The Dark Fantastic

by Stanley Ellin

  “Should be before noon, Johnny. You want to play it safe, make it noon. Am I expected, too?”

  “No need. Oh yeah, and when you get a bill from Miami – Sullie’s office – that’s on Pacifica, too. Make it quick pay. And make sure about Willie, Shirl.”

  Milano put down the phone again and sat for awhile considering the coming bloody bout with Willie. Then he went back to the living room where Chris, naked and enticing, was sprawled on the floor on her belly reading the jacket copy of an old album.

  “Business call,” Milano explained.

  “You don’t have to apologize,” she said. She handed him a record. “I pick one to start, then you pick one. This is my pick.”

  Bessie Smith.

  “Mine, too,” said Milano. “So you also get the next pick.”

  At about four o’clock, he got out the Toyota and they drove through dark, almost empty New York to Sarge’s all-night deli over on Third Avenue for a combination dinner and breakfast. Afterward, since they agreed it would obviously be graceless of her to risk waking roomies Pearl and Lenardo by coming in at this hour, they headed back to the apartment and this time had one of those languorous, almost slow-motion sessions which, however, produced the same rapid-fire M-G-M fireworks for the big finish.

  When Milano finally got around to turning off the light he discovered that there was sunshine filtering through the blinds. He closed them tight, pulled the phone jack – with phones disconnected there could be no communication from reality out there – and set the alarm clock.

  “Busy little beaver, aren’t you?” Chris commented sleepily.

  “Meeting with my partner at noon. I’ll be gone before you’re up, but you just wait here for me. Any objections?”

  “No. One, maybe. What do I do if I crave some nourishment meanwhile? Fry up a pan of ice cubes?”

  “You use the kitchen intercom and tell the doorman all about it. And when delivery is made remember it’s all on my tab. Hey, are you listening or are you asleep?”

  “Both,” said Chris.

  She was still sound asleep, twenty fathoms under and far gone, when Milano took his departure, and when on the way out he stopped to remove the Sunday papers from the doorstep and lay them on the bed beside her as his replacement, she didn’t twitch.

  Willie, on the other hand, was wide awake and ready to go. A little pouchy-eyed and the worse for wear after the high old time at his antique cops’ convention and the quick flight home, but in, what was for Willie, a good mood. If there was any such thing as a happy ferret, Milano reflected, his partner was giving a first class imitation of it.

  It wasn’t going to last long, but it was nice while it lasted.

  They met in Milano’s office, and Milano, seated at his desk, took note of subtle changes on its surface. Some of Hy Greenwald’s personal effects were there including Hy’s own appointment calendar, pretty heavily loaded. Evidence in a way that the protegé might be the ball of fire he had been estimated to be.

  By way of a sociable warmup Milano remarked on this, and Willie, lighting his cigar in the armchair across the desk, grunted affirmation. When he had the cigar properly fuming, he said, “Greenwald told me you two figured out it was this guy Rammaert over on Fifty-seventh. It is him, isn’t it?”

  “Nobody else.”

  “Shows you. I dropped in there myself to size him up, and that fat son of a bitch don’t look like he has the brains for any such operation. Looks like he runs a funeral parlor. Great front. And that shop, too. You spotted those Boudin pictures? You know where he’s got them?”

  “Come on, Willie, would you be here if you thought I didn’t?”

  Willie had the grace to wink broadly. “My partner. A real wildman. But when it counts—”

  “Sure,” said Milano.

  “Look, Johnny boy, you think you’re easy to live with? But I never said you didn’t earn your keep. All those fat cat connections, glamor people, show biz screwballs, art crazy characters like that Grassie – I never said we don’t put money in the bank from your side of it. But you forget sometimes there is a beat-up old man with his nose to the grindstone across the hall. Doing all that boring nine-to-five paperwork that has got to be done.”

  “Finished?” said Milano.

  “I’m letting bygones be bygones. Now what about those pictures? From what I saw in that shop, the security is strictly nothing. So it’s just a case of lining up the two guys I want on this and timing their moves right. You give me that floor plan with the little old X marked on it—”

  “How do you know I can?”

  Willie froze for an instant, then warmed again. “Johnny boy, if you know where those pictures are, you saw them. I mean, with your own big brown eyes. You did not just see a paper bag with a string around it and Boudin pictures marked on it. If you did, you’d know it was just goddam bait, wouldn’t you?”

  “Whatever I saw, Willie, we’re playing this one legit. We’re buying those paintings from Rammaert.”

  Chris Bailey could produce silences that hummed in the ears. Willie now produced one that roared in the ears. He finally found his voice. “We are what?”

  “Buying them,” said Milano equably, “and fast. Now cool off and listen. Those paintings made it from the Coast to Miami, probably by car. They were shipped to Rammaert from Miami, and he’s got them ready now for delivery to Europe. Probably by plane. And if they’re on that plane when it gets off the ground at Kennedy, we have blown the deal.”

  “You still don’t—”

  “Keep listening. There was kind of a screw-up at the Miami end, so the cops there might wind up with Rammaert’s name and address. He doesn’t know about that, because if he did he wouldn’t have those paintings so close to him right now. That’s why we have to move fast, make it legit, not take any chances. And I guarantee Rammaert’ll sell me the goods for a bargain price.”

  Willie was fast recovering himself. “The Miami cops? For chrissake, if there was ever a small town, redneck, meatball department, you just named it. Whoever’s handling this case for them, you just show him a twenty dollar bill and watch how fast that folder gets lost.”

  “Stop dreaming and talk sense, Willie.”

  Willie was now back in balance. To prove it, he held the cigar at arm’s length and carefully tapped its ash to the carpet. He said in friendly fashion, “First let’s get straight what we mean by sense. What would you call a bargain price?”

  “Sixty thousand for both. He’ll want a lot more. He’ll settle for sixty.”

  “Sixty.” Willie pursed his lips and nodded solemnly. “Very reasonable.” Milano waited. He didn’t have to wait long. Willie removed the cigar from his mouth and leaned forward. “You really think we will pay that thief sixty thousand bucks for those goods – stolen goods – when we don’t have to? For that matter, if you got the gun to his head the way you say, why not just pay him off by telling him we’ll keep out mouths shut? And what can he do about that?”

  “You never push a rat up against the wall, Willie. He must have sunk plenty into the deal so far. We cover that so he won’t go dangerous on us. We get too greedy and the agency license could be on the line.”

  That touched a nerve but didn’t sever it. “Sixty thousand,” Willie said.

  “It makes the deal a piece of cake. Pacifica said they’d have payment in our hands on forty-eight hours notice. Probably through that Hale character. So you give them notice right now and by Wednesday he’ll be here with the money. The other thing you do right now is countersign an agency check for the sixty thousand. I’ll settle with Rammaert fast, and I’ll have those paintings waiting for Hale when he shows up. Simple?”

  Willie was taking it surprisingly well. Too well. So this was not going to be one of his apoplectic sessions, Milano saw, not this one. This would be one of those classic stonewalling jobs. An invitation to keep banging your head against that wall until you went dizzy and had to be carried to your corner.

  “John,” Willie said i
n the gentlest of tones, “my way costs only twenty thousand. At most. And Rammaert never knows what hit him.”

  “It’s still grand larceny.”

  “Then all Rammaert has to do is yell for the cops. Which you and I know is the one thing he will never do. Right? So we come around to that same old question. How can you have any kind of larceny without a complaint?”

  “Bullshit. The agency’s loaded, Willie. We’re not working out of that dump off Union Square any more. It’s getting time to change old habits.”

  “Maybe. So you just make out that floor plan with that big X—and with any helpful little notes to go along – while I think it over.”

  They looked at each other. A new comic strip featuring William Watrous, thought Milano. Granite Man.

  And it was better-than-a-Vermeer Chris Bailey, he knew, who was somehow blocking his way to the usual weary surrender. A co-conspirator, but to what? Buy back the paintings, and though this would bruise Rammaert, it meant she’d be the co-conspirator to only a mild scam. Let Willie do it his way, and, Chris baby, you are co-conspirator to something you might think is real evil.

  And it wouldn’t matter that John Milano had chosen not to tell you what had transpired behind the scenes. Five minutes after you opened the shop on that torn and disfigured canvas next morning, you’d work it all out. Too brainy for your own good, baby, and disastrously too brainy for mine.

  Milano watched Willie, an unruffled, squint-eyed owl, watching him. Settling in for a long stay.

  “There’s an informant involved,” Milano said. “You know how we stand on that. If we do it your way, this one could be hurt bad.”

  “Christine Bailey?”

  For two heartbeats Milano had the amazed feeling that the old bastard could actually read his mind. Those two beats were all Willie needed to settle any doubts he might have had, that was for sure.

  “I thought so,” Willie said. “For one thing, there I am okaying charges to Pacifica for surveillance of a Lorena Bailey. Big fat charges. By a couple of our colored help, no less. And when I put it to them, all they could tell me was it was some high school kid you had them tailing. But when I put it to Greenwald he said he didn’t know about any such kid, but there was a grown-up Christine Bailey worked for Rammaert. I got a look at her in that shop, Johnny boy. Great-looking piece of dark meat all right. So she fingers those pictures for you, and you pay off by fingering her sister for something or other. I’ll bet you fucked the ass off her too along the way, didn’t you? Not that this bothers me any. At least, not as long as I got my own private toilet here. With my own private toilet seat.”

  This man is garbage, Milano thought. A lot of words came close to describing him, but here was the only one that really did it with absolute precision. Garbage.

  But shrewd garbage.

  “She’s still an informant,” Milano said.

  “Knock it off,” Willie said contemptuously. “This is no pro we’ll ever do business with again. This is a pigeon flying by.”

  Milano seized the opening. “The total pigeon. In fact, she still doesn’t know Rammaert’s private business. Or where the hell those paintings are. But if you lift those paintings, Willie, she winds up at the bottom of the pile. I do not see it that way.”

  “You don’t.” Willie, his eyes fixed unwaveringly on this oddball across the desk, realized his cigar had gone out. He abstractedly drew the pack of matches from his pocket and then, without relighting the cigar, abstractedly put them back into the pocket. And that, thought Milano, was about as good as things were going to get. Willie said, “Let me spell it out. This piece worked the inside for you. She gave you your leads. So now you know right where those pictures are. But somehow she don’t. My goodness gracious, she don’t even know what Rammaert is all about, does she?”

  “Believe it,” Milano said.

  “Yeah? Well, I believe what I can see. And what I see is that while she was doing a job for you, you were paying off by doing some kind of job for her charged to Pacifica. You scratch my back, I scratch yours, right? But of course she never had the least idea why you’re scratching each other’s backs like that.”

  “And still doesn’t,” Milano said. “Because I cooked up a whole beautiful story for her to go on.”

  “Uh-huh. And if you didn’t, I’ll bet you could cook it up for me right now, couldn’t you?”

  We are going to do it Willie’s way, Milano thought.

  We are going to do it Willie’s way, and smartass Chris Bailey will take one long look at that pair of fourteen by seven emptinesses on Surface Number Ten and suddenly know all the answers.

  So the logical move now would be to haul this load of Willie garbage to that window and heave it out. Thirty stories free fall, and it really would become garbage. The trouble was that whether up here or thirty stories down it would be regarded by the law as some sort of human being. Felony manslaughter at the least, not misdemeanor littering. Which shows how much the law knows.

  On the other hand—

  Milano centered Hy Greenwald’s scratch pad on the desk, took pen in hand and wrote briefly. He tore off the slip of paper and offered it to Willie. Willie read it. He read it again. He looked at Milano. “Your I.O.U. for forty thousand?”

  “My way costs sixty. Yours costs twenty. The difference is forty. I pay the forty and we do it my way.”

  Willie’s face was screwed up into a Hieronymous Bosch study of total incomprehension. “Are you out of your fucking mind?”

  “Don’t push your luck, Willie. You’re getting the best deal you ever had a chance at.”

  Total incomprehension became total suspicion. “Why?”

  “Yes or no, Willie, that’s all you have to say. And the way you say yes is to countersign a company check for sixty thousand right now. I cash it tomorrow and move right in on Rammaert. I’ll have the paintings for you tomorrow afternoon.”

  “I still want to know what your angle is.”

  “Going once,” said Milano. “Going twice. And the answer seems to be no.”

  “The answer is maybe.” Willie studied the note again as if trying to break its code. He held it up on display. “This paper means nothing. And the way you blow your money, I know goddam well you couldn’t hand me any check for forty grand that wouldn’t bounce from here to Jersey City. So the big question is, if there’s formal papers drawn up where you assign the forty thousand to me out of your share of the company profits this year, will you sign that?”

  “Sure. Does that mean you are now saying we have a deal? Then what you do right now—”

  “Oh no,” said Willie. “I’ll have the papers drawn up by Tuesday morning first thing. First you sign, then you get the check for Rammaert’s payoff. Don’t worry, those pictures’ll keep one day more. So will Rammaert. And so will that chocolate bar you and him are taking turns at. Right?”

  Garbage to the end.

  Walking back to the apartment, Milano put in the first long crosstown block wrestling cold fury to the mat until, while it still did some heaving and writhing, it was pinned down there.

  The second block, he examined the case against John A. Milano.

  Time to part from Willie once and for all. But every passing year had been the time to part from Willie once and for all. So?

  Inertia. Moving along the old familiar groove you stayed in the old familiar groove.

  The good life. The very good life. Half-partner in what had somehow turned out to be, as Willie had predicted it would, a money machine. You could do all right on your own, but you could not do ten or twenty times better than all right. Which is what you were doing right now.

  Willie’s age. Maybe not older than God, but old enough to draw social security payments along with his company take, and you had to be in a special category of old to do that. How much more time could he clock anyhow?

  But getting down to the bottom line, Milano silently asked the statue of Bolivar guarding this expensive end of Central Park, can someone who voluntaril
y pays his partner forty thousand dollars just to claim his voting rights in the company be capable of sanely working out a heavy personal problem? Especially, as was now the case, when the problem appeared to be working him out.

  What the hell, sufficient unto the day—

  Milano let himself into the apartment, and Chris appeared in the bedroom doorway wearing his Sulka dressing gown over apparently nothing. She folded her arms on her chest and just stood there.

  “Hi,” she said.

  Milano regarded his forty thousand dollar prize with a sense of profoundly pleasurable rediscovery. “Hi to you.”

  “Something happened here,” said Chris. She hugged her arms tighter against her chest. “A little while ago.”

  End of announcement? Well, Milano thought, fuses will blow, and water will overflow the bathroom sink, and life will go on. He said encouragingly, “Something happened here a little while ago.”

  “Yes. I called the doorman on the intercom and ordered a couple of sandwiches. He said he’d be up with them in about half an hour.”

  “And you’re still waiting.”

  “No,” said Chris, making it a long, long no on a rising note. “About fifteen minutes after that, the doorbell here rang. I thought, well this doorman is really super service, isn’t he, and I opened the door. It wasn’t him.”

  “Chris, even in a place like this you never—”

  “It was a girl. Cute blondie. Big hello there smile. Until she got a look at me.”

  Milano’s heart sank. Literally sank, he knew, so that it was now being queasily cradled by his entrails.

  He glanced at his watch.

  One-twenty.

  Sunday.

  And ten o’clock Sunday morning was breakfast time with Betty at the Wardour.

  And with the phones off here—

  He said to Chris, “Did she ask who you were?”

  “No. She just pushed by and went looking through every room full speed, bathroom included. Then she hauled out that bottom drawer in the dresser and pulled out nighties and such and went in the kitchen and dumped them in the garbage can. Then she took off.”