Джо Горес - Gone, No Forwarding

“Just two blocks down — toward the river.”

Bart Heslip turned a corner and was suddenly engulfed in the raucous gaiety of Bourbon Street after dark. Masses of shirt-sleeved and cotton-dressed tourists wandered the street from sidewalk to sidewalk, since striped police barricades interdicted the street to auto traffic.

From open honky-tonk doorways poured hot jazz. The topless joints and strip houses had their doors open to give passers-by quick glimpses of the meat on display inside. Heslip was starting early to hit as many places as possible before the lines waiting for the next complete show started building up. At a po’boy stall he got a beer in a paper cup — glasses were forbidden outside on Bourbon Street — and a sandwich; ate and drank standing at the curb, happy with the warm night and the festive throng.

And then it was time for work. He angled across the street toward the nearest topless joint where two dancers sprawled in chairs just inside the open doorway, their loose, meaty, naked thighs spread wide to catch the cool breeze and indiscriminate male pedestrians. Heslip slipped into the empty chair between them. On his passage across the street a pair of mirrored shades had appeared on his eyes. “You lovely ladies are as sweet as a mother’s love, I swear.”

Neither girl answered, so he leaned over and pinched one gently on the thigh.

“Hey, listen, shithead,” she snarled, sitting up straight, “you just look, you don’t touch.”

“Praise de Lawd. I thought you wuz daid.”

“Oh you’re funn-n-ny. Ha. Ha. Ha.”

“Little Verna, she thinks I got my game uptight. What time she come on?”

“No Verna here, black boy,” she said with a lifted lip.

“Fleur?”

“No Fleur, either.” She raised her voice toward the dim interior. “Hey, Chuck, this Nigra...”

Heslip was up and out, sliding away nimbly through the crowd, an eye to storefront windows reflecting the street behind him until he was sure Chuck wasn’t following his scent. Then he slowed and turned into the next topless joint. No girls on display outside this one, so he threaded his way through darkness, noise, smoke, and the jazz beat of the band next to the raised stage where a girl in a frayed, filmy negligée moved in approximate time to the music.

He slid onto a stool and ordered a beer. As he paid he flashed a Stepin Fetchit grin at the bartender and said. “Hey, my man, if you can tell me what time Verna comes on...”

Back into a 4 A.M. street, dimly lit and alive with ghosts, stepped Heslip, zipping up, after depositing the most recent two hours of beer in a littered doorway. He’d lost track of the number he’d drunk, as he’d lost track of the number of near-naked women he’d looked at in the last seven hours with only negative results. They’d all run together in his mind — a single fat, skinny, beautiful, sad, ugly, happy, alcoholic, straight, spaced-out, drunk, coked-up, sober woman with an indifferent body who smelled of perspiration and tired feet.

He checked his watch: 1:30 A.M. in San Francisco. Here, only blown trash and rumbling garbage trucks and early delivery vans and the lonely sound of his solitary footsteps, but there, his fragrant, elegant lady asleep in her bed. Was it too late — too early? — to call her and tell her how he missed her?

Far down the street, on the far side next to an alley, light and jukeboxed jazz spilled from an all-night bar. He looked in the window when he got to the place; in the back, near the restrooms, was a pay phone. He went in.

Stale beer. Sweat. Dime-store musk. Seven male patrons, two with women of their own, watching the almost naked black girl on stage display her ineptitude. A tall blond with the strident tones of a drag queen was using the phone. Heslip sat at the nearest table and leaned back and shut his eyes. Tired. The music stopped to a smattering of applause. A new record started.

“Yeah, what’ll it be?”

“The phone,” said Heslip without opening his eyes.

“Gotta order.”

He opened his eyes. The waiter was short and black and had led with his nose against a fist or a bottle many years before.

“Beer,” he said, as his eyes looked beyond the waiter to the stage where, now, a small skinny girl with breasts a midget’s hands might cup and the body curves of a high school sprinter, gyrated with great energy and no talent. Heslip added sharply to the waiter’s back, “Hey.”

When the waiter turned, he was holding out a ten-dollar bill. The girl on stage had freckles and skin light enough to pass.

“And tell the little lady that Santa Claus is black and early this year.”

He shut his eyes and drifted again. The music stopped. Started. Stopped. Did it all again. Dusting of applause. Finally, one of the chairs squealed being pulled back from the table.

“Jingle Bells?” It was a little voice willing to be playful.

He opened his eyes. A good face, small and serious behind all the cosmeticked garbage.

“Hello, Fleur,” he said. “Where’s Verna?”

“Will Delaney have Pivarski here or not?” asked Kearny as they got out of the elevator.

“Hell no,” snorted Tranquillini. “Neither would I if he was my client, now that I know what Hawkley has Pivarski ducking. He can’t be sure, if this witness comes up with a positive I.D., that the State wouldn’t go after his client for Murder One anyway. And you can never tell how juries will react in murder-for-hire cases.”

“But if he was in our office fifteen miles away at the time—”

Tranquillini stopped abruptly outside the open door of the hearing room. “He would have to prove that. And they’re having their troubles right inside this hearing room proving it to satisfy the referee. What would they have to do to convince a jury, in the face of a positive eyewitness?” He shook his head. “I figure Delaney will stall today and then, if ordered to produce him, will do it next Monday. By that time, Benny Nicoletti’s witness will have gotten cold feet and gone back up to Canada. My guess is that today Johnny-boy will have a very nasty surprise for us.”

“Be seated and state your full name for the record,” said the Hearing Officer.

“Jeffrey L. Simson. S-I-M-S-O-N.”

“Your address, Mr. Simson?”

“One-four-seven-two Fort Point, Los Angeles. Fort Point is two words.”

The Hearing Officer said to Delaney, “Proceed.”

“Mr. Simson, were you employed by Kearny Associates as a collector during November of last year?”

“Yes I was.”

“Do you recall the Pivarski account?”

Simson cleared his throat. “Yes sir, I do.”

“Do you recall Mr. Pivarski coming into your office on November fifth, and if so, do you recall the purpose of that visit?”

“He came regarding an attachment of his wages.”

“Did he offer to pay any money at that time?”

“Two hundred dollars,” said Simson.

Tranquillini was doodling on his scratch pad and looking bored.

“To whom did Mr. Pivarski talk when he came in?” Simson affected to think very deeply. Finally he nodded. “Yes. First myself, then Miss Onoda.”

“Can you tell us anything further about the purpose of Mr. Pivarski’s visit to the Kearny office?”

“It was my underst—”

“I object to the form of that question,” said Tranquillini. “He wouldn’t know Pivarski’s purpose. He might know what Pivarski told him.”

“Sustained as to form,” said the Hearing Officer.

“Well, would you state what Mr. Pivarski said?”

“It was my understanding that the money was to be held—”

“I object to his ‘understanding’ something.”

The Hearing Officer sighed. “Will the witness please just relate the conversation as best he can recollect?”