Scarlet Night (7 page)

“I’ll buy us a round when next we meet,” he said and emptied his glass. “I’ve to go now and do my work.”

“I’ll be waiting to hear when you’re reading next…I wouldn’t care if it was the phone book, you’ve such a lovely voice.”

J
ULIE WAS LATE ARRIVING
at the Alexanders’. She had dressed carefully. A blue chiffon silk that suggested more bosom than could be proven.

Fran said at the door, “Jeff was worried about you.”

“I don’t believe it. I’m always having to tell people Jeff’s going to be a little late.”

“So that’s what was worrying him—that he got here on time. Don’t you look stunning!”

“Thank you.” Julie could feel the color rise to her cheeks. Fran always looked stunning. She had a lot of style but it never got in the way of her being a real person. She was much younger than Tony, probably closer to Jeff’s age. They were going to be like three generations at dinner. Fran ran a flower shop on Lexington Avenue where a lot of customers came in to drop off gossip they hoped might turn up in Tony’s column in the
Daily News.

“Here’s our girl,” Fran called out, leading the way through the living room out onto the terrace.

Tony heaved himself out of the chair. His dark shirt was sprinkled with ashes from his pipe. Jeff looked as though he had shaved and showered on arrival. He generally did look that way. Julie kissed him and then kissed Tony, just missing the sharp end of one white waxed mustachio.

“Orange juice and vodka, light on the vodka, right?” Tony said. The others were drinking martinis.

“You weren’t really worried?” Julie said to Jeff.

“You’re so rarely late I had to say something.”

“Ha!”

They moved to the edge of the terrace. Manhattan south from the twenty-sixth floor on Fifty-sixth Street. A thousand million lights were coming on and the sun, wrapped in a golden haze, was going out for the night. “How was Washington?”

“Very Hebraic. I had an hour with the Israeli prime minister this morning. I went back to the hotel afterwards and read the Book of Job—at his suggestion.”

“Patience, right?”

Jeff nodded. “And with you?”

“I’d better read the Book of Job too.”

Tony returned with the vodka and orange juice and the martini pitcher. Fran brought a bowl of shrimp, her famous
Sauce Diable
on the side, and four plates with the little ivory forks that Jeff had brought from Africa. They had given them to the Alexanders for a wedding anniversary. Julie knew Jeff would have liked to keep them. Jeff collected, Julie gave away. She caught him looking at them covetously. Which made the gift more generous on his part.

Shrimps and orange juice weren’t the greatest combination. They seemed to go fine with martinis.

“Steak and salad are all we’re having,” Fran said. The grill had been set up in the corner of the terrace.

Tony said, “Do I have a wine for you, my friend. I decanted it so you wouldn’t see the label.”

“But you saved the label,” Jeff said.

“You’re damned right. You’re going to want it.”

Fran smiled at Julie. “We’ll go down later and have ice cream at Baskin-Robbins.”

It wasn’t meant that way at all, but it emphasized the difference in their ages—and everything else. She felt in no way the equal of a man who had spent an hour that morning with the Israeli prime minister. She chose this as the do-or-die moment, took a deep breath, and said something she had rehearsed all the way to the Alexanders’: “Tony, what would I have to do to get a job with you—legwork maybe—like you gave Jeff when he was starting out?”

Tony scowled at her from under drawn shaggy brows. His hair was white, his mustache white, the brows black and ferocious. “First, you’d have to tell me why you want it.”

“For one thing, I think I’d be good at it, interviewing people, even writing about them, but I don’t seem to be able to get started on my own. I need an apprenticeship.”

“You’re already apprenticed to a master,” Tony said.

“That’s part of my trouble.”

“I understand what Julie’s saying,” Fran put in.

“So do I,” Tony said. “I didn’t think she was paying me the extreme compliment. I’m not in Jeff’s class myself.”

Jeff shifted uneasily in his chair and kept his eyes on the martini glass.

“But I like where I am,” Tony growled.

“So do I,” Julie said. “That’s my whole point. This spring I met a lot of people, some pretty bizarre types—police, prostitutes, pimps, a priest…”

“A gangster or two, some theater originals,” Tony added. Then, with a twinkle: “Don’t think we haven’t followed your career, Friend Julie.”

“Oh, boy.”

They all laughed, even Jeff.

“I must have twenty thousand index cards on bizarre types,” Tony said. Then, turning to Jeff: “I was thinking the other day, I may have to destroy those files if the Supreme Court doesn’t straighten out this First Amendment business.”

The men fell to a discussion of the reporter and his notebooks at issue in a murder trial. Julie was glad to get offstage. Her heartbeat slowed to nearer normal. She sipped her drink. She wondered where Tony had learned about Friend Julie. Was it common knowledge among their friends? Jeff’s kookie wife? Talk about bizarre types…

Tony wheeled around on her. “You were thinking of ‘In the Spotlight.’ Is that it?” Once a week he devoted most of the column to a profile, just short of actionable, on someone in the news. “I’ve got a deal for you, Mrs. Hayes: you do me an interview with Sweets Romano and I’ll take you on.”

“I
UNDERSTAND PERFECTLY,” JEFF
said later that night.

“It’s not that I’m trying to compete with you. Ha! As though I could.”

“Would that be so terrible?”

“I hate women who compete with their husbands. I’m not all that great a competitor with anybody.”

“And yet, Julie, you’ve asked for a job in the most competitive field in journalism, the gossip column. Of all the people I know you’re the least susceptible to gossip.”

“But I’m curious. I’m a very curious person.”

“You certainly are,” Jeff said, grinning. He shook out his bathrobe and put it on.

“But Sweets Romano. That really threw me.”

“Tell me about him. Why is he called Sweets?”

“Somebody told me it was because he looks that way—rather plump and immaculate and cherubic. And then I heard it was because he owned a piece of a chain of candy stores.”

“That sounds more likely. But his main line is pornography?”

“That’s how I got to him.”

Jeff laughed aloud.

“It’s true. Pete Mallory had made a porn film…”

“Acted in it?”

“Yeah. He was one of the principals. He needed money. It was when Laura Gibson, the actress, was dying and he was trying to take care of her. When I first went to see Mr. Romano, I thought it was Pete he was interested in…”

“Is Romano homosexual?”

“Jeff, I don’t know what he is. He told me he’d been in love with Laura Gibson for years. He called himself the ultimate voyeur. He makes a great thing of not having touched another human being in twenty years. And yet he has all this marvelous painting and sculpture, and the first thing he said to me when I was looking at one of the sculptures was, ‘Do touch. It is the greatest tribute.’ He speaks beautifully, Jeff. And it sounds natural. But natural he isn’t.”

Jeff grunted. “Are you afraid of him?”

“Well, I was pretty shaky when I got out of there.”

“Concentration will help. It always does for me.”

The idea of Jeff’s ever being afraid hadn’t occurred to Julie.

“Oh, yes,” Jeff said, reading her eyes. Then: “Did he like you?”

“I think maybe he did, you know, the idea of my seeking him out and coming to see him about Pete on my own. And I really did admire his art collection.”

“That might be it, don’t you think,” Jeff suggested gently, “a way in?”

“I’m not the greatest authority on art,” Julie said, and thought of
Scarlet Night.
Something she had not yet told Jeff about. It didn’t seem exactly relevant at the moment.

“Even if you were, you would want to defer to him under the circumstances. Do you know how to contact him?”

“I have his unlisted number at the shop.”

“I have only one word of advice at the moment, Julie: don’t wait too long. Make your contact.”

J
UANITA WAS BACK IN
front of the shop when Julie arrived in the morning, trying to make her gallant band of crippled dolls shape up. Her mother was in the upstairs window, elbows to pillow to windowsill. “Hi, Mrs. Rodriguez. How was the vacation?”

“No good. My husband’s brother—he wants us to bring the whole family to New York.” A business catastrophe for Mrs. Rodriguez, Julie thought.

She spoke to the child. “Did you miss me?”

If Juanita had she wasn’t saying. The only word in her vocabulary that Julie knew of was “bad.” Someday she was going to break out in two languages and either tell Papa that Mama was a moonlight hustler or tell Mama what she
could
tell Papa if it seemed to her advantage. Blackmail: childhood’s ultimate weapon. Juanita needed an ultimate weapon.

“Julie…?” the mother crooned.

“No messages,” Julie said and let herself into the shop.

She was glad when she heard Mrs. Rodriguez call the child upstairs. She could never quite overcome a feeling of responsibility when Juanita was hovering outside the shop door. She ought to have brought her something from Paris, a doll, one more doll to tear the limbs from. What she might do was give her the Tarot cards and defy in herself that lingering superstition. But the cards had a certain beauty, worn though they were by perhaps a generation of gypsy hands…Señora Cabrera, whom she knew only from Mrs. Rodriguez’s description. She might mount the cards or make a collage of them and hang it alongside
Scarlet Night.
She glanced at the painting where she had hung it on the plasterboard partition between the front and the back of the shop. She had turned her desk sideways to that wall. If anything in the room looked temporary it was
Scarlet Night
with its bold heavy frame. The goose-neck lamp shone bleakly on the notebook, open to two empty pages. There were three director’s chairs around the table she had cut down to knee height for reading the cards. On the table were the crystal ball through which the most she had ever seen was the magnified grain of wood in the table, and the collected poems of William Butler Yeats.

Sweets Romano. She dialed the unlisted number.

As had happened on the previous occasion, the man who answered took her name and number and promised to call right back.

She waited, her heartbeat noisier than the drip of the tap in the bathroom sink. Mrs. Ryan was right: the place needed more air and light. On the other hand, considering the things that came out from the walls to play, who wanted to see them?

The phone rang.

“Romano here, Mrs. Hayes.”

“I don’t know if you remember me, Mr. Romano…”

“I do. Someone who cared what happened to Peter Mallory.”

“I’d like to talk to you for a little while, Mr. Romano, if we could make an appointment.”

“It would give me pleasure. Today? Tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow would be better for me.”

“Come for lunch. My car will pick you up. Is it the same address?”

“Yes, but Mr. Romano, couldn’t I just come on my own?”

A second or two of hesitation. “Very well. Alberto will be waiting for you in the lobby. Twelve-thirty.”

One step at a time, Julie cautioned herself when she hung up the phone. She had twenty-four hours for preparation. She wound up the cords on the spotlights in the front room, put the lights in a shopping bag, and went to see Mr. Bourke. It was he who had obtained Romano’s phone number for her. He had given it with deep reluctance. In fact, her fear of Romano derived in large part from him.

Mr. Bourke had spent all his life in the neighborhood. He was one of those people whose age Julie could not begin to judge. Forty? Sixty? She could imagine him at seven, a myopic child with smudged glasses already taking root on his nose. He lived at the Willoughby when he wasn’t at his electrical-equipment shop, which was most of the time. Mrs. Ryan had confided to Julie that he had once been in trouble: he liked young boys. Julie knew him as gentle, solicitous, street smart, and religious, but she had figured out early on that his “trouble” had made him vulnerable to pimps, police, and other assorted bullies. Mack, the pimp, who had once been Romano’s bodyguard, had used the shop as a “cover” for his girls, including Rita.

Mr. Bourke would not take a cent from Julie for the rental of the two spotlights. “I don’t think you operated at a profit. Did you?”

“I got a lot out of the experience,” Julie said.

“Give a little something to St. Malachy’s. They’re about to convert the Actors’ Chapel into a seniors’ club.”

They would do better, Julie thought, setting up a hostel for runaway girls. Maybe not. There were a lot of seniors—like Mrs. Ryan—hanging onto what was left of respectability in the neighborhood.

“Mr. Bourke, has Mack been around again?”

He shook his head, and pushed his glasses back into place. “Not since Peter’s death. Even the police have stopped inquiring. And I must say I haven’t missed him.”

“Mr. Romano told me they wouldn’t find him.”

“He ought to know.”

“Meaning?”

Mr. Bourke looked startled. “I said nothing, Julie. Nothing.”

“What could he do to you?”

He was upset, but as he thought about the question, he calmed down. “I don’t suppose anything—himself, and that’s what you mean, isn’t it?” Julie nodded. “I doubt if he knows I exist. It’s the noncommissioned officers I have to deal with. From what I’ve heard, Romano is a perfect gentleman himself. And a very generous one. I don’t know, Julie: I’ve never heard of a hospital or any other charity turning down his contributions. He disappeared himself from the streets several years ago, but men who call themselves his enforcers are still around. Oh, yes.”

“Unless they’re Mack,” Julie said.

Mr. Bourke did not say anything.