South Wind Read online

  South Wind

  Theodore A. Tinsley

  SOUTH WIND

  Jerry Tracy, maker of wisecracks, cuts in on a bit of Southern tragedy

  BUTCH’S BIG FEET always shuffled when he was worried or puzzled. As he led the old man into the private Broadway cubby of the Planet’s famous columnist, he squirmed his huge shoulders sidewise and his soles dragged like twin ashcans.

  He shot a brief glance at Jerry Tracy and resumed his fore and aft scrutiny of the visitor.

  In the canny experience of Butch old guys like this worked the novelty grift between Longacre Square and the lobby of the Republic Theatre. They were hired by the Minsky Brothers or maybe Luckyfield cigarettes. Every few yards on their strolling they pressed a button and an electric sign lit up on their shirt-front, or maybe on the seat of their pants. They all wore crummy Prince Alberts like this in the daytime and changed to dress suits with shiny shirt-fronts after dark; and they all sported that white, goatlike whisker under the lower lip. Must be a rule of the union, Butch figured.

  Butch waited stolidly to get the office from Jerry—either a discreet scram for himself or a swift bum’s rush for the old bird.

  “Mistuh Je’y Tracy?”

  A soft, blurry voice. Southern. The columnist looked at the straight back, the mild eyes. Sixty, he guessed. His gaze dropped to the veined back of the hand resting on the knobbed cane. It was puckered and fragile looking, spotted on the skin with faint brown marks like overgrown freckles. Jerry changed his guess. Seventy, at least.

  He answered the formal query with a brisk; “Check. What’s the complaint?”

  The old man sat down.

  “Why, no complaint, I reckon. It’s merely that I’ve been info’med, suh, that you’re in a position by virtue of yo’ knowledge of theatrical matters and Bro’dway, to render me a kindly service—”

  Uh, uh! Here comes the bee, Jerry thought He could almost hear it buzz. In a moment it would alight painlessly on his wallet and fly away with a buck. Well, maybe two, damn it! The old fella looked pretty tired; the hand that mopped his face was trembly …

  “I’ve come to see you about my granddaughter, Mist’ Tracy. I tho’t—I’ve been reliably info’med—that you could probably help me find her.”

  Tracy’s eyes narrowed. Might be the McCoy; might be a build-up. Too hot to speculate. The dead pan of his bodyguard wasn’t much help.

  “Outside, Butch,” he suggested curtly.

  The old man was fingering the edge of an inner pocket. “I’ve got a photograph—”

  “Just a minute, Colonel.”

  “Major, suh,” he corrected courteously. “Major Geo’ge Fenn.”

  “Okey by me … What makes you think I find women? Somebody tell you I was a private op? And who gave you the address? Been over to the Planet office?”

  “Yes, suh. I forgot—I saw a gentleman named Hennessey, I believe, and he gave me this yere note.”

  “Let’s have a look, Maje,” said the columnist grimly. Dave Hennessey was getting to be pretty much of a lousy nuisance lately! Him and his nose for news! Jerry would put a cover on his can the next time he saw him!

  He ripped open the envelope and read the thing with a scowl.

  “The attached prise package has been getting under our feet and walking around presses looking for you. He refuses to spill the plot except to Mistuh Tracy, suh. Maybe there’s a gag in the guy. If there isn’t, toss him to Butch. D.H.”

  Jerry crumpled the message disgustedly and flipped it into the waste-basket.

  “That makes everything as clear as the depression,” he grinned. “Who sent you over to the Planet in the first place?”

  “The clerk at the hotel. Mr. Collins. A ve’y nice man. Most helpful an’ courteous. When I explained to him that Alice Anne was in the theatrical profession he said that—”

  “I know. He said Jerry Tracy, just like that. He’s not Snitch Collins, by any chance, of the dear old San Pueblo?”

  “That’s right. That’s where I’m stoppin’. I like it first-rate, suh. Ve’y quiet. No noise. The cab driver recommended it”

  His wrinkled eyes smiled.

  “New Yo’k is a real homey town. As nice an’ friendly folk as you’d find in the hull of No’th Ca’lina.”

  Tracy nodded absently. Friendly, all right … The friendly hackman, cruising around Penn Station in a gyp-wagon, hauling fresh meat to the San Pueblo, pulling down his commission. The friendly Snitch Collins, steering the old guy to the Planet on the off chance that his joint might horn in on some publicity for a change. The friendly Hennessey, his Irish nose alert for a cheap hot-weather gag for his lip-reading customers … Just a great big friendly town!

  And quiet! You couldn’t find a quieter spot than the San Pueblo Hotel if you started at the Aquarium and walked all the way to Gun Hill Road. The San Pueblo specialized in dense silence. The hard-pan dicks who dropped in for an occasional chat with the guests and the management, did all the loud talking. A month back they had carried out a small blonde exhibit from a room on the fifth floor. The Tabs made an awful noise. “Dance Hostess Slain by Fiend!” But the San Pueblo merely said: “Tsk, tsk!” got a pencil and a Racing Form and stretched out in its underwear to study the Pimlico results with the shades discreetly pulled.

  Tracy said, in a flat murmur: “Yeah, it’s pretty quiet … The granddaughter’s in show bizness, you say—her name’s Alice Anne Fenn and you say she’s been up here—”

  “Fo’ years, suh. But I haven’t had any letters since—”

  “Let’s see the photograph.”

  He studied it with a scowl. The picture was about as helpful as ear-muffs in August. A faded three-quarter pose of a girl about sixteen in a fluffy white dress, with a white ribbon, on her hair and a rolled diploma in her left hand.

  “Her graduation picture,” said the old man proudly. “First in her class. Smart as a buggy whip.”

  “What’s her stage name? Never told you, eh?”

  “No, suh. I always wrote to Alice Anne at general delivery. She wasn’t much hand at answerin’ letters and for the last two years—”

  “I know.”

  Damn’ right, he knew! An actress, eh? that meant she might be anything. A waitress in Quids, a salesgirl in Gimbels basement. Or she might be demonstrating corn-razors or opening day-beds in a store window. Pounding the sidewalks of Sixth Avenue or doing a strip act in a cheap burlesque show. Hell—for all he knew she might have a coupla kids and be living in the Bronx, married to a shoe-clerk. Try to find a stage-struck kid from the South in this burg! New York was lousy with Southern gentlewomen trying to get their monickers up in the lights.

  He picked up a sheet of paper, folded it, tore a semi-circle out of the crease. He opened the paper and laid it flat on the photograph with the girl’s face in the hole.

  He studied it, looked away with eyes closed, studied it again. There was something vaguely familiar about that isolated head in the center of the white sheet. Add a few years, subtract the schoolgirl simper … Hmm … Lower-lip pout, round face and movie chin; moonlight and honey-suckle in the slow drawl of that famous second act exit …

  Behind his own closed eyelids jigsaw letters joined hands and formed a name. Lola Carfax, by ——! Lola …

  When he opened his eyes his face was wooden.

  “Can’t place her at all, Major,” he said. “Some more dirt, please.”

  “Suh?” The old man looked puzzled.

  “Details. Dope. Information.”

  Major George Fenn wiped his moist face and began tremulously to recollect. Jerry sucked a pencil end and listened.

  Alice Anne was the only kin—his only granddaughter—all he had left—he was gettin’ old, powerful lonesome. Smart little tyke; she used to
play with his watch-chain an’ call him Marse Geo’ge. The Fenns came from Thunder Run, in No’th Ca’lina. Not much of a place, but pretty, suh … Saggin’ fences an’ houn’ dawgs blinkin’ lazy, with their paws couched in the red dust o’ the road. Thunder Run warn’t much of a crick but it certainly did thunder, by Judas Priest! when the stars made everythin’ else quiet an’ the spray kep’ brashin’ an’ gurgling in the dark over them flat stones. An’ the hills—blue, suh!—with hawks driftin’ like dots an’ fat white clouds that never moved …

  “So Alice Anne packed up and left,” Tracy reminded him.

  That was correct. She went No’th. Grandpap couldn’t hold her, not after she married that damn’ Jeff Tayloe. Only seventeen, she was. Headstrong as a colt.

  Jerry stopped sucking the pencil abruptly. So La Carfax was married! Well, well—and also, hum, hum!

  Jeff Tayloe was a scamp, it seemed. A damn’ cawn-pone hill-billy with white teeth an’ a big laughin’ voice—an’ she ma’ied him. Three months later Jeff was in jail and Alice Anne smiled calculatin’ an’ far-away, packed up and went North. Plenty o’ spunk. She wrote letters for a while, then they stopped coming. Never told him her new name—he always wrote to Alice Anne Fenn at general delivery, and after a while his letters came back with big carmine rubber-stamp marks all over them.

  “How long since she left, did you say?” Tracy murmured.

  “Four years this Fall.”

  Humm … Lola Carfax—seventeen and four—check! Three years since Hymie Feldman picked her out of thin air and gave her the juicy lead in “Southern Charm.” A natural! Couldn’t act worth a plugged dime, but her drawl—oh, man! And her luscious innocence in the second act—oh, ma-a-a-an! And her wise, case-hardened persistence in the part after the smash-hit closed. Little Lola knew instinctively what the vise critics didn’t—that Southern Charm was a golden racket in a big evil-minded burg, if you played the role on Park Avenue and met the right people and your voice was as soft and velvety as pollen on a bee’s thigh … A luscious peach from the Southland with a small, rotten pit tucked snugly away in the fruit. Jerry knew the outlines; Patsy would know a hell of a lot more!

  He said, absently, “Beg pardon?”

  “—my declinin’ years,” the old man was saving in a slow, stately murmur. “The last prop of my house. If you could only find her—”

  “I thought you said she had a brother,” Tracy lied in an odd voice.

  The old man hadn’t said anything of the kind, yet he nodded.

  “Did I mention him? Her brother, Henry Fenn, made the supreme sacrifice in France, suh. She’s all I have left.”

  “Check,” said an odd, gasping voice in Jerry’s brain. “No brother to guide her. Then who whelped Buell Carfax? And—holy sweet hominy!—can it be that young Massa Buell has white teeth and a big, laughing voice? Also, how tight are Southern jails, I wonder?”

  He was burning with a desire to get to Patsy and soak up her slants on the subject. Patsy could spear a fish like Lola Carfax with a dozen well-chosen words.

  He got to his feet, smiled, held out his hand.

  “Tell you what, Major. You’ve got me interested. I don’t recognize the photograph but I’ll keep it, if you don’t mind. You wait for developments at the San Pueblo—I’ll have Butch ride you over in a cab. It may take a little time to trace Alice Anne—”

  “I was hopin’ you might find her for me in the next fo’ty-eight hours,” Major Fenn said faintly. “Circumstances at Thunder Run make it impe’ative, I’m afraid—”

  Busted. The old fella had his fare probably and a small, carefully counted roll …

  “We’ll do the best we can, Maje,” said Tracy cheerfully.

  He stepped into the outer office and leaned over Butch’s cauliflower ear.

  “Take this guy over to the San Pueblo. After you’ve parked him, go up to Snitch Collins at the desk and tell him I said to keep his hooks off the major. Tell him if he doesn’t I’ll send someone over there that’ll take him by the ears and smash every—chair in the lobby with his heels! Tell him that from me.”

  Butch made a slow spittle-noise with his lips. He pulled his unfailing joke, a high-pitched falsetto: “Is that a promise?”

  He went out with the major and Tracy walked to the window and stared across at the dirty façade of the Times Building.

  He put on his bat after a while and went out.

  Typewriters were clicking busily in the Planet’s big news room. Hennessey looked up from the city desk as Tracy breezed by.

  “Hi, Jerry! Get any belly laffs outa the old gempmum?”

  “Shut up, you ape, or I’ll raise a high hat on your skull!” Tracy grinned. “Patsy around?”

  “Where d’yuh get that Patsy stuff? Lay off! I happen to know she don’t like it.”

  “Brrr! You happen to know? You wouldn’t know if your collar was unbuttoned, Dave. See you later when you got money.”

  He turned a corner, went down a corridor and stepped into the third cubby on the left.

  “Hawzit, Patsy?”

  “H’lo, Bum.” She sat back. “Lousier an’ lousier. This place makes me sick. I could be fired right now for what I think I’ve been toying with the quaint notion of expunging myself from the payroll”

  “So what? And if same occurs?”

  “I could try newspaper work for a change.”

  “Ouch! That hurt!” He looked at her with alert eyes.

  “No kiddin’, Jerry,” she said gravely.

  She was tall and slim, almost loose-jointed. Nice face, dark hair and eyes, small mouth. She dished up society news and could write with a cruel, jewel-like hardness when the need arose. It seldom did. Her customers rode in the Bronx Express and liked prose poems about Piping Rock. She could turn that stuff out in her sleep. She and Jerry were the twin stars that made the circulation manager of the Planet sing in his bathtub. Doris Waverly’s Chat, syndicated …

  She bad been born in a beery flat on Tenth Avenue. Kicked loose, saved up, pulled a grim A.B. out of Vassar—talked nice to strangers and tough to friends. Her real name was Veronica Mulligan. Tracy called her Patsy and she liked it. Hennessey, the city editor, tried it once and she curled him like Cellophane with a brief, pungent description of his type, straight out of the Elizabethan drama.

  “Ever hear of Lola Carfax, of the ole Southern Carfaxes?” Tracy asked her.

  “Ah reckon Mistuh Beauregard. … Why ask me? You’ve got the rat assignment, Jerry.”

  “Come, come, child! Poppa wants the dirt.”

  “Want it brief?”

  “Uh, uh.”

  “I’ll say it slowly. She’s a wise, crooked, honey-drawlin’, little—”

  “I getcha. B as in bird-dog.”

  “And not the Poppa, either. … ” She grinned. “Why the sudden interest?”

  “Her grand-pappy’s in town. The real name, if you’d like to know, is Alice Anne Fenn. Take a long look and say yes or no.”

  She studied the photograph.

  “It’s Lola, all right. That’s one dame that can make the hackles rise on me. She and her pretty brother!”

  “What’s he like, this brother? Wait—don’t talk! Has he got nice strong, white teeth and a big laughing voice?”

  “That’s Buell. Add the professional drawl and the phoney courtly manner and he’s yours.”

  The columnist’s smile cut a little crease in his face.

  “What makes you think I want him? Listen, Patsy! She married him when he was Jeff Tayloe, when she was shy and seventeen, in the dear old deep Southland.”

  “Tell me some more,” Patsy said slowly. Her dark eyes were like agate.

  He told her a lot. When he had finished she nodded.

  “I’ve often wondered about Buell Carfax,” she admitted. “He’s only been on the scene for a year or so. Her graft is no mystery but I never could figure brother Buell. They’re smooth workers. Right now I’d say they’re both definitely in the inner sanctum. I’ve only heard
one ‘no’ since Lola gave Park Avenue the office. It came from old Miss Lizzie Marvin of Sutton Place. Somebody said: ‘Dear little Lola! Such a sweet child!’ And the ancient virgin from Sutton Place smiled her wise old smile. ‘The little girl in white? Ah, yes. … She fairly stink-ks of Southern charm!’ I had all I could do to keep from hugging the old war-horse!”

  Jerry lit a cigarette, leaned over the desk and blew smoke against his trick Panama.

  “Scene changes. What about this Doctor Altman? Profile, please.”

  Her lips curled.

  “There’s a suspicious nose in the profile, but the good doctor is Church of England. Edgar Louis Altman. He gets around. Surgeon, polo, squash—maybe Lola Carfax.”

  “Why maybe?”

  “There’s always a big maybe about matrimony—did I tell you the girl was smart? She’s been in the money for months, but like old Robert E. Lee, she wont surrender without a ceremony. If I were you I’d bet on matrimony. Altman has sunk enough dough already to make a wedding look like good economy. He’s chasing her hard, Jerry.”

  “I’ll make a note of that,” he grinned. “The little girl is chased!”

  She said irritably: “Stay sober. How about Buell Carfax? The big brother with the nice teeth.”

  “You asking me, Patsy? A nice boy like Jeff Tayloe gets out of a North Carolina jail, sees something in a rotogravure, reads something else in the social chatter, picks a few pockets and comes North. What a lovely reunion that must have been! I’d say the split was 50-50, but we know Lola is smart so maybe he’s only cutting a straight 10 per cent. Even at that, he could play ball—it’s a life job, Patsy, and a handsome brother with a smooth line is worth 10 per cent of anyone’s dough.”

  Her face clouded. “And the old grand-pappy’s in town? He sounds nice. It’s nice to find someone that’s McCoy once in a while. … Where’s he parked?”

  Jerry chuckled. “You’d never guess. San Pueblo. Nice and quiet, he says.”

  “Holy cats! Well—what are you going to do?”

  “None of your damn’ business.”

  “I’d like to talk to the old fella.”