Elsinore

by Jerome Charyn

“What’s you theory? Mine is that mother and daughter might be bleeding the old man. So he has to come up with cash to stuff all the leaks.”

  “I don’t speculate, Holden. I’m your facts man. But I wouldn’t mess with those two girls. If they have the cantor on a string, imagine what they could do to you.”

  “I’ll be careful, Tosh.”

  Holden had Phipps and the two Judiths on his agenda, but he stopped off at the Algonquin to find Paul Abruzzi. The district attorney liked to hold court in the lounge. It had become his throne room. He was sitting with several Democratic precinct captains when Holden arrived, men with black teeth who gathered votes for Paul in the outlands of Edgemere and Hollis. Paul was always conspiring with political captains. He ran the borough of Queens from his table at the Algonquin. Paul dismissed the captains when he saw Sidney Holden.

  “How are you, son?”

  “I’m in love with Fay.”

  “That’s your misfortune,” the district attorney said. “Did you come out of your latest rathole to tell me that? I don’t want trouble, Sidney. I hear you’ve been running with Howard Phipps.”

  “Does that scare you, Paul?”

  “Yes it does. The man can do me a lot of harm.”

  “Who kidnapped Fay from Elsinore?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Elsinore. You put her in that nursing home in College Point.”

  “She never went near College Point. You don’t have all your marbles, Sidney. I could get you a psychiatrist.”

  “I saw Fay’s psychiatrist. And I saw Fay. At Elsinore.”

  “You’ve been having too many wet dreams.”

  “Where is she then?”

  “Where she belongs. Away from you.”

  “Should I tell that to Howard Phipps?”

  Paul’s eyes shrank into his head. Holden understood that dark white mask. Paul was planning Holden’s destruction. “Don’t play that card, Sidney, or we’ll all get hurt.”

  “Then listen to me, Paul. Somebody put Fay in Elsinore and somebody took her out. Check on it.”

  “I don’t have to check. You’re a public nuisance, son. Phipps will wake up to you, and when he does, it’ll be all over. Now get the fuck out of here.”

  “Just tell me how she is.”

  “Holden.”

  “I won’t bother you, Paul. Just tell me how she is.”

  “Holden.”

  “I’m not leaving. I don’t care if the Algonquin has a house detective. Let him come for me. I don’t care.

  That white mask grew darker still. “She doesn’t even remember you’re alive. You’re a zero to her, Holden, an absolute zero.”

  Holden’s eyes twitched under the Algonquin’s lights. He could have broken the district attorney’s neck, but it wouldn’t have gotten him nearer to Fay. Paul didn’t seem to have the answers to Holden’s riddles. Elsinore.

  He went downtown to Aladdin Furs. The whole market was sensitive to Sidney Holden. He was more than a retired bumper, or a man whose face was inside Vanity Fair. He was the master of his own company, president of Aladdin. He didn’t even know where his accountant was. His cutters and nailers were attending to the skins. His designer, Nick Tiel, was out of his skull, and Holden assumed the men worked from Nick’s old patterns, because Nick had nothing new. Holden never asked. What was a president, after all? He didn’t run the shop. And so far he hadn’t even signed a check. Who would pay Holden if Holden couldn’t pay himself?

  He sat in his office, pondering his own presidency, when Phipps appeared in his favorite cardigan with Mrs. Vanderwelle, little Judith Church.

  “You’re a hard man to find,” Phipps said. “I’ve been calling for days. Aren’t you gonna invite us to sit down?”

  “Not until you tell me who signs the checks for this establishment.”

  “Whoever you like, Sid. Take it up with Gloria.”

  “I’m sorry,” Mrs. Vanderwelle said. “The new checks are at the printers.”

  “New checks?”

  “Yes. With your name on the cover.”

  “But I don’t know what each of my men makes.”

  “I’ll give you a salary schedule once the checks arrive.”

  “And what about me?” Holden asked.

  “Don’t lay that on us,” Phipps said. “You’re the boss.”

  “But I haven’t seen the books,” Holden said. “What can we afford?”

  “Whatever you’re worth. Now can we sit?”

  The old man and his secret daughter sat on the bed in Sidney Holden’s office. “You’re supposed to be my companion. I can’t talk to you, Sid. You seem preoccupied.”

  “It’s my fiancée. The district attorney stole her again.”

  “Can’t you manage to keep your own fiancée?”

  “I don’t have badges and Detective Specials. I can’t go to a judge and get some writ. All I have is my reputation.”

  “And your salary, don’t forget.… All right Where is big Paul?”

  “At the Algonquin,” Holden said.

  “Dial the hotel, will you, dear?” Phipps asked Mrs. Vanderwelle.

  She got the Algonquin on the line and handed the phone to Phipps.

  “Paul Abruzzi, please.… Paul? Howard Phipps here. My man Holden seems to think you’ve been shuffling his fiancée around to a lot of different places.… Ah, I see. But Sid must have had some arrangement with her. I mean, he didn’t invent the fact that she was living with him.… Thank you, Paul. I appreciate it.”

  Phipps returned the telephone to its cradle. “Your fiancée’s at home. You shouldn’t get involved with a married woman.”

  “When can I visit?”

  “Soon as you like. The door’s open to you, Sid.”

  Should he bring flowers or a potful of ratatouille from an East Side restaurant? He was helpless and half crazy. He wondered if he should wear another suit. He would have showered at his office if Phipps hadn’t been there with little Judith. He would have found the right cologne. But what cologne was right for the occasion? He arrived with his tail between his legs, like some forlorn commando.

  He rang Fay’s bell. It was worse than fear, this loving Fay. Paul opened the door.

  “You shouldn’t have gone to Phipps.”

  “I didn’t have much of a choice,” Holden said. “I’m not the district attorney. Are you letting me in?”

  “Of course. You’re our hallowed guest. You bought Aladdin, I heard.”

  “It was a gift from the old man.”

  “Better still. You’re the golden boy. Come, I’ll bring you to Fay.”

  The blood beat brutally under Holden’s eyes, as if he had a long spear in his cheek. She was just like that woman he’d met in Elsinore. But she wore a dress, not a white gown. He couldn’t get used to Fay without her curls. She sat in a room with little gates on the windows. Paul had decided to bring his own Elsinore into the house. Holden didn’t see any signs of the children or that playwright Rex. His darling was alone with Paul.

  “Where’s Rex and the kids?”

  “On vacation,” Paul said.

  “Who takes care of her?”

  “Nurses. But it’s none of your business.”

  “And you stole her back from Elsinore.”

  “She’s never been out of the apartment. Isn’t that right, Fay?”

  His darling nodded her head.

  “And who is this man?”

  Her lips moved, but she said nothing.

  “Isn’t he the Frog?”

  “Frog,” she said like a mechanical girl.

  Holden was born in Avignon. He’d come here as a little boy, the son of an American soldier. He couldn’t really remember who his mother had been. He was a “love child,” a little frog who’d grown up in Queens.

  “Would you like to go with the Frog? He wants to take you to Central Park West. He has his own tower.”

  Furrows appeared in her head, dark lines, like some horrible static. “I can�
�t leave, Paul. I have my sewing lessons.” She held out her hand. “Good-bye, Mr. Frog.”

  The prosecutor accompanied Holden to the door.

  “You win, Paul.”

  “I didn’t win, damn you. She’s lost to us. And don’t give me any more crap about that dumb nuthouse. Elsinore doesn’t exist.”

  “She’s not lost,” Holden said. “She’s gone into her own closet and she can’t come out.”

  Holden walked away from Paul.

  The prosecutor had to laugh. He’d defeated the wild boy, Sid Holden. Fay wouldn’t run to any more towers on Central Park West. She’d become a baby, but so what? Holden couldn’t have her. Paul had nurses around the clock to clean her potty chair. The same nurses had been teaching her how to knit and sew. The needles she had were as blunt as a Popsicle stick. The yarn was like wet paper. She’d been working on a pair of mittens for a month.

  The phone rang. Fay’s ears didn’t even twitch to the sound of the bell. She was in a universe where telephones didn’t matter. “Mr. Frog,” she muttered.

  Paul answered the phone on the sixth or seventh ring. “Abruzzi here.… Yes, boss. Holden was a lamb.”

  He got off the phone and started shouting for the nurse. “Miranda, will you come, please? I think Fay has to go to the toilet. Jesus, she’s all wet.”

  Miranda arrived. A tall black woman with purple lip ice. She reminded Paul of Holden’s black “mama,” Mrs. Howard. She moved like a sexy serpent. Paul couldn’t take his mind off Miranda. He grieved for Fay, still loved her, in spite of her soiled clothes and vacant stares, but Paul was in the final bloom of his life. Soon he’d have his seat on the high court. The pols had promised it to him, and he would need a mistress like Miranda, who wouldn’t have to give up her title as nurse of his entourage.

  Miranda bent over Fay, and Paul could see the outline of her underpants. “Honey,” she said, “we’ll just take a little trip to the toilet. We’ll get into the shower and I’ll sing you a song.”

  “What kind of song?” Fay asked.

  “Anything you like.”

  Paul’s face was blue with desire. Miranda waltzed around him. Fay started to hum. “Froggy,” she said.

  And all the desire seemed to retreat from Paul. He’d have to kill Sid Holden one of these days.

  7

  Alone, without his darling, Frog sought out Judith Church and her Manhattan Mimes. The Mimes occupied a loft on Amsterdam, a few blocks north of Holden’s tower. It took him three days to get an appointment with big Judith. He couldn’t afford to look like the Duke of Windsor and expect to get close to the Mimes. And so he put on one of the outfits he would wear when he was in the habit of killing people. And he arrived at Judith’s loft.

  Now he understood Phipps. The babe had to be touching seventy, but she was almost as beautiful as Mrs. Howard, who’d lived with Holden’s dad. Judith Church was the handsomest white woman Sidney Holden had ever seen. She didn’t have any starch around the eyes, no rouge to obscure the wrinkled skin. Her hair was as gray as Mrs. Howard’s. He couldn’t find any resemblance between both Judiths. Big Judith had the tall, subtle body of a dancer. Frog couldn’t have imagined her with a law degree. He wondered how Phipps could have ever thought to tame her. And Holden couldn’t help himself. He had the image of Judith Church with her legs around a man. It would have been like making love to a python.

  She began the interview, scratching on a sheet of paper with a blond pen. He called himself Micklewhite, which was close enough to Micklejohn, the name his dad had been born with. Sidney Michael David Hartley Micklejohn. But Micklejohn had been a fugitive, and his bosses turned him into Sidney Holden Sr.

  “David Hartley Micklewhite,” Judith scratched with her pen. “We don’t advertise for students. Who told you about the Mimes?”

  “Tosh. He’s sort of a librarian now, but he studied with you.”

  “Ah, that Tosh,” she said. “And Tosh recommended me.”

  “He said it was the best training I could ever have.”

  “But we’re Elizabethans, Mr. Micklewhite. We do Shakespeare without words. It doesn’t have the slightest practical value. What are your ambitions?”

  “I have none, Mrs. Church.”

  “Then you’re a man of independent means.”

  “Something like that. And I could benefit from the discipline of your troupe.”

  “And I suppose you’d be willing to make a contribution to the Mimes.”

  “Of course.”

  “And what if I said my own fee was five thousand dollars?”

  “I’d pay it.”

  “Then we understand each other, Mr. Micklewhite. But if you interrupt my classes, I’ll have to get rid of you. I won’t work with a straggler. You’ll have to keep up.… Here, you can change in that little closet,” she said, handing Holden a body stocking, a battered pair of tennis shoes, and a little cardboard mask.

  Holden was bewildered. “I didn’t realize we were having a class,” he said.

  “Why delay?”

  He went into the closet, shut the door, undressed, put his clothes on a hanger, and climbed into the body stocking, which stretched around his loins like some extraordinary silken thing. The tennis shoes made a perfect fit. Holden put on the mask, walked out of the closet, and saw his own twins, men and women in dark body stockings and little masks. Judith wore the same party mask with its beaklike bridge. She was taller than Holden, and he could feel her litheness under the silk, like a skeleton with musical bones.

  She led the Mimes, and Holden did what he could to follow her moves. Bumping hadn’t prepared him for this. He couldn’t bend his knees. His body wouldn’t glide under the stocking. His chest ached. He was hopeless as a Shakespearian mummer and mime.

  He knew Hamlet and a little Macbeth, but he wasn’t sure which country Judith had entered until she slackened a bit and she had all the gloom of Hamlet under her black mask. Holden had come to Elsinore. And now he understood what that farce at the nursing home had been about. The Mimes had staged it for Sidney Holden. He was the audience and the big comedian of the show. Dr. Herbert Garden had to be one of the men under the masks. But how had they lured Fay to College Point in Queens?

  Holden took off his mask.

  “It’s been an education, but I have to go.”

  He dressed in the closet and when he came out, the mummers were gone. Judith stood in her stocking, without the mask.

  “We have to settle your account, Mr. Micklewhite.”

  “You know who I am,” Holden said. “I’m not Micklewhite.”

  “Yes. You’re the Frog.”

  He paid with one of his new checks from Aladdin, signed it “S. Holden, President,” and scribbled “personal business” under his signature. He didn’t know how liquid the company was, but he refused to worry about Aladdin’s cash flow.

  “Why did you come to us as a pretender, Mr. Holden? Couldn’t you have said you worked for Howard Phipps?”

  “You’d never have seen me.”

  “You’re wrong. I’ve been expecting you. I always like to meet Howard’s latest messenger boy.”

  “I’m not a messenger boy.”

  “Then what are you, Mr. Holden?”

  “It’s hard to define. His bodyguard, maybe. And his companion.”

  “Do you go with him into the toilet when he has to pee?”

  “You shouldn’t talk about his infirmities like that.”

  “Why not? He’s one of the richest men in America.”

  “But somebody’s been bleeding him. I’d say that somebody is your daughter … with a little help from the Mimes.”

  “My daughter?”

  “Please, Mrs. Church. This isn’t Shakespeare. And we’re not miming anymore. She calls herself Mrs. Vanderwelle, but her name is Judith Church.”

  “I’m Judith Church.”

  “Little Judith then. Are you happy? She likes to play Phippsy’s lawyer.”

  “I don’t know Howard’s lawyer. What did h
e say about me?” The bones of her face seemed incredibly fine in the spangled light of the loft. “What did he say?”

  “That he loved you. That he was stupidly jealous. That you ran away and got married to a Rochester man. That the man killed himself on account of Phipps … and you went into a funny farm.”

  “Elsinore,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Howard put me in a sanitarium. Elsinore.”

  “Is it in Queens?”

  “No. Vermont. Near Montpelier. It was a deluxe prison camp. A gulag with champagne. Howard visited all the time. I bit him on the mouth. I drew blood. It was like having a year ripped out of my life.”

  Two Elsinores? One in Queens. One in Vermont.

  “Is it still functioning? Elsinore.”

  “Not unless Howard had other old companions who went berserk. It was much too grand. Every patient with her own butler. Elsinore must be buried under the snow by now. But who told you about this daughter I never had? Not Howard. It must have been your librarian, Tosh.”

  “Tosh doesn’t lie,” Holden said.

  “Then he lives in too many libraries.… Thank you, Mr. Holden, but I have work to do.”

  “How can I get a ticket to one of your performances?”

  “We never perform in public. I’m opposed to audiences who come in off the street. Whatever we do is by invitation only. And I’m afraid you’re not right for our guest list. Good-bye, Frog.”

  “I’m not so fond of good-byes.”

  “Then I’ll have to ask my people to throw you out.”

  “I still say you have a daughter. No one but little Judith could have told you who I am.”

  Six or seven mummers appeared from behind a door, like waltzing skeletons. Frog tried to pull at their masks, hoping he’d uncover little Judith or Dr. Herbert Garden. But he still couldn’t understand how the Manhattan Mimes had captured Fay and put her in their own Elsinore at College Point. And while he dreamt about that, the mummers seized Holden and tossed him down two flights of stairs. He couldn’t even get a single mask in his hands. He arrived on the street with a twisted shoulder. He heard a door click. The mummers had locked him out of their loft.

  He went straight to the Phipps Foundation.

  Gloria Vanderwelle greeted him outside Phippsy’s office. Frog began to doubt himself. He couldn’t imagine that girl with the bow in her hair as one of the Mimes. But she had to be Mrs. Church’s daughter. Little Judith.