by Kane, Henry
“Yes, I’ll be waiting for you, Mr. Avalon,” said Marilyn.
“Goodbye, Peter my love.” Sally bent and whispered in my ear. “Tread easily, dear Peter. Naive quiff is a strange variety. She likes you, and you may get there, but not, I assure you, by the accustomed route. The usual line will get you nowhere but nowhere. Stay with it, have patience, and it may open up, or it may not ever at all. Good luck, my horny cabellero.”
He kissed my neck, gathered in the adoring Paul, and they disappeared, blithe wraiths, into the gloom of cigarette smoke.
The next pair to fly off were Marilyn Windsor and I.
“Would you like to leave?” I asked her.
“This darned dress has become like a strait jacket. It’s doing all sorts of things to my circulation. I’m dying to get out of it.”
“A grand idea,” I said with enthusiasm. “Goodbye, all you remaining dear goons,” I said. “My lady and I are about to take off.”
I raised a hand for the waiter. Roy Paxton pulled my hand down. “This trip it’s on me,” he said.
“Thanks for the bribe,” I said.
“It’s no bribe, ingrate,” he said.
“Honey baby Marilyn,” said Kiki Kalmar, “if you make it with this guy, I wish you’d report back to me. I still think he’s a nance.”
Honey baby Marilyn, intent upon the amenities, didn’t know what the hell she was talking about. “Oh, thank you, it was wonderful, I’ve had a lovely evening,” she said. “Goodbye, Miss Kalmar. Goodbye, Mr. Paxton. Gee, this is a most interesting place, and I just adored Mr. Christie’s poem, though honestly I didn’t understand too much of it, but he is such a charming young man. I’d love to see him again.”
“Him you really need like a hole in the head,” murmured Kiki. “Goodbye, and come see us again.”
At her apartment Marilyn went to shower and change while I piled lush-tuned long players on the record machine and moved about impatiently, indulging in an occasional wistful dance with myself. She came out with her face washed clean of make-up, wearing red shorts and red bandana, and barefoot again, which made her about as unprovocative as an erupting volcano. We danced, and I got close, but she grew remote. I tried to kiss her but she elbowed out of my clasp. “Please, please,” she whispered. “Please don’t. Oh, please don’t. Please. I’m afraid.”
“Don’t be afraid of me, honey.”
“I’m not afraid of you.”
“But you just said—”
“I’m afraid of me.”
“Afraid of you? What are you going to do to yourself?”
“No. Afraid of losing myself….”
“Lose yourself. Lose yourself, baby. I’ll find you. I’ll bring you back.”
“Oh, you’re sweet. You’re so funny and dear. You’re so sweet.”
But nothing helped the cause. Dear Sally was so damned right it hurt, in all sorts of places. I tried every approach but ran up against a roadblock each time. I threw more passes than a quarterback in the fourth period three touchdowns to the bad. Nothing helped. We didn’t hug, we didn’t kiss, we didn’t neck, we didn’t pet, let alone anything else. Finally she hinted that it was getting late and she was right. I limped for the door, defeated but not dishonored. And at the door she whispered, “You’re so darned sweet and I’m so darned crazy about you. I had a wonderful, wonderful time tonight, and please let’s have a date for tomorrow night. Call me. Call me. Call me all day tomorrow.” And that got me out the door without even a good night kiss.
And so I walked. I walked and walked. Risking the muggers, I walked and walked, trying to shake loose from frustration. I walked up to Forty-second, across to Sixth Avenue, and up Sixth Avenue. I live on Central Park South near Sixth but I was not heading directly home. It was almost 3:30 and my friend Olaf closed up at 3:30. He had his stand at Fifty-sixth and Sixth and when I was out late it was my habit to pick him up and we would have coffee together at the all-night Riker’s at Fifty-seventh. If the talk went well, we would either repair to my place or to his and we would continue cutting up conversational jackpots until dawn. Fifty-sixth and Sixth at that time of night is a dark and desolate corner. Olaf’s stand was closed but there was activity about it. Two men were engaged in battle; that is, one was inert on the sidewalk, and the other, above him, was pummeling. I had seen the action from afar and had started running. As my footsteps came nearer, the pummeler ceased and took off, westerly, into the night. I did not chase him because the guy on the ground was my friend Olaf. I helped him to his feet and I said, “What the hell!”
He grinned somewhat sheepishly. “Never more glad to see you in my life,” he said.
“You hurt?”
“No, not really.” He touched a hand to the base of his skull. “A little lump back there, that’s all.”
“Shame,” I said, though in relief. “A guy as big and strong as you figures to know how to take care of himself.”
“He snuck up on me unexpected. Slugged me on back of the head and I fell. I don’t care how big and strong you are, when you get one in back of the head unexpected, you’re helpless.”
“Mugger?” I said.
“No. No mugger.”
“How do you know?”
“Let’s go have some coffee and I’ll tell you.”
THIRTEEN
Olaf Kalmar was my favorite newsstand dealer in all the world. Olaf, in his own sweet and unaffected manner, was a character. For instance, self-learned, he was a formidably cultured man. For instance, although he never spoke about it, he had been a hero in Korea and had gained the Purple Heart and a medal for valor. For instance, although he never spoke about this either, he had been chess champion of the Armed Forces of the United States. For instance, although he had come to the United States from Sweden at the age of 17 and had never had any formal training or tutoring in this country, he spoke English perfectly, fluently, and with enviable diction. For instance, although he had been the ward of an enormously wealthy woman—the mother-in-law of his sister—he had refused any and all grants of money from her, except that he had borrowed sufficient to purchase his newsstand, and he had returned every penny of that loan. For instance, tall, blond, handsome, a strapping widower of thirty-nine, he was the father of a daughter aged twenty-six.
All of which requires a fast dash of Kalmar history. When Olaf was fifteen and going to high school in Stockholm, his sister Astrid was twenty-two and dancing with a musical troupe in Gothenburg. The children were orphans and Olaf lived with an aunt. In Gothenburg, Leopold Lund, travelling through Europe with his mother, met, was smitten with, and married Astrid Kalmar, and took her back with him to The United States. Olaf remained in Stockholm, but at seventeen, when he was graduated from high school (at the top of his class), his aunt died and Astrid sent for him. He became part of the Lund household, but he became the special favorite of Mrs. Barbara Lund for three reasons: he was a bright boy (actually brilliant) and she enjoyed his company, he was a talented painter (he devoted his time almost completely to painting) and she was a lover of the arts, and he was a marvelous chess player and she was addicted to the game. At nineteen he borrowed the money for the purchase of the newsstand, found himself an apartment, and moved out. At twenty he married Rita Levin, a girl exactly his own age, and also a painter. His wife was incapable of conceiving a child and when they were twenty-two years of age the Kalmars applied for and legally adopted a child from an orphanage, a nine-year-old girl named Kiki. Nine years later, Rita Levin Kalmar was killed in a hit-and-run accident, and Kiki, at eighteen, left home to commence her career (?) as a dancer. Although Kiki was not particularly fond of her foster-father (nor had she been of her foster-mother) and hardly ever saw him, Olaf, nonetheless, considered her his daughter and his responsibility, sent her money whenever she requested it and he could afford it, and regarded her as his legal next of kin and sole heir and his will so stated. At the time of Rita’s death and Kiki’s departing the household, Mrs. Barbara Lund tried hard to convince Olaf to move in
to the now male-less Lund menage, but Olaf resisted. He had a charming four-room apartment in an old two-story house at 40 West 57th Street, and there he had his library, and there he did his painting, and there he was happy. (He had had several one-man shows which had received good critical notices.) Mrs. Barbara Lund had also attempted, from time to time, to have Olaf sell his newsstand and take up another means of livelihood (or to devote his entire time to painting under her patronage) but Olaf, a proudly stubborn man, insisted that he was satisfied with his mode of life. Although painting was his one true interest, he would not accept charity or patronage, and he asserted that being a newsdealer was, for him, the easiest and least corrosive manner of earning his daily bread. He sometimes beefed to me that he wished he had more time to devote to painting but Olaf was not one to complain and his beefs were brief and infrequent. He had an assistant who took care of his kiosk by day, and he came on in the evening. Withal, Olaf Kalmar and Mrs. Barbara Lund had been close and dear friends.
Actually, I became acquainted with the Lunds through Olaf. I was a customer of his, we had become friends, we had many mutual interests including chess, and he had invited me to a sort of chess soirée at 700 Park where I had met the old lady and Astrid. And now, over coffee and corn muffins at Riker’s, Olaf Kalmar said, “What do you think of that damnable thing about the old lady?”
“Damnable,” I said.
“I know you’re working on it, Pete.”
“Working on what?”
“The murder. What else?”
“The police are working on it.”
“I said you, Peter.”
“Yes. I suppose I am. In a way. Tangentially.”
“Why in a way, tangentially?”
“What the hell! I’m only one guy, and not a member of the Police Department at that. I don’t have all of their facts and absolutely none of their authority but, hell, I’m doing whatever I can.”
“Fine,” he said. “If you’re doing whatever you can, that’s all I can ask you to do, isn’t it?” And over coffee, his blue eyes smiled seriously.
“Are you trying to get me off the subject?” I said.
“What subject?” he said.
“The subject of an attack upon you, and you say it wasn’t a mugger. Now lay that on the line for me, in words of one syllable.”
“There are two syllables in each of the words I have for you.”
“Okay. Two syllables.”
“And two words.”
“Go, man.”
“Vinnie Veneto.”
“You’re nuts!”
“I don’t think so.”
“Olaf, it so happens I talked with him only yesterday, and, as a matter of fact, your name came up. He said he didn’t have a grudge in the world against you.”
“Maybe that’s what he said, but it’s not what the man said.”
“What man?”
“The man who clipped me in the vicinity of the medulla oblongata.”
“The mugger-fella?”
“That was no mugger-fella, fella. That was a janissary.”
“Janissary of whom?”
“Of Mr. Veneto, that is of whom?”
“Olaf, I tell you, you’re crazy.”
“I’d be showing Mr. Veneto’s marks if you hadn’t run up as opportunely as you did. And I’m not crazy.”
“But, damn, how do you know?”
“Simple, the guy told me.”
“The mugger-fella?”
“The janissary. He slugged me from behind, and I fell, and he was just beginning to go to work on me, and he said, quite clearly, ‘This is a little present from Vinnie Veneto. Once over lightly. And this is only the first dose.’ ”
I punched out a cigarette and lit it. “All right. We’re going to the cops.”
“Oh, no. I’ve had enough of cops. I’ve had enough of police protection. I’ve had enough. Right up to the throat. Now that I know it’s coming, I’ll be prepared for it. I can take care of myself.”
“We’re going to the cops,” I said.
“Declined,” he said.
“Then I’ll go myself, on your behalf. I’ll tell them what happened:”
His jaw set in a stubborn line. “I don’t think you will, Pete—without my consent.”
“I’m not going to let you lay yourself wide open for the likes of Veneto.”
“Pete, you don’t know what it means for a guy like me to have cops around him all the time. Cops at the newsstand, cops wherever I go, cops in my apartment. I tell you I can take care of myself.”
“We’ll see, we’ll see,” I said.
“You won’t go to them without my permission, will you?”
“No, I won’t, you stubborn son of a bitch. But maybe I’ll convince you, and if not me, maybe another. I’m certainly going to talk to Veneto. Do you mind?”
“No, of course not.”
This was current events that I thought were ancient and dead. A ruffian by name Nelson Boligula had been pounced upon, months ago, by a couple of Vinnie Veneto’s hoodlums, and beaten almost to the point of death. The event had occurred one night at Fifty-sixth and Sixth. Boligula had come out of a saloon, two men had catapulted from a waiting car, and had worked him over quickly and efficiently. Olaf had been perhaps a hundred feet from the attack, had run to it, had received a clout on the jaw for his pains. The two men had jumped back into the car and it was gone before the stunned Olaf could recover. Olaf had put in a call, the police and an ambulance had come, and that would have been the end of it except for Olaf Kalmar. Normal citizens, too often, are subject to temporary spells of blindness when they are witnesses to gangster-doings—but not so Olaf Kalmar. Olaf had got a good clear view of the two assailants, and to the welcome shock and pleasure of the police, Olaf was not only happy to cooperate, he considered it his duty. He could make no identification of one of the attackers, but he plucked the other from a Rogues Gallery group, and when the man was picked up, one Teddy Gumbaro, Olaf selected him instantly out of a lineup of twenty-four strangers. Boligula hovered between life and death, Gumbaro was held on a charge of attempted murder (which would be changed to murder when Boligula died), and the star witness, Olaf Kalmar, was assigned the round-the-clock police protection which he learned to abhor. The newspapers played it fondly: Olaf was an anomaly because the citizenry is generally timid, and Olaf, simply and without guile, was naturally brave and he did not think he was doing anything any more brave than anyone else would do. Olaf was a refreshing change and the newspapers hung paeans on him like pennants and there were lavishly laudatory editorials all of which worried the police because they knew from whence had come the attack upon Nelson Boligula and they knew of the retribution that Vinnie Veneto could visit upon upstanding citizens. At that time, I went to Veneto and pleaded with him in the cause of Olaf, but received no direct reply. Miraculously, however, Boligula recovered, and, true to his code, he refused to press charges, insisting that his injuries were due to an accident and that the supposed witness, Olaf Kalmar, was a liar or insane or attempting to make a reputation for himself as a hero; at length the matter was dropped, Gumbaro released, and the police protection lifted. And then again I had gone to Veneto on behalf of Olaf and that second time I had received his promise that Olaf would not be molested.
And now the damned thing was alive again.
We quit Riker’s and I walked Olaf home. It was a walkup and he lived on the first floor. He invited me in, donated a mixture of Scotch and Drambuie on ice, rejected my repeated pleas that he permit me to contact the cops, and then grew rapturous about a painting which he refused to show me.
“Come tomorrow night,” he said. “Tomorrow night it’ll be finished. I think it’s the best thing I’ve ever done. I’m dying for you to see it, finished. You’ll be the first. Please come tomorrow night.”
“I’ll pick you up at the newsstand.”
“Great, great. Tomorrow night. We’ve got a date.”
And so ended my day. I went home an
d peeled off my clothes and fell into bed and slipped into sleep. I did not dream of lobby murders or street attacks or junkies or lawyers or loan sharks or beatnik poets or fishnet strippers or Swedish painters who owned corner kiosks. I dreamed of Marilyn Windsor.
FOURTEEN
I leaped out of sleep at a quarter of twelve propelled by the frenzy of many emotions: worry about Olaf Kalmar, anger at Vinnie Veneto, curiosity about developments anent Barbara Lund, suspicion of Roy Paxton, contempt for Astrid Lund, wry amusement at the antics of Sally Avalon, and deep-down lingering longing for Marilyn Windsor. I called Parker before I even brushed my teeth, and I got him in.
“Anything on the old lady?” I said.
“We found the gun,” he said.
“Good. Where?”
“Routine dragging of the sewers around 700 Park.”
“Does it give you anything?”
“Gives us the murder weapon, no question about it, but it doesn’t give us anything else. No distinguishable prints and the serial number filed off but good. How about you? Got anything for me?”
“Not yet.”
“Not yet—sounds hopeful. You know we run along different alleys, son.”
“Yes, I know.”
“You’ll call me when you care to talk, I hope.”
“I sure will, Louie.”
“Goodbye,” he grumbled and hung up.
I brushed my teeth. I showered, shaved, dressed, and quit my digs, which, I have heard, is Londonese for cutting out of the pad, which, I have heard, is New Yorkese. I went to Reubens where I had a breakfast of marinated herring followed by ham and eggs washed down with coffee and cigarette smoke. So fortified, I was cab-whisked to 2 East 85th Street which are the digs or the pad or whatever you wish to call an imposing three-story townhouse wherein dwelt, in appropriate splendor, Vinnie Veneto. There, after being screened by more Japanese than a Chinese Communist caught with his pants down in the palace of Mr. Hirohito, I was ushered into his august presence. Not Hirohito. Vinnie Veneto.
