Shatterday (21 page)

But when we got there—
there
being a rundown tenement in a scuzzy section—I found an apartment half-filled with card-carrying criminals. They had the appearance of righteous gypsies, some kind of hyperthyroid Romany rejects. Eleven of them, looking like road company understudies for "The Wolf Man," starring Madame Maria Ouspenskaya.

Four flights up, in what would have been called a railroad flat, had we been in New York and not Chicago, they sat around the kitchen staring at Jimmy and me with dark, hooded eyes. I felt like a cobra at a mongoose rally.

An extremely attractive young woman had opened the apartment door after Jimmy had knocked in a special cadence: two shorts close together, pause, then three more shorts.

"'Open, Sesame' isn't required, eh? How convenient," I said. He gave me one of his looks.

And the door was opened by this extremely attractive young woman, who threw her arms around him and kissed him full on the mouth. I stared beyond them, into the kitchen, and was greeted by the massed nastiness contained in ten pairs of dark, hooded eyes.

He held her away from him and murmured something too quietly for the gypsies to hear. What he said, Jimmy always the romantic, was: "What're you pushing this time … cancer?"

She grinned and gave him a playful punch in the stomach—playful enough to straighten him out with a whooze of pain. Then she led him into the apartment. I followed, not happily.

Let me cut through all the subsequent hours of weird happenings. The background was this:

Jimmy had been out on the lecture circuit the year before. In Kansas City the usual gaggle of esurient sycophants who cannot differentiate between the Artist and the Art rushed the podium for autographs and cheap thrills such as the pressing of flesh. In the crowd had been an extremely attractive young woman who, when her turn came to thrust a book and a pen under Jimmy's nose, had thrust neither. She had moved in quickly and thrust
herself
. Reaching for him, she had put her mouth to his ear and whispered, "Why don't we go back up to your hotel room and see if you can make me groan."

Needless to say …

About a week later, Jimmy back home, a phone call on his private line. It was the extremely attractive young woman whom Jimmy had made groan. Her name, she told him, was not Mia, as she had told him. She was not, strictly speaking, a bank teller, as she had told him. She was, in fact, a member of a rather large family that specialized in robbing banks. When they were between jobs, she worked as a bank teller. "Who better?" Jimmy had replied to that one. She was on the dodge, spent most of her time underground with different aliases and different pseudo-lives, and she had had a wonderful time with Jimmy whose books, during those long hours underground, had brought her endless pleasure.

When Jimmy inquired why she was revealing all this to him, she shamefacedly admitted—though he couldn't see her face—that she had probably given him a cataclysmic dose of the crabs.

Without even bothering to check, Jimmy perceived that he had, at last, an understanding of why he had been scratching furiously for the preceding week. As it was his first exposure to
Phthirus pubis,
he dropped instantly into panic. "I would rather," he said later, "have ten thousand years of tertiary syphilis than ten seconds of the crabs." He had an urgent Candygram from his autonomic nervous system, directing him in the most stridently hysterical tones, to rush off and set fire to his crotch.

She had gone on—unaware that Jimmy was no longer within ratiocination range—to say she hadn't known about it herself, that she was sorry as hell, and that she thought it was a crummy thing to do to someone who had given her so many hours of pleasure, both in print and in bed. And
that
, she told him, was why she was calling him to tell him … and spilling the beans about herself. (Which wasn't that big a deal, apparently, because she wasn't in Kansas City any more; and
he
couldn't very well find her, or the family, if the FBI, the Federal Reserve System, the Organized Crime Task Force, Brink's and the Pinkertons couldn't find them.)

Ever the polite chap, Jimmy had thanked her decently for taking the time to call on such a piddling matter when she obviously had bigger problems to worry about. Then he hung up the phone, hyperventilated, and sent Missy to the pharmacy to buy copious quantities of A-200 Pyrinate Liquid, Cuprex, Kwell cream
and
Kwell lotion—and a thermite bomb just to be prepared in the event a scorched-earth policy proved necessary.

Now a year later, the Mia-
manqué
had summoned Jimmy from California to Chicago to act as intermediary in the family's surrender to the Laws (as she called them, reminiscent of the colorful patois of Bonnie & Clyde).

And this once he had taken me with him.

Pseudo-Mia took him by the hand and started to lead him down the hallway toward the rear of the apartment. "Hey!" I said. The sound made by a ferret caught in a clampjaw trap.

Jimmy turned, still being led by the hand, walked backward and said, "Make yourself at home. Strike up new acquaintances. Establish meaningful relationships. I'll be back."

And Not-Mia opened a door to what I presumed was a bedroom off the hall—thereby illuminating her family's liberal, one might even say cavalier, attitude toward her sexual egalitarianism—and she disappeared inside; followed by Jimmy's disappearing hand, arm, body, and face, leaving behind only the smile of the Cheshire Cat.

I turned to stare at ten pairs of dark, hooded eyes that were staring at me.

A man in his thirties got up, stood aside, and indicated the empty chair at the kitchen table. I sat down, not happily.

At almost the instant I realized there was a wonderful, dark brown smell of something baking in the apartment, the old woman—an old
old
woman, shapeless and infinitely corrugated with wrinkles—sitting directly across from me reached behind her, wearing a potholder mitt, opened the door of the oven, pulled out a metal bread pan, and slapped it down on the table between us.

"
Langos,"
she said. She pronounced it
lahng
-osh.

It smelled sensational. Some kind of deep-fried bread dough she'd apparently been keeping warm in the oven. I looked at it. The guy who had given me his seat took a bowl full of garlic cloves off the sink and put it down in front of me.

"Bread," he said. "Rub it with the garlic."

I reached in, took a piece of langos, burned my fingertips, squeaked, provoked ten smiles, added an eleventh, my own, and rubbed the hot surface with a clove of garlic. It tasted sensational.

Then the old, old woman began rattling off at me. She spoke uninterruptedly for about a minute. In Hungarian. I smiled. I nodded. She stopped and looked at me, waiting for a response, I thought of Arctic tundra.

A man in his fifties, sitting to my left, said, "She asks if you know if Laurie will marry Vic Lamont and if Cookie will go crazy and will Simon Jessup kill Orin Hillyer?"

I stopped chewing. I smiled. I nodded. I—looked from one to another of them, hoping someone would take pity on a man lost in the desert.

The old, old woman, hearing what the man in his fifties had said, added a few more words. I looked at the interpreter. He spoke resignedly: "And will Adam Drake fall in love with Nicole?"

I hoped, with profound desperation, that Mia was neither greedy nor afflicted with the
djam karet
attendant on ownership of a hooded clitoris.

"I'm sorry," I said slowly, "but I don't know what she's talking about." I smiled. I nodded.

There was an appreciable drop in temperature around the table. The man in his fifties said something short to the old, old woman. She snorted that special snort translatable in
any
language as, "Who asked for you, who sent for you; who sent for you, who asked for you?"

And so, every instant anguish, I sat there for the better part of an hour. In Indonesia they have a name for it:
djam karet
… the hour that stretches.

Eventually, open covenants having apparently been openly entered into, Other-Than-Mia and Jimmy emerged from the bedroom. It looked like a draw.

I got up at a signal from Jimmy, who drew me aside. I started to whisper my consternation, but he pressed my bicep for silence. Maybe-Mia took my seat, and began speaking in a low, intense voice. In Hungarian. Or Urdu. Or tongues, maybe. What do I know about glossolalia?

She was about fifteen seconds into the recitation when they
all
started replying. Eleven gypsies, all going at it like the Russians were invading Evanston. A hailstorm of babble.

Jimmy leaned in and said, "You know the FBI's list of Ten Most Wanted?"

I
nodded. Not happily.

"They just made it to number one."

"Terrific. I'll meet you in the car; say my goodbyes for me."

"Shut up and listen.

"It's a hype. It's a publicity dodge. The Feds never put
anyone
on that list till a week or two before they're going to make an arrest. That way they spread it around about all these dangerous felons at large, and a week or so later the Bureau makes a pinch, making it look as if they're right on top of things. People they
can't
find never even get
on
the list."

"You're telling me Jimmy Stewart's going to break in here any minute with a Thompson submachine gun, is that it?"

"I'm telling you they want to give themselves up; but they're afraid they'll get wiped out if they just wait for the Feds to find them."

"Why don't they run? God knows they're in practice."

"Shut up and listen.

"They want me to be the go-between. To get the press and some responsible local officials in here before they pull the plug."

"Listen, Jimmy … they pull the plug and you're liable to lose the baby with the bathwater. I'm referring to
me
, baby, in case you had any doubts …"

"Take it easy. I did a docudrama about a Chicago psychiatrist for CBS last year …"

I hadn't heard the word
docudrama
before. I was looking at him with confusion. He understood my problem and said, "Fictionalized documentary. Semi-real. Touches truth in at least ten places. Anyhow …"

The babble was growing louder. The old, old woman was now silent, watching and listening. The thirty-year-old guy and the fifty-year-old guy were obviously on opposite sides of the question—whatever the question
was
—and I could see the crowd was about evenly divided. The older guy was with Mia, whatever she was proposing, and I had the certain feeling that if the thirty-year-old guy's point of view prevailed, that this baby might go down the drain
before
Jimmy Stewart made one of his rare personal appearances.

"Are you
listening
to me?" Kerch demanded, squeezing my arm.

"No," I whispered, "I'm listening to them. Somehow I get the feeling what they're saying has more to do with my living to a dignified old age."

"Just shut up and listen, for Christ's sake!

"Marvin Ziporyn is his name … the psychiatrist. He's the top shrink for the state. Works with the Cook County authorities. Concert violinist, big social mover, wrote a couple of books; he's got access to Kup and the Mayor and everybody else."

I was staring openly now. Hell, anybody could get to the Mayor; but access to Irv Kupcinet, the columnist; well, that was the Big Time.

"So?"

"So I call Marvin, tell him what I'm into, get him to contact Kup, who'll love it a lot. They pull in a few of the local squires and top cossacks … and Mia and the crowd remand themselves into proper custody."

"Before Jimmy Stewart breaks in …"

"Right, right."

"I'll meet you at the car. Thank the old lady for the bread." I started toward the door. The thirty-year-old guy erupted from his seat and if there was anything else in that lousy kitchen but the gigantic .45 in his hairy paw, I didn't see it. There is a quality about blue-steel gunmetal that gathers all light in a room; like a black diamond.

He was pointing it at me.

I grinned stupidly, placed both palms against the air and tittered like the village idiot. He seemed somewhat mollified and the barrel of the automatic lowered to the vicinity of my crotch. For A moment there it had been like staring into the mouth of the Holland Tunnel, only bigger.

"Damn it, Larry, stop acting like a schmuck. Let Mia handle it."

"Her name isn't Mia."

"
Whatever
her name is; let her handle it." So I stood there with him, leaning against the wall, for the better part of an hour while the Sanhedrin decided my fate.

Sometime during that hour I asked him, "Who's Vic Lamont?"

He said, "Who?"

I said, "Vic Lamont."

He said, "Never heard of him."

I said, "Will Laurie marry him?"

He said, "What the fuck are you talking about?"

I said, "Will Laurie marry Vic Lamont; will Cookie go crazy; will Simon Somebody-or-other kill Orin Hillyer; will Adam Something-or-other fall in love with Nicole?"

He stared at me.

"The old lady seemed miffed I didn't know the answers," I whispered.

He thought about it a minute. Then he said, "The
Edge of Night
. It's a soap opera."

I said, "Why me?"

He said. "Because you're with me, and Mia told them I'm a famous television writer, and that means you're a famous television writer, and that means you know what happens to all those characters in the soap operas, because they're not characters, they're real people, and I suppose when you're on the lam the only consistency in your life is the surrogate life of people in soap operas. What'd you tell her?"

"I didn't tell her anything. I didn't have the faintest idea what she was talking about."

He said, "How'd she take it?"

I said, "Not terrific."

He nodded, thought about it a minute, then called Mia over. He took her aside, whispered at her for a little while, then sent her back to the table. She bent down over the old, old woman, whispered in her ear for a while longer, and when she straightened up the old, old woman was grinning wide as a death's-head, Her mouth was a classic argument for compulsory remedial orthodontia.