Oh yes.
The bus
The bus stops at the corner here before those brownstones which adjoin this house. It is a transfer point, it draws a heavy Bulanga traffic. And by mid-morning every day of the week one needs an alpenstock to make his way over the litter of bottles and cans on this sidewalk. At noon almost every day, Perez, the superintendent of the brownstones, makes an effort to thin out this midden heap. Sometimes when I am cleaning up the residue from my own lawn he and I exchange sympathetic shrugs of the shoulder.
My lawn costs in money and effort
Never mind
The dumbwaiter. That is the point here.
I long ago sealed the dumbwaiter skylights with metal plates. Sealed what was left of them, because the Bulanga young with free entry to the roof had a game called Smash The Glass Of The Dumbwaiter Skylights.
A nuisance when I had to do it. Now a blessing.
Because no one on the roof can possibly see the activity going on in those shafts. My activity.
My ah vee. Vee. Vee
A hiatus.
Blackout?
A few minutes. All well again. Weak though.
A blackout. Amazing experience. Bewildering.
I was leaning forward addressing this microphone. That was it. Leaning forward addressing the microphone.
Then I was opening my eyes. Sprawled over the side of this swivel chair a distance from the microphone on the desk. No sense of time elapsed. No sense of entering or emerging from coma.
Not frightening. Aware that it
Aware that it is the result of extraordinary physical strain and emotionalism. Thoughts and feelings running away with me. Galloped me right into a tunnel. Also codeine plus Percodan plus half bottle of wine.
Curiously, pains in chest and side which were acute during previous narrative – pre-blackout narrative – now are less acute.
Sensory brain cells somehow permanently affected?
No chance of that. Clearsighted and clearheaded now. Can recall my exact thoughts and words.
My activity. In the dumbwaiter shaft. Out of anyone’s sight.
Yes.
To resume.
The grand event will be the explosion of seventy-two sticks of dynamite planted within those shafts. Two of those shafts. Those servicing the – those which used to service the interior apartments. Implosion. The caving in, not the flying out.
To that end, the necessary wiring must be run from bottom to top of each shaft, the sticks of dynamite, capped and wired, attached to the dumbwaiter doors. Decreasing number of sticks from bottom to top. Twelve for the ground floor, ten for the second, eight for the third, six for the fourth. Severest impact centered at the lowest levels.
The basement is now privileged territory. The door reinforced, bolted from the inside when necessary. The windows on the sidewalk level sealed with concrete block. That, five years ago after a series of raids and depredations.
So
The basement is my private cave – series of caves – and now with the gas and electric meter readers not scheduled to reappear until next month, there is no reason for anyone to ask entrance. It was those meter readings which determined my own schedule for the grand event. Once they were out of the way I could mark my calendar accordingly.
Pain in chest and side suddenly as bad as ever now. A good sign after blackout? Or could blackout signal a very small stroke?
Bah bee bo. Bahbeebo. Bah bee bo.
No stroke.
Tongue and lips completely under control. All limbs
All limbs flex on demand. Mind crystal clear.
Make a note of that, you psychology whizzbangs. Mind crystal clear.
Well.
Digression, said Professor Morton Shapiro, Department of Psychology and saintly Bulanga-fancier, is creativity.
In which case, friends, pardon my creativity.
And to return to flat, uncreative exposition, yesterday I used chisel and hammer to open the sealed door of the first dumbwaiter shaft. Basement door. I then dismantled the dumbwaiter itself, giving me clearance to enter the shaft. I mounted it by way of those small angle irons driven as footholds into one side of the shaft, bringing up the first set of wires with me.
A hellish vertical tunnel, dank, smelly, still thick with the vermin crawling its walls. Lit only by my flashlight propped on the floor, the beam directed upward. Unlit, one might say, my body constantly cutting off the light every time I moved.
That ascent alone was the cruellest of tests, but hauling myself up one careful step at a time, resting to ease the pains, I rejoiced in it. I was afraid only of making noise. Coughing. Thus an extremely heavy dose of the codeine compound to help control it. And most difficult to bear with, a section of clean handkerchief wadded in my mouth and a handkerchief tied over my mouth like a gag.
Two trips up. The wire first, then the six dynamite sticks. The process of capping and wiring them. I then made the mistake of trying to tape the assemblage to the dumbwaiter door there, but it was too heavy. Finally, I placed it on the narrow ledge at the base of the door, taped it to the door that way.
Coughed only infrequently. Tried to contain each spasm so that I thought my head would explode. In the end not contained but certainly muffled.
Total time required for the operation two hours, twenty minutes.
Returned home in time to admit Lorena Bailey to her unclothed duties. More about that.
Not now.
John Milano
SATURDAYM MORNING. Double order of sit-ups and push-ups, single cup of black coffee with artificial sweetener, single scrambled egg, half a tomato – the tomato had to be non-fattening because it seemed to be made of plastic anyhow – and a quick scanning of the News and the Times. After some weighing of pros and cons Milano guiltily ate the remaining half of the tomato. He had just gotten it down when the announcement came on the intercom that his chauffeur – to put it kindly – was waiting.
That was David, Maxie Rovinsky’s Israeli-American heir-apparent, who, a faded twenty-five-year old, always managed to look as if he had just crawled out of bed after a hard night and put on whatever he found in the laundry bag. The car itself was the plebian number in Maxie’s mini-fleet, a dented, always dusty Granada, once seen never remembered, and thus highly suitable for Milano’s occasional purposes.
When it pulled up to Christine Bailey’s doorway the lady herself was visible at her open window on the third floor apparently keeping lookout. Still, Milano had to hail her a couple of times to start her downstairs. As she got into the rear seat beside him she remarked in explanation, “I thought you said something about a Mercedes.”
So it goes, Milano told himself, not without satisfaction. The Queen of Sheba might have been strung out on Solomon’s wisdom, but that kingly, gold-plated chariot sent to pick her up at the station didn’t hurt one bit.
“The Mercedes is mine,” he said. “This is hired. It comes with David there. It’s tough keeping people under surveillance when you’re behind the wheel yourself wondering about parking spots.” He said to David, “Brooklyn. Manhattan Bridge. Right down Flatbush Avenue to Witter Street.”
“Witter Street?” said David who nested in Queens.
“I’ll tell you when you hit it.”
Christine yelped as the car, with horn blasting, made a wide U-turn through the thick of Sixth Avenue traffic and headed south.
“You’ll get used to it,” Milano assured her. He handed her the tightly rolled-up papers he had waiting. “Your half of the trade-off. Photos of those two Boudins, and inside there’s a list of names. You see or hear any of them in the gallery, you pass the word to me quick. Try my home phone first – the number’s in here – and if it’s no dice, call Mrs. Glass at the office. Right now you can tuck that package away in your bag and go over it in private. Monday you start checking out the gallery and upstairs there for any sign of those paintings. Any questions?”
“Uh-huh. But not to do with this. I want to know what’s
supposed to happen when I walk into the house right now.”
“A little performance. I’ll give you a head start to say hello to the folks, then ten, fifteen minutes later I’ll ring your bell. Community-minded stranger in town looking for some redevelopment action. Want to see what this typical apartment is like. Once I get a good look at little sister I’ll take off and lay low outside. When she leaves the house I’ll just tag along. No sweat.”
Christine shook her head. “I’m still not so sure. When you get a good look at her she gets a good look at you. Then if she spots you tagging along—”
“Look –” said Milano. “Say, do you mind if I call you Christine?”
“It’s my name.”
“All right, Christine.” Mark it as one small step in the right direction for mankind. “You leave the worries to me and just tell me who I’ll be meeting up with when I walk into the apartment now.”
“Mama. Lorena. My kid brother Vern. My older brother Odell, but I think he took off for the weekend.”
“No papa.”
Christine’s eyes narrowed. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Just what it sounds like. What do you think?”
“You ask me, man, I think it sounds like oh sure papa took off long ago. You know how these blackie papas are. Love ’em and leave ’em and let Welfare do the mopping up. So it’s just another of these black mama families I’m walking in on.”
Milano ran through astonishment and outrage. With an effort he shifted over to reflection. The female had lately taken to bushwhacking the male. The Libbers for sure. Even a seemingly stable element like Betty Cronin, right off the cover of Woman’s Day, had suddenly gone split personality. The response? You just moved out of range until they either did or did not come knocking at your door again. One way or the other you were in control. But with this Queen of Sheba and her sudden knee to the groin anti-white tactics, control seemed to be a serious problem.
Be smart. Give up.
Like hell, give up.
He finally said the kindest thing he could think of saying. “You’re a flake, Christine.”
“Or a mind-reader?”
“You’d starve to death in that line of work. Another thing. When you turn on this race crap your voice changes somehow. Deep and mellow, know what I mean? Real Carolina cotton-pickin’. Tell me something. You ever pick any cotton in your young life?”
“My goodness gracious, listen to the man. Art lessons. Stagecraft. How to be Sherlock Holmes. Now it’s elocution for the minorities.”
“And now you’re talking straight midtown New York.”
“Don’t kick it around too hard, mister. You could sprain a toe.”
“I’m John. Or, even better, Johnny. And Italian. I thought Italian rated minority too.”
“Does it? You want to hear in detail, John-or-even-better-Johnny, just how fucking tired I am of hearing all that Italian and Jew talk about their minority miseries? While who the hell do you think they hire to clean out their dirty toilets?”
“My mother,” said Milano, trying to make it light but not too light, “always cleans her own.”
“Well, mine cleans other people’s. And my father used to call himself a railroad man. That meant a diner waiter on the old New York Central. He died ten years ago from a bad appendix. We didn’t see much of him what with those runs between here and Chicago, but take it from me, man, what we saw was very good.”
Score a point for her, thought Milano. But score a point for him, because she was handing him all this in straight midtown New York. Just like real people talking to each other.
Manhattan Bridge. No heavy traffic in Brooklyn this time of Saturday, so clear sailing all the way. Empire Boulevard, and those high-rises there were once Ebbett’s Field. Among others, Robinson, Newcombe, Campanella. Milano was about to comment on this sweet recollection, then thought better of it. This volatile Queen of Sheba was likely to take any such reference as condescension. It was a case of think twice before you even open your mouth about the weather. Milano had a feeling that his consciousness was suddenly being raised so high that it made his head ache.
Past Empire Boulevard, Flatbush Avenue showed signs of government money at work. A new roadbed instead of the old washboard. New sidewalks with a handsome brick trim. Saplings planted at regular intervals, each wired between a pair of upright two-by-twos for protection. With the help of God those saplings might yet become trees. The stores, however, once a class act, now added up to shlock alley. Second-hand Sams had taken over, and funky clothes shops, and Korean vegetable markets with their loaded bins blocking off most of the sidewalk, and hole-in-the-wall take-out food joints. Saturday was a heavy shopping day around here. A lot of folks out with full shopping bags; a lot of small fry being nudged along.
At Witter Street, Milano gave David the signal for the left turn and then had him pull over into the space decreed by a hydrant. That four-story number down the block, said Christine, was 409. As she opened the car door, Milano asked, “Your mother know about me?”
‘“Yes. Just her.”
“She a good poker player?”
“She’s mad enough and scared enough to play this hand just fine.”
When she was on her way down the block David sourly addressed the rearview mirror. “You mind me saying something, Mr. Milano?”
“I might, sonny. So don’t say it.”
From the car window Milano had a clear view of the three tired-looking brownstones on the corner and the brick façade of 409 which fronted directly on the sidewalk. He had only a partial, but fascinating, view of the building between, mostly of the shingled octagon cone of a tower rising above a gabled roof and surmounted by a gilded weathervane.
With ten minutes clocked off, he followed Christine’s course, taking his time in front of that curious structure to get the full view of it. A view to make any fancier of pure, mind-boggling Victorian – American Victorian, of course – weep for joy. A great big bay windowed, leaded-glass windowed, stained-glass windowed job, the octagon tower rounding out its corner toward 409, a wide three-stacker chimney crowning it all. A spacious colonnaded porch on a fieldstone foundation. A massive double-doored entrance in front, and on the tower side a porte-cochere. Delicate fretsaw trim where-ever there was room for it, from the roof overhanging the porch to the eaves over the attic. And every inch of the building looking as freshly painted and polished as if it had been hauled here from a century ago by an oversized time machine.
Even the color of that paint job – too many eager beavers who picked up these classics nowadays immediately laid on the white paint, the Colonial bug having bitten them. But this baby was, as were all proper models in the Gilded Age, exactly the right chestnut brown.
At the far end of the driveway, partly hidden by the house – house? mansion? demi-mansion? – what must have been the carriage house in the good old days was now a garage with a carriage house look.
And that sweep of lawn around the whole works, except for some casually disposed of empty bottles and soiled newspapers, had the closecropped lustrous texture of a golf green. All of this guarded by a high, wrought-iron fence which, although showing some dents here and there – that knee-high series was most likely made by a car bumper whamming into it – was still in respectable shape.
Number 407. No doubt the domicile of the old character who gave little sister her few hours of paid employment each week. A black squire? Had to be. No sane white property holder would still be living on this block to start with. And if he did, for whatever whacked-out reason, he wouldn’t keep up his property this way, he’d look to dump it for what he could get. Presentable would be the best he’d offer, not this kind of high-cost perfection.
Those shingles alone – slate shingles, no less – looked like they were laid down last week.
The apartment building next door was a different story. A good solid Jazz Age survivor, but now on the way down and out. The pavement-level cellar windows sealed with concrete blo
ck. Graffiti. A taped up crack in the glass of the front door. Inside, a cavernous terrazzo-floored lobby stripped of all furnishings. A chandelier reduced to one naked light bulb. Flaking paint everywhere. Some kindergarten-sized kids loudly having a tricycle race in the emptiness.
The building was divided into two units, front and back, sort of a squared-off exercise weight in design, with the lobby as the handle of the weight. The Bailey apartment was one flight up the front stairway. Milano rang the bell and Christine answered it. Holding the door open behind her, she asked with a straight face, “Yes?” and, after Milano had jovially explained his redevelopment mission in tones that had to carry through the door, she motioned him in and made introductions to the kinfolk: mama, short, stout, and maybe a little too falsely welcoming to be rated a first-class poker player; brother Vern, a razor-thin six-four in warmup pants, neon jacket and sneakers, evidently itching to get to his basketball game; and sister Lorena, a leggy kid just on the interesting side of nubile, as those skintight jeans and T-shirt plainly signalled. Pretty, but would have been a lot prettier if that face wasn’t unrelieved sullen.
She didn’t feature Christine’s kind of Afro hairdo either. Her hair was a silky-smooth ebony cap, a pageboy right out of King Arthur’s court. In terms of surveillance, definitely an easy mark. While Milano went through his community-minded rote again, carefully not selling too hard, he caught the girl from several angles, sprawling, sitting, standing, and, under mama’s orders, heading into the kitchen for breakfast. Meanwhile, Vern took just enough interest in the rote to point out that all this redevelopment jive only meant tenants getting shoved out of the building, and if they weren’t shoved out, man, it was only because they would be hustled for a lot more rent, and wasn’t that the truth?
The Dark Fantastic Page 9