The Old Turk's Load Read online

  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.”

  Nanny

  T

  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.

  She didn’t want any part of this meeting because she knew he was going to talk to her about Kevin, whom she didn’t want to talk about because, although she’d seen through his egotism and phony romanticism, she was still getting her mind around the nearly unbearable fact that he’d used her. She wasn’t ready to talk about it yet, at least not to Julie.

  He eyed her as she slid into the booth, and she beamed at him—innocent as a dewy morning.“We’ve been missing you around the office, Glo.”

  “I’ve been trying to avoid everyone.”

  “Tired of my lectures?”

  This had to be about Kevin. Or did it? “As tired as ever. But

  it’s Daddy, really. Every time I see him these days, he tears into me.” “You know he loves you.”

  “He’s got a funny way of showing it.”

  “He’s been under a lot of pressure.”

  “Me, too.”

  Roth had always paid close attention to her and, thanks to

  enough carefully gathered intelligence, he had a pretty good idea of what was going on. In the course of her disillusionment with Gallagher and the foco, she’d become Irene Kornecki’s full-time legal aide, using her smarts and manipulative ability to gather facts bearing on the most difficult cases. Now she was beginning to understand that Irene was vastly more effective than Gallagher’s empty talk or any of the violent schemes of the Motherfuckers. More important, though he had no idea of the specifics of the matter, Roth sensed that Irene had become a certain kind of figure in her life—how could he put it?—a person she enjoyed beyond any question of use or gain. He knew this was a precious sort of relationship, one Gloria had rarely experienced.

  He reckoned that her feelings for Irene had gotten mixed up with her anger at Gallagher, and the resulting emotional mess had spilled onto her father, whose self-absorption and dictatorial ways always made him an easy target. It didn’t help that, in his burnedout state, he’d abdicated his parental duties along with just about everything else.The Newark windfall presented a perfect way to act out against her father while winning Irene’s approval. Roth could sense she was determined to get her hands on it before Mundi could turn it to his own purposes.

  She looked at her old friend gazing into his coffee cup and braced herself for the Kevin lecture.

  But he surprised her. Roth told her about the heroin straight up—where it was, how it had been acquired, and how much it was worth.Then he laid down a lot of backstory she’d never heard before about Weehawken Mills, the utter uselessness of Murchison and Kraft, her father’s increasing dysfunctionality, and the tremendous hit they’d taken after the Newark riots. Daddy had always wanted her to run the company. Now Roth was telling her that it was probably too late.There was nothing left to take charge of except a shell corporation and a lot of debt.

  The only sane thing to do was to offer the “assets” of Mundi Enterprises to the bad guys in Newark, who would use them to legitimize the enormous amounts of cash their business generated. The return of the heroin would be the conversation starter, the peace offering.

  “I want to take the initiative,” Roth told her. “Get to them with the whole idea before they bang our doors down.”

  “What does this have to do with me?”

  “I know you’ve been talking to Seamster. I know how much time you’ve been spending with your lawyer friend. I know you want that stuff and I’m pretty sure I know why you want it. And I have to tell you, I can almost agree with you. It would be a wonderful thing to put that filthy shit to some good use in this world.”

  Gloria gaped at him.

  “But there are complicating factors,” he added.

  “Aren’t there always?”

  “Not like this. In the first place, your father doesn’t intend to listen to me and give the drugs back to the Newark boys. He wants to sell them himself. Take the money and run.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Sugar, I’ve been around him so long, I can read his mind.”

  “So he’s going to run off with the dope and leave you to deal with a pack of pissed-off mobsters?”

  “That’s not necessarily a huge problem. The really bad part is that he’ll never get away with it. He thinks he’s still in his prime, but he’s too old, too slow. They’ll find him and kill him. He doesn’t stand a chance.”

  The waitress rattled past with a tray o
f empties. Roth asked for the bill.

  “There’s more, Glo, and this is the hard part.” He turned to her earnestly. “I can’t work for him anymore. Not with where his head is at.”

  “What would you do if you weren’t working for Daddy?”

  “I don’t know. You, your father, the family . . . you’ve been my life for a long time. All I know is that right now I need to keep him from getting himself killed. Then I’ll figure the rest out. That’s why I’m asking you not to do anything that’ll . . . complicate the situation. I mean with the heroin.You’ve got to give me some room here.”

  She grasped what he’d done and seethed. By coming clean with her, he was putting a moral roadblock in her way. A little more sophisticated, but not that much different than when she was little. “I didn’t know any of this.”

  “It’s okay, Glo. It’ll work out fine. I just need your help.”

  “Of course, of course.”

  They were silent for a while, like chess players over the board. He was relieved she was listening, that she hadn’t copped an attitude. She, despite her frustration at being headed off once again, was pleased he’d cut her some slack about Gallagher, that he seemed to understand about Irene and the cause. Each felt they were in the presence of a worthy adversary, and satisfied to have moved the game this far. The old Turk’s load had them both.

  She rose and gave him a peck on the forehead. She really did love him. She just wished he’d get the hell out of her way. Roth blushed with shy pleasure, like one of Snow White’s dwarves. He adored her, knew she was almost ready to come into her own. She was so damned good at seeing people, at intuiting their weaknesses and needs. She was just a little too into herself, hadn’t been knocked around by the world enough. That would come, if only he could convince her to play along this one last time.

  He watched her through the window, smiling, as she headed toward the subway. Harry Jarkey watched her, too, from across the street. He folded his paper and followed her down.

  Gloucester Harbor, Evening

  A

  ll it took to be reborn into a new world was for the Mailman to realize he was as good as dead in the old. Then he was free to take advantage of the opportunity that had been in front of him all along but that he hadn’t been able to see until his rebirth.