Penelope

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Penelope Page 13

by Howard Fast


  They both looked up at the short, wide man who stood at their table. Cohen’s mouth remained open, but Penelope had the presence of mind to say, “Dear, dear John Comaday. What a delicious surprise! You must join us.”

  “It is a pleasure, Mrs. Hastings,” the commissioner said, dropping into a chair by the table.

  “What I want to know—and your answers don’t make one shred of sense,” said Comaday, “is where you got that money?”

  “My answers don’t make any sense,” Cohen said, chewing on his lower lip and strangely giving the impression of a ballet dancer on a high wire without a single movement of his body, “because you haven’t given me a chance to answer.”

  “I haven’t noticed you pushing me,” the commissioner growled. “You talk in the biggest circles I ever saw—and furthermore, what is a busy district attorney doing here in the park?”

  “A man has to eat,” Cohen protested.

  “You don’t eat. I never saw you eat. The kind of skin-and-bones body you walk around in doesn’t need food to nourish it. You live on your goddamn fantasies. Now what I want to know—”

  Penelope saw that Cohen was beginning to boil, and while it pleased her to see two men engaged in what was essentially a quarrel over her, she hated to be witness to a real altercation between the males of the species. She had always felt that the readiness of men to resort to name-calling and fist-throwing was-the direct result of their constant separation from the reasoning process. So she laid one hand on Commissioner Comaday’s blunt fist, and another on Larry Cohen’s bony hand, caressing each of them ever so gently as she said:

  “Dear Mr. Comaday—”

  “I think we know each other well enough for you to call me John, dear lady,” he said.

  “Thank you. John, then. Dear John …” lingering on the name, “dear John, you must understand that dear Larry is hopelessly romantic. He fancies me as someone who needs protection.” She smiled at Cohen, who was watching her uncertainly. “And he thinks that if he tells you the truth, a suspicion will arise in your mind that I robbed my husband’s bank.”

  “You!” Comaday exclaimed, as if someone had just accused Joan of Arc of operating a brothel as a sideline to saving France and practicing for sainthood. “He thinks that I would accuse you—the kindest, most gentle creature I have ever known—of robbing—oh no!” He turned on Cohen angrily. “You know what you suffer from?”

  Cohen shook his head in bewilderment.

  “A sick mind,” Comaday spat out. “I may be a cop—but I have always felt that, down underneath, every D.A. is an executioner. You got the mind of an executioner—”

  Cohen listened in silent amazement, while Penelope squeezed both their hands tenderly.

  “John—dear John Comaday,” she said, “how gallant of you! But your anger is directed toward the most innocent of innocents. Poor Larry was only demonstrating his own gallantry. You see, I gave him that package of money—exactly forty-two thousand, six hundred and eleven dollars.”

  “You did?”

  “I did,” Penelope nodded. “So you see, he had every reason to believe that I had stolen it—”

  “If he was a half-wit,” Comaday snapped. “If he could conceive of anyone as good and gentle as yourself—ah, the man’s a fool.”

  Larry Cohen was so intrigued that even the direct insult failed to touch him. “Penny,” he said, “where did you get the money? You never told me.”

  “Didn’t I?”

  “No,” Cohen said.

  “No, I don’t suppose I did. I was going to when you came along, John. You see, I had this lunch date with Larry—poor dear, he wanted to assure me that my yellow suit would be returned to me—and I had left my apartment and walked down Park and then the block to Madison Avenue, when this woman stopped me—”

  “What woman?” Comaday demanded.

  “She could have been your robber.” Penelope nodded, being both thoughtful and serious and weighing each word. She knew that Comaday was no fool, but she also knew that a man enamored of a woman will believe exactly what he desires to believe. Also, base premises are fairly unshakable. Comaday’s premise was that Penelope could no more rob a bank than he could jump over the moon, a judgment her husband would have shared.

  “Describe her,” Comaday said shortly and professionally; and as Larry Cohen listened with dumb and continuing wonder, Penelope said:

  “About my size—oh, perhaps an inch or two taller; jet-black hair (it has to be dyed, believe me, because no woman of her age has hair naturally that black), bright blue eyes—”

  “What age?” Comaday interrupted.

  “Thirty-five, thirty-six,” Penelope shrugged. “You know, John, when a woman cuts black hair into a bob and has the kind of face to carry such a haircut—you know, one of those round, tip-nose faces—well, it is almost impossible to tell what her real age is. Except that her nose could have been better.”

  “A bit lopsided?” Cohen asked.

  “What?” demanded Comaday.

  “The nose,” Cohen said.

  “You are clever, Larry,” Penelope nodded.

  “Black mole?”

  “No.”

  “Well, she puts that one on and off,” Comaday said. “The rest fits.”

  “John, do you mean that I was talking to the bank robber herself?”

  “You were. Did she have an accent of some kind?”

  Penelope nodded. She drove herself to try to understand why an otherwise sane and intelligent man could believe this kind of nonsense. Cohen was observing her with undisguised admiration, and Comaday said:

  “You seem very puzzled, Mrs. Hastings.”

  “Please, dear John, call me Penny. I feel that we are all of us such old, tried friends.”

  “Penny—”

  “Yes, of course. And you were asking why I was puzzled. But John, why should she give me the money?”

  “She gave you the money?”

  “Yes.”

  “Just like that?”

  “No, oh no,” Penelope said. “First she stopped me, and in this strange accent of hers—”

  “What was the accent like?” Cohen asked her.

  “I wish to hell you wouldn’t keep interrupting,” Comaday said testily.

  “Like the Gabor sisters,” Penny sighed. “I do love a foreign accent. I feel that I myself am so hopelessly, prosaically American—”

  Comaday flashed Cohen a knowing look. “Like the Gabor sisters,” Cohen whispered. His face twitched, and he covered it quickly with his hands.

  “Oh, you perfect ass,” Penelope thought. “The whole thing was saved so nicely, and now you’re going to give it away because you don’t have the self-control of a twelve-year-old.” Aloud, she said, “Poor Larry—is it anything serious?”

  “A twinge of migraine. I get it, you know. It only lasts a moment or two.”

  “I didn’t know. Terribly sorry,” Comaday said. “You don’t mind if Penny goes on?”

  “Not at all,” Cohen managed to whisper.

  “Well,” Penelope continued, “she stopped me and asked me whether I was not Mrs. Hastings. I said that I was. Then she thrust this little package, wrapped in white tissue, into my hands, and she said, ‘God help me!’ and then she fled.”

  “Just that? No more?” Comaday asked curiously.

  His hands still covering his face, Cohen made small noises. He arose and began to stumble away.

  “Can I help you?” Comaday asked; but as the commissioner made to rise, Penelope grasped his arm and assured him that Cohen was better off alone. “All he wants is a bit of cold water, and he’ll find that in the men’s room. Larry is shy about his pain. He doesn’t like people to watch him.”

  “How do you know all this?” Comaday asked.

  “People tell me things. They confide. I don’t know why.”

  “By God, I do,” Comaday said. “It’s because your heart is as large as your face is lovely.”

  “That’s so sweet. Thank you, John. W
e’re both of us lucky, I guess. Larry has so many problems—they overwhelm him. Don’t you think that’s the source of his headache?”

  “Larry will live,” Comaday said. “Let’s go back to the lady with the dark hair. All she said was, ‘God help me’? No more than that?”

  “Not a word more.”

  “How did she seem?”

  “Troubled. John—”

  “Yes—Penny?”

  “Will you keep after her, now that she has given the money back? The poor woman—”

  “The routine continues.” Comaday nodded. “We can’t have people going around and sticking up banks, even troubled women.”

  “I suppose not. Sometimes,” Penelope mused, “when I reflect on my own life and consider how I fritter away my time—not needed by anyone, not helping anyone—I do so envy people like yourself. Police Commissioner of New York City—thirty thousand men to do your will—”

  “To do the people’s will, my dear,” Comaday corrected her.

  “Still, your will. How proud and happy you must be!”

  “I’m afraid not,” Comaday said. “It’s one thing to do a day’s work. It’s another thing entirely to come home to a house where you are neither loved nor appreciated.”

  “Poor John—”

  At this point, Cohen rejoined them. His headache, it appeared, was much better, and he wanted to know whether he could not take Penelope home.

  But Penelope was in no mood to deal with Larry Cohen just now. She had been through a long and demanding day. “I am so sorry,” she said, “but I have three colleagues from the Children’s Aid Society waiting for me at home, and I must rush off. I hate to do this. But will both of you take me to Fifth Avenue and find me a cab there?”

  They were delighted. It was only after she had gone that Cohen remembered the blouse he must return to Madame Sadaba’s salon.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The City Federal Bank Building was located on Park Avenue, between Forty-ninth and Fiftieth Street, and reasonably between heaven and earth. At one point, James R. Hastings was all for the tallest building in the city, but his board of directors voted him down. It was the only real disagreement he ever had with his board of directors; nevertheless, it was a terrible blow to his ego, and as a result of it he had hardly talked to Penelope for a period of two weeks, except for a briefly snarled yes or no. When Penelope brought this to Dr. Mannix, she was advised to disregard her husband. “He has serious problems with his hostilities,” Dr. Mannix told her. “Just allow them to blow out, the way a storm does.”

  Finally, the architects arrived at a thirty-two story box of glass and aluminum with a single tower. James’s office was the uppermost office in this tower, and at first he desired windows on all four sides of his office. He resented—among other things—that he had a generation less of wealth than Penelope (that is, her family); and because his grandfather had been a small-town banker (savings and loan) he was exceedingly conscious of all and sundry status symbols. There were eight windows on each side of the tower, and if his office could include all four sides, that would give him thirty-two windows.

  The architects reminded him of elevators, air shafts, plumbing, waiting room and secretary, and he in turn remarked that if he knew as little of banking as they did of architecture, the City Federal Bank Building would never have been built.

  Withal, his office was large and spacious—as fine an office as Sadaba had ever laid eyes upon, and she was not easily impressed.

  If it did not have thirty-two windows, it had at least sixteen, and in all fact it was harder by far to crack than the new branch bank on Madison Avenue. Floor by floor, stage by stage, minor executive by minor executive, major executive by major executive, male secretary and female secretary—through all of them Sadaba fought her way. She used scorn and hauteur; she cajoled and she threatened; she stormed and she simpered; and to the endlessly repeated question of, “Just what is your business with Mr. James R. Hastings?” she steadfastly refused to answer.

  “In the church,” said Sadaba, “the priest is not asking Sadaba what is Sadaba’s business with God.”

  “Mr. James R. Hastings is not God.”

  “Ha! Just believe me—going to the bottom of this building and fighting your way up, and you is seeing who is God or Mr. James R. Hastings.”

  More frequently than not, Sadaba was incomprehensible to the secretarial help that surrounded Mr. Hastings. In such cases, she brazened through. It took a lot of doing, but finally it was practically done, and Mr. Hastings’ secretary brought word to him that Sadaba was outside.

  “Who?”

  “Sadaba.”

  “What is Sadaba?”

  “Sadaba is a tall, angry lady.”

  “Is Sadaba her first name or her last name?”

  “I asked her that. She said that Sadaba is her only name.”

  “Nonsense!”

  “Well, that’s what she says.”

  “What is her business with me?”

  “She won’t say.”

  “What!”

  “I insisted. But she won’t say.”

  “Then throw her out.”

  “She will not go.”

  “Then call security.”

  “I threatened her with that. She said, ‘Ha!’”

  “What the devil does that mean?”

  “I think it meant go ahead and call security.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “Because she seemed to have the upper hand, Mr. Hastings,” the secretary said, “and I think you ought to see her.”

  Even as the secretary had bowed to the weight of the implacable, so did Mr. Hastings become aware of a heaviness in the air-conditioned atmosphere, a sense of impending trouble.

  “What is she?” he asked his secretary. “I mean, what does she do?”

  “She operates a dress salon.”

  “Oh? Why didn’t you tell me that?”

  “You did not ask me.”

  “Of course I asked you. Don’t contradict me. The whole thing is obvious. Four or five thousand dollars of clothing bills that have slipped my wife’s mind. Did she call?”

  “Who?”

  “My wife. Penelope.”

  “No, Mr. Hastings, she did not call. Shall I call her?”

  “What the devil good is that going to do? No. Send this Sadaba in, I’ll talk to her.”

  Ignoring his request that she be seated, Sadaba paced slowly around James R. Hastings’ office, observing the place with a proprietary eye, as if she were estimating just how much high-pile rug and real Renoir her cut would entitle her to.

  “Nice, airy place,” she remarked finally. “Is better if you open window a little.”

  Ignoring her suggestion, Mr. Hastings barked at her, “Well, what can I do for you, Mrs. Sadaba?”

  “Is not Mrs. Sadaba. Is plain Sadaba.” Her wide nostrils quivered as she sniffed. “Is air conditioning. Sadaba despises air conditioning. What for in January is necessary air conditioning?”

  “It’s a contained heating and cooling system,” Hastings found himself saying.

  “Ha! In what is contained? To Sadaba, it smells stale.”

  “Mrs. Sadaba, surely you are not here to discuss my heating system?”

  “Not ‘Mrs.’—is Sadaba.”

  “I hardly think I know you well enough to call you by your first name.”

  “Is not first name—is not last name. Is Sadaba. Such an office, and you don’t even act like you got a little brains.”

  “That’s enough! That’s quite enough!” James R. Hastings cried, slamming his fist down on the desk. “Out! Get out!”

  “Not so fast, please, Mr. James R. Hastings.”

  His hand hovering over the security button, Hastings regarded her narrowly and demanded to know exactly what the devil she wanted with him.

  “I am a busy man.”

  “Sadaba is a busy lady. But not so busy she doesn’t stand by the window of her shop which is across Madison Avenue f
rom the newest branch of the City Federal Bank, and is actually watching the bank robbed.”

  “All right. If you have information about the robbery, take it to the police.”

  “Such information as Sadaba got you want Sadaba to bring to the police—is that it, Mr. James R. Hastings?”

  “Exactly what do you mean?”

  “Is meaning perhaps Mrs. James R. Hastings, wife of Mr. James R. Hastings?”

  “Sit down, please,” he said, his manner changing. “Sit down and say right out whatever you have to say to me.”

  “Good. Sadaba is liking straightforward conversation.” She seated herself in one of the chairs beside the desk. “Please, a cigarette?”

  He handed her a silver box and then offered a light, while Sadaba examined the under side of the box.

  “Excellent,” Sadaba said; but whether she was referring to the cigarette or the silver box, James R. Hastings did not know. For a moment it piqued his curiosity; but rather than engage in that particular discussion, he hewed to the matter in question.

  “What has the robbery of my bank got to do with my wife, Mrs. Sadaba?”

  “Ha!”

  “I’ll thank you to to be more explicit.”

  “All right, Sadaba is explicit. Your bank is robbed by lady in yellow suit and black hair. Yellow suit is your wife’s—yes?”

  “Yes, of course. The suit was stolen from her.”

  “Givenchy—yes?”

  “What?”

  “Is made by Givenchy, the suit. Anyone has an eye for suits, he can see is made by Givenchy this yellow suit. Maybe from one special-cut material Givenchy has special dyed. So is only one suit like it—yes?”

  “We know it is my wife’s suit. It was stolen from her the same day that my bank was robbed.”

  “So Sadaba is telling you this. Sadaba is standing by the window of Sadaba’s shop, across the street from your bank, when the lady who robbed the bank comes out from it. Is unmistakable—one lady, one Givenchy suit.”

  “Granted. The woman who robbed my bank may have worn the suit that was stolen from my wife. It’s a theory the police are working on. They have not proven it yet, but it is a theory that they hold.”

  “Sadaba turns theory into fact.”

  “You mean you know who the woman is—the woman who robbed my bank?”

 

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