She didn’t go off with a bang, more like a string of those small Chinese firecrackers. The smoke hadn’t completely dissipated when the company arrived, but since Betty was obviously programmed for good manners under whatever conditions she bore up bravely under the impact of these rambunctious strangers, closing her ears to Gracie’s truckdriver language, and even doing yeoman duty as barmaid and snack dispenser, beyond which she made herself generally inconspicuous.
In brief, as Milano took note through the smoke of the lovely contraband Havana that Maxie had supplied, the girl was handling herself very well indeed in very rough waters, and he could feel sister Angie’s matchmaking elbow pointedly digging him in the ribs.
No use smiling to oneself about it. For all he knew, given time he might find out that Angie was making good sense. He was, at that moment a little before midnight, ahead of the game by a euphoric hard-won fifteen hundred dollars.
At midnight, Betty motioned him into the kitchen and he followed her there.
“I have to be up at seven,” she said. “I have a job to go to. As I’m sure you know. What do I do now?”
“Just go to bed,” Milano said reasonably.
“Now? With everyone still here?”
“You don’t have to undress in front of them. Use the bedroom.”
“Very funny. But it seems to me you’ve won more than enough for one night. There’s no reason you can’t just tell them the party’s over, is there?”
“Sure there is. They’re playing at my invitation, and, as you say for yourself, I’m the big winner right now.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“No more than your impression that we’re holding a meeting of the Holy Name Society in there. Look, baby, I’m sorry about this whole mixup. I really am. But all I can do if you won’t stay is call a limousine service to get you home. They’ll have a car here right away.”
“No. Oh, no. I’m not being driven up to my house at this hour in any chauffeured limousine. I’m supposed to be spending the night with a girl friend. Just how would I explain a limousine to my father and mother?”
“Explain?” said Milano. “Jesus Christ, at your age you should really—” and was struck dumb right there by the expression on her face.
So, after being turned down by the first half-dozen cabs the doorman hailed, he had finally managed to send her on her way by cab. The bribe required to have the driver head in the direction of that terra incognita called Staten Island could have bought a trip by limousine to Chicago. After which he had gone upstairs and dropped not only his fifteen hundred win money but another five hundred. And most of it to Gracie. Who was both an obnoxiously triumphant winner and a too frequent one.
The good part was that he had hardly given Willie a thought the whole night.
The bad part was that Betty, as she got into the cab, was distinctly red-eyed. Not crying, but on the verge. Probably spent the whole trip in tears, then had to put on a bright smile for mommy and daddy who apparently waited up for her by candlelight any night she spent away from the nest.
Idiotic, as Milano plainly saw. Bad comedy. Nonetheless there was this dismal early morning guilt, a sort of psychic hangover.
Odds were that she hadn’t left for her office yet. He switched off Aretha, looked up the Staten Island number and touchtoned it. Betty answered.
“Look,” Milano said, “I want to apologize for last night. No fancy explanations, no excuses. Just an abject apology.”
“Thank you.” Very cool. Very controlled.
“I want you to know I mean that.”
“Yes.” A long pause. “Well, I think there’s something you ought to know. I told my mother and father about us. I mean, I told them very plainly that you and I were having an affair.”
“You did?”
“Very plainly. I mean, after what happened last night – after what you said—” She seemed willing to let it go at that.
“And how did they take it?”
“Mother took it very well. Father didn’t. But he’ll survive. I asked him if he wanted me to move out and he said absolutely not. But I probably will. If I find a place I can afford near the office.”
“Makes sense,” Milano said. The original guilt had somehow been transformed into another variety of guilt which he couldn’t clearly identify. “Meanwhile, how about lunch with me today?”
“No. Not today.”
“Now look—”
“Goodbye,” said Betty, and hung up.
Milano suddenly recognized that new variety of guilt. Just before their initial roll in the hay, she had answered his common sense question with yes, she was on the pill. And, with some hemming and hawing, had let him know that he would not be the first to bed her. From the evidence, this was certainly the truth.
Then why was he now weighted down with this feeling that he had been the one in her life to deflower her?
No answer. None really expected.
At eight-thirty he walked over to the Rammaert Gallery and made the best of a steady drizzle in the shelter of a neighboring doorway. A few minutes before nine, Christine Bailey appeared from the direction of Sixth Avenue and entered the gallery. Very nice. No umbrella, no hat, the cap of wiry hair gleaming with droplets.
So far, so good.
The drizzle became a driving rain as Milano set course for the Mid-town Athletic Club on Fifty-third Street. He used it infrequently but his level of tipping made for instant and effusive recognition. He turned his suit over to the valet for drying and pressing, then, allowing plenty of time in between each operation to get his wind back, did twenty laps on the track, twenty in the pool, and wound up in a wild three-on-three basketball game with some muscular and humorless members of the younger generation. His man featured mugging as a defensive maneuver until Milano hipped him with a bang into the wall, after which junior was openly hostile but highly respectful.
Then there was a sweat, a long, luxurious rubdown, hot and cold water, and a trip to the scale which provided good news. Four days of starvation plus one workout came out to minus six pounds, never mind the bald spot. One-ninety for his big-boned, better than six foot height – all right, call it an even six foot – would be gratifying, but meanwhile he could live with two hundred. He stretched out on the rubbing table again and fell asleep feeling macho as hell.
The rain had stopped at five o’clock when he went back to Fifty-seventh Street. There he had a slow vodka and tonic at the bar of the Russian Tea Room to ease newly discovered muscles in shoulders and legs, and booked a table for two for six-fifteen. He returned to his post near the gallery, and when Christine Bailey emerged from it he fell in step with her. “Miss Bailey.”
She continued on another couple of steps, then pulled up short in a sort of pedestrian double-take. She frowned at him, calling on memory. “You were in the gallery today.”
“Yesterday.” Seen across the desk she was eye-filling. Seen this close up she provided powerful impact. “Milano’s the name. John Milano. Private investigator. On business that might involve the Rammaert Gallery. And I’m risking a hell of a lot when I level with you about it like this, but I think it’s the only way to do it.”
“Do what? Mister, if you want to talk gallery business, just talk to the boss. He’s there right now.”
“No way, Miss Bailey.” With a hand on her elbow he eased her against a store window clear of passing foot traffic. “I’m under strict instructions from my client not to talk to Rammaert. That means if I do I can blow this case and all the money that goes with it. Including your own large payment for helping out. And you have my word for it, it’s clean money. A California divorce case where let’s call him Mr. Smith is trying to put the boot to Mrs. Smith by getting away with part of the estate before the settlement, you know what I mean. Some fine art that’s being shipped out when nobody’s looking. And I think Rammaert’s been made agent for it. Given the job of converting it into cash. And that’s it.”
“Is it? Do you want to know w
hat I think?”
“Gladly. But first let me ask you something. Do you like borscht? Shashlik? You know, those skewer jobs. The best in town.”
“What?”
“Because,” said Milano, “if you do, we ought to be working out this question and answer thing in that restaurant down the block. On the expense account. My client Mrs. Smith is a very rich lady. Vindictive, you may say, but very rich. So I’m not only in line for a heavy payment if I can tell her where her paintings are, I am also on what amounts to an unlimited expense account meanwhile.”
“Oh, man,” said Christine Bailey wonderingly.
“Well?”
“Forget it, mister. If I want to believe this isn’t your freaked-out idea of an easy pickup—”
“Believe it, Miss Bailey. I play for money, not pickups. Easy or otherwise.”
“If I want to believe that, what I think is that you people got some kind of divorce hassle you’re looking to dump on Rammaert. Only, he and I get on fine. I like him, I like my job, and the only favor I’ll do you is not tell him about this come-on. And the only reason I’ll do you that favor, Mr. Milano – it is Milano, right?”
“Right.”
“– is so I can walk down the street at night without wondering if some Mafia brothers of yours are waiting for me around the corner. See? You leveled with me, I am leveling with you.”
“Miss Bailey—”
“I don’t have time for this. I have other business I’m already late for.”
“Miss Bailey,” Milano said with elaborate patience, “I am an investigator working out of this office.” He lifted her hand and pressed the Watrous Associates card into it. “It’s three minutes away from here. Tomorrow, just drop in, look around, ask any questions you want to about me. Right now, let’s talk money.” He drew the envelope from his breast pocket and offered it to her. When she made no move to take it he held it up, flipped through its contents. “Five hundred cash up front, Miss Bailey. A lot more if we make the client happy.”
She was briefly tempted, no question about it. Then she shook her head vigorously. “No dice, mister. And when I move off I don’t want you tagging along. I won’t like that.”
“You’ve got it backwards. I’ll take you wherever you’re going. Just say where.”
“You’re the big detective, you can try to find out where all by yourself. Just keep off my tail, understand? Now and for good.”
She walked off toward Sixth Avenue, and Milano, after giving her a fair lead, followed at the proper angle. Righthanded was the way she had started to reach for the envelope, and it was Willie who long ago pointed out that righthanded people tended to look back over their left shoulders. Obviously a textbook case she did that once, then headed into the subway entrance on the corner and took a D train downtown, Milano one car behind.
Rush hour over now, not much of a crowd, so he had a good view of her through the windows at the head of his car and tail of hers. Although not as good a view, he saw, as that provided the male customers facing her across the aisle who were plainly gratified by the scenery. She took notice of this and responded with a sharp little downward tug of her skirt, symbolic of the contemptuously curled lip.
Up and out at Fourth Street, Milano giving her plenty of room to maneuver in. Along Sixth Avenue, down Cornelia Street where the early evening Greenwich Village crowd made it a case of broken-field running, and so to Bleecker Street. There, Christine Bailey joined a huddle of others, mixed black and white, before a theater which looked like an abandoned gypsy tea room, curtained display windows and all, and which bore overhead a poster announcing Two Stops Before The End of The Line.
Not even Off-Off-Broadway. Off-Off the map altogether.
Milano bided his time, then as the huddle broke up he strolled over, taking notice that on the billboard beside the door was posted, among other names comprising the cast of the play, the name of Christine Bailey. “Evening, Miss Bailey,” he said to that shapely back.
She turned and confronted him narrow-eyed. Simmering. “Man, I warned you.”
“No, you didn’t. You challenged me.”
An exasperated shake of the head. But was there the suggestion of an involuntary smile in that quirk of the lips? “I can see that was my mistake,” Christine Bailey said.
“A small one. The big one is the way you give away money.”
“Oh yeah, money. You do have it on the brain, don’t you?” She looked him over. “Those threads never came off the rack. What kind of car you drive? When you do drive. Caddie?”
“Mercedes. This year’s.”
“Not much like those late-night movies, are you?”
“No, I’m up to date and for real. Now, can we meet after the show, Miss Bailey, and talk things over? With my assurance that nobody suffers the least pain from this deal except possibly my client’s husband?”
“I have to see somebody tonight. Maybe tomorrow night after the show. Maybe.”
“And final curtain’s down?”
“About ten. Just remember the maybe. It’s a big one.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” said Milano.
Back in the apartment he phoned Shirley at home and was answered by the lord of the manor, sometimes acidly referred to by Willie as Mister Shirley Glass. Sam Glass said, “She’s not here. She’s out visiting the daughter. Want to leave a message?”
“Yes. Tell her this is Pacifica Inland business. A girl named Bailey might check me out at the office tomorrow, and I want Shirley to give her my four-star treatment. And to keep Greenwald out of sight all day. Got that?”
“Sure. Pacifica Inland. Bailey. Greenwald. Four stars. Say, I hear you and Willie are at it again.”
“Yes,” said Milano.
Charles Witter Kirwan
A TEST OF ENDURANCE TODAY.
Now feeling acute pain in chest and spine, but that is balanced by an excitement – a rejoicing – that I’ve discovered a reserve of strength in me which will certainly carry me to my goal. A marvelous feeling. High as a kite, as my grandfather used to say of my stepfather, although I haven’t allowed myself one drop of alcohol all day.
And at this moment – eleven-thirty this memorable Thursday night – I still feel no need for any such stimulant.
I now have in hand
I now have in the trunk of my car the last of the materials necessary for the grand event. The wire. The detonator. Both manifestly brand new, guaranteed to do the job.
Our Mr. Swanson who was supposed to phone me last evening never did, a stupidity that cost me most of my night’s sleep. But he did phone early this morning with a rambling, unbelievable excuse for the stupidity which I
Never mind that. He phoned to say that the materials were ready and that I was to pick them up at seven in the evening. The drive up the Hudson to Sutton Falls ordinarily takes about two and a half hours. Considering my physical condition – impossible to find a position behind the wheel that doesn’t cause misery – I allowed an additional half hour, and then barely made it on schedule. The return trip, where I had to pull off the road several times and leave the car to ease incessant pains, took four nightmarish hours. No resorting to the Percodan either. That, I could not risk on the public highways with a load of high explosives in my possession.
The nightmare isn’t completely over either. When I tried to lift the coil of wire from the car’s trunk I found it too much for me. It will have to be dragged into the basement of 409. I’ll attend to that in an hour or so, this time fortified by my dosage. And with no bright Bulanga eyes tracking me from those still lit windows.
Or in front of my headlights.
Oh yes.
Wheeled into the driveway and there like the doe at the crossing, Christine Bailey. A rare visitor in these parts lately. Black as the night itself, wearing some sort of dark dress, almost invisible until my lights hit her. She jumped, I stamped on the brake.
“I’m sorry, Miss Bailey.”
“That’s all right, Mr. Kirwan.”
And off she wiggled to 409, each movement free, as the poet happily put it.
Yes indeed.
So.
Sleepless last night, troubled by yesterday’s taping of a narrative whose point and purpose I lost in digressions. I replayed a lengthy section of it just now. I’ve done that once before, and evidently to good effect: the sound of my coughing is almost completely eliminated. But in this replaying – is it the machine itself? – my voice sometimes emerges as denasalized and too high-pitched.
Those records played on our old wind-up Victrola
My professorial voice? Is this what my blankfaced, contemptuous classes heard? The Bulanga among them openly stretching and yawning so that you could see right down to the quivering pink uvula in the midst of all that blackness?
Disturbing in a way.
Well.
I did, however, determine where my yesterday’s narrative was intended to lead. The explanation of how the grand event was conceived. A vital matter, not to leave this explanation to those psycho-academicians who practise historical divination according to the gospel of Doctor Fraud.
This is not a case history, doctors. This is – and you must forgive my use of an archaic, dirty, despicable phrase – a social history.
Starting with the death of my aunt, Mrs. Margaretha Gretchen Witter Hayes. My Aunt Maggie. Who, having spent the final years of her life in the exclusive Sutton Falls Memorial Home, died there at age ninety-five, demanding, ungrateful, and quarrelsome to the end. Childless. A record of long ago stillborn deliveries. Which was good luck for the stillborn, bad luck for me.
It is possible that someone somewhere may be in possession of those notes I addressed to her now and then over recent years. Notes very affectionate in tone. It’s more than possible that some people close to her – certainly some attendants at the Home – may recall my visits to her every few months, my patience in dealing with her, my apparent regard for her.
Understand this now. If such notes and such recollections are made public they must be dealt with as entirely false and misleading. I detested the woman and I detest her memory. But my grandfather out of concern for her made a coward and a liar out of me in this regard. He asked me near his death to assure him I would continue providing for her what he had: understanding, sympathy, money.
The Dark Fantastic Page 6
