The Dark Fantastic

by Stanley Ellin

  After which he took off to his game, and because Lorena was now back on the scene, a cup of coffee in hand and a transistor to her ear, but casually curious about these goings-ons, Milano played it cozy by asking for a tour of the premises. Two bedrooms, twin beds in each, and from the window of what was obviously the ladies’ quarters he had a fine view of the Victorian beauty next door, especially that noble tower right up to its weathervane which, gratifyingly, twitched south to southeast and back again as he watched.

  In white territory the apartment would have been rated a find. Two bedrooms, living room, kitchen, and bathroom. All right, the dingy walls showed leakage stains here and there, and for want of any floor coverings – except for the kitchen lineoleum – the bare hardwood floors showed rough wear. But this was a well-crafted old building, and who, nowadays, was planning cheap apartments with nine-foot-high ceilings, solid doors, and honest-to-God eat-in kitchens like this one, big enough to seat six around the table? In his own super de luxe co-op, a man had to suffer what was politely called a galley, for Jesus sake. Bend over to look into the refrigerator and you found your butt in the oven right across the narrow aisle from it.

  Interesting on a different score was that ornately framed, hand-tinted photo on the living room wall over the stereo set. Father of the family. Easy to see where his female offspring got their enticing looks. A strikingly handsome man, caught in his prime, staring grimly at the camera as if defying it to do its worst. No nonsense. And, Milano wondered, how would he have handled daughter Lorena? Laid her over his knee, strap in hand, taking the chance she wouldn’t be listed next day in the runaway files? Or come on as one of those doting, more or less unconsciously incestuous daddies who’d never admit that their suddenly curvy little girls could be rambling out of legal bounds?

  Christine led him outside the apartment and let the door shut behind her. She said in a low voice, “When do I hear from you?”

  “Right after the show tonight.”

  “No. Not there. But you can call me at home any time after, say, midnight.”

  Milano jotted down the number she gave him. “Sure I won’t be bothering anybody there?” he asked, putting it about as subtly as he could. Which, as he knew – and he had a feeling she knew – wasn’t all that subtle.

  Christine chose to overlook any nuances. “Lenardo and Pearl have the bedroom. I have the parlor couch. Phone’s next to the couch. You call as late as you want.”

  Pearl the playwright, Lenardo the director. All right. And while the couch might possibly open into one of those double-bed jobs, the way it was put suggested – wish-fulfillment? – that it was serving solo duty.

  “One other thing,” Milano said. “If Security in some store jumps the kid, do I let nature take its course, or do I step in and blow my cover? Not that blowing my cover means much in that case. You’ll have whatever evidence against her you need right then and there.”

  Christine looked like she was fighting off a qualm of nausea. “It’ll kill Mama if she has to go down to the station house for anything like that. But what could you do about it?”

  “Trade secret. Leave it to me.”

  “All right,” Christine said unhappily, “I’m leaving it to you.”

  Marking time outside the building, he took inventory of the block. Not too bad. Tree-lined, old Brooklyn style. Some graystones and brownstones in fair shape. Apartment houses needing work. The closer you got, the more work you could see they needed. In the middle of the block across the street a real loser. Abandoned, sealed up, every window shattered. Looking up through the empty frame of a top-floor window, Milano could see the gaping emptiness of what used to be the roof there. Probably a torch job. Hit a loser with torch hard enough and collect full insurance.

  One job like this on the block wounded the block. A couple more could kill it. “Want to wet down those torches?” Willie had once said. “Knock off those fucking crooked insurance agents who sell policies to the mob. And while you’re at it, knock off those fucking crooked claims adjustors who okay the claims.”

  Willie, of course, was always powerfully set against anybody else’s corruption.

  Kids were whooping it up and down the street in some kind of space-wars game. A couple closed in on Milano. “You the City, man?” one asked. He might have been eight years old.

  “Private,” Milano answered man to man. “Wondering how much that pile would cost to buy.”

  The kids gaped and giggled. Then number one said, “Man, you give me a dime, it’s all yours.”

  Tempting to work up this comedy act, but there was Lorena Bailey, ballasted by a swollen shoulder-bag, coming out of 409.

  Back to the job.

  As anticipated, it was an easy, uncomplicated job. David, who seemed to take a disdainful pleasure in this kind of chauffeuring, maintained precisely the right distance behind the girl as she moved along, stopping to pick up a pair of girl friends on her way. And managed to neatly tailgate the Flatbush Avenue bus the trio took all the way to downtown Brooklyn. When they disembarked at the Livingston Street entrance of the Abraham and Straus department store Milano said goodbye to his chauffeur and resigned himself to tedious footwork.

  And, after he got his bearings in the store, to some worrisome considerations.

  It was a big place, A and S, a whopper, and saturated with uniformed security, not to mention the plainclothes variety. A light-fingered pro might get by them, but Lorena didn’t have that pro look. So the sensible play would be to spot any wrong move, then come on as fast as possible. Beat the uniforms to her. Or, if it was a tie, make immediate payment as required and get her out from under. The worrisome part would be her reaction to him under these conditions. Not really him. The family.

  If there was a loud bust-up with them, and she did take off—

  By the time they were done with A and S, Milano didn’t believe for a moment that there had ever been any shoplifting. Lorena bought – after much conference with her two chums – and paid cash. A couple of blouses upstairs, some items at the junk jewelry counter on the main floor. Lunch at a stand on Fulton Street, a pair of shoes in a shop nearby, a couple of purchases in the Albee Mall, and all paid for with Lorena’s green folding money.

  Mid-afternoon, the party moved along to the Loew’s movie house, and was there joined by a couple of boys. Callow, noisy, good-natured kids, no hard edges to them. Most to the point was that Lorena was the one who bought the tickets for the whole crew, boys included.

  Once he saw them through the theater doors Milano treated himself to a hot dog at a corner stand, used a men’s room at A and S, then seated himself on a bench down the block from the theater to wait it out. Government money had gone into this Fulton Mall thing too. The roadway had been narrowed down for bus traffic only, the walks on either side had been expanded to boulevard width. For trimmings, these semicircular benches had been planted at intervals along the way; as a test for the spine they were backless. Ranged along the street robed and skullcapped black Muslims pushed Islamic reading matter, bric-a-brac, and punk from folding tables. Burning samples of the punk scented the air not unpleasantly. And the passing show provided fair entertainment value. The largest part of it was colored, a good proportion Hispanic. No one among the younger women was up there in Christine Bailey’s class, but quite a few added considerable charm to the scene.

  It interested Milano that, of course, these were the same black and brown women, men, kids as ever, but he seemed to be getting a subtly different view of them.

  A magic bench?

  Christine?

  Hunger pangs?

  Lorena and chums emerged from the theater, made their way across the street to a music shop. One hour and twenty minutes going through the stock there. Outside, the party broke up, the boys going off one way, the girls back to Livingston Street and the bus. There were cabs in sight, but Milano let them go by. His accounts with both Christine Bailey and Eugene Louis Boudin were balanced for the day, and tomorrow was another day.<
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  Besides, his feet hurt, his back ached, and some energy had to be reserved for the evening’s program.

  Timing it to a nicety, he paid his way into the Birdbath Theater a few minutes after the action had started. More audience than last night, enough so that he could logically and inconspicuously seat himself in the last row, in the corner away from the entrance.

  At first, what he saw might have been interpreted as a bad night for all concerned. A spasmodic, bumpy, jumpy set of performances, none of the gears seeming to mesh. Unbelievably, even for this level of theater, during a scene in two between Christine and Tamar McBride the spotlight lost both players and had to go prowling around to relocate them. Amateur night all right, until it dawned on Milano that what he was viewing here was no series of accidents. Christine Bailey, so pliant to the wily machinations of her co-star in her last night’s performance, had given up on pliant. Tamar was trying the same old scene-stealing tricks, but this time they were backfiring.

  What d’ya know!

  Milano slipped out of the theater a few minutes before intermission, and what he knew was that there would be hell to pay backstage during intermission. What he wondered about when he returned – he wouldn’t have missed the payoff for anything – was who the second act would declare the winner. He didn’t have long to wonder. Tamar was having her hands full and not liking it. Christine was cutting loose and sending those previously muted vibrations right to the back row. Awkward timing, weird lighting and all, Two Stops Before The End of The Line now gave loud, clear signs of what it could be. Not bad. Not bad at all.

  Regretfully, Milano ducked out before Christine’s final lines. His feet had long ago ceased to hurt, his back felt just fine.

  Midnight, she had said. Phone any time after midnight.

  He killed two hours at O. Henry’s working on a steak – no trimmings at all – a salad, and a couple of Perriers with lime, and the New York Post, then wended his way along Sixth, up three flights of narrow, loudly creaking stairs, and knocked on Christine Bailey’s door.

  She asked who it was; he told her. She opened the door and stood there wrapped in a blanket. From the look of those bare shoulders and bare legs up to mid-thigh she had nothing on under the blanket.

  “I told you to phone,” she said.

  “I don’t like phoning when I don’t have to.” True. “And I happened to be in the neighborhood.” Nearly true.

  She still stood there blocking the doorway. A good actress, especially, it seemed, when she didn’t intend to be, it was all there on her face. Concern, wariness, irritation. All three in one.

  “Well, what happened?” she asked. “What did you find out?”

  He could plainly see that the room behind her was empty, that the couch was just a cushioned couch with a sheet tucked around the cushions. Still, she didn’t invite him in. His feet and back suddenly started to hurt again, and his temper started to rise. In a nutshell, who the hell did she think she was?

  “Do you always talk over your family troubles out here in the hall?” he asked.

  She grudgingly stood aside. “All right, come on in.”

  “No need. I can give you the word right here.”

  “Look, I am asking you to come in. I don’t know why you’re making a case of it.”

  Milano remained where he was. “The word is,” he said, “that there’s no shoplifting. The kid did some buying in a few places, treated a couple of girl friends to eats, treated the girls plus a couple of boys to the movies. Paid cash all the way. She seems to have that pocketbook stuffed with cash. And neither of these boys is a Jimmy-type buying her favors. Both are wet behind the ears. That’s it.”

  “What do you mean, that’s it? Then where’s she getting that money?”

  “An interesting question. If you want to discuss it further, just phone me at home any time tomorrow morning.”

  He started down those creaking stairs, and Christine leaned over the bannister. “What’s wrong with right now?”

  A panicky note there? Good. “I’m off duty now,” said Milano, going his way.

  In the lobby of the co-op the night man hailed him. “Message for you, Mr. Milano. Mrs. MacFadden said that if and when you showed up, there’s a little party in the penthouse.”

  Gracie’s Saturday night little parties were like Ringling Brother’s little circuses. On the other hand, to go up to the apartment and walk the floor mentally snarling at the image of the blanket-clad Christine Bailey—

  “Tell Mrs. MacFadden I’m on my way up,” said Milano.

  Charles Witter Kirwan

  SUNDAY.

  Sunday afternoon.

  I withstood an impulse to attend church this morning.

  The Dutch Reformed Church, that is, over on Flatbush Avenue. Worth the few blocks extra walk if and when you come to view what will be listed in the guide books as The Witter House.

  The Witter House.

  Funded – richly funded – by The Hendrick Witter Foundation.

  What I was about to

  Oh yes, that churchgoing impulse. It was not an impulse born of any need to atone for the splendidly perverse sexual experience to which I finally introduced Lorena Bailey late Friday afternoon.

  Most certainly not that.

  Nor did the impulse come from any need to sit through lugubrious hymns and a watered-down sermon. In this libertarian society, Calvinism, a once powerful brew for my ancestors, has become so much sugar water. As have so many once proud and potent faiths, excluding, of course, that raucous, high-profit evangelicalism nowadays completely addling the wits of the already half-addled.

  So

  In point of fact, my impulse was to attend services this morning as Quakers do their meetings. That most curious and foolish of sects – with its remaining handful of beatific, traditionally Bulanga-loving ninnies – holds meetings for worship without any pastor in charge. The congregation just sits there speechless until God, who obviously has nothing better to do with his time, plants words in someone’s mouth, and these words are then solemnly declaimed to the faithful.

  Well, not altogether a bad way of giving the taxpayer a chance to speak his mind, if only that mind isn’t petrified into a lump of cant. Mine is not, thank you. Whatever my record of politely speaking cant to the issues, it is not. Now listen to this. Psalm 32, 3.

  “For while I held my tongue, my bones consumed away through my daily complaining.”

  Lines of fire.

  I politely kept my tongue from speaking the bitter truth and so my bones are being agonizingly consumed. Bones and lungs and guts.

  Therefore I would attend church and would rise like Jeremiah to deliver that truth to this captive audience.

  I did not.

  Too much to lose. I would be marked as eccentric, to say the least. Mentally out of gear.

  Why lay all this before you – the impulse and its restraint?

  To give proof that I am, as I always have been, entirely clear-minded, precisely understanding the nature and consequences of the grand event I’m designing.

  If the psycho-quacks will forgive the expression – totally sane.

  I must also make plain that I’m no churchgoer. Florence – my wife – was. Liked the singing, liked the saccharine sociability, dozed through the sermons. Your good average churchgoer. I am not, and since my youth I never have been. My grandfather was not. I suspect his passion for historical study soured him on organized religion. When I handed him the draft of my doctoral thesis on Alva’s occupation of Flanders and The Netherlands during their struggle for freedom – where it was Roman Catholic against Lutheran and Calvinist, during which butchery Lutheran and Calvinist turned to butchering each other – he first said, “Very sound work,” which was what I wanted from him. Then he added drily, “On three of our dear Lord’s churches who’ll never be able to wipe each other’s blood off their hands.”

  True.

  One danger in studying history is the contempt it can breed for mankind’s most
cherished institutions in their unending stupidity.

  But our Bulanga have found a way to beat that game. Too dull-witted in their African grass huts to ever invent a written language and come up with a recorded history of their tribe’s arid past, they are now busily conjuring up glowing accounts of its imaginary glories. Using whitey’s alphabet and whitey’s printing press of course.

  And pundits nod approval of this make-believe, and publishers pour out good gold for it, and television audiences sit goggle-eyed at gaudy dramatizations of it. And courses in Bulanga hagiology are instituted in my college so that the tribe can rejoice in its made-to-order past.

  The Bulanga witch-doctor as Thucydides.

  Dear God.

  Where was I?

  Church. Church-going. Yes.

  While I’m at it, since this is uninhibited family history, I may as well complete the roll call.

  My mother. Hattie – Harriet Sprague Witter that was – one of the most god-fearing. Locked horns with my grandfather a few times during my puberty about my freedom of choice and finally gave up.

  My father. Henry Witter. Sorry. Too much of a blank there. A lieutenant in the infantry during the First World War – a volunteer – he died of influenza in a hospital in Brest in 1918. Survived combat in the Argonne campaign. Died of influenza.

  I was five years old the last time I ever saw him. I have a favorable memory of him. I don’t know if it’s accurate.

  Sorry.

  But

  But his replacement in my life

  A different story.

  Daniel Kirwan, stepfather.

  Daniel Kirwan, born Roman Catholic, became a devoted Protestant. Devoted, remember. I did not say devout. Devoted to the Witter house, to the Witter Packard which he proudly drove to church each Sunday, to the Witter money, and possibly – as much as he could squeeze out that kind of devotion – to my widowed mother whom he married two years after my father’s death.

  Stupid. Burly red-faced, red-haired Hibernian, loud in his affections, his good intentions, his stupidity.

  A go-getter. His own words. A common idiom in my childhood. Go-getter. Someone on the rise, using elbows and knees however he had to.