Falling Angel (11 page)

“There must be someone around. You’re not the only one open for business.”

“Yeah, now you mention it, I know just the people to send you to. There’s a freak show over on 10th Street near the Boardwalk. Ordinarily, most of the oddities would be working the circus this time of year, but these are old people. Semiretired, you might say. They don’t take vacations. Going out in public is not their idea of a lot of laughs.”

“What’s the name of this place?” I asked.

“Walter’s Congress of Wonders. Only it’s run by a gent named Haggarty. You can’t miss him. He’s all covered with tattoos like a road map.”

“Thanks, Danny. You’re a fund of valuable information.”

TWENTY-ONE

Walter’s Congress of Wonders stood on 10th Street near the ramp leading up to the Boardwalk. More than any of the surrounding attractions, it had the look of an old-time carnie midway. The front of the low building was festooned with bunting, below which hung large primitive paintings of the exhibits inside. Simple as cartoons, these vast canvases depicted human deformity with an innocence that belied their inherent cruelty.

MY IS SHE FAT! read the caption under the picture of a woman big as a blimp holding a tiny parasol above her pumpkin-sized head. The tattooed man — BEAUTY IS ONLY SKIN DEEP — was flanked by portraits of Jo-Jo, the Dog-faced Boy, and Princess Sophia, the Bearded Lady. Other crude portraits showed an hermaphrodite, a young girl entwined by snakes, the seal man, and a giant wearing evening clothes.

OPEN SAT. & SUN. ONLY, a sign announced in the empty ticket booth by the entrance. A chain hung across the open doorway like the velvet ropes in nightclubs, but I ducked underneath and went inside.

The only illumination came from a dingy skylight, yet it was sufficient to reveal numbers of flag-draped platforms arranged along both sides of the deserted room. A smell of sweat and sadness hung in the air. At the far end, a line of light showed under a closed door. I went over and knocked.

“It’s open,” a voice called.

I turned the knob and looked into a large, bare room, made homelike by several sagging second-hand couches and gay circus posters brightening the mildewed walls. The fat lady filled a couch like it was an armchair. A diminutive woman with a black curling beard spread across her demure pink bodice sat engrossed in a half-assembled jigsaw puzzle.

Under a dusty fringed lampshade, four curious misshapen humans engaged in the familiar ritual of draw poker. A man with no arms or legs perched Humpty Dumpty-fashion on a large cushion and held his cards in hands growing directly out of his shoulders like flippers. Next to him sat a giant, playing cards reduced to postage stamps in his massive fingers. The dealer had a skin condition which made his cracked complexion look like the hide of an alligator.

“You in or out?” he demanded of the player on his left, a wizened leprechaun wearing a tank-top undershirt. His neck, shoulders, and arms were so heavily tattooed that he appeared to have on some exotic skin-tight garment. Unlike the gaudy epidermal artwork pictured on the canvas poster outside, he was bleached and faded, a blurred carbon of what was advertised.

The tattooed man eyed my attaché case. “Whatever you’re selling, we don’t want any,” he barked.

“I’m not a salesman,” I said. “No insurance or lightning rods today.”

“Then what the hell’re you after, a free show?”

“You must be Mr. Haggarty. A friend of mine thought someone here might be able to help me out with some information.”

“And just who might this friend be?” the multicolored Mr. Haggarty demanded.

“Danny Dreenan. He runs the wax museum around the corner.”

“Yeah, I know Dreenan, a two-bit con man.” Haggarty hacked up a wad of phlegm and spat into a wastebasket at his feet. Then he smiled to show he didn’t mean it. “Any friend of Danny’s is jake with me. Tell me what you need to know. I’ll give you the straight dope if I can.”

“Mind if I sit down?”

“Be my guest.” Haggarty pushed an unoccupied folding chair away from the card table with his foot. “Park it there, pal.”

I sat between Haggarty and the giant, scowling above us like Gulliver among tike Lilliputians. “I’m looking for a gypsy fortuneteller named Madame Zora,” I said, setting my case between my feet. “She was a big attraction before the war.”

“Can’t place her,” Haggarty said. “What about you fellas?”

“I remember a tea-reader named Moon,” piped the man with flippers in place of arms.

“She was Chinese,” the giant growled. “Married an auctioneer and moved to Toledo.”

“Why’re you looking for her?” the alligator-skinned man wanted to know.

“She used to know a guy I’m trying to find. I was hoping she could help me out.”

“You a shamus?”

I nodded. Denying it now would only make things worse.

“Gumshoe, eh?” Haggarty spit into the wastebasket again. “
I
don’t hold it against you. We all gotta earn a living.”

“Me, I could never stomach a peeper,” grumbled the giant.

I said: “Eating detectives gives you indigestion, right?”

The giant grumped. Haggarty laughed and pounded the card table with his red-and-blue-embroidered fist, upsetting careful stacks of chips all around.

“I knew Zora.” It was the fat lady who spoke, her voice delicate as bone china. Magnolias and honeysuckle bloomed in her melodic accent. “She was no more a gypsy than you are,” she said.

“You sure of that?”

” ‘Course I am. Al Jolson wore blackface, but it didn’t make him a nigger.”

“Where can I find her now?”

“I couldn’t tell you. I lost track of her after she folded her mitt camp.”

“When was that?”

“Spring of forty-two. One day she just wasn’t there any more. Walked away from her racket without a word to anyone.”

“What can you tell me about her?”

“Not a whole lot. We’d have a cuppa Java together once in a while. Jaw about the weather and stuff like that.”

“Did she ever mention a singer named Johnny Favorite?”

The fat lady smiled. Somewhere under those acres of suet lurked a little girl with a brand-new party dress.

“Didn’t he have a pair of golden tonsils?” She beamed and hummed a tune from long ago. “He was my favorite, all right. I read once in the scandal sheet that he consulted Zora, but when I asked her about it she clammed up. It’s like a priest hearing a confession, I guess.”

“Is there anything more you can tell me, anything at all?”

“Sorry. We weren’t that close. You know who might be able to help you out?”

“No, who?”

“Old Paul Boltz. He used to be her shill back then. He’s still around.”

“Where can I find him?”

“Over at Steeplechase. He’s the watchdog there now.” The fat lady fanned herself with a movie magazine. “Haggarty, can’t you do something about the steam heat? It’s like a boiler room in here. I’m about to melt!”

Haggarty laughed. “You’d make the world’s biggest puddle if you did.”

TWENTY-TWO

The Boardwalk and Brighton Beach were deserted. Where summertime crowds lay sweating like wall-to-wall walruses a few determined scavengers probed the sand for discarded pop bottles. Beyond them, the Atlantic was the color of cast iron, surf surging against the breakwater in a leaden spray.

Steeplechase Park spanned twenty-five acres. The Parachute Jump, a hand-me-down from the ‘39 World’s Fair, towered above the factory-size, glass-walled pavilion like the framework of a two-hundred-foot umbrella. A sign out front said THE FUNNY PLACE above the leering, painted face of founder George C. Tilyou. Steeplechase was as funny this time of year as a joke without a punchline, and I looked up at the grinning Mr. Tilyou and wondered what there was to laugh about.

I found a man-size hole in the chain-link fence and pounded on the salt-encrusted glass near the locked front entrance. The noise echoed through the empty amusement park like a dozen poltergeists on a ghostly spree. Wake up, old man! What if I was a gang of thieves out to boost the Parachute Jump?

I started on a circumnavigation of the vast structure, beating the glass with the flat of my hand. Turning a corner, I came face-to-face with the muzzle of a gun. It was a Colt’s Police Positive .38 Special, but seen from my vantage point, it looked about the size of Big Bertha.

Holding the .38 without a tremor was an old party in a brown and tan uniform. A pair of pig-squint eyes sized me up above a nose shaped like a ball-peen hammer. “Freeze!” he said. His voice seemed to come from under water. I froze.

“You must be Mr. Boltz,” I said. “Paul Boltz?”

“Never mind who I am. Who the fuck are you?”

“My name is Angel. I’m a private detective. I need to talk to you about a case I’m working on.”

“Show me something to prove it.”

When I started for my wallet Boltz jabbed his .38 emphatically at my belt buckle. “Left hand,” he snarled.

I shifted the attaché case to my right hand and got out my wallet with my left.

“Drop it and take two steps back.”

“Do not pass Go, do not collect two hundred dollars.”

“What was that?” Boltz stooped and picked it up. His Police Positive stayed trained on my belly button.

“Nothing. Just talking to myself. Open the flap and you’ll see my photostat right on top.”

“This here honorary buzzer don’t mean shit to me,” he said. “I got a piece of tin at home just like it.”

“I didn’t claim it was valid; just look at the photostat.”

The pig-eyed watchman flipped through the cardholders in my wallet without comment. I thought of rushing him then but let it rest. “Okay, so you’re a private dick,” he said. “What do you want with me?”

“You Paul Boltz?”

“What if I am?” He tossed my wallet onto the deck at my feet.

I picked it up with my left hand. “Look, it’s been a hard day. Put the gun away. I need your help. Can’t you tell when a guy is asking for a favor?”

He looked at the revolver for a moment, as if considering having it for supper. Then he shrugged and slipped it back into his holster, pointedly leaving the flap unbuttoned. “I’m Boltz,” he admitted. “Let’s hear your spiel.”

“Is there someplace we can get out of all this wind?”

Boltz motioned his misshapen head, indicating I was to lead the way. He followed a half-pace behind, and we went down a short flight of steps to a door marked NO ENTRY. “In here,” he said. “It’s open.”

Our footsteps boomed like cannon shots in the empty building. The place was large enough to contain a couple of airplane hangars with room left over for a half-dozen basketball courts. Most of the attractions remained from an earlier, unmechanized era. A large, undulating wooden slide gleamed in the distance like a mahogany waterfall. Another slide called the “Whirlpool” spiraled down from the ceiling, spilling out onto “The Human Pool Table,” a series of polished, revolving disks built into the hardwood floor. It was easy to imagine Gibson girls in leg-o’-mutton sleeves and dapper gents tipping their straw boaters as the calliope played “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.”

We paused in front of a row of “fun house” mirrors, the distorted images making freaks of us both. “Okay, shamus,” Boltz said. “Give with your pitch.”

I said: “I’m looking for a gypsy fortuneteller named Madame Zora. I understand you used to work for her back in the forties.”

Boltz’s phlegm-thickened laughter rose to the lightbulb-studded girders overhead like the barking of a trained seal. “Bub,” he chortled, “you ain’t gonna get to first base the way you’re headed.”

“Why not?”

“Why not? I’ll tell you why not. First off, she ain’t no gypsy, that’s why not.”

“I heard that, but I wasn’t sure if it was on the level.”

“Well, I’m sure. Didn’t I know her racket inside and out?”

“You tell me.”

“Okay, dick, I’ll give it to you straight. She weren’t no gypsy and her name wasn’t Zora. I happen to know she was a Park Avenoo debutante.”

A mule’s kick would have seemed the kiss of an angel alongside that bombshell. It took a while to get my tongue back in gear. “Did you know her real name?”

“Whadya take me for, a gazoonie? I knew all about her. Her name was Maggie Krusemark. Her father owned more boats than the British navy.”

My elongated reflection stretched like Plastic Man across the wavy surface of the trick mirror. “When did you see her last?” the rubber lips asked.

“Spring of forty-two. One day she pulled a fade. Left me holding the crystal ball, you might say.”

“Did you ever see her with a singer named Johnny Favorite?”

“Sure, lots of times. She was stuck on him.”

“Did she ever say anything about him that you can remember?”

“Power.”

“What?”

“She said he had power.”

“And that’s all?”

“Look. I never paid much attention. To me it was just a carnie hustle. I didn’t take it serious.” Boltz cleared his throat and swallowed. “It was different with her. She was a believer.”

“What about Favorite?” I asked.

“He was a believer, too. You could see it in his eyes.”

“Have you ever seen him again?”

“Never. Maybe he flew off to the moon on his broomstick for all I care. Her, too.”

“Did she ever mention a Negro piano player named Toots Sweet?”

“Nope.”

“Can you think of anything else?”

Boltz spit on the floor between his feet. “Why should I? Them days are dead and buried.”

There wasn’t much else to talk about. Boltz walked me back outside and unlocked the gate. After a moment’s hesitation, I gave him one of my Crossroads cards and asked him to call if anything came up. He didn’t say he would, but he didn’t tear up my card either.

I tried calling Millicent Krusemark from the first phone booth I came to but got no answer. Just as well. It had been a long day and even detectives are entitled to some time off. On my way back to Manhattan, I stopped in the Heights and gorged myself on seafood at Gage & Tolmer’s. After poached salmon and a bottle of chilled chablis, life no longer seemed like a glass-bottomed boatride through the city’s sewer system.

TWENTY-THREE