Fallen Angels, Part Four - Can you Pet a Phantom Cat?
#4 of Fallen Angels
Chapter Three
Can You Pet a Phantom Cat?
The bottle of Bourbon was missing from Dr. Gill's office.
When I arrived at the hospital, Quinn was staring intensely at the blank spot on the desk, as if he tried to make the bottle reappear by will alone.
"It's gone!"
he stated the obvious, pointing into thin air.
"Officer Peterson went to dust for prints, but someone beat him to it - someone with a hospital key."
He turned to look at me, proud and frustrated at the same time. Proud because he was right in assuming the bourbon was an important piece of evidence, but frustrated over the same piece going missing. The investigation was back to square one - not that we had ever moved forward to square two, but now we stood empty handed and clueless.
Apart from the janitor, the only staff with a key to the office was the cleaning personnel. Quinn and I made a quick inquiry about their comings and goings, but they all knew Gill's office was an investigation scene. The only employee we couldn't ask was one Miss Sapere Irene, who had taken the day off.
"She only works halftime," said one nurse. "She tries to get her singing career going at The Phantom Cat Nightclub." The nurse showed us a staff photo of Irene Sapere. It was cheap and blurry photo-booth quality, but both Quinn and I recognized the woman in the photo in an instant:
Irene Sapere was the waitress who had served coffee for me at the Port Salute Café.
"Waiter in the morning, singer in the evening and cleaning staff at night, " said Quinn. "Where does she find the time to sleep?"
This girl was working three paying jobs. Either she was hyperactive, or she needed money bad. If money was a problem, she had sure come to the right place. Dr. Gill had been loaded before he took the dive, and having a safe stacked with greenbacks was as good a motive for showing the doctor the fastest way to the parking lot, as you can get.
"We know she makes great coffee, and this office is spotless," Quinn said. "Now, let's go and see if she can sing."
Irene Sapere was scheduled to go on stage at 21:00 under the stage name of
Miss Irene. Quinn and I arrived half an hour early.
"Wanna beer?" I asked.
We were lucky to find two seats not far from the window. The music hall was filling up and people were still queueing up outside. Quinn fidgeted around, looking like someone very much at unease. He moved and shifted in his seat, he buttoned and unbuttoned his sleeves and scratched a three day stubble growth of beard.
"Sure," he said. "I'm off duty."
A local jazz trio was on the stage, playing standards. I thought they were good, and I reached for a smoke, but Quinn paid them no attention. Instead he kept staring out the window.
"Why are you so uptight?" I asked.
"Full moon," he rasped. His voice was dry, and he sucked half a beer out of the bottle in one noisy slurp.
"You're not gonna go wolf on me, or anything?"
"Nah!", he shook his head. "It's tugging at me, but I'm in control."
Quinn was not the only one in the club to be tense. There was an excited anticipation among the audience. The kind you find at a rock concert right before the Stones or Bruce Springsteen goes on stage. To them, Miss Irene was not just some random nightclub singer. They had come specifically to see her act.
Miss Irene took the stage at fifteen past nine, with a backing trio of bass, piano and drums. It struck me how beautiful she was in the stage-light. A dark beauty with raven hair, eyes like black olives and a face that was almost heart-shaped.
The moment she began singing, all went quiet. The nervous anticipation among the audience dispelled like a bad dream by the first note of My Funny Valentine. Her voice was deep, smoky and soulful, and her delivery of the song was full of loss and longing. I eased into my seat and regretted my choice of beer. I felt cheap and outclassed in her presence, so I waved to the waiter and whispered for him to replace our beer with two glasses of Chablis. Quinn didn't make any comment when the waiter took his beer away, but nodded and agreed with my decision.
"She's amazing," whispered Quinn.
It was almost as if she had heard his words, because she eased over to our table, leaned over and cooed Fly me to the Moo_n softly into his ear. Her voice was hardly more than a whisper and in that moment I envied Quinn. At forty plus, he was almost fifteen years her senior. _It was unfair, I thought.
That son of a bitch had a career, a steady income and now he had the hot girl crooning into his ear.
In that moment, I felt like the sidekick character in a crime novel. But it wasn't only a display of stage entertainment. Something unspoken was going on between them. A kind of wordless understanding or bonding I didn't recognize. I tried to make eye contact with Quinn, but he sat transfixed, like a dog getting his belly rubbed. Whatever Miss Irene was giving Quinn, he was sure getting his admission fee worth. Miss Irene finished her singing and went back on stage. Her entire act only lasted for forty-five short minutes, but those minutes flew by like seconds. Then she handed the stage over to the house orchestra, and the audience started talking again. Miss Irene clearly had the audience spellbound from the moment she sat foot on the stage, so why she needed to work night shifts as a cleaning lady was another mystery I'd have to look into. Maybe she was only singing for tips. Maybe she had expensive habits, or a drug addiction.
Backstage was off limits to the audience. Two hand written signs taped to the wall said as much, and the bouncer didn't look too friendly either. But I know of two things that grant you access in places like this: a hefty bribe or a police badge, and Quinn flashed the latter to a bouncer. We found Irene in her changing room, wiping off her stage makeup with a damp sponge and smoking an Insignia.
"Yes," she admitted, the moment she saw the police badge. and blew a smoke ring at me. "I took the bottle and dumped it."
"That bottle was police evidence," said Quinn. "Tampering with it, is a federal offence."
"Ohh," purred Irene and stretched out her arms towards him, palms facing up.
"So whatcha gonna do, officer? Put me in handcuffs?"
I don't know what went through Quinn's mind in that moment, but my thoughts were all pleasant fantasies - most of them involving Miss Irene wearing handcuffs and nothing but. The idea alone gave me an instant erection, but I crossed my legs and tried to remain professional.
Irene let out a sigh, she stubbed out the cigarette and crossed her arms. I hadn't had a smoke since that morning and right now I was dying for two things only: a drink before sex and a cigarette after.
"Gill had a drinking problem," Irene said. "It almost ruined his career when he botched an operation six years ago. He was out of his skull from drinking, and his patient died right there on the operating table. When I heard about the bourbon, I let myself in with my staff key and dumped the bottle
- to save his reputation I guess."
"So where is it now?" asked Quinn.
"Dumpster outside the hospital."
"Let's go then."
Irene shrugged and reached for her jacket. "It's within walking distance," she said. "We could walk through the park. There's nothing like a long walk under that full moon. Alone, and in touch with nature."
Quinn hesitated. Then he got to his feet.
"It's alright," he mumbled eventually. "I'll go get it myself."
"What?" I objected. "You don't even know what dumpster to look in."
Quinn glared at me, visibly annoyed. "I'm off duty," he growled. "I don't need your permission to do what I want. -and right now I want to go for a walk in the park."
"Err..."
"Alone!"
The Phantom Cat is one of the oldest nightclubs in Oakfort. It opened in sixty two as a beatnik hangout for slamming poetry and banging bongos. The walls of the dressing room were cluttered with photos and posters collected over the years. Beatles and Stones lookalikes from the mid-sixties, flower power bands from the summer of love morphed into flared-out disco groups of the seventies. I didn't recognize most of the names.
"So, it wasn't always a jazz club?"
"Jesse's trying to turn it into a jazz revival thing." Irene laughed. "It's a long shot from my usual style."
A framed photo on the dresser showed Irene in her late teens. She was posing with her band that counted a fiddle player, accordion and a guitar player. He was the spitting image of Irene and of the same age. He had the same dark eyes and hair and sported a trimmed moustache. The photo must have been six or seven years old, and I estimated Irene to be in her mid twenties, same as I.
"He's playing a WishBone guitar," I noted. "I always wanted to get my hands on one of those."
"It's my brother Carlo," said Irene.
"Still plays with you?"
"He's dead."
Unlike his sister, Carlo looked unwell. There were dark rings around his eyes, and his cheeks were hollow, but he still did his best to smile into the camera. I didn't wish to ruin the vibe, so I made no further comment on the photo or Carlo. I didn't know how she made Quinn leave, but there was a good reason for it, and the last thing I wanted was to ruin my chances with her by bringing up a dead brother.
Irene lived in a two room apartment right above the Phantom Cat. It was run down from many years of neglect, but it belonged to the nightclub and she stayed for free.
"It's a step up," said Irene while she opened a bottle of Californian sparkling wine. "Can you believe I used to be homeless?"
"With a voice like that, I find it hard to believe."
"Carlo and I both had our talents." Irene poured two flutes of bubbles.OneHope, read the label.
"But sometimes it's talent that drives you homeless."
The wine was crisp, with notes of apple and cedar. Irene dimmed the lights and lit candles. Then she sat down beside me and we started kissing. She unbuttoned my shirt and for a moment I feared my heart would simply take off and fly away. But in that moment, a familiar voice exploded in my head.
"Leave now!" It was the voice of the General. He's been my faithful companion since I was seventeen; always telling me what to do, whom to trust and what to like.
"Go away, I'm busy." I replied in my mind.
"She's a snake," said a female voice; the one I know only as Karen. Both my voices claim to be demons from the abyss, sent to assist me and protect me in my duties.
"I'm busy with someone." I hissed.
Irene sat down behind me and began caressing my shoulders and back. I hadn't been with a woman for years and the bulge in my pants was about to burst through the zipper.
Snake, my ass.
"She'll poison you!" warned both Karen and the General.
"I'm shutting your asses down for the night," I replied.
This was unfair; I was enjoying the company of a woman for the first time in years and my voices told me I couldn't have her, only because she was a snake. If the three of us were all demons, and Quinn was a wolf, what harm could it do to spend time with a snake?
Screw them!
The forked tip of a thin tongue licked around my upper neck while some unspeakable limb unzipped my jeans.
Whatever she may be, I'm much scarier.
I turned around with some reluctance. I knew that I might see something scary, but I also knew it wouldn't be for real.
Irene had turned into a half-snake half-woman with the same face I had seen in Gill's office two days before.
It's only a hallucination. She's still the same girl underneath that illusion, I convinced myself and we embraced.
I never felt so good about caving in, and we kissed and made love to the soft, plaintive wailings of the voices in my head.
Do the cops pay you for your help?" asked Irene.
We were still in bed and the sun had risen long before we did. I was not in any hurry to race it.
"Sometimes."
"But not enough to pay your rent?"
I sighed. "I get government benefits because of my condition."
"Listen," she said. "I need a guitar in my band. Why don't you join us?"
"Really?"
"I'm sure the cops will be alright -even without you helping them out."
With unpaid bills piling up and Ms Schultz hounding me for back rent, I couldn't believe my luck. I grinned broadly; Quinn could keep his half bottle of bourbon and his full moon antics, but now I had landed a real job, and I got to keep the girl.
"We practice at four PM," said Irene.
I was out of bed and in my clothes before she could finish the sentence.
"Lemme just go and grab my guitar," I panted.
Jesse the owner of Phantom Cat was in his office downstairs. I told him of my inclusion into the group, and along the way I questioned how come his main attraction needed to work two jobs to make ends meet.
"Irene?" Jesse laughed "She don't need to work two jobs. She's making more than me...Look!"
Jesse showed me the books. Irene was the highest paid member of the staff and I calculated that she made as much as Quinn and I together. With a salary like this, she'd have no need to work extra hours at the hospital, unless she had some extreme expenses.
"You really pay her this much every month?" I was stunned by the figures.
Jesse nodded, "I'd be a fool not to. That voice is pure gold."
"And you let her stay for free?"
"Son," said Jesse. "That woman - she knows how to get her way."
"The audience keeps coming back?" I guessed.
"She's got the audience by the balls, but..." Jesse hesitated and looked around before continuing. Then he whispered,
"Be careful around her... She can sing you into doing all sorts of things!"
"Things?"
"Anything at all."