I revised my guess at their age group upward to 12 to 17. Some of them were quite large, including a six-foot black. There were four blacks, one Oriental, and two I thought were Hispanic. All were remarkably thin, some painfully so, and most had the poor skin tone of slum kids. There were scars and bruises in abundance, and one shambling youth had a black patch over one eye.
Knurr led them through a series of increasingly violent exercises, culminating with a series of high front and back kicks.
After the exercise period was finished, Godfrey Knurr assigned partners and the boys paired off. They went through what appeared to me to be mock combat. No actual blows were struck, no kicks landed, but it was obvious that all the youths were in dead earnest, punching and counterpunching, kicking out and turning swiftly to avoid their opponents’ kicks. As they fought, Knurr moved from pair to pair, watched them closely, stopped them to demonstrate a punch or correct the position of their feet. He had a few words to say to each boy in the room.
“All right,” he shouted finally. “That’s enough. Unroll the mat. We’ll finish with a throw.”
The wrestling mat was spread in the center of the bare wood floor. They gathered around and I moved closer. Knurr strode out onto the mat and beckoned one of the lads.
“Come on, Lou,” he said. “Be my first victim.”
There was laughter, some calls and rude comments as the six-foot black stepped forward on the mat to face Knurr.
“All right,” Knurr said, “lead at me with a hard right. And don’t tighten up. Stay loose. Ready?”
Lou fell into the classic karate stance, then punched at Knurr’s throat with his right knuckles. The pastor executed a movement so fast and flowing that I could scarcely follow it. He plucked the black’s wrist out of the air, lifted it as he turned, bent, put a shoulder into the boy’s armpit, pulled down on the arm, levered up, and Lou’s feet went flying high in the air, cartwheeling over Knurr’s head. He would have crashed onto the mat if Knurr hadn’t caught him about the waist and let him down gently.
There was more laughter, shouts, exclamations of delighted surprise. The Reverend helped Lou to his feet and then they went through the throw very slowly, Knurr pausing frequently to explain exactly what he was doing, calling his students’ attention to the position of his feet, how his weight shifted, how he used the attacker’s momentum to help disable him.
“Okay,” he said, “that was just a demonstration. Tomorrow you’re all going to work on that throw. And you’ll work on it and work on it until everyone can do it right. Then I’ll show you the defense against it. Now…who’s going to show up for the bullshit session tonight?” He looked around the room. But heads were hanging; no one volunteered. “Come on, come on,” Knurr said impatiently, “you’ve got to pay for your fun. Who’s coming for the talk?”
A few hands went up hesitantly, then a few more. Finally about half the boys had hands in the air.
“How about you, Willie?” Knurr demanded, addressing the shambling youth with the black eyepatch. “You haven’t been around for weeks. You must have a wagonload of sins to confess. I especially want you.”
This was greeted with laughter and shouts from the others.
“Right on!”
“Get him, Faddeh!”
“Make him spill everything!”
“He’s been a baaaad boy!”
“Aw right,” Willie said with a tinny grin, “I’ll be here.”
“Good,” Knurr said. “Now dry off, all of you, then get the hell out of here. The gym will be open from five to eight tonight if any of you want to work out. See you all tomorrow.”
They began to pick up their garments from the floor, with the noise and horseplay you’d expect. Knurr rolled up the mat and flung it against the wall. His sweatshirt was soaked dark under the arms, across the back and chest. While he showered I sat at the kitchen table, sipping beer from the can, listening to shouts and laughter of departing boys. I looked up through the window. In the apartment house across the courtyard an old woman fed a parakeet seeds from her lips, bird perched on finger.
Godfrey Knurr came into the kitchen wearing a terrycloth robe, toweling head and beard. He put the towel around his neck, took a beer from the refrigerator. He sat across from me.
“Well?” he demanded. “What do you think?”
“Very impressive,” I said. “You speak to them in their own language. They seem to respect you. They obey you. The only thing that bothers me is—”
“I know what bothers you,” he interrupted. “You’re wondering if I’m not teaching those monsters how to be expert muggers.”
“Yes,” I said. “Something like that.”
“It’s a risk,” he admitted. “I know it exists. I keep pounding at them that they’re learning the martial arts only for self-defense. And God knows they need it, considering what their lives are like. And they do need physical exercise.”
“Does it have to be karate?” I asked. “Couldn’t it be basketball?”
“Or tiddledywinks?” he said sourly. “Or I could read them Pindar’s odes. Look, Joshua, most of those kids have records. Violence attracts them. All I’m trying to do is capitalize on that. Listen, every time they punch the air and shout ‘Hah!’ they’re punching out the Establishment. I’m trying to turn that revolt to a more peaceable and constructive channel.”
“You can kill with karate, can’t you?” I asked him.
“I don’t teach them killing blows,” he said shortly. “Also, what you just saw is only half of my program. The other half is group therapy and personal counseling. I try to become a father figure. Most of their natural fathers are drunks, on drugs, or have disappeared. Vamoosed. So I’m really the only father they’ve got, and I do my damndest to straighten out their tiny brains. Some of those brutes are so screwed up—you wouldn’t believe! Mens sana in corpore sano. That’s really what I’m hoping for these kids. What I’m working toward. Let’s eat.”
He had made a salad of cut-up iceberg lettuce topped with gobs of mayonnaise. The roast beef sandwiches had obviously been purchased in a deli; they were rounded with the meat filling, also slathered with mayonnaise. He opened two more beers for us and we ate and drank. And he talked.
He was a very intelligent, articulate man, and he talked well. What impressed me most about him was his animal energy. He attacked his sandwich wolfishly, forked the salad into his mouth in great, gulping mouthfuls, swilled the beer in throat-wrenching swallows.
“But it all costs money,” he was saying. “Money, money, money: the name of the game. There’s no church available for me—for any of the tentmakers. So we have to make our own way. Earn enough to do the work we want to do.”
“Maybe that’s an advantage,” I said.
He looked at me, startled. “You’re very perceptive, Joshua,” he said. “If you mean what I think you mean, and I think you do. Yes, it’s an advantage in that it keeps us in closer touch with the secular life, gives us a better understanding of the everyday problems and frustrations of the ordinary working stiff—and stiffess! A pastor who’s in the same church for years and years grows moss. Sees the same people day in and day out until he’s bored out of his skull. There’s a great big, cruel, wonderful, striving world out there, but the average preacher is stuck in his little backwater with weekly sermons, organ music, and the terrible problem of how to pay for a new altar cloth. No wonder so many of them crawl in a bottle or run off with the soprano in the choir.”
“How did you meet Tippi Kipper?” I asked.
Something fleeting through his eyes. He became a little less voluble.
“A friend of a friend of a friend, he said. “Joshua, the rich of New York are a city within a city. They all know each other. Go to the same parties. I was lucky enough to break into the magic circle. They pass me along, one to another. A friend of a friend of a friend. That’s how I met Tippi.”
“Was she in the theatre?” I asked.
He grinned “That’s what she sa
ys. But no matter. If she wants to play Lady Bountiful, I’m the bucko who’ll show her how. Don’t get me wrong, Joshua. I’m grateful to Tippi Kipper and I’ll be eternally grateful to her kind, generous husband and remember him in my prayers for the rest of my life. But I’m a realist, Joshua. It was an ego thing with the Kippers, I suppose. As it is for all my patrons. And patronesses.”
“Sol Kipper contributed to your, uh, activities?” I asked.
“Oh sure. Regularly. What the hell—he took it off his taxes. I’m registered in the State of New York. Strictly nonprofit. Not by choice!” he added with a harsh bark of laughter.
“When you counsel your patrons,” I said slowly, trying to frame the question, “the rich patrons, like Tippi Kipper, what are their problems mostly? I mean, it seems unreal to me that people of such wealth should have problems.”
“Very real problems,” he said soberly. “First of all, guilt for their wealth when they see poverty and suffering all around them. And then they have the same problems we all have: loneliness, the need for love, a sense of our own worthlessness.”
He was staring at me steadily, openly. It was very difficult to meet those hard, challenging eyes.
“He left a suicide note,” I said. “Did you know that?”
“Yes. Tippi told me.”
“In the note, he apologized to her. For something he had done. I wonder what it was?”
“Oh, who the hell knows? I never asked Tippi and she never volunteered the information. It could have been anything. It could have been something ridiculous. I know they had been having, ah, sexual problems. It could have been that, it could have been a dozen other things. Sol was the worst hypochondriac I’ve ever met. I’m sure others have told you that.”
“When did you see him last?” I asked casually.
“The day before he died,” he said promptly. “On a Tuesday. We had a grand talk in his office and he gave me a very generous check. Then he had to go somewhere for a meeting.
We sat a few moments in silence. We finished our second beers. Then I glanced at my watch.
“Good heavens!” I said. “I had no idea it was so late. I’ve got to get back to my office while I still have a job. Pastor, thank you for a very delightful and instructive lunch. I’ve enjoyed every minute of it.”
“Come again,” he said. “And often. You’re a good listener; did anyone ever tell you that? And bring your friends. And tell them to bring their checkbooks!”
I returned to the TORT building at about 2:50, scurrying out of a drizzly rain that threatened to turn to snow. Yetta Apatoff greeted me with a giggle.
“She’s waiting for you,” she whispered.
“Who?”
She indicated with a nod of her head, then covered her mouth with her palm. There was a woman waiting in the corridor outside my office.
She was at least 78 inches tall, and wearing a fake monkey fur coat that made her look like an erect gorilla. As I approached her, I thought this was Hamish Hooter’s particularly tasteless joke, and wondered how many applicants he had interviewed before he found this one.
But as I drew closer, I saw she was no gorgon. She was, in fact, quite pleasant looking, with a quiet smile and that resigned placidity I recognized. All very short, very tall, and very fat people have it.
“Hello,” I said. “I’m Joshua Bigg. Waiting for me?”
“Yes, Mr. Bigg,” she said, not even blinking at my diminutive size. Perhaps she had been forewarned. She handed me an employment slip from Hooter’s office. “My name is Gertrude Kletz.”
“Come in,” I said. “Let me take your coat.”
I sat behind the desk and she sat in my visitor’s chair. We chatted for almost half an hour, and as we talked, my enthusiasm for her grew. Hooter had seen only her huge size, but I found her sensible, calm, apparently qualified, and with a wry sense of humor.
She was married to a sanitation worker and, since their three children were grown and able to take care of themselves, she had decided to become a temporary clerk-typist-secretary: work she had done before her marriage. If possible, she didn’t want to work later than 3:00 P.M., so she could be back in Brooklyn in time to cook dinner. We agreed on four hours a day, 11:00 A.M. to 3:00 P.M., with no lunch period, on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
She was a ruddy woman with horsey features and a maiden’s innocent eyes. Her hair was iron-gray and wispy. For a woman her size, her voice was surprisingly light. She was dressed awkwardly, although I could not conceive how a woman of her heft could possibly be garbed elegantly. She wore a full gray flannel skirt that would have provided enough material for a suit for me. With vest. A no-nonsense white blouse was closed at the neck with a narrow black ribbon, and she wore a tweed jacket in a hellish plaid that would have looked better on Man-o-War. Opaque hose and sensible brogues completed her ensemble. She wore only a thin gold wedding band on her capable hands.
I explained to her as best I could the nature of my work at Tabatchnick, Orsini, Reilly, and Teitelbaum. Then I told her what I expected from her: filing, typing finished letters from my rough drafts, answering my phone, taking messages, doing simple, basic research from sources that I would provide.
“Think you can handle that, Mrs. Kletz?” I asked.
“Oh yes,” she said confidently. “You must expect me to make mistakes, but I won’t make the same mistake twice.”
She sounded better and better.
“There is one other thing,” I said. “Much of my work—and thus your work, too—will involve matters in litigation. It is all strictly confidential. You cannot take the job home with you. You cannot discuss what you learn here with anyone else, including husband, family, friends. I must be able to depend upon your discretion.”
“You can depend on it,” she said almost grimly. “I don’t blab.”
“Good,” I said, rising. “Would you like to start tomorrow or would you prefer to begin on Monday?”
“Tomorrow will be fine,” she said, heaving herself upright. “Will you be here then?”
“Probably,” I said, thinking about my Friday schedule. “If not, I’ll leave instructions for you on my desk. Will that be satisfactory?”
Sure, she said equably.
I stood on tiptoe to help her on with that ridiculous coat. Then we shook hands, smiling, and she was gone. I thought her a very serene, reassuring woman, and I was grateful to Hamish Hooter. I’d never tell him that, of course.
The moment Mrs. Kletz had departed, I called Hooter’s office. Fortunately he was out, but I explained to his assistant what was needed: a desk, chair, typewriter, wastebasket, stationery and supplies, phone, etc., all to be installed in the corridor directly outside my office door. By eleven o’clock the following morning.
“Mr. Bigg!” the assistant gasped in horror. I knew her: a frightened, rabbity woman, thoroughly tyrannized by her boss. “We cannot possibly provide all that by tomorrow morning.”
“As soon as possible, then,” I said crisply. “My assistant was hired with the approval of the senior partners. Obviously she needs a place to work.”
“Yes, Mr. Bigg,” she said submissively.
I hung up, satisfied. Today, a temporary assistant. Soon, a full-time secretary. A larger office. Then the vvorrld!
I spent the remainder of the afternoon at my desk. Outside, the snow had thickened; TORT employees with radios in their offices reported that three to five inches of snow were predicted before the storm slackened around midnight. Word came down from upstairs that because of the snowfall anyone who wished to leave early could do so. Gradually the building emptied until, by 5:00 P.M., it was practically deserted, the noise stilled, corridors vacant. I stayed on. It seemed foolish to go home to Chelsea and then journey uptown to meet Perdita Schug at Mother Tucker’s at 7:00. So I decided to remain in the office until it was time for my dinner date.
I got up and looked out into the main hallway. The lights had already been dimmed and the night security guard was seated at Yetta Apat
off’s desk. Beyond him, through the glass entrance doors, I saw a curtain of snow, torn occasionally by heavy gusts.
I went back into my office, wishing that Roscoe Dollworth had left a bottle of vodka hidden in desk or file cabinet. A hopeless wish, I knew. Besides, on a night like that, a nip of brandy would be more to my liking. Now if only I had—
I sank slowly into my chair, suddenly realizing what it was that had puzzled me about Professor Yale Storehouse’s study: the bottle of Rémy Martin on the silver salver was new, uncorked, still sealed. That meant, apparently, that it had been there since the night he disappeared.
There was a perfectly innocent explanation, of course: he had finished his previous bottle the night before and had set out a fresh bottle, intending to return when he left the Stonehouse apartment on the night of January 10th.
There was another explanation, not so innocent. And that was that Professor Stonehouse had been poisoned not by doctored cocoa, but by arsenic added to his brandy. He had both cocoa and brandy every night before retiring. The lethal doses could have been added in either. And if he had discovered the source, it might account for the sealed bottle in his study.
I glanced at my watch. It was a few minutes past 5:30—a bad time to call. But I had to know. I dialed the Stonehouse apartment.
“Yah?” Olga Eklund said.
“Hi, Olga,” I said. “This is Joshua Bigg.”
“Yah.”
“How are you?”
“Is not nice,” she said. “The weather.”
“No, it looks like a bad storm. Olga, I wonder if I could talk to Mrs. Dark for a moment—if it isn’t too much trouble.”
“I get her,” she said stolidly.
I waited impatiently for almost three minutes before Mrs. Dark came on the line.
“Hello, dearie,” she said brightly.
“Effie,” I said, “I’m sorry to bother you at this hour. I know you must be busy with the evening meal.”
“No bother. Everything’s cooking. Now it’s just a matter of waiting.”
“I have a few more little questions. I know you’ll think they’re crazy, but they really are important, and you could be a big help in discovering what happened to the Professor.”
The Tenth Commandment Page 20
