Melancholy Baby

30

Ike Rosen’s home and office was in a nice-looking brownstone on 92nd Street just west of Broadway. I didn’t know what he looked like, so I rang his bell every time a man entered the building. At a quarter to twelve, I rang the super’s bell. He came to the front door and talked to me outside on the top step.

“I’m with Lexington Insurance Company,” I said. “I have a claim settlement check for someone named Isaac Rosen at this address.”

“You want me to hold it?” the super said.

“Can’t,” I said. “I have to hand it to him. And I have to get his signature. Do you know where he is?”

“Probably out chasing ambulances,” the super said. “Nice-looking babe like you. You shouldn’t be hustling insurance payments.”

“Gotta work,” I said. “Can you tell me what Mr. Rosen looks like?”

“You don’t have to work,” the super said. He had thick black eyebrows and receding hair. His green work shirt was buttoned to the neck. “You should have a sugar daddy.”

“It’s hard to find one I like,” I said.

The super thought about that for a minute. Then he nodded.

“Yeah, you right. Never thought about liking them.”

“Rosen?” I said.

“Fat guy. Short. Red face. Hair’s kind of thin. Always wears double-breasted suit, you know. Very natty. Suits always dark.”

“Is he fat, fat?” I said.

“Fat, fat, fat,” the super said.

“Thanks,” I said.

“I see him, I tell him you looking,” he said.

I nodded and went back down the stairs and across the street. At 1:45, a very fat man in a dark blue double-breasted suit came down the street, eating some sort of drippy sandwich. He walked leaning forward so whatever was leaking out of the sandwich wouldn’t get on his shirt front. Given his size, the suit fit him well. With it, he was wearing a starched white shirt with a Windsor collar and a pale blue silk tie. A white silk handkerchief spilled dashingly out of his breast pocket.

“Mr. Rosen?” I said.

“Well, well,” he said. “My day’s looking up.”

“I’d like to talk with you, if I may.”

“Looking way up,” Rosen said. “My place or yours.”

He had longish white hair. His pink face was clean-shaven and healthy-looking. He smelled of cologne, and maybe a little of bourbon. His hands were small, and he wore a diamond pinkie ring. His feet, in wingtipped black tasseled loafers, looked too small for him.

“We could sit right on your front steps,” I said, “and talk while you finish your sandwich.”

“We could,” he said. “Or we could go up to my place and talk, over a couple of drinks.”

I smiled at him.

“The steps are fine,” I said.

He shrugged. I tucked my skirt under me and sat on the top steps of the brownstone. He sat beside me. He had no trouble getting down. Except that he was fat, he didn’t seem fat. He leaned forward and carefully took another bite of his sandwich.

“Pork barbecue,” he said. “Saloon on the corner sells it.”

“It looks good,” I said.

“Happy to take you up there and buy you some,” Rosen said.

“No thanks,” I said. “Do you know Lewis Karp?”

“Karp?”

“In Boston,” I said.

“Lew Karp,” he said as if he were thinking.

“The answer is yes,” I said. “I know you know him.”

“Then why did you ask?”

“Standard investigative procedure.”

“You a cop?”

“Not anymore,” I said. “You sent an attorney to see him.”

He was looking at my knees. The hem had slipped back a little. I made no effort to adjust it. In certain circumstances, that was also standard investigative procedure.

“You used to be a cop,” he said. “What are you now? Insurance? Private?”

“Private,” I said.

He finished his sandwich and wiped his mouth and hands carefully on a napkin, which he then dropped to the sidewalk. He leaned over and patted my bare knee.

He said, “How much you want the information, hon?”

“So there is information?” I said.

“There might be,” he said. “Lemme make a suggestion. We go upstairs to my place. I break out a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. We have a couple over ice. We talk. We see what develops. Huh?”

I thought about it. How much was I willing to let him paw me to find out what I wanted to know? Not much. But he didn’t have to know that until the pawing started. I tried to look titillated.

“Well, you certainly are direct.” I said.

He stood and carefully shook his cuffs down over his shoe tops.

“Life’s too short,” he said. “Let’s continue this upstairs.”

“I guess that would be okay,” I said.

He smiled at me and unlocked the front door.

He lived one flight up in a small, very neat apartment, which smelled equally of cologne and bourbon. I sat on a straight chair next to the fireplace, with my knees together and my purse in my lap, while he made me a drink. I was working on a prim but excited demeanor. He handed me the drink and went and sat on the sofa. The drink was in a nice, thick lowball glass.

“Come on over here,” he said. “Easier to talk if we’re side by side, don’t you think?”

“I really need to know that lawyer’s name,” I said.

He looked at my knees some more, and touched his lower lip with the tip of his tongue. I was wearing my camel’s hair coat, which was unbuttoned.

“We can talk about him in a while,” he said. “Drink a little of that Jack Daniel’s. Good Tennessee whiskey.”

I pretended to sip. I wasn’t much of a bourbon drinker, and I also had no way to know what else was in the drink.

“That’s the way,” he said. “Come on over here.”

I smiled.

“If you expect me to show you mine,” I said, “you’ve got to show me yours.”

“Show you...?”

“Who was the lawyer you sent to see Lewis Karp.”

“I tell you and you’ll come sit beside me?”

I smiled and tried to bat my eyes. I think I just blinked them.

“You won’t have to go all the way,” he said. “We could, you know, just do a little touching.”

He drank half his bourbon.

“That doesn’t sound too bad,” I said.

He grinned.

“I don’t have to get on top of you or anything. I know I’d crush you.”

“Touching sounds nice,” I said.

He grinned and patted the couch beside him.

“Sit here, baby.”

“So, who was that lawyer?” I said.

“Oh, hell,” he said. “Pete Franklin.”

“Short for Peter?”

“Peter Winslow Franklin. Come on and sit down now.”

“And what if we, you know, do whatever, and I find out afterwards you were lying?”

“Jesus Christ,” he said.

He took a long, slim wallet out of his inside coat pocket, and opened it and took out a business card, and held it out to me. I leaned forward and took it and read it. It read Peter W. Franklin, and the firm’s name: Harrop and Moriarty. And a midtown Manhattan address.

“Here’s his damn card. Now come over here and put that cute ass down beside mine and let’s get things going.”

I put the card in my side pocket and stood.

“Thanks for the drink,” I said.

“What the fuck are you doing?” he said.

“I strung you along,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

“You fucking bitch,” he said.

He stood and moved in front of the apartment door.

“You lying fucking bitch,” he said.

I almost felt bad for him.

“I’m going now,” I said.

“The fuck you are,” he said. “We had a deal.”

“Step out of the way,” I said.

I still had the drink in my left hand.

“You ain’t leaving, without you doing a few things like you promised.”

I sighed. There was no reason to mess with it. I threw my drink, glass and all, into his face. The rim of the glass caught him on the bridge of the nose and drew blood. He turned his head away and tried to wipe the bourbon out of his eyes, and I took a leather sap out of my right-hand coat pocket and hit him hard behind the left knee. It made the knee buckle, and he fell sideways. He started to cry.

“Bitches, you’re all bitches, all of you, bitch...”

I stepped past him and opened the door and went on down the stairs to the street. I felt kind of bad.