He's referring to the strip of porn shops and cheap whore's hotels on DaVinci Road where it runs along the edge of Gunktown.
"Deval was a hustler?"
Tony nods. "For years, Mr. C kept it quiet. In his set, it was okay to be gay. You sowed your wild oats in Europe or New York, then met someone from your own class and settled down. But if people found out Mr. C'd picked up his boyfriend on DaVinci – well, that would've been something else. Now, of course, everything's different. A thing like that can even be a plus. After Waldo died, Spence told a couple of his friends and they spread it around. Now people are fascinated he hast that in his past."
Which leaves me with no clear answer to my original question, whether Waldo, with his arch manner, malicious wit, and flaunted superficiality, was, beneath it all, a bit of a cheap crook. And though my first impression, upon hearing this from Chip's mother, was that if it were true it made Waldo scum, I now take a gentler view. In fact, I decide, it's the first thing I've heard about Waldo that makes him truly interesting… as does the fact that his boyfriend was a hustler. And perhaps, I think, since Waldo obviously didn't need to blackmail people for money, perhaps he did it as a kind of social service, his way of ripping the masks off the people he wrote about, a confirmation also of his world view – that everyone was some kind of hypocrite.
8:00 p.m.
The rain's stopped so I decide to walk to Jurgen's girlfriend's place. The address seems odd for a residence, a 1930s-era office building ten blocks from Calista Center. A uniformed doorman admits me to a restored art deco lobby embellished by contrasting slabs of marble and alabaster.
She I express surprise that people live here, the doorman tells me several upper floors have been converted to apartments.
"Very private, one residence to a floor," he says. "Ms. Hanks is expecting you. You're to go right up."
A high-speed elevator whisks me to the penthouse. Stepping off into a small foyer, I hear the wonderful old Ella Fitzgerald/Cole Porter album playing behind the facing door.
When Jurgen lets me in, the vision before me is so stunning I pause to draw my breath. We're on a balcony overlooking a double-story living room with a gracefully curving staircase leading down. The room below has been done up with a studied absence of color – black leather upholstery, black and white rug, black and white framed photographs on the walls. The wall opposite is a broad expanse of glass revealing a spectacular view: the entire Calista Valley from Irontown to Delamere Lake caressed by the light of the setting sun. The Calista River, a soft buff red, snakes its way through the ruins of the mills, while Lindstrom's twin glass towers catch and reflect the pink mackerel sky.
It's a drop-dead view from a drop-dead room in a drop-dead apartment. I'm amazed. If this is who a high-class call girl can live in Calista, I wonder why any girl in ‘the life’ would stick around L.A. or New York.
"What a fabulous place!"
Jurgen nods. "Dove inherited it from a client. He liked her, set her up here, then he died here, heart attack ‘in the saddle,’ as they say. His wife and children were pissed when they discovered Dove was in his will. Tried to buy her off cheap. I got her a good lawyer. Now she owns it free and clear."
As if on cue, Dove Hanks appears. Jurgen introduces us and we formally shake hands.
I smile and Dove giggles – we both know why I'm here. She's a lovely, tall, willowy black woman, mid-twenties, with rich, dark skin so silken smooth I'm tempted to reach out and touch it just to see how nice it must feel. Her features are cover-girl gorgeous and there's nothing at all call girl avaricious in her eyes. On the contrary, they convey a tender dreaminess. She's wearing strappy sandals and a simple white dress looped over her bare shoulders by spaghetti straps. Glossy, precision-cut black hair surrounds her face like a helmet.
"Been looking forward to meeting you, David. I've posed for plenty of photographers. You'll be my first real artist."
"I'm more an illustrator than an artist."
She smiles again. "I saw your drawing of Jurgy. Caught him just right, I thought."
She's well-spoken and knows how to flatter. I find her immensely likeable.
"I brought along some large sheets of paper," I tell her. "I thought we'd work on a bigger scale tonight."
"Speaking of sheets," she giggles, "I hear you want me to pose on mine."
"Only if it makes you comfortable."
"I'm always comfortable in my skin." She beams at Jurgen. "Ain't I, sweetpea?"
"Dove's always comfortable, " Jurgen affirms.
He pours each of us a flute of champagne, then the three of us sit on the glove-black leather couch, chatting and listening to Ella while watching the sun set and all color drain from the view. Finally we go silent, awed by the noir vision before us – Calista as night city, towers twinkling, river black as oil, traffic in the streets becoming ribbons of flowing amber light.
A half hour later, we're in the bedroom – Dove sprawled naked on her rumpled sheets, Jurgen seated in an easy chair beside the bed, I perched on a stool facing her and my portable easel, outlining her sprawled nude form in the manner of Matisse, trying to depict her as a twenty-first-century odalisque.
Dove does a line of coke, while Jurgen and I continue to sip champagne. Occasionally we nibble from a platter of cold hors d'oeuvres he's brought over from his restaurant cooler.
I enjoy drawing Dove. She makes for a gorgeous subject, and the wrinkled, white bedding surrounding her chocolate body sets up delicious contrasts between furrowed and smooth, light and dark.
"The other day I heard a surprising thing about Waldo Channing," I tell Jurgen, as I draw the undulating curve of Dove's back. "I heard Waldo and Maritz had a blackmail racket going. Did you know about that?"
"I think Jack mentioned it a couple of times. Like I told you before, he had no use for Maritz. He liked Waldo well enough since Waldo always mentioned The Elms in his column."
"Why would Waldo, with so much going for him, have to stoop so low?"
Jurgen smiles. "That he didn't have to was probably why he did. He wrote all that gossip about the Happy Few, but I think he really hated them. Jack, on the other hand, truly liked those people. They were fun and spent a lot of money at his club. But what do I know? I was just maitre d'."
"Maitre d' at The Elms – that would've been a good position to observe."
"Yeah," Dove drawls, "don't put yourself down, sweetpea. Maitre d's and whores, we know folks' secrets like servants always do. We know all about them, but they don't know batshit about us."
Jurgen blows her a kiss.
"So tell me, Jurgen, from the maitre d's point of view, what was it between Cody and Barbara Fulraine besides sex?"
Jurgen raises and eyebrow. "Isn’t it always sex?"
"For me it always is," Dove says.
I draw the sweet crevice between her buttocks.
"There must have been more to it. People say Cody was stringing her along about her daughter the same way you told me Maritz did."
"Not true!"
Jurgen's annoyed. I've discovered something interesting about him: that he's still such a loyal acolyte of Jack's that the slightest hint that Jack was less than admirable spurs him to tell me things he'd probably prefer to keep to himself.
"That's what the cops say."
"They don't know anything. Mrs. Fulraine believed her daughter was still alive. Jack knew better. Still he wanted to find out who took her. If he could find one of those people, he'd beat the truth out of him, then track down the rest of them and administer his own kind of justice."
"Kill them?"
"In the Legion we called it execution prejudicelle."
"So in the end what did Jack find out?"