The Girl with the Frightened Eyes Read online

  “I hope so. Lucy told me that she saw Paula with a Pierre something or other. I’m looking for a Pierre. It might be Lecotte.”

  “New York is lousy with Pierres. And plenty of them hang out in the dark alleys of the Village.”

  “What does Lecotte look like?”

  “Nothing much. About your size, sports a mustache, a French accent and a wonderful art routine. He eats, drinks and sleeps with his art. Class.”

  I said, “He sounds like my man. Paula might have known him if he’s any kind of an expert in art, is he?”

  Hank nodded. “A connoisseur, an authority. An intellectual—and a damned smart business man. Lecotte took over the place and set it up as a combination night club and art gallery. Smart, eh?”

  “I don’t get the angle. You mean he’s actually making money on the art and liquor deal?”

  “Plenty,” said Hank. “He holds exhibitions in the place and, believe it or not, shows the works of some of the biggest names in the art trade. You can’t blame the painters for falling for the gag—Pierre lured back the uptown snobs with his real art angle and still holds the regulars, the art dilettantes, the dealers, the out of town gapers and the after-theater New Yorkers who like to get drunk while glimming a wall full of lush dames. Everybody goes there now—it’s part of the city culture—the glamour of the big town, plus damned good drinks at fair prices. Pierre hit the jackpot with his formula. You ought to drop in sometime if you go for fancy art with a hangover. Me, I can’t take it—modern art goes right to my ulcers.”

  I said, “It sounds good and it might be a lead to Paula. Besides, I’m in the mood for a spot like that—I haven’t seen the inside of a night club since the night you bounced me on my head up on Fifty-Second Street. Shall we leave?”

  He looked through the door at his guests, now gathered about the huge radio Victrola and listening to the cacophony of boogie-woogie.

  “They’ll never miss you,” I said, grabbing his elbow.

  “Maybe you’re right” said Hank. “And even if you’re wrong, I’m a sucker for doing soldier boys favors.”

  We took another quick one and Hank led me to his roadster and we left for The Frog.

  CHAPTER 4

  The Frog was incongruous.

  On a dark, tenement-lined street, away from the bright-fronted windows of the central Village amusement section, The Frog was a small yellow canopy over the sidewalk. The building itself was squat and dirty, as dirty as its brothers around and about it. A heavy wrought iron lamp glowed over the door. A black giant, festooned in a Moroccan costume, stood alone at the door, looked into the darkness beyond him and yawned at us as he opened the door.

  Inside, the darkness closed about us. It was designed, this new gloom. Some paranoiac interior decorator had unleashed his libido in the small lobby and bar. The color scheme was black. The walls were padded, mattress fashion, in a black cloth and dotted with black buttons. The floor was carpeted in black and the ceilings painted to match. On the small tables, black shaded lamps threw tiny circles of light, dead light, for the black cloths reflected none of it. The bar itself, beyond the lobby, sparkled in the background, shone against the backdrop of ebony. It was painted enamel white, and the brightness of it gave it an odd perspective. It was hanging in air, this white bar alone in the black, and the customers hung with it, sharply outlined against the whiteness.

  Hank said “Cheerful, isn’t it? A nice place for a hangover.”

  I followed him through the bar and then to the left into the main drinking cell. A large, square room, skillfully lit to feature the gallery of paintings adorning the walls. The current show promoted nudity, well painted, well drawn and academic nudity. The work was photographic and the artist clearly a specialist in his own somewhat florid line. All of which probably accounted for the well filled room. Customers sat around midget tables, leaned uncomfortably over their drinks, cast furtive eyes at the art and loaded the room with smoke and the buzz of conversation.

  A short, bald man at a white piano shrugged up his sleeves and began to roll out “St. Louis Woman” with a heavy left hand. Nobody gave him an ear.

  We edged through the maze of tables and found a place against the far wall. A waiter appeared out of nowhere and reached down to shake Hank’s hand.

  Hank said, “Hello, Ike. What in hell are you doing in this joint? I thought you’d stay over at The Haystack until they pensioned you off.”

  Ike was a caricature of a caricature of Charles Laughton, sulk and all. He said, “I am here for the last five months. This is because I find out The Haystack is strictly a two-bit job with buttons for tips compared with this hole.” He swept a hand around the room. “Look at this trade and you will catch what I mean. This mob is loaded with moo. When they have it, I maybe get some, you follow me?”

  “Don’t kid me,” said Hank. “You made the switch because of the naked dames on the walls.”

  Ike scowled at the painting, sour faced. “That oil painting stuff leaves me cold as a herring under sour cream, mister. In a place like this I haven’t got time for culture. Take a look at this mob and you’ll see what I mean right away. They all look at pictures, sure—but they drink a lot of drinks and keep a waiter on the run just the same.” He wiped his ample brow with a red striped handkerchief and sighed. “Besides, when you get to be my age you don’t bother with art or naked dames or anything else off the beat. I got no time to bend my neck at artistic stuff—I got tips to collect.”

  “How often does the art show change in this dump?” Hank asked.

  “Every week it’s different. Last week we had the crazy stuff, lots of botched-up pictures, looked more like jigsaw puzzles or dress patterns. Or maybe the boss hung them upside down on purpose, who knows?”

  “You remember the name of the artist who did last week’s show?”

  Ike scratched at his memory through his chin. “I don’t remember the guy’s name, but he walked in here the night his pictures were hung. A little guy with two hairs on his head and a big black beard. You know him?”

  Hank said, “That sounds like Barney Tripp, the nut from Passaic. Claims he paints the soul.”

  “Maybe he does,” sighed Ike. “But most of his souls looked to me like a dish of meat blintzes mixed with mustard and sitting on top of a sewer pipe.”

  “Do many of these meat blintzes ever sell?” I asked.

  “That’s what I don’t understand,” said Ike, and his eyes rolled upward. “Me, I can understand these art boys going for a nice clean picture of a naked dame on a rug peeling herself a grape. But the stuff these people buy! And the prices they pay for such junk! Last week I saw a customer take a quick look at one of those blintzes. He half closes his eyes, he holds his thumb in front of his nose and then he takes a deep breath and sighs like a baby after his bottle. ‘Lovely,’ the customer says. ‘Absolutely sheer perfection and a beautiful rendition of form and space set against a background of the universe’. Then he digs into his coat pocket and writes a check for nine hundred smackers.” Ike glared down at us and his face was a study in frustration. “Is this a price to pay for a blintze on a sewer pipe? If the OPA ever hears about it they’ll come down here and close the dump.”

  “Spoken like a true art patron,” said Hank. “You and I have the same point of view about modern art. Me, I’ll take the naked dames and leave the pot roast and cheese blintzes to the long hairs. And talking about long hairs reminds me—when does the great Lecotte walk in?”

  Ike laughed. “The blintze merchant? You want to buy one of these dames maybe?”

  “Not tonight,” said Hank. “Tonight I just want to talk fine arts with the great man.”

  “You’ll have to wait,” said Ike. “The boss walks in the same time every night, regular. After twelve-thirty you can catch him down the hall there in his office. Meantime, you want a couple drinks now?”

  “Not yet,”
said Hank. “Maybe you can help the soldier boy. He’s looking for a doll named Paula Smith. Know her?”

  Ike rolled the name on his tongue, dubiously. “Who’s Paula Smith? She work here?”

  “I’m asking you,” said Hank.

  “Paula Smith?” Ike shook his head slowly. “Never heard of her.”

  I told him that she was a good looking redhead, an artist who knew his boss.

  Ike’s face brightened. “That’s different, now that you give me something to go by. Redheads I don’t forget. There was a nice number I used to see with the boss once in a while. Some time ago, it was.”

  “She visited the club regularly?”

  He waved his hand in negation. “I don’t mean that, soldier. She used to visit the club, sure, but not in here. Reason why I remember the doll is because I used to bring drinks in to Lecotte when she came into his office to see him. She used to see him often, come to think about it, sometimes at night, sometimes even in the afternoon. I’d be in here around six, getting my tables ready, and I’d see her waltz in and go back to his office. Then, pretty soon the buzzer would ring and I took ’em back some drinks. She always drank the same stuff—Daiquiris they were. I would mix ’em myself on account of the barman didn’t come on that early.”

  “When was the last time you saw her?”

  “Some time ago. Maybe a month, maybe three weeks ago.”

  We ordered two Old Fashioneds and Ike moved off toward a heavy woman with a ham-like head and too many diamonds around her neck. The man at the piano still banged his left hand too hard on the bass. From somewhere near the bar a woman’s voice took up the lyrics. It was a vile combination.

  I caught myself studying the crowd. It was like the old days when I worked The Star as their theatrical caricaturist. I would move into a place like this when the customers were warming up with liquor. I would sit in a corner, alone with my small sketchpad and do one head after another. It was good practice, for my models were never still, never posed. It was a challenge to my skill and I developed many new tricks in the art of caricature because of it. I was able, after a while, to set down a head in a few sure strokes, a dot for an eye, a flick of the pencil for a nose.

  I took a few scraps of paper from my pocket and borrowed Hank’s pencil. He watched me set down my first sketch, the woman with the ham head.

  He said, “You get them fast, Jeff, but you get them right. That beagle-nosed dame you just put down is a masterpiece of understatement.”

  “She’s easy,” I said. “She’s a living caricature.”

  “Don’t be a modest goon,” said Hank. “You’ve still got the touch, chum. You remind me of the great Barton, another man who made a line mean something.”

  “You flatter me. Barton was a genius at this business, but he was never known to put them down fast. He belonged to the other school, the school of sweat and blood caricaturing. He hammered out his masterpieces over his drawing board, far away from his model. He had the patience of a real genius. Me—I’m a man who really just takes notes.”

  I continued to sketch and my right hand enjoyed the exercise. There were plenty of models and I let myself run hog-wild over the customers. I ground out one thumbnail sketch after another, limiting myself to the simplest elements—the turn of a head, the tilt of a nose, the expression of a mouth.

  I tired of the seated figures and began to draw a few of the characters at the bar. A short man in a sport jacket held my eye for a few minutes. I set him down simply, catching the angle of his hips as he leaned against the bar. I finished him and rubbed a few shadows on him and then left him alone.

  The next bar standee was a woman. She was half hidden behind a pillar, but I recognized her at once.

  I nudged Hank. “There’s your good friend Mrs. Preston.”

  He followed my finger and nodded. “She always was a one for alcohol, Jeff. I remember the last time I saw her. It was at a brawl over in Bailey’s Grill. I’ve never seen a dame lap up more of the stuff with greater finesse. She’s a human liquor vat.”

  Mrs. Preston was mooning over a tall glass that might have been a Tom Collins. She was with a man, sipping her drink with regularity, staring ahead into the mirror before her and saying nothing.

  I said, “Who’s the gent with her?”

  “That looks like Boucher, the art dealer.”

  I was finishing my sketch of Boucher’s head when Hank put a hand on my arm. “Here come a couple of sketches you won’t want to miss. Get a load of the fat boy who just walked in. He looks like an elephant’s end with a nose in the middle.”

  The fat boy in the gray double-breasted suit stood on the top step. He was a mountain of fat, a tall mountain. He held the elbow of a short, well curved woman with Golden Bantam peroxide hair.

  Her big black eyes were worried as she studied the room. She nudged the fat boy with a dainty elbow and they stepped down among the tables. He followed her stolidly, staring dead ahead with a school boy’s belligerent pout.

  They sat in the middle of the place, near the little white piano. They were well posed for me, facing each other in profile, and the range was good.

  I studied the fat boy, sharpening his image to a fine point. His head was a broad oval, yet flattened on the hairline in a way that accented the flabbiness of his face. His eyes were two pale dots in a sea of flesh. They were queer eyes, too small for his head, too wide open. They were the eyes of an adolescent, there was a look of childishness in them; something I couldn’t catch with my pencil.

  I tried again. I set down the basic shape of his head, bunched his nose and mouth in the center of his face; flicked a few quick lines for his mustache. I worked on the small mouth, fascinated by its effeminacy. The upper lip had a delicate curve that suggested weakness and girlishness and other things too involved to catalogue. I made the mouth smaller than it really was and went back to studying his eyes again. They were empty blue pinpoints, staring dead as a child would stare at a cloud, unseeingly.

  Then I discovered, suddenly, why fat boy always stared. He had no eyebrows.

  Hank lifted the sketch away from me and held it up for approval. “You got him, General.”

  I shook my head. “The man I’ve put down might be Herbert Hoover, or Fatty Arbuckle, or any other fat man with a round and fleshy head. But I’ve missed this fat boy because I don’t know him well enough, perhaps.”

  Hank pointed to the woman with the yellow hair. “How about the babe? Or do you have to walk over and examine her birth certificate?”

  “She’s easy,” I said.

  And she was. The little woman with the turned-up nose rolled off my pencil almost as smoothly as my own signature. She was duck soup for caricaturing. Retroussé noses are simple for any cartoonist with a flair for exaggerating his handiwork into the realm of pure caricature. You draw the nose, playing hob with the upswing. Then you hang everything around that nose, the big black mascaraed eyes, the over-long lashes; the false crimson blob of mouth.

  I finished the picture with a bomb burst of hair that swirled over her shoulder theatrically. I warmed to my work and whipped out a red crayon, rubbing it gently over the high cheek bones for the desired effect. I dug it in around the mouth, squeezing the color out of my pencil until it shone bright and lush on the paper.

  Hank said, “I see what you mean now.”

  Out of the corner of my eye I watched the dame survey us. She leaned over and spoke a few crisp words to the fat boy. She pointed a long fingernail in our direction.

  “Grit your teeth,” muttered Hank. “The tub of lard is headed this way with a small fire in his eyes.”

  The tub of lard waddled between the tables, red faced. I watched the fat boy approach us. In the close-up, there were new and interesting details on his face. A short S-shaped scar burned purplish red high on his left cheek, near the eye.

  He reached our table and stood ov
er us, arms akimbo, big ham-like fists knotted on his hips.

  He pointed a finger at my sketch. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, soldier?”

  I said, “Who wants to know?” I looked up and smiled at him, feeling no anger.

  He came closer. “Who gives you permission to make a picture of the lady?”

  Hank said, “It’s a free country.”

  “You stay out of this,” snarled the fat boy and turned to me again. “Hand over the picture.”

  I folded the picture and stuck it away. I gave the pencil to Hank, still holding back my anger. “You play too rough, mister. Maybe if you were nice about it I would have given you the sketch. Go back to your girlfriend and tell her about it.”

  He banged a fist on the table. “Get up, soldier. Get up and I’ll bat your head in”

  I didn’t get up. The shock of his anger was amusing and I sat there laughing at him. He reached out for me, but before he made the distance I pushed back my chair. It caught him off balance and he fell forward a bit. He hit the table and his hands slid along the cloth, carrying our drinks near the edge. Before he straightened up I saw the blonde watching him with alarm.

  He came at me again but I sidestepped his hand and brought up my fist until it hit his larded jaw. It was a hard blow, well timed. He went down on one knee and held his face.

  Ike appeared from nowhere and helped the fat boy to his feet. He piloted him back to the blonde and stood there for a while, talking to her.

  When he returned he was grinning. “Lecotte will thank you personally for that, soldier. This big dope is a regular customer, but all the time he’s picking fights.”

  “He shouldn’t,” I said. “He was wide open and easy to hit. Someday he’ll find his head in a sling.”

  “That’s right, he’s easy. But most of the time he gets away with it, you understand? He scares a lot of people and they back away from him on account of he’s so heavy. I got to hand it to you, soldier, you gave him the smear, all right. Maybe you taught the lug a lesson.”