Kissing the Beehive

by Jonathan Carroll

  A beautiful receptionist was facing the elevator so that the moment the door slid open, you were blasted with one of those million-white-teeth smiles that are supposed to make you feel welcome and comfortable.

  "Can I help you?"

  "I have an appointment with David Cadmus. My name is Samuel Bayer."

  "Would you have a seat while I call?"

  I sat on a slinky leather couch and looked around. Nothing new. The place looked like every other film producer's office I'd seen: tony furniture, the requisite posters of the films the company had made. I recognized the titles of some. Two had been genuine hits.

  I almost laughed when David Cadmus entered the reception room because he looked exactly as he had twenty-five years before. Same spiky porcupine haircut, square eyeglasses, white dress shirt buttoned to the top. Yet his "look" was today's ultimate cool, as opposed to ultimate asshole when we were young. Black chinos, dress shoes . . . I'm sure the labels on his clothes were Prada or Comme des Garcons rather than Dickies, but the result was the same.

  I stood up. He kept his hands in his pockets. We looked at each other. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed the receptionist watching us. We hadn't even said hello but were already in a High Noon standoff.

  "He didn't do it."

  Without thinking, I cocked my head quizzically to one side. "Excuse me?"

  "My father. He didn't kill Pauline Ostrova."

  According to his son, by the time Gordon Cadmus fell in love with Pauline he had forgotten how to laugh. Certainly there's a lot less to laugh at as we grow older, but that's beside the point. Here was an immensely powerful man who controlled half the crime in Westchester County. People did what he said without thinking. He had private bank accounts in countries whose names you couldn't even pronounce. He had what he wanted, he'd achieved his dream. But he was a morose sourpuss, convinced years before someone actually shot him that one day he would be murdered.

  So shocking to the Cadmus family was the sound of the old man's laugh – a surprisingly deep and delighted har de har har – that both son and mother froze when they heard it. In their separate bedrooms on that Saturday afternoon, the boy had been reading Famous Monsters of Film Land magazine, the mother one of Jack Paar's autobiographies. Within seconds, both appeared at their doorways, both wearing similarly worried expressions.

  "Did you hear that?"

  "Yes! You think something's wrong?"

  "Dad never laughs."

  "Maybe we should go see."

  At the top of the long staircase, they bent clown to see Gordon Cadmus at the front door, talking to a girl.

  It was Pauline Ostrova who, among other things, wrote for our high school newspaper. Someone had told her there were rumors Gordon Cadmus was involved with "the mob." Being insanely self-confident, she decided to do an in-depth interview with our local gangster. She put on her nicest dress, combed her hair and rang his bell.

  When he answered the door – a thing he rarely did – a nice-looking girl stood there, looking as it she might be selling magazine subscriptions or tickets to a church raffle. She said, "Mr. Cadmus, my name is Pauline Ostrova and I write for the Crane's View High School newspaper. It's well known you're associated with organized crime and I'd like to interview you."

  That's when he laughed and then invited her in.

  Almost three decades later, his son said, "You've got to understand that most people couldn't even look at my father without breaking into a sweat."

  "Aw, come on, David. We were nosy kids. We knew what everybody did in Crane's View. How come we never knew about your father? How come we didn't know he was in the Mafia?"

  David smirked. "Because on paper he wasn't. He was in waste removal and olive oil importing. He had a construction company." He could have filled a wheelbarrow with all the cynicism in his voice.

  "Yeah, all synonyms for the Mafia, right?"

  He smiled and nodded.

  "So how did a high school girl find out who he was?"

  "Because at the time, the high school girl's lover was the chief of police."

  "Cristello? Pauline was Cristello's lover too? Who was this girl, Mata Hari?"

  Policeman Cristello told his lover about mobster Cadmus and she went right out and became his lover too. Simple as that, or according to the mobster's son it was.

  Cadmus fell for her that first afternoon. Why? Because she made him laugh. Years later, he told David the whole story. The two men had grown very close over the years and one Christmas the old man asked his son what he wanted for a present. David said the truth. He wanted to know about his father's life because he knew absolutely nothing and it mattered very much to him. In one astounding night, Gordon Cadmus told his son everything.

  I didn't probe, but did ask how he felt after he'd heard his father's story. "I never loved him more."

  As I was leaving, I asked David how he knew I was going to ask about his father's connection to Pauline. His answer shocked me.

  "Because your pal McCabe called and said so. He's been taunting me for years about it but has never been able to find even the smallest shred of proof that Dad killed her. Because there isn't any. My father loved Pauline. He was crushed by her death."

  "Wait a minute! Can I be frank? Your father could have found out who did it. He must have known people who could have found out."

  "Dad believed the boyfriend did it. Edward Durant."

  It made real sense. Durant killed her and went to jail. When he got there, Cadmus arranged to send in the clowns who used Edward as a sex toy until his brains were scrambled eggs and he saw no way out but a permanent necktie. What a neat and evil way to get your revenge.

  It sounded plausible, but what had seemed so simple a few days before had suddenly become a surreal three-ring circus of motives, love and revenge.

  David walked me out of the building into a scorching California afternoon. We talked by my car a few minutes. I noticed the heat didn't seem to bother him. No sticking shirt, no squinting against the sun.

  "This is a long way from Crane's View, New York. Have you been back there recently?"

  He shook his head. "I remember you and Frannie McCabe walking down the halls of the school. I never knew if I envied or hated all of you in that gang. No, I haven't been back, but McCabe keeps calling me. He's a strange motherfucker. I'd be flattered by his attention if I didn't know it was my father he still wants to get."

  We were staying at the Peninsula Hotel but when I got back to the room, Veronica wasn't there. That was okay because we had been as inseparable as Siamese twins throughout the trip. It was good having time alone to think through my meeting with Cadmus and make notes.

  I write all my books by hand. There is something ceremonious and correct about putting things down a letter at a time, your hand doing all that slow work instead of fingers tap-dancing across a keyboard. For me, something is lost in all that speed. On the computer screen, the work looks finished even when you know it isn't.

  From my briefcase, I took out a beautiful leather notebook Cass had given me for my last birthday. Then the forty-year-old mustard-colored Parker 51 Custom fountain pen that was the only one I ever used for this purpose. I am superstitious about everything and over the years the pen had become a fundamental element of whatever mysterious chemistry was involved in writing a book. I filled it with ink and opened the notebook to the first page.

  In that lovely anonymous room with the air-conditioning purring around me, I began the story of Pauline Ostrova's death – with my dog Jack the Wonder Boy.

  He looked at you seriously and appeared to listen to what you said. He was smart and generally reasonable, but there were certain things he insisted on and refused to stop doing even if you went after him with a broom or an angry hand. Bones could only be eaten on a rug, he had to sleep on the corner of my bed, any food left too close to the edge of a table was his if he could somehow get to it.

  Every morning of his life he stood by the front door at a reasonable hour, wa
iting to be let out. We all knew to check the hall as we walked to breakfast to see if he was waiting by the door. In all of his fifteen years, I don't think his neck ever knew the feel of a collar or the tug from a leash. Jack took care of himself, thank you, and didn't need to be led by any human. None of us ever followed him on his rounds, but he was a dog of such fixed routines and dimensions that I'm sure he walked the same route, lifted his leg on the same trees, sniffed the same places thousands of times.

  I began the book with our front door opening and Jack stepping out into a new day in Crane's View. My words took him out to the street and then on his morning jaunt.

  I wrote for an hour, then got up and walked restlessly around the room, flicked the television on, channel-surfed, turned it off. Looking out the window, I remembered I had a book signing at Book Soup at seven and wondered if Veronica would be back in time. I sat down again and went back to work.

  Jack trotted through town. Stores were beginning to open. A few cars were parked in the Grand Union lot on Ashford Avenue. Three teenagers stood in front of the firehouse smoking cigarettes and watching cars go by. Bobby LaSpina. Victor Bucci. Alan Tarricone. According to McCabe, LaSpina died in Vietnam, Tarricone ended up running his father's gas station, Bucci left town and no one heard from him again.

  Why did Frannie keep calling Cadmus over the years? Even if Gordon was guilty of Pauline's murder, what could David do about it, especially now that his father was dead? And what else was McCabe up to? What other inexplicables did he have up his sleeve?

  Pauline Ostrova hit our dog Jack in front of Martina Darnell's house. At the time, I had a big crush on Martina but she wasn't interested in me. The only time we ever spoke for more than ten seconds was when she described hearing the screech of tires in front of her house, the thud, Jack howling.

  That morning, I was the only one home when Pauline knocked at our door.

  "Hi there."

  I was so involved in writing that Veronica's voice gave me a jolt. I turned around. Her face was a foot from mine. "It's just me."

  "Hi! I didn't hear you come in."

  "I see that! You're writing away like a little engine. Whacha doin'?" She had a couple of bags in her hand, which she tossed onto the bed. A piece of anthracite blue lingerie slid provocatively out of one. Pushing her hair up with one hand, she fanned her face with the other. "It's not hot outside – it's a punishment! Can you tell me what you've been writing?"

  "After I talked to David Cadmus, I started writing notes and think I might even have begun the book."

  "Really!" Her eyes widened and she clasped her hands to her chest. "That's wonderful, Sam! Can I give you a hug?"

  "I'd love one."

  The moment we were in each other's arms, the phone rang. We kept hugging, but the insistent ringing made it feel like someone was in the room, waiting. I broke off and answered. A very deep woman's voice asked for Veronica. Taking the receiver, she looked at me like she couldn't imagine who it might be.

  "Hello? Oh hi, Zane. What?" She paused to listen, then both her voice and face went from blank to fierce in a flash. "So what if I'm here! Am I required to check in with you every time I come to L.A.?" Listening, she started tapping her foot and shaking her head. "Zane . . . Za . . . You don't need me anymore. What? It's a big town. I doubt we'll bump into each other. No, I'm not going to Mantilini's. What? Because we shouldn't see each other!" She raged on like that a few more minutes and then, making an exasperated face, hung up. "That was Zane. We used to go out. She wanted to meet." She shrugged and frowned.

  "You hung right up on her."

  "Life's too short." She took a deep breath and looked hard at me. "Does it upset you that I was with a woman?"

  "Makes you more intriguing. Anyway, who's counting?"

  The book signing went well and afterward we had dinner at the restaurant next to the store. Both of us were in good moods and we gabbed away throughout the meal. It was the kind of conversation only new lovers can have – a combination of discovery, recognition and sexiness that comes as a result of knowing one facet of a person extremely well and almost nothing about the others.

  I said something about how magically our relationship had evolved and how I wished I knew how that magic worked so I could spread it over other parts of my life. She stood up and said, "The only ones who want to know how a magician does his tricks are children and fools. I'll be right back."

  Although to the eye there is nothing immediately wrong, there are wrong faces. All the features are in the correct places and the nose has only two holes, but something is off and without being able to say exactly what, you know it. The restaurant made a wonderful creme brulee. I liked it so much that I had my eyes closed in ecstasy over a mouthful of it when I heard that deep voice again.

  "You're Samuel Bayer, aren't you?"

  I didn't know whether to open my eyes or swallow first, so I did both. Every feature on her face was sharp as a Cubist painting – nose, cheekbones, chin. Her eyes were as black as her hair, which was short and spiky and very a la mode. She was good looking in a combative, don't-fuck-with-me way and had a long thin body that matched. She would have been a good villainess in a James Bond film, dressed in patent leather, knowing every lethal karate move in the book.

  "Yes I am. Do I know you?"

  "My name is Zane. I was the one who called Veronica before. The one she hung up on. I've been waiting to talk to you, but it has to be fast, before she comes back."

  "How did you know she was in Los Angeles? How did you know where we were?"

  "She had lunch today with a mutual friend. She told me." She kept looking toward the bathroom. Tough as she looked, she was clearly apprehensive. Was it a crazy face? Mean? Maybe it wasn't her face at all that was so disturbing: maybe it was the incredibly negative, mad-mouse-running-in-a-wheel energy she shot out in all directions. "Ask Veronica about Gold. Ask her what happened with her and Donald Gold."

  "The writer?"

  "That's the guy." Once again she looked toward the bathroom, saw something, and without another word walked quickly out of the restaurant. I watched her go. Once outside, she paused on the street, looked at me, mouthed, "Donald Gold," and took off.

  Veronica returned a moment later and asked coolly, "Was that Zane?"

  "Yeah. Strange woman." I hesitated, then thought, what the hell and said, "She told me to ask you about Donald Gold."

  "Good old Zane. Still Miss Terminal Toxic Nastiness. Did she think that was going to ruin things between us? Before I met her, I lived out here with Donald. We were bad for each other. We fed on each other's weaknesses. He threw me out and was right to do it."

  "That's all?"

  "I was lost then, Sam. Maybe a little more than is safe. I was living a life that if you read about in a book, you'd say, 'How could she let that happen?' But here I am now and you seem to like that me, right?"

  Taking her hand, I kissed it and intoned pompously, "Omne vivum ex ovo."

  "What's that?"

  "The only Latin I remember from school. 'Everything alive has come from the egg.'"

  I don't remember what television shows we watched as kids on Saturday mornings, but all of them were sacred. Television itself was sacred then. That big square altar in the middle of the living room that held you captive anytime it was on.

  I was watching TV that Saturday. My parents and sister were off shopping. I was sitting on the living room floor eating a doughnut when the doorbell rang. White powdered sugar was all over my fingers and mouth. The only thing I did to prepare myself for whoever was waiting was to rub an arm across my mouth, then my hands over my filthy jeans. Unhappily I went to the door.

  When I opened it and saw Pauline Ostrova facing me, looking gorgeous and scared, I didn't know what to say. Of course I knew who she was. I was in lowly junior high while she lived in the upper echelons of high school, which would have given her godlike status even if her unprecedented reputation hadn't preceded her.

  When she saw me she smile
d a little. I almost peed my pants. "Hey, I know you! You're Sam, right? Listen, I ran over your dog."

  "That's okay." I said cheerfully. I loved Jack the Wonder Boy but so what compared to Pauline Ostrova knowing my name.

  "He's all right, I guess. I took him to the vet. The one on Tollington Park, Dr. Hughes?"

  "We use Dr. Bolton."

  "Yeah, well, I thought he was going to die from the way he looked, so I took him to the vet closest."

  "Okay. You want to come in?" I had no idea what I was doing. She'd just run over our dog. Shouldn't I be frantic? What would I do if she came in? Just the idea of Pauline Ostrova breathing the same air made my heart race around my chest.

  I was twelve, so she must have been sixteen then. At school even I knew she was all things to all men – adult, whore, scholar, artist . . . A few years later they would have called her liberated, but in those black-and-white Dark Ages before Betty Friedan and feminism, Pauline was only one word – weird. Everyone knew she slept around. That would have been acceptable if it had only been that. Then we would have had a category for her, ugly and simple as it was. But she made everything complicated by also being so smart and independent.

  Waiting for her to say something else, I suddenly remembered the doughnuts I had been eating. Frantically, I rubbed my mouth in case any crumbs were still there.

  "Don't you want to know more about your dog?"

  "I guess." I leaned against the door, then stood up straight, then tried leaning again. In her overwhelming presence there was no comfortable position on earth.

  "He ran out in the street and I hit him and broke one of his rear legs. Actually, it was kind of cool because the vet let me stay and watch him put the leg in a splint."

  She was talking to me. I was just a little tool in seventh grade who watched her float by every day with upperclassmen, all of them carrying reputations nine miles long behind them like bridal trains. Yet for the moment, this high honor roll/slut goddess who knew my name was saying words meant only for my ears. The fact she was doing it as a way of apologizing for almost killing our dog was irrelevant.