I was wonderin’ if you were gonna make it in before I went home for the night,” Cass said as I dropped my hat on the stand. Her tone was breezy enough but I thought I read a little relief in those baby blues of hers, like she was happy to have me back no worse off than when we parted ways.
“Weren’t you headed to your mother’s house?”
“I got halfway there before I remembered she’s visiting my aunt up in Smyrna. So I figured I’d come into work … you know, just in case.”
Just in case Miss Night came in, she meant, and I liked her a lot for that. I guessed it told me something about her life outside of work, too.
“Good thing I did, too,” Cass continued, “’cause you got a call I figure was pretty important.”
“Cora from the Trib?”
Cass nodded. “She got that information you asked for.” She flipped open her memo pad, reading. “Mister and Missus Danaus Night. Died in an automobile accident on …” She scanned her notes and gave me a date a few years back. “Only surviving relative, Miss Evelyn Night, their daughter.” Cass looked back at me with real sorrow in her eyes. “Tough break, huh?”
I nodded, thinking of my client suddenly orphaned at the very beginning of her adult life. Being left alone in that big, empty museum-piece house. “Yeah, tough.”
“She inherited their whole estate—a house in the city, a summer place, stocks, bonds, and plenty of cash. At least she doesn’t have to worry about keepin’ the lights on.”
The whole picture was coming into focus for me now. The lady loses all the family she has in one smash and ends up in an empty mansion with more cash than she can figure out what to do with. She’s like a luxury yacht cut loose from its moorings with no one at the helm. She starts looking for some diversion, a little adventure, why not? Take a few risks because you’re feeling like you’ve got nothing important to lose, only money. Plus the booze and the opium and … whatever else … helps her forget about what happened to mother and dad. She meets Junior Dapper at some ritzy club where he plays Mister Big by throwing the Tartarus Syndicate’s money around. And he’s got that vaguely dangerous edge she’s been looking for, even if she didn’t know she was. He likes the looks of her—and hell, who wouldn’t?—and they make some time for each other. Pretty soon she’s mixing with some of the bigger fish in that scummy pond, swimming with sharks like Radamanthus and too turned around to realize how deep the water’s getting, or that the big fish have big teeth and big appetites. Or maybe in her pain she just doesn’t care. Junior makes a few wrong moves and ends up feeding the guppies in the West River or who the hell knows where, but by now Miss Night’s in up to her neck, there’s no getting out.
But right about there the yarn started to unravel. What happened next? What could’ve blotted out her mind, left her leading a double life and not even knowing it? I’d seen rotgut and dope wreck people’s brains, but never like that. What the hell did she mean when she said that this man Menace was her murderer, had already killed her? It had a dark, seductive kind of logic that I couldn’t untangle.
“Has she called, Cass?” I tried to keep my tone businesslike, but judging by the resignation in Cass’s eyes, I guess she heard my feelings creeping in.
“Not yet, Frank. Sorry.”
“Mmm,” I grunted, and went into my office to think things over, and wait.
“Y’ain’t gonna stay here all night again, are you, Frank?”
I looked up from the glass of bourbon I’d been contemplating as Cass poked her face in the door. Her smile looked tight, a bit forced.
“I don’t know when she might come in, Cass. I should be here, now that I’ve got a name to give her.”
“Well shoot, why don’t you just put a cot in here? At least you’d get some sleep once in a while.”
Because if I put a cot in here I’d never go home, I thought, and I’m not ready to sink that low in life. Not yet.
“I’ll be fine.”
“Mmm,” Cass said, maybe imitating me. “I tried the Chandler again for ya. No sign of her there, either. Fella on the desk said he’ll call if she comes in.”
I nodded.
Cass lingered.
“How’s your face?”
“Hanging in there,” I said. Most of the cuts and bruises had quieted down to a dull ache that I could ignore easily enough, especially from inside an amber cloud of booze.
“You scared me pretty bad there, Frank,” Cass said, hardly more than a whisper.
“Thanks for picking up the pieces.”
“Sure.” A note of disdain crept into her voice. “It’s what I do, ain’t it?”
She hesitated in the door a minute longer, silent, lips pursed like she had something to say but couldn’t quite figure how to start.
I helped her out. “’Night, Cass,” I said.
Her pursed pink lips twitched into a mild frown. “Okay. Good night, Frank.”
She left.
By 8:00 pm it was pretty damn obvious that my client wasn’t going to turn up. I couldn’t help wondering if I would ever see her again, or if the deep darkness on the bad side of the river had claimed her for good, the way it had claimed Hally Thersis and that Guilio kid.
But no. I wasn’t about to let it happen, not if I could possibly stop it. Right there in my shirt pocket I had all the secrets she’d come looking for—her name, her home, her past. I was itching to give it back to her at last, and now I couldn’t even be sure I’d ever get the chance. Hell, I couldn’t even make odds on whether or not she was still alive. Not that I had any reason in the world to think she might’ve been killed, but … I kept hearing her telling me that this Mr. Menace was her murderer. The bourbon hadn’t done much to soothe that itch or quiet those fears.
Bottle in hand I paced my office, as if walking around while I drank could erode away the hours faster. I listened to the traffic and watched the Hotel Moira sign wink its bloodshot neon eyes at me. Evelyn Night was out there somewhere, lost in the labyrinth of the city, maybe forgetting the last of who she was. I felt just about sick, not being able to do anything, not being able to even give her back her name. I wondered what the hell Radamanthus made those girls do, once they got on the other side of that door with the red circle. The thought of it stirred things up deep down inside me, things I don’t like to think about too much. I took another swallow.
I went to the desk, pulled my piece out of the drawer, and hefted its cold, lethal weight, thinking maybe it’d make me feel not quite so powerless, maybe even give me the foolish bravado to go looking for Evelyn despite the impossibility of it. But the killing iron only made me feel strangely hopeless, so I tucked it away and sank down into my chair and closed my eyes for a few minutes.
Those few minutes unfurled into a few hours, but it didn’t matter. I woke up around midnight, clear-headed enough to start drinking again—and maybe start thinking some, too.
I pulled out my notebook and flipped to the scribbles from that day’s investigations. I ignored the stuff I’d already checked up on, and went back to the page with the names of all the girls in the caption.
Ms. Damia Nyx
Ms. Elenore Duncan
Ms. Evelyn Night
Ms. Valerie Alder
Ms. Nicolette Morgen
I’d circled Miss Night’s name, but right now it was the others that interested me. I got the phone book out of Cass’s desk and started riffling through. None of the girls from the picture were listed. I wasn’t surprised. These society types always felt more important if their numbers weren’t in the book where any old rabble could find them and call them up. I wondered if my cop routine would work twice in one day. I’d already wandered pretty far over the line, lying to get Evelyn Night’s address, using fake credentials to sneak into the Tombs, threatening a prisoner … Might as well make a clean sweep of it, I figured.
I dialed the operator and gave my phony name and badge number, then told her the information I wanted. She rattled the information off with the gravel-rough voice of a three-pack-a-day smoker. Numbers and addresses for Nyx, Duncan, and Alder. There was no listing for Miss Morgen. The operator, every bit as helpful to the boys in blue as the last one I’d chatted with, offered the suggestion that Miss Morgen had maybe gotten married and might be listed under her husband’s name. I supposed I could get that information from one of the other girls if I managed to contact any of them, or send Cass to hunt down marriage records at City Hall. I thanked the operator for her help, said what a good citizen she was, helping out the cops like this, and dropped the phone back in its Bakelite bed.
It was past too late to do anything with the information tonight, but at least it gave me somewhere to go tomorrow morning. I looked at my watch and remembered that it already was tomorrow morning, had been for about half an hour now. Probably, I thought, I should just call it a night, grab some sleep in something like a real bed, and start fresh on the new leads once the sun had been up a while—if it ever broke through the sodden blanket of clouds that still hung dripping over the whole city. All of this crossed my mind even as I put my head back down on the desk and let sleep take me right where I was.
I dreamed I was playing the elderly baby grand in that dark corner of the lounge in the Highsmith, Johnny O polishing glasses behind the bar, the regulars hunched over their drinks, all of them rendered anonymous, shadows blotting out their features. For some reason I dropped the classical stuff and started in on some old torch song. As I did, an invisible crooner joined in, providing the lyrics in a voice as dark and rich and smooth as the smoke from a fifty-dollar cigar. I turned away from the piano but somehow kept right on playing, and looked at the figure slouched on the nearest stool. I hadn’t seen her at first but she’d been there all along, I knew that somehow. She wore that same elegant gray suit I’d first seen her in, those same pearls. Her wide-brimmed hat draped a veil of darkness across her face, leaving only her fine mouth and delicate chin uncovered. Her skin was white as talc, her lips red and moist so that I couldn’t help thinking of fresh-spilled blood. She smiled a tiny, devastating smile, the kind people in the pulps call a “come-hither” smile.
I went thither. The torch song went right on playing itself on the piano without me. I didn’t mind.
Neither of us spoke because there wasn’t anything to say. I took her with rough arms and tugged her off her stool and crushed my face to hers and we kissed again, kissed deeper than before, deeper than I’d ever kissed any woman, deeper than I’d ever been kissed. Deeper than it’s possible to kiss. We might’ve been trying to drink one another in and swallow one another whole, like two ravenous pythons. I wanted it to last forever.
In the shadow of her hat brim, I couldn’t see if her eyes were open or closed. Mine were closed. I didn’t think to wonder how that could be since I was seeing everything. Maybe I was standing outside myself, watching all of this. I can’t remember, if I even knew. Dreams aren’t obligated to make sense.
Then again, neither is reality. I know now, better than anyone, that logic and order are manmade boxes, and sometimes reality is the wrong shape and size to fit in. And for that we can only blame the box makers. There’s no point at all in blaming the world.
I caught a glimpse of us in the tall backbar mirror, me and Miss Gray-Night—and it was like a late-autumn wind had blown through me. There was nothing in my arms but shadows. No—there were no arms, either. Just darkness. Johnny O was gone, and the nameless regulars. We had the place to ourselves. Neither of us moved our hands but somehow I was undressing her or maybe she was undressing herself, that expensive jacket sliding away, that fine blouse slipping off feather-soft flesh, all pale curves and cool expanses, and I was utterly lost in her then, helpless. And I didn’t care.
Then I noticed the reason I couldn’t see the rest of her face was because there wasn’t anything there. Only mouth, and shadows. Something warm and wet ran over my cheek, down my throat and chest.
Darkness rolled over everything, obliterated the dream, or what I can remember of it.
I woke up I don’t know how much later with my face in a pool of spilled bourbon. Guess I knocked the bottle over in my sleep. I stood it up to save what I could, then went to change into one of the spare shirts Cass kept handy. I found them folded up in a big filing cabinet beside her desk, along with two extra ties, trousers, and a pair of socks.
I tugged the shirt on, looking at my back-up wardrobe. I shook my head some, thinking about Cass’s “cot” comment. I wasn’t all that short of living here already.
I used my handkerchief to wipe up the rest of the spilled booze, wrung it out in one of the darkroom sinks, then sat back down. The sky outside was showing hints of dawn, pale blue streaks visible through the clouds and beyond the sawtooth skyline. Cass would arrive in a couple of hours, and then I could start chasing down the girls from that old society page picture and see if they knew anything about the life and times of their old gal-pal Evelyn Night. Until then, I figured I might as well go searching for another dream or two. Dark as the last ones had been, I found myself hungering for a few more.
I’d just closed my eyes and settled my head on my bourbon-smelling desk when the phone jarred me to wide-eyed alertness. I grabbed it before it could ring again.
“Hello,” I said, forgetting the formal business hours manner of answering the phone by naming the agency.
“Mister Orpheus?” said a voice, distant as the sky, and much more beautiful. “Frank?”
“Where are you?” I asked. A dozen revelations banged around my brain, furious to escape, but I held back. This was information to be delivered face to face.
“I … don’t know …”
“Can you find your way back to the office?”
“Tonight … I’ll try … I can’t talk now. I’m scared.”
“You’ll be okay. I have some—”
The phone went dead in my hand.