Tales of the Black Widowers

  Crowning it all was the dark-brown derby which Henry now doffed, holding it lightly by the brim.

  "I haven't seen a derby in a long time," said Avalon.

  "Or a hat at all," said Drake.

  "It is the freedom of the times," said Henry. "We each do our thing now, and this is mine."

  Avalon said, "The trouble is that some people consider the thing to do to be molesting women in laundries."

  "Yes," said Henry, "I heard what the doorman said. At least we can hope there will be no trouble today."

  One of the elevators arrived at the lobby and a lady with a dog got off. Avalon looked inside, right and left, then entered. They rose to the fourteenth floor without trouble.

  They were all gathered, or almost all. Rubin was wearing his wife's apron (it had a large "Jane" crocheted on it) and he was looking harried. The sideboard had a full collection of bottles and Avalon had appointed himself an impromptu bartender, after fending off Henry.

  "Sit down, Henry," said Rubin in a loud voice. "You're the guest."

  Henry looked uncomfortable.

  Halsted said, with his very slight stutter, "You've got a nice apartment, Manny."

  "It's all right-let me get past you for a minute-but it's small. Of course, we don't have children, so we don't need it much larger, and being in Manhattan has its conveniences for a writer."

  "Yes," said Avalon. "I listened to some of the conveniences downstairs. The doorman said women have trouble in the laundry."

  "Oh, hell," said Rubin contemptuously. "Some of the dames here want trouble. Ever since the Chinese delegation to the United Nations took over a motel a few blocks down, some of the dowagers here see the yellow menace everywhere."

  "And robberies, too," said Drake.

  Rubin looked chagrined as though any slur against Manhattan were a personal attack. "It could happen anywhere. And Jane was careless."

  Henry, the only one sitting at the table, and with an as yet untouched drink before him, looked surprised-an expression which somehow did not put a single wrinkle into his unlined face. He said, "Pardon me, Mr. Rubin. Do you mean your apartment was entered?"

  "Well, yes, the apartment lock can be opened with a strip of celluloid, I think. That's why everyone puts in fancy locks in addition."

  "But when was this?" asked Henry.

  "About two weeks ago. I'm telling you, it was Jane's fault. She went down the hall to see someone about recipes or something and didn't double-lock the. door. That's just asking for it. The hoodlums have ah instinct for it, a special ESP. She came back just as the bum was leaving and there was a hell of a fuss."

  "Did she get hurt?" asked Gonzalo, his ordinarily prominent eyes bulging slightly.

  "Not really. She was shook up, that's all. She yelled like anything-about the best thing she could have done. The guy ran. If I'd been there, I'd have taken after him and caught him, too. I'd have-"

  "It's better not to try," said Avalon austerely, stirring his drink by moving the ice with his forefinger. "The end result of a chase could be a knife in the ribs. Your ribs."

  "Listen," said Rubin, "I've faced guys with knives in my time. They're easy to ban- Hold it, something's burning." He dashed into the kitchen.

  There was a knock at the door.

  "Use the peephole," said Avalon.

  Halsted did, and said, "It's Tom." He opened the door to let Thomas Trumbull in.

  Avalon said, "How come you weren't announced?"

  Trumbull shrugged. "They know me here. I've visited Manny before."

  "Besides," said Drake, "an important government operative like you is above suspicion."

  Trumbull snorted and his lined face twisted into a scowl, but he didn't rise to the bait. That he was a code expert all the Black Widowers knew. What he did with it, none of the Black Widowers knew, though all had the same suspicion.

  Trumbull said, "Any of you counted the bulls yet?"

  Gonzalo laughed. "It does seem a herd."

  The bookcases that lined the wall were littered with bulls in wood and ceramic and in all sizes and colors. There were several on the end tables, others on the television set.

  "There are more in the bathroom," said Drake, emerging.

  "I'll bet you," said Trumbull, "that if we each count all the bulls in the place, we'll each come out with a different answer and every one of them will be wrong."

  "I'll bet you," said Halsted, "that Manny doesn't know how many there are himself."

  "Hey, Manny," shouted Gonzalo, "how many bulls have you got?"

  "Counting me?" called back Rubin, amid the clatter of pottery. He put his head out of the kitchen door. "One thing about eating here is you know damn well you don't get any liver in the appetizer. You're getting an eggplant dish with all kinds of ingredients in it and don't ask the details because it's my recipe. I invented it. ... And, Mario, that bull will chip if you drop it and Jane knows them all by heart and she'll inspect each one when she comes back."

  Avalon said, "Did you hear about the robbery here, Tom?"

  Trumbull nodded. "He didn't get much, I understand."

  Rubin hustled out, carrying dishes. "Don't help, Henry. Say, Jeff, put down the drink a minute and help me put out the cutlery. . . . It's roast turkey, so all of you get ready to tell me if you want light meat or dark and don't change your mind once you've made it up. And you're all getting stuffing whether you want it or not because that's what makes or-"

  Avalon put out the last of the knives with a flourish and said, "What did they get, Rubin?"

  "You mean the guy who broke in? Nothing. Jane must have come back just as he started. He messed up some of the items in the medicine chest; looking for drugs, I suppose. I think he picked up some loose change, and my recording equipment was knocked about. He may have been trying to carry off my portable stereo to hock it, but he just had a chance to move it a bit. . . . Who wants music, by the way?"

  "No one," shouted Trumbull indignantly. "You start making your damned noise, and I'll steal the stereo and kick every one of your tapes intd the incinerator."

  Gonzalo said, "You know, Manny, I hate to say it, but the stuffing is even better than the eggplant was."

  Rubin grunted. "If I had a bigger kitchen-" The wail of a siren sounded from outside. Drake jerked a thumb over his shoulder toward the open window. "The lullaby of Broadway."

  Rubin waved his hand negligently. "You get used to it. If it isn't a fire engine, it's an ambulance; if it isn't an ambulance, it's a police car; if it isn't . . . The traffic doesn't bother me."

  For a moment he seemed lost in thought. Then a look of the deepest malignancy crossed his small face. "It's the neighbors who bother me. Do you know how many pianos there are on this floor alone? And how many record players?"

  "You have one," said Trumbull.

  "I don't play it at two a.m. at top volume," said Rubin. "It wouldn't be so bad if this were an old apartment house with walls as thick as the length of your arm. The trouble is, this place is only eight years old and they make the walls out of coated aluminum foil. Hell, the walls carry sound. Put your ear to the wall and you can hear noise from any apartment on any floor, three up and three down.

  "And it's not as though you can really hear the music and enjoy it," he went on. "You just hear that damned bass, thump, thump, thump, at a subsonic level that turns your bones to water."

  Halsted said, "I know. In my place, we've got a couple who have fights and my wife and I listen, but we can never hear the words, just the tone of voice. Infuriating. Sometimes it's an interesting tone of voice, though."

  "How many families do you have here in this apartment house?" asked Avalon.

  Rubin spent a few moments computing with moving lips. "About six hundred fifty," he said.

  "Well, if you insist on living in a beehive," said Avalon, "you have to take the consequences." His neat and graying beard seemed to bristle with high morality.

  "That's a real fat hunk of comfort," said Rubin. "Henry, you're going
to have another helping of turkey."

  "No, really, Mr. Rubin," said Henry, with a kind of helpless despair. "I just can't-" And he stopped with a sigh, since-his plate was heaped high.

  He said, "You seem very put out, Mr. Rubin; and somehow I feel there is more to it than someone's piano playing."

  Rubin nodded and, for a moment, his lips actually trembled, as though in passion. "You bet it is, Henry. It's that Goddamn carpenter. You might be able to hear him now."

  He tilted his head in an attitude of listening and, automatically, all conversation stopped and all listened. Except for the steady whine of traffic outside, there was nothing.

  Rubin said, "Well, we're lucky. He isn't doing it now; hasn't for a while, in fact. Listen, everyone, dessert was a kind of disaster and I had to improvise. If anyone doesn't want to eat it, I've got cake from the bakery, which I wouldn't ordinarily recommend, you understand-"

  "Let me help this course," said Gonzalo.

  "Okay. Anyone but Henry."

  "That," said Trumbull, "is a kind of reverse snobbery. Henry, this guy Rubin is putting you in your place. If he weren't so damned conscious that you're a waiter, he'd let you help wait on us."

  Henry looked at his plate, still piled high, and said, "My frustration is not so much at being unable to help wait on table, as at being unable to understand."

  "Unable to understand what?" asked Rubin, coming in with desserts on a tray. They looked very much like chocolate mousse.

  "Are you having a carpenter working in this apartment house?" asked Henry.

  "What carpenter? . . . Oh, you mean what I said. No, I don't know what the hell he is. I just call him a carpenter. He's forever banging. Three in the afternoon. Five in the morning. He's forever banging. And always when I'm writing and want it particularly quiet. . . . How's the Bavarian cream?"

  "Is that what this is?" asked Drake, staring at it suspiciously.

  "That's what it started out to be," said Rubin, "but the gelatin wouldn't set properly and I had to improvise."

  "Tastes great to me, Manny," said Gonzalo.

  "Little too sweet," said Avalon, "but I'm not much of a dessert man."

  "It is a little too sweet," said Rubin magnanimously. "Coffee coming up in a minute; and not instant, either."

  "Banging what, Mr. Rubin?" asked Henry.

  Rubin had bustled away, and it wasn't till five minutes afterward, with the coffee poured, that Henry could ask again, "Banging what, Mr. Rubin?"

  "What?" asked Rubin.

  Henry pushed his chair back from the table. His mild face seemed to set into a harder outline. "Mr. Rubin," he said, "you are the host; and I am the guest of the club at this dinner. I would like to ask a privilege which, as host, you can grant."

  "Well, ask," said Rubin.

  "As guest, it is traditional that I be quizzed. Frankly, I do not wish to be, since, unlike other guests, I will be at next month's banquet and at the one after that, in my ordinary capacity as waiter, of course, and I prefer-" Henry hesitated.

  'You prefer your privacy, Henry?" asked Avalon.

  "Perhaps I would not quite put it-" began Henry, and then, interrupting himself, he said, "Yes, I would quite put it that way. I want my privacy. But I want something more. I want to quiz Mr. Rubin."

  "What for?" asked Rubin, his eyes widening behind the magnifying effect of his thick-lensed spectacles.

  "Something I have heard this night puzzles me and I cannot get you to answer my questions."

  "Henry, you're drunk. I've been answering every question."

  "Nevertheless, may I quiz you formally, sir?"

  "Go ahead."

  "Thank you," said Henry. "I want to know about the annoyance you have been having."

  "You mean the carpenter, and his lullaby of Broadway?"

  "My line," said Drake quietly, but Rubin ignored him.

  "Yes. How long has it been going on?"

  "How long?" said Rubin passionately. "For months."

  "Very loud?" asked Henry.

  Rubin thought a while. "No, not loud, I suppose. But you can hear it. It comes at odd moments. You can never predict it."

  "And who's doing it?"

  Rubin brought his fist down on the table suddenly, so that his coffeecup clattered. "You know, that's it. It isn't the noise so much, irritating though it might be. I could stand it if I understood it; if I knew who it was; if I knew what he was doing; if I could go to someone and ask him not to do it for a while when I'm having particular trouble with a plot line. It's like being persecuted by a poltergeist."

  Trumbull held up his hand. "Wait a while. Let's not have any of this poltergeist horse manure. Manny, you're not going to try to bring in the supernatural, here. Let's get one thing straight first-"

  Halsted said, "It's Henry that's doing the quizzing, Tom."

  "I'm aware of that," said Trumbull, nodding his head frigidly. "Henry, may I ask a question?"

  "If," said Henry, "you are about to ask why Mr. Rubin, hearing a, noise, can't tell where it's coming from, it is what I am about to ask."

  "Go ahead," said Trumbull. "I'll help myself to more coffee."

  Henry said, "Would you answer the question, Mr. Rubin?"

  Rubin said, "I suppose it is hard for you all to understand. Let's see now, two of you live across the Hudson, one of you lives down in one of the older sections of Brooklyn, and one of you is in Greenwich Village. Tom lives in a reconverted brownstone. I'm not sure where Henry lives but I'm sure it's not a modern beehive, as Avalon calls it. None of you live in one of these modern apartment complexes with twenty-five stories or more, and twenty-five apartments on a floor, and nice sound-carrying concrete for a skeleton.

  "If someone had a good loud record player on, I might be able to tell if it's from upstairs or from downstairs, though I wouldn't bet on it. If I wanted to, I could go from door to door all along this floor, then door to door all along the floor beneath, and again all along the floor above, and I guess I would be able to tell what apartment it is by plastering my ear against the right door.

  "If it's just a soft hammering, though, it's impossible to tell. You can listen at a door and it wouldn't help. Sound doesn't carry so much through the air and the door. It goes through the walls. Listen, I've gone from door to door when I got mad enough. I don't know how many times I've crept through the corridors."

  Gonzalo laughed. "If you get caught doing that, that doorman downstairs will be getting reports about vicious-looking hoodlums sneaking around."

  "That doesn't worry me," said Rubin. "The doorman knows me." A look of coy modesty suddenly dripped over Rubin's face. "He's a fan of mine."

  "I knew you had one somewhere," said Trumbull, but Henry pushed at the turkey on his plate and seemed more distressed than ever.

  "Suppose your fan isn't on duty," said Gonzalo argu-mentatively. "You've got to have doormen around the clock and your fan has to sleep."

  "They all know me," said Rubin. "And this one, the guy at the door now, Charlie Wiszonski, takes the four-to-twelve evening shift weekdays, which is the heavy shift. He's senior man. .. . Look, let me clear the table."

  Henry said, "Could you have someone else do that, Mr. Rubin? I want to continue questioning you and I want to get back to the carpenter. If sound carries through the walls and you hear him, don't many other people hear him, too?"

  "I suppose so."

  "But if he disturbs so many-"

  "That's another irritating thing," said Rubin. "He doesn't. . . . Thanks, Roger, just pile all the dishes in the sink. I'll take care of them afterward. . . . This carpenter doesn't seem to bother anyone. During the day husbands are away and so are lots of the wives and the apartment house isn't rich in children. The wives that are home are doing housework. In the evening, everyone has the television set on. What does anyone care for an occasional banging? I care because I'm home night and day and I'm a writer. I care because I'm a creative person who has to do some thinking and needs a little quiet."

  "H
ave you asked others about it?" said Henry. "Oh, occasionally, yes." He tapped his spoon restlessly against the cup. "I suppose your next question is to ask what they said."

  "I should guess," said Henry, "from the look of frustration about you, that no one admitted ever hearing it."

  "Well, you're wrong. One or two would say something about hearing it once or twice. The trouble is, no one cared. Even if they heard it, they didn't care. New Yorkers get so deadened to noise, you could blow them up and they wouldn't care."

  "What do you suppose he's doing to make that noise, whoever he is?" asked Avalon.

  Rubin said, "I say he's a carpenter. Maybe not professionally, but he works at it. I could swear he has a workshop up there. I can still swear it. Nothing else will explain it."

  "What do you mean, you can still swear it?" asked

  Henry.

  "I consulted Charlie about it."

  "The doorman?"

  "What's the good of the doorman?" asked Gonzalo. Why didn't you go to the superintendent? Or the owner?"

  "What good are they?" said Rubin impatiently. "All I know about the owner is the fact that he lets the air conditioning blow out every heat wave because he prefers to patch it with the finest grade of chewing gum. And to get the superintendent you have to pull in Washington. Besides, Charlie's a good guy and we get along. Hell, when

  Jane had the run-in with the hoodlum, and me not there, Charlie was the one she called."

  "Didn't she call the police?" asked Avalon.

  "Sure she did. But first Charlie!"

  Henry looked terribly unhappy. He said, "So you consulted the doorman about the banging. What did he say?"

  "He said there were no complaints. It was the first he had heard of it. He said he would investigate. He did and he swore up and down that there were no carpenter's workshops anywhere in the building. He said he had men go into each apartment to check air conditioners-and that's one sure way of getting in anywhere."

  "So then the doorman dropped the matter?"