Where the Truth Lies (36 page)

We pulled up to the emergency-room dock at Saint Mary’s, the only entrance open at this hour. Adolfo intended to go in with me, but I told him there was no need for him to be waiting in an emergency room full of sick people and the victims of knife and gun wounds. This depiction mollified his eagerness, and he told me he’d stay right there until I knew more.

A small desk served as the sentry post for the emergency room, manned by a Russian woman who’d seen everything and was reading a romance novel. I asked her if anyone had been admitted there in the last twelve hours with a head injury. She said she’d need a name. I said the name was “Cledrow Gommelfarver.” I spelled it for her and made her check for the name twice. I figured that if anyone (such as this mythical and unlikely private detective whom I’d fantasized Vince hiring) were to ask her the name thatI’d asked for, even if she remembered it accurately it would sound like she hadn’t heard it properly. “Something like Cledrow Gommelfarver,” she’d say in her heavy accent, and the detective would roll his eyes. That’s if she remembered. My guess was she’d simply say it was a funny name she’d never heard before.

I didn’t actually think Vince was going to hire a private detective. I didn’t even think he doubted my story. I just wanted to play it safe.

I returned to the car, looking grim and heartbroken. Adolfo looked concerned.

“I was too late,” I said bitterly.

Bye, Cliffy. We hardly knew ye.

Adolfo crossed himself and apologized for not having gotten here faster. I reassured him: “No, no, he passed away before my plane landed. His last words were ‘No tears.’” I said this primarily because I wasn’t a good enough actress to credibly cry on demand. Better I play the stoic. “His body isn’t even here; it’s at a funeral home in Rego Park.”

Adolfo offered to drive me there, even if it was now well after midnight. I shook my head. “No, they’re flying his ashes down to South Florida tomorrow, where he was born. There will be a ceremony there, and his remains will be scattered throughout the Everglades he loved so well.” Adolfo nodded compassionately.

I asked Adolfo if he’d be kind enough to drive me back to JFK. I’d check in at the Hilton hotel there (“Not that I’ll get any sleep,” I sighed) and take the first available flight to Miami in the morning.

Adolfo got me to the Hilton, gave me his personalized Fugazy card, and said if I needed anything at all, I should not hesitate to call him. I pointed out that the regular airport shuttle would get me to the Air Florida ticket window in under ten minutes. I tried to tip him but he refused it, saying it was included in the billing.

The Hilton was used to individuals staggering in at threeA .M. minus their luggage, their connecting flight canceled, who preferred to rent a room for a few hours than to spend the night in a plastic chair at the terminal. The night clerk asked if I needed a wake-up call in the morning. I asked for a sevenA .M. call.

I got to my room, took off all my clothes, and hung them in the bathroom, where I’d let my morning shower steam some of the wrinkles out of them for me. I flipped on the TV, turned to Channel 2 for what was left of the Late, Late Show, and yanked the bedspread and the thin blanket off the bed. As I lay down on the cool sheets, a public service commercial ended and we went back to the movie. It would have been fitting if the movie had featured Vince and Lanny, or at least Michael Caine, but it wasThe Quiet Man, with John Wayne and the hauntingly lovely Maureen O’Hara. The two were being driven by Barry Fitzgerald on their first date; John looked handsome, but I only had eyes at this moment for Maureen, lovely Maureen, her opulently red hair giving the TV set quite a challenge in the tint-and-hue department. As I fell asleep, Maureen was smiling sadly on the screen, with a questioning look in her eyes that was surely intended only for me.

TWENTY-FOUR

Before she’d died, Maureen O’Flaherty had lived in Hollywood, Florida, if one believed the return address on a postcard she’d sent her mother. When I called Mrs. O’Flaherty early that next morning from my hotel room, I’d needed the first line of the address—“7GW c/o Ludlow”—and the street number I’d seen on the postcard, but I’d remembered the street’s name, because at the time, it had amused me: “North Dixie.” Surely an oxymoron to rival “Glen Campbell Special.” Living fifteen miles north of Miami Beach, Maureen would have had an easy commute to the several hotels and nightclubs at which she’d worked as a waitress.

So having been to Manhattan on the West Coast by way of the New York street set Vince had shown me, I was now surveying a Hollywood on the East Coast for whatever remnants I could find of Maureen O’Flaherty.

I located 1350 North Dixie at the corner of McKinley Street (the cross streets to Hollywood’s Dixie Highway being named after our chief executives from Washington through Coolidge, rising from the south to north in order of succession). It was one of many porcelain-white, gray-mortar mid-rise apartment buildings that had been slapped up twenty-five years ago. Its facing was now cracked and spackled by time, heat, and the occasional fusillade of a tropical rainstorm. Just outside its entrance, a man in his early sixties was seated in an aluminum lawn chair with a webbing of interwoven white and teal plastic. He sported a uniform that only partially conceded he was the building’s doorman: dark brown pants with a gold stripe running up each trouser leg, teamed with a yellow T-shirt that saidI CAN ’T BELIEVE I ATE THE WHOLE THING! His comb-over began virtually at one ear and ended just short of the other to form a shiny helmet over his skull. To make it worse, he’d streaked his hair with blond highlights. I could smell his Hai Karate aftershave from the end of the walk.

Upon my arrival in Miami, I’d rented a cool blue Camaro and driven it to Burn, Baby, Burn, a very trendy boutique that dished up dreamy, elegant outfits that seemed always on the verge of slipping off one’s body. I’d opted for a conservative number that still looked like I’d jumped into something comfortable and nearly missed. I could see the doorman perking up as I sashayed toward him.

“Hot out.” I smiled.

“I got cold Budweiser in the fridge in my apartment,” he offered. Jesus. It was eleven-thirty in the morning, he was at least thirty years older than me, I hadn’t said more than two words, andstill he was giving it a shot. “My name’s Tony,” he added.

“I could go for one and that’s for sure, but,” I sighed, “can you give me a rain check till later this afternoon? Right now I’m working.” I tilted my hips to one side as if to explain. “I’m Jill. You run this place, right?”

He nodded. “Pretty much.”

I lowered my voice. “You remember a party in Apartment 7GW named Ludlow? Back in the late fifties?”

“I ought to. I talked with him about an hour ago.”

As they say in the sacred liturgy of the Catholic Church: bingo. Forty bucks cash got Tony Gebbia to open up like a blown-glass pińata.

Ludlow in 7G West was Kef Ludlow, and judging by both his appearance and some idle conversation over the last fifteen years, Tony estimated the man’s age to be about the same as his own. Kef’s occupation had always been a murky issue. The one thing Tony knew for sure was that Ludlow was enslaved to the dog races, attending them five days a week. He’d have gone seven days, but they were closed on Sundays and Mondays, not so the dogs might rest but so that the personnel could.

Sometimes Tony got the impression that Ludlow had something to do with the gambling that was associated with greyhound racing. Tony ventured that he might be a bookie. This, in the family tree of organized crime, seemed very low to the ground, being to gambling what podiatry was to medicine. The local betting at the dog tracks in Florida was done on a pari-mutuel basis, with the track and the state deducting their cut, and it was hard to envision any big-time gamblers getting worked up because Bowser in the fifth was showing long odds and Spot had just been spayed.

In the late fifties, it seemed as if Ludlow had hit a run of luck, either because he was picking a string of winners or (if hewas in fact a bookie) because his customers were not. He’d stopped taking public transportation and had purchased a used Buick LeSabre the size of a small yacht. Ludlow started bringing home fewer groceries and eating out more. The doggie bags he came home with were from places like the Embers and the Lobster Trap, first-class steak-and-seafood joints. One year at Christmas he tipped Tony a twenty-dollar bill.

Sunday through Thursday in this time frame he’d leave the building at eight in the morning. He’d be wearing a straw panama and a lightweight white jacket with blue vertical stripes (Tony said it was made from thin crinkly material, which I took to mean seersucker) over a blue wash-and-wear short-sleeved shirt with white pants and a white belt. Some days Ludlow wore a tie. On these mornings he always sported a pair of prescription sunglasses (at the dog races, he wore only his regular glasses, as he felt that shades limited his powers of observation). He’d usually be whistling; “Lemon Tree” was a recurring favorite. In his hand would be a manila envelope. About a half hour later, still whistling, he’d return to his apartment. On Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays he’d reappear ten minutes later, having changed into a more casual outfit of polo shirt and navy blue polyester pants, and he’d be off to the dog races. On Sundays and Mondays, when the track wasn’t open, he’d come back from his errand and stay in his apartment. You could hear his TV through the door; he tended to like wrestling, jai alai, and baseball.

On Fridays and Saturdays he would not go out in the early morning but simply head straight to the greyhound track around eleven, dressed in his more casual outfit.

The lucky streak lasted only so long. By 1960, he’d sold his LeSabre, complaining that it used too much gas for city driving, and instead waited for the Number 24 bus two blocks north on Taft to take him to the races each day. He’d leave only at eleven, no longer at eight, with a brown-bag lunch he’d made the night before. He didn’t whistle much anymore, nor did he eat out. Hamburger Helper started to appear at the top of his grocery bags. He said you didn’t even need the hamburger most of the time, or certainly nowhere near as much as the box suggested; a little Mazola oil and oleomargarine added to the mix would serve you just fine.

Of Ludlow’s family, Tony knew nothing. His mail, when Tony saw it, was very ordinary and usually addressed to “Occupant.” In the glory years, he gotTV Guide every week, but later he said that the schedule in the newspaper was just as good. Packages that wouldn’t fit in the mailbox would be under Tony’s supervision, but Tony couldn’t remember anything unusual arriving for Ludlow in all the time he’d been there. Every five years, maybe a box of new checks from Florida First National Bank. Once, a package from Marboro Books had been delivered half-opened and Tony had seen its contents. One volume was calledHow to Beat the Pari-Mutuel Racket! The other was a photo essay book calledThe Art of the Nude, with lots of color photos.

After I’d drained Tony Gebbia (a process that made me feel like Dracula sucking on a hemophiliac) on the topic of Kef Ludlow—who took no vacations, had no visitors, and was a relative stranger to those who lived alongside him on the seventh floor west—I then produced two more twenties and explained to Tony that the focus of my interest was much more in a roommate Ludlow might have had during the late fifties.

Tony’s eyes narrowed a bit. “You mean the redhead?” I nodded and he warmed to the subject. “What a piece of assshe was. She could’ve sat on my face all day like I was a lawn chair and you’d never have heard me complain about it. When I read she was dead, up in New Jersey, I said, ‘Hey, if nobody else wants the body, I’ll take it.’” He smirked at the pithiness of his observation.

I wanted to spit in his face, but I needed to know what he knew. I asked how long she’d lived with Ludlow.

“Not so long and not very often. I don’t think it was a full-time thing. I never knew what their story was. He was, I don’t know, maybe twenty years older than her. He was no ladies’ man, I’ll tell you, even back then. Has a nose like Durante. I think he may have just been putting her up but not getting anything, although he liked us thinking he was. She must have been coming in like at two or three in the morning, ’cause although I saw her leave the building once or twice a week, usually in the late afternoon, I hardly ever saw her getting in. The only times I did were when she came in so late she’d be walking in as I went to meet the garbage pickup. She used to joke about us both wearing uniforms.” He indicated his pants. “Back then I wore the whole thing, shirt, clip-on bow tie, even the jacket, if it wasn’t too hot. She always wore her hotel uniform home ’cause she worked part-time in different hotels and it was easier to keep all her outfits in one place. She’d had the pants altered so they really tucked tight around her ass, then she had the jackets shortened so you could see it, and then she moved the buttons on her jacket and shirt so you could see some of her tits.”

My guess was that Maureen prided herself on her looks and that her work uniforms were standard issue, designed for men. I’m sure she found, pragmatically, that men tipped attractive women better than dumpy women. It was likely worth the investment on her part in order to garner sizable gratuities from the Miami Beach fat cats and celebrities she served.

Tony Vermin was still prattling on. “She liked me a lot. We could have had a thing, but our schedules were too different.” Yeah, that was it. Just the scheduling. Otherwise, Tony would have been a shoo-in for getting into Maureen’s tailored pants. Same problem for Tony with Kim Novak. Opposite coasts. Ah, what might have been.

She’d gotten a couple of letters at Ludlow’s address; he knew this because the postman had been confused and had asked Tony if there was an O’Flaherty in 7GW. He admitted to snapping back, “Yeah, but it doesn’t mean Ludlow’s dicking her,” which was probably more of an answer than the U.S. postal worker had required. Not a lot of mail had come to her, though. What letters he’d seen were from New Rochelle, New York.

Sometimes a week or two would go by without him seeing her at all. He’d ask Ludlow about her, and Ludlow always had a similar response. He’d say something along the lines of “I’m a lucky guy, Tony” or “She’s beautiful, isn’t she?” Answers that told Tony next to nothing but allowed Ludlow to lord it over him for a moment.