Part 16 (1/2)

And then the nightmare of the past hour suddenly revealed itself as having been logical all along. I knew something that Leen himself did not know, that probably n.o.body in the world but me knew. It was impossible, but it had to be true: Mary Kathleen O'Looney and Mrs. Jack Graham were the same.

It was then that Arpad Leen raised my hand to his lips and kissed it. ”Forgive me for penetrating your disguise, madam,” he said, ”but I a.s.sume you made it so easy to penetrate on purpose. Your secret is safe with me. I am honored at last to meet you face to face.”

He kissed my hand again, the same hand Mary Kathleen's dirty little claw had grasped that morning. ”High time, madam,” he said. ”We have worked together so well so long. High time.”

My revulsion at being kissed by a man was so fully automatic that I became a veritable Queen Victoria! My rage was imperial, although my language came straight from the playgrounds of my Cleveland adolescence. ”What the h.e.l.l do you think you're doing?” I demanded to know. ”I'm no G.o.d d.a.m.n woman!” I said.

I have spoken of losing my self-respect over the years. Arpad Leen had now lost his in a matter of seconds, with this preposterous misapprehension of his.

He was speechless and white.

When he tried to recover, he did not recover much. He was beyond apologizing, too shattered to exhibit charm or cleverness of any kind. He could only grope for where the truth might lie.

”But you know her,” he said at last. There was resignation in his voice, for he was acknowledging what was becoming clear to me, too: that I was more powerful than he was, if I wanted to be.

I confirmed this for him. ”I know her well,” I said. ”She will do whatever I tell her, I'm sure.” This last was gratuitous. It was vengeful.

He was still a very sick man. I had come between his G.o.d and him. It was his turn to hang his head. ”Well,” he said, and there was a long pause, ”speak well of me, if you can.”

More than anything now, I wanted to rescue Mary Kathleen O'Looney from the ghastly life the dragons in her mind had forced her to lead. I knew where I could find her.

”I wonder if you could tell me,” I said to the broken Leen, ”where I could find a pair of shoes to fit me at this time of night.”

His voice came to me as though from the place where I was going next, the great cavern under Grand Central Station. ”No problem,” he said.

23.

THE NEXT THING I knew I knew, I all alone, having made certain that no one was following me, was descending the iron staircase into the cavern. Every few steps I called ahead, crooningly, comfortingly, ”It's Walter, Mary Kathleen. It's Walter here.”

How was I shod? I was wearing black patent leather evening slippers with little bows at the insteps. They had been given to me by the ten-year-old son of Arpad Leen, little Dexter. They were just my size. Dexter had been required to buy them for dancing school. He did not need them anymore. He had delivered his first successful ultimatum to his parents: He had told them that he would commit suicide if they insisted that he keep on going to dancing school. He hated dancing school that much.

What a dear boy he was-in his pajamas and bathrobe after a swim in the living room. He was so sympathetic and concerned for me, for a little old man who had no shoes for his little feet. I might have been a kindly elf in a fairy tale, and he might have been a princeling, making a gift to the elf of a pair of magic dancing shoes.

What a beautiful boy he was. He had big brown eyes. His hair was a crown of black ringlets. I would have given a lot for a son like that. Then again, my own son, I imagine, would have given a lot for a father like Arpad Leen.

Fair is fair.

”It's Walter, Mary Kathleen,” I called again. ”It's Walter here.” At the bottom of the steps, I came across the first clue that all might not be well. It was a shopping bag from Bloomingdale's-lying on its side, vomiting rags and a doll's head and a copy of Vogue, a Vogue, a RAMJAC publication. RAMJAC publication.

I straightened it up and stuffed things back into its mouth, pretending that that was. all that needed to be done to put things right again. That is when I saw a spot of blood on the floor. That was something I couldn't put back where it belonged. There were many more further on.

And I don't mean to draw out the suspense here to no purpose, to give readers a frisson frisson, to let them suppose that I would find Mary Kathleen with her hands cut off, waving her b.l.o.o.d.y stumps at me. She had in fact been sideswiped by a Checker cab on Vanderbilt Avenue, and had refused medical attention, saying that she was fine, just fine.

But she was far from fine.

There was a possible irony here, one I am, however, unable to confirm. There was a very good chance that Mary Kathleen had been creamed by one of her own taxicabs.

Her nose was broken, which was where the blood had come from. There were worse things wrong with her. I cannot name them. No inventory was ever taken of everything that was broken in Mary Kathleen.

She had hidden herself in a toilet stall. The drops of blood showed me where to look. There could be no doubt as to who was in there. Her basketball shoes were visible beneath the door.

At least there was not a corpse in there. When I crooned my name and my harmlessness again, she unlatched the door and pulled it open. She was not using the toilet, but simply sitting on it. She might as well have been Using it, her humiliation by life was now so complete. Her nosebleed had stopped, but it had left her with an Adolf Hitler mustache.

”Oh! You poor woman!” I cried.

She was unimpressed by her condition. ”I guess that's what I am,” she said. ”That's what my mother was.” Her mother, of course, had died of radium poisoning.

”What happened to you?” I said.

She told me about being hit by a taxi. She had just mailed a letter to Arpad Leen, confirming all the orders she had given to him on the telephone.

”I'll get an ambulance,” I said.

”No, no,” she said. ”Stay here, stay here.”

”But you need help!” I said.

”I'm past that,” she said.

”You don't even know what's wrong with you,” I said.

”I'm dying, Walter,” she said. ”That's enough to know.”

”Where there's life there's hope,” I said, and I prepared to run upstairs.

”Don't you dare leave me alone again!” she said.

”I'm going to save your life!” I said.

”You've got to hear what I have to say first!” she said. ”I've been sitting here thinking, 'My G.o.d-after all I've gone through, after all I've worked for, there isn't going to be anybody to hear the last things I have to say.' You get an ambulance, and there won't be anybody who understands English on that thing.”

”Can I make you more comfortable?” I said.

”I am comfortable,” she said. There was something to that claim. Her layers and layers of clothing were keeping her warm. Her little head was supported in a corner of the stall and cus.h.i.+oned against the metal by a pillow of rags.

There was meanwhile an occasional grumbling in the living rock around us. Something else was dying upstairs, which was the railroad system of the United States. Half-broken locomotives were dragging completely broken pa.s.senger cars in and out of the station.

”I know your secret,” I said.

”Which one?” she said. ”There are so many now.”

I expected it to be a moment of high drama when I told her that I knew she was the majority stockholder in RAMJAC. It was a fizzle, of course. She had told me that already, and I had failed to hear.

”Are you going deaf, Walter?” she said.

”I hear you all right, now,” I said.

”On top of everything else,” she said, ”am I going to have to yell my last words?”