Nightmare Alley (34 page)

“Molly?” Stan was pacing the room, his hands in his pockets. “I’ll give her a couple of grand and tell her to meet me some place in Florida. All she needs is a few bucks and a race track to keep her happy. She’ll be in a daze as long as the dough holds out. If she wins a little she’ll forget the day of the month and everything else. When she’s broke she can go back to the carny and work the Ten-in-One. Or get a job as a hat check somewhere. She won’t starve.”

Lilith stood up and came over to him, stretching tailored gray arms up around his neck and giving him her mouth.

They swayed for a moment and Stan rubbed his cheek against the smooth hair. Then she pushed him away. “Run along, Reverend. I’ve a patient due in five minutes.”

When Grindle got to the church he found the Rev. Carlisle in his study upstairs. On the desk, spread out under the lamp, were letters with currency clipped to them. Stan picked up one which held a ten-dollar bill and read aloud: ‘ “I know the wonderful future which the City holds for us all in the line of a pooling of our spiritual forces. What a joy it will be when our friends and loved ones in spirit life can be with us as often as we wish. God bless you, Stanton Carlisle.’ Well, the rest of it is of no consequence.” He smiled at the ten-spot. “It’s very touching, Ezra, some of the letters. Many of them are from uneducated people—yet their faith is so pure and unselfish. The City will be a dream come true. They should thank Ramakrishna, though, for everything I do is done with the hand of that great spiritual leader on my shoulder.”

Grindle sat staring at the ember of his cigar. “I’ll do my share, Stanton. I’m pretty well fixed. I’ll do what I can. This idea of pooling all the spiritual power in one spot makes sense to me. Same as any business merger. But my part isn’t easy: I’ve built such a wall around myself that I can’t get out any more. They’re all devoted, loyal people. None better. But they won’t understand. I’ll have to think of some way …”

While the turntable revolved Stan leaned over the machine with a clothesbrush, keeping the blank record clear of acetate threads cut by the recording needle. Suddenly he raised the needle arm, tore the record from the turntable and slung it into a corner. “God damn it, kid, you’ve got to sound
wistful
. The dame and the old guy can be together forever, frigging like rabbits, only he’s got to help the church build this City. Now take it again. And get in there and
sell
it.”

Molly was almost crying. She turned back the pages of her script and leaned closer to the mike, watching Stan put on a new record blank.

I can’t
act
. Oh, golly, I’ve got to try!

She started to cry, forcing the words out between catches of her breath, struggling through it and winking so she could still read the script. Toward the end she was crying so hard she couldn’t see it at all and ad-libbed the rest. She was waiting any minute for Stan to blow up and bawl her out, but he let it ride.

When she was through he raised the recording arm. “That’s the stuff, kid—plenty of emotion. Let’s listen to it.”

The playback sounded awful, Molly thought. All full of weepy noises and gasps. But Stan was grinning. He nodded to her and when he had heard it all he said, “That’s the stuff, kid. That’ll shake him loose. You wait and see. You think that sounds corny? Forget it. The chump’s overboard. I could roll up my pants legs, throw a sheet over me, and he’d take me for his long lost love. But we’re going to need one circus to nail him to the cross.”

Moonlight struck through fern leaves in the conservatory; the rest of the church was in darkness. The minutes slid by—twenty of them by Stan’s luminous-dial watch. He shifted his feet and found the floor board by the organ.

A tinkle came from the trumpet lying on the lectern, across the Bible. Grindle leaned forward, clenching his fists.

The trumpet stirred, then floated in air, moonlight winking from its aluminum surface. The chump moaned, cupping one hand behind his ear so as not to miss a single syllable. But the voice came thin and clear, a little metallic.

“Spunk darling … this is Dorrie. I know you haven’t forgotten us, Spunk. I hope to materialize enough for you to touch me soon. It’s wonderful … that you are with us in building the City. We can be together there, darling. Really together. We will be. Believe that. I’m so glad that you are working with us at last. And don’t worry about Andy and the rest. Many of them will come to accept the truth of survival in time. Don’t try to convince them now. And don’t alarm them: you have some securities—some bonds—that they don’t know about. That is the way out, dear. And let no one know how much you give, for all must feel that the City is their very own. Give your part to Stanton, bless him. And don’t forget, darling … next time I come to you … I shall come as a bride.”

It was late when Stan pressed the buzzer outside the apartment. Lilith opened the door, frowning. “I don’t like your coming here so much, Stan. Somebody might see you.”

He said nothing but hurried in and threw his brief case on her desk, tugging at the straps. Lilith closed the Venetian blinds a little tighter.

From the case he dug a helter-skelter of papers, the faked letters with currency still attached, which Lilith gathered up, pulling off the cash. She emptied them into the fireplace and put a match to them.

Stan was feverishly smoothing out bills and arranging them in stacks. “The convincer boodle did the trick, babe. I took every cent I had in the sock—eleven grand.” He patted the piles of bills. “Jesus, what blood I’ve sweat to get it in this goddamned racket! But here’s the payoff.”

In two legal-sized brown envelopes were thick oblong packets. He drew them out and broke confining strips of paper. “There it is, baby. How many people ever see that much cash in all their lives?
One hundred and fifty thousand!
Look at it! Look at it! And the McCoy. I never saw
one
five-yard note before. God almighty, we’re lousy with ’em!”

The doctor was amused. “We’d better put them away, darling. That’s a lot of money for one person to carry in his pocket. You might spend it foolishly.”

While Stan gathered the crumpled bills of the convincer into a wad and slipped a rubber band around them Lilith assembled the “take” and placed it carefully back in the brown envelopes, sealing them. She swung open the dummy drawers of the desk and when she dialed the combination Stan automatically tried to get a peek but her shoulder was in the way. Lilith put the money away and spun the dial.

When she stood up the Rev. Carlisle was staring into the polished mahogany of the desktop, his face flushed. “Wounds of God! A hundred and fifty grand!”

She handed him a double brandy and poured one for herself. He took the glass from her hand and set it on the bookcase. Then he slid his arms around her roughly. “Baby, baby— God, this high class layout had me dizzy but I get it good and clear now. Baby, you’re nothing but a
gonif
and I love you. We’re a couple of hustlers, a pair of big-time thieves. How does it feel?”

He was grinning down at her, squeezing her ribs until they hurt. She took his wrists and loosened them a little, closing her eyes and raising her face to him. “You’re wonderful, darling, the way you read my mind.”

Dr. Lilith Ritter did not go to bed right away. After Carlisle had gone she sat smoking and drawing careful parallel lines on a scratch pad. Once she turned back to the file cabinet behind her and took out a folder identified only by a number. It contained a chart on graph paper, an idea with which she often played, an emotional barometric chart, marked with dates, showing a jagged rise and fall. It was an emotional diagram of Stanton Carlisle. She did not trust it entirely; but the curve had reached a high point, and on four other occasions such peaks had been followed by sudden drops into depression, instability, and black despair. Finally she put the folder away, undressed, and drew a tub of hot water into which she threw pine bath salts.

She lay in the water reading the financial section of the evening paper. Grindle Motors was off two points; it would go still lower before it started to rise again. Lilith’s smile, as she tossed the paper to the floor and snuggled deeper in the comforting, scented warmth, was the smile of a well-fed kitten.

With a twist of triumphant glee her mind drew pictures of her two sisters as she had seen them last: Mina, spare and virginal, still proud of a Phi Beta key after all these years of beating Latin into the heads of brats. And Gretel—still looking like a wax angel off a
Tannenbaum
, with half a lung left to breathe with and a positive Wassermann.

Old Fritz Ritter had kept a State Street saloon called “The Dutchman’s.” His daughter Lille smiled. “I must be part Swedish,” she said softly to a bar of pink soap, molded in the form of a lotus. “The middle way.”

For two days Ezra Grindle had dropped from sight. His legal staff, his chauffeur-bodyguard, and his private chief of police, Melvin Anderson, had conferred again and again as to where the boss might be, without getting anywhere. Anderson knew little about the Old Man’s activities lately and was afraid to stick a tail on him for fear he would find out about it. The Chief was cagy as hell. The lawyers learned that Grindle had not touched his checking accounts. Nothing, at least, had cleared. But he had been into one of his safe-deposit boxes. It was difficult to find out what securities the Chief had liquidated or how much. And where was he? He had left word: “I shall be away on business.”

The lawyers went over the will. If he had made a new one they would have drawn it. All his faithful employees were remembered, and the rest was distributed to his pet colleges, medical foundations, and homes for unwed mothers. They would just have to wait.

In a tiny bedroom, lit only by a skylight, on the top floor of the Church of the Heavenly Message, the great man sat with his glasses off and his dentures in a glass of water beside him. He was wearing the yellow robe of a Tibetan lama. On the pale green wall of his cell was painted in Sanskrit the word
Aum
, symbol of man’s eternal quest for spiritual At-One-ness with the All Soul of the Universe.

At intervals Grindle meditated on spiritual things but often he simply daydreamed in the cool quiet. The dreams took him back to the campus, and her lips when he kissed her for the first time. She wanted to see his college and he was showing her the buildings which stood there in the night, illumined, important. Afterward they strolled in Morningside Park, and he kissed her again. That was the first time she let him touch her breast …

He went over every detail. It was amazing what meditation could do. He remembered things he had forgotten for years. Only Dorrie’s face eluded him; he could not bring it back. He could recall the pattern of her skirt, that day at Coney Island, but not her face.

With the pleasure of pressing a sore tooth, he brought back the evening, walking on the Drive, when she told him what she had been afraid of; and now it was true. It seemed that no time had passed at all. His frantic inquiries for a doctor. He had exams the very time she was supposed to go; she went by herself. Afterwards, up in the room, she seemed all right, only shaky and depressed. What a hellish week that was! He had to put her out of his mind until exams were through. Then the next night—they told him she was in the hospital and he ran all the way over there and they wouldn’t let him in. And when he did get in Dorrie wouldn’t speak to him. It went around and around in his head—like a Tibetan prayer wheel. But it was slowing down. Soon it would stop and they would be Joined in Spirit.

The skylight had grown a darker blue. The Rev. Carlisle brought him a light supper and gave him further Spiritual Instruction. When the night had come there was a tap at the door and Carlisle entered, carrying with both hands a votive candle in a cup of ruby-red glass. “Let us go to the chapel.”

Grindle had never seen that room before. A large divan was piled with silk cushions and in an alcove was a couch covered with black velvet for the medium. The entire room was hung in folds of dark drapery. If there were any windows they were covered.

The clergyman led his disciple to the divan; taking his hand he pressed him back against the cushions. “You are at peace. Rest, rest.”

Grindle felt foggy and vague. The bowl of jasmine tea which he had been given for supper had seemed bitter. Now his head was swimming lightly and reality retreated to arm’s length.

The medium placed the votive candle in a sconce on the far wall; its flickering light deepened the shadows of that dead-black room and, on looking down, the bridegroom could barely make out the form of his own hands. His eyesight blurred.

Carlisle was chanting something which sounded like Sanskrit, then a brief prayer in English which reminded Grindle of the marriage service; but somehow the words refused to fit together in his mind.

In the alcove the medium lay back on the couch and the black curtains flowed together by their own power. Or was it the medium’s odylic force?

They waited.

From far away, from hundreds of miles it seemed, came the sound of wind, a great rushing of wind or the beating of giant wings. Then it died and there arose the soft, tinkling notes of a
sitar
.

Suddenly from the alcove which served as a cabinet came the trumpet voice of the control spirit, Ramakrishna, last of India’s saints, greatest of
bhakti
yogis, preacher of the love of God.

“
Hari Aum!
Greetings, my beloved new disciple. Prepare your mind for its juncture with the Spirit. On the seashore of endless worlds, as children meet, you will join for an instant the Life of Spirit. Love has made smooth your path—for all Love is but the Love of God.
Aum
.”