Bandbox (34 page)

Here she was in a world of appearances, trying to win the heart of a fellow prettier than she was. The thought compounded her nervousness with despair—a mortal sin, she reminded herself. She decided, for the sake of calm, to attend the noon Lenten service at the Palace. Heading out to it, she joked with Cuddles about the theatre’s ecclesiastical transformation whenever the calendar took a religious turn.

“By the way,” she asked, “what have you given up for Lent?”

“Giving up,” he answered, after a couple of seconds’ thought.

——

That same day, over lunch at Malocchio, Spilkes had to talk Harris out of an idea the boss had to dress up some bums who’d recently been rousted from “Mr. Zero’s Tub” on St. Mark’s Place. (The city’s health commissioner had developed some momentary zeal about flophouse conditions.)

“Have Lord put ’em in tuxedos and we’ll run their pictures next to some guys from the Yale Club,” Harris had proposed. “Challenge the reader to pick out the real swells from the down-and-outs. We’ll print the answers upside down, in small type, at the bottom of the page.”

Spilkes dissuaded him with an argument that the magazine’s more “sensitive” readers might find a certain cruelty in all this. Harris asked him just who could be called sensitive in this day and age, and while Spilkes had no real answer for that, his use of the word had served to remind Harris that
he
, in fact, beneath the bombast and the current blood sport with Jimmy, still retained an earlier era’s spirit of fair play. Soon Harris was thinking: Why humiliate those poor Sterno-drinking souls? Even if there was a free suit in it for them.

What Spilkes really needed the boss to change his mind about was Max’s article-in-progress. The m.e. had developed a considerable fear over one aspect of the situation. “If the police department sees us making ourselves out to be heroes,” he argued, “Boylan may be all over you. Only five days ago he took the head off that reporter who asked him how come there’d been no progress finding Shep.”

“Norman, I’d like to point out that we
did
find him. Even if Houlihan was heading up the ‘we.’ ” With things still so uncertain, Harris had decided there was no reason yet to forgive Cuddles, though he’d had to take back his pink slip. “So what would you suggest?”

“Let the cops go out there and capture Rothstein’s guys. Make that the climax of Max’s story.”

Harris poured himself more olive oil and asked if Spilkes had ever heard of such a thing as a calendar. “We’ve accelerated the print run. I begged Oldcastle to change the schedule for every magazine in the company so that we could have an earlier press time this month.”

Calendars being more or less his specialty, Spilkes took one out from his wallet. “The pages go to the printer on the thirteenth. If you act today, there’s still time. Tell Boylan the situation. His men will have three days to get out there, three days to get back—and three days in between to make arrests.”

“The thirteenth is a Friday,” said Harris, looking at the tiny calendar. His mind went back to Leopold and Loeb. “How the hell does that happen twice in four months?”

Spilkes ignored the objection. “You can still be on the stands by the twentieth. The issue’ll leave the printing plant on the nineteenth.”

“Keep your voice down,” said Harris, hearing mention of this other unpleasant date—the one for Gianni’s sentencing. The restaurateur had given the editors no more than a curt nod this afternoon, before retreating into his kitchen.

Spilkes waved away this problem, too. “The nineteenth is also one day before the GMEs. But so what? You need to concentrate on what’s important here.”

Harris was so concerned about the magazine’s collapse that he
had
in fact forgotten all about the GMEs. Since that day on the sixteenth floor, Oldcastle had been more silent than Coolidge, offering only his knife blade of a smile whenever the editor saw him in the elevator.

“All right,” said Harris, willing to consider Spilkes’s approach. “But suppose California lets Boylan’s cops make the collar, and suppose it even extradites Rothstein’s thugs. What’s to say Boylan’ll keep it out of the papers until we can get onto the stands?”

“Because that’s the arrangement you’ll offer him: he gets credit, but from us. He’ll take the deal.”

“Now tell me how you keep Rothstein from killing Max, once his guys are in a New York jail.”

Spilkes sighed. “Max seems willing to take the risk. You know, sales for
Ticker Rape
weren’t up to his usual level. His publishers have concluded that no one can associate the stock market with pain. He’s ready for the new burst of publicity this will give him. He’ll hide in plain sight.”

“If he’s not hidden in some landfill first.” Harris took another sip. He’d also been wondering what might happen to the kid—and, for that matter, to all the rest of them, too.

He consoled himself with the thought that these gangsters might settle for an atrocity against Mukluk. And he told Spilkes okay.

Up on eighteen, Paul Montgomery was preparing the short counter-article wanted on newsstands at exactly the moment
Bandbox
’s Shep story hit. What Paulie had been asked to compose—a straightforward exposé, deduced from the chain of the Wood Chipper’s evidence—was not at all suited to his talents. In place of his usual lyric enthusiasm there would be numbered points, as well as photographs of what Chip had taken from Max’s desk (and then put back, before Max could find it missing). Jimmy still hoped
Cutaway
might somehow get a picture of the Shepard kid on the
Bandbox
premises, maybe lounging against the water fountain, but he could do without that if need be. More important was knowing Joe’s speeded-up production schedule, which he did, now that the Wood Chipper had seen it on Hazel’s desk. It was the last thing, Jimmy promised, that Chip would ever be required to copy, swipe, or even overhear.

Down on fourteen everyone was too busy to notice how little Chip was around. Sick of waiting for his reward, he’d gone on an extended shopping spree, running up bills for French ties from
Sulka’s, a half-dozen silk shirts, and a fur-collared overcoat like the mayor’s.

When Hannelore saw him in this last garment, she knew it hadn’t come from the
Bandbox
Fashion Department. She gave Mr. Brzezinski a long look that mixed skepticism with—rather to her own surprise—lust.

John spent Wednesday afternoon in his room at the Commodore, ordering another hamburger from the kitchen and almost beginning to miss the walks and horseback rides he’d had on the ranch. Outside his window, the Chanin Building, growing higher every day, resembled a craggy mountain ridge he would never be allowed to wander past. He told himself he’d just have to be patient and consider the plus side: Miss Snow, who was really pretty, kept treating him like a fellow who’d just come back from the war, bringing over more magazines and crossword puzzles than he could handle. He’d also been promised Sunday dinner at Mr. and Mrs. Stanwick’s in Brooklyn, and a late-night movie in Times Square after that. And he’d finally gotten to make that telephone call to his parents, who were overjoyed to hear from him but unable to understand why they had to keep news of his discovery a secret. “Is this quite on the level, young man?” his father had asked, making John wonder, for a moment or two, whether he might not be in worse trouble now than before.

“Bellissimo!”
cried Mrs. Pandolfo from the top of the stoop. At this early hour on Cornelia Street, her husband was carrying a just-purchased lamb, its feet bound and ready for Easter slaughter, toward the patch of yard at the back of the building.

Walking past, Allen Case kept his eyes on the sidewalk and tried to ignore this grim reminder of Sunday’s approach. But he did make a mental note to pick up some carrots, a holiday treat, for Sugar.

Arriving at the office before 8:30, Allen looked around for the next piece of Max Stanwick’s closely guarded draft, which had been reaching the Copy Department two or three paragraphs at a time. As the text grew and rearranged itself according to Max’s latest inspiration, the layout and photographs kept changing with it. And this morning there was something different.

That had to be a mountain lion. And in the next photo on the pile: wasn’t that the wingspan of a condor?

“NO,” said Gardiner Arinopoulos, bustling in. “Those are already OUT.” He took the prints from Allen’s hand. “We MAY use that little QUAIL instead. See it looking so HELPLESS on that sandy PATH? An analogue to our CAPTIVE SUBJECT.”

Allen thought about driving a no. 2 pencil into the wrinkled patch of skin between the photographer’s eyebrows.

“So WHAT do you THINK?” Arinopoulos asked Allen, drawing his attention back to the prints just snatched from his hand.

“I th-think they’re all w-wonderful.”

“THANK you.”

Allen had meant the animals, not Arinopoulos’s artistry. He let his gaze linger on the eight-by-ten image of a wolf pondering its apparent
freedom out there in California; just across the East River, he knew, the photographer’s own no-longer-wanted menagerie must be in the early throes of starvation.

Arinopoulos chuckled as he put the pictures back into his portfolio. “They’re as PAMPERED as FOLLIES girls, these ones.”

“Who t-takes care of them?” asked Allen.

“Some CRAZY old dago Jew,” explained the photographer. “Mr. Isidore Mazzaferro. He used to KILL people for Rothstein when he wasn’t running diplomatic missions between the Ginny and Hebrew bubbles of crime’s MELTING pot. NOW he PURRS over every HAIR on these CREATURES.” Arinopoulos tapped the portfolio. “Rothstein’s PENSIONED him off to this little NATURE preserve. Along with the cattle, he takes care of these NOT-quite-indigenous PETS.”

This was all news to Allen; Max hadn’t written a word about the ranch’s animals, at least not in the bits of copy he’d seen so far.

“Not that Mr. M’s KILLER instincts have disappeared ENTIRELY. You should have seen his RAGE when this cowboy named DARYL dug one of his HEELS a little too hard into his horse.”

Allen spoke carefully. “I imagine M-Mr. Mazzaferro would h-hurt anyone doing something b-b-bad to the creatures in his pr-preserve.”

“WORSE harm than came to Diamond Joe Esposito,” Arinopoulos assured him, with a loud laugh.

“I imagine,” said Allen, “that he’d want to h-hurt anyone doing h-h-harm to animals anywhere. Even in Qu-Queens?”

Arinopoulos narrowed his eyes. “What are you TRYING to say?”

“Take me out to that warehouse,” said Allen, with a force that broke through every consonant.

The photographer tried laughing off this sudden request. “I have a COVER shoot THIS afternoon. I need to get ready.”

For a moment Allen said nothing, just continued looking straight at Arinopoulos, who realized with a chill that this gaunt, bespectacled boy might be crazier than Mr. Mazzaferro.

“You stopped p-paying the bills five days ago,” said Allen.

“YES,” said Arinopoulos. “I DID. The creatures had SERVED their purpose. Let somebody BUY them and EAT them. WHAT business is it of YOURS?”

He was almost out the door when Allen blocked his path into the corridor.

“Mr. M-Mazzaferro w-will be seeing this article. He’ll be m-m-mad enough already. Th-then wait until he finds out about that w-warehouse in Queens.”

“And YOU’RE going to tell him that?” With contempt, the photographer scanned the boy from head to toe. He was as skinny as … a fuse. Arinopoulos swallowed hard.

“Take me there,” said Allen. “N-now.”

They were over the Queensboro Bridge within fifteen minutes, the photographer doing his best not to appear afraid. When they arrived at the warehouse property in Long Island City, Allen made a fast survey of its torn wire fencing; the weeds strewn with car parts; the broken little factory windows. From somewhere inside the low brick building a radio played “Make My Cot Where the Cot-Cot-Cotton Grows.”

“Don’t move,” Arinopoulos instructed the taxi driver. “We’ll PAY you to WAIT.”

No growling dogs were in evidence this time, perhaps because it was daylight. Allen and Arinopoulos had a clear path to the overhead garage door, which went up seconds after the photographer knocked on it.

“I thought you were through with all that,” said Mr. Boldoni, the manager, with a vague hand gesture toward some distant but, even from here, pungent precinct of the interior. Allen leaned forward, trying to find the little zoo inside this vast and filthy expanse—half auto body shop, half indoor junkyard.

“C’mon,” said Mr. Boldoni, in a weary tone. He led them inside at
last, wishing that Arinopoulos would make up his mind about these smelly beasts. “You’re lucky any of them are still around.”

The sight of a half-dozen scrawny caged animals, without even straw beneath them, just sodden newspaper, seared Allen’s vision. A wild-eyed ram weakly bleated, while the lemur who’d done the
House & Garden
shoot shivered violently, trying to sleep through its slow starvation. Through one of the broken windows Allen could see what appeared to be an open pit for burning trash. God only knew how many creatures had been flung into it.

A blue vein bulged through the thin skin of his neck, as he turned toward Gardiner Arinopoulos: “Mr. M-Mazzaferro would be very m-m-mad.”

“Oh, for Christ’s SAKE!” cried Arinopoulos, who reached into his wallet for a wad of small bills that he handed over to Boldoni.

“Here’s their MEAL ticket for ANOTHER month.”

Imagining the long days and nights that Canberra had spent here, Allen told the photographer: “I’m afraid that’s n-not going to be good enough. For m-me
or
Mr. Mazzaferro.”

At lunchtime that day, Nan stood in Harris’s office going over a piece of Max’s story. She had, at least so far, no obscenity problems to raise, only a concern that Max’s cowboy dialect sounded less than wholly accurate. She was reading Harris some examples of it when Mrs. Zimmerman rang Hazel’s desk to announce that Rosemary LaRoche had just arrived on fourteen with her own hairdresser,
chauffeur, and secretary. Hazel took only enough time to repeat the information before dashing off to Reception for a look.