The Old Turk's Load (8 page)

real, which was exactly where Jarkey needed to be. Despite his snide critique of Kelly’s behavior, he understood what the detective was doing for him and was grateful.

Munching his sandwich, he read the papers carefully, with some bitterness, analyzing the work of former colleagues until it was too dark to read. Then he turned on the radio and caught the beginning of a Jean Shepherd monologue about a pest exterminator who ran a have-a-heart trapping service up in Westchester. Shepherd’s wry, friendly voice filled the night and salved Jarkey’s wounds. This exterminator would trap the woodchucks off those big lawns and haul them away. Naive clients assumed he’d release the animals in the wilds upstate.The rest just figured he’d gas them or shoot them. But he didn’t do any of that.

What he did was take them across town and release them on the lawns of the estates over there. Pretty soon he’d get calls from those people, and he’d go over and trap the woodchucks in his have-a-heart traps and let them go where he’d first caught them. He’d been at it for years: Spring and fall were the big seasons, and it was working out fine. The woodchucks were like his partners in the business. Whole generations of them. They’d waddle into the cages and wait patiently to be transported to their alternate digs. But then a competitor from Ardsley started releasing woodchucks on his turf. He could tell because the woodchucks were new and scared, hissing and clawing in the traps. “That,” said Shep, “was when the trouble started.”

Jarkey never got to hear the rest, because at that moment Kevin Gallagher came stomping out onto the sidewalk, slamming the building door. “Fucking bitch!” he yelled, then pounded off, hands jammed in his pockets.

This presented Jarkey with a tough call. Kelly’d told him to tail Gloria. But Gallagher now was there in front of him. And, clearly, the deeper purpose of his assignment—if such an escapade could be dignified with that term—was to get some dirt on Gallagher. Jarkey, watching him head down the block, slid out of the car, pushing the door quietly shut.

It turned out the right thing to do. Gallagher boarded the subway southbound. Jarkey sat a car back, keeping his eye on the platform at each stop. He exited behind Gallagher at Chambers Street and tailed him two blocks east to a stolid granite-fronted building. Though it was long after office hours for any regular sort of business, Gallagher pushed through the high brass doors with the unhesitating confidence of a man who knew exactly where he was going. Jarkey waited a couple of minutes, then walked past the entrance, glancing inside.The lobby was empty. He pushed through the brass doors and walked over to the directory on the wall next to the elevator.

arry Jarkey, given his wounded condition, never considered how much he brought to the arrangement with Kelly. But the fact was, Kelly approved of him as a person, respected his work, and needed his assistance in such matters as finding car keys and tailing clients’ daughters. Kelly had a profound understanding of his own existential helplessness. It was part of his power.

He stood examining the piles of photostats now spread out on his desk—all Jarkey’s doing—full of admiration at what a genius his man was in a newspaper morgue. Jarkey understood the branching nature of reality, that stories were webs, not lines. What he’d given Kelly was more than a stack of reports about a dead woman, Agnes Mundi. It was the story of her world and how it intersected with her husband’s. Somewhere in the overlap was the key to Richard. Kelly was sure of it. Once he understood those two, he could make sense of this mess with the daughter.

The lead on the obit, in bold type, said,“Agnes Day Mundi, 46, Entertainer.” She’d been discovered dead in her home and, judging by the conflicting euphemisms, it was probably suicide.“Unexpected” might have been a heart attack, unlikely for a forty-six-year-old. “Brave struggle”suggested a lingering illness, which didn’t jibe with “unexpected”—unless it
had
been a lingering mental illness.

A few sheets down there was another story from two days earlier, entitled, “Singer Found Dead.” It differed in an interesting, not to say heart-stopping way from the obituary. This version suggested an autopsy was planned, which in turn suggested an overdose of narcotics as the cause of death.That put a different spin on “brave struggle.” To Kelly it looked like the earlier item broke before anyone had a chance to whitewash it. By the time the obit came out, the story had been changed to imply suicide. Better that than dying a junkie.

Her stage name was Agnes Day but her family name was Dyckman, old money from upstate, relatives of the even older Manhattan Dyckmans. Jarkey had retrieved a pile of stuff about them. Railroads, canals, coal, a brewery. Properties they’d owned in Kingston before that place became a slum. Agnes had been a debutante during the Depression, which meant her family had deep-enough money to survive the thirties. She’d attended Bryn Mawr and had been married briefly to a man named Day who’d been killed in an auto-racing accident in 1938. Then she married Mundi, who was featured in the financial section later, in ’47, as one of the “new breed” of developers “working closely with state and federal agencies to create high-quality affordable housing for returning servicemen.” Mundi’s file showed him creeping across Long Island, then into Manhattan and northern Jersey. No mention of Gloria, oddly, other than that she’d been born in ’41. Prominent people didn’t talk as much about their babies after Lindbergh.

Nor did women who were developing careers. And Agnes was definitely working on hers.There were a couple of pictures. She was pleasant enough to look at but must have lacked a leading lady’s pizzazz. Probably it was Mundi’s pull that got her to Broadway. Or maybe family connections. She’d worked in a number of supporting roles, character stuff mostly—the homely girlfriend or the eccentric aunt. The seeming pinnacle had come when she landed a gig as Vivian Blaine’s understudy in
Guys and Dolls
. It should have been the start of bigger things, but it wasn’t. She disappeared from the news for a couple of years, and when she showed up again it was, as Kelly dimly remembered her now, singing with the Harry James Orchestra.Then came a short review of a Village gig as a torch singer, then a blank until the death notice and obit in ’60, which made it seven years she’d been dead rather than the ten Mundi had said. He’d been rounding off.

Somehow it had gotten to be late afternoon and Kelly still hadn’t had breakfast. He thought of the jar of Tang, but instead took three aspirin and washed them down with a swig of Wilson’s. Then he picked up the phone and after several tries connected with Nordbloom & Macomber, the agency that’d handled Agnes Day.

He spoke to a Mr. Lundquist, told him he was working on a feature article for the
Sunday Times
on the city’s female vocalists, and there might be some ink for the sleeper acts that were every agent’s burden. They made an appointment for an interview that would never come off, and while they were shooting the breeze Lundquist happened to mention Agnes. Kelly expressed interest in her and Lundquist told him the names of some of the places she’d worked in Manhattan before she died.

Kelly hung up satisfied, had another hit of Wilson’s, took the train down to Bleecker Street, and walked west to the Swingin’ Door. He knew the club and he knew the manager. It was here, Lundquist had told him, in a rather dramatic fashion, that the curtain had come down for Agnes.

Smart money had set the place up Left Bank–style during the beatnik era. They billed name entertainment between the poetry sessions and packed the joint with tourists who wandered out of Washington Square thinking to experience the real thing at $1.50 a drink. But trade had fallen off, once fashion sent the decent folk uptown to twist. The Door started to swing shut, getting wilder and less profitable.The smart money sold out and left their partner, Kelly’s pal Johnny Carburetor, holding the bag. Now the club was selling cheap shots to bums and waiting for hippies to start spending like advertising executives.

The alcove up front where the coat check girl used to stand was dark and smelled faintly of urine. Kelly winked at her ghost and went undisturbed down the four steps to the club itself. After all these years, he thought, the decor was finally looking authentic.

It was still early for a place like this. A few couples lurked in the shadows, and two alkies were sitting at a table down front. One of them kept drooping forward, then lurching up again. The other stared at his knee, letting his cigarette burn toward his first two fingers. Up on the stage a yellowed pianist was capably churning out cocktail tunes, wondering if it was time for his next fix.

The bartender sported black horn-rims and a close-trimmed goatee, and would’ve been the archetypal hipster except that he had a rummy’s purple nose. He was sipping daintily from a filthy glass and reading a well-thumbed paperback. When Kelly sat down he slapped the book shut and grinned in recognition.

“Kelly! You ain’t dead yet?” The gap between his two bottom teeth was just wide enough to accommodate his top tooth. “Been too busy. Boss around?”
“Gone to read and write.” Sandy was an old-timer. “Took the air, eh?”
“Tap city,” Sandy replied.
“They send him up the river or pull the plug?”Kelly was quickly

losing track of what they were talking about.
“Johnny ain’t dead, if that’s what you mean. And he ain’t in
jail. Yet. Rounded up his assets and boogied. Musta hit a bad week
at the track. Me and the musician get the stock and the nightly
gate for keeping the place open. We’re even taking liquor deliveries.
Make the creditors think Johnny Boy’s still in town. Haw haw.” The laugh turned into a coughing fit. Sandy poured the contents of the glass down his throat and the cough became a gurgle,
then a purr.
“You’ve really turned the place around.”
Sandy tilted his head in the direction of the piano. “Manny’s
got his habit to think about, and I might be at the end of my run
here. Got a cousin in Vegas who’ll put me up. Lotsa work out there.” Kelly went around behind the bar, made himself a drink,
returned to his stool, and put down a $10 bill.
“The root of all evil,” said Sandy, eyeing the money. “You’re an evil guy.”
“So what’s on your mind?”
“Agnes Day.”
Sandy rubbed the mass of purple tissue that served as his nose
and stared heavenward, as if his speech were printed on the stamped
metal ceiling. “Agnes Day . . . Sure, I remember. A little dish of a
redhead used to sing for Funko Williams’s band.”
“That was Alice Blake, Sandy. You got them confused.” “Oh yeah? Maybe I do.” He folded the sawbuck twice and
tapped the wad against his top tooth. Then he handed the bill to
Kelly. “Tell you what. It took some trouble to get them confused.
You’d save yourself a lot more if you did the same.”
Kelly knew he was on to something now. He took another
$10 bill, folded it with the first one, and slipped them under the
book on the bar. Sandy was reading
Barnyard Lust,
a classic in its
field. “Too late for staying out of trouble.”
“Okay. Your funeral.”
“And your twenty dollars. So tell me about Agnes.Who made
you forget her?”
“Heavies. Scary guys like in the movies. They came around
and gave Johnny and me the idea that it might be good to forget
she was ever alive.”
“Who sent them?”
“Mundi. That’s my guess. He was sick in love with her, you
know. I don’t think he wanted word spread around about how bad
she’d gotten.”
“Couldn’t hold a tune anymore?”
“Couldn’t hardly stand up anymore.There was something really
wrong with her. Probably strung out on downers. It was sad. He’d be
sitting back there and you could see it was driving him crazy.” “When was this?”
“’Fifty-nine. Not too long before she died.”
“What was her act like by then?”
“She could never cut it as an actress, you know? But she had
some pipes. Went with the big bands for a while, then I think the
travel got to her. Started booking just local gigs with house bands.
By the time she got here she was working with a tenor man, sorta like a white Billie Holiday. Had some talent, all right, but she was
already a goner. Kept missing shows.”
“How was she getting on with Mundi?”
“Oh, just great. He was a control freak and she was a prima
donna. You can imagine what it was like at home. If she ever went
home.”
“So he wanted it hushed up to save her reputation?” “Or his. That’s what some people think, anyway.” “What do you think?”
Sandy looked around the room, then down at his book. Kelly
peeled off another $10 bill. Sandy pocketed the three bills and
looked hard at Kelly. “Where do you think his head was at, having this bitch tear his guts out every night? How hard you think it
would have been for him to do something about it?”
“I thought you said he loved her.”
“He loved what she was, not what she turned into. I know
for a fact he had her in the hospital a couple of times. But it never
took. If you want to know what I think, I think she was all twisted
up inside, and it was just a matter of time before she killed herself
in some lushed-out way. Right in front of all his rich friends. And
I think that’s why he wanted us to dummy up about her.The whole
thing’s a bummer. Leave it alone.”
“Are you trying to tell me he let her kill herself ?” “I got no more to tell.”
“Was it drugs or booze?”
“I’m sick of talking about it. I had to watch her ruin herself
and her old man, too. I’m sorry you made me think about it.” “You realize how much her family was worth?”
“I told you I was finished, Kelly. Go away.”

hey were supposed to meet at ten for coffee at the Copper Kettle, a little place around the corner from the Tishman Building, but Gloria didn’t arrive until ten fifteen. Roth was waiting in a booth near the door, doodling with his mechanical pencil on the paper place mat. He winked at her when she came in, did not rise. Julius Roth was somewhere between an uncle and a father to her. What with Mommy’s struggle to manage her illness and her career, and Daddy’s preoccupation with business, he’d done much of the actual work of raising her—driving her around, cooking for the three of them at the Westchester house when the staff was off, serving as her part-time nanny, bodyguard, and confidante. When she would run off to get into trouble, he’d anticipate her move and appear in front of her, arms folded over his huge chest, that indulgent ever-loving smile on his puss. It still felt that way. From the first, he’d been one of the few people she couldn’t bully or charm into submission.