At Zuhl Publications, the staff worked on New’s Year Day, closing the new issues of Jungle Pilot and Smuggler’s Cove, and afterward had a belated Christmas party. The offices were festooned with pine wreaths and holly and even a sprig of mistletoe above the water cooler. Otto Zuhl catered a lavish supper—shrimp cocktail, oysters, roast beef, and French champagne—and distributed end-of-the-year bonuses in purple envelopes embossed with his trademark Z.
“Happy New Year,” he concluded his toast, “and to hell with the income tax, which one day will go the way of the dinosaur.”
Only when his employees opened their envelopes, and found cash rather than checks, did they understand what he had been talking about.
In his envelope Franklin found two crisp one-hundred-dollar bills and a note in Zuhl’s cramped hand:
WITH SPECIAL THANKS FOR ZENA WALKER.
YRS, O.Z.
It was a more generous bonus than Franklin had expected, but then, like everyone else at the office, he knew that the magazines’ circulation was up fifty percent—River Detective eighty percent— and though the bookkeepers were tight-lipped, it was obvious that Otto Zuhl was raking in big profits. So big, it was rumored he was going to sell the company and—fulfilling his long-held desire— form an animated film studio in Hollywood.
Pamela had joined Franklin at the party—the first time she’d ever been up to Room 6000 in the Ice & Fire Assurance Company Building. Occasionally they rendezvoused in the lobby, but because she worked in Brooklyn, it was always at the end of the workday.
On this night, Franklin thought, Pamela looked ravishing in an orange dress imprinted with poinsettias, and a pair of orange high heels. She was also wearing his Christmas present to her, a pendant of his own design: a Mexican fire opal, set in gold, that matched her ring. He had given it to her on the roof of her building on Christmas Eve, as they sat watching a pair of yachts, lighted up like cakes, churning north on the East River.
In the jostle of Franklin’s coworkers, sipping champagne, Pamela eyed Persephone carefully. They had never met. Pamela had heard from Franklin what a hard worker she was, smart and imaginative, and how she steered good projects his way, but never, of course, the fact she was stunning to look at. After Thanksgiving, he’d thought it wise not to mention Persephone at all anymore— which aroused Pamela’s curiosity all the more. For her part, Persephone was gracious and welcoming, though she cast a close eye on Pamela as well. The two women were opposites in many ways. The one dark, the other fair, Persephone tended to be secretive and remote, Pamela open and—in the right company— expansive. But that simplification was deceptive. In fact, Franklin considered Persephone easier to read; he felt the air of mystery she cultivated was consistent with the essential elements that made up her core. Beneath Pamela’s sunny disposition, on the other hand, he knew a harsher and more ambiguous dynamic was at work.
Still, even after working closely with Persephone for several months, Franklin felt he hardly knew what she was like underneath. He thought that meeting her husband might tell him more about her. But at the last minute her husband didn’t come to the party.
“He had to go to Pittsburgh,” Persephone explained without elaborating.
“Business?” Franklin asked.
“It’s become that,” she said cryptically, then turned away.
The artists and editors, accountants and secretaries, ate, drank freely, and danced to gramophone records that Lily the receptionist played at her desk. The two caption writers, the heavyset Albert
Norris and the clubfooted Ted Dodd, kept their green visors on to tend the makeshift bar. Arvin Beckman had come to work in a rented tuxedo and starched white shirt.
“Because later,” he confided to Franklin while wolfing down scalloped potatoes, “I’m taking Eunice to the Printers and Pressmen’s holiday ball. All the local chapters have been invited, including Jersey and Connecticut. They’ve rented the armory on 102nd Street.”
Eunice was a labor organizer, daughter of the printers union’s treasurer, with long unruly red hair to match Arvin’s.
“Don’t tell me labor’s gone black tie,” Franklin grinned.
“Not the ball itself,” Arvin said sheepishly. “But afterwards the union officers are going to Delmonico’s for dinner, and Eunice’s father invited us along. He told me to rent a monkey suit, so I did.”
“Ah.”
“But what do you think about Ethiopia, Franklin?” Arvin said, changing the subject. “Now it’s not just Spain. The Blackshirts are marching in Africa.”
Franklin stopped smiling. “It’s bad all right.”
On the front page of every paper in town was the story of the Ethiopian town of Mekele, bombed and gassed two days earlier by the Italian Air Force. There had been rumors since October, when the Italians invaded Ethiopia, that they were using mustard gas— denied indignantly by Mussolini and his diplomats. This was the first confirmed report by an eyewitness journalist—an American named Wesley McFale who was arrested after wiring in his story. Two thousand Ethiopian civilians had died. Another thousand were missing. McFale’s whereabouts were unknown. Roosevelt was threatening to recall the American ambassador to Italy.
“What’s strange,” Arvin said, “is that the Italians have suffered so few casualties. The Ethiopians don’t have much artillery, but they’re well supplied with repeating rifles. There was a full-scale battle near Mekele and, according to McFale, only twenty Italian soldiers were killed, compared to nine hundred Ethiopians.”
“No, the air force didn’t come in until later. McFale reported that the Italians just weren’t dropping, even through heavy gunfire.”
Franklin became queasy, thinking back to Argentina, to the Ancasti Mountains and Ignatius Devine’s search for zilium. Had Devine finally shipped a cache to Germany that some Krupp factory was fashioning into body armor, just as he had boasted? Was it a zilium lining beneath the Italian soldiers’ uniforms that was shielding them from death?
The notion seemed fantastic, still, to Franklin—like something concocted in that very office for the pages of Jungle Pilot which had suddenly leaped into reality. Before long, such a leap would occur, something penned by Franklin himself that would turn up in the far larger war he could already hear, like thunder, just over the horizon.
Four months later, beside a blue lake overhung with weeping willows, the war seemed that much closer for Franklin when, from a nearby circle of men, he overheard one of them mention zilium before being hushed up by his companions.
They were in western Connecticut, near the village of Havenwood, at Otto Zuhl’s country house. It was a big white house on forty acres of land with a wraparound verandah and a topiary garden. Wisteria vines climbed one wall of the house. Rosebushes lined the flagstone paths, wafting perfume. It was the first Saturday in May, unusually hot, and the air swirled with pollen. On the cropped lawn that sloped down to the lake, a picnic was under way. Food and drink were being served from long tables under maple trees. A few dozen guests were gathered in clusters, clutching glasses, wearing hats against the sun.
Only three employees of Zuhl Publications had been invited to this party: Persephone Eckert, who had yet to arrive, Pat Markey, the head accountant (and Zuhl’s most trusted confidant), and Franklin, who that morning had driven up from the city in a green Packard convertible with Pamela.
Violetta had lent them the Packard for the weekend. It had a V-12 engine, tartan plaid upholstery, whitewall tires, and reclining seats. Violetta had acquired it only recently, a gift from Joe Szabo, who in turn had won it—part of a final gigantic pot—in an all-night stud poker game in Yorkville with members of a Polish gang allied to the Vas. The Polish gangster who owned the Packard was so enthused about his full house, kings high, that he kept raising each bet wildly until, finally, when Joe displayed four sixes, the Pole had to cover his losses with the car. Joe already owned a new Chrysler sedan, so Violetta got the Packard, which she seldom used.
Franklin was teaching Pamela to drive so she could get her license. Midway to Havenwood, they put the top down and Pamela got behind the wheel.
Acclimating herself to the dashboard, she tested the headlamps, turned on the windshield wipers, and pulled out the choke.
“What’s this?” she said, when she came on a button at the base of the dashboard, beneath the heater switch.
“I don’t know,” Franklin said. “Press it.”
She did, and a small hidden compartment snapped down at a forty-five-degree angle. Nestled within was a snub-nosed black pistol.
“My god,” Pamela said.
Franklin examined the pistol. “A .38,” he said, spinning the cylinder. “Fully loaded.”
“It must have belonged to the Polish guy,” Pamela said.
Franklin grinned. “Unless Joe himself stuck it in here for Violetta’s protection.”
Pamela shook her head. “Violetta couldn’t know about this.”
“One thing’s for sure,” Franklin said, snapping the pistol back into its hiding place, “you won’t need it for the driver’s test.”
As Pamela negotiated the two-lane highway through the forest, she said with a trace of weariness, “So how’s it going with the machine?”
She knew that Franklin’s mind had gone to the subject that had been preoccupying him for months, whatever the occasion: the manufacture of his paint-shaking machine. This couldn’t be helped, but as he kept telling her, it was only temporary.
Securing the patent had turned out to be the easy part: now he had to raise money, build a prototype, and mass-produce the machine. Obtaining a bank loan, at a time when banks themselves needed money, was tortuous. There weren’t many institutions inclined to speculate on an inventor with an unproven device and no track record. Even the wealthiest private investors, who might have enjoyed the gamble in fat times, had become ultracautious six years into the Depression.
Then he caught a break. Eunice’s father, the union treasurer, passed along a name to him by way of Arvin Beckman: Stanley Evergreen, a seventy-year-old left-wing manufacturer (mattresses, pillows, and cushions) with two factories in Newark and one in lower Manhattan, where he kept his offices. Evergreen had deep pockets and was helping to bankroll the Lincoln Brigade and other Republican volunteers in the Spanish Civil War. He also gave plenty to war relief charities and refugee organizations.
“But I seldom put dollars in other men’s businesses,” he told Franklin, gazing across his cluttered desk. Evergreen had a wide face, a gap-toothed smile, and receding curly hair, slate-gray It was a cold March morning and the pigeons were huddled on his windowsill overlooking Water Street. “My own business I can control. Another man’s …" He threw his arms open. “And you say you don’t have any collateral. You own nothing.”
“Just my ideas. And, I promise you, they’re worth more than a house or a plot of land.” Franklin leaned forward. “I need four thousand dollars to start up. I’ll pay it back within two years— monthly, however you like—and you name the interest rate.”
Evergreen sat back, stuffing his briar pipe with stringy Balkan tobacco. “You’re sure of yourself,” he said.
“I am.”
“I like that. There’s one other thing, though: I’m a capitalist, but an enlightened one. Or so I tell myself. To be blunt, I wouldn’t want to assist anyone unenlightened.”
“I don’t think you and I would find much to disagree about in that area.”
Evergreen screwed up his eyes. “You’re a communist?”
“No. But I live on your side of the street. I’ll always run a union shop and treat my workers fairly. And I’ll put my own profits into things I believe in.”
“Money is only a means to an end, Mr. Flyer. Can you tell me what it is you’re after?”
Franklin looked him in the eye. “What I want feels like the easy part—to prosper, to do good, to explore. What I’ll truly discover along the way, what’s hidden now, I can’t say. All I know is that I’ll keep my eyes open and my heart. And that right now I can’t continue my journey without money.”
Ten minutes later, Franklin walked out of Stanley Evergreen’s office with a check for four thousand dollars. The day the check cleared, he rented a bare garage space fifteen minutes from his apartment, on Bond Street near the Bowery. He bought equipment—drill presses, precision saws, acetylene torches, and an array of tools—off a secondhand supplier in East New York, and hired a pair of machinists, Hank Crowley and Willie Tork, to build the machine from his blueprints. They were making good progress, the three of them working weekends now for two months. Franklin was exhausted, but exhilarated. After putting in a ten-hour day at Zuhl Publications, he went directly to the garage, picking up sandwiches and coffee on the way. Pamela missed the dinners at Ventimiglia, the Saturday matine´e double features, and their long walks in Prospect Park on Sunday mornings. She had a rival, she only half-joked, who couldn’t walk or talk—just shake.
Zuhl’s property, four miles from the nearest public road, was at the end of a gravel lane on which NO TRESPASSING signs had been posted every hundred yards. There was a red barn where his wife kept three Appaloosa horses and some Shetland ponies. Evidently she rode a lot. Persephone had told Franklin that Mrs. Zuhl spent most of her time at this house, with her husband joining her on weekends. But on that particular weekend Mrs. Zuhl was in Madrid, concluding a European junket.
“Tomorrow Evelyn goes to Lisbon,” Zuhl said to Franklin. “Wednesday she sails home on the San Maribel.” He sipped his Tom Collins. “Ever been to Spain, Flyer? Beautiful country. In some places, like our Old West. A few of my Spanish associates are here today. I’m sure you’ll run into them.”
It was thus that Franklin found himself at the lake with Pamela, near a group of well-dressed men, when he was startled to hear the word “zilium.” The breeze rustling the willows had lulled him, and Franklin couldn’t pick out the speaker as the men, smoking big cigars, resumed their conversation in muted voices. Excusing himself to Pamela, Franklin casually approached them, suppressing his excitement.
These must be Zuhl’s “Spanish friends,” he thought, though two of the men, middle-aged, fairly nondescript—one loudmouthed, with a florid face, the other barrel-chested, with sandy hair—were clearly American-born. It was the sandy-haired one who stepped from the group and, sizing Franklin up, extended his hand.
“You work for Otto, don’t you?” the man said.
“Yes. My name is Franklin Flyer.”
“I’m Herman Ganz.”
“Karl Marius,” the florid man put in, shaking Franklin’s hand.
Franklin felt the eyes of the other men on him, but none introduced himself.
“Please join us,” Ganz continued.
Suddenly, through the cigar smoke, one of the faces—pock- marked, turned toward the lake—registered on Franklin. Had this been the man who mentioned zilium? As one of Ignatius Devine’s companions in Argentina, and despite the fact he didn’t speak English, Señor Guiterrez certainly knew that word. He was just as Franklin remembered him: dour, taciturn, his hair pomaded like black glass. Their eyes met, but in Guiterrez’s there was not a flicker of recognition. He didn’t even seem curious. Or else, Franklin thought, he was a first-rate actor.
But why should Guiterrez pretend? In Washington Tommy Choylo and Dr. Volonz, while uncomfortable, acknowledged that they knew him. Also, what was Guiterrez’s relationship to Zuhl? Guiterrez was a Falangist businessman, and this wasn’t 1931, it was 1936: the fascist Falange, with hard support from Italy, were on the rise, agitating openly, on the verge of igniting a military coup. One day soon they might be the government of Spain, where Mrs. Zuhl was enjoying her vacation. A rare holiday destination at that time for Americans. You might as well travel to a tropical island in the path of a hurricane.
“We were discussing the Italian victory in Ethiopia,” Ganz said in a flat voice.
Earlier that week, on the first of May, Franklin’s twenty-ninth birthday, the Italian Army had laid siege to the capital city of Addis Ababa. Four days later, the Italians had overrun the city and expelled the emperor, Haile Selassie. Mussolini had declared the Italian king, Victor Emmanuel III, the new emperor and appointed as viceroy General Pietro Badoglio, the victorious commander. From Berlin Adolf Hitler sent public congratulations to Mussolini. Franco did the same, while the rest of Europe registered feeble diplomatic protests.
“A resounding victory,” Marius declared. “The beginning of—”
“Thank you, Karl,” Ganz interrupted him. “And what do you think about Ethiopia, Mr. Flyer?”
Shifting his weight, Franklin thrust his hands into his pockets. “I think the Italians just made a terrible mistake.”
“It’s a bankrupt move. Morally, politically.” Weighing his words, Franklin again peered into the faces around him. “Economically, of course, it’s also stupid.”
“How can you say that?” Marius snapped, turning even redder. “Ethiopia is a rich territory.”
“What—coffee beans, hemp?” Franklin goaded him.
“Not quite,” Marius snorted.
Ganz shot him another glance and he fell silent.
The other men remained poker-faced during this exchange. But now Señor Guiterrez was gazing intently at Franklin. He’s recognized me, Franklin thought.
His lips curling into a smile, Ganz scratched at his thick side-burn. “I feel certain the Italians will do much good in East Africa. Building roads and bridges, dredging rivers.”
“I see,” Franklin smiled back, “it’s all about public works.” Ganz’s pointed reference to East Africa made Franklin more curious than ever. He tried to figure out how he could provoke Marius into saying more. But just then he heard Pamela come up behind him.
“Franklin, I’m going up to the house,” she said.
He was debating whether or not to join her when the sudden arrival of two other guests decided the matter. Side by side a man and woman were descending the sloped lawn, the woman waving to him.
“It’s your friend Persephone,” Pamela said with an edge in her voice. Ever since meeting her, Pamela had been suspicious and jealous of Persephone. Franklin had anticipated her jealousy, but not its intensity; when he asked Pamela about it, she vehemently denied having any such feelings. Afterward she refused to discuss Persephone at all.
“Excuse me,” Franklin said to Ganz.
“Of course,” Ganz nodded. “I’m sure we’ll meet again.”
The man with Persephone was thin and gray-haired, with narrow shoulders and spindly legs. He walked gingerly, in heavy shoes, following her down the steep incline. Surely this couldn’t be her husband, Franklin thought; the man was more than twice her age. Flush with the heat, Persephone tossed back her long hair. “Franklin,” she said, taking his arm, “I want you to meet my husband, Horace. Horace, this is Franklin Flyer. And Pamela LeTrue.” Horace Eckert wore a seersucker suit with blue stripes and a blue bow tie. The heavy shoes were black wing tips. A monogrammed handkerchief was forked neatly into his front pocket. His eyes were pale gray, and he had a moustache, white and pencil thin, that even at a short distance was barely visible.
“We took the train,” Persephone sighed, “and it was so slow.” "We would have given you a ride,” Pamela said coolly, and Franklin looked at her sidelong.
Persephone shook her head. “Horace doesn’t like cars.” Later, sipping a Scotch and soda on the verandah, Franklin learned that Horace also didn’t like liquor, airplanes, or canned food. He was a strict vegetarian who drank quarts of barley tea to cleanse his bloodstream. A chess buff, he was also adept at the Japanese game of Gô, played with black pebbles. But what most intrigued Franklin was Horace Eckert’s encyclopædic knowledge of the religion of ancient Egypt. He had learned to read hieroglyphics, and over the years had pored over every Egyptian text he could lay his hands on, from The Book of the Dead to the royal chronicles of the Twelfth Dynasty to the papyrus Sallier IV which depicts the cosmic battle between the gods Horus and Set. He was familiar with all the arcana of Isis and Osiris, Râ and Thoth, and Anubis, the dog-headed god of the dead. In the previous decade he had made a half-dozen pilgrimages to Egypt on steamships, visiting the ancient ruins at Giza and Luxor, the Valley of the Kings and the pyramids at Memphis. He was also an expert on Egyptian glass. He informed Franklin that the earliest known specimens of glass were produced in Egypt in 2000 B.C., and that five hundred years later, its manufacture was commonplace in the Nile Valley.
This subject was of especial interest to Horace, who for thirty-two years had been an employee of the Harmon Glass Company, rising through the ranks from salesman to development director to executive vice president. By holding on to a big chunk of company stock, waiting out the barren years after the Crash for it to rebound, he had become a wealthy man. Harmon Glass specialized in win-dowpanes, mirrors, and optical lenses. Among his other duties, Horace oversaw the company laboratory, and even held a couple of patents, for a type of glass that could withstand the heat of the most powerful incandescent lightbulbs.
Franklin had more in common with Horace than he anticipated. Always trusting his first impressions, he was drawn to him at once. Horace seemed honest and plainspoken. Franklin wondered if, ten years earlier—when she was twenty-four—this was what had attracted Persephone to a man so much her senior. He guessed that Horace was at least in his mid-sixties now. And he wondered about his other good qualities, especially with regard to women. Horace didn’t seem like a romantic type, but then, you never knew. And Persephone was no romantic herself, Franklin thought; with her shadowy allure and striking beauty, it was easy to cast her in that role. From Horace’s point of view, it was not so difficult to understand the attraction: in Persephone, he had encountered a woman who might easily have stepped from the amber light of a tomb painting in Luxor. Everything about her—not just her name— reminded Franklin of one of those stately deities of the underworld who seem darkly out of place in the teeming upper world, the sunlit chaos of daily life.
Certainly Persephone was a woman who appreciated the financial stability an older man like Horace could offer her. But what had really brought them together—more complicated even than money—was their mutual interest in Egyptology. Persephone would confide to Franklin that the subject of their very first conversation was none other than King Tut. “Not this caricature with which they’re selling alligator handbags and hair oil, but the pharaoh who succeeded Smenkhkarê and moved the capital of the ancient kingdom back to Thebes, sacred to the god Amon. Tutankhamen celebrated the primacy of Amon and restored his name to all the monuments. You see, there’s this Egyptology for socialites and hucksters, and then the true history, which can open up entire worlds to us.”
Franklin’s first conversation with Horace, however, branched out quickly from ancient Egypt. In fact, for the most part they discussed zilium. After learning Horace’s background, Franklin brought it up, and, not surprisingly, Horace knew all about it, including the best ways to mine, refine, and smelt it.
“We believed zilium might make a better lightbulb filament than tungsten,” he explained. “You could have a bulb that burns for ten thousand hours. But it was too dense to serve as a conductor, even short-term.”
“Couldn’t it have other uses?” Franklin said. “The stuff is malleable, yet practically indestructible. Good for armor-plating, perhaps.”
Horace looked at him curiously. “Sure, but you would need large reserves for that.”
“They exist in Argentina, in the mountains.”
Horace nodded, sipping his tea. “But, you know, the real stash is in Africa.”
“What?”
“Western Ethiopia, which is generally metal-rich. Lots of gold and platinum. And the zilium is untouched, close to the surface.”
Franklin was dumbfounded. Was that the real reason the Italians had invaded? "How do you know this?”
“It’s no secret. We sent a team over years ago when we were doing lab tests. What of it, though?”
Franklin hesitated. From fleeting impressions, he was trying to gauge the depth of Horace’s relationship to Otto Zuhl. Watching them exchange formal pleasantries, Franklin had decided that Horace didn’t much care for Zuhl and was at the party strictly on Persephone’s account. Horace also seemed to be a complete stranger to Herman Ganz and his companions. Still, Franklin chose to keep his speculations about zilium to himself, if for no other reason than the fact Horace might think him a crackpot. “It’s just something I heard about recently,” he replied vaguely.
Through the long sultry afternoon, as the refreshments flowed, Otto Zuhl’s guests milled in and around his house in ever-shifting clusters. Yet Franklin never once saw Zuhl alone in conversation with Herman Ganz, Karl Marius, or any of the others; whenever Zuhl was near them, it was always in the company of other guests. As for Señor Guiterrez, after conferring briefly with Herman Ganz across the rose garden, he cast a quick look at Franklin and disappeared altogether.
Just before sunset, Franklin backed the green Packard out of its parking space near the barn. As Pamela climbed in, he glimpsed someone watching them from a sedan parked beneath a shade tree. It was Karl Marius behind the wheel, smoking a cigarette. Even when he realized he had been spotted, Marius didn’t avert his gaze.
Pamela had been quiet most of the afternoon, picking at her food and drinking more than usual. By the time the party broke up, she had lapsed into silence and did not speak until she and Franklin were speeding south on the state highway in the darkening twilight. She had taken off her straw hat, and the wind was ruffling her platinum hair.
“What is it?” Franklin said, switching on the headlamps.
She stared straight ahead.
“Pamela?” Franklin put his hand over hers, but she drew away from him.
After another mile or so, she rolled up her window. “How long have you been in love with Persephone?” she asked in a low voice.
“You heard me.”
“I am not in love with Persephone.”
“Come on, Franklin, she’s so damn beautiful.”
“You were the most beautiful woman there today. Every man was looking at you.”
“You weren’t looking at me.”
“Pamela, I’m in love with you. I work with Persephone— period. Now, what’s this really about?”
“Look,” she snapped, “I understand why you’re lying. And you’re good at it. But I know what I see with my own eyes. You’re having an affair with her.”
“You didn’t see anything of the kind—and I’ve never lied to you.”
“Oh, then I must be crazy, is that it?” she said, raising her voice. “I’ve had other men hurt me—I’m not new to this.”
He was beginning to think she was crazy. By the time they pulled into a gas station a few miles later, she refused to talk at all.
Night had fallen. The gas station was a tiny oasis of light in a sea of blackness. Pamela went to the bathroom out back. Inside the garage, a mechanic was working noisily beneath a jacked-up car. Franklin honked and the mechanic sauntered over to the gas pump wiping the grease from his hands, looking slightly annoyed. He was a short, stocky man with flushed cheeks. He pumped ten gallons of gas into the Packard, Franklin paid him, and he returned to the garage, sliding beneath the car and starting to bang away. Franklin thought he must be trying to loosen the oil pan.
The passing traffic was light. Across the highway the birch trees were swaying in the wind. Somewhere a dog was barking. Franklin’s watch read two minutes of nine and he wondered what was keeping Pamela.
In the rearview mirror he saw a car pull off the highway into the gas station. The car slowed, its headlamps doused, and the rear door flew open. There was a spurt of flame, a muffled explosion, and Franklin heard a bullet whiz by his window. Another ricocheted off the pavement, throwing sparks. A third tore into the Packard’s trunk. Ducking down, he remembered the button beneath the dashboard.
He snapped out the hidden compartment, grabbed the .38, and leaning out his window fired twice at the other car. His shots missed, but the fact he had a gun was enough.
The car screeched into reverse and lurched onto the highway, a Buick sedan with New Jersey license plates. Seconds later, it sped away into the darkness.
The mechanic stopped banging and emerged again from the garage, holding a mallet. “What the hell was that?” he demanded.
“Guy got a blowout,” Franklin replied, keeping his voice level.
The mechanic looked up and down the highway suspiciously. “Where is he?”
Franklin pointed vaguely to his left.
“Never heard no blowout like that,” the mechanic said.
Pamela reappeared and got into the Packard and Franklin accelerated onto the highway. He kept his eyes glued far ahead, trying to pick out the taillights of the Buick, scanning the shoulder to make sure it hadn’t pulled off under the trees. He drove fast, and the tires squealed when he veered into the next exit.
“Hey,” Pamela cried. “What are you doing?”
“I’m circling back to the highway,” he said, zigzagging along a succession of back roads, one eye glued to the rearview mirror.
Pamela rested her head against the window and closed her eyes. “Let me know when we reach New York.”
He returned to the highway near the state line. His head was still pounding. He had been shot at before, but this was different. Touching the pistol in his pocket, he told himself how lucky he was. Pamela was another story: he didn’t feel so lucky about her.
Near Mount Vernon, without lifting her head, she opened her eyes a crack. But until they pulled up in front of her apartment house, she didn’t say another word. They had planned to spend the night in Brooklyn, but stepping onto the sidewalk, Pamela said, “Take the car back to Violetta tonight.”
Franklin was tired of this now, and angry. “You’re sure that’s what you want?”
“Positive.”
He took a deep breath. “Pamela, I told you I love you.”
“You told me a lot of things.”
“Maybe it isn’t that I’m unfaithful, but that you get jealous over nothing.”
“That’s another lie.”
He threw up his hands. “You really believe I’m involved with Persephone?”
She slammed the door. “I believe exactly what I said.”
“Pamela—”
But she was gone.
Franklin crossed the Brooklyn Bridge, swearing under his breath. The moon was full and the river choppy, glinting silver. He was astonished to find just how rancorous Pamela’s jealousy was, and how deep its roots. No matter who she was involved with, it would surface, and this realization made him feel sick and heartbroken.
Entering Chinatown, he thought about Karl Marius watching him from the parked car; and Herman Ganz’s sharp glances; and Señor Guiterrez’s impassive stare. That bunch made Ferret Hawkins look like a Boy Scout—but who were they, exactly? Franklin decided he would get Arvin Beckman and Joe Szabo, each with his unique pool of sources, to help him find out.
He drove up East Broadway, across Division Street, north onto Bowery. In his agitated state, he didn’t want to go home yet and be alone, so he stopped at the warehouse on Bond Street to look in on Tork and Crowley And to see if they could patch up the bullet hole in the trunk.
For the next week Franklin looked over his shoulder: when he turned down an empty street at night or waited for the subway in a rush-hour crowd. Once when he was entering his building, a car pulled up slowly, and he froze, flattening himself against the wall. But it was just someone looking for a parking space. Another time, two men in rain-drenched hats followed him quickly into an elevator. But then they started arguing about baseball. As time passed, he let down his guard. It wasn’t so difficult, seeing as he had more immediate problems to deal with. Such as Pamela.
Over chamomile tea at her apartment, with Joe playing solitaire across the room, Violetta patted Franklin’s arm. “Look, my old man left scars,” she said. “I bet Pamela never mentioned that he deserted the family for another woman. She was ten, and all she’d ever heard was that she was his favorite. She’s always been jumpy about men cheating on her.”
So that’s it, Franklin thought.
“It’s good for a woman to be a little jealous,” Joe observed, not looking up.
“Oh, is that Confucius, too?” Violetta said drily, for of late Joe had taken to quoting from a pamphlet of adages his Chinese dentist had given him.
“No, that’s Szabo,” Joe said, lighting a cigar, “based on real life.”
“I’m sure she’ll come back to you, Franklin,” Violetta said softly.
Franklin wasn’t so sure. Wasn’t so sure, either, that he wanted her to.
Meanwhile, Joe and Arvin had had no luck in discovering, first, who had shot at Franklin, and, second, who Herman Ganz was. Arvin said that Karl Marius had been almost too easy to identify: a conspicuous front man for the German-American Bund, who publicly extolled the virtues of the Third Reich. From Yorkville, Joe gave Franklin another angle on Marius.
"Two different guys told me Marius has a motorboat from which he’s dumped guys wrapped in chains into the harbor.”
“Like who?”
“Bund guys, for starters. Anybody steps out of line, he takes ‘em out for some sea air.”
Two weeks after Zuhl’s picnic, Franklin still wasn’t sleeping well, but it was thoughts of Pamela—not hitmen—that kept him awake. Refusing to take his calls or see him, she warned in a note that if he tried to use Violetta as an intermediary, he would never see her again.
Meanwhile, at the office, he gazed hard at Persephone when she was unawares, searching out hidden tugs and twinges in himself. Even while he missed Pamela, he increasingly found himself fantasizing about Persephone—and wondering whether he really was in love with her.
Then late one night, after everyone else had gone home, he and Persephone were putting the new issue of Diamond Courier to bed. Franklin was touching up the final frame, shading the heroine’s pale cheek, and Persephone in an indigo dress was sitting on his desk smoking a cigarette. Her legs were crossed and one of her high heels was clicking against the side of the desk. Neither of them heard the front door open.
From the reception area, a woman in an orange trench coat rounded the corner. Franklin glanced up in time to see Pamela turn on her heel and run out the door.
He raced after her, and as she stepped into the elevator, she wheeled around and flung an envelope at him. Then the doors closed.
Standing by a window in the corridor that overlooked the Globe Building, Franklin opened the envelope and found two tickets to the Tuxedo Dance Hall and a card with Pamela’s careful script: Take me dancing.