The Dark Fantastic

by Stanley Ellin

  “Binoculars?” said Christine.

  “Field glasses.” Milano mimed them sweeping the room.

  Mrs. Bailey looked shocked. “I never see any such thing. And Christine never see it either else she would have told me.” She turned to her daughter. “Wouldn’t you?”

  “I guess,” said Christine. She said to Milano, “You catch him at it?”

  “Maybe, but I couldn’t swear to it. Meanwhile, there’s one other item. You work there, Mrs. Bailey, don’t you?”

  “Tuesday every week. Do what I can. He’s neat as a pin, that man, so it’s mostly just dusting and bathroom and kitchen.”

  “Whatever. But all the time you’ve known him, did you ever get the impression he keeps a lot of money around? Right there in the house?”

  “In the house? No—” Mrs. Bailey’s eyes opened wide. “You think maybe Lorena—”

  “Stealing from him?” said Christine unbelievingly.

  “I didn’t say that,” Milano protested.

  “Oh, don’t play dumb, Milano. The way you put it – what else were you getting at?”

  “Well, the thin chance. She’s working for him right there and might have the run of the house. He comes on eccentric. It’s something to think about.”

  “The way he is about money?” said Christine. “He is so tacky cheap he’d know if a nickel was missing. Much less a couple of hundred dollars every week.”

  “All right,” said Milano, “I asked, you answered.” He glanced at his watch without noting the time. “Can I give you a lift back to the city?”

  She hesitated. “No, now that I’m here I guess I’ll stay awhile.”

  You didn’t push at a moment like this. And both she and her mother looked like they could use some of each other’s company for awhile.

  “I’ll keep in touch,” Milano said. “And remember you go on the job tomorrow.”

  “Yes.” She sounded vague, her thoughts on their own track.

  “Boudin,” he reminded her. “Eugéne Louis Boudin. Remember?”

  “Oh yes. Sure.” She opened the door for him. “And thanks for everything. I guess.”

  He stopped at the almost deserted office on the way home and hunted through Shirley’s desk until he came up with a job application form. He typed Lorena Bailey’s name, address, and school on this and under Nature of Employment put down Special Youth Training Summer Program. Looked good and, when he read it aloud, sounded good. He folded it into a company envelope, but on second thought removed it and stamped it Confidential in bright red warning. With that and a couple of the company’s embossed business cards, the jokers imprinted Watrous Associates, Research Consultants, he was in business.

  Monday morning, the team of Heywood and Smith beat him to the draw and were already waiting outside the Church Avenue station when he pulled up in the Toyota. DeLong Heywood, moonfaced, chunky, solemn and still sporting that single gold earring, was identifiable at sight. Gracella Smith, small, skinny, totally unpretty, had a pert, sharp-eyed quality and the wound-up look of a sprinter just waiting to get her feet against the starting blocks.

  Milano gave Heywood the copy of Lorena’s classroom schedule and laid down the ground rules. Close surveillance from the time the subject left her home until she was in it for the night, probably around eleven. That meant inside and outside the school – Erasmus – and if there was security trouble at the gate, head right for the principal’s office and come on as an investigator for Watrous Associates, checking out a job candidate. If no security trouble, save that visit to the office for afternoon. Trick there was to pump all sources for whatever could be brought up on the subject. And “confidential” was the key word to use on school staff. Confidential. Lower the voice when you speak the sacred word. Any questions?

  “Yeah,” DeLong said. “We looking for something special along the way?”

  “Selling maybe. Anything from grass on up.” Milano nodded at Gracella. “That makes the girls’ toilet your territory any time the kid walks into it. No problem inside the building as long as you both stay inconspicuous during classes. Outside the building you figure it out. I mean when and where you team together or just cover for each other.” He handed DeLong his own card. “Midnight tonight you phone me a detailed report at that number. Now hop in the car and I’ll finger the subject for you.”

  “Oh my,” said the perky Gracella. “Finger the subject. Real private-eye talk, man.”

  They caught the subject coming out of her apartment building, tracked her along Bedford to Church Avenue where Milano pulled up and let his passengers out. “Remember,” he told DeLong, “a detailed report. You got your little notebook?”

  DeLong slapped his pocket. “Big one,” he said.

  But when it came, the midnight report made it plain that a little one would have done. No security problems for the team in school or out. No signs of Lorena selling, buying, or trading. Company she kept, matter of fact, seemed kind of straight arrow. Also, assistant principal put the team on to her counselor regarding that job application, and it seemed Lorena, aside from occasional fits of big mouth and hot temper, had a fair scholastic record.

  “Where’d she go after school?” Milano asked.

  Delong seemed to be flipping notebook pages at the other end of the line. “That big house next door to her place. Three-thirty to four-twenty. Then back to her own place.”

  Milano thought it over. “All right, you two pick it up again tomorrow. And report to me same time tomorrow night. By the way, how’d Gracella make out?”

  “Sharp chick,” said DeLong. “But she says her legs hurt.”

  “Professional pains,” said Milano.

  He got a busy signal the first two times he dialed Christine, and then to teach her a lesson she wouldn’t even know she was being taught he angrily piped in a promising film on the WHT channel – nudity and vulgar language – and while the language was certainly vulgar, although not down to Gracie MacFadden’s level, the nudity, mistily poetic, appeared to be shot through a bath towel. Milano shut off the set as soon as the phone rang.

  “What happened?” Christine asked without preface. “Did you find out anything?”

  “No,” said Milano, “but it’s only one day. We’ll take another crack at it tomorrow.”

  “You sure she didn’t know she was being followed?”

  “I’m sure. Why?”

  “Because Mama just phoned to say Lorena was really in a mood tonight. Way down. Not a word. Just sat around hating everybody.”

  “I thought that was standard procedure for teen-agers.”

  “Sometimes. But this time she got around to locking herself in the bathroom for a couple of hours and wouldn’t answer anybody until my brother busted the door in. Then she tried to take his eyes out. That’s a lot more than standard procedure.”

  “Could be. Did you tell her about her name being put in for a summer job at my place?”

  “My mother did.”

  “Then even if somebody in school tipped her off she was being investigated, that would cover it. And I don’t believe anybody did tip her off or she would have laid that on you. No reason for her not to.”

  From the sound of it, Christine was blowing a long slow breath into the mouthpiece. She finally said, “I guess not.”

  “So there we are. And tomorrow’s another day. That is, today’s another day. Meanwhile, were you able to move on those paintings at all?”

  “Yes. There are a couple of packing crates in the office, some in the storeroom. But no West Coast labels. I’m also going through the files on that list of names you gave me. That’ll take a little while. I don’t like to be at those files every time Rammaert or his wife walks in.”

  “Smart,” said Milano.

  “Sure, man,” said Christine. “We’re both smart. Only a fifteen-year-old kid comes up even smarter.”

  Charles Witter Kirwan

  OUR MRS. BAILEY HAS JUST LEFT.

  Aunt Jemima. With just a touch of larceny.r />
  Done her work. Collected her pay. Departed.

  Confusing.

  Not Wednesday. I’ve been living Wednesday in my mind these past few hours, but it is not Wednesday, because Mrs. Bailey comes on Tuesdays.

  Tuesday.

  Definitely Tuesday.

  Strange. But understandable. The tolerance for Percodan increases. An excess of Percodan fortified by wine and you may lose a few hours. An error easily corrected, the mind in this case hardly the ordinary instrument.

  Meanwhile, the pain is held in abeyance. Knocking at the door but can’t come in. And that spasmodic, gut wrenching cough is held in abeyance. I sense the rising of it, brace myself against it, but no cough.

  A bad sign? Nothing left of the lungs now but a mass of putrefaction? Time running out too fast, trying to cheat me – cheat the world – of the grand event? No. I’m on schedule. The second charge was planted this morning in the dumbwaiter shaft of 409. Two out of eight. Agonizingly tedious and difficult work. I watched my hands at it. Braced up there in that filth-ridden stinking dimness, the cockroaches nauseating me as they scurried close to my face, I watched my fingers and wondered why they were so slow and clumsy. A stranger’s fingers. A roach ran along the taped sticks of dynamite, was almost on my fingers before I shook it off.

  Roaches. If one believed in the transmigration of the Bulanga soul, it would explain that multitude of roaches.

  Where

  Oh yes, Mrs. Bailey. Today.

  I let her in to do her work as I was on my way out to 409 to attend to mine. I said to her, “More repairs next door.” She clucked her tongue. Just clucked. Fat black hen who lays eggs for gentlemen. Cluck, cluck. Ordinarily she would comment at length, given that opening. Shame about that old building, Dr. Kirwan. Shame you have to do all that fussin’ with it. Use up what strength you got. Given any opening, talk and talk.

  Not this time. Furtive. I could meet her eye boldly, she couldn’t seem to meet mine. It should have been the other way around. It wasn’t.

  And on my return from my job storing up the grapes of wrath, the same. Furtive. Avoiding me. Applying herself passionately to the vacuum cleaner and mop and dust cloth. Paid her due, mumbled something, waddled off.

  Lorena’s secret out? Hardly.

  Her brothers in some trouble? Odell? Vern? From my view of them, no.

  Christine? Showing up so often lately? Possibly. Lost her job? Pregnant? Making arrangements for a new little Bulanga to be delivered – as happens with so many new little Bulangas in 409 – into grandma’s care when the time comes?

  Possibly Christine. Christine has affectations. Nose in the air. An actress. The Bulanga answer to Katherine Cornell. When she made application to the High School for Performing Arts I wrote straight-faced a stirring recommendation of her. Fine girl. Noble character. Yes. And now? Don’ act all that much, Dr. Kirwan, but she got herself a good steady job at a place downtown sells them fancy pictures. Painted pictures. Says folks pay real big money for one of them pictures. Sometimes five, ten thousand dollars, you believe that?

  Affectations, yes, but Christine is pure Bulanga. Could have been unloaded from the slave-ship yesterday, stood naked on that platform down there in tobacco-land, hands chained behind her. House stuff, while the lady of the plantation simmered.

  Yes.

  Possibly Christine is the

  But not Lorena. Nothing about Lorena from her mother. No charges. No policemen at the door. Lorena knows her place now. House stuff. Bed stuff.

  Oh yes.

  Yesterday I was already in my robe when she arrived. She stood in the doorway and looked. Lost heart. “Just wanna tell you I’m not comin’ in today. Don’ feel good.”

  Oh ho.

  “Don’t be stupid, Lorena. Your money’s waiting.”

  She hesitated. I motioned her in. She came in.

  No improvisation this time. A bed, not a battered old swivel chair. Her clothes on, mine off. On my back, hands clasped under my head, her mouth the milking machine. No mercy this time, no warning. Hard work dispelling a numbness in the organ, then I came when I had to into the milking machine.

  She squawked and gagged and fluttered. Into the bathroom full-tilt noisily making repairs. Came back, her expression making plain that she had just ingested a mouthful of lemon juice. The outstretched hand took the money I had waiting under my pillow.

  For the first time she didn’t even count it. Just went.

  She

  A hiatus.

  Forgivable under the circumstances.

  I was under the misapprehension that my supply of Percodan was sufficient, but it must have been a bad weekend. While I was speaking into this machine the pain broke through. Bad. Very bad. And I found very few of those tablets rattling around in the bottom of the bottle.

  So

  Not to digress, do you know what a controlled substance is?

  A controlled substance is any substance which our benign, libertarian government – Big Brother – thinks may do us harm.

  And since every substance under creation may do us harm under certain circumstances, Big Brother has a lot to play with. To control. To protect all his infantile little brothers and sisters from.

  A drug which may even briefly ease the pains of a dying human being must of necessity be a controlled substance, God forbid that anyone ever be allowed to die in peace.

  Controlled.

  Legally allowed this moribund specimen in just sufficient amount so that he may barely survive the pain.

  Controlled.

  I will now

  Yes.

  I will now put on the record information of special interest to the authorities. Big Brother’s eager beavers. I will preface it by stating as a fact that the owner of the pharmacy in question, Irving Saphir, Nostrand Avenue, has no part in this matter. No knowledge of it. More Jew-cowardly than Jew-greedy he was openly alarmed when I suggested he augment the meager amount of Percodan allowed me by prescription.

  This, after I had dealt with him for more than twenty years.

  Now forget him. Forget the name.

  The name of significance is Jennings. Whether that is his given name or family name I don’t know.

  Jennings.

  He replaces his employer at five-thirty, keeping the shop open until midnight. All other local pharmacies close at five or six, so there is evening trade to be had.

  Jennings is a Bulanga educated beyond his station, as the fine old phrase goes, and ready to take advantage of that. He heard me discuss my problem with Saphir, and that evening phoned me to meet him at closing time, because he might have a solution to the problem. I suspected from his tone during the call, from the heavy-handed humor and broad innuendo of his language, what he was getting at, and of course I was right. He could supply my needs for a price. The source of supply was his own. It had nothing to do with any of the shop’s wholesalers.

  Big Brother controls. Jennings decontrols.

  The price? Three hundred dollars for one hundred tablets the first time I dealt with him. It was four hundred dollars the second time. Cash. I have just now, within the hour, met friend Jennings at the shop’s closing time and paid him five hundred dollars cash for his merchandise. A seller’s market, and this canny Bulanga knows it.

  A formidable-looking creature, a cur in a lion’s hide, our friend. He wears the mask so many of our Bulanga tribesmen in these parts favor.

  The mask. Not the ancestral colored mud and the bone through the nostrils. Now it’s composed of a fierce beard and mustache, a towering shock of untrimmed frizzy hair, menacing dark glasses. Or instead of that haystack of hair, there may be oiled and braided locks of it draped around the face and head. Dreadlocks, the Bulanga call them.

  Clever word. Clever disguise for a cur. Pass it in the street and shrink from it involuntarily. Strip it away and there is the cur under the lion’s mane.

  Secure only in packs, these tribesmen. Their youth jeeringly brave only in packs. Over the centuries, sold c
heap by their own brave chiefs in Bulangaland.

  Five hundred dollars. One hundred pills.

  The residue of my cash goes fast.

  Household expenses minimal, but Lorena. And Jennings.

  Time is on my side, of course. And sufficient unto the day is the cost thereof.

  Yes.

  If I could place the dynamite charges each day, only six more days would be needed. Too much effort that way though. My store of energy must determine my schedule. Use energy near dinnertime to climb three flights of stairs in 409 to repair a badly abused refrigerator, and I am cheated out of that much strength tomorrow.

  Yes.

  Well

  The mask.

  The image of it seems stuck in my mind now. Good. Determination may lag under physical weakness; that image fortifies it with hatred. All those masks blown apart at the instant of the grand event. All those dark glasses blown away, the eyesockets emptied by concussion. All those whining, yelping, howling curs dead.

  That mask suddenly appeared on campus, courtesy of our city’s Open Admissions policy. Open Admissions. If the applicant’s pulse could be detected, he was welcome to share in higher education at public expense. Somewhere along the way might even learn to read and write. But the natives grew restless in their futile pursuit of the diploma, that magic piece of paper. The Bulanga rose. The intellectual demands were too great; ease up on them demands for readin’ and writing’ and ’rithmetic, whitey.

  The masks suddenly appeared on those old enough to cultivate facial hair and fierce scowls. Well-feigned anger. Fire and sword. The citadel was taken. Easily taken. It had been a distinguished institution in its own curious, mass-production fashion. It became a bad joke overnight, fountainhead of hypocrisy, the liberal’s delight.

  It was

  I was

  Yes, I will say it here and now. I, Charles Witter Kirwan, apparently fearless in military combat – under Lieutenant-Colonel Willis Crittenberger of the IV Corps through the Italian campaign – I who managed to play the brave company commander through that horror became a coward, a liar, a dissembler in the face of a moral issue. Knew hatred, had every good reason for it, and didn’t have the guts to stand up and proclaim it.