The Song Is You Read online

  “What do you want to go there for, kid? You don’t want to get into that. Honest.” He looked at Hop and his lids went heavy. His whole

  body seemed to sink deeper into itself. “It’s not a place you wanna be unless you can’t help it.”

  “I just need to make sure—”

  “Kid, they sure as hell ain’t talking there. You don’t have to worry about that.” He shook his head.

  “All the same,” Hop said, waiting.

  Townsend sighed, turned his head, and seemed to be staring at the picture on his wall calendar, the topless girl with high black boots straddling the top of a fireman’s truck, the hose wrapped around her, releasing a few stray drops.

  Without turning back to Hop, he flicked a small card from a container on the top of his desk and tossed it at him.

  “All the same,” he said. Then, looking back at Hop, he added, “Watch what you wish for, kid.”

  Hop walked back down the spiral staircase and down the hallway until he was back in the main room, which was even more jumbled with people. A small jazz band had taken the stage and was playing a raucous version of “That Old Master Painter.”

  “Oh, if it isn’t Hop …,” he heard some girl chirp, reaching out to him, fingertips just barely on his arm, but before he could turn, the crowd had pushed him on. The brief smell of her perfume passed through him and he almost stopped, but the scramble to get around the dance floor shoved him further along and suddenly he was back near the far wall and the crammed tables filled with the serious drinkers.

  As he moved past, intending to make it to the front door, he saw a flicker of auburn hair out of the corner of his eye.

  Frannie Adair, alone, wearing a deep green dress with amber buttons that glittered, sending flocks of light across the wall to her side.

  She gave him a small wave.

  He walked to her table. “I don’t see how …,” he started, but couldn’t finish. Trying again, he said, “And dressed for the part,” trying to match her nonchalance.

  “It’s my job,” she said with just a trace of self-consciousness as she

  straightened her satin-edged collar. “I’m good at it. Like you.”

  “But you didn’t follow me.”

  “No. This is just your bad luck. I followed him.”

  She pointed across the room to a small corner table clotted with

  random girls. Hop peered closer.

  And there he was: Marv Sutton. Alone and holding court, tie loose around his neck and a cigar in his hand.

  “So where’s Hardy?”

  “Looks like Laurel’s flying solo tonight. Maybe he’ll only get in half the trouble.”

  “You’re going over to get a quote,” Hop said, suddenly realizing. He tried to hide a distant panic. “Maybe I can handle it for you. I’m imagining something along the lines of, ‘I’m a happily married man with three beautiful children. I love my wife dearly. I never even met the girl.’”

  “A little too late for that.”

  “How about, ‘Sure, I took her for a ride. A hell of a broad. I’d do

  her again … if only I could find her.’”

  She looked at him.

  “Over the line? Sorry. I’m all classed out.” He slumped down in the seat next to her, the weight of everything beginning to settle in his shoulders. “You trying to lose me my job? Or worse?”

  “Hey,” she said. “If you’re clean—or as clean as you types get—I’ll leave you well out of it. I’m not out to break a story about some studio flack with loose lips. Where’s the headline in that?”

  “So,” he said, pulling his chair closer to her. “What’d you find out today?”

  “Oh, all kinds of things. But no, I’m not getting a quote from Sutton. Not yet. I don’t want to tip my hand. I’m just watching.”

  “Sounds more like a private eye than a reporter.”

  “What does that make you?”

  “The bastard child of both, baby.”

  “I thought you were the palace guard.”

  “So you’ve been bracing the staff? The waiters, the busboys, the bartenders? Did they give you the lowdown?”

  She shook her head. “Actually, it’s amazing, Mr. Hopkins: they were all hired in the last six months.” She gave him a stare, then added, “I didn’t know you had such pull.”

  Hop tried not to smile. “Let’s have a drink.”

  “I never have drinks with men who are prettier than me.”

  “Neither do I,” Hop said. “You never know what might happen.

  “Ah, but I do,” she said, grinning.

  “So sure, huh?” Hop waved the bartender over. “You give me too

  much credit. C’mon. Help a lonely fellow out. What’s your tonic?”

  She sighed, hands curling around her russet handbag.

  “Whiskey highball.”

  “Make that two.”

  She turned back to him. “But only one round. I’m on the job,

  sailor.”

  “Me too, baby. Me too. So before I came over last night to pour my bitty heart out, what were you doing?”

  “Sleeping, remember?” “Before that.” He leaned toward her ever so slightly, as if in

  confidence.

  She looked at him. “Why does that matter?”

  “It doesn’t,” Hop said, easy. The way she was tensing next to him was interesting. He was just grazing something, almost by accident. And whatever it was, it was turning her into something else. Something he knew.

  “I was on a date. Sort of. A fellow who could maybe help me with other stories. Down the line.” She looked at Hop only out of the corner of her eye, seemingly focused on trying to see through the crowd to Marv Sutton. “The way to get it, the things you need, with these guys—well, you have to give them a long line. You have to dance on the hook a little.”

  Hop thought for a second. “You can’t be both the fisherman and the fish,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Your comparison. The metaphor,” he said, drawing out his five-dollar word. “The line and the hook—which end are you on?”

  “Don’t you know?” she said. “Just like in your biz, I’m always on both ends at once.”

  “And the job is telling them apart.”

  She looked at him. Then, slowly, she seemed to be trying to regain her balance. “So why did you want to know what I was doing last night?”

  Eyes on her, Hop folded his arms across his chest and reclined a little in his chair. He was playing it soft—this thing he was playing. He almost always played it soft. Those guys who couldn’t do it, who were always rushing the gate, he found pathetic.

  “I don’t know, Frannie,” he said evenly. “There was something about it. About the moment I rang your bell. The idea of you on your bed. One shoe off. Your breath on your pillow. I have a picture of you in my head. And you’re such a smart, strong girl, it feels like I’m the little boy caught at the peephole.” He paused for effect, then repeated, “I keep thinking of you on your bed, one shoe off.”

  She listened intently and he could feel her taking the words and weighing them, weighing him, caught between puzzled irritation and something else.

  And he knew she was seeing the image he’d just described. Of herself. And she was wondering, was that an alluring image? Wasn’t it just forlorn? Was it something, really, that would run hot through a man’s veins? Is that what he is saying?

  “Funny the way you put it. Almost like it was me exposing myself last night," she said, voice thick. Then turning smooth fast. "Instead of you."

  Either he’d really misread her, Hop thought, or this was her last defense.

  “Hey,” he said, flashing her a smile, fingers spread on his chest. “I got nothing to hide. And I’m easy.”

  She couldn’t hide her own grin. “You’re half right.”

  “And you’ll notice,” he added, “I haven’t taken back a single drunken confession.”

  “Wouldn’t matter if you did.” She
finished off her drink. “In vino veritas. Or so the Fathers used to tell me.”

  “Let me get you one more, then.”

  “No thanks,” she said, reaching for her handbag. “I don’t want to tilt the mitt too far with Mr. Sutton. And besides, in this case”—she waved her finger between the two of them—”I know just which side of the metaphor I’m on.”

  She stood, and as she did she laid her palm, for one split second, on the lapel of his suit. It was warm and he felt it there.

  “It’s okay.” He rose, pushing the table out of the tight corner so she could leave. “I’ve got a long line.”

  She half turned in response, but before he could see her face, the crush of clubgoers swallowed her up.

  He sat for a while, catching glimpses of Sutton. He knew the ones like this. He knew them even back in Syracuse. Even there, there were ones like this. Something in the way they carried themselves, the way they walked through a room, parked their cars, lit their cigarettes, groomed their hair. It wasn’t something you could put your finger on. A kind of unruffled self-satisfied contentment wrapped just barely around a seething center. Something was in there, wedged deep, dating back to the time they saw their pet dog run over, lost their sister to polio, felt Mother’s overly tender hands on their bodies, got teased at school for the club foot, caught Daddy shtupping the nanny, or watched as the neighbors fished a dead body out of the river. Who the fuck knew? And who knew why the thing nestled tight in them made them like this, when plenty of other fellas had bad memories and never wanted to hog-tie a girl or lynch anybody?

  He’d leave that to the head doctors.

  All he knew was Marv Sutton had that look, even if you didn’t see it on the silver screen but only in places like the Eight Ball or the Red Lily.

  He thought about going over and talking to him. But what would he say? And why would he say it? What good could it do? He ordered a second bourbon. As he sat there, he felt a wave of uncomfortable recollections stream in and begin to settle in his head. Of looks that had passed between Sutton and Merrel that night, of the aggressive

  Marv and the strangely cold Gene, famous baby face set in stone, sitting with Jean Spangler between them and one of them flipping the string of beads that hung down the front of her dress. Flipping them like she was a doll or a department-store mannequin. Of Iolene looking at him, looking at him again and again, leaning backward to catch his eye as he pretended to listen to the fluttery nothings issuing from Miss Hotcha’s candied mouth.

  And later Iolene’s hand on his arm.

  ‘You’ll come, right? To the Red Lily?”

  “Sure, kid, I’ll meet you there,” he’d said. “Right after I do my gentlemanly duty and escort this charming young lady home.” He’d been glib and winking about it and she was straightfaced and yes, he saw it, anxious. Maybe frightened.

  As he watched Sutton now, he began to think: Was this a coincidence, Sutton showing up tonight? Or willful? Tony Lamont warns him to stay away and the guy can’t stop himself from showing up, thumbing his nose at fate?

  Before he knew it, Hop was walking over to Sutton, drink in hand.

  The long ruffle of girls that had been curled around his table had narrowed down to two redheads in the Rita Hayworth vein, one in bright yellow and one in midnight blue. A grinning fellow in hound’stooth rounded out the group. What am I doing, he half thought. I should be steering as clear as I can from this guy. I don’t want any connection at all between me and the lead Frannie Adair’s got. Why am I doing this…

  “Marv Sutton as I live and breathe,” Hop said as he reached the table—with as much loud bravado as he could muster.

  Sutton looked up with his famous dancing eyes, just as they appeared in The Crazy Caravan. A face that looked so bright and jubilant on-screen hung snide in real life.

  “This is, honest, deja vu,” Hop added, swinging the glass in his hand so it came just short of splashing bourbon on the table.

  Sutton didn’t say anything. The man in the hound’s-tooth straightened up in his seat and scowled a little. By the Dan Duryea imitation, Hop guessed this fellow for a studio employee. “Care to introduce yourself, buddy-o,” the man said.

  “Easy, Bob,” Sutton said, smooth as an oil slick. “You do look familiar, pal.”

  “Gil Hopkins—in the press office.” Hop shoved his hand out.

  Sutton pretended not to see it and let loose an easy smile. “Sure,

  kid, sure. Pull up a chair.”

  Hound’s-Tooth Bob seemed to relax and took Hop’s outstretched hand instead, yanking him down into a chair.

  “So what’s doing tonight?” Hop ventured, settling in the seat, half pressed against the face of the redhead beside him. It was a face so empty Hop felt he was looking straight through it, so light he thought it might blow away. Was she a paper doll?

  Hound’s-Tooth Bob was trying to get his attention, tapping his shoulder to get him to turn toward him.

  “You’re the one who banged my secretary,” he said, wagging his finger.

  Hop thought for a second. “Me?” he finally said.

  “My secretary, Ruthie.” The grin was wide. “I do Marv’s books. And I only know about you and Ruthie because Tony Lamont wanted me to give her the sack. He said she was laying a publicity man in the file room every day at three instead of taking expense receipts to accounting. Tsk, tsk.”

  Hop suddenly remembered the girl with the short bangs and cat’seye glasses and the baby fat around her middle. It was only for a week or so during the first month he was at the studio. A way to congratulate himself on the new job.

  “I’m not the only fella in publicity,” Hop said. “You sure it was me?”

  As he said it, he noticed Sutton’s growing interest. He seemed to find Hop a hairsbreadth more interesting.

  “I think it was you,” Sutton said, looking Hop in the eye but not moving, sitting as still as a king or a statue.

  ‘Yeah?” Hop said, finishing his drink and setting it down with a smile. He could see something in both men’s eyes. Something he could work. “Okay. Guilty as charged. But let me tell you, fellas, it only lasted a week. On Monday she was a virgin, covered her face with her hands for the entire lock-kneed deflowering. But” —Hop let loose as nasty a smirk as he could fashion—“by Friday she was ready to take on the entire USC Thundering Herd, front to back, top to bottom. I never saw one turn so fast. She had tricks for me by week’s end and she even let me do her sister after work.”

  “Is that what killed it? Bob grinned.

  “Nah.” Hop waved his hand. “She found out I was married, called my old lady, and threatened to twist a broken bottle in her face if she didn’t divorce me.”

  “Bitch,” Sutton said, shaking his head, the first real animation Hop had seen in him. “Listen, pal, they ever give you a hard time like that, two quick ones to the face. Open hand. Like this.” He took the face of the redhead next to him in his left hand and feigned a hard cut to her jaw with his right. Even though Sutton didn’t connect, he still managed to jerk the girl’s face hard enough to crack her head against the wall. Not the stuff of Crazy Caravan, that was for damn sure. “Ow,” the girl murmured, rubbing the back of her neck.

  “So you’re the one who gave that lesson to my wife,” Hop said. “Well, you forgot to tell her about the open-hand part.”

  “Get a load of this one,” Hound’s-Tooth Bob harrumphed, looking over at Sutton, who almost joined him. “A bona fide court jester.”

  “I remember you now,” Sutton said, lifting one manicured finger a sliver of an inch. “One night we rendezvoused with some ladies you brought, right?” He shot a wink at Bob before adding, “You’re good at bringing girls. That’s why you’re a comer.”

  “Is that why?” Hop smiled, as he always did with these types. “I wasn’t sure you remembered that night. But I think I left before the party really took off.” Hop couldn’t imagine why he was bringing this up to Sutton. How could this help? But he couldn’t stop h
imself.

  “Is that so?” Sutton said blankly.

  “Yeah, you went off to the Red Lily, if I remember correctly.” Hop

  watched for any flicker of meaning from either man.

  Bob rolled his eyes. “That old rat trap.”

  “You been there lately?”

  Sutton’s jaw twitched ever so slightly, but it was hard to tell if it carried any significance other than bored dismissal of the question. He seemed like a man always on the verge of boredom. Tapping out a cigarette, he groaned, “I thought you publicity guys were supposed to be in the know. That place has been dead for months.”

  “I guess it depends what you’re looking for.”

  “It does,” Sutton said, looking off onto the dance floor as if thinking, gropingly, about something he couldn’t quite reach.

  “It’s purely for the hulking masses now,” Bob sighed. “It’s lost all its native delicacy.”

  “These places have a shelf life,” said Hop, trying to get a bead on Sutton. Was he just a lout or was that thing Hop thought he’d seen in him from across the room as deep and malignant as it appeared? He watched him and thought he saw something twisting around behind his hollow gaze.

  “But Gene still drops in?” Hop ventured, using every angle of his springy, anything-goes tone.

  “Maybe,” Sutton said. “We don’t socialize much anymore. Can’t keep that one out of the harbor and skid row. He got a whiff of the docks and he can’t get enough of it.”

  “It’s epic. The stuff of high melodrama,” Bob said. “Gene Merrel, that shanty-Irish baby face, that ululating voice. Dancing his way from the slickest of soundstages straight into the gutter and back again. His feet never touching the ground. Mr. Muckety-Muck can’t get enough of the muck.”

  “Yeah, well, he better make sure he keeps those wings on his feet,” Sutton said. “I don’t want to see my gold piece sinking in that muck.”

  “Marv here prefers to be the muckiest part of any scene,” Bob added, evidently a little high and feeling bold. “He was upstaged.”

  Sutton shrugged and lit a cigarette, open cuffs dangling. Hop looked over at him, working at an idea. Maybe the high-life degeneracy that used to intrigue him lost its gleamy allure. Maybe there was some real thinking going on behind the movie-star mug with its long jaw and massaged and scented fleshiness.