Elsinore (15 page)

“You weren't an heiress,” Holden said. “And heiresses were his thing. But it's all lies. Howard says he hasn't seen you in twenty years. Yet you're supposed to work for him.”

“I do. But that was one of the conditions of my employment. That I wouldn't have to see him. I would build fake little sets. I would train actors. I would invent whatever environment he wanted.”

“Like Elsinore at College Point.”

“Yes. You wanted your Fay. Howard produced her.”

“He didn't produce anything except an acting class. You were mumming Fay. You were wearing some kind of mask. How did you manage to get her voice?”

“It wasn't difficult. Paul Abruzzi brought her to us on several occasions. I studied her. I watched—”

“Paul?” Holden said. “Paul was part of the scheme?”

“We couldn't have accomplished anything without Paul Abruzzi's cooperation.”

“You're all a bunch of lovelies, aren't you? The woman's sick, and you had her pose for you like a doll.”

“She wasn't insane, Mr. Holden. I promise.”

“I'm happy to hear that. You had one Elsinore, so you had to build another … at my expense.”

“It was Howard's idea.”

“But the details were yours. Phippsy doesn't have your genius. He's only a billionaire. Tell me, Mrs. Church, if you haven't seen Howard, who was the delivery boy? Someone had to handle the traffic between you and him. Was it a little angel?”

“No. Sidney Michael David Hartley Micklejohn.”

“Say that again, please.”

“You understand perfectly, Mr. Holden. It was your father.”

Little Judith found a chair for Holden, who had to sit. There was no satisfaction on her face. She was like a guilty sister. And he almost grabbed for her hand.

“My dad was that close to Howard? He shuttled between the Phipps Foundation and the Mimes. A little servant, just like Sid.”

Frog got up from the chair like a giddy ghost. He didn't look at either Judith. He floated out of the loft. Wherever he went, he couldn't escape his dad. Why did he bother to grow up? He could have remained a dwarf in Queens.

13

He whistled his way across town in two cabs. Holden never liked a direct route. It was a habit he'd picked up when he was still bumping people and had other bumpers to consider. He arrived at the Algonquin on foot, having abandoned the second cab at Forty-seventh and Sixth. Paul had his own little Round Table where he presided like a prince in a dark baggy suit. The Queens district attorney preferred the Algonquin to the Criminal Court Building at Kew Gardens.

Holden sat down next to Paul, who was with a pair of Broadway producers.

“Hello, Paul. I have a message from Howard Phipps. He says you're not worth the money he pays you.”

Paul smiled at the producers. “See you, Bernie. See you, Al. I have business with this young thug. You remember Sidney Holden. He's the one who cleaned up the bad boys from Miami.”

“Of course we remember,” Al said. “We love Holden.” The producers shook his hand and left the Round Table.

Paul's face swelled into a deep red mask. “Try that trick again, Holden, and I'll have you pulled off the street.”

“I don't think so;” Frog said. “Uncle Howard wouldn't like that. And as long as we're making threats, listen to me, Paul. If you ever move Fay around and lend her to the Manhattan Mimes, I'll give up my early retirement and blow your fucking brains out in this fucking hotel.”

“I'm not one of your cronies, Frog. You can't talk to me like that.”

Frog grabbed Paul's necktie and twisted it against his throat. “I'm immortal. I work for the billionaire.”

He got up while Paul started to choke.

Frog had to see Fay one more time. He went to Park Avenue. He had no trouble getting upstairs. The doorman announced him. Frog was guilty now because he was half in love with that creature with the bow in her hair. But he still had a fiancée, even if she was locked out of his life. He had to see her one more time.

He knocked. He entered. He saw a ghost.

“Loretta?” he said. “Mrs. H.?”

The ghost smiled at him. She was a tall black beauty with a touch of gray in her hair. Mrs. Howard had come back from the grave a little younger than she'd been when he last saw her alive. It was Holden who'd found her corpse, Holden who'd carried her out to the funeral truck, Holden who'd cried.

“I'm Miranda,” the ghost said.

“I'm sorry. I thought …”

“You've come to see Mrs. Abruzzi. I'm her nurse. My name is Miranda Roberts. You're Holden, aren't you? You visited once before. But we didn't connect.”

He was still shivering, because the nurse had Mrs. Howard's lilt, a delicious singsong that made him want to die.

“Fay,” he said. “I'd like to …”

“Of course.”

It drove him wild to watch her walk. Her loins were Mrs. Howard's. He wasn't even prepared to meet Fay.

She sat in her own room, knitting with two enormous wooden needles. “Hello, Frog,” she said, as if he'd just come from around the corner. The needles clacked, then stopped, and Frog was already outside her field of vision. He said good-bye, but Fay never noticed.

He was paler than he'd ever been.

Miranda offered him a cup of coffee.

“You'd better sit.”

“No, I'm fine.”

He didn't cry in the elevator. He had his work.
Kronstadt
. Frog went to the Copenhagen and visited with Kit Shea. Kit was in his basement retreat, repairing a broom. He had the broom handle in an incredible vise and bound it to some straw with a great big bundle of wire.

“Kitty,” Holden said to his former spy. “Does Kronstadt ring a bell? It was before your time. But I figured—”

“Nineteen twenty-seven. The bird was found dead on the Lower East Side. We had cops jumping all over the place.”

“But you were a kid. You couldn't have been more than nine or ten.”

“That's old enough when you're a Westie. I joined the gang at eight. I had my ears to the ground. I could feel every tremor.”

“Kitty, what was her first name?”

“Who?”

“Kronstadt.”

“Jesus, I'm not a dictionary. I'm Kit Shea. She was Kronstadt. Her throat was stretched. Her face was kicked in.”

“Was there a rabbi connected to the case?… A cantor, I mean. Feldstein.”

“Never heard of the guy.”

“He became a Pinkerton and then a billionaire. Howard Phipps.”

“Phippsy? He was one of us for a while. He ran rum with the old Stanley mob. He was the best. He never forgot an old friend. I still get Christmas cards from Phippsy … with cash inside.”

“Did you ever bump for him?”

“That's indiscreet,” Kit said. “You hurt my feelings, Holden. You shouldn't ask questions like that”

“I'm sorry,” Holden said. “But did he ever talk about Kronstadt? Could he have murdered the lady?”

“Yes. No. Maybe. What kind of answer can I give?”

“But you were around him. Did he like to beat up women?”

“One more question, Holden, and I'll ask you to talk to my attorney, Saul Nimbus.”

“Saul died three years ago. I was at the funeral.”

“There are other attorneys. I can pay the bill.”

“Kitty, you were my man. Help me, Kit”

“I have my own loyalties. I'm not a rat I always helped you, Holden, when I could. I'm fond of the old man.”

And Frog had to let Kitty go back to his broom.

He could have gone to the billionaire. Frog wasn't ready. Perhaps he didn't want to hear what Phippsy had to say. He dreamt of Kronstadt, recognized her face in the middle of the night. She had blond hair and big brown eyes. She was almost as tall as Judith Church. And she haunted Hester Street Hungarian like some lady cantor, singing sad songs in that tomb of a synagogue. Then all the extravagance fell away. She was one more lonely creature who longed to become invisible on the Lower East Side. It bothered Holden's sleep. The cantor had killed her. The cantor had killed her. But Frog stuck to Morton Katz.

He followed him home from the shul. The little president of Hester Street Hungarian lived at a golden-age club on East Broadway. It was a retirement colony amid all the broken roofs and patches of bald land. The Esterhazy Houses, Hospital, and Club. Holden begged to God it wasn't another of Judith's installations. He had less and less trust in the world after meeting Howard Phipps.

Frog presented a thousand dollars to the front office in the name of Aladdin Furs. And all of Esterhazy was open to him. But Morton Katz had turned silent. He wouldn't talk to Sidney Holden. He wore pajamas at the club, not his king's suit. And Frog had to track him down in the toilet.

“Go away. Please. I've said enough.”

“I have to know more about Kronstadt.”

“There's nothing to know. She lived. She died.”

“And she got a cantor's kiss.”

“I fed you a story, Holden. I was paid to embroider the facts. That Pinkerton didn't have to be Hirsch.”

“Morton, what are you afraid of?”

“Everything,” said the tiny president in his pajamas.

Frog wouldn't persecute the old man. “Are you short of money? I can give you an allowance.”

“I'm not a child.”

And Holden felt ashamed. He walked out of the Esterhazy Houses. But he couldn't let go of Morton Katz. He would stand a block behind Katz on his excursions to the synagogue. And Frog almost laughed. Because on his second hike he discovered a man who was also following Morton Katz. The man had that incredible hunched looked of violence that was a mark of all the Westies. Kit Shea had come out of his basement retreat with a sawed-off broom handle. Holden stopped him when he got within ten feet of Katz and spun him around. Kit raised the broom handle with a surly growl while Katz entered the synagogue, oblivious of Holden and Kit Shea.

Frog deflected the downward sweep of the broom handle.

“Jesus, I didn't recognize you,” Kit said. “You shouldn't sneak up on a man like that.”

“And you shouldn't go around trying to knock the president of a synagogue over the head. Who's paying you, Kit?” Holden seized the broom handle. “Tell your master that Morton Katz is one of my untouchables.”

“Tell him yourself.”

“If you hurt this old man, I'll break every broom in your closet.”

“I don't scare, Holden. That's why I'm a Westie.”

“But I never heard of a Westie dropping a man who's eighty-five. Morton is a colleague of mine. I'm a member of his congregation.”

“Get out of here. You're not even a Yid.”

“Every synagogue has to have one non-Jewish member.”

“You're his shabbas goy?”

“Sort of,” Holden said.

He couldn't run from the Kronstadt case. He sat in his office, pondering a woman who'd been dead for over sixty years. Why did she seem so incredibly close? Kronstadt had removed herself from her own history, and Frog was seeking a history he never had. Both of them might have met at some vanishing point where time and space were as liquid as a miser's millions. The Mimes could have manufactured the whole story. Who cared? Kronstadt was in his blood.

He didn't have to follow the billionaire home to his nest. Phippsy had no nest, besides the Supper Club. He lived in a tower apartment at the Phipps Foundation, two rooms that didn't even have a fridge. One phone call got Frog into the apartment. The billionaire was in a scruffy flannel robe that could have come out of a flea market.

“Had twenty rooms on Park Avenue, Sid. I inherited them from the Vanderbilts. With five live-in butlers and maids. I was miserable in their company. I prefer it here.”

“What if you get sick?”

The billionaire pointed to a buzzer. “I have doctors on a twenty-four-hour call. My own private emergency room.”

“But you can hardly take off your own pants.”