Escorting Henry to the common room while surly Pete Wexler comes along behind, pushing a handcart loaded with boxes of records, Rebecca Vilas dimly remembers having seen Duke Ellington wearing a white cutaway like this in a clip from some old film . . . or was it Cab Calloway? She recalls an upraised eyebrow, a glittering smile, a seductive face, an upright figure posed before a band, but little more. (If alive, either Mr. Ellington or Mr. Calloway could have informed Rebecca that Henry’s outfit, including the “high-drape” pants with a “reet pleat,” terms not in her vocabulary, had undoubtedly been handmade by one of four specific tailors located in the black neighborhoods of New York, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, or Los Angeles, masters of their trade during the thirties and forties, underground tailors, men now alas as dead as their celebrated clients. Henry Leyden knows exactly who tailored his outfit, where it came from, and how it fell into his hands, but when it comes to persons such as Rebecca Vilas, Henry imparts no more information than is already likely to be known.) In the corridor leading to the common room, the white cutaway appears to shine from within, an impression only increased by Henry’s oversized, daddy-cool dark glasses with bamboo frames, in which what may be tiny sapphires wink at the corners of the bows.
Is there maybe some shop that sells Spiffy Clothes of Great 1930s Bandleaders? Does some museum inherit this stuff and auction it off? Rebecca cannot contain her curiosity a moment longer. “Mr. Leyden, where did you get that beautiful outfit?”
From the rear and taking care to sound as though he is muttering to himself, Pete Wexler opines that obtaining an outfit like that probably requires chasing a person of an ethnicity beginning with the letter n for at least a couple of miles.
Henry ignores Pete and smiles. “It’s all a matter of knowing where to look.”
“Guess you never heard of CDs,” Pete says. “They’re like this big new breakthrough.”
“Shut up and tote them bales, me bucko,” says Ms. Vilas. “We’re almost there.”
“Rebecca, my dear, if I may,” Henry says. “Mr. Wexler has every right to grouse. After all, there’s no way he could know that I own about three thousand CDs, is there? And if the man who originally owned these clothes can be called a nigger, I’d be proud to call myself one, too. That would be an incredible honor. I wish I could claim it.”
Henry has come to a halt. Each, in a different way, shocked by his use of the forbidden word, Pete and Rebecca have also stopped moving.
“And,” Henry says, “we owe respect to those who assist us in the performance of our duties. I asked Mr. Wexler to shake out my suit when he hung it up, and he very kindly obliged me.”
“Yeah,” Pete says. “Plus I also hung up your light and put your turntable and speakers and shit right where you want ’em.”
“Thank you very much, Mr. Wexler,” Henry says. “I appreciate your efforts in my behalf.”
“Well, shit,” Pete says, “I was only doing my job, you know? But anything you want after you’re done, I’ll give you a hand.”
Without benefit of a flash of panties or a glimpse of ass, Pete Wexler has been completely disarmed. Rebecca finds this amazing. All in all, sightless or not, Henry Leyden, it comes to her, is far and away the coolest human being she has ever been privileged to encounter in her entire twenty-six years on the face of the earth. Never mind his clothes—where did guys like this come from?
“Do you really think some little boy vanished from the sidewalk out in front of here this afternoon?” Henry asks.
“What?” Rebecca asks.
“Seems like it to me,” Pete says.
“What?” Rebecca asks again, this time to Pete Wexler, not Henry. “What are you saying?”
“Well, he ast me, and I tol’ him,” Pete says. “That’s all.”
Simmering dangerously, Rebecca takes a stride toward him. “This happened on our sidewalk? Another kid, in front of our building? And you didn’t say anything to me or Mr. Maxton?”
“There wasn’t nothin’ to say,” Pete offers in self-defense.
“Maybe you could tell us what actually happened,” Henry says.
“Sure. What happened was, I went outside for a smoke, see?” This is less than strictly truthful. Faced with the choice of walking ten yards to the Daisy corridor men’s room to flush his cigarette down a toilet or walking ten feet to the entrance and pitching it into the parking lot, Pete had sensibly elected outdoor disposal. “So I get outside and that’s when I saw it. This police car, parked right out there. So I walked up to the hedge, and there’s this cop, a young guy, I think his name is Cheetah, or something like that, and he’s loadin’ this bike, like a kid’s bike, into his trunk. And something else, too, only I couldn’t see what it was except it was small. And after he did that, he got a piece a chalk outta his glove compartment and he came back and made like X marks on the sidewalk.”
“Did you talk to him?” Rebecca asks. “Did you ask him what he was doing?”
“Miz Vilas, I don’t talk to cops unless it’s like you got no other choice, know what I mean? Cheetah, he never even saw me. The guy wouldn’t of said nothing anyhow. He had this expression on his face—it was like, Jeez, I hope I get to the crapper before I drop a load in my pants, that kind of expression.”
“Then he just drove away?”
“Just like that. Twenty minutes later, two other cops showed up.”
Rebecca raises both hands, closes her eyes, and presses her fingertips to her forehead, giving Pete Wexler an excellent opportunity, of which he does not fail to take full advantage, to admire the shape of her breasts underneath her blouse. It may not be as great as the view from the bottom of the ladder, but it’ll do, all right, yes it will. As far as Ebbie’s dad is concerned, a sight like Rebecca Vilas’s Hottentots pushing out against her dress is like a good fire on a cold night. They are bigger than you’d expect on a slender little thing like her, and you know what? When the arms go up, the Hottentots go up, too! Hey, if he had known she was going to put on a show like this, he would have told her about Cheetah and the bicycle as soon as it happened.
“All right, okay,” she says, still flattening the tips of her fingers against her head. She lifts her chin, raising her arms another few inches, and frowns in concentration, for a moment looking like a figure on a plinth.
Hoo-ray and hallelujah, Pete thinks. There’s a bright side to everything. If another little snotnose gets grabbed off the sidewalk tomorrow morning, it won’t be soon enough for me.
Rebecca says, “Okay, okay, okay,” opens her eyes, and lowers her arms. Pete Wexler is staring firmly at a point over her shoulder, his face blank with a false innocence she immediately comprehends. Good God, what a caveman. “It’s not as bad as I thought. In the first place, all you saw was a policeman picking up a bike. Maybe it was stolen. Maybe some other kid borrowed the bike, dumped it, and ran away. The cop could have been looking for it. Or the kid who owned the bike could have been hit by a car or something. And even if the worst did happen, I don’t see any way that it could hurt us. Maxton’s isn’t responsible for whatever goes on outside the grounds.”
She turns to Henry, who looks as though he wishes he were a hundred miles away. “Sorry, I know that sounded awfully cold. I’m as distressed about this Fisherman business as everyone else, what with those two poor kids and the missing girl. We’re all so upset we can hardly think straight. But I’d hate to see us dragged into the mess, don’t you see?”
“I see perfectly,” Henry says. “Being one of those blind men George Rathbun is always yelling about.”
“Hah!” Pete Wexler barks.
“And you agree with me, don’t you?”
“I’m a gentleman, I agree with everybody,” Henry says. “I agree with Pete that another child may well have been abducted by our local monster. Officer Cheetah, or whatever his name is, sounded too anxious to be just picking up a lost bicycle. And I agree with you that Maxton’s cannot be blamed for anything that happened.”
“Good,” Rebecca says.
“Unless, of course, someone here is involved in the murders of these children.”
“But that’s impossible!” Rebecca says. “Most of our male clients can’t even remember their own names.”
“A ten-year-old girl could take most of these feebs,” Pete says. “Even the ones who don’t have old-timer’s disease walk around covered in their own . . . you know.”