Waiting

by Stephen Jones

  “I’ll try to get there.”

  Ellie blew him a kiss and tripped back into the dressing room. Brady heard whoops from the other chorus girls as she did so, and he rapidly made his way to the wardrobe room at the end of the corridor.

  Brady did not have long to wait before he heard three sharp raps on the wardrobe room door, but he did not immediately come out, and it was as well he didn’t. Soon after, he heard footsteps coming down the corridor and the door being tried. Fortunately, he had locked it as Miss Ellie had suggested.

  Twenty minutes later he emerged to find the theater apparently deserted and in darkness. He nevertheless moved silently, having taken care to put crêpe on the soles of his patent-leather pumps. He came down two flights of stairs, hearing and seeing nothing, but when he came to the stage level, he heard a noise coming from one of the star dressing rooms. He crept closer and found an alcove from which he could hear unobserved what was going on.

  “No, Micky, no!” said a high, slightly nasal voice, which Brady recognized as belonging to Miss Billie Bernard. “I will not come to your ball. I know when I’m not wanted. I was lousy tonight and I know it.” “But, honey, you were great! I did all this for you.”

  “I know, Micky, I know. And I’m grateful believe me. But I just can’t take it. Aw, Micky just leave me.”

  “You are coming to Sardi’s, doll. I said so.”

  “Let me go, you big ape!”

  Brady heard sounds of a struggle, then a grunt from Micky and a scream of pain from Billie. He peered out of his recess, darting back just in time to avoid being seen by Micky, who emerged from Billie’s dressing room nursing what looked like a scratch on his right hand. Brady saw him turn a corner and then, beyond Brady’s line of sight, begin to speak in muffled tones to some person or persons.

  Brady heard the words: “. . . and see she shows up” from Micky, followed by a “Yeah, boss,” which was echoed by another. Then Micky left, slamming the stage door behind him. Meanwhile, a sound of sobbing was coming from Miss Billie Bernard’s dressing room.

  Brady was just about to emerge from his hiding place when two large men came round the corner and walked purposefully toward Billie’s dressing room. Their faces were shapeless and pockmarked—one of them had the little finger missing from his left hand, the other a pencil-moustache so thin it looked like the gash from a knife. Incongruously, they were immaculately costumed in midnight-blue dinner suits with wing collars and black bow ties.

  They paused before Billie’s dressing-room door and knocked.

  “We’ve come to take you to the party, Miss Billie,” they said.

  “Scram, you great lunks!” screamed Billie from within. “I’m not going for you or anyone!”

  “Boss’s orders, Miss Billie,” said Pencil Moustache.

  The one with the missing finger who seemed, if possible, even more brutish than his companion mumbled: “Boss’s orders.” Then they both entered Billie’s dressing room.

  Presently Brady heard scuffles and screams and the smashing of glass, followed by the heady odor of cheap scent. A bottle of perfume had been thrown. Brady wondered if he should intervene, but this was not what he was here for. Besides, it sounded as if Miss Billie Bernard could look after herself. Then there was a further crash, and Billie came bolting out of her dressing room. She wasted precious seconds trying to lock the two mobsters in her dressing room, but they forced the door open, pursuing her down the corridor past where Brady was concealed.

  Billie tried to dodge through the door to the stage, but they blocked her way. There was now only one possible route of escape—the staircase down to the understage, and this she took with Pencil Moustache and Missing Finger in close pursuit. Brady decided to follow at a discreet distance. Billie was screaming, the two hoodlums bellowing—it was a primitive scene.

  Brady followed them down to beneath the stage, where he was just in time to see Billie take an unwary step and half-slide, half-tumble down a ragged hole in the floor of the basement. Pencil Moustache and Missing Finger followed her down the steps more carefully, using their cigarette lighters to see where they were going.

  Brady came to the edge of the hole to watch the descent of the thugs at a safe distance. He had a flashlight, but would not use it unless absolutely necessary. He could hear the hollow echoes of Billie’s cries and the splashy echo of her footsteps as she wandered blindly in the spaces below.

  As soon as Pencil Moustache and Missing Finger had reached the bottom of the steps and negotiated the uneven pile of rubble at their foot, setting off in rather hesitant pursuit of their quarry once more, Brady started his own descent into the depths.

  The first thing he became aware of on reaching the bottom was the smell. It was ancient and putrid and fishy. The atmosphere down there was not, as he had expected, close. There was air coming from somewhere, almost like a breeze, but the odor it carried was all decay and death. The walls Brady touched were mostly smooth and clammy, though in parts it felt as if they were covered with coarse wet hairs: some sort of moss or weed, he presumed. The growth was faintly bioluminescent, and of a greenish-gray color, like a vast hirsute glowworm.

  Brady risked a quick flash of his torch, and what he saw astonished him. It was just as H. P. Lovecraft had described: He was in a vast barrel-vaulted corridor with smooth walls, some of them masked with the coarse subterranean growth he had felt and seen. Other parts of the wall were damp and naked but intricately carved, either with lettering which Brady identified as Runic in character, or with grotesque bas-relief sculptures. He had no time to examine them because, ahead of him, Pencil Moustache turned around, uttering the words, “What the—!” Brady immediately snapped off his flashlight.

  Ahead of him, the two thugs had other things to occupy their minds. Brady saw them halt and hold up the flickering lighters to stare around them. The vaulted gallery had debouched into a wide, almost circular chamber from which numerous passages wound off like tentacles from the head of a monstrous beast. They evidently could not tell which way Billie had taken, and were dazed by the awesomeness of the structure that they encountered.

  The roof of the space was conical, like the beehive tombs of pre-classical Greece, and every inch of the smooth cyclopean masonry with which it was built was covered in carvings of strange and hideous creatures, coupled with what looked like astronomical charts featuring constellations and planets.

  Brady came up close to the two men unobserved, and watched as they stared in horror and wonder at the chamber they had entered. For a moment there was complete silence, then a scream was heard coming from one of the tunnels that led out of the space they were in. It was Billie.

  Pencil Moustache and Missing Finger had some discussion as to which tunnel Billie’s voice had come from. Eventually, Pencil Moustache overruled Missing Finger and plunged down one of them, the latter following, disgruntled. Brady thought he rather favored Missing Finger’s decision, but decided to follow them at a discreet distance.

  As soon as Brady entered the tunnel he was aware of a thicker, more oppressive atmosphere, the fish-corpse odor now so powerful that he could hear the two hoodlums ahead of him choke and retch. Brady conserved his strength and took shallow breaths. The two men began to call out: “Miss Billie! Miss Billie!” trying vainly to sound conciliatory. but nothing except the hollow echo of their cries was to be heard.

  Then came another sound. At first it was no more than a pulse in the earth that could have been mistaken for the thump of Brady’s own beating heart. Rapidly it grew louder and began to boom like the vibrating skin of a vast drum. Pencil Moustache and Missing Finger were still moving forward ahead of him, but slowly, tentatively. Now the booming sound was accompanied by the splashy patter of splayed feet advancing over puddles. There was a curious hissing noise before Brady heard Pencil Moustache say, “Son of a—!” Then things began to happen rapidly.

  There was a swishing sound, and Pencil Moustache was swept off his feet by something like a giant arm. Missing
Finger pulled his gun and started firing indiscriminately until the clip of his magazine was exhausted. Brady switched on his flashlight to witness a scene of such horror that for a few seconds he could do nothing but stare.

  Pencil Moustache was being held aloft by a giant arm or tentacle, and he was either dead or unconscious, but his eyes were wide-open and staring. Most of his right leg had been torn off and was being devoured by a host of creatures, half-human, half-piscine, and of unimaginable hideousness. Meanwhile, Missing Finger was bellowing and struggling among a roiling mass of creatures.

  Above it all, a half-human voice cried out triumphantly, “Rghyyeloi fo Xhon! Rghyyeloi fo Xhon!” And it was taken up by many more: “Rghyyeloi fo Xhon! Rghyyeloi fo Xhon! The Armies of the Night! The Armies of the Night!”

  Brady considered intervening, but it looked as if Pencil Moustache and Missing Finger were doomed, and perhaps not to be much missed. He would be better employed trying to rescue Miss Billie Bernard. He switched off his flashlight and ran back down the tunnel toward the central hall. As he did so, the dreadful bellowing of Missing Finger stopped in midscream.

  When he reached the hall, almost without thinking he darted down the tunnel from which he and the late, lamented, Missing Finger had thought Billie’s screams were emanating. Losing all caution, he switched on his flashlight and ran, calling out, “Miss Billie!” as he went. The passage became narrower, and Brady noticed that it was now constructed from homely brick. He heard what he thought sounded like a muffled human cry. Brady turned a corner without any precaution, his light flashing over the rough brickwork as he ran. He did not even draw his pistol. Then, before he saw him, he heard a man say: “Stand right where you are!”

  Brady halted, cursing his own recklessness. He shone his flashlight directly ahead and saw a big man standing in a blade of light made by a half-open doorway. In his right hand he held a revolver, which was pointed directly at Brady. His left arm encircled the frail form of Miss Billie Bernard, who struggled feebly in his grasp, and the massive left hand was clamped tightly over her mouth.

  “You better come with us, punk,” said the man, a vast Chinaman, almost as wide as he was tall, “unless you’re looking for a gut full of lead.” Brady was not, so he followed instructions and preceded Billie and the Chinaman through the door and up a narrow flight of stairs. From somewhere he could hear the sound of laughter and a very capable dance orchestra in full swing. Brady felt the almost irresistible urge to ask the Chinaman if he knew his good friend Charlie Chin, but felt this was neither the time nor the place. But he did ask where they were. They were not in the Roxy Palace, that was for sure.

  “You dumb or something?” said the Chinaman. “This is the Garden of Allah, and I am taking you to see the boss, Mr. Leo Vinci.”

  “Oh, you mean Leo the—” Brady just restrained himself from uttering the dreadful word artichoke. “Mr. Vinci. Yes, of course.”

  “And,” added the huge Chinaman, rather superfluously, Brady thought, “Mr. Vinci will not be very happy to see either you, Mr. Smart-Ass, or Miss Billie Bernard!”

  II

  March 7, 1937 (early hours)

  The office of Leo “the Artichoke” Vinci was situated at the top of the building which contained his highly fashionable nightclub, the Garden of Allah. It would not, however, be true to say that the aforementioned establishment owed any of its success to Mr. Vinci. It had been bought, for a very reasonable sum, from the club’s original proprietor and creator who had got into difficulties with Vinci and been made, as they say, “an offer he couldn’t refuse.”

  Mr. Vinci, however, was not a man to deny himself credit, even if it was undeserved, and he made sure that everyone knew that he was the Garden of Allah’s sole director, and that the excellence of its orchestra, the refinement of its food and liquor, and the slenderness of its chorus girls’ legs were all thanks to him. His office was the epitome of what was considered in his world to be sophisticated modernity.

  Whatever was not chrome-plated was gold-plated, and the elegance of his moderne furniture was only matched by its discomfort. Behind his desk, a portrait of Vinci by the artist of the moment, Tamara de Lempicka, was a miracle of popular cubism and shameless flattery.

  He himself was not a thing of beauty, even though the Polish-born artist had done her best to imply it. She had certainly caught the angularity of the man. He had an abominably long, thin face, which had been likened by no less a person than Miss Dorothy Parker to “two profiles stuck together.” His nose was a beak; his lips were exiguous. That narrowness of aspect reminded Brady, when he first came into his presence, of his new friend Lovecraft; but this was a demonic version of the lantern-jawed sage of Providence, Rhode Island.

  The Chinaman had been right. Vinci was not pleased to see them, though Brady doubted whether the man sitting opposite him and playing with a dangerous-looking steel letter-opener was ever pleased to see anything except his bank balance.

  “I found these guys in the basement,” said the Chinaman.

  Vinci was enraged. “Haven’t I told you, Hang, never to let anyone go down in that goddamn basement!”

  “But, boss, they didn’t come from the Garden, they came in some other way.”

  “What! Is this true?”

  “It’s true,” said Brady.

  “And who the hell are you?”

  “Nathan Brady, FBI,” he began to reach for his badge, but as he expected, was stopped.

  “Keep your hands away from your pockets, punk!”

  “Very well, then, Mr. Vinci. If you or your assistant reach into the right-hand outside pocket of my jacket, you will find my authority.”

  “Do it!” said Vinci to the Chinaman, who extracted the badge and threw it onto the desk in front of Vinci.

  “So, Mr. FBI,” said Vinci, lacing every syllable with sarcasm, “you expect me to be impressed.”

  “Not impressed, but perhaps better informed.”

  Vinci’s eyes narrowed. “Would you like to tell me how in hell you got here?”

  “It’s very simple. I was following this young lady here. Miss Billie Bernard.”

  “Yes, I know her name, thank you, Mr. FBI. We know each other well, do we not, Miss Bernard? Have you come back to me, then, Billie, begging for forgiveness? Have things gone sour between you and that hulking great sonofabitch, Micky Angel? Is that your game?”

  Billie, released at last from Hang’s debilitating grip, began to show spirit. “Listen, Leo,” she said. “I know I was your doll once, and I know you are pretty mad at me for throwing you over for a sap like Micky Angel, but that is not here nor is it there. And how I got here, I do not truly know, and who the hell this G-Man is and what he is doing shnozzling around after me, I know not neither. Now, will you kindly release me from your extremely classy joint? I have a party at Sardi’s to attend, following the premiere performance of a show named Zip Ahoy! at the Roxy Palace, with which you may not be entirely ignorant.” And, with that, she began to march confidently toward the door of Vinci’s office.

  “Not so fast, sister!” said Vinci. “At this moment my betsy is pointed at your ass, which is a very fine ass as asses go and would not benefit from being rearranged by the insertion of lead.”

  Billie halted. She knew Vinci well enough to sense that he meant business. She turned around to see that Vinci’s revolver (pearl-handled and gold-plated) was indeed pointed directly at her nether regions.

  “Aw, Leo,” she said, “it is truly touching that you still have my best interests at heart.”

  Vinci, a stranger to irony, did not smile. “Park your ass, doll, and lay off the gabbing till I tell you to gab.” Billie sat down in the chair that Hang indicated with a flick of his pistol. “Now I want to know how in hell you got here and where you came from, or I shall loose Mr. Hang on you with some methods of persuasion that you will not like.”

  Brady explained that there was a route from the basement of the Roxy Palace to the basement of the Garden of Allah, whic
h had been discovered, and that he had followed Miss Billie Bernard there. He did not think it appropriate to mention the part played by Pencil Moustache and Missing Finger, or their unhappy fate.

  “And why were you following Miss Billie?”

  It was a question that Brady had been expecting and dreading. “That is a confidential FBI matter and no business of yours, Mr. Vinci.”

  “Oh, no? And suppose Mr. Hang here makes it relevant, punk?”

  “Mr. Hoover would not be happy with you, Mr. Vinci. And when Mr. Hoover is not happy, consequences follow.”

  “Oh, yeah? And if you end up in the East River wearing the concrete overcoat, who’s to know?”

  “Mr. Hoover would know. He knows enough already, and he always gets to know everything in the end. I will give you plenty of five to seven on that. I can only guarantee your safety if you let me go unharmed.” This was, of course, as Mr. Hoover might say, the phonus balonus, but it seemed to impress Vinci. Like most people of a criminal persuasion, Leo Vinci was superstitious, and had bought into the myth of the FBI’s omniscience.

  The proprietor of the Garden of Allah considered a moment, then spoke. “Okay, Mr. Wise Guy. I’m going to let you go, but you do exactly as I tell you. You go to Micky Angel and you tell him that I have got Miss Billie Bernard, and that she does not go on tonight or in any show ever, unless he comes and does business with me. We will meet in a friendly way, and our people will be carrying the minimum of weapons. And I expect his answer by tonight. I am done with Mr. Buonarotti muscling in on my territory.

  “First he steals my broad, then he builds his theater a few blocks away, then he comes at me from under my building. This is not the action of a guy who used to be a buddy. Micky and I grew up together. Hell, we used to run a whorehouse together! Best goddamn whorehouse in Brooklyn too! Together we buried ‘Feet’ Macorquodale alive for singing to the cops about the Hoboken bank heist.

  “Now he’s in cahoots with your director. What’s his hold on the guy? Why does he not share it with me? Where is the comradeship? Where is loyalty and honor? Where is the old pals act? It is all gone. I tell you, Mr. FBI, this country is taking the A train to Hell. Now get your ass out of here.”