“What’s your uncle’s name, sir?”
“Cyphre. Louis Cyphre.”
“I’m terribly sorry. Mr. Cyphre checked out this morning.”
“What? Back to France?”
“He left no forwarding address.”
I should have chucked the whole thing right there and taken Epiphany for a Circle Line cruise around the island. Instead I phoned Herman Winesap downtown and demanded to know what was going on. “What the hell is Louis Cyphre doing at Hubert’s Flea Circus?”
“What business is it of yours? You were not hired to follow Mr. Cyphre. I suggest you stick to the job you’re getting paid for.”
“Did you know he was a magician?”
“No.”
“Doesn’t that fact intrigue you, Winesap?”
“I have known Mr. Cyphre for many years and fully appreciate his sophistication. He is a man with a wide range of interests. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least that prestidigitation was among them.”
“In a penny arcade flea circus?”
“Perhaps it is a hobby, a form of relaxation.”
“Doesn’t make sense.”
“Mr. Angel, for fifty dollars per diem, my client, yours too, I might add, for that price he can always find someone else to work for him.”
I told Winesap I got the message and hung up.
After a trip to the cigar stand for additional dimes, I made three more calls. The first, to my answering service, yielded a message from a lady in Valley Stream with a missing pearl necklace. Someone in her bridge club was suspected. I didn’t write down the number.
Next, I called Krusemark Maritime, Inc., and learned that the President and Chairman of the Board was in mourning and not available. I tried his home number and got some flunky who took my name. I didn’t have to wait long.
“What do you know about it, Angel?” the old brigand barked.
“Some. Why don’t we save it. I need to talk to you. Soon as I can get there’d be as good a time as any.”
“All right. I’ll call downstairs and tell them to expect you.”
THIRTY-EIGHT
Number Two, Sutton Place was the building where Marilyn Monroe lived. A private driveway curved off 57th Street, and my cab let me out under a pink limestone vault. Across the way, a row of four-story brick townhouses was marked for doom. Stark whitewash crosses were crudely brushed on every window like a child’s painting of a graveyard.
A doorman festooned with more gilt braid than an admiral hurried to assist me. I gave my name and asked for the Krusemark residence.
“Yes, sir,” he said. “Elevator on the left.”
I got off on the fifteenth floor, stepping into a spartan walnut-paneled foyer. Tall gilt-framed mirrors on either side provided an infinity of foyers. There was only one other door. I rang the bell twice and waited.
A dark-haired man with a mole on his upper lip opened the door. “Mr. Angel, please come in. Mr. Krusemark is waiting for you.” He wore a grey suit with tiny maroon pinstripes and seemed more like a bank teller than a butler. “Right this way, please.”
He led me through large, luxuriously furnished rooms with views of the East River and the Sunshine Biscuit Company over in Queens. Precisely arranged antiques suggested those period display rooms at the Metropolitan. These were rooms for signing treaties with quill pens.
We came to a dosed door and my grey-suited guide knocked once and said: “Mr. Angel is here, sir.”
“Bring him in where I can see him.” Even through the door’s thickness, Krusemark’s husky growl reverberated with authority.
I was ushered into a small, windowless gym. The walls were mirror-covered, and the multiple reflections of stainless steel body-building machinery gleamed endlessly in every direction. Ethan Krusemark, wearing boxer shorts and a skivvy, lay on his back under one of these shining contraptions, doing leg presses. For a man his age, he was pumping a lot of iron.
At the sound of the door closing, he sat up and looked me over. “We’re burying her tomorrow,” he said. “Toss me that towel.”
I flipped it to him, and he wiped the sweat from his face and shoulders. He was powerfully built. Knotted muscles bunched beneath his varicose veins. This was one old man you didn’t want to fool with.
“Who killed her?” he growled at me. “Johnny Favorite?”
“When I find him, I’ll ask.”
“That danceband gigolo. I should have deep-sixed the bastard when I had the chance.” He smoothed his long silver hair carefully back into place.
“When was that? When you and your daughter snatched him from the clinic upstate?”
His eyes locked on mine. “You’re way out of line, Angel.”
“I don’t think so. Fifteen years ago, you paid Dr. Albert Fowler twenty-five thousand dollars for one of his patients. You gave your name as Edward Kelley. Fowler was supposed to make it look like Favorite was still a vegetable in some forgotten ward. Up until a week ago he did a pretty good job for you.”
“Who’s paying you to dig into this?”
I got out a cigarette and rolled it between my fingers. “You know I won’t tell you that.”
“I could make it worth your while.”
“I’m sure you could,” I said, “but it’s still no dice. Mind if I smoke?”
“Go right ahead.”
I lit up, exhaled, and said: “Look. You want the man who killed your daughter. I want Johnny Favorite. Perhaps we’re both interested in the same guy. We won’t know unless we find him.”
Krusemark’s thick fingers curled into a fist. It was a big fist. He punched the flat of his other hand and a noise like a board snapping echoed in the gleaming room. “Okay,” he said. “I was Edward Kelley. It was me paid Fowler the twenty-five Gs.”
“Why did you use the name Kelley?”
“You think I’d use my own name? The Kelley business was Meg’s idea, don’t ask me why.”
“Where did you take Favorite?”
“Times Square. It was New Year’s Eve 1943. We dropped him off in the crowd, and he walked out of our lives. So we thought.”
“Let’s take that one again,” I said. “You expect me to buy that after paying twenty-five grand for Favorite you lost him in a crowd?”
“That’s the way it happened. I did it for my daughter. I always gave her what she wanted.”
“And she wanted Favorite to disappear?”
Krusemark pulled on a terrycloth robe. “I think it’s something they cooked up together before he went overseas. Some kind of hocus-pocus they were fooling around with at the time.”
“You mean black magic?”
“Black, white, what difference does it make? Meg was always a funny kid. She played with tarot cards before she could read.”
“What got her started?”
“I don’t know. A superstitious governess; one of our European cooks. You never know what really goes on inside people’s heads when you hire them.”
“Did you know your daughter once ran a fortunetelling parlor at Coney Island?”
“Yes, I set her up in that, too. She was all I had, so I spoiled her.”
“I found a mummified human hand in her apartment. Know about that?”
“The Hand of Glory. It’s a charm supposed to open any lock. The right hand of a convicted murderer, cut off while his neck is still in the noose. Meg’s has a pedigree. Came from some Welsh highwayman named Captain Silverheels condemned in 1786. She bought it in a Paris junk shop years ago.”
“Just a souvenir of the Grand Tour, like the skull Favorite kept in his suitcase. They seem to have had similar tastes.”
“Yeah. Favorite gave that skull to Meg the night before he shipped out. Everybody else gave their girl a class ring or a varsity sweater or something like that. He picks a skull.”
“I thought Favorite and your daughter had broken things off by then.”
“Officially, yes. Must have been some game they were playing.”
“Why do you sa
y that?” I flicked an inch-long ash onto the floor.
“Because nothing changed in their relationship.”
Krusemark pressed a button next to the door. “Like a drink?”
“A little whisky would taste good.”
“Scotch?”
“Bourbon, if you’ve got it. On the rocks. Did your daughter ever mention a woman named Evangeline Proudfoot?”
“Proudfoot? Can’t place it. She might have.”
“What about voodoo? Did she talk about voodoo?”
There was a single knock and the door swung open. “Yes, sir,” asked the man in grey.
“Mr. Angel will have a glass of bourbon, ice only. Some brandy for me. Oh, and Benson?”
“Yes, sir?”
“Bring Mr. Angel an ashtray.”
Benson nodded and closed the door behind him.
“He the butler?” I asked.
“Benson is my private secretary. That’s a butler with brains.” Krusemark mounted a mechanical bicycle and began methodically pedaling imaginary miles. “What were you saying about voodoo?”
“Johnny Favorite was mixed up in Harlem voodoo back in his skull-giving days. I wonder if your daughter ever mentioned it.”
“Voodoo was one she missed,” he said.
“Dr. Fowler told me Favorite was suffering from amnesia when you took him from the hospital. Did he recognize your daughter?”
“No, he didn’t. He acted like a sleepwalker. Didn’t say much. Just stared out the car window into the night.”
“In other words, he treated you like strangers?”
Krusemark pedaled for all he was worth. “Meg wanted it that way. She insisted that we not call him Johnny and that nothing be said about their past relationship.”
“Didn’t that strike you as odd?”
“Everything Meg did was odd.”
I heard the faint chiming of crystal outside the door an instant before Benson knocked. The butler with brains wheeled in a portable bar. He poured me a drink and a snifter of brandy for the boss and asked if there would be anything else.
“This is fine,” Krusemark said, holding the tulip-shaped glass under his nose like a blossom. “Thank you very much, Benson.”
Benson left. I spotted an ashtray next to the ice bucket and stubbed out my smoke.
“I once heard you tell your daughter to slip me a mickey. Said you picked up the art of persuasion in the Orient.”
Krusemark gave me an odd look. “It’s clean,” he said.
“Persuade me.” I handed him my glass. “Drink it yourself.”
He took several healthy swallows and handed me back the drink. “It’s too late for playing games. I need your help, Angel.”
“Then play straight with me. Did your daughter ever see Favorite again after that New Year’s Eve?”
“Never.”
“You sure of that?”
“Of course I’m sure. Do you have reason to doubt it?”
“My business is doubting what other people tell me. How do you know she never saw him again?”
“We had no secrets. She wouldn’t hide a thing like that.”
“You don’t seem to know women as well as you do the shipping business,” I said.
“I know my own daughter. If she ever saw Favorite again, it was on the day he killed her.”
I sipped my drink. “Nice and neat,” I said. “A guy with total amnesia, doesn’t even know his own name, wanders off into a New Year’s mob fifteen years ago, vanishes without a trace, and then suddenly shows up out of the blue and starts killing people.”
“Who else did he kill? Fowler?”
I smiled. “Dr. Fowler was a suicide.”
“That’s easy enough to arrange,” he snorted.
“Is it? How would you go about arranging it, Mr. Krusemark?”
Krusemark fixed me with a steely buccaneer’s stare. “Don’t go putting words into my mouth, Angel. If I wanted Fowler knocked off, I would have had it done years ago.”
“That I doubt. As long as he kept the lid on the Favorite business he was worth much more to you alive.”
“It was Favorite I should have had put away, not Fowler,” he growled. “Whose murder are you investigating anyway?”
“I’m not investigating anybody’s murder,” I said. “I’m looking for a man with amnesia.”
“I hope to hell you find him.”
“Did you tell the police about Johnny Favorite?”
Krusemark rubbed his blunt chin. “That was a tough one. I wanted to point them in the right direction without implicating myself.”
“I’m sure you came up with a good story.”
“I came up with a dandy. They asked if I knew what sort of characters Meg was romantically involved with. I gave them the names of a couple fellows I remembered hearing her mention, but I said the only really big romance in her life had been with Johnny Favorite. Naturally, they wanted to hear more about Johnny Favorite.”
“Naturally,” I said.
“So, I told them about their engagement and how weird he was and all that stuff. Stuff that never got into the papers back when he was a headliner.”
“I’ll bet you laid it on good and heavy.”
“They were looking to buy; selling it was a snap.”
“Where did you tell mem they could find Favorite?”
“I didn’t. I said I hadn’t seen him since the war. Said the last thing I’d heard was he’d been wounded. If they can’t trace it from there, they ought to look for other work!”
“They’ll trace it to Fowler,” I said. “That’s when their problems will start.”
“Forget their problems. What about your problems? Where do you go from New Year’s 1943?”
“No place.” I finished my drink and set the glass on the bar. “I can’t find him in the past. If he’s here in the city, he’ll surface again soon. Next time, I’ll be waiting.”
“Think I’m a target?” Krusemark slid off his Exercycle.
“What do you think?”
“I’m not going to lose any sleep over it.”
“Might be a good idea if we kept in touch,” I said. “My number’s in the book if you need me.” I wasn’t about to hand my business card over to another potential corpse.
Krusemark clapped me on the shoulder and flashed his million-dollar smile. “You got more on the ball than New York’s Finest, Angel.” He walked me to the front door, exuding charm like a pig sweating blood. “You’ll be hearing from me; you can count on that.”
THIRTY-NINE
Krusemark’s dynamic-tension handshake stayed with me all the way to the street. “Cab, sir?” the doorman asked, touching his braid-crusted cap.
“No, thanks. I’ll walk a few blocks.” I needed to think, not discuss philosophy or the mayor or baseball with some cabbie.
Two men were waiting on the corner as I came out of the building. The short, stocky one wearing a blue rayon windbreaker and black chinos looked like a high school football coach. His companion was a kid in his twenties with a d.a. haircut and the wet, imploring eyes of a greeting-card Jesus. His two-button green sharkskin suit had pointed lapels and padded shoulders and seemed several sizes too large.
“Hey, buddy, got a minute?” the coach called, ambling toward me with his hands in his jacket pockets. “I got something to show you.”
“Some other time,” I said.
“Right now.” The blunt muzzle of an automatic pointed up at me from out of the V in the coach’s half-zippered windbreaker. Only the front sight was exposed. It was .22-caliber, which meant the guy was good, or thought he was.
“You’re making a mistake,” I said.
“No mistake. You’re Harry Angel, right?” The automatic slid back out of sight into the windbreaker.
“Why ask if you already know?”
“There’s a park across the street. Let’s you and me take a walk over there where we can talk nice and private.”
“What about him?” I nodded at the kid in
the sharkskin suit nervously watching us with his liquid eyes.
“He comes, too.”
The kid fell in behind us, and we crossed Sutton Place and started down the steps to a narrow park fronting on the East River. “Cute trick,” I said, “cutting the pockets out of your jacket.”
“Works nice, don’t it?”
A promenade runs along the river’s edge, the water ten feet below an iron railing. At the far edge of the little park a white-haired man in a cardigan sweater walked a Yorkshire terrier on a leash. He was coming toward us but kept to the dog’s mincing pace. “Wait here till that bozo makes himself scarce,” the coach said. “Enjoy the view.”
The kid with the stigmata eyes leaned his elbows against the railing and stared at a barge breasting the current in the channel off Welfare Island. The coach stood behind me, balanced on the balls of his feet like a prizefighter. Further along, the Yorkshire terrier lifted his leg on a litter basket. We waited.
I looked up at the ornate latticework of the Queensborough Bridge and the cloudless blue sky caught in its girdered intricacies. Enjoy the view. Such a beautiful day. You couldn’t ask to die on a nicer day, so enjoy the view and don’t make a fuss. Just stare at the sky quietly until the only witness is out of the way and try not to think of the iridescent undulance of the oily river beneath your feet until they drop you over the railing with a bullet in your eye.
I tightened my grip on the attaché case. My snub-nosed Smith & Wesson might as well have been at home in a drawer. The man with the dog was less than twenty feet away. I shifted my weight and glanced at the coach, waiting for him to make a mistake. The quick flicker of his eyes as he checked the dog walker’s progress was all I needed.
I swung the attaché case full strength, driving it up between the spread of his legs. He screamed with true sincerity and bent double. An accidental shot burned through his windbreaker and splattered off the pavement. It made no more noise than a sneeze.
The Yorkshire terrier strained at his leash, barking shrilly. I gripped the attaché case with both hands and slammed it against the coach’s head. He grunted and went down. I kicked his elbow and a Colt Match Target Woodsman with custom pearl grips spiraled across the concrete.
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