by Marc Behm
The elevator carried him down to the lobby. He ran out to North Boulevard.
She was a block away, walking down Astor Street towards East Burton.
He followed her.
She turned west, along Burton, then south down Dearborn, then west again to Clark, then south again down Clark all the way to Goethe Street.
They took two taxis back to the hotel.
It took her exactly seventeen minutes to change clothes, pack, pay her bill, and check out.
Two more taxis drove them to O’Hare. They caught a late flight to New York. The name on her ticket was Annie Greene.
On the plane she emptied Marlboros out of the gold cigarette case and filled it with Gitanes. Then she read Hamlet.
The Eye worked on Puzzle Number Seven. Leper King was Baudouin. Ibis head had to be Thoth. Arctic swordfish was Narwhal. Kraut Cat Five was a German Mark V tank, a Panther.
But Capital in Czechoslovakia still confounded him. In fact, everything confounded him, the whole fucking bit! But he refused to think about that.
He took the class photo from his pocket. Annie Greene finished Act Three. Scene Three.
My words fly up, my thoughts
remain below;
Words without thoughts, never
to heaven go.
She set the book aside. The Eye studied the faces of the little girls. Annie held the two emeralds in her fist and rattled them like dice.
Then they both fell asleep.
The Eye dreamed he was walking down a long corridor. He thought he was back at the Ritz-Carlton. But no … he opened a door and saw blackboards, a crucifix, rows of empty desks. It was a school! He opened another door, calling his daughter’s name. He found himself in a bare, damp chamber, standing before an old man with a rotting face, who sat on a throne, holding a map on his lap.
I have been plotting your course, he said.
Who are you? the Eye asked.
I am the King of Jerusalem.
And he held out his arms, showing him his leper’s paws.
5
A brief five lines appeared in the New York papers the next day announcing the murder of Kent ‘Bing’ Argyle. According to the Chicago police report, his body was discovered in Lincoln Park at nine o’clock in the morning, stabbed and robbed. Dorothea Bishop wasn’t mentioned. Neither was Abdel Idfa.
The Eye read the story, relieved. The Arabs were staying away from it. They’d smuggled the body out of the penthouse and were now just going about their business, giving away no leads whatsoever. Kismet!
So Annie Greene was safe.
But she was no longer Annie Greene. She was registered at the Park Lane Hotel on Central Park South as Daphne Henry (blond wig). She sold the two emeralds to a fence on Bedford Avenue in Brooklyn. She’d had dealings with him before; he thought she was a Hungarian refugee named Marta Ozd (red wig). She put her money in a safe-deposit box in a bank on Jerome Avenue in the Bronx where she was known as Erica Leigh (platinum wig). She spent most of her time in a girls’ private club on East Fifty-ninth Street. Her name here was Debra Yates (no wig).
Lucy, Eve, Josephine, Dorothea, Annie, Daphne, Debra … he gave up trying to sort out her identities. All the Minolta XK photos of her were spread about the floor of his room at the Park Lane, just next door to her suite. He sat staring at them. The best of all was the very first, the young woman he saw in the park at four o’clock one afternoon, walking along a lane of trees, coming into his life like Grace, smiting an unbeliever.
In another picture, snapped in the O’Hare waiting room, she stood with her hands on her hips, staring into the window of a boutique. The bent index of her left hand was curved against her waist, a pathetic asp curled in a nest.
He kissed it gently.
Pity seized him, holding him fast in a grip of agony. His eyes burned with tears. He bit his lip, swallowing a sob. It sank down into him, gulping in his throat and filling his lungs with electricity and fish-hooks.
He looked at the wall.
She was there, less than five feet away from him, splashing in her bath. He could hear her whistling. He got up, crossed the room.
He touched the wall.
Then guilt and dismay lashed at him furiously.
Poor Maggie! He had betrayed her. Usually, his every third thought was for her, guiding her, phantomlike, past every pitfall and jeopardy his anguish could invent. Now she was an orphan, erring alone – where? While he worshipped this goddess bathing in the next room, who would protect his daughter – if only with a thought – from the daily vileness of growing up – from the back alleys, the vacant lots, the garbage dumps, the cellars, from the sex creeps in doorways with their cocks hanging out, from the street sharks, the subway freaks, the pushers and pimps, the muggers with ice picks and the junkies climbing across roofs like dacoits, from all the ghoul-people of the city wilderness?
His nails clawed at the wall and he whimpered like a dog in a kennel.
She and five or six other girls worked out in the club gym all morning, three days a week. Two of them were debs with nothing else to do. The others were actresses and models. At noon they’d swim nude in the attic pool. One morning the Eye gave the janitor of the adjacent building ten dollars so he could watch them through a skylight. Later, in a cafeteria on First Avenue, he listened to two of them talking about her.
‘I think she’s a dyke. I bet she’s making it with Ditty after we leave.’
‘No way. I touched her once in the water and there wasn’t any turn-on.’
‘Those eyes of hers scare the shit out of me.’
‘I love her ass. It’s just right.’
‘She looked at me the other day and I got dizzy.’
‘I wonder what she does.’
‘I had a cat with eyes like that. A real mean little beast.’
‘If I had her ass, I’d be making four grand a week.’
‘That mink she was wearing must have cost four grand.’
‘I asked her. She said she picked it up out West for practically nothing.’
The next time he tried to spy on the swimmers the janitor wouldn’t let him into the building.
‘Get lost!’ he said. ‘A guy came up there yesterday and I caught him jerkin’ off! I’m not runnin’ a massage parlor!’
Debra Yates was sitting naked on the edge of the pool, reading her horoscope.
You are too impulsive. This is
no time for heedless action.
Do not solicit unnecessary
complications. Have confidence
in a steadfast friendship.
The others girls were diving and frolicking around her, eyeing the overhead skylight, trying to get a glimpse of any onlookers who might be up in the loft windows of the place next door, watching them. Whenever they were sure someone was there, they’d begin their orgy act, writhing on the poolside like bacchantes pretending to go down on one another, dancing lewdly on the diving board, daisy-chaining in the water, working themselves into a wanton frenzy.
Debra took no part in these antics. She would swim her twelve lengths (one underwater), then eat a pear or read or just loll until she got cold, then leave.
She seldom gossiped, had no friends, rarely laughed.
Speculation about her ran wild. She was an ex-nun. She graduated from Vassar. She was the illegitimate daughter of the Shah of Iran and an Apache squaw. She was the highest paid call girl in Manhattan, specializing in anilingus, bestiality, S/M, scatophagy, est sex, and United Nations representatives. She made porn movies in LA. She was the WASP plaything of a Mafia don. She was a Martian. She was frigid.
Finally they all decided she was simply bizarre and let it go at that.
Ditty, the club’s manageress, came over to her. ‘Come here, Debra, I want to show you something.’
Debra got up and followed her around the pool to a front window. They looked down at Fifty-ninth Street. ‘Shit,’ Ditty said. ‘He’s gone. He was standing over there in front of Charlie’s joint.’
A sudden chill blew goose pimples over Debra’s nudity. ‘Who was?’ She wrapped a towel around her shoulders.
‘Listen.’ Ditty slipped her arm around her, taking advantage of their conspiracy to fondle her shoulder. ‘The other day – Friday – I was downstairs, out front, waiting for Romy. I wanted to see who was driving her car.’ Romy worked in the gym. She was Ditty’s girlfriend and was constantly involved in shady infidelities. ‘I think she’s playing come-and-get-it with Liz. You know, the broad at Hunter College. Having a quick one every now and then on the side.’
‘And what happened, Ditty?’
‘Well, I was very alert, otherwise I wouldn’t have noticed. This guy walked by, see. Then he came back. Then he came back again. He passed four or five times. He was there when you left. He tailed you.’
Debra huddled in the towel, her shoulders hunched, her hands crossed on her breasts. ‘Maybe it’s just one of the creeps next door,’ she said.
‘I don’t think so, Debra. Like Monday he was here again. He had on a duffel coat. He drifted by, see, toward York Avenue. Then five minutes later there he was, crossing the street, coming from First. He was wearing a Harris Tweed jacket. Then back he comes, in a fucking raincoat! He’s probably got a car parked somewhere and keeps changing his clothes. The dingdongs next door wouldn’t go to all the trouble.’
‘Describe him.’
‘So-so. Medium. Average.’
‘That’s not a description, Ditty!’
‘How the fuck d’you describe men? They’re amorphous. I’ll show him to you when he comes by again.’
But he didn’t come by again. The Eye saw them standing together in the window and faded back to his car.
She came down First Avenue, entered an office building on the corner of East Fifty-seventh, and stood in the lobby watching everyone who came through the doorway behind her. Fifty people passed. She tried to memorize all the men.
She walked seven blocks to Fiftieth Street, turned west, crossed Second, Third, and Lexington. She went into St. Bartholomew’s Church on Park Avenue, sitting in a rear pew to watch the door. Fifteen minutes passed away. A man entered. He was in his late sixties, tubby, rosy, white-haired, wearing a double-breasted topcoat. He minced into a pew across the aisle, brushed the bench fussily with the tips of his fingers before sitting down.
He glanced at her furtively, blinking, his face jumping with tics. He pivoted toward her, unbuttoned his coat. Hanging between his thighs from a length of string tied around his waist was a large green cucumber. He shook his hips, flopping it at her. Then he jumped up and trotted out the door.
She sat there a moment longer, stifling a smile and giving him time to escape. She went out to Fiftieth, walked to Madison, turned north.
She entered a Hugo shoe store (Founded in 1867) on East Fifty-fifth. She stood in the front window, staring out at the sidewalk. She told the clerk she was waiting for a friend.
A few thousand people passed – two thousand, three thousand. She saw only the men, an endless cavalcade of male profiles – noses, ears, chins, torsos, bellies, hats, warts, grimaces, moles, squints, glasses, cigars, pipes …
She left. She bought two pears in a grocery on Fifty-sixth, ate one of them.
On Fifth Avenue she took a subway to Queensboro Plaza.
She ate the other pear, studying the faces of the passengers. A soldier. A Japanese. A boy in a baseball cap. A priest. A black. Another Japanese. Three men who looked like burglars, carrying bags of tools. Two deaf-mutes waving their fingers, emitting bird noises. A cop. A dozen others … all blank faced, featureless, as expressionless as closet walls.
She took three buses to Greenpoint, the Navy Yard and DeKalb Avenue. She ate a hamburger in a drugstore. She stopped once and looked over her shoulder, certain he was standing just behind her.
She went into the subway again on Pacific Street.
She spent all afternoon and half the night rolling up and down Brooklyn on the Fourth Avenue, West End, and Brighton Beach Lines. She changed cars every four or five stops. She went back and forth from Coney Island four times. She was sure she never saw the same face twice.
At one o’clock in the morning she checked into a grubby hotel on Kings Highway. She gave the night clerk ten dollars.
‘I want you to write down the names of everyone who checks in after I do,’ she told him.
He sniggered at her. ‘What for?’
‘For another ten when I leave tomorrow.’
‘That’s an all-night job, lady,’ he smirked. ‘Better make it twenty.’
She gave him an extra ten. She sat up all night in a clammy room, watching the street. At six o’clock she went down to the desk, and he handed her a copy of Penthouse. Scrawled on its cover were three names:
Mr. & Mrs. Clark Gable
Mr. Wm O’Something
Mr. Ed Dantes
She gave him his twenty dollars and sat in the cubbyhole lobby reading the Penthouse, waiting for them to check out.
O’Something came down at six forty. He was as tall as a circus giant and carried three heavy valises. He drove away in a car with Idaho license plates. Mr. and Mrs. Gable were a hooker and her John, both Puerto Ricans. They left at seven ten. Ed Dantes was the Eye.
He saw her as he started down the stairs. He retreated silently into the upper hallway and climbed out a window. He jumped down into the backyard, ran across a lot into the adjacent street.
She sat there until nine, watching the stairway. When the day man arrived, she had him ring his room. There was no answer.
She left.
He was on the platform of the Kings Highway station when she took the train back to Manhattan, but she didn’t see him. She returned to the Park Lane Hotel and took a bath. Then she began again. She went to the club, and she and Ditty watched East Fifty-ninth Street until after two.
Lunch in a Chinese restaurant on Third. A movie on Forty-second Street. She crossed Central Park to West Seventy-second, then walked down Columbus Avenue to Broadway. She had dinner in a pizzeria near Grand Central. A man in a beige suit and Hawaiian shirt sat at the next table, ogling her, spoiling her meal.
She went to a bar on East Fifty-fourth and drank two cognacs and read Hamlet. At midnight she telephoned the Kings Highway hotel and asked the sniggering night clerk if she could talk to Mr. Dantes.
‘Who?’
‘Mr. Dantes.’
‘Gone.’
‘Did he leave a forwarding address?’
‘Are you the beautiful lady who gave me the two twenties?’
She hung up. The man in the beige suit and Hawaiian shirt came into the bar as she was leaving.
She drifted down Fifth to Forty-second Street, then up Broadway to Seventh.
Two drunken marines swooped down on her out of nowhere. Whooping, they lifted her off her feet and whirled her across the sidewalk, fighting over her playfully, mauling her between them. She broke away from them, shoved them aside. They wobbled off the curb into the gutter, and a swerving taxi hit one of them, sending him spinning into the crowd like a drunken dervish. Someone screamed.
She walked on slowly, not looking back.
She turned the next corner, stood in a doorway. The front of her dress was torn open, her necklace was broken, the disc was gone. She took her blond wig from her bag, pulled it on.
She pinned the dress, crossed Fifty-seventh Street. Ten minutes later she was in the deserted lobby of the Park Lane. The night man gave her her key.
‘Good night, Miss Henry.’
‘Good night.’
In her suite she removed the blond wig and sat down at her dressing table, catching her breath. Her dress was ruined. She donned a pair of gloves.
A key turned in the lock, the door opened. The man in the beige suit and Hawaiian shirt strolled into the room. The Eye stood under a lamp post on Seventh Avenue, thinking about Puzzle Number Seven and watching the marines play with Daphne Henry.
Arctic swordfish, six letters down, had
to be Narwhal So Adrastea was Nemesis.
He saw the taxi coming.
But Capital in Czechoslovakia, four across, didn’t make any sense at all. In fact, the whole bit was turning into a monumental pain in the ass!
He lunged forward, stumbled against one of them, shoved him off the curb. The marine lurched into the gutter and the taxi hit him, pulverizing him.
But the goddamned crosswords had been a perfect cover all these years, he had to admit that. They camouflaged everything.
Someone screamed.
Nobody – but nobody! – knew just how really nutty he was. They all thought – Baker and Flatfeet and the zombies sitting in the room with the eleven desks – they thought he was just eccentric. Oh, him! He’s harmless. A crossword puzzle freak. He’s been like that ever since his wife left him. Spaced out.
He followed Daphne over to Fifty-seventh Street.
It had started in Washington, D.C., the year he’d spent six months looking for Maggie. One night he’d woken up at three in the morning and found himself sitting out on the ledge of his hotel room, ten floors above the street. He’d crawled back into the room, opened a magazine, and spent the rest of the night doing a crossword.
And he’d been doing them ever since.
Then there had been that horror in the alley in Cheyenne. Jesus! In the last instant, just as the hammer was swinging, he’d looked at Grunder and seen his horns and his tail! And when the bullet hit him, he’d vomited flames.
Spaced out indeed! Wow!
That’s why going back to the fucking office was impossible – for the time being, anyway. He couldn’t hide behind himself forever. Sooner or later somebody was bound to catch on. And when that happened, they’d close in on him with butterfly nets and he’d end up gibbering out on the ledge forever.
He prayed: Not now, Lord, not yet! Let me stay loose for just a little while longer.
He needed a rest … a haven … peace … shelter. He needed this. Her. She was his appeasement, his rod and his staff in the valley of death. And he was hers.
He followed her into the Park Lane Hotel, just behind the man in the beige suit and Hawaiian shirt.
‘Your name is Daphne Henry?’