Chapter 2: Night of the Honeysuckles
Vera rose and announced she wanted
to go to her room. That gave me an opportunity to get out of there and compose
myself before talking to Cici, so I offered to escort her.
“You’re in number seven, Miss
Peregrino,” said Fenwick. “And you’re in one,” he told me. The first cabin we
came to had a 9 under a half-moon of three stars. I assumed that would be
Thursby’s. We passed eight, and I dropped Vera at her room, telling her I’d
come for her at seven.
“Nineteen hundred hours.” She
saluted, mocking the general’s voice.
At the far end of the car, from the
galley and the lounge, were a toilet and shower room and cabin number one. It
had a sitting area, which could be converted into a single bed. There was a
good-sized window, covered by venetian blinds, closed, and burgundy curtains,
drawn open. It had a connecting door on the side of compartment two.
An envelope on the bed had my name
on it. I unpacked my duffel, opened the blinds, and sat down watching the
backyards of Oakland glide by while I slit the envelope flap.
It was from Thursby. Inside was a
check made out to Old Vine Detective Agency for $150, signed by Nick Fenwick,
and a note from the general. I recognized his handwriting from the note that
accompanied my invitation.
Swiver,
Thanks for coming. Enclosed is a check for your retainer. Let
me know when that runs out.
Two things—first, there are some tensions among the guests. I
can still take care of myself, but I wouldn’t mind having someone I can depend
on to watch my back. And second, the police are doing nothing in the
O’Callaghan killing. They closed the case as an accidental poisoning. I’m sure
it’s murder, but I need some kind of proof. I want you to find it. Rusty
O’Callaghan was my friend.
I suggest you commence your investigation with the widow.
Thursby
My stomach knotted up, and a dull
garnet haze came between my eyes and the paper after I read the words “killing . . .
murder.” I hadn’t known Rusty O’Callaghan, but I knew of him, and I thought
he was a lucky guy who had it all. He had money, good looks, and wit. He had
Cici.
And I had Vera. A few hours ago,
we’d met in the office on Post Street to go to the train in Oakland together.
We had a couple of glasses of cabernet together, and one thing led to another,
as it often did for us. And after we’d made love, she whispered in my ear, “I
love you, Frank.”
“It’ll be exciting to go along as
an op, not just a secretary,” she said. Vera’s scarlet cocktail dress was
folded neatly over the back of one of my client chairs; my suit was hung up,
but the rest of my clothes were all over the floor, and we both lounged naked,
face-to-face, legs intertwined, on the old leather davenport that I had
alongside one wall. Not entirely naked, she still wore her red, high-heeled
shoes, and I had my fedora on the back of my head. The light coming through the
office window fell on the downy yellow hair on her upper thighs. Vera was about
five eight. Her height and long legs made her appear slender and elegant, like
a fashion model or a rich girl. Yet from another angle or in a different outfit
she might look like an athlete who rode a bike to work, or a sinewy, but
healthy, farmer’s daughter. She had golden brown hair that fell across her
shoulders just far enough to cover her breasts if she ever decided to do a Lady
Godiva act. But now her hair had fallen back to the sides and she lay there,
breasts revealed, in all her wanton beauty.
I wanted to say, “I love you too,
Vera,” but for some reason, I didn’t. I couldn’t because something felt
different from that time I had been in love, in love with Cici.
I splashed a little water on my face at the washbasin, and started to
shave.
I remembered when Rusty O’Callaghan
had died. I’d even clipped the story from the Examiner at the time. It
was only a couple of months ago. He’d died at home one morning, the apparent
victim of a bizarre poisoning.
Then, in the mirror over the sink,
I saw the connecting door to compartment two start to open. I thought I’d
checked the lock, but maybe not—someone was coming in. Everything was close in
the small train cabin. I turned and was about to shoulder the door hard, but a
whiff of scent in the air made me stop myself. Cicilia O’Callaghan came into
the compartment quickly and closed the door behind her.
“Hello, Frank.” Her voice was deep,
with a dry whispery note. It was the kind of voice that an actress might use
for a passionate love scene. It was the kind of voice that would make the actor
play the sap for her.
“Hi ya, doll. Still using the same
perfume as the old days?”
“Night of the Honeysuckles, Frank.
It’s been a long time. I’m surprised you remembered.”
There are some things a man doesn’t
forget, like the feeling I had when you threw me over for Rusty. “Yeah, it
brings back old times.” My voice sounded hollow to me. Cici had slipped into my
room without shoes. Minus her high heels, she was about five feet four inches—of
trouble. Of all the compartments in the general’s private varnish, she had to
have the one next to mine.
“Thank God you’re here tonight,
Frank. I need help.”
I didn’t know what to say to that.
So I said nothing and drank in Cicilia with my eyes. After fourteen years, they
were thirsty eyes and she was as refreshing as a splash of Vouvray, and more
intoxicating too. Her skin had a healthy golden-olive glow, as if she’d been in
the sun. Her black dress was simple and elegant, but un-widow-like. The low cut
only emphasized her ripe and voluptuous breasts. With my height advantage in
the small compartment, I was practically forced to eyeball her cleavage.
She followed my gaze. “You like
what you see, Frank?”
“You know I always did, Cici. Who
wouldn’t?”
“Rusty, for one. He couldn’t have
cared less.” She sighed. “It’s nice to be noticed again.” The train rocked, and
Cici bounced against me.
“Oh, yeah. Rusty O’Callaghan. Tough
break about your husband. A poison mushroom omelet? You were there, weren’t
you?”
“Yeah. I’d thought they were
chanterelles.” She blinked her eyes. “Well, at least it didn’t happen at the
restaurant.”
“I can see how that might be bad
for business, poisoning the diners.” Rusty O’Callaghan had opened the popular
restaurant, Chez Cici, where he’d installed Cicilia, his new wife, as
chef.
“You say you need help, doll?”
Night of the Honeysuckles seemed to be entangled in the waves of her hair, just
under my nose. My mind drifted back to those nights fourteen years ago, when
Cici would finish her waitressing shift at John’s Grill and we’d leave together
and hurry over to my single room.
In ‘33, I was a recent Berkeley grad, trying to crack into a teaching
job. I happened into John’s one night, wondering if I could afford a sandwich
and a beer. The beer was only a nickel, but I paid with a piece of my heart.
Cicilia Ricci had been a waitress
there. She was about eighteen then, maybe seventeen and a half, when I met her,
and she was the stuff young men dream about. Petite, with dark-brown, almost
ebony hair, she had emerald eyes. You know the color of the sea off Monterey
sometimes when the sunlight angles across it? Her eyes were that kind of
sparkling green that had their own light, and when I gazed into them, they
lured me deep into their sea-green abyss. I’d kept coming back to John’s, to sit
at one of Cicilia’s tables, but I wasn’t coming back for the food. I watched
Cici move around the tables, we talked, she winked at me, or licked her lips,
and a burning would start deep down inside me.
Ronald “Rusty” O’Callaghan had been
a rumrunner in southern California in the 1920s who had blown into town late in
1933 when Repeal dried things up for him. He started showing up at John’s
Grill. O’Callaghan would dig into a twenty-four-ounce T-bone and drink a half-pint
of Scotch whisky. He gave Cicilia rides in his Packard. He told her tales of
gun-battles off the Catalina coast, of punching a shark in the nose while
clinging to a floating wooden crate of gin, and of paying off the LA cops,
while outsmarting the G-men. He carried a thick roll of banknotes and laughed
loudly. Rusty O’Callaghan, a man of action who had an air of danger about him,
brought excitement into
the restaurant. Cicilia Ricci must have felt that excitement, and felt it was
all for her.
I’d despised Rusty O’Callaghan when
he took Cicilia out of John’s, and I’d envied him when he married her. That was
in ‘34, the last time I’d seen either of them, and the first time I had that
empty ache inside. Rusty O’Callaghan sure was a lucky guy, and I’d drawn a
losing hand. Now O’Callaghan was dead. A police spokesman had termed the death
“suspicious, but presumably accidental.” And I’d lived to read about it.
I was bitter about being dumped,
but that passion I’d felt for Cicilia never quit burning inside me. There’s
been a little pilot light on these last fourteen years.
“I need money, Frank,” she said. “I’m
a poor widow now, you know. Thursby owes me, but he won’t pay up.”
“Poor? I hear Chez Cici does
good business.”
“Sure, Chez Cici does good, but
doing good in the restaurant business just pays the bills. Owning one
restaurant means working fifty-two weeks a year, and if you’re good, it’s a
living, but that’s about all. It’s not enough. What I’ve got to do is expand. I
want to open a branch in Sausalito.”
“So how’s the general owe you,
doll? Did he run up a tab?” I breathed in the scent of honeysuckles warmed by
body heat, maybe a little garlic and oil too, from all those hours in the
kitchen, and a definite, undeniable undercurrent of muskiness, rising up from
her center. It was making my head spin, but I sucked it in like a man
struggling in the water takes air when he’s at the surface.
“Hardly,” she said. “Look, I found
these in Rusty’s desk.”
Cicilia carried a little black bag
on a thin strap over her shoulder, and she reached in and extracted a fistful
of papers, half sheets, and some even smaller—the size of currency. She handed
them to me as she spoke. “Gambling debts, Frank. They’re promissory notes for
gambling debts.”
I flipped through them. Five hundred
here, $1000 on another, $700, $2400. The same scrawl at the bottom of each one
might have been “Lloyd Thursby.” It might have been the same hand that had
signed the notes I’d received.
Cici kept talking, filling me in as
I glanced through the IOUs. “Rusty used to go over to Thursby’s place four or
five nights a week, around ten or eleven, and sit with the general and play
cards for hours.”
“Looks like Rusty was a lucky guy.”
“Hah! Lucky?” She turned, sauntered
over to the window, and peered out. “You couldn’t prove it by me. I never even
knew he was winning, Frank. The soft-headed bum never brought home a nickel. He
just took the general’s paper.”
“You show these to Thursby?” I
followed her.
“Not yet. I just found them. But
you can show them to Thursby. You can make him pay me. Thursby threatened me
and had his goon throw me out.”
“His goon?”
“Fenwick.” Cici turned back to me.
“That hairy wine-steward.” Fenwick—I didn’t like the picture in my mind of him
with his paws on Cici, giving her the bum’s rush. Something told me the apeman
and I weren’t going to get along.
I felt a tug at my trousers. I’d
been reviewing the notes Cici had given me and musing over Fenwick. When I
glanced at her again, I saw her black dress on the floor in a circle around her
feet. She was squatting down in front of me, her butt on the seat, while her
fingers worked at my fly.
“Jesus, doll. What do you think
you’re doing?”
“Oh, Frank. I can’t help it. It’s
been so long, Frank. I’m so hot. I want you to make me feel like a woman again.”
It’d been a long time all right.
Fourteen years is a long time. Did Cicilia think she could just walk out of my
life without so much as a fare-thee-well, then sashay back in fourteen years
later and pick up where she’d left off? Now she rose to her feet, her green
eyes flashing and locked on mine. Reaching behind her back, Cici undid the
clasp on her black bra. She slipped it off, tossed it across the compartment,
and shook her shoulders. The IOUs wafted to the floor as I cupped each breast
with a hand and plunged my face down into their softness.
Maybe you’ve walked with danger and laughed and said, “Let’s go; you
can’t beat me.” Maybe you know what it’s like to go without something for
years, like maybe you were a boozer who lived through Prohibition without
getting a drink. Then all of a sudden after all those years you can have it
again, and it’s better than ever. If so, I guess I don’t have to tell you what
I felt, lying with Cici across the Pullman bed of my compartment. And if you
haven’t done anything like that, maybe you wouldn’t understand the feeling I’m
talking about anyhow.
I checked my watch, and it was
almost seven. It’s not that I didn’t know where the time had gone. It’s more
like I didn’t know where I had been. Wherever it was, I liked it there,
and I didn’t want to come back.
“Okay, Cici, I’ll take your case.
I’ll talk to Thursby.”
“Be careful, Frank. He’s
dangerous.”
“I laugh at danger.”
“I knew I could count on you. I’ll
give you ten percent of whatever you collect.”
“Twenty-five dollars a day, doll.
Plus expenses.” She knew she could count on me. Hell, Cici could have seduced
Mohandas Gandhi into donning a suit and tie, and he would have eaten filet
mignon to please her.
“Right now, we’ve got to get
dressed,” I said. “It’s seven o’clock.” I yanked her off the bed to her feet
and reeling her in, planted a long kiss on her lips. “There’s wine out there to
taste.” I sent her on her way to her compartment with a smack on the butt. That
bitterness from fourteen years ago—it wasn’t completely gone, but Cici had
sweetened me up a little.
I had two clients, and two jobs to
do. I needed the work bad, but could I give Cici what she wanted and help
Thursby too?
