Which apparently was forever. "A revelation," Bobbi repeated. She swigged half the jelly glass of wine, and said, "I suddenly realized I could be my own person, you know?"
"I know," Madge said, and she really did know. Quickly, before Bobbi could say anything else that she'd already said, Madge told her, "But I'm sorry, honey, I'm afraid I've had it for today."
Bobbi stared at her, not understanding. "You what?"
"I'm sleepy." Madge got to her feet. "Stay up as long as you want, Bobbi, but I have to go to bed."
"In the morning," Bobbi said, "I'll go see Coalshack." Everett Coalshack was the director of the New York City Symphony Orchestra, where Bobbi and Madge both worked.
"That's right," Madge said.
"He can send me to the right people out on the Coast," Bobbi said. "I know he'll help me.
"I'm sure he will," Madge agreed, not for the first time, and retreated out of the room and out of earshot, while Bobbi went on talking.
"I'll get to California," Bobbi said to the jelly glass and the wine jug and the empty room, "and the first thing I'll get is a car. A car, goddam it. And a nice house somewhere near the ocean. And never have to see or hear or speak to that bastard Chuck again."
She went on in that vein for a while, eventually noticing that she was indeed alone, and then she prepared herself for bed, a process that involved emptying both suitcases all over the living room floor. When this exercise unearthed the little gold-painted statue that had started it all, "You're my good-luck charm. You know that? You made it all possible."
She placed the statue on the windowsill, among the avocado plants, with the spider plants dangling overhead; a very jungly atmosphere, perfect for the little devil. And when at last she turned out the lamps and stretched herself on the sofa under Madge's other blanket, she saw how the peach-coloured glow of the sodium streetlight outside glinted in metallic slivers on all the contorted surfaces of the creature. Coral and gold, with wicked emerald eyes. "Good night, little devil," she whispered to it, and she could almost believe that one of the eyes winked at her.
Soon…
THE FOUR WOMEN playing bridge in the Bernstein dining room were Angela Manelli Bernstein (north), Teresa Manelli McCann (east), Floyd's wife Barbara Kavetchian McCann (south) and Kathleen McCann Podenski (west). (Kathleen, Frank and Floyd's sister, was married to a Polish gentleman named Howie Podenski who was currently serving three concurrent terms for mail fraud but was expected home soon.) Angela was in four spades, doubled, on the basis of Barbara's promise of strong support, but when Teresa led the jack of clubs and Barbara lay down her dummy hand Angela saw at once that she'd been screwed again. "Barbara," she said, glaring at her sister's sister-in-law, "what in Jesus Christ's holy name made you support spades?"
"Well," Barbara said, blinking in that infuriating way of hers, "you sounded so enthusiastic about it."
"Barbara," Angela said, and in the other room the phone rang. Angela closed her mouth, counted to seven, opened it again, and said, "Barbara, answer the phone. You're dummy"
"All right." Barbara went away to answer the phone, and Angela settled down to compare her hand with the dummy's, to see how much could be salvaged.
When Angela had called Frank's and Floyd's wives to tell them their husbands wouldn't be home for dinner, the idea of bringing in Kathleen Podenski for a fourth and settling down to a nice game of bridge had seemed a natural one. And since the Bernstein home was the only one not blessed with children, it had also been natural to hold the game here. (Besides, Angela was on duty for phone messages, of which this one was the first.) The nine children belonging to the other women, ranging in age from Frank and Teresa's eleven-year-old Francine to Floyd and Barbara's four-year-old Ronald, had all been assembled over at Barbara's house with Francine as their baby-sitter and the colour television set to keep them out of trouble, so everything was fine.
The only thing wrong, in fact, was what was wrong with the same idea every time they tried it. Floyd's wife Barbara and her partner (they rotated) invariably lost every game. Invariably. And Angela, who was a very intense and rather good bridge player, hated to lose. Hated it, hated it.
And she was going to lose again, no doubt of it. Down three, at the very least. Jack of clubs led, king X X in dummy (one of Barbara's few honours, as it happened), X X X in Angela's hand. If she played over the jack, surely Kathleen would have the damn ace. If she didn't, Teresa would have the damn ace. Whatever happened, Angela could see herself losing three club tricks in a row. Hell and damnation.
Angela chose to finesse, playing a low club. If Kathleen had the ace but not the queen, she might play high. Except that she didn't, and on the second round Teresa led the queen, and this time Angela played the king over it, and Kathleen had the ace.
Kathleen was leading the ten of clubs, which was now high in that suit, when Barbara came back from the phone to say, "I think it's Mel."
Angela had just about enough of Barbara. Glaring at her, she said, "You think it's Mel?"
"He sounds garbled," Barbara explained.
"In a minute." Angela played that club round through, Kathleen took the trick, and now Angela had to take every last trick after this to make the contract. Fat chance.
Kathleen led another club. Angela was now void both in her hand and in the dummy, but given Barbara's luck of strong cards Angela would prefer to be in her hand, so she played a low trump, and damn if Teresa didn't go over it with a medium-size trump, and now Angela had to decide whether to lose the trick or to use up not only one more trump on this same trick but also to use up one of the few entries to dummy.
"How we doing?" Barbara said.
Angela looked up at her. "We? We?" Making a sudden decision, she got to her feet, slapped the cards face-down on the table, and said, "You play the hand. I'll go talk on the phone."
Angela left Barbara blinking and went into the living room, where she picked up the phone and snarled, "Hello!"
"Angela? Is that you?" Mel didn't sound garbled, he sounded hysterical.
"What's up?"
"I'm arrested!"
"Arrested? For burglary?"
"Everything but," he said. "Reckless driving, endangerment, grand larceny, assault and battery, attempted murder, wilful destruction of property and leaving the scene of an accident. Attempted leaving the scene of an accident."
"You?" Disdain dripped like honey from her lips. "You don't have the guts for all that."
"The point is," he said. "I'm here in Haddam Neck, Connecticut, and I'm—"
"You're in what? Horse's neck—"
"Haddam Neck. Connecticut. And this is the one phone call I'm permitted, and I made the mistake of calling my wife. I'd do better to call Yassir Arafat."
The presence of Barbara back there in the dining room left Angela with no compassion in her heart. "You may be there in Horse's Ass, Connecticut," she said, "but I'm here in Dreadful Gulch, Queens, playing bridge with Barbara McCann, and what the hell am I supposed to do about you?"
"Jesus, you're a sweetheart. I've been arrested."
"Better late than never."
"Listen, Angela," he said. "I can tell you're in one of your moods, so just listen to what I tell you, and pass it onto Jerry when he calls in. I think they plan to hold me overnight, but I want somebody to get a good Connecticut lawyer up here in the morning. That's Haddam Neck, Connecticut."
"All right, all right. I got it."
"Also tell Jerry, I got to the Beemiss statue and it wasn't the right one."
"Beemiss." Angela was finally starting to jot things down on the notepad beside the phone.
"I didn't get to any of the others," Mel went on, "but I did run into two people on somebody else's list. Almost ran into them, anyway. Edward Ross and Jennifer Kendall. I think Frank had them. Their statues weren't any good."
Angela wrote the names on the pad. "Anything else?"
"You're a terrific person, Angela. Your husband is about to spend the night in a jail cell, an
d you say, 'Anything else?' "
Angela made the effort: "Keep well," she said. "Try not to get bugs."
"What a warm human being," Mel said, and hung up.
Angela shrugged. She'd tried, hadn't she? Going back to the dining room, she said to Barbara, "How we doing?"
Barbara was blinking furiously. "Down four," she said.
"It could have been worse," Angela said. She'd expected it to be worse.
"So far," Barbara said, and led a card.
In due course…
SWIMMING POOL SALESMAN Wally Hintzlebel was slowing down. The story of New York is speed, is movement, movement without stopping, on the go all the time, gotta hustle, but Wally was slowing down. The nervous energy still crackled and fizzed inside him, it still pushed and poked and prodded, but he wasn't used to the pace, and his brain was slowing down.
That was why it was so good to be in the Professor Charles S. Harwood apartment. Empty, silent, calm. What a place to be, after all he'd gone through. First the library, then the phone call with Mom and the scramble home for dinner and back to the city, and then the drunken black man with the statue glued to the windowsill. Why would anybody glue a statue to a windowsill?
A bigger question: What sort of person pours boiling water out his window onto the head of somebody in the street below? (All right, technically Wally'd been burglarizing Green's apartment, but he hadn't taken anything, had he? Did that deserve boiling water on the head?)
But now, like a safe port after stormy seas, here he was at last in the Harwood apartment, wonderfully empty of crazy people, or indeed of any people at all.
Unfortunately, it was also empty of golden statues, since that pile of fragments in the living room fireplace clearly had once been a plaster copy of the Dancing Aztec Priest. So the million dollars wasn't here. It was necessary to move on.
Still he stood where he was, trembling slightly his eyes dull but with flickerings deep within as he gazed around at the empty living room. Something was holding him here, something— Why were the lights on? Every light in the apartment turned on, and the apartment completely empty. Why was the bedroom stripped? Living room and kitchen looked lived-in but in the bedroom the dresser drawer gaped open, empty. What was going on here?
Wondering, frowning, back to the bedroom Wally went and brooded at those empty dresser drawers. And when he turned to the closet he discovered the door was locked. With the key in the keyhole. Puzzled, at sea, Wally reached out a tentative hand, unlocked the door, opened it, and a wild-eyed naked man leaped out at him, babbling, "Oh, thank God, thank God, I thought I'd starve in there, I was praying somebody would—"
"I don't want to talk to you," Wally said. He pushed the naked man back into the closet, he locked the door, he went away.
Anon…
MEL BERNSTEIN'S CAR looked like a hobo's hat after its richochet romance with the trees of Connecticut, but the damn thing still ran. Mel ran west in it for ten miles before he found a phone booth, next to a closed gas station, where he called Angela once more.
This time she came on herself, and Mel said, "It's me again."
"Listen, Mel," she said. "I'm glad you called back. I was in a very bad mood before."
"I noticed."
"How's your cell?"
"I'm not in a cell. I got out, that's what I'm calling about."
"You escaped?"
"They let me go. Listen, I'll tell you the story," Mel promised, and he did, from the time he'd entered the Beemiss residence until the motorcycle had run into the state trooper's car, at which point Angela said, "Come off it, Mel. If you did all that, they'll never let you go."
"Well, I had some advantages," Mel told her. "In the first place, the couple on the motorcycles was interracial."
"Oh? Which one was black?"
"The boy."
"Ah hah," said Angela.
"In the second place," Mel said, "the people in the Cadillac turned out to be mobsters of some sort. They kept being evasive with the cops. But the thing that really did it, the trooper that I hit with the motorcycle, he's an amateur writer, he—"
"No," she said.
"Swear to God."
"He's a customer of yours?"
"Client," Mel corrected. "He's sent in a couple stories, yeah. He recognized the Zachary George name right away. They wanted my occupation, and I said I was Zachary George's assistant, and this trooper fell over."
"Mel, that's incredible."
"What's so incredible? I get hundreds of pieces of shit in the mail every week."
"But the trooper."
"Angela, to tell you the truth, I think the interracial business and the mobster business would have done it for me, anyway. But the Zachary George connection didn't hurt."
"So they let you go."
"I posted a bond, by cheque, but it won't come to anything. The mobsters didn't want to press charges or make any waves, and the cops didn't want to listen to the interracial couple, so I'm home free."
"You coming back now?"
"No, it isn't that late, and I've only done one of my four names. Two of them are on Long Island, I'll try them tonight and come home after that."
"Good luck," she said.
"That's what I've got, all right."
When all at once…
The adventures of Frank and Floyd in the Ghetto
A SERIES OF BLACKOUTS
1
From Floyd's list:
Leroy Pinkham
119 West 122nd St.
Leroy, he say, "Buhbuh."
Buhbuh, he say, "Yuh?"
"Lu da cah."
"Wuh cah?"
"Dah cah."
Buhbuh, he look at that car, he see two white men inside there in that car. "Huh," he say.
Leroy, he say, "Dah cah, it been rowndeh block befoah."
Buhbuh, he say, "Yeh?"
Leroy, he say, "Kewbee cops?"
Buhbuh, he say, "Nah."
Buhbuh and Leroy, they sitting on the stoop out front Leroy's house. It after eight o'clock, but not dark yet. Leroy's Mama and Leroy's sister Rose and Leroy's other sister Ruby, they at the church, practicing with the choir. Leroy's other sister Reeny, she to the movies with her boyfriend, and Leroy's big brother Luther, he in the Army. Nobody in Leroy's house. Leroy, he don't like to be in there by himself, so him and his best buddy Buhbuh, what also goes to Liberation High, they out on the stoop talking about the astronauts, until Leroy, he see that car.
Now they don't talk about nothing for a while, and then Leroy, he grin and say, "Man, I dig that Chi-neez food." Him and Buhbuh, they ate in a restaurant today for almost the first time ever, and they both of them really dug it. Chinese restaurant, regular restaurant where you sit down and they's waiters and everything. Him and Buhbuh got to go there cause they helped out with some bunch of people that Miss Tower was working with. Miss Tower, she their favourite teacher at Liberation High, cause they is both got the hots for her. That Miss Tower, she got some beautiful ass, but she don't go for none of that shit at all. She a goddam virgin. But pretty to look at.
Liberation High, that something else. It for guys like Leroy and Buhbuh, what dropped out of school and now is like nineteen, twenty, and they ain't getting nowhere. So they can go back to this school, and it ain't like no regular school with bad-ass teachers and dumb subjects and all. It special for older guys what are smart and what want to get theyselves an education. Already they been fourteen graduates from Liberation High gone to City College.
So today Leroy and Buhbuh, they got to go to this real Chinese restaurant, with Miss Tower and this whole bunch a people, and they ate up a damn storm. So now Leroy and Buhbuh, they talk about that food at that Chinese restaurant, until Leroy, he say, "Dere it go again."
Buhbuh, he say, "Wuh?"
"Dah cah."
Buhbuh, he look and see that car, and it the same car as the last time, with them same two white men inside there.
"Cops," say Leroy.
"Yuh," say Buhbuh.
They watch that car go down round the corner, and then they talk about a movie they seen on television, with monsters and vampires in it. They talk about that until Leroy, he say, "Lu dah."
Buhbuh, he say, "Wuh?"
"Dem cops."
Buhbuh, he look, and them two white men from the car, they walking on the sidewalk, and they coming this way. Buhbuh, he say to Leroy, "I din do nuthin."
"Well, I sure as shit din do nuthin."
"So, wuh the hell?"
So the two white men, who isn't anyway cops but is Frank and Floyd, they comes along and nods at Leroy and Buhbuh with quick nervous little smiles, and then they goes up the stoop and into the building, and Leroy and Buhbuh, they look at one another, and Buhbuh, he say, "who dey aftuh?"
So they talk about that, all the different people in the building, while Frank and Floyd, they go upstairs and find the Pinkham apartment, and they walk right in 'cause Leroy, he don't never lock the door, 'cause if you lock the door when the place empty the junkies, they gone think you got something in there and they gone bust the door down. So Frank and Floyd, they go in and split up to search the apartment for the golden statue, and when they meet again at the front door they is both found it.
Frank, he say, "What the hell is that?"
Floyd, he say, "It's the goddam statue. What's that?"
And Frank, he say, "Shit. We better take them both."
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