by Kane, Henry
“Oh. No.”
“Does it have a reason?”
“It has a reason. He’d called on the phone at about ten in the morning. Pamela was out keeping an appointment at the beauty parlor. I told him I expected her. He said he might have to be out of town for a while, that a note of hers was due in a few days, and that if she’d meet him at the bank at eleven o’clock, with the note, he would have the money for her.”
“What bank?”
“Banker’s Fiduciary. Madison Avenue.”
“Did you make the date?”
“Yes. I was expecting her. But as it turned out, she went shopping directly from the beauty parlor, and she didn’t come home until after one o’clock. He called again, and we both met him at the Anchors Away at four.”
She branched off at Eighth to Sheridan Square and then we rode along narrow Barrow Street, and she pulled over. “Coming?”
“Is it all right?”
“Of course.”
It was an old gabled three-story building, a walk-up with wooden steps. I followed her all the way to the top floor, where she knocked on a door while I blew for breath.
“Come in.”
She opened the door on a large rectangular bare-floor room with bright daylight pouring through a slanting ceiling, all glass. Four men stood up from a huddle of wooden straight-legged chairs. I had met two of them, fleetingly, at El Courvocco. The other two, in order of rank, were Inspector Sam Kelcey and Lieutenant Louis Parker.
4
Everybody was genial.
The gentlemen smiled for the lady and the lady smiled at the gentlemen and there was the hum and the pother of cross-introduction. Once more, but more attentively, I met Conrad Merrill and Arnold Petersen. I guessed that the one in the spotted smock was Merrill. The other one was tall, clean, crew-cut and blond, in a dark brown double-breasted and a button-down shirt, with steel-rimmed specs on a high-boned nose in front of keen blue laughing eyes.
“Drinks,” Merrill said, “are on their way. We’ll just all of us have to wait. Prairie is out acquiring the necessaries.”
Kelcey said, “I didn’t know you were acquainted with Mr. Chambers, Miss Reeves.”
“Oh, yes. Of course we are. He’s rather an old friend. Mr. Mikvah introduced us. Ages ago.”
She was a good liar. I couldn’t make up my mind, right then, whether I liked that or I didn’t.
Petersen raised one eyebrow and Kelcey dropped both of his and Parker rumbled in his throat and Merrill made a crack about a lone prairie and I looked pretty. Conversation dimmed down. Faces lost their initial animation. The five of us stood silent, apart and expressionless, like people in an up-elevator facing the door and watching the floor numbers.
Then Kelcey said, “Routine, Miss Reeves. We called your home, no answer. We tried your agency, and they told us you’d be here. Seems we got here first.”
Parker said, “We’ve got to round out our report on, uh, Pamela Reeves.” He turned to Merrill. “Is there another room?”
There wasn’t much in this room. There were the four chairs in a group and the sky coming in through the ceiling. There were two easels by the windows and near each there was a small table with paints and brushes and the smell of turpentine. There was Nancy Reeves on one easel bursting out of a green bathing suit with the sun dying behind her and the heavens all red. The other easel was empty. There was a bridge table in a corner, and that was all the furniture. There were framed paintings on each of the long walls, each wall completely different. One wall had the easily recognizable Conrad Merrill touch. The other wall was a startling gallery for a strange work of deep color and piled-up oil and bold lines, and that was the wall that called me. I squinted my eyes at the paintings and opened them and squinted again and backed away and came near. I loved them. The signature on all of them was Prairie O’Neil.
Prairie O’Neil, I thought, I once knew a Prairie O’Neil, which was more laughable than a frantic feather at unprotected toes. My Prairie O’Neil had been a wrestler schooled in all the burps operating out of a club on Thirty-fourth called the Pantheon.
I heard Merrill say, “… you and the Inspector and Miss Reeves stay right where you are, we’ll use the other room …” and then I felt his hand on my shoulder and he said, “Good, eh?”
“Wonderful.”
“That’s Prairie O’Neil, my pride, my protégé, my corridor to immortality. That”—he swung me around to the opposite wall—”that is Merrill the Philistine, drunkard, hedonist, slave to the almighty buck …”
“A Philistine,” Petersen said, “who’s good for two hundred thousand dollars a year. Net. Some Philistine.”
“Now, Miss Reeves,” Parker said, “let’s us sit around the bridge table, the Inspector, you, and me.”
Merrill released my shoulder and brought up both hands at the policemen. “All of this, boys, won’t take too long, now will it? You see—”
“No, sir,” Parker said. “Routine. About fifteen minutes.”
“Fine. And now, my hearties, if you will follow the master …”
We followed him, Petersen and I, through a short hall to another rectangular room, this with a regulation whitewashed ceiling, but twin to the studio room, just as large and apparently of the same measurements but more prosaic, and, prosaically, better filled. It was half kitchen, half living room. One half had a cooking range and a refrigerator and closets and food bins and porcelain plumbing for running water and washing dishes, and the other half had a couch and a rug and easy chairs and a desk and floor lamps and statuettes and mirrors.
Merrill said, “Sit down, won’t you, gentlemen? Refreshments shall appear, I hope, in short order. Funny, isn’t it? When you run out of refreshments, it happens all together.” He smiled and he gestured at many empty bottles clustered under the sink. “I’ll have to have Prairie remove the unjoyous remains. Ah, Aristippus, what of the unjoyous remains?”
Petersen grinned. “Your name’s Chambers, isn’t it?”
“It isn’t Aristippus, if that’s what you mean.”
“That’s what I mean.”
“Ah, Aristippus,” Merrill said.
“Although,” I said, “I can be accused of hacking off a hunk of that philosophy, and living it.”
“Never heard of him,” Petersen said.
“Ah, Aristippus.” Merrill moved to the window, musing. “And where in all hell is my Prairie?”
He was a handsome man. He was tall and very thin with a long face and deep-set black eyes and wavy black hair cresting up from a high white forehead and cut close by the ears but full across the head and worn deep to the nape of the neck. His shining wavy hair and his long serious face and his deep black eyes gave him the look of an actor made up to look like an actor, and this was heightened by the quick movements of his long-fingered bony hands; even his walk was dramatic. But when he smiled you lost that: his teeth were square, large, white, and healthy, and his face wrinkled to grin, and then the look was that of a boy, a long, angular, skinny boy, spasmodic of movement, with a wild mane of hair.
“What do you do?” Petersen said.
“I’m a private detective.”
“There he comes,” Merrill said at the window, “bearing bundles. The drought endeth.” He jerked around, waving a hand. “Now our Nancy cavorts with private detectives, whom she says she knows for ages. Which is one goddamn lie.”
“I wanted to speak with you, Mr. Merrill. I asked Nancy—”
“Why?” asked Petersen.
“I really don’t think that’s any—”
“No. I mean why should Nancy lie about knowing you for ages? Because of the cops?”
“That’s right, Mr. Petersen. Because of the cops.”
“But why?”
“She very delicately avoided cross-action. She knows I’m working on the same matter they’re working on. Pamela Reeves.”
“Why should you?” Merrill said. “When they are?” He pointed at the wall, through the wall, into the other room
where the conference occupied three sides of the bridge table.
“Actually, they’re not working on it any more. According to them, the case is closed.”
“We know that,” Petersen said. “They told us. It’s a darn pity about poor Mikvah.”
“You knew him?”
“Very well. So did Conrad.”
“That bitch,” Merrill said, “simply got what’s been coming to her. It’s a blasted shame Mikvah wasn’t a more patient man. If he’d have stood trial, the jury would have come back bearing laurel wreaths. Sit down, won’t you, gentlemen?”
Petersen took the couch. “You don’t agree with them, then.”
I took an easy chair. “Pardon?”
“As you said, they’ve come to a definite conclusion. Based, they say, on irrefutable evidence. Mikvah killed Pamela and killed himself. But you say you’re working on it. Do you have a different theory?”
What did I have to lose? “Yes.”
“You have a reason for this different theory?”
“Yes.”
He crossed his legs. “This is very interesting. I wish you’d tell us. Would you?”
“No.”
“I mean, both Conrad and myself, we knew Pamela Reeves for many years, and we were both more than passing acquainted with Mikvah. We might invest your theories with additional theories.”
“No. I’m sorry, but I couldn’t very well tell you.”
“Come now, why?”
“Look. Could you tell me, for instance, why you’re here?”
His legs uncrossed. “What’s that?”
“You’re the very eminent Mr. Arnold Petersen. You’re the head man of a top-flight model agency known throughout the world. That should make you a very busy man, and these are business hours. A model comes down to an artist’s studio for finishing touches on a bathing-beauty study, so the boss man is also present. See what I mean?”
“That’s what I call changing the subject,” Petersen said.
“But astute,” Merrill said. “Oh, astute.”
Petersen’s eyes behind the steel rims weren’t laughing. “All right. It happens this is an important account—”
“Sure,” I said. “I mean I wasn’t the one who started with the nosy questions, Mr. Petersen. Let’s jump over the fact that, even for important accounts, there are important underlings to supervise the painting of a poster. Let’s say I could understand why the boss man should show up at the initial get-together with the artist, planning layout, et cetera, discussion—I could even understand why he would show up to see how things were going at the beginning, the account being that important, but not when the deal is ‘finishing touches.’ “
“Oh, astute,” Merrill said. “Well, then, Mr. Chambers, why would you say that the eminent head of the modeling agency would be present at the time of the application of the finishing touches to one lousy painting?”
“May I?” I asked Petersen.
“Of course.”
“I’d say the interest was in the model, rather than the painting.”
Merrill burst into laughter, slapping both hands at his buttocks. “Oh, my dear eminent head, it seems your long underwear’s showing, but flagrantly. Oh, my. What’s your name, young man?”
“Aristippus.”
He kept laughing. “Oh, my. Chambers, isn’t it?”
Petersen reached over and touched my knee. “I’ll tell you something. I like you. I’ll tell you something else. I was needling you. I’m sorry.”
“Check.”
“Where the hell’s that Prairie?” Merrill said. “I just saw him downstairs.”
We heard him. He came through with Kelcey and Parker directly behind him. It was my Prairie.
“Well,” Prairie said, sliding brown paper bundles down to the floor. “What’s he doing here?”
“Who?” Merrill said.
“Him. The transom-pusher.”
Kelcey said, “Excuse me, gentlemen. You can have your lady, and very pretty, too. We’re finished. Thank you for your courtesies.”
“Won’t you have a drink?” Merrill said. “I mean you gentlemen of the law.”
Parker smiled. “Got the boss with me, you know.”
Kelcey said, “No, thank you. Bye, now.”
CHAPTER TEN
Prairie O’Neil unfurled Scotch, rye, and Demerara rum.
Merrill said, “I’m for the rum. Anybody else?”
“Scotch,” I said.
“Scotch,” Petersen said.
“Me, too.” Nancy Reeves came through the little hallway. “And I need it. Not that the inquisition was too bad, but you simply get fidgety flanked by the brawny gentlemen who keep the peace.”
“Scotch for me, too,” Prairie said, helping himself. “And nobody told me yet. What’s with Transom over here?”
“He’s a friend of Nancy’s.” Merrill distributed glasses. “One drink for me, and one for Nancy, and we go to work. It shouldn’t take more than a half hour. After that, I have a date to get drunk. Right here. Me and the hardest-drinking painter that ever lived, and that covers a world of territory. I refer to the incomparable Prairie O’Neil.”
Prairie’s face opened in a wide wedge of smile. “Don’t mind him, Transom. Mr. Merrill is what you call a card.”
“I detect an undertone of respect,” Merrill said, “for our—Mr. Transom.”
“And how. I seen this guy tangle with the toughest, Mr. Merrill.” He gulped Scotch. “Transom, here, Mr. Merrill, is also what you call a card. You and me, we drink with him sometime, and boy, that’s gonna be one merry tripod. I’m telling you, one merry tripod, believe me.” Prairie took his coat off. “I’ll be right back, lady and gents.”
“One merry tripod,” Petersen said. “You’ll be third leg, Chambers.”
Prairie came back in an open-collar shirt with short sleeves. Prairie was two globes, globe on globe: a thick globe of head and a thick globe of body, with protruding arms and legs. He was squat and rolling, with black hair on stumpy arms and black hair coming up through the shirt top. He had short bow legs and a round bald sweating head and a flat nose and the glint of eyes inside of fat and a big broken-toothed smile. “Characters they got you running around with now, Miss Nancy. Where’d you fall on Transom?”
Merrill said, “Would you bring out some coke for the rum, please?”
“Sure thing.”
“And soda for me?” Nancy said.
“How about you guys?”
“Water,” Petersen said.
I said, “Ditto.”
Then the four of us did, “Cheers,” and Prairie said, “I’m a couple up on you, but that’s allowed because I’m fatter than any of you, and furthermore I drink it straight and it takes less time,” and I said, “Prairie, if those paintings outside are yours, then I raise this glass in adulation,” and he said, “Adulation, nuts, you’d raise that glass on any excuse.”
Merrill held his glass up. “Grandma Moses, John Kane, there are many that are good. Ladies and gentlemen, in all humbleness and with great pride, I give you the greatest Primitive of our time, whose one-man show only the other week set the critics back on their heels and gaping—a great painter and a grand companion—Prairie O’Neil.”
Prairie actually blushed. He raised both hands, one clutching the small glass, over his head, in the time-honored fighter’s salute. Everybody drank.
“Will somebody explain this to me?” I said.
“What?” Nancy asked.
“I’ve known Mr. Prairie O’Neil for a good many years. I’ve watched him wrestle and I’ve watched him eat and I’ve watched him drink, and in each department he has had my devout admiration. Then he faded out of the sport world, and he was gone. Now—”
Merrill said, “In a manner of speaking, Petersen discovered him.”
“Sure,” Petersen said, “as a drawing card. We once billed him as The Mutton Chop That Walks Like a Man.”
“You see, Mr. Chambers”—Merrill sat on the arm of the couch�
��”our tycoon, Petersen, is a man of varied milieu. He has a finger, hand, wrist, elbow, and arm in a good many pies. One such pie is the Pantheon, which he owns. Well, until Petersen added another, my one visual vice was burlesque, the burlier the better, for which I frequently journeyed to Jersey, and sat in a box and threw the vegetables back at the comedians. Then Petersen persuaded me to go see a wrestling match at his Pantheon, and my second visual vice was born.”
“Sure,” Petersen said, “but when the good Conrad Merrill gives birth to a vice, it grows to quick maturity. I had to stage private matches for him. We had matches right here in this studio, with an audience of burly-queens all the way from Jersey.”
“So,” Merrill said, “after one of those matches, when somebody put our Prairie down on his back, he looked up, and finally saw my pictures. When he was dressed again, he came to me, and he said, ‘Mr. Merrill, would you look at my pictures?’ and you could have knocked me over with a palette. I said, ‘Certainly, Prairie, where do you hide them?’ and he said, ‘I’ll bring up a couple sometime.’ “
Prairie said, “Just a minute.”
He poured Scotch in his shot glass, drank it, poured another, drank that. “Like this, Transom. I’m out in Coney Island with a gorgeous little tomato and she says, ‘Fatso, if you’re such a strong-arm, let’s see how many times you can hit the gong,’ one of them boilermaker things, you know. You don’t have to be strong to hit the gong, it’s what you call a knack, but I worked out there one summer, so I got the knack and I’m strong. So I say, ‘Tootsie, I’ll make you a deal. If I bump that gong ten times in a row, can I go upstairs with you when I take you home?’ and she says, ‘Fatso, back where I come from in Chi, my brother was the strong man in the circus, and I had him out by the fair once, and he couldn’t hit it ten times in a row, so, fatso, you hit that gong ten times in a row, you can’t only go upstairs with me when we get home, fatso, you can move in.’ “
“How many times did you hit it?” I said.
“Ten times. But who wants to move in with that tomato? But—I get a prize. A paint box. I almost shoved it down the guy’s throat, but, well, I’m with a lady, so I don’t shove it down the guy’s throat. I hold on to it. A paint box, you know, one of them paint boxes that you buy for kids. Well, that paint box lays around my place for a while, and one day I open it and I fiddle with it, and then I put it away, and then I’m reading a newspaper and it’s in the winter, and there’s a picture of a cop directing traffic with all the people around him, and the snow coming down, and the automobiles and the busses, and all of a sudden I figure I’d like to see if I can’t get that down in the crazy colors that come up in my head. It takes me an hour looking around the town to buy a canvas, because I don’t know where to go or how to tell them what I want, but finally, it works out. I come home with the canvas, and I go to work with that lousy little paint box and I get the biggest kick out of what I’m doing than anything else in my life, which includes eating and drinking and women, and from that time on, I’m cooked, I’m hexed, I’m picture crazy.”