When Elephants Forget (Trace 3) Read online

  “I don’t have any trouble,” she said. She took the card.

  Trace said, “LaPeter says talk to him about the rent.”

  “Thank you. I will.”

  “When you call me, if a woman answers, don’t hang up. That’s only my mother. We always travel together.”

  “That’s sweet,” she said, and slipped the card into the top pocket of her uniform along with her tips. “Tell her not to wait up for my call.”

  The black man rose from the booth and walked down the counter to them.

  “Jennie. Everything all right?”

  “Sure, Barker, sure.”

  “This face bothering you?” he asked, nodding toward Trace but not deigning to look at him.

  She shook her head.

  “Then why he jawin’ so much?” Barker demanded.

  “He just one of those who like to talk.”

  “That’s right,” Trace said. “I’m just one of those who likes to talk.”

  “I wasn’t talking to you,” the black man said.

  “Too bad,” Trace said. “We might have had a nice conversation and wound up being real good friends. Friends are forever, don’t you think?”

  “I think you some kind of wise ass. Ain’t you, boy?”

  “That’s right. Boy,” Trace said.

  Barker started toward him, but Jennie stretched across the counter and grabbed his sleeve.

  “He’s leaving, Barker. Right now.”

  Barker looked at her, then at Trace. Trace took out his wallet again and dropped a dollar onto the counter, then took his time about standing up.

  “Well, if he’s leaving…” Barker said.

  “For now,” Trace said. “Just for now. See you, Jennie.”

  “No, you won’t.”

  “Don’t you come back here,” Barker said.

  “I’ll see you again too,” Trace said to him.

  Driving back up the Merritt Parkway, Trace opened his pack and counted his cigarettes. There were six left. He had smoked only fourteen so far that day, when normally he would have smoked forty by then. He was very proud of himself and stopped at a roadside pay phone to call Chico and tell her.

  She answered the phone after a couple of rings and told Trace she’d been in the shower.

  “I only smoked fourteen cigarettes so far today,” he said.

  “Is that good?”

  “That’s a reduction of two-thirds in my normal amount.”

  “All right. Fair. I expect better tomorrow,” she said.

  “Pain in the ass,” he said. “Hold on.” He lit another cigarette for spite. “Hear from Sarge?” he asked.

  “No. And no messages.”

  “Did you spend a lot of money today?”

  “Not too bad. Less than I’d spend back home. Eighteen guys tried to pick me up at Bloomie’s. That’s the biggest singles bar in the world, Trace.”

  “Any of them get lucky?”

  “All eighteen. I made a dollar eighty. Six of them are still here.”

  “Are we going to have dinner tonight or did you already make a date?”

  “We’ll have dinner, you and me. I don’t think any of these guys would be prepared to see me eat at this stage of our relationships.”

  “I’ll be there in a little while. Clear the room before I get there.”

  “We’ll all be done by then,” she said.

  Chico insisted that Trace exercise some more before they went to dinner, but he held the day by insisting that twelve pushups were certainly ample for a man who had not exercised in fifteen years. He promised to do thirteen the next day.

  Sunset had brought another break in the day’s stifling heat and they walked the half-dozen blocks to Chez Nick. The maître d’ smiled at them as they came in and Trace said, “Pierre, it’s good to see you again.”

  “It’s George, sir.”

  “That’s right. Pierre’s your twin brother.”

  “Do you have a reservation tonight, Mister…Mister…”

  “Tell him my name,” Trace told Chico because he couldn’t remember the name he’d used before.

  “Rascali,” she said. “Luigi Rascali.”

  “Right,” Trace said. “We don’t have reservations yet.”

  “I’m afraid there’ll be a little wait tonight,” George said. “Perhaps an hour.”

  “That’s fine,” Trace said. “We’ll wait in the disco. I find the music very soothing before meals.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  “Good,” Chico said as they walked down the stairs. The thumping sound swelled as they got nearer the bottom double doors. Trace thought it was like being a bacterium traveling toward the nerve of a tooth. “I love discos,” she said. “I’m even dressed right.”

  “You planned this, didn’t you? You checked and found out there would be a long wait and so you wore your Disco Dolly dress so you could drag me on the floor and embarrass me, in front of my inferiors. Tell the truth.”

  “You’re a suspicious thing,” she said. Trace pushed open the doors. His ears were pounded by noise that seemed to come from everywhere. Lights flashed around the walls and the ceiling and the floor. Throbbing along in counterpoint to the thump of the electronic music was a general din of people shouting, trying to be heard.

  They stood inside the door.

  Trace said, “How can you stand this place with all this noise?”

  “What?” Chico said.

  “How can you stand all this noise?” Trace asked again.

  “I can’t hear you.”

  “I know. You’ve got a banana in your ear. Never mind.” He began to pantomime. “Me. Drink. Lots of drinks. Get sick. Throw up. Hide in toilet. Quiet there maybe.”

  “Let’s dance,” she said, uncomprehending.

  “You dance. Me drink,” he said very slowly. “Drink. Now. Dance. Later.”

  She nodded and pointed toward a raised platform at the far end of the room where there was a bar and a scattering of cocktail tables.

  As they walked toward it, Trace swiped two cocktail napkins from an empty table, wadded them up, and stuck them in his ears.

  They folded their bodies around a small table, and before they had a chance to take a breath, a waitress stood in front of them, demanding their order. “Wine for me. Perrier for the lady,” Trace shouted. The waitress seemed to have no trouble hearing. She nodded and walked away.

  Trace talked right into Chico’s ear.

  “How can you stand this noise?”

  She tried to talk back into his ear, saw the cocktail napkins stuck in them, and pulled them out.

  “Idiot. I grew up in them,” she said.

  “Why didn’t it affect your brain?” he shouted.

  “I don’t know. It’s nice sometimes to come to one of these places and do something like this. Mindless. Turn off your brain. Dance. Do drugs. You don’t have to talk to anybody because you can’t hear them.”

  “People who go every night”—he waved toward the dance floor—“they’re zombies, right?”

  “Right. But some of them dance real well.”

  “Oh. Well, that’s all right, then. As long as they dance well, who cares if they’re vegetables or not. Chez Nick, the home of the dancing rutabaga. Really, woman, where’s your taste?”

  “Trace, I dance with them sometimes. I don’t take them home to Mother.”

  Their drinks came. A glass of wine and a bottle of Perrier cost twelve dollars. Trace gave the waitress fifteen.

  “Nice place you bring me to,” he told Chico. “Twelve dollars for two drinks and one of them that water that Frenchmen do unspeakable things to.” He sipped his wine. “God, I hate this shit.”

  “Have a real drink if it’ll make you feel better. I’m tired of your being grouchy. Have a cigarette too.”

  “No way. You’re just trying to weasel out of having to pay me that five hundred dollars when you lose your bet. You notice anything going on?”

  “Besides the drug dealing at the bar?” she s
aid.

  “How the hell did you spot that so fast?” he asked.

  “Generation gap,” Chico said. “People my age were born with the knowledge of how to score drugs.”

  Trace was watching a man at the bar. He had long dark hair and a Fu Manchu mustache. He wore bright plaid trousers and a matching vest, and a white shirt, open at the throat, with puffy ballooning sleeves.

  A blonde had just walked up to him and he had slipped his hand into her purse. She, in turn, put a bill on the bar, then walked away.

  Chico said softly into Trace’s ear. “Another transaction completed. I love a guy who knows how to close the deal.”

  “I don’t want to hear about it.”

  The man at the bar turned back to his drink. Less than a minute later, the scene was replayed, this time with a young man in multicolored matching pants and shirt, with an army bush jacket over them. Again, the money onto the bar, as if to buy a drink, and then Fu Manchu’s hand slipping into the pocket of the bush jacket.

  Trace watched the young man walk away, but lost him as he blended with the mob of people milling about the dance floor in wild gyrations that reminded Trace of the sacrifice scene in the original King Kong.

  “Lost him,” he said.

  “Going to the men’s room,” Chico said.

  “If everybody who buys stuff is in that men’s room, it’s a fire hazard.”

  “That’s why they have big bathrooms in these places. Didn’t you ever notice? Well, no, you’ve never been here. They have all kinds of counter space and room, so all the nose-candy people have room to work.”

  “I hate it when you know more about things than I do,” Trace said.

  “Your days must be filled with nothing but unending grief,” she said.

  Trace looked around the dance floor for a while, then brought his gaze back toward the bar. As he did, a door in the corner behind the bar opened and he caught a glimpse of a black man walking inside. The heavy door closed quickly behind him.

  The waitress came up to their table and Trace ordered two more drinks.

  “Is that the office back there?” he asked, pointing.

  The waitress nodded.

  “Who’s the black guy who just went in?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, and walked quickly away.

  Their drinks came. The music continued to crush against his skull.

  “Want to dance?”

  Trace looked up. The man standing at their table was one of the two men he had seen sitting upstairs, talking to Armitage the night before, and who had then followed him and Chico back to the hotel. He was wearing another striped three-piece suit and was standing close enough so Trace could count the acne scars on his face.

  The other man was standing, with his back to the bar, ten feet away, watching them. When his eyes met Trace’s, he smiled and cracked his knuckles.

  “Not really. Thanks anyway,” Chico said.

  “People usually come here to dance. I thought maybe your friend here was too old to dance.” He nodded at Trace but didn’t look at him.

  “No,” Chico said again. “I just don’t feel like dancing.”

  “I bet you could dance real good with me if you wanted to. I’ll get them to play slow music, so we can hold each other.”

  Chico turned away from him, toward Trace.

  “Come on, lady,” the man said again. He turned to Trace, “Come on, old-timer, help me out.”

  “The lady said she didn’t want to dance.”

  “That was with you. Not somebody younger,” he said.

  “Buzz off, beanbag,” Trace said.

  “What? What’d you say?”

  Before Trace could answer, Chico slid out from her seat. “Come on. Sure, we’ll dance. Right now. Let’s get it on.” She grabbed his arm.

  He tried to pull away, but she held tight and yanked him toward the floor. “I’ll be back to continue our conversation,” the man said to Trace in a half-shout.

  “I’ll wait for you,” Trace said. He saw the other man leave the bar and come over toward his table. He stood there looking down at Trace.

  “I heard what you said to my brother.”

  He was wearing an identical suit and his face was as swarthy and as scarred. Maybe they were twins, Trace thought.

  “Well, if it isn’t Tweedledee. Or are you Tweedledum? Or don’t you remember?”

  “I heard what you called my brother. I don’t like smartasses. You better stand up.”

  “What for? You’re just going to try to knock me back down, so why get up?”

  “Because if you don’t, I’ll hit you while you’re sitting down.”

  Trace sighed. “Well, then, I guess maybe I ought to get up.” He started to his feet, just as Chico returned.

  “Time to go, Trace,” she said.

  The man at the table turned toward her, and as he did, Trace punched out his lights. A hard left in the belly doubled him over and then a chopping right hand onto the side of the temple pitched him forward onto his knees. He hit the floor, the top half of his body lying across the seat of a chair.

  “Your right hand’s getting better,” Chico said as she took Trace’s arm and led him away.

  “That one was pretty good,” Trace said. “Where’s his clone?”

  “Last I saw him, he was rolling around on the floor, holding the family jewels.”

  “You didn’t.”

  “I did. I kneed him in the groin. Hard. Teach him not to try feeling up a dancer,” Chico said. “But I still think we ought to get out of here before the cavalry arrives.”

  “Hai, Michiko-san,” Trace said.

  On the steps going upstairs, leaving the loud raucous music behind, Trace said, “On the whole, I think we might plan on eating elsewhere tonight.”

  “It’d better be soon. I’m starved,” she said. “Fighting always brings out my appetite.”

  Upstairs, Trace told the maître d’, “Pierre, please cancel our reservations tonight. And my best regards to your brother, George.”

  They started to walk back toward their hotel, but when a cab came down the street, Trace hailed it.

  “In case our friends follow us,” Trace explained to Chico.

  The driver grumbled when Trace said he wanted to go to the Plaza. “For Jeez sakes, buddy, it’s only six blocks.”

  “That’s right. In only six blocks, you won’t have us to kick around anymore.”

  “You don’t make no money on no six-block fare,” the driver said.

  “Usually you make more than you do with an empty cab. Look at it this way. Don’t consider us fares. Just think of us as old friends that you just happened to meet on the street and we’re spending a few happy moments together before we all go our separate ways again, okay?”

  The driver said, “Aaaaaah.”

  Trace said to Chico, “Some people just can’t stand being cheered up.”

  “Cheer me up by feeding me. God, I’m hungry.”

  “Must be two hours now since your last feeding,” Trace said.

  “Don’t complain. Think how tough it would be if I were a drinker. God, that’d eat up the money, wouldn’t it?”

  “You gonna get out or not?” the driver snapped as he stopped across the street from the Plaza.

  Trace told the driver that normally he was a big tipper, but since the driver was so rude, Trace was tipping him only a small amount. He asked Chico, “What’s five percent of two dollars and forty cents?”

  “Twelve cents,” she said.

  “All right. Two forty and twelve. Two-fifty-two. Driver, do you have change of a nickel?”

  “No.”

  “Well, here. Take the whole two-fifty-five.”

  “Thanks a lot, pal,” the driver said sarcastically as he took the money.

  “Hold on. You got a receipt? This is tax-deductible.”

  The driver snarled again and drove away.

  Trace yelled after him, “I’ve got your license plate, mister. You won’t get away with
this.”

  Chico said, “Why do you bust people’s chops like that? Is it because you’re not drinking and smoking so much anymore?”

  “No. It’s New York. It brings out something in me. They’re all such assholes in this city. They’re surly and rude and stupid, but they believe their own press agents. The Big Apple. Wow, man, like wow, so they think they’re better and smarter than anybody else, and that’s crap. They’re jerk-offs and I like to remind them of it once in a while. Just repayment for all the poor little people from Dubuque that they terrorize.”

  “Enough of the big thoughts for the evening,” she said. “Feed me.”

  “My delight and my pleasure,” he said.

  They walked a block and a half away from the Plaza to a small corner restaurant. Trace left Chico to order for both of them while he found a telephone and called Sarge’s home. When there was no answer, he called his father’s office. No answer there either, and on a hunch, he called the restaurant downstairs from the office, but Sarge had not been in since lunchtime, he was told.

  When he returned to the table, Chico had finished the rolls in front of her and was eating Trace’s. The woman ate like a tapeworm farm, Trace thought, wondering how she did it and still managed to stay tiny and thin. She had been a dancer most of her life, and exercise kept her body supple and strong. But a normal person could exercise twenty hours a day and still get obese on Chico’s diet. It must be genetic, he thought, some secret message stamped into her genes that dictated that her furnace burn hotter and brighter than anyone else’s and burn up food before it turned to fat. Maybe he would get her to pose for a before-and-after photo, to promote his new diet plan using those pictures of all those degenerates he had seen on the wall of that restaurant near Sarge’s office. Get a picture of some fat Japanese woman and call it before. Take a picture of Chico and call it after. It’d make him a million.

  “Couldn’t reach Sarge,” he said. His voice must have sounded depressed, because she said, “Not much of a day for you, I guess.” Her voice was sympathetic, but not so much that she would let go of the last of the rolls she held in her hand.

  “Not much,” he agreed. “It started off bad with Sarge getting me up in the middle of the night, just when I thought I was going to make it with you. And then there was that woman. She just rubbed me wrong somehow.”