Bandbox

by Thomas Mallon

  “Did he tell you that?” asked Nan.

  “No, but I remember noticing how he ate one of the shrimp. You could—”

  “Please,” said Nan. “I’ll use my imagination.” She turned to Hazel. “Are you showing that letter to everybody?”

  “Yeah. If people like you and Becky know, then Himself may feel shamed into doing something.”

  “He wouldn’t be shamed by us?” asked the countess, wounded that Hazel didn’t credit her with the same moral persuasiveness.

  “No, not by us,” said Hazel, untroubled by her own exclusion.

  “I’ll needle him about it,” promised Nan.

  Daisy went back to reading a newspaper story on John Nicholas Brown, born America’s richest baby in 1900 thanks to the death of his father while Nicky himself was still in the womb. Now a young man of extreme eligibility, Brown was combining in Daisy’s mind this morning with the lost John Shepard, and the two were stirring up memories of her own rich young count, the lovely, wheezing Antonio. Despite her sympathy for Mrs. Shepard out there in Indiana, Daisy knew how important it was for these sensitive boys to be pried from their mamas. She wondered for a moment whether John hadn’t taken the extreme measure of disappearance to elude an overzealous maternal grasp.

  “Could you take a look at this?”

  The Wood Chipper had once again come up to Nan, before she could start back to her own desk. He handed her a brief fashion piece—two badly typed pages about the advisability of a short man’s wearing a low, narrowly pointed collar. Nan took less than thirty seconds to make her way through the text’s shaky grammar and ask Chip why he’d produced this effusion.

  “Just trying to pitch in,” he answered. “I figure we need all hands on deck with everything that’s going on here.”

  Nan narrowed her eyes, knowing his motives had to be as mixed as his metaphors.

  Chip looked away, hoping she wouldn’t guess that the squib was something he’d worked up for Jimmy Gordon. This was going to be his week, he felt sure. At least one of the crises facing Bandbox should provide him a chance to be so useful to Jimmy that Chip Brzezinski would finally be invited aboard Cutaway. He would hit the ground running with this little piece of copy on collars.

  “Maybe I should show it to Case,” he muttered, when Nan failed to say anything more.

  “Don’t,” she responded. “He’d be able to make it sound even more like you.”

  Norman Spilkes, still wearing his overcoat, came suddenly into view. He made a fast approach to Hazel’s desk. “Is he in?” the m.e. asked.

  Hazel shook her head no.

  “How was your trip?” asked Nan.

  “I learned to rhumba,” Spilkes answered, before noticing the Wood Chipper. “I’ll tell you more later.”

  Once left alone with Hazel, he tried again: “Has he called?”

  “Nope,” she answered.

  Spilkes wondered when he’d be able to tell Harris about yet another problem that Andrew Burn had just imparted in the elevator: Wanamaker’s was shifting three-quarters of its menswear ads from Bandbox to Cutaway.

  A couple of the catastrophes that Spilkes had become acquainted with since arriving home last night seemed soluble enough. First, put an end to the fiction contests: treat the fiasco of the current one as a big boy-are-we-embarrassed joke, and hold it in reserve against Sidney, a weapon to be deployed once he again got too big for his fancy flannel britches. Second, realize that the solution to Newman’s problem was even easier: fire him. But there was nothing easily done about all these numbers. Jimmy’s magazine had made it past the dangers of infancy. It was now another mouth for the economy to feed, and even in this boom there were only so many readers and advertisers to go around. Cutaway needed to be strangled in its playpen, but the tot seemed well on its way to committing parricide before that could be accomplished.

  Hazel’s voice halted Spilkes’s dark train of thought. “If you find him before I do,” she said, “give him these.” She handed the managing editor two powder-blue slips of paper—one message asking Harris to report to the police commissioner’s office “as soon as possible,” and another requesting that he visit Hiram Oldcastle “IMMEDIATELY.”

  31

  “Mukluk!” cried Betty Divine. “That’s too loud even for me!”

  The dog had begun barking once he smelled the familiar aroma of Joe Harris’s shaving lather. Harris himself was still outside the closed door to Betty’s office, giving a box of candy to her secretary and smiling at the two girls in matching jumpers on their way to be photographed for Pinafore. If his English journey had been a men-only interlude, he now found himself the only male inside another single-sex paradise. There could scarcely be a more charming place to spend Valentine’s Day than Betty’s magazine. From one end of the eleventh floor to the other, girls were untying candy-box ribbons, opening envelopes, and plucking eyebrows in anticipation of their evening dinner dates.

  “Baby,” said Harris, once Betty figured out the cause of Mukluk’s yapping and opened the door. “Happy Valentine’s.”

  She kissed him quickly and took her presents, putting the enormous heart-shaped Whitman’s sampler onto her desk. She hushed the dog, asked her secretary to find a vase for the roses, and sat Joe down in a chair in front of her desk. Then she closed the door once more.

  “Jesus, baby, did you miss me? You’re acting like you’ve got some efficiency expert eyeballing you through a peephole.”

  “Have you been to your office? Have you spoken to Norman?”

  Harris stretched his arms in animal contentment. “Came straight here from my place. The salt air must still be in my lungs. I slept eleven hours—that’s more than even Coolidge can manage.”

  Betty could see how rested he was. She hadn’t had the heart to call his apartment in Murray Hill last night; she’d called Spilkes at his home instead.

  “Speaking of Coolidge,” she said after a deep breath, handing Joe the first newspaper story, clipped eight days ago, about Stuart Newman’s misadventure.

  As he read it, Harris’s shoulders slumped, and his stomach poured forward in a long, defeated exhalation.

  “I’ll can him,” he finally said, without relish. “This is worse than his being sober. Christ, our model of the single gentleman.”

  Betty waited for some aggression to overtake mere weariness and disgust. But Harris just sat there, shaking his head.

  “Joe, you can’t fire him. Not right now. Hazel told me your precious LaRoche has such a case on him she’d never put up with it.”

  Harris’s eyes flared. After an extended silence, he muttered: “She’s one cover I can’t lose.”

  Betty could make out the alarm in his expression, but not what he’d just said. “She’s got a lover who can’t booze?”

  “SHE’S ONE COVER I CAN’T LOSE.”

  Betty felt shaken, not by the volume, which she was used to during these auditory clarifications, but by the realization that he still had almost no idea how deep his troubles were.

  “Jehoshaphat,” she said, using the name Harris heard even less often than Houlihan heard “Aloysius.” She leaned forward and looked straight into his eyes. “You need to start worrying about losing the whole book.”

  Betty laid it all out: the tale of Mr. Palmer’s plagiarism; the scandal of Gianni’s arrest, and Harris’s own crucial role in it. If she’d known the news about Wanamaker’s, she would have thrown that in, too. Once finished, she couldn’t tell whether she’d brought Joe to his senses or thrown him permanently into shock. He’d gone so white and silent that Mukluk, observing from a corner, began moaning low.

  “You never opened the telegrams, did you?” she asked.

  “Get me a drink,” he said at last, knowing there were two bottles of everything in the bottom drawer of Betty’s filing cabinet.

  She stared at him, fiercely. “You’re not getting so much as a Drambuie-filled chocolate. Here,” she said, tearing open the Whitman’s sampler and tossing him a caramel.
“Eat that. It’ll give you energy.”

  Harris meekly accepted the candy, popping the little cube into his mouth while Betty selected a coconut creme for herself. For several seconds they chewed in silence. When she saw Joe’s tongue trying to pry the sticky caramel off the roof of his mouth, she practically wanted to sing “Can’t Help Lovin’ That Man of Mine.” But she was too short and too cute to pull off Helen Morgan; besides, she’d never be that needy. She could, however, be like Winnie Winkle, that plucky female breadwinner of the funny papers, which lay open under Mukluk’s water bowl. Why couldn’t Joe just retire and let her keep at it for a couple more years until they could both call it quits for good up in Dutchess County? Because, of course, inside of two weeks he’d be drinking applejack and talking to the moosehead. No, she realized, seeing all the fight gone out of him, neither Helen Morgan nor Winnie Winkle was called for now. It was time to hardboil herself into a pint-sized Lady Macbeth.

  “Joe,” she said, pitching her voice as deep as it would go. “When Hi gave you Bandbox, a magazine with no ads, no readers, and no future, how long did it take you to turn it around?”

  “One business quarter,” Harris replied, with more reflex than gusto.

  “And tell me, Joe,” asked Betty, getting up from her chair and going over to his, where she sat herself on his lap. “Who do I always say is the smartest man in the Graybar Building?” Her hands were streaked with chocolate, not blood, and a little of it was getting on Joe’s shirt front, but she knew, if there were no interruptions, that she could make him screw his courage to the sticking-place. Aside from all else, sitting on his lap made it easier for her to hear.

  “I am,” said Joe.

  Betty nodded, and kissed his nose.

  “But I’m also the oldest,” said Harris. “I don’t know if I can hoist myself up out of all this. I’m fresh out of presto-changos.”

  Before Betty could say she’d rather have him back in the postcard business than sounding like this, the intercom buzzed. She got up and went back to her desk.

  “Mr. Spilkes on the line,” said her secretary.

  She handed the receiver to Joe, who only listened and said yeah, three or four times, before hanging up.

  “Wanamaker’s is moving most of their ads to Jimmy.”

  Betty wanted to get back on his lap and resume her pep talk, but the mood of connubial conspiracy had been broken.

  Harris continued, tonelessly: “Norman says I’ve got messages to go see the police and Oldcastle.”

  “Do the easy one first,” Betty advised. “Go see the police.”

  32

  Hazel was getting what she wanted. In the bathrooms, at the water fountain, and beside the contribution box for the sponsored Bunion Derby contestant (“Don’t Let His Dogs Get Tired!”), staffers were devoting some of their morning conversation to the disappearance of that bright-eyed fellow from Indiana, who, in truth, most of them didn’t remember.

  Becky and Cuddles had both seen Mrs. Shepard’s letter, but by 10:45 they’d yet to discuss it. Inside Cuddles’ office, Becky was helping to scoop up the complimentary clutter that had accumulated during his absence.

  “Disgraceful,” he said, looking at his pocket watch. “Ten forty-five. The idea that senior people can still be absent from their desks at such an hour.”

  “Do you want tickets to Rio Rita?” she asked, before tossing them into the wastebasket.

  Cuddles’ only response was to begin humming a Latin tune, an effort quickly interrupted by Paul Montgomery’s arrival at his door.

  “Cheerio, guv’nor!” cried Paulie to Cuddles, adding something about “this lovely bird” once he noticed Becky.

  “Been to England, Paulie?” Cuddles asked. The returning writer carried a ski pole autographed by his Olympic subjects; a half-yard of worsted left over from his bespoke suit and speared to the pole; three oversized menus from the ship; and six boxes of English toffee, noblesse-oblige presents for the secretaries and messengers. “You know,” continued Cuddles, “the only way you could get any worse is to be an actual Englishman. No offense intended.”

  “None taken!” said Paulie, who clattered down the rest of the corridor, noisy as a junkman, toward Hazel’s desk.

  “Is Rudy Vallee a pansy?” asked Spilkes, whose grave face replaced Montgomery’s in the doorway.

  Cuddles waited a moment before replying: “That’s carrying Valentine’s Day awfully far, Norman. I wouldn’t send a card.”

  Spilkes was trying, despite his current anxiety, to practice business as usual. He was seeking information that would allow him to decide whether the Connecticut Yankees’ saxophone player, who’d created a sensation when he sang a couple of numbers at the Heigh-Ho last month, might be a suitable Bandbox story, maybe even a cover.

  “I hear he likes girls,” said Cuddles, “but not so much that they’d notice. Sort of like me.” He instantly regretted the joke—it belonged to his old, motley-wearing character—but Becky ignored him and went on tidying. “Get Sidney to handle a piece on Vallee,” he suggested. “That should be punishment enough for him.”

  Max Stanwick was the next to enter.

  “Any good rubouts last night?” asked Cuddles, who’d heard about Max’s current drought.

  “Nah,” said Max, too discouraged to alliterate more than a pair of initial consonants: “Every tommy gun’s drilling a dry hole. This Hammer Slayer they’ve just arrested is no good; he’ll be in the chair before our lead time is up.”

  “What about the Subway Slasher over in Brooklyn?” asked Becky.

  “So far he’s only slashing coats,” said Max. “Besides, it’s too local.”

  “Maybe he’ll start working the Express,” suggested Cuddles.

  “You know,” said Max, “the Hammer Slayer would have been a good story if the woman had disappeared for a while, instead of just turning up dead with the guy’s fingerprints all over her and the ballpeen.”

  Cuddles had a thought: “Has Hazel shown you this letter to the boss? From the distraught mother in Indiana?”

  “No,” said Max, but as Cuddles laid out the handful of facts, he began to display a clear interest and new signs of life: “I remember him at that party. A happy little Hoosier hoisting his first hooch. I gave him some reporting tips.”

  “Do you think he’s playing a trick on his parents?” asked Becky. “By disappearing, I mean.”

  “No,” said Max, shutting his eyes and concentrating like a police psychic. “It’s something bad. The kid’s giving me the heebie-jeebies.” Closing his eyes even tighter, he tried seeing whether he himself had followed the advice he’d imparted at the Oldcastle party: notice everything. Could he recall anything peculiar?

  “Max,” asked Cuddles, “if you were an actual cop, instead of our consonantal connoisseur of crime, what would you do first here?”

  “Talk to Lindstrom,” said Stanwick, without hesitation.

  “Why so?” asked Spilkes.

  “He’d know who might be in the market for boys like our little Hoosier.”

  “Oh, God,” said Becky, who went on to point out, hopefully, that Lindstrom himself, a different sort altogether, had also disappeared.

  “Maybe it’s Peaches and Daddy in reverse,” suggested Cuddles. “Maybe our boy has found himself some seventy-year-old Mrs. Astor who’s got him on a divan up on Park Avenue.”

  “I suppose,” said Max, “that if Gianni Roma’s crowd is involved, any story here would be off-limits to Bandbox, by fiat of ’Phat. Of course, the issue might not be flesh. The kid could have come up against anybody from rumrunners to the Klan.”

  “If you were to write about this for the magazine,” said Cuddles, with an ardor that took the others—and himself—by surprise, “maybe you could take a different approach entirely. Make the hunt itself be what’s important.”

  “Yes,” said Spilkes, thinking there might be something fresh here. “ ‘In Search of a Subscriber.’ Something like that.” A story that would build brand lo
yalty among readers by showing Bandbox’s loyalty to them.

  Cuddles watched Spilkes consider the possibilities for the magazine, while Stanwick thought through the opportunities for himself. Within half a minute they were leaving his office, discussing the angles in low, intense tones.

  “I don’t know if this can actually work,” said Spilkes.

  “Norm,” replied Stanwick, who was by now truly enthusiastic, “what you don’t realize is that I invented Mrs. Shepard.”

  He meant only that more than ten years ago, for a novel called McCormick’s Grim Reaper, he’d created the character of a grief-stricken midwest farm wife whose son got murdered with a piece of automated agricultural equipment; he understood the psychology of such a mother, and its appeal to the reading public.

  Alas, before the writer and the managing editor entered Spilkes’s office, Chip Brzezinski, who’d been following them in the corridor at a prudent distance, succeeded in hearing only that Max had “invented Mrs. Shepard.”

  33

  In sight of the domed Police Building, which looked a little like that London church Spilkes was always trying to get him to visit, Harris reflected that it only made sense for the NYPD to have its headquarters in Little Italy. Who needed more policing than the paisans? Even so: poor Gianni, being treated like some murderous gangster when he was just an enterprising pervert. How would he face him tonight at Malocchio?

  A police matron ushered Harris into Patrick Boylan’s second-floor office and told him he’d have to wait a few minutes for the commissioner’s spokesman. Left alone, Harris picked up a ceremonial baton and gently shook what appeared to be some ancient noisemaker. This last item was still in his hand, making a surprising little racket, when Boylan entered.

  Everything about him was steel gray: the old suit; the wires of his spectacles; the hair above his gaunt face. “Mr. Harris,” he said, not offering a handshake. The brogue, Harris noted, was substantial.