He had just gotten down on his hands and knees and started to crawl into the closet, the draft becoming stronger and colder the more deeply he went inside, when an abrupt knock came on his door. Instead of responding to the knock, he decided to go a few feet closer to the wall. He put his hand out and felt for the first time a piece of plywood about three feet by three feet that had been nailed against the wall itself. Given all the nailheads his fingers found there in the gloom, Hanratty could tell that the plywood should have been firmly affixed. But it wasn’t. Not at all. It almost came off in his hands. He put fingers on either side of the plywood and felt an opening, a wide piece of duct work now closed off for some reason. He wondered where it led and why it had been closed off. Then, just as he sensed a sweet odor — perfume coming from duct work? — the knock on his door became adamant. He reaffixed the piece of plywood as well as he could, crawled backward out of the closet, and then went to answer the door.
There, in his standard white bartender’s uniform, stood David Sullivan. David was twenty-four, a former second-string tackle for the Browns, and now a guy trying to get himself an MBA at the local state university while working nights here. Sullivan was big, as you might expect, and handsome in the way a somewhat forlorn St. Bernard is handsome. Hanratty knew why he was forlorn. Sullivan was in love with Sally Carson.
“I talk to you a minute, Richard?”
Sullivan was a good kid and Hanratty both liked him and felt sorry for him. “Sure. Come in.”
Sullivan did so, closing the door. His brown eyes watched curiously as Hanratty wiped closet dust from his hands. Hanratty thought of explaining, then saw that Sullivan’s business seemed to be a lot more urgent.
“What’s going on?”
“You saw Sally?” Sullivan said. His voice was trembling.
“Yeah, kid, I did.”
“That bastard. That’s the third black eye in less than two months.” He made a fist the size of a melon. “You know what I want to do—”
Hanratty lit a cigarette, exhaled smoke. “Look, kid, I don’t mean to hurt your feelings, but remember the last time we had this conversation?”
“I remember, Richard. You told me that if she really wanted to get away from him she would.”
“That’s right.”
“Not any more.”
“Oh?”
“She snuck over to my place about dawn this morning and really broke down. Just laid on my couch and cried and cried. She was really scared.”
“Of Bentley?”
“Right.”
“Why doesn’t she just leave him?”
Sullivan said, “She thinks he’ll kill her.”
Hanratty frowned. “Look, I take no back seat in my loathing of Kenny Bentley. I know he likes to cheat his employees every way he can, and I know he likes to harass and debase people every way he can, and I know that he gets some kind of sick kick from beating up his woman-of-the-moment. But I can’t say that I see him as a killer. Not on purpose anyway.”
“She thinks he may already have killed one of his women.”
“What?”
“Two years ago. She ran into a waitress who used to work here and the waitress told her that there was this really gorgeous but very quiet waitress named Denise Ayles who worked here while she was going to the Harcourt Academy. She got involved with Kenny very briefly but started to back away once she saw what he was like. Only he wouldn’t let her back away. He kept coming at her. Then she just vanished.”
“Vanished?”
“Right. Vanished. The waitress said she called the police and had them look into it, but all they concluded was that Denise Ayles, for reasons of her own, just took off.” He made a melon-sized fist again. “You know damn well what happened, Richard. He killed her and got rid of the body.”
Hanratty’s jaw muscles had began to work. “I guess that wouldn’t be out of the question, would it?”
“Not with Bentley.”
“And the cops lost interest?”
“Bentley had an alibi. He was in Vegas.”
“Then maybe he didn’t kill her.”
“You know Bentley’s friends. He could buy an alibi with no problem.”
“I guess that’s true.”
Big, shaggy Sullivan looked sorrowful again. “I don’t know what to do about Sally.”
“Just kind of ride with things, kid. See what happens.”
“If he lays a hand on her again, I’ll break his neck, Richard. That’s a promise.” The cold rage in his otherwise friendly gaze told Hanratty that this was no idle threat. Not at all.
Hanratty reached up and put his hand on Sullivan’s shoulder and said, “Let’s just see what happens, all right? I don’t want to see you or Sally get into a jam, okay?”
Sullivan sighed, calmed down somewhat. He even offered a quick flash of smile. “I don’t know why you stay here. Especially since you got hot as a songwriter the past few months. You ever think of selling your songs?”
Hanratty wanted to say: Kid, I’d love to. If they were really my songs.
He played the new song for them that night, “Without You,” and you could sense how the audience liked it. Enough to set down their drinks; enough to quit copping cheap feels in the shadows; enough to quit shedding tears over lovers who were never going to leave their spouses. How intent they looked then, sleek pretty people in sleek pretty clothes, the sort of privileged people Hanratty had always wanted to be — and now, as always when he played one of the songs left so mysteriously for him — now he was one of them.
By the time he got to the payoff, his voice straining just a little to hit the final high notes, he could see their eyes shine with the sadness of the song itself. The lyrics got to Hanratty, too and always did. Whoever was writing them knew the same kind of tortured loneliness Hanratty had felt all his life but had never been able to articulate, not even to himself. But it was there in the majestic melancholy of the music itself, and only reinforced by the words.
They applauded till their hands grew numb.
A few of the drunker ones even staggered to their feet and gave him an ovation.
And there was one more phenomenon Hanratty took note of — the look certain of the women had been giving him. Not as if he were a too old, too chunky, too clichéd piano bar man but instead a very desirable piece of work. The same kind of looks the bartender David Sullivan was always getting.
Finished with “Without You,” and realizing that he had now run through the six songs that had been left to him over the past few months, he sat down and began playing the standards Kenny Bentley insisted on, everything from Billy Joel to Barry Manilow, with a few Broadway tunes thrown in to give the proceedings a more metropolitan air.
And he lost them then, as he always lost them then.
They started talking again, and grabbing cheap feels, and giggling and arguing.
Without the six original songs composed for him by the phantom composer, Richard Hanratty’s act had gone back to what it had always been — background music.
Three hours later, finished for the night and sitting in his dressing room with a scotch and water and a filter cigarette, Hanratty stared at the six pieces of sheet music that he felt could secure him the sort of future he’d always wanted. If only he could be sure that once the songs became hits nobody would show up to claim them...
He got the chills, as happened many times after the show, because even playing ballads you worked up a sweat. He needed to get out of his jacket and shirt, wash up in the basin in the corner, and put on a turtleneck and regular tweed sportcoat.
He splashed water on his face and under his arms and then slapped on Brut and deodorant. Feeling much cleaner, he stepped to the closet and picked out the turtleneck he’d worn to the show tonight.