The Eighth Circle

by Stanley Ellin

  So that, Murray thought, was what his five-dollar tip had bought the little Puerto Rican with the sad face and the bright, fixed smile.

  “You could have left him alone,” he said bitterly. “He doesn’t know anything.”

  Caxton shrugged. “That’s what he kept saying, but it’s none of my worry, Mr. Kirk. I’m just telling you about it, so you’ll know what the score is. Now, how about getting your coat on and taking a little run out to Staten Island with me? The car’s right downstairs.”

  “What happens if I say no? You shoot me and drag the body along to Wykoff? Maybe he’d rather have me in shape to talk.”

  “Oh, if that’s what’s bothering you,” Caxton said. He held out the gun to Murray, who took it incredulously. “It’s not loaded. I always say anybody carries a loaded gun around with him is sooner or later going to have it blow off when he don’t expect it to. This way it just comes in handy so people’ll listen when you want to talk to them.”

  Murray broke open the gun and saw the empty chambers inside. Then he flung it aside with the wild joy of combat flaring up inside of him. What happened next was hard to understand. He was looking up at Caxton—up when he had just been on his feet lunging at the man—and he found that he was sprawled on his back, his head almost in the ashes of the fireplace, the hot salt taste of blood filling his mouth. Caxton stood like a Colossus over him, looking down at him pityingly.

  “The bigger they are,” he said. “Especially when they got a glass jaw. Anyhow, you don’t have to take it too hard, Mr. Kirk. You look in the records for Billy Caxton you’ll see fifteen kayoes out of thirty-six decisions. And always classy opposition. I was a real good banty-weight in my time.”

  Murray turned sideways, putting his weight on one elbow, and grabbing at the man’s booted legs with his other arm. Caxton stepped back and kicked him in the ribs hard enough to drive the breath out of him and leave a vacuum in his chest for liquid pain to rush into and fill up. “You dumb son of a bitch,” Caxton said dispassionately, “now can you see why I don’t need any gun to handle you, or any three big slobs like you?”

  He watched silently as Murray pulled himself unsteadily to his feet, using the fire screen as support, and then said, “Maybe you still don’t get the score, so I’ll tell you about a couple of other friends of Mr. Wykoff’s. I mean, you’ll be real interested in this. They parked right behind you when you went down to Gramercy Park Saturday night, and they hoofed it all the way down to Barrow Street with you, just to get a good look at your friend. Very pretty, they tell me. A real gorgeous piece. Now, how would you like it if some crazy character jumped all over her the way he did with García? Or maybe got the idea to heave a bottle of acid into her face, so she wouldn’t be so pretty any more? That would be too bad, wouldn’t it?”

  There was no more blood in his veins, Murray knew, but only a terror like beads of ice crawling through them. “Listen to me,” he said; “if anything happens to her—”

  “Oh, sure, Mr. Kirk, but that’s up to you. Meaning, we take a run out to Staten Island, you tell Mr. Wykoff what he wants to know, and then you forget all about it. What is it, yes or no?”

  “Yes,” Murray said.

  “I thought it would be.” Caxton looked him up and down, and it was clear that he was relishing what he saw. “You don’t look like such a big shot any more, Mr. Kirk, the way you did when you opened that door before. Fact is, you’re just a dirty mess. Go on and change those clothes. And when you talk to Mr. Wykoff you can forget what happened here. It might get him all upset.”

  18

  The ferry from Battery Park docked at St. George, the small, hilly metropolis of Staten Island. From there it was a twenty-minute drive to the village of Duchess Harbor. The car rolled noiselessly through the village—a cluster of shabby stores and an abandoned movie house—and entered a narrow road which wound along the shoreline past several handsome estates. Wykoff’s was the most remote of these.

  Wykoff was at the dinner table with two guests when Murray was ushered in. Seen at close range the man looked years older than he did in his newspaper photographs. His face was sallow and deeply lined, his eyes creased at the corners by a network of wrinkles. He was wearing an expensive suit, but it hung on him in a way that suggested he had lost a good deal of weight recently. All in all, Murray noted, he looked like the epitome of the harassed businessman, which, no doubt, was exactly the way he saw himself. His voice, when he took notice of Murray, was loud and high-pitched.

  “You didn’t eat yet, did you?” he said without any preliminaries. “No, I guess you didn’t. Here, sit down and they’ll fix a place for you. You can skip the soup. It only makes you gassy, anyhow.”

  It was clear that whatever business Wykoff had with him would keep. Murray sat down at the foot of the table, and the Japanese major-domo who had taken him off Caxton’s hands at the door set his place with the dexterity of a man producing rabbits out of a hat.

  Wykoff said: “You don’t know these people, do you? This is Mitchell Dowd, my lawyer. This is Mrs. Dowd. Her name is Mona. Did you ever hear of a song about ‘Oh, Mona’? I was telling her about it, but she says she never heard it. What’ll you have to drink?”

  “Nothing,” Murray said,

  “Ah, don’t give me that,” Wykoff said, and nodded at the Japanese. “Bourbon for the man, Joe. Make it the good bourbon.” He waved a spoon in Murray’s direction. “This is the guy I was telling you about,” he said to Dowd. “Murray Kirk. He runs that big agency. A real sharpshooter. He don’t look like you’d expect, does he?”

  “Not very much,” Dowd said. He had the grave, self-satisfied air of a lawyer whose richest client is in serious trouble. “Glad to know you,” he told Murray.

  His wife was a tall, languid girl with doll-like features and sleepy eyes, flawlessly made up so that her face gleamed waxily in its perfection. She had probably been a showgirl in the recent past. “Meetcha,” she said.

  “My pleasure,” Murray said. He downed the bourbon at a gulp and winced when it stung the cut in his mouth.

  “What I mean is,” Wykoff remarked, “now and then I run into a guy in the private-detective line he’s always a creep. Always a Broadway suit and a dirty shirt. So I see somebody like Kirk here who got a little class, it’s very interesting.” He peered near-sightedly at Murray. “You go to college maybe?”

  “Yes.”

  “I thought so. Now, tell me something. How do you like the way this place is fixed up? I don’t want you to crap me, y’understand. I want your honest opinion. How does it look to you?”

  “I haven’t seen it yet,” Murray said. He wondered if Wykoff’s phone was being tapped and decided it probably was. Which meant that even if Wykoff would let him use it, trying to call Ruth would be a bad move.

  “It’s mostly like this room,” Wykoff persisted. “What do you think about it?”

  The room with its starkly designed, blond furniture and bleak gray wall-to-wall carpeting was a perfect example of what Frank Conmy had called Antiseptic Modern. It was strikingly like the Harlingens’ apartment.

  “Very nice,” Murray said. “It’s got real class.”

  “That’s on account of Mona,” Wykoff said. “She did the whole thing from top to bottom. Sixteen rooms and thirty thousand bucks worth of stuff in them, and my baby girl here handled the whole deal. She made it a real showplace. Didn’t you, baby?” he asked Mona.

  Mona gave Murray the feeling that she was always on the verge of stifling a yawn. She roused herself from her lethargy long enough to shrug deprecatingly. “I liked doing it,” she said in a small voice. “It was fun.”

  “That’s what she says,” Wykoff told Murray, “but it was a lot of work, believe me. She had to take apart everything that decorator guy I had in here messed up for me. You should have seen that guy, Kirk. A real fag from off Park Avenue with the hands always going around in the air like this, and with one screwball idea after another. You wouldn’t believe some of his stunts. I�
��m away in Vegas while he’s working on the parlor, and when I come back what do I see? Everything red and black like a Chinese whorehouse, and right in the middle of the floor he’s got a little merry-go-round! In my parlor he’s got a merry-go-round, the crazy bastard! You know the kind, like those little ones they pull around on a wagon for kids to ride on. That’s what’s in my parlor, all painted up and ready for me to take a ride on. That’s what I’m supposed to pay him for, putting merry-go-rounds in my parlor. Let me tell you, he’s still waiting to collect. Do you honest-to-God think there’s people who like that kind of thing in their houses?”

  “I guess so,” Murray said. “I never heard of a Park Avenue decorator starving to death.”

  “Well, this one’ll starve to death if he’s sitting on his round little fanny waiting for my money,” Wykoff said. “And you know what his trouble is? He’s got no class. He’s faking it. Real class is something inside you, y’understand. I don’t mean you have to be born with it or any crap like that, y’understand, because I personally know some society people don’t have it any more than a monkey. What I mean is, you put some work into it, you can wind up with real class, so people couldn’t even tell you didn’t pick it up at home when you were a kid. Naturally, you don’t have money to go with it you’re just a poor slob. But when you got money and class back to back, Kirk, you’re in the driver’s seat. What do you think of that?”

  Dowd said—and there was a warning in the way he said it—“You can see that George feels very strongly about this.”

  “Why not?” said Murray. “It makes sense.”

  “It makes good sense,” Wykoff assured him. “Now, let me tell you something funny about class. I mean, about the way you can get it right inside of you when you’re not even looking for it. You know anything about wine?”

  Mona said to Dowd, “Would it be all right if I—?” and then there was a deadly silence as Wykoff turned to face her. He put his spoon down and rested both hands flat on the table.

  “When I’m talking,” he said softly, and his face was not pleasant, “you shut up. I already told you about that, didn’t I? When I was a kid I was brought up so when one person talked everybody else shut up. That’s the way I want it now!”

  Mona fixed her eyes on her plate. She was caught between two fires, Murray saw. Dowd was glaring at her from across the table with unconcealed anger. “I’m sorry,” she said.

  Wykoff was not mollified by this. “What is it? You’re tired of hearing me tell about this? You don’t have to con me. Just give me an honest answer.”

  “I’m sorry,” Mona said. “I was just feeling headachy.”

  Wykoff picked up his spoon. “Then take an aspirin and don’t make a production out of it.” He pointed the spoon at Murray. “Where was I?”

  “You asked me if I knew anything about wine.”

  “Oh. Well, what I wanted to tell you is something funny that happened to me account of learning to drink wine. Real French wine, y’understand. The imported stuff. How I got on to it is because sometimes when I was in a fancy eating place I’d see customers lapping it up, and it was mostly the kind of place and the kind of customers with a lot of class.

  “So what bug do I get when I’m down in Miami once with nothing but time on my hands? I got to find out what’s with this wine deal. Frankly, the first few times I tried the stuff I never thought it made any sense, because it always tasted spoiled. But then I got hold of a guy in my hotel—you know what a sommelier is?”

  “Yes,” Murray said.

  The answer did not sidetrack Wykoff. “It’s a guy with a big chain around his neck, he’s in charge of all the wine,” he explained. “So I hired this sommelier to sit down with me and tell me all about what’s what. And with all his jabber the one sure thing I picked up was that if you were a greenhorn you would start with a sweet wine for a table wine, but then if you wised up it would be too sweet, and you’d want stuff that was drier and drier. When you talk about wine you don’t call it sour, y’understand. You call it dry. I mean, if you’re talking about good wine, not Dago red.”

  Wykoff leaned forward intently. “And you know what? It happened just like he said it would. I am not handing you the crap, Kirk. I am sitting here and telling you that I started with what they call Château d’Yquem which is real sweet, and then I moved over to some stuff called Graves, and I finally wound up with Chablis, which is as dry as hell and strictly for the experts! Right now if you put a bottle of Château d’Yquem in front of me for a table wine I would gag on it, because it would taste like candy to me!

  “So now, y’understand, I can be with people who were maybe brought up on French wine all their life—you know, the kind of snotty characters get all dressed up for the opera—and I can drink it right along with them and enjoy it without faking. I don’t care how fancy the people are. I can call the sommelier over and order the right wine and not look like some kind of creep who don’t belong there. And remember, I was brought up in a house where they drank out of the bottle and ate with their hands. Now you get what I mean about having real class inside of you, and all you got to do is work at it a little?”

  “I get it,” Murray said.

  When they finally arose from the table Wykoff surprised him by asking, “You play any bridge, Kirk?” because, offhand, bridge would hardly seem to be Wykoff’s game. On second thought Murray saw that his surprise was unwarranted. What with one thing and another, bridge was bound to be Wykoff’s game. It had Real Class.

  “I’d rather talk business,” Murray said. He did not try to conceal his impatience.

  “Ah, there’s plenty of time for that,” Wykoff told him. He placed a hand over his belt buckle and patted himself there. “Fact is, y’understand, my stomach is a little bit shot, and the doctor laid it on very heavy about not doing any kind of business until I digested. Anyhow, the $64,000 Question comes on TV pretty soon, and if we start talking we’d only have to stop then. I don’t miss that show, no matter what. What I figured, we could get in a couple of rubbers up to the show, and then afterward we talk turkey. You know, I only been playing bridge a little while, Kirk, but I am absolutely sold on it. Here is the one game in the world you can play for no money at all, and still get a kick from it.”

  It was a touching speech, but, as it turned out, the stakes were five cents a point—just enough, as Wykoff said, reversing his field easily, to make it a little interesting—and since Wykoff and Dowd who played partners shared an almost uncanny rapport, the bill came high. When the major-domo came in to announce that the television set was warmed and waiting, Wykoff ran his pencil down the score sheet and reported that the total was eighty dollars and change.

  “Call it eighty bucks even,” he told Murray graciously. “You and Mona both pay me. Mitch and I got a little deal on where any time we play partners I take it all if we win, but I got to pay the whole tab if we lose. That’s how I am. I hate to think I might be costing somebody money because my game is off or something.”

  “That’s how I am, too,” Murray told Mona as she opened her purse. “It’s all right, I’ll pay the tab for both of us.” His one consolation had been the discovery that she was not as sleepy as she looked. Not only had she played capable bridge, but at one point, when he had stretched a leg out under the table he had found it pressed against hers, and they had played through the rest of the session sharing a warm and stimulating contact. Even so, Murray reflected, at about two dollars a minute it was high-priced consolation.

  Now Mona looked at him with what might have been surprise. “Well,” she said on a rising note, “aren’t you the real good sport?”

  When Wykoff and Dowd went off down the hall in the direction of the television set she lingered to apply fresh lipstick, and Murray politely lingered with her. “You play a solid game,” he said. “Too bad we didn’t get a few breaks.”

  “Oh, that.” She studied her handiwork in the mirror of a small jeweled compact. “They cheat all the time, you know. Didn’t you
catch on?”

  “No.”

  “I thought maybe you did, because it’s kind of crude, really. You know, the way you hold the cards, or the way you announce bids—that kind of jazz. It’s not Mitch’s fault. George likes to do it, so Mitch just strings along.”

  “And George always collects for both of them. He must be pretty far ahead of you by now.”

  “Ahead of me?” Mona looked at him blankly. “Aren’t you silly? You don’t really think it cost me thirty thousand dollars to furnish this dump, do you?”

  The room where they viewed the show was a shrine to television. An immense set was centered in one wall, and every seat was arranged to face it. In the corner was a small bar attended by the Japanese, now garbed in a white jacket. The only object that seemed out of place was a Christmas tree in the back of the room, a stately tree glittering with tinsel and glass ornaments.

  “George has a couple of nephews who bring their families around on Christmas,” Dowd explained when he saw Murray staring at it. “How many kids do they have?” he asked Wykoff. “Six, isn’t it?”

  “Seven, God bless them,” Wykoff said tenderly. “The cutest kids in the world, but wild Indians, the whole bunch of them. That’s why I got the tree in here along with the television. At least with the tree and the television together you can keep them out of your hair a little.”

  The $64,000 Question was received with the reverence usually accorded a church ceremony. No one spoke, and in the reflected light from the set Murray saw Wykoff sitting open-mouthed, his face vacuous with wonder and admiration, literally sweating it out with each contestant in the isolation booth. When it was all over he wiped his brow with a handkerchief, a man who had been through a profound emotional experience.

  “Tell me something,” he said to Murray. “You think the fix is on with this show? I mean, you think it’s all on the level?”

  “Why not?” said Murray.