Shatterday (22 page)

Whatsername sat down and smiled, waiting.

Then the old, old woman said something sharp and hard. In Hungarian. Everybody shut up and stared at her. Then she said something else, not quite as sharp and hard, and the thirty-year-old guy packing the Holland Tunnel bowed his thorny head, nodded in supplication, and murmured words of acquiescence.

The fifty-year-old spoke rapidly to the Ghost of Mia Past, every once in a while pointing at Jimmy or me, or Jimmy
and
me. Once, damned sure, he was making a threat; and once, damned certain, he was giving warning. She nodded, said okay okay okay every few sentences, added a thought here and there and, finally, it all seemed settled.

She got up, came over to us, and said, "All set. Do your stuff, Kerch."

He gave her a little kiss and started toward the old black two-handed pedestal telephone on the kitchen counter. I asked the Memory of Mia, "What's all set?"

She patted me on the check and answered, "They're not going to cut you into small pieces and leave you in garbage cans all over the South Side." Then she went away, to join my best friend, Kercher Oliver James Crowstairs, who had brought me along into the jaws of death on a "dangerous mission of research."

It was not till a week later, after the gypsy bank robbers had given themselves up with attendant headlines and photos of Jimmy leading them out of the tenement into the waiting arms of Irv Kupcinet, the Mayor of Chicago and the bureau Chief of the Midwest Regional FBI office (not to mention several thousand cops and G-Men armed for the apocalypse), that Kerch bothered to tell me that what had saved our lives was Mia's imparting to her dear old Granny the information that I was a close family friend of everyone on
The Edge of Night
and that when (or if) Granny ever got sprung from the federal slam, I would introduce her to Laurie, Vic Lamont, Simon Jessup, Orin Hillyer, Cookie, Nicole and Adam in Drake,
whoever
the hell they were!

•

"My name is Kercher O.J. Crowstairs," said the Kercher O.J. Crowstairs three times life-size on the screen before us. The camera pulled back into a medium shot and Jimmy up there whipped open the wallet lying on the desk. He pulled out a sheaf of cards and held the first one up to the camera, which obligingly zoomed in for a closeup. Jimmy's voice, off-camera, said, "And this is my driver's license, issued by the state of California. You'll notice it has a rather unflattering photograph of me right here in the lower left-hand corner, which will identify me as the one and only K.O.J. Crowstairs, your friendly neighborhood testator."

The camera had slowly pulled back to include the attorney, Kenneth L. Gross. He was making a small moue at Jimmy's levity. The moue became a stricture as Jimmy held up one card after another:

"And this is my BankAmericard/Visa card; and this is my Master Charge card; and this is my Diners Club card, but I don't use it much; and this is my Carte Blanche; and this one will rent me a Hertz, and this one an Avis, and this one will get me a tacky room in any Holiday Inn across the face of the Earth; and this one is for Neiman-Marcus, and this one is for good old Bloomingdale's, and …"

He must have caught the strangled moan from Gross, because be stopped. He dropped the rest of the thick pack of cards, and looked into the camera.

"Look: we're doing this videotape so no one, and that means
no one
will be able to raise the question of my competency after I've croaked. By competency they mean was I of sound mind and body, and under no duress, such as being held captive by the Symbionese Liberation Army. But if I played it absolutely straight, and didn't laugh at all this somber bullshit, then anyone who's known me more than ten minutes would suspect I
was
out of my skull.

"Nonetheless …" and be said this hurriedly, because Gross was making the kind of strangling noises that, had he uttered them in a good restaurant, would have brought the maître d' running to administer the Heimlich Maneuver, "nonetheless, moving right along to the serious stuff, folks, here's my friend and advisor, the world-famous corporate attorney, Mr. Kenneth L. Gross, who'd like to say a few words. Let's give him a big funeral day welcome …
KennyGross
!"

The attorney was the color of old toothpaste as he read from a prepared form. "Mr. Crowstairs, you have now established your identity for those who may be seeing this recording at a later date. You have retained this office in connection with estate planning and more specifically to prepare your will. The document I now show you (handing will to client), is the final draft of that will. Would you please take a moment to review it?"

The screen now went to split-frame, the right side being a copy of the will. Jimmy took the document Gross handed him and scanned it. "But this is a laundry list, Kenny." The attorney damned near fainted. Jimmy laughed and hurriedly corrected himself. "I'm
kidding
, I'm just kidding; this is my will; honest to God, I swear it is!"

Gross was breathing bard. I felt for the poor devil. "Is this the document that you have, hopefully, previously read?"

"Yes, it is. But you don't mean
hopefully
, Kenny. You mean I
hope
, or
it is to be hoped
, or
one hopes
. You see, when you use the word 'hopefully,' you're reporting a subjective state of mind; that is,
full of hope
, Your error is in attributing your hope to the object, in this case the will … or is the object
me
? I'm never really sure of parts of speech. In any case, if you were to reverse the word, you'd see how wrong it's being used:
hopelessly
I've read it. See what I mean? Good grammar, Kenny; always good grammar. Your mother and I have chided you about this on numerous occasions …"

Gross exploded. "
Mister
Crowstairs! If you will, sir! This is a serious undertaking! Now
is this
, or is this not the document previously read by yourself?"

"It is, it is! Nag, nag, nag."

Gross gave it up. He bulled forward. Not happily. "Are you executing this document or prepared to execute this document… . no, wait … I'm out of sequence! Damn it, Kerch!"

Jimmy grinned infectiously. He was never happier than when he was stirring up the soup. He laid a placating band on Gross's. "Take it easy, Kenny. Don't fumfuh."

Gross swallowed; as they say, he looked daggers at his client, pulled a weathered pipe with a large Oom Paul bowl and a bent stem from his vest pocket, puffed it alight with a kitchen match taken from his
other
vest pocket, harrumphed once, and began again.

"All right, then: In my presence, and in the presence of these witnesses, and cognizant of the fact that these proceedings are being videotaped, does this document reflect your exclusive and entire wishes with regard to the disposition of your property?"

Testator responded in the affirmative: "I respond in the affirmative."

The attorney now turned to the three witnesses. "Each of you has known Mr. Crowstairs for many years. You have been asked to participate in these proceedings for the purpose of further identification. Will you now, each in turn, declare who you are, your relationship to Mr. Crowstairs, and verify that this is, in fact, Mr. Kercher Oliver James Crowstairs."

Camera came in to closeup on the first witness as the split-screen went to solo image.

"My name is Brandon Winslow. I have been a close personal friend, house guest and sometime-collaborator of Kercher Crowstairs for almost fourteen years; and I hereby declare that the man over there with all the credit cards is, in fact and as he's stated, the Crowstairs he says he is."

Well, well
, I thought,
oh my ears and whiskers
.

"Sometime-collaborator." Now there's one phrase I never thought I'd hear in connection with Jimmy. So Bran had been paying off the loans and the live-in companionship with something more valuable than coin of the realm. He had worked on some of the books, That went a long way toward explaining how Jimmy could turn out his novel
and
a short story collection every year as regular as the swallows visiting Capistrano, plus finding the time for all the introductions, newspaper columns, background pieces for TV GUIDE; the lectures, the television talk show appearances, the writing workshops; and the women. He had another laborer in the vineyard. A bond slave.

I cast back through the long list of Crowstairs publications trying to figure out which ones had been co-written—
entirely ghost-written?
!?!—no, it was unthinkable—but then, collaboration had been unthinkable till Bran had let the black cat cross the path—and I came up with two immediately.

Bakelite Radio
Fantasies and
Fearsome Noises
. They were gentler, more thoughtful than was Jimmy's wont. There was greater lyricism in them, closer in tone to Bran's own solo novel—his
only
novel—
Knowledge of Two Kinds
. They were a couple of my favorite Crowstairs creations.

And my heart contracted in my chest as I realized that in some way Bran Winslow had sold himself to Jimmy, had denied his own career, to add a few more chapters to the myth of Kercher Crowstairs. I didn't want to know what Jimmy had had on Bran, that could make him, seemingly willingly, put aside his own work, to become a secret shadow of the public Kerch.

To me, it was unthinkable. The more I thought about it, the more often the word
unthinkable
burned in the darkness. Unthinkable: Jimmy was many kinds of a man, but blackmailer wasn't one of them. Unthinkable: Brandon Winslow was as fiercely committed to his art as was I, as was Jimmy …

Unthinkable!

No one has that kind of charisma. I simply wouldn't go for it. There had to be something deeper, something more potent. It was unthinkable that a writer of Bran Winslow's sincerity and dedication would simply give over his life to Jimmy; it was unthinkable that Jimmy's fever could be passed on to another writer—possibly a
better
writer, a more important writer, an intrinsically more valuable, a
worthier
writer—to cause him to deny the song of his own Muse. But now that I'd thought it, as unthinkable as it had seemed …

Kercher Crowstairs refused to acknowledge the night.

He had a quote from Thomas Carlyle taped to the molding of the bookcase right over his typewriter:

Produce! Produce! Were it but the pitifullest infinitesimal fraction of a Product, produce it, in Gods name! 'Tis the utmost thou hast in thee: out with it, then. Up, up! Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy whole might. Work while it is called Today; for the night cometh, wherein no man can work.

He refused to cower against the fear of scaled or furry or fanged creatures moving toward him in the night.

He was a sharpened stick.

He was in motion, no sitting target.

He did not play poker, yet he never sat with his back to the door.

But such a level of energy has to dissipate itself before it can consume another writer. It has to! Sheer force of will, massed totality of personality, unleashed waves of charismatic power … no one has that. No one! Unthinkable goddam you Kerch Jimmy!

What the fuck did you have on Bran Winslow to turn him into your Uncle Tom? Your Stepin Fetchit? Your coolie laborer
?
Second sax in your brass section
?
Make-work creative typist
?

Oh, Jesus, Jimmy, this is most hateful; and I don't even know what was behind it.

Poor Bran.

Damn! Stop that! Stop thinking that way. There was a reason, a solid, good reason. There had to be. No writer can do that to another writer who knows how good he is, who has the books in him crying out to be released. No one. No damn you,
no one
!

My head was swimming. I felt sick to my stomach.

"Can you hold the tape," I heard myself saying; and then as the film vanished and white screen appeared, I bolted out of my chair and rushed for the toilet.

•

That dyspeptic old fart Nelson Algren got three out of four. He wrote: "Never play cards with a man named Doc. Never eat in a place called
Mom's
. Never sleep with a woman whose troubles are worse than your own."

Close. Very close.

But he missed a fourth:

"Never let anyone catch you down on your knees puking into a toilet bowl."

Especially not a woman whose troubles are worse than your own.

I should have locked the door. But the bile was pushing as if it were spring-loaded; I barely had time to get into the can before I felt it coming like the Sunshine Express. Down on my knees, loving the toilet bowl, and then the river of fire.

Leslie was in there, right behind me, trying to hold my forehead,
for Christ's consumptive sake
, with me hurling and heaving like a boa constrictor that's swallowed a Peterbilt. I shoved at her, ineffectually, as she continued to play Lady Bountiful to my bounty.

I failed my free arm behind me, trying to get her to
back off
. I think in that moment I realized just how insensitive she is. There'd always been hints … such as her revelation at a group dinner many years before that she had, as a child, thrown a hamster into a window fan … and then, of course, she'd stayed married to Jimmy; that had to indicate more than a
soup on
of the obdurate.

But the level of insensitivity it takes to force someone in the most degrading condition known to humanity to think that he's being
watched
while he glops up his guts, no matter if it's misguidedly interpreted as "concern" or "out of love," is a bestial level whereon one finds only flagstones or spent shell casings.
Back off
!

After a while I got up, filled the sink with cold water, put my face into it completely, and lay there for quite a length of time, allowing the spittle and other nastiness to float away on the tide. My eyes were burning. I could not, thank God, see my face in the water.

I emptied the bowl, washed thoroughly, gargled as best I could with icy water, and reached for a towel. Leslie was standing there with one in her outstretched hand.