Kiss Your Elbow (12 page)

W
HEN WE REACHED THE
C
ASBAH
there was a 1934 Chevrolet with a New Jersey license plate parked out in front. Jan wasn't in his usual place on the stairs, and Helga wasn't in her room. And I didn't have any messages in my box.

“You might as well wait in my room while I go flush Helga out,” I told Maggie. “She's around somewhere.”

We walked up the stairs to the third floor. The door to Kendall's room was open and as we passed it, I heard voices. I looked in and there was Helga helping a thin, gray little man stuff Kendall's belongings into his huge wardrobe trunk. Helga asked me to come in and gave Maggie a sharp appraising look as she followed me. There wasn't much room, with the trunk open in the middle of the floor and the breakfast food and soap piled along the walls.

“This here is poor Mr. Thayer's brother come to get his things. This is Mr. Briscoe.” I held out my hand, but he ignored it and went on emptying the drawers of the bureau into the trunk.

“I'd like to tell you how sorry I am about you brother, Mr. Thayer.”

He paused in his work and looked at me. His face was completely colorless. He still had his hat on but the bits of hair that showed were almost white. It was impossible to believe this drab little man was Kendall's brother. His eyes were expressionless behind glittery gold-rimmed glasses. And when he spoke he scarcely opened his lips. He just squeezed the words through them like toothpaste.

“My name is Slattery and so was his before he changed it.” He threw a handful of dirty socks in the trunk drawer, closed it and opened another one. “That name wasn't good enough for him. He had to change it to Kendall Thayer when he got to be an actor. Amos Slattery wasn't good enough for him. Well, it's good enough for him now,” he said, viciously stuffing another handful of clothes into the trunk. “That's the name that's going to be on his grave, Amos Slattery. I hope he rests in peace, the son of a bitch.”

“You shouldn't say that about your own brother.” Helga was horrified. “He was a good man.”

“He was a no-good drunken bum. That's what he was. Nothing but trouble since the day he was born. Do you think when he was making all that money in pictures he'd send us any, or even save any? He did not. Spent every damn cent on himself. No insurance. No nothing. Just a lot of crummy clothes and soap and breakfast food and look at these…” And he jerked one of the drawers open so violently that it fell out and scattered newspaper clippings and photographs in a messy heap on the floor. Some of them were yellowed around the edges and crumbled when they hit the floor. “Every one of them telling what a great guy he was. How many
bathrooms he had, all about his swimming pool. But who's got to pay for burying him? I have. Who's been keeping him in liquor for the last ten years? I have…. And this is what I get…dirty clothes and newspaper clippings. He should have poured that acid in him long ago instead of spending all my money for whiskey.” He jabbed the last of the clothes in the trunk and slammed the drawer. He picked up the drawer that had fallen on the floor and turned it upside down and a few more clippings floated to the floor. Then he grabbed some of the soap cartons and filled the drawer and put it back in the trunk. I helped him close it. “There, I guess that's all.” He looked at Helga. “Will you have this expressed to me?” He wrote the address on a piece of paper and handed it to Helga.

“When is the ceremony, Mr. Slattery?” I said. “Kendall was a friend of mine. I'd like to be there.”

“There isn't going to be any ceremony.”

“What do you want me to do with all this food and soap and these paper clippings?” asked Helga.

“Burn them. Throw them away. I don't care. Send the trunk collect.”

Without even nodding goodbye, he rushed out of the room. I could hear him walking down the stairs. None of us said anything till he had made all three flights and we heard the front door slam.

“Whew!” said Maggie. “Nice fellow. So full of brotherly love.”

“He shouldn't talk that way about his own brother,”
said Helga, shaking her head. “No one should say that about his own brother…. It's not nice.”

Maggie had picked up some of the spilled clippings and was looking through them.

“That policeman come back this morning asking questions,” reported Helga. “He called him a bum, too. It's not nice to talk that way about people, even if they are dead.”

“What sort of questions, Helga?” I asked.

“If anyone heard anything strange.”

“And did they?”

“No. Nothing. But it's not nice to say things like that. He was a good man, Mr. Thayer, even if he did drink. He was a nice man…no bum like they say.”

“I know it, Helga.”

“Tim, look at this.” Maggie handed me a picture cut from
Photoplay.
It was Kendall standing in front of a huge Spanish house. He was in a white shirt opened at the neck and white flannel trousers. Even in the direct sunlight you could see how handsome he was. It was a shock when I remembered the Kendall I was used to—the cigarette bummer…the two-buck borrower—it didn't seem possible that he had ever looked like that and lived in so fancy a house. She shuffled some more of them. Reviews of pictures and plays. All mention of him was carefully underlined in red pencil. All at once, that thought that had been waiting round to be thought hit me. Those clippings that Kendall had brought in for me to read! I hadn't seen them in my room. I hadn't seen them or read them, but they had been on top of my
dresser where he had thrown them, and I didn't remember seeing them there.

Helga was starting to clean up the mess, and Maggie was still thumbing through the clippings. I ran back to my room, unlocked the door and looked on the dresser. The clippings were gone. I searched through all the drawers and even the wastebasket, but there was no trace of them. I went back to Kendall's room.

“Helga, did you see some of those clippings on my dresser yesterday?”

“Ja. Just like these.”

“What did you do with them?”

“I didn't do nothing with them. I leave them there. I don't take things out of rooms. You know that, Mr. Briscoe.”

“Well, maybe Jan did. Where is he, anyway?”

“Oh, no, Mr. Briscoe. Jan wouldn't do a thing like that.”

“Well, he knows where you keep your pass key. He got it for me the other night.”

“Oh, no. That isn't possible.”

“Where do you keep the pass key?”

“On the shelf in the broom closet, but he doesn't know. He's too little to understand.”

“Well, where is he? I'd like to ask him about the other night.”

“I'll call him, but I know he won't know nothing and he wouldn't do a thing like that.” She yelled out the door for him and, before the echo had died out in the maze of halls, Jan was standing in the doorway looking at us soberly with those incredible eyes. Before Helga could
start in, I asked her to let me talk to him alone. I didn't doubt that he had heard everything we had said, and perhaps he would think his mother would punish him. Maggie and I led him to my room and I closed the door. We sat on the bed and Jan leaned against the dresser. His head just came to the top of it. I took a quarter out of my pocket and held it in my hand so Jan could see it. “Now, Jan, here's a quarter for you if you'll tell me something.” He held out his grimy hand. “No, first you must tell me something and then you can have it.” He didn't say anything, but just looked at me.

“Did you come into my room yesterday and take something out of it?” He still didn't say anything.

“It's all right if you did, Jan. I'm not angry with you. I just want you to tell me if you did.”

“No,” he said. “Gimme money.” I handed over the quarter.

“Well, did you open the door for anyone? You remember, like you did for me when I had forgotten my key…you know, with the secret key?” He shook his head violently.

“Won't tell.”

“Why not? Surely you can tell me? I'm your friend.”

“Promised.”

“Promised who, Jan? Who did you promise not to tell?”

“The Phantom.”

Maggie and I looked at each other. She shrugged.

“You promised the Phantom you wouldn't tell you opened my door?” He didn't say anything. “Did he give you money, too?”

Jan nodded. I pulled out a fifty-cent piece. This little third degree was getting expensive.

“See this, Jan? I'll give you this if you'll tell. That's more than the Phantom gave you, wasn't it?”

His face lit up at the sight of the money and he reached for it. I held it over his head the way you do a piece of meat for a puppy. “Not until you tell me.”

“No,” he said stubbornly. And stuck his hands behind his back.

“Nana says it's all right.” Maggie brushed me out of the way and knelt down beside him. “I was talking to Nana this morning and she said for me to tell you to tell Mr. Briscoe all about the Phantom.” He turned his big eyes on her and opened them even wider.

“She did?” He looked at Maggie as she put her arm around his shoulder. “Honest?”

“Honest,” said Maggie. “So you see it's all right. Nana wouldn't tell you it was all right unless it was, would she, Jan?” He thought this over for a minute.

“Last night,” he said finally.

“You mean it was last night when the Phantom spoke to you?” He bobbed his head. “What did the Phantom look like? Was it a man like Mr. Briscoe or a girl phantom like me?”

He pointed to me.

“So it was a man phantom? What did he look like, Jan? Did he tell you he was a phantom?”

Jan shook his head. I was getting impatient, but I gritted my teeth and tried to force a lover-of-children smile on my mouth. “Then how did you know he was the Phantom?”

“He had great big green eyes. Great big green eyes like this.” And Jan pushed up the corners of his eyes with his two dirty forefingers, the way you indicate Asian eyes.

“Do you mean he was Asian, Jan? You know what an Asian looks like, don't you?”

“He was the Phantom.” Then suddenly it clicked. I'd remembered Jan was a comic-book addict and the Phantom in the comic books always had eyes like…exactly like harlequin glasses. I grabbed him by the shoulders and he started to cry. I had to give him the fifty cents before he would shut up and listen to me.

“Had you ever seen him before?” He shook his head. “Did he ask you to open my room specially, or just any room?”

“Your room. Can I go now?”

“Of course you can go. And thank you very much, Jan, and here's another quarter.” I gave it to him and he ran out. Maggie and I just remained squatting on the floor for a minute after he left. Finally I helped her up. She sat on the bed and I sat down on one of the two chairs. We both knew what the other was thinking and it wasn't very pleasant.

“That was a neat bit about Nana. Whatever made you think of it?” I didn't want to say what we were thinking. Not just yet.

“Didn't you have imaginary playmates when you were little? Most children do, particularly if they're lonely…. It must be the same man, mustn't it?”

“Yes. Bertha's pal. The one who didn't want to give her his autograph that morning.”

“Do you think that's enough proof for Lieutenant Heffran?”

“Just that Bertha didn't get the autograph of a man wearing funny glasses and a little kid, four years old, who says that he opened my door for a phantom? I can hear him laughing now.”

“You won't consider Mexico? The offer still goes.”

“Thanks, darling, but no.”

“I didn't think you would. I don't suppose there's much doubt in your mind, either, that the gent in the funny glasses is Bobby LeB., is there?”

“Is there in yours?”

“Not very much, I'm afraid. So it looks as though you'll never be happy until you find him and get your acid ration. I still don't see why he had to kill poor old Kendall just to get that book.”

“Unless he meant to kill me.” That was a pleasant thought I always came back to and quickly tried to run away from. “But he didn't mean to kill him. Kendall must have recognized him. But even so, what difference would that make?”

“How did Kendall get mixed up with him, anyway?”

“Maybe he heard Bobby and thought it was me….”

“I.”

“Okay. Then came in to see me. He'd left me a note saying that he wanted to see me as soon as I got in.”

“But why take the clippings, too? That seems very silly. If you want to take the trouble you can get notices of any show at the library.”

“I can't understand that part of it, either. There must
have been something in them. We'll have to do that. Go to the library and find them. We can do that tomorrow.”