Эд Горман - Murder on the Aisle

There, in the gloom at the rear of the hall, beneath the ear-thrumming speakers, Tobin felt a kinship with them — grinding out some middle-aged pleasure that, even if it was a tad desperate, imposed some meaning on lives lost in punching time clocks and watching children drift away, knowing that in the end you’d made a fucking botch of it all. Almost as if he were tuned into Tobin’s reverie, the saxophone player grabbed hold of Little Richard’s “Lucille” and grabbed hold of it good, actually bringing something close to artfulness to his rendition. Tobin, all five feet five of him, found himself alive with music and forgot for a moment about playing detective and allowed himself to be Pied-Pipered toward the bandstand, where the punch bowl loomed in the shadows like a shrine. The guy doing the ladling was as drunk as any of the dancers, and so he got nearly as much on Tobin’s sleeve as he did in Tobin’s glass, but Tobin didn’t give a shit, he just started roaming, still a little buzzy from the bourbon he’d shared with Frank Emory, hoping suddenly that he’d find some unlikely lady here and that together they’d hump through the night (or fifteen-twenty minutes, more realistically, then just sort of hold each other through the night).

He was drifting this way, through knots, clumps, corrals of people, when a hand meant to do him harm began to play trash compactor with his shoulder.

“You think I don’t know who you are?”

The guy obviously had a video cassette of Urban Cowboy at home and obviously he’d let it have a big impact on him. He was such a squared-away cowpoke that he would have given Hopalong Cassidy an inferiority complex, and he’d accomplished all this without ever leaving the city.

But Tobin knew better than to laugh because even if the guy was a cowboy peacock, the jerk had a hand that could uproot redwoods and a sneer that looked as if it had been put there by a switchblade.

“You’re here doin’ a story on our pension fund, aren’t ya?”

“No. Actually.”

“Bullshit. I seen you on TV.”

“You’ve seen me on TV, but not as an investigative reporter.”

“Fuckin’ Reagan wants to bust unions. That’s what all this shit is about.”

“This may surprise you, but I don’t like Reagan either.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“So what’re you doin’ here?”

“I’m not sure.”

The guy grabbed him. He was drunk and he’d been meaning all along to grab him anyway. He had just been looking for some excuse and Tobin had been stupid enough to give him one.

He pulled his fist back and sort of aimed it like a missile and was ready to let go when a guy about Tobin’s height but maybe sixty pounds heavier came up and grabbed the cowboy’s hand and proceeded to envelop it in a fist that forced the cowboy to let go of Tobin and start doing a whole passel of grimacing.

“You’ll always be a moron, won’t you, Gilhooley?”

“He’s a TV guy,” Gilhooley said by way of explanation. He whined. Like a child. Tobin took a great deal of pleasure from the sound.

“ ‘He’s a TV guy.’ Jesus Christ — of course he’s a TV guy. He’s a movie critic.”

“A movie critic?”

“That’s right. A movie critic. Now haul your ass out of here. You understand?”

“Gee, Sal, I was just tryin’ to do the right thing.”

“Dudley-Do-Right,” the stout man named Sal said as Gilhooley disappeared into the press of dancers. He put out his hand. “Sal Ramano. I’m vice-president of the union.” As they shook hands, he smiled. “And you’re Tobin.”

“I’m Tobin.”

“I guess I’ve got to say that I don’t blame Gilhooley for being surprised at seeing you here.”

“I’m just looking for a little information is all.”

“Why don’t we go to my office and have a drink and see if I can help you.”

“That’d be great.”

“It’s our pin, all right.”

Ramano pushed the union button back across his desk to Tobin.

“It was found last night at the scene of a break-in.”

Ramano smiled. “I wish I could say that all of our members are good little boys and girls who go to mass twice a day and never say anything worse than ‘Fudge.’ That doesn’t happen to be the case.” He flicked ash from his plastic-tipped cigarillo. “Where was the break-in?”

“It was out at Hunter College. In an office in the English department.”

“They keep valuable things in English department offices?”

“That’s the strange thing — no, they don’t.”

Ramano leaned back in his tall leather chair and thought a moment. “What you’re really asking me is if any of my people are regular B and E artists.”

“I guess.”

“They’re not.” There was no hostility in Ramano’s voice. He still seemed perplexed by the whole idea of somebody breaking into an English department office. “But I did just remember something.”

“What?”

“There’s a guy — a few years ago — seems he was taking some kind of night courses.”

“At Hunter?”

“For some reason, I think so. Let me check.”

Ramano got up and went over to a computer terminal that was covered for the night. He sat down and turned the machine on and worked with surprising speed.

While Ramano worked, Tobin glanced around the office. If anybody was dipping into the pension and welfare funds, he wasn’t spending the money on office furniture. This place appeared to have been furnished out of the local Goodwill store. Warped slabs of imitation knotty pine covered the wall; thin maroon carpeting was frazzled in little explosions across the floor; and the desk and filing cabinets looked as if somebody beat on them regularly with hammers.

“Ebsen,” Ramano said, scribbling something on a notepad, then standing up.

“Ebsen.”

“Harold Ebsen. Used to work in a dry cleaner’s when he first joined the union, but then he went part-time last year so he could go back to college part-time and fulfill his dream.” Ramano smiled. “Of being a writer. But that isn’t what you really remember about somebody like him. What you really remember is how crazy he was. Always getting in fights. Very anti-black, anti-Semitic. Always angry. Just another oddball who doesn’t fit in anywhere — but you always sensed he was dangerous. Says here he went back to Hunter.”

“You wouldn’t have his address, would you?”

Ramano tore a sheet off the notepad and handed it to Tobin.

“Here you are.”

“Wonder what he’s doing?”

“Ebsen?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, as I remember, the last time I heard anything about him, he was attending some kind of survivalist classes and writing a book about the coming fascist revolution.”

“Can’t wait to meet him.”

“Take my word for it.”

“What?”

“He’s nobody to fuck with.”

“I’ll need to talk to him anyway.”

“Then you should go in the daytime.”

“Thanks.”

“Now I’d better head back to the floor. See how Gilhooley is doing at keeping the peace.”

“He inspires a lot of confidence in me as a peacekeeper.”

Ramano laughed. “Gilhooley’s a lot easier to handle when he thinks he’s on the side of the law than when somebody’s trying to calm him down.”

“Yeah, I can imagine that.”

Ramano put out his hand. “I’d go very easy with Ebsen. I’ve heard very strange rumors about him.”

“Such as?”

“Oh, eating only organic foods. Somebody told me he even butchers his own meat.”

“You’re starting to convince me.”

“I’m trying to convince you. Even if you underrate Stallone movies.”

“I’m not always right.”

Ramano grinned. “So I’ve noticed.”