The Song Is You

  “Not really.”

  ‘You don’t know too much, do you, buddy?”

  “Less than that.”

  “He was a lady doctor—you know, a doc for ladies. Things can get hot.”

  Hop nodded. ‘You mind if I go up and check it out?”

  He shrugged. “I sell newspapers. What’s it to me, bud?”

  Hop paid for his cigarettes with a five-dollar bill.

  The elevator creaked up four floors. He had to use both arms to drag the grated door open, rust pinching into his fingers.

  The corridor walls were daubed with smoky amber sconces. The only sound as he walked was his own shoes skating over cigarette stubs, a candy wrapper. He heard a throaty whistle that startled him until he recognized it as his own—a nervous habit left over from childhood, from visiting his uncle in the TB sanatorium in Onondaga, or his grandmother in a charity ward back in ‘34.

  The beveled glass at the end of the hall had M. STILLMAN, MD stamped on it in fading black letters. He took a breath and placed his hand on the knob, which felt cold and greasy and made Hop think of salve on burn wounds.

  He wondered what he expected to find. The end of an endless tunnel. The wormy ground at the bottom of a hole. Blood and horror and a churning, red-ringed breach into the void.

  Or an empty office as stripped of meaning as anything else?

  He turned the knob, but the door was locked. Fuck if this was going to stop him now. Fuck if he couldn’t stare down that gaping breach. Spotting an old brass standing ashtray nearby, he lifted it and plunged it against the beveled glass once, twice, three times and the plate knocked out whole, thudding to the floor, and—a ghost of his old luck remaining—cracked into a spiderweb without shattering. He reached through the window frame and unlocked the door, which wobbled open, revealing a dark outer office with one marbled window bringing in faint, diffuse light from the street. Not much to see: a desk and a row of waiting chairs covered with dust. Walking through, he opened the door to the inner office and saw a glass-front cabinet with scalpels, clamps, foamy rolls of gauze. Beside it stood a rolling table with still-full jars of ammoniated mercury, Vaseline, and Unguentine, glowing red bottles of Mercurochrome. And in the middle of it all sat the metal examination table, with detachable stirrups. A reel of prone women went through Hop’s head. Of Jean Spangler torn and desperate. Kirk, can’t wait any longer, going to see Doctor Scott. It will work best this way while mother is away …

  But this wasn’t Dr. Scott. It was Dr. Stillman. And why Iolene would have his files was far from clear.

  He looked around cursorily in the examining room before returning to the outer office and the file cabinets. He pulled open the drawers one by one and, as with Iolene’s, each one was empty. He opened the desk drawers and they carried only office supplies, a few open boxes of pens, pads of paper. As he searched, he found himself repeatedly turning his head to look back at the open door to the inner office and the white-papered examination table, which, with its swivel trays and attenuated stirrups, looked disturbingly like a large mechanical spider. Each time he looked he could almost see Jean Spangler’s long legs rising from its center.

  Hop, you are losing your mind.

  Giving up on the outer office, he knew he’d have to return to the interior examining room, but as he did, he tried not to look too closely at the equipment or to smell the uncomfortable mix of heavy dust, mold, and alcohol.

  Scanning the other side of the small room, body radiating with prickly heat, he noticed a closet he’d missed before. He opened the heavy wooden door and saw a few old lab coats and, behind them, several large boxes stacked high.

  He slid the boxes out of the closet, took a seat on the wheeled chair, and lifted the lid off the top box. Inside were mostly old receipts, utility bills, carbon paper. The second box, however, was filled with brittle brown file folders.

  Heart battering around in his chest, he began pulling out file after file, eyes scanning the folder tabs far too fast to take them in. One overstuffed folder he grabbed so hard and so fast that the box fell to the floor with a grunt. The manila folders inside spilled out into a fluttering windmill and at the top was one labeled, in strangely familiar hand, “Employee Records.” He fell to his knees, one sweaty hand smearing across the folder. Tax forms, ID forms, JEANNE HORELLY, RECEPT. (1944), CARL HAUS, LAB ASST. (1945-48), LAURA SEIDL, NURSE (1946), and so on. Individual photos of stern-faced employees all posed against the same white backdrop that still hung on the wall next to the reception desk. His damp fingers stuck to one and he shook it loose.

  Here was finer metal. Long blonde hair gathered high atop her head, heart-shaped face with a round petal of a mouth. Slanty, sexyas-hell eyes. All sizzling beneath his fingers. She always had ‘em. Looks to make you swoon, looks like murder.

  Oh, Midge.

  Reno, 1946

  Three weeks to the day they met, Hop was driving Midge Maberley to Reno, head pounding already with the hangover that was still six hours away. Driving through the desert relentlessly to get there before he could come to his senses.

  They couldn’t get married until the last twenty-seven days of her residency were complete. She had to wait out her divorce, a seven-month marriage to a touring bandleader who hadn’t made it back to the West Coast since the honeymoon.

  In Reno, Hop filed phantom stories at the local UPI office and drank and played cards all night, every night. He kept playing until he lost everything, lost the thousand dollars he came with, and then lost it again. That thousand had been all he had in the world, most of it from a big win at Santa Rosa, the win that started the binge during which he met Midge to begin with. When there was nothing left, Hop, alone and running out of distractions, had the sudden realization that he’d played so that he would lose everything, had dedicated himself to losing. He didn’t want to marry this girl, Midge, with one slim dime in his pocket, nor one faint thread of decency or expectation. Each night he clamped his hand on one of her white dimpled knees and pushed it down flat on the rough hotel sheets and tried to fuck all their shared ugliness away. And all her beauty, too. By the time the divorce came through and he propped himself up at city hall, there was nothing left of either of them. Not one bright shock of sentiment or hard-won illusion.

  Sitting in his car, Hop stared at the photo of his wife and tried to think, tried to focus. When he’d met Midge she was working at Earl Carroll’s. She’d talked about having half a dozen jobs since she’d moved to Los Angeles, from shampoo girl to cigarette girl to thirdrow-back chorus girl and back again. But she’d never said anything about having worked in a place like this. Maybe it just never came up. Maybe.

  He looked at the dates of employment: MAY 1944—FEBRUARY 1945. Not such a short employment that it wouldn’t merit mention. And he’d met her in late fall 1945.

  Was it all happenstance that Iolene had files from a place his wife once worked? Hell, maybe this doctor was the one to go to for all the girls who ran through the nightclubs. He knew a few doctors frequented by all the actresses at the studio, like their favorite hairdresser or tailor.

  Try to talk yourself out of it, Hop, but…

  Midge at the Earl Carroll Theatre on Sunset. The famous sign out front read, THROUGH THESE PORTALS PASS THE MOST BEAUTIFUL GIRLS IN THE WORLD. He remembered it well. Sitting

  there, he found himself even saying it aloud:

  “Through these portals pass the most beautiful girls in the world.”

  A chill raced up his back.

  Iolene. The last time he saw her, at the bar.

  I’ve known that girl forever, she’d said about Jean. One of the most

  beautiful girls in the world. They should have written that for her.

  What? he’d asked.

  She’d shaken her head. Never mind. You never got it.

  Had Jean Spangler worked at Earl Carroll’s? Vaguely, he

  remembered something from the papers. How had he forgotten? Both Jean and Midge. Did Midge know Jean?
r />   Of course.

  Before he knew it, he was back in his car, folders strewn across the backseat.

  Midge. Fucking Midge. Is there any corner of my life you’ve left untouched, uninfected?

  What could you possibly…

  At first, his head was too flooded with facts and revelations to form an idea, a theory. Then, as he began driving, scenarios thrummed to life. Almost no food for two days, a few hours’ sleep, sure, but he could still put two and two together. The coincidence was too great: she worked at Dr. Stillman’s office and files from his office show up at Iolene’s. Jean worked at Earl Carroll’s and Midge worked at Earl Carroll’s. Midge playing so dumb, coming to his apartment, pretending she didn’t know what Frannie Adair was digging for (”She asked if I remembered about a girl who disappeared … I told her I didn’t remember anything like that …”). Stringing him along, watching him twist, when all along she knew Jean Spangler. God, did Midge work with them? It was a stretch, but not impossible. Why else would she never mention working for a doctor before? He imagined, veins throbbing in his temple, a setup: Jean, Iolene, and Midge all doing the same dance for that hood Davy Ogul back in ‘44, ‘45. Jean meets Midge at the doc’s office, or Midge takes the job there just to have access to the files. Or Davy Ogul puts her in that job to get access to the files. Had Midge still been in touch with Iolene? Was that why Iolene came to him? Had the two been pulling something on him now, ready to blackmail him as Midge’s last revenge? He knew he was reaching, but the way his head was jammed, the ugly possibilities seemed infinite. Jean, Iolene, Midge— he wondered, crazily, if they were somehow the same woman with three slippery tentacles reaching out to grab him by the neck.

  Well, he was no fucking patsy.

  He suddenly realized that he was driving to Jerry’s, and he hoped Midge was there alone. He didn’t want any interruptions. To stop him. She was going to explain herself. They all were.

  Blood pulsing in his head, he was at the front door of Jerry’s apartment without any memory of parking his car or entering the building or walking up the four flights. And now there was a man in his shirtsleeves and bedroom slippers standing in the hallway,

  pointing his finger at him.

  “What? What?” Hop said.

  “You hammer that goddamned door any longer, I’m calling the

  cops,” the man shouted.

  Hop looked down at his fist on the door, at his own red knuckles. For the first time, he heard the sound he was making. Dropping his hand to his side, he turned back to face the man.

  “Who the hell do you think you are, buddy?” the man continued. “People are trying to eat their Sunday dinner and they gotta hear you yelling and pounding.”

  “Take it easy, pal,” Hop said. “This isn’t the public library.” He rubbed his reddened fist with his other hand.

  The man, a good six inches shorter and twenty years older than Hop, wouldn’t relent. Folding his arms across his chest, he groused, “I should call the cops on you.”

  Hop felt something rising within him, something popping in his head. Something that made him start walking toward the man, still

  rubbing his fist in his hand. Walking purposefully.

  The man saw something in Hop’s eyes and backed up in a dart.

  “Where you going, pal?” Hop said, finding himself wanting the man

  to take him up on his threat. Wanting anyone to. The man, eyes like saucers, tripped back into his apartment and

  shut the door.

  Hop, two feet away, stopped.

  He wanted the popping feeling, that strange flitting in his brain,

  pressing down and up at the same time in hard bursts—he wanted it to stop.

  So, he said to himself, letting his arms fall to his sides, she’s not here. No one’s home. That’s okay. That’s okay.

  He walked slowly down the stairs, out the front door, and to his car.

  You should go home, Hop.

  Go home. Clean your head out. You can telephone later. Your head’s not right now. Everything’s at funny angles. You need to rest.

  But instead he ended up driving to yet another drugstore and calling Jerry’s apartment. No answer. Of course. Sweet Mary, Hop. Then he called Frannie Adair at the newspaper.

  She’s out on assignment.

  Where?

  The Little New Yorker.

  Hop called the Little New Yorker.

  He could hear the bartender calling out Frannie’s name. A few minutes later, he heard her voice on the phone. Direct and lively, like always, but a little breathier. A shade more drawn out.

  “You keep close tabs. I’m beginning to feel like my old man’s in town,” she said, then paused, as if waiting for Hop’s rejoinder. He knew he couldn’t possibly offer one, and she went on without him. “Well, my boy, as it happens, I’ve been trying to reach you. This fella I talked to at the studio, turns out he remembered something. Remembered hearing Jean Spangler had gotten lured into some mob-run, picture-peddling racket. And that she had a girlfriend working with her, a colored girl, a torcher.”

  “Hmm. How Christian of Jean.” He cursed himself for letting this Alan Winsted thing get away from him. It was his own fault. Who knew that little studio runt would know so much or be so hungry? I should have, of all people, Hop thought.

  “This colored girl, she’s the one who came to see you, isn’t she? Came for help because she was getting pressure? Someone—maybe some heavies, maybe studio people, maybe both—thought she had something, something she could use to blackmail them or Sutton and Merrel, or both. Maybe she did and maybe she didn’t, but they weren’t taking any chances.”

  She paused. He didn’t bite. He felt the space between his temple and the earpiece get damper and damper.

  “Listen, Hop, Iolene might be as gone as Jean Spangler by now. That’s what I’m getting at.”

  “My, my,” Hop said. He was surprised at the sudden coolness in his own voice. To him, it sounded as forced as B-movie tough, but maybe not to Frannie. ‘You’ve made a lot of progress, gumshoe. So the cops weren’t so far off. Just another girl for hire hustling for Cohen’s boys and then trying to work it solo for more dough, right?”

  “How do you figure?” she said, her voice bristling.

  “Hey, I believed the damsel story as long as I could—the wrong-place, wrong-time girl. Savaged and abandoned for the bad luck of having long legs. But let’s face it. She was just another badger girl making bucks on her back. She got greedy and paid the price,” Hop said, fast and cold.

  Frannie didn’t say anything. The phone booth felt 120 degrees. He could almost hear the wood planks spreading.

  “Jesus, Frannie, I can practically see your Little Orphan Annie eyes now,” he said. “Come on. You’ve been around long enough to write the end to this sob story.”

  She sighed. “Just because they may have gotten recruited into some blackmail scheme doesn’t mean Sutton and Merrel didn’t hurt her, or worse. The one doesn’t cancel out the other.”

  “Well, there’s evidence for one and not the other, so you run the odds.” Even as he said it, he pictured the stained blanket, its heavy rings of rusted blood, its meaty odor. Had he really seen it? Or was it one of his frenzied dreams, nights shot through with booze, sleeping sitting up in his car, Iolene becoming Jean becoming, somehow, Midge again. The Red Lily itself seemed more and more a fever dream with blurred edges, fun-house grit and pop-up horrors.

  “There’s evidence for everything,” Frannie sighed. “Too much evidence and not enough proof. My editor won’t let me run anything until I can get a PD go-ahead. And I could show Jean Spangler and Judge Crater are living in tract housing in Mountain View and the boys in blue would still not raise a paunchy finger. They’re bored with my face.”

  With that face, impossible, he almost said, would surely have said forty-eight hours ago or less. Now he couldn’t say a word.

  But her face could never be boring. It had too many bright things in it, too many pr
omises of warm hands, knowing smiles, morning coffees on kitchen tables with red-checkered cloths, long car rides in sunny glades, Saturday-night shows with hands touching light and eyes flickering at the screen. Real things with heft behind them, brimming with their own dark wonder. A relentless wonder that stirred him whenever he looked at her.

  But something suddenly hit Hop. “Wait a minute. You said Iolene.”

  “What?” she said quizzically.

  “A few minutes ago, you said Iolene might be as gone as Jean

  Spangler by now. Where’d you get that name?” She paused. A split second—maybe less—but it was there. Then

  she said, “I told you. The fellow at the studio. He gave me her name.”

  “Bless you, Frannie Adair, you’re a horrible liar.”

  “I’m not bad on occasion. But listen, you don’t tell me everything. Why should I tell you?”

  “You shouldn’t,” Hop said. ‘You shouldn’t.” His head throbbed at the thought of how much else she might know by now. The memory of Midge’s employee photograph flirted through his brain and suddenly his blood was beating against his skin again. He had no choice. He had to find out. “Listen,” he continued, trying to keep his voice from trembling, “can I see you?”

  “Okay,” she agreed, voice slipping back into a breathier tone. “Meet me at Don’s Bar and Grill in a half hour. Hey, Peggy Spangler called. She wanted your phone number. Wouldn’t tell me why.”

  “Did you give it to her?”

  “No. She said she called every sheet in town and you didn’t work for any of them,” Frannie said, and Hop could almost see her grin. “I told her you were freelance, which is true, after a fashion.”

  “I’ll be there in thirty,” Hop said, hanging up. He wasn’t worried about Peggy Spangler. She was a detour. Another girl with something hard and metal knocking around in her chest, a can of thumbtacks, a rusty alarm clock. Another blank face with dollar signs for eyes.

  Fuck, Hop, can the purple prose. And don’t worry about Frannie Adair. Never waste your time worrying about someone who can’t

  even lie over the phone.