Night of the Juggler

Chapter 8

Manolo Ramos, in a suite in the Plaza, lay in the warm and urgent embrace of a florist from Detroit, Michigan. The man, whose three sons attended the University of Pennsylvania, whispered in Manolo’s ear, “Would you do that for me?”

Manolo arched his delicate eyebrows and allowed his exquisite features to register a mixture of surprise and admiration.

“You a crazy stud, you know that?” Manolo said softly.

“Will you do it?”

Manolo looked at his gold wristwatch and shook his head slowly. “It’s been too long, daddy.”

“I’ll pay you extra.” The man had begun to pant like an exhausted swimmer. “I’ll double what I gave you. Please do it. Please. ”

That would make Samantha happy, Manolo thought sullenly. Overtime for the big black bitch, collected from my sweet ass.

Last night and today, he had earned close to three hundred dollars.

Almost halfway home. But maybe she’d give him a break; she seemed kinky enough yesterday to want to make it with him.

As Manolo’s practiced hands and lips catapulted the florist to a pinnacle of frenzied ecstasy, he was wondering if there was anything for him with Samantha, if he could make it with her, make it straight.

Maybe, he thought, remembering with a blend of guilt and excitement how effortlessly she had turned him on yesterday. .

“Oh, God!” the man cried in a soft, shuddering voice.

But if he didn’t score heavy, Manolo thought, he’d have to try the park again tonight. Maybe even the Ramble, where he might luck onto a coke pusher. Some of them were rich enough and hot enough to trick all night. That way he could be even with big Sam by tomorrow.

“Here we go!” the man screamed into Manolo’s ear, his voice threaded with exultant anticipation.

You go, big, fat, crazy shit, Manolo thought, and looked critically at the back of his left hand, the rosy fingertips gleaming dully in the illumination of a bedside lamp.

In the same hotel, at approximately the same time, but on a higher and more prestigious floor, a young waiter named Lee Chang pushed a dinner cart in the direction of the suite occupied by Rudi Zahn and Crescent Holloway.

Chang had been given the heady details of their arrival the preceding day. Waiters, bellhops, desk clerks, all had been gossiping like scandal-starved voyeurs about Crescent’s shrewdly democratic manners and her clothes, a creamy white flannel pants suit trimmed in honey-colored mink, the tabby-striped hair, her great lavender eyes, and the hips, thighs, and breasts which seemed to be linked but oddly separate continents of sexuality. And they had chattered about her luggage, sixteen pieces of matched Hermes, and her personal maid and hairdresser, her cheerful, balding manager and lover, Rudi Zahn, and what the florist had sent up and what they had ordered from room service the night before-oysters, caviar, and three bottles of chilled Batard Montrachet.

Chang had hoped for a glimpse of Crescent Holloway, but it was Rudi Zahn who opened the door and waved him inside.

Tall, narrow windows gave out on immense, spectacular sweeps of Central Park. The living room was cluttered with flowers and luggage and bowls of fruit wrapped in bright ribbon and foamy clouds of cellophane, the donors’ envelopes unopened, thrown aside like small unrespected flags.

Chang noted with disappointment that the large double doors leading to the bedroom were closed.

Rudi Zahn signed for the early supper-baby lamb chops, white asparagus, and Mouton Rothschild ‘59-and within seconds Chang was once again in the long corridor, alone again, except for his dashed little hopes and dreams.

Rudi Zahn had drunk sparingly the night before and was in excellent spirits, physically and mentally. Crescent, on the contrary, had finished two bottles of the Montrachet, and Rudi anticipated trouble with her, particularly if she had got into any of the scripts he had left pointedly on her bedside table.

(Nate Sokol had handled the morning’s press conference. Film clips and delicatessen and champagne and whiskey had been a benign substitute for the Stacked House Kid, who, Nate Sokol had explained, was down with a mild bout of flu.)

Rudi had waked at three thirty in the afternoon and, after a half hour of calisthenics, had shaved, showered, and put on a gray flannel suit over a tattersall vest, a combination he thought would complement the smart “British” look of his brown suede shoes. Rudi had ordered this light supper, not because Crescent would be hungry yet, but because nibbling at the food would allow her to savor the wine without any pangs from her conscience.

Not that her conscience ever won out. She ate and drank like a willful, undisciplined child: hot dogs and Cokes for breakfast, bags of roasted almonds, liverwurst sandwiches washed down with scotch as after-dinner snacks. Her handbag was always bulging with candy, and her portable dressing room (practically a bungalow) was stocked like an East Side delicatessen. Yet her skin remained flawless and creamy, her body was firm and slim, and her lavender eyes glowed with calm, serene health, like those of a contented Persian cat.

He pushed open the double doors and pulled the dining cart into her bedroom. “Hello there,” he said to Crescent, who was sitting up in their huge round bed, looking with what he judged to be active dislike at the script she was holding.

“Where do you get this shit from?” she asked him.

“What shit?”

“I mean this script shit,” she said. “I mean, who writes this cunty drivel?”

“There is one thing to remember about each of those scripts, sweetie,” he said and poured a glass of wine for her.

“Thanks. What’s that?”

“Each of those scripts is accompanied by a firm offer, and each offer tops anything we’ve got so far.”

“But why does it always have to be such crud? Honest, Rudi, there’s a scene in this bomb-what’s it called?” She turned the script around to look at the title on the cover. Then she stuck out her tongue at the script. “‘Boobs in the Woods.’ Well, there’s a scene where I’m attacked by vibrators. And are you ready for this? I adore it. Can’t get enough of it.”

“Look, sweetie. We’re not selling you as Bergman or Katie Hepburn,” he said. “You’re everybody’s roll in the hay, the little girl who shivers and squeaks when she’s kissed, who can widen her mouth into a perfect circle and make guys think dirty.”

“But you don’t have to act in these stinkers, Rudi.”

He gave her another glass of wine. She gulped two big swallows and then, more petulant than angry now, said, “Do you realize what it’s like to know that the grips and gaffers are embarrassed for you?”

Crescent looked miserably at her empty glass. “What are you so afraid of, Rudi?”

“I’m afraid of not making these three deals,” he said untruthfully, surprised at the question.

“But I don’t have any friends anymore,” she said, sighing again like a hurt child. “I’m thirty-three, and I’ve got to keep acting like I’m twenty. I’m sick and tired of training around the year like a goddamn racehorse. I want to eat and drink what I please-”

He cut in. “Well, if you’re on a diet now, I’d hate to be around when you go off it.”

“You just don’t want to get involved with anything or anybody. Just collect the loot, so we’ll be safe and secure when we’re what? Living in some rest home?” She sighed again. “I can’t wait. You and me going hand and hand up the path, where the staff of Ye Olde Bedpan Manor is waiting for us with big, happy grins.”

Rudi smiled at this, but he didn’t want her to start feeling sorry for herself; self-pity was vanity’s sniveling little sister, he knew, and Crescent was more malleable in moods of arrogant self-esteem and sexual exuberance than she was when her spirits plunged into these states of self-deprecation.

“Have some more wine,” he suggested, and when she nodded, he filled her glass.

But Crescent was not ready to be cheered up. “I don’t even see my family anymore. You don’t have any family, so you don’t know what that means, Rudi.”

“My family went up in smoke in Poland,” Rudi said coldly.

“Oh, shit, I’m sorry, Rudi.” She looked contritely at him. “That was a lousy thing for me to say.”

She was going the wrong way again, he realized, loose and sloppy.

To correct this, Rudi said, “I wish you would occasionally think, think, if you know what the word means, before you shoot off that big mouth of yours.”

“Well, Christ, I said was sorry.” Then her temper got the better of her, and she threw her long golden hair back from her forehead and glared at him with what she fancied to be her “tigress” look. “Just who the fuck do you think you are, Rudi Zahn?”

“Very nice display. Very nice and tasteful,” he said quietly.

“Don’t give me that well-bred gentleman shit,” she screamed at him, challenging now, brandishing her sex like a weapon. “Where the fuck would you be without me? Without your sluttish dummy? You’d be hocking around the studios with flop sweat shining on your bald head, laying secretaries to get ten minutes with their bosses.”

She would be all right now, Rudi knew. When he returned, she would be her normal cheerful self. No gloom, no depressions. They would have a pleasant dinner, here or at 21, and she would be happily drunk by bedtime and would be grateful if he made love to her.

“Charming,” he said, and gave her a little bow. “You’re so delightful I’ll let you enjoy yourself without any distractions. I’m going for a walk.”

“Well, take these shitty scripts with you then,” she said, and hurled two of them after him. One of them struck his shoulder and fell to the floor.

He picked it up, put it on a coffee table, and strolled into the living room of their suite.

“Please come back, Rudi. Please.” She raised her voice to make sure he would hear her, but her anger had evaporated, and her tone was as pleading and helpless as a frightened child.

When she heard the door of the drawing room open and shut with a dry click of finality, she threw herself sideways on the bed, cradling her face in her crossed arms. She knew that Rudi used her, manipulated her moods and responses, playing her like a goddamn yoyo, but there was little bitterness in her reflections because she knew his private hells.

But it was hard. Hard to be thirty-three and charged with sexual excitement and still have to compete for Rudi’s love with an eight-year-old child who had died almost thirty years ago. Ilana. She was burned into his soul like a brand. He was chained to her memory.

Well, she’d keep trying, get herself beautifully turned out, and when he came back from the park, they’d go to 21 for dinner.

She sat up smiling and poured herself a glass of wine. They’d have champagne with a splash of vodka and maybe Little Neck clams and prime rib.

And then they’d come back here and be so good to each other. .

In the East Eighties, between Park Avenue and Lexington, a street vendor sold pretzels and cones of shaved ice liberally drenched with sweet fruited syrups.

The “clock” in Gus Soltik’s head told him there was time. So he bought one of the paper cones of sweet ice, extending his hand and letting the vendor pick the proper coins from his rough palm.

A police car cruised smoothly past the vendor, slowing with the rush-hour traffic.

The patrolman in the passenger seat was a uniformed officer in his forties, Joe Smegelski, a veteran with smoothly tanned features and calm blue eyes.

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” he said quietly, and tapped his partner on the arm. “Pull over to the curb, Abe. Take it nice and slow.”

“What’s up?”

“Just do what I tell you. Nice and easy.” Smegelski opened the glove compartment, pulled out the police artist’s Xeroxed sketch of the Juggler.

“Could be this character’s back there on the southwest corner of Lex and Eighty-third. Check your mirror.”

Abe angled the squad car to the curb and at the same time glanced up at the rear-vision mirror.

“Let’s pick him up,” Smegelski said. “Take the north side of the street; I’ll take the south. Don’t look at him. Play it like it’s coffee-break time.”

The policemen left their squad car and sauntered along opposite sidewalks on a course that would bring them to the hulking figure who resembled the sketch artist’s portrait of the Juggler.

But at this moment, with the interval of savage rapture so close to culmination, Gus Soltik’s instincts were as alert and sensitive as a jackal in the terrain of its predators.

Mingling casually with the normal flow of pedestrians, the policemen were converging casually on him, and when Gus Soltik saw them and sensed their deliberate lack of interest in him, alarm bells clamored through his nervous system. It was like that terrible night in the basement when the big man and the man with a scar had wanted to hurt him. .

Gus Soltik turned and bolted south into Lexington Avenue and in his terrified flight collided with a pair of window-shoppers and knocked them sprawling onto the sidewalk.

“Police! Halt!” Smegelski yelled, and drawing his gun, he sprinted to the intersection with Abe close behind him. They ran along the sidewalk twenty or twenty-five yards behind the Juggler, unable to risk a shot because of the crowds.

Gus Soltik plunged from their view into an alley, and by the time the officers reached this narrow passage he was already straddling a ten-foot brick fence.

“Freeze!” Smegelski shouted at him, but the huge man leaped from sight a split second before shots from Smegelski and Abe’s police specials blasted splinters and explosions of red dust from the brick wall.