He went back, “What did you mean about Ab?”
“He drinks. He drinks too much. That’s what he calls solution.” Her eyebrows scowled.
“Solution of what, for God’s sake?”
“Of Barby being in love with Otto Skaas.” She didn’t add “Idiot,” but her expression did.
“She isn’t.”
“Oh, yes, she is.”
He didn’t argue that further. He asked, “What’s that to do with Ab?” It hadn’t ever occurred to him. “Does he—”
“Of course, darling. He always has. Long before you came on the scene.”
“I didn’t know.” It was like Ab if he’d only thought about it. Stepping aside, giving others’ happiness the preference.
“He wouldn’t have you know. He rather idealizes you, Kit. He doesn’t mind second fiddling to you. But he doesn’t like bowing for Otto.”
He said, “Barby doesn’t seem happy about it—she’s troubled.”
Content curled a wise lip. “A refugee as goodlooking as Otto is too popular. Barby’s accustomed to having the field.”
He didn’t want to discuss Barby further with this unsympathetic chit; he didn’t want to discuss Barby with anyone but herself. He asked Content now what he’d asked everyone else this evening. “Who is this Otto Skaas?”
She replied promptly, easily, too easily, “An agent.”
“Christian Skaas.”
“Another one. The brains.”
Facts were facts. “His record.”
She shrugged. “How do we know where the real Skaas is? It isn’t difficult. He’s supposed to be only a shell of his former self because of—you know. Anyone with a slight resemblance could act a wheelchair part. And we don’t get any news out of Norway except what Germany thinks is good for us.”
“What makes you believe this, Content?”
“I’m smart.” She turned her impudent young face up at him. “I’m out in the world where you have to think faster than the other fellow. I can smell phonies.” She wrinkled her nose.
“Have you talked to Barby about it?”
She threw back her head and trilled laughter. “Be yourself, Kit. Barby—and all the rest of the elite—know everything. The ten carat suckers are always right. You ought to know that. You grew up with them just as I did.”
He said, “But I didn’t belong. I’m not indigenous you know.” He frowned. “Someone ought to warn Barby.”
“Ab’s tried.”
He looked at her quickly. “He knows?”
Her little face was sober. “He’s attempting to get real information. He’s working for the state department, decoding. He speaks German and French like English, you know. He was in school over there for years after—” She caught her breath. “But he’s on his own trying to track the Skaases down. The Department of Justice doesn’t believe they’re not what they say.” She caught his arm and there was a little terror flicking in her eyes. “You’ve got to help him out. He needs you, Kit. If they’re agents, he’s in danger and he’s not strong like you. He won’t protect himself as he should.”
He knew. Ab’s finding his mother and the shotgun she’d killed herself with at their hunting lodge. A boy of eight coming on that. Ab couldn’t touch a gun. He couldn’t even see a picture of one without turning sick. That was why he couldn’t go to Spain with Kit, no matter his urge. That explained his pride in the new work, a job that implied danger.
“I will,” he promised. “I’ll even take over if he’ll let me.” His mouth set. “I’ve one little job to get out of the way and then I’ll play bodyguard to Ab.”
She withdrew her hand and looked at the elongated crimson nails, “Louie Lepetino.”
His eyes probed her but she wouldn’t look at him. Carlo’s fat warm arms came between them bearing the tureen of soup to Content, a bottle encased in dusty sweet straw to him. “It is the best wine, Mr. McKittrick.” His mouth was anxious. “I get it before all the trouble over there. Maybe you would rather a drink of Scotch. The Scotch I have it too.” He waved to the old ruby wood of the bar.
“I’d rather this, Carlo.”
The man was pleased. But he didn’t beam. There was sadness behind his pleasure. Nor did he linger. Kit poured the dull crimson for both of them. Content said, “Only a sip. I don’t drink.” She still didn’t look at him. She was crunching a bread stick.
He drank. And then he asked, “What do you know about Louie Lepetino?”
“Wasn’t he a friend of yours?”
“He was. What do you know about him?” He demanded an answer.
“I work for Jake. His brother. Carlo’s his uncle.” She blew on the soup. “That’s why you came back, isn’t it?”
“Maybe.”
She said, “That’s why.” She ate noisily as if she enjoyed eating. “They’ve been waiting for you to come back.”
“Why?” That was surprise.
“Because you’re Chris McKittrick’s son, and Chris was their friend. You’re only a demi-god but that’s good enough with the old god gone.”
He said, “Louie didn’t kill himself.”
“No.” She sucked at the soup.
“It wasn’t an accident.”
“No.”
She had to pay attention to him, had to stop guzzling soup and be serious. But she didn’t.
He demanded. “Listen, Content. Do you know who killed Louie?”
She did stop at that. She looked at him, shook her head slowly.
“Do you know anything about it?”
She kept shaking her dandelion head, her eyes wide and blank.
“Do you know anyone who does know anything about it?”
She returned to the soup. She said, “Toni Donne saw him fall.”
He was eager now. Here was his first lead. “Who is Tony Donne? Where can I find him?”
She tipped back her head. Her mouth was curved in amusement. “Right about now you could find her at the Waldorf. She’s the little dark-haired doll you dragged me past that table so you could ogle at.”
His face must have been drawn with perplexed amazement for Content giggled. She asked, “You didn’t know that was Toni Donne?”
He said, “I have never heard her name until now.”
He was so puzzled his head hurt. Content’s unrelated facts were like hot rivets hurtling at him. But she went too fast for him to catch them and make them fit. He poured a fresh glass of wine. He said firmly, “Stop it.”
Now she was puzzled.
He said, “Stop making me guess. I want to know. Put it together.”
She wiped the lipstick off her mouth. Her voice was quiet. “I can’t, Kit. I don’t know how. I couldn’t give you this much only—I’m not supposed to catch on, I’m dumb, you see—that crazy Hamilton kid who never has had a lick of sense.” She shrugged. “Can I help it if people talk too much when I’m around? Can they help it if sometimes I do catch on?” She began to repaint her lips.
He leaned nearer to her. “You can tell me about Toni Donne.”
“Very little. Felix Andrassy’s grand-daughter. The old Prince and Toni had to get out of Paris after the occupation. Det knew them there and she’s been helping out. So had Geoffrey and Ab’s father and mine. Everyone knew the Prince from of yore. Even I can remember screaming my head off in Paris when I was about three and was taken to call at the palace.”
“What’s she like?”
He didn’t care about Prince Felix but Content continued, “He’s like a grand vizier, in Scheherazade’s most frightened moments. He must be about ninety—the last of the royalists. He’s never admitted that France has had a history since the Louis’s. The Napoleonic era was mere bourgeoise gaucherie. Oh, you know what he’s like, Kit—or you will when you meet him.”
“What makes you think I’ll meet him?”
She didn’t answer that one. She looked at her mouth in a diminutive mirror.
“And the grand-daughter?” he was forced to ask again.
“She se
ems trying hard to support them. Evidently they had to flee without the crown jewels. Although they brought their twenty trunks. They have an ancient apartment on Riverside where the Prince dwells with reminiscences and Toni chars after a hard day at the office.”
Toni Donne had been dancing with Otto Skaas. He’d left Barby to dance with her and Barby hadn’t liked it.
“How do you know so much about them, Content?”
She answered, “From José, of course.”
He’d forgotten the violinist. He included him now. “Who is José?”
“A lunkhead musician.”
“He may be a lunkhead. He is a musician. And where does he fit?”
She leaned back and looked straight at him. “He was a protégé of the Prince. He came over with them.”
“And where do they fit with Otto Skaas?”
She played with the crest on his ring. “We met them, José and me, at the benefit tea Barby’s mother sponsored for one of the war countries.”
“But the Skaases and French royalists—”
She wasn’t frank. She looked at him wide-eyed and laughed but she was dissembling. “Darling, all the great of all the countries have been turning up in the Prince’s bed or ballroom for nigh onto ten decades. He says so himself. Obviously they knew each other before they came to New York.”
He seized that. “But Content—this Prince would know if Dr. Skaas is real.”
She patted his hand. “They bask in each other. They purr. And Toni—” She broke off.
“Yes?”
“Toni and Otto know each other.” It wasn’t what she’d started to say. She called out then to Carlo Lepetino. “Bring the bill. I have to skip.”
He came softly for all of his bulk. And he said, “I hope I may have the honor of serving you again soon, Mr. McKittrick.”
The three average men at the bar and the suburban couple at a table, who had drifted in during the hour, heard his words. They looked at Kit and Content as if they were movie royalty incognito. They didn’t see Carlo’s eyes pleading.
Kit said, “Of course.” He followed Content up the steps into the now heavy snow. She turned away. “Goodbye.”
“No, you don’t.” He caught her hand.
“It’s only—” he looked at his watch “—a little after eleven.”
“I have to be there at eleven-thirty, Kit. To get that Basque wonder lad into shape to play. He’ll be worse than usual tonight, seeing Barby with Otto.”
He spoke wryly, “Another competitor.”
Her eyes were oblique. “He doesn’t like Barby. She wastes Otto’s time.”
One competitor erased. “You have time to tell me what I want to know. Ride or walk?”
“Walk,” she decided. “It’s only a few blocks. West of Fifth. What do you want to know, Kit?”
“About Louie.”
She shook impatient snow from her hood. “I’ve told you.”
He spoke firmly, “I want to hear everything about that night he was killed. You were there, weren’t you?” He was certain.
She didn’t answer at once. He was about to repeat when she said more softly than snow, “Yes, I was there.” Her body came close to him and he could feel the trembling of it. “I was there but I don’t know anything about it. Kit.”
“You said Toni Donne saw him fall.”
“Yes. It was at Det’s. She still lives at The George on Fifth. It was a big party. I wasn’t a guest. Me and José were hired help, to entertain. There’s a big drawing-room and beyond it a library. The library looks down on Fifth. Everyone was packed in the drawing-room to hear us. And José gave me the signal for the Tsigane.” She was shivering.
He said, “You’re cold.”
She shook her head violently, held his arm tightly clenched as they crossed Fifth, quiet in the hour and the snow.
He said, “You didn’t want to do that number tonight. Why not? It’s magnificent.”
Her voice was too quiet. “I don’t like it. I’m afraid of it. It’s vicious. There’s madness in it—and death.” She shook her head. “I’d never done it before that night. José had taught me the song but he didn’t accompany me while I learned it. That night he did. You’ve heard him. It holds everyone like they’re drugged.” Her words were ice pellets. “It’s meant to. I told him afterwards I’d never sing it again. I haven’t—until tonight.” She turned her blue eyes squarely to him. “I sang it tonight because I wanted you to hear it.”
“But why?” Frankly he didn’t understand.
“I wanted you to hear it,” she repeated stubbornly. “I wanted you to know it if you ever heard it again. I wanted you to recognize what it means, and beware.” She started walking again.
He asked, “Aren’t you being superstitious, Content?”
“I am not.” She said it simply. She continued, “We did it and everyone went wild. Insatiable. We began it again. Just in that bar where he builds to a climax, where he hits that ninth in C sharp minor, she began to scream.”
“She?”
“Toni Donne.”
He held his jaw tight. “Go on. Tell it all.”
They were in front of Number 50. Another brownstone. They drew together in the basement areaway out of the snow.
“She said she’d felt faint in the crush of the drawing-room and had gone into the library for air. When she was half across the room, she said, she saw Louie fall or jump from the window.”
“Where were the Skaases?” They spoke quietly as if there were listeners there in the lone dark.
“Christian was sitting under my nose. When he heard the scream he closed his eyes—and smiled.”
He was sharp. “Where was Otto Skaas?”
“Upstairs in his room. They were living at the George then but someone must have tipped them off it was too swank for refugees looking for help. They’ve moved. To the same apartment house where Toni and the Prince live. Otto had a cocktail spilled all over his shirt just before we began our stint. He’d gone up to change.”
“Perfect alibis.”
She said, ironically, “Alibis have to be perfect, Kit.”
“And Prince Felix?”
“He doesn’t attend refugee affairs. He is available by invitation only in his throne chair at the apartment. He is too feeble to go out.” She hesitated. “They say.”
He was quick. “You’ve seen him out?”
She moistened her lips. “I don’t know.” She spoke slowly. “I’ve seen someone who may have been he.”
He asked harshly, “What was Louie doing at that party?”
Her voice had no inflection. “He’d come with Toni Donne.”
He couldn’t fit it. He took off his hat and his hand was wet running it through his hair. A dame got Louie. Toni Donne had the face of a Perugino saint.
Content said, “I have to go in now, Kit. You wouldn’t like to meet Jakie—and José?”
“Not tonight.”
She held his coat sleeve, her eyes blue on his face. “You’ll come see me? You’ll talk to me again, Kit? You’ll let me know what you’re doing?”
“I’ll see you.” He kissed her absently. “Thanks for everything, baby,” waited until she ran up the steps and beyond the frosted door. He strode back to Fifth, hailed the first cab, and rode home.
3.
He’d forgotten to take a doorkey. He went through every pocket of his suit, into the pockets of his overcoat. It felt unfamiliar. He never put a billfold in his overcoat pocket. It wasn’t a billfold. He opened it there in the private hallway. There was only one apartment to each floor.
It was a worn leather folder; under the saffroned isinglass on one side there was a snapshot, he and Louie and Far Rockaway. He couldn’t have been more than fifteen at the time; he’d escaped from Park Avenue golden bars for a day with the Lepetinos. He’d escaped because his mother and Geoffrey were touring Spain that summer. A soiled sheet of paper folded and refolded in the other compartment. Written with a stubby pencil. Dear Louie. Written from a
ghost prison in Spain, not a Spain from which travelers brought back words of beauty to fire the imagination of a Black Irish kid; a Spain where hope had been stoned to death, where the International Brigade would be a legend told in a far dim future, a Spain where a living dead man couldn’t die until the word escape stopped gnawing at his vitals. Dear Louie. If the note could be smuggled out, if Louie would translate out of kid talk on the downtown pavements. If. Escape out of the charnel house. Because Louie had understood.
He thrust it back into his coat pocket, looking around quickly as if someone could be watching in the private hall. He put his left forefinger on the bell and held it there. He wasn’t shaking; he was strong again, and his right hand lay on the butt of the diminutive gun deep in his pocket. There was a shoulder holster for it but he didn’t bother with that. He preferred the reassurance of casual steel under his hand. There was no danger in the hallway; no one could get into it unless the elevator brought them up, or unless they came from within the Wilhite apartment. But he wished the goddamned maid would stop necking somebody’s chauffeur and get to the door.
She did eventually; she looked surprised and quite pretty with hastily smoothed hair and blurred lipstick, her dress not completely fastened. She said, “Why, Mr. Kit—I was asleep—I heard the bell and—”
He told her gruffly, “Forgot my key. Go on back. I’ll take care of my coat.” He waited until she closed the kitchen door. He listened until her maid-quiet footsteps stopped crossing the kitchen. He heard the door to the servants’ wing close before he put his overcoat on the black padded hanger, transferring that folder into his coat pocket in the dark of the closet. He returned to the heavy front door, put on the chain. For a moment he stood there listening again, waiting. He shook away the reason for the pause. The thud and slur of steps had haunted him across the width of ocean, had even limped after him into the desert wastes. But he was cured now. He wouldn’t ever hear them again.
He walked down to his own rooms, closed his door, and as an afterthought turned the key. The liquor fray hadn’t been removed. He poured a generous brandy, drank it, and then he took out the folder again and looked at it.
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