Bandbox

by Thomas Mallon

  “Thanks,” said Harris, relinquishing the waiter’s arm. “It’d be something if the one time I actually fell on the floor in this place I turned out to be sober.” He managed to unfold his napkin. “Where’s Paulie?”

  “He telephoned,” said Spilkes. “He’s not feeling well.”

  “I hope he doesn’t catch what I’ve got.”

  Spilkes wondered whether this dinner, which he’d proposed during his call to Betty’s office this morning, was still such a good idea. “You sure you’re strong enough for a war council, Joe?”

  “I’m not even strong enough to eat,” said Harris, who signaled the waiter back. “Just a small plate of calamari. And bring the special olive oil. The golden-brown kind.”

  “Yes, sir,” said the waiter, who recognized the code for scotch, which he’d now bring to the table in a glass cruet.

  “Is Gianni around?” Harris asked, nervously.

  Fine pointed to the kitchen door. “He hasn’t come out the whole time we’ve been here.”

  Spilkes added: “It may be just as well, Joe.” He wanted to review the whole series of disasters, one at a time, in his orderly way. “I’ve found out a little more about Wanamaker’s—”

  Harris, who’d never made it to his own office today, cut him off with a laugh. “Let me restore your sense of proportion, Norman.” He then told all that had happened in Oldcastle’s office, from which he’d gone straight to the Warwick to lie down with a hot towel across his forehead, waiting for Betty.

  Spilkes, badly shaken by this new information, noticed that Harris was already refilling a coffee cup with “olive oil.” “Joe,” he warned, “you need to be on your toes.”

  “Norman, I’m not training for the Golden Gloves.”

  “Start simply,” Spilkes urged, remembering a day when the whole AT&T grid, from Greenwich to Norwalk, had gone down. “First off, you need to repair things with Rosemary LaRoche, even if we have to sober Newman up and send him to California. You’ve got to tend to that first thing in the morning. Jimmy’s clearly up to something there. Hellinger’s running an item that says Cutaway’s preparing a portfolio called ‘Ladies We Worship.’ Jimmy promises Rosemary will be at the top of their list.”

  “Who’s feeding Jimmy all of our troubles?” cried Harris.

  Spilkes, who now knew that the Newman-LaRoche story was all over the fourteenth floor and could have traveled up to Cutaway as simple gossip, just moved to the next matter. “You’re going to get a heavy pitch from Max first thing tomorrow morning.” He explained the disappearance of John Shepard, of whom Harris had no memory at all. “In some ways this is a very good idea,” Spilkes said, arguing how the story of a search might cement the bond between Bandbox and its readers.

  Harris was baffled. “Why don’t we just start rescuing cats from trees? No, Norman.”

  “I have a few doubts myself,” said Spilkes, “but it’s worth considering.”

  “Norman, I’m worn out. Don’t even ask about the half-hour I had to spend with this sanctimonious mick, Boylan.” Harris took a breath. “The only thing I’ve got to deal with tonight is Gianni.”

  “You’ve got to keep him friendly, Joe. We can’t have him saying anything about those payoffs on the witness stand. In the meantime, I should tell you that the money in your ‘Special Projects’ strongbox has been put into a passbook savings account. You know, I always had my suspicions …”

  Fine had explained the payoffs to Spilkes this morning. “You know, Joe,” the columnist now said, “things aren’t going to be smooth between you and Gianni. I called him this afternoon. He didn’t even want to talk to me.”

  “Why not?” asked Harris.

  “Because, he says, five years ago I introduced him to you.”

  Harris reached for the olive-oil cruet. Pursing his lips, Spilkes rose to his feet and signaled Fine that it was a good time for them to go. The editor-in-chief, deciding he didn’t need their disapproval, waved them off. He was happy to keep sitting for a time, while a rainstorm blew outside the restaurant, in something close to solitude. Not noted for romantic atmosphere, Malocchio was always empty on Valentine’s Day.

  A waiter approached with a piece of paper.

  “What’s that?” asked Harris.

  “The bill.”

  It was the first time he’d ever been presented with one here. Sighing, Harris reached for his money clip. After putting nearly all the cash he had onto the table, he got up and walked to the kitchen.

  Gianni was seated alone at a wooden table near one of the sinks. Harris came and stood over him, unable for a moment to do more than stare at the tiny coffee cup in front of his former friend. He’d never understood it: however strong the brew might be, these thimble-sized Ginny cups were such an affectation.

  At last, pointing to a rain-lashed window, he said: “Every time I’m in here lately it feels like the end of the world.”

  “So,” said Gianni. “You go off to England, fiddling while Roma burns.” He’d stolen the line from a subhead in the Mirror. “Siddown,” he continued, snapping his fingers for the grappa bottle. “You letta me down.” His accent had returned since his release on bail.

  Harris said nothing.

  “You forgot?” asked Gianni. “You forgot to make the payments to that fat paddy bastard O’Flynn? Do I forget to go to fish market every morning? Do I forget my mamma’s birthday?”

  “Okay,” said Harris, sitting down and pouring himself a grappa. “I forgot. But how was I supposed to know the cops’ going after Waldo would lead them to you?” He paused. “Did you sell him stuff?” This was easier to ask than whether Gianni had actually slept with Lindstrom.

  “I no sell! I give! Like I always give!” He jumped up and went to a sideboard. “Here! Take a free boconnotto!” he cried, slapping down the pastry. “Here! Take some more grappa!” he shouted, pouring from the bottle until Harris’s glass overflowed onto the table. “I give and I give! And now I probably lose my restaurant. Thanks to you! Well, now you and your friends won’t have no place to go when you finished with your workday.”

  Harris mopped up the grappa before it could reach his lap.

  “Goombah, we soon may not have any place to go during the workday.”

  Harris was too keyed up to return to the Warwick, so when he’d finished with Gianni, he took a cab to the Graybar and paid the driver with what cash he had left. The Negro watchman let him into the building and brought him up in the elevator to fourteen. Lights were on all over the deserted floor. All right, he thought: he would start very simply, with a memo to the staff about all this midnight oil being burnt for nothing.

  He kept an ancient Remington in his office, using it when he thought its distinctive typeface would add a note of personal authority to his communications. Unfortunately, his two-fingered hunting and pecking was so hit-and-miss that Nan had once compared it to man’s discovery of fire. Tonight, on top of all else, his hands were too shaky to get the mimeograph paper into the roller. He’d have to dictate to Hazel in the morning.

  Sinking into the cracked leather of his desk chair, he tried to feel at home again. But glaring up from the blotter was a letter from Rosemary LaRoche, messengered over by the Paramount Building after a three-day air trip from Hollywood.

  What kind of magazine are you running? This was her opening, in a penmanship so unadorned it might have belonged to an engineer instead of a movie actress. The letter proceeded to indict the magazine’s “phony made-up stories” (presumably a reference to Mr. Palmer), the “drug crowd” its people ran with, and the “gross indecencies” that Stuart Newman, “a public dipso,” had tried inflicting on her person. She would hate having to tell Cutaway the details of these offenses. “But listen, ’Phat,” the letter went on—and Harris was somewhat thrilled by her use of his familiar—“I’m willing to let Mr. Newman come out here and redeem himself, so long as a third party stays in the room at all times, alongside the two of us, so as to keep an eye on things. You need to get in tou
ch with me about such new arrangements, which I hope will save the reputation and face of everybody involved. In the meantime, on account of the embarrassment and suffering your magazine has caused me, I’ll be getting seven cents, not five, on every copy of my issue that you sell.”

  Harris did a rough mathematical calculation while, through the frosted glass, he watched the bright, bankrupting glow of electric light. Forget her endearments and diminutives! He would put Max Stanwick on this vulture’s tail; he’d have him find out who this dame really was and what skeletons she’d buried on her trek from the wheat fields to Grauman’s Egyptian.

  He made a note to telephone Max in the morning, and then picked up the next item on the blotter: that tear-jerking letter from the mother in Indiana. He read it and frowned: aside from all else, how was the magazine supposed to scour the country for this milk-fed kid? It’d be like looking for hay in a haystack.

  He put the letter on the bottom of the pile and took a break to commune with his familiar surroundings: the pictures of Yvette and Claudine, who looked so much more at ease here than in Captain Boylan’s office; his quiver of pens and their massive crystal inkwells; his EDITOR OF THE YEAR cigarette case; and all the photographs of himself—with Dempsey, Valentino, Walker, Mae West (when they did the piece on her, Oldcastle had approved the title “Vitamin Mae,” but vetoed a picture of her sucking some healthful concoction off a spoon). Another wall photo, from his regime’s earliest days, showed Harris inside Malocchio with Fine and Houlihan and Gianni. A last one, from the old offices, had him and Jimmy Gordon with that lawyer Oldcastle always assigned to the closing of Jimmy’s more audacious pieces.

  This was his world, and he was not leaving it.

  He looked again at the clock. Betty would soon be worrying, so he got up and went in search of some money he could use on a cab back to the Warwick. Rummaging beneath Hazel’s desk, he remembered that, thanks to Norman, the Special Projects fund was now locked up at the Irving Trust earning three percent. Where else might he find—

  Suddenly, from behind Houlihan’s door, he heard a noise. Oh, Christ, thought Harris: don’t tell me Cuddles has been evicted and is bunking on his office couch. With surprising daintiness, he tiptoed toward the door, which was open a crack, and listened to the particular sort of raised voice that signified long-distance telephone conversation.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he heard Cuddles say between pauses. “Yes, Mrs. Shepard, we’re very concerned.… We’ll be sure to cooperate with the police in every way.… No, we don’t know anything about the trunk.… That’s why we’re going to try something special.… No, I’m sure John would never do anything like that.” He listened and spoke with great patience before the line was relinquished back to an operator in Indianapolis.

  “It’s not enough everybody’s running up the light bill,” said Harris. “We’ve got to squander the long-distance budget, too.”

  “Official business,” said Cuddles, not the least bit startled, as he turned around in his chair.

  “Unauthorized business is more like it. Listen, I know about this let’s-find-Fido idea, and it’s a stinker. Besides, I want Max for something else right now. I’m going to get him to dig up three bushelfuls of dirt on our gal LaRoche. We’re going to climb through every hole in her negligee.”

  “Yeah?” said Cuddles, cocking an eyebrow—a gesture that had once supplied Harris with a bigger dose of reality than any well-reasoned lecture from Spilkes. At this unexpected reprise of it, Harris’s eyes nearly glistened. If there were any justice in the world—if Cuddles hadn’t betrayed him by losing interest—the two of them would be back in his own office right now, huddled around the bottle of Stoli as if it were the last grenade in their foxhole.

  “Turn Max loose on the kid,” Cuddles calmly advised. “Readers want to imagine ravishing Rosie on a pile of money. They don’t want us telling them she’s got a social disease.”

  “You know,” said Harris, after some hesitation, “it scares me to hear you thinking like an editor.” He waited some more. “Tell me what’s so damned important about this Shepard kid. Why are you so interested in a mother’s tears?”

  For much of the day Cuddles had been wondering that himself. Maybe the question required a head doctor: Was he really trying to find his own lost carcass? Or was he just hoping that here, somehow, might lie the opportunity to crank himself back to life in front of Becky? All he knew for certain was that the story had stuck to him even before Stanwick and Spilkes began confabulating about it this morning.

  “Norman and Max have their reasons,” said Cuddles. “That should be enough for you. Me agreeing is only like some exception proving a rule.”

  “I don’t follow you,” said Harris.

  “I don’t either,” replied Cuddles. “Just do the story. It’s a good one.”

  Maybe it was, thought Harris. Maybe they should go ahead and find the kid and thereby stick it to Boylan and the whole NYPD, so busy taking graft they had no time to concern themselves with the nation’s missing young men, its future Lindberghs being swallowed up by urban evildoers. Harris felt himself warming to the idea. He tried picturing his readers like those folks who sit around the radio until the trapped miner is pulled free. They’d be watching their mailboxes waiting for news of John—no, the magazine would call him Jack, or even better, Shep. Maybe there was something here. And besides, who knew how many chances against Jimmy he had left?

  “Okay,” said Harris. “We’ll do it, but if it fails, it was your call.”

  Cuddles smiled. “Delighted to know my head’s still worth platter space.”

  “Now lend me two bucks,” said Harris, who took the cash and went back to his office, leaving Cuddles to reflect that he might as well get fired over something instead of nothing.

  From the boss’s office, he soon, almost nostalgically, heard a clatter of hangers and some good-night bellowing: “And while he’s at it,” cried ’Phat, pulling his topcoat from the closet, “tell Stanwick to find my goddamn moose!”

  37

  To guard against using it in a moment of romantic desperation, Daisy had rarely taken, or even allowed herself to know, any man’s phone number.

  But this was a moment of real desperation, and she thanked her stars as soon as she located the number for Chip’s horrible rooming house on a crumpled piece of paper inside an old purse. Dialing with the tip of a trembling fingernail—which even now she could see needed new polish—she prayed that Chip’s huge Norwegian landlady wouldn’t pick up and yell at her about the lateness of the hour.

  “Yeah?” said a rough male voice instead.

  “May I please speak to Mr. Brzezinski? It’s an emergency.”

  “Sure, lady,” said this other tenant. “It’ll be a pleasure to wake him.” He went off to bang on Chip’s door down the hall. The whole sordid place came back to Daisy as she heard the footsteps and knocking through the phone. At last Chip took the receiver on his end.

  “Listen, Mabel, I told you to stop—”

  “Chip, it’s Daisy.” At the sound of her own name, she burst into self-pitying tears. “He’s dead!” she cried. “Please come over right away! I need you!”

  Chip’s thoughts, few and far apart tonight, began to multiply; they required a moment’s collection. He’d heard that this judge of hers wasn’t on the level. If there’d been a rubout, did he want to be around while the countess decided whether to call the cops?

  “Are you alone?” he asked.

  “Yes—except for the body!” said Daisy, with a gasp. “Please take a cab!”

  Chip liked to hold as many markers as possible, and this one, he realized, might be worth plenty. Maybe riding off to the damsel in distress would net him some piece of juicy, damaging information on Harris, which Chip had always suspected Daisy of possessing. Of course, like everyone else, he had a soft spot for her; that he was all she had to call at a moment like this struck even Chip as sad. Some Valentine’s Day.

  “Give me ten minutes,” he fin
ally said.

  It took him no more than that to get from Ninth Avenue to Beekman Place. On the third floor, Daisy stood, shaking, behind her apartment door, which was open a few inches but still chained. As soon as she let him in, even before he could spot the twisted form under a sheet on the Murphy bed, a narrative flood started to pour out of her:

  “I knew I’d be alone tonight, but I didn’t mind: I had things to do.” (Remembering the bottle of Wyeth’s Sage Tea and Sulfur Compound, with which she’d been planning to dye her hair, she moved to hide it from Chip’s sight.) “The judge had told me he’d be attending a Bar Association dinner, which did sound a bit unlikely for Valentine’s Day, but as you know, dear Chip, I don’t believe in being a clinging vine. I knew he really had some business at Lindy’s, and I wouldn’t pry into it.” More tears began escaping, but she managed to continue: “I never open the door these days, not with all the suspicious characters who have been coming around—a jurist makes so many enemies! But I recognized the voice, even the knock, and I let him in.”

  At this point she sat down in a club chair and gave way to sobbing.

  “Right,” said Chip, as he wondered, given her emotional state, whether the two of them might not wind up knocking off a piece before the cops showed up to haul away the judge. He looked over at the sheet but couldn’t see any blood. They must have strangled the poor bastard. Where’d she hide when they did? And why’d they let her go? “So they forced their way in behind him …,” he said, encouraging her to complete the story.

  Daisy, looking perplexed through her tears, asked: “They?”

  “Whoever did this to the judge,” said Chip.

  “The judge is at Lindy’s.”

  “Then who—?” With more exasperation than squeamishness, Chip lifted the sheet on the Murphy bed, revealing the contorted form of Siegfried von Erhard. No wounds of any kind were visible, not even at the neck; in fact, were Siegfried lying face up instead of down, Chip was pretty sure there’d be evidence the newsstand owner had died smiling.