"Spencer Tracy was silver-haired in that movie," Kit corrected.
"You have your Sthpen-ther Tra-thy, and I'll have mine," Temple said between gritted teeth. It was hard to speak clearly while breathing through your mouth.
Midnight Louie cried in protest, but then, he had no holy figures to invoke for protection.
Then Louie hissed. It sounded remarkably like "Baaasst!"
"I think that Louie's saying that Spencer Tracy was a bastard," Temple said.
"Louie knows nothing about it," Kit replied. "Tracy couldn't divorce his wife to marry Katharine Hepburn because he was a devout Catholic. One of Hollywood's few off-screen tragedies."
"Devout Catholics are the pits," Temple said.
"I happen to admire Spencer Tracy. He was a fabulous actor."
"But I bet he wouldn't be caught dead in this dump."
"That was Bette Davis. Now, please, constrain yourself. We're almost there."
Kit was right. The elevator soon stopped. The ruined doors took their time about deciding to open.
Temple streaked out, Louie in her arms. Kit followed, glasses perched on her nose.
"We should have brought a flashlight," she noted.
The hall lay before them, more smelled than seen, a stew of hotplate cookery, unclean corridors and bathrooms too far from rooms.
"I suppose you don't have vintage buildings of this age in Las Vegas," Kit said.
"Only the Blue Mermaid Motel."
"The Blue Mermaid. What an evocative name. It should be used in a play."
"Where are we going?"
"To Rudy's flat."
"How will we find it?"
Kit sighed. Her faux fur brushed Temple's wrist. "I have a number, which I cannot see. Perhaps we will meet a kindly guide on the way."
"Perhaps we will meet a housing inspector."
"Not in New York City! Onward."
Finally, finding no sense to the numbering system, by dint of approaching innumerable doors and by process of elimination and the curt direction of disturbed residents, Kit and Temple stood before one narrow door.
"What if he's home?" Temple asked. "Won't he be mortified that we hunted him down?"
"He may be, but we will not be." Kit was still doing her Empress of all the Russias impersonation. "We are merely visiting an old friend for the holidays. We'll take him out for cheese blintzes or something. Look, Temple. If rent control ever phases out, this place will be snapped up, rehabbed like my building and become one of the finest addresses in lower Manhattan. Consider our visit. . . premature."
"Consider poor Rudy the renter an endangered species."
"Rent control has allowed a fringe person like him to have a home all these years. At least he'll have a couple years to look for new accommodations."
"If he isn't dead already."
"Temple, please! I've been trying not to think of that. I guess we have to knock. There's no doorbell."
"You're wearing the leather gloves."
Kit lifted her chin again, and her fist, and rapped three times.
Knock three times . . . no answer
Several more attempts were answered only by silence.
Louie had, by then, had it. He meowed in an angry tone, then wriggled his head and forelegs free of the bag. Two black cat paws pushed on the door.
And it opened.
"What a natural!" Kit slipped past Louie into the dark beyond. "Remember to say the cat did it, if anyone should ask."
Inside they were accosted by a pair of assertive odors: ancient, brittle newsprint and mildew. Temple and Louie sneezed in tandem. Somewhere in the dark, Kit scrabbled for a light switch.
"This reminds me of the conference room." Temple whispered, rather than whistled, in the dark. "And look what happened there."
Her answer was a soft click. A wan puddle of light spread on the ceiling like a stain.
Kit was a huge, humped figure vanishing into her own shadow down a dim hallway. "Wait here, Temple. Rudy! It's Kit Carlson. Merry Christmas! Are you home?"
Temple waited. "Louie, it's so cold in here. Don't they have heat?"
Midnight Louie wriggled in his carrier, but he didn't try to leap to the floor. Temple figured his nose told him what had been on that floor, and he wasn't going to follow an act like that!
"Temple!" Kit's voice from far down the hall sounded clogged. "I've found a flashlight."
Temple ventured down the dark hallway, cheered by a wavering comet of light at the end of the tunnel. The odor of stale Oriental food grew. She figured a tiny kitchenette lurked behind an ajar door. Another open door floated by; beyond it, she glimpsed piles of papers and books.
Kit's flashlight took wild stabs at illuminating parts of a tiny room at the hall's very end.
"This place is laid out like a classic railroad flat," Kit said. "Narrow and cubbyholed and homely. I don't suppose you're old enough to remember the Box-car Kids books?"
Temple couldn't respond before Kit answered herself. "No, of course not. Too young. Railroad flats. A boon from an indifferent housing authority and time itself. A rent-controlled throwback, a hidden refuse heap, but its residents' own. Rudy lived here. Smell the stale pot."
"Lived?"
"He's not here now, and I haven't seen any sign of a Santa suit about the place. I know he had his own outfit. Look at those baskets." Her flashlight sketched a mattress on the floor surrounded by wicker laundry baskets full of papers. "You wonder if he collected them for warmth, or content. We had no idea how he lived, we old actors lending him the occasional hand. We remembered him tall and slender and as limber as a weeping willow. He had a fantastic talent for mime. That made him a great street beggar later. Looked so pathetic. When we got him cleaned up a few years ago, and lined up regular jobs, he always showed up. And always came back to here, the place he'd gotten years ago. Do you think he's really dead, Temple? Or just... out on the town in his Santa suit doing another gig?"
"I don't know. Maybe we should come back by daylight to find out if he's come back here. Or maybe we should call the precinct and ask to see the body, sans everything."
Kit snapped off the flashlight. "I was afraid of that."
For a long moment, in the utter dark, she thought of Rudy.
Chapter 25
A Very Bad Joint
I have not been in a down-at-the-heels dive like this in ages.
I am sorry to report that people live in places across this great land in which I would not kennel a dog . . . and my opinion of dogs is well known. I am also sorry to report that there were times in my not-so-recent past when I would have been happy to have such a joint to cut the wind.
Speaking of joints, I am surprised that my two lady friends have not commented on the roaches around this place. I refer both to the six-legged variety, which skitter away from the flashlight beam as if it were a laser-sword from Star Wars and they were Darth Vader (given some people's belief in reincarnation, they could be), and the shriveled brown butt-ends of marijuana cigarettes. I would think that Miss Kit Carlson, given her vaunted flower-child lifestyle in the decade of the sixties, would have more than a passing acquaintance with such storied leftovers of the era.
In fact, I pat one atop a dresser so it rolls on the floor. Miss Temple gives the object the distracted frown of one who is concentrating so hard on holding her breath so as to avoid noxious odors that all her other senses are on vacation. Miss Kit favors me with a dirty look, and casually kicks the roach out of sight under the dresser.
Maybe she does not wish to further scandalize her niece, or is worried about Rudy's reputation, which is like locking the barn door after Native Dancer is out and has gone cantering on to greater glory. So while the ersatz Snoop Sisters debate the state of the missing resident's health, I am pretty convinced that he was the dead guy in the sky at the advertising agency's Christmas party.