“And I had Niarchos sitting next to me, which was no help. He had enough Cognac in him to pickle a rhinoceros. He started at me, very belligerently, and said: ‘Look me in the eye.’ Well, I couldn’t—his eyes were unfocused. ‘Look me in the eye and tell me what makes you happiest in the world?’ I told him sleep. He said: ‘Sleep. That’s the saddest thing I’ve ever heard. You’ll have thousands of years to sleep. Now I’ll tell you what makes me happiest. To hunt. To kill. Prowl through the jungles and kill a tiger, an elephant, a lion. Then I am a peaceful man. Happy. What do you say to that?’ And I said: ‘That’s the saddest thing I’ve ever heard. To kill and destroy, that seems to me a very pathetic thing to call happiness.’ ”
The Black Duchess inclined her head, agreeing: “Yes, the Greeks are dark-minded. The rich Greeks. They bear the same resemblance to humans as coyotes do to dogs. Coyotes look like dogs; but of course they aren’t dogs—”
Aces intervened to comment: “But, Kate, you like to hunt. How do you account for that?”
“I like to play at hunting. I like the walking and the wilderness. The only thing I ever shot was a Kodiak bear, and that was in self-defense.”
“You shot a man,” Aces reminded her.
“Only in the legs. And he deserved it. He killed a white leopard.” Corinne appeared with a small glass of Verviene, and Aces was right—the liqueur matched perfectly the ultra-green of her eyes. “But what I started to tell you about was this amazing woman I met at Mingo’s fandango. She sat down next to me, and said: ‘Hello, honey. I hear you’re a Southern girl, and so am I. I’m from Alabama. I’m Virginia Hill.”
Aces said: “The Virginia Hill?”
“Well, I didn’t realize she was all that famous until Mingo told me. I’d never heard of her.”
“Nor I,” said Mme. Apfeldorf. “Who is she? An actress?”
“A gangster’s moll,” Aces informed her. “The Most Wanted woman. The F.B.I. have pictures of her posted in every post office in America. I read an article about her, it was called ‘The Madonna of the Underworld.’ Everybody’s after her, not only the F.B.I. but most of her old gangster chums, too: they figure if the F.B.I. ever catch her, she might talk and talk too much. When things got too tough, she fled to Mexico and married an Austrian ski instructor; she’s been holed up in Austria and Switzerland ever since. The Americans have never been able to extradite her.”
“Mon Dieu,” said Mme. Apfeldorf, making a sign of the cross.
“She must be a very frightened woman.”
“Not frightened. Despairing, even suicidal perhaps; but she wears a jovial mask very convincingly. She kept putting her arm around me, squeezing me and saying: ‘It sure is good to talk to somebody from down home. Hell, you can take the whole of Europe and cram it up your shithole. See my hand?’ She showed me her hand; it was wrapped in plaster and gauze, and she said: ‘I caught my husband in bed with one of these ladeda bimbos, and I broke her jaw. I would’ve broken his, too. If he hadn’t jumped out the window. I guess you know all about my troubles stateside; but sometimes I feel I’d be better off to go home and get it over with. I can’t be more in a jail there than I am here.’ ”
Aces said: “But what was she really like? Is she beautiful?”
Kate considered. “Never beautiful, but pretty, cute, like a cute little carhop. She has a nice face, but two chins to go with it. And I can’t imagine what her tits weigh—at least a couple of kilos.”
“Please, Kate,” complained the Black Duchess. “You know how I dislike those words. Tits.”
“Oh, yes. I always forget. You were educated by Brazilian nuns. Anyway, what I started to say was, suddenly this woman pressed her lips against my ear and whispered: ‘Why don’t you kidnap him?’ I simply looked at her; I had no idea what she was talking about. She said: ‘You know all about me but I know quite a lot about you. How you married that Kraut bastard and how he kicked you out and kept the kid. Listen, I’m a mother, too. I have a boy. And I know how you feel. With his money, and these European laws, the only way you’re going to get that kid back is by kidnapping him.’ ”
Mutt whined; Aces jingled some coins in his pocket; Mme. Apfeldorf said: “I think she’s quite correct. And it could be done.”
“Yes, it could,” said Aces. “A damned dangerous business. But it could be done.”
“How?” Kate McCloud shouted, pounding her fists into the pillows. “You know that house. It’s a fortress. I could never get him out of there. Not with old-maid uncles always watching. And the servants.”
Aces said: “Still, that part of it might be accomplished. With exemplary planning.”
“And then what? Once the alarm was sounded, I’d never get within ten miles of the Swiss frontier.”
“But suppose,” croaked Mme. Apfeldorf, “suppose you didn’t try to cross the frontier. By car, I mean. Suppose you had a private Grumman jet waiting for you in the valley. All aboard, and off we go.”
“To where?”
“To America!”
Aces was excited: “Yes! Yes! Once you were in the States, Herr Jaeger would be helpless. You could file for divorce, and there’s no judge in America who wouldn’t give you custody of Heinie.”
“Daydreams. Pipedreams. Mr. Jones,” she said, “I’m sorry to have kept you waiting so long. The massage table is in the closet over there.”
“Pipedreams. Perhaps. But I’d think about it,” said the Black Duchess, rising. “Let’s have lunch next week.”
Aces kissed Kate McCloud on the cheek. “I’ll call you later, darling. Take good care of my girl, P. B. And when you’re finished, look me up in the bar.”
While I was setting up the massage table, Mutt jumped on the bed and squatted to peepee. I started to grab her. “No harm. Many worse things have happened in this bed. She’s so ugly she’s adorable. I love her black face with those big white circles around her eyes. Like a Panda. How old is he?”
“Three, maybe four months. Mr. Nelson gave her to me.”
“I wish he’d given her to me. What’s her name?”
“Mutt.”
“You can’t call her that. She’s far too charming. Let’s think of something more suitable.”
When I had the massage table arranged, she rolled off the bed and dropped a gauzy short negligee, underneath which she was nude. Her pubic hair and her shoulder-length honey-red hair were an exact color match; she was an authentic redhead, all right. She was thin, but her body needed not an extra ounce; because of the perfection of her posture, she seemed taller than she was—about my height: five feet eight inches. Casually, her perky breasts scarcely quivering, she crossed the room and touched the button of a stereo phonograph: Spanish music, Segovia’s guitar, relieved the silence. Silently, she approached the massage table and reclined there, letting her fascinating hair fall over its end-edge. Sighing, she curtained her brilliant eyes; closed them as though she were posing for a death mask. She wore no makeup, and required none, for her high cheekbones had a warm natural coloring and her pleasingly pouted lips a pinkness of their own.
I felt a stirring in my crotch, a stirring that stiffened as I gazed along the length of her healthy, sculptured body, her succulent nipples, the ample curve of her hips, and her supine legs extending toward slender feet flawed only by skier’s bunions on both her little toes. My hands were unsteady, damp, and I cursed myself: Cut it out, P. B.—this isn’t very professional of you, old boy. All the same, my prick kept pressing against my fly. Now, nothing like this had so spontaneously happened to me before, though I’d massaged, and more than massaged, a fair share of arousing women—though none, admittedly, to compare with this Galatea. I wiped my wet hands against my trousers, and began to manipulate her neck and the upper regions of her shoulders, kneading the taut skin and tendons as though I were a merchant fingering costly fabric. At first she was tense, but gradually I induced suppleness, an easing.
“Hmm,” she murmured, like a drowsy child. “That’s nice. Tell me, how did you fall
into the hands of our naughty Mr. Nelson?”
I was glad to talk; anything to get my mind off that mischievous hard-on. So not only did I tell her how I’d met Aces at a bar in Tangier, I continued with a brief resume of P. B. Jones and his journeys. A bastard, born in St. Louis and raised there in a Catholic orphanage until I was fifteen and ran away to Miami, where I’d worked as a masseur five or so years—until I’d saved enough money to go to New York and try my luck at what I really wanted to be, a writer. Successfully? Well, yes and no: I’d published a book of short stories—ignored, unfortunately, by both the critics and public, a disappointment that had brought me to Europe, and long years of traveling, scrounging about while I attempted to write a novel; but that, too, had been a dud. So here I was, still drifting and with no future that extended beyond tomorrow.
By now I’d reached her abdomen, massaged it with a rolling circular motion, then descended to her hips, and then, with my eyes on her rosy pubic hairs, I thought of Alice Lee Langman, and Alice Lee Langman’s memories of a Polish lover who had enjoyed jamming her cunt with cherries and eating them out one by one. My imagination enhanced that fantasy. I imagined soft pitted cherries marinating in a bowl of warm rich sweetened cream, and I saw Kate McCloud’s savory fingers selecting creamy cherries from the bowl and inserting them—My legs trembled, my cock pulsed, my balls were tight as a miser’s fist. I said: “Excuse me,” and walked into the bathroom, followed by Mutt, who watched with puzzled, pixie interest as I unzipped my fly and jacked off. It didn’t take much: a couple of tugs and I launched a load that damn near flooded the floor. After removing the evidence with Kleenex, I washed my face, dried my hands, and returned to my client, my legs weak as a seasick sailor’s but my cock still semi-saluting.
The dormer window was smudged with wintry Parisian dusk; lamplight defined her figure, silhouetted her face. She was smiling, and she said, a flickering amusement tempering her tone: “Feeling better?”
A bit gruffly, I said: “If you could turn over now … !”
I massaged the nape of her neck, rippled my fingers along her spine, and her torso vibrated, like a purring cat. “You know,” she said, “I’ve thought of a name for your dog. Phoebe. I once had a pony named Phoebe. And a dog, too. But maybe we ought to ask Mutt. Mutt, how would you like to be called Phoebe?”
Mutt squatted to sprinkle the carpet.
“You see, she loves it! Mr. Jones,” she said, “could I ask a great favor? Would you let Phoebe spend the night with me? I hate sleeping alone. And I’ve missed my other Phoebe so much.”
“It’s all right with me, if it’s all right with … with Phoebe.”
“Thank you,” she said simply.
But it wasn’t all right. I felt if I left Mutt here with this sorceress, she would never belong to me again. Or, perhaps, I’d never again belong to myself. It was as if I’d slipped into furious white water, an icy boiling current carrying me, slamming me toward some picturesque but dastardly cascade. Meanwhile my hands worked to soothe her back, buttocks, legs; her breathing became rhythmic and even. When I was sure she was asleep, I bent and kissed her ankle.
She moved, but did not waken. I sat down on the edge of the bed, and Phoebe—yes, Phoebe—jumped up and curled beside me; soon she was asleep herself. I had been loved, but I had never known love before, and so I could not comprehend the impulses, the desires careening around my brain like a bobsled. What could I do, what could I give Kate McCloud that would force her to respect and return my love? My eyes toured the room and settled on the fireplace mantel and the tables supporting the silver-framed picture of her child: such a serious little boy, though sometimes he was smiling, or lapping an ice-cream cone, or poking out his tongue and making comic faces. “Kidnap him”—wasn’t that what the Black Duchess had advised? Absurd, but I saw myself, sword unsheathed, castrating dragons and fighting through infernos to rescue this child and bring him safely to his mother’s arms. Pipedreams. Bullshit. And yet, instinct somehow told me the boy was the answer. Surreptitiously, I tiptoed out of the room and closed the door, disturbing neither Phoebe’s slumbers nor those of her new mistress.
TIME OUT. I NEED TO sharpen pencils and begin a new notebook.
THAT WAS A LONG TIME out; almost a week. But it is November now, suddenly, unreasonably cold; I went out in a hard driving rain and caught a dandy. I wouldn’t have gone out if my employer, Miss Victoria Self, the High Priestess of the Dial-A-Dick, Call-A-Cunt services, hadn’t sent an urgent message ordering me to her office.
It beats me why, when you think of the money that woman must be coining, she and her Mafioso confederates, they can’t fork out for slightly less sleazy headquarters than the two-room dump above a 42nd Street porno shop. Of course, the customers seldom see the premises; they only make contact by telephone. So I guess she figures why waste money pampering the help, us poor whores. Drowned, the rain water all but gushing out of my ears, I sloshed up the two flights of creaking stairs and once more confronted the frosted-glass door with chipped lettering: THE SELF SERVICE. WALK IN.
Four people occupied the stuffy little waiting room. Sal, a short hunky Italian wearing a wedding ring; he was one of Miss Self’s moonlighting cops. And Andy, who was on probation for a burglary charge; but, if you didn’t look too closely, he might pass for an average college-kid type; as usual, he was playing a harmonica. And then there was Butch, Miss Self’s blond, languid secretary, who, now that the last of his Fire Island suntan had deserted him, resembled Uriah Heep more than ever. Maggie was there, too—a plump sweet girl: the last time I’d seen her she had just got married, greatly to Butch’s indignation.
“And now guess what she’s done!” Butch hissed as I walked in. “She’s pregnant.”
Maggie pleaded: “Please, Butch. I don’t see why you’re making such a hullabaloo. I only found out yesterday. It won’t interfere.”
“That’s what you said when you sneaked off and married this bum. Maggie, you know I love you. But how could you have let such a thing happen?”
“Please, honey. I promise. It won’t happen again.”
Not mollified, but somewhat, Butch rustled papers on his desk and turned to Sal.
“Sal, I hope you’re not forgetting you have a five o’clock appointment at the St. George hotel. Room 907. His name is Watson.”
“The St. George! Jeez,” grumbled Sal, whose nickname is Ten Penny because of his ability, when his dick is fully erect, to line ten pennies along its thick length, “that’s in Brooklyn. I got to haul-ass way the hell over to Brooklyn in this weather?”
“It’s a fifty-dollar date.”
“I hope it’s nothing fancy. I’m not up to anything fancy.”
“Nothing fancy. Just a simple Golden Shower. The gentleman’s thirsty.”
“Well,” said Sal, stepping over to a water cooler in the corner and grabbing himself a Dixie cup, “I guess I’d better tank up.”
“Andy! ”
“Yessir.”
“Put that miserable harmonica in your pocket and leave it there.”
“Yessir.”
“Is that all you delinquents do in jail? Get yourselves tattooed and learn to play the harmonica.”
“I ain’t got any tattoo—”
“Don’t talk back to me!”
“Yessir,” said Andy humbly.
Butch swerved his attention my way; in his expression there was an extra-added smugness hinting that he might be privy to some ominous information concerning me. He pressed a buzzer on his desk, and said: “I believe Miss Self is ready to see you now.”
Miss Self seemed oblivious to my entrance; she was stationed at a window, her back to me, pondering the downpour. Thin grey braids were looped around her narrow skull; as always, her stoutish figure bulged inside a blue serge suit. She was smoking a cigarillo. Her head swiveled. “Ah, so,” she said with the leftover remnants of a German accent, “you are very wet. That is not good. Have you no raincoat?”
“I was hoping Santa Claus would br
ing me one for Christmas.”
“That is not good,” she repeated, advancing toward her desk. “You have been making good money. For sure you can afford a raincoat. Here,” she said, producing from a drawer two glasses and a bottle of her preferred tranquilizer, tequila. While she poured, I wondered anew at the severity of the setting, starker than a penitent’s cell, utterly unadorned except for the desk, some straight-back chairs, a Coca-Cola calendar, and a wall of filing cabinets (how I would have liked to have got a look inside those!). The only frivolous object in view was the gold Cartier watch flashing on Miss Self’s wrist; it was so out of character. I puzzled as to how she had acquired it—was it perhaps a gift from one of her rich and grateful clients?
“Kicks,” she said, emptying her glass with a shudder.
“Kicks.”
“Alors,” she said, sucking her cigarillo, “you may recall our first interview. When you applied here as a potential employee of The Service. Recommended by Mr. Woodrow Hamilton—who, I regret to say, is no longer with us.”
“Oh?”
“For a serious infraction of Our Rules. Which is precisely what I want to discuss with you.” She narrowed her pale Teutonic eyes; I felt the queasiness of a captured soldier about to be interrogated by the Commandant of the Camp. “I acquainted you with those rules in complete detail; but to refresh your memory, I will remind you of the more important ones. Firstly, any attempt by a member of our staff to blackmail or embarrass a client will result in severe retribution.”
A vision of a strangled corpse floating in the Harlem River insinuated itself.
“Secondly, under no circumstances will an employee ever deal directly with a client; all contacts, and all discussion of fees, must be made through our auspices. Thirdly, and most especially, an employee must never associate socially with a client: that sort of thing is not good business and can result in very disagreeable situations.”
She doused her cigarillo in the tequila, and downed a generous slug straight from the bottle. “On September eleventh you had an appointment with a Mr. Appleton. You spent an hour with him in his room at the Yale Club. Did anything unusual happen?”