The Dark Fantastic

by Stanley Ellin

  Binoculars.

  Once, when opportunity arose, trained on Christine, naked and tempting. Then she had moved out, and it was Lorena’s turn. And the kid had detected Kirwan’s game. And had been blackmailing him. Of course, that five-dollar-an-hour cataloguing job was just a cover-up.

  Confront Lorena with this, confront Kirwan with this, and what happens?

  Nothing, when that little team had every reason to keep its mouths shut. Correction. One thing. If Kirwan is in a mood for it, John A. Milano can be held liable for slander.

  Milano took out the pack of cigarettes, carefully opened it, and lit himself a cigarette. He drew in deeply, discovering sensitive areas right down to the bottom of his lungs, and exhaled the smoke luxuriously. All right, a momentary fall from grace, but it could be laid squarely on Christine Bailey who had to have a kid sister like that. A teen-age disaster area.

  He had stored the ashtrays on a kitchen shelf. He went to get one and on the way back picked up the unread copy of this morning’s Times from the foyer table. He laid it out on the desk over the Kirwan dossier and opened it to the real estate section. Sales and Rentals. Greenwich Village. Once rentals took up most of these listings; now with the co-op movement on, it seemed to be all sales. Which, considering that your rental apartment was likely to go co-op next week, made sense.

  Sheridan Square. Abingdon Square. Bleecker Street. West Tenth. West Tenth? West Tenth had style. But would she regard it as true Village when funky Village it definitely was not? He took out his pen and circled the Tenth Street address, then marked off a few other possibilities. One advantage in aiming for a house rather than an apartment was that you didn’t have to rush over with a deposit to nail it down. It would still be there next day when you had time to look it over.

  At three o’clock, the half-empty pack of cigarettes in his pocket, he went downstairs and had the doorman hijack him a cab for the trip to Brooklyn.

  It might have been Witter Street itself that put him off guard. Tree-lined, full of kids fresh home from school and more or less amiably playing an assortment of noisy games, here and there mamas and grandmas keeping an eye on baby carriages, the whole scene so charged with domesticity that it simply blocked from the brain any apprehension about what might be waiting behind the door of that house until one split second too late.

  Milano had rung the bell, the door had been opened by Kirwan who stood aside to let his guest enter the vestibule, the door had closed, and that one split second later Milano felt the hard object jammed into the middle of his back.

  He went rigid, knowing what it had to be before Kirwan, right behind him, spelled it out in a harsh whisper. “A shotgun, Mr. Milano. Double-barreled. Ten gauge. Both barrels loaded.” Whisper and wheeze, whisper and wheeze. “Don’t move. Don’t speak. Just do as I tell you.”

  “Hey, look,” Milano protested, and the pressure against his spine increased.

  “Don’t speak. Just do as I tell you. Clasp your hands on your head.”

  Milano clasped his hands on his head. The worst of it, he saw wrathfully, was that he had no one to blame but himself. Despite all kindly report about the old man along the way, he had known that this was a character way off center. Maybe dangerously off center. But comes the showdown, and here was Johnny boy with a loaded shotgun in his back and what could be a homicidal maniac at the other end of it.

  God damn.

  Of course, mistaken identity.

  This whole act was intended for somebody named Passarini, and Johnny boy had been taken for Passarini’s accomplice or whatever.

  Don’t speak? The hell with that.

  “I tell you,” Milano said, “that I don’t—”

  “Quiet!” The gun dug into him, and then Kirwan was seized by a spasm of coughing which had those twin barrels, their pressure unyielding, jiggle against the spinal column. Milano set his teeth hard. One cough too many, he thought, and that was it with a bang. The spasm subsided. Kirwan said, “I warned you not to speak. Just do as I say. We’re going up those stairs now. Very slowly.”

  The inside door of the vestibule was open. Milano, hands on head, moved across the threshold of the doorway into the hall leading to the staircase, that threatening pressure still firm against his spine. Against the wall there was a full-length mirror, a wooden hatrack mounted on either side of it. From the corner of his eye, Milano caught a brief view in the mirror of the picture he and Kirwan made. Milano and a tall, skinny Quasimodo. The old man was hunched all the way over, his body twisted, one shoulder thrust forward. The gun was held low, locked against the hip by an elbow, the finger through the trigger guard.

  Wheel around suddenly? Ram your shoulder back against that near shoulder, try to knock the man off balance, take it from there?

  Suicide time, Milano thought. The thing to guard against right now was the temptation to make any sudden move. No matter how fast the move, it couldn’t be as fast as the convulsive motion of that bony finger against the trigger. This Kirwan was not only a galloping case of paranoia but in his time a tested and proven combat man. And he was handling that ancient drill in expert style.

  “Move,” Kirwan said. “Very slowly.”

  They went up the stairs very slowly. There was a strip of carpeting, brassbound, laid on the stairs, and Milano carefully held to the center of it. Raise the left foot, place it on the step above. Raise the right foot, place it beside the left. One step. Two steps. Three steps—

  “Wait,” Kirwan ordered.

  Milano waited. As if he held a stethoscope against that caved-in chest, he could clearly hear the wheeze and gasp of those straining lungs. Just going up these stairs unburdened, he remembered, had been hard for the old man. Now burdened with the gun, he was being pushed to the limit of his strength.

  And then, hope springing eternal, maybe past the limit?

  Maybe. More likely if you’re paranoid enough, that limit was highly flexible.

  Captain Kirwan. That was it. Now paranoid. Reliving some wartime glory mission where he—

  “Move,” Kirwan said. “Slowly. Then wait.”

  Milano planted his left foot on the next step up. Planted the right foot beside it. Waited.

  A glory mission. Captain Kirwan’s foggy mind was back there on the road to Rome. The enemy all around. A prisoner taken.

  That had to be it.

  And then what happens upstairs? Do you plead the Geneva Convention? Ask for one phone call to the nearest Allied police precinct?

  “Move,” Kirwan said.

  They moved that way – one step up and wait, one step up and wait – to the head of the stairs. Then down the hallway to the tower room. A delay there by the desk. The last time Milano had gotten a look at that desk its top had been almost clear, the few items on it neatly squared away. Now it was covered by a surrealist clutter. Kirwan plucked a narrow leather strap from the clutter. The muzzle of the gun nudged Milano’s spine. “Across the room,” Kirwan said. “By the radiator.”

  Flogging time? No, tying-up time.

  An iron riser from floor to ceiling connected near its base to the radiator. Under orders, Milano backed up against the riser. The gun barrel clanged against the riser as it shifted position to the nape of his neck. Double-barreled all right: Milano could trace the outline of each barrel just below his hairline.

  “All right,” Kirwan said, “hands behind you around the pipe. Slowly. Good. Now cross your wrists.” One-handed himself, the gun barrels erratic against Milano’s skull with each movement, Kirwan slipped the strap around the crossed wrists, worked it through its loop, wound it around and around, and finished by tucking the free end under the binding at the juncture of the wrists.

  Tight and hard, Milano found, straining against the pressure, pulling the strap against the riser. So much for the old man’s failing strength. There was still plenty of it left. To what end? One prisoner taken and ready for questioning?

  At least when Kirwan stepped back to look over his handiwork the gun no longer dri
lled painful welts into the neck. Evidently satisfied with what he saw, Kirwan propped the gun against the wall and went over to the desk. From the litter he extracted a long piece of cloth. A badly wrinkled, brightly colored necktie.

  A necktie party?

  A private lynching?

  “For chrissake,” Milano erupted, “you’re making a mistake. I don’t know what this is all about, I don’t know any Passarini—”

  “Please!” Kirwan looked pained. “That part of the game is over, Mr. Milano.”

  “What game?”

  “Yours. That part of it.” Kirwan made an impatient gesture. “Understand that you’re beaten. But you can be helpful. Oh yes. But on my terms.” He moved up to Milano, the necktie taut between his hands. “I’m sorry. But I think you might be heard outside.”

  “Listen to me, Kirwan—”

  No use, not that Milano had expected it to be. He was gagged, the tie drawn between his teeth, knotted tight at the back of his neck right over the soreness left by the gun barrels. He tried to raise voice against the pressure, and it came out a growling in the throat. There was already a sour taste in the mouth from that necktie material and an outpouring of saliva saturating it.

  A total wipeout. One prisoner, sir, ready for disposal.

  Kirwan was doing some incoherent muttering in his throat too, as he went about his business. Impossible to make out the words, but from their rhythm he could have been reciting a set of rules to himself. Or instructions. Or the Ten Commandments.

  No way of getting any clues from this, Milano saw, but that deliberate series of actions might provide something – anything—to get a handle on. Kirwan opened the familiar plastic shopping bag on the desk. Into it went the familiar Thermos bottle. That heavy-duty pair of shears. The flashlight. That tool like a pliers with a notary public’s seal fixed on its nose. The last time out, that tool had been in two parts. Now it was riveted together, the fresh rivet conspicuously shiny against the dull metallic finish of the tool.

  And that was it. The same stuff that had been carted out of the basement next door on the introductory visit to Kirwan. Which had to mean that he was now packing to leave for that basement. But not to work on any boiler. You didn’t kidnap somebody at gunpoint and then go make boiler repairs. Cracked as Kirwan was, there was a purposefulness about him. Marching to a different drummer, yes, but toward some well-defined objective.

  All packed, Kirwan took stock of the prisoner.

  “You see, Mr. Milano? All for that handful of Mr. Passarini’s fireworks.” There was no triumph in that croak, only querulous reproach. “And you still haven’t come up with the answer, have you?”

  Milano shook his head vigorously to indicate truthfully that no, he hadn’t come up with anything.

  “I’m sure,” Kirwan said. He squinted up at the Naval Observatory clock over the doorway. “Almost four-thirty, Mr. Milano. So you’ll get your answer very soon. At seven o’clock promptly. Worth waiting for. Oh yes.”

  Milano measured the distance to the desk. The phone on the desk was close to its edge. With a leg extended it might be possible to jar that massive piece of furniture and send the phone to the floor. And then—

  For a chilling instant as Kirwan leaned over the desk it looked like the phone had drawn his interest too. Wrong, thank God. Part of the clutter was made up of tape recorder cassettes, a load of them. Kirwan drew them together into an untidy heap. He held one up to give Milano a proper view of it. “The rest of the explanation,” he said, “is right here. In all of these. Oh yes. Marked in order.” No more Captain Kirwan now but Professor Kirwan solemnly getting a seminar under way. “After the event – that should be not long after seven o’clock – you will make this clear to those in charge. Do you understand?”

  Milano repeated that vigorous shake of the head, no, and Kirwan instantly turned wrathful. “You’re not that obtuse, Mr. Milano. I said everything is here. The complete presentation. Complete. All marked in order. For the proper authorities. Priceless.” He was gasping the words, hardly able to form them. “Priceless.”

  Jesus, Milano thought with foreboding, now all the old man has to do to create a really wicked problem in getting out of this was to drop dead of a paroxysm on the spot. So picking the lesser of the two evils, he nodded enthusiastically in affirmation and was grateful that Kirwan appeared to cool down as fast – and unpredictably – as he had heated up.

  “Good,” he said. “That’s all then. Until seven. You’ll see.”

  There was a weatherbeaten raincoat slung over the back of the swivel chair behind the desk. Kirwan laboriously got himself into the coat, stuffed shotgun shells into its pockets from a box on the desk, then made his way to the gun leaning against the wall and, as if trying it on for size, tucked its butt under his armpit, the barrel extending along his leg concealed by the coat. Evidently satisfied with the fit, he hefted the gun in one hand, the shopping bag in the other, and headed for the door.

  He stopped in the doorway and turned to face Milano who, with a foot already probing for the desk, had to withdraw the foot lightning fast.

  “In your original tongue, Mr. Milano,” said Kirwan, “nos morituri.”

  He moved off, and Milano could follow that hunched-over figure along the hallway to the head of the stairs where it turned out of sight. But the house was deathly quiet, and the painful progress down the stairway was audible, step by tedious step. A brief silence. Then the sound of the front door slamming shut.

  That was at thirty-six minutes after four.

  Ten minutes later, Milano realized that he was dead-ended. Which, he knew, meant ten minutes shot to hell because he had gone physical when he should have gone mental. He had displayed exactly as much sense during that time as a mouse sealed in a shoe-box. Strictly instinctive and physical. Had slid down to a sitting position to ram his heel again and again into the leg of that desk – like ramming it against a block of granite – and the result, aside from a couple of the cassettes spilling onto the floor, was only physical anguish. A bruised heel. Bound wrists, forced against the riser as he stretched out as far as possible to reach the desk, seemingly gnawed to the bone by their leather binding. Both shoulder joints on fire. Mouth, abraded by the necktie, like raw meat worked over with sandpaper.

  Time to go mental.

  Milano pushed himself upright and leaned back against the riser with eyes closed. Under physical constraint, he found, it wasn’t easy to get a wild scramble of thoughts organized when the one constant among them was the raging need to get free of the constraint.

  Never mind struggling to get free of the constraint right now. The immediate object was to make some sense of it. Think it out. Take it from there.

  All right, the dim side. A wild-eyed certifiable case was roaming loose with a shotgun and a mess of backup shells in his pocket.

  The bright side. The wild-eyed certifiable case wasn’t really running loose. He and his shotgun were locked in that cellar next door where he would be busy at some project. Which would be completed at seven o’clock. After which—

  A project.

  Milano looked around the room taking stock. On the desk: telephone, penholder, lamp with a dent in its brass reflector, pile of cassettes, and what looked like a couple of old-fashioned blackpaper photo albums. Against the wall that antique safe. But now its door inscribed with the gilt Witter & Son was wide open, revealing just one lonely item, a cassette player.

  The family treasure, that player? Hardly. So one might assume – one should goddam well assume – that these cassettes with their numbered-in-order explanation of Kirwan’s coming event were the family treasure that had been stored in the safe. To be delivered – as well as someone bound and gagged could deliver them – to—

  How had Kirwan put it?

  Those in charge.

  The authorities. Who would be showing up soon after seven o’clock.

  But not Kirwan. Not the old man himself. Because he had other plans for himself after that mysteriou
s event.

  Take off somewhere. Disappear. The packed bags probably already stowed in his car. Now all he had left to do in that cellar was what? With what?

  In your original tongue, Mr. Milano. Nos morituri.

  Hell, Milano thought, that wasn’t just laying on the erudition, that gladiator’s goodbye. We who are about to die—

  Nos morituri te salutamus. We who are about to die salute you.

  Not likely you’d get the message, Mr. Milano, you dumb wop, said Captain Kirwan in effect, but if by some miracle you do, you’ll know I’m now signing off for good. I am going down with my event, baby. And why I did and how I did it is all on those tapes under your nose.

  Nos morituri, Mr. Milano, and up yours. You really walked into this one, didn’t you?

  That hunched-over half-dead wreck ready to go on its mission. One shotgun, plenty of shells in reserve to stand off unwanted visitors to that cellar for quite a while.

  One plastic shopping bag. Into it, one Thermos bottle. One heavy shears. One flashlight. One freaky-looking tool, freshly riveted.

  That was what did it.

  You fool around with the windowshade cord long enough, and suddenly the shade flies open and light floods in, dazzling you. All those years ago – it was even before he had teamed up with Willie – there was that gang of fake political heroes trying out extortion on those uptown hotels. A month of bomb threats, then an explosion. And more promised, until young Johnny Milano had tagged their Numero Uno and was allowed to be right there when the cops had invaded his little bomb factory. Dynamite evidence, said the cops happily, looking around. And one of them, pencil reversed in his hand, carefully nudged a curious tool into a plastic bag. A crimper, he said in answer to Johnny Milano’s question. You fit your blasting cap and fuse to the head of the dynamite stick and you crimp them tight with this gimmick.