The Hours of the Virgin Page 4

  The Tomcat Theater was one of those historical relics no one would miss when they finally went the way of all brick. Fifteen years ago it had been one of a hundred places around town where a lonely man in a raincoat could go when all the impressionable young ladies were unavailable for flashing; those throbbing hot-pink wombs smelling of bleach and mildewed plush and chewed Spearmint, lit chiefly by the dusty beams of out-of-date projectors and the grainy flesh onscreen. The erosion of city fines, committees of decency, and—most important—stiff competition from chain video stores had ground them down to this one cinderblock building, painted celery green and set back from Telegraph Road under a stuttering marquee whose weight seemed to be pressing the structure into its own foundation. At that hour, with the yellow bulbs just making headway against the last exhausted glow of a sun that had squandered itself meaninglessly above the cloud cover, Boyette’s car and mine doubled the number parked in the little lot. The advertised feature was Psycho Night Nurses in Chains, or some shopping list of appropriately prurient nouns and adjectives like that. The bottom half of the double bill, Horny and the Bandit, was in the eighteenth year of a three-week run.

  My client had gone inside, carrying a bulging mailer under one arm, when I pulled into a slot and got out and kicked all my tires just in case someone was watching. The two strange cars, a Pontiac station wagon with terminal Michigan cancer and a silver 1978 Firebird with its rear end jacked up on stilts, looked unoccupied, but you can only be so thorough without drawing fire.

  In front of the building I stopped at a painted plywood booth and gave six singles and a Kennedy half-dollar to a debatably female attendant in purple leather with a hoop through her nose. She closed one black-shadowed eye and studied the fifty-cent piece closely with the other.

  “He was a president,” I said. “Nobody you’d know.”

  She moved a bare tattooed shoulder, flipped the coin into a tackle box, and tore a ticket off a roll the size of a bicycle wheel. I asked her if the feature had started.

  “It don’t matter.” She took a bite out of her sandwich, liverwurst and something green. “They run back to back, twenty-four hours.”

  I thanked her and went in through a steel door with a buzz lock. That put me directly inside the auditorium; the building had begun life as a construction-materials wholesaler and had no lobby. On the screen, a woman in an old-fashioned white nurse’s cap and a black garter belt was busy performing a variant kind of CPR upon a man with wide sideburns and three-alarm eczema. In the reflected glow, a couple seated near the door improvised on the scene with all the enthusiasm of two off-duty gravediggers excavating a basement. I figured it was their anniversary. The back of a motionless dark head in the center row and Boyette’s fair one up front topped off the attendance. Good house for a weeknight.

  The linoleum snatched nastily at the soles of my shoes on the way down the aisle. The seat I chose, three rows behind Boyette on the end, squawked when I tipped it down. It felt as if someone were already sitting in it. I squirmed around until I found some dales that fit my hills, unholstered the .38 Smith & Wesson I carried into street combat and movie theaters on Telegraph, and propped it on the cushion between the armrest and my thigh. Now I had everything the well-prepared cinemagoer needed, except popcorn and penicillin.

  Psycho Night Nurses was painless as those things go, ten minutes of plot stretched over an hour and a half of orgasms spliced together from the outtakes of a dozen other films shot at the same time. Some of the actors’ lines were dubbed by a ham-fisted German engineer with a Dutch-English dictionary and a hole in one eardrum; the rest were delivered with the amount of skill you expect from would-have-beens who had been rejected for one-line walk-ons in television commercials. This one boasted a celebrity appearance by Doug McClure, but coming in thirty seconds after the opening credits I must have missed it, because I never saw him. The sex was redundant, awkward, and dull. That part at least rang true. The back of Boyette’s head was more interesting, and after the first half hour I focused on it exclusively. What he thought of the movie was anyone’s guess. Probably wished he were home rereading Beowulf.

  The place began to fill up. A flock of teenagers in Turkish pants and fatigue coats five sizes too big for them swooped in at the end of the first reel and took over the front row on either side of Boyette, loudly evaluating the performances during the grope scenes and offering advice. A man in his seventies wandered in a few minutes later holding his hernia and sat down next to a wall. A college-age couple took possession of the two seats directly in front of me and the young man spent the rest of the show trying to unbutton his date. Two tailored ladies with gold-rimmed glasses and silver-blue rinse jobs came in and sat across the aisle from me with their knees together and their hands folded in their laps. They were the only ones I couldn’t figure out until the girl showed up.

  She was a pale-skinned brunette of twenty or so who excused herself in a whisper when I stood to let her slide in past me. When she took the seat next to mine, black hose showed between the dark red hem of her dress and the fur tops of her ankle boots. The rest of her was wrapped in silver fox, and to hell with animal rights because no fox ever wore it like her. She fished a gold-tipped cigarette and a silver lighter out of a clamshell purse the size of a compact, failed to get a spark out of the flint after two tries, and said, “Damn!” in a way that made it sound as if it had never been said before. The girl seated in front of us disentangled herself from her escort long enough to turn her head and tell her to shush.

  “I think smoking’s off limits,” I whispered.

  “Foreplay too, apparently. At least onscreen.” Smiling, the brunette turned my way and raised the cigarette to her lips.

  It was one of those honey-over-grits accents, sweet and slightly scratchy. Below Kentucky, way below. I struck a match. Her hair was cut short and to the shape of her head, exposing her ears; reflections of the flame crawled on the surfaces of dangling earrings bent into open triangles. As she leaned forward I saw that her eyes didn’t match. The right one was baby-blanket blue, the left that reddish brown with hints of green they call hazel so it will fit in the blank on a driver’s license. Flaws in the features of good-looking women interest me. I was still looking at her eyes when they twitched past my shoulder.

  That set off an alarm. I used my elbow, colliding with her cheekbone where it met the mastoid and following through with the rest of my arm, sweeping her out of the way while I snatched at the revolver next to my leg. The vague object was to get the gun and go to the floor. The floor was my friend.

  For a flash I thought the Smith had gone off accidentally. A pistol report indoors at close range is louder than Krakatoa and more disorienting than a stroke. Voices raised, feet thudded, dully and without resonance in the echo of the blast. I glimpsed the sole of a fur-trimmed boot scrambling away. I felt the barrel of the .38. It hadn’t fired. The sulfur stench freshly laid in over the normal ones said somebody else’s had.

  Someone was talking. I stayed on the floor and listened.

  WOMAN: Alberto, stop!

  MAN: What’s wrong?

  WOMAN: Your organ; I don’t think it’s big enough.

  MAN: Sorry. I didn’t know it would be playing in a cathedral.

  The voices were loud and echoed around the edges as if they were being pushed through a P.A. system in a deserted terminal. They were coming from the theater’s speakers, buzzing along the floor and vibrating through the hand I was using to support myself. The movie was still playing, just in case anyone was paying attention.

  I leaned against the back of a seat, swung the cylinder out of the revolver from habit to make sure all the chambers were dressed, and snapped it back. My free hand was crusted with the things that collect on linoleum that hasn’t been mopped since Boy George. I plucked a bit of shiny metal off the heel of my palm, looked at it, and stuck it in a pocket. I wiped the rest off on my pants, grabbed an armrest, and levered myself up onto a cushion. The couple onscreen had stopped fencing and were now coiled together in a chaise longue that looked like the same one a different couple had used for the same purpose in the living room of a high-rise apartment earlier. If so, I was the only one there to appreciate it. There is no alone quite like being alone in a movie house with the feature ratcheting away for one’s own entertainment. I felt like a Hollywood mogul in a private screening room. A dumb Hollywood mogul. That got-a-match gag had rheumatism.

  I thought of Boyette, got up, still holding the .38, and trotted to the front row, where the screen towered overhead and if I’d wanted to I could have looked up into all kinds of interesting orifices. Then I walked back the other way, checking all the rows. My client wasn’t in any of them. The package he’d brought in with him was as gone as my good opinion of myself.

  Both emergency exits were chained and padlocked, a violation of the fire ordinance the City of Detroit had managed to overlook during its many election-year efforts to close the theater permanently. I flattened myself against the main entrance door and eased it open. No one shot at me. Under the security lights an icy gust blew a purple advertising leaflet against the right rear tire of my car, then took the sheet across Telegraph. The Cutlass was the only car parked in the lot. The ticket clerk had been in too much of a hurry when she left the booth to close the door or finish her lunch; half a Twinkie lay on the greasy paper sack that had contained her liverwurst sandwich.

  I went back inside and did some more detecting. One of the electric wall sconces was out. When I took a closer look, I found out where the bullet had gone that was meant for me. The slug had punched a hole in the tin fixture, parted a wire, and buried itself in the mortar between two cinderblocks. I couldn’t reach it with my pocket knife.

  The movie ended while I was still trying. The screen went white a minute later, accompanied by a distant flapping, like a moth hurling itself against a screen. I found the door to the projection-room stairs behind a seam in the carpeted wall opposite the one where the bullet had penetrated. I could see my breath in the well; no sense wasting heat on the help. At the top I grasped the knob of yet another steel door, tightened my grip on the revolver and went in fast, spinning on my heel to cover all the corners. A plastic dashboard troll with orange hair greeted me with the demented grin of a major-appliance salesman. It was glued to a lighting console studded with buttons and metal switches.

  The room had a folding cot with a doubled-over pillow and a blanket as thick as a dishtowel, none of them in use at present. A plastic coffee mug with the South Park kids on it steamed on a folding card table next to a copy of High Times spread open to an article on Colombian papers. That old familiar smell of scorched grain clung to everything, but no half-finished joint smoldered in the molded-plastic ashtray. The projectionist hadn’t left in such a panic he forgot the important things.

  I almost wasted a bullet when the small electric space heater on the floor kicked in with a buzz and a whir. I returned the Smith to its clip on my belt.

  The take-up reel on the big projector was still spinning, throwing a spoked shadow on the walls and ceiling. I located the switch and turned it off. There was no window, but that was okay. I had a feeling if I looked outside I’d see a world bombed into kibble, with me the sole survivor.

  The first siren swooped and fell then. I should have known the cops would make it too.

  6

  When John Alderdyce saw me he hesitated a step and said shit.

  I’d found the rest of the house lights on the console and turned them up. When he came in I was in the auditorium, sitting on one hip on the arm of one of the back-row seats, facing the entrance. He looked blacker than ever in the light of the recessed ceiling fixtures, a polished ebony carving in a camel’s-hair overcoat and light gray double-breasted suit, tailored to his garage-door frame. Since reaching middle age he’d put on forty pounds and lost a lot of hair, but he had the bone structure to handle the extra weight, and his balding front just accentuated the angular configuration of a head that would have been at home on Easter Island. We’ve known each other most of our lives.

  “I wish I’d shaved,” I said. “I didn’t think no tussle at the Tomcat rated no visit from no inspector.” I’d only seen him a few times since the department promoted him out of my league.

  “I was on the Southfield Freeway when the radio call came through. Any car in the vicinity. My luck.” He swept his coattail aside and returned the nickel-plated snubnose he’d come in with to his kidney holster. He was the only cop in the city who hadn’t gone to elephant calibers after the riots. “Where’s the body?”

  “Under this suit.”

  “What the hell happened to the suit?”

  “All-night grindhouses and gas station toilets affect me the same way. I can’t resist rolling around on the floors.”

  “You’re slipping, Walker. Where you are there’s usually a couple of hundred pounds of USDA Choice waiting for the wagon.”

  “I’m coming down with something. Well enough to be shot at, but too sick to shoot.” I coughed.

  “Do what I do, pump aspirins. Thinner blood kills germs.” He held out his hand.

  I squeaked out the .38 and gave it to him. He sniffed at the barrel, inspected the cylinder, and returned it. His nose kept working. “Somebody shot something.”

  I pointed toward the damaged sconce. “You’ll find the slug behind there. The reason it doesn’t have my brains on it is the reason my suit looks like this. How’d the cops get it?”

  “Nine-one-one. A fight, she said.”

  “She?” I saw eyes that didn’t match, a pair of triangle earrings.

  “She said she sells tickets. Dispatch believed her. She couldn’t put together a coherent sentence without a building permit.”

  “Oh. The girl in the booth. I’m surprised she took the time. She rabbited along with everyone else, including the projectionist.”

  “Who can blame them? The place has more priors than seats. The concession stand is a guy named Atticus in the parking lot. What’s the story?” He leaned back against the block wall with his hands in his coat pockets. He looked as casual as the Kremlin.

  I found an uncrushed Winston in the pack, lit up, and darkened my lungs another shade while I gave it to him from Chapter One. I edited out Earl North. That wasn’t city property.

  “You stepped on that old rake?” he said when I got to the girl with the cigarette.

  “If I were smart I’d be two-thirds of the way to a pension.”

  “No wonder that bullet missed your brains.” He looked at the empty screen, as if the story were playing there. “What’s your take on this bird Boyette? You’ve only got his word for it that money’s his. It wouldn’t be the first time a courier took off with the pony.”

  “I thought about it. I don’t like it. I initiated contact. He didn’t search me out.”

  “Good con guys almost never do. Merlin Gilly would shill for the Prince of Lies.”

  “Pick him up.”

  “Are you filing a missing-persons report on Boyette?”

  “My specialty’s missing persons. I’d never live it down. Anyway, for all I know he’s sitting in his living room right now, unrolling a Dead Sea Scroll.”

  “How about attempted murder on you? That’s got to be a misdemeanor.”

  I shook my head.

  “Then it’s your scooter,” he said. “All I’ve got is a shot fired inside city limits and maybe a property damage complaint, if anyone bothers to come down and swear one out. No one will. In a minute or so I won’t even have the shot fired. My specialty’s homicide.”

  He should have played the lottery. Exactly sixty seconds later a uniform came in, young, with the marks of the academy mold still on his shiny leather jacket and in the crease of his trousers. Alderdyce flashed his shield, then walked away with him a few yards, speaking low. The uniform nodded and went back out. The inspector stayed where he was with his hands in his pockets.

  “Something?” I asked.

  “Not likely. I just remembered I’m in no hurry. My daughter’s using our living room for her divorced women’s meeting.”

  In a little while the uniform returned and read something out of his notebook. “That’s next door, isn’t it?” Alderdyce asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Stay here and wait for the manager.” The polished-ebony head turned my way. “Temperature’s about twelve. Good for the lungs.”

  I crushed out my cigarette on the linoleum and buttoned my coat.

  “Ticket clerk has an apartment next door,” Alderdyce said as we headed across the parking lot. “She left the address when we called downtown. I had the kid get it from Dispatch. Maybe she knows your brunette.”

  I didn’t say anything. The wind was full of razor blades.

  It was another block building, this one the original gray, with a Laundromat on the ground floor, locked up and dark. The door to the stairs came open when he tugged on the handle. “No wonder I never run out of work,” he said.

  “Maybe she’s from Iowa,” I said.

  “Nobody leaves Iowa.”

  We climbed a steep flight of gridded iron steps between walls three feet apart. The number he wanted belonged to a door just off the landing. He knocked, and when the lid slid away from the peephole inside, introduced himself, holding up the gold shield in its folder. The lid squeaked back into place. A series of clicks followed.

  “Told you,” Alderdyce said.

  The door opened wide enough to show a black-shaded eye, a gold hoop in a pale nostril, and half of a pair of lips painted green. The chain wouldn’t let it open any wider.

  “You ought to lock the door downstairs too,” said the inspector. “By the time they get up here they might be mad enough to break this one down.”

  “Lock’s busted downstairs.” She waited.