Free Pardon My Body by Dale Bogard Page A

had nothing to do and wished they were young again and the shop clerks who strolled to and fro around lunchtime.
    Next thing I knew I was waking up again. My watch said it was three-fifteen. I had slept two and a half hours. I was hungry now but it was the wrong time to eat. I went swimming instead. I hiked up to an under-glass plunge bath where I go to keep myself fit and kid myself I’m still young—until the twenty-year-olds start doing double flips off the fifteen-footspringboard. But, hell, I can kid myself every once in a while, can’t I?
    The only other swimmer was a tall, olive-skinned girl with long black wet hair which she didn’t bother to tuck under her cap. She swam with an effortless crawl and gave me a friendly eye twice but I wasn’t in the mood for swimming-pool small talk. I’d have passed up Esther Williams right then. Besides, I had a date. I’d forgotten it, but the presence of the longhaired girl in the two-piece swimsuit brought it back.
    I climbed out, towelled and dressed, and bought myself coffee and frankfurters at a drugstore counter on the way back to my apartment. By the time I had changed my clothes it was time to get the convertible and keep that date.
    I got stalled in a traffic pile-up but I finally made the Wall Street country with five minutes to spare. I pulled into the side and killed the motor. I didn’t go into the office block. I stayed in the car smoking a pipe and leafing through the afternoon editions. The evening editions had Bule on page one in a thirty-six point headline with over half a column of text from which it appeared that Detective-lieutenant O’Cassidy had everything under control and would be arresting somebody any minute now. Like hell he would. O’Cassidy is one smart operator but even O’Cassidyhas to have a clue, and at this moment there wasn’t one that pointed any place in particular.
    Then Miss Julia Casson stepped through the swing doors and moved over the sidewalk. I stuck my head through the window and said, “Hello.” She was wearing a Russian ermine coat which swung open to announce a soft woolen two-piece in pastel blue. After that came mile-long legs in nylons and ending in black court shoes. She had a large blue saucer poised on top of her magnificent mane. She looked cool, composed, competent and bedworthy but I decided not to tell her. She knew it already.
    â€œWhere to, big man?”
    â€œYou’ll like this,” I said. “We’re going to the Village.”
    She smoothed her two-piece in order to draw attention to her legs, but she was a little late for that.
    Then she said, “Not the Oval room at the Ritz Carlton, then?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œOr the Persian Room at the Plaza?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œOr even the El Morocco?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œOkay,” she said, “what do we do—dig some Dixieland at Eddie Condon’s?”
    â€œWe’re not going to Eddie’s tonight,” I said. “There is a new place that’s opened nearby. We’re going to try that.”
    She got out a cigarette and eyed me sideways. “You don’t look the kind of man who would go for that hot jazz music.”
    â€œYou never can tell,” I said. “Maybe it reminds me of my youth.”
    â€œYour misspent youth?”
    â€œI fear not.”
    â€œWhat a shame. It’s time you had some fun, big man.”
    â€œYeah,” I said, “maybe. But not just this minute.”
    The drive was as trying as it always is in this city. I went out of the way to buy tobacco and again to see if a detour would speed things up. It didn’t. Fifty-second Street was dead except for Jimmy Ryan’s, bravely reminding you that this was once the hottest street in jazz. We drove south on West Third Street, made a couple of right-hand turns and we were there.
    It was a little club dispensing better-than-most food and jazz of the kind that