Armchair in Hell (Prologue Books) Page 4

  “He’s got a girl?”

  “Sure he’s got a girl. He’s got a girl he’s crazy about. He’s got her sort of hid out. He’s shy, that midget, and he likes them tall.”

  “Is Crying-Towel Reed still his number-one boy?”

  “Crying-Towel Reed is now a free lance.”

  “Good enough. Vyseuseau is first. Tomorrow morning. Today, technically.”

  “No,” Viggy said. “What?”

  “Now. Right away.”

  “What?”

  “I called him before I came here. He’ll be waiting for you. You’re seeing him as my representative. I didn’t tell him anything else. You’re to postpone the deal in the bank and you’re handling that whole end of it, any way you think best.”

  “Did you tell him my name?”

  “Nothing. My representative.”

  “I’m Barry Drumgoole.”

  “Who?”

  “Barry Drumgoole.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I don’t want to be Peter Chambers. I don’t know who the guy is chummy with here in New York. I think I’d rather be Barry Drumgoole. For a while. For fun.”

  “So you’re Barry Drumgoole. For fun. That’s your department.”

  “So long, pal,” I said. “They tell me your Little Guy will shove an umbrella into people, high, and open it up, just for laughs.”

  “He used to be my partner.”

  “So I’m reminding you.”

  I squeezed out of the booth and I unpasted my pants from where I sit and I shook hands with him.

  His palm was cold-wet like a subway wall.

  Chapter Five

  RAIN seltzered the sidewalk.

  No cab.

  I waited for a bus on Fiftieth Street and then I started walking and I walked all the way across to Park Avenue and no bus caught up with me.

  I thought about pneumonia. Then I thought about Charlie Batesem and Algernon Hale and the popeyed woman, dead and naked, and rain splattering the windshield of an anonymous automobile. Then I thought about the unfunny joke on the guy that owned the automobile.

  Then I rode up and rubbed knuckles on the door of 1212.

  “Who?” somebody said.

  “Mr. O’Shea’s representative.”

  “Aha,” he said pleasantly enough. “But yes.”

  He opened the door. He wore a black silk tight-belted lounging coat and black silk lounging pants and a white glistening cascade of silk neckerchief, puffed up and out and tucked beneath the shiny lapels of the coat. But distinguished.

  “Ah,” he said, and he clicked his heels, soft-shoe, the best he could manage in house slippers. “Ah.”

  “Ah,” I said.

  “Come in. Do come in.”

  “Thank you.”

  I came in.

  I took off the gabardine hat and rain ran down my face. I took off my raincoat and he took the hat and coat and watched me squeeze, rain out of my jacket.

  He was a small, bouncy, peppery man — Worcestershire sauce in a trim, white Vandyke — with soft, rambling hair on his head. He had a thin, straight, correct nose and a high, pale forehead and small, sharp blue eyes that darted about like badminton birds. He had an upper plate of false teeth, large and slate-gray, the kind that European dentists seem to specialize in: when you smile, you look like a horse.

  He smiled and he looked like a horse. “The name,” he said, “is Pierre Vyseuseau.”

  He bowed, somewhat.

  “The name,” I said, “is Barry Drumgoole,” and I bowed,

  somewhat, and the feet in my shoes made a soggy, squashy sound and wet underwear got caught in all of the cracks of me. Raincoats are like harlots. They are wonderfully attractive to look forward to when it looks like rain but when the rain comes, you are disappointed. The prettier they are the more you are disappointed. And the big, stiff, sturdy ones, like what the traffic cops use — they just aren’t pretty enough.

  “This will not do,” he said. “This will not ever do. Simply, Mr. Drumgoole, you must change.”

  “Simply,” I said, “you’re damn right. That’s mostly what I’ve been doing all of this crazy night. Changing up clothes.”

  “Veritably?” he murmured.

  He led me to a little foyer and he pointed at a toilet with a shy just-in-case look on his face and then he led me through the little foyer and put the light on in a bedroom. He brought out a silk lounging robe and a pair of slippers, and he said, “The slippers, undoubtedly, will be too small, but please try,” and he went back to the living room.

  I dropped my clothes in a wet pile on the rug and I got a towel from the bathroom and rubbed myself and then I put on the lounging robe and it came down to upwards of my knees and it fit me around the shoulders like Tarzan in a chemise, but I didn’t care. It was beautifully hotel-warm in the apartment and I was anxious to get at this Vyseuseau. I looked at my big feet and I looked at the little house slippers, and I stepped over them.

  I pattered back into the carpeted living room, and he smiled and bowed again. “The name — ” he said.

  “I know. Vyseuseau.”

  “Please sit down.”

  I sat and slung my bare legs over the side of a wide, soft armchair, and he went to a hard, small chair next to a hard, small writing desk and sat and tapped the tip of a high-manicured finger on the turned-down ledge of the desk.

  “I had been asleep,” he said. “Mr. O’Shea said it was of considerable importance.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “First, if you please, may I inquire — who are you?”

  “Certainly. Now I am Mr. O’Shea’s personal representative. Generally, I am a private detective.”

  His eyebrows came together and then spread out, and an amused corner of his mouth tightened into a smile-grimace. He fiddled with the point of his beard.

  “Ah,” he said. “Wonderful. Exquisite. Regard, if you please. We, in my country, know full well of the American private detective, and with respect. We hold the wife both in esteem and in awe. Pray, if you please, the wife?”

  “Wh-a-a-t?” I said.

  “The wife. In my country, we associate the American private detective with a wife, a blonde and beautiful and lengthy-limbed wife, who flits about, fetchingly and disarmingly and dangerously, and who is rescued by the husband, several times, and so the case is solved.”

  A cute little Frenchman with innocent little eyes and a nice white beard and horse’s teeth that clicked like a lady’s heels on a parquet floor and a sly, sardonic, superior tone of voice, mostly nasal.

  “No wife,” I said.

  “No wife?”

  “How long since you’ve been in your country?”

  “Several years.”

  “They have added a record to that album. Mr. O’Shea asked me to inform you that the transaction is to be postponed. The meeting at the bank at ten o’clock is canceled.”

  “Please?” he said.

  “Canceled.”

  “Why?”

  “Mr. Algernon Hale. He is dead.” (That’s what happens when you talk to a Frenchman. You begin to talk like a Frenchman. You know?)

  “Ah,” he said softly, with a finger in his beard. “Ah.”

  I shoved, automatically, into the pockets of the lounging robe, for cigarettes. Mr. Vyseuseau bounced up like a blown feather and he offered a leather cigarette box and he bowed and he lifted the lid and he said, “Please.” The cigarettes were king-sized with gold tips and they tasted like they were filled with toasted guano embroiled with perfume. I took two drags and I got up, stumblingly, looking for an ash tray. I found one and I dumped the cigarette.

  “The drink,” he said, suddenly and animatedly. “One thousand pardons. But yes. The drink. “No?”

  “Yes,” I said, hurriedly, and I went back to my armchair. “In the grand tradition of the new record in the album. But yes.”

  “Excellent,” he said, and he displayed the teeth. “Exquisite. I love you very much.”

  He
opened the door of a third room and he closed it behind him.

  I got up and I stood in the center of the carpet with my hands on my hips and I surveyed the room, coolly and professionally and with detachment, like a real good detective, and I saw a big, well-outfitted, impersonal room, and nothing else, and I thought about dabbling with the pigeonholes of the writing desk, and I thought about how ridiculous that would be; then I went back to my chair and tossed my legs over the side and wrapped the bottom of the lounging robe around my thighs.

  Pierre Vyseuseau presented himself with a bottle of Remy Martin and two water glasses.

  He said, “Cognac.”

  I said, “Swell.”

  I stood up and he filled each glass a quarter full and we clinked and drank, then he took my glass and filled it halfway and added a drop to his and he sat down and I sat down.

  I put my nose into the glass and I let the bouquet bounce around. I said, “You didn’t seem surprised.”

  “At which?”

  “About Algernon Hale.”

  “Oh,” he said. “Did I not?”

  “Nor particularly affected.”

  “Mr. Drumgoole, I am not a young man. I have seen and experienced much of violence. The murder of Mr. Hale is of no disturbance to me. I saw the man once in my life. It is regrettable. But I have no interest in that. I have interest in tapestries.”

  “Temporarily,” I said, “the deal is off.”

  “Ah, là. But — ”

  “Mr. O’Shea, or myself, we’ll be in touch with you. Now if you please, what is this all about? What’s with tapestries?”

  “Why not?” he said. He finished his drink and set the glass down alongside the bottle on the desk. “With tapestries, it is this. You recall the war?”

  I sipped.

  I said, “I recall the war. I have a mark on me that helps me to recall it. It sounds silly, but that’s the way it is.”

  “Not silly. Very interesting. Tell me — ”

  “Ancient history,” I said. “You tell me. About tapestries.”

  “La. These Americans.”

  “Look,” I said. I pointed at the windows.

  The dimness of dawn had begun. The rain had stopped.

  “Tell me about tapestries,” I said. “I would like to go home.”

  He straightened in his chair and he intertwined his fingers in his lap. “Do you know about tapestries? Anything?”

  “No.”

  “All right. There are tapestries and there are tapestries. There are tapestries of the time of Thutmosis at Thebes in about the year fourteen hundred b.c. There are tapestries, such as woven at Brussels for the Emperor Charles V in the commemoration of victory in Tunis, which took years and years and years to produce, with gold and silk thread provided by the Emperor himself, done with such delicate care and attention, that, simply to sponsor the preparation, an emissary of the Emperor spent more than two years in Granada in supervision of the preparatory silk to be used. There are tapestries designed by Raphael, Rubens, Hennequin de Bruges, Boucher — the greatest. There are tapestries that are sole, unique, unmatched, and priceless, steeped in historical heritage — ”

  “Cut,” I said. “There are tapestries of such extraordinary special value that twelve of them are worth two and a half million dollars to your people. So?”

  “So, during the war there was looting. The Louvre, the museums, public holdings — many we hid, with success, and many were discovered. Much of the looted property has been recovered. Much has not been.”

  “So let’s get down to cases.”

  “To cases — this group was the man Himmler’s. In his name, by devious methods, great looting was accomplished. Specialists were assigned to sort and evaluate. It is of no matter. Suffice it to say — twelve priceless, irreplaceable tapestries were dispatched to the Argentine by submarine, part of the personal backlog against a rainy day. Himmler’s agent with them. Upon the death of Himmler, this agent took over ownership and transferred them to this country by airplane, where he effected a sale for a comparative paucity. The agent has been apprehended. He had sold them to an elderly American, who is now dead of heart failure. From his family, I learned that this man had sold them, also; but how, to whom — no trace. Then your Mr. O’Shea was engaged, Algernon Hale was discovered — and now you tell me that the transaction is in abeyance.”

  “Temporarily,” I said. “I hope.”

  “Is that all?”

  He stood up.

  “About the dough?” I said. “Who’s paying all that dough?”

  “Ah. There are great and many men of riches throughout the world. A syndicate was commenced — charitable contributions — rich men in Switzerland, England, India, America, even my own country; for the discovery and replacement of objects of art, looted during the war; under the sponsorship of my government. Voilà, and so. Thus the ‘dough’ in this matter of importance.”

  I drank cognac like Seven-Up, down to the bottom of the glass, and then I said, “Please, I should like to use your bathroom,” and I got up and gave him the glass.

  “Please?”

  “Lavatory. Toilet. Simply,” I said, “I got to go.”

  “But of course.”

  “You will excuse me. I might be a little while. I have got to go. I have also got to be sick. To the stomach.”

  “But of course, of course. And certainly.”

  I went to the toilet.

  I did not have to go and I did not have to be sick. I made a large fuss about joggling the lock on the door, but I didn’t lock it. I flushed the bowl, roaringly. I pulled the shower curtains and turned on the shower, then I went back to the door and put my ear flat against the thin wood and listened, and sure enough, I heard him shuffle lightly through the little foyer.

  When I said, “Ahem,” courteously and continentally, from the doorway to the bedroom, he tried to drop my pants back to the floor, but his hand stuck in the pocket like the little boy with his wrist marooned in the cookie jar.

  “Ahem,” I said, again.

  I got bright-eyed, blinking silence: Vyseuseau with one horizontal arm, like an amputated scarecrow.

  I went up to him and spread my bare feet and reached out and took hold of the kerchief around his neck, and I brought him up to me, a few inches off the floor.

  “How did you know,” I said, “that Algernon Hale was murdered?”

  He kept shaking his hand. He finally got rid of my pants.

  He gurgled like a water cooler. “What? Pardon?”

  “Murdered. Algernon Hale. How did you know?”

  “You told me.”

  “That’s a lie.”

  “You told me.”

  “I did not tell you.” I shook him, still dangling. “How did you know?”

  “I assumed, in the circumstances …”

  His face, very near me, was red-blotched and loosely knotted in small lumps like grated cheese in thick, hot soup.

  “You assumed, too, in the circumstances that I was the kind of a guy whose clothes needed a fast frisk. Look, brother Vyseuseau — ”

  Then a round, cold point sneaked in through my borrowed lounging robe and nudged at my stomach. I sighed. I let him down, but I held him close.

  “First today,” I murmured, grievously.

  “À votre santè.”

  “What?”

  He smiled a quiet little smile. “It is out of my boyhood. A reflex. My father, when he would partake of stimulants, frequently would speak the words like ‘First today,’ and the family would utter, in unison, ‘À votre santè.’ “

  “Touching,” I said. “I am not referring to stimulants. I am referring to pistol in the pippik.”

  “Please?” he inquired.

  The round, cold point didn’t move.

  “Pistol — the peewee cannon you are digging into me. Pippik — midsection, stomach, belly button, navel.”

  “Pip-puke?” he said, tentatively.

  “New Yorkese,” I said. “I suppose, I’d say.�
��

  “Pip-puke,” he said.

  I let go the kerchief and I turned my back on him and I dropped the robe and started getting into my damp and wrinkled possessions.

  “An impetuous young man,” he said.

  “You knew about Hale, Mr. Whiskers. You really ought to tell me. I might help you hurdle a large hunk of trouble.” That one was older than that Thutmosis at Thebes with the tapestries, but what did I have to lose?

  “I repeat. I believed you had told me. Perhaps I am mistaken. Perhaps I assumed it from the manner in which you mentioned of his death. It is a fact, then? He was murdered?”

  “I’ll play,” I said. “He was murdered. Stabbed. Plus some advice. If you’re smart, and I think you’re smart, you never heard of Algernon Hale. From now on. Also, I am still a private detective. So if you would like to make a speech, now,

  about a guy that used to be Algernon Hale. I might go out and find you a parcel of extenuating circumstances.”

  I still had nothing to lose: shooting blanks at no target.

  “So,” he said, musingly, but with finality.

  I was dressed.

  He looked at me, looked at the little gun in his hand, and slid it into the copious pocket of his lounging coat. I followed him into the living room. He gave me my raincoat and my hat.

  We shook hands.

  “I’ll be seeing you,” I said.

  “But of course. Au revoir, Mr. Drumgoole. You will be in touch? I am anxious about the tapestries.”

  To me, it didn’t sound like he meant it.

  Chapter Six

  I WENT home and I had a hot shower. No soap: a hot, half-power, lingering shower; a standstill shower with my head hanging like a mule with the feed-bag on. Then I thought about the luxury of a tub. Undried, I switched to the cold, smooth porcelain of the tub and I let the water run, very warm, and it filled gradually and caressingly. A hot, dreamy, soaking tub: soap and suds and pine oil and bath salts. The works. A hot tub, up to the neck, with your feet stuck over the far rim — that is no time for the phone to ring.

  I let it ring.

  That bothered me.

  The phone stopped ringing.

  Peace went out of the bathroom.

  I got out and rubbed down with a thick towel. I put on a terry-cloth robe and felt slippers and I went to the kitchen and set coffee to perking and did me a bachelor’s delight: three eggs in a buttered pan, harden slightly, deviled ham on one side with American cheese on top of that, fold, increase heat, shake around a little, and serve. Eat with a buttered biscuit and coffee and wash the dishes and you’re ready for bed.