The Dark Fantastic Page 4

  Oh yes.

  Ole whitey – frail, gentle, pathetic, bronchial-tormented ole whitey – has the edge here. Even the toughest Bulanga mother would have more reason to put her faith in him than in a troublesome teen-age daughter.

  All those fancy calculations.

  And what happened?

  Lorena moved toward the desk. She ran a fingertip back and forth over the money as if making sure it was real. “I git off my clothes, you git off your rocks, that it?”

  Mind you, this is a fifteen-year-old child speaking.

  But of course the Bulanga female matures early. In 409 Witter Street there is a mother just fourteen years older than her infant son. Mother attends a special public school for conspicuously fertile juveniles. The school is always overcrowded. It is one of life’s wonders that—

  No. Never mind.

  Where was I?

  Oh yes, Lorena.

  I braced myself for the crossing of the Rubicon. Then I heard myself say, “Clothes off while you do your work here. And you get the five dollars for that work besides this big money. Every time.”

  “Every time? That same money?”

  We were in business.

  A funny aspect of it. The first few times it was plain that she didn’t like my watching her undress. She would huddle in a corner while at it, a Bulanga September Morn. Then she became casual about it. Now she’s arrived at the point where, seated on the edge of a chair, darting sidelong glances to see how I’m taking it, she sometimes performs a sort of slow striptease for me.

  A long-legged, delicately curved budding beauty.

  I take it very well, thank you.

  My partner in felony.

  Wrong? Sinful?

  Not for the transformed Charles Witter Kirwan it isn’t. Not a goddamned bit of it.

  No.

  What do you know about sexual deprivation?

  Are you enjoying its blessings?

  I married at forty-two. I can count on the fingers of one hand my sexual experiences before my wedding night.

  My wife was a dear woman. She had many virtues, few vices.

  Florence Pettengill. Clerk in the bursar’s office at the college. An attractive woman. With friends who also happened to be among my friends. Insistent, nagging, well-meaning, matchmaking friends.

  Florence and I liked each other before our marriage. We became used to each other afterward.

  My wife was a gracious woman. Everyone who reads this and knew her will testify to that.

  She consented to sex graciously. She tolerated it patiently.

  Think that over.

  I masturbated almost every day of my life from pubescence to marriage. Is it any wonder that I masturbated almost every day of my life after my marriage?

  Did my wife know? I’ve wondered about that sometimes. If she did, she would have graciously preferred it that way.

  And now that I

  A hiatus.

  While I was dictating into this machine I could hear Mrs. Bailey wielding the vacuum cleaner downstairs. It suddenly stopped, so I did. I think the lady has an ear made for pressing against closed doors.

  Mrs. Bailey has now been paid her money and taken herself off. She asked how Lorena was doing, I said she was doing very nicely.

  That reminds me. When I warned Lorena against any careless display of her newfound wealth before her family she looked at me blankly and said with apparent puzzlement, “What money, man? I don’t know about any money.”

  She actually put me off balance for the moment.

  Bulanga wise.

  John Milano

  TUESDAY, THE LID BLEW OFF AT WATROUS ASSOCIATES. No big surprise for Milano: it blew off whenever the pressure rose above boiling level, something of an annual event in recent years. One trouble, as Milano saw it, was that Willie had always been a son of a bitch, and old age, senility, whatever, seemed to be making him a bigger one every time you looked at him. The other trouble was that the pair of them, like an old married couple, knew each other’s weak spots too well. If there was an old married couple somewhere who could refrain from shoving the needle into each other’s weak spots, they hadn’t stood up to be counted.

  Yet the day had started nicely. On impulse, a phone call to Mama and fifteen minutes of her on the subject of her evil daughter Angie. This evened things up, because it was no secret that when Mama talked to Angie her favorite subject was her evil son Johnny. But at least the call had been made. Chalk that up on the board.

  At breakfast prepared by himself, Milano went through the Daily News and the Times with an eye out for any item suggesting a possible client for the agency. In the middle of breakfast – tomato juice, single scrambled egg, single piece of unbuttered toast, black coffee, no sugar – it struck him that he had somehow slipped into a diet during the past two days, a realization which filled him with a glow of virtue.

  The glow lasted until he was at his desk and called in Shirley Glass. “A bank messenger job, beautiful. I’ll need three thousand expense money. In hundreds.” Shirley seemed to whimper in response, and he looked at her appraisingly. “What’s wrong with you?”

  “Not me. Helen Monahan. Willie fired her at quitting time yesterday.”

  Helen Monahan had been one of the first typists hired by Watrous Associates back in antediluvian times. Grotesquely fat, already middle-aged, she had plainly hungered for the job in contrast to the shapely young things who took their time deciding whether or not it was worth their trouble. Over the years since getting it, she demonstrated gratitude, not by efficiency, but by such an eager effort to be efficient that it made Milano nervous to deal with her.

  But fired?

  “Why’d he fire her?” Milano asked.

  “She was coming in late sometimes, going home early sometimes. She couldn’t help it. She’s got a very sick husband she’s trying to keep at home instead of sending away somewhere for nursing. That’s not easy.”

  “Then there’s no problem. Get her on the phone right now and hire her back.”

  Shirley shook her head. “Willie said if you tried that he’d fire her again as soon as she showed up. You can’t kick her back and forth between you like that. Willie has to do the hiring.”

  Milano said grimly, “I need this kind of soap opera like a hole in the head,” and walked across the carpeted hallway into Willie’s office loaded for bear.

  Willie sat hunched over his desk, hands clasped before him. He promptly said, “If it’s about Monahan, Johnny boy, forget it.”

  “Willie, you don’t fire people that way.”

  “I didn’t. I retired her. She made sixty last month. That’s retirement age around here.”

  “Since when?”

  “Since right now.”

  “If sixty is the deadline,” said Milano, “where does that leave you?”

  “I’m still the boss. Monahan was hired help.”

  “Ah, come on, Willie, we’re making more money than we ever dreamed of. What the hell would it hurt to carry her? She’s like family after all these years.”

  “Yours maybe. Not mine.” Willie dropped the cape and showed the sword. “But I’ll tell you what, Johnny boy. There’s ten thousand dollars worth of pictures on your wall across the way. That the company paid for. And not even real pictures, for chrissake. Copies.”

  “They’re quality Rouault prints, you ignorant bastard. Right now they’re worth twice what we paid for them.”

  “Twenty thousand? Are they now?” said Willie sweetly. “Then I’ll tell you what you can do with them, you smartass guinea. You can sell them and give half the take to Monahan. The other half you can give back to the company. That way we’ll all be happy, won’t we?”

  Milano tried slowly counting to ten. A thousand wouldn’t have done it. “Well, see you around, killer. Sooner or later.”

  Willie came to his feet, forefinger aimed at Milano’s nose. “Don’t you give me that sooner or later shit! Not if it means you now head for the hills because your fucking ten
der feelings are hurt. Oh no, not this time!”

  Leaving, Milano slammed the door behind him so hard that the knob came off in his hand. He laid the knob on his desk, and Shirley looked at it. “You beat him to death with that?” she said.

  “Not yet.”

  “But he wouldn’t change his mind about Helen?”

  “No. Look, I’m taking off from the job for a stretch. Hy can keep that chair warm meanwhile. Just give him whatever pointers he needs.”

  “Hy Greenwald? Johnny, outside of all the routine here you’ve got a couple of big ones on the burner. Especially that Pacifica thing. Hy’s not up to that.”

  True. But the routine and the rare coin job could be left to simmer on the burner, no harm done.

  Which left a pair of lovely helpless Boudins heading underground somewhere like lovely helpless Persephone. And once underground, never to be seen again. Hell, never even to be listed in any catalogue again.

  Milano said, “All right, I’ll see what I can do about Pacifica. That’s all. For starters, send a messenger over to the apartment with the three thousand. I’ll be waiting for it there around noon.”

  “And how do I tell Willie about you?”

  “I have a feeling he already knows,” said Milano.

  Instead of going straight back to the apartment he walked full-tilt into the park as far as the zoo. A mistake. Except for the Prospect Park Zoo which had to be the absolute bottom, this concrete detention center was undeniably one of the most depressing zoos in the world. He lingered for awhile in front of the cages penning the big cats. In one cage a tiger contentedly dozed, eyelids half shut, sunlight toasting its belly. In the next an edgy leopard restlessly padded back and forth covering the small distance between walls. If neither of them was faking it, this proved, philosophically speaking, that it took all kinds.

  In the apartment he hesitated between a low-calorie Perrier and a high-calorie Jack Daniels and compromised by mixing a half-and-half. He put the Maria Caniglia Tosca on the player, then stretched out on the couch. He stayed with Tosca to Scarpia’s booming solo which brought down the first-act curtain and felt a little better. He shifted over to Billie Holiday and drifted into a pleasantly mournful stupor.

  At twelve-thirty, the messenger arrived with the money. At one o’clock the phone rang. Hy Greenwald.

  “Que pasa, Johnny? You really cutting out just like that? What’re you doing there?”

  “Like meditating, sonny.”

  “Good. Then I’ll give you something heavy to meditate on. A phone call from a guy who wants to meet with you about those Boudins. Not Rammaert. This one says his name is Irv and you know him. He gave me a number to call back.”

  “Irv Saltzman. In the trade. Lives under a rock.”

  “But is there any chance that—?”

  “There’s always a thin chance. What you do now is ask him to give you the exact head count on how many women in each painting are carrying parasols. Exact. You can get the count from those two photos.”

  “I’ll do that. But if he doesn’t have the paintings, what his angle?”

  “Dreams of glory. Trying to weasel into the deal as our agent. Anyhow, call him back now and see what happens.”

  Three minutes later, the phone rang again. “Looks like he’s not the one,” Hy reported. “Not from what he had to say.”

  “What was that? Wrong count?”

  “No, he just said to tell you to take a flying fuck. That’s all. Then he hung up.”

  “So it goes,” said Milano. “And you could hear from others like him. Give them all the same treatment. If anyone looks kosher, call me fast.”

  “You mean the woods are full of hyenas like that?”

  “Along with the Rolls-Royce type hyenas who manipulate the art market and eat up all the little lambs that come in to shop. Those you’ll find listed in Who’s Who.”

  “Very informative. They never had seminars on that in Cornell. Say, when do you expect to be back here?”

  “I’ll let you know when the countdown starts,” Milano said.

  According to its brochure, the Rammaert Gallery closed at six. Milano timed himself for a five-thirty arrival. Carnegie Hall on the corner, the Russian Tea Room, and, a few doors farther along, the gallery, street level in an unobtrusive four-story building. Despite heavy homegoing pedestrian traffic which occasionally bounced off his shoulder, he braced himself in front of the display window for a view of its contents. Very discreet. A single painting and a plasticized blow-up of a New York Times review. The painting was of a swirling nebula which pretty well covered the range of Grumbacher’s color charts, surrounding a rectangular white core. The review was the usual cotton candy whipped up in these cases. The artist was Archbold. No other name offered, just Archbold. Like Rembrandt.

  There was more Archbold to be seen in the gallery’s long, narrow front room, about a dozen nebulae on each wall. Also a desk at the head of the room near the display window. On the desk a phone and on the phone’s base the army of buttons marking this as a mini-switchboard.

  A young woman sat behind the desk.

  Christine Bailey?

  From Hy’s awed description, Christine Bailey.

  Black. Both-sides-of-the-family black. Frizzy hair in a modified Afro. And, Milano had to admit to himself, Hy hadn’t exaggerated. Any healthy male dropping in here would have a hard time trying to focus on the finest of fine art with that showpiece in view. Matter of fact, you could hear some client in a burnoose and with a sack of petrodollars – or the ranchero with the gaucho gold – telling Rammaert to forget the prime Picasso, just wrap up the lady there for quick delivery.

  The lady glanced up at Milano, gave him the briefest of professional smiles, and went back to reading the book before her. He tried to make out its title and couldn’t, helped himself to a descriptive flier on Archbold from the stack there, and went for a stroll among the nebulae. A couple bore unobtrusive red stars indicating that they were already sold. Maybe they were. On the other hand, as any operator like Rammaert could tell you, boxes of little red stars were easily available at your local stationer’s for just one dollar a box.

  There was a smaller room behind the main one. Here, under more subdued lighting, was hung an assortment of Nineteenth Century French academic stuff. Milano stopped to scrutinize a Gérome closely. Probably authentic. Géromes were now being feverishly hauled out of attics and dusted off for the chicken-headed market, but their prices, while rising, still hadn’t hit that level which might tempt a world-class forger to try his hand at one. Glossy stuff, not too hard to imitate, but mind-numbing in its detail.

  At the far end of the room was a door, a light shining under it, a voice within audible in the phone conversationalist’s grumble. Rammaert’s office. No doubt, Rammaert’s voice.

  Milano looked at his watch. A few minutes before six. Despite powerful temptation, he managed to refrain from considering the lady at the desk and, instead, considered the layout of the premises. A simple-minded alarm system conspicuous over the front door. No uniformed man on duty. All adding up to third-rate security for third-rate merchandise.

  He had not really – not directly, at least – lied to Hy Greenwald. Thanks to the agency’s vast accumulation of indexed information, the evidence pretty much tallied up to Rammaert. And if he was the one, the Boudins would very likely wind up right here in his shop on their way through. Not even hidden. Just left crated in a storeroom. Or even in a corner of that back office.

  Because, contrary to amateur logic, that was the place for them if the cops miraculously pinned the job on the right man. That was what gave the right man room to be a terribly innocent victim wrongly accused. My God, officer, these paintings were taken on consignment in all good faith. Here’s the correspondence to prove it. And to think they’re stolen goods! Horrifying. Unbelievable.

  Check out the West Coast end of the correspondence and nobody’s there. Had been, but not any more. Is that the fault of this honest New York art dea
ler? The defense rests.

  So going by the odds, as Hy had been advised, the Boudins could be here or, more likely, on their way here. No guarantee, but that was the smart bet. And with solid evidence that Rammaert had possession of the goods, you could then approach him, ransom money in hand.

  What Hy hadn’t been told was that there was an option to weigh before the Q.E.D. Just as the paintings had been lifted from tycoon Grassie, they could be lifted from art dealer Rammaert. Surreptitiously removed by experts in that line of work for shipment back home to daddy as soon as Pacifica made full payment to the agency for them.

  Nothing Rammaert could do about it afterward. Not a thing.

  Couldn’t go to the law, couldn’t raise a howl, couldn’t even risk a stifled moan about it. The biter bit.

  A little grand larceny? Well, yes. But consider the poetic justice of it. And the results.

  But that was Willie’s end of it, the larceny. After thirty years of Safe, Loft and Truck, and Special Frauds, and Riverfront, and God knows what else on the Force, Willie had contacts who’d hit Fort Knox if the price was right. For a place like Rammaert’s you could line up a team who might do the job for five thousand. You could also line up a team who’d guarantee a flawless job for fifteen or twenty. And this was the only kind of marketing where Willie – give the miserable little bastard credit – didn’t go bargain-hunting.

  Milano cast an eye at his watch: a few minutes after six. The place to wait for Christine Bailey was outside the foyer, clear of the display window. Then, depending on the play of cards, it could be the bar of the Russian Tea Room or that coffee shop on the corner of Seventh Avenue for the warmup pitches. Right now, there was still a chance of getting a look into the office behind him.

  He tried to, but the view was instantly obscured by the man emerging through the office door. Big-bellied, jowly, and with the Flemish high color. The russet hairpiece over the graying sideburns was transparently a hairpiece. Had to be Rammaert. Then the door was pulled almost shut.