It seemed like a hell of a long way to have come for very little.
10
Just as Meyer had felt A Plethora of Daisies would have been a magnificent title for a novel about, for example, a man who is stabbed through the heart with the stem of a frozen daisy, the murder weapon thereafter melting in the eighty-degree heat, if only something like that hadn’t been done in Dick Tracy when Meyer was just a kid being chased around the goddamn neighborhood by friendly goyim, he now felt similarly — and in agreement with Mrs. Hawkins — that Caribou Corner was perhaps the worst name ever devised for a restaurant, and especially for a steak joint. In trying to think up names that were potentially worse when it came to attracting customers to an eatery, he could think only of The Hairy Buffalo. The hero of A Plethora of Daisies would take his girlfriend to a steak joint called The Hairy Buffalo. Somebody there would shoot at him from behind a purple curtain. The hero’s name would be either Matthew, John, Peter, Andrew, Thomas, Jude, Philip, Bartholomew, Simon, or James the Greater or Less since most good guys in fiction were named after the twelve apostles, the exception being anybody named Judas Iscariot who — five would get you ten — turned out to be a bad guy, and who had already been replaced by Matthias, anyway. Sometimes good guys were named after Paul or Barnabas, alternate apostles. Sometimes they were named after other biblical chaps like Mark, Luke, or Timothy. Bad guys were generally called Frank, Randy, Jug, Billy Boy, or Baldy. Nice wishy-washy guys were called Larry, Eugene, Richie, and Sammy (but not Sam). Schlemiels were called Morris, Irving, Percy, Toby, and — come to think of it — Meyer, thank you, Pop.
The man who owned Caribou Corner was called Bruce Fowles.
The name Bruce — in fiction and according to Meyer’s research — had only two connotations. Bruce was either a fag, or Bruce was a hairy-chested macho villain working against the stereotype of the pantywaist. Bruce Fowles, in real life, was a white man in his late thirties, perhaps five feet nine inches tall and weighing a hundred and sixty, with sandy-colored hair going slightly bald at the back of the head (Meyer noticed this at once). He was wearing blue jeans and a purple T-shirt imprinted with the head of a shaggy elk, or moose, or something at any rate with a great pair of antlers spreading over pectorals and clavicles and threatening to grow wild around Bruce Fowles’s throat. He came out of the restaurant kitchen drying his hands on a dish towel. If Meyer were naming him, he’d have called him Jack. Bruce Fowles looked like a Jack. He extended his hand, and took Meyer’s hand in a good Jack Fowles grip, never mind this Bruce crap.
“Hello,” he said, “I’m Bruce Fowles. My waitress says you’re from the police. What’s the violation this time?”
“No violation that I know of,” Meyer said, smiling. “I’m here to ask some questions about a girl who worked for you back in March, according to our information.”
“Would that be Clara Jean Hawkins?” Fowles asked.
“You remember her then?”
“Read about her in the newspaper the other day. Damn shame. She was a nice girl.”
“How long did she work here, Mr. Fowles?”
“Look, we don’t have to stand here, do we? Would you like a cup of coffee? Louise,” he called, gesturing to a waitress, “bring us two coffees, will you please? Sit down,” he said. “I’m sorry, I didn’t get your name.”
“Detective Meyer,” Meyer said, and reached into his pocket for identification.
“I don’t have to see your badge,” Fowles said. “If ever anybody looked like a cop, it’s you.”
“Me?” Meyer said. “Really?” He had always thought he looked somewhat like an insurance agent, especially since he’d bought the Professor Higgins hat. The hat was on his head now, soggy and shapeless from the rain outside. Both men sat at a table near the swinging door leading to the kitchen. The time was twenty minutes to twelve, a little early for the lunch hour.
“Cops have a distinctive cop look,” Fowles said. “Restaurateurs, as it happens, also have a restaurateur look. It is my firm belief that people either choose their occupations because of the way they look, or else they evolve into what they look like because of the occupation they’ve chosen. Tell me the truth, if you saw me walking along on the street, wouldn’t you know immediately that I owned a restaurant? I mean, you wouldn’t arrest me for a pusher, would you?”
“No, I wouldn’t,” Meyer said, and smiled.
“Similarly, I didn’t have to know you were a cop to spot you as one. Even if Louise hadn’t told me there was a cop outside to see me, I’d have known what you were the minute I came through that door. Where’s the coffee, by the way? Service in this place is terrible,” he said, smiling, and signaling to the waitress again. When she came to the table, he said, “Louise, I know we have to send across the street for the coffee, but do you think we might have two cups before midnight?”
“What?” she said.
“The coffee,” Fowles said with infinite patience, “the coffee I asked you to get us. Two coffees, please. Detective Meyer here just came in out of that typhoon, and he’s drenched to the skin, and he would like a cup of coffee. I wouldn’t particularly like one, but since I’m the alleged boss here, I think it might be nice if I were offered one just for the hell of it. What do you think, Louise?”
“What?” Louise said.
“Coffees, two coffees,” Fowles said, and shooed her away with his hands. “Louise’ll be a waitress till the day she dies,” he said to Meyer. “She’ll be seventy-eight and doddering around here with a bewildered expression on her face, blinking her eyes, a trifle slack-jawed, lotsa muscle but no brains,” Fowles said, and tapped his temple with his forefinger.
“How about Clara Jean Hawkins?” Meyer said.
“A different breed of cat,” Fowles said. “I knew she’d leave one day, and it didn’t surprise me when she did. Waitressing is usually a stopgap job for most girls. At least, waitressing in a place like this, which is a combination between a cafeteria, a greasy spoon, and a local hangout. I thought of calling it The Ptomaine Ptent, with a ‘P’ in front of the ‘tent,’ decorate it like a circus tent, put things on the menu like elephant steak and tiger piss. If anybody asked for an elephant steak, we’d explain it had to be for at least a party of twelve because we’d have to kill the whole elephant — what do you think of that name, The Ptomaine Ptent?”
“I like it only a little better than Caribou Corner.”
“Awful, right? There’s something perverse in me, I know it. Maybe it’s the fact that I started this place with my wife’s money. Maybe I want it to fail, do you think that’s a possibility?”
“Is it failing?”
“Hell, no, it’s a roaring success.” He glanced at his watch. “You’re here early. If you came in at twelve-thirty, we’d have to seat you in the men’s room. And dinnertime is a madhouse. Listen, I shouldn’t kick,” Fowles said, and rapped his knuckles on the wooden table.
“Tell me more about Clara Jean Hawkins.”
“To begin with, smart. That attracts me in a woman, doesn’t it you? Brains?”
“Yes, it does,” Meyer said.
“Speaking of geniuses, where’s Louise?” Fowles said, and turned toward the swinging door and bellowed at the top of his lungs, “Louise, if you don’t bring that coffee in three seconds flat, I’m going to have you arrested for loitering!”
The swinging door flew open at once. Louise, looking harried and flushed, came out of the kitchen carrying a tray upon which were two cups of coffee. Meyer could well imagine her trying to serve tables at the height of the lunch or dinner hour. He wondered why Fowles kept her on.