Elsinore (5 page)

Garden introduced him. “This is Sidney Holden.”

Fay took his hand. “It's kind of you to come.”

He couldn't open his mouth.

“Would you care for a Perrier?”

“I think Sidney has to go, darling,” the doctor said.

“It's a pity. We have so many things to talk about.… Make him promise that he'll come again.”

“Oh, he's loyal,” the doctor said. “He wouldn't leave you in the lurch.”

And Holden ran outside to the toilet and threw up his breakfast into the sink. Holden looked up when he saw Garden in the mirror.

“I'm sorry you had to see her like that. But you insisted.”

And Holden left Elsinore without rinsing his mouth.

He'd have gone to the Amazon, lived among whatever savages were around, but it wouldn't have cured Holden's disease. He'd never rescued Fay. He'd killed his friend Mike and brought her slowly to her doom. He didn't return to the Copenhagen to lick himself clean. He was like some forest animal who needed Mr. Phipps. But something bothered him about Phipps' little presentation in that giant breakfast room. Ninety-two-year-old man seeks adventure and hires Holden his guide. Phipps' whole story began to stink.

And Holden visited the one encyclopedist he knew. Tosh, an eccentric book dealer who gathered information for bloodhounds and the mob. Tosh had his own morgue, like the
New York Times
. Six rooms of files. He'd never really been Holden's rat. Tosh was much too independent. Mob lawyers liked to use him because Tosh himself was an encyclopedia of crime. His files were open day and night, but Tosh was no bachelor, no night fish. He had a wife and three kids who lived in the rooms above his inventory, and he was a devoted husband and dad. Holden admired him for that. Tosh might have disappeared into all the paper and the dust without his family.

He'd had a year of Harvard, but Cambridge, Mass., must have been like the Sahara to Tosh. The bookworm needed New York. There was so much discipline in his head, so much on file, that he'd never have survived without the instant anarchy of the streets. He was handsome and tall, and sometimes he used Holden's tailor, even with all the dust on his sleeves.

“Tosh,” Holden said, “you could have been an actor, another Gregory Peck.”

They were sitting in Tosh's bookstore on Hudson Street.

“I used to be an actor,” Tosh said.

“You never told me that.”

“Yeah, I played the tree in
Waiting for Godot
. I swear to God. They needed a prop. I was the tree. And I got curtain calls, Holden. Audiences loved me. But I couldn't hack it, theater life. Late hours, slobbering over drama critics … How can I help?”

“This billionaire wants to hire me. Howard Phipps. Toshie, what do you have on him?”

“Off the cuff? He's not as rich as the Gettys or the Rothschilds.”

“How did he make it?”

“He built up companies, one at a time. Took tiny outfits and managed them like a hawk.”

“He swears he was a bootlegger.”

“I don't think he ever legged.”

“And his philanthropies?”

“They're legit. But I doubt if he loses money on them.”

“The woman who runs his foundation, you have anything on her? The name is Vanderwelle.”

“She must be new,” Toshie said.

“Can you dig into her history … and the old man's?”

“Holden, I'm never sure what I have.”

“I know that, Tosh. But I'll help you. He's ninety-two.”

“Why don't you go upstairs and visit with the wife? Come back down in an hour.”

And Holden went upstairs to sit with Mrs. Tosh. Why couldn't he fall in love with a sane woman? He'd picked Andrushka out of a showroom when she'd been selling herself to whatever buyers would have her. And he'd had to kill three men to find a path to Fay.

He returned to Toshie's downstairs office.

“His name isn't Phipps,” Tosh said. “It's Feldstein.”

“A Yid?”

“Without a doubt.”

“Where was he born?”

“In Milwaukee,” Tosh said. “And he's not ninety-two. He's eighty-nine.”

“Who the hell would lie about a thing like that? He must have wanted my sympathy.”

“Holden, I sell facts. Not motives.”

And suddenly Holden was more interested in Howard Feldstein Phipps than he'd ever been in a man.

“A Yid, you say.”

“And also a bit of a rabbi.”

“I'm speechless,” Holden said. “A rabbi? Where did he practice?”

“Holden, he didn't have a congregation, or anything like that. He studied at a cantor's college.”

“What's that?”

“You know, a cantor. Sings all the holy songs. Leads the choir. He was a terrific grosser.”

“I don't understand.”

“A cantor with a good voice was like an opera star. Had an agent and everything … Holden, he was a hired gun. Went from synagogue to synagogue. All over the country. You had to book him a year in advance.”

“When was this?”

“Around nineteen twenty-two.”

“But he was a child. Nineteen or twenty.”

“That's not so young for a cantor,” Toshie said. “But something happened. He fucked up in Chicago. There was a scandal. The big synagogues wouldn't hire him. And guess what? He shows up in Seattle as a Pinkerton man.”

Toshie started to laugh, but Holden couldn't get out of his gloom.

“Don't you think it's funny? From cantor's college to the Pinkertons. That's when he became Phipps. He leaves the agency in 'twenty-nine, and bingo, it all starts for him. He buys, he sells, with terrific concentration. The country goes into a depression, and Phipps becomes a billionaire.”

“What about the girl? Gloria Vanderwelle.”

“Holden, I didn't come up with a thing.”

“All right. What do we have? He's a Yid. He sings for a living. He stops. He's a Pinkerton. Then he makes his first million … Now he's eighty-nine, he grows bored, and hires Sidney Holden. He talks about funny paper, and he wants to hit the road. Why?”

“He's in trouble,” Tosh said. “There's a saboteur in his operation. Maybe more than one. His companies are tumbling, two at a time. His accounts are running dry.”

“So it's a crisis. He can hire whoever he wants. Some big law firm with a whole team of bloodhounds. They'd find the leaks, wouldn't they? Why me?”

“I don't have the facts,” Toshie said.

“Why me? I'm retired, Tosh. You know that.”

“But the cantor doesn't.”

5

Holden was at Phipps' cathedral restaurant a minute before nine.

He couldn't bear to look at the food the waiters brought. He drank a cup of hot water, with a lemon slice, while the old man had a dish of breakfast curry.

“Lost your appetite, Sid?”

“Well, I saw my fiancée. She didn't recognize me.”

“I'm sorry, but you ought to eat. We're going on a long trip … to Chappy.”

“Never heard of the place.”

“Chappaquiddick. To collect some funny paper.”

“Just like that?”

“It's been arranged, Holden. We leave in half an hour.”

“I never travel without twenty-four hours' notice.”

“You'll have to break your rules. It can't be helped. The money is waiting for us in Chappaquiddick.”

“Let it wait.”

The old man began to diminish in front of Sidney Holden. The cardigan sat like an envelope around a bag of bones. “I can't go by myself.…”

“You could raise an army in five minutes.”

“Don't want an army. I want you.”

“All right,” Holden said.

And the bag of bones was gone. “Do you have a gun?”

“Yes. But it's at home.”

“Then we'll have to collect it, won't we? Finish your breakfast, Mr. Holden.”

Holden gulped the hot water. “Cheers.”

They went down to Phipps' office to meet Mrs. Vanderwelle. She'd packed an overnight bag for the old man. And Sidney Holden had that same dilemma. He could sense the lines of her body under the suit she wore. The mouth was soft. But was she pretty, and why should he have cared? Holden wasn't looking to replace his darling. It didn't matter how damaged Fay was. He was devoted to her, even if she couldn't remember his name. He'd have to visit Elsinore again, bring her some roses, talk about Red Mike … with Dr. Garden.

He must have been inside a trance. Mrs. Vanderwelle tugged at him. “Some pocket money,” she said. “For the trip.”

She gave Holden a thick packet of twenty-dollar bills. He wanted to question her, but not in front of the old man.

“You'll take care of him, won't you? He mustn't forget to put on his pajamas.”

And Holden started to dig. “Why don't you come along?”

“I wish I could. But I have the foundation … and Howard didn't invite me.”

“I'll invite you,” Holden said.

“Another time.” And Holden understood now why it was so hard to make up his mind about Mrs. Vanderwelle. He couldn't meet her eyes. Under the tinted glasses, her eyes weren't there. She might have been looking at the wall while she chatted with Holden. It infuriated him. He was feeling homicidal, but he'd never have touched the lady.

He went down into the street with the old man, whose chauffeur appeared in a rented Plymouth. Holden could have found a better car in the meanest body shop. But Phipps wanted to be anonymous on the road to Chappaquiddick.

And while Holden had been measuring the Plymouth, the chauffeur disappeared.

“Who's going to drive us to Chappaquiddick?”

“You are.”

“That's the limit,” Holden said. “My dad was a chauffeur. I watched him suffer behind the wheel. It broke him, Mr. Phipps. It kept him a fucking child. I swore to myself that I'd never follow my dad into that line of work.”

“But I can't take my chauffeur. It would ruin it for us. He'd know all our plans.… Get in. I'll drive.”

“You're too old. And you have bad feet. I'll drive. But don't make it a habit. I'd have to quit.”

“I'll sit up front with you, Sid. We're companions. I won't let you down.”

He couldn't escape that shadow, the shadow of his dad. It was a recurrent dream, a nightmare Holden had endured since he could remember. Holden wearing some kind of livery while he sat behind the wheel. Sidney Holden, the prince of chauffeurs in a peaked cap. But his uniform had eagles and stars and buttons of the United States. It was a soldier's livery. Holden's dad had been a soldier during the big war. But Holden couldn't tell who he was driving in all the dreams. Now he saw the face. It was God, God in the back seat, wearing the cardigan of Howard Phipps, that hidden singer of holy songs. And Holden had to laugh. God had been a Pinkerton man.

Phipps wanted to stop in New Haven for lunch. Holden shivered when he saw the towers of Yale. It was like coming to a foreign country, and he panicked for a moment, thinking they'd need some currency with a queen's head. Oh, he'd dealt with Yalies before. He'd even been to the Yale Club in Manhattan. But the college startled him. He expected to see monks riding around on bicycles, and all he met were kids and tweedy men, dressed like they were living in a kind of noble poverty, a knighthood of books and baggy pants. Holden was glad he'd gone to Bernard Baruch.

Phipps led him to a neighborhood behind the college. There were no towers. The streets were broken, and black children played in the rubble. Holden couldn't find a restaurant. There was a merciless regularity to the small, dark buildings, like the inner walls of a heartland Holden had never heard about. The town was like Phipps himself, porous, with a lot of different pasts.

And then, in those dark streets, Holden discovered a tiny Italian restaurant that didn't have a signboard or a name in the window. Holden parked in front of the restaurant, and the two of them went inside and sat down. The waiters ignored them until Phipps shouted in some Italian dialect that must have been born in the streets of New Haven, because suddenly the waiters danced. A tablecloth materialized, together with silver, and a blue candle that no one would let Holden light all by himself.