Guy Vanderhaeghe - The Englishman’s Boy

Vogle argued against taking the boy. He made the thirteenth recruit and thirteen being the number around the table at the Last Supper, there could be no worse luck. Hardwick said since the only one who’d died on that expedition was the leader, and Vogle wasn’t leading nothing, what was he worrying about?

Vogle shook his head. “Thirteen’s bad medicine,” he said.

“That’s the Indian in you talking now,” said Hardwick.

Harry Vincent, detective, is sitting in a car parked just off Hollywood Boulevard and Cahuenga Avenue, keeping a grey frame building known as the Waterhole under surveillance. The Waterhole is a cowboy hangout famous in Hollywood, one part speakeasy, one part hiring hall. Inside the Waterhole, cowboys play poker and drink illegal whisky served in china teacups while they wait for picture directors short of extras to drop by and offer them work. Nobody but cowboys and directors ever frequent this establishment; tinhorns and curiosity-seekers are not made to feel welcome in the Waterhole. Even the cops give it a wide berth and pretend they don’t know porch-climber is sold there. Prohibition may be the law, but the police have decided meddling with cowboys and their simple pleasures is more trouble than it’s worth.

I’ve been sitting here for over two hours watching the entrance, hoping to spot Shorty McAdoo among the patrons who stagger in and out of the Waterhole on high-heeled riding boots, but no such luck. There’s no use putting it off any longer; the time has arrived to meddle with the cowboys.

After the hot California sunshine, the shuttered gloom of the Waterhole leaves me blind. I stand just inside the doorway, blinking, smelling the place – horse and sweat, tobacco and leather, the rank fumes of raw alcohol – before I see it. Then I begin to make out smoke, swirling like fog in the light of a few tin-shaded ceiling lamps, coiling and curdling greasy yellow under the naked bulbs like milk poured into vinegar. I decipher a crowd of stetsons, the tall hat-crowns wrapped in smoke, toadstools in a shifting ground mist. The toadstools tip back from cards and rose-patterned teacups containing illegal whisky. The glaring light skates down the faces like water down a cliff. They know I’m not a director, so I’m met with nothing but stony, inhospitable stares.

Directors of Westerns like flamboyance, it photographs well, which accounts for the way these boys are duded up. The bigger the hat, the gaudier the costume, the better the chance of being picked for a job. As I wend my way through the tables to the bar, I can sense their hostility; it’s a little bit like being dropped into a carnival where all the sideshow attractions resent you for looking at them. And it’s hard to ignore the extravagant costuming, screaming for attention the way it does. Beaded Indian vests and brass-studded leather gauntlets, big Mexican spurs with sunburst rowels, chaps of every style – bat-wing, stovepipe, angora – flashy shirts and towering hats, polka-dot bandannas the size of small tablecloths knotted around necks. Streetwalkers dolled up to catch the eye of men they despise.

I ask the man behind the bar to pour me what everybody else is having. Apparently everybody else is drinking flat, cold tea. I hold the teacup the way all the cowpokes do, not by the handle, but wrapped in my fist, and nonchalantly inquire of the bartender whether he’s seen Shorty lately.

“Shorty who?” he wants to know. “They’re all Shorty, or Slim, or Tex, or Yakima.”

“Shorty McAdoo.”

“I suppose you’re going to tell me you’re a friend of his.”

“No.”

“That’s good. Because if you did, you’d be a goddamn liar.”

“When’s the last time you saw him?”

“Four, five weeks ago. Maybe longer.”

“But generally he’s a regular?”

“Nothing regular about McAdoo. He comes. He goes. Some days he talks. Some days he don’t. Some days he drinks. Some days he don’t. I’d call him pretty unregular.”

“Where do you think I might locate him?”

The big man pushes himself away from the bar, putting distance between us, folds his arms protectively over a baywindow girded in a filthy apron. “What you want with McAdoo?”

“He’d thank you if you were to point me in his direction. There’s money in it for him.”

“He ain’t given to thanks.”

“Then maybe I could do it on his behalf,” I say, taking out the envelope of expense money I’ve been provided with, fishing a ten-spot from it which I lay on the counter. “Where’s he live?”

The bartender eyes the money, but he isn’t sure. “He ain’t going to thank me if you’re police.”

“It’s customary to hire cops with two good legs. You saw me cross the bar.”

“It ain’t a bar,” he says.

“All right, I’ll call it a tea shop if it makes you any happier.” It doesn’t seem to.

“This about that director?”

“What director?” The way I say it he knows I don’t have a clue what he is talking about.

“Shorty may be an old man,” he says. “But he’s a fucking grudgeful old man.”

“I don’t intend to give him any reason to hold a grudge. Against me or anybody else. I like to be everybody’s friend.”

He picks up the bill, crushing it in his fist as if he wants it out of sight before anybody notices. “This is all I know. Two months ago somebody said he was bunking at Mother Reardon’s.”

“Who’s Mother Reardon?”

“She runs a boarding house. She likes cowboys. Gives them a preference on rooms.”

“Address?”

The bartender takes a stub of pencil from behind his ear, scribbles on a torn envelope. “I ain’t promising nothing. It’s just what I heard – that he might be there. Cowboys don’t stop long in one place.”

“I understand,” I say.

He passes me the paper. “If you find him, don’t bother mentioning me. I don’t want no credit on this one.”

Mother Reardon’s is a shabby little bungalow not far from the empty lot on the corner of Sunset and Hollywood boulevards where Griffith constructed the gargantuan Babylon set for his film Intolerance. A hand-lettered sign on a piece of cardboard in the front window says, “Room and Board, Weeklie, Monthlie.” The old woman who answers my knock is thin as a straight razor and wears a black dress so shiny it looks wet.

“I’d like to speak to Mr. McAdoo,” I say.

“Not here.”

“When do you expect him back?”

“Don’t. Moved out.”

“Do you have a forwarding address for him?”

“Nothing to forward. He never got mail.”

I think for a moment, hand on the screen door. “He didn’t happen to skip out on the rent by any chance, did he?”

“What’s it to you?”

“I’m a business associate,” I tell her. “It’s possible I might be able to settle any debts. Collect any personal belongings he might have left behind.”

A shrewd, cold look passes over her face and then she dismisses the opportunity with a regretful, weary shake of the head. “No, he paid in full. Always did. He’s a punctual man.”

“Do you have a guess where he went to?”

“No.”

“Did he say anything? Give any reasons for leaving?”

Mother Reardon cocks her head, shoots me a look like a bright-eyed scrawny bird. “Business associate, you said?”

“In a manner of speaking.”

“Then you ought to know him to be closed-mouthed. Never said much more to anybody than a word at the supper table. ‘Pass the butter.’ ‘Pass the beans.’ That’s all he ever asked from anybody, that they pass him what he paid for.”