Elsinore (2 page)

2

He had an office, a great big room at the Aladdin Fur Company that had once served as his living quarters. He would walk down to the fur district, but there was nothing to do. The market was filled with Greeks. They were frightened of Sidney Holden, but they liked to pat his sleeve, touch Holden, feel his fame. Aladdin employed no Greeks. The cutters and nailers were from a lost generation, before the Greeks monopolized the market. They knew how to dress a mink. They were masters in a trade that had no stability at all. Half the coats they cut were already out of fashion. Holden had no instinct for dark skins on a board. He would pick up his check, nibble on a sandwich, and run.

He couldn't threaten people who owed Aladdin money. It would have been like the bark and bite of a tin man. He was too famous. The people he threatened would only ask him for his autograph. So he went to his office once a week, for half an hour. He didn't talk on the telephone. He sat and considered whatever future he might have.

He was in the middle of a reverie when the phone rang. No one called him at the office anymore, not Fay or his senior partner, Bruno Schatz, the Swiss, who controlled the Paris end of Aladdin's operation. Swiss was a wise man … and a thief. He swindled half the world and hid inside Aladdin's label. Aladdin was the cover for all his mischief and mayhem. Schatz was eighty-one. And the lines of his future were much more clear than Sidney Holden's. Schatz was married to Holden's wife, Andrushka. Andrushka was a bigamist. She'd never bothered to divorce her little Sid.

The phone stopped ringing, then started again. Somebody wanted Holden. He picked up the phone, but he didn't hear that familiar static of a Paris call. It couldn't have been Schatz.

“Hello?”

“Am I talking to Mr. Sidney Holden?”

A woman's voice, cultured and sweet. She didn't sound like the candy stores of Queens, where Holden spent his boyhood chewing chocolate sundaes.

“Yes, this is Holden.”

“I'm Mrs. Vanderwelle, Gloria Vanderwelle. I represent Mr. Phipps of the Phipps Foundation.”

“I'm sorry, Mrs. Vanderwelle. I'm not familiar with foundations.”

But it was a lie. He'd heard of Phipps, the billionaire philanthropist who was much older than Bruno Schatz. Ninety and he walked to work. Holden had read that in
Manhattan, inc
.

“We finance social projects, Mr. Holden … hospices for people dying of AIDS, apartments for the homeless, clinics for battered wives, and music classes for gifted children who can't afford a violoncello.…”

“But I'm not a philanthropist, Mrs. Vanderwelle. I mean, I could contribute to one of the causes.”

“This is no solicitation, Mr. Holden. Mr. Phipps would like to meet you.”

“Are you his secretary?” Holden asked.

“I'm his lawyer,” she said. “And I direct the foundation.”

“I still don't understand.”

“We would like to hire you, Mr. Holden.”

Ah, they wanted him to bump another philanthropist.

“Mrs. Vanderwelle, I can't afford to auction my services, understand? My fiancée is sick. I appreciate the phone call, but …”

“Shall we say ten o'clock tomorrow morning, Mr. Holden? A late breakfast at the foundation … or an early lunch.”

And before he could tell her no, the bitch had hung up on him. How did she get Holden's line? It wasn't listed.

He walked out and locked the door.

He didn't find much comfort at the Copenhagen.

Fay was gone.

The building was cluttered with shooflies from the Queens district attorney's office, detectives in pink socks who carried Fay's wardrobe in their arms, skirts, dresses, underwear. They smiled, and they had the key to his apartment. He wrestled with the shooflies in front of the elevator door. There were five of them, and they had blackjacks. But Holden had one advantage. The vestibule was small. They couldn't clutch Fay's wardrobe and also swing their arms. He leapt into the five of them, and they landed on the floor in a bundle of clothes, like some great cotton ball.

The elevator opened and Paul Abruzzi stepped onto the landing. The Queens D.A. had to mince about in his black shoes until his men extricated themselves and stood with their shoulders squeezed against the wall. He didn't seem angry at Holden. He was a man of sixty-one who wore baggy suits and had silky white hair. Paul didn't have Holden's tailor. Holden's tailor had swiped the patterns of kings and several dukes.

“Morons,” the D.A. said to his shooflies. “I didn't ask you to feel her underpants. Get out of here.”

They boarded the elevator and Paul Abruzzi let himself into Holden's apartment. Holden had to follow him inside. There were no introductions from Paul, no polite talk about Holden's sudden fame in the republic of Manhattan.

“Sidney, I have a court order … I have a writ.”

“Show me,” Holden said.

Paul produced a scroll with the seal of New York. It was signed by a judge. Paul could get a writ anytime he wanted. He owned the courts.

“It's still a fucking seizure.”

“The woman is suicidal, or haven't you noticed?”

“I've noticed, Paul. I've noticed. But you picked a convenient time. I'm gone two hours, and you come around with your writs. You staked the house, didn't you? You had your shooflies in the park, wearing camouflage suits.”

“Does it matter, Sidney? You don't have a legal claim on the woman. She wasn't your wife.”

“And you? The father-in-law who romanced her away from your own son.”

“Are you going to be tiresome, Sidney? I wanted to behave like a gentleman with you.”

“Where is she, Paul?”

“That's privileged information, son.”

“I'm not your son. Your son writes plays with his dick in his hand.”

“But he's responsible for her, Sidney, not you. As far as Fay is concerned, you don't exist.”

“I'll find her,” Holden said.

“I'm sure you will. But if you go near her, if you force your way in, you'll never leave the place. The guards I hired have your photograph from
Vanity Fair
. They've been trained to kill.”

“I'm a bumper, Paul, or did you forget?”

“Those days are over.”

Paul started to leave. Then he turned to Holden. “Didn't I tell you the crying spells would start? It's like a fever. She crawls into a depression and she can't crawl out. She was better off with me. She didn't have to worry about true love.”

“I'll find her.”

“Good-bye, son.”

He had lunch at Fine & Schapiro, where John Lennon liked to eat in dark granny glasses. Lennon would sit at the back of the restaurant, undisturbed. Holden had half a chicken in a pot. He had soup with special little soup nuts. He had half-sour pickles. He signed his autograph on the waiters' menus. If he meditated long enough, he might meet Lennon's ghost.

He sat at Fine & Schapiro through lunch and dinner. He made three telephone calls. He had more soup nuts.

Finally, at ten o'clock, as the waiters were stacking chairs, a short, thick man entered the restaurant. His skin looked as if it had been waxed by a mortician. He dressed like a ponce. He wore a purple jacket and gold rings and a toup that seemed stuck on his head with mustard plaster. He was a retired police captain named Brian Calendar, who'd once worked for Paul. He ran a detective agency near the Queens Criminal Court Building. He was the best bloodhound Holden had ever used. And he hated Paul. Paul had forced him to retire. Calendar was an extortionist and a thief, but he was also reliable.

His hands trembled. He had Parkinson's disease. He ate a bowl of half-sour pickles. His eyebrows and his mustache had been dyed a rich, silky black. Holden didn't have to explain a thing.

“Paulie took back the merchandise.”

“He kidnapped her,” Holden said. “He's got her in some fancy snakepit.”

“A sanitarium?” Calendar asked, his eyebrows crinkling in separate directions, as if whatever motor he had could only master individual parts.

“Yeah, a sanitarium.”

“Holden, there's fifty states. And that doesn't include Switzerland.”

“But he has a weakness for her, Brian. He wouldn't stick her far away.”

“True,” Calendar said, eying the soup nuts in Holden's bowl. “What's that?”

“Soup nuts.”

“Never heard of such a thing … Waiter, I'll have some of that, in a big bowl.”

But Fine & Schapiro had been around for fifty years, and the restaurant didn't have to rush for a private detective with Parkinson's disease.

“Sorry, the kitchen's closed,” the waiter said.

And Calendar got up from the table. All the trembling was gone. He was a police captain again. And the restaurant, with its salamis on the wall, could have been his own lost precinct. “Soup nuts,” he said.

The waiter scampered into the kitchen and returned with a tureen of soup.

“Thanks,” Calendar said. “I don't need a bowl.” He served himself with an enormous ladle. “We were talking about Paul.”

“You know his habits,” Holden said. “And the safe houses he would use.”

“If a judge signed the commitment papers, Paul could never use a house of his own. Did you look at the writ?”

“I saw it, but I didn't really look.”

“Ah, it could have been a phony document. And it wouldn't matter. He'd have her switched half a dozen times, just to fuck you in the head. But I'll have a peek at the records, Holden. There's always a clerk I can kiss. Don't worry. I'll find the princess. But it will cost you five K. In advance.”

“Brian, we're not sitting in a vault. I wouldn't carry that much cash around.”

“Gimme what you got.”

Calendar took his change, and his small bills, everything Holden had in his pants. He drank the soup from the tureen and belched once. Then his hands started to shake, and Holden began to have some doubts. But Calendar was the closest he could get to Paul.

Holden sat another half hour while the restaurant went dark. He couldn't see his own face in the mirror. He dreaded going home.

No one chased him from the restaurant, and he didn't need cash. He had a charge account at Fine&Schapiro. He walked out a little before midnight. He had two beers at the Irish bar across the street. A woman kept staring at his clothes. She had a bruise under her eye.
Battered wife
. Holden could have introduced her to the Phipps Foundation.

“Mister, that's one hell of a suit.”

“It belonged to the Duke of Windsor once upon a time.”

“How did you inherit it?”

“My tailor had it swiped from the Duke's closet.”

“You're a lucky man to know,” she said, putting her hand inside Holden's sleeve. “My name's Irene.”

“Who hit you?” Holden asked.

“Some guy … but he's out of the picture. Say, aren't you Sidney Holden? Could you come upstairs and beat the hell out of my old man?”

Holden paid for the beers with a credit card and left without Irene.

It was almost two o'clock when he arrived at the Copenhagen.

His telephone rang a minute after he opened the door. It was Paul Abruzzi.

“Don't you ever sleep?” Holden asked.

“Sidney, you're a bad boy. You shouldn't have hired that scumbag. I had to put him in the tank. Brian was carrying a couple of unlicensed guns.”

“Paul, let him go.”

“That's up to you.… Here, I'll put him on. We can have a conference call.”

Holden waited and then Calendar said hello. He was crying. “I'm sorry.”

“That's okay, Brian.”

“Tell him,” Abruzzi said.

“You'd better stop looking for Fay.”

“Tell him again.”

“Don't look for Fay.”

Holden hung up.

He slept in the living room because he couldn't bear to lie in his own bed without Fay. He didn't really sleep. He crept around like a forest animal, watching the lights of Central Park. A somnambulist in silk socks.