The Erection Set

IV

New York was getting its midweek bath under a slashing northeast rain that churned up ripples in the street and blew waves of spray across the sidewalks. Empty cabs cruised by, but the shoppers had stayed home and it was too early for the office crowd to be leaving the grotesque sepulchers that contained them.

Lee’s voice was a muttered undertone of total futility. Weller-Fabray, Tailors, his pants legs and shoes soggy under the hem of his black raincoat. I paid off the driver and climbed out of the taxi, letting the rain tear at me, then walked past him and into the store.

Lee’s voice was a muttered undertone of total futility. “A whole year before this class joint would even sell me a suit, now you blow it in one bounce.”

“Down, boy,” I said.

The British gentleman with the sweeping moustache and formal tails nodded politely to Lee, studied me a second and nodded with an almost imperceptible bow. Somehow he seemed to wear the cloak of royalty around his shoulders, his eyes observant and capable of instant analysis. For that scant moment we just looked at each other, then, in perfect French, he said, “Yes, m’sieu, how may we help you?”

There was no trace of accent in my French, either. I said, “I would like a complete wardrobe for every occasion. I haven’t the time to stand for fittings and need two suits immediately. There are certain alterations of design that are somewhat unusual, but necessary, as you will see. My measurements are on file at Betterton and Strauss in London, and Mr. Betterton will be happy to give them to you at any hour, so please call him immediately and bill me for any charges. Choice of material and styling will be at your discretion. Please include shirts, ties, underwear, socks and whatever you consider pertinent.” I wrote out a check, handed it to him along with Lee’s address and added, “Only the finest, if you don’t mind, and this should cover the preliminary expenses. When may I expect delivery of the two suits?”

He never even glanced at the check. Completely unperturbed he told me, “Tomorrow, sir. About noon?”

“Fine,” I said. There was that slight bow again and I walked Lee back outside into the rain.

We were halfway down the block before my friend could find the right words. I knew his smattering of French had let him in on the conversation, and the look he gave me was almost one of awe. “How the hell do you do it, Dog? Nobody gets a suit out of Weller-Fabray under four weeks. It takes a dozen fittings and ten character references to even get a shirt there!”

“It’s all a game, pal, and I haven’t got time to play games.”

“Baloney. You know they wouldn’t make a suit for the mayor? They refused that polo-playing millionaire and Count Stazow because they thought they were boorish. Ha!”

“You got in, didn’t you?”

“With a knockdown from two bankers who owed me a favor and an abject air of proper humility for great crafts-men. I’m not listed in their golden file case, but I get my picture in the papers on all the right occasions and don’t demean their product. But you... you walk in like a slob, all soaking wet, and they lay out the red carpet.”

“They know class, kid.”

“Shit.” He ducked his head against a blast of rain. “Now where’re we going?”

“Downtown to Barney’s. I’m going to pull a couple things off the racks for tonight. Might even get a raincoat if this weather gets any worse.”

“I wish I could figure you out, Dog.” Lee gave me a nervous, sidewise glance. “Frankly, I still think you’re crazy. You’re trouble on the hoof.”

“Don’t let your imagination run away with you.”

“Then why lay a trail as broad as the Hudson River behind you?”

“Why not?”

“Because you have too much to hide,” he said. “Like that money.” Lee paused a moment, then pushed me into the alcove of an office building. “Your French is perfect, buddy. How many other languages do you speak?”

I shrugged and looked at him curiously. “A few.”

“Turkish?”

I nodded.

“Any Arabic?”

I nodded again. “Why?”

“Some interesting items have been showing in the newspapers lately. You know anything about narcotics, Dog?”

My face was cold and hard when I looked at him and he pulled back instinctively. “Never touch the stuff,” I said.

Lee squeezed his mouth shut until his lips were a thin line, but he wouldn’t let go of it. “There has to be a reason for somebody dropping out of sight like you did. For showing up the way you did too. I thought I knew you, and maybe I did back there during the war, but I sure as hell don’t know you now at all. Talk about enigmas, you’re the perfect example. What happened, Dog?”

“We all get a little older, kid.”

“Okay, let it go at that. You’re still the guy who saved my ass too many times, so I’m sticking with it. You got me shook, but the ride is wild. Maybe I’m as sappy as you are. Only don’t blame me if I get the shakes and suddenly cut out. I’m just not geared to this kind of living. Goose bumps come awfully easy and last a long time. You got me so I’m looking over my shoulder half the time. I’m beginning to think I’m back in the blue in a P-51D peering into the sun for bogeys.”

“Good thinking, then. Keep your head out of the cockpit and you won’t get it shot off.”

“That was the first thing you ever told me,” Lee said. “I get the chills hearing it said again. At least the last time you were talking about the war.”

“Everything’s a war,” I told him.

He looked into my eyes, shivered involuntarily, then turned his raincoat collar up around his neck. “Okay, buddy, so be it. I kind of have the feeling you really don’t need me bird-dogging you around, so I’m going to peel off and get back to work. The date still on for tonight?”

“Sure. I want to meet all your beautiful people.”

“Look a little decent, will you? They’re kind of important. You really going to get clothes off the rack at Barney’s?”

“Doesn’t everybody?”

He grinned at me, spotted a cab coming and ran out to the curb to flag it down, then held the door open for me so I wouldn’t get any wetter. He stood there shaking his head in annoyance when I told the driver to take me to Barney’s.

They built New York’s first skyscraper downtown at Twenty-third Street and called it the Flatiron Building, an ornate, old-fashioned triangular antique that rose on the south side of Twenty-third at the juncture of Fifth Avenue and Broadway where it stared out majestically on a city about to explode into growth, and remained a couple of generations later, still staring, but with windowed eyes a little sad and clouded with the dirt the new age had thrown up. It was a wistful building, its original name and history almost forgotten now, but a building that had lived through many years and a multitude of experiences, yet still stood like a miniature fortress planted in the middle of an anthill.

On the seventeenth floor, in the pointed nose of the structure, Al DeVecchio had his office. The door had triple locks and the gold-leaf sign simply read L.D.V., Inc., beautifully ambiguous, not at all encouraging to solicitors, yet in certain areas well known and caustically respected.

Two secretaries and an old man wearing outdated sleeve garters and an archaic green eyeshade worked in compartments lined with modern business equipment, but Al’s private quarters were in the front end of the triangle where he could look out over his city like the master of a ship conning his vessel from the bridge. His coffee maker was still in the perpetual state of percolation, his small freezer still full of imported salamis and cheeses, one wall still full of books on mathematical formulas it took an Einstein to understand, and the same pair of rocking chairs he had had in the operations shack in England during the war. The arms were polished from use and the hardwood sweeps a little thinner now from the years of oscillating, but their gentle roll was still as damnably mesmerizing as ever. A lot of generals had cooled off in those chairs and a lot of command decisions arrived at in their easy motions.

“Nostalgic, isn’t it?” Al asked me.

“You were born too late, buddy.”

“I’ll buy that,” he grinned. “Coffee?”

“No, thanks.”

“Hunk of Genoa? Came in last week. Spicy as hell. You could stink up a place for hours with it.”

“Unh-uh. I can still remember the last one we split.”

“Tasted lousy when you burped into an oxygen mask, didn’t it?”

“Fierce. I don’t know how you guineas can eat all that stuff.”

“So you Irish live on corned beef and cabbage draped around a melted potato. Peasant food.”

“Only when we’re affluent.”

“You must be gorged by now,” Al said.

“Glad you did your research, Captain.”

“Oh, you were always a pet project of mine.” He held a cup under the coffee spigot, filled and sweetened it, then got back in his rocking chair. “You know, little Italiano from the poor end of Hell’s Kitchen wondering what made the rich kid from the bi^g estate tick. We all looked alike in uniform, but the difference was still there.”

“Keep talking,” I said. “How does a prejudiced slob from an uptown penthouse feel going back to the old turf?”

“Great,” he told me. “I keep rubbing it in to any of the old gang who are still around. I like the envious look. They all think I belong to the Mafia.”

“Tell ’em any different?”

“Nope. It gets respect, especially from the young punks I use occasionally.”

“Let the mob get wise and you’ll be holding your head.”

“They already tried. Just once. I get respect from them too.”

“How?”

“Easy,” he said. “I used your name.”

“That must have gone over big.”

Al grinned slowly, mulling over the memory. “You’d be surprised, Dog. They sent their three best hatchet men out to chop you down and none were ever heard from again. They simply disappeared. No bodies. No rumors. Just sudden and total disappearance like they never even existed, and within three days after each one vanished somebody’s grand villa burned down or their seagoing yacht mysteriously blew up. Oh, and I almost forgot the one in Naples those old French Resistance boys nailed with new and damning evidence of being a Nazi collaborator and hung from the bell tower in the church he had financed.”

“You’re talking over my head, buddy,” I said.

“Sure I am.” His tone held mock sarcasm. “Let’s just say I’m a good guesser. Aren’t you taking a chance exposing yourself away from your own field of operations?”

“Al, you got one hell of an imagination.”

He nodded, looking at me squarely. “I hope you have too. Somebody with all your earmarks left one hell of a mark on things over there. Here too. You echo, Dog, big and loud. Why didn’t you come home with the rest of us?”

“Social football isn’t my cup of tea, kid.”

“Man,” he said, “you could have taken over all of Barrin Industries with your smarts. The old man could have used you.”

“All I want is my ten grand,” I told him.

Al sliced another chunk off the salami, skinned it and pulled two cold beers out of his freezer. He popped them open and handed one to me. “Sure you don’t want some Genoa?”

I shook my head and took the beer. It was tangy and tasted good going down. “Just your report, old buddy.”

“You know, I think I liked you better in the old days. You’re a mean bastard now,” he said. Al didn’t have to look at any files. They were all carefully stored away in his mind, detail by detail, and when he finished his salami he stared out the window a moment, then looked back at me. “You want it all broken down?”

“Just your summation.”

“Uh-huh. Okay, Barrin Industries is still very much blue chip unless some shrewdie from SEC really digs into it. They’re turning out products with the help of government contracts and old-line investors who thought your grandfather was the greatest guy alive. Their operation is marginal as hell. Equipment is out of date, standing up only because the old man insisted on the best original installations. Two of the original employees got Barrin off the hook by developing a by-product when pollution control went in and the by-product was worth more than the product itself. Your cousins conned them out of their rights just when both those men came up with something really tremendous and they got so damned pissed off they retired, died within the year and took their big secret with them.”

“What was it?”

“If I told you, you’d never believe me.”

“Try me.”

“Okay, an antigravity device.”

“Come on, Al, knock off the crap.”

“I told you.” He leaned back in his chair, smiling. “I saw it, Dog. A little steel-looking marble that would stay anywhere you put it. On the ground, ten feet up... anywhere. Throw it, it would keep on going. Rest it, the ball stayed there.”

“Really?”

“Damn, you’re an emotionless slob. You know what that could mean?”

“Sure I do.”

“Then say something.”

“I’m glad they didn’t let anybody take it away from them.”

“It was a billion-dollar invention, Dog.”

“Shit. The government would have confiscated it. Or somebody would have squeezed them for it. They were smarter doing what they did.”

“You don’t really believe me about the gimmick, do you?”

“Why not?”

“Because you’re not excited.”

“Al, I got enough trouble with gravity without worrying about the anti garbage.” I felt a tug at the corners of-my mouth. “Damn interesting idea, though. You could take a broad and...”

“There you go again!”

“So get back to Barrin Industries,” I said.

Al looked at me, shook his head in disgust and smiled crookedly. “Barrin is busted. They’ve borrowed all they can on the sheer weight of the physical properties they own, but they’re at the end. All they can do is deal in odd bits and pieces, but the big contracts will go right past them. The more sophisticated products are beyond their reach and they couldn’t possibly stay inside the time elements on the new contracts being let out. Your cousins committed Barrin to a contract that is absolutely going to slay them, then the vultures are going to move in and take over, as they say, lock, stock and barrel.”

“What vultures, Al?”

“You ever hear of Cross McMillan?”

I let out a low laugh and picked a cigarette out of the open pack on the table and lit it. “Sure. His old man and my grandfather were mortal enemies. He was born when his father was sixty-some and grew up to be the meanest kid in the area. That son of a bitch knocked me for a loop one day when I helped some doll carry packages into her car. He was eight years older than me and was after her hide and didn’t want anybody cutting in. What a cocksman he thought he was.”

“So you put a firecracker under his car?”

“Nope. I hit him in the head with a rock one day and ran like hell. He never did catch me.”

“Well, friend, he caught your cousins. He’s the big vulture. Right now he’s got millions going to waste and all he wants is to get hold of Barrin Industries.”

“So let him.”

“He’ll get your ten grand too.”

“Like hell,” I said.

“Don’t believe me, then.” Al reached over and cut himself another slice of Genoa salami and nipped an end off it with evident pleasure. “Just watch,” he told me.

“Where did it go, Al?”

“The money?”

I nodded.

“You don’t know your cousins.”

“Tell me. That’s what I’m here for.”

“And a paid-up customer at that.” He swallowed the chunk of meat, burped and took a sip of beer. “It’s what you call letting skeletons out of the closet.”

“Like you said, I’m the customer.”

“Okay, Dog.” Al told me. “Your funeral.”

“No flowers, please.”

“Sure. Well, if you remember, all that Barrin stock was left to the family... at least the controlling majority.”

“Fifty-seven percent,” I reminded him.

“Exactly. And according to the terms of the will, neither your cousin Alfred nor Dennison could sell.”

“True.”

“They owned fifteen percent apiece, with the rest going to Veda, Pam and Lucella. The old man figured the girls needed something to attract a husband.”

“Yeah,” I said sourly, “I know. They got them too. All except Veda.”

“Remember them?”

“Only too well, buddy.”

“So you could have forgotten. They were all older than you. Anyway, remember Veda’s vice?”

“The cubes?”

“Oh, Dog, she’s got more class than that. Your cousin Veda discovered Las Vegas. She got with the wild bunch from New York and some of the sharpies who used to be based in Havana. Man, did she go down, and I don’t mean sexually. That crazy broad went through everything she had and hocked everything she didn’t have. Right now she’s living off the income from a small block of securities she won when she was having an early streak of luck. If it weren’t for that, Cousin Veda would be humping for a living.”

“Stupid dame,” I muttered. “She wouldn’t make a nickel being a whore.”

“You haven’t seen her for a while. I kind of think she did take some of it out in trade. Morrie Shapiro wiped out her chits and so did Hamilton from that theater chain. She’s a real swinger, that one. Built like a brick outhouse now. No mind, but built. Talented, too, I hear. A real sex machine... something like having a new antique car. Style, performance, color, but a little aged.”

“That leaves Pam and Lucella,” I said.

“Same old story. Pam’s husband Marvin Gates got himself caught in one hell of a gigantic swindle when he tried to finance a cute little operation and Pam had to bail him out. It was either pay up or visit him in jail. Pam paid up and now Marv’s her own personal little ass kisser who had better not ever open his mouth again except when she says when, where or how. And I think you know what I mean.”

“Remembering Pam’s sexual preferences, I sure do,” I said. “And Lucella?”

“Too many luxuries. She woke up one day and it had all dribbled away. The Riviera, Paris and Rome were memories. That guy she married... what was his name?”

“Simon.”

“Yes, Simon... she sold his polo ponies, his race cars. Simon got a divorce in Mexico, married some old dame and Lucella keeps looking at her pictures of the Riviera, Paris and Rome.”

“Sad.”

“Isn’t it?” Al said. “But typical. Who was it said three generations from shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves?”

“Some wise-ass,” I told him.

“The rough part is this,” Al said. “Alfred and Dennison don’t know about all this machinery. They’re trying to operate on the assumption that the gal cousins have all their stocks and are bugging them to turn over control to them. None of them will buy the attitude... not that they wouldn’t if they could... it’s just that they can’t. It just ain’t there to sell anymore. Al and Dennie own thirty percent of nothing with old Cross McMillan ready to reach in and snatch it all away. He already owns one hell of a block he picked up when the original investors died and if it ever comes to a proxy fight, he can pick up all the marbles.”

“Maybe not.”

“Come on, Dog. The dame cousins of yours dumped everything. Whoever picked it up bought a sucker deal and it’s got to be spread out all over the place. It’s only junk, and who would bother with it anyhow?”

“Oh, you never could tell.”

For a long time, Al looked at me, his eyes tight little beads trying to see inside my mind, and finally they did. “You got it,” Al stated.

“Why not?” I asked him. “Like you said, it was only junk.”

He let me have that long look again. “McMillan is going to kill you.”

I grinned at him.

“He wants everything... Barrin Industries, the Mondo Beach property... the works. He’s going to get even with your grandfather.”

“Fuck McMillan.”

“Not him, Dog. I told you, he’s a vulture. He’s got the money and the power. To him Barrin Industries is only a toy to be played with. That guy plays in international finance. He can buy anything he wants to.”

I took a long drag on the cigarette and snuffed it out in the empty beer can. “Almost everything, Al. Or do you know about that too?”

“You even look at his wife sidewise and you’ll be dead, buddy. Like D-E-A-D.”

“I wasn’t intending to. I just said there were some things you just can’t buy.”

“Dog, you’re nuts. Those two are crazy in love. They always have been.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“Maybe there’s an age differential. Not much, but they’re sure as hell in love.”

“I wasn’t talking about that,” I said.

“What them?”

“Nothing that makes any difference right now.”

We sat there rocking a few minutes, looking up Broadway. North of Thirty-fourth Street a gray cloud was beginning to encompass the Empire State Building.

“It’s going to rain.” I said.

For the first time, old Al DeVecchio’s face was a study in consternation. I never had seen him like that before. It was like he had stumbled into somebody else’s foxhole and found it full of shit.

“I never should have answered your letter,” he said.

REFLECTIONS: AL DEVECCHIO

Who the hell is he now? You think you get to know somebody under four long years of war and gunfire and he zeroes out like a pissed-on cigar butt and the guy you knew isn’t there anymore.

“Say, mate, you wanted Spit time, didn’t you?”

“Now?”

“Really, Major, if it wasn’t for this girl... daughter of one of your senators, y’know... sort of asked for me and it’s hands across the ocean and all that sort of crap, y’know? Now, she’s a new Mark Thirteen and never been scratched. Only two milk runs on photo across to the sub pens...”

“She armored?”

“Full up, Major.”

“If I get my ass snarled on this one...”

“Blimey, Major, I got them all prepped. No sorting out to do at all. Beansey, Jerry and Tag are off your wings. Good chaps, those. Twelve kills among them. Relatively new and not like you at all, but remember, dear boy, you wanted to fly the Spit...”

“No time goes on my record?”

“ ’Pon my word, Major. I wouldn’t want to go before Old Snarly for anything. Realize you and the flight surgeon are having it out over those missing missions, but don’t forget, it was that little niece of mine who lifted your records. Good job, what?”

“Yeah, lovely.”

“Too bad you chaps get rotated so soon. It’s really a gorgeous war,” he said. “Tell me, Major, why don’t you want to go home?”

“Long story, my friend, And like you said, it’s a gorgeous war. I always did want Spit time. That crate handle well?”

“You should know, Major. Much better than the Nines. Just remember to find me an empty Mustang on the next Nuremberg run. There’s a farmhouse there occupied by a particularly nasty character who stuck a pitchfork in my buttock when I bailed out on his property. Damned near didn’t escape. If it weren’t for the little beauty across the river who always had been partial to the sons of John Bull I never would have made it. Quite an interesting stay, that was.”

“You Limeys are nuts,” Dog said.

“Determined, you must admit.”

“Sure, to lay an American senator’s daughter.”

“Oh, just trying to improve our relationship with the colonials, Major. Enjoy the Spit, old boy. My batman has everything arranged. Would appreciate it if you could bring her back more or less unscathed. Old Snarly has an eye for details like bullet holes and he knows my new buggy is still a virgin. Unpenetrated, y’know?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, cheerio.”

“Dog,” I asked him, “why the hell do you squeeze In extra missions? You coulda been out long ago. You like all this crazy fighting?”

“Something to be learned,” he told me. “You survive or you don’t. Get the worst of it in now and all the rest will look easy.”

He survived, all right. I wish I could confirm all those rumors that had been seeping out of Europe the past twenty years. But no matter what I heard, they didn’t jell with the Dogeron Kelly I knew. Nice guys just don’t change. And the rumors were all screwed up too. One told of a darkly lethal character who blew the whole postwar black market business to hell and gone when he creamed out the hard operators, using Stateside mob money to disrupt the economy. Nobody wanted to talk about what happened after that. Then there was the other “El Lobo”... the Wolf... who tangled with the international financiers and took them for all they were worth. The Dog and The Wolf. There was a sameness there. The difference was that Dog could hardly handle simple mathematics. He never could solve a navigation problem when he had to use a Weems Computer or triangulate a course. If he hadn’t had a pigeon’s instinctive memory for time, distance and direction, he couldn’t have hit the floor with his hat. But he had, and he was always on target and always back again, sometimes leading strays and once a squadron whose numbers failed them. When it came to finance, he couldn’t even make sense out of British money, far less a French franc. If it wasn’t the American dollar it was all play money. The only other rate of exchange he understood was cigarettes and candy bars.

Yet, there was that change. Those damn eyes of his. They watched everything. He moved funny too, always knowing who was behind him and on either side, an odd awareness of where everyone else was and, when they were out of position, he knew and was ready to pounce.

Two Dogs? Three? It was possible. He was here now and I’d see him again. Digging into the dark corners was my game and now I’d really get to the answers. I had to. I was curious: I hoped I’d like what I’d find.

I was afraid I wouldn’t.