The Kind One Read Free Page B

of my bungalow and we went in. She looked around the living room with a pleased expression. “I had a nigger named Matilda spend the whole day cleaning in here. You could eat off the floor if you wanted to. Because nobody cleans like Matilda.” Then she gave me the key. “Well this is yours now. If you need anything you know where to find me. Do you play checkers by any chance?”
    “Checkers?”
    “My husband loves checkers with a passion. If you ever feel like a game, just come on over. And I’ll pour you a cup of jackass brandy to boot.”
    “Okay, Mrs. Dean. Thanks.”
    She left. The key was cool in my hand. I was all alone in my little bungalow. I thought it not bad for forty bucks a month.
    One reason I took it was, it was furnished, with some battered mismatched odds and ends. I sat down on a tattered black davenport. I took my hat off and placed it down beside me, then sat there with my hands on my knees trying to remember if I knew how to play checkers. Red and black squares. Take your jump. Crown me. Yes. I knew how to play checkers.
    My head hurt. I always kept a little tin of Bayer aspirin in my pocket. I got up and went in the kitchen. No glasses. I’d have to buy some. I’d have to buy a lot of things. I didn’t really own anything, except a toothbrush, a shaving kit, a couple suitcases of clothes. And the car. It used to be Bud’s car. He gave it to me. After I got hit in the head.
    I put two aspirin in my mouth, turned on the tap, put my cupped hand under the water, and washed the aspirin down. Then I went in the bedroom.
    A bare mattress lay on a rickety frame. I needed sheets, and pillows. On the mattress was a tea-colored stain almost exactly the shape of the state of Texas.
    I lay down on the bed, avoiding Texas. The box springs creaked. I put my hands behind my head. I planned to stay here till my headache went away.
    I heard something, and looked toward the window. Sunlight was pouring in. A fly was buzzing and butting its head against the glass. The fly was green, bright as a jewel.
     
     
     

Chapter   3
     
     
       I PULLED INTO the parking lot of the Peacock Club. It was on the north side of the Sunset Strip, just down the street from the Clover Club.
    It was early afternoon, and the club wasn’t open yet. Inside Bud Seitz sat in his usual U-shaped booth, just to the right of the stage.
    Every table had its own little wooden peacock, and the walls and ceiling were covered with painted peacocks, and there were a thousand or a million or who knows how many eyes of the tails of the peacocks looking at you. The club was called Cicero’s before Bud bought it. He changed the name and the look because when he was a kid growing up in New York he went to the Central Park Zoo and fell in love with the peacocks. On opening night he had three dozen live peacocks brought in. They were supposed to just walk around looking proud and pretty but almost immediately it got out of hand. People got drunk and started chasing the peacocks around trying to pull out their tail feathers and the peacocks were screaming and crapping all over everything and then one of them flew up on a table where there were candles burning and its tail caught on fire. The burning peacock flapped around the room and everybody just went nuts, guys in tuxes and girls covered in jewels were yelling
fire, fire
and running toward the exits, movie stars were cursing and swinging their elbows and knocking people down and the funny thing was, the newspapers the next day didn’t print a thing about it. Sure, they had stories about the gala opening of the Peacock Club and pictures too, but everything went swimmingly and everybody had a grand time according to the reporters who were all on Bud’s payroll.
    One of those reporters, John Hobbs of the
Los Angeles Times,
was sitting with Bud in his booth. Nucky Williams, Nello Marlini, and Arnold Dublinski were there too. There was so much smoke rising out of the booth it was like it was