by Kane, Henry
Merrill stood up and put his glass away. “He’d been doing that for a number of years when I met him. He’d been picking up pointers from Village painters, to whom, I’m sure, he could have given pointers, and he progressed from that crude box of water colors to oils, and, luckily, he had no teacher, and nobody to stultify his form and color sense. When he brought me two of his paintings, I was astounded. I went back with him to his apartment, and when I looked at the rest of his work, I knew that I’d run up on genius. I said, ‘Prairie, you’re a great painter,’ and he thought I was kidding him. At that time, he was wrestling to make money for paints, and I said, ‘Prairie, how would you like to give up wrestling, and paint the rest of your life?’ “
“That,” Prairie said, “was one hundred per cent with me.”
“So he moved in here with me, as assistant, bodyguard, valet, and fellow-painter. I pay him well, and he does what he likes, but he paints. I don’t try to influence or actually teach him. I give him technical pointers, we discuss his work, and that’s all. He’s the foremost Primitive of his time, and he keeps getting better. He has more imagination than I can ever hope to have, and his color sense is unbelievable. Prairie is my enthusiasm, and as long as I live, Prairie paints, and if I die, Prairie is provided for. Our Prairie shall paint forever.”
“Whew,” I said.
“Not bad,” Prairie said. “Huh, Transom?”
“Let’s go to work,” Merrill said.
“May I talk with you later, Mr. Merrill?” I asked.
“What about?”
“Pamela Reeves.”
“No.”
“But, Mr. Merrill—”
“Mr. Chambers, you may have impressed Mr. Petersen, and I know you’ve impressed our Nancy, and you’re a friend of Prairie’s, all of which is very much in your favor, but I’ll go along with the professional version of that affair—and the professional version has it that Mikvah murdered Pamela and killed himself. There appears to be no doubt whatever.”
“But, Conrad—” Nancy said.
“Let’s go to work, please.”
She gave her glass to Prairie and she shook her head at me and she went out with him.
Prairie said, “Now, don’t take it too hard, Transom, my boy. He’s what you call a card. I’ll get your things.” He stumped into the narrow hallway.
Petersen said, “Chambers.”
“Yes, sir?”
“After I take Miss Reeves home, I’d like to have a chat with you. May I see you at your office, say, in an hour?”
“One hour. That’s a date.”
2
The September sidewalk was sunny. A fresh wind ran up the canyon of the narrow street. I kicked along, filling my lungs like an opera star and holding it and exhaling slowly. I passed up a number of chummy saloons for a ham-and-eggery I knew on Christopher Street that served clam chowder divine. I had clam chowder divine in a bowl, and then they grilled down a pompano fresh-flown from Florida. I had coffee and I paid my bill and I had a toothpick and I said, “Thank you” to the Greek that owned the place and he said, “Good, huh?” and I said, “Wonderful.” This was one of the finest fish places in all of the city. The Greek simply had never removed the Ham and Egg sign, but Glorified, after he’d bought it. If it was ham and eggs you were interested in, the smell of the place dissuaded you, but, thereafter, you were a customer.
I bought a paper, and I jumped the Broadway local to Fiftieth Street, reading on the way about the murder of Pamela Reeves and the quick solution and the congratulations all around from the Mayor to the Commissioner and down. There was nothing about Nottiby. Mikvah was a suicide, period. I climbed out at Fiftieth and I walked back to Forty-eighth and Seventh.
The Roxbury looked like all the rest of the Roxburys the world over. It was tall and narrow, dirty-lemon brick, with a swinging electric sign outside. It had a revolving door that resisted pressure like an honest politician. You pushed your way through into a long alley of a lobby with a napless rust carpet that had once been coral. You got a strong smell of faint disinfectant and dead perfume and old cigars and weary dust, and a rubbery odor of age. The walls were of a perspiring type of pseudo-marble. There was an elevator to the left, cage open, motionless. Further in, to the right, was the desk. You had the feeling, the instant you got by the reluctant whirl of the door, that after the bellboy (if any) opened the windows and tested the lights and flushed the bowl, if you tipped him well and asked for a girl, whisperingly and out of the side of your mouth, there would be a knock on your door in five minutes. It was that kind of hotel.
The desk was an old wood counter smooth-shiny with use. Behind it, on the wall, was the lattice work of the square pigeonholes for keys and mail, and, as you leaned over, the switchboard was on the left. The switchboard operator was also the desk clerk, performing on a swivel chair that creaked—a languid young man with orange hair and a satiny face and expressive nostrils. The guy had more swish than a train going into a tunnel. He was chattering into the telephone mouthpiece and I had to rap my knuckles twice on the counter before he came to.
He stood up and he spread his hands on the counter and he leaned on his fingers. His fingernails glinted pale polish. “Yes?”
“I’m calling on Mr. Nottiby.”
“Not in.”
“How would you know? That quick?”
“Hey,” he said. “You know, from here you smell like cop.”
“You’re clairvoyant, soldier.”
“Me? Sure. I am also psychic. What’s he done?”
“Who?”
“Your Nottiby.”
“Why don’t you be a good boy?”
“I am, mister. Real good. Honest.”
“Look, blondie. Let’s stop with the sparkling repartee. Nottiby. Toby O. Nottiby.”
“I told you before, mister.”
“Well, tell me again. Or you looking for me to start breaking up the joint?”
“You, alone?”
“Me and a lot of other people.” I grabbed him by his royal-purple tie and I heaved him half across the counter. I leaned down on his plucked eyebrows. “You know what I mean?”
He bobbed his head at me.
“All right.” I let him drop back. “Nice and polite, I’m asking to see Mr. Nottiby.”
“He’s still not in. Sir.”
“Much better. Only that’s what you said before. For me, you said it too quick. So I asked you why. So you started flying.”
He fixed his tie. He ran a light hand over his orange waves. “It’s because his key’s sticking out. Right there.” He pointed a long finger.
“When’d he go out?”
“I’ve been on all day, mister. He didn’t go out. Probably, he didn’t come in.”
“We ought to check that, huh?”
“Well …”
“Maybe he’s got a key of his own.”
“Could be.”
“Let’s go see, huh?”
“I’d love to go, mister. With you, I would love to go. But I can’t on account I’m not allowed to leave the desk.” He put his palm down on one of those punch bells that plunk by percussion. He screamed, thin-pitched, “Eternal! Hey, Eternal!”
The colored man, who had been reading a newspaper on a stool in the elevator when I went by, pushed his head out. “Me?”
“Take this guy up to six-o-three.”
Eternal came to the desk. “Six-o-three ain’t in.”
“That’s what I been telling him. Here’s the key.”
Eternal took the key. “How come?”
“This handsome gentleman is law.”
“How do you know?”
“He told me, that’s how I know.”
“Did he show you a badge or something?”
“Look, let’s not start getting technical; let’s not start making with a long-drawn affair. Take the guy up and show him six-o-three ain’t in, and bring him back. Goodness.”
“Okay, George. Don’t get excited.”
“W
ho’s excited? My goodness. With badges, yet. Maybe I ought to make him produce his birth certificate. What’s the big deal? A guy comes in with a simple question, and it winds up a three-cornered argument. Listen, kid, if I don’t know a cop when I see one, badge or no badge— How do you like that? I’m sitting here behind the counter minding my own damn business …”
I trudged behind the slow march of Eternal. In the elevator I said, “He been on all day?”
“George is a good guy, mister.”
“Has he been on all day?”
“All day. Since five in the morning. He’s a good guy, mister. A little on the fluffy side. Who isn’t? Kinsey.”
“Kinsey?”
“You know how it is with the fellers. Kinsey.”
“Kinsey,” I said. “It ain’t a bad whiskey.”
Deprecatingly Eternal said, “Law.”
He pulled the gate at six. “Over by the right, mister. Here’s the key. You want me to wait?”
“I’ll ring.”
“Mister.”
“Yeah?”
“George don’t know it, because George is strictly the day man, but there’s been cops here before. Sometime during the night. Looking for what you’re looking for. And they found what you’re going to find, mister. Nothing.”
Six-o-three was empty. The bed was unturned. The windows were tight-closed. No towels in the bathroom were sullied.
I rang for the elevator and I gave the key to Eternal and I said, “Tell George thanks,” and I went out into the sunshine. In the sunshine, I took my hat off and scratched my head, a propitious gesture for a puzzled richard. Then I remembered about the Pantheon. I was on my way again.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The Pantheon was a square, flat building of three brown stories, a reformed armory, on Thirty-fourth Street between Eighth and Ninth Avenues. Downstairs they had wrestling twice a week and on Fridays they had fights. The two upper stories were rigged out as gyms where the wrestlers rehearsed and the fighters trained. This time of day, the heavy iron front portals were closed. Entrance and egress were through a small side door always guarded by an obese Chinese cocked back on a chair with his feet up against the opposite door jamb. If you belonged, his feet came down. If you didn’t belong, he lifted torpescent lids and he regarded you while you remonstrated, then he dropped his eyes, but the feet stayed up, discouragingly. His name was Rocky Dock and he had once wrestled as the Shanghai Jester. After an injury, as compensation, he had been promoted to doorman. I tapped his knee and I said, “Hello, doc.”
“The hell with you.”
“How’s everything, doc?”
“A lousy businessman, you. We could make a million bucks, you and me.”
“Sure, doc.”
“Sure, doc, sure, doc. All the time, sure, doc. All the time the brush. You take me on, it’s a million bucks.”
“I can’t afford it, doc.”
“All you got to do is give me a job. An Oriental detective, it’s money in the bank. You break me in, that’s all. A person of your reputation, with Rocky Dock as the number one fly-cop assistant, boom, the movies come with a million bucks. Boom, you retire. You manage Rocky Dock and his millions, the screen star. You’re dumb.”
“Morty in?”
“Dumb. The small trees blind you to the large forest. Millions.”
I tapped his knee again. “I’ve got to see Morty.”
He closed his eyes, murmuring, “The hell with you, very much,” but the chair came down on its four legs and his feet moved off the door jamb.
“Thanks, doc.”
“Dumb.”
The elevator was as narrow as an upright coffin. I pushed the top button and I came out into the vinegar smell of arnica and sweat. There was noise and there was activity. There were six roped rings, all in use. Men pummeled men, ducking, sliding, and lurching, to profane advices from the corners. You became accustomed to the stench of the sweat and you became a part of it. The naked men in trunks wrestled and the naked men in trunks boxed and the men in the slacks rapped out talk through the part of their mouths unencumbered by the swatch of cigars and the men in the sweat shirts with towels around their necks sat around blank-eyed and mumbled. In one corner, a radio spewed a ballgame. In another corner, another radio spun disks. Off to the right, young men ricocheted fists against punching bags and other young men squirmed along parallel bars and other young men drove earnest blows into the unfeeling, slow-swinging heavy bags. Wrestlers worked on mats, waiting for a ring. The disk broke to the familiar raucous, “R-r-racing fans …”
Somebody yelled, “Shut that goddamn thing off. How’s this monkey gonna learn to keep his left up when he’s worrying about a six-horse place-parley?”
Sweat and smoke and futile clamor. Young men, old men, wise men, broken men. The great sieve rattling: and once in a while a flap-armed quick young man drops out that’s money—once in a great while. Mostly, they batter each other into premature bumbling broken-faced senility, the brisk young men without brains, the pier-six brawlers of the neighborhoods, the poolroom boys with iron in their shoulders, the wise boys with the squint eyes who would rather cash a crooked dime than earn an honest dollar; the moronic young men with the muscles, listening in awe to tales of the dive, the double-cross, the out-of-town killing, the sharp and easy buck. And always, on the outskirts, the fat wrestlers, trained for performance like bloated seals. Throughout the country, in all the big cities, the sieves rattle …
I touched a shoulder. “Morty around?”
“Blow, crumbum.”
I touched another shoulder. “See Morty?”
“Saw him a minute ago. Try the office, bub.”
I skirted the parallel bars and the wrestling mats and passed into a small stinking corridor and knocked on the office door.
“Who that?”
“Pete. Pete Chambers.”
“Come on in, Transom.”
He was standing, one small foot on a chair, talking into the telephone. He winked, waved to me, and kept talking. He was Morton Brodie, general manager, factotum, and fix-man for the Pantheon. He was small and scraggly in high-waisted pinch-pants with red galluses over a white silk sport shirt. He gained an inch on bottom from his built-up heels in the special-made shoes and he gained another half inch on top by virtue of a complex grease-set sticky whirl of stand-up pompadour. He was beak-nosed and smooth-shaven with small black eyes in wrinkled sockets, restless as an old man’s young bride. He had white narrow cheeks and loose nervous jaws. He hung up the phone and he said, “A visit from a transom, that’s going to cost somebody money. It better not be me. What do you want?”
“Hello, Morty.”
“Polite, this trip. Okay, we play it on your wire recorder. Hello, Mr. Chambers.”
“Morty, I’d like you to straighten me out on something.”
“Nobody’d have guessed that, huh? Nobody’d think you’d be here to register with the gym to work off the potbelly.”
“What potbelly?”
“Everybody’s got a potbelly that ain’t registered in a gym. What do you want me to straighten you out about?”
“I thought Sweetheart owned this joint.”
“That’s right.”
“I’ve been hearing different. That’s what I’m inquiring about.”
“So what, if you heard?”
“He around?”
“Who?”
“Sweetheart.”
“The guy works all night. You don’t expect him to be visiting with these scrambled-brains, having fun in the morning.”
“It’s not morning, Morty.”
“All right, all right, it’s not morning. What do you want?”
“I heard someone else owns this joint. It’s not important, but I’m checking. I could check the long way around. I prefer the short way. How about it?”
“For how much?”
“Is it necessary?”
“Sure, it’s necessary. Otherwise, it’s like you said, there’s always the l
ong way.”
“All right,” I said. “How much?”
He took his foot off the chair. “How important is it?”
“Not very.”
“A C note?”
“That’s too much.”
“So long, Transom. Go take the long way.” He brought out cigarettes, offered me one, and lit them. “I know you, brother. You’re here for information. So, pay for it. Like you said, it’s information that you can pick up elsewhere, but that way it’s harder. So, the easy way, pay for it. Furthermore, you couldn’t get that information from me, I don’t care what you paid for it, if I really thought it was a secret. That’s me, Morty, the man of honor. I suppose nobody goes around broadcasting it, search me why, but it ain’t really no secret. So, for one hundred clams, I’ll be glad to let you in on what ain’t no secret. That’ll be one hundred cash bucks on the line, pay up or shut up, and I’m busy.”
I took out my wallet and pushed aside five unrecollected thousand-dollar bills, and I counted out one hundred dollars. “That’s because I like you, Morty.”
“Like hell you like me.”
“Well?”
“Okay, now let’s get specific. What do you want to know?”
“Who owns this joint?”
“Sweetheart.”
“Now, look, guy—”
“All right, all right. For the record, for the public, Sweetheart owns the joint. But he’s got a partner.”