Pipsqueak Read online

  From the mannerisms of these and most of the rest of the gallery people, I got the impression that they were the hard-cores. They didn’t act like this was a costume ball. Even while being sociable among themselves, they continually lapsed into serious postures of folded arms, confidential whispers, and meaningful glances. It was as though this gathering of wine and song had some grave import to them: less Benny Goodman, more Brahms.

  The lights dimmed and the champagne arrived. Curtains parted at the back of the dance floor, and applause drowned out the pop of our cork. About ten band members in red blazers, white shirts, and red ties sat at attention in two rows of bandstand stalls monogrammed with GC (for Gotham Club). Piano, bass fiddle, and drums flanked the stalls. The drummer’s base had The Swell Swingers stenciled on it in gold glitter. The bandleader was in shirtsleeves with red arm garters and a red bow tie hanging undone. He brandished a grand smile but was unshaven and had black rascally locks hanging in his eyes. Possibly a little stoned.

  “Gawth! See Vito? First row, all the way right. Cornet.”

  I nodded. There sat Vito in a neat red blazer, shaved head shining in the multicolored stage lights. His shaded eyes sparkled beneath hooligan black eyebrows, the kind that shake hands at the nose.

  With a wave of his red baton, the bandleader charged into a round of familiar swing numbers that got the crowd dancing. When the bottle of champagne was history, Angie and I hit the dance floor for two numbers, and I was relieved not to notice any hypercritical stares from the technically accurate dancers. At this point, I really couldn’t say whether what we were doing was a Lindy, East Coast or West Coast swing, jitterbug, jump, or what. In fact, it’s certain that we abbreviated the steps. But I figure as long as you can swirl the girl, dip your doe, flip your chick, and not drop the dame, you’re doing okay. I’ll take panache over persnickety any day.

  The applause from the last number stumbled to an end as Angie and I resumed our seats.

  “Thank you very much, ladies and gents, thank you!” Wiped from exertion and free radicals, the bandleader took a long drink of ice water. He drew a hand across his head, pulling the sweaty locks from his face. “I’m Rob Getty, and the Swell Swingers are certainly glad you could make it to the Gotham Club tonight.” While the audience applauded obediently, he stole the pianist’s cigarette from an ashtray on the Steinway. “And now we’d like you to give a warm welcome to Scuppy Milner and his Wailing Voice of Gold!”

  From stage left, an aquamarine tux jogged onto the stage filled with the night’s singer, a man with a forehead twice the size of his face. And atop that sat a rigid triangle of reddish-brown hair. Tiny blue eyes glinted above a smile as wide as his forehead was tall. I’m not completely sure he even had a nose. Scuppy (Scottish puppy? Schoolhouse guppy?) was a caricature of himself, an amalgam of outsize features, and his pugilistic hand gestures made it clear that he was rarin’ to go mano a mano with Buster Poindexter. The very thought: like a Godzilla flick, two giant foreheads locked in battle, swinging at each other with their titanic hair ledges, buildings toppled, Greenwich Village laid waste.

  The teeth flashed. “Who’s ready for some new stuff, huh? Shake it loose, people!” The gallery exploded with applause for Scuppy, obviously a local fave.

  The band fired up again, this time with a boogie-woogie beat, flaring horns, and hoodoo jungle drums. Scuppy lit up a smoke, winked at the audience, and made a fist around the mic.

  I didn’t catch all the lyrics, but I picked up a Swell Swingers CD later that spelled them out. And the song—“Blinking Light”—went:

  Baby, step away from that screen

  Now let go, jive and scream

  Tomorrow’s not a day to waste

  The future’s past as bongos race

  Blinking light commands

  That you never ever understand

  All to own and not to breathe

  Bar codes, access, shopping TV

  Listen up and dig the sound

  It’s your mind coming ’round

  Light me, baby, eyes of fire

  We’ll wail away the techno mire

  Baby, step away . . . [refrain]

  Tongue that tastes complete

  Isn’t junked with the obsolete

  Dance with me, leave your mouse

  Wall of numbers, crumbling house

  Doctor says we’re not lookin’ well

  That we’re dancin’ to certain hell

  Electron gun shot his hypothalamus

  Red blue green—now he’s not one of us

  Baby, step away . . .

  I got the gist of the lyrics during the performance, if not the complete swing libretto. Maybe it’s just me, but the sentiments seemed a little odd—certainly a far cry from “Jump, Jive, and Wail.” I looked back to the gallery while Scuppy belted it out. Some were cutting the rug in earnest. Meanwhile, Bing, Bowler, Feather Lady, and their cronies hung over the railing popping fingers, howling, bobbing heads, and generally going bananas.

  Peppy, contemporary swing music is to my liking, and I must say that I was pleased to see it come to the fore, especially as swing seems to be edging out the seventies revival. So I have a gut appreciation for this swing craze. But I have to say that the music coming from the stage at the Gotham Club had a dark element that was both alluring and sinister.

  The Swell Swingers finished their set a few numbers later, trombones swaying and horns blaring. Angie and I barely had time to quiz Dudley and Carmela about their wedding plans before a pair of hands grabbed my shoulders.

  “Hey ho, whadda ya know?” Vito came around from behind me, grinning, and pulled out a chair.

  “Hey, nice set, Vito.” I stood, shaking his hand. “Angie, this is Vito.”

  “This is your woman? Can it be true?” Vito the charmer.

  Angie put out a hand; Vito kissed it.

  “You know the swankiest people, Garth,” Angie quipped.

  Vito turned to Carmela. “And can this flower of loveliness be Carmela?” She stared balefully up at Vito’s waxed head. Without hesitation or pensive blink, he took her hand and squeezed it. “I get to be flower girl, am I right?”

  Dudley guffawed. “Oh, siddown, you cad!” He waved over a waitress, who replaced the empty bottle.

  After some reminiscing about jury duty, what Angie and I were up to, a sentence on Carmela’s job at the DMV, and what Dudley was into, we got around to Vito.

  “So, come up with any innovations in the glass eye?” I asked. “I’m in the market for some goat eyes.”

  Vito pointed at me. “You know the new contoured eyes with the offset scleral band, with the corneo-junction?”

  “Scleral band?” Angie said.

  “With the white around the side,” I explained.

  “Have you seen any prerotated, with exaggerated veining, using powdered production gold?” Vito thumped the table for emphasis. “Can you imagine how stunning that is for photography, the way the eyes light up instead of looking like black glass? I suppose you’ll be looking for some slot-pupil models that would work for a goat. What size?”

  “Maybe twenty-seven millimeters? Maybe not even that big.”

  “Call me, I’ll see what I’ve got. Would you believe how busy I’ve been with the music scene that I haven’t filled any orders lately?”

  “Swing?”

  “Yeah, swing has got every horn player in high gear. Used to be, I’d have three solid gigs in a good week, but now? Forget about it.” His fingers tapped out a triumphant drumbeat on the table. “Would you believe that if I wanted to work more rent-a-band shindigs, this big bad wolf would be blowing down the piggy’s house seven nights?”

  “So you play in more than one band?” Angie asked.

  He nodded gravely. “Doesn’t everybody? I mean, you got your main gig, but you sit in with other guys, pickup bands, you know? A few studio musicians, a couple fellas from the symphony, we pull up chairs, and what have you got? A band, so what do you name it? I play in the Buddy Phel
ps Hepsters, the Hell’s Kitchen Irregulars, Pistol Pete’s Mob . . . Sometimes we make up the name when we get to a club or when we put in at an agency for a listing to play private parties.”

  “All swing?” I asked.

  “Variations. One bunch does twenties stuff, another is very zoot suit, while another may be more jump, rockabilly, or traditional. How many flavors fit on a snow cone?”

  “Gawth wants to know about retros, Vito,” Dudley interjected.

  Vito nodded thoughtfully, waiting for me.

  “Well, I guess I’m curious about these people back up at the bar. I understand that this isn’t just dress-up.”

  Vito pursed his lips. “I’d say not.”

  “What’s behind it?”

  He shrugged. “A fad, a craze? Maybe in two years I’ll be back to playing Dixieland.”

  “That’s it, huh? I was listening to the lyrics in that first Scuppy number. Not the usual crooner fare.”

  Vito suddenly looked impatiently at his watch. “They gotta write songs about the war, you know?”

  “War?” Angie injected.

  Vito stood up, looking toward the bandstand, where one musician was working spit from the valves on his horn. “Before: Hitler, Vietnam. Now? Would I say it was like lifestyle wars? Technology will be the ruin of us all. Hey, nice seeing you guys. Gotta get backstage for the next set.”

  Angie and I exchanged glances, but Dudley didn’t seem to register anything from Vito’s sudden departure.

  “You didn’t get to ask him about Cola Woman,” Dudley noted. Angie and I exchanged a different kind of glance.

  Candle flicker made Angie’s sly look menacing. “Now, why would Garth want to ask Vito about Cola Woman?”

  Dudley drummed his pinkies on the table and looked at the ceiling, realizing he’d goofed. Carmela stirred her soda with a finger, mollified, I think, by the tinkling sound and golden-brown flash of ice light.

  Now, some people believe you should share every thought with your mate, and under ordinary circumstances, I’m one of them. But as I’ve intimated before, some pretty extraordinary circumstances have presented themselves over the last couple of years. More specifically, dangerous circumstances, those that I don’t necessarily go looking for but seem fated to encounter. Obviously, I knew that looking for Cola Woman—a de facto murderer—had certain risks. At this point, I was just nosing around to see if I might be able to spot her while filling a social obligation to my friend Dudley and taking Angie out on the town. You know, based on Nicholas’s hunch.

  I’m sure that in a lot of relationships, it’s the gal who frequently bemoans her man’s predilection for dangerous activities. You know, like “You’re not going to try to fix the roof yourself!” or “Skydiving? I don’t think so!” Yeah, but Angie ain’t that kinda girl, which is just another reason I love her so. The trade-off is that she is an inveterate puzzle person. Crosswords, Jumble, Win Ken Kleine’s Money, and even TV whodunits, like that. And she’s good at it too, whipping through the Times crossword over a cup of coffee and unwinding movie plots while the title credits are still rolling. Penetrating tenacity is her hallmark. She gets hold of a crossword and won’t let go until it’s done. Forget about breezing past an incomplete jigsaw in a bed-and-breakfast parlor. Something about her psychology drives her to pounce on and unravel a puzzle. In the past, she’s injected herself into my “extraordinary circumstances,” and despite my better judgment I stuck my neck out to satisfy her quizzical reflex. In the process, she’s nearly been shot and blown up. I’ve nearly been assassinated and crushed by a boulder.

  Call me overprotective if you must, but I didn’t want Angie getting involved with Cola Woman or my burgeoning Pipsqueak search.

  Nicholas was one puzzle she’d already got hold of, and I didn’t think she’d really let go of the T3 incident, either. God forbid she saw a connection. Of course, it was too late now, about Cola Woman anyhow.

  “I just mentioned to Dudley that since Cola Woman was dressed kind of old-fashioned that, you know, there might be some kind of outside chance that we might see her here.” I must have shrugged ten times. Darnedest thing about cohabitation is that you become so transparent to your mate.

  “Ah.” Triumph curled on her lips. Angie saw a pattern and was starting to stir jigsaw pieces in earnest. I wouldn’t hear any more about this until later, so I excused myself to the gent’s room before the band started up again.

  As I ascended the plush steps from the tiers to the gallery, I kept my eyes peeled for Cola Woman—not that I really expected to see her. She certainly wouldn’t be dressed Elly May–style at the Gotham Club, so I probably wouldn’t recognize her anyway. Then again, as I looked around, she might not be so out of place at that.

  It was much more crowded in the gallery than when we entered, the late-night crowd filling up the joint for the second set. And the fashion demographic was becoming proportionately wackier. I noted a pair of black-leather rockabilly boys sporting giant pompadours and cigarettes behind their ears. Variations on the jive costumes were myriad, ranging from men in coats with palm-size triangular buttons and string ties to women in their grandmas’ flowing black nightgowns with matching marabou slippers. I was beginning to detect direct themes and influences to ensembles too. Blaze-orange capri pants and silver-sequined camisole: Laura Petrie goes deer hunting in Vegas. Sharkskin suit, black shirt, crew cut, and El Presidente cigar: Dobie Gillis morphing into Jerry Lewis. There was the woman with the Veronica Lake hair, red flannel shirt, porkpie hat, baggy pants, clodhoppers, suspenders. Her girlfriend was in a black suit, white shirt, narrow black tie, Debbie Reynolds hair. It was all making me a little woozy. I made a point of not looking too closely at the gals in line for the powder room as I made my way to the men’s room.

  As usual, the men’s room wasn’t that crowded, and I took my place at the urinal.

  I don’t know about the rest of the country, but New York has gotten out of hand with advertising. Walk four blocks and take every handbill for porn or cheap suits. You’ll have a full ream. Leave your car parked on the street for a couple of hours, and the windshield is covered not only with parking violations but handbills: Zoom Lube, Go-Go Moving Company, and Barney’s Fried Chicken. Enter your apartment and the entryway is carpeted with Chinese, Indian, and sushi menus. Messenger bikes now have tiny billboards on the back of the seat. Whole sides of buses shill for TV. Mobile-billboard trucks drive the street hawking vodka, and taxis are painted up as ads for the latest Broadway show. Every mundane item that might hold your eye for a millisecond—cups, fudge-bar sticks, cocktail stirrers, bottle caps, gum wrappers—assaults you with an important message about another consumable. And how could you help but notice the two-fers? Cola cups/bottle caps that promote not only the cola brand but the latest blockbuster or the NBA with some lame “peel-off” game. I challenge anybody to find a soda container from a fast-food chain—or most other places, for that matter—that doesn’t cross-promote. Sorry, try again! I don’t think so.

  And some Madison Avenue Einstein recently decided that public bathrooms are the “it” venue. As you wait in line, there are racks of free postcards that are actually liquor or car ads. At the urinal, I was faced with a foot-square billboard for Fab Form, that soapy health drink. And then there’s the plastic cage for urinal cookies. Commercials are found posted on the bull’s-eye, so now (particularly if you’re male) you can piss on the product they want you to buy. This one, though, had a good-cause message, perhaps a belated warning for many. Say No to Drugs. I don’t know about you, but I think in their avarice, the Larry Tates of this world have so inundated us, so overstimulated us with their blaring flash-frame TV spots, that we no longer see any messages at all. Really take a hard look around at how thoroughly immersed your life is in ads, and you’ll feel like you’ve been snapped out of a trance.

  I noticed that the images of the healthy couple chugging Fab Form had been scratched (using keys, I guessed) with messages from fellow whizzers. Access Is Su
bmission. Black & White. No Codes. Smoke & Degauss. Who’s monitoring whom? Hello, dick breath. Except for the last, I found them more interesting than whether I could measure up without Fab Form. Unlike ads, cryptic sloganeering is at least thought-provoking.

  I gave myself the once-over in the mirror—just to make sure my wayward hair was still frozen under the spell of ULTIMATE CONTROL, Level 6, hair gel—and made my way out past the women’s room line. I squeezed my way through the gallery of jive lost boys and was just taking a step into the tiers when I turned. I’d passed someone I thought I recognized, but now she was gone. I turned forward again, saw Angie giving me a curious look from our table, then decided I wanted to see who it was I’d maybe recognized.

  As I approached the bar, my eye zeroed in on a figure over by the hatcheck. I saw a red dress, small stature, full figure, and yellow beehive hair, but it was the chunky legs that had been imprinted on my memory. She was talking to that Bing Crosby wannabe while collecting her wrap. He put a hand to her flabby elbow and they moved off into the red velvet folds of the exit. Dodging Feather Lady and a zoot suit, I got to the hatcheck just in time to see Bing and the Red Lady step outside. They paused, him offering her a light from his Zippo. I zoomed in on her profile. I knew her from somewhere. Then it hit me like Moe’s fingers in Curly’s eyes. As the door closed, I heard her kvetch: “This better not take all night.”