The Investigations of Avram Davidson

by Avram Davidson

  Sometimes a girl thought she might just as well be back in Piney Woods, New Jersey.

  What, then, to do tonight? Wash her hair? Watch TV? Catch up on her letters? Mending? Solo visit to a movie? She decided to take a walk.

  A few blocks from her apartment she saw a familiar trio leaning in familiar stances against a wall. They nudged one another as they saw Daisy coming, as they had the first time and as they did every time. By now she knew there would be no wolf whistles, no rude proposals.

  “Good evening, miss.”

  “G’evening, miss.”

  “Evening, miss.”

  “Good evening,” Daisy said, pausing. “Oh, look at your new hats!” she exclaimed. “White fedoras. My goodness. Aren’t they nice!”

  The three men beamed and smirked, and readjusted their brims. “All the big fellows wear white fedoras,” said the leader of the trio, whose name was Forrance.

  “The big fellows?”

  “Sure. Like on that, now, TV show, The Unthinkables. Al—Lucky—Baby Face—you know.”

  As Forrance mentioned these people his two associates pursed lips and nodded soberly. One was quite small and suffered from nosebleeds. (“Must be a low pressure rarea comin’ down from Canada,” he would mumble; “I c’n alwees tell: Omma reggella human brommeter.”) He was known, quite simply, as Blood.

  His companion, as if in compensation, was obese in the extreme. (“A glanjalla condition,” was his explanation; he indignantly denied gluttony. Taxed with overeating, he pleaded a tapeworm. “It’s not f’ me,” was his indignant cry, over a third helping of breaded pork chops and French fries; “it’s f’ the woim!”) Not unexpectedly he was called Guts. Now and then he pretended that it was an acknowledgement of personal courage.

  “Al?” Daisy repeated. “Lucky? Baby Face? White fedoras? The Unthinkables? But you’re not gangsters?” she burst out. “Are you?” For, as often as she had seen them, she had never thought to ask their trade.

  Forrance drew himself up. Blood slouched. Guts loomed. A look of pleased importance underlay the grim look they assumed at the question. “Listen,” Forrance began, out of the side of his mouth, an effect instantly spoiled by his adding, “miss.”

  “Listen, miss, you ever hear of—” he paused, glanced around, drew nearer—“the Nafia?” He thrust his right hand into his coat pocket. So did his two lieutenants. Daisy said, No, she never did; and at once the three were cast down. Was it, she asked helpfully, anything like the Mafia? Forrance brightened, Blood brightened, Guts brightened.

  “Sumpthing like the Mafia,” said Forrance. “Om really very surprised you never—but you’re from outatown, aintcha?”

  “But what do you do?” Daisy demanded, mildly thrilled, but somehow not in the least frightened.

  “We control,” said Forrance impressively, “all the gumball and Indian nut machines south of Vesey Street!”

  “My goodness,” said Daisy. “Uh—are there many?”

  “We are now awaiting delivery of the first of our new fleet of trucks,” said Forrance formally.

  “Well,” said Daisy, “lots of luck. I’ve got to go now. Good night.”

  “Good night, miss.”

  “G’night, miss.”

  “Night, miss.”

  The crisp air was so stimulating that Daisy walked a considerable distance past her usual turning-around point, and then decided to come home by a different route, window-shopping on the way. And in one window she noted many good buys in linoleum and tarpaulins, ships’ chandlery, bar-and-grill supplies, and various other commodities; but somehow nothing she really needed just at the moment.

  Then the flowered organdy caught her eye, but the bolt of blue rayon next to it was just as adorable. She looked up at the sign. THE ALMOST ANYTHING SECOND-HAND GOODS AND OUTLET STORE, it said. Wondering slightly, Daisy opened the door and went in. A bell tinkled. After a moment another door opened and a tall vigorous-looking woman, whose brown hair was turning grey, came in from the back. She smiled politely on seeing Daisy.

  “I thought I might get some of that organdy in the window, the one with the flowers, enough for a dress.”

  “Yes, isn’t it lovely? I’ll get it for you right away. Was there anything else in the window you liked, while I’m there? Leather goods, outboard motors, canned crab-meat?”

  “No, just—”

  “Seasoned Honduras mahogany, yerba maté, Manila hemp? Turkish cigarettes—Sipahi brand?”

  “No, just the organdy, and, oh, maybe that blue rayon?”

  “That’s lovely, too. You have very good taste.”

  While the lady was reaching into the window, the door at the back opened again and a voice said, “Granny,” and then stopped. Daisy turned around. She saw a well-made young man with a healthy open countenance and light brown hair which needed combing. He wore a peacoat, corduroy trousers, and a woolen cap. He stared at Daisy. Then he smiled. Then he blushed. Then he took off his cap.

  Daisy instantly decided to buy, not just enough material for a dress, but both entire bolts, plus so large an amount of leather goods, outboard motors, canned crab-meat, seasoned Honduras mahogany, yerba maté, Manila hemp, and Turkish Sipahi cigarettes as would leave the proprietor no choice but to say, “Well, you can never carry all that by yourself; my grandson will help you take it home,”—or words to that effect.

  What actually happened was quite different. The lady emerged from the window with the bolts of cloth and said, “I really don’t know which is the lovelier,” then noticed the young man and said, “Yes, Neely?”

  “I finished the, uh, you-know,” said the young man. He continued smiling at Daisy, who was now smiling back.

  “Then start stacking the Polish hams,” his grandmother directed crisply. “Smash up all those old crates, pile the raw rubber up against the north wall, but not too near the Turkish cigarettes because of the smell. Go on, now.”

  “Uh—” said Neely, still looking at the new young customer.

  “And when you’re finished with that,” his grandmother said, “I want all the cork fenders cleaned, and the copper cable unwound from the big reel onto the little ones.”

  “Uh—”

  “Now, never mind, Uh—you go and do as I say, or we’ll be up all night.… Neely!”

  For a moment the young man hesitated. Then his eyes left Daisy and caught his grandmother’s glance. He looked down, swallowed, scraped his boots. “Well?” Neely threw Daisy a single quick glance of helplessness, wistfulness, and embarrassment. He said, “Yes, Granny,” turned and went out the door.

  Daisy, her purchase under her arm, walked home full of indignation. “There are no young men any more!” she told herself vexedly. “If they’re men, they’re not young, and if they’re young, they’re just not men. ‘Yes, Granny!’ How do you like that? Oh, I’d ‘Yes, Granny’ him!” she declared. “I’d show him who was boss!” she thought, somewhat inconsistently.

  “Milksop!” she concluded. She was surprised to realize that, in her annoyance, she had bought only the flowered organdy. There was really no help for it; much as she despised the grandmother and grandson, if she wanted that blue rayon she would have to revisit THE ALMOST ANYTHING SECOND-HAND GOODS AND OUTLET STORE a second time. Too bad, but it wasn’t really her fault, was it?

  * * *

  THE MAN CALLED Tosci stepped from the yacht’s launch onto the gangway ladder and was steadied by a stubble-faced man in dungarees. “Thank you, boatswain,” he said.

  “Did you enjoy your visit ashore, M. Tosci?” the bosun asked.

  “Ah, New York is such a stimulating city,” said Tosci, going up the ladder. “One simply cannot absorb it on a single visit.”

  He handed his hat to the man, who followed him to his cabin, where he tossed the hat aside, and turned on a device which not only blanked out the sound of their actual conversation against any electronic eavesdropping, but supplied a taped innocuous conversation to be picked up by such devices instead.

  “W
ell?” the “boatswain” demanded.

  Tosci shrugged. “Well, Comrade Project Supervisor,” he said, “they took the Treasury Notes and said they would let us know. One really could not expect more at the moment.”

  “I suppose not,” the Project Supervisor said gloomily. “Do you think they will ‘take the contract,’ as I believe the phrase goes?”

  “Why should they not, Comrade Project Supervisor? How could they resist the temptation? We are, after all, prepared to go as high as a hundred and eleven million dollars. It would take them a long time to collect a hundred and eleven million dollars from their, how do they call it, ‘numbers racket.’”

  “About a week and a half; not more. Well, well, we shall see. Meanwhile, I am hungry. You took your time coming back.”

  “I am sorry, Comrade Project Supervisor, but—”

  “No excuses. Bring me my supper now. And see that the cabbage in the borscht is not soggy as it was last night, and that there are no flies in the yogurt. Do you hear?”

  “Yes, Comrade Project Supervisor,” said Tosci.

  * * *

  DON SYLVESTER FITZPATRICK, Second Vice-President of the Mafia (Lower Manhattan Branch) and son-in-law of Don Lefty McGonigle, sat brooding in his tiny office in the wholesale foodstuffs district. Despite his title he was a mere petty don in the hierarchy; well did he know that it was rumored he owed even this to nepotism, and these circumstances rankled (as he put it) in his bosom. “A man of my attainments, which they should put him in the front ranks of enterprise,” he muttered, “and what am I doing? I’m in charge of the artichoke rake-off at the Washington Market!” Don Sylvester laughed bitterly; Don Sylvester sulked.

  Meanwhile, in the Grand Chamber Council, discussion among the senior dons went on apace.

  “Blowing up the Brooklyn Navy Yard,” said Don Tex Thompson reflectively, “might be just the thing the national economy is in need of. Unemployment among skilled laborers went up seven point-oh-nine percent in the last fortnightly period, and among unskilled laborers the figure scores an even higher percentile. The Mafia,” he said, “cannot remain indifferent to the plight of the workingman.”

  “Not if it is to retain that position of esteem and preeminence to which it is rightly entitled,” said Don Morris Caplan.

  “To say nothing of the excellent effect upon our National Defenses of clearing out all that obsolete equipment and replacing it with the newest devices obtainable through modern science,” Don Shazzam X (formerly Rastus Washington) declared. “The Congress could scarcely refuse appropriations in such circumstances.”

  Don Wong Hua-Fu pursed his thin lips and put the tips of his six-inch fingernails together in church-steeple fashion. “The Honorable Ten Tongs do include sound common stocks in the various heavy-metals industries in their portfolio. Still,” he said, “we must consider the great burdens already borne by the widows and orphans who constitute the majority of American taxpayers.”

  And Don Leverret Lowell Cabot pointed out another possible objection. “We cannot neglect our own heavy commitments in the Brooklyn Navy Yard area,” he said. “As part of our responsibility to the men who man our country’s ships we have, need I remind the Grand Council, leading interests in the bars, restaurants, night clubs, strip-joints, clip-joints, and gambling hells of the area—to say nothing of the hotels used for both permanent and temporary residence by the many charming ladies who lighten the burdens of the sea-weary sailors.”

  “It’s a problem, believe me,” sighed Don Gesú-María Gomez. “Little does the public know of our problems.”

  “Decisions, decisions, decisions!” Don Swede Swanson echoed the sigh.

  “Gen-tle-men, gen-tle-men,” said Don Lefty McGonigle, a note of mild protest in his hoarse voice. “Aren’t we being a littul pre-ma-chua? We are not being asked to blow up duh Brooklyn Navy Yahd dis minute. We are not even being asked to decide if fit should be blown up dis minute. All we are being asked to do, gen-tle-men, is to decide if we are going to make a soyvey of de lowa East Trivva estuary from d’ point of view of its ameni-ties as a pos-si-ble headquarters faw moychant marine offices. I yap-peal to you, Grand Master, am I creckt?”

  Don Alexander Borjia tore his eyes away from the Mona Lisa on the wall. The lineaments of La Gioconda never ceased to entrance him, and there was the added fillip to his pleasure that the rest of the world naïvely thought the original still hung in the Louvre, little realizing that this last was a mere copy, painted, true, by Leonardo, but by Leonardo in his ancient age. The switcheroo had been arranged by Don Alexander’s father, the late Grand Master Don Cesár Borjia, before the First World War. Copies of masterworks of art, stolen at various times from museums and private collectors around the world, adorned the other walls. But Don Alexander Borjia’s favorite remained the Mona Lisa.

  “Don Lefty McGonigle is correct,” he said. “Take the contract for the survey, charge them eighty-seven million dollars for it, and when it comes time for a decision on the big question, so we’ll leave them know further. All in favor say Aye. Opposed, Nay. The Ayes got it.”

  There was a silence.

  “A foyda question,” said Don Lefty finally. He fingered the cabochon emerald which nestled in his watered-silk four-in-hand, and fiddled with his eyepatch.

  “Speak.”

  “Whom is to be ap-poin-ted to take over d’ soyvey?”

  “Whom did you have in mind?”

  “A young man which he oughta be given more responsibility than he’s being given, to wit, my son-in-law, the Second Vice-President of the Mafia, Lower Manhattan Branch. Woddaya say, gen-tle-men?”

  The pause which followed this suggestion seemed faintly embarrassed. Then Don Swede Swanson was heard to express the opinion that Don Sylvester FitzPatrick couldn’t find the seat of his pants in the dark with both hands.

  Don Lefty turned to him and pressed both his hands to his chest. “You wound me!” he exclaimed, his voice deep with suppressed emotion. “Night afta night I come home an’ my liddle Philomena is eating huh haht out. ‘Daddy, Daddy, Daddy,’ she asks, weeping, ‘what has everybody got against poor Sylvester? Didn’t he soyve his apprenticeship the same as everybody else? Is-int he loyal? Trustwoythy? Coyteous? Kind? So why, afta twelve years, is he still only in chahge of ahtichokes at Wahshington Mahket?’

  “An’ ya know what? I don’t know what ta say ta huh! If fit was a matta of money, so I’d buy him a sand-and-gravel company, or a broory. But it’s a matta of tra-di-tion, gen-tle-men! All of youse got sons. I ain’t got no son! All I got is my liddle Philomena. A bee-uty in thuh Hollywood sense a thuh woid she may not be, but she yiz the yimage of huh sainted mother, rest her soul, an’ huh husband is like a son ta me, so when ya spit on him, gen-tle-men, it’s like ya spitting on me!”

  Throats were cleared, eyes wiped, noses blown. Don Alexander essayed to speak, but was prevented by emotion. At last the silence was broken by Don Swede Swanson. “So let be Sylvester,” he said huskily. There was a chorus of nods.

  * * *

  “OF COURSE, THERE is one hazard of the chase involved in my sweet Sauncepeur’s snaffling hot broils off these outdoor grills,” Lord Grue and Groole observed. “It—shall I sweeten the air in here a bit? I’ve a packet of frankincense that my friend, Osman Ali the Somali, sent me not long ago; I wouldn’t buy incense, of course,” he said, sprinkling the pale yellow grains on the glowing embers. A pungent odor filled the cave.

  Denny the Dip coughed. The Marquess donned his gauntlet and examined the falcon’s talons, particularly about the pads. “It makes the poor creature’s petti-toes sore. I’ve experimented with various nostra and it’s my considered opinion that Pinaud’s Moustache Wax is above all things the best. Is there anything more left in the flask? Shall we kill it, as you say over here? Ah, good show.”

  With a gesture he motioned to Denny to take the bed; he himself reclined on a tiger skin which was stored during the day in a dry niche. Thus settled, he grew expansive. “Ah, it’s not what I’v
e been accustomed to, me that used to have my own shooting lodge in the grouse season, waited on, hand and foot, by a dozen Baloochi servants; well, and now here I am, like a bloody eremite, living on me wits and the $5.60 I get from home each week.”

  Denny lifted his head. “You’re a remittance man?” he inquired.

  “Sort of remittance man, you might say, yes. Me nevew, Piers Plunkert, pays me two quid a week, not so much to stay away as to stay alive. ‘Avoid alcohol, Uncle,’ he writes, ‘and mind you wear your wooly muffler when the north wind blows.’ It’s not filial piety, mind, or avuncular piety, or anything like it. You see, if I pop off, he becomes the twelfth Marquess of Grue and Groole, and all the rest of that clobber—the mere thought of it makes his blood run cold. No, he’s not a Labour M.P.; his fix is worse than that. He’s one of the Angry Young Men!

  “Struth! Lives in a filthy little room in South Stepney, and composes very bad, very blank verse damning The Establishment, under the pseudonym of ‘Alf Huggins.’ Well, now, I ask you—would you pay any attention to an Angry Young Man named Lord Grue and Groole? No, of course you wouldn’t. And neither would anyone else.

  “Once a year I threaten suicide. ‘It doesn’t matter about me, my boy,’ I write. ‘You will carry on the name and title.’ My word, what a flap that puts him in! Always good for ten quid pronto via cablegram.”

  A sound, so dim and distant that it failed to reach the ear of Denny the Dip, caused the peerless peer to break off discourse and raise his head. “Bogey,” he announced. “Policeman, to you. Weighs about a hundred and sixty and has trouble with his left arch. Neglects his tum, too—hear it rumble!”