The Hunt aka 27 (38 page)

“Hi, Frankie Kee,” she said softly, accompanied by a devastating smile.

He was so surprised at the sight of her, he faltered before he spoke. His mind suddenly leaped back to the Berlin train station, almost five years ago.

Vannie throwing him her beret. Walking back to the hotel alone in the rain, thinking not about her but about
Jenny. Sending the flowers without any card.

She looked great, a black Chanel hat cocked over one eye, long legs sheathed in black silk, her magnificent figure flattering a gray silk suit, a black velvet choker with a single diamond in the center. She was dressed to kill and he knew he was the quarry.

Bad timing, he thought, until she said just the right thing.

“I’m truly sorry, Kee,” she said. “I just heard about Bert.”

“How’d you know I was here?”

“Oh
. . .
I knew,” she said, almost wistfully. “May I come in?”

“Of course, what’s the matter with me?” he said and stepped back, swinging the door wide for her.

The living room was the size of a loft with a massive picture window overlooking a balcony and beyond it, the East River. The French doors on either side of it were open and a cool breeze billowed through the drapes. The furniture, lamps, tables, were all rounded at the corners and had a soft, inviting quality, the latest in art deco. The room was painted in light shades of pastel—grays, yellows, blues. There were three Impressionist paintings in the room, one by the recent Spanish discovery, Picasso. An open brick fireplace dominated one side of the room and facing it were floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, both of which offset the pale colors and gave the room a strong masculine quality. On a table in the corner was a picture of Jenny, Bert and Keegan at Longchamp. It was the only photograph in the room.

Vanessa saw the three glasses on the coffee table next to the open scrapbook.

“Oh,” she stammered, suddenly embarrassed. “I didn’t know you had company. What a brazen thing for me.

“I don’t have company,” he said flatly.

She looked down at the glasses again and he wondered how it must look, a man sitting alone in an apartment with three glasses of champagne. How the hell does one explain that? he wondered.

“I was
. . .
I was drinking a good-bye toast to Bert. Why don’t you join me?”

“I’m sorry, this was presumptuous
. .

“I’m glad you came,” he interrupted. “C’mon, I’ll get you a glass of champagne.”

“Why don’t you just drop a lemon peel in one of those,” she said with a smile.

“Still remember that, huh?”

“I remember every second of those two days,” she said very directly. “I also know about your friend and what happened to her. You’ve had more than your share of grief. But you can’t stay alone forever, Kee.”

He smiled as he poured her glass. “That carved in stone?”

“No,” she said, her shoulders sagging a bit. She took the glass and followed him out on the balcony. The soft summer breeze stirred her collar. She leaned on the balcony, staring at a tugboat put-put-putting up the river. “It’s probably carved in desperation.”

“Desperation?”

She took off the hat and shook out her hair. She had let it grow down to her shoulders.

“I’m absolutely shameless where you’re concerned,” she said. “For four years I’ve gone to every first-night, every gallery opening, every party, your favorite restaurants, hoping to accidentally bump into you. But you don’t go to openings or parties. And I guess you eat at home.”

“I’ve turned into a helluva cook, Vannie,” he said. “I’m just not ready for the social swim yet.”

“After four years! You have friends here who care about you and miss you.” She turned to him, leaning her back against the balcony rail. “At least one, anyway.”

She was still as splendid as she had been in Berlin but the bright-eyed look of innocence was gone, replaced by the first signs of cynicism, the first cruel lines of maturity.

“I heard you got married.”

“So you do still
talk
to the living.”

“I was never really a part of your society, Vannie. Your father made that clear to me.”

“What do you mean?”

“That I’d only be accepted if I played by their rules.”

“Which you didn’t choose to do.”

“Hell, I’m not an aristocrat. My blood is definitely not blue. The last party I went to was
. . .
I guess three years ago, after the
Normandie’s
maiden voyage. Marilyn Martin filled me in on you.”

“I know. I saw you for just a minute. Remember?”

He nodded slowly. “Sure I remember,” he said. “You were the most stunning woman there

Sleek and proud, the
Normandie
steamed loftily into New York Harbor while thousands lined the waterfront, cheering her to her berth. Hundreds of tiny boats clustered around her like puppies around a Great Dane. She had just broken the world speed record on her maiden voyage, easily stealing the honor from Germany ‘s
Bremen,
so the crowd was particularly gleeful. Horns honked. Whistles shrieked. A storm of conf
e
tti f
el
l on Wall Street as she passed lower Manhattan on her way up the Hudson. There had been a clatter of
fireworks as she negotiated the wide turn into her berth at the foot of West 49th Street.

Keegan arrived just as the party, which had started on the broad, gaily l
i
t
first-class deck, spilled into the main salon. Benny Goodman’s Trio kicked off and charged into “I Got Rhythm.” The uptown crowd, at least Jive hundred of them enjoying the hospitality of the French line, jammed against the stage, applauding Goodman
’
s
j
oyous playing, the thunderous beat of Gene Krupa drums and Teddy Wilson s subtle counterpoint as his fingers barely brushed the keys. At the back of the dance
f
loor, behind the crowd, the more adventurous guests jitterbugged frantically, spinning away from their partners and back, high-kicking, their feet a lively blur. Keegan got a drink and was sampling the hors
d
‘oeuvres when a voice behind him said:

“Francis?”

He turned and stared down at a diminutive redhead. Her hair was auburn, cut short and close to the nape and covered with a sequined cloche. Her green eyes were saucer-round and ebullient. E
n
ergy radiated from her. Her white, sequined dress barely contained a spectacular figure, the small stones glittering in the light, twinkling as she w
al
ked and turning every step into a shimmy. A true sprite, Keegan thoug
h
t. A dazzling imp.

“Marilyn,
“
he said. “It
g
good to see you.

“You remembered!” she cried, obviously pleased. He was surprised himself He had not seen her for years. Her brot
h
er was one of his gang at college and the last time he saw her was just be
f
ore graduation—before the caterpillar had turned into a butterfly.

“Have you seen Vannie since you got back?’ she asked abruptly. The question caught him totally off balance. Before he could answer, she said, “Oh, that was catty of me. I know
you haven’t seen her, she’s my best friend.”

“Vanessa Bromley?”

She nodded.

“How about that,” he said for lack of anything better.

They started strolling toward the front of the big room to get a better look at the Goodman Trio.

“Is she here?” he asked.

“She will be. She’s at the th-e-ah-tah.” She closed her eyes and elongated the word with mock sophistication, then she stared up at him and quickly added, “But she’d walk out in a second
if
she
knew you were here.”

“Stop that,” he said irritably.

The tall, bespectacled bandleader was like the calm in the center of a hurricane. Only his fingers seemed excited, fleeing across his clarinet as though the keys were on fire while the baby-faced Krupa was his antithesis, an entranced whirlwind, turning every drumbeat into a pistol shot.

“Please don’t leave until she gets here, “Marilyn blurted out. “She’s very unhappy.”

“Marilyn.
.

“Anyway, this is fun. I haven’t seen you for.
. .
ten years? Ten years! My dad loved you. Said you were the on
l
y crazy one in the whole gang.”

“I
’v
e never met Freddie Armis
t
ead?”

“Freddie wasn
‘t
crazy, he was hopelessly insane,”

Keegan smiled at the memory, despite himself ‘Remember when he dug that hole in the Quad and put the horse in
it?
Took them all day to dig it out. They never did figure out who did it.”

‘Wonder what ever happened to old Ar
m
istead?” she said. “He vanished into thin air after graduation. And remember Lyle Thornton?”

“Old Turkey Thornton?”

“Oh God, how he hated that nickname. Were you responsible for that?”

‘
N
ah,” Keegan said unconvincingly. “But he did look like a turkey.”

She hunched up her shoulders and giggled. “Looked
exactly
like a turkey, “she said. She squinched up her nose. “That little scrawny neck.”

“How about that beak of his?”

“That’s cruel, Francis.”

“C ‘mon, he had a nose the size of a baseball bat.”

“Did you hear about his father? Got cleaned out in the crash, went out to Chicago and jumped out a window of the Edgewater Beach Hotel. Old Turkey floundered around for a couple of years, then he married rich and his father-in-law bought him a seat on the stock exchange for a wedding present, probably so he wouldn
‘t
have to support him.”

“Lyle L
l
ewellyn Thornton, the Third, “Keegan reflected. “You have to be rich with a name like that. Who’d he get to marry him?”

“Vannie,” Marilyn answered bluntly.

“Vannie!” he said. “Vannie married Turkey Thornton!
?“

“Doesn’t make a bit of sense, does it?” Marilyn said. “One of the true mysteries of the twentieth century.

“Maybe he has some hidden talent we don‘t know about,
“
Keegan suggested.

“I really don ‘t think so, “Marilyn answered. “He got involved in the theater. Turkey got a couple of uptowners involved with a Broadway show. Lo and behold it turned out to be
The Gay Divorce.
Now everybody thinks he can smell a hit a mile off He’s been dabbling in it ever since. They have a townhouse on East 83rd, half a block off the Park, and a summer house on Cape Cod. “She stopped for a moment and flicked a speck of confetti off her shoulder. “She’s absolutely miserable.

“Miserable?”

“Thornton turned into an absolute ogre.
He
knocks her around, stays out for days at a time. Once the little SOB got his hands on the money
...“
She let the sentence die, then added, “She talks about you all the time, has ever since that summer in Germany.”

“It was two days, Marilyn.

“And she never forgot it, “she said,
fi
n
i
shing the sentence. “What are you, the Upper East Side matchmaker?”

“No. I just hate to see my friends unhappy. I have no complaints,

I’m very lucky. Happily married, have two girls who ‘Ii knock your eyes out, a big house in Westport, and a husband who dotes on me. “She stared up at him with the big green saucers. “Whyn
‘t
you just stay long enough to say hello to her,
“
she pleaded.

“We’ll see, “he said and quickly changed the subject. “Where
i
s
your husband? Do I know him?”

“I don’t think so. He s from Pittsburgh. A surgeon. He’s got an emergency operation at Governor‘
s
Hospital. I’m hoping he‘
ll
get here before the party’s over.”

“From the look of things, this brawl will still be going on next Tuesday.”

“Look, we’re all going to the French Casino on 50th and catch the midnight show of the
Folies-Bergêre,”
she said. “Why don’t you come with us? It’s supposed to be very
risqué
.”

“Not when you’ve seen the real thing.”

“That’s very snobbish.”

“I didn’t mean it to be, “he said casually. “I just meant the French version is a lot bawdier.”

“Well, come with us anyhow.”

“Marilyn.

“Or how about Sunday brunch? We’re all going out to the Merry Go Round. It’s on the Island, Atlantic Beach. Has a revolving bar, hobby horses, these fluffy, crazy-looking jungle animals. It’s right on the ocean with an outside dance floor She did a little shimmy.

“Marilyn.

“Or how about coming up to the Westport theater to see Ruth Gordon in
The Country Wife?
She’s supposed to be quite the screwball in it, you know. We ‘re planning.
.

“Marilyn!”

She stopped suddenly. “Yes?” she said innocently.

“The lady’s married.”

“She dying inside, Francis,” she answered seriously.

“I can
‘t
do he started to say and caught himself
I can’t do anything about it. It’s not my problem. Familiar phrases from the past. Embarrassing phrases he had sworn never to use again.

‘It’s obviously a bad time for both of us,” is all he said.

“Will you think about it?”

The ultimate out—think about it. One could take forever
th
i
nking
about it.

“Sure. I’ll think about it.”

“Good. C ‘mon, dance with me.”

“I don’t know how to do that newfangled stuff”

“It’s called jitterbugging and it c easy.” She led him out on the enormous dance floor, shimmering in her spangled dress.

Later he had stood near the bridge of the big ship, looking down at the party. He saw Vanessa come aboard, watched her move majestically through the crowd. She was in a short, black cocktail dress, startling in its simplicity, with a clutch of diamonds at her throat. He realized as he watched her how much time had changed her—from a lively sprite to royalty. She moved with sublime grace, an exquisite creature who exuded stately nonchalance as f she were in some superior caste created for her alone. Confident, imperious, sublime, there was also about her a hint of wanton naïveté. Easily the most interesting and imposing person at the party, Keegan thought. And probably the most dangerous. What a pair she and Marilyn must make. He didn’t even notice old Turkey Thorn-

Then suddenly she turned as
if
by some primal instinct and looked straight up at him. They stared at each other for a full minute while the crowd seemed to part and move around her. Her expression changed very subtly, became more intense, then someone rushed up to her and there were giddy greetings and hugs and squeals of delight. He left the party.

I’ll think about it,
he had said. That was three years ago.

………
anyway, Marilyn talks too much,” Vanessa was saying.

“She talked like a best friend talks. She was concerned about you.”

“
I
know, I didn’t mean that. Fact is, she talked me into coming over here. I didn’t have the courage to do it on my own.”

“Courage?” he asked quizzically.

She turned her face away from him. Her voice was almost a whisper. “Oh, God, Kee, don’t you know why I really came?”

She still did not face him.

“I came because I threw my husband out a year ago. I came because I’m twenty-four years old and I’m lonely and because I’ve been thinking about you for five years and I’ve wanted to sleep with you for all five of them. I’ve never stopped wanting to sleep with you. And if that makes me a hussy or

“Hey, hold on,” Keegan said softly. Then he chuckled. “What the hell, you always did get right to the point.”

“Just hold me, will you, Frankie Kee?” she said. “Or let me hold you.”

“Hell, I’m no good to you,” he said, and it had the tone of a warning.

She shook her head and turned her back to him, looking out toward the river.

“I don’t know why I said that anyway,” she said. “What I really want is someone to hold me while I fall asleep, share my tears with me, hurt when I hurt, laugh when I laugh. I want someone to believe in me, not laugh at my fantasies.” She looked back over her shoulder at him. “Is that so very much to ask of somebody, Kee?”

“No, it’s a modest request.”

“Don’t you want that?”

“I did.”

“And you lost all that?”

“I stopped caring.”

“Why?”

“When I lost her
. . -
hell, I don’t know.
. .
maybe it was never quite as good as I remember it.”

He stopped and sorted through his darkest thoughts, questioning his memory, as he had done many times in the past, always with the same conclusion.

“No,” he went on, “that’s not true. It was, it was a very fine time in my life. It just didn’t last very long. Maybe we all have just so much happiness doled out to us and we used ours up and now we’re paying for it, except the price she’s paying is.
. .
much

· . .
too high.”

“I don’t believe that. I don’t believe God’s that cruel. I haven’t given up yet.”

“You mean with old Turkey?”

“The hell with old Turkey,” she snapped. “I got over him a long time ago.”

“Where’s he now?”

“He has a place in the Dakota, that big gloomy building on the West Side.”

“1 know the place.”

“1 guess that’s where he entertains his show girls,” she said bitterly. “I hear he likes two or three at a time.”

“Are you divorced yet?”

“Twenty-four more days. I mark each one off on my calendar.” She stopped to catch her breath. Tears crept into the corners of her eyes and she tried to blink them away. “I tried so hard, Kee. I tried to be a good wife and make him happy. It was never enough. Lyle never gets enough of anything. His appetite for everything is insatiable. Thank God we don’t have children.”

“That little freak,” Keegan said harshly. “He never had anything going for him. He was a cheat in school—and a liar. He used to lie all the time.”

“Oh, he’s very good at that.”

Keegan tried to soften the dark tone of the conversation. “Hell, he wasn’t any good at it at all, he just lied so much people got tired of calling him down.”

And she laughed and nodded. “Yes! You’re right! That’s exactly what people do.”

“What was it about old Turkey
. . . ?“

“Oh God, I don’t even know anymore. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and wonder the same thing. And then I think
. . .
maybe it’s me, maybe I didn’t
deserve
any better
. .

“Stop that.”

“No, I do..

“Stop
it! Don’t lay off all the misery on yourself. There are lots of Thorntons in the world
. . .
they use up everything they can get their hands on and never give anything back.”

She stared at him with moist eyes. “There’s another thing about it. Sometimes I think.
. .
we had three years together and I think, there ought to be
some
happy memories. I ought to feel something for him. But I don’t.”

“I have a partner named Nayles out on the West Coast. When we were in the war together, he used to say, ‘Pal, we come in buckass naked and we go out buckass naked and everything in between is gravy.’ Maybe that’s the right attitude. Maybe we ought to make the best of whatever comes to us.”

“You’re not doing that.”

She looked up at him and her stare seemed to come from a very private place deep within her; a warm, longing, loving look that pierced Keegan’s armor like a lance.

“Oh, Kee, what’s happening to the world? What’s happening to all of us?”

His anger was like a coiled snake he had kept trapped inside him and suddenly it burst free. It was not a shrill outburst but his fists were clenched and he spoke in a voice that was low and full of rage.

“What’s happening is that we’re living in a world full of people who want us to think the way they do and act the way they do and believe the way they do and if we don’t, if we don’t conform, they destroy us. And you know the irony? They’re always in the minority. We ignore them until we wake up one morning and there isn’t any
Times
on the newsstand and our favorite books are gone from the library and they beat up our best friends and drag them off to prison because their hair’s the wrong color or their noses don’t measure down to their standards. Then it’s too late.”

“You really think that could happen here?”

He nodded emphatically. “There was a moment, Vannie, when I literally had to run for my life. I mean I literally had to
run
for it. I don’t know which was worse, the fear or the humiliation, but I think I have a better idea of what freedom is all about now.”

“Is that what happened to her in Germany?”

“That’s what happened to
Germany.
She got caught in the sweeper. So you don’t need to shed any tears for me, save them for her. She’s locked away for life in a cesspool run by psychopaths.”

“Oh my God.
.

She reached up and ran her fingertips lightly down his cheek. Then she wrapped her arms around his waist and held him very tightly and after several moments he reached out, too, and put his arms around her and they stood on the balcony for a long time clutching each other, like two drowning people, each trying desperately to save the other.

They fell into a warm friendship that was shakily platonic. But she did not impose on that part of him. She was happy to be around him, coming to his place, fixing dinner, occasionally dropping by and listening to
him
and Ned discussing the news of the day. When they went out for dinner they went to offbeat places, usually late at night to avoid old friends. Only Marilyn shared their secret, sometimes spending the evening with them when her husband was tied up at the hospital. Keegan juggled his emotions between past and present. Until suddenly a voice from the past changed everything.

New Year’s Eve, 1939, three
A.M.

Keegan was returning from Vanessa’s apartment. He was fumbling for his keys when a voice, thickly European, whispered from the shadows beside the entrance.

“Mr. Keegan?”

Keegan stopped, squinted suspiciously into the darkness. The man moved partly into the light. In silhouette he was an inch or so shorter than Keegan but ten pounds heavier, all of it in his muscled shoulders, chest and arms, which strained the sleeves of his black cloth coat. The bottom of his face was obscured by a thick black beard and he was wearing a black seaman’s cap, pulled low on his forehead.

“Depends on who’s asking,” Keegan said cautiously.

The man moved into the light.

It was Werner Gebhart. Avrum Wolffson’s chief lieutenant in the Black Lily.