Double Take. Roy Huggins
“We’ve started something, Bailey. I’m not sure we did the right thing now—maybe this is just what the guy on the phone wanted. But we’re going to finish it.… So help me, I’ll never forgive myself if I don’t.”
I didn’t say anything.
After awhile he said almost cheerfully: “What’ll I hand this fellow when he calls again?”
“Tell him you’re interested. You’d like to know what he’s got to sell—but don’t sound too interested. I’ve got a hunch he’s just taking a flyer. He might only know one thing, that your wife was a show girl once.”
Johnston nodded.
“Let him carry the conversation,” I went on. “If you get stuck tell him you’re letting me handle it, give him my number and hang up.” A shaft of morning light streamed through the window and glared at me like the spirit of Carrie Nation. I got up and put the whiskey on the bar.
I said. “I’m being tailed.”
“Since when?”
“Since I got back. Since this morning rather.”
“So I’m being watched?”
“Probably not. It could be from the Portland end. I shook him off down on Beverly.”
“Better not come up here any more. Contact me by phone — here, not at home.”
I went to the door and stepped out and glanced back at him. He was looking toward me, but he didn’t seem to be seeing anything. I left him sitting there, the sun shimmering in his blond hair, shoulders hunched, looking like an old and tired man.
CHAPTER V
THE switchboard was silent and Hazel was harassing her ancient typewriter and smoking a cigarette. There wasn’t anyone else in the place. I went over to my desk and sat down.
Hazel stopped hammering and smiled. “Hi! Where ya been?” She was thirty-one, and looked it in a nice lean way.
I said: “If I didn’t know your first love was that P.B.X. board, I’d swear you missed me.”
“I did, lug. Did you get the job?”
That was the nice thing about Hazel. Her heart was roomy enough for all fifty of her clients. Hazel had been a government stenographer with imagination and a few pennies in the bank. She rented two offices in the Pacific Building, knocked out the partitions, moved in five desks, six phones, a P.B.X. board, and a rack of pigeonholes and she was in business. For ten dollars a month I and about fifty other gentlemen from various walks of life—all legitimate, Helen insisted—got a mailing address, a telephone, with a competent voice to answer it, and the use of the office whenever we needed it. There was a small room in one corner for private conferences and for five dollars a month extra Hazel had let me bring in my broad-gauge files, two Mexican posters, and my own desk, set down by the east window overlooking Broadway and the distant, dusty hills of San Bernardino.
I told her yes. I had got the job, and asked for an outside line. The rest of the day I gave my left ear a workout calling theatrical agents and employers of second-rate talent in the area. None of them had ever heard of a Peg Bleeker. A few of them remembered Buster Buffin vaguely, and one had an idea he’d left show business and bought himself a meat market.
It sounded more like a gag than a lead, but I took my phone book out of its drawer, looked around to see if anyone was watching—no one was except a large fly perched on the end of my pen desk set—and looked under the B’s. After the Buffetts came one lonely Buffin. Buster Buffin’s Buffet, with an address in Venice.
The large fly sneered at me and said, “Bailey, you’re losing the simple touch.” Or maybe I said it to the fly.
…I was thinking about something else and I didn’t notice the green Dodge until I was out to where Wilshire passes the Los Angeles Country Club and the traffic had lost its Beverly Hills bulge. I let him tag along to Westwood Village.
At Warner I swung to the right and then pulled up and leaned out, waiting. He came wheeling into Warner in an agony of sound, straightened up and shot by me. As he went by, he saw me, and I caught a glimpse of a sallow face under a green felt hat, and a loose-lipped mouth hanging open in indecision and surprise. He drove up to Woodruff, turned left, and disappeared.
I started the car and drove up. A few feet down Woodruff, the Dodge was parked. I pulled up and got out. The car was empty. There was no registration showing, and the single plate was the deep chocolate brown issued by Michigan that year. Across the street a tall growth of oleander ran along the walk for half a block. I got back in my car and drove off. When I turned toward Wilshire, the green Dodge was still sitting at the curb, empty.
Buster Buffin’s Buffet was on the ocean front, a colorless, beaten little shack cuddled up next to the Paragon Ballroom like a barnacle clinging to a luxury yacht.
* * * *
INSIDE there was warmth and steam and the smell of fried onions and fat. There was a horseshoe counter in the center with a kitchen at the open end and booths along each side. Some stairs at the rear on the left side went up to a second floor. A sign over them said: “Private Dining Rooms.” There were some smaller signs on the back walls that made me pretty sure I had come to the right place: “Yes! We serve crabs. Have a seat.” “Stomach pumps provided with our blue plate special.” “Vy is der zo miny mor orzis azis den der iz orzis?” Several others suggested with the same pungent humor that asking for credit would be a mistake. There weren’t any customers.
A little fellow with quick eyes like a nervous robin and the same hungry grin I had first seen on the display board at Keller’s came out of the kitchen. He had aged some, and he managed to look unhealthy under a heavy coat of tan.
He had a rag in one hand and a cigarette in the other. “Bein’ as it’s meatless Tuesday,” he grinned, “what’ll you have?”
“You’re using last year’s calendar. This isn’t Tuesday.”
Buffin put the rag up to his nose, screwed up his face in a pained grimace and held the rag out stiffly behind him. “Brother,” he said, “at Buffin’s every day is Tuesday. You can have clam chowder—or clam chowder.”
“Chowder,” I said agreeably. “And a cup of coffee.”
He trotted back to the kitchen and came out after awhile with a paper napkin, a bowl, and a large spoon. He put them down in front of me.
“You’ll find the chowder warmer than an old’s maid’s feet,” he said, “but not half as clammy.”
I said: “You’ll have to watch that stuff. They’ll be making you charge an entertainment tax.”
Buster suddenly grabbed up the bowl in front of me and with a pseudo-horrified expression on his face said,
“You wouldn’t be a food inspector, would you?”
“No,” I laughed. “And anyway, I’m hungry—put it back.”
Buster put it down again and walked over to the coffee urn. I tried the clam chowder. It was tepid and thin and I didn’t find any clams in it, not even a dead one. Buster put the coffee in front of me in a cup that weighed a pound. He was grinning again. It was a nice grin, not really inane, just a little tired and a little sad, the remnant of an insatiable optimism.
“Cream?” he asked, “or do you take it like it is—mud gray?”
I reached for the sugar and said, “Get much business from the ballroom?”
“Yeah, except when the weather’s like it was last Monday. That kills business at the beach. Even at night. I guess it’s psychology.”
That looked like a fine opening. I said: “I liked that rain. Reminded me of home. I’m from Portland, where it really rains.”
“You don’t have to tell me,” he snorted.