“Protestant houses of worship,” said I, and before she could react adversely, gave some sensible alternatives as aims for Villanvoa’s change of plan: “Realizing that I could prove myself a respectable citizen and that the police wouldn’t long suspect me of murdering a man whom I didn’t know and that, on the other hand, Bakewell had threatened Villanova, Teddy had second thoughts about leaving the body on my doorstep. His own activities would soon enough come into question when the name ‘Washburn’ emerged. Therefore he sent his bullies here to collect the corpse and no doubt strip it of identification and bury it in an isolated marsh on Staten Island.”
“Or Jersey,” Peggy added, with her bias, old news to me, against the Garden State. Whenever a foul odor came through an open window, or for that matter an insect, she theoretically traced its origins to New Jersey, in which, she brazenly admitted once, she had never set foot.
For some time the Wyandotte Club, physically in the second-floor rear of my building, had been creeping in the abstract into the ratiocinative area of my brain. Its comers and goers—few before midnight; most, moving in duets and trios, between 3 and 4 A.M.—were of Italian pigmentation and mien. I had once or twice shared an early-morning elevator with them, though my peregrinations during those hours were rare. I hadn’t recently had enough money to stay that late at a public place of entertainment, and am no nighthawk in the most prosperous of times.
But now and again, having to leave my current girl’s place in the wee hours, owing to the return of her roommate, who frequently got the sudden boot from a boy friend’s bed in the middle of the night (he being seemingly a certifiable paranoiac), I had come back to my office building and encountered Wyandotters. They were good neighbors, Manhattan-style, neither looking at nor addressing strangers (the chummy, in New York, are invariably perverts, panhandlers, or footpads), nor, for that matter, each other. They might have been two or three persons, coincidentally Italian, who by pure chance found themselves rising simultaneously in the shabby elevator of a seedy commercial edifice sometime before dawn, then, the fortuity still at work, deboarding at the same floor and applying for entrance at the same portal, which was opened by an individual who made no sign of recognition but admitted them without ceremony—as I had seen beyond the slow-closing door of the lift which eventually took me to the floor above.
Whatever went on inside, it was either quiet in both conception and development or insulated by good soundproofing.
Sam Polidor, who was fearlessly rude to my face, and probably worse behind my back, became so craven at the mere mention of the Wyandotte Club as to refuse even to speculate on what went on within its walls, beyond sending his eyes up into his frontal sinus and saying: “Parcheesi. Don’t ask, ya live a rife old age.”
“Mafia, maybe?”
“Everybody has to be Jewish?”
It was obvious to me now that Teddy Villanova likely had some connection with the Wyandotte Club. My fecund response to Peggy’s despair that there was no money for me (and thus none for her) in the Bakewell killing, my “maybes” now can be interpreted as referring to an inchoate, a dim inclination, hardly yet a true plan, to penetrate a roomful of gangsters and, isolating him who was probably Mr. Big, shake him down for a generous fee in return for which I’d stay mum about the corpse.
Alas, I have the kind of fancy that conjures up subsequent scenes: Teddy laughs with two rows of pasta-choppers, fells me with an exhalation of garlic fumes, and says: “’ey, Mario, Gino, beat the shit out a dis bum and trow him downa airshaft, huh?”
Nonetheless, I leered at Peggy, so violently that, probably taking it as an expression of lust, she left the neighboring chair and put the desk between us. Now, however, when to do so would have been practical, she failed to lower the hem of her skirt, and through the kneehole— this piece, which I had purchased from Goodwill Industries for a song, was not equipped with a so-called modesty panel; perhaps that had been extracted by some previous voyeur—I could see the seam made by the compression together of her robust white thighs until eventually it was terminated by a portion of embedded slip.
I began my cunning proposal: “Say, Peg…”
“Knock it off, Russ.”
“No, no. Listen!” I exposed my theory of the Villanova-Wyandotte link. I proceeded more cautiously in regard to the shakedown, of which I now had a perfect formulation. “Bear with me for a moment. Since the Middle Ages, Italians have had a very special attitude towards women—”
“Boy, don’t I know that from Treese Conigliaro’s brothers!” Peggy cried with heat. “Roman hands, I call it.”
“Illuminatio dei,” I proceeded relentlessly, “the reflection of God. Dante finds Beatrice in heaven, on one side of the Lord, with none other than the Virgin on his other hand. Think of that, a trinity in which two of the elements are female!”
My torch was failing to ignite Peggy, who showed no spark even at the reference to the Madonna, which I had always assumed surefire. “O.K.,” said I, “look: remember when Joe Columbus was shot on Italian-American Unity Day at Colombo Circle?…Uh, reverse those terminal syllables. Anyway, prominent gangland figures were quoted as doubting this was the work of a rival, because women and children were present—and it is the law of the underworld that families are sacrosanct. You might well say, ‘What hypocrisy,’ but all the same…”
She wasn’t saying anything of the sort. She had instead begun early on to fix me with a grim stare. And what she said was: “You got another thing coming, brother.”
“Oh?” Like many persons who are habitually obtuse when dealing with the mundane, Peggy proved she could penetrate the exotic, the unprecedented, with the ease of a Roentgen ray passing through fatty tissue.
“Yeah!”
“I guarantee that Teddy wouldn’t lay a hand on a woman.” Except a gangland doxy; but I didn’t add that. “I think we would be within the realm of reason if we asked ten thousand, ‘ten big ones’ in his parlance, which perhaps, in the interests of a show of authenticity, we should adopt. A melon, my dear Peggy, we would split right down the middle. That’s one-three-five to go into your now battered, soon to be replaced purse. New cardigans for you as well, cases of White Owls and Seven Crown for your brothers, a rampage through Korvette’s for your mom, et cetera. Heck, new cardigans!” In its previous employment this term had not scored. “Heck, a pilgrimage to Lourdes!” A shrewd touch, she being literally Margaret Mary Bernadette Tumulty.
“Russ, now you hold it right there,” Peggy said levelly. “I have no intention of going now, or never, to the Wyandotte Club and trying to blackmail Teddy Villa-whoozit.”
I abandoned the scheme, at least her role in it. I am like that. “But you do agree that he would likely be found there?”
“I couldn’t say.”
“What do you think are my chances of getting killed if I go there?”
“Two hundred percent.”
“That bad, eh? But look, how about if I protect my rear, so to speak? You know what I mean.” I put authority into my voice. “I’m not acting alone in this. If anything happens to me, my associate will go to the police.’”
Peggy again picked up her sweater and purse. “I’ve got a bellyful of you, Russ, and I don’t mean maybe. You want to get us both killed. I don’t work for you now, and I haven’t ever held this position.” She was on her feet. “I’m willing to swear to that.”
I waved her down. “Can’t you take a joke any more? Do I look like a blackmailer? It was just something to clear the air, Peg. To play for time. I’ve got to work this thing out. A human being has been killed, and the police won’t believe it.”
Reseated, Peggy yawned cavernously—as usual, unless a lascivious detective was present, without covering her mouth. “Gee, who cares?”
“Well, really!”
“Well, really,” said she, “when I was little it used to be two people per day were murdered in this town. Now I think the rate is twice that. Everybody knows this is a cesspool of humanity. So w
hat? You’re stuck with it.”
“Then why not move?”
Now she grimaced horribly. “And go to the sticks?” Another bit of typicality. For many years Peggy hadn’t experienced more of Manhattan than could be encountered within three blocks of whatever office she worked in. In the morning she came by subway from Queens, and in the evening returned, neither trip without an aboveground detour unless there was a fire en route to the station. She lived with her parents in a rabbit-warren apartment house that was one of thousands of such structures set fifty feet apart on the concrete plain that began at the East River and continued through half of Nassau County, with only an occasional pause for cemetery, oil-tank farm, or airfield. Her acquaintance with the heart of Gotham, its cultural treasures and pleasure palaces, began and ended with Radio City Music Hall, where on some birthdays as a child she was conducted to witness Disney on the giant screen and the terpsichorean precision of stage.
Since having begun regularly to depilate her legs, Peggy had probably not been north (aboveground) of West Twenty-eight Street, where prior to her employment with me she had worked for a wholesaler in cheap neckties.
“Well,” said I, working the self-righteous vein, “I’m concerned, having, as you pointed out, a highly developed social consciousness—”
“I said nothing of the kind. I said you were scared to break the law.”
I gave vent to my spite. The Wyandotte project had been a damned good idea, and only she was blocking it at this point. “Do you know why you will be only a sporadically paid secretary all your life? Never a true gal Friday? You have no sympathy.”
She wailed in disbelief: “Why should I feel sorry for you?”
“I don’t mean that. I mean you are incapable of cooperating. You have no sense of team, something of which you are a part but not the whole, working for a common cause.”
“Oh, what do you know.” She upended the Tab can and shook the remaining drops into the hopper of her outthrust lower lip.
At this moment, through the doorway, which despite the events of the morning I had not closed—no door in Sam Polidor’s building would long have delayed a desperate character, and, the street windows being shut against the black snowfall from nearby incinerators, ventilation must needs come from the hall—striding vigorously over the threshold came a handsomely attired, splendidly fit, and nobly profiled chap of about thirty.
Soon giving me the tapered back and flared tail of his subdued houndstooth jacket, with its long double vents, he drew up before Peggy’s desk, lowered his blond head, and spoke in the mixture of slur and precise enunciation that must eventually be proved British or Northeastern American.
“I believe this is Mr. Russel Wren’s office—I read it backwards on the door!” Though I could not see his face, he seemed to be asking for some amused award for this feat. In Sam’s building all doors opened out; my own was folded against the corridor wall and held there by a fire bucket full of sand studded for the last six months with the same cigarette butts.
Peggy was vaguely hostile, as always with visitors of some distinction in clothing, countenance, or carriage. Only to obvious undesirables was she immediately genial. She had probably dripped all over the grotesque Bakewell.
She winced suspiciously. “Yes?…”
“May I see Mr. Wren?”
Now Peggy’s response became openly offensive. Elaborately raising the one eyebrow visible to me—I could see exactly half her face: a strange effect, suggesting that when her visage was again whole it would belong to a stranger she began her stare at his crown and lowered it slowly along the length of his body available to her search, coming to a halt at groin level.
Stunned by this for an instant, I continued to sit in silence behind him.
When Peggy finally spoke, however, her tone was routine. “Whom should I say…”
“Don Washburn,” the man answered vigorously.
“That wouldn’t be the Second?”
“It would indeed! How nice to be expected.”
I hurled out of my paralysis and addressed his back of golden head.
He swung his sparkling teeth around. He thrust a hand at me. He had a walnut tan, in April. His jacket was unbuttoned. He wore fawn-colored trousers of luxuriant cavalry twill, the kind that has a dull silken gleam; a self-belt closed these at the lean waist. His fly, however, was open, and a view of a naked, small, seemingly withered phallus was offered.
Peggy’s demeanor was thus explained. As he approached me, she darted frantically from the office.
4
Rising quickly to the occasion, this being one I could manage, having been a man since birth, I pointed and used the vernacular for a statement so suited to it. “Barn door’s yawning, my friend.”
“Good gravy!” he exclaimed, looking but not immediately taking measures. First he assumed an air of mock indignation and cried, from a head that swiveled to survey the room: “All right, who did that?”
To ease the moment I joined him in a jovial chuckle. When finally his fingers fell to pluck at the tiny Talon tab, I saw I had suffered an unprecedented trick of the eye: what showed from the groinal aperture was not his virile member but rather a fragment of harmless beige shirt-tail.
“Good job it wasn’t fouled in the teeth,” said he, disposing of the twist of fabric and causing the peculiar scream produced by a zipper when rapidly closed.
At this point, Peggy being absent again, I should not have been surprised by his drawing some deadly weapon or felling me, by means of the hand that rose inexorably from his fly to seize mine, with a judo throw. But he did nothing of the sort. Displaying his palate to the dangling uvula, those perfect incisors and canines fencing the foreground, he expressed concern that, through thoughtlessness, he had routed my “girl,” actually saying “gull.”
In relief at his pacific manner, I made a jocund play on words: “I have never succeeded in gulling her into being my girl, as it happens.”
He put his lips together and frowned his immunity to this jape. He was handsome again; he had looked a bit foolish with an open mouth. He was one of those persons who should limit their facial mirth to the wry indentation of dimples.
“I assure you, I did not come here to jest.”
“You are Donald Washburn the Second?”
He took out an elegant notecase and offered me a driver’s license and a selection of credit cards from expensive emporia.
I fended them off in polite horror and, warning of the constricted doorway, led him into the inner office, where, after the briefest inspection with flared nostrils, he sat down on the couch, avoiding the well of collapsed spring, and crossed his long legs, one jodhpur boot, of the hue of antique brass, dangling.
“I was obliged to move into this shambles while my own suite of offices was being redecorated. Little did I then know of the ways of feckless plasterers, and the electricians are scarcely better.”
“Still,” said he, “pigging it can have its charms,”
“Yes, it can,” I admitted with a stage guffaw. “I must remember that.” I lowered my brow. “Well then, to the matter at hand. Before hearing your account, I think it would be of some service to relate the extraordinary events of my morning.” I gave as concise a narrative as I could, eliminating any expression of the emotions to which it gave rise, though he, if willy-nilly, bore some responsibility for them.
He listened soberly, perhaps even gravely.
When I had finished, I said: “Naturally, I have a number of questions. But I’ll reserve them until I get your response to this series of—to me, at any rate—bizarre events.”
He frowned. “I don’t mean to be rude, but are you possibly an Englishman?”
“No, I’m not,” said I. “I’m from upstate, a drowsy little hamlet, dreaming on the Hudson shore, as it happens.”
“Ah.”
“Be that as it may, would you like to tell me about Mr. Bakewell? Now departed but, frankly, not lamented by me.
Washburn gave me
a generous quota of cerulean eye. “I never heard of the man.”
“Perhaps a false name? He was a good six-seven or -eight and a bad three hundred pounds…?”
Donald Washburn II shook his head decisively. “Niente. He said he worked for me?”
“In so many words. It was presumably on your behalf that he gave me the warning to forward to Teddy Villanova. There’s a name to conjure with. Have you ever heard of him?”
Washburn continued to profess total ignorance, and nothing in his immaculate saddle-leather face suggested he was lying. Indeed, he began to smile. “I was not aware that it happened in real life—mistaken identity, not to mention a disappearing corpse.”
I was not amused. “Didn’t you see blood in the elevator?”
“I took the stairway. I welcome opportunities for exercise.” He clapped his knee. “Well then, shall we press forward in this business about Teddy?”
“You do know him?”
“Him? I mean her.”
“Teddy is a woman?”
“No, I told you I don’t know Teddy. I said ‘Freddie.’” “His name is Freddie Villanova?”
Washburn’s smile turned oversweet. “My dear fellow,” he said, “I assure you you are persisting to no purpose in that direction. I have come to you because of my wife, whose name is Frederika Washburn. I suspect she is having an affair. She seems to speak in code language when she answers certain phone calls. I’ve found more than one cigar butt in the ash trays when I’ve come home. And swarthy hairs in my power comb. Imagine someone with the gall to brush his head with my property. Freddie’s hair is red, incidentally.”
“That’s the only reason you’ve come here, to employ me for an investigation?”
He raised his fair eyebrows onto his tanned forehead. “Isn’t that the sort of thing you do? I found you in the Yellow Pages.”
I had not forgotten about the letter. In quest of it I went into my back pocket. It was gone. I prowled the rest of my person unsuccessfully, then dashed into the front office and looked there, with results quite as nugatory. The fake policemen must have taken it from my supine body, though at no time had I lost consciousness.