WALKING THE FLOOR OVER YOU
By Walton Simons
The club was crowded, but a little less boisterous than usual. Audience members whispered to each other or played with their drinks, but they weren’t giving the girl at the microphone the kind of attention she needed.
A lot of the customers were smoking, but Carlotta’s routine was doing the opposite. It wasn’t the material, and her delivery was spot on. Well, as good as it ever was, anyway.
She was gorgeous, though. Carlotta had creamy skin, delicate features, and a body that, as the joke went “would make a bishop kick out a stained-glass window.” Her honey-blonde hair was cut in a Louise Brooks pageboy, framing her face to ideal effect. Bob leaned back into the polished bar rail and sighed. If he didn’t have a personal interest in her, it would be easy enough to fire her. Not much chance of that, though
In every crowd there was somebody who looked like they didn’t belong. Tonight it was a pair of guys sitting together to the left of the stage, just away from the light’s edge. They were young and looked like FBI agents dressed in particularly loud disco garb. One had a face with a hound-like quality and his companion was taller and thinner. Mentally, Bob dubbed them Mutt and Jeff. Neither man was laughing or even smiling at Carlotta’s material, although they were certainly keeping their eyes on her. Bob decided to pay them a visit.
He navigated the floor over to their table. “Enjoying the show, gentleman?”
The tall thin man looked up at him, expressionless. “Great,” he said.
Bob cleared his throat. “It’s traditional to laugh at the jokes.”
“My friend has a medical condition that keeps him from laughing.” The thin man smiled. It wasn’t pleasant. “So I don’t either, just to keep him from feeling bad.”
“That explains why you’re patronizing a comedy club.” Bob wasn’t sure what he wanted from these two, but knew he wasn’t going to get it if they had their way. “Pay attention.” He gestured to Carlotta. “You might just enjoy yourselves.”
“I’m sure most of you can tell I’m not from around here.” Carlotta looked down ashamedly from her mike. “The truth is, I’m from America’s heartland, the great state of Iowa.”
“That would explain why you smell like pigs.” A deep male voice, slightly slurred, came from the back of the audience. Bob walked in the general direction of the heckler. He’d done this plenty of times and would have the creep pinpointed quickly.
Carlotta tried to work the interruption to her advantage. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned since being in the Big Apple, it’s that no one can survive very long with a well developed sense of smell.” Small laugh. “Getting back to Iowa. This is the truth, I swear to god. They held a contest in my home state for a new tourism slogan and asked Iowans to help them out.”
“You suck, you corn-fed bitch.” The heckler was even louder this time around. Bob picked out a large sandy-haired man in a tank top and faux leather pants sitting by himself a couple of tables away on the left. Bob pulled a small flashlight from his jacket pocket and moved in.
“Really,” Carlotta continued, ignoring him this time around, “you’d be amazed at the cruelty of responses from the folks in Iowa. These are people with a real sense of humor. One was ‘Iowa, gateway to Wisconsin.’” She sold the joke with a broad sweep of her arm, but didn’t get much for the effort.
“Go the fuck back where you came from,” yelled the heckler. Bob was standing directly behind him and briefly turned on the flashlight over the troublemaker’s head. Carlotta was looking in his direction and nodded.
“My favorite slogan by far, though, was ‘Iowa, it makes you want Dubuque.’” This got a pretty good response from the audience but the heckler started to laugh uproariously. He knocked his drink over, spilling ice and alcohol onto the floor, and grabbed onto the edge of his table, laughing convulsively. He looked up at Bob, with something close to panic in his widening eyes. Bob grabbed the man under his sweaty armpits and hauled him into a standing position, then guided him toward the exit. The heckler got his legs under himself quickly and Bob was afraid he might try to resist being ushered out the door. Luckily the man seemed relieved as Bob pushed him outside into the heat.
“I wouldn’t come back,” Bob said, as a parting shot, and gave the man a practiced stare for good measure. The heckler said nothing, but walked slowly away down the pavement.
Carlotta was leaving the stage to scattered applause when Bob made it back to the interior of the club. Mutt and Jeff had disappeared, which was okay with Bob. “Thank you ladies and gentlemen,” he said to the audience. “She’s here Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Tell your friends.”
Bob met her backstage with a half-smile. “Not your best, but not awful, given the circumstances.” He’d guessed Carlotta’s wild card ability and had bluffed the truth out of her a few weeks earlier. She couldn’t do any real harm with it; make a crowd giggle, a few people laugh out loud, or—if she focused it on one person—completely incapacitate them.
“Right.” Carlotta wiped her forehead and combed back her damp hair. “Thanks for the help, but I had him spotted. Jerks seem to grow on trees in this burg.”
“That’s a fact, my dear. After six months here, I’d think you’d come to expect it. New York’s reputation didn’t manifest itself out of thin air.”
Carlotta headed for her tiny dressing room. Bob followed. “God help me if I ever get used to rude assholes,” she said without looking back at him. “The dirt, yes. The noise, yes. Even the lack of anything green outside of Central Park or the A&P. But jerk-off morons are always going to piss this girl off.” She turned around at the doorway of her tiny dressing room. “I haven’t got time to talk. I’m meeting someone.”
“You’re certainly not a very traditional girl.” Bob fingered his watch and waited for a reply, but received only a roll of the eyes. “Most people suck up to their boss a bit, unless they’re very, very good at their job. You certainly don’t have more than one ‘very’ and possibly none at all.”
“You’re not going to get rid of me just yet, Mr. Cortland,” she said, and closed the door with finality.
Too true, Bob thought to himself. He wandered back over to the bar and poured himself a half-shot of scotch, wondering what it would be like to win a round with her. She certainly wasn’t smarter than he was. Well probably not. But he couldn’t match her obstinacy. “To good humor,” he said quietly. “Mine. And patience.”
He saw her flash out the rear exit in a short blue dress and almost-matching heels, blonde hair bouncing, and decided, with the help of the scotch, to try another approach on her. He had until he caught up with her to figure out just what that might be.
Once outside, the July heat swallowed him like a chip of ice in a cup of steaming coffee. Even in the early morning hours, the still, furnace-like air sucked the life out of everyone and everything. Carlotta was disappearing down the alleyway, but stopped short on the far side of a dumpster. Two men emerged from the darkness and stepped into her path. Bob couldn’t see them well and slipped into the shadows on the dark side of the alley, carefully removed a small revolver from his right jacket pocket. It felt bigger in his hand that it really was. He was hoping the same psychological phenomenon applied to the men he was going to try to stop.
“You’re coming with us. Any trouble, I hurt you.” The taller of the two men grabbed Carlotta by the arm. She tried to wrench away, but was pinned by his grip.
Bob moved out from behind the dumpster and trained his weapon on the man holding Carlotta, recognizing the pair as Mutt and Jeff. “Let her go,” he said, in as even a tone as he could manage. “I’ll shoot you both if I have to.”
Mutt stared at him, unblinking. “Now why don’t I believe that?”
Taking a deep breath, Bob pointed the end of the revolver slightly to one side of the man and pulled the trigger. The gun kicked uncomfortably in his sweaty hand and the bullet ricocheted off the brick alley wall and into a pile of crates, spraying chips of wood. “Because you’re stupid,” he suggested.
The pair turned and bolted toward the street. Bob aimed the gun toward the Mutt’s receding back, realized he wasn’t up to that, put the safety back on, and slipped the weapon back into his pocket.
Carlotta still stood unmoving, fists clenched. Bob quickly put his arm around her and got her moving back toward the club door. “You never have any shortage of admirers. Ever seen them before?”
She let out a deep breath. “No. Not until tonight. Show business isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.” Carlotta looked into his eyes for a second, then turned her head. “Thanks.”
“You want to tell me anything?” Bob tried to make eye contact with her, but she looked away and walked slowly back into the club. “Somehow, I didn’t think so.”
He was in his favorite seat at the club, lazily rubbing his thumb over a cigarette burn on the table’s hard wood finish. Bob was tired and it was only late afternoon. The excitement of the previous night had kept him from sleeping. Not that insomnia was unusual for him. It even helped if you ran a late-night business. Even though he’d put on fresh clothes, he felt rumpled.
Carlotta had seemed more scared than he would have expected if Mutt and Jeff were just muggers, and she didn’t spook easily as far as he could see. Not to mention the fact that comedy clubs like his didn’t really pay very well and any thief with half a brain would know that. Something was up, he was sure of that, but he didn’t have a clue what it might be. Maybe Carlotta just made him stupid. He took a sip of lukewarm coffee. It was his fourth cup of the day. If he had to be tired, at least he would be alert.
Wes the bartender walked over with a half-empty pot of coffee and gave Bob a warmup, then headed back to his work cleaning glasses behind the bar. A native New Yorker, Wes was physically large, but not particularly good-looking, loved to laugh, and only poured heavy for regulars and attractive women. He was the first person Bob had hired when he opened the Village Idiot and the only original employee the place still had.
“Wes, am I an idiot?” Bob asked, without looking for inspiration in the steam swirling in his cup.
“No, boss. No one who has the good sense to hire me could possibly be an idiot.”
Bob knew Wes could have made a comment about Carlotta. The bartender had a good pair of eyes and a quick mind. “Thanks, Wes.”
“How about a raise?”
“Don’t hurt me, Wes. You know how things are.”
Bob heard a key turn in the front door and Carlotta stepped in. Even in the dim light, he could see she was paler than usual. She was wearing a royal blue halter-top that was sweat-soaked to the skin and her hair was plastered to the sides of her face.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Bob asked. “You look like, well, like last night.”
“Funny about that.” Carlotta clutched a chair back and took a deep breath. “Because that’s how I feel.”
“Okay. Sit down and tell me about it.” He motioned to Wes. “You want anything to drink?”
“A shot of brandy would be nice.”
“Coming up.” Wes grabbed a glass and a bottle. “Anything for you, Mr. Cortland?”
“Not just yet, Wes.” He put a finger under Carlotta’s chin and raised her head. “Let’s hear it.”
Carlotta took the glass of brandy Wes had hurried over and had a sip. “Okay. I’m shopping on Eighth Street. Checking out some clothes and whatnot, and I wind up in a bookstore. This guy comes up to me and starts talking. Gorgeous guy. Tall. Blonde. You’d hate him.”
“I do,” Bob said. “I’ll take that brandy after all, Wes.”
“Right. Well we really hit it off and he asks if I want to get a cup of coffee. I figure he’s looking to get laid, which isn’t exactly objectionable in my mind, so I’ll just entertain the possibility and see how it goes.”
“Playing hard to get again.”
“Forget that, okay.” Carlotta shot him an agitated glance. “I don’t need you to ride me right now. In any case, we’re having coffee and it turns out he likes the same things as me. Russian composers, and Monet, and Woody Allen, and iced coffee.” She ticked off the coincidences on her fingers as she named them. “And I realized that this was beyond Kismet and into something really creepy. This guy came after me, same as those goons last night. Only he was using sugar instead of trying to strong-arm me.” She paused and took a deep breath, then another swallow of brandy.
“So where is he now?”
“Damned if I know,” Carlotta said. “I crawled out the window of the ladies room at the coffee shop to get away from him and came straight here.”
“All right,” Bob said, nodding. “Do you think there’s any chance you’re being paranoid or overreacting because of last night?”
“No way.”
Bob picked up his brandy and drained the small glass. “Then lets’ go. We’ve got somebody to see.”
Carlotta hadn’t been excited about a trip to Jokertown, but the fact that she hadn’t protested either indicated to Bob that she was genuinely scared. Not that Jokertown was that bad these days. In fact, it was one of the few areas of the city that didn’t live in fear of the ’44 Caliber Killer known as the Son of Sam. There were a few nut-balls suggesting a joker was the murderer, but most people weren’t buying it, particularly in Jokertown.
“Pull over next to the newsstand,” Bob told the cab driver. The cabbie whipped the car over, his tires squealing slightly as the rubber met the concrete curb. Bob handed him a twenty, too much really for such a short ride, and helped Carlotta out onto the sidewalk.
No place on earth, at least that Bob had seen, was like Jokertown. The streets and building looked and smelled a little different, and the residents ranged from almost passably normal to grotesque, but that wasn’t what struck him every time he came here. It was that the rules were somehow not quite the same inside Jokertown, and outsiders never knew where the lines of acceptable behavior lay.
One of the few people he did know and trust down here ran this newsstand. Bob walked over with Carlotta in tow. The proprietor was wearing one of his trademark Hawaiian print shirts. Even in the gathering shadows of dusk, the colors looked electric. “Jube,” Bob said, extending his hand. “Got a minute?”
Jube, who resembled nothing more than an upright, badly dressed, walrus, extended a blubbery gray hand. “Well, if it isn’t the owner of the Jokertown Idiot.”
The walrus always gave Bob grief over the fact that the Village Idiot was technically closer to Jokertown than Greenwich Village, even after Bob explained that a club named the Jokertown Idiot not only wasn’t clever sounding but would fold in less than a month.
“Thanks. I need your help. Actually,” he indicated Carlotta, “she does.”
Jube’s lips tightened appreciatively across his tusks and into a smile. “Whatcha need?”
Carlotta looked Jube up and down and lightly shook her head. “You didn’t tell me he was a redhead.” She pointed to the crimson tufts on Jube’s head. “Could be more trouble.”
Jube gave a deep, rumbling chuckle. “She’s a live wire, Bob. One of yours?”
Bob nodded. He was relieved Carlotta hadn’t shed her sense of humor. “Yes, but only as an employee.”
There was a rapid skittering noise behind them. A coin flew up over the lip of the newsstands wooden front and landed in Jube’s open palm. Something thin and semi-transparent whisked away a copy of the Jokertown Cry. A short, indistinguishable form folded the paper and shot across the street into the shadows.
“Thanks, Speedy,” Jube said, tossing the quarter into the register. He turned back to Carlotta. “Now, where were we?”
“We,” Bob said, emphasizing the word, “need someone for a protection job. Someone very good.”
“Mmmm.” Jube leaned forward. “And cost?”
“Is a consideration, but not a deterrent to hiring the best.” Bob had an Uncle Scrooge vision in his mind of dollar bills flying away on angel wings.
“I’ll pay you back, don’t worry.” Carlotta smoothed her hair back with both hands. “Just tell us who to see.”
Jube pulled out a beat-up notepad and wrote a name and address on it. “He’s the best I know of. Doesn’t ask too many questions and gets results.”
“I sense a qualifying ‘but’ coming here,” Bob said.
“No, not really. He’s a . . . changeable guy, but reliable. Just pay him what he asks and tell him what he needs to know to do the job and you’ll be fine.” Jube tore the paper from the pad and handed it over.
Bob turned the paper around and peered at it, unable to make out the letters. “What’s his name? Starts with a ‘C’? Can’t quite read it.”
“Croyd, just Croyd. I’ll call ahead and let him know you’re coming” Jube said. “Hey, you know how many jokers it takes to screw in a lightbulb?”
“I don’t have time to find out. Thanks, Jube.”
Whoever Croyd was, he didn’t have a standard address. Bob walked carefully down the alleyway with Carlotta a couple of steps behind. Dumpsters, baked by the incessant heat, clogged the alley with the actively unpleasant smell of accelerated decay. Bob checked Jube’s instructions with his flashlight and kept moving forward, looking for a door.
“Are we there yet?” Carlotta was trying to maintain her sense of humor, but Bob wasn’t laughing, or even smiling.
“Just about, I think,” he replied.
“I’d turn back if I were you,” the voice came from behind a stack of half-empty boxes. There was an old, bearded man sitting there, nursing a bottle of something. His threadbare clothes were soiled with what looked like a decade’s worth of stains. He looked them up and down and then turned back to his bottle.
“I do believe in spooks, I do believe in spooks, I do, I do, I do believe in spooks.” Carlotta’s voice had a bit of the spunky tone Bob associated with her, which was okay because his courage and confidence were beginning to head south. He came to a door and rapped hesitantly on it.
“Entre vous,” came a deep, raspy, voice from the other side.
Bob opened the door and stepped into a small, high-ceiling room. There was a low-light lamp in one corner next to a large mattress and the opposite corner was screened off. Something was sitting in against the wall opposite the door, covered in a massive gray-brown tarpaulin. There was an odd smell, but no Croyd was visible.
“We did hear somebody, right?” Carlotta was right on his heels.