by Inconnu(e)
“Wait,” said Feinberg. “How about a little something in return. If you’re going to live at the Windletop, we’d appreciate a little information about that damned building. Nobody has been able to get past all those guards . . .” The telephone rang. “Feinberg. Yeah, I’ll be right up.” He hung up and swung his swivel chair around. “We’d like to get a line . . .”
Cassidy had gone.
• 4 •
“The wardship of rich little girls was much sought after,” Cassidy grimaced, clownlike in the privacy of his own room. “One wealthy three-months-old orphan was fought over by no less than two English kings. Abbot Samson contested his right to nurture the young lady (and her fortune) against Henry II. Richard the Lionhearted continued the struggle for the wardship of the little orphan when he became king and was finally bought off by the gift of hunting dogs and horses.”
Cassidy lay on his unmade bed, feeling sorry for the little highnesses. Greed in the thirteenth century was no different from the twentieth but the arithmetic was. You couldn’t buy people off quite so cheaply. “The girl was later kidnapped by her godfather, his way of getting into her fortune. The Abbot then sold his claim for $100 to the Archbishop of Canterbury, and he promptly sold it to the brother of the King’s Chamberlain for $333.”
What happened to the girl after that? Did she grow up and marry a few fortune hunters who looted her like the others? History didn’t say.
Which brought him to Lucia, a rich little girl, whose father had been kidnapped and then, unnecessarily, murdered. It stuck in his craw—that unnecessary murder.
Cassidy rose from the bed and returned the book to its special shelf next to the Chronicle of Richard of Tours 1217, Chanson de Roland, the Castellan de Courcy, the Contes de Severin, the Annals of Dunstable, and all the other lays and legends.
The Chamber, Cassidy called it, because the word room was inadequate. It was too spacious, too high-ceilinged, too grand with its fourteen-foot windows on West Thirteenth Street to be called a room. A true chamber with its own towering personality. Cassidy had clung to it even when the Company had sent him to Tangier for three years and to Belgrade for seven. Each time he’d had to evict his subtenants when he returned from abroad because the tenants clung like barnacles having become as fond of the Chamber as he was.
Cassidy crossed the room to the highboy desk next to the shuttered windows that kept the place in perpetual twilight. What was the point any more? Who’d want to look at an aged Irish—ex-CIA, ex-academic, ex-husband, ex-everything? Force of habit, that’s why. All my habits are outworn like myself.
Cassidy picked up a pile of bills held together by a rubber band. Twelve hundred dollars worth. “I can pay them off in a month,” he said aloud, addressing himself to his dead wife, whose photograph stood on the desk. “I’ll soak up the Principessa’s light and heat and pay the bills, in a month’s time.” He picked up the photograph and blew the dust off it. “I’ve been looking for work,” he explained apologetically. “I’ve not had the time,” explaining the dust. I’d be a much better husband now than then. “I had ambitions then,” he said to the pretty, roguish dead face, “a husband with ambitions is too self-centered to pay proper heed. Today I’d be at your feet all day long. You’d be bored to death.” He put the framed photograph back on the desk tenderly, skeptical of his own sentimentality. Maria had been dead fourteen years, and he distrusted the memory of happiness as probably bogus. Maria had died of leukemia at thirty-eight. He remembered the pain. Not the marriage. I had a wife when I didn’t need one, and now I need one I haven’t one. My timing is wrong, all the way down the line.
Cassidy tossed the pile of bills into his aged portmanteau which lay open on the floor. It already contained his three shirts, his four pair of socks, his two cardigans. Now . . . books. Cassidy pulled off the shelves the Chronicle of Behemund, the Conte de Brabant, the Chanson de Passim—bloody tales of villainy, treachery, and greed for the edification of a twelve-year-old contessa. As Groucho Marx had once said, they have to learn sometime.
Cassidy mounted the teak ladder which ran on rails clear round the chamber and propelled himself half the length of the room. From the second highest shelf, just under the ceiling, Cassidy took out three pamphlets—Caetano’s Red Fascism (the best book on Italian terrorism yet written), Sylvester Guardi’s Mafia in Italy, and a very private highly classified document he’d stolen from the CIA on personal protection procedures in Israel. Outdated, but the best he had.
The Middle Ages were for the education of Lucia. These books were for his own edification.
Cassidy pushed the ladder, himself on it, to the corner of the room where he reached behind the books to bring out his silenced .22. Very portable but not much at stopping a man in his tracks. For that he pulled out the .38, which could shatter the head of a crocodile. Cassidy hated it because it was so noisy.
He dropped the two guns in the portmanteau (real Brabazon leather which smelled of the nineteenth century) next to the books, and closed the bag.
Mounting the ladder once again, he propelled himself to the far corner of the room and pulled out a large volume of French medieval songs. The letter was just inside the cover.
Horatio:
I did what I could but in the current climate of Presbyterianism around here it didn’t help. The black bag job was a pretext as you know. We all did them in the old days and when I authorized yours, I couldn’t foresee Watergate, could I?
Keep in touch.
Hugh
Then at the bottom under the signature on the plain paper: Please Ds.
Cassidy smiled. Trust Alison to put a Ds on a letter that had self-destructed twelve hours after he got it. (But not before Cassidy had carefully Xeroxed it, knowing Alison.)
Cassidy tucked the letter back into the book, not just inside the cover this time but deep inside.
On the way out, he double-locked the door and put the telltale in place overhead. As always, he felt bereavement. Half my life, he thought savagely, I’ve spent away from this place for the sole purpose of earning enough money to pay the rent. It was self-defeating. There must be some aim in life higher than this—to hang on to the latch key of a one-room apartment I’m hardly ever allowed to live in.
He picked his way down the brownstone steps past the garbage cans and let himself into the Spumi, the little Italian restaurant in the basement underneath his apartment.
Henry was behind the bar laying out slices of lemon, olives, and triangles of lime for the luncheon crowd. Without a word, Henry poured out a shot glass full of Wild Turkey. Cassidy threw it down his gullet in one motion.
“I’ll call in, Henry, if you’d be so kind.”
The Spumi had taken his phone calls for years.
“Want to leave a number?” Henry was Swiss. He liked to write it all down in his little book.
“No,” said Cassidy. “Anyone calls. Get the number. I’ll call them.”
“Suppose Sophy drops by.”
Cassidy sighed and rubbed his ear. “Tell her I’m in Turkestan.”
Henry blinked. So it was like that, was it? He didn’t comment, wise bartender that he was. “You want to pay a little on the bill?” Very gently. He and Cassidy had been friends for thirty years.
“I’ll pay it all in a couple of days,” said Cassidy harshly.
“No hurry,” said Henry, polishing a glass. “I just thought . . . well, Turkestan is a long way.”
“I’m not leaving the city this time, Henry.”
“It’s a big city. Don’t get lost.”
“I’m expecting a call sometime this evening. Just get the name and number. It’s important.”
Henry nodded. When he looked up from his polishing, Cassidy had gone. Henry racked up another ninety-five cents on the tally sheet next to the register.
• 5 •
“Every single resident of the Windletop fears kidnapping,” said the Security Chief in tones so emotionless they vanished from the mind seconds later—as if uns
poken. What was he—German? A round smooth face on which nothing was imprinted except caution. Very good English but not the kind picked up at mother’s knee.
“That’s why we must insist on these annoying procedures.”
“Life is just a bowl of annoying procedures,” said Cassidy.
None of the staff had names. They were known as Security 1, Security 2, the Front, the Desk. All this, it was explained, so their own wives or children couldn’t be held hostage as a way to gain entry to the Windletop. Many of them seemed European, men with few home ties or ties to anything. (Like me, thought Cassidy.)
“You were in the CIA—in covert operations,” said the Security Chief tonelessly.
“Who told you that?” Security Chief smiled faintly, a trace smile for purposes of showing he’d heard a question he had no intention of answering: “Of course, you have left the Company—as they all say they have.” Security Chief leaned back in his leather armchair and contemplated the ceiling, fingertips together as if praying: “One wonders . . .” speaking to the ceiling. Or to God. “ . . . whether anyone ever actually leaves the CIA or the Mossad or MI5 or the KGB.”
“One is paid to wonder these things, isn’t one,” said Cassidy evilly. “Well, for your information, people do get fired from the CIA. The KGB kills theirs; the English rusticate them; the Israelis parachute them into places they never come back from. We all have our national idiosyncrasies.”
The Security Chief smiled as if enjoying the sarcasm. “For a very high price the Windletop provides shelter—in the fullest sense of the word—not only from the wind and rain but from all the vicious social currents that so bedevil the lives of the rich and the powerful in all the western world.”
Bedevil, thought Cassidy. Lovely word. I must use it in a sentence sometime. Aloud he said: “I’d like a list of all the residents.”
“Well, you won’t get it.” Again that whisper of an apologetic smile. The Security Chief leaned forward, his glossy black hair (A wig? Dyed?) glinting in the overhead light. “If you must know, Mr. Cassidy, I don’t know the real identities of all of them. We have people here who I’m sure are not using their real names and even their fake names are secret. Of course, everyone knows a few identities like the di Castigliones and a few others who are so rich and well known we’ve not been able to keep it out of the papers.” The Security Chief played with his pencil. “If you live here, you’ll hear rumors. Oh, my God, the rumors!” Security ran his fingers lightly through his glossy black hair. “We have the Pope here, deposed kings, the Mafia.” Security smiled a weary smile: “I’d disregard the rumors if I were you. About the only thing you can say of our residents without being hopelessly wrong is that all of them are rich. And afraid.”
Cassidy spoke harshly: “What kind of security is that? If you don’t know who the residents are? They could be anyone—Red Wind, Symbionese Liberation Army, PLO, Japanese Red Army.”
“Oh, I don’t think so,” said Security lightly. “I don’t vet the residents. But believe me they are vetted by the toughest security check in the world. After all, Mr. Cassidy, if a single resident were kidnapped—or assassinated, the Windletop would empty out in three days. As it is, we are 100 percent occupied.”
The Security Chief rose and picked up a large ring of keys. “At the Windletop, we have nothing so flimsy as identification badges which can be easily forged. We operate entirely on faces .ind voices which are difficult to duplicate—though not Impossible. Total security is . . .” he spoke with the impersonality of a scientist explaining the diffraction of light “ . . . is not possible. A dream. We play the percentages. After you.”
Showing him the door with the professional courtesy of a hotel clerk. The office was on the second floor directly over Control where Security 1 and 2 kept watch. Security pushed the elevator button. “There are twelve elevators in this building, Professor Cassidy—a security nightmare—but one of the glories of the Windletop is the fact that elevators are never crowded because there are so many of them. This building—as you must know—was built in 1928, the last extravagance before the roof fell in in 1929. It was completely gutted, remodeled and faced with glass in 1974.” The word “glass” came out of him with a distinct hiss like escaping steam. There was no doubt that he regretted the remodeling of the Windletop, conceivably even the entire last half century.
The elevator door opened at the basement. “I’m showing you around the services. We provide all services,” said Security, smooth as a fish, “except undertakings for which there has been no demand. Yet.”
The services were lit indirectly by lights concealed in enormous bronze urns, another extravagance left over from the 1920s. The two men strolled the length of the corridor, past a beauty shop with a flaming pink door, a flower shop where a Japanese girl arranged violets as delicate as herself, Buccellati’s jewelry shop where an emerald ring in the window was $12,000 (appalling, thought Cassidy, the medievalist whose own taste ran to the blazing simplicity of Saracen goldsmiths), a leather shop (Barthelme’s of Paris whose prices were even more rarified than Gucci’s), a boutique where the salesgirls were all sisters in linen suits and sold blouses that were silk and Italian and explosively colored. The delicatessen displayed cheeses from France, caviar from Russia, bonbons from Belgium. Across from it was a fur boutique displaying sable and marten and otter (nothing so ordinary as mink). Laundry and dry cleaning were tucked out of sight beyond a series of double doors.
“As you see,” said Security Chief with silky good nature, “we could withstand a siege just like your medieval castles.”
My medieval castles, thought Cassidy. Security was showing off just how well informed he was. Cassidy didn’t rise to the bait. Instead, he said: “Have you vetted all the service people?”
“Yes, indeed,” said Security Chief softly. “Some of them will be around much longer than yourself, Mr. Cassidy. The turnover of tutors up at the forty-ninth floor is quite high. The Contessa has already fired two . . .”
The Contessa fires them? Not Mama?
Cassidy didn’t feel like rising to that either. Instead he said: “This isn’t the lowest floor in the Windletop. There must be some guts to this building where garbage and sewage and all those unpleasant things are taken care of. There has got to be another exit. I’d like to see it.”
“We don’t allow anyone below this floor, Mr. Cassidy.” Velvety voice, very firm. “One of our annoying procedures.”
“Very annoying, too,” agreed Cassidy.
“When you tire of ogling that Japanese girl—who is quite unavailable; she’s been spoken for by one of the Windletop’s richest and most lustful residents—I’ll show you the Windletop Club.”
“Will they allow either of us in?”
The Windletop Club was an anomaly, a relic of the past, so exclusive that many of the residents, while sufficiently rich and presentable to gain occupancy of the Windletop itself were not good enough for the Windletop Club. Most of the Club members didn’t live in the Windletop and many of them—Cassidy had got this out of the Times clips—openly scorned many of the Windletop’s newer residents, especially those who had moved in for security reasons.
To get to the Windletop Club, they had to descend to the main lobby, go out the bronze doors and around the corner where the Club had its own quite separate canopy and door and lobby. To say nothing of its own elevator. As they shot up to the roof, the Security Chief said casually: “This elevator makes only one stop—the Club on the roof. Club members can’t wander around the rest of the Windletop. Or vice versa.”
The Club restaurant was small, elegant, and hushed. Great plate-glass windows overlooking Manhattan were softened and given shape by heavy drapes in soft autumnal colors, the same pattern as the tablecloths on the oval tables. The restaurant floor was a series of giant steps which made for many embrasures and landings and changes of elevation, all in curved shapes. Through the plate-glass windows Manhattan was spread out below like a table of hors d’œuvres, shini
ng in the sunlight. Waiters were setting the tables for lunch—silver, brown napkins, wine glasses, fresh flowers—making it a sacerdotal rite like altar boys. There was a small dance floor with a ceiling of antiqued mirrors.
“This is Robert,” introduced the Security Chief, using the French pronunciation (Roe-bear), “the maitre d’. Professor Cassidy will be accompanying the little di Castiglione girl on her monthly luncheons, Robert. Do take good care of him inasmuch as he may not be with us very long. The last tutor, you’ll recall, lasted three days.”
“I’ll try to hang on a little longer,” said Cassidy. Robert was eying his suit with the sort of horror his clothes always aroused in headwaiters. In retaliation, Cassidy said: “This restaurant is too small to break even. How much do you lose a week, Robert?”
Robert examined his fingernails for small flaws and said nothing.
The Security Chief leapt into the silence. “The restaurant doesn’t depend on luncheon altogether. It has many private parties. The place is booked solid through Easter.”
“Including a big party to be given by the Principessa,” murmured Robert.
“Am I invited?” asked Cassidy.
“Only if you last that long,” said the Security Chief, taking his elbow. “And the odds on that are not very high.”
The Security Chief led him firmly back to the elevator, chatting away almost to himself. “Aah, the dreams they had in the 1920s, so much more nourishing than the ones we have now.” He pushed the button for the elevator. “Did you know this building actually had a railroad station built below it for the private railroad cars of the residents? The Depression ended all that and private railroad cars vanished from the possessions of the rich—even our rich who are very rich indeed.”
“Now they have Lear jets which are even more expensive,” said Cassidy.
“But it can’t deliver you to your own doorstep,” said Security with infinite regret for a vanished age.
The two men were back in the lobby.
