The Dark Fantastic Read online

  “I’m sorry” – the hint of a guttural – “but we are closing now.”

  “Yes, of course,” Milano said, but bided his time as Hairpiece ponderously made his way into the front room. That office door was tempting. An inch of opening allowed a narrow view of the office.

  He heard the front door bang, then the outside door, and wheeled around. Hairpiece was at his desk, Christine Bailey wasn’t. She must have shot out of there like a bat out of hell. “Goddam,” Milano told the Gérome between his teeth.

  He left the gallery at a brisk pace, nodding pleasantly to the proprietor as he went by, then stood on the street looking up and down for any glimpse of that Afro hairdo and ebony swan-neck among all the commonplace heads and necks in view.

  Lost her.

  Even Hy Greenwald could have done better.

  Charles Witter Kirwan

  HAVE YOU EVER HEARD OF THE MOONLIGHT MOVING COMPANY?

  A Bulanga term. Sometimes the Bulanga, despite their limited vocabulary, come up with an image of surprising acuity.

  The Moonlight Moving Company consists of a rented U-Haul truck which appears between midnight and dawn to be loaded with unpaid-for furniture by unpaid-for tenants on the move. It is the creation of our town’s political messiahs who, brimming over with Christian and Jewish charity and avid for the Bulanga vote, decided on a scenario where those who rent the Bulanga their living space must always emerge as the villains of the piece. The bad ones. The whiteys. Instructed to cosset their tenants, tend their quarters, pay property taxes on schedule, and always acknowledge that they themselves are the worms in the Big Apple.

  And the Bulanga? A regally proud people, never mind the public charity that droppeth on them like the gentle rain from heaven. After all, as the scenario has it, charity won by extortion and menace is not charity, it is dues.

  Does it surprise you to learn that my prideful, dues-collecting tenants have better things to spend their money on than their rent?

  To be absolutely fair, not all of them. At any given time no more than half are in arrears beyond two months. Just enough to have the building drain away what money I have left instead of providing for its own maintenance.

  This comes up because last night, a little after midnight, I watched the Moonlight Moving Company in action next door. The Mitchells this time, four months in arrears, were decamping. In my records, their apartment was occupied by one mother, two children. On the street before 409, loading furniture and furnishings into the U-Haul, were two females, five children, and four adult males. I recognized two of the males; I had seen them in and out of the building sometimes. As a gentleman, I will assume that the other two were friends of the family in a Boy Scout mood.

  I make such assumptions now and then for my private entertainment.

  So.

  For the first time, I could, with death’s firm and friendly grip on my shoulder, watch this kind of event dispassionately. I must make clear I was not on the lookout for it. Not in the tower room to do any spying. But in the way of the Bulanga culture, when the Moonlight Moving Company is on the job there is no secrecy about it, no hush-hushing, no tiptoeing. There is thud, bang, and clatter; there is unrestrained badinage and laughter. The uninhibited Bulanga cackle and whinny. All more than enough to have me part the window curtains a bit and view the action.

  Dispassionately.

  Caliban upon Setebos.

  Yes.

  “Let twenty pass, and stone the twenty-first,

  Loving not, hating not, just choosing so.”

  Know that one?

  Robert Browning. Too long a poem – smothering in its own luxuriant verbiage at times – but these lines

  The Victorian poets? Possibly too fluent? I’ve sometimes wondered if they

  Never mind.

  But these lines of Caliban strike sparks.

  You see, Mrs. Mitchell and her spawn and her dear friends will not be part of the grand event. They will only learn about it afterward, from a distance. They will sit popeyed before their television sets viewing the devastation and trying to comprehend the goodness of de Lawd. They will feed on it all the rest of their lives like the people who cancelled their passage aboard the Titanic as it prepared to sail on its first and last voyage. They will be the cynosure of all Bulanga eyes for their uncanny prescience, and if Mrs. Mitchell is shrewd enough to seize opportunity, she can wind up reading the cards for fun and profit, as do Madam Dora and Madam Clarissa around the corner here on the avenue.

  Charles Witter Kirwan. Caliban upon Setebos. In his own fashion.

  I watched the U-Haul laden, I watched it depart. In farewell, one of the party tossed an empty beer can – or soft-drink can – over the high railing of my front yard to land among the rest of the evening’s deposit in the grass. It could have been a comment on the landlord, it could have been the usual Bulanga method of trash disposal. Impossible to say.

  What was I doing in the study at that hour?

  I was supposed to get an urgent phone call early in the evening. When there was no phone call I was disturbed and angry. And, inevitably, sleepless. At such times I usually take refuge in the study and its distractions.

  Yes.

  An intensely urgent phone call.

  I have my six dozen sticks of dynamite. I still do not have the blasting caps containing the necessary primers for them, nor the length of wire fuse needed to set off the explosion from a single detonator, nor the detonator itself.

  And in view of my physical condition, time grows short.

  I have estimated as accurately as possible. I’ll be working under difficult conditions, but if I can put in between two and three hours a day, I should be able to position and wire the dynamite within two weeks. If I have the necessary materials at hand.

  For the information of the police, this depends on a gentleman named Swanson – I don’t know his given name – who is right now night watchman for the Passarini Demolition Company of Sutton Falls, New York, a few miles above Kingston on Route 32.

  I’m afraid Mr. Swanson is not quite the devoted employee that his employer may think he is. He is the one who sold me my dynamite from his company’s stores without its knowledge, and, as if to prove that his felonious nature knows no bias, he cheated me thoroughly in the process. For the agreed-on price of one thousand dollars – which I paid in cash – he was to supply one gross of dynamite sticks, one hundred yards of wire, and a detonator.

  When I made my count of the dynamite in his watchman’s shanty and found only half the promised order, he had his excuse all ready. Inventory had just been taken by the boss, so this was all he could risk of the stock. Refund half the money? Well, he no longer had any of the money to refund. Anyhow, he had been paid by me to do his best, to stick his neck way out, and that was what he had done.

  Oh yes.

  And the wire and detonator? And blasting caps?

  Well, now—

  A shabby, boozy, threatening Viking, but the Lowland Witters never took kindly to intimidation.

  “Mr. Swanson,” said I, “If I tell your boss what’s happening to his supplies and offer to return what I already have of them, I have nothing at all to lose. You have a great deal.”

  It took courage I didn’t know I had, and that was a pleasant discovery. He could have split my skull and buried me under that shanty without anyone the wiser.

  He didn’t. Instead, I was given solemn assurance that in exactly a week – Wednesday – today – he’d call me collect at home after dinner and let me know when to make the pickup.

  And there was no call.

  And, inevitably, no sleep for me.

  On the face of it, it was reckless of me to do my shopping this way.

  On the face of it.

  But in practical terms, I had small choice in the matter. There are no shops I know of where you just walk in and order several cases of high explosive. And any authorized supplier would certainly be curious about why someone like myself was in the market for his d
angerous wares. Identification and some form of license could be necessary. A check-up by the authorities might follow.

  Not for me, thank you.

  There is another reason for depending on the undependable Mr. Swanson.

  Let it be entered into the record now that I did not plan the grand event and then search for the means to execute it.

  Not at all.

  In fact, it was the witnessing of a purposeful and controlled explosion that inspired the plan. And I must make clear – I must make absolutely clear – that it was not a scene presented by television or in a movie, those media so often blamed for the aberrant acts of some lunatic members of their audience.

  My mental balance is just fine, thank you.

  And that explosion I witnessed

  No.

  I must place the matter in its proper context.

  I have – I had an elderly aunt. Maggie. Margaretha. Some time ago, I took it on myself

  Sorry.

  That long silence was simply because I forgot to turn off this machine while I got my thoughts in order. I believe this can be corrected by cutting and splicing the tape, but I won’t attempt it. I’m not that sure of myself when it comes to handling this equipment.

  Now where was I?

  Yes. To start at the proper starting point, my grandfather had two children, a daughter and a son three years her junior. The daughter was my Aunt Maggie – always Margaretha to my grandfather – and the son eventually became my father. From all accounts, Aunt Maggie was the apple of my grandfather’s eye, a rather plain-featured girl but, in my grandfather’s words, always mannerly and dutiful, which, I assume, meant that she always did as he told her to do.

  Don’t get the impression from this that he was some sort of family tyrant. Far from it. He made a formidable appearance, yes; rather short but broad-shouldered and powerfully built, and with a square jaw and unusual pale gray eyes that enforced respect at a glance.

  Yes indeed.

  But contrary to appearance he was in no way the bully. Never raised his voice in anger, a marvelous trait in any human being, one I’ve spent a lifetime trying to cultivate. Never threatening. Always in calm, certain control of himself. Rarely given to demonstrations of affection, but, in fact, they weren’t needed. Weren’t needed at all. The affection was there, and his family knew it. And I, the one and only grandchild, came to know it very well.

  So.

  Disaster, as they used to put it in those ancient melodramas, lurked in the wings. At eighteen, Aunt Maggie spent her summer at the farm of some people who provided fruit for Witter and Sons, ships’ suppliers of Fulton Street, Brooklyn. Founded, may I say, in the year 1830. At the foot of Fulton Street, and provisioning ships of every type, not only with their edibles, but with every possible article needed for the voyage.

  Enormously prosperous during the Civil War. Never again that prosperous.

  Rise and Decline. Not to quick extinction, but to a slow downhill ride until it was finished off by the Great Depression. My grandfather inherited the company at the age of twenty, and in his half-century of management couldn’t raise it to its glory days again. A scrupulous, capable businessman, but at a time when huckster aggressiveness became the hallmark of the successful businessman he lacked it. No Jew in him, as he put it.

  Placed whatever profits there were into safe and sound investment elsewhere. And into this house. His treasure and prize. Every inch of it from foundation to spire built under his close supervision. Every bit of material handpicked.

  Can you build for the ages out of wood?

  Yes. If you build right. If you maintain properly.

  The company’s brick and stone building at the foot of Fulton Street long gone. The wooden house remains.

  Witter and Sons of Fulton Street.

  Strange and wonderful smells in that old building.

  Grandfather pointing across the river. “Do you know that our Fulton Street in Brooklyn continues that Fulton there in Manhattan? One long street with a river crossing it?”

  Then walking to Brooklyn Heights nearby to see where Washington embarked his army for Manhattan in their flight from the British. And grandfather pointing here and there, and somehow William of Orange came into it. William sailing from the Netherlands to become King of England. And with him a trusted secretary, Piet Uitter.

  And then our trip back to Flatbush on foot. Miles and miles of hard pavement where I – nine years old? ten years old? – sometimes walked and more often trotted to keep up along Flatbush Avenue, the finger pointing that this was once the old Flatbush Road, pointing out the past here and there, while the tempting trolley-cars rolled by me one after another.

  And home, dear God, home at last, with my mother working my shoes off my swollen feet and saying, “Oh, Papa, what were you thinking of?” and grandfather, who lived not for business but for his Gibbon and Motley and Prescott and Guizot – all still ranged right around me here on these bookshelves, each volume with his signed nameplate in it – yes, grandfather saying, “He was learning history. I think the boy has a head for it.”

  A head for it. If not the feet for it that memorable day.

  Yes.

  His very last letter to the American Historical Journal

  No.

  I seem to have lost my thread. That isn’t what I was getting at.

  What was it?

  Oh yes, my Aunt Maggie.

  So my Aunt Maggie spent that summer at the farm upstate and fell madly in love with the young handyman there. Came home and announced the news to her father. A handyman. And he loved her as madly as she loved him. And since they couldn’t bear to be apart she wanted to marry him right now.

  Oh dear, oh dear.

  A handyman. For bed and board and five dollars a week in cash.

  When my grandfather digested this there was no sturm und drang in the house, no stormy weather, that was not his way. But there was a deep freeze. My Aunt Maggie weeping the days away in her room. My grandmother, already close to death though no one knew it yet, weeping in hers, the nurse along with her. My father, the teen-age brother, carefully keeping out of sight as much as possible.

  Aunt Maggie won the battle and lost the war. Married Curtis Hayes, her handyman, and was disinherited. On my grandfather’s death – my father having predeceased him – Aunt Maggie got nothing, I got it all. Not much money left by then, but there was the family home and the apartment house next door. Lucky for the family home I was the one.

  So my Aunt Maggie and my Uncle Curtis – a big, strong, perpetually smiling fool – lived outside Sutton Falls upstate on their little dairy farm as dependent on my grandfather’s ongoing charity as they were on their few pathetic Holsteins. My uncle died, and charity had to be increased. My grandfather asked Aunt Maggie to share this house with us; she refused. Had a need, she said, to tend to her husband’s grave every day. Perhaps she did. In her old age she was a great one for table-tapping, horoscopes, and communicating with the dead.

  However, not to digress

  No.

  I was leading up to something here.

  On the tip of my tongue.

  Infuriating. Really infuriating.

  John Milano

  TOO EARLY THURSDAY MORNING HE WOKE UP mysteriously guilt-ridden, the voice of the radio weatherman jubilantly advising him to expect cloudy skies with occasional rain. This was followed by Aretha who tunefully presented much the same message about life in general. It took him awhile, with Aretha providing background music, to pin down that guilt.

  The poker game. Betty. The Staten Island Zeitgeist.

  He had come back to the apartment last evening with his head full of Christine Bailey and her magic disappearing act. No room left in it to remember that Betty, after leaving her office, was to have her hair done and then come over to whip up dinner and settle in for the night.

  So, with considerable effort, he had put together a poker game for the night. Couldn’t get all six regulars but finally did line up four of
them, including Maxie Rovinsky who operated the building’s garage and who, against strict co-op rules about parking being limited to one car per resident, allowed Milano to maintain both his cars there; and Gracie MacFadden who, all liver spots, blue-white hair, and arthritic claws, occupied the building’s duplex – top floor and penthouse – with what appeared to be two husbands simultaneously. Gracie dripped heavyweight diamonds, a large number of them recovered by Milano after a very nasty physical heist in the penthouse, and in return for this job well done, Gracie guaranteed – and delivered – house seats for any show in town on one day’s notice. Gracie had theater connections like no one else in New York had theater connections.

  The point is that these were friends to be cherished. Not in any way to be put out of countenance.

  The troops were to rally at nine. At seven-thirty, there was Betty at the door, all smiles and dimples and fresh hairdo.

  The smiles and dimples disappeared as she sized up Milano’s rigor mortis. “You know,” she said with devastating accuracy, “I don’t think you even remembered I was coming.”

  It went from bad to worse. From Patient Griselda to Katharina of Verona. Prettier than ever in a cute little Bloomie’s apron, she laid out dinner. He picked at it, one brain cell counting calories, another wondering how best to break the news of the poker game.

  Betty was narrowly watching. “Are you on a diet or something?”

  “No.” Hell, no big deal about dieting. But admitting to it somehow presented the picture of a pathetic hulk desperately fending off middle-aged flab.

  “Then,” said Betty, “there must be something wrong with you because you did the same thing Sunday. Your mother spent a whole day cooking all that food and you hardly touched it. Is there something wrong with you?”

  “Well –” said Milano, and since it was getting that close to nine o’clock, he told her about the game.