Джо Горес - Gone, No Forwarding

Nobody quite like his vague memory of Simson. But in the booth on the far side of the circular dining room, Ferdie Diamond. Queen Ferdinand indeed. A sari of gleaming white picked out with gold thread. A BB-sized diamond at the edge of one nostril awink with a turn of the head. A dozen glittering red rhinestones pasted along the outer edge of each eyelid, accented with red eyeshadow. Jammed hip to hip with five others in a four-person booth.

Ballard went back outside. No use making a play in there, Ferdie probably knew everyone in the place. Obviously he was driving Simson’s car, so equally obviously he knew where Simson was. Ballard drove out of the lot and parked in the yellow zone across the street from the restaurant. From there he could see Ferdie in the booth, and could see just the trail of the white Gremlin around the edge of the building.

He settled down behind the wheel and turned the radio to KNEW-91. His dashboard clock showed a new day had begun. He waited.

As he drove, Ferdie Diamond kept casting covert glances at the shuddery brute beside him. Where had the scary darling been, that he’d met him only tonight? A bear of a man, with a gravelly voice, and cheeks that would always need a shave, and a mop of coal-black hair growing low on his forehead. Deep-set eyes, a straight bar of brow above them. Positively Neanderthal.

A little shiver of delight ran through Ferdie under his sari. He felt suddenly weak as he thought of being under the Neanderthal man in bed. He backed into the open parking space three doors down from his apartment house. Another parking ticket in the morning, because he just knew he wouldn’t be up early.

“Here we are.”

Neanderthal didn’t speak, he rumbled. “You’re very kind to offer me a nightcap.”

“Let’s hope it’s an... experience neither of us will forget.”

“It will be.”

That was too much for Ferdie. A little moan of anticipation escaped him as he turned blindly toward the big, rough-voiced man. Their mouths met as a thick-fingered hand slipped up Ferdie’s thigh under the togalike robe toward his groin. The hand tightened. And tightened. Ferdie’s moan of pleasure turned to one of pain.

“Aw, Jesus H. Christ!” Ballard burst out aloud.

Queen Ferdinand and his boyfriend were parked across the street, four spaces up, and they were kissing, for Chrissake!

But then the door on the rider’s side opened and the black-haired guy got out with Ferdie right behind, still gripped tenderly in the big man’s grasp. Writhing in passion even after they were out of the car into the deserted midnight street. Passion? Or pain? From where Ballard set, the embrace looked more like a choke-hold.

Diamond was getting mugged. Right there on the street. Ballard started his hand toward the horn, to scare the guy off, when the two men turned in abruptly at the Queen Anne and disappeared into the shadows beneath the building.

Ballard was out of his car, eight-inch Stillson wrench from the floor of the back seat in hand. He stood on the sidewalk, breathing quickly and shallowly, trying to pierce the shadows with his gaze. Back there in the dark the big guy could be wringing Diamond’s neck as easily as he would a chicken’s. Ballard ran silently and obliquely across the street. The narrow concrete passageway under the house was ripe with garbage but otherwise empty. At the far end, a staircase of narrow rough plank stairs.

Sure. Up to Diamond’s apartment, clean him out, leave him trussed up and broke. Or broke up. Or dead.

Ballard went up the stairs to the second floor. The door there opened into an interior hallway. No time to think, because if he stopped to think he’d call the cops. That guy looked mean. But, he told himself, Ferdie was his only link with Simson.

Okay, then. Down the silent carpeted hallway to Apartment 5. When he pressed an ear against the door, he could hear the rumble of the big guy’s voice.

“... cut it outta your nose, fruiter-boy, unless...”

Ballard got a flash of the bastard sawing through Ferdie-baby’s nostril with a big Bowie knife. Another flash of the same knife sinking up to the hilt in Ballard’s gut. Oh, wonderful. Just what he needed right now was a vivid imagination.

He dragged the head of the Stillson wrench down the door with a clawing noise on the wood. The voice stopped.

“I saw you, Ferdie, with that gorgeous hunk,” Ballard trilled. “Let me in. Let’s share.”

Ear back to the door. Furious rumbling whisper. Ferdie’s terrified voice from beyond the door. “Go away!”

Ballard dragged the wrench down again. “Stop teasing,” he said. And stepped quickly back across the hall. Braced himself. Watched the doorknob until it turned.

His shoulder hit the door and smashed it wide. He ran right across the room and knocked over the portable bar with a terrific crash of glasses and bottles. At the same time he caught one confused glimpse of Ferdie reeling back, his nose spread all over his face by the door, and the black-haired guy, unhurt, coming toward him like a cat.

Ballard whirled toward him, letting the wrench lead his movement. It caught the black-haired guy on the right arm. The knife went flying as the elbow shattered like glass. The man screamed, doubled over holding it, every aggression washed away by pain. Ballard tapped him on the back of the head with the wrench, although every nerve and fiber screamed to bury the wrench in the skull up to the handle.

The big guy went down, hard, on his face.

Ferdie was sitting in the middle of the floor, his gown up around his waist like a two dollar hooker in an alley showing a prospective trick what she had. What Ferdie had was male genitals and no underwear.

“Cover yourself up, you disgusting creep,” said Ballard.

Ferdie was beyond modesty or coquetry. Blood from his busted nose leaked from between the spread fingers held up to his face. “By dode,” he moaned. “By dode id brokend.”

The tough-looking landlord from that afternoon appeared in the doorway, a dangerous glint in his eye and a baseball bat in his hand.

“Call the cops,” said Ballard.

The man’s eyes took in the scene as his nose twitched to the raw stink of the broken liquor bottles. He nodded and disappeared.

“By dode,” moaned Ferdie.

Ballard looked at him and blew out a long disgusted breath. And said coldly, “Where’s Simson?”

The man weighed over two hundred pounds and little of it fat, with a luxurious brown mustache and straight brown hair fanned out across the shoulders of his fringed buckskin jacket. Except that he waved a flashlight instead of a Colt Peacemaker, he would have been Wild Bill Hickock. He pointed the flashlight at the worn plush curtain. “ The daughters of sin, come in! The daughters of sin, come in!”

Four college types in warmup jackets accepted the invitation and followed the beam through the curtains to the unknown delights.

“ Gorgeous female models in... the... nude!” cried the barker. “The daughters of sin, come in!”

A gold Eldorado convertible stopped in front to disgorge two daughters of sin. The blond white girl was taller than the afro’d black girl, but both were striking in their revealing Frederick’s of Hollywood party dresses.

“It’s all right inside, folks!”

They trailed cheap perfume past the barker as they went in. The black girl also trailed lingering fingers along his jawbone. “Ti-i-i-ger!” she purred.

As they disappeared inside, the driver got out of the Caddy. He was a very black dude in a wide-brimmed pimp’s hat.

“Gorgeous fee-male models in... the... nude! The daughters of sin, come in, come in ...”