The Vaults Page 6

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Frings watched Nora smoke a Chesterfield through a holder. She had long, elegant fingers for a woman so generously proportioned. Her eyes on the jazz band up on the stage, she showed no indication of enjoyment or boredom. She was simply there. Not that this was unusual. Nora’s pleasure in music came from performing, from the exchange of energy between herself and the audience. It was, Frings supposed, a sensual feeling for her to be onstage; her ability to translate this feeling through her voice, along with her physical beauty, made her the sex symbol she was. The upshot, however, was that she did not especially enjoy being in the audience for a jazz show. Given a choice, she would probably have rather been at the symphony.

  They were at the Palace on the City’s East Side—its black side. The place was nearly full, with Frings and Nora two of only a handful of Caucasians. It was their favorite place; for Nora, because here she could relax somewhat, away from the usual attention. On the East Side, the black musicians were the celebrities, while she was just one of the vanguard of fashionable whites who ventured here to enjoy the scene and—if less so in her case—the music. As for Frings, he liked the music, but it was also where he could score his reefer.

  “You enjoying the band?” he asked her as the musicians paused between songs to retune their instruments and take a quick sip of whatever they were drinking.

  She shrugged and frowned slightly, watching something across the room. She was distracted, in her own world, which tonight had Frings alternating between an anxious sadness and complete indifference. The bond between them had always been unclear. She was the chanteuse of the City’s vibrant white jazz scene. For now at least. He was a “name” reporter, stirring up trouble among the wealthy and powerful. As a couple they seemed to epitomize the glamour of the City that was at once elegant—her—and seedy—him. But while this played well as a symbol, their relationship had, from the start, been based on a mutual sense of excitement that had eroded with time. Leaving what? More and more nights like this in which they seemed only to be living lives side by side.

  A tall, elegant man in a tuxedo walked over to their table. He wore his hair slicked back, and a thin mustache was barely visible against his dark, dark skin. He leaned over Nora and they exchanged kisses to each cheek. Then he shook hands with Frings.

  “How are things, Frank?” said Floyd Christian, the floor manager at the Palace. Frings had known him for years. “What do you think of the band?”

  “They’re hitting on all sixes,” Frings said. Floyd looked to Nora. “Nora’s not talking,” Frings explained.

  She had returned to staring vacantly at the stage, blowing smoke through parted lips with practiced sensuality that by now seemed unconscious.

  “Floyd, if you’ve got any reefer . . .”

  Floyd gave a low laugh. “These days, I’m always holding. My cup runneth over, I think is what they say. Those headaches bothering you again?”

  Frings smiled. “Not so funny when you have them.”

  Floyd nodded in sympathy. “Hey, there’s something I need to tell you. Some hood was poking his nose around in here asking about you. He didn’t know from nothing but he was fishing.”

  “Big guy, yellow hair, pole up his ass?”

  “That’d be him.”

  Smith. “Anybody say anything?”

  “Shit.”

  “Yeah, sorry. Of course not.”

  “He official?”

  “Afraid so.”

  “You got yourself into one?”

  Frings nodded.

  “Now I see why you need that mezz. I’ll be back.”

  The band took a break and Nora turned to Frings with a look that made him realize her distance that night had been less the product of indifference than anxiety. She put her hand over his, holding it. He let her, but did not move to take hers in return.

  “There was someone watching me at the club last night.”

  “You’re onstage—everyone’s watching you.”

  “No, they’re watching the show. This man was watching me.”

  “You’re thinking too much.”

  “Am I?”

  “How can you possibly tell, a roomful of people like that, that one particular person is watching you like . . . differently from just watching the show?”

  “How many shows do you think I’ve done, Frank? I can read people in the audience. I can tell when men are thinking what it would be like to sleep with me, or to hurt me. I can see the women who are jealous or who think I’m a tramp.”

  “Or who also want to sleep with you,” Frings suggested with a smile.

  “Don’t be an ass. I’m serious. This was different. This wasn’t . . . I don’t know. He seemed to be there with a purpose, and it wasn’t seeing the band. He was watching me. For a reason.”

  “Guy with a crush?”

  Her temper flared, though Frings knew that it was triggered by fear, not anger. “People look at me every goddamn day, Frank. I have a pretty good sense of the difference between being ogled by a guy with a crush and being watched.”

  Frings thought about this for a second. A woman with Nora’s beauty and fame was bound to be an object of obsession for any number of men, and she ran into that problem frequently. Frings had seen it for himself on more than one occasion. It didn’t rattle her. So if this one did, Frings figured, maybe there was something to it.

  “Okay. Listen. Describe him for me.” For some reason he assumed this might be Smith. The guy was showing up everywhere lately.

  “He was little and had dark skin. Like an Indian. From India.”

  “Did he say anything to you?”

  “No. Just hung around at the bar and watched.”

  “Was he with anyone?”

  “I don’t think so. Didn’t see him talk to anyone.”

  She pulled her hand away from his. Cross-examination was not what she had wanted from him, Frings knew, but he did not know what else to say.

  “I don’t know, Frank,” she said into her drink. “I’m off for a week, so maybe he’ll get bored and screw.”

  The conversation seemed to be over, as Nora turned from him to watch the comings and goings of the people close to the stage. These were the City’s Negro elite, and Nora was fascinated by them; perhaps because she had no entrée into their world. Few doors were closed to her. Frings leaned back in his chair and smoked a Lucky, trying to force himself to care more about Nora than he did. It was a depressing exercise, and he was relieved to see Floyd approaching.

  “You got a call on the office phone, Frank.”

  Frings excused himself to Nora’s back and followed Floyd to the club office, red velvet on the walls and black leather furniture. A telephone perched on an ebony desk, the earpiece off its hook. Frings brought it up to his ear and spoke into mouthpiece at the base.

  “Frings.”

  “Frank, it’s Panos.”

  Christ, what was he doing calling him at this time of night? “What’s the rumble, chief?”

  “There’s been another bomb.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Two years back, Poole had been doing blackmail and private dick work long enough to be self-assured, but not yet long enough to be scared. The scars from State still burned, and he was often overwhelmed with self-disgust. He drank more then and was more than willing to use his size as an instrument of intimidation and fear.

  One night the excuse was a young pro named Alice. She was leaning against a wall, smoking—couldn’t have been more than fifteen—and Poole saw that both her eyes were black, swollen down to slits. He asked her what happened. She said to screw. He persisted and she finally gave in, as much to get rid of him as anything else, it seemed. A john had gotten rough—hit her, kicked her in the ribs, left without paying. Her pimp had taken care of her other eye.

  Poole took Alice on a walk. Eventually they found the john shooting craps in the alley next to Lambert’s Tavern. Poole grabbed him, dragging him deeper into the alley as the other gamb
lers watched. The energy from their collective adrenaline fueled Poole’s anger. He braced the john. The man went down on all fours, then Poole broke his ribs with a kick. He gave the wallet to Alice, who took the money she was owed and tossed the rest on the man, now groaning in a fetal tuck.

  Next they found the pimp, who surprised Poole by being no older than Alice. No matter. Similar story. When the pimp had finally had enough, Poole held him at eye level and told him, if there was ever any other trouble with Alice, to come to him. If the pimp ever touched her again, he would be back. The pimp nodded and Poole dropped him in a pile.

  Alice had only one way to thank Poole, and he wasn’t interested. Someday, he said, you might be able to do me a favor. Now he was calling in that chit.

  Poole walked through the intermittently lit paths in Greer Park with Alice on his arm. She was blond and thin and her face was painted with ghoulish makeup. She wore a cheap cocktail dress under an overcoat she had for the cold.

  The gazebo stood in a clearing a few yards from Greer Pond. Surrounding the clearing was a well-groomed stand of trees without any undergrowth, an improved version of nature that offered no effective cover. If police were waiting, Poole would spot them without trouble. As they approached the gazebo, Poole scanned the perimeter of trees for any human shape or movement. Finding nothing, he and Alice continued on.

  Low clouds were illuminated a gray yellow by the City lights, and wisps extended downward like the tentacles of jellyfish. The noise of the City was muffled here, and it was easy enough to picture this as some bucolic country scene.

  Poole had Alice sit on the floor of the gazebo. This spot was often used by prostitutes, and tonight Alice was Poole’s cover.

  “If someone comes other than the mark,” he said to her, “I’m taking it out of my pants. You just stand up like you’re surprised.”

  “I can make this more realistic, if you’d like.”

  Poole laughed. “I don’t think Carla would appreciate that so much.” This was not the first time she had been direct with him, and he was used to her enticements.

  She slouched back against the interior wall of the gazebo while Poole kept watch on the path for Bernal. Right on time came his footsteps on the pine-needled dirt path, sounding like someone punching a bag of rice. His silhouette came into view; hat, overcoat, and briefcase. Poole reached into his bag and pulled out a pillowcase with two eyeholes. He tossed it to Alice. “Put it on.”

  She looked at him inquiringly and he repeated his command. He didn’t want her to be the target of any reprisals. She pulled the case over her head and adjusted it so she could see out the eyeholes. He took a stocking from the bag, removed his hat, pulled the stocking over own his face, then replaced the hat. They looked absurd, he knew, but it was essential to keep their identities a secret. He had also found that under such circumstances, absurdity could be quite unnerving to the mark.

  Bernal hesitated twenty feet from the gazebo, and Poole beckoned him forward with an expansive arm gesture. Bernal resumed walking. Poole noticed that he did not look over his shoulder. At the foot of the three steps leading up to the gazebo, Bernal paused again.

  “Move,” Poole said.

  Bernal ascended slowly and stepped to the center of the gazebo. He gave the hooded Alice a look but did not seem perturbed.

  “Set the case on the floor.”

  Bernal did as he was told.

  “Did you bring the police?”

  Bernal shook his head.

  “Because if you did, now is the time to tell them to screw. I have an associate with the photos. I don’t return, they get sent to all the rags.”

  “I didn’t bring the police.”

  “Okay.” Poole showed Bernal his Luger. “I have one, just so you know.” He replaced it in the shoulder holster. “You wearing?”

  “No gun.” The man’s face was expressionless. He did not seem scared, though he was certainly tense.

  “Mind if I check?”

  Bernal spread his arms and legs, keeping silent. Poole, patting up his sides and legs and finally his back, found nothing.

  “Okay, open the case.”

  Bernal got down on one knee and sprang the two latches. Then he slowly lifted the lid to reveal the stacks of twenty-dollar bills.

  “Pick one out from the bottom and show me.”

  Bernal dug his hand into the case and removed a packet of bills. He flipped through them, showing Poole that they were all twenties. The wind gusted now, and the trees made a soft noise like fire on wet wood. It would be harder now to hear an approach.

  “You know that if you’re short—”

  “It’s all there.”

  “Okay. The other thing you are going to do for me is, you’re going to meet the union’s demands and end the strike.”

  Again, Bernal remained silent, but now his face betrayed him.

  “Savvy?” Poole prompted.

  “I don’t think you understand,” Bernal began, then thought better of it and tried again. “It’s not something I can just do.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “You can believe me or not. I can’t do it.”

  The wind was constant, the scent of phosphorus overwhelming the Christmas smell of the pines. The ripples on the water below began gathering into tiny waves.

  “You have two days to make it work. I don’t care what you have to do. I don’t care what excuses you have. Two days. Forty-eight hours. Then the photos go to press.”

  Bernal shut his eyes, and picking up the great tension in the man’s body, Poole realized that Bernal would hunt him dead were he ever to suss out his identity. Poole felt a sudden chill and with it the first stirrings of panic at all the sounds that would not be audible beneath the wind.

  “Close the case.” His words sounded shrill.

  Bernal opened his eyes, his gaze locking on Poole’s. Poole wondered just how effectively the stocking was managing to disguise his features.

  “Close the goddamn case,” Poole shouted, his nerves rioting.

  Bernal dropped to one knee again, closed and latched the case, and then stood up.

  “Turn around and walk to the wall.”

  Bernal turned his back to Poole and took two steps until he was leaning against a wall overlooking the stirring pond.

  “The girl in the apartment,” Poole said, “she wasn’t in on this, got it?”

  Bernal shrugged.

  “If she’s hurt, it will make things more difficult for you.”

  Again Bernal shrugged. Poole grabbed the case with one hand and with the other grabbed Alice’s arm, jerking her up with more force than he intended.

  “What time do you have?”

  Bernal checked his watch. “Five after eleven.”

  “Wait until ten past.”

  Bernal nodded.

  They half-walked, half-trotted down the path, the wind blowing pine needles and dead leaves around their ankles. Poole pulled the pillowcase off Alice and the stocking from his face and stuffed them in a coat pocket. He had left the bag at the gazebo, but it would not be of any use to the police.

  He parted with Alice, giving her one hundred dollars for the night and telling her to go home and keep her head down for a day or two. Then he walked home, every passerby sending his adrenaline spiking. Some actions you can’t backtrack on, and he was now committed to chiseling one of the most powerful men in the City. Poole was about to find out if Bernal’s ruthlessness in business translated to other facets of his life.

  He saw a tower of blue smoke rising into the blue and yellow neon of the Theater District across town, but it did not register in his preoccupied mind as anything of significance.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Red Henry sat in his favorite leather chair, feet on the matching ottoman, reading the Gazette. Occasionally, when he read something particularly annoying, he snorted in disgust or took quick, deep breaths to calm himself. It was not that the Gazette actually ran anything untrue—they were a respectable
paper. It was not even their seemingly insatiable need for sniffing around City Hall trying to catch the scent of corruption. Scandal sells papers, and he certainly understood the profit motive. No, what left him particularly aggrieved was that they did not seem to see that when the City did well, the Gazette did well. And the City did best when Henry was given some goddamn latitude to make things work.

  “That shit-ant Frings,” he mumbled half-audibly.

  “What’s that?” His mistress, Siobhan, was stretched across his couch reading Nietzsche or some such crap. She was wearing a green silk sleeping gown that a previous mistress had left. It was alluringly snug and accentuated her long red hair.

  Henry looked at her; then decided it was worth answering. “Frings. He wrote a column, thinks he’s going to tie my hands.”

  Siobhan returned to her book. “Nobody ties your hands, sugar,” she said evenly.

  Henry gave her a heavy-lidded look, then put the paper down, and rose out of the chair, wearing only his slacks from the day, his suspenders hanging loose around his knees. His bare upper body was massive without being particularly fat or muscular. There was simply a lot of him. He stood at the window, taking in his fourteenth-floor penthouse view of the City. Actually, it was the thirteenth floor, but the elevator skipped straight from the twelfth to fourteenth floor. It disgusted him, indulging people’s ridiculous superstitions. Still, one must pick one’s battles and he had plenty.

  Henry pressed his palms against the window, slightly farther apart than his shoulders. It looked as though he were holding the City between his hands.

  The phone rang, and Henry turned slowly to watch Siobhan’s body moving beneath the silk as she went to the set. She answered, listened, then held out the phone as if she were offering him a martini. He walked slowly across the room.

  “Yeah,” he grunted, taking the phone.

  “Sir, there’s been another bomb.”

  Henry didn’t answer.