The Best American Mystery Stories 2008

Rupert Holmes The Monks of the Abbey Victoria

From Dead Man’s Hand

Heads had been known to roll in the RCA Building like cabbages in a coleslaw factory. The maroon hallway carpet on the twenty-first floor often doubled as conveyor belt to the waiting express elevator, which was always eager to facilitate an executive’s plummet back down to the street. I’d hardly been at the network a month when I found my own fair-haired cranium poised fetchingly on the chopping block. But at least I didn’t lack for company.

“This memo in my hand.”

Ken Compton, Vice-President of Programming but second to no network chieftain in his wrath, flourished the document for the four of us to see. The four of us were attorney Shepard Spitz of Practices and Standards, Matty Dancer from Variety and Specials, Harv Braverman in Public Relations, and myself, Dale Winslow, from the catchall hopper dubbed “Broadcasting.” As department heads, we formed the quartet that reported directly to Compton, with News, Sports, and Original Programming having their own hierarchy within both the network and the building. I’d been brought on board to achieve the goal of broadcasting in compatible color from sign-on right up through “Sermonette.” Even the National Anthem and the test pattern were going to be in color.

“This memo in my hand,” Compton reiterated. “It’s worth more to our enemy up the block than the sum total of your lifetime incomes, including retirement benefits. That’s without even factoring in the possibility that one of you won’t be working here tomorrow.”

We sat across his desk, four boarding-school students caught smoking behind the sports-equipment shed.

“Let me tell you how ultra hush-hush this memo was.” He leaned forward as if betraying troop locations in Korea. “I typed it myself.”

There could be no clearer proof of how seriously Ken Compton feared intranetwork espionage than that he would endure the humiliation of sitting at his secretary’s desk to hunt and peck on her electric typewriter. He’d had this fixation since Ted Thissel, my immediate predecessor, had been suspected of selling the previous season’s fall schedule to CBS, forcing Compton to relocate some audience favorites to unfamiliar time slots, a last-minute move which many thought had cost us dearly in the ratings.

“Do you know where I found this memo?” he asked. “Let me tell you where I found this memo. Propped behind a bottle of Vitalis above the sink in the executive washroom. If I hadn’t been the next one in there, this document could have been filched by the cleaning lady and sold to those vipers at CBS.”

The image of our Mrs. Dawkins sitting patiently in William Paley’s outer office, bucket and mop at her side, was the only thing amusing about the moment.

“Spitz, I gave it to you first. Who had it last?”

I knew the answer to this question and sorely wished I didn’t. The memo — which listed by title the films we’d acquired from Paramount that we planned to run as specials against our rivals’ strongest shows — had been addressed to the four of us only, and Compton had intentionally made no carbons or photostats. We were each to read the memo, check off our own name, and hand it to one of the others. The last to read it was to return it personally to Compton.

Harv Braverman’s name was the only one that hadn’t been checked when I’d given the memo to him, but now it was as ticked off as Compton was with us. I looked at Harv, who was peering about the office as if the identity of this incredibly careless executive was an enthralling enigma to him. I turned back to discover the others staring at me. After all, I was the new fellow on the block, a refugee from Ogilvy and Mather. The others were lifetime NBC men. Their blood ran peacock blue.

Spitz said, correctly, that there was no way for him to know. Matty Dancer said he couldn’t remember, as did the blameworthy Braverman, who then turned my way with raised eyebrows.

I could have tried to exonerate myself but, being ridiculously new at the network, I thought it politic not to state my case at Braverman’s expense. I hadn’t even been assigned a secretary yet, and my office still contained the embarrassing scent of fresh paint.

“I have to be honest,” I said, which I thought was as good a way as any to begin a lie. “I’ve been dispatching so many memos since coming aboard that I can’t recall where I was in this particular sequence of events. If it’s any help, I’m strictly a Brylcreem guy.”

Our uniform dim-wittedness left Compton with nothing to tango or tangle with. “Honor among thieves. Fine. Then I’ll deal with you like I’m Ali Baba. Here’s our fall schedule.”

He tossed it onto his desk blotter. We hadn’t expected to see it for at least two more weeks. Reflexively, Dancer reached for it, and Compton slapped at his hand. You heard me. He slapped at his hand.

Compton transferred the memo to a lower drawer and locked it with a little key. “So here’s how it works. If you want to consult the schedule, you come in this room, you ask me for the specific information you want, I will look it up and tell you. Until then, no one sees it, holds it, or gets a copy of it. Not my secretary, and not you four.”

I got the feeling we were being listed in order of trust.

“Mighty white of you, Winslow,” Braverman mumbled in the hall as he tucked neat pinches of cherry blend tobacco into his briar pipe. The stem made little clacking noises as it rolled against his side teeth. “Not everyone in your position would have kept mum. As new man here, suspicion was likely to fall on you first.”

I said something about the time I’d sent a line drive through Mr. Overmeyer’s window and been finked on by Ricky Yatto, when it would have cost him nothing to cover for me.

Braverman offered in stumbling fashion, “This Saturday. A little shindig me and the missus throw each year. Cocktails, canapés, more cocktails, sit-down barbeque. Been meaning to invite you. You’re married, I’ve heard?”

“Fourteen years, three months, two weeks,” I joked, a stock line that I updated every now and then.

It evoked an understanding laugh from Braverman. “Ever get time off for good behavior?”

“Not a chance.” I smiled.

“Donna at Reception will be sad to hear that,” he said.

This statement instantly made Braverman one of the most interesting people I’d ever met. “What do you mean?” I asked, trying to sound casual about Donna at Reception, who bore a passing resemblance to starlet Joi Lansing in every department. This bears repeating. Every department.

“Didn’t you know?” he asked. “She’s been waving semaphore signals at you since you started here.”

I smiled. “She’ll lose her enthusiasm when she finds out I’m married.”

Braverman lowered his voice. “I already broke the news to her, buddy boy, and her reaction was ‘What else is new?’ ”

I couldn’t help looking down the hallway, where Donna at Reception was stationed behind a low-cut reception desk. She smiled my way, then arched her back and stretched her arms above her head. I expected the Sweater Police on the scene any moment to charge her with assaulting an angora.

“I just invited her to my party,” Braverman added. “You know what she said?”

“What?”

“She said she’d come stag and asked if you’d be there, too.”

“Joanie,” I said to my wife as she changed for the party early that Saturday evening, “if you’re really feeling under the weather, I’ll understand if you want to stay home.”

She was wearing a navy blue strapless cocktail dress and applying roll-on deodorant that I hoped would not glisten so much by the time we got to the party. “I didn’t say I was feeling under the weather,” she corrected. “I said I was exhausted from shopping. It’s Saturday night. I wouldn’t think of you going without me.”

Braverman was a hi-fi buff and had built himself a great rig. He was putting it through its paces with one of those stereo demonstration disks, Provocative Percussion or Persistent Percussion or something. Braverman centered me and kept pointing from the right to the left as bongos or claves would ping-pong to either speaker, while an accordion throbbed “Misirlou” straight down the middle.

He and his wife, Linda, were serving gimlets, with the color and taste of a Charms lime lollipop but one hell of a kick. Braverman revealed himself to be some kind of barbeque nut, complete with one of those aprons that proclaimed “I’m the chef!” With his straight briar pipe clenched between his teeth, the only thing he said to anyone for an hour was “Too rare for you?”

Donna from Reception was wearing a tight canary yellow dress that had undoubtedly brought a pleased smile to her lips when she first saw it in the changing-room mirror at Saks. Every time I looked her way, she was already looking at me. She made impatient little arcs with her eyes, urging me to step out onto Harv’s patio to chat with her, for pity’s sake, but Joanie intercepted one of Donna’s glances and instantly asked to be introduced to my closest associates at NBC. I was sure she didn’t consider Donna to be one of my closest associates, nor did I want her to.

Harv, Shepard Spitz, and Matty Dancer couldn’t have been more gracious to my wife, clearly going out of their way to make her feel accepted within the NBC community. Her merest quip regaled them, and she flushed with pleasure at their attention and approval.

While Braverman was otherwise doubled up with laughter at what I thought was a fairly commonplace observation on Joanie’s part, he managed to catch my eye and redirect my attention to the sight of Donna leaving the party. She had apparently phoned for Rye Taxi to take her back to Manhattan. As she left, she gave me the most eloquent shrug, causing her cleavage to speak volumes.

Round about ten thirty, Harv signaled to me from the doorway of his den. It was a room I would have treasured, centered around my idea of rustic: a wide stack of hickory logs ablaze in a natural stone fireplace with an Emmy on the mantel above it.

Braverman smoothly locked the door from the inside. Turning, I discovered that Dancer and Spitz were already seated, holding big-fisted scotches on the rocks. There was the stilled air of ceremony in the room.

“We’ve been impressed with you, Dale, virtually since the moment you started,” said Dancer.

“And we’ve agreed to extend you an offer.” Spitz used his best attorney voice. “Braverman has nominated you into the Order of the Monks of the Abbey Victoria.”

Dancer chimed in, “We think it’s a whale of an idea, and we’ve made it unanimous.”

“I have no idea what to say,” I said appropriately, since I had no idea what they were talking about. I thought it wise to add, “I’m very honored, of course.”

Harv Braverman smiled and began to fill his pipe. “You of course have never heard of our Order, and we like it that way. Membership is offered only to those who have displayed discretion and proven themselves trustworthy. One unexpected demise and another member’s retirement had brought our membership down to four. Then Thissel got the boot, and we three were all that was left. Until you showed us this week that you have what it takes.”

Dancer handed me a scotch identical to his own. “Look, we’ll explain it all to you at the initiation ceremony. Can you get free and clear of your wife this coming Monday night?”

They saw the hesitation on my face.

“Tell her we’ve asked you to join our weekly poker game,” Spitz advised. “You won’t be lying.”

“American men still possess certain inalienable rights, even as we depart the Fabulous Fifties,” asserted Dancer. “Our wives have their mah-jongg nights, bridge clubs, and canasta. In return, an unwritten law has been left on the books that married men like ourselves are allowed to play poker one night a week, excluding Friday through Sunday.”

Dancer advised, “You might let her know the stakes are penny ante. Nickel a chip.”

“Joanie, the guys want me to get together with them for their weekly poker night,” I said as I hung my suit on the overnight valet in our bedroom.

To my surprise, Joanie wasn’t taken aback. “Oh, yes. Linda Spitz was telling me about it. Molly Dancer, too.” She was in the bathroom, shedding her strapless cocktail dress in an efficient manner, clearly transmitting that tonight was not the night. “It’s on Mondays?”

“I’m lousy at poker,” I said.

“They might be insulted if you turn them down,” Joanie cautioned. “I know you don’t like playing office politics, Dale, but it’s NBC, after all.”

The Abbey Victoria was that dowdy one-star Michelin hotel you’d find in Chartres or Rouen, where you were expected to leave your passport with the front desk and the restaurant would close by nine. Except that somehow this prim, bourgeois hotel had drifted off to sea and foundered upon the corner of Fifty-first and Seventh in midtown Manhattan. You’d hardly notice it alongside the gleaming Americana (which to me had always looked like the UN with a coat of whitewash). The Shabby Abbey, as some called it, was crammed full of chambers with little twin beds that had been purchased in a time when everyone was shorter and two businessmen found nothing odd about sharing a room to halve their expenses.

A number of the Abbey’s bedrooms had adjoining parlors so that they could be rented as suites. But if the Abbey wasn’t full (and these days it never was), you could book the drawing room alone. Apparently, parlor room 622, situated between bedrooms 620 and 624, was regularly reserved on Monday nights by the Order of the Monks of the Abbey Victoria.

The door swung open and Dancer greeted me. He’d changed since work into a blue turtleneck and tan chinos. He looked at his watch.

“Seven-oh-six,” he noted. Dancer had never struck me as the punctilious type, but my time of arrival seemed to please him. “You’re the first — other than me, of course.”

A table from room service had been wheeled into 622, its two hinged leaves locked in the up position. A green felt cloth served as cover to the now-circular table. Presumably, ours was not the first poker game ever to have been played at the Abbey. Alongside a few red-backed Bicycle decks, still sealed, were colored plastic chips neatly nested in a circular caddy, the kind you’d see in a Sears Roebuck catalog.

“What beer do you like?” Dancer indicated a pewter bucket filled with crushed ice and a modest supply of bottled beer. Pilsner glasses were inverted alongside the bucket. He inventoried the supply. “We have Piels, Schlitz, Knickerbocker, and Miller.”

I wasn’t much for beer, but when in Rome. “Miller,” I opted.

“The Champagne of Bottled Beers,” he affirmed. So far the conversation was scintillating. There was a knock at the door and he again looked at his watch. “Seven-ten, and my money says that will be Shep.”

If there was anyone who did not resemble a “Shep,” it was the fellow in the doorway, attorney Shepard Spitz, still in his three-piece suit. He entered, giving no indication he might remove his jacket or loosen his tie.

“I want you to know I turned down ringside seats at the Garden to do this,” he complained without preamble. “Where’s Harv?”

“I’m here,” said Braverman, entering right behind him. “Don’t make it sound like such a chore, Shepard. This is a big night for Dale. For all of us.”

Spitz sat himself at the circular table. “Sorry, Winslow. Welcome to the fold.”

“And fold-wise” — Braverman used his best ad-agency parlance — “let’s hope you have the decency to fold once or twice when there’s a big pot, right? Who’s dealing?”

“Host is always dealer,” said Dancer, sliding into a vacant chair. “You know that full well, Harv, and I note that whenever you’ve been host, you win more hands. Just a comment.” He broke the seal of the blue tax stamp on a Bicycle deck. “The game is straight poker, brethren. No improvements, wrinkles, exceptions, or exclusions, and nothing is wild. I will now accept a five-dollar offertory from all members of the congregation in return for chips.”

We each tossed a bill his way. As he slid our chips toward us, he cautioned, “For the benefit of Brother Dale, let me remind you that the Monks of the Abbey Victoria observe a vow of silence about current work and current events, including sports, motion pictures, TV shows, and hit records. Our purpose is to shrug away the world that is too much with us, to speak only of our experiences in the past and the lessons we may have learned from these experiences. Ante up, fellow Monks.”

It seemed an odd set of restrictions on conversation. And considering that the purported reason for our get-together was to have a pleasant time, the evening passed fitfully, as if we were all fulfilling some sort of obligation. Surely life was too short to spend every Monday night this way.

“Don’t you think you’ve had enough?” asked Spitz as I tried to improve my spirits by reaching for a second beer.

I looked at him in bewilderment. “I’ve only had the one.”

Spitz nodded at the others’ glasses, from which only a few token sips had been taken. “Best to keep your wits about you. Poker requires a clear head, especially when the stakes are high.”

I took a glance at the current pot, which totaled about eighty cents and was unlikely to achieve a dollar, but the others nodded silent assent. I forsook the beer.

“Hey, did you see the outfit Donna was wearing today?” ventured Harv.

“Not permitted,” Dancer said quietly. He seemed to take his role as chairman seriously.

“Sorry,” Harv muttered. “Can I talk about her in general?”

Dancer raised the pot another nickel as he pondered the question. “For the moment, I’ll allow some general discussion,” he ruled.

“Sometimes I could swear she’s not wearing a bra.”

“Of course she wears a bra,” said Spitz. “Call.”

“But today, when she was leaning over, in that peasant blouse—”

“Not permitted,” Dancer said. “Specific to time. Let’s move off this general topic, anyway. It’s fraught with difficulty. Anyone hungry?”

I hadn’t had dinner and said as much. The others agreed that food was in order. I walked to the phone. “I assume room service is still open? It’s not even ten.”

Dancer shook his head. “We don’t like the room service here, except for beer and peanuts. Food’s lousy. And the kitchen’s had citations from the Department of Health. Who wants Chinese?”

There was some grousing about which Chinese restaurant in the immediate neighborhood was best. Harv was big on Bill Hong’s, whereas Spitz said he’d been going to the New Bamboo Palace, a place I didn’t know myself, since the night of his high-school prom in Amityville. Matty Dancer insisted Ho-Ho was the finest and Canton Village the cheapest, at least in midtown. I suggested the one I considered classiest: China Song at 54th and Broadway.

The discussion stopped dead. “We can’t go to China Song, Dale,” Braverman said quietly. “That’s CBS territory. It’s wedged in between Studio 50 and Studio 52. They’ve got paintings of Garry Moore and Durward Kirby hanging over the bar, for chrissake. If Ken Compton sees any of us at China Song, he’ll think we’ve gone over to the other side. We can’t go to China Song, Dale. Even for takeout.”

Apparently, the Abbey Victoria had a policy against food deliveries from the outside, but they allowed guests to bring food in. So Spitz took down our order and volunteered to pick it up for us at the New Bamboo Palace. Braverman said he’d accompany him, which left Dancer and me alone.

It was strange to find myself sitting late at night in a frilly little hotel room with Matty Dancer, a man I barely knew. “It’s nice to have you for company, Dale,” he commented and started to tidy up, cleaning out the four little blue glass Abbey Victoria ashtrays that rested by our packs of cigarettes and Braverman’s pipe. “We alternate as hosts each week, but it seems as if every time it’s my turn, the others go out for food, leaving me to mind the roost. Of course, I’m the neat one.”

I nodded slowly, hoping this was as far as Dancer was going to bare his breast to me. He was married, of course, and his wife, Molly, was lovely. Still, it’s a funny world.

“How long have you been married, Dale?” he asked, and I gave him the same stock answer I’d given Braverman, adding a few days to the total. He nodded solemnly. “These Monday nights are very important to my marriage, I have to tell you. They provide me with a much-needed... interruption. The same way our viewers sometimes look forward to a commercial, so they can get some ice cream from the freezer, or see if the kids have turned out their lights, or take a leak. Even Shakespeare had intermissions, for God’s sake. So should marriage. Any good, healthy, sound marriage. You know?”

The phone rang, a long “hotel ring” via the switchboard, and he picked it up. “Yeah. Okay, I’ll ask him.” He turned to me. “It’s Harv, he’s calling from the New Bamboo Palace. He can’t remember if you wanted almond gai ding or moo goo gai pan.”

I had opted for the former and said so.

In theory, I agreed with the case Dancer was making for a once-weekly break from connubial “togetherness,” as was the newly coined term for marital constancy. But if the offered respite was four sullen men playing dreary nickel-and-dime poker and taking little sips on ever-flattening beer while eating one from Column A, I did not see this as the ideal alternative.

Spitz and Braverman returned with two brown-paper bags. We made no shared feast, but ate our individual orders, each from his own white cardboard box, maintaining the relative silence of those who find the food more interesting than the conversation.

Blessedly, midnight arrived at last. Harv commuted from Rye by car and both Spitz and Dancer lived in Manhattan, but I relied on the New York Central to get me home. So I had no problem rising to my feet and saying, “Well, guys, it’s been a great night, but I have to catch the 12:35 to Pelham.”

“Sit down, Dale,” Spitz said gravely. “You’ve not been installed or initiated.”

I could feel the temperature in the room drop by a good ten degrees.

Spitz looked at the others. “Are we ready?”

Dancer and Braverman nodded assent and turned their chairs to face me. Spitz, who had courtroom experience, opened: “Dale. Tell us what we did tonight.”

I looked around the room. “Uh... we played poker.”

Spitz shook his head slowly. “No, Dale, don’t disappoint me. I want you to give us a detailed account of what we did tonight. For example, what time did you get here?”

I remembered Dancer’s greeting when I’d first walked in. Perhaps he’d been so specific about my arrival time for the very purpose of this oral exam. “Seven-oh-six.”

“Who came next?”

“You. Followed by Harv.”

“What brand of beer did each of us drink?”

I pride myself on having above-average recall and rarely came up empty-handed during the interrogation. I accurately synopsized the run at the table, with Dancer playing aggressively and (I said in all candor) foolishly. Spitz had been conservative, folding his hand often; thus, when he did stay in, we assumed he had the goods. This ultimately cost him, as we didn’t allow big pots to build when he stood by his cards. I’d played inconsistently, pushing a few weak hands farther than I should have and not riding a trio of sixes as far as I might. The most impressive winning hand had been Braverman’s. He had broken up a pair of eights in successful search of an inside straight and had gone on to be the big winner for the night, apologizing after each victory. He would be departing nearly ten dollars richer than he’d started.

As for conversation, I had little problem reconstructing the general thrust of our discourse. Past histories had come into play, Spitz recounting his years as a civil-defense attorney, Braverman the winning of the Colgate Toothpaste account by some fairly devious means, Dancer his prior career as a producer of off-Broadway revues. We’d recalled college days. Braverman was Princeton orange and black, Spitz had been Fordham Law, Dancer boasted of being kicked out of several Ivy League schools, and I tried to make the most of my class standing when I graduated from Michigan State.

As I recapped the convoluted path of our unmemorable exchanges in such detail that it alarmed me (surely there was something more noteworthy to occupy the vacancy between my ears), I noticed knowing glances cast among my associates. I wrapped up with “Harv, you accompanied Shepard to his favorite, the New Bamboo Palace, at something like nine forty-five—”

“Forty-two, but who’s counting?” said Braverman.

Increasingly peeved, I rattled off, “You brought back egg rolls for three, shrimp toast for Harv, who also ordered sweet and sour pork, Matty had lung har gai pan, Shepard had steak kew, and I had the almond gai ding. Matty and Harv had pork fried rice, I had white, Shepard didn’t eat his, now may I please ask what this inquisition is in aid of?”

Dancer stood and ceremoniously raised his pilsner. “Gentlemen, I believe we have ourselves a brother. Welcome, Frère Dale.”

“Frère Dale,” echoed Braverman and Spitz.

Dancer clapped an arm around my shoulders. “I suppose we must have you pretty confused. Sorry about that. We’ll be delighted to enlighten, but first we need your word as a fellow Monk of the Abbey Victoria not to disclose on pain of death what we are about to tell you. Not to NBC, to your neighbors... not even to your wife.”

“I know how to keep a secret,” I said.

“You showed us that the other day,” acknowledged Braverman.

Dancer nodded. “So we’ve had ourselves a pleasant evening” — he looked at the others and grimaced — “all right, let’s say we’ve had ourselves a harmless evening, consisting of poker, beer, Chinese food, and some of the most tedious conversation any of us have ever endured, most of which you’ve just now recounted in impressive detail. A typical weekly edition of our informal men’s club. And now, Brother Dale, I am pleased to inform you it is very likely we will never assemble like this again.”

Spitz added, “Until such time as necessity dictates. Hopefully, not for months to come.”

“Amen, Brother,” murmured Braverman.

I looked at their serene expressions. “I don’t understand—”

“We won’t reconvene until we have a need to,” Dancer explained. “You see, Dale, the reason we got together tonight was so that all of us, including you, could identically describe exactly what transpired this evening, with — what’s the word, Spitz?”

“Versimilitude.”

“For what purpose?” I asked.

“Freedom,” said Dancer. “We’re all of us married, tethered, seven days a week every week of the year. However, as members of the Order of the Monks of the Abbey Victoria, we get one gorgeous night each week to do whatever we wish.”

Spitz elaborated. “Meaning, Winslow, that we are the poker club that does not play poker. Or even convene. We go our own way, free from wives, neighbors, and each other, to pursue whatever secret pursuits spring to mind.”

“Not to say,” rushed in Harv, “that we do something bad on that one day a week.”

“Perish the thought,” said Dancer. “It might be that Spitz here feels like hanging around the Shandon Star all night to watch the Dodgers. On that same evening, maybe I opt to see a Mamie Van Doren feature at the Trans-Lux that my wife doesn’t approve of, ogling the screen in pleasant solitude.”

Braverman lit his pipe. “It’s the adult version of playing hooky, Dale. Every Monday night from here on in, we all do whatever we like without having to account to anyone, even if it’s as harmless a distraction as going back to the old neighborhood to have a chocolate malt while reading a comic book. Simple, innocent pleasures.”

There was a significant pause. Then Braverman added, “Or you can do something bad.”

“Very bad,” Dancer instantly affirmed with a wicked grin. “Very bad indeed.” I had the impression he had specific images in his mind, and I was glad I couldn’t see them for myself.

“What does ‘bad’ really mean, after all?” Spitz waxed philosophically. “A life without experience is a life hardly lived.” Then he glared at the room. “But what we do on our Mondays is nobody’s business. Correct, gentleman? Even amongst ourselves.”

“Even amongst ourselves,” Dancer repeated, clearly for my benefit. “As far as any of us are concerned, we are all here every Monday, playing poker. If anyone significant in our lives happens to ask us how the evening went, we will merely try to do as admirable a job as Brother Dale just did in recounting whatever details — very real details, to be sure — are needed. Thus, should our wives or others compare our stories, they will jibe harmoniously.”

I tried to understand what they were telling me. “So we’re supplying each other with an” — I couldn’t think of another word — “alibi?”

Spitz fidgeted. “The term ‘alibi’ would imply that one or more of us might need one, because we had done something illegal. Think, rather, of the Monks of the Abbey Victoria as a cover story, and that we spend our Mondays... under cover.”

“So how does it work?” I asked, already wondering how I might occupy myself next Monday evening.

Spitz said, “We don’t meet here again until we have to. The innocuous events of this evening will serve as what transpires here every Monday until one of us is obliged to recount the details to another person, in which case we will reluctantly reconvene to create a different real evening to describe.”

Dancer was moving the used glassware to the ice-bucket tray. “Each week, one of us mans this outpost. Today was my turn, next week is” — he mentally went through the alphabet — “is Shepard, then you, Winslow, then Harv, and then it’s back to me.”

“And what do I do when it’s my turn?”

“The same thing we all do,” Matty Dancer said. “You check in for the four of us, order up some beer and a card table, and sit here alone for the rest of the night. You watch TV or read a book, but you must stay here. Mid-evening, the three remaining members phone in, just like Shepard did from the Chinese restaurant, to make sure the coast is clear. If one of our wives has called the hotel, either because of an emergency, an errand, or simply to check up on us, that week’s sentry will tell them their spouse is out getting food for the others. When that husband checks in at mid-evening, the sentry advises him to call his wife as soon as possible. We all check in a second time at midnight, just in case.”

Harv chimed in, “If anyone presses us about what we did, what we discussed, how the poker game went, we just describe the last time we were together. That’s why we never discuss current events, TV, movies, things that might date our evening. Under ideal circumstances, we may not have to meet more than once or twice a year.”

“That’s fine with me,” Spitz murmured.

“If you like, I’ll help you on your first shift as sentry,” Dancer offered as he and I left Room 622 and walked to the elevators. Braverman and Spitz had already left, staggering our departures to draw less attention to ourselves.

“But won’t that mean you’ll lose out on one of your Mondays?” I asked.

He looked almost embarrassed. “Oh, I’m afraid I don’t have any really exciting prospects at the present. Not like some of us.” He pushed the elevator button. “Our receptionist Donna, for example. She likes you, damn your eyes.”

“You work too hard, Mr. Winslow,” Donna said that Friday. She’d volunteered to bring me a cup of coffee before she left for the night, and I’d had no problem accepting her gracious offer.

“Call me Dale, please,” I requested. “After all, I call you Donna.”

“But you don’t,” she said.

“Don’t what?” I asked.

“Call me.” She set the cup on my desk, accidentally brushing the right side of my body. “My number’s in the book, you know.”

“And what would we talk about?” Oh, I was enjoying this.

“About where you might want to take me for dinner after we go to the planetarium.”

“You’re interested in astronomy?” I asked.

“I’m interested in dark places. On a first date, the planetarium is as far as I go.”

I was certain if I asked how far she went on a third date, I’d get yet another answer I’d never forget, but my conscience nagged at me almost as much as Joanie does when I’m not helping her around the house. I indicated my wedding ring, which suddenly weighed a ton.

“I’m married,” I heard myself say.

Someone knocked at my office door and opened it without waiting for my response. I would have bitten his head off if he hadn’t chosen to be Ken Compton.

“Winslow, am I hallucinating, or is there simply no ethical behavior on this avenue anymore? You will not believe who was just coming on to me, and I mean coming on strong.”

Reflexively I looked at Donna, but Compton answered his own question. “Those little worms at CBS. Paley’s man Denham. Inquiring if I wouldn’t be happier with them, maybe I could do a little better for myself there. Insult to my intelligence and ego. It’s the damn schedule they want, that’s all. They know we’ve got them beat this season. If you get any calls from anyone at CBS, I want you to put them directly through to me. That’s official, got it?”

A second later, Donna and I were alone again. “Where were we?” she asked.

Compton’s exit seemed to trigger her need to fidget with the buttons on her blouse, and I was fighting a similar urge. “I’m afraid I was reminding you I’m married,” I reprised.

“I know,” she said. “So many people in this country are. It must be the reason for the skyrocketing divorce rate.”

Give me credit. At least I was no longer a foolhardy kid who couldn’t foresee an absolute disaster in the making. At least I now had enough willpower to resist temptation, no matter how appealingly it was offered.

“You doing anything Monday night?” I asked.

Joanie shouted to me through the bathroom door, “How much longer are you going to be using the shower? My makeup’s in there.”

“Help yourself!” I called out cheerfully, being in a better mood than I am most Monday mornings.

As she entered, she turned her head away so as not to see me through the translucent shower curtain. It wasn’t as if I were deformed or something, I was just naked.

“Where’s my makeup mirror?” she asked.

“Sorry, I was using it,” I apologized. “I was shaving in the shower. I read somewhere you get a much smoother shave that way.” I turned off the water, wrapped a towel around my waist, handed the magnifying mirror to her, and reached for the bottle of Aqua Velva I’d bought on Sunday, ladling its contents onto my face.

“Take it easy with that stuff,” she said. “It’s expensive.”

“Sorry yet again. I’ll try to defray the expense by winning a few big hands tonight.”

“It might be more diplomatic to come home on the losing side,” she counseled. “These fellows can help you at NBC. There’s no need to make them look bad.”

I slapped my cheeks hard as the alcohol pleasurably burned my face. “Okay, honey. I’ll try not to get too lucky.”

The planetarium had a bank of pay phones by the corridor that led into the Museum of Natural History. The last Star Show had ended, as had (for the moment) whatever groping and nuzzling I’d been having with Donna, judging by the fact that she was now fixing her makeup. I used this hopefully momentary lull to place my check-in call to the hotel, asking the Abbey’s operator for Room 622.

“Hello?” Shepard sounded bored and a little dozy.

“It’s Brother Dale,” I informed him. “Anything I need to know?”

“Nope. No one’s called except Dancer and Braverman to ask the same question. But make sure you check in again before you head home. The first time you don’t call here will almost certainly be the one time your wife does.”

I thanked him for minding the fort, and he assured me I’d be returning the favor next Monday. I kind of hoped he’d ask how my night had been going, so that I could boast a bit about my partial conquest, but he honored the tenets of the Brotherhood and made no personal inquiries.

Donna was checking her makeup in the reflection of a glass case containing a portion of a meteorite that had landed in a Kentucky farmyard in 1928.

“I’m ready for dinner,” she said. “Necking makes me hungry. Do you have somewhere nice in mind?”

I suggested we not go where either of us might be recognized by someone from work.

“I appreciate your concern for my professional reputation,” she nodded, her tongue planted as firmly in her own cheek now as it had been in mine just a few minutes earlier.

“Do you know anyone from Queens?” I asked as we stepped outside.

She shrugged that well-researched shrug of hers. “I’ve never met anyone who went to Queens who ever came back.”

“Good. I took the liberty—”

“You sure did,” she said, not altogether disapprovingly.

“—of reserving us a table at a romantic spot with candlelight dining. We’ll just ask them not to light the candles.” I waved for a cab, simultaneously using my arm to hide my face from passersby in the strong light of the streetlamps.

“Hello, angel,” I greeted Donna at her reception desk the next morning. “Did you have pleasant dreams?”

I was a half hour late, having missed my regular train from Pelham. I’d stayed in bed later than usual, debating if I’d been brilliant or an imbecile not to press my luck with Donna after supper. On consideration, I felt I’d done the wise thing. She’d seemed pleasantly surprised that I hadn’t tried to translate our racy dinner conversation into action at her apartment in lower Manhattan. But Donna was someone to be nurtured, brought along slowly. At least until next Monday. (I was already hoping I could convince the supportively disposed Braverman to trade turns with me, so I’d not lose precious momentum with her.)

“I thought about you all the way in to work,” I now told her smoothly. She gave me an icy look that was not sugar-frosted and, keeping her voice low, spoke as if her words tasted of Acromycin. “I made myself a big mistake last night, Mister Winslow, and thank God it only went as far as it did. NBC would can me and your wife would brain you if either party found out about our date. So let’s not ever talk about it again. In fact, let’s not ever talk, ’kay?”

I was horrified, I mean horrified. That she despised me was all over her face, and I’m sure her face and the word despised were rarely to be found in the same sentence. I frantically searched all memories of the previous night for what I might have said or done to turn her around so completely. As I unmanfully pleaded for an explanation, I saw Matty Dancer approaching and instantly silenced myself.

Dancer offered a far warmer greeting than had Donna, with whom I’d been necking under the projected heavens less than a dozen hours earlier. He set a manila envelope on the reception desk and asked her to see it was correctly messengered to its intended recipient. Then, under the guise of jovial chitchat, he said to me, “Hey, Ken Compton wanted to have a brief word with you, Brother Dale.” He lowered his voice and added, “He’s already spoken with the Other Fellows You Were With Last Night, if you catch my drift.”

“Bit of a personal question, Dale,” Compton began in an embarrassed manner. He rose from his desk and flopped onto the leather couch directly behind me. I swiveled my visitor’s chair to face him across his Danish modern coffee table, as he began, “Forgive me, but do you mind if I ask where you were last night?”

I had no idea what this was about, but felt relieved I had a big, fat, juicy answer to offer.

“Well, I guess there’s no shame involved in admitting that Dancer, Spitz, Braverman, and I were playing poker. Over at the Abbey Victoria. We have a little poker night in Room 622 each Monday. I think I arrived a few minutes after seven and left a bit after midnight Give me a moment and I can probably be more precise.”

Compton waved away my offered alibi. “No, I just wanted to hear it from you. I’ve already spoken to your friends this morning, and they told me about your little poker club.” He leaned forward. “So will you tell me? Who’s the best player among you? My money’s on Spitz.”

I smiled. “Well, he’s very conservative, and that ultimately works against him. It was Braverman who cleaned up last night, if you can call ten dollars cleaning up.”

He nodded. “Exactly as I expected. But honestly, I don’t know how you guys put up with room service at the Abbey. I’ve heard their restaurant tends toward Italian by way of the Borgias.”

I explained to him how we have to bring food in. “Last night Spitz and Braverman fetched us some chow from the New Bamboo Palace. My almond gai ding was quite good.”

“Ah, the old New Bamboo Palace.” Compton laughed as much as I’d ever heard him laugh. Come to think of it, I’d never heard him laugh. “I remember that place. Used to love the pu-pu platter there.”

Although we were clearly alone in his office, he looked around as if to ensure our privacy. “Dale, may I tell you why I ask about your poker party? Last night someone broke into my office. Pried open the drawer where I was keeping the fall schedule. Took it. Stole it. Stole a schedule that CBS would pay somebody a fortune for. like stealing jewelry. And there were only four people, other than myself, who knew that the schedule already existed and where it was kept.”

“When did this happen?” I asked.

“The night watchman discovered the forced lock on my door when he was making his eleven P.M. rounds. I keep telling RCA they have to make people sign in and sign out around here. Anyone could have taken an elevator to a couple of floors above us, waited somewhere along the fire stairs until later in the evening, then grabbed the schedule from my office, walked down to a lower floor, and taken another elevator from there to the lobby. After that, they could walk out of here free as a bird. Or if they felt like celebrating, head back up to the Rainbow Room and dance the night away.”

I agreed that the scenario was plausible. “But there must be some other explanation. Because the four people who knew where you kept the schedule were otherwise occupied last night, until after the break-in.”

“Well, I know that, for gosh sake. You were all having Chinese food from the New Bamboo Palace at the Abbey Victoria.” He flashed me a mirthless grin that showed me more of his teeth than I’d ever wanted to see. “It’s just a damn shame they closed the New Bamboo Palace three years ago.”

As my brain tried to reason how Spitz and Braverman had brought back food from a restaurant that was no longer in business, Compton discarded his genial manner and taught me how frightened one man can be of another.

“Now let me ask you, sonny: Why would you make up a pack of lies unless you had something to hide? I’ve already asked each of your three associates where they were last night. Their stories were impressively consistent. It seems Spitz bet like a wild man and won over a hundred dollars. They ordered in a pizza with anchovies, since the Abbey Victoria graciously allows deliveries. They arrived at six P.M. and played until two A.M. They talked about their upcoming projects at the network, compared notes on current movies, discussed rumors about Wilt Chamberlain leaving the Globetrotters to sign with the Warriors, and indulged in some fairly graphic speculation regarding the mores of a girl in the secretarial pool named Rita Truscott. Each man’s story was completely consistent with the others. Whereas you, Winslow, are totally at odds with all of them. So the question is, why would you so ignorantly and desperately lie to me if there weren’t something you need to hide?”

A window alongside the door to the office looked out upon the hallway. Over Compton’s shoulder, I could see Donna standing at the water cooler, having herself a quick laugh with Spitz and Braverman, while Spitz was having himself a quick feel of Donna’s derrière. It was a silent movie, and I was not a member of the cast. Donna was opening the manila envelope that Dancer had left with her, and withdrawing what looked to me like currency. She wore an expression of pleasure, likely the first genuine one I’d ever seen on her face, including last night at the planetarium.

I understood now. There had never been a Monks of the Abbey Victoria. Not until I came on the scene. The one meeting I’d attended of “the Order” had been the only meeting ever convened. My fellow Brothers must surely have struck a deal with someone at CBS. Perhaps theo’c made a similar deal the year before, one for which my predecessor, Ted Thissel, had taken the fall.

Whatever cash from CBS they were splitting, I was certain a modest percentage of their take could be found in the envelope now in Donna’s hands.

I knew. But I couldn’t speak, couldn’t offer my real alibi, tell anyone with whom I’d been the night before, because Donna would simply deny it. Besides, any such claim on my part would give my wife, Joanie, abundant grounds for divorce. I was caught in a fool’s mate, where my king could only toggle between two squares, either of which placed me lethally in check.

“All right, maybe I got some of my facts wrong,” I rasped from my suddenly dry mouth. I was about to be given the red-carpet treatment, my head bouncing down the hall, bound for the express elevator that eagerly awaited my plunge to the street. “But Compton, how would I know about the poker club, and the name we gave it, even the room number, if I hadn’t been there?”

He frowned. “Your associates independently explained that, sympathetic to your being the new man here, they offered you the fellowship of their club, which you attended for the first time last week. They were stunned and insulted that, after reaching out to you in a brotherly way, you were so rude as to simply not show up last night.”

I had no idea how I’d explain to Joanie that I wouldn’t be working at NBC. What reason could I give her for my dismissal? How might I earn a living after this? I looked back at Compton as if I were staring into the very sun that was setting on me.

He wasn’t quite done. “A very foolish bluff to try to put over, Winslow. Frankly, your friends are lucky to be rid of you.” He stood without offering his hand. “You must play one lousy game of poker.”