Bandbox

by Thomas Mallon

  Allen was, in fact, still so happy that he’d quite forgotten any culinary crimes to which the doughnut might be accessory. Last Monday, Arinopoulos had furnished proof that the surviving warehouse animals were on their way, via trucks equipped with the latest in ventilation, to the San Rafael Valley, where they would be cared for inside Isidore Mazzaferro’s nature preserve. The photographer had arranged, in a series of telegrams, for the superannuated mobster to take charge of this little group of creatures he claimed to have discovered living in APPALLING conditions when he was out in Long Island City to shoot the mechanical marvel of the Silvercup sign.

  At the other end of the floor, Joe Harris sat in a state of nervousness beyond any Daisy was enduring. Chewing his nails, he still waited for news of what had happened out in California. So far there had been only an abundance of rumor: the cops had made arrests and were on their way back to New York with Rothstein’s henchmen; no, the local authorities had not allowed extradition; actually, the police had gotten all the way across the country and then failed to arrest anyone; in fact, despite Boylan’s promises, they’d never gone out there in the first place. Every hour it was something else. Had he been double-crossed? All Harris knew for certain was that the May issue, already printed, included a picture of Boylan and a vaguely phrased but still declarative paragraph about how his boys in blue had made masterful use of Max Stanwick’s detection and brought Shep’s tormentors back to the bar of New York justice.

  If the cops had gone to California, and had made arrests, and had gotten extradition, there were now three days left for them to get back here. Actually, only two, until Harris would no longer be able to stop the issue from leaving the Connecticut printing plant for newsstands all over town.

  He was looking up at his picture of Yvette, whose countenance offered no odds on the outcome, when the telephone rang.

  “Congratulations,” said Betty.

  “Thank God!” responded Harris. “I don’t think I’d have survived waiting till Friday.”

  “What do you mean? You’ve got to.”

  Confused, Harris said nothing.

  “You and Jimmy are both nominated for Distinguished Achievement in a new men’s category. The awards breakfast is Friday. Read the memo. It’s got to be somewhere on Hazel’s desk.”

  “Oh,” sighed Harris. “The GMEs.”

  “That’s all you can say?” Betty, who remembered his up-all-night cravings for these awards, hardly knew what to do. “You need to call Jimmy and offer congratulations” was all she could think to suggest.

  Harris barely heard her. No GME was going to provide relief. Oldcastle wouldn’t be impressed with a whole row of the silver-pencil trophies now that the competition, and maybe the cops, were closing in on Joe Harris.

  “Why can’t Jimmy call me?” he finally replied.

  Accustomed to pretending that she’d heard correctly, Betty decided to make this one of the rare moments when she would pretend to have misheard. “That’s better,” she said, kissing Joe through the telephone before hanging up.

  Harris’s line rang again as soon as she was off.

  “It’s nice that the GME committee still considered the portion of last year before we came along,” said Jimmy Gordon. “I guess that’s how you squeaked by.”

  “Nice of me to have invented a whole new category of magazine for you to fit into.”

  “Actually,” said Jimmy, “we’re doing some uniquely pioneering work—in crimefighting. But in my acceptance speech Friday morning I will give you credit for providing the crime. I’ve asked them to put us at adjoining tables. See you at the Biltmore.”

  REALTY PERIODICALS CORP.

  BUREAU OF NATIONAL LITERATURE, INC.

  EVANGELISTIC COMMITTEE OF NEW YORK CITY

  Just before lunchtime, waiting for the elevator, Becky mused upon the obscurity of some of the smaller tenants listed on the Graybar’s wall directory. What did they have in common with one another? Nothing, it seemed, except Becky’s own feeling that she wouldn’t want to punch a time card at any of them. She was happy, she now knew, working right where she was. She had done the best she could making this sheaf of notes for Daniel, and she would get them all typed up before the end of the day, but only if she drank two extra cups of coffee to stay awake.

  The Scottish Chaucerians, really! And all this respect for obscure history—which had been what, after all? Just the ephemerality of its own day, disdained by those like her own dear Daniel until it could congeal into the past. But somebody had to put things into the world in the first place. And wasn’t that what she and her colleagues were doing each day on fourteen? Whipping up the silly faddish here-and-now of life itself so that someone could pronounce it, eons later, the spirit of its vanished age? Why shouldn’t she be at the foamy, evanescent moment of creation itself? Why not keep dancing in and out of the ring binder that could hold Nelson’s Loose-Leaf Encyclopaedia for only a month or two at a time, instead of gluing herself, for eternity, into the Britannica?

  Stepping into her office, Becky noticed a bottle of prewar wine and a half-dozen roses that had been set down on her desk beside the not-yet-filed-away galleys of her piece on Rosemary LaRoche. “NICE JOB, KID,” said the card from Harris. “GOD WILLING, WE’LL ACTUALLY ISSUE THIS ISSUE.” She smiled, and put the Scottish Chaucerians on a chair by the wall. The Rosemary profile might already be closed, but right now she felt an impulse to reread the proofs of her own words, to revel in having gotten things stylish, if not (thanks to Rosemary’s mythmaking) completely right. The actress’s mendacity was her own affair; but she, the Rebecca Walter of the byline, had succeeded in putting things across. Could she do it again, maybe even better, next time? She kicked off her shoes and kept reading until Cuddles materialized in the doorway.

  “I didn’t get a cactus. Not even a bottle of seltzer.”

  Becky could no longer keep herself from asking: “Do you know any more than I do? About what’s going on?”

  “Volumes.”

  “Oh.”

  “We’re all catching frostbite from Spilkes’s cold feet.” The m.e., having grown direly nervous about the restraint he’d imposed on Harris, had this morning confided to Cuddles what the delay was all about.

  “So what do they think’s been happening out there?” Becky asked.

  “It’s all rumors,” said Cuddles. “One is that Mr. Jones tried to use his tommy gun, not just pose with it.” He paused to drag on his cigarette. “As for the facts: we know Max has gotten a little skittish. He’s home in Brooklyn, peeking out through the shutters. But Shep’s life is still one big cherry phosphate from room service. Want to come out with me?”

  “To Manking? I shouldn’t. I had a big breakfast before I—”

  She decided against mentioning the Scottish Chaucerians, but not because she feared Cuddles would make a crack about Daniel. She feared she might.

  “Not to Manking,” he said. “On an errand. Slightly adventurous.”

  “Okay,” she said, right away and not even against her better judgment. If she had to sit here typing Daniel’s notes—and imagining what it would soon be like to type his dissertation—she’d wind up rummaging in her desk for aspirin to go along with the extra coffee.

  Only when they were in a taxicab did she ask Cuddles where they were going.

  “You’ll see,” he said, as they started up Lexington. The outing felt like a strange reversal of the afternoon she’d hauled him unawares to the Macfadden Building. Since when was he supposed to be rescuing her?

  “Give me a hint,” she asked.

  “I’m packing,” said Cuddles.

  “For where?”

  “No, packing. Heat,” he explained, extracting a .22 pistol halfway from his suit coat. He noted Becky’s shocked expression. “Relax. I don’t think you can make a citizen’s arrest for a mere violation of the Sullivan Act.”

  “My God, are they after you, too?” she asked. “Along with Max?”

  “Nah,” said Cuddles. “
As soon as we get the wagon through the pass, I’ll give him back his gun.”

  “Are you going to tell me what this is about?”

  “Want to turn back?”

  “No.”

  “Good. It’s really just a simple delivery.”

  Becky knew, once the two of them reached its headquarters inside a Fifty-seventh Street walkup, that the Rothmere Investment Co. was not what it claimed to be. A lone secretary occupied the outer office, and a monastic quiet suggested that no one else was on the floor. Becky recalled from Max’s profile that Arnold Rothstein rarely rose before mid-afternoon, and she was now pretty sure she also remembered a description of this secretary—MISS FREDA ROSENBERG, the nameplate said—from the article.

  “Good afternoon,” said Cuddles. “May I leave this for Mr. Rothmere?”

  Miss Rosenberg, organizing some long ledger sheets marked BOXING and BASEBALL, responded with a studied neutrality that convinced Becky and Cuddles of her indispensability to whatever went on here: “Mr. Rothmere does not accept deliveries at the office.”

  “This one,” said Cuddles, proferring a thin envelope, “should definitely be opened before Christmas.”

  Miss Rosenberg allowed herself the slightest of frowns.

  “It’s a greeting from Mr. Jones,” said Cuddles, who pulled open his overcoat to show the bulge in his suit jacket.

  Miss Rosenberg rolled her eyes, in the manner of Nan O’Grady. She had seen this sort of male protuberance many, many times and was not much impressed. But she finally sighed and accepted the envelope from whoever this amateur was.

  On the cab ride back, even though she was sitting down, Becky could feel her ankles shaking. She and Cuddles were nearly at the Graybar before she at last managed to press him for enlightenment: “ ‘A greeting from Mr. Jones’? And you’re only delivering it now?”

  “Actually, it’s a greeting Jones doesn’t know he’s making. Something transmitted by Shep. Remember our little pitcher’s big ears at the party?”

  “Yes,” said Becky, excitement making her sound angrier than she was. “They’re what caused all the trouble in the first place.”

  “Well, they were up and alert back at the ranch. What’s in that envelope might get us all home before dark.”

  Waiting for the elevator on still-unsteady legs, Becky looked for the second time that day at the wall directory listing the Bureau of National Literature and the Evangelistic Committee of New York City. She could almost swear she saw the Scottish Chaucerians on the board with them.

  Once inside the elevator, ignoring the white-gloved operator, she whispered to Cuddles: “Kiss me. Just once, but kiss me.”

  55

  Francis X. Gilfoyle was never free, even on his own bench, from the watchful eye of a “messenger.” But on Thursday afternoon, with nothing much at stake for Arnold Rothstein in State of New York v. John Roma, the judge could follow his own lenient instincts.

  Gianni, called upon to make a statement before sentence was pronounced, looked around and found the audience pitifully small. Waldo was of course nowhere to be seen, but not even Daisy DiDonna?No, a couple of columnists had made mention of “the countess and the judge,” and she’d thought it better not to appear in her lover’s courtroom on a day he had to send someone from her circle up the river. And aside from that, what with Bandbox’s more pressing woes and the current newsprint-devouring story of the Bremen aviators—found stranded but alive up on Greenely Island—Gianni’s little drugs-and-degeneracy episode had lost any head of steam in the press. The only viewer the defendant could recognize was David Fine, who’d shown up as the eyes and ears of Joe Harris, preoccupied by the approaching climax of the Shep venture.

  A look from Mr. Goodheart, his top-notch lawyer, reminded Gianni that he needed to be contrite. Just admit it, he’d been advised; put in a dig at Prohibition if you want—it’ll go down well with a Tammany wet like Gilfoyle—but let that be the extent of any contempt for the court.

  “Your Honor,” said Gianni, after clearing his throat, “itsa hard to tella right from wrong these days.”

  Goodheart gave him a second stern look.

  “But I didda wrong.” Gianni paused to look around at Fine. “I coulda used a little help and guidance from my friends, but”—he turned back to the bench—“even so, I didda wrong.”

  Judge Gilfoyle looked as sympathetic as his sweet, ancient mother, and pronounced a sentence of four months in the state prison at Fishkill—as little punishment as the law would allow.

  Both Gianni and the judge were then led from the courtroom—the latter not by his bailiff but the ever-watchful messenger.

  Fine sat for a moment by himself, thinking about his good old days as Gianni’s sommelier, even before Joe Harris came on the scene. He had an awful feeling that it was all coming to an end. Joe had looked plain terrible this morning, trying to decide whether to hold the issue back or let it go—a quandary he had only hours left to think his way out of. Boylan would not return the editor’s calls, whether just to torture him or because there’d been a double-cross, no one could be sure. And tomorrow, whatever happened, Joe would have to sit through the GME breakfast with a smile.

  Fine decided to go up to Yankee Stadium and rub Eddie Bennett’s hump.

  Norman Spilkes sat alone in his office, fingering the tie tack he’d been given the other week at AT&T: a tiny Statue of Liberty and a bejeweled little Eiffel Tower attached by five links of the thinnest possible chain. Between his index finger and thumb, the managing editor worried the object as if it were the string of beads Harris’s barber always carried.

  He meditated upon the marvel that had once been the focus of his own employment: the telephone. Before long, everyone, not just General Pershing, would be able to call from Paris—or dial directly from Norwalk to New London—all on his own. Harris’s helpless bellowing of “Hello, Central!” when Mrs. Zimmerman and Hazel were away from their desks had already begun sounding antique. During his days at AT&T, Spilkes had never seen the numbers drop; people only wanted more of a product being continually improved and purveyed by no one else. Whereas desire for his current wares, after a long juicy waxing, had begun to wane so fast you could hear the air escaping.

  Why, he tried to remind himself, had he come here? Because he’d grown tired of administering too sure a thing? Because he’d been so dispirited, a few years ago, by the discovery of his own early middle age? Back then an improbable dinner-party encounter with Joe Harris had seemed a chance to throw his own gearshift into a fast, giddy reverse. He loved Joe’s Bandbox—its pages were a flashing nickelodeon of all the images he’d desired for himself as a young man—and in many respects he loved Harris, too. The fun catering to his moods when that outsized creature was soaring! And the pleasure of being the calm traffic cop to all the colliding racehorse personalities on the fourteenth floor! The clattering racks of suits; the athletes; the steakhouses; the girls and the gadgets—what would he have done without them? Jazzed by his new job’s tonic, but still happily tethered to his pretty wife and children, Spilkes had made it successfully into his middle years. Which only—right now—put him at another crossroads. The career change that had been a matter of rejuvenation was turning, suddenly, into a terrifying self-indulgence.

  Ever since Harris told him about Jimmy Gordon’s taunting phone call, Spilkes had felt seized by something like panic. What did Jimmy mean about Bandbox “providing the crime”? What did he know? That the rumor of arrests out in California was false? Had Boylan set a trap—his way of getting back at Harris? And had Spilkes’s own cautionary calculation been the undoing of what might have been a great success?

  Maybe he and Joe would both wind up in the clink with Gianni.

  Instinct now made him reach for that embodiment of everything once steady and secure in his life: the phone.

  “Mrs. Zimmerman,” he heard himself saying, “please get me James Lauder at AT&T headquarters.”

  While he waited for the connection, he consul
ted his New Haven Rail Road timetable and took out an empty Brooks Brothers shopping bag from the bottom drawer. Could he get out of here, with his personal possessions, this afternoon, without anybody noticing?

  Just before 5:00, Cuddles came in from a short walk to the Commodore to pay Shep’s weekly bill. Across from the Chanin Building’s construction site, he’d looked up at some Indians strolling the girders twenty floors above the street. Strange that they should be the group most at home atop the city’s new vertical essence; stranger still that New York had been home to him from the moment he first ferried into Manhattan more than twenty years ago. He had rarely made a surefooted way across any beams—he’d more usually felt like he was hiding in the bucket that dangled from the crane—but even now, as Brigham Young had said to Grandpa Houlihan about somewhere far away, This was the Place.

  And from what he’d learned just before his walk, it might be that for a while to come.

  Back inside his office, Cuddles removed his raincoat and found Harris taking up position in the doorway. The boss was in a state. “Where’s Norman?” he asked.

  “I’ve no idea.”

  Harris shook his head. “The pictures on his desk are gone. Is Fine around?”

  “Not back from the courtroom,” said Cuddles. He realized that ’Phat was looking for friends, and that he himself still hadn’t been redeemed to the point where he was eligible to serve.

  “How about your girlfriend? Is she here?”

  “Do me a favor,” said Cuddles. “Tell her that’s the role life has thrust upon her.”

  Harris, all need, stood there waiting. Cuddles refrained from giving him the look he deserved, and added only: “She left early.”

  Harris moved his eyes to the clock, whose second hand kept falling and ticking, falling and ticking.

  “You know,” said Cuddles. “You can find Jimmy and Paulie up on eighteen.”

  Stung by the remark, and the realization that on this crucial evening of his life it was coming down to him and Houlihan, Harris finally asked: “Have a drink?”