by Henry, Kane,
Blamey got up.
I said, “Good-by now, nice man.”
“Good-by, Mr. Chambers. Take care of yourself.”
11
THE HOUSE on East Sixty-seventh Street was an old-timer, located on a corner and three stories high. It had a quaint grill-door entrance, street-level, and a knocker. I lifted the shiny brass knocker and I knocked.
A butler, whose face was a question, opened the door.
“Chambers,” I answered.
The butler took my top hat and bowed and gracefully gestured welcome with his right hand and arm and disappeared through a low doorway on the right. I stood alone in a long narrow dim hallway, which, about twenty-five feet away, grew into a brightly lit room.
It was strangely quiet in this house. I wondered for a quick moment if something had gone wrong. I took a few steps toward the bright room with the eating hardware and then to my left I saw high, polished-wood twin doors. I pushed through and walked into a lushly carpeted, heavily furnished, lavish drawing room, and there in the middle of the room with her hands on her hips and quite alone stood Miss Edith Wilde.
Tartly she said, “Midnight, Mr. Chambers. Remember? Not dawn.”
I said, “You are very beautiful.”
She said, “Thank you. You are late.”
I said, “You’re an exquisitely beautiful woman.”
And I wasn’t kidding. In severe wine velvet, her bold curves were milder, but a quality, an alluring, gentle, inherently regal quality was about her like a cape of glory — something I had missed before.
I bowed. I said, “Apology for tardiness. Business. We are alone, perhaps. I hope.”
“We are, for now.”
“May I kiss you?”
“Peter, the irrepressible. No. The others are in the garden. I am here because I heard you knock. And I heard you knock because I was listening. And I was listening only because I was bored.”
“Flatterer. What is this about a garden?”
“A charming garden. Come along, my one-eyed adorer, and I’ll show you.”
“Oh,” I said. “A floor hit me.”
“Come along, then, and look out for swinging floors.”
I said, “Anybody here know my business?”
“Of course not.”
“What am I?”
“You’re a friend of mine.”
She touched a cord with a gold tassel and the butler came in.
“Aperitif?” she inquired and she looked at me.
“Manhattan,” I said.
“Manhattan, Alfred. And several Martinis, dry. Please serve them in the garden. Now, come along, Peter Chambers. And don’t disgrace me.”
She put her arm through mine and she walked me to and through curtained French doors and we went into a coolly lit garden and six people did not look at us.
“Mr. Peter Chambers,” Edith said loudly. “Mr. and Mrs. Gorin, Professor and Mrs. Brewster, Professor and Mrs. Gorin.”
I said, “Pleased,” to the short murmur of acknowledgment.
And then a stylish lass with a scintillating curve of gorgeous upsweep got up and came to us and took charge; a blonde with verve and eyes and small curves and a pink revealing gown and voltage.
“Mr. Gorin has been asking about you, Miss Wilde.”
“Has he?” purred Miss Wilde. “Thank you.”
Edith walked across to two men who looked alike facing each other in wicker chairs and one of them got up and dragged another chair over and she sat down.
“Dorothy,” said the pink lady.
“Peter,” I said.
“Good. I hate formalities.”
She stood a little away from me and held my hand and looked at me, up and down, with curiosity. I liked it.
“Come sit down, Peter. I like that name.”
Her eyes were wide and blue and her nose was tiny and upturned and her lips were molded salaciously and sparkled, and sitting on a wicker sofa I was a foot and a half above her and I looked down and admired the scarcity of pretty pink gown.
“I’m glad you came,” she said.
“I am too.”
Alfred came with the cocktails. I set my Manhattan on the wide arm of the sofa and Dorothy daintily plucked a Martini from the tray as the man moved away.
She calculated studiously on slender soft white fingers with red nails. “Edith’s Martinis. One of three. She shall be one-third more furious.”
I sipped my Manhattan. I said, “I like this garden business.”
“Thank you. It was my idea. This used to be a yard.”
Edith looked toward us and quickly looked away.
Dorothy drank half her Martini. “This midnight supper was my idea too. Not really supper. We’ve all eaten. Snack, rather. It’s dull as dull hereabouts. I’m working on the girls for a week end in the country.”
I said, “Let’s try one subject at a time. Let’s start with here. Tell me who is who.”
“All right. The two men with Miss Wilde are the brothers Gorin.”
“I know one of them. I helped when he got that patch over his eye. Wesley. The younger one, then, is Eric.”
Both were little men, almost dainty. They looked alike enough to be twins but Wesley’s wavy hair was iron-gray and Eric’s wavy hair was brown, and Wesley’s face was loose and pale and had more lines than an accountant’s ledger, and Eric’s was a tight ruddy face with no wrinkles, only cracks; less fat, more bony and higher cheekbones. Wesley looked about fifty-five, Eric about ten years younger.
“And that,” she said, “is Professor Brewster.”
He sat on a large sofa between two ladies who talked right through him. His pudgy hands were folded over lots of stomach and he seemed asleep and he was old, past seventy, and completely bald with a large hawk nose and a great square heavily jowled face.
The women were middle-aged and one was attractive with milk-white hair and a haughty face and a stiff upright sitting posture, and the other was or had been blonde, of indistinct plain features and remote colorless eyes behind large pinch-nose glasses.
“Which one is Brewster’s wife?”
“I am Brewster’s wife.”
I almost fell off the wicker sofa. Mrs. Dorothy Brewster’s laughter tinkled softly.
“The lady with the white hair is Mrs. Wesley Gorin and the other lady is Mrs. Eric Gorin.”
I kept my eyes on the cherry in the cocktail glass. I said, for want of anything better to say, “Not very sociable, these folk.”
She finished her Martini. “You’re very wrong. Quite the contrary. That is entirely my fault. I am quite the willful tyrant and they know me and they all know better than to interfere when I set about monopolizing. And now, Mr. Peter, I am monopolizing.”
“Oh.”
“What about your black eye?”
“Aren’t you the patient one, Mrs. Brewster?”
“Patient? No. Polite, for a minute or two. The name is Dorothy.”
“The black eye is a tiresome tale.”
“Not interested. I’d like more Martini, though. Let’s forget about the eye, which only enhances your manly beauty, and let us go mix more.”
She led me back through the French doors and through the drawing room and through the narrow hallway and into a kitchen and she said, “That is all,” to the carping face of Alfred and he went away.
“Now,” she said and she produced rye and bitters and cherries and olives and gin and two kinds of vermouth, dry and sweet, and then she backed up against a table and put her hands behind her and clasped the edge of the table and watched me, her body tight against her dress.
I mixed drinks. And set them up on the washtub and I looked at her and she didn’t move and I looked again and I don’t know which of us was breathing more heavily.
I had to say something. I said, “No servants?”
“None other than Alfred.”
“No one?”
“There’s a woman for cleaning that comes in. Not a member of the household, though. W
hat are we talking about?”
She wriggled just a little bit, which didn’t do me any good at all. “But ask me more if you like. Anything.”
She moved a little and her breasts pointed at me and the outline of her body from thigh to shoulder stood out more than nude in the flimsy pinkness of the smooth silk dress.
I went over and I kissed her arm and her hands went under and around and she hooked onto my shoulders and she raised herself on me and she kissed me on the lips, but good.
It was developing into one hell of a swell case.
The midnight supper, at two thirty in the morning, was very successful. Dorothy had quit monopolizing and I got acquainted with the company. I sat between Edith and Dorothy and across from Wesley Gorin, and Wesley was a pretty nice guy at that, hearty and witty and human and friendly. And Eric was drunk and showed us some really skillful magic. “Quite out of character for a school teacher. And botany,” Tamara Gorin said. And Professor Brewster came awake and vehemently told jokes. And I enjoyed everything and especially the constant pressure of Dorothy’s resilient thigh and her occasional warm hand on my knee. And Brewster told the one about how seven sidecars make you see double but think single, and everybody laughed and Dorothy looked at me and said, “Don’t you know any jokes?” and I shook off most of the haze and remembered I was there on business.
“I know a joke,” I said, “and I tell it just before I go home and then I’m remembered as the life of the party.”
“We are going home,” Edith said flatly and looked at her watch.
“Then tell it,” Dorothy begged.
“Little fellow,” I told them, “was out on a cruise. First day out he went down to breakfast and was assigned to a table with a Frenchman who was already digging in. Frenchman got up and bowed and said, ‘Bon appetit.’ Little guy said, ‘Ginsburg,’ and sat down. Lunchtime, Frenchie got up and bowed and said, ‘Bon appetit.’ Little guy said, ‘Ginsburg,’ and sat down. Seems the Frenchman got there before him at supper too and he got up again and bowed and said, ‘Bon appetit,’ and the little guy said, ‘Ginsburg,’ but without enthusiasm. Taking a turn on the deck that evening, the little guy met a friend and related what had happened. ‘Dope,’ his friend said. ‘This is not introducing. It is meaning bon appetit — good appetite.’ ‘Oh,’ said the little guy, and went to bed, but the next morning he made it his business to be at the table before the Frenchman. When he saw him, he jumped up and bowed and said, ‘Bon appetit.’ ‘Ginsburg!’ said the Frenchman.
It was well received. Brewster’s roar cut through the general laughter. “That’s good,” he yelled. “Good.”
“Xavier Hoy Ginsburg,” I said to nobody.
Eric Gorin’s face swung toward me abruptly and his stuck-on smile was an unwilling splotch on his mouth. I tried looking like a lamb, but our eyes met, violently, like a kick in the stomach.
At the curb, I stopped and looked for a cab.
“I’d much rather walk,” Edith said.
Stonily she said, “Was it mentioned that Dorothy Brewster is Henry Brewster’s wife? Not daughter.”
“Quite pretty.”
“I wouldn’t exactly call old Henry pretty.”
“Subtle,” I said, “like a pooch at a fire-plug. You know whom I mean.”
“Dorothy Brewster is quite pretty, quite forward, and quite dangerous.”
I said, “What am I reading into innocent conversation? Could it be jealousy?”
She stopped walking and so did I. She said. “Peter, I don’t like hedgehopping. I rarely hurt. But I hurt easily when I can be hurt.”
“Look,” I said. “Nonsense. That just happens to be me. Ungrammatical but veracious. It doesn’t mean a thing. I’m built that way. Very little means anything to me, for that matter. Sometimes, yes. Mostly, nothing. It’s the way I was made.”
She said, “Nonetheless, I had a very uncomfortable evening.”
We walked the rest of the way without saying a word. At the Broadmoor, she opened her bag and took out her keys and she looked at me, her peculiar green eyes glowing.
I said, “Forgiven?”
She said, “Yes.”
I said, “Sucker.”
She said, “Precisely.”
I said, “You’re a good guy. I’m sorry.”
“Nightcap?”
“With all my heart.”
12
I WAS home in bed next day. All day. I awoke once and saw the sun and turned and squirmed back to sleep, and I heard the phone ring, far away, a few times, but I couldn’t get interested. It was a quarter to six in the evening when I got my legs down over the bed and sat there and listened to my stomach. I went to the bathroom and looked at my red eyes in the mirror and stuck my tongue out and looked at the white fuzz and put my tongue back and it didn’t fit.
The phone rang and it set off a gong in my head.
“ ‘lo,” I said in the living room.
“This is Miss Foxworth. There’s a party been trying to get you all day.”
“Who?”
“A party by the name of Matty Pineapple.”
“Thank you, precious.”
“He left a number.”
“What’s the number?”
She told me and she hung up.
I called Matty Pineapple. I said, “Yes, okay, one o’clock tonight, good-by.”
I opened a window and put the gong in my head out for air. It was a stinker again; cold, damp and cloudy.
I pulled my head in and closed the window. I went back to bed.
I had breakfast at midnight and I showered and I looked at my eye in the mirror and I didn’t like my face. I dressed and took my hat and topcoat, and downstairs I opened the street door to a windy night — and Blair Curtis.
“Well …” I said.
We went back into the lobby.
Curtis said, “I thought I’d try you at home. I have an appointment in this neighborhood in half an hour.”
“Anything new?” I asked.
“No,” he said. “That is what I wanted to know. I called your office several times today.”
“I didn’t get any message.”
“I didn’t leave any.”
He took his hat off and said, “Your friend Lieutenant Parker is beginning to lose patience with me. I’ve been spending too much time with him. I wish you’d do something.”
“I’m doing the best I can.”
I wasn’t being polite. I wasn’t having any of that this evening. I wasn’t inviting him up to the apartment for a drink. Not tonight. I was fidgety. I had an appointment with Mr. Matty Pineapple, which was important, and I wanted to drop in on Blamey first. I got a good idea; I’d be polite and I’d see Blamey too.
I said, “I have an appointment at the Club Nevada. It’s near enough. Let me buy you a drink.”
He smiled. He said, “No, thank you. I really should be going. But please keep me apprized, Mr. Chambers. I’m very anxious.”
Outside, we buttoned our coats and shook hands and went off in opposite directions. I walked fast until I got to the neon lights of the Nevada.
I saw Grant at once, perched on a high stool at the circular bar, his back to the door. I checked my things and went over and put my arm around him.
“Hello,” I said, feebly.
He took a long, black, flat cigar out of his mouth and he looked at me, wall-eyed.
“Remember me?” I said. “I’m sorry about last night. But you know how it is. I love the girl. I wanted to make an impression.”
He didn’t say anything. He shrugged my arm off and lifted his drink and finished it.
“Buy you a drink?” I said.
“No.”
“Come off it, Andy boy. Last night was just one of those things.”
He looked away. I thought about yanking him off the stool and trying my luck again. I said, “No drink with a pal?”
He said, “Pal, you’re riding for a fall.”
It was nothing, but I didn’t like the way it s
ounded. For a second, I had a skinny tinge of apprehension. I chased it away.
“Suit yourself,” I said. “But remember. Lay off my girl.”
I went around to the dressing rooms to see Blamey. Blamey was out. She’d be back though, soon, if you cared to wait.
I cared to wait. I cared a lot. I just didn’t have the time.
Matty’s had been a speakeasy during prohibition; it was still a speakeasy in that when most all of the other spots in New York were shuttered for the night in pursuance of law, there was still a drink to be had at Matty’s.
Matty’s was raided regularly and shut down intermittently and reopened inexorably.
You checked your hat and coat and there was a Tap Room to your right. It was a long bar (to which you had to wiggle through eager customers five deep) and a concrete floor covered with green sawdust and scattered cocktail tables and a ceaselessly grinding juke box.
To your left, was the large square Rose Room. This had rose lights and a bandstand and a band and a small slippery dance floor and many round tables with rose-colored tablecloths. It was always noisy.
I picked my way to a table in the rear of the Rose Room.
The waiter said, “Howdy, Mr. Chambers.”
Mr. Chambers said, “Rye and ginger ale, no ice, and tell Matty I’m here, please, Slim.”
“Right away.”
I drank my rye and ginger ale and appreciatively I watched six foot five of gorgeous Dirty Gertie Golden, and plenty wide, rhythmically unclothe tremendous expanses of shoulders and bust and hip and leg in a strip-tease that was a strip-tease.
I flagged the waiter. “Well?”
“But you only just told me, Mr. Chambers. He’s very busy.” He jerked a thumb at the peekaboo door leading to the gambling tables. “Trouble. Inside.”
“It’s his trouble. Go in there and tell him I’m here. He’d hate it like all hell if I left without seeing him when he specially asked me to come down tonight.”
“Oh,” Slim said, “he wants to see you.”
I was deeply engrossed in all of Dirty Gertie Golden when Matty slumped down alongside me.
“How’s all the little tricks, Petie boy? A louse inside tried to knock himself off. Why do they always pick my joint?”