Cynthia

by Howard Fast

  “You don’t. You look as fresh as a Goddamn rose.”

  “Harvey!”

  “And who was that?”

  “Harvey, I do believe that you’re jealous,” she said, smiling with pleasure. “That’s so nice, Harvey. But it’s nothing to get jealous about. Jimmy’s a nice boy, lovely boy—Harvard, and it was such wonderful fun to talk about old days at the Yard—but that’s just what he is, a very pleasant boy.”

  “Which is undoubtedly why you felt it your duty to kiss him.”

  “That? Oh, Harvey, that wasn’t a kiss at all. It was a little bit of a sibling peck on the cheek. Oh, do stand up.” I stood up, and she put her arms around me and kissed me on the lips. “That, Harvey, is a real kiss—a gentle one but real. Do you feel better now?”

  “Why should I feel better? Do you know what I kept thinking sitting here?”

  “No.”

  “That you had been knocked over or strangled or something—”

  “Harvey, how sweet! And all I was doing was having dinner with a nice boy who works in the Consulate.”

  “Dinner? You mean to say you went off and had dinner and left me here to starve?”

  “Harvey, what else was I to do? I called the Consulate, and the only one there except the cleaning woman was Jimmy, who had stayed to catch up on his work, and we sort of met over the phone, and when he learned that I was Radcliffe, 1960—he’s Harvard, 1963—and I never lie about my age, as you know, Harvey, well, he insisted that I come over to the Consulate, and then he insisted that I have dinner with him, because he’s not married and this is only his second month in Toronto, and he is terribly lonely, even though he’s the first assistant to the vice-consul—is that right? Are there vice-consuls?

  “How the devil should I know whether there are vice-consuls?”

  “Please don’t be angry, Harvey, because I did find out what you wanted to know—I mean about Cynthia and the count.”

  “You did?”

  “Oh, yes—yes, indeed, Harvey. They got their visas today and left for New York this evening on the seven o’clock.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Their visas were validated at the airport, so there you are. We must have passed them in midair.”

  “And of course they stayed at the Prince York,” I said.

  “You’re so grumpy, Harvey—you’re not even grateful. No, they did not stay at the Prince York. No one does anymore. They stayed at the Regency, which is the poshest new hotel here.”

  Chapter 9

  At first, I thought it was Sergeant Kelly, and I said to Lucille, “You see that one over there, the big feller with the dark hair and the tweeds, he’s a dead ringer for this Sergeant Kelly who holds Rothschild up, so that Rothschild can hate me better than if he had to hold himself up at the same time.”

  Then it turned out to be Sergeant Kelly, which proved at least that I was not becoming more paranoid than usual. He was standing in front of the information counter at Malton Terminal, and next to him was a thick-necked, burly man who had fuzz woven in and out of his clothing. Kelly grinned at me and called out.

  “Over here, Harvey. Good to see a friendly face in a strange land.”

  “Then it is Sergeant Kelly!” Lucille exclaimed with delight.

  “And this is my colleague, Constable Brimpton, of the Toronto police. Shake hands with Harvey Krim, Constable Brimpton.”

  Handcrushers were evidently endemic to Toronto. Finally, Constable Brimpton let go of my hand, smiled upon me with approval, and then nodded to Kelly.

  “You were right, Sergeant,” he said to Kelly; and then to me, “Clever lad. Harvey Krim—clever lad. You have a reputation well deserved. A bit agile on occasion, as Kelly tells me, but clever.”

  It was ten minutes after nine on the following morning, and we were on our way through the terminal at Malton to get our plane, and there they were. I thanked them both.

  “And this will be Cynthia Brandon, of course,” Constable Brimpton said. “Well, it’s not for me to be critical of the way they do things in the States, but I always say, spare the rod and spoil the child.”

  “You always say that?” Lucille asked.

  “I do indeed, Miss Brandon.”

  “She’s not Miss Brandon,” I said.

  “Harvey!”

  “Now look, Sergeant,” I said to him, “we are not in New York. We are not even in the United States. We are in the Dominion of Canada, and here in the Dominion—oh, the hell with all that! Go blow your horn.”

  “You are forgetting me, Mr. Krim,” Constable Brimpton said sternly.

  “How on earth did you know we were here?” Lucille asked, fascinated.

  “Feller called Gustin put it on the wire at the Toronto police headquarters. All points. Lieutenant Rothschild had me take the first plane this morning. We been waiting here.”

  “Lousy John Wayne creep,” I said.

  “It’s utterly delicious,” Lucille said. “But I am not Cynthia Brandon.”

  “Of course you are.”

  Constable Brimpton supported that. “Now see here, Missy,” he said, “arguments make things unpleasant and we don’t want any arguments, do we, Missy?”

  “What did you call me?” Lucille asked coldly.

  “Missy.”

  “Well, don’t you ever dare call me that again. Not ever! And both of you listen to me. My name is Lucille Dempsey, and I work at the Donnell Branch of the New York Public Library. Have you ever heard of the New York Public Library? I have heard of Expo ’67.”

  “Now, Missy, we don’t want to drag Expo ’67 into this, do we?”

  “Missy! How dare you!”

  That was beyond me; that was deep inside of a new Lucille, and I turned it back to reality by telling Kelly, “She just happens to be telling the truth. How old is Cynthia Brandon?”

  “Twenty.”

  “All right, take a good look at my friend, Miss Dempsey. Does she look twenty?”

  Kelly stared at her.

  “You’ve seen pictures of the Brandon kid.”

  “I guess I have,” Kelly said slowly.

  Her face white and angry, Lucille opened her purse and took out a driver’s license and other cards. Kelly looked at them, and then we were able to say a pleasant goodbye to Constable Brimpton. That is, I said the goodbye. Lucille said nothing.

  When we went out toward the plane, Kelly walked with us. I assured him that it was not necessary.

  “That’s what Rothschild wants. The Lieutenant wants I should stick with you closer than glue.”

  “This isn’t New York. It’s not even the States. It’s Canada.”

  “That’s why I am being extra polite and delicate,” Kelly replied.

  His seat was close to the tail, about six rows behind us. I sat down next to Lucille, who had not said a word during the past fifteen minutes—which in Lucille was entirely out of character.

  We fastened our seatbelts, and then I said that while Constable Brimpton may have touched a sore spot, it was unwitting.

  “Not unwitting but witless, and not Constable Brimpton but you.”

  “Me?”

  “You, Harvey Krim, are a louse.”

  “Me? Why? What have I done?”

  “A brainless louse,” she said.

  “What? After all I did for you—after shelling out for this trip and a hotel room and—”

  “Yes, sir, Harvey Krim, the last of the big spenders. The Great Gatsby. The last of the oldtime sports.”

  “If I had one notion of what I did—”

  We were airborne and approaching altitude, which allowed Sergeant Kelly to unfasten his seatbelt, amble over to where we were, and ask Lucille whether they couldn’t have a few words together.

  “Blow,” I said. “Miss Dempsey has nothing to say to you.”

  “Miss Dempsey will decide that,” Lucille said primly, rising. “There is an empty seat next to you, isn’t there, Sergeant?”

  “There is indeed, Miss Dempsey.”

>   Without giving me a second glance, Lucille went off with Kelly; and I may say that in my time I have been through a good deal of this and that, but this beat everything. The enormous effrontry of it was such that for a matter of minutes I simply sat frozen in my seat, and I suppose I looked the way I felt, because the stewardess stopped to ask me whether I was all right. “More or less,” I said. “Tell me, Miss, how old are you? Or am I stepping out of line?”

  “I’m dated tonight,” she replied. “I’m twenty-four. I’m free day after tomorrow.”

  “Would you get angry if I said no one would mistake you for seventeen?”

  She smiled and said she would be delighted. “Twenty is something else. I mean, who wants to be mistaken for seventeen, but my friends say I haven’t changed an iota in the past four years. Oh, oh—there’s my signal.”

  She left, and I sat motionless. Not entirely motionless; looked at from the rear, I tried to give the impression of being relaxed and casual; but I did not get up for the next ten minutes. That was as long as I could hold the pose. I went back to the tail and drew myself a drink of water. Kelly was on the outside seat; he had put Lucille inside, next to the window. I leaned over them, smiled, hoped they were having a good chat, and poured the glass of water into Kelly’s tweed lap. I fussed and apologized all over the place, but it did not halt the natural reflex in Kelly, who leaped up, got me by the lapel, and whispered, “Goddamn little creep—I ought to break every bone in your body.”

  “Ah, now, Kelly,” I said soothingly. “We are out of the city and in an airplane. Think of the headline—city cop slugs private eye in plane. Or better yet—city plainclothesman crosses state line illegally and enters Canada. Oh, juicy. Rothschild would love that, wouldn’t he?”

  Mine was a return whisper. Lucille, seeing me in the grip of two hundred and ten pounds of bone and muscle, said to Kelly scathingly, “I misjudged you, sir. I certainly did.”

  He let go of me and turned to her.

  “A simple accident and you’re ready to kill a man,” she said. “Do you ever think of anything but force and brutality—or is that your natural reaction?”

  He let go of me and stared at her dumbly, mouth open, water dripping from his trousers. I went back to my seat, trying not to think of what might happen the next time I met Kelly in New York, and in a few minutes, Lucille joined me. As she sat down, she said, “Only one thing, Harvey Krim, and for once in your life tell the truth—did you deliberately empty a cup of water onto Sergeant Kelly?”

  “Yes.”

  “Deliberately?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you know why? Or are you simply psychopathic about such things?”

  “I don’t like him.”

  “I only talked with him for a few minutes, but he appeared to be decent and forthright—and well-educated.”

  “That’s exactly why I don’t like him. He was probably so decent and forthright that you spilled everything. Right?”

  “You can’t like someone who’s decent and forthright, can you?”

  “Honey, let’s not get off on that tack.”

  “Admit it,” she pressed me.

  “Well, I like you. As a matter of fact, there are times when I believe that I am a little bit nutty about you.”

  “Harvey—”

  “And then you dominate me. First thing out of the bag. Look, just what did you tell Kelly?”

  “Well, I really didn’t tell him anything, Harvey. You know, what you said is very sweet. I don’t think I dominate you. I just can’t think of myself that way. I’m only a librarian, Harvey. And you shouldn’t say that I spilled everything to Kelly. I didn’t tell him about that enormous sum of money you are carrying.”

  “But?”

  “He asked me whether I thought Cynthia was kidnapped. Well, it’s hardly likely that a girl who goes around marrying prince-regents of the Mafia of her own free will is being kidnapped. You know, Jimmy said that was a lot of nonsense about the Mafia. He said that the Mafia is one great big myth and simply does not exist.”

  “Who the hell is Jimmy?”

  “Harvey, you’re jealous. Of course you remember Jimmy. He’s the boy from the Consulate who bought me dinner. He’s sweet and he’s certainly no competition—”

  “He’s an idiot. What did you tell Kelly when he asked you whether you thought that Cynthia was kidnapped?”

  “I told him what Jimmy said about there being no such thing as the Mafia.”

  “You told that to Kelly?”

  “He didn’t get grumpy like you. He just thought it was a good thing that nice boys like Jimmy were in the diplomatic service and not on the New York City Police Force, and he agreed that Cynthia was probably not kidnapped, and then I told him how Jimmy tracked her and the count at the Consulate.”

  “Oh, my God, no,” I moaned. “You didn’t tell him that?”

  “Well, why not, Harvey? I mean, even if the Mafia is a myth, this fake count is playing footsie with the law, isn’t he?”

  “What else?”

  “Nothing else. I only sat there a few minutes, and if you weren’t stupid beyond the call of duty, I would not have been there at all.”

  “Me? Stupid?”

  “Oh, Harvey—about women.”

  “Did you tell him about the Ritzhampton?”

  She frowned and then shook her head. “I don’t think I even mentioned that. Why?”

  “Because I have a crazy notion that they went right back there.”

  “Who?”

  “Corsica and Cynthia.”

  “No. They wouldn’t do that.”

  “Why not?” I demanded. “They don’t know they’re being chased. They don’t know that anyone has seen them. They don’t look upon themselves as fugitives—”

  “Harvey!” she burst out.

  “What now?”

  “Harvey, I forgot to tell you.”

  “What?”

  “Something else Jimmy said.”

  “If Jimmy said it, I don’t want to hear it.”

  “Oh, but you do, Harvey. You certainly do. Jimmy said that the count had no business marrying anyone except a boy.”

  “What?”

  “That’s right. The count likes boys, not girls.”

  “Well, how the hell would Jimmy know about that?”

  She took a deep breath and said, “Because Jimmy looks like he is but he isn’t.”

  “And just how do you know he isn’t?”

  “Because a girl can tell.”

  “That’s a hell of a note!” I exclaimed indignantly.

  “Oh, Harvey, you’re a silly ass. You never made a real pass at me. You suffer from reverse Momism. That Cotter girl you almost married, she was thin as a stick. I always thought that 38-24-38 was a rather nice thing to walk around with, but—”

  “You’re 38-24-38?”

  “Yes, Harvey.”

  “That’s a hell of a thing for a librarian to be.”

  “The world changes, Harvey.”

  “But your friend, Jimmy, could be mistaken about the count—”

  “No, he couldn’t, Harvey. The count made a pass at Jimmy.”

  “He did? How? When?”

  “When Cynthia went to the little girls’ room, and the count was alone with Jimmy for about three minutes. No diddling, Harvey—but a real, honesfc-to-goodness pass.”

  I studied her curiously and with new interest. “You really have a rounded education. So that’s the way it is. I just can’t believe that they would ever pick one to lead the mob. That’s what makes no sense. It makes no damn sense at all. Couldn’t he be a switch-hitter?”

  “That doesn’t solve your problem, Harvey. You know what I think?”

  “No, I don’t know what you think.”

  “I think that if there is a Mafia like you say, then they’re smart enough to know about other syndicates, like Fats Coventry’s gang in Texas. And if they have a new boss, they certainly don’t want him turned into a target. So they ring in a decoy to d
raw the fire, and then they eliminate the threat of the opposition.”

  “That is the craziest proposition I ever heard of,” I said.

  “Just a notion, Harvey. Poor Cynthia.”

  “Let’s just find her. The marriage can be annulled.”

  “Still, I say, poor Cynthia.”

  Chapter 10

  It was quite early on Tuesday morning when we landed at LaGuardia, with Kelly tacked on to us like a glued label; and with Lucille still complaining that she could not understand why we did not throw in our lot with the cops.

  “Because no one throws in with the cops. With the cops, you surrender.”

  “So we surrender, Harvey.”

  “Krim doesn’t surrender,” I answered grimly.

  “For heaven’s sake, Harvey,” she said, “aren’t they on our side? They want to find the girl too. So we help them.”

  “In the first place, you don’t help cops except that you help them their way—”

  “That’s a most peculiar syntax, Harvey.”

  “What difference does it make? I’m trying to get a point across.”

  “If you don’t think syntax makes a difference, Harvey, then we have lost the ability to communicate.”

  “All right. You run with hoodlums and your syntax suffers. Does that satisfy you? I apologize.”

  “Harvey!”

  “All right. Let me put it to you bluntly. You have heard me complain about my boss, Alex Hunter, and about that ulcer-ridden monster over at the Nineteenth Precinct, Lieutenant Rothschild; but they are both little lambs compared to a Mr. Homer Smedly, who is the vice-president of the third largest insurance company in the world. People go around thinking—”

  “Here’s a cab, Harvey,” she said.

  We got into the cab, and Kelly got into one directly behind us. I took a ten-dollar bill out of my pocket and gave it to the driver, and said, “Here’s the tip. I pay another five plus whatever’s on the meter and we’re going to the Ritzhampton on Madison Avenue.”

  “Who do you want me to kill, mister?” the driver asked happily.

  “That’s your problem. See the olive-green job behind us?”