The Brass Cupcake Page 4

  He gave a meaningless grunt.

  “Go talk it over with the Commissioner. Doesn’t he tell you when it’s time to spit?”

  “I’m right tired of you, Cliff.”

  “Is that right?”

  “I’ve been thinking on it a long time. When this thing is over you’re getting out of town.”

  “Am I?”

  “You’ll be God’s own fool if you don’t. Every time you take a drink I’ll have you thrown in the tank. Every time you get in that car of yours, you’ll get a traffic ticket. You’ll learn about ordinances you never even dreamed of.”

  I pulled up in front of headquarters. “Go in and phone the Commissioner, Chief. Give him my love. Tell him for me that you’re a fat, pompous old fud dangling next to him on the end of Tony Lavery’s string.”

  He grunted his way out of the car, easing his belly tenderly through the door. He looked at me and shook his head sadly. “You could have been in line for my job, Bartells. You could have had just about anything you wanted in this town. But you have to go and get religion about some stinkin’ bum of a wild kid. It sure is a damn shame.” He duck-walked away, leaning over backward to counterbalance the weight of the big belly, clucking and shaking his head sadly.

  4

  AT SIX-FIFTEEN and a half I drove down Derecha Street through the blue-purple dusk. When I was fifty feet from the Coral Strand I saw Melody standing waiting at the curb, slim and tall. It is hard to know what to expect. I had anticipated a long wait. It was a good guess that she was out there on time because she guessed that I had expected to be kept waiting.

  Dusk took the gold out her hair and left it shining silver. I pulled up beside her, reached over, and swung the door open for her. She stooped and looked in at me before climbing in. She put a folded red cape on the seat between us. She wore no hat. Her dress was severe and white with three large red buttons to keep it from looking like a uniform.

  “I had to be sure it was you. Some wolves, junior grade, have been cruising by.”

  “Thus showing their good taste.”

  “Now you’re starting off on the wrong foot, Mr. Bartells. I don’t want to hear anything that sounds remotely personal or complimentary.”

  “At your service, Miss Chance.” I rolled the wagon north along Derecha and turned east on Howland Road.

  “Where are we going?” she asked.

  “Tampa. A good place to eat. It’s about a two-hour drive and I have a hunch that any talk we might try to have in this town would be interrupted.”

  She settled back in the seat. Two blocks along Howland Road I noticed the car without lights dawdling along behind us. I took a right, a left, another left, and a right back out onto Rowland Road.

  “This sounds pretty trite, Miss Chance, but we are being followed.”

  “What do you plan to do about it?”

  “Run away from them.”

  “In this?”

  “She might surprise you.”

  “O.K. So I’m waiting.”

  As soon as I crossed the city limits I put the gas pedal down to the floor. My car has a shortened stroke, a high-compression head, and dual carburetors with control knobs on the dash. The shortened stroke makes her logy at speeds below fifty. As soon as the needle was up to seventy the stranger behind us put on his lights and began to eat up the distance between us.

  “Here we go,” I said above the rush of the wind, and reached out to change the carburetors to the right spot.

  At eighty she began to whine nicely. The needle moved quickly around, bounced off the hundred post a few times, and then pasted itself there while the car continued to increase speed. I carry two big sacks of beach sand in the back end. The frame is reinforced.

  The road stretched clear ahead. I managed to glance quickly at Melody. She had moved forward onto the edge of the seat. Her lips were slightly parted, her eyes almost closed. The lights faded ’way back. I held it at max for a good ten minutes, then dropped it back to eighty. As I did so, Melody came out of her trance and leaned back in the seat.

  “How fast was that?” she asked. Her voice shook.

  “Around one-twenty, I think.”

  She reached out and patted the dashboard. “I take back that snide remark, car.”

  “It forgives you, Melody. How did you feel when I had it on the top?”

  “Odd. Very odd. Like I couldn’t move or speak or breathe, even.”

  I smiled to myself and thought of other girls who had sat on my right when the crate moved up into the high numbers. Kathy, screaming against the wind, half fright and half exhilaration. And I remembered one in particular, a pale-eyed redhead I had taken home to Miami. The very extent of her steel control had intrigued me, and I had made a pass that I hadn’t planned on making. She had suffered the kiss in thin, tight-lipped silence and then said, “This is a little silly, isn’t it?”

  Out of anger I had punched the crate up to a speed where the wind screamed like a thousand devils. The redhead took that top speed in grim silence for ten thundering miles before something within her snapped and she moved over against me on the seat, her head loose on the slender throat. When I stopped the car the second time her mouth had been like a soft open wound.

  All of them are alike. They’re like the locks I used to buy in the dime store when I was a kid, with rings that you set so that it made a certain combination of numbers. But with the females, the rings contain letters rather than numbers, and you have to be smart enough to set them so that the letters spell out a word. For the redhead the word had been danger. With Kathy the mystic combination was the word marriage.

  Now I looked over at Melody’s clear profile against the night and I wondered what the combination would be for her. I wondered whether, if I found it, I would want to use it. It would not be an emotional attachment. I wanted no part of any emotional attachment. It would be a game, like working on one of those locks until you hit the right number. And that was all it would be. I had a funny kind of weariness in me. The odd part was sensing that Melody had it too.

  I felt her eyes on me. “So you’re not married, Mr. Bartells.”

  “How do you figure?”

  “A wife would make you give up this toy of yours. Most of them would.”

  “Are you an expert on how wives react?”

  “I was one myself, once upon a time. You see, I keep his name. Chance. More rhythmic, don’t you think, than Melody Stegman? I use the Miss to keep from compounding the confusion.”

  “Did it suit you? Marriage?”

  “What’s your name again? Cliff? Put it this way. It suited what I was. I don’t know if it would suit me now. What do they say? It takes seven years for every part of you to change. I guess we’re like lizards, shedding a thousand skins a year. When I was twenty I was a gay little bride. Now, Cliff, I’m twenty-seven, and I’m not so very gay.”

  “When I was one and twenty…” I said softly.

  “Tell me about you at one and twenty, Cliff. Don’t you get the feeling that they’re still back there, in the past, the people we were once upon a time, still laughing and loving and not knowing what will happen?”

  “Now we go mystic, eh? There was nothing mystic about me at twenty-one. I was a he-maid in a tourist court in Florence City. I bet I changed forty beds a day. You learn a lot about humanity, changing their linen, you know. The boss had a daughter. I suppose if I could hop in my time machine and go back there and take a look at her, I would have her cased. I would see the round heels. But to me, back there, she was the angel of all angels. Her name was, and is, Connie. My true beloved. On the hottest days the body scent of her would come through the perfume and the deodorant, very delicately tart. It made me dizzy, that scent. We had a storeroom. One side of it was piled high with mattresses and pillows. It had no windows, and it was like a furnace in there in the summer. I guess her people had us figured out, all right. Now I know why the old man didn’t raise hell. I guess he figured that I was keeping Connie at home, at least.
And besides, I was going to be a cop and we were going to live happily ever after, especially after I got my pension and we could watch our grandchildren grow up. I talk too much, don’t I? I got to be a cop and later I went into the Army. I see Connie on the street sometimes. She always smiles.”

  “You surprise me, Cliff.”

  “What did you expect?”

  “We are being frank, aren’t we? No fencing. You annoyed me on the beach. You realize that, of course. I decided right away about you. I decided you are a type I don’t care much for. One of those men who always plots himself as the hero of a very bitter James M. Cain novel. The muscular, side-of-the-mouth, ‘Come here, baby’ sort. The man who thinks that because he has all the usual muscles and most of his hair, he’s irresistible to all females. Now you have me wondering.”

  “Why?”

  “Men like that always make themselves the hero of their little stories. In the Connie story you don’t come out so well. That’s what surprises me. Of course, I do detect a certain amount of bitterness. Why did you stop being a cop, Cliff?”

  “The opportunities for advancement are too limited.”

  “Now I’ve asked the wrong question, haven’t I? Your voice is different.”

  “Who’s your ex-husband married to now?”

  “Not that color widow, Cliff. I’m the legitimate kind. Dave Chance was a very sweet guy. Not too awfully bright, I guess, but I thought so at the time. No money and no social position, much to Aunt Elizabeth’s horror. A war marriage, of course. He was a naval aviator, and they had him instructing at Pensacola. We lived in a room there. You know—borrowed-time stuff. A little chintzy room. I was storing up all the memories, locking them away fast like packing trunks, against the day when he’d go overseas. Then one afternoon Commander Moore, his boss, came in a staff car and held both my hands very tight and said that a bos’n’s mate named Dockerty had run over Dave in a Navy jeep and killed him. I was bracing myself for high tragedy at some time in the future. The Navy Department wire and all that, with Dave dead three thousand miles away. But there he was, dead in Pensacola. Just like the parachute jumper who falls off the back steps. Poor Commander Moore. I took a deep breath and roared, just roared with laughter. Of course, it turned into hysterics and they gave me shots and all that, but that first laugh is probably something the Commander will never forget.”

  “What did you do then?”

  “I went back to Boston and took a grim little room in Chelsea and worked in a bookstore near the Common.”

  She didn’t elaborate, and the lights of Tampa were in the distance before either of us broke the silence again.

  “You’re very special, Melody,” I said finally. “In a funny way.”

  “I’m not special, Cliff. I’m too tired of—of things to be special. Tired of fighting and tired of trying and tired of believing in things. Sooner or later I’m always told I’m special, as though it’s the highest possible compliment.”

  “I didn’t mean it as a compliment and I wasn’t talking about the visible aspects of the problem. It’s no news to you, Melody, that your face is neither pretty nor beautiful, but very striking, which is maybe better than to have it any other way, and you’re put together by somebody who enjoyed his work and did well by you. So to hell with this compliment angle.”

  “Are you trying to be rough, Cliff?”

  “Not rough. Objective. You’re special because most women with your visible advantages spend all their time grabbing or posing, and I haven’t seen you do either yet. You talk my language and I don’t know how to go about making you, and I may even give up the whole idea.”

  I had spoken with more heat than I had expected to show. She said gently, “It would be a very good idea to give up, Cliff.”

  By this time we were entering Tampa, and I jockeyed the car through the traffic in the direction of Ybor City. Melody wondered about it and I told her. The city fathers have, for some time, had the rather vague idea of turning Ybor City into something resembling the French Quarter in New Orleans. But there isn’t enough to start with. Ybor City is what you would get if you took the flavor and atmosphere of one square block of old New Orleans and scattered it, diluted it over thirty or forty blocks of depressed ex-residential, semi-industrial area in any U.S. city. A lot of the best food is served in tile palaces that look like annexes to the men’s room in Grand Central, and you can get the same food next to a patio fountain with colored lights shining on it—if you want to pay the differential.

  Ybor City was alive and awake after a long dull day, and laughter was harsh on the street corners. Melody sat in her corner with a certain wariness. I parked and she stood waiting while I locked the car, and we walked together to Mamma Fernandez’ place.

  “It’s a good place,” I said as I pushed open the door. Pritch, from the Tampa Times, was standing at the bar He gave me a cool nod. Pepe, Mamma’s eldest, was tending bar. Off to the right of the bar were wire-legged tables and chairs, none of them set for service. Mamma came bustling in from the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron. I had called her earlier; she was expecting us.

  Since Mamma looks like the movie version of the hefty Mexican matriarch, it is a considerable surprise to hear her talk with the flat nasal tones of Indiana, where she was born and raised.

  “My God, Cliff, you’re getting sense, going out with a tall girl. Come, darlings, I’m putting you in the smallest room, and don’t look like that, girl. This is purely a restaurant I’m running. What’s your name. Chance? Right back here, come along.”

  As Melody followed her through the curtains, I glanced back over my shoulder. Pritch had a speculative look on his face. I could almost hear the wheels turning. It was bad luck that he had to be there, but it couldn’t be helped.

  The smallest room is surprising. The walls are paneled in cypress and there is a tiny fireplace for the few cool months of the year. The tablecloth was chalk-white under the light of the two candles. The room is not larger than ten by ten.

  I slid Melody’s chair in and went around and sat down, facing her. She smiled. “It’s nice here!”

  “The best is yet to come, Melody.”

  First came the tiny shrimp, cooked in garlic and oil, with Mamma advising us to dawdle over them and over the manzanilla wine so that the main course could be prepared.

  We ate like a pair of wolves. The wine flushed our faces, and looking across at her, I found I had made an error in telling her that she was not beautiful. Then Mamma proudly brought in the hot casserole of paella. Melody had never eaten it before. Paella is an adventure, particularly when it is lovingly prepared by Mamma Fernandez. Melody made warm small sounds in her throat as she came upon the clams in their open shells, the white breasts of chicken, the half-inch cubes of tenderloin. She was wary of the octopus, but willing to try it, and then sorry there wasn’t more of it.

  When it was all gone Mamma brought in the pot of coffee, her special coffee, so strong that you can almost stand the spoon in it.

  There was a comfortable and friendly silence. One of Mamma’s meals is an experience shared.

  “What came before Pensacola?” I asked. “I’ve got to sort you out.”

  “Sorting me out, I suppose, depends on understanding Aunt Elizabeth. My father was her younger brother. To drop into the vernacular, before the depression, when I was quite small, we were loaded. Dad was a partner in a Boston brokerage house. We had a place on the Cape. I got a horse for my birthday when I was six. That was in 1929. Dad had a sixty-foot boat. We had three cars. I guess I was a pretty snotty little brat. Private schools and all that. An only child. Spoiled through and through. Of course, I didn’t know what was going on. Dad’s lawyer told me years later, the year I got out of school. Both Dad and Aunt Elizabeth were in the market. Very heavily. She got scared in the summer of 1929 and got out. As the older sister, she insisted that Dad get out too. He laughed at her. Nothing could go wrong with the world. Aunt Elizabeth was not a woman you could cross.

 
; “Those were the happy years, I guess. They’re pretty dim in my mind. Aunt Elizabeth converted all of her holdings—most of them, anyway—into government bonds. In 1930 Dad went to her and pleaded with her to bail him out. They were about to sell him out because he couldn’t put up the margin. She told him that she had warned him.

  “A week later Dad killed himself. He used the typical brokerage procedure in those days. He went out a high window. Mother died eight months later. They left me two things: a little money—enough to get me through school in Switzerland—and a lot of hate. I think it was hate of Aunt Elizabeth that killed Mother. It poisoned her. And she told me never to have anything to do with her. Things like that make a terrible impression on kids. I couldn’t understand why, but I knew that Aunt Elizabeth was, in some way, responsible for what had happened.

  “The hate lasted longer than the money did. I suppose any person less determined than Aunt Elizabeth would have given up. She didn’t. She tried to run my life. I was the only close relative left. She couldn’t admit defeat. I sent back countless gifts—beautiful, expensive gifts. She was at her worst when I was twenty, trying to block my marriage to Dave Chance. You see, she didn’t have any hold over me because I had never taken a dime from her. But she kept on trying.

  “It’s really funny, in a way, that Dave was the one who gave me the first doubts. I told him the whole story once. He said that Aunt Elizabeth was right, that no amount of money she could have given Dad would have saved him. He was in too deeply and the stocks dropped too far. Aunt Elizabeth’s money would have gone down the same hole his did, and then there would have been no money at all in the family. He told me I shouldn’t be so rough on the old girl. I guess Dave just didn’t have the capacity for hate. Well, I told you how he died. I went back to Boston, but habit is a very strong thing. I still couldn’t bring myself to make peace with Aunt Elizabeth. I didn’t want any close relative. I wanted to be alone, to mend alone. You know how that is.