A Rocky Stone Christmas

For the week of Christmas, we will take a break from our current storyline and skip forward in the Rocky Stone notebooks to the entry for December 25, 1949. Many things have happened to Rocky in the previous eight months, not the least of which being his romance with the nightclub singer Sultry Vixen. On the 22nd, Rocky had been contacted by a woman named Gertrude Whittington to find her husband, James, who went missing the previous week. Rocky is in his new favorite haunt, a downtown diner called The Secret Place, shortly after he found the man he was looking for.

Hank was on duty, carefully washing a glass behind the counter, and that's all I needed to know about the coffee in the cup in front of me. It was going to slap me on the back and get me moving in the right direction the moment I lifted the cup to my lips. I just sat there and stared at it, watched the steam rise from its deep dark corners, breathed in its welcoming aroma. Drinking it would have been a crime.

Four hours earlier I stood before a dark and battered door on the fourth floor of a dingy hotel for men only. A man meeting the description of James Whittington had checked in under the name Jones, the same day he disappeared. There were fifteen men in the hotel registered as Jones and it took the man behind the desk a while to figure out which Jones was which. Five minutes later, there I was, staring at that door as I stared at the cup of coffee, considering the “4F” written on it in white with a sign-painter's precision.

Normally I don't take cases like this. It was much too close to divorce and that was a racket I couldn't abide. Still, there was every reason to suspect James Whittington had simply stepped in front of a bus a week ago and no one could identify him. But no, he was here, and if I knew the drill, there was a woman inside with him. I could have stood in the shadows and waited for them to leave, snap off a couple of photographs to give Gertrude for the trial, but I was in no mood. I was going to give him a piece of my mind and ask him who he thought he was. I knocked on the door, square in the middle of the “4F.”

“Why don't you take a sip?” Hank asked me through my haze of remembering. I was back in the diner, watching a car ease by the long stretch of window. The place was empty.

I wrapped my hands around the cup and felt the warmth through the china. “I'm thinking,” I said.

He winked at me. “You trying to insult me or something? My coffee not good enough for you?”

“Anything but,” I replied, and then I told him about my morning.

When James Whittington opened the door he said nothing. The man had never laid eyes on me before and he looked at me as if we were old friends. He motioned me forward and I followed him into the phone booth of room they had given him. There was no whiff of perfume and no place for a woman to hide even if he had sneaked her in. I sat in a chair in the corner, a wooden one painted black by a man in a hurry. He took a seat on the bed and they springs creaked and groaned under his weight. His eyes were red. He had been crying and he didn't care if I knew it.

“My name is Rocky Stone. I'm a private badge. Gertrude hired me to find you.”

Whittington nodded to say he suspected that. His eyes never left the ground.

“Why did you let me in?” I asked.

His head lifted and his eyes carefully made contact with mine. They shone with realization, and not the good kind. “I had Christmas dinner,” he intoned in a nasal voice, “at the automat just down the street. Three other men and two women were inside. We each sat at our own table. No one said a word to me.” He snorted a laugh as he thought about it. “Just what I always wanted.”

“Listen,” I said, “why don't you go home? You don't know me from Adam, but I know one or two things about loneliness. Some of us just aren't cut out for it. Go home to your family.”

Whittington snorted again. “Family. Her family! Bunch of daffy busybodies. Mother-in-law who can't stop meddling, insults me with every word! Some Christmas. How do you think I ended up here?”

“You came here because...?”

“I've had it up to here with family and Christmas and presents and the like. They can have it. I'm done. I'm through.”

He wasn't the only one who was through. The idea of a man abandoning his family because he couldn't deal with one day out of the year put me over the edge. I saw the way his wife came into my office and I knew she was concerned about him. The poor dope was loved and he didn't even see it. All he could think about was how he'd have to plaster a fake smile on his face as the in-laws carved up the Christmas goose.

I stood up. “So you'd rather be here? Alone? No wife, no kid, no nothing? That's pretty selfish of you, brother. Think about how they feel.”

I made sure the door made a good-sized noise as I slammed it behind me.

Hank just looked at me as I finished up the tale. “Really got under your skin, huh?”

“Yeah. I've spent more than a few Christmases at the automat myself, but not by choice. Turkey and dressing just like Mom used to make, provided Mom ran an automat. When a man turns down his family like that, it makes me sick.”

“That's not all, though,” said Hank. “You've got something more on your mind, I can tell.”

There was, and I was carrying it around with me. I fished it out of my coat pocket and placed it on the counter, next to the cup and saucer. A small, padded box, the kind you don't have to open to know what's inside. Hank decided he would have a look, anyway, and when he did, he pursed his lips and whistled at it. “For me, Rock? You shouldn't have. But I should tell you, I'm already married.”

“I've had that in my pocket for a month,” I said. “Every day I've told myself that this is the day I pop the question and every night I take that box out of my pocket and put it on my night stand. Then I said to myself I'd propose at Christmas. But she's gone back to Illinois to be with her folks for the holidays.”

“Why didn't you go with her?”

“I took this case.”

Hank took a towel and wiped his brow. “Bet she was thrilled with that.”

“Overjoyed. Tell me, Hank, is there something wrong with me?”

“Yep.”

“I thought so.”

The bell on the door rang and two men walked in with broad smiles infesting their faces. It was Lieutenant Hardacre of the Homicide squad and my lawyer, E. J. Rabboni. They both looked so full of Christmas cheer that it about made me sick. They slapped my shoulders a few times each and sat on either side of me. Rabboni ordered up a slice of pie for each of us and Hardacre slapped my shoulder again, practically knocking it out of joint. “Merry Christmas, Stone,” he said. “Rabboni said we'd find you here.”

“You worried about me?”

He got defensive. “Nah, but Myrna...she thought...”

Rabboni spotted the box on the counter. “What's this?” he said, as he picked it up.

“He's been landed,” said Hardacre in fake lament. “I never thought I would live to see the day.”

“He's still got to get it on her finger,” said Rabboni, “and he's been hanging on to it for far too long. A month, at least.”

It irritated me. “How do you know?”

“I know. Take my advice: put her mind at rest and marry the girl.”

Hank leaned over the counter and looked at me. “Listen to the man. You get this great gal to fall for you, who is not only sweet and warm and charming but is also the best-looking woman in six counties, you buy her a ring and then you have second thoughts. What's not to like, boy? Go out and sign her to a contract before she signs up with some other outfit.”

I winced. “Her father's a big shot college professor who has this old-fashioned idea that a man asks for the family's blessing before he takes the plunge.”

“So?” said Hardacre. “Myrna's father did the same with me. So you gotta go through a few hoops. Big deal. We all gotta make sacrifices.”

They were making me laugh. “Who do you think you guys are? The three wise men?”

“Would it help you to know,” Rabboni continued, “that James Whittington went home to his wife this afternoon?”

“How did you...?”

“I know. Seems somebody reminded him that it's better to be with the ones you love at Christmas than it is to be alone. Sound advice.”

“Yeah,” I said, and took a sip of that coffee. It made me wonder why I had been staring at it all along. I shoved the ring back in my pocket and looked at the three of them, grinning like gremlins at me. If they weren't absolutely dead-on right, I would have given them a piece of my mind. The nearest train station was few blocks away and I knew I had better get there in a hurry before the last train east had left. I yanked the door open and took one last look at them. “I hope you're satisfied.”

“Just bring back the girl,” said Hank.

“Merry Christmas,” Rabboni added.

“Merry Christmas.”