Джо Горес - Dead Man

“My God!” breathed Sherman. “Do you realize what’s in...”

The waitress chirped at him, “How about you, sir?”

“Nothing, er, ah, a refill on the coffee, and, ah, a glass of orange juice.” She wrote, nodded, started away, Sherman called after her, “Is that O.J. fresh-squeezed?”

“Yessir,” she piped, aged eyes bright, “I squoze it out of the carton myself just this morning.”

Sherman repeated, “My God,” then turned to Dain with a glint of anger in his eyes. “Why did you really bring me here?”

“I’m on my way to the airport, I’ve got something I—”

“Back to Chicago?”

“No.”

“So Mr. Maxton’s problem was resolved quite rapidly.”

“Not resolved. Suspended. I’ve been waiting for the tape of a phone tap to confirm my next move. My man found someone else was tapping the same phone. Maybe Maxton is playing games with me, so...” He shrugged. “I wanted you to hear something, check my assumptions.”

The waitress arrived with their food on a single big platter balanced on one arthritic hand. Sherman took a cautious sip of orange juice; Dain slurped his chocolate shake, began wolfing down golden-brown french-fried onion rings. The look on Sherman’s face was worth it.

Munching away, he took the yellow Walkman out of his pocket and set it on the table, punched PLAY.

“Robert Farnsworth here. How may I—”

“This is Jimmy.”

Sherman’s hand darted out to hit stop.

“Are you crazy? ” he hissed at Dain across the table. “Playing an illegal surveillance tape in a public place...”

Dain looked around. In the next booth were a tall trim brown-haired man with glasses and a short white-haired muscular overweight man wearing a red shirt in a Southwest American Indian motif. Whenever the jukebox paused to change tunes, they could be heard taking turns trashing publishers and bemoaning Hollywood agents who never returned their phone calls.

Back in the open kitchen the cooks, just out of their teens and wearing tall white chefs’ hats on top of too-long hair, bopped and jinked to Buddy Holly’s stuttery “Peggy Sue.” The air was heavy with the smell of frying bacon, sizzling eggs, french fries bubbling in hot grease. The place was jammed, the din atrocious.

“With the music going, you’d need a shotgun mike in here to hear what those guys are saying at the next table.”

He turned on the Walkman again.

“Jimmy! I’ve been calling your office long-distance, they keep saying you’re out of town. I want to know if you have any phone numbers out here in San Francisco for me. Girls like—”

Zimmer’s voice interrupted. “Bobby, that... ah, client who has the...” he cleared his throat, “bearer bonds...”

Farnsworth was immediately all business. “These are the bonds you were telling me about in Chicago, Jimmy?”

“Yes, yes.”

“Nothing wrong with them, is there?” asked Farnsworth in a jocular voice. “Not forged? Counterfeit? Stolen?”

Zimmer exclaimed in a near panic, “Good God no!”

“Then take them to our Chicago office and—”

“I’m out of town.”

Farnsworth’s voice said, “Out of town where?”

“N... I can’t tell you that.”

“Attorneys!” He sighed. “Okay, look in your local phone book and see if Farnsworth, Fechheimer and Farnsworth has an office in whatever city—”

“I already did. They do.”

“Bravo! Take in the bonds and...”

Dain punched off the Walkman. “The rest is just verbiage.”

“What’s it all about?” said Sherman. “Who’re the players?”

“Jimmy Zimmer stole two million bucks in stolen bearer bonds from our friend Maxton. Bobby is his stockbroker buddy temporarily in San Francisco. It was Bobby’s phone I bugged.”

“So the bonds were stolen twice.”

“Technically, embezzled the first time. Anyway, Jimmy-baby is running around with a woman named Vangie Broussard. By her Chicago arrest record, her first busts were in New Orleans for dancing nude on barroom tables at the age of sixteen. So...”

“You’re off to New Orleans?” demanded Sherman in surprise. He gestured at the Walkman. “On the basis of that?”

“That — and the second bug on Farnsworth’s phone.”

“But why New Orleans? Because a woman dances on tables when she’s a teenybopper—”

“It’s on the tape — didn’t you catch it?” His food had gotten cold while they listened to the recording. Maybe he wouldn’t have to eat it. “When Jimmy was asked where he was calling from, he voiced the letter ‘N’ before he caught himself. ‘N.’ New Orleans. The brokerage firm has a New Orleans office, Broussard’s first arrest was in New Orleans, it’s home territory for her. Plus her name — Broussard. That’s a Cajun name.”

“I suppose it fits.” Sherman was staring at him as if seeing him for the first time. “Have you ever considered what a very strange man you are, Dain?”

“I doubt Nielsen would choose you as a test viewer, Doug.”

Sherman chuckled and nodded. “Touché” He leaned forward across the table. “But even if by some strange event they should be there, how do you plan to—”

“She’s too smart to let Jimmy cash any of the bonds this soon, so she’ll be dancing in some topless joint in the Old Quarter to raise them a travel stake.”

Sherman hesitated, spoke as if with difficulty. “Dain, I have a bad feeling about this one because of that second bug...”

Dain stood up, scooping up the check and leaving a too-large tip in its place. “And I have a good feeling about it — because of that second bug.” He stuck out his hand; Sherman shook it. “I’ve got Shenzie in the car, I’ve got to drop him off at Randy Solomon’s place before I go to the airport.”

“I’m surprised you’d leave your cat with that Gestapo thug. Will there by anyplace I can reach you if—”

“I’ll reach you. If.” He grinned again, pointed at the Walkman with the Farnsworth tape still inside it. “Keep that for me until I get back. Just in case.”

He left his car in his rented parking place across the Embarcadero from the loft, caught the shuttle bus to the airport, and was in New Orleans in time to watch the sunset.

Here the Mississippi was the classical Mark Twain river — lazy brown water, green banks, a churning paddle wheeler angled upstream to fight the current. On the landing dock was insomniac Dain, one of the few early passengers waiting to catch the deliberately anachronistic paddle wheeler’s first trip of the day. His only lead was Vangie; he could only look for her at night. So he rode in a clopping horse-drawn carriage through genteel upper-crust neighborhoods, watched the Vieux Carré street life through wrought-iron filigreed balconies, listened to the music starting to strut from some of the clubs.

Dain went through the open passageway to the hotel court where the fountain burbled and brightly clad tourists sipped tall pastel drinks. From the courtyard, he went along Chartres to Conti, turned left toward the rising sounds of Bourbon Street. Wandered, pausing to look in windows, peering through open club doorways at the entertainment inside. Stood on a corner to watch black boys tap-dance for thrown coins.

A topless joint, the music not very good, leave without even making it to the bar for a drink. Stand on the sidewalk eating a po’boy and drinking beer from a paper cup. Then plunge back into the night world.

Better music, the hornman a Muggsy Spanier clone, nurse a beer through a whole round of floor shows, leave the bottle half-full behind him. Just another single male alone on his own in the big city. To bed at dawn, to not sleep worth a damn.