CHAPTER 5

Gretchen’s place belonged to Gretchen MacGruder, a plump matron with a showgirl’s complexion, the make-up piled on with abandon, apple-red in the cheeks and crimson in the broad mouth. And over it all, a powdery quality that told you the truth about her age and the lunacy of her temperament. Gretchen was hanging onto youth and madness with a desperate grip, converting her basement apartment into an intellectual hangout where she could mingle with the manic set. She minced and bounced among her visitors, generous with the alcohol and fluttering like a fat technicolor bug around males of any age.

“Helen Calabrese!” she said in a high voice. “It is Helen?”

“Evening, Gretchen.”

“And your escort? I didn’t catch the name.”

“Martingale,” said Helen. “Ulysses S. Martingale.”

“Ah? Oh? Not the writer?”

“Painter,” I said.

“Of course, of course,” breathed Gretchen. “I know the name, man. Saw your show. Last year, wasn’t it? Abstract? Great, singing welts of color? Broad, airy masses?”

“Dada,” I said, because the word tasted good and Gretchen’s drinks were biting hard. “You like Dada?”

“Adore it, man. Dali. King of them all. Have you met him?”

“Not lately.”

A little man with a pitcher eased through the crush of bodies and replenished our glasses. It was a stinging brew, biting and sharp, vodka and God-knows-what.

The little man slid by, his mouth moving. “Today is tomorrow … a black pocket in the coat of time …”

A remarkably pretty girl caught hold of his arm and halted him and held out her glass to be filled. She stared hard at me, weighing me with her shining eyes, smiling a Bohemian smile, half challenge, half mockery.

“Crazy Brains in yet, man?” she asked the little drink merchant.

“Not yet … the doom is black.”

“Fletcher, you’re gone,” she commented. “You’re way out there. Is he out, or is he out, cat?”

“Fletcher is definitely in outer space,” I said.

She drank, unbuttoning her yellow blouse in a broad V, exposing the fresh curves of her torso.

“And what sort of dreams do you paint, man?” Gretchen was asking me.

“Nightmares,” I said.

“The finest,” added Helen.

“And on a broad screen. In startling Conacolor.”

“Conacolor?”

“A pointillist technique,” I said.

“That clarifies it,” said Gretchen.

“Dim … deep down … the dungheaps of the dark,” whispered Fletcher, easing against the tide of Nowists. “Drink is the end … out … and gone.”

“I must tell Hagemeyer about it,” said Gretchen, and was gone without looking at me again. She headed for the door. Two men had just entered, a pair of tail and delicate boys, one of them as bald as an egg. She began to shout greetings to them before she reached them; high, whinnying and unnoticed against the great tide of noise from the hi-fi in the comer and the frantic buzz of the intelligentsia.

It was a long and narrow room, a catch-all for a weird collection of bric-a-brac, furniture, rugs, and oddments of decoration. Gretchen must have devoted a lifetime to the gathering of these strange furnishings—ancient and cumbersome chairs out of long dead Italy, overstuffed couches from Grand Rapids, Oriental rugs, tasseled lamps, birdcages, and many books.

The place was crowded to the doors with a conglomerate group; far too many people to meet, far too many to appraise. The atmosphere reeked with smoke: a gray pall hungover the dimmed lights—a smoky cloud that somehow couldn’t erase the deeper stench of mustiness, decay, dust, and the inevitable aroma of cats. Gretchen was a cat fanatic.

She had assembled almost as many felines as people, a variety of cats that seemed to go well with their human company; alley cats and toms, Siamese and Persians, all of them well fed and sleek and silently out-staring the odd-ball ghouls around them. They sat in laps, lounged on bookshelves, curled in corners, and mewed only when prodded by any of the unthinking guests.

“Gretchen feeds all these beasts?” I asked.

“Gretchen worships them,” said Helen Calabrese. “Her door is always open to wandering cats. It’s a religion with her, the love of her life. So long as the cats are males.”

“I see what you mean.”

Gretchen was seated on the floor in the dim corner of the room, her boxlike figure in a yogi pose, a large black cat in her lap. Alongside her, the tall, bald sprite stroked the cat while engaging Gretchen in deep and serious conversation. A few of the others had gathered around, talking fast as they sipped their drinks and blew great clouds of smoke at each other, The very short man drifted into the group with his pitcher, replenishing the glasses. The girl with the yellow blouse strolled the floor with a slippery, sliding motion. She took off her blouse and draped it casually on her arm.

“Cool,” somebody said.

“Gone,” said somebody else.

The man with the pitcher poured my glass full again. Up close, he was mumbling a mad soliloquy, a personal dirge, a comment on the cosmos.

“The black box of boredom … the big, deep …”

There were many unattached females wandering through the knots of discourse, odd types with odd shapes and odd heads and very odd attitudes. They were pursued optically by the surrounding males, some bold and some shy, but all of them free with their eyes—as though tasting each female through a sly leer, an open stare, or a romantic wink. Snatches of admiring dialogue skimmed around me:

“Get a load of the yellow shirt, Sam …”

“What a pair of buds!”

“Is she for real?”

“For realarooney.”

“And that short one in the corner …”

“She’s taking off soon …”

“You know her, Joe?”

“A stripper, but not yet. Another drink …”

“There it goes …”

“Dig those apples, Sam!”

“I’m cutting over there, man …”

“Good luck, cat …”

The girl carrying the yellow shirt crossed my way, snaking through a mob of intellectuals who were yammering Nowist theories. All eyes followed her, stayed with her a moment and then abandoned her to the little man with the pitcher. She let him fill her glass again, saying nothing, staring at me with strange hypnotic eyes. Then she casually removed her brassiere.

From the other side of the room, another girl entered, naked to her belt and carrying an orange cat in her arms. The girl with the yellow shirt turned, her greeting a slow nod. The party was taking on a new tone. Was it the drinks the little man was serving? Beyond, all over the big room, other girls stood suddenly bare above the midriff, and the talk rose to a higher pitch, an impossible cacophony now, a mixture of hilarity and hysteria and the perpetual pounding of the background jazz.

The girl with the yellow shirt said: “Crazy Brains. Is he here yet, Alice?”

“I hear he is.”

“Alone, cat?”

“Crazy Brains alone? You mad?”

“Who is it tonight?”

“I didn’t see.”

“You trying him?”

“I’m off him. Got my cat.”

“Cool. Who?”

“The big one over there. Blue-eyes.”

“Not for me.”

“You trying for Crazy Brains?”

“I’m trying.”

“You never give up.”

“He’s for me.”

“See you later.”

“Not if I can help it, Alice.”

“Decadence was yesterday,” mumbled the little man with the pitcher. “Did I ever tell you my theory of form in space, cat?”

“Come with me, Fletcher. Crazy Brains is here.”

She led him away, pitcher and all. The hubbub had reached a new high, a steady drone, loud enough to kill the deep tones of the hi-fi, still blatting something progressive in jazz, African on the drums and sad on the sax. Alongside me, Helen Calabrese stood close, her hand locked on my arm, her eyes thick-lidded. She was watching a man on the far side of the room.

“Jeff Masterson,” somebody whispered.

“Old Crazy Brains …”

“Dig that beard, cat …”

“Cool …”

He was standing near the door, his bearded head bent in conversation with a woman. In the quick tableau, she slid off to one side, tugging him with her, as though to remove him permanently from the group of admiring females. She saw me then. She lowered her head and moved off toward the exit. She would have made it easily, but a sudden shift in the structure of the crowd revealed her to me and almost brought a laugh to my lips.

“Mrs. Timmerman,” I mumbled.

“Who?” asked Helen Calabrese.

“This dump attracts a mad variety of disciples. Or is it Masterson who brings them here?”

“Masterson has a way with girls.”

“Quiet, cat,” somebody said in a soprano whisper.

“He’s beginning to read,” said another.

“Endless, endless, the tightrope tread of time,” sang the voice of Masterson. “Endless, endless …”

He was a ponderous youth, thick in the shoulders and square in the face. His unbuttoned black and white checkered shirt seemed purposely open to reveal his shaggy chest. He wore a dirty green corduroy jacket, frayed at the sleeve-ends and patched in the elbows with light tan leather oblongs. He wore black pants, bagged at the knees and deliberately neglected to affect the Bohemian look. His shoes were a sick and cloudy buff, once slick and chic, now aged with ancient dirt and mottled with a variety of stains to murder their original suede splendor. He had a reddish mop of hair, uncombed and falling heroically over his classic brow. His beard was a shade redder, full grown around his jaws, unkempt, uncombed, and calculated to give him a Hemingway flavor—all man and literary as hell. He clutched a small sheaf of manuscript, read it slowly, tasting each word as though eating good food. He had a deep rich voice, strong enough to carry without shouting. The silence was gathering around him from behind us. He would have everybody in the room listening before too long.

“What’s with him?” I asked.

“He’s spouting Nowism.”

“Quiet, cat,” someone whispered behind us. It was the girl without the yellow shirt.

“How long does he flip this way, Helen?”

“Have another drink, Steve. You’re not quite gone enough.”

“I’m gone,” I said, and was gone.

I was gone around the right side of the group, aiming myself at the door. A brief breeze of fresh air slid in from the street, followed by a new group of devotees, two couples and an odd girl.

“Conacher,” smiled the odd girl, holding out her hand and trying to steady herself for me. “We meet again.”

“I didn’t think you were the beat type, Linda.”

“You think right.” She held my arm and leaned into me drunkenly. “But I do come here for laughs, especially on nights like this when I’m really down.”

“How far down must you get?”

“You’re much too serious, Steve. Will you get me a drink?”

“You’ll have to see Fletcher, the man with the pitcher.”

“Of course.” She stepped forward and scanned the gathering through heavy-lidded eyes. The voice of Jeff Masterson held her and she cocked her head and seemed to be listening to him. From where we stood it was possible to see him clearly, still hypnotizing the crowd, still droning on about the blackness of time and space. But something new had been added. Helen Calabrese now sat close to him, her hand on his knee, her dark head against his arm. He held her, his free hand around her waist. He was unashamed of the provocative movement of that hand.

“The master speaks,” whispered Linda. “And he’s got himself a new disciple.”

“You know Helen Calabrese?”

“I’ve seen her around the television rehearsals. She’s a nothing.”

“She’s obviously something to Jeff Masterson.”

“He can have her.” She grabbed at the little man with the pitcher and he poured her a drink and then moved off to the rear to replenish his supply. Linda gulped the liquor thirstily, staring hard at Masterson as though trying to attract him to her by sheer concentration. He was on his last page, slowing to a crawl, his voice heavy with the drama of his double-talk prose. Then he was looking our way, observing Linda, scowling at her.

“The louse,” she said. “The cheap louse.”

There was a flurry of applause and the place broke into fresh waves of hubbub, the crowd melting away from Masterson except for a few eager enthusiasts who shook his hand and gave him personal praise, Linda advanced as soon as the way was cleared. She didn’t wait for the handshakers to move off.

“Hello, escort,” she said, glaring at Helen Calabrese.

“Linda, my love,” Masterson said. He pulled her down suddenly and kissed her violently, unmindful of her struggles, her mad kicking.

“Cool,” somebody said.

“Louse,” said Linda, pulling away from him. “I want you to meet Steve Conacher, louse. Mr. Conacher is a detective.”

“Not for real?” Masterson laughed. He had a tremendous laugh, full-throated and husky, and probably copied from some hero character he chose to imitate. The hilarity shook his big frame and died as suddenly as it began. “Detectives are fantasy characters for me, Conacher.”

“Jeff is really a country boy at heart,” Helen Calabrese said, no longer lingering close to him, “A rustic in search of reality.”

“Tell Mr. Conacher the reality of our date late yesterday afternoon, Jeff darling.” Linda was trying for calm, for theatrical poise, for a way to sell me her sincerity. But she had downed too many drinks before coming here. Her lines were muffled and halting, her gestures too loose, too abandoned.

“You’re drunk, Linda,” he said. “You were drunk when I met you. You’re drunk now.”

“Is she right about your date with her?” I asked.

“Get lost, little man,” he said. “You bother me.”

“Dandy,” I said and stepped in close to him. The small group of acolytes watched open-mouthed. There were whisperings and rumblings, an expectant hush. Masterson put on a big show of manly staring, his heavy brows knitted as he glowered at me. The scene began to build in humor. He was still seated, his manuscript rolled in a big fist. There was a tattoo of a bird of some sort on his wrist—not the conventional eagle favored by sailing men but another type, of Mexican or Inca origin—a crude bird, odd looking in the talons. I had him at a disadvantage for movement. That was why I pressed my luck and waded in, grabbing his grimy lapels high up near his throat. He reddened and struggled to pull my hands loose. But there was nothing but pulp behind his brawny-looking frame. He wilted. “But didn’t you take Linda over to Flato’s?” I asked.

“What if I did?”

“You didn’t wait for her,” I said. “That’s not very gentlemanly, Masterson.”

“She had a date with Jan,” he said angrily.

“And you? Did you have a date?”

“That’s my business.”

There was an overpowering temptation to take this big boy apart, to see how much manhood was in him. I was drunk enough and angry enough, but my effort would have been wasted on him. He seemed obviously a man for the women only. Helen Calabrese watched him quietly, her eyes soft on him. I let him shake me off and get to his feet and adjust his virility for the crowd.

“We’re not getting anywhere, Masterson,” I said. “If you’ll give me five minutes to ask you a few questions I can finish my job with you.”

“I don’t give a damn about your job.”

“Maybe not. But you will. You see, I’m trying to locate Mari Barstow.”

The mention of her name produced no reaction in him other than a lift of his eyebrows. He would be the type to continue bluffing unless shocked into talk. He was aware of his stature in the picture. His disciples were watching him, waiting for his next line.

“You’re wasting your time,” he said. “I haven’t seen Mari Barstow in months.”

“When did you see her last?”

“I’ve got a bad memory.”

“Do the best you can, Masterson.”

“Not now,” he said. They were standing around us in a tight knot, enjoying the byplay. I might have reached him if the little laugh had not come. Somebody outside the perimeter of the group had chuckled, probably a drunken Nowist at the bar. But the hilarity tightened Masterson. His face reddened and his jaw went hard and stubborn. “This is no time for questions and answers, little man.”

“You name it,” I said. “Where can I reach you?”

“I’ll let you know.”

“You’ll let me know now.”

He was moving away from me when I grabbed him again. I caught hold of his jacket, up high, near the neck. His body offered me no resistance, a confusing sensation because of his girth and weight. He turned to give me the treatment with his angry eyes. It would have been fun if he’d lifted a fist at me. But Gretchen barged into the group.

“No fighting in my house,” she screamed, turning the full weight of her personality on me, her hysterical voice high with abuse. “No fighting in my house. Clear, man? Or do I have you thrown out?”

“There won’t be any fight,” Helen said. “Forget it, Gretchen.”

“Not in my house, cats. Never, do you hear?”

“Never,” I said.

The little man with the pitcher drifted our way again and the tension broke and Masterson retired to the next room, followed by his tribe of supporters. I stayed with Linda and watched the byplay as Helen Calabrese found herself displaced by the girl with the shirtless torso. I gave myself time to relax, to think a bit, to let my eyes study the characters here. There was something unsavory, something rancid and rotten thriving here—a feeling of heightening idiocy that would probably explode in some kind of orgiastic ritual later on. Some of the couples were already engaged in public embrace, squatting in corners among the cats, pawing each other, lost in their nightmare madness.

Helen Calabrese no longer remained close to Masterson. Instead, she stood across the room, engaged in an unfriendly conversation with a man I hadn’t seen before. He was a fat and oily type, flat-nosed and animal-eyed. Familiar? Did I know him? I began to hate myself for letting Fletcher feed me so much of his rotgut. Curiosity moved me toward Helen and her friend. He was leaning in close to her, throwing her an animated pitch. She listened to him, but her heart wasn’t in it.

But he saw me before I finished my sidewise stroll through the crowd. He slipped skillfully to the right, made the door to the corridor and was gone.

“Who was the big nuisance?” I asked Helen.

“A Nowist louse,” she laughed. “Trying to sell me the service.”

“He didn’t look the type.”

“Is there a type?”

“What I mean is he lacked the intellectual look.”

“You don’t need brains to join the cult.”

“You didn’t catch his name?” I asked.

“Who needs it?”

“I do. He looked familiar to me.”

“You’ve got friends among these nuts?” she asked.

“Possible.”

“Don’t tell me you buy this Nowist guff, Steve?”

“That man was a Thenist.”

“Another mad cult?”

“A Thenist is somebody from then, Helen. I have a good head for faces and he rang a small bell for me. He looked like an old tabloid face out of the last decade. I knew every thug in town then. Some of them are still my friends. Others, like that slug, are on the prowl. He’s a refugee from a police blotter, Helen. Unless I’m too well loaded with Fletcher’s liquor, your friend’s name is Carmen Grippo, a two-bit gunsel.”

“A funny name,” she said.

“Not to your brother, it isn’t.”

“My brother?” She challenged me with her eyes. “What do you mean, Steve?”

“Luigi knows him well, Helen.”

“He does?”

“Grippo could be working for your brother.”

“He could?”

“Is it possible that Luigi sent Grippo down to this pest-hole to protect his kid sister’s virtue?”

“My brother,” she said, “is not my keeper. Do I look the type?”

I didn’t bother to answer. A cool trickle of air hit my face and I turned toward the end of the room to see the door open and a few men enter. There was a small commotion at that side, the cultists melting away from the men as they converged on Linda Karig. One of the men was Cushing. Two others were squad dicks.

And the fourth was Max Ornstein.

His keen eyes spotted me almost at once and he shuffled his hefty frame against the wall of Nowists blocking his way to me. He was shaking his head sadly as he pulled up.

“It’s a hot night,” said Max wearily. “Better I should be behind the counter at Lynbrook, Steve. You got yourself a crazy megillah if you know that Linda Karig girl. She’s yelling for you up front. Dave Cushing is taking her in because they found a bloody knife in her apartment.”