I woke up to the staccato beat of someone hitting on the pipes downstairs in the wholesale plumbing shop over which my apartment is situated. Lifting my head off my pillow, I turned and looked at the clock on the nightstand next to the bed. It read one o’clock. I knew that couldn’t be correct as the second hand hadn’t moved for the entire time I stared at it. I brought up my right wrist to view the time on my wristwatch which read nine. I assumed it was nine a.m.
I left Rocco’s Pub last night after pouring over Sally Hammond’s diary with Ralph Mills for over an hour. Ralph has a short attention span, as shown by the length of his four marriages, so he left me to find the next girl of his dreams.
He was weaving around the dance floor to the crooning of the Raja’s rendition of The Tennessee Waltz. The lady whose ass Ralph was grasping onto for dear life looked like she was someone’s blowup doll that wasn’t fully inflated. Her hair looked like a patch of grey fuzz attached to a melon and her skin had the pallid appearance of someone who hadn’t seen the light of day in years and her eyes were sunken deep within their sockets. She wore a faded cotton dress, large enough for two of her. Her bare arms and legs looked like brittle sticks. She had a cigarette hanging out the side of her mouth and was breathing like an old truck with a leaky head gasket with every step they took. She was a good six inches taller than Ralph and he had his head on her shoulder with a dreamy look on his face when I left. I guess what they say is true; beauty is in the eye of the beer holder.
Eloise never did bring my drink last night so I woke up for the first time in a long time without a hangover. I recalled reading over Sally Hammond’s diary two more times before falling asleep. I also wanted to go to the office and talk John Marcello into taking a trip with me over to Harley Davidson’s Corporate Offices on Juneau Avenue. He had a special relationship with one of the founders, Walter Davidson’s granddaughter, Diane. I had a crush on Diane for two years but that never went anywhere. One of the last things she told me was to leave her alone. She said I was destined to spend my life sitting out in the street collecting pigeon shit. I guess she was looking for something better. Considering how our relationship ended, I figured Marcello had a better chance of getting some inside information on Sally Hammonds and her coworkers than I did.
The sky was steamy and there wasn’t a breeze to be found as I opened the door to my Nash and started my daily ritual of cranking the bitch until one of the spark plugs felt sorry for me and fired. Today it fired right away. This could be my day, I thought; no hangover and this old lady turned over for me on my first touch. I decided to drop her top and enjoy the day.
Mildred was busy bitch-slapping her typewriter when I walked in. Her legs looked like they were ready to explode through the heavy support hose she was wearing. The hair on her legs were poking through in every direction and her lips were pursed so I couldn’t tell if the hair over her lip originated from her nose or was her mustache.
“Hi Mildred, is the wop in?”
She looked up with a scowl on her face, pushing her glasses up on the bridge of her considerable nose and nodded in the direction of Marcello’s office; then turned back to beating the hell out of her Smith-Corona. I figured I got as much conversation out of Mildred that I could expect for the rest of the day. So I ended the pleasantries and walked back to John’s office picking up the last donut on the tray that Mildred provided every day. I told John he better stop eating all those donuts or else he would turn into Mildred’s twin.
“Morning Pizza, what’s on your agenda for today?” I inquired.
“What are you doing here, Max,” he asked? “It’s only 11:30 in the morning. I didn’t know you kept morning hours.”
Ignoring his jab, I said: “Why don’t you buy me a burger at Rocco’s and then take a ride out to the Harley plant on Juneau Avenue and have a talk with Diane?”
“And why should I do that,” he asked?
After I filled him in on what I had he was interested enough to buy my lunch and risk the wrath of Diane Davidson by bringing me along with him to her office. He called her to set an appointment for one thirty that afternoon. She said she was more than happy to see the Merry Wop.