“Mr. Bones?” he said, feeling very much like a straight man in a minstrel show.
“What’d I do this time?” Bones asked into his phone. He smiled as he asked the question, and Meyer unconsciously returned the smile.
“Nothing that I know of,” he said. He took out a small leather case, allowed it to fall open over his shield, and held the shield up to the plastic divider. “I’m Detective Meyer of the 87th Precinct in Isola. We’re investigating a homicide, and I thought you might be able to give me some information.”
“Who got killed?” Bones asked. He was no longer smiling.
“George Chadderton,” Meyer said.
Bones merely nodded.
“You don’t seemed surprised,” Meyer said.
“I ain’t surprised, no,” Bones said.
“How good is your memory?” Meyer asked.
“Fair.”
“Does it go back seven years?”
“It goes back thirty,” Bones said.
“I want to know what happened the night Santo disappeared.”
“Who says he disappeared?”
“Didn’t he?”
“He split, that’s all,” Bones said, and shrugged.
“And hasn’t been heard from since.”
Bones shrugged again.
“What happened, do you remember?”
Bones began remembering. As far as Meyer could tell, he was remembering in great detail and with a maximum of accuracy. It was not until several hours later — when Meyer compared notes with Carella on the telephone — that he recognized that Bones’s story was not without its inconsistencies. In fact, there were only two congruent points between the story Barragan had told Carella and the one Bones told Meyer; both men agreed that George C. Chadderton was an egotistical prick, and both men agreed it had been raining on the night Santo Chadderton disappeared. As for the rest—
Bones remembered the job as having taken place at the Hotel Shalimar in downtown Isola, a hostelry every bit as palatial as the hotel Barragan remembered, but some ten blocks distant from it and on the north side of the city as opposed to the south. Meyer, listening to Bones, not yet knowing that Barragan had pinpointed the hotel as the Palomar, jotted into his notebook “Hotel Shalimar,” and then asked, “When was this exactly, can you give me some idea?”
“October,” Bones said. “Sometime the middle of October.”
Later that night, Meyer would learn that Barragan had recalled the date as “Sometime in September. A Saturday night the first or second week in September.” For now, blissful in his ignorance, Meyer simply nodded and said, “Yes, go on, I’m listening,” and indeed did listen very carefully to every word Bones uttered, and faithfully transcribed each of those words into his notebook, the better to point up later the frailties of eyewitnesses even if they don’t happen to be in a Japanese movie.
The job, according to Bones, was a wedding job. Two society families, he couldn’t remember the names. But the groom had just got out of medical school, Dr. Somebody — wait a minute, Bones would get it in a minute — Dr. Coolidge, was it? He was sure the kid was a doctor, there were a lot of doctors at the wedding that night, Cooper, that was it. Dr. Harvey Cooper! Everybody in tuxedos and long gowns, a real swanky affair with good-looking guys and gorgeous broads — especially one blonde who kept hanging around the bandstand all night long, giving Santo the eye. According to Bones, the blonde — who had not so much as put in a bit-appearance in Barragan’s story — was one of those tall, healthy-looking, full-breasted, long-legged women he always associated with California. Man, the women out there were enough to drive a man out of his gourd, especially if the man happened to be a musician, which Bones happened to be. He could remember one time, this was after the Chadderton band broke up, he was doing a series of one-nighters on the Pacific coast, from the Mexican border all the way up to—
Meyer said he hated to interrupt, but he wanted to get back to the city at a decent hour, and also he didn’t want to cut in on Bones’s television viewing, which he understood—
“No, that’s okay,” Bones said, “television stinks anyway, all cops-and-robbers shit,” and went on to conclude his story about this woman he’d met in Pasadena, big tennis-playing California-type woman, long legs and great tits, pearly white teeth, took her to his room back at the motel, showed her how a black man aces a serve in there, yessir, showed her a few little tricks she hadn’t picked up out there on the coast.
“Well, that’s fine,” Meyer said, “but about Santo—”
“I’m only saying,” Bones said, “that there’s a certain kind of woman can easily be classified as a California woman, do you dig?”
“I dig,” Meyer said.
“It’s a type, man, you fathom me?”
“I fathom you,” Meyer said. “You’re saying this woman who was hanging around the bandstand that night was a California type, I get you. Blonde and tall and—”
“Big titted.”
“Yes, and long legged.”
“Right, and lots of white teeth. California, man. That’s what that is, man, a California type. Do you understand me now?”
“Yes, I do,” Meyer said. “So what happened with this woman? You wouldn’t remember her name, would you?”
“Her name was Margaret Henderson, she was married to a man named Thomas Henderson, who happened to be chairman of the dance they were throwing at the tennis club out there, where Margaret had won the women’s singles.”
“That’s in Pasadena, you mean.”
“Yeah. Margaret Henderson. Big tall blonde lady with gorgeous gams and the biggest set of—”
“I meant the one here at the Shalimar.”
“No, not as big as Margaret’s. Nice, you understand, full, very nice — but not like Margaret’s.”
“I meant her name,” Meyer said.
“Oh. No, I wouldn’t know her name. It was Santo who spent all the time with her.”
Bones went on to say that the way Santo had spent his time with the mysterious blonde lady who had no name was by dancing very close to her while the relief band (Bones seemed to think the other band was the relief band, whereas Barragan believed just the opposite) played these very slow tunes that could put a person to sleep. Didn’t put Santo to sleep, though, not with this gorgeous California-type no-name lady in his arms dressed all in white, slinky white satin gown slit almost to the thighs, suntanned tennis-player legs showing on both sides of the gown, gold bracelets on her arms, flashing those white teeth at him, long blond hair falling to her naked shoulders, sweet California lady, mmm, sweet.
“Man, she had him in her spell from minute number one,” Bones said.
“What do you mean?” Meyer asked.
“Dragging him around the floor like he was hypnotized.”
“Uh-huh,” Meyer said, and looked up from his notebook. “Did he ever leave the ballroom with her? Where was this, anyway?”
“The Hotel Shalimar, I told you.”
“Yes, I know, but any particular ballroom?”
“The Moonglow Ballroom.”
“Did he ever leave with her? Did you see him leaving with her?”
“Once. Well, let me correct that, man. I didn’t see him leaving with her, but I saw him outside with her.”
“Outside where?”
“In the hallway outside. I was going to the men’s room, and I saw Santo and the blonde coming up the stairs.”
“From where?”
“From the floor downstairs, I guess,” Bones said, and shrugged.
“When you say he looked hypnotized—”
“That was just an expression.”
“You weren’t suggesting—”
“Dope?” Bones said.
“Dope, yes.”
“I don’t think Santo was doing dope.”
“Not even a little pot every now and then?”
“No,” Bones said, “I don’t think so. Not Santo. No, definitely not. He respected his body too much. Whenever we had a rehearsal — we used to rehearse in the basement of the First Episcopal in Diamondback — Santo used to go in the ladies’ room and—”
“The ladies’ room?”
“Yeah, cause there was a mirror in there, a full-length mirror. There were mirrors in the men’s room, too, you understand, but they were over the sinks, and Santo wanted to see his gorgeous body in full living color, you dig?”
“Yes, mm, I dig,” Meyer said. “So he went in the ladies’ room, right?”
“Well, there was no danger of anybody walking in on him. I mean, we were down there all alone, rehearsing. This was in the basement of the church, you fathom, man?”
“I fathom. What was he, a weight lifter or something?”
“How’d you guess? Wait a minute, you done some lifting yourself, didn’t you?”
“Once upon a time,” Meyer said.
“Did you used to go in the ladies’ room and admire yourself?”
“No, not the ladies’ room.”
“You look pretty good for a man your age,” Bones said. “How old are you, anyway?”
Meyer was reluctant to tell Bones how old he really was because then he’d have to explain further that bald-headed men sometimes took on an appearance that belied their true youthfulness, sometimes in fact appeared stodgy and stuffy when their hearts were really in the highlands — and then he remembered that he had not taken off his Professor Higgins hat. It was still sitting there on top of his head, hiding his baldness and causing him to wonder what else there was about him that might prompt a casual observer to refer to him as “a man your age.”
He decided to ignore Bones’s question, decided also to sidestep any further discussion of those days when he was but a mere lad pumping iron in his bedroom, lest some inadvertent clue — like mentioning the emperor’s name, for example, or making reference to the chariot races that week — would enable Bones to pinpoint his decrepitude more precisely. Instead, and solely because a femme fatale now seemed to have entered the picture in a very healthy, long-legged, full-breasted California-type way, and seemed to have cast a spell upon Santo the moment she slithered across the floor of the Moonglow Ballroom to perch herself upon his shoulder as he bonged his bongos, Meyer asked the question that — properly answered — might at least have brought up the curtain on the three-act drama known as Santo’s Disappearance (to be retitled Rashomon as soon as Meyer compared notes with Carella), and the question was this:
“Tell me, Mr. Bones, is it possible that Santo left the hotel with this woman? After the job, I mean? Is it possible he simply left with her?”
Anything was possible, of course, but the question — on the face of it — was patently absurd. If Bones had seen Santo leaving the hotel with the mysterious blonde (who would become even more mysterious later on when Carella revealed that Barragan hadn’t once mentioned her), if indeed Bones had even the faintest suspicion that Santo and the blonde had vanished into the stormy night together, under the same umbrella perhaps, why wouldn’t he have mentioned this to the late George C. Chadderton? And wouldn’t this noble gentleman (a prick, according to Barragan and Bones alike) then have limited his search to only those ladies of California-type, long-legged, big-breasted persuasion? Of course. Even recognizing this, Meyer waited breathlessly for Bones’s answer.
“Yes,” Bones said, “I think that’s exactly what happened.”
“Would you elaborate on that?” Meyer said.
“I think he split with her.”
“And then what?”
“I don’t know what,” Bones said.
“When’s the last time you saw him?” Meyer said.
“During the last set.”
“Then what?”
“He went down the hall with Vinnie.”
“Vinnie?”
“Vinnie Barragan.”
“By down the hall...”
“To take a leak,” Bones said.
“Then what?”
“Georgie and me packed up and went downstairs to wait for them.”
“Where’d you wait?”
“Under the canopy there. The hotel canopy.”
“Yeah, go ahead.”
“We saw Vinnie coming out of the elevator, so we started running for the van. Coupla minutes later, Vinnie came over to the van, but there was no Santo with him. So we go back in the hotel looking for him, but he’s gone.”
“And you think he left with the blonde, is that it?”
“Isn’t that what you’da done, man?”
“Well,” Meyer said, and let the word dangle. He frankly did not know what he might have done had a beautiful blonde in a slinky white gown come around casting spells on him, but he sure as hell knew what his wife Sarah would have done if ever she’d spotted him leaving the Hotel Shalimar or any hotel with such a blonde on his arm. Within minutes, the cops of Midtown North would have been investigating the strange and baffling death of a bald-headed detective whose skull had been crushed by a stale bagel. “Did you mention this to George?” he said. “That his brother might have left with the blonde?”
“Nope,” Bones said.
“How come?”
“Fuck him,” Bones said, summing up quite simply how he’d felt about the late George C. Chadderton.
“This blonde,” Meyer said, “I wonder if you can describe her a bit more fully.”
“Gorgeous,” Bones said.
“How tall would you say she was?”
“Five ten at least,” Bones said.
“How old was she?”
“At first I’d have said her twenties, but I think she may have been older than that. Her early thirties, I’d say.”
“What makes you say that?”
“You can tell by the way a chick carries herself, you dig? This one was older. Maybe thirty, maybe even a little older than that. Healthy, you understand, all these California types are healthy as hell, man, they can fool you with all that healthiness, you can think they’re twenty when they’re really fifty.”
“But this woman looked to be in her thirties, is that right?”
“No, she carried herself that way.”
“I don’t understand,” Meyer said, puzzled. “Did she look thirty, or did she...?”
“Well, how would I know how she looked, man?”
Meyer blinked. “What do you mean?” he said.
“She was wearing a mask,” Bones said.
“A mask?” Meyer said, and blinked again. “At a wedding?”
“Oh,” Bones said. “Yeah.” He blinked, too. “Maybe I got something mixed up, huh?” he said.