Going, Going, Gone

by Jack Womack

  I offered my paw and he gripped it as if trying to break it off. I wondered what was giving him such a near-fatal case of the smirks. ‘Walter. One of the Smith boys.’

  ‘Burt,’ he said. ‘You’re Trish’s ex, aren’t you?’ Wasting no time in laying on the mustard plasters.

  ‘That’s neither here nor there,’ Trish said. ‘Burt was starting to tell me –’

  ‘Best not to poke boils,’ I said as the orchestra started in on a Beatles medley. ‘Never know what’ll pop out.’

  ‘Quit it,’ Trish said, laughing but failing to lull my suspicions. Luckily, she interposed herself in time. ‘All right, Walter, so who were they? What’s the story?’

  ‘I was saying –’ Boob started to say.

  ‘Jersey girls,’ I informed my henchwoman. ‘Looking for a hot time in the big city. Did you have to call when you did?’

  ‘Excusez moi. I hate to admit I was a nervous nellie,’ she said, ‘but you know what happened last night? At Max’s?’

  ‘Something happened?’ I asked, hefting the glass the barman put before me and inoculating the mad dog.

  ‘Somebody stabbed a guy in Max’s after you left last night,’ she said, stirring her green delight. ‘Put icepicks through both hands. No suspects. Naturally I went off on a tangent and my stomach started doing backflips. Worried you’d wind up being done in by those Jill the Rippers.’

  Figured it best not to mention Chlojo’s tiny titty bumber-shoots. I was safe as milk,’ I said. ‘It was copacetic. Don’t let your hair turn white.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Booboo interrupted, speaking twice as loud as either of us and not because he needed to shout over the theremin. His wardrobe was of the irksome prepster sort. He wore khakis and penny loafters and a cashmere sweater that would have paid my rent for three months. Orange, but that was probably what Perry Como was wearing and therefore acceptable. ‘Anyway, before you got here I was telling Trish about something important, a great experience –’

  ‘Muchas regretas,’ I said.

  Trish bounded into the conversation, filling up silence as quickly as she could. ‘Last night Walter tried on his Casanova suit with these two sweet potatoes down at Max’s,’ she said. ‘Muffies, I figured but figured wrong. When I called over there last night he was busy playing host with the most –’

  ‘Fine, fine,’ he said. ‘But I was telling you about the experience. There’s something this group can offer anyone –’

  ‘Burt, I told you I’ll check it out, but right now I just want to enjoy a cheerful beverage. Put a sock on the Dynamos and swill away.’

  Something in Bub’s eyes made me think his story had a few more twists and turns than I’d thought at first. I wouldn’t say they were as empty as my ghost’s, but there was a quality to them reminiscent of aggies and shooters that made me suspect he wasn’t sticking as close to the high road to glory as he tried to make it seem. ‘My apologies,’ he said, giving me a highly suspicious onceover but baring his teeth nonetheless, as if thinking it a smile. ‘My inner got the better of my outer.’

  ‘Happens to me all the time,’ I said. ‘What group are you talking about?’

  ‘The Personality Dynamos. My company sent several of us on their weekend programme. Fascinating. Confidence building. You learn yourself inside and out. I was telling Trish about it.’

  Trish smiled, and put away the rest of her green goodness. ‘Sounds too booga-booga to me.’

  ‘What’s your company?’

  ‘Goldman Sachs. I’m a junior manager. Only a matter of time, though.’

  ‘Till what?’

  ‘Senior,’ he said. ‘Think, and it happens. What do you do?’

  ‘I’m in government work.’ Trish shot the daggers at me like we were the main attraction under the big top but I managed to dodge the sharpest ones. The thereminists moved on to the Rodgers and Hart songbook. Bobo looked absolutely dumbfounded.

  ‘Seriously?’ he asked. I nodded. ‘Doing what?’

  ‘Odd jobs,’ I said. ‘In the national interest.’

  Had Booby said anything else of interest, I would pass it along, but he didn’t. All he did was take up valuable space until both Trish and I were ready to go home. I don’t drink more than one or two at a sitting; better to save the liver for more essential effort in my own professional field. ‘You going east?’ she asked, recapturing her coat from the check girl.

  I nodded. ‘Catching the El.’

  ‘I’ll walk with you far as Lexington.’

  Trish lived uptown, on East 77th near York. Farther east than Newfoundland and almost as frosty and windswept come winter, but when anybody asked where she cooped her chickens she could put on the big light and say, Upper East Side. Among some in her sewing circles, that was de rigeured.

  ‘Sure you didn’t want to make the scene with Bart?’

  ‘Burt. Please.’

  ‘You know him from where?’

  She stared out at the statue in front of the Plaza for a second or two, pulling her coat tight around her. ‘I can’t remember. Poor pup. Sounds like he’s found a good home with those Dynamos, though.’

  ‘He said it was a weekend thing.’

  ‘Every weekend. He’s into it. Next thing you know he’ll be selling flowers at the airport, probably. Preps are such pigeons.’

  It was after midnight, and a weekday besides, so only a few taxis cruised along with the cops, and we were the only ones taking a stroll. All the used book stores along 59th had rolled their tables inside and pulled down the grates. Neither of us said much as we perambulated on our merry way; when you’re close as we were there’s not always a need to chitchat. Besides, it was so tedious being constantly interrupted by Boohoo that we were both happiest to be hearing nothing, just then. The flakes eased off before we reached Madison. By the time we crossed Park the wind had started blowing the clouds away. A full moon, silver-dollar size, hung over the Waldorf like an Evacuation Day ornament.

  ‘You know the Indians had a different name for the moon every month?’ she asked. ‘I forget what it’s called this month. I remember September through December, that’s all. Hunter’s moon, Harvest moon, Beaver moon, Cold moon. Wish I could remember the rest.’

  ‘You’re doing all right to remember Indians,’ I said.

  ‘They’re really going to land on it next year?’ she asked. ‘It’s go with mission control?’ I gave her a nod. ‘When are they leaving?’

  ‘Next summer sometime. June, July. Depends on the weather.’

  ‘You’re so scientific, knowing these things. And once they land on it, what do they do?’

  ‘Anything,’ I said. ‘Anything at all. Main thing’s landing there. That’s as ultima groovitudina as it gets.’ She hooked her hands tighter around my arm. ‘You know I’d love to go there someday.’

  ‘I thought you’d already been,’ she said, smiling.

  ‘You know what I mean,’ I said. ‘Wouldn’t you want to go there, somebody gave you half a chance?’

  ‘I’d just figure I’d do no better there than here,’ she said. ‘You’re such a junior birdman, Walter.’

  ‘Always had a soft spot in my heart for science fiction.’

  ‘Heart, or head?’ she asked. ‘Think I’ll start calling you Buck.’

  I shook my head. ‘Flash.’

  Listening – don’t know for what – I heard nothing but the sound of tyres shusshing over wet pavement and the tap tap tap of our heels. ‘Aren’t half the ones working on Apollo ex-Nazis?’ Trish asked. ‘They probably have some ideas what to do, once they get there.’

  Sad but true – it was another one of those things that leave you feeling drawn and quartered if you think about them too long. Thanks to Nazi science, man would walk on the moon. We had to destroy the village in order to save it – that kind of logic wears away the stone real fast. While under the influence of something, a little while back, I’d been reading the Saturday Review when I read what they called that numbness that sinks into your
head like a bad cold when you start trying to keep two realities in the same place, and pharmaceuticals aren’t involved. Cognitive dissonance; catchy. Seemed like something I suffered from more often than not.

  The entrance to the East Side IRT yawned before us. ‘Don’t let the bedbugs bite, snookums,’ she said, planting a wet one on me. ‘Or Jersey girls.’

  ‘You know me.’

  ‘Too well,’ she said, and skipped down the stairs.

  A freelance existence has its advantages but stability isn’t one of them. February is always the quietest month, but this year it was going way past dead and deep into embalmed. When I’d heard no word from my usual employers by the first week of March, I realized that somebody up there was trying to starve me into submission. Served me right: I’d ignored the key rule for junkies and freelancers alike, don’t keep your eggs in the foxes’ basket. Martin and I may have had a big something in common, but that didn’t mean he’d always do everything I wanted him to do. At least he still took my calls.

  ‘Walter,’ he said, when he finally picked up the phone, ‘if I had a job for you, you’d know it. I swear, believe me.’

  ‘Wish I could.’

  ‘Walter –’

  ‘You know in the paper this morning I counted references to twenty-seven ongoing student actions, all Vietnam-related,’ I said. ‘Pretty amazing that none of ’em call for my kind of expertise.’

  ‘Not exactly. Not until –’

  ‘I agree to start singing “Danny Boy”.’

  Almost felt his breath coming out the phone when he sighed. ‘Walter, what are you trying to prove?’

  ‘Trying to prove nothing,’ I said. ‘It’s just something I don’t want to get into. Not with those Kennedys. They’re crazy as loons, you know that.’

  ‘I can assure you, there’ll be no danger. It’s not even a possibility. You’re just cutting off your nose to spite your face. Would you listen to reason –’

  ‘Could say the same about you when it comes to not using me.’

  ‘It’s out of my hands, Walter.’

  That was a new one on me. ‘Whose hands is it in?’

  ‘They won’t change their mind unless you change yours,’ he said. ‘Do us both a favour. Please.’

  ‘I’ll think about it.’

  We both hung up on cue. This pissed me royally. Martin never was one for giving me public support but he’d always paved over the rocks in the passway in the past. Supposed it’d gone beyond that now. Didn’t matter, I tried to tell myself. No matter how hard they pulled on this slave’s neck chain they weren’t going to drop me off in the briny deep. Worse came to worse, I could always get a real job.

  For real? Of course not. Once you’ve gotten away living the boho life as many years as I had it’s not easy to sneak back into straight society even if that’s where you want to go. Like all blessed with a knack for the grift I had a salesman’s skills but lacked the temperament; and no experience with doing the hard sell, considering how long I’d been working in a field where convincing the buyer he needed the product was never a consideration. Plus, I had the same problem Agency alumni face when they get thrown back into civilian life: the biggest part of your curriculum vitae is sealed under wraps, for the foreseeable future.

  I’d paid March’s rent already; that was good. Had two hundred dollars left in my account but no way to pay April’s unless opportunity knocked; that was bad. Then my old gal Trish came through, once again.

  We slid our treats out of their slots at the Times Square Automat and snared a table upstairs underneath the stained glass. ‘Way you were talking I thought you’d reached the hot water and catsup stage,’ she said, giving the onceover to my high-stacked tray. I didn’t care; it was the first time I’d eaten out in weeks. When food cash ran short my strategy was to live on peanut butter sandwiches, gumming away at their sticky goodness while looking at the pictures in cookbooks and reading about twelve-course banquets. Imagination triumphant over nature once again.

  ‘Better to exaggerate now than tell the truth later,’ I said. ‘So what’s the deal? You say your friend Boff is involved?’

  ‘Burt,’ she said. ‘All right, here’s what he told me. You remember the time you met him he was going on and on about that group he was hanging out with?’

  ‘Vaguely.’

  ‘Well, here’s their deal straight from the uncorrupted,’ she said. ‘These nutty squirrels are on the Upper West Side mostly, at least here in New York. Started out ten years ago as psychoanalysts and their patients. Adlerians, I think, maybe Maslovians. One of them got a big head, started telling the others what to do. Rather than saying go screw yourself royally they listened to him. Then his patients told their friends and the group grew, after a while things hit critical mass. They all went completely woowoo.’

  ‘Krishna Krishna woo woo or Ronettes woo woo?’

  ‘Closer to the latter, I suspect,’ Trish said. ‘Anyway, once the light hit them they confabulated an entirely new purpose in life. Everybody wants some of that of course so now they’re all over the place, but mostly here and LA and London. Now along with these weekend programmes they have weekly meetings. Burt let on that after you’re really into the group that’s when they let you in on the next level.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘They sit around all weekend expanding the mind.’

  That piqued my interest. ‘Literally or metaphorically?’

  ‘Along your lines,’ she said, grinning. ‘Got tired of shrinking it, I guess. Burt tells me they need a new supplier. The guy who had the original arrangement made deliveries once a month, found out another client of his was setting him up so he skipped. Burt came to me hoping that you might possibly be of help. I told him you possibly might be.’

  ‘Possibly.’

  She extended her arms as if she’d just jumped off a high wire in the centre ring. ‘Tah-dah.’

  ‘What do they need?’ I asked.

  ‘Mescaline,’ she said. ‘Chocolate, strawberry, any tangy flavour of your preference. Nothing stronger, certainly none of the things you put away for breakfast. Sounds like they have an intensive session first and unwind after. And it sounds like they’ve got thousands of members. That’s a lot of action.’

  ‘What’s their guiding light?’

  Trish shrugged. ‘Sounds like the usual bushwah hey nonny no to me. He laid a brochure on me. It’s no page-turner.’

  I looked over the propaganda. Doctor Oscar – no last name – was the founder and Honcho Grande of the group Personality Dynamos Incorporated, whose members, having undergone Mental Plastic Surgery, perfected the techniques of Opportunity Seizure. One session cost fifty bucks but special corporate rates were available. Looking at the back of the brochure I saw that, supposedly, executives of General Motors, Singer, Metropolitan Life and, yes, Goldman Sachs, had all undergone the Shake-Out; as had doctors, lawyers, dentists, famous movie stars and people Just Like You. Seemed reasonable enough, as these things go, but then I glommed the pitch:

  ‘Po?’

  ‘Tential.’

  I nodded. ‘So I just deliver the goods and they make the payment? Right then and there?’

  ‘You got it,’ she said. ‘Could anything be simpler?’

  ‘Will they be having a séance while I’m around? Do I have to go?’

  She shook her head. ‘You’ve already maxed your po, if you ask me,’ she said, ‘but I’m sure they’re always on the prowl for victims. They’ve probably got some fast talkers, too.’

  ‘I’ll carry rocks in both hands.’

  ‘Good, Walter,’ she said. ‘I’d so much rather you did this than whatever you do for the feds. It’s always better to be in business for yourself.’

  Wasn’t hard to lay paws on mesc; along with other useful material I kept enough of the stuff to turn on Hoboken in a safe-deposit box at my local Greenwich Savings. The next night, nuts in hand, I rode the West Side Local, going to meet the squirrels. When I got out at 79th I bounced upstair
s and fell right into the middle of a gaggle of cops. Bad as St Patrick’s Day, except none of them was drunk enough to shoot themselves or each other. Considering that I was holding so many psychedillies I could take down a regiment, I started to get a little weak-kneed. No need to fret, though, I was home free; the boys of Killarney had their hands full rounding up a different set of suspects. A kibitzer gave me the lowdown, said an Albanian dry cleaner had been gunned down in his shop and the bluecoats were rounding up the block’s shiftier-looking Montenegrins. ‘Kids,’ we agreed and I edged past the holding area on my way uptown.

  Two hundred feet further and I’d walked past a Hungarian restaurant, Serbian bookstore, Turkish candy shop, newsstand run by two Croatian women, Serbian shoe repair place, and at the corner of 80th and Broadway a grocery owned by a French Commie. I’d met him at a party Trish threw – she knew him of course. He’d been on the losing side of a party dispute involving ersatz Roquefort and had to skedaddle, but he hadn’t lost his principles in the free world; even named his place after the store he managed in Paris, Cheese Store Number Three, and made sure to be out of whatever cheese his customers wanted. New York tries on a new mask every ten years, but no neighbourhood in town had been put through its changes like the Upper West Side. It’d been going on twenty years, ever since the Soviets dropped the bomb in 1949 and evaporated Berlin, ending the war. Half the population that was left took the leap and landed in New York; nobody in America minded European immigrants, no matter what they’d been up to in the past. Even after everything went full-tilt Commie from London to Constantinople, people who wanted out bad enough managed to get to New York.

  Since then the refugees had become one with the landscape. Packed into the West 70s and 80s like gunpowder in a pipe were Serbians, Albanians, Wallachians, Turks and Montenegrins; and scattered throughout, German and Hungarian Jews who’d gotten out of Europe in the thirties but hadn’t yet made it to Long Island. After ten years of having their flats divided and subdivided into one-roomers and flops, all the big old apartment buildings on the avenues looked like wedding cakes left too long in a damp basement. The houses on the side streets were even more jam-packed, sometimes holding fifteen or twenty in a two-room apartment.