Instinct? We build our reactions out of the tangled web of experience. Once, long ago, on the way home from a movie in Rockville Centre, I walked beneath the suburban elms, lost in my memories of screen hero. My feet set up a clacking echo on the empty street. Behind me, moving steadily my way, I thought I heard another sound, a whispering scuffle, as though somebody followed me on the lawns. I began to walk faster, my heart pounding, my ears alive to the mischievous noise. Yet I didn’t escape him. He came at me when I reached the darkest shadows. He held a grimy hand over my mouth, trying to stifle the wild screams, the hysterical yowling. Luckily, he caught me at a home where folks were still up. He fled when the door opened and a man appeared. He was gone after that, a faceless, nameless man whose horrible presence I would never forget.
Because I was remembering him now.
Was somebody behind me?
I paused at a tiny shop window, struggling to study the people on the pavement behind me. They passed me casually, a group of teen-age youths singing folk songs. And behind them? More people, of course, far down the street.
I raced for a taxi.
“Take it easy,” I told the cabby. “Very easy.”
“You name it, lady,” he said. “We got it.”
“A slow crawl.”
“So I’m crawling.”
He slid away, aimed uptown, slow enough so that I could manage a long and searching look back at the corner. In the tableau back there, a small group waited at the curbing for the light to change: two girls and their escorts, a middle-age man with a poodle, a policeman, a trio of teenage boys and a very tall man.
A tall man?
Something about his distant figure grabbed at me. He approached the corner, turned to look my way and then retreated out of my line of vision. On a clear day, under a bright sun, I might have identified him. But the night blossomed with shadows and my eyes could not focus clearly. His face was lost to me. His massive frame, however, teased my memory. In the electric moment of studying him, in the tick of time before he walked out of the scene, some vagrant and familiar gesture came through to me. It was his walk. He moved with a stallion swagger.
“Keck!” I said to the night air.
“Come again, lady?”
“Turn around. Back to the corner where you picked me up.”
“What a way to make a buck.”
He swung the cab sharply around and returned to the corner quickly. We cruised along the storefronts slowly and I scanned the streets, hoping for another glimpse of the mysterious tall man. But he was lost to me.
“Forget him,” I said.
“Lady, I don’t give a hoot in hell for him. Where do I take you now? Albany, maybe?”
“Just coast.”
“What am I? A sled, maybe? Or a pair of roller skates?”
“No guessing games. You know what you are.”
“My old man told me I should study to be a dentist. But no, not me. I had to get myself tied up with a broad. After that, you know the bit. I got married. Kids. Expenses and so forth.”
“Turn left here.”
“Then the war. They grabbed me like maybe I was talented for the army. They grabbed me, flat feet and all. So I went to Korea and worked in a dump near Seoul for two whole years. When I came back the first kid was already over a year old—”
“Go down Thirteenth Street.”
“—so who could spend time going to school? They told me I could use the GI Bill, but who would be feeding the wife and kids, I ask you? So I got into the hacking business, a dog’s life. Ten, twelve hours a day behind the wheel. Murder.”
“Pull up here and turn out your lights.”
“What for? You playing games, lady?”
“Sit tight for a minute or so.”
“Lady, I’m sitting, but not tight.”
“Relax,” I told him. Behind us, far down the block, a car was turning our way. It rolled slowly, another taxi, obviously on the prowl. It came abreast of us and I squinted through the gloom, struggling to get a good close-up of the lone passenger. But there was no way to probe the internal shadows of the other cab. It slid past and proceeded on the crawl, its tires a whispering hiss on the empty street. Then it swerved suddenly to the right and a woman got out. She ran my way, a sure-footed siren who ducked into the doorway marked 505.
I paid off the cabby and followed Magda inside.
CHAPTER 13
4:38 A.M. Saturday
Timothy Cantrell was having a party. The sound of revelry came through to me in the small hallway outside his basement pad. A sickly blue light shone fitfully over his door, on which some oafish wit had lettered a small sign:
Timothy and You, Darling
Please Crawl In?
I stood there for a moment, letting my womanly instincts play games with my nose. Around and about Timothy’s pad hung a strange and cloying stench, a breath of incense brewed for gasps and groans, the kind of stink manufactured out of cheap perfume for the five-and-ten cent trade. I have a delicate set of nostrils and a stomach to match. It would be an effort to work against this horrid aura of Timothy’s alter-ego.
But I braced myself and walked through the door.
Immediately, the low buzz and drone of perpetual conversation swept over me, a wave of sound that would never diminish until the party ended. The smell was weaker here, killed off by the pall of cigarette smoke that hung in the air like a London fog.
If I live to be five hundred, I’ll never forget Timothy’s fantastic pad. It ran the full length of the house, a single gigantic room, chock full of mad furniture, people, and—cats. The cats belonged to several feline breeds, gray cats and brown cats, Persian cats and alley cats, old Toms and young Tomasinas. They sat in odd poses on the various chairs, couches, benches and tables. They crouched and blinked impassively at the assembled group of Village idiots gathered to partake of Timothy’s hospitality. Along the far wall, a row of zany chairs, the wreck and ruin of several uncharted periods in American furniture history, old couches out of Victorian living rooms corroded and dirtied. And in the couches, and on the floor, sat the guests, mumbling and pawing each other in attitudes of casual play.
In the center of the room, adjusting her naked torso to the dull beat of a distant jazz theme, a young girl danced in a slow and grinding tempo. She used her body with a skilled purpose. Alongside her, a bearded youth bumped and rolled in the frenzied movements of a personal ballet. The girl moved close to him, shaking and squirming in a sleepy, aggressive bump and grind. They clutched at each other. They came together and moved as one. They were lost in their personal never-never-land of passion.
Nobody watched them.
“Hello, sweetheart.”
“Hello,” I said. I was talking to a squat wench, a girl who walked like a man. She approached me out of the gloom and winked a wicked, masculine eye at me. She had a guttural voice, loaded with male hormones.
“You’re for me, baby.”
“Not tonight, Josephine.”
“Just call me Maxine.”
“I’ll call you when I need you.”
“You’re pretty.”
“You’re handsome, yourself, Maxine. But I can’t use you.”
“Are you sure? Don’t fight it.”
“You’re not my type,” I said. “I’m looking for Magda Trent.”
“Comical,” said Maxine. “I’m much more interesting than Magda. We could make nice music together.”
“My piano needs tuning. Get yourself another instrument, Maxine.”
“Women,” she said with a gusty sigh. “If I live to be a hundred years old, I’ll never understand women.”
“Maybe I can make myself clear. I’m looking for Magda Trent, remember? Where is she?”
“Probably in some dirty corner, seducing another wacky lover now that George DeBeers is dead.”
“Which corner would that be?”
“Follow your nose,” said Maxine. “When you smell offal, you’ve found Magda.”
She melted away, her bright eyes already sifting the place for another potential mate. And there was a strong chance that she would strike pay dirt in this mob. The place seethed with women of all types: young and lean adolescents, fresh from the delinquency group in the high schools, their girlish figures lissome and ripe for the marauding hands of their partners. Mixed in with the teenage Tessies were a variety of others; tired-eyed vixens from the world of industry; secretaries and clerks and typists on the loose for a quick bout with the Bohemian boys. I caught one or two familiar faces from the world of television and the movies, actresses of the cheaper class who yearned for some contact with fantasy to deaden the reality of their struggle for thespian glory.
“Drink, sister?”
‘“Not yet, brother.” He was a cadaverous man, a sudden apparition who emerged out of the gloom to lean over me and show me his white bicuspids. He had a zany grin, as wide as his face and loaded with alcoholic ambition.
“Benjamin Five,” he said. “The name is Five.”
“Benjamin what?”
“Five, my love. The name is Five.”
“You’d better lay off the juice, Benjamin.”
“You don’t believe my name is Five?”
“Your name is legion,” I told him. “Why not find yourself a quiet corner and die, Benjamin?”
“A clever woman,” he said, studying his glass and letting me see he thought me wonderful. “An intellect, by gad, a rare type in this sort of brothel brawl. Why can’t we be friends, queen?”
“Ask me an easy question.”
“Will do. You want a drink?”
“What are you drinking?”
“Cantrell punch, a mixture of branch water and Cantrell juice.”
“It sounds horrible.”
“It goes down. Care to try one?”
“I’ll settle for plain branch water.”
He oozed off into the crowd, in search of the sink. The record player flipped and the music bumped and blared in a moody modern jazz opera. The girl in the middle of the room was losing her clothing. She swayed and bounced to the new tempo and her black skirt slipped slowly down over her hips and to the floor. She kicked the skirt away and continued her dance dressed only in a pair of panties. Her little breasts bounced to the rhythm of the tune. She closed her eyes and lost herself in some personal dream, her hips grinding, her body alive with naked lust. Nobody looked at her.
“Your drink, doll.”
“Thanks,” I said. Benjamin was smiling at the girl who danced. “What do you think of boneless adagio?”
“I think she needs a good whacking from her old man.”
“You don’t approve of bodily freedom?”
“I don’t approve of peep shows.”
“What a strange man,” I said. “What on earth brought you to this fiesta?”
“Curiosity,” he shrugged. “The jazz. Rumors that Luke Gronnam would play his horn here tonight. Music I like. Music I love. But what some queers do to the rhythm of good music makes my guts bump.”
“Hear, hear.”
“And how about you?”
“How about me?”
“I mean, what brings you here, beautiful?”
“I was born curious, Benjamin. Let’s just say I’m slumming, shall we?”
“Alone?”
“Why not?”
“There are characters here who could be dangerous for a young, pretty chick.”
“I can handle them, thank you.”
“The hell you say. You need an escort.”
“Somebody strong and brave, like you, Benjamin?”
“An offer of Boy Scout integrity,” he smiled. “Just call me Honor Scout Benjamin Five.”
“Five?” I asked again. “Are you really serious?”
“But of course. I abandoned my real name some time ago. I’m a realist, a worshiper of the happenstance, the whims of fate. I was born on the fifth of May on the fifth floor of an apartment situated on Fifth Street in Coolidge Heights, Pennsylvania. The number of the apartment house was five-fifty-five and I was the fifth child in a family of five.”
He went on at great length with his gentle fantasy about the name Five. He explored numerology and tied up his decision to change his name with a yen for personal recognition and acclaim that was charming nonsense. But he was smiling inwardly as he unfolded his strange theories. His pale eyes shone with a friendly glow and he seemed dedicated to making himself attractive to me.
“Five is a lovely number,” he said. “Do you see it in a different light now?”
“I’ll never laugh at a five again.”
“This Five is grateful.”
“Will this Five do me a big favor?”
“Five favors,” he laughed. “One at a time or in a lump.”
“Magda Trent came in a while ago. Where can I find her?”
“Magda Thirteen,” said Benjamin, with a sudden tightening of his mobile mouth. He soured up his face as though nibbling at a large lemon. “I call her Thirteen because she symbolizes inevitable ruination.”
“You know her well?”
“I know her. An elegant body under an evil head.”
“Stop talking like a Village poet,” I suggested. “Care to tell me where I can find her?”
He looked at me with a careful eye, studious now, his manner changed, his face softening. In the close-up I wondered about him. He radiated a quality of seriousness, an inner sincerity that gave the lie to his talk about numbers. He had the face of an average Joe, an aging college student, a law clerk or a good salesman. He had been working hard to sell me his zany personality. Maybe he had worked too hard.
“Don’t I know you from somewhere?” he asked.
“That pitch won’t get you anywhere.”
“Seriously?”
“What are you selling, Five?”
“I think I know you.”
“Why not? I’m not here incognito.”
“Of course,” he said, his sombre eyes lighting with a sudden glow. “You’re Sugar Shannon, aren’t you?”
“Bingo.”
“Then you’re here on a story?”
“Clever,” I said. His dialogue held me. He talked with ease and humor, yet there was thought and meaning behind his words. He was no ordinary beatnik bum, certainly, and his face came through to me as a sudden challenge. Where had I seen him before? In one of the dusty Village dens, on my last story? Or did he come from another area of my day-to-day life? A reporter? A cop? A writer of some sort?
“You were anxious to meet Magda Trent?” he asked with a smile. “Maybe I can find her for you.”
“Will you do that?”
“Wait here for about five minutes, Sugar. Then follow me through the door at the end of the room. It leads to a corridor. Across the hall is the way out to the alley. On your right, in the corridor, you’ll find the door to Cantrell’s private cell. It’s my hunch Magda will be there.”
“Why can’t I come with you?”
“Maybe I have business with Magda first. Give me five minutes with her—and then follow me.”
“Thank you, Benjamin.”
“To hell with the Benjamin Five routine,” he smiled, his hand on my shoulder. “Call me Abe. My name is Abe Fine.”
He walked away on the line. My head buzzed and hummed with headachy recollection. His name was familiar to me. I watched him stride through the crowd of beatniks, trying to get a fix on him. Abe Fine? My mind struggled to search him out, to pull his personality out of my catalogue of characters who crossed my path in the whirligig routine of daily reporting. His appearance, his Bohemian outfitting threw me off. He was dressed in the ca
sually careless attire of the typical Village male: a garishly striped shirt and tight pants and dirtied shoes of the loafer variety. His hair was long and untrimmed, his face gray with stubble. If I could forget his costume, forget his misfit image, my mind might possibly set him into the proper niche of memory. I backed into a corner and closed my eyes, working my female sagacity into high gear.
And suddenly, Ben Abe Fine came into focus for me.
Memory took me uptown into an office where I had journeyed for a lead to a police story. There was a fat detective behind a desk, bragging about a new department he had recently organized. He pointed with pride to three men who stood at ease around him. These were the first recruits in a novel squad. These were police spies, hand-picked for their cleverness. They had been trained in a strange career. They would go out into the city, selecting the areas where they might apprehend pushers in the dope traffic. They would move into the neighborhoods posing as local citizens in search of a fix. Once accepted by the residents, they would plumb and pry for the evil salesmen of narcotics. And their names? And their faces?
One of them was Abe Fine, of course!
I minced through the revelers, stepping gingerly among the knotted lovers, moving slowly through the great mass of squirming humanity in the center of the room.
“Put it down here, doll.”
I brushed away meandering hands, seeking the wall’s edge where there would be clear access to the door at the far end. It seemed an interminable trek before I passed the last groping male and found myself in the narrow corridor Abe Fine had described to me.
Out here, silence. On the right, a small bulb glowed feebly in the gloom. There was a door, a black door on which the same frantic artist had lettered the words:
Cantrell Rolls Here—Knock Before Interrupting
I knocked. I knocked again. The knob turned in my hand and the door slid away before me, squealing on rusted hinges. Inside, a single bed, a mattress on a base of boards, the sheets disarrayed. On the far side, an ancient chest of drawers on which sat a lamp constructed to ride a mad sculpture, a woman’s torso, four-breasted and lunatic in design. But the room was empty. I stepped inside, feeling for a light switch that was not there. My hand explored the wall, found nothing but some hanging material, a silken weave, probably one of Cantrell’s feminine shirts.
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