Win, Place, and Die! Page 14

  “Has Larry Seff been in here tonight?”

  “I don’t know any Larry Seff.”

  “Or Buffo?”

  “You’re killing me with those names, bud.”

  The door to the street swung open and a girl walked in. She stood in the center of the lobby, undecided about her next step, her eyes flicking to the main room. She bit her lip and stepped that way, close enough so that she could survey a small part of the layout. Then she retreated, as though pondering the importance of her purpose. Her face clouded with doubt, aimed at the bar now, so that I could see her features clearly. She was Nancy Blackburn.

  I bounced across to her and took her arm.

  “Don’t you ever go to bed early?” I asked.

  She said: “It’s a small world, isn’t it? What on earth are you doing in this den, Dave?”

  “I was about to ask you that question.”

  “Is my father in here?”

  “Should he be?” I asked.

  “Not for my money, he shouldn’t,” Nancy said. “But he’s been here before, and often. With you-know-who.”

  “Lisa Varick?’

  “You are the clever one. Who else?”

  “And you came down to rescue daddy from the wiles of the wicked woman?”

  “The bitch,” Nancy said in a menacing whisper. “She’s got my father jumping through hoops. And Dad’s too old for that kind of exercise.”

  “He doesn’t seem to mind the strain.”

  She stared beyond me, into the main room of The Famous Cellar. It would be difficult to pick out your mother in this dusty den. The place was decorated by some fiend with a morbid eye and a colorless soul. The entire atmosphere blossomed with black. The black walls were tufted in the way mattresses are made, small ebony buttons set in great billows of a black and shining material. The floor, too, was done in a dark and muckish shade of dull and rubberized squares. The tables alone held the room alive and awake. The black cloths were relieved by white dishes, which glittered and shone against the vast sea of somber inkiness around them. A tiny lamp illuminated each table, the white shades dotting the room, but casting only a small glow around them. In this vast arena of murkiness, beyond the tables, the dance floor was cluttered with revelers, bumping and grinding against each other in the tune of a rhythmic rumba.

  Nancy held my arm. Her nails were tight on me.

  “Just see what she’s done to him, Dave.”

  They were out there, Eustace Blackburn and Lisa Varick. They were mincing in the sea of dancers. Nancy’s father seemed lost in a private world of bliss. He rocked and rolled with Lisa, setting off in a crazy pattern of movement that carried them from one end of the small square floor to the other. Blackburn was obviously well potted. But Lisa directed him calmly, half carrying him through the routine motions of the South American dance.

  Nancy left my side before I could stop her. She advanced to the dance floor and shouldered her way to her father. The merrymakers around Lisa and Blackburn slowed their prancing, anticipating the scene to come. From behind me, I caught a familiar figure. It was Buffo. He rose from his table and stepped forward. He deliberated joining the foray. But something held him where he stood. He reached for his drink and sipped it tentatively, watching the group on the dance floor with a keen eye. He remained in that pose.

  Eustace Blackburn attempted to shake off Nancy with a drunken petulance.

  “You’re making a scene,” he whispered, loud enough to be heard at the far end of the bar. “Stop it at once, Nancy.”

  “The scene is over,” Nancy said. “I’m taking you home.”

  “Do as the little girl says,” Lisa commented.

  People were pausing in their rumba gymnastics to observe the high jinks. I piloted Blackburn across the floor and allowed him to shrug me off and wallow back to his table where he sat down heavily and began to, appraise the empty glass at his plate. Lisa Varick arrived behind me and immediately set to work signaling the waiter.

  “We’re leaving now, Dad,” Nancy said, firm and purposeful at his shoulder. “You’ve had enough of this for tonight.”

  Lisa Varick said: “Your father’s a big boy now, darling.”

  “He was a big boy until he met you.”

  “Watch your language,” Lisa said calmly. “Tell her why she should watch her language, Eustace, doll.”

  “Not now,” Blackburn said uncomfortably. “Not right now.”

  “Shall I tell her, doll?”

  “I’ll tell her myself. But later.”

  “Now. She’ll sleep better if you tell her all about us right this minute.”

  Nancy stepped back and her mouth opened and she bit her lip. She looked down at her father, as frightened as a Girl Scout over a garter snake. “Don’t tell me—” she began. “Don’t tell me that she’s really done a job on you, Dad? You’re not going to marry her?”

  “Would it break you up very much, darling?” Lisa asked.

  “It would cripple me.”

  “Must daddy ask your permission?”

  “He could be making a big mistake,” Nancy said.

  “We all make mistakes, don’t we, darling?”

  “Not this big.”

  “Sometimes we make bigger mistakes,” Lisa said with quiet vehemence. “Even a nice girl like you could make a big mistake. Isn’t that so, Nancy?”

  “What are you driving at?”

  “Should I tell you now?”

  Blackburn waved his hands blearily. “That’s enough, now. That’s enough, girls.”

  Lisa said: “Maybe you and I should get together, Nancy, dear. We can be real good friends, if we get together and talk. A girl like you needs companionship. You and I could talk about all kinds of things. Maybe I could straighten you out.”

  “I’ll survive without you,” Nancy said. But the sting of her verbal fencing was gone, somehow. She had softened during the last few lines of their exchange. She held her eyes away from Lisa Varick now, almost like a small girl who has erred before her superiors. “Just forget you ever met me.”

  “Oh, but I don’t want to do that, darling. I want to help you. You need plenty of straightening out. Why don’t we get together and let our hair down sometime?”

  “That’s better,” Blackburn burbled. “Much better, girls.”

  “The sooner, the better,” Lisa said, still smiling. “It would help clear the air. You could learn a lot from me, Nancy. Even your father admits I have a good head for all kinds of practical things.”

  “Great business head,” said Blackburn to the napkin. “Great.”

  “You see?” Lisa asked. “And you can use a great business head, couldn’t you, Nancy?”

  Nancy didn’t respond. She was too busy trying to rouse her father, to get him up on his feet and moving. I helped her pull him off the chair. He weaved and bobbled, but still regarded Lisa with the same doglike devotion.

  “Maybe Nancy’s right, Lisa,” he said with a laugh. “I’m done in for tonight. Take you home, too, honey?”

  “No thanks,” said Lisa. “Let little daughter take dear old daddy home. Mamma’s staying here for a while.”

  “You’re not angry with me, Lisa?”

  “Bless your sweet heart, no,” she said, and leaned over to kiss him on his brow. Nancy’s face soured at the demonstration. “Lisa will see you tomorrow.”

  I helped Nancy escort her father through the tables and into the street. We rolled him into a cab and I said my good night to her as she adjusted him in the seat. It was obvious that this sort of incident was unusual for her. Eustace Blackburn would normally retain his upper-class dignity. He would be only a middle-distance type of drinker, rarely allowing himself to go completely under, especially in a place like The Famous Cellar. Yet, here he was, the picture of alcoholic abandonment, a man well along the road to complete besot
tedness.

  “That woman,” Nancy said with quiet desperation. “I don’t know what she’s got, but it’s completely leveled my father.”

  “He’s in love with her?”

  “Madly.” Nancy stared at her father incredulously. “She’s got him on the hook, Dave. But in a big way.”

  “Just what does that mean?” I asked.

  “My father’s a sucker.” She whispered it to me, not wanting her words to carry into the cab. “All the way, believe me. Can you imagine a man with his experience being taken for a ride? A big, long, monetary ride? They used to call women like her gold diggers. But there should be another name for Lisa Varick. She’s an expert in professional seduction. She’s hypnotized him. Would you believe that he bought her a townhouse? In Sutton Place?”

  “It sounds fantastic.”

  “I’ve seen it. A nice, new, modern establishment with a blue front and the latest refinishing. Real estate is high in that area. It must have cost Dad a fortune.”

  “Your father told you all this?”

  “I discovered it all by my lonesome,” Nancy said. “Dad and I don’t talk about Lisa. He’s quite aware that I detest her.”

  “Home,” muttered Blackburn from the taxi. “Home, Nancy.”

  “Can I drop you anywhere?” she asked, giving me an open invitation with her eyes.

  “I’m staying here for a while.”

  “I’d like to see you again, Dave.”

  “You will.”

  “But soon.” She pressed my arm. “I must talk to you. Will you call me tomorrow?”

  “I’ll certainly call you.”

  She eyed me uncertainly before stepping into the cab. It was as if she had something that couldn’t stand a delay, a few words she must tell me now. She hesitated and her pretty mouth opened. But at the last moment, she changed her mind.

  “Tomorrow, please,” she said before the cab roared away.

  CHAPTER 17

  When I re-entered the club, Buffo was seated with Lisa Varick. They talked quietly, a pair of casual diners, sipping casual drinks and dropping casual clichés. Lisa seemed unmoved by the frenzied scene just past. She would be the type to recover quickly. She had the calm, cool poise of a professional actress as she laughed and drank in a friendly pantomime with Buffo. And the big man reacted to her quiet ease. He leaned in across the table to say a secret word to her. She patted his hand and began to laugh. Her laughter irritated me.

  I marched back through the lobby. Ruvulo’s door was unguarded now.

  Ruvulo was surprised to see me.

  “What the hell?’ he asked himself.

  He was something out of a pulp story version of night club management. His lean and handsome and oily face glared at me stupidly. On his feet he seemed as tall as I, but gone to beef in the shoulders and paunch. The slick, fancy monkey suit he wore could not hide the flabbiness around his midsection. He was aware of this deficiency. He took great pains to button his jacket as he stood to face me.

  “Mr. Ruvulo?” I said. It was a major effort to screen the anger in my voice. Ruvulo had been introduced to me the hard way. He would be forever tied up in my mind with the soupy image of Leech. He would be tough to take, even if he chose to handle me with normal courtesy.

  But this was a course Mr. Ruvulo had not chosen.

  “Get out of here,” he yelled, making the turn around the corner of his desk and coming at me full tilt. “Or do you want me to throw you out?”

  He had the artificial arrogance of the flabby big man. Ten years ago he might have slapped me over without straining himself. Right now, he was offering me an outlet for my over boiling impatience. I grabbed him as he came my way. The offensive gesture threw him off balance. He would have skidded to his knees. Instead, he groped for the desk. He failed to reach it. In the quick moment of his slipping and sliding, I had him on the way back to a chair near the wall. I pushed hard. He went down, flat on the seat of his pants. He went down hard. When he reached into his jacket pocket, I hit him. I put enough force behind my fist to show him that I meant business. He took my punch groggily and his head bobbed and rolled back. He had an automatic in his jacket. I pocketed it and slapped him awake.

  “What the hell?” he said, as soon as his eyes were open.

  “Better sit where you are, Ruvulo. Or I’ll have to hit you again.”

  “Tough boy,” he mumbled, rubbing his chin where my fist had caught him. He eyed me blearily and shook his head at what he saw. “You had me fooled, mister. I didn’t think you had guts enough for it. You had me fooled, all the way. There’s no dough in this office, mister. Nothing here at all.”

  “I’m not after your money, Ruvulo.”

  “What else?”

  “Your time,” I said. “All I crave is a few minutes of your time. And some information.”

  “That’s a laugh,” he told himself. The big joke would level him if I gave him the chance. Mr. Ruvulo was a man of great personal merriment. He laughed himself out while I went to the door and locked it. Then he stared at me again, caught in the snare of his own good humor. He saw nothing funny in me as I returned, flipping the door key in my hand. “What’s that for?” he asked. “Why the locked door?”

  “Privacy. You and I want to be alone.”

  “All right. So we’re alone. Now what?”

  “Let’s start with George Bannerman,” I said. “Why was he fired?”

  Ruvulo caught himself on the upbeat of another explosive laugh. He checked his hilarity easily this time. “That’s easy. George was getting too old for the job, mister. He was falling asleep out there. So I fired him.”

  “After so many years on the job, you let him go like that?”

  “Listen, mister. I got a club to run. The old guy was nothing to me. I got to keep my customers happy. Otherwise my dump goes out of business.”

  “Whose dump?”

  “Mine.”

  “You own it?”

  “Sure I own it.” He twisted his body to gain some measure of nonchalance in the small leather chair. The gesture seemed contrived, out of key with his previous rhythm of movement. Ruvulo was not created to promote falsehoods. His bland, almost oily face had the wide-open naïveté of an overgrown adolescent. He blinked up at me, his fat lips beginning to tremble. He was frightened, a big scared boy. “I bought it a couple of years ago.”

  “You’re lying, Ruvulo.”

  “Why should I lie to you?”

  “Because somebody might have told you to lie.” I reached down for him again and enjoyed his cringing, almost childlike upset. “I want to know who’s paying you to run this dump, Ruvulo. Why play it slow and stupid? I’ll find out sooner or later.”

  “I told you,” he said with a gulp. “It’s my club.”

  I hit him again. He was unprepared for me this time. I slapped his face twice, using both hands. His cheeks were sweaty, covered with a natural oily dampness. When my hand came down for an encore, I began to talk, explaining my intentions for further mayhem. I hammed it up, heated by my natural impatience; warmed by the events of the past day, anxious to move on from here to more important places. My guttural monologue began to have its effect on Ruvulo. He would break completely soon. His watery eyes begged me to let up. But he did nothing to stop me or slow me with his big hands. A thin trickle of blood started from his mouth. He wiped at it frantically. He showed himself the blood. The sight of his personal gore broke him up completely.

  “Enough,” he gasped, holding up both hands. “I’ll tell you what you want to know.”

  “The owner of the place,” I said.

  “Lisa Varick.”

  I dropped him in the chair. “She was in here talking to you a while ago?”

  Ruvulo nodded, absorbed by my reaction to his startling news. He had sagged back and away from me, his jacket pulled up incongruously arou
nd his neck in the rumpled pattern my clutching fists had made of it. Now he adjusted himself slowly, regarding me with his question-mark eyes as I abandoned him and geared my mind to accept his information. Lisa Varick! The range of this woman’s activities was beginning to fascinate me. But there was no time for further questioning of Ruvulo. I opened the door and flipped the key across the room. It fell in Ruvulo’s lap. He only stared down at it, dazed and mystified by my behavior.

  I left him that way and crossed the lobby and searched the gloom of the big room for Lisa Varick.

  She was where I had seen her last, at the table in the far corner of the room. She leaned in close to a new male companion.

  She was talking to Larry Seff.

  CHAPTER 18

  After midnight, Sutton Place is a deserted concrete canyon, an area of dead buildings and empty, soundless alleys. The occasional yellow oblongs of light belonged to the late party-givers, the upper-class and chichi group who chose to drink until breakfast and then dine on caviar and scrambled eggs. A few of these roisterers swung out of the exit of one of the lush apartment houses. Gay feminine voices filled the streets, but only for a tick of time. The festive noises were swallowed up in cabs, followed by the smart staccato barrage of slamming doors and the quick roar of motors, going away. Then, quiet again.

  I spotted the house with the blue front, one block from the river. The neighborhood contained only one of this scheme. Some modern architect had brought the ancient pile to life. Lisa Varick’s house was a masterpiece of avant garde design. A long picture window overlooked the street on the second floor. Below, the ancient and rococo trimmings had been cut away and the bricks smoothed and painted a soft shade of blue. I observed these things and noted them, laughing at myself for my imitation of a clever detective. But the laughter did not soothe me. I was temporizing, groping, stalling for my next direction.

  I got out of my car and entered a gaily lit emporium called Gourmets, Incorporated. This was delicately fashioned specialty shop, created to satisfy the epicurean whims of the neighborhood moguls. The window showed a variety of imported foods, tastefully set against a display of travel posters from all parts of Europe. The impact of such a lure was perfectly suited to this street. A discreet sign, almost buried among the truffles and olives, announced: Catering Is Our Specialty. A brisk and efficient young man greeted me behind the counter. At the far end of the store, another brisk young man was filling a white carton with canned stuffs. A short fat man awaited the box. A tall and curvaceous girl stood alongside the little man and held his hand.