Harlequin

by Morris West

‘No, settle with him. You and Karl Kruger discussed basic terms. I can probably better them in a personal negotiation. It rather depends on what success Milo Frohm has in London – and what sort of compromise he can work out between the Administration and his agency. That part of it is out of my hands.’

  He was deliberately vague: but I was in no mood to press him. I wanted to quit anyway. He was giving me the chance to go with dignity. We could still be friends: but the friendship would never be the same; because he had changed and I couldn’t. Still, it was better to leave things tidy. I told him:

  ‘I suppose you know I’ve asked Suzy to marry me?’

  ‘No, I didn’t. But I’m glad. I think it’s a good idea.’

  ‘She hasn’t consented yet.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘She’s still in love with you. Always has been.’

  He looked at me in faint surprise, as though I were talking about the price of tomatoes. ‘But I’m not in love with her.’

  ‘That’s all I wanted to know. Thanks, George. I’ll wait in New York until she’s finished. Then I’ll take her away… Now, let’s get these documents done, shall we?’

  In the days that followed, I felt strangely bereft and aimless. An era in my life had ended. I didn’t know how or where to begin another. I stayed away from the market and from the Club, because I didn’t want to answer questions about my own plans or join in the gossip about Harlequin. I didn’t read the papers because the news was all bad, and the index was down and the less trading I did the better.

  To fill the vacant hours, I made the rounds of naval architects and boat-builders and talked about an old dream – a motor-sailer that could take me across the Pacific. I haunted the slipways for forgotten or neglected beauties. In the evenings, I would call at the Salvador, have a drink with Harlequin, play a while with my godson, and then take Suzanne to Gully Gordon’s and afterwards back to the apartment.

  She, too, was distracted and ill-at-ease. Her work was temporary now. We could not share it. Decency demanded that I should not intrude into confidences from which I had been formally disbarred. Our relationship became strained and edgy. There were snappish exchanges. I felt she was shutting me out. She accused me of pushing her too hard, denying her the time I had promised to make a free decision. One night, after a slightly rowdy dinner with Karl Kruger and Hilde, she dissolved into tears and said she would rather not see me for a few days. I went on a round of parties with Mandy Ducaine and her friends, which left me jaded, sore-headed and lonelier than ever. I got back at three one morning to find a note thrust under my door. ‘Chéri, I’m sorry. Must see you. Suzy.’ I called her at breakfast time and we talked for half an hour and made a date to meet for dinner at home.

  That same morning, for want of anything better to do, I strolled down to the flowershop on Third Avenue and asked to see Aaron Bogdanovich. This time I was invited into a cluttered back room, where the master of terror was engaged in the prosaic business of totting up accounts.

  He waved me to a chair, scribbled a few figures and then leaned back and surveyed me with sardonic amusement. ‘Well, Mr Desmond, how does it feel to be out of a job?’

  ‘I’m getting used to it. You?’

  ‘Undertakers and florists are always busy. And I’m still on the payroll of Harlequin et Cie.’

  ‘That’s news to me.’

  ‘I thought it might be. Why did you leave?’

  ‘I was asked to retire.’

  ‘Do you know why?’

  ‘Reasons were given.’

  ‘Did they satisfy you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why are you hanging around New York?’

  ‘I’m waiting to marry Suzanne – I hope.’

  ‘She’s good for you.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Why did you come here?’

  ‘I’d like to buy you a lunch.’

  ‘Thank you. I never eat lunch; but, so long as you’re here, I’ll give you some advice.’

  ‘Well…?’

  ‘I have no friends, Mr Desmond. I can’t afford them. There are few people I respect. Your friend, Harlequin, is one of them. He is the sort of man I should like to have been if circumstances had been different. On the other hand, he is not equipped to be the man I am…’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘He asked you to retire so that you would not be accused of complicity in his design.’

  ‘Which is…?’

  ‘What it always was – to kill Basil Yanko.’

  ‘I don’t believe it. I can’t! He told me…’

  ‘That he was going to settle with Yanko. He will. Then he will kill him. Nothing else will satisfy him. Afterwards, of course, he will find that nothing is solved. He has asked me to help him. I will, because my people want Yanko removed. I can see – as I could not before – a way to do it. You will not stop it. It would be useless to try. I suggest that you might stay to pick up the pieces of George Harlequin, or at least look after his son.’

  ‘Would you have told me if I hadn’t come this morning?’

  ‘Yes… but I learnt only last night what he proposed.’

  ‘That’s funny! That’s really funny!’

  ‘What, Mr Desmond?’

  ‘Harlequin absolves me; you bind me again.’

  ‘And that’s what you’ve never wanted, Mr Desmond! You want both ends and the middle of the sausage. You want respectability without virtue, possession without threat, pleasure without payment. You want mercenaries to do your killing and blind men to bury your dead. No way! No way in the world any more I Martyr or killer – that’s the choice! Unless you want to join the chain-gang shuffling from birth to death and crying for the Messiah who never comes!’

  If he hadn’t been so vehement, I should have missed it. If he hadn’t been so positive, I should have ignored the tiny nagging doubt that I had thrust too long into the back of my mind. It was’ so tenuous that I had to search for the words to express it:

  ‘I think… I think, Mr Bogdanovich, you’re setting us up – Harlequin and me, both.’

  There was no tremor of emotion on his saturnine face. His eyes were blank windows to a blank soul. ‘What precisely do you mean, Mr Desmond?’

  ‘Valerie Hallstrom…’

  ‘What about her?’

  ‘Let’s go back over the sequence. You searched her apartment. You left. You saw a man go in. You saw her come home. You saw the man leave. You went back and found her dead. That’s what you told me.’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘But she was your agent. While she was being killed, you waited outside…’

  ‘So?’

  ‘You knew it was happening. You let it happen.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Why, Mr Bogdanovich?’

  ‘Valerie was used up. She was playing in Gully Gordon’s bar – and she was talking too much, as she did to you, Mr Desmond. Her cover was blown. Yanko had her killed. I let it happen, as you say. Now, I’m tidying up. Yanko will die very soon. Harlequin and I have arranged the details. It’s a clean solution for all of us. I think you’ll find we’ve earned our fees.’

  ‘I still say you’re setting us up.’

  ‘You insult me, Mr Desmond. You’ve forgotten our contract: if there’s blood on the carpet, I clean it up afterwards; and you, for your part, are pledged to silence. If you can’t stomach the play, walk out and go home. That’s still your privilege.’

  ‘I’m going to talk to Harlequin.’

  ‘Do so, by all means… Your wife wasn’t killed in Mexico City. It wasn’t your child hung by his hands from a fifth-floor window in Geneva.’

  He wasn’t angry. He wasn’t even emphatic. He might have been reading from a children’s primer. As I stood up to leave, he stayed me with a gesture and an odd, patronising irony:

  ‘I meant what I said. The child will need you. And you may have to pick up the pieces of your friend. Stay around. It will not be as bad as you think. Death is a very banal event.’
>
  I left him tallying the costs and profits of flowers and walked an hour through the jostle of lunch-time New York. I was in no hurry. There was no one who demanded my company, no place that would be empty without me. I stared in shop-windows and saw jumbles of meaningless objects. I looked into faces and saw only actors’ masks. I smelt food and had no taste for it. I licked my lips and desired to drink and knew that I would gag on the first mouthful. I wanted company but I would have fled at a single word of greeting. I was not afraid. I was not ashamed. I was empty and discredited. My fragile philosophy was in tatters, my unreasoned code as full of holes as a Swiss cheese. Aaron Bogdanovich had shaken me to the soul, but I could not shift him an inch from the settled conviction that life was an inconsequence, easier ended than mended.

  After a while, my head began to ache and my feet hurt; so I went home. Takeshi made me coffee. I didn’t want to think any more. I pulled a book at random from the shelves and, without even looking at the title, began to read at the first page that fell open:

  ‘…I don’t know who – or what put the question. I don’t know when it was put. I don’t even remember answering. But at some moment I did answer “yes” to someone – or something – and from that hour I was certain that existence was meaningful and that therefore, my life in self-surrender… had a goal…’

  I looked then for the first time at the title-page. It was Markings, the private jottings of that strange, involuted man, Dag Hammarskjold. I read on:

  ‘…From that moment I have known what it means “not to look back” and to “take no thought for the morrow”. Led… through the labyrinth of life, I came to a time and place where I realised that the Way leads to a triumph, which is a catastrophe, and to a catastrophe which is a triumph, that the price for committing one’s life would be reproach and that the only possible elevation possible to man is in the depths of humiliation…’

  I did not understand it; but it moved me strangely. I felt an urge to copy it down on the end paper of my pocket diary, where I could not fail to see it every day. I had just finished when Takeshi came in, coughed, hissed, bowed and begged a moment of my most valuable time.

  ‘Yes, Takeshi. What is it?’

  ‘There is something, sir, that I must tell you. It is not easy.’

  ‘Sit down then, take your time.’

  ‘No, sir, thank you. The things that have happened to you, to your friends…’

  ‘The things that have happened… yes?’

  ‘On the television. The day they hung the baby from the window…’

  ‘Go on…’

  ‘The one who held him was my nephew – the one to whom I always sent your postage-stamps.’

  ‘Did you know before that he belonged to Rengo Sekigun?’

  ‘When the FBI came and asked questions, then I knew. Before, I was not sure.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell them?’

  ‘I have family in California and in Hawaii. They are good people. Good Japanese, good Americans. In the war, they were put in camps as if they were enemies.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘You were in Mexico.’

  ‘But afterwards? Those people could have come for me, for Miss Suzanne. We were warned it was possible.’

  ‘If my nephew had come here, I should have killed him.’

  ‘He would have killed you first, Takeshi.’

  ‘One knows such things, sir. One does not believe them. Now, when it is too late, I believe.’

  ‘You should have told me before this.’

  ‘I should have. I was too ashamed. If it is convenient, sir, I shall leave in the morning.’

  ‘Takeshi…’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Why do you want to go?’

  ‘My nephew dishonours me; I dishonour you.’

  ‘Honour is a reed, Takeshi. It bends when you lean on it.’

  ‘What then do we lean on, sir?’

  ‘Sit down, Takeshi, for God’s sake! It makes me tired looking up at you… You remember the man who sleeps in a grave…?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘He told me today that there is no middle way to live. You must die for a truth or kill for it. Should I believe him?’

  ‘That is what my nephew says.’

  ‘And what do you say, Takeshi?’

  ‘You do not cut down a flower to make it bloom. And what use is the truth to a dead man… Are you ashamed because you, too, are not sleeping in a grave?’

  ‘No… because I haven’t the courage.’

  ‘During the war, when we read of the banzai charges and the kamikaze pilots, my father used to shake his head and say a wise coward was better than an idiot hero. I think he was right.’

  ‘Takeshi, do you have to leave? Do you have a better job?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Why not stay a while and let’s lean on each other?’

  He would not demean himself to show pleasure but he made it a three-bow occasion and agreed. Then he asked whether I lacked faith in his cooking or his care – and, if I didn’t, why was Miss Suzanne not staying here instead of in some great crowded hotel?… Which made the greatest good sense, if only I could persuade her to see it.

  At five in the evening, Saul Wells came to visit me. He had been reporting regularly to George Harlequin. He had the impression that his services were not greatly valued any more. He wondered why I had resigned. The money was good; but a situation was developing that he didn’t understand. He didn’t want to be left holding the can. He hoped I could enlighten him.

  I told him half the truth: Harlequin was a scarred man. He had to keep himself busy. He needed to be in total control. I didn’t want our friendship to be strained by conflicts of policy. Saul accepted that, with a certain reserve. Then I asked him about Bernie Koonig. He was instantly animated:

  ‘Koonig’s a queer story. He’s a small time hit-man and he hires muscle to the number boys and the loan sharks. Frank Lemnitz used him – which we know. What we didn’t know, and what it’s taken me all this time to find out, is that he used to work in California for Basil Yanko, who was then married to his second wife – the one who blew herself up in the speed-boat. Koonig was doing the same job as Lemnitz did in New York – chauffeur, body-guard, you name it. After the accident, he left California and came east. He had money then – quite a lot – but he blew it and went to work for the mob. Since Lemnitz died, he’s been running scared…’

  ‘Have you talked to him?’

  ‘No. Bogdanovich has.’

  ‘I was with him this morning. He didn’t tell me.’

  Saul Wells gave me an odd sidelong look, unwrapped a new cigar and took a long time to pierce and light it. Finally, he said, uncomfortably:

  ‘Look! I’m a simple Jewish boy. I send money to Israel and go to synagogue. Aaron isn’t simple and he does different things. How he does ’em, why he does ’em, I never ask. And even if he told me, I’d know it was only a part of the answer. He’s like a conjuror who puts a mint in your mouth and pumps lemonade out of your elbow. It’s a trick. You expect to find a connection between the two events, and there isn’t any. With Aaron there’s always a connection. Like a girl goes to bed with a guy in Paris and a man buys an airline ticket in Lima, Peru, and four days later there’s a body floating in the Delaware River… So Bogdanovich has talked to Bernie Koonig and he hasn’t told you. Leave it at that l’

  ‘What else can you tell me, Saul?’

  ‘Basil Yanko’s been in touch with me.’

  ‘The hell he has! What for?’

  ‘He wants Lichtman Wells to handle security for Creative Systems. It’s a big contract.’

  ‘You’d be a fool to turn it down, Saul.’

  ‘Yes, wouldn’t I? He also offered me a personal fee of a hundred thousand.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Copies of all my reports to Harlequin et Cie and any other documents I can lay my hands on. I told him I’d think about it. Then I talked to Aaron.’


  ‘And what did he say?’

  ‘He thought it was a good idea – provided he cooked the documents before I gave them to Yanko.’

  ‘Does Harlequin know about this?’

  ‘Sure. He didn’t seem to mind. If Aaron advised it, he’d go along.’

  ‘So, why are you telling me, Saul?’

  ‘Because I think we’re both in the same boat, Mr Desmond – up the same creek without a paddle. Harlequin’s taken over from you. Aaron’s taken over from me. They make a rough pair. I don’t want to get caught in the meat-grinder. When I was talking to Aaron, he said, “Get paid in cash, Saul. You can’t sign cheques in gaol, and when you’re dead, the banks stop payment.”’

  ‘Did you ask him what he meant?’

  ‘You’re not hearing me, Mr Desmond,’ said Saul, mournfully. ‘With Aaron if you don’t understand the words, you don’t deserve to know.’

  I was still trying to swallow that piece of gristle when Karl Kruger and Hilde arrived, panting from a shopping spree on Fifth Avenue. Hilde had sore feet, three new dresses, a diamond brooch. Karl had a hole in his pocket-book and a raging thirst. Saul Wells was goggle-eyed at Hilde’s ample charms. When she curled up on the settee, he sat as near as he could get and talked twenty to the dozen, while Hilde sipped her drink and smiled dreamily through the monologue. If she understood one word in ten, I was a two-headed Hottentot; but Saul was a man, and Hilde wouldn’t ask any more until he did – and then he would need every cent of his hundred thousand.

  Karl Kruger spread his vast bulk in an armchair, swallowed a pint of lager in record time, belched happily and then demanded a whisky to soothe his nerves. Women, he averred, were the most splendid of God’s creatures, provided you had nothing to do with them until after dark. Shopping was a pastime for cretins of whom he was the least intelligent. When I asked him how things were going between Harlequin and Basil Yanko, he grunted, irritably:

  ‘ …And why should you have to ask me eh? I told George he was a fool to let you go… Things advance. They have both seen a draft agreement, which their lawyers are prepared to recommend. I talk to George; I talk to Yanko. All the time I keep asking myself how it is possible that the police or the FBI do not intervene. The man is a criminal.’