Going, Going, Gone Read online

  The Dynamos’ HQ was on 81st between Columbus and Amsterdam, midblock, at the top of the hill. Most of the places nearby were slumlord specials but these boys had scratch, clearly, and owned their joint. I hopped up the stoop and ding-donged. It was one of those old Victorian whitestone jobs, with mahogany doors and gargoyles carved over the windows, heavy white curtains and thick iron grilles. They hadn’t brought in the afternoon paper yet; the front page of the Sun read ONE MILLION IN VIETNAM TOO MANY, SAYS KENNEDY. Bobby, evidently; only bearable one in the bunch, but not by too much.

  I heard a click, then a creak; then a cadaver in a black suit unlocked the door. Sounded like the start of Inner Sanctum when he dragged it open. ‘Mister Jones?’ he asked. I followed him into the entrance hall, padding over one of those forty-dollar a foot rugs. ‘Please wait here. Be seated.’

  I took him up on his offer and unloaded on a handy pew next to the parlour’s open double doors. Skinny lanked up the stairs like he was being tugged by strings. A session was going on inside, and I felt free to look – nobody told me not to. Twenty-odd boys and girls sat in a circle on metal chairs. Most looked like insurance salesmen or executive secretaries, in their thirties and forties; they wouldn’t have stood out of the crowd if they’d been alone in the room. In the middle of the circle was a tall balding fellow with grey hair. Doctor Oscar, perhaps? Not likely from my experience. Once the head men really get the racket rolling all they have to do is sit back and let the minions take care of the marks, doesn’t matter if it’s the carnival or the Department of Defence. This one was experienced, I could tell; he might have seemed like he was rambling but he was working his audience like he was the main act at the Copacabana.

  ‘Now imagine this entire room is filled to the ceiling with shit.’ That caught my ear. ‘Imagine you know a priceless jewel was somewhere deep in that shit.’ While he blew hot and cold he started turning, slowly, as if he stood on a lazy susan. ‘Imagine that the only way to find that jewel was to burrow down through the shit until you found it. Would you?’

  Judging from the glares a few of the participants shot him I gathered I wasn’t the only one wondering what kind of produce he was on. Newcomers, obviously, and not used to the lingo.

  ‘Aren’t there adults present?’ he asked. ‘Only children? Every one?’

  Two men and one woman lifted their hands gingerly, as if they weren’t sure. None of them looked altogether keen on being teacher’s pet.

  ‘Zingo!!’ shouted the ringleader.

  Skinny trotted back down the stairs. He handed me a brown paper envelope; I took a quick peek inside and, satisfied, passed him the goods. If I was cautious, three hundred would do me three weeks, maybe more, and I supposed these characters could become steady customers without much effort on my part. ‘You’re interested in the Shake-Out?’ he whispered.

  ‘That’s this?’

  He nodded. ‘A five week programme ending in Ascendancy. The first week is the introductory period. This is second week, when the programme gathers momentum, and you roll with it down the hill of understanding. Sit here with open ears, if you choose. You choose?’

  His lips pulled back over his teeth like his skin was starting to shrink. ‘I choose,’ I said, lowering my voice and speaking in a stage whisper, imagining that that was the way they preferred it be said. Give it that I Love Adventure twist.

  ‘After visualizing your possibilities you may decide that you are ready to outside your inside,’ he said. ‘Let me know.’

  ‘Definitely.’

  He slid off down the hall as if he’d greased his shoes. When I turned my attention back to the parlour I heard the ringleader still going on and on about shit and the need to burrow through it. As you might have guessed I’m not much of a fudge queen so while he elaborated on his fantasia I ran my peepers over the rest of the parlour. There were some props on the far side of the room, and they didn’t ease my restless mind. Lying on the far side of the circle, I saw several long wooden paddles, too small to be oars but too long to be fraternity memorabilia. In the corner of the room was a steel cage big enough for a Great Dane currently available to let. Two looped ropes hung down from the ceiling; they’d been attached with big u-bolts and looked like they’d support considerable weight. To my mind, none of this really bode well. On the mantlepiece, placed between two silver candelabra, was a twice-life size bust of someone I assumed to be Doctor Oscar; at least the bust vaguely resembled the photograph I’d seen on the brochure. Couldn’t tell what the bust was made of from where I sat, but it looked like it’d been moulded by second shift cooks out of grainy chopped liver.

  ‘What does an adult use?’ the ringleader started shouting.

  ‘Two feet only!’ the group shouted back.

  ‘What do children say?’

  ‘Diaper me!’

  ‘What do you tell them?’

  ‘Take pain and like it!’

  The top of the ringleader’s head shone like a wet rock as he started heating up. Figured he’d work himself into some kind of preacher riff at any moment now, and I was starting to think he might be good at it. Good enough to empty the wallets of the congregation, at least.

  ‘If you have to turn on the freeze to make your child undependent on you, how low do you go?’

  ‘Subzero!’

  The ringleader stopped rotating. Paused as if to catch his breath but it was easy to see he had plenty to spare. His audience seemed to be getting with it, somehow – it was all I could do to keep from laughing.

  ‘If it’s necessary to hug someone to evoke their child, what do you do?’

  This may have been the second week but nobody acted as if they knew the drill. The sitters looked more than a little bumfuzzled. The ringleader made sure he had no expression on his kisser while they tried figuring it out. ‘Hug?’ one of the men finally asked.

  ‘Zingo!’

  The ringleader lifted him out of his chair and gave him a real rib-cracker, slapping his back as if whacking on a tom-tom. He started grinning like the acid was kicking in, and I wondered if the ringleaders were the ones who most often used nature’s helping hands in their acts on cue.

  ‘If it’s necessary to kiss someone to make them outside their inside, what do you do?’

  ‘Kiss them,’ another man, more at ease, piped up.

  ‘Zingo!’

  The ringleader chose not to kiss that particular good student. He scooted off in the opposite direction and planted a big juicy one on the loveliest lovely in the circle, a tall blonde in a red shift. He rubbed his hand over his mouth and went wild with the dramatic pauses.

  ‘If you have to beat the living shit out of a no-nothing,’ he said, ‘to drag their child to sunlight, what do you?’

  That seemed to bring everybody up short. The ringleader pulled a stopwatch out of his pocket, clicked it and eyed the dial. ‘Five,’ he said. ‘Four. Three. Two. One.’

  Silence, no more than ten seconds’ worth.

  ‘You stupid fucking assholes!!’ the ringleader began screaming. ‘Assholes!! Every goddamned one of you!’ His face turned beet-purple. ‘Fucking stupid assholes!!’

  It was like watching some poor soul getting set to take a sidewalk dive and listening to everybody in the audience shouting jump, jump, jump. The ringleader cursed like a sailor for two full minutes, spitting in the face of guys twice his size as he sputtered away, shouting at the women until every one of them, and three of the men, were crying. Finally, he ran out of breath, and stood in the centre of the circle, huffing and puffing, looking like he could really use a cigarette.

  ‘Child response, no,’ he said. ‘Adult response, yes. One more time. If you have to beat the living shit out of a no-nothing to drag their child to sunlight, what do you do?’

  Again, silence. ‘Five. Four. Three –’

  ‘Hit them?’ one of the older men asked; a fellow in his early fifties or so.

  ‘Zingo!!’

  The ringleader wasn’t that big but he had a punch like
a welterweight. The good student almost fell over in his chair after he was hit, blood gushing from his nose. He’d never get the stains out of his suit. I’d have thought at that point there’d have been a mass sick-out, but no. Everyone looked terrified, except for the ringleader.

  ‘Assistance forbidden!’ the ringleader said. ‘Assistance forbidden!’ He walked up to the victim and pressed his hand down on the man’s bleeding nose. Considering that it looked like he’d broken it I couldn’t imagine it felt especially good. ‘Response?’ The man started to rain and his face swelled up like it was going to pop but he still didn’t do what he was supposed to have done, clearly. ‘Response?’

  Again, nothing. ‘Example!’ The ringleader turned to his left and slapped a younger guy, sending his glasses flying across the room. ‘Response?’

  ‘Thank you,’ said the younger man, getting out of his chair and kneeling in front of the ringleader. The older one didn’t look like he could do much more than bleed. That was enough for me, and I started to make for the door.

  ‘As an outgrouper and not an ingrouper, you may not view the programme in the right context,’ Skinny said, emerging from the shadows under the stairs, grabbing my arm, hanging onto me like a leech.

  ‘Maybe not,’ I said, backing up, keeping my eye on him. I almost fell down the stoop on the way out, but didn’t; got halfway to Broadway before I felt safe enough to catch my breath. Considering how they acted, straight, I shuddered to think what this bunch was like once they started flying.

  My brief taste of potentially steady employment convinced me of the error of my ways. Next day, Martin called. He asked me to reconsider. I did.

  FOUR

  Next day at lunchtime I skidded over to the Old Town bar on 18th Street, two blocks from my crib; Martin said he was coming to town and that put me in the catbird seat when it came time to mark the turf. I put a reverse banana on my leather jacket, trying to keep those March winds from whistling inside. The Old Town’s a 19th-century joint – ceiling so high and dark bats ought to be hanging from it, feeding pews too small for 20th-century keisters, a scarred mahogany bar with a dented brass rail, a mirror that makes you look drunk even if you’ve taken the Keeley. No one went inside in daylight but white-haired liver-wranglers, you see ’em lining up every morning before the doors open like they were waiting for Series tickets. Martin and his gang had expropriated a square table in the back. Hamilton and Frye were with him, and I’d expected they would be. The fourth member of the team wasn’t Bennett.

  ‘Walter, this is Hermann Sartorius,’ Martin said. ‘He’s with the Justice Department. One of Hamilton’s associates.’

  ‘Welcome to New York,’ I said. When I offered my mitt he gave me an icy road.

  ‘I been before,’ he said. Glass eyes, spun gold on the summit and accent thick enough to cut with a Luftwaffe

  dagger. Even if Commies hadn’t been unwise enough to present themselves as Commies, the boys in the marble halls would have still given the edge to Nazis; krauts were so talented, and so adaptable. But Justice Department! No question Martin felt the same way I did, sharing good air with one of these trolls, but if it gave him the queasies he managed not to need a flight bag.

  ‘Good to see you, Walter,’ Hamilton said. ‘We’re glad you’ve reconsidered. We gather things might have gotten a little dicey for you since we last met.’

  ‘A little.’ I signalled the waiter to haul over a beaker.

  ‘Idle hands, the devil’s workshop,’ he said. ‘Did you see today’s papers, by chance? You do read the papers, don’t you?’

  I shook my head. ‘No cats, no parakeets.’

  Hambone puckered up like he’d been sucking lemons. ‘Your hyperbole refreshes, Walter. In any event, you remember our previous meeting, I’d imagine. Do you remember my speaking of upcoming situations?’

  ‘They came up?’

  ‘When the moment came to raise or fold, all it took our leader was one word to decide,’ he said, unfolding a copy of the Trib. Martin gave a wistful glance at the bar and I know he wished he still drank. Frye had a certain damp limpness to him, as if he hadn’t been plugged in. Adolf sat there taking in the ozone, staring down from Berchtesgarten, looking like he’d forgotten to take the coat hanger out of his jacket before putting it on. ‘One word.’

  ‘Plastics?’

  ‘Tet,’ Hamilton said, kissing the word as he lifted up the front page.

  PRESIDENT LODGE DECLARES HE WILL NOT RUN FOR RE-ELECTION

  States Vietnam setbacks played no part in decision.

  Washington More or Less Agog at Unexpected Development

  ‘Some less agog than others,’ Hamilton said. ‘I’d think an intelligent man such as yourself will clearly grasp what this implies.’

  ‘Incumbent’s not going to win?’

  Frye went off on cue. Hmnf hmnf hmnf. The Old Pretender fingered the rim of his glass as if trying to make it warble.

  ‘I’m sure his unforeseen loss in the New Hampshire primary wasn’t reassuring,’ Hamilton said, shooting his cuffs to show off the links; small gold theatre masks, sweet and sour. ‘The Democrats are greatly pleased by last night’s surprise. Probably Mansfield went ahead and ordered his new desk for the Oval Office. There was, however, a new development this morning.’

  ‘He’s got competition passing the collection plate?’

  Hmnf hmnf hmnf

  Frye wasn’t the only one making with the chucks. Even Hambone gave a quick smirk before shooting me a death ray. Perching there he looked like he was some vicious old grandfather the littlest ones were always ratting on. ‘You’re a live one, Walter. A clam in the chowder.’

  ‘What is funny?’ Sartorius asked, cocking his head to one side like a parrot, maybe trying to shake water out of his brain. Clearly the more jive I slung around one-ball the more he’d be left in the dark.

  ‘A private joke, Hermann,’ said Hamilton, patting his arm. ‘Nothing more. Passing the plate indeed. As you might suspect, the man in the aisle is Senator Robert F. Kennedy of the great commonwealth of Massachusetts.’

  ‘And you wouldn’t call that the bee’s knees?’

  ‘I’m a man of affable nature,’ he said. ‘Speaking for myself, there’s no reason for these matters to concern me. Republican, Democrat. Both are equally adaptable in the right time and place. However, there are associates of mine who prefer that the Senator not run. Who, in fact, want to make sure he doesn’t. I’ve assured them I’ll do everything I can within realistic limits, but even so I can’t do everything. Special abilities such as yours are needed to satisfactorily prepare the ground. Your sociability, your intelligence. The harmless impression you feign so well. Your willingness to –’ He paused. ‘Your adaptability.’

  ‘I get the picture,’ I said. ‘Keep in mind I’m strictly make love not war.’

  ‘What do you think I’m asking of you, Walter? We have a lead, we need a featured player. There’s no need to be suspicious.’

  ‘Told Oswald same thing, didn’t you?’

  No humfy humfs from Frye on that one. Sartorius blinked a couple of times but otherwise might as well have been a wax figure. Martin looked like he might have had a stroke if I’d kept pressing the point, but malicious I’m not. Hammy leaned across the table so I could hear his whisper. ‘Walter, what do you take us for? This isn’t New Orleans.’

  I was still reading the papers in 1963 and remembered it all quite well. The ‘64 election, coming up fast. Nixon’s thirty points up in the polls but every night he walks the halls in the White House, shaking his fists at his predecessors, wondering what they had that he hasn’t got. No question he’ll get the majority but old Tricky has a jones on for those Euro elections, ninety-nine per cent for Fearless Leader and the loser hung in a gibbet on the road out of town. There he is, managed to whip the opposition into shape and then along come those goddamn Long boys, puffed up full of themselves like old uncle Huey (luckily not to such a degree), upending the Hadacol cart by slapping their Repu
blicans into Democrat duds, converting the state, ergo the Southwest. After the fact Tricky’s henchmen swore it was his idea to strongarm Pearly Earl in person, but nobody bought that but the Commission. Grab the banjo and let’s cakewalk down to Dixie: whoever said it, it got said. Pat and cocker spaniels in tow, Nixon goes to New Orleans. Sunny September afternoon, he barks at his mugs to lose the bubbletop, he’s keen to do his semaphore act all the way down Canal Street. Vietnam escalation sure to turn the tide. Off goes the Pierce-Arrow’s roof; up go the arms; Ka-chow! sneezes the roscoe. Before the Trickster feels that warm Gulf breeze where the top of his head used to be he finds himself heading way down south, getting the purple-ass treatment from Satan’s snickering imps, and belly-aching about how much better Ike’s probably got it. Topside, nobody’s surprised, not really. Nobody except Oswald that is to say, once he finds out he’s not going to be working on his tan in Fiji after his work is done, after all.

  ‘All right, I’ll go along,’ I said. ‘So fill me in. What is it you want me to do?’

  Hamilton leaned forward – conspiratorily, you could say. ‘It’s really very simple,’ he said. ‘We’d like you to make friends with someone.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘You’ll be ingratiating yourself with one of Bobby’s brothers.’

  Thought I’d dreamed what he said at first, and so ignored them. ‘What’s the punchline?’ Their icicles suddenly felt mighty sharp when they started to land. ‘Are you trying to tell me one of them’s going to let me get in earshot?’

  ‘Of course.’ Hamilton was so calm he almost looked beatific. Thinking quickly I ran through the possible players. It wouldn’t be Joe Jr., loser of the ‘60 election and Paramount Pictures head honcho; not John, Washington Star kingpin and Commie scourge; not Father Ted, up there on the Cardinal’s throne in Beanville. Obviously not Bobby. That left –