"Have you seen Vannie since you got back?" she asked abruptly. The question caught him totally off balance. Before he could answer, she said, "Oh, that was catty of me. I know you haven't seen her, she's my best friend."
"Vanessa Bromley?"
She nodded.
"How about that, " he said for lack of anything better.
They started strolling toward the front of the big room to get a better look at the Goodman Trio.
"Is she here?" he asked.
"She will be. She's at the th-e-ah-tah. "She closed her eyes and elongated the word with mock sophistication, then she stared up at him and quickly added, "But she'd walk out in a second if she knew you were here. "
"Stop that, " he said irritably.
The tall, bespectacled bandleader was like the calm in the center of a hurricane. Only his fingers seemed excited, fleeing across his clarinet as though the keys were on fire while the baby-faced Krupa was his antithesis, an entranced whirlwind, turning every drumbeat into a pistol shot.
"Please don't leave until she gets here, " Marilyn blurted out. "She's very unhappy. "
"Marilyn . . . "
"Anyway, this is fun. I haven't seen you for . . . ten years? Ten years! My dad loved you. Said you were the only crazy one in the whole gang. "
"He never met Freddie Armistead?"
"Freddie wasn't crazy, he was hopelessly insane. "
Keegan smiled at the memory, despite himself. "Remember when he dug that hole in the Quad and put the horse in it? Took them all day to dig it out. They never did figure out who did it. "
"Wonder what ever happened to old Armistead?" she said. "He vanished into thin air after graduation. And remember Lyle Thornton?"
"Old Turkey Thornton?"
"Oh God, how he hated that nickname. Were you responsible for that?"
"Nah," Keegan said unconvincingly. "But he did look like a turkey. "
She hunched up her shoulders and giggled. "Looked exactly like a turkey," she said. She squinched up her nose. "That little scrawny neck."
"How about that beak of his?"
"That's cruel, Francis."
"C'mon, he had a nose the size of a baseball bat. "
"Did you hear about his father? Got cleaned out in the crash, went out to Chicago and jumped out a window of the Edgewater Beach Hotel. Old Turkey floundered around for a couple of years, then he married rich and his father-in-law bought him a seat on the stock exchange for a wedding present, probably so he wouldn't have to support him. "
"Lyle Llewellyn Thornton, the Third, "Keegan reflected. "You have to be rich with a name like that. Who'd he get to marry him?"
"Vannie, " Marilyn answered bluntly.
"Vannie!" he said. "Vannie married Turkey Thornton!?"
"Doesn't make a bit of sense, does it?" Marilyn said. "One of the true mysteries of the twentieth century. "
"Maybe he has some hidden talent we don't know about," Keegan suggested.
"I really don't think so, " Marilyn answered. "He got involved in the theater. Turkey got a couple of uptowners involved with a Broadway show. Lo and behold it turned out to be The Gay Divorcée, Now everybody thinks he can smell a hit a mile off. He's been dabbling in it ever since. They have a townhouse on East 83rd, half a block off the Park, and a summer house on Cape Cod. " She stopped for a moment and flicked a speck of confetti off her shoulder. "She's absolutely miserable. "
"Miserable?"
"Thornton turned into an absolute ogre. He knocks her around, stays out for days at a time. Once the little SOB got his hands on the money . . . " She let the sentence die, then added, "She talks about you all the time, has ever since that summer in Germany. "
"It was two days, Marilyn . . . "
"And she never forgot it, " she said, finishing the sentence.
"What are you, the Upper East Side matchmaker?"
"No. I just hate to see my friends unhappy. I have no complaints, I'm very lucky. Happily married, have two girls who'll knock your eyes out, a big house in Westport, and a husband who dotes on me. " She stared up at him with the big green saucers. "Whyn't you just stay long enough to say hello to her," she pleaded.
"We'll see," he said and quickly changed the subject. "Where's your husband? Do I know him?"
"I don't think so. He's from Pittsburgh. A surgeon. He's got an emergency operation at Governor's Hospital. I'm hoping he'll get here before the party's over. "
"From the look of things, this brawl will still be going on next Tuesday. "
"Look, we're all going to the French Casino on 50th and catch the midnight show of the Folies-Bergère," she said. "Why don't you come with us? It's supposed to be very risqué."
"Not when you've seen the real thing. "
"That's very snobbish."
"I didn't mean it to be, " he said casually. "I just meant the French version is a lot bawdier. "
"Well, come with us anyhow. "
"Marilyn . . . "
"Or how about Sunday brunch? We're all going out to the Merry Go Round. It's on the Island, Atlantic Beach. Has a revolving bar, hobby horses, these fluffy, crazy-looking jungle animals. It's right on the ocean with an outside dance, floor . . . " She did a little shimmy.
"Marilyn . . . "
"Or how about coming up to the Westport theater to see Ruth Gordon in The Country Wife? She's supposed to be quite the screwball in it, you know. We're planning. . ."
"Marilyn!"
She stopped suddenly. "Yes?" she said innocently.
"The lady's married. "
"She's dying inside, Francis, " she answered seriously.
"I can't do . . . " he started to say and caught himself. I can't do anything about it. It's not my problem. Familiar phrases from the past. Embarrassing phrases he had sworn never to use again.
"It's obviously a bad time for both of us, " is all he said.
"Will you think about it?"
The ultimate out—think about it. One could take forever thinking about it.
"Sure. I'll think about it. "
"Good. C'mon, dance with me. "
"I don't know how to do that newfangled stuff. "
"It's called jitterbugging and it's easy. "She led him out on the enormous dance floor, shimmering in her spangled dress.
Later he had stood near the bridge of the big ship, looking down at the party. He saw Vanessa come aboard, watched her move majestically through the crowd. She was in a short, black cocktail dress, startling in its simplicity, with a clutch of diamonds at her throat. He realized as he watched her how much time had changed her—from a lively sprite to royalty. She moved with sublime grace, an exquisite creature who exuded stately nonchalance as if she were in some superior caste created for her alone. Confident, imperious, sublime, there was also about her a hint of wanton naïveté. Easily the most interesting and imposing person at the party, Keegan thought. And probably the most dangerous What a pair she and Marilyn must make. He didn't even notice old Turkey Thornton.
Then suddenly she turned as if by some primal instinct and looked straight up at him. They stared at each other for a full minute while the crowd seemed to part and move around her. Her expression changed very subtly, became more intense, then someone rushed up to her and there were giddy greetings and hugs and squeals of delight. He left the party.
I'll think about it, he had said. That was three years ago.
". . . anyway, Marilyn talks too much," Vanessa was saying.
"She talked like a best friend talks. She was concerned about you."
"I know, I didn't mean that. Fact is, she talked me into coming over here. I didn't have the courage to do it on my own."
"Courage?" he asked quizzically.
She turned her face away from him. Her voice was almost a whisper. "Oh, God, Kee, don't you know why I really came?"
She still did not face him.
"I came because I threw my husband out a year ago. I came because I'm twenty-four years old and I'm lonely and because I've been thinking about y
ou for five years and I've wanted to sleep with you for all five of them. I've never stopped wanting to sleep with you. And if that makes me a hussy or . . ."
"Hey, hold on," Keegan said softly. Then he chuckled. "What the hell, you always did get right to the point."
"Just hold me, will you, Frankie Kee?" she said. "Or let me hold you."
"Hell, I'm no good to you," he said, and it had the tone of a warning.
She shook her head and turned her back to him, looking out toward the river.
"I don't know why I said that anyway," she said. "What I really want is someone to hold me while I fall asleep, share my tears with me, hurt when I hurt, laugh when I laugh. I want someone to believe in me, not laugh at my fantasies." She looked back over her shoulder at him. "Is that so very much to ask of somebody, Kee?"
"No, it's a modest request."
"Don't you want that?"
"I did."
"And you lost all that?"
"I stopped caring."
"Why?"
"When I lost her . . . hell, I don't know . . . maybe it was never quite as good as I remember it."
He stopped and sorted through his darkest thoughts, questioning his memory, as he had done many times in the past, always with the same conclusion.
"No," he went on, "that's not true. It was, it was a very fine time in my life. It just didn't last very long. Maybe we all have just so much happiness doled out to us and we used ours up and now we're paying for it, except the price she's paying is . . . much . . . too high."
"I don't believe that. I don't believe God's that cruel. I haven't given up yet."
"You mean with old Turkey?"
"The hell with old Turkey," she snapped. "I got over him a long time ago."
"Where's he now?"
"He has a place in the Dakota, that big gloomy building on the West Side."
"I know the place."
"I guess that's where he entertains his show girls," she said bitterly. "I hear he likes two or three at a time."
"Are you divorced yet?"
"Twenty-four more days. I mark each one off on my calendar." She stopped to catch her breath. Tears crept into the corners of her eyes and she tried to blink them away. "I tried so hard, Kee. I tried to be a good wife and make him happy. It was never enough. Lyle never gets enough of anything. His appetite for everything is insatiable. Thank God we don't have children."
"That little freak," Keegan said harshly. "He never had anything going for him. He was a cheat in school—and a liar. He used to lie all the time."
"Oh, he's very good at that."
Keegan tried to soften the dark tone of the conversation. "Hell, he wasn't any good at it at all, he just lied so much people got tired of calling him down."
And she laughed and nodded. "Yes! You're right! That's exactly what people do."
"What was it about old Turkey . . . ?"
"Oh God, I don't even know anymore. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and wonder the same thing. And then I think . . . maybe it's me, maybe I didn't deserve any better . . ."
"Stop that."
"No, I do . . ."
"Stop it! Don't lay off all the misery on yourself. There are lots of Thorntons in the world . . . they use up everything they can get their hands on and never give anything back."
She stared at him with moist eyes. "There's another thing about it. Sometimes I think . . . we had three years together and I think, there ought to be some happy memories. I ought to feel something for him. But I don't."
"I have a partner named Nayles out on the West Coast. When we were in the war together, he used to say, ‘Pal, we come in buckass naked and we go out buckass naked and everything in between is gravy.' Maybe that's the right attitude. Maybe we ought to make the best of whatever comes to us."
"You're not doing that."
She looked up at him and her stare seemed to come from a very private place deep within her; a warm, longing, loving look that pierced Keegan's armor like a lance.
"Oh, Kee, what's happening to the world? What's happening to all of us?"
His anger was like a coiled snake he had kept trapped inside him and suddenly it burst free. It was not a shrill outburst but his fists were clenched and he spoke in a voice that was low and full of rage.
"What's happening is that we're living in a world full of people who want us to think the way they do and act the way they do and believe the way they do and if we don't, if we don't conform, they destroy us. And you know the irony? They're always in the minority. We ignore them until we wake up one morning and there isn't any Times on the newsstand and our favorite books are gone from the library and they beat up our best friends and drag them off to prison because their hair's the wrong color or their noses don't measure down to their standards. Then it's too late."
"You really think that could happen here?"
He nodded emphatically. "There was a moment, Vannie, when I literally had to run for my life. I mean I literally had to run for it. I don't know which was worse, the fear or the humiliation, but I think I have a better idea of what freedom is all about now."
"Is that what happened to her in Germany?"
"That's what happened to Germany. She got caught in the sweeper. So you don't need to shed any tears for me, save them for her. She's locked away for life in a cesspool run by psychopaths."
"Oh my God . . ."
She reached up and ran her fingertips lightly down his cheek. Then she wrapped her arms around his waist and held him very tightly and after several moments he reached out, too, and put his arms around her and they stood on the balcony for a long time clutching each other, like two drowning people, each trying desperately to save the other.
They fell into a warm friendship that was shakily platonic. But she did not impose on that part of him. She was happy to be around him, coming to his place, fixing dinner, occasionally dropping by and listening to him and Ned discussing the news of the day. When they went out for dinner they went to offbeat places, usually late at night to avoid old friends. Only Marilyn shared their secret, sometimes spending the evening with them when her husband was tied up at the hospital. Keegan juggled his emotions between past and present. Until suddenly a voice from the past changed everything.
New Year's Eve, 1939, three A.M.
Keegan was returning from Vanessa's apartment. He was fumbling for his keys when a voice, thickly European, whispered from the shadows beside the entrance.
"Mr. Keegan?"
Keegan stopped, squinted suspiciously into the darkness. The man moved partly into the light. In silhouette he was an inch or so shorter than Keegan but ten pounds heavier, all of it in his muscled shoulders, chest and arms, which strained the sleeves of his black cloth coat. The bottom of his face was obscured by a thick black beard and he was wearing a black seaman's cap, pulled low on his forehead.
"Depends on who's asking," Keegan said cautiously.
The man moved into the light.
It was Werner Gebhart. Avrum Wolffson's chief lieutenant in the Black Lily.
THIRTY-SIX
"Perhaps you remember me?" he whispered from the shadows. "We met in Berlin."
Keegan was astounded to see the young German. "My God, Gebhart, of course I remember you," he said, motioning him into the open. "Come in, come in."
Gebhart moved quickly. They shook hands as Keegan led him through the private entrance and down the hallway to his private elevator. Gebhart looked frightened, his eyes frantically checking the street as they entered the hallway.
"Is something wrong?" Keegan asked.
"Yes," Gebhart answered. "I am an illegal."
"Not here you're not," Keegan said with a reassuring smile.
"Mazel tov," Gebhart said, and there was relief in his voice.
When the elevator doors closed, Gebhart relaxed. Keegan remembered him as being an innocent, slender man-boy, youthfully arrogant and suspicious. He had put on twenty hard pounds and his face was ridged by hard times. He had
tortured eyes, half-pleading, half-angry, the kind that had seen too much suffering, had lost too many friends and had seen the kinds of things that rob the young of their innocence. His black beard was already streaked with gray. How old was he, Keegan wondered? Mid-twenties at best. Looking at the toll the Nazis and Black Lily had taken on Gebhart in four years, Keegan wondered what the years had done to Avrum Wolffson.
"Avrum?" Keegan asked.
"Alive."
"And well?"
Gebhart nodded. "He has become too hard. It shows." "And what of your other friend . . . ?"
"Joachim Weber?" Gebhart answered. "Joachim was murdered by the Nazis.
Keegan's shoulders sagged. My God, he thought, the madness never ends. "I'm sorry, Werner," he said.
Gebhart simply nodded.
"When did you get here?" Keegan asked.
"About ten o'clock."
"You've been waiting here for five hours?"
"Yes."
"How long have you been in the country?"
"Since ten o'clock. I came on a steamer from Portugal."
"Good! You must stay here. It's perfectly safe and all my people have closed lips."
Gebhart held up his hand. "Please, Ire, that part of it is taken care of. I have a place. Someone who has worked with us for years. On Fifth Avenue. I understand there is a park across the street."
Keegan smiled. "Central Park. Pretty fancy digs up there, Werner."
"So I have heard."
"You haven't been there yet?"
Gebhart shook his head. "I came here first. It was Avrum's wish that I see you first."
"God, it's good to see you again," Keegan said finally. "I haven't heard from Avrum for all these years. I thought . . . hell, I thought everything."
"It is dangerous even to send out letters. But I have a present from him. And a message for you. He said to tell you it is the one you owe him."
Keegan laughed. "He has a helluva memory. The last thing I said to him, That's one I owe you. It was a joke."
"Avrum doesn't joke."
Keegan thought for a moment before he nodded. "I had forgotten."
He was avoiding the big question, almost afraid to ask. The elevator reached the penthouse and he led Gebhart into the kitchen. "I have a cook," he said, "but she won't be here until seven. I'm sure we can scrounge up something. How about a steak and some eggs?"
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