don’t try to knock off daddy.” He smiled at the ridiculousness of the idea. His teeth were small and fine like a child’s first set. “Where you from?”

“Pacific Point.”

“I never see you in the Point.”

“I work the whole coast,” I said impatiently. “You want to know my history, send me a questionnaire.”

“Hard up for it?”

“I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t.”

“All right, take it easy. I like to know who I’m dealing with, that’s natural, isn’t it? You want to use my needle or you snuff it?”

“The needle,” I said.

He crossed the room to a chest of drawers in the corner, and opened the top drawer. Mosquito wasted no money on front. The room stood as he had found it: bare discolored walls, broken-backed iron bed, cracked green blind over the single window, the rug on the floor marked with a threadbare path from the bed to the door of the bathroom. He could move at a minute’s notice into any one of ten thousand similar rooms in the city.

He set an alcohol lamp on top of the chest of drawers and lit it with a silver cigarette-lighter. A new-looking needle gleamed in his other hand. “You want the forty, or the sixty-five main-liner?” he asked me over his shoulder.

“Sixty-five. Your prices are high.”

“Yeah, aren’t they? I like to see the money first, old man.”

I showed him money.

“Bring it over here.”

He was melting some yellowish-white powder in a spoon. I counted sixty-five dollars down beside the hissing lamp.

Water began to run behind the bathroom door. Somebody coughed. “Who’s in there?” I asked him.

“Only a friend of mine, don’t get your wind up. Better take off your coat, or do you take it in the thigh?”

“I want to see who’s in there. I’m loaded. I can’t take chances.”

“It’s only a girl, old man.” His voice soothing. “There ain’t the teensiest danger. Take off your coat and lie down like a good boy now.”

He dipped the needle in the spoon and charged it, turning to me. I slapped it out of his hand.

Mosquito’s face turned purplish red. The loose flesh under his tiny chin shook like a turkey’s wattles. His hand was in and out of the open drawer before I could hold him, and the blade of a spring-knife jumped up under my nose. “You dirty filthy beast, don’t you dare touch me.” He backed against the wall and crouched with the knife advanced, its doubleedged blade pointing at the ceiling. “I’ll cut you if you lay a finger on me.”

I brought the revolver out of my jacket pocket. “Put it away, Mosquito.”

His small black eyes watched me uncertainly, looked down at the knife and crossed slightly, focused on its point. I swung the gun on him, cutting the wrist of his knife hand with the muzzle. The knife dropped to the floor. I stepped on it and moved in closer to Mosquito. He tried to scratch my face. Since it was necessary to hit him, I hit him: a short right hook under the ear. He slid down the wall like a rag doll.

I crunched the hypodermic needle into the carpet with my heel, stooped for the knife, which I closed and dropped into my pocket. Mosquito was out, quick adenoidal breathing his only sign of life, his eyeballs under the heavy lids as blank-white as a statue’s. His head was jammed against the wall, and I lifted him away from it so he wouldn’t choke. His narrow black suede shoes pointed to opposite corners of the ceiling.

The bathroom door clicked behind me. I straightened up quickly and turned. The door creaked inward slowly, opening on darkness. It was the girl Ruth who emerged from the darkness, moving like a sleepwalker. She had on pajamas that were much too big for her, yellow nylon piped with red. Thin soft hanging folds obscured her lines and enhanced the dreaminess of her walk. Her eyes were dark craters in her smooth blanched face.

“Hello hello hello,” she said. “Hello hello.” She noticed the gun in my hand, without fear or curiosity: “Don’t shoot, cowboy, I give up.” Her hands jerked upward in a token gesture of surrender, then hung limp from her wrists again. “I absolutely give up.” She stood swaying.

I put the gun away and took her by the elbow. Her face didn’t change. I identified its look of frozen expectancy. I had seen it on the face of a man who had just been struck by a bullet, mortally.

“Unhand me villain,” she said without rancor; pulled away from me and crossed to the end of the bed where she sat down. She didn’t notice Mosquito until then, though he was lying practically at her feet. She nudged his leg with a red-tipped toe: “What happened to the nasty little man?”

“He fell and hurt himself. Too bad.”

“Too bad,” she echoed. “Too bad he isn’t dead. He’s still breathing. Look, he bit me.” She pulled the pajama collar to one side to show me the red tooth-marks on her shoulder. “He couldn’t hurt me, though. I was a thousand miles away. Ten thousand miles away. A hundred thousand miles away.” She was chanting.

I cut in: “Where were you, Ruth?”

“On my island, the island I go to. My little white island in the deep dark blue ocean.”

“All alone?”

“All alone.” She smiled. “I shut the door and lock it with a key and bar the door and fasten the chains and sit in my chair and no one can touch me. No one. I sit and listen to the water on the beach and never open the door until my father comes. Then we go down to the water and look for shells. We find the prettiest shells, pink and red and purple, great big ones. I keep them in my house, in a special room. Nobody knows where it is, I’m the only one that knows.” Her voice trailed off. She drew her knees up to her chin and sat with her eyes closed, rocking gently back and forth on a remote inward surge.

The breathing of the man on the floor had changed for the better, easing and slowing down. His eyes were closed now. I went to the bathroom for a glass of water: Ruth’s clothes were scattered on the bathroom floor: and poured the water over Mosquito’s face. The little eyes snapped open. He gasped and sputtered.

“Upsadaisy,” I said, and dragged him to a sitting position against the walls. His head hung sideways but he was conscious, his eyes pointed with malice. “You won’t get away with this, old man,” he whispered.

I disregarded him, turned to the girl on the bed: “Have you seen Speed?”

“Speed?” she repeated from a great distance. Her face was closed and smooth as a shell listening to its own murmurings.

Mosquito struggled up onto his knees: “Don’t tell him anything, he’s a heister.” Which told me that Mosquito had something to tell.

I bunched his tie and shirt-collar in both hands and lifted him against the wall. He hung limp, afraid to resist.

“You tell me where Speed is, then.”

He twisted his wet head back against the plaster, his eyes watching me from their corners. “Never heard of him.” His voice was thin, almost a rodent squeak.

“Take your dirty hands – off me.” His face was purpling again, and the breath piped in his throat.

“There’s no way out of this one.” I loosened the pressure of my fingers slightly. “I want Speed.”

He tried to spit in my face. The bubbly white saliva ran down his chin. I tightened the pressure, carefully. He invited death, like a soft and loathsome insect.

He struggled feebly, gasping. “Turn me loose.”

I released him. He dropped onto his hands and knees, coughing and shaking his head from side to side.

“Where is Speed?” I said.

“I don’t know.” He crouched like a dog at my feet.

“Listen to me, Mosquito. I don’t like you. I don’t like your business. Just give me a slight excuse, and I’ll give you the beating of your life. Then I’ll call the feds to cart you away. You won’t be back for a long time if I do.”

He looked up at me through a rat’s nest of hair. “You’re talking big for a hood.”

“No. It’s what I’m going to do if you don’t take me to Speed.” I showed him my Special Deputy’s badge to clinch it.

“I guess you win,” he said to the threadbare carpet. Slowly he got to his feet.

I held my gun on him while he combed his hair and put on a green tweed coat. He blew out the alcohol lamp, replacing it in the drawer.

The girl was still balanced on the end of her spine, rocking blindly. I gave her a shove as I passed her. She tumbled sideways onto the bed and lay as she had fallen, with her knees up to her chin, waiting to be born into the world or out of it. Mosquito locked the door. I took his key away before he could pocket it. He backed against the door, the malice on his face canceled by fear into a kind of stupidity. The red corridor light shone down on him like a dirty little sun, sailed to the world in his head. His outstretched hand was questioning.

“You won’t speak to the night clerk, you won’t even look at him. Is it far to Speed?”

“He’s at Half Moon Bay, in a cabin. Don’t take me there. He’ll kill me.”

“Worry about him,” I said, “unless you’re lying to me.”

Behind one or another of the numbered doors, a woman cried out sorrowfully. A man laughed. Down the corridor, in the elevator, across the lobby, up the steep street to the empty square, I stuck to Mosquito like a brother. He walked as if every step he took had to be willed in advance.