Those final weeks, spanning end of summer and the beginning of another autumn, are blurred in memory, perhaps because our understanding of each other had reached that sweet depth where two people communicate more often in silence than in words: an affectionate quietness replaces the tensions, the unrelaxed chatter and chasing about that produce a friendship’s more showy, more, in the surface sense, dramatic moments. Frequently, when he was out of town (I’d developed hostile attitudes toward him, and seldom used his name) we spent entire evenings together during which we exchanged less than a hundred words; once, we walked all the way to Chinatown, ate a chow-mein supper, bought some paper lanterns and stole a box of joss sticks, then moseyed across the Brooklyn Bridge, and on the bridge, as we watched seaward-moving ships pass between the cliffs of burning skyline, she said: “Years from now, years and years, one of those ships will bring me back, me and my nine Brazilian brats. Because yes, they must see this, these lights, the river—I love New York, even though it isn’t mine, the way something has to be, a tree or a street or a house, something, anyway, that belongs to me because I belong to it.” And I said: “Do shut up,” for I felt infuriatingly left out—a tugboat in dry-dock while she, glittery voyager of secure destination, steamed down the harbor with whistles whistling and confetti in the air.
So the days, the last days, blow about in memory, hazy, autumnal, all alike as leaves: until a day unlike any other I’ve lived.
IT HAPPENED TO FALL ON the 30th of September, my birthday, a fact which had no effect on events, except that, expecting some form of monetary remembrance from my family, I was eager for the postman’s morning visit. Indeed, I went downstairs and waited for him. If I had not been loitering in the vestibule, then Holly would not have asked me to go horseback riding; and would not, consequently, have had the opportunity to save my life.
“Come on,” she said, when she found me awaiting the postman. “Let’s walk a couple of horses around the park.” She was wearing a windbreaker and a pair of blue jeans and tennis shoes; she slapped her stomach, drawing attention to its flatness: “Don’t think I’m out to lose the heir. But there’s a horse, my darling old Mabel Minerva—I can’t go without saying good-bye to Mabel Minerva.”
“Good-bye?”
“A week from Saturday. José bought the tickets.” In rather a trance, I let her lead me down to the street. “We change planes in Miami. Then over the sea. Over the Andes. Taxi!”
Over the Andes. As we rode in a cab across Central Park it seemed to me as though I, too, were flying, desolately floating over snow-peaked and perilous territory.
“But you can’t. After all, what about. Well, what about. Well, you can’t really run off and leave everybody.”
“I don’t think anyone will miss me. I have no friends.”
“I will. Miss you. So will Joe Bell. And oh—millions. Like Sally. Poor Mr. Tomato.”
“I loved old Sally,” she said, and sighed. “You know I haven’t been to see him in a month? When I told him I was going away, he was an angel. Actually”—she frowned—“he seemed delighted that I was leaving the country. He said it was all for the best. Because sooner or later there might be trouble. If they found out I wasn’t his real niece. That fat lawyer, O’Shaughnessy, O’Shaughnessy sent me five hundred dollars. In cash. A wedding present from Sally.”
I wanted to be unkind. “You can expect a present from me, too. When, and if, the wedding happens.”
She laughed. “He’ll marry me, all right. In church. And with his family there. That’s why we’re waiting till we get to Rio.”
“Does he know you’re married already?”
“What’s the matter with you? Are you trying to ruin the day? It’s a beautiful day: leave it alone!”
“But it’s perfectly possible—”
“It isn’t possible. I’ve told you, that wasn’t legal. It couldn’t be.” She rubbed her nose, and glanced at me sideways. “Mention that to a living soul, darling. I’ll hang you by your toes and dress you for a hog.”
The stables—I believe they have been replaced by television studios—were on West Sixty-sixth street. Holly selected for me an old sway-back black and white mare: “Don’t worry, she’s safer than a cradle.” Which, in my case, was a necessary guarantee, for ten-cent pony rides at childhood carnivals were the limit of my equestrian experience. Holly helped hoist me into the saddle, then mounted her own horse, a silvery animal that took the lead as we jogged across the traffic of Central Park West and entered a riding path dappled with leaves denuding breezes danced about.
“See?” she shouted. “It’s great!”
And suddenly it was. Suddenly, watching the tangled colors of Holly’s hair flash in the red-yellow leaf light, I loved her enough to forget myself, my self-pitying despairs, and be content that something she thought happy was going to happen. Very gently the horses began to trot, waves of wind splashed us, spanked our faces, we plunged in and out of sun and shadow pools, and joy, a glad-to-be-alive exhilaration, jolted through me like a jigger of nitrogen. That was one minute; the next introduced farce in grim disguise.
For all at once, like savage members of a jungle ambush, a band of Negro boys leapt out of the shrubbery along the path. Hooting, cursing, they launched rocks and thrashed at the horse’s rumps with switches.
Mine, the black and white mare, rose on her hind legs, whinnied, teetered like a tightrope artist, then blue-streaked down the path, bouncing my feet out of the stirrups and leaving me scarcely attached. Her hooves made the gravel stones spit sparks. The sky careened. Trees, a lake with little-boy sailboats, statues went by licketysplit. Nursemaids rushed to rescue their charges from our awesome approach; men, bums and others, yelled: “Pull in the reins!” and “Whoa, boy, whoa!” and “Jump!” It was only later that I remembered these voices; at the time I was simply conscious of Holly, the cowboy-sound of her racing behind me, never quite catching up, and over and over calling encouragements. Onward: across the park and out into Fifth Avenue: stampeding against the noonday traffic, taxis, buses that screechingly swerved. Past the Duke mansion, the Frick Museum, past the Pierre and the Plaza. But Holly gained ground; moreover, a mounted policeman had joined the chase: flanking my runaway mare, one on either side, their horses performed a pincer movement that brought her to a steamy halt. It was then, at last, that I fell off her back. Fell off and picked myself up and stood there, not altogether certain where I was. A crowd gathered. The policeman huffed and wrote in a book: presently he was most sympathetic, grinned and said he would arrange for our horses to be returned to their stable.
Holly put us in a taxi. “Darling. How do you feel?”
“Fine.”
“But you haven’t any pulse,” she said, feeling my wrist.
“Then I must be dead.”
“No, idiot. This is serious. Look at me.”
The trouble was, I couldn’t see her; rather, I saw several Hollys, a trio of sweaty faces so white with concern that I was both touched and embarrassed. “Honestly. I don’t feel anything. Except ashamed.”
“Please. Are you sure? Tell me the truth. You might have been killed.”
“But I wasn’t. And thank you. For saving my life. You’re wonderful. Unique. I love you.”
“Damn fool.” She kissed me on the cheek. Then there were four of her, and I fainted dead away.
THAT EVENING, PHOTOGRAPHS OF HOLLY were front-paged by the late edition of the Journal-American and by the early editions of both the Daily News and the Daily Mirror. The publicity had nothing to do with runaway horses. It concerned quite another matter, as the headlines revealed: PLAYGIRL ARRESTED IN NARCOTICS SCANDAL (Journal-American), ARREST DOPE-SMUGGLING ACTRESS (Daily News), DRUG RING EXPOSED, GLAMOUR GIRL HELD (Daily Mirror).
Of the lot, the News printed the most striking picture: Holly, entering police headquarters, wedged between two muscular detectives, one male, one female. In this squalid context even her clothes (she was still wearing her riding costume, windbreaker and blue
jeans) suggested a gang-moll hooligan: an impression dark glasses, disarrayed coiffure and a Picayune cigarette dangling from sullen lips did not diminish. The caption read: Twenty-year-old Holly Golightly, beautiful movie starlet and café society celebrity D.A. alleges to be key figure in international drug-smuggling racket linked to racketeer Salvatore “Sally” Tomato. Dets. Patrick Connor and Sheilah Fezzonetti (L. and R.) are shown escorting her into 67th St. Precinct. See story on Pg. 3. The story, featuring a photograph of a man identified as Oliver “Father” O’Shaughnessy (shielding his face with a fedora), ran three full columns. Here, somewhat condensed, are the pertinent paragraphs: Members of café society were stunned today by the arrest of gorgeous Holly Golightly, twenty-year-old Hollywood starlet and highly publicized girl-about-New York. At the same time, 2 P.M., police nabbed Oliver O’Shaughnessy, 52, of the Hotel Seabord, W. 49th St., as he exited from a Hamburg Heaven on Madison Ave. Both are alleged by District Attorney Frank L. Donovan to be important figures in an international drug ring dominated by the notorious Mafia-führer Salvatore “Sally” Tomato, currently in Sing Sing serving a five-year rap for political bribery.… O’Shaughnessy, a defrocked priest variously known in crimeland circles as “Father” and “The Padre,” has a history of arrests dating back to 1934, when he served two years for operating a phony Rhode Island mental institution, The Monastery. Miss Golightly, who has no previous criminal record, was arrested in her luxurious apartment at a swank East Side address.… Although the D.A.’s office has issued no formal statement, responsible sources insist the blond and beautiful actress, not long ago the constant companion of multimillionaire Rutherfurd Trawler, has been acting as “liaison” between the imprisoned Tomato and his chief-lieutenant, O’Shaughnessy.… Posing as a relative of Tomato’s, Miss Golightly is said to have paid weekly visits to Sing Sing, and on these occasions Tomato supplied her with verbally coded messages which she then transmitted to O’Shaughnessy. Via this link, Tomato, believed to have been born in Cefalu, Sicily, in 1874, was able to keep first-hand control of a world-wide narcotics syndicate with outposts in Mexico, Cuba, Sicily, Tangier, Tehran and Dakar. But the D.A.’s office refused to offer any detail on these allegations or even verify them.… Tipped off, a large number of reporters were on hand at the E. 67th St. Precinct station when the accused pair arrived for booking. O’Shaughnessy, a burly red-haired man, refused comment and kicked one cameraman in the groin. But Miss Golightly, a fragile eyeful, even though attired like a tomboy in slacks and leather jacket, appeared relatively unconcerned. “Don’t ask me what the hell this is about,” she told reporters. “Parce-que je ne sais pas, mes chères. (Because I do not know, my dears). Yes—I have visited Sally Tomato. I used to go to see him every week. What’s wrong with that? He believes in God, and so do I.” … Then, under the subheading ADMITS OWN DRUG ADDICTION: Miss Golightly smiled when a reporter asked whether or not she herself is a narcotics user. “I’ve had a little go at marijuana. It’s not half so destructive as brandy. Cheaper, too. Unfortunately, I prefer brandy. No, Mr. Tomato never mentioned drugs to me. It makes me furious, the way these wretched people keep persecuting him. He’s a sensitive, a religious person. A darling old man.”
There is one especially gross error in this report: she was not arrested in her “luxurious apartment.” It took place in my own bathroom. I was soaking away my horse-ride pains in a tub of scalding water laced with Epsom salts; Holly, an attentive nurse, was sitting on the edge of the tub waiting to rub me with Sloan’s liniment and tuck me into bed. There was a knock at the front door. As the door was unlocked, Holly called Come in. In came Madame Sapphia Spanella, trailed by a pair of civilian-clothed detectives, one of them a lady with thick yellow braids roped round her head.
“Here she is: the wanted woman!” boomed Madame Spanella, invading the bathroom and leveling a finger, first at Holly’s, then my nakedness. “Look. What a whore she is.” The male detective seemed embarrassed: by Madame Spanella and by the situation; but a harsh enjoyment tensed the face of his companion—she plumped a hand on Holly’s shoulder and, in a surprising baby-child voice, said: “Come along, sister. You’re going places.” Whereupon Holly coolly told her: “Get them cotton-pickin’ hands off of me, you dreary, driveling old bull-dyke.” Which rather enraged the lady: she slapped Holly damned hard. So hard, her head twisted on her neck, and the bottle of liniment, flung from her hand, smithereened on the tile floor—where I, scampering out of the tub to enrich the fray, stepped on it and all but severed both big toes. Nude and bleeding a path of bloody footprints, I followed the action as far as the hall. “Don’t forget,” Holly managed to instruct me as the detectives propelled her down the stairs, “please feed the cat.”
OF COURSE I BELIEVED MADAME Spanella to blame: she’d several times called the authorities to complain about Holly. It didn’t occur to me the affair could have dire dimensions until that evening when Joe Bell showed up flourishing the newspapers. He was too agitated to speak sensibly; he caroused the room hitting his fists together while I read the accounts.
Then he said: “You think it’s so? She was mixed up in this lousy business?”
“Well, yes.”
He popped a Tums in his mouth and, glaring at me, chewed it as though he were crunching my bones. “Boy, that’s rotten. And you meant to be her friend. What a bastard!”
“Just a minute. I didn’t say she was involved knowingly. She wasn’t. But there, she did do it. Carry messages and whatnot—”
He said: “Take it pretty calm, don’t you? Jesus, she could get ten years. More.” He yanked the papers away from me. “You know her friends. These rich fellows. Come down to the bar, we’ll start phoning. Our girl’s going to need fancier shysters than I can afford.”
I was too sore and shaky to dress myself; Joe Bell had to help. Back at his bar he propped me in the telephone booth with a triple martini and a brandy tumbler full of coins. But I couldn’t think who to contact. José was in Washington, and I had no notion where to reach him there. Rusty Trawler? Not that bastard! Only: what other friends of hers did I know? Perhaps she’d been right when she’d said she had none, not really.
I put through a call to Crestview 5-6958 in Beverly Hills, the number long-distance information gave me for O.J. Berman. The person who answered said Mr. Berman was having a massage and couldn’t be disturbed: sorry, try later. Joe Bell was incensed—told me I should have said it was a life and death matter; and he insisted on my trying Rusty. First, I spoke to Mr. Trawler’s butler—Mr. and Mrs. Trawler, he announced, were at dinner and might he take a message? Joe Bell shouted into the receiver: “This is urgent, mister. Life and death.” The outcome was that I found myself talking—listening, rather—to the former Mag Wildwood: “Are you starkers?” she demanded. “My husband and I will positively sue anyone who attempts to connect our names with that ro-ro-rovolting and de-de-degenerate girl. I always knew she was a hop-hop-head with no more morals than a hound-bitch in heat. Prison is where she belongs. And my husband agrees one thousand percent. We will positively sue anyone who—” Hanging up, I remembered old Doc down in Tulip, Texas; but no, Holly wouldn’t like it if I called him, she’d kill me good.
I rang California again; the circuits were busy, stayed busy, and by the time O.J. Berman was on the line I’d emptied so many martinis he had to tell me why I was phoning him: “About the kid, is it? I know already. I spoke already to Iggy Fitelstein. Iggy’s the best shingle in New York. I said Iggy you take care of it, send me the bill, only keep my name anonymous, see. Well, I owe the kid something. Not that I owe her anything, you want to come down to it. She’s crazy. A phony. But a real phony, you know? Anyway, they only got her in ten thousand bail. Don’t worry, Iggy’ll spring her tonight—it wouldn’t surprise me she’s home already.”
BUT SHE WASN’T; NOR HAD she returned the next morning when I went down to feed her cat. Having no key to the apartment, I used the fire escape and gained entrance through a window. The cat was in the bedroom, and he wa
s not alone: a man was there, crouching over a suitcase. The two of us, each thinking the other a burglar, exchanged uncomfortable stares as I stepped through the window. He had a pretty face, lacquered hair, he resembled José; moreover, the suitcase he’d been packing contained the wardrobe José kept at Holly’s, the shoes and suits she fussed over, was always carting to menders and cleaners. And I said, certain it was so: “Did Mr. Ybarra-Jaegar send you?”