The Dark Fantastic

by Stanley Ellin

  “Well, I thought that—”

  “No trouble at all. Right away. Just stand by.”

  The Prince Albert Hotel down on 27th Street was what anyone with a good architectural eye might weep over in its decay. A big one all right, a massive baroque beauty dating from that era when Herald Square was way uptown. The grime on it seemed to have been accumulating since those days, and, like the yet unopened shops surrounding it, wholesale outlets mostly, the building had a dismal cut-rate look. Steady rain didn’t brighten the scene either.

  The lobby however was in decent repair and, as evidence of respectability, the desk clerk phoned Miss Cronin’s room before passing along its number. The room itself turned out to be small, in need of some serious plastering and painting, and offering a claustrophobic view of an airshaft through its murky window. There was not one suitcase here, Milano took note, but four of them. And two bulky cartons still corded around. And a couple of bulging shopping bags.

  All the earmarks of a permanent resettlement.

  Go figure. A week ago, the last word you’d use in describing the lady was impulsive, but what other word better described the way she had suddenly confided her sins to her daddy and now, just as suddenly, had taken off from the nest? So far in his experience, Milano reflected, impulsiveness, as demonstrated by the female in a sort of “You know what let’s do now?” role-playing, could have its charms. Betty’s exercise of it, however, seemed more like a variation of Russian roulette.

  She was plainly scared by this herself. The strain of playing it bright and chipper showed. “Not much, is it?” she said, indicating the room. “I seem to be full of surprises, don’t I?” Then frowning as she looked him over, she dropped the act. “You’ve lost weight. What are you doing, starving yourself to death?”

  Better if she had expressed admiration rather than concern, but even so, considering the ongoing martyrdom involved, it was nice of her to take notice. A nice observant concerned girl, and what the hell were you supposed to do about it? There were women you could let down with a thud, but this was definitely not one of them.

  “Just counting calories,” Milano said. “What happened with your father anyhow? How’d you wind up here?”

  “I’d just as soon not talk about my father. And I wound up here because it’s the cheapest place I could find on one day’s notice. I mean, where I wouldn’t be afraid to walk out in the hall. Even so, you know what it costs, Johnny? It’s really murder.”

  “I can imagine,” Milano said. He poised on the brink, then took the plunge. “But if you can dig up some girl who’s looking to split apartment rent—”

  Her expression cut him short. Bewildered. Stricken. “Is that how you feel about it, Johnny?”

  “It?”

  “Us.”

  So here it was. The us part. Milano started to sit down on the edge of the bed, realized his raincoat was sodden, and, rather than take it off, stood up. He said gently, “If what you’re getting at, baby, is that we set up housekeeping together, it would never work. It wouldn’t last long enough to be worth trying. Believe me, I know we’ve been getting along fine with each other—”

  She cut right across his bow full speed. “You know it’s been a lot more than that, Johnny. I’d say we definitely arrived at a very meaningful relationship. And you know I’m not talking marriage. I’m just saying that when two people have something so good to share why share it just weekends and holidays? We’re happy with each other then, aren’t we? So why not make it every day of the week?”

  “Because maybe I’m only happy weekends and holidays.” A mistake. She was shakily trying to hang tight, and cheap repartee was no help in that direction. Milano said quickly, “I’m sorry. But I am also confused, baby. Last time we were together we had a very loud blowup. Remember why? I suggested you stay overnight in the apartment what with the trouble you’d have getting home at that hour, and you wouldn’t do it because my friends there might take notice. Now you’re proposing an arrangement where practically everybody in town would have to take notice.”

  “Yes. But I was being stupid that night. And when you said – you know – I was too old for such nonsense I thought I was angry at you for it. But I wasn’t. Afterward, I realized I was really being angry at my father. And my mother too, because she is just like an echo in that house. Look at me. At my age. And with a good job. And with you—”

  “A different father.”

  “What?”

  “Think it over, Betty. You’re saying you finally broke loose, you’re your own woman now. But all you’re really doing – call it symbolically – is trying to switch fathers. And what you call a meaningful relationship looks made to order for the switch.”

  “Oh no, Johnny, I never—”

  “Oh yes.” Amazing. That nickel and dime analysis was supposed to be just evasive action, and suddenly here it was providing insight into some painful facts of life. Forty years old. The father image. And what were the odds on Christine Bailey settling for any father image? But this wasn’t Christine here, it was a bird of a very different disposition. Milano said, “We have to be honest about this, baby. You move in with me, it’ll only be a change of address for you, nothing else. You’ll take all the signals from me, you’ll make all the adjustments, and in the end you’ll be as scared of me coming on mean-tempered as you ever were of your father. And you won’t know what to do about it this time around. For that matter, neither would I.”

  Betty frowned, trying to work it out. “I don’t see that. You make it sound like we were always at each other. But we weren’t.”

  “Because you’ve always been just as weak-kneed with me as you were with your father.” He pushed ahead fast before she could offer more than a hesitant shake of the head. “Look, you’re still mixed-up about all this, and that’s natural. And this room here isn’t helping any; it is depressing as hell, baby. That brings up a practical concern. Moving into something civilized. Happens I’m owed a couple of favors by the manager of a very civilized apartment hotel uptown on Fifth. Bedroom, sitting room, and a kitchen layout where you won’t bankrupt yourself eating out. Not easy to get in there short-term, but it can be done. Meanwhile—”

  “Uptown on Fifth? I’ve got some money put away, Johnny, but not that kind of money. And my paycheck would never—”

  “Right. So meanwhile, just to make me feel better about such items as your comfort and security, you will kindly let me finance the deal until you make your own arrangements.”

  “You mean, pay my rent?”

  “Only until you make your own arrangements. Now relax. Obviously I am not trying to buy your favors. All I’m doing is offering a helping hand when you need one. If you turn it down out of some whacked-out principle, I’ll go along with that. But I can tell you one thing, baby, I won’t be happy about it.”

  When you’ve taken a hotel manager off the hook for the looting of his safe-deposit boxes by speedily nailing the looters and recovering most of the loot, you have a large reserve of gratitude to draw on. Mr. Francona-Nerisi, manager of the Wardour, was ready to bend all rules in his gratitude. More than that, whatever private doubts he had about Mr. Milano’s apparently well-bred and undeniably very pretty country cousin and her curious assortment of luggage, he was positively courtly in his welcome to her.

  So at ten a.m. the country cousin took possession of her new apartment and set to work storing away her belongings – the procedure seeming to firm her resolution about this adventure as she gained momentum – while Milano, after surveying the scene outside the sitting room window – a Childe Hassam Fifth Avenue below, the noble bulk of the Metropolitan Museum a couple of blocks north – ran the Mercedes downtown to lay in a store of provender from Balducci’s. He couldn’t eat most of this wonderful stuff, especially now that his new figure had been given public recognition, but he could sure as hell take a bitter satisfaction in buying it.

  Back again, he was relieved of his cartons by Betty who, making protesting noises at s
uch extravagance, loaded up the refrigerator and kitchen shelves. With everything done that could be done, she joined him in the sitting room. She confronted him, face flushed, arms akimbo, like Joan of Arc getting ready to address the troops.

  “Well, all right,” she said.

  “Except for those hunting prints on that wall,” Milano said. “And those School of Fragonard teasers in the bedroom.”

  “I’m not talking about any pictures. I’m talking about this situation. It just takes some time to get used to, that’s all. Even if it is only for the time being.”

  “Good. Got any ideas on how to celebrate the occasion?”

  “Don’t you have to go to work?”

  Milano shook his head. “Today is all celebration.” No use hinting that the Met was only a short walk away. At best she was a dutiful museum-goer, dim of eye, polarized to the obvious, always a step behind him, waiting to get his reaction before coming up with her own. Skip the Met. And Velasquez. And that small Rubens. “So,” said Milano, “how about Atlantic City?”

  “A casino? Now?” She had made this expedition with him once before, had been alarmed and baffled by any table action, but had discovered the slots with rapture. He had observed at the time that where she was shy about his providing her original stake she popped up at his table regularly after that for an added twenty or fifty. The reason, of course, was that she had been almost instantly brain-washed by the spirit of the place. This wasn’t real money. There was no real money in Cloud-Cuckooland. The picture of those rows of slots, jackpots heating up for her in each one, must have inspired her now. “All right,” she said, answering her own question. “Why not?”

  A small hitch developed in the expedition when Milano stopped at his bank downtown to raise necessary funds. His bank balance, it appeared, couldn’t cover a check for ten thousand. Sorry, but would eight thousand do?

  His instant heated reaction, uncontrollable as a hiccup, was that Shirley Glass who saw to the direct deposit of his hefty Watrous drawing account each week had somehow gone and skipped a week. But of course she hadn’t. She never did. It was just a case of the four M’s again, he knew – mortgage, maintenance, Mercedes, and Mama. Mama’s house, that is, which sister Angie had somehow laid off on him when the bills for keeping it livable first started to pile up. And then there were all those handy credit cards, whose statements the bank electronically attended to behind his back. Personal merchandise and travel and entertainment and such, not to be weaseled into the company expense account, because if he was going to ream Willie, it wouldn’t be by any soft-core swindling.

  Come to think of it, there was now another item for the list, Betty’s gilded cage in the Wardour.

  Oh yeah. It was beginning to look like that almost quarter of a million of Pacifica’s money he’d be splitting with Willie was definitely needed to recharge the money machine.

  Any chance of not delivering the goods to Pacifica?

  Yes. But minimal if Rammert and the buyer’s representative had arranged for the classic procedure of swapping paintings for cash, face to face. Across the table, one examining the paintings, the other counting the cash, neither trusting the other the length of a pinkie-nail. C.O.D. and probably a couple of custom-tailored hired guns standing around making sure the figures balanced.

  Milano settled for the eight thousand the bank teller had offered and in his first two hours at blackjack almost doubled it while Betty at her slots was getting just enough return now and then to put the roses in her cheeks. When she finally did tap out, he planted her in his lucky seat to nervously hold the fort with small bets while he phoned Shirley at the office.

  Her report was irritating. Yes, Willie had gotten on his P.D. buddies first thing, and no, Charles Kirwan had no priors, no police record of any kind, no nothing. All very negative. Who was this Kirwan anyhow?

  “Somebody who bothers me,” Milano said. “Is that Heywood and Smith team in touch with you?”

  “Uh-huh. DeLong called in this morning from the college. He’ll call again before closing time here.”

  “Good. Tell him to meet me for breakfast tomorrow morning. Same place, same time. And to bring whatever he’s got on Kirwan so far.”

  “Sure,” said Shirley. “By the way, I also took a message for you yesterday. Four times. A Betty Cronin wants you to get in touch with her as soon as possible. I’d appreciate it, Johnny, if you’d—”

  “I’ll take care of it right now,” said Milano.

  Back to the table then, where he staked Betty to her next try at the giant jackpot and where the dealer was openly relieved to see him replace his lady friend. The dealer must have known something, because his concentration was now definitely blown. The cards were far away; up front was that nagging Bailey-Bailey-Rammaert-Kirwan cycle again, so after losing back his winnings he shifted over to a crap table where the dice might do some reverse magic for him. No use. By dinnertime he was down to about a thousand, Betty was down to a cupful of half-dollars, and that was what they took back to New York with them. Not good, but better than nothing.

  Could have been worth it too, considering that Betty, despite some battle scars – a badly swollen hand and sore feet – appeared to be dreamily content with her lot. Romantically disposed, too.

  But there was no romantic interlude at the Wardour. Parked at its entrance, Milano remarked that he was sorry to say – really sorry to say, sweetheart – that as of this moment he was officially back on the job, a heavy case that would probably tie him up into the small hours.

  “Oh,” said Betty. “Well, I’ll call you tomorrow then.”

  “No, better let me do any calling. For one thing, I’ll be short of sleep as it is, I’d just as soon not have the phone breaking it up. For another thing, you’ve got message service, and I don’t.”

  “That’s right,” said Betty. She leaned over, locked her arms tight around his neck and gave him a lingering, heated kiss. Smelt good, felt good. But—

  He watched her walk a few steps toward the doorway. Then she stopped and shaded her eyes against a fine drizzle, her head going back, back, back as she took in the height of the building, its façade studded here and there with a glow of light from picture windows. The way she did it, the contemplative shake of that head, suggested that what she was viewing here was improbable, it was no more real than casino money.

  Which, come to think of it, was all to the good.

  Of course he should have phoned Christine Bailey before making a useless trip down to the Village. To simply assume she’d be home and ready for a little chat over a glass at, let’s say, O. Henry’s was stupid. Smart would have been to assume that right now the girl was having a lot more than a little chat with some fucking black Adonis of a pro-ball carrier who, of course, got added exposure in fucking glamorous TV commercials.

  No response to the bell, to the persistent knocking at the door?

  The hell with her.

  He changed his mind about that first thing in the morning. A fair night’s sleep helped, the sunshiny Friday morning was calculated to settle turbulent emotions, and, of course, J. Milano could provide what even the smoothest running back couldn’t: the job of hauling little sister out of whatever deep and dangerous hole she was digging herself into.

  A troubled kid all right. Definitely not happy down there at the bottom of that hole.

  He had invited DeLong Heywood to attend breakfast with him solo; it was no big surprise to find that the sprightly Gracella was, without apology, a member of the party. And exceedingly tender toward her working partner who showed no resentment of the motherly ministrations – the straightening of his jacket collar, plucking of a minute bit of lint from his sleeve – delivered his way in public.

  No resentment at all. In fact, when he handed Milano the Kirwan dossier – a folder with a stack of Xeroxed sheets – he motioned at Gracella and said, “Most of this is hers. Girl really knows her away around this kind of stuff.”

  She did. The pages were obviously lift
ed from every type of printed medium, of every size and shape, and wherever Kirwan’s name appeared it was highlighted by colored marker. There was a cover sheet too, a sort of index categorizing the folder’s contents under the headings of Family History, Military, Academic and so on.

  “Nice,” said Milano. He risked treading on DeLong’s toes by addressing Gracella. “How do you figure him?”

  “Kirwan?” She made a face. “Kind of the last of the dinosaurs.”

  “How?”

  “Oh, old family. Old, old. Way back to Dutch times. Funny thing is his real name is Witte – I mean his father’s name – but when his mother married again he took the new father’s name. That’s the Kirwan. Anyhow, the family’s been there since the beginning of Brooklyn. That street is named after them.”

  “How about more up-to-date?” Milano said. “Why did he give up teaching at the college? Any little difficulties? Aberrations? Anything at all in that line?”

  Gracella shook her head broadly. “No way. Just retirement, that’s all. With honors. Big farewell dinner and such.”

  “And,” said DeLong, taking time off from his pancakes, “he got a big writeup in the student paper about it.” He pointed at the folder. “It’s all there. When they were having those troubles a few years back—”

  “Ethnic troubles,” Gracella put in wickedly.

  “Those troubles,” said DeLong, “about, you know, open admissions and black studies and all, he came out for ethnic. Big man on the faculty, graduated from the college himself, snow white” – he shrugged in apology – “you know what I mean.”

  “I know,” said Milano.

  “Yeah, well – so that did good for ethnic in newspaper and TV interviews where he could have scored for the other side. So the student paper gave him heavy credits. Also that now he was retiring he didn’t look to go Sun Belt like a lot of other retired teachers but would be staying right there in the family house and keep on being part of the changing community.”

  “Very touching,” said Milano. “And what about before all this? The military stuff. That would be World War II, I take it.”