Robin Elk’s voice was jovial; but then it usually was, whatever the news. “I wanted to be the first to congratulate you.”
“How’d you find out? We haven’t told anyone yet.”
“I might ask the same thing. I just got the word.”
“Did Ellen tell you?”
“She knows, too?”
“Let’s start over,” Jacob said. “What’s your news?”
“Edvard Kaspar called to tell me which movie star to put on the cover of the new edition of The Fence. It seems you’re now in the picture business. He’s sending a crew to shoot background footage next week: The B unit, it’s called. You’d think they’d have all New York on film by now; but Hollywood never misses the chance to spend money.”
“I’ll be damned.”
“What’s your news?” Elk said.
He told him about the baby.
Elk chuckled. “Well, then, double the congratulations, and please extend them to your lovely bride. When is the happy event?”
“The doctor says March. Who’d Kaspar get to play Moynihan?”
“Cain, you mean. Some fellow named Victor Mature; an invented appellation, no doubt. Do you know him? I’m woefully ignorant on the subject of U.S. cinema stars; apart from Fred Astaire, of course.”
“He’s better than I’d hoped, but he plays heroes. Now I suppose he’s receiving and selling stolen merchandise to pay for his mother’s operation.”
“Are you upset?”
“No. You can’t ruin something that’s already finished. Have you told Phil? He’ll want to get photos and scrounge up a model who bears some resemblance.”
“I have: There’s a time factor, otherwise I’d have notified you first as a matter of courtesy. Shall I quote his reaction, or would you prefer I paraphrase?”
“I’m not a child, Robin.”
“Very well.” He cleared his throat, and delivered a fair impression of Scarpetti’s Brooklyn accent. “‘You mean the liver-lipped weightlifter who played Doc Holliday in My Darling Clementine?’ I’m at a loss as to the reference.”
“Will Scarpetti do it?”
“Of course he will. He’s a professional.”
The launch party for the new edition of The Fence was more subdued than the first celebration Jacob had attended at Blue Devil. The music came from a cabinet phonograph in Elk’s office, and the gathering was smaller. Cliff Cutter sent his regrets from his camp in New Mexico, where he was researching a new western, and Hugh Brock—whose Invisible Aliens had been picked up by a suddenly science-fiction-hungry Hollywood—was in New York General, undergoing psychiatric treatment after a little-known incident at the Bronx Zoo (“Even the tabloids can’t find a way to report a romantic encounter with a zebra that will pass inspection,” said Phil Scarpetti), and Hank Stratton was in California, serving as a technical advisor for Lash Logan’s second season on CBS; the TV Guide pan had paid off in ratings.
Phoebe Sternwalter—P. B. Collier—asked Ellen’s permission to touch her swelling abdomen, and predicted a son. She sighed. “Another aggressive member of the male population to make war on our gender.” She shook a finger in Jacob’s face. “Don’t give him a toy gun.”
Jacob, grinning with fatherly pride—and the effects of an open bar—said, “I can’t give him a real one, Phoebe. Dr. Spock wouldn’t approve.”
Burt Woods and Paul Arthur came up to them separately, as was their habit. “Just don’t let them cast William Demarest as the detective,” Woods said. “He turned our Inspector Spang into a buffoon.”
Arthur: “Don’t listen to Burt. He wanted Ed Wynn.”
Robin Elk tapped his glass to command attention. Hooking his cane over one arm, he snatched the sheet off an easel, showing Victor Mature at the pawnshop counter with a familiar-looking blonde stripping in the background.
“Grace Kelly?” said Jacob. “Has she been cast?”
Elk shook his head. “Kaspar wants her on the cover anyway. I ran it past Lawyer Waterman. He says celebrities are public figures, and less entitled than the rest of us to sue for invasion of privacy.”
Ellen said, “Why not Bess Truman?”
“She wouldn’t return my calls.” Scarpetti was drunk as usual.
Elk said, “We’re running a banner: OVER ONE MILLION COPIES IN PRINT.”
“I’m one in a million.” Jacob put his arm around Ellen’s waist. “What do you think?”
She patted her stomach. “I think Jack, Junior must never be told where you got Marcy.”
As the gathering dispersed, Elk pulled Jacob aside.
“Splendid news. Mrs. St. John—I should say the Honorable Margery St. John of the great state of Nebraska—is a dead issue. Her request for a hearing on the industry has been denied.”
“Who killed it?”
“The Speaker of the House. He’s retiring at the end of his term to write his memoirs. Someone explained to him the benefits of issuing them in a format his constituents can afford.”
“I almost feel sorry for her.”
“One roots for the underdog. It’s the American way, yes? Yes.” Elk twirled his cane and propelled himself toward the bar, manned by Howard Belknap.
“Victor Mature?” Jacob said to Scarpetti.
The artist shrugged. “I was just happy I could fit his shoulders on the canvas.”
Jacob glanced across Elk’s office at Ellen, who was admiring the tiny diamond on Alice’s left hand; she and Belknap were engaged.
“If you’d told me four years ago I’d love this old barn, I’d’ve laughed in your face.”
“You’re sloshed, Heppleman.”
It looked like a scene in one of his books: White Gold, about the white slavery racket in Chinatown. A man in a slouch hat and trench coat was reading a newspaper under the corner streetlamp half a block from their apartment.
Jacob didn’t think anything of it at first. The man didn’t look up as he passed. There was a light rain falling, and there was no law against dressing like Hank Stratton; but why pause in the rain to read a newspaper?
It was only when he was climbing the stairs to the apartment that it sank in: The paper was in Hebrew.
Ellen was staying overnight in Ossining, where her mother was hosting a baby shower attended by some of Ellen’s friends from work.
He had his key out when the door opened away from it.
His heart jumped. He looked straight ahead, then down at a stunted figure standing inside his home. Irish Mickey Shannon looked even smaller now. He’d lost weight behind bars, shrinking his face and redefining the bones. With chin unshaven and a cloth cap pulled low over his bulging eyes, he looked like a police artist’s sketch based on an eyewitness description; the features were that exaggerated.
The effect was increased by a scruffy brown leather jacket worn over a heavy orange turtleneck. Tan slacks covered his stumpy legs and his feet were shoved into sneakers plainly bought in the boys’ department.
He made a motion with an ugly blue Luger. It was a swollen thing in his hand, a cartoon blunderbuss. It should have been comical; it wasn’t. He stuck it under his belt.
“Sorry about the artillery, Jackie boy. You never know who you might run into this late.”
“How’d you get in?” He heard his voice quaver.
“You pick things up in the joint. You need a better lock and an unlisted number. Ain’t it past your bedtime?”
“I was visiting a friend.”
Shannon sniffed, looking like a Pekingese. “Mary Jane’s my guess. That’s illegal. Take a load off.”
He thought of trying for the stairs. Then he remembered the man under the streetlamp. He stepped inside. The dwarf kicked the door shut.
“Nice dump. Kid on the way, you’ll need more room.”
Jack and Ellen stood smiling in a framed photo on a table, she with a hand on her swelling stomach. She was five months along.
“What’s the idea, Mickey?”
“Take a load off, I said.”
He sat, in the rocker they’d bought to put the baby to sleep. Shannon took a seat in Jacob’s overstuffed chair; squirmed around, jerked the pistol from his belt, and laid it on an end table. He took the new edition of The Fence from inside his jacket.
“Found it in J. C. Penney’s. What I wonder is why I had to spend two bits when you was to show it to me before it got in print.”
“I sent you the galleys.”
“Galleys, what’s that?”
“Early proofs. You’re a busy guy. Maybe you forgot all about ’em.”
Shannon stared at him without blinking.
“Could be. I ain’t much of a reader. Also when I made bail after the pinch I had to find a billet where the cops couldn’t tail me to my warehouse.” He looked at the back cover. “‘Soon to be a Major Motion Picture.’ You must be rolling in it.”
“I haven’t seen a penny yet.”
He didn’t seem to be listening. “I guess you heard about my trouble.”
“Anybody can make a mistake.”
“Somebody tipped off that cop.”
“Mickey, it wasn’t me.”
“Scraps, maybe.”
“Not Phil either. What would be the point? We both got what we wanted.”
“Don’t get your panties in a wad. I thought it was one of you, you’d both be dead. But I can’t go near my stuff till the heat’s off, and I’m tapped. I need a loan.”
“I thought all you guys knew somebody.”
“The sharks expect to be paid back. Way I see it, since I was your whatchacall inspiration, you might return the favor.”
“You think Mike Moynihan is you, don’t you?” Jacob shook his head. “I talked to a lot of people, did a lot of reading. In the end I made him up. That’s why it’s called fiction. Look at the cover. He look anything like you?”
“Cut the bullshit, Jack. Dames buy books. I’d still have my cherry if I didn’t know how to raise dough. Personally, I think this bird looks like a wop gigolo, but there’s no accounting for taste.”
He tapped the book. “I open this up to any page, I hear me talking. Everything I told you’s in here. My name should be on the cover right next to yours.”
Jacob relaxed a little. This was Isidore Muntz, the midget jockey from Tijuana, not Baby Face Nelson. “How much, Mickey? Five hundred? A thousand?”
“I wouldn’t sting you for a grand; not all in a lump. You’re a fambly man, got to worry about diapers and college. We’ll go on the easy payment plan. Five hundred down, a yard a month. When the movie comes out we’ll renegotiate.”
Jacob had had enough. The little man had seen too many movies in stir. “No dice, Mickey. Where would it end? Get the hell out of my house. You’re on parole. Just having that pistol can put you back inside.”
Mickey’s face congested; turned almost black. His breath wheezed through his squashed nose. “I told you things I almost got kilt to learn! It was my gift to you and you sold it to every bum on the street for two bits!”
He paused, looked embarrassed; shook himself and smiled, showing stumpy yellow teeth with black gums. “Take a hinge out that window.”
“Why, you going to throw me out it, shrimp like you?”
“I could shoot you in the back.” He took the pistol, kicked out the magazine, put it in his pocket, and ejected the cartridge from the chamber. Nodded toward the window.
Jacob stood and looked out. The man on the corner had put away his newspaper. He was staring up at the window.
Jacob laughed almost hysterically. It was the old Jew from Mickey’s brownstone. He was absurd in street clothes.
Then, seeing Jacob, he reached inside the right sleeve of his trench coat and withdrew something that glinted under the streetlamp: An ice pick ground down to a razor point.
“Sid used to collect for Dutch Schultz,” Mickey said. “He’s got rheumatism now, and it makes him testy. It ain’t so bad he can’t stick you in the heart someday in a crowd.
“You know what the witnesses always say,” he added: “‘Officer, it all happened so fast.’”
Jacob went into the bedroom, unwrapped his .45 from a towel on the top shelf of the linen closet, checked the load, in case Mickey had found it and disarmed it, and went back into the living room. Shannon stood with his hands in his pockets, the Luger in his belt.
“Scram, you little squirt. Take the Golem with you.”
“You don’t want to do this, Jack. Think about Mrs. Heppleman, and little Jake, Junior, if you’re lucky and it’s a boy. Don’t he want to be born?”
“If I see you and your goon anywhere near me or my family, I’ll put you both down like dogs.”
“It ain’t like in your books. The holes don’t bleed clean and help don’t come in the nick of time. It’s the innocent bystanders get the shaft.” He went to the door. “My turf next time.” He opened it and went out.