3
Marlowe had followed Sam’s assailant—beefy man in gray suit—to the Chelsea Hotel, room 9C, which according to the desk clerk was a suite rented to a man named Hans Seeley. Marlowe was waiting in the hall for Seeley, if that’s who it was, to come out when he heard a muffled shot. Five minutes later another man, slight, with horn-rimmed glasses, came out of the room in a hurry, carrying a package wrapped in newspaper under his arm. Marlowe asked him if he had a match. The man, mistaking Marlowe for a confederate, handed him the package and said: “The boat thails tonight.” “What boat?” Marlowe asked. The Little Man, discovering his mistake, asked for his package back. Marlowe was too quick for him. Before Little Man could get to his pistolero, Marlowe had his arm wrenched behind his back.
Marlowe took the Little Man, who said he was Seeley, into room 9C—there was no sign of the other—and fired questions at him. What happened to the man who came in here? What boat thails tonight and what does it mean?
At first Seeley insisted he knew nothing, but under pressure of inquiry, he admitted to being a double agent in the employ of both Stockholm and Sol(l)ness, willing to sell out either or both for the right price, an ideologue of the necessary. Stockholm had hired Seeley to infiltrate Sol(l)ness’s organization. It didn’t take Sol(l)ness long to discover what Seeley was up to—perhaps Seeley even wanted him to find out—and so to stay alive Seeley was persuaded to betray Stockholm to Sol(l)ness. It was further possible that Stockholm had discovered that his agent was now in the employ of the enemy and had “persuaded” Seeley to betray Sol(l)ness in the guise of betraying Stockholm. Perhaps there was even a third force to whom Seeley betrayed both Stockholm and Sol(l)ness. Marlowe never got to find out. A shot from the window silenced Seeley’s lips forever.
Seeley’s assassin, bleeding profusely from a wound in the left shoulder, escaped down the fire escape, taking the last four stories in a final step.
Seeley’s last words, stammered in Marlowe’s ear, were something like (last words are often deceiving)—“The thoul is the heart’s hostage;”
“Thollness?” Marlowe asked, trying to decipher the message, but Seeley had no more words to speak.
The next thing Marlowe did was to tear open the package he had acquired from Seeley. Inside were a pair of brown men’s shoes, size 10—1/2D. On the sole of one he discovered what was apparently a treasure map drawn in childlike scrawl in red crayon.
Marlowe was studying the drawing when hit on the head from behind. When he came to, Seeley was gone and so were the shoes. He questioned the desk clerk, who insisted he knew nothing but remembered, after Marlowe slipped him a tenner, that he had seen a man dressed as a woman come through the lobby in a hurry, carrying the body of a mug who resembled Seeley.
“Just as Marlowe thought.” Marlowe said, and he went back to the Scandinavian Pavilion to find his friend Sam. where indeed, as we have seen, he did just that.
“For a long story it could have been longer.” I said. “How did you find the tunnel?”
“It’s an extraordinary example of devious planning,” he said:
“One admires it grudgingly.”
“What I mean is, how did you get to it?”
“Same way you did. Through the paneled wall in Stockholm’s office. What you really want to know is how Marlowe found out you were trapped in the tunnel. Am I right?”
“That’s what I wanted to know.” I admitted.
“It’s Marlowe’s view that we’re into something unbelievable here. Sam. Something really incredible. We are dealing with a conspiracy so intricate, subtle and diabolic, that it is beyond the invention of language to conceive. -6##--7&………/ :……/--(&) = ++ = +……/,#9#9#9 &&&&&&&&&&&) $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$/
($) $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$--***# %@#$/#="
“I don’t believe it,” I said.
“Nevertheless,” said Marlowe, “we live in a time in which anything is impossible.”
4
“I want to see Sol(l)ness.” I told the receptionist at the Trade Winds Foundation, an Oriental dwarf with the face of a depraved cherub.
“Whom shall I say is calling?” she said, winking at me.
“Use your imagination,” I said.
On electronic signal, the smoked glass doors behind her swung open into a simulated Mexican adobe hut. The whirr of tape recorders—six to naked eye going at once—like insects in the air.
Attractive brunette with pleasant smile in peasant blouse, past first bloom and blush, introduced herself with slight trace of East European accent as Madame Sol(l)ness.
“I am looking for a Harvard Sol(l)ness,” I said, taking quick sharp glance at surrounding environs. The detective must see with the eye of the poet.
“Do you mean my husband?”
“If you’re his wife, he’s who I mean.”
“My husband is at present in Mexico collecting new tapes.
Perhaps I can help you. Harvard and I work hand in glove.” She sat down crosslegged on what I assumed was a Mexican rug—the design on it like a treasure map or an algebraic equation—indicating with her head that she wanted me to sit next to her. “In Mexico, my friend, you do as the Mexicans.”
I squatted down next to her. “When did your husband leave Mrs. Sol(l)ness?”
“Call me Katerinka. Please.”
“I’m here on business, Madame Sol(l)ness. Three people are already dead because of something somebody wants. I think the key to it may be in this room.”
She pulled on her skirt, calling attention to her long legs.
“Three isn’t much. Do you think three is an especially large number? Perhaps they were accidents.”
“Does the name Mellisa Markey mean anything to you, Madame Sol(l)ness?”
“The name means nothing to me.”
“She worked for your husband.”
“Oh that Mellisa Markey. You ought to be more specific, Sam.”
I got up and walked behind Madame Sol(l)ness. “Mellisa Markey is dead,” I said dramatically.
She shook her head, denying the undeniable. “Her Spanish wasn’t very good. She had no sense of the conditional.”
“It won’t get any better,” I said. “What kind of work did Mellisa do for your husband, Madame Sol(l)ness?”
“Call me Katerinka. Odds and ends. Interviewing, translating, typing, window dressing. She laughed at his jokes.” The phone rang and Madame Sol(l)ness got up from the rug to answer it. “We live quite simply, my husband and I, as you can see. We admire simplicity. The simple life in our opinion is the good life.” She spoke Spanish on the phone in a high musical voice.
I was impatient. Three people were dead, one of whom I cared about, cared a lot about, and I didn’t know any more about the murderer’s identity than when I had started. “Bad news?” I asked. She was trembling.
“Sansho Dayu is dead,” she said and collapsed. I grabbed her before she hit the floor. “Was your husband responsible?” “We are all in our own way responsible,” she said in a soft familiar voice.
“Tell me what you know,” I said. She smiled slyly, stuck out her tongue. “All right, Madame Sol(l)ness… Katerinka, I’ll tell you. You found out—this was some time ago—that your husband was having a thing with Mellisa so you got him to fire her. Am I right so far?”
“A thing? What means, a thing?”
“He was having his way with her,” I said. “Go on,” she said coldly.
I was guessing wildly. “He fired her, but he didn’t stop seeing her, didn’t stop giving her tapes to translate. You knew because you had them followed or followed them yourself. It wasn’t the sex business that bothered you—you and your husband had an understanding about such matters—it was the tapes and the confidences. It didn’t matter to you that your husband preferred intimacy with other women, but what you wouldn’t put up with was his trusting another woman’s judgment above yours. That was the unforgivable sin, am I right?” Katerinka cleared her throat. “Especially a woman like Mellisa who was in your
opinion no more than an ignorant girl.”
“Very interesting,” she said, “your story.”
“Should I continue?”
“How does one stop you?”
“There was a time, several months of time in point of fact, when Mellisa refused to see your husband and you had him, Katerinka, in a manner of speaking, all to yourself. You were happy then.”
“Was I? I don’t remember.”
“But your husband was a persuasive man, Madame S…
Katerinka. Who knew that better than you? He persuaded Mellisa to see him again. You found out about it through one of your spies and the discovery of Sol(l)ness’s infidelity threw you into a fit of rage. Hell has no fury. Am I making sense?” Her eyes were closed and I had to shake her to get an answer.
“Yes no. I don’t think she knew more than one position.”
“Comparisons are invidious,” I said.
She batted her big brown eyes, moistened her lips with a snaky tongue. “Do you think I’m less attractive than that Markey person?”
The next thing I knew I was kissing her, into something beyond the invention of language, my position compromised. “So,” I continued, resisting distraction, “you wanted revenge.” “Yes,” “My first idea was that you followed your husband to Mellisa’s apartment, but then I realized that wasn’t the way you worked.” “Oh yes.” “What you wanted, Katerinka, was both of them out of the way. You knew enough of the operation to write Sol(l)ness’s books without him. And with the business came what was at the end of everybody’s rainbow, the black bird.” “Yes.” “So you turned him over to Stockholm.” “Yes, yes.” “And now comes the really beautiful part.” “Yes.” “You knew your husband’s style so well, inside and out, hand in glove as you say, you could imitate him if.” “Yes.” “Could actually impersonate him if.” “Yes.” “So disguised as Sol(l)ness it was you that took Mellisa out to dinner.” “Yes.” “It was you disguised as Sol(l)ness.” “Yes.” “Who went into her room with her.” “Yes.” “That fateful night.” “Oh yes,” “In her bed the masquerade could no longer.” “Yes.” “Persist.” “Oh yes yes yes yes.” “You.” “Yes.” “Strangled Mellisa until she.” “Yessssssssssssss.” We arrived at the same conclusion.
“Do you love me, Sam?” she asked.
I nodded my head. She was nibbling on an ear, whispering Mexican-Spanish endearments. “I’ll teach you all the Spanish I know,” she said, “We’ll do his books together. I’ll be good to you, Sam. Oh how good I’ll be.”
“No deal,” I said.
“You don’t love me, Sam.”
“If I let you go, Katerinka, every halfway good-looking woman around will take me for a sucker. That’s if I live that long. What’s to stop you from turning me over to Stockholm any time the whim goes through that pretty head of yours?”
She kissed me. Katerinka a persuasive woman with a kiss, turning my head. “You’re kidding, aren’t you Sam?”
“Get your clothes on, Katerinka. I’m turning you over.” “What’s it got you, your precious incorruptibility? You’re a failure, Sam. Look at your clothes. No one dresses that way anymore.”
She didn’t understand. There were things you did and things you didn’t do and if you did the things you didn’t do or didn’t do the things you did, you might as well be led by the nose by whatever Katerinka there was around to lead you. I picked up the phone and asked the operator to get me the police.
“Which police do you want, sir?”
“Put down the phone, Sam. Don’t make me do something we’ll both be sorry for. The Bolivian General Staff is in the next room.”
“Just get me any police, lady. This is an emergency.”
“I’ll make you rich and famous, Sam. We’ll share the black bird between us. Don’t make me push the button.”
“All lines are tied up,” the operator was saying. “Hang up and dial again. This is a recording. This is.”
“You leave Dragon Lady no choice,” she said and pushed the button.
5
When she pushes the button, Wilmer and Fritz come in, followed by the massive configuration of the fat man. From the pained look on Katerinka’s face, I can see it is not what she expected.
“Scotland Yard,” says the fat man, flashing a phony shield.
“You have something in your possession, madame, that belongs, if I’m not mistaken, to Her Majesty’s government.”
“Don’t believe him, Sam,” she says. “He’ll say anything.”
“How do I know, Stockholm,” I say, “you are who you say you are?”
“Sir, who else would I be?”
His answer puts an end to civil conversation. Our guns are out, his three to my one, putting me at an obvious though inessential disadvantage. When the fat man claps his hands, Fritz and Wilmer begin to take the room apart. Katerinka uses the occasion to slip noiselessly behind me. “If we get out of this alive,” she whispers, “I’ll tell you everything I know.”
The fat man and his colleagues desolate the room. Hours of tedious quest pass before Wilmer discovers a package wrapped in newspaper in a hollow space under the floorboards. “We have here the fruits,” Stockholm says, stripping the wrapping with his grotesquely truncated fingers, “of years of single-minded dedication. …Fools.” Inside the package is a single black open-toed woman’s shoe. “It is not even my size,” he says and laughs insanely. Fritz accuses Wilmer of a double cross. Wilmer in turn accuses Fritz. Several guns go off. In the confusion I grab the treacherous Katerinka and leap through a window. She is the last proof of my innocence.
“My hero,” she says as we fall. “My black bird.”
Wherever I go, the bird comes up one way or another. We pass a newsstand on the way to the police station. The headline on the late edition reads:
MARKEY CASE CLOSED
ALL IS FORGIVEN
The fix was in, I guess. It always is, even when the whole world stands on its head and says no.
“I’ll make you rich,” she whispers.
I say something about truth and justice coming before money and having to look at your face in the mirror in the morning when you shave.
“Who’s talking about money,” she says, “or shaving for that matter.”
I take her to an abandoned warehouse in the West Bronx overlooking the Harlem River and question her intensively night and day without rest, without regard for personal safety. There is more evidence than one can say. The lines of implication are myriad and complex. Guilt is everywhere.
“Hurry,” she whispers, my silky-skinned, downy-legged spy. “I have to be home at six to give the kids dinner. And please, whatever you do, Sam, don’t leave any marks.”
Sometimes in this business, you can be on the same case for as long as you live.
Neglected Masterpieces IV
The other night this unusual novel crossed my desk and I lost two days and two nights contending with it, unable to put it down for more than ten minutes at a time. A compelling fiction of nine hundred odd pages attenuation, it is titled THE SWAN FLIES AT MIDNIGHT’S FALL and comes full blown from the pen of the pseudonymous Sexton Lovelady. Lovelady is a master storyteller and plot twister as I hope a brief recitation of the narrative will evidence.
At the center of THE SWAN FLIES (etc.) lies Cora Boardway, a secretary out of Cedar Falls, Iowa, who falls in love with and marries Harmon Stores, the fourth richest man in the world. At the time Harmon and Cora meet, Harmon has just learned that he has a hereditary disease (“the sins of his father visited on the son”) and that he has a life expectancy of no more than five years. Up until then, Harmon Stores had been a ruthless and unfeeling man, self-regarding in the extreme. The news of his mortality causes him, after not a little soul searching and self-recrimination, to make an effort to change himself for the better. As a step in that direction, he elects to make plain, unassuming Cora his fourth wife. Harmon decides to marry Cora, not because he loves her, though in time that too will come to pass, but be
cause she is different from all the other women he has known (most of them great beauties), and because he wants to leave his fortune to someone sincerely deserving. Cora, in his view, is unspoiled and highly principled, the most decent person of his own generation to come into his life. She is reluctant to marry Harmon because of the disparity of their situations, but finally she is too much in love with him to let his inordinate wealth stand in the way.
Most of the preceding is offered to us in flashback or through dialogue between Stores and his friend and advisor, Dr. Rankin. When the novel starts Cora and Harmon are celebrating their first anniversary. They seem happy together—indeed we learn they are exceedingly well mated—though Harmon has a nasty predilection for chasing tail. He explains it to Cora in a characteristically eloquent passage as a “cursed disease” and assures her that “you alone illumine the dark places” in his life. “I can’t share you,” she tells him. “I’m not made that way.” Harmon promises his wife to resist the evil stirrings in his nature. He is able to keep this promise until the beautiful television newscaster, Donna Amanda Tortona, comes to interview him for a series she is planning on self-made men. They are instantly attracted to each other and drift into a volcanic affair. When Cora learns of her husband’s infidelity—she actually discovers Harmon and Donna Amanda (“their ruby thighs o’erlapped”) making love in the maid’s room—she feels that she can no longer continue living in the same house with her husband.
Cora leaves no forwarding address and Harmon hires a private detective to find her and bring her back. This is one of the most interestingly plotted sections of the novel, an interstice between circumstance and metaphor. The detective, Bill Wall, turns out to have been a high school sweetheart of Cora’s from Cedar Falls and is a personification of her innocent past. Following a hunch, Bill Wall discovers Cora working as a waitress in Beverly Hills, it is what she had always dreamed of doing as a child—and orders a tuna fish sandwich on rye toast at her table. There is a dead fly in the sandwich, a symbol of the difficulties Wall will confront in trying to bring Cora back to her prodigal husband. Wall pretends to Cora that their meeting is circumstantial, that he just happened to wander into the obscure luncheonette—a place called Hand to Mouth—in which Cora is slinging hash.
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