The Kind One (4 page)

“Darla, don’t be mad. This wasn’t my idea.”

She discovered a hangnail, scratched at it with her thumbnail, put it to her teeth and tried to bite it off.

She was wearing a soft yellow sweater, a gray skirt, silk stockings, and gray, low-heeled shoes. She was hardly wearing any makeup because she hardly needed any makeup. I remember the night I first saw her sing and I thought she wasn’t the best or the worst singer in the world but she probably was the prettiest girl in the world.

She’d started singing at the Peacock Club about five months ago. Within a couple of weeks, Bud had sent her to his doctor for a checkup. A couple weeks more and she showed up wearing a ring with a ruby the size of a marble, then six or seven weeks ago Bud had made her stop singing because he didn’t like other guys looking at her.

She opened her purse and took out a little silver flask. She unscrewed the cap and took a drink, then gave me a smirk. “Vodka. He can’t smell it on me. And what he can’t smell can’t hurt him.” She offered the flask to me, but I shook my head. “Oh, come on. I know you’re dying for it. I can see it in your face.”

“No thanks.”

She shrugged and returned the flask to her purse. I noticed a charm bracelet on her wrist—a silver chain a-dangle with a star, a crescent moon, a heart, a man’s hat, a Scottish terrier, a mermaid, an owl, and a lightning bolt.

“I like your bracelet.”

“Yeah?” She raised her arm up and looked at it herself; sunlight was angling in on her side of the car, and the charms trembled and glittered in it. “Bud got it for me. To make up for what you guys did to Doc.”

We were rolling down the big hill on La Cienega. I turned left on Fountain. She said: “It’s okay, Danny. I don’t blame you for it.”

I realized my fingers were squeezing the wheel so hard they were turning white, so I loosened my grip.

“I guess it was all my fault,” said Darla. “I should’ve just given him the cupcake.”

“So you didn’t know about it. About what Bud was gonna have us do.”

“Course not. I loved Doc.”

Darla was spending most of her time at Bud’s house these days, but she still kept her apartment, in a building on Fountain near Fairfax. She wanted me to stop off there so she could check her mail and pick up some things.

I parked the car out front but when I started to open the door she put her hand on my arm.

“No, Danny. You stay here.”

“But—but Bud said—”

“I know what Bud said, but let’s get something straight. We’re both stuck with this situation for now, but that doesn’t mean I want you following me around everywhere like you’re my little poodle. I’ll be back in five minutes.”

Fifteen minutes later I was getting worried. I started thinking I’d been on the job less than a half hour and Darla was maybe kidnapped already, she was trying to scream out my name but she had a gag in her mouth and two muscle-bound goons were throwing her in their car and I got out and headed toward the apartment house.

It was a five-story yellow-brick building. One of those swank kind of places, with a green awning. The door to the lobby swung open and the doorman held it for Darla, who had an armful of clothes. She saw me and said: “Gimme a hand.”

As I was taking the clothes a young, tall guy in a sharp suit came out of the lobby and walked past us. He gave Darla a grin and a rakish wink.

I watched him walk toward the street, resettling his snap-brim hat on his head; he had a happy-as-a-clam look about him.

“Who’s that?” I said.

“I got no idea.”

“He winked at you.”

“Danny, if I had a nickel for every time a guy winked at me I’d be richer than Rockefeller.”

I put the clothes in the car and we drove off. Darla lit up a Lucky Strike and tossed the match out the window; then she leaned back against the door and blew smoke at me and gave me a long look.

“I get it now.”

“Get what?”

“You’re not my bodyguard. You’re a spy.”

“A spy?”

“Bud thinks I’m sneaking around behind his back seeing other guys. So what did you think, Danny? That I’d been up in my apartment balling that guy that winked at me?”

“I didn’t think anything.”

   Evelyn’s Klip n’ Kurl was on Beverly Boulevard. I started to go in with Darla, but she blocked the doorway. “Sorry, Danny. No boys allowed.” She opened her purse and pulled out a bill. “Here’s ten bucks. Go buy yourself a nice steak. Or a not-nice girl. Or whatever you want.”

I stiffened a little and stared at the money.

“No thanks.”

Darla sighed, and returned the ten to her purse. “All men are morons. You included. Just get lost for a couple of hours, okay?”

She shut the door in my face.

I walked off slowly down the street. It was warm and sunny, and I took my coat off and slung it over my shoulder, and loosened my tie.

An old Apperson rattled past, its tailpipe billowing smoke. A slackjawed woman was driving, leaning forward with an anguished look on her face, clearly desperate to either get somewhere or get away from somewhere.

Two teenage girls were looking at me kind of wide-eyed and giggly as they walked by. I’d forgotten about my gun in my shoulder holster, and I put my coat back on.

An ice cream cone minus the ice cream lay smashed on the sidewalk. A pair of sparrows pecked at the brittle bits of cone.

Step on a crack. Break your mother’s back.

There was a filling station on the corner. A sign above a red Coca-Cola cooler said: NO LOAFING. I opened the lid, reached down into the icy water, pulled out a dripping bottle of Coca-Cola, paid for it, and immediately went on my way.

I walked down the street trying to remember just one thing about my mother. Name? Age? Height? Weight? Color of eyes? Color of hair? For just a moment I thought I glimpsed some glimmering something, some look in her eyes as she looked at me as I stood in some ghostly, long-lost doorway, but it was gone before I could nail it down.

A guy with no legs was sitting on the sidewalk in front of a hardware store. He was selling combs and brushes out of a suitcase. A sign said: WAR VETEREN—I LOST MY LEGS FOR YOU.

“How much?” I said.

He scrutinized me from under his battered hat.

“Brush is two bits. Comb’s a dime.”

“I’ll take a brush and a comb.”

“Okey doke. Pick ’em out.”

I picked out a black comb and a pink brush; then I dug in my pants pocket for some change.

“I was watching you coming up,” he said. “I thought you was a war veteran too the way you was walking. But now I see you close up I see you ain’t nearly old enough.”

I handed him a quarter and a dime.

“Nope. Not old enough.”

I started to walk away, but then he said: “Hey mister, I’m awful dry. How’s about lending me that sody pop?”

I gave it to him. He looked up at me and gave a harsh, nasty laugh, as though he’d just put something over on me.

I went back to my car, which was parked just down the street from the beauty parlor. I slid behind the wheel, slumped down, tugged down the brim of my hat.

I went to sleep fast, and started dreaming. I dreamed about a girl, but it wasn’t Darla, she was dark where Darla was fair but she was nearly as pretty but I didn’t know her name, and then I dreamed about a train and the clackety clack of its hard wheels, clackety clack, clackety clack…

I woke up. I looked at my watch. I’d gotten myself lost for the requested period of time.

I went in the beauty parlor.

Darla was sitting in a chair leafing through a
Ladies’ Home Journal
. A hatchet-faced woman dressed like a nurse was standing beside her. Darla’s hair had disappeared into fifteen or so gleaming metallic curlers, which were attached to a tangle of black electrical cords which snaked down from a sinister-looking black apparatus a couple of feet above her head.

I couldn’t help but laugh. Darla looked up at me and said: “Stop it.” Then she said: “Hey! Stop it!”

Then she threw the magazine at me, but she too was laughing.

   WE CAME OUT of the Klip n’ Kurl. “I’m hungry,” Darla said.

“What are you hungry for?”

“Fried chicken. Lots and lots of hot and greasy fried chicken.”

“You know the Hottentot Hut?”

“Sure. Let’s go.”

People were getting off work, and there was a lot of traffic. I was glad I didn’t have a regular job and my job was driving Darla around. She went in her purse for the vodka and finished it off, then had me stop at a liquor store to buy some more. She tried to get me to join her again, and I said no again.

“’Cause it’s not sundown yet? He’s not God, Danny. He can’t see what we’re doing.”

“He might have somebody watching us,” and I checked the rearview mirror. “Somebody might be tailing us.”

“You mean a spy that’s spying on the spy?”

“I’m not a spy.”

“It’s no fun drinking alone. You’re a goddamn party pooper.”

Somebody like Darla was practically always going to get what she wanted from somebody like me. I’d never had vodka before, and I hated it. I thought it tasted like rubbing alcohol. But pretty soon as the bottle passed back and forth I felt like busting out in a song.

I couldn’t remember ever being as happy as I was driving north across Hollywood toward the Hottentot Hut with Darla. I felt like we were escaping something, like school, or prison, or like the car had plunged off a bridge into a river and sunk to the bottom but we had gotten out and now we were holding hands as we floated upwards in a swirl of silvery bubbles, any moment now we would break the surface and look at each other and laugh because we were Danny and Darla and we were still alive.

We drove up Highland Avenue then across the Cahuenga Pass and onto Ventura Boulevard. The parking lot of the Hottentot Hut only had two or three other cars in it. As we walked inside, Hawaiian music was playing. A ceiling fan made of dried palm fronds swished over our heads.

We took a table, and ate ourselves silly. Washed down the chicken with cold beer. Darla’s hands and lips shined with grease. She wiped off her mouth with a paper napkin then reached across the table and wiped my mouth off. “You’re a funny fella,” she said.

“Yeah?”

“All that Two Gun Danny stuff. Just doesn’t seem to fit you.”

“I guess I must’ve been different before I got hit in the head.” I was quiet for a minute, chewing, thinking. “I was Bud’s favorite, so they say. Before—you know. Now I think I disappoint him all the time.”

“Maybe it’s a good thing you disappoint him.”

In a little while she said: “I need to make the river run.” She got up and went to the ladies’ room.

A guy at the next table leaned toward me. “Hey, bub. What did you do to deserve it?”

“Deserve what?”

“That goddamn gorgeous girl.”

I just smiled and shrugged. He laughed. I didn’t mind him thinking what he was thinking.

When she came back to the table she was dancing along with the music like a hula hula girl, hips slowly swaying, arms moving in a wavelike way. She sat down and gave me a dreamy smile. “Aloha, Danny.”

“We better get going. Bud’s probably wondering what happened to us.”

“Fuck Bud.”

I paid up and we left. The sun was gone and the stars were out. We drove back over the Cahuenga Pass. Darla was curled up in a corner of the seat, arms crossed, eyes closed. She sighed, and murmured something.

“What?” I said.

“Mutual Movies Make Time Fly.”

I’d heard that before—it was the motto of a movie company. She kept talking but didn’t bother to open her eyes. “You like my hair, Danny?”

“Sure.”

“You should’ve told me, then. When a girl gets her hair done, that’s what she wants to hear.”

“I like your hair.”

She wiggled around a bit to get more comfortable. The headlights of oncoming cars lit her up, and left her dark, and lit her up, and left her dark.

   I dropped her off at the Peacock Club, then drove home. Except I figured out I wasn’t ready to go home, so I stopped off at Healy’s Bar. It was on Vine near Melrose.

As I walked up to the entrance, an old stewbum stumbled out, looked at me with amazement, and said: “Brian!”

“You got the wrong guy,” I said. I tried to walk past him, but he grabbed my arm. He had a black stocking cap pulled down over his forehead, and his breath smelled like his insides were rotting out.

“You ain’t Brian Dunnigan?”

“Nope.” I pulled my arm away and went in.

It wasn’t a place for fancy people. It was long and narrow and dark, like a tunnel to nowhere, and had that vomity dead-end smell joints like that always have. A smoke-dimmed picture of Custer’s Last Stand was hanging on the wall. Kid McCoy was sitting at the bar with his drinking pals George and Sonny. They all greeted me by name, they were happy to see me because they knew I would buy them all a drink. I got a vodka for myself.

“How can you drink that belly-wash?” said Kid McCoy. “Only queers and Communists drink that shit.”

“I know a girl that drinks it. She got me started.”

“A girl, huh?” He shook his head and stared broodingly into space like I’d just explained everything.

McCoy had been the middleweight champ of the world back in the 1890s. The phrase “the real McCoy,” meaning the genuine article, came from him. He’d got in a fight in a saloon with a guy who’d refused to believe he was Kid McCoy. When the guy woke up ten minutes later, he rubbed his jaw and said: “Geez, I guess that
was
the real McCoy.”

McCoy got really rich then spent every dime on women and booze and the high life. He was married nine times. Then he met somebody he wanted to make wife number ten. But she started getting nervous that he wanted to marry her for her money, because she was getting divorced from this wealthy guy and was about to make a big pile of dough on it. She started talking about maybe moving to New York after the divorce instead of marrying McCoy, so one night he got drunk and shot her in the head with a .32 revolver. And then he left her apartment and ran amok and shot and wounded three other people before the cops finally stopped him. Both the judge and the jury went easy on him because he used to be famous, and all he got was an eight-year bit in Quentin.