Penelope Page 11

  “Cotton in the nostril,” Comaday grunted. “Oldest trick in the book.”

  “Hair?”

  “Hair,” Mr. Green replied cheerfully.

  “Could it be a wig?”

  “Did I examine it? Did I pull on it?” Mr. Green demanded. “A lady comes into my store for a dozen envelopes, you want me to start pulling on her hair? Please—this is no way to keep customers.”

  “All right. What else can you tell us?”

  “She was a Hungarian,” Mr. Green nodded cheerfully.

  “What?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “You mean she told you she was Hungarian?” Cohen asked.

  “As good as told me. I tell you, gentlemen, Madison Avenue is a peculiar place—very strong with Hungarians, beauty salons, jewelry stores—you know the Gabors?”

  Cohen and Comaday nodded.

  “Every other jewelry store on Madison Avenue is owned by one of the Gabors. Myself, I am an ardent admirer.”

  “Of Hungarians?”

  “Of Zsa Zsa and her sister Eva. These are absolutely two of the most beautiful women in the country—make no mistake, I give my attention to such matters. I never miss a television or movie where one of them performs. High-class performers. So when this lady with the black hair comes in for the envelopes, I know right away this is the accent from the Gabor family; so I ask, is she related? So obviously, she is not going to say, ‘I am’—no, she indicated—”

  “All right, Mr. Green,” Comaday interrupted wearily, “we are grateful for the time you gave us. You have been a good citizen, aside from being an expert on matters of pulchritude, and I’ll have one of our cars take you home.”

  When Green had gone, Comaday dropped wearily back into his chair. “Hungarian accent, cotton in the nose—all the tired ones.”

  “They work.”

  “Funny thing is,” said Comaday, “that I never met a woman like that. How old are you, Larry?”

  “Thirty-six.”

  “I got almost twenty years on you, three grown kids, and a wife who never gets off my back. What the hell am I thinking?”

  “I have no idea what you are thinking,” Cohen said, “except that you haven’t got a shred of proof—nothing but your miserable and contemptible suspicions.”

  “What suspicions?”

  “Just remember that. I talk as a lawyer now,” Cohen stated righteously. “You start shooting your mouth off about these groundless suspicions—”

  “Just who the hell do you think you are talking to?” Comaday growled.

  “Oh? I forgot myself.”

  “Goddamn you, Larry, you are a public prosecutor.”

  “I got nothing to prosecute, no evidence, no case—nothing. Not even the insurance frauds. Do you have a complaint?”

  “No.”

  “Then lay off me,” Cohen said, rising.

  “You miserable …” Comaday began. But Cohen was opening the door already, and as it closed behind him, he said:

  “So long, Commissioner. Be well.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Penelope had just sufficient time to go home and freshen up a bit before proceeding to Madame Sadaba’s. Whatever it was that Sadaba desired to thrust at her, she would be in a better position to meet it with her hair combed and her lipstick renewed; but at home Martha was waiting, now in her rock-of-Gibraltar phase, her I-am-your-friend-and-will-stand-by-you-no-matter-what role; tall, straight, gaunt, an aged but loyal servitor.

  “The police called.”

  “Oh?”

  “The police,” Martha repeated.

  “For Mr. Hastings?”

  “No, my dear child—for you. You are to call Police Headquarters and ask for Mr. Comaday, and I was instructed that this is personally for you and not to be conveyed to Mr. Hastings. So you may depend on me—”

  “Martha, stop being an idiot. Be yourself, please.”

  But Martha had long ago forgotten what was herself and what role she had played in the dim, dark past. She stared at Penelope uncertainly, dropping into a Zazu Pitts stance—Miss Pitts being a silent-screen actress of the long ago whom Martha had greatly admired.

  “Mr. Comaday is a darling man,” Penelope explained, “who is unhappy in his marriage and likes to rub ladies’ knees under the table. I knew that he would call me today, and his instructions about James relate to the fact that, like all policemen, he is frightfully in awe of the City Federal Bank with its wretched thirty branches—”

  “A policeman, Penny?”

  “He’s the commissioner of police—a sort of general or something, only he doesn’t wear a uniform,” Penelope explained. “And he doesn’t want to arrest me. I’m sure he only wants to have lunch with me.”

  Penelope was right. “Dear Mr. Comaday,” she said, “I am so unhappy, really. I would love to have lunch with you—”

  “I think you could call me John—I mean, would you—I mean—”

  “I know exactly what you mean,” Penelope answered. “And you will call me Penny.”

  “Penny?”

  “Penny.”

  “Penny. Of course. And you will have lunch with me?”

  “Dear man—if you had only called this morning.”

  “You can’t?”

  “John, I have another date. I am so sorry.”

  “Tomorrow, then?” the commissioner asked earnestly. “This is not an easy role for me, Penny. I mean, you realize the kind of a man I am. A mature man. These things don’t come easily to a mature man. I thought that I had found a way to live without happiness, but—”

  “Dear John, I understand—completely,” Penelope assured him.

  “Where do you like to dine?” He was reluctant to let go.

  “On a day like this—well, only in the Central Park Zoo.” Penelope laughed. “But on any other day—wherever you say, John.”

  “Penny?”

  “Yes?”

  “Penny, may I say that for a woman in your circumstances, a woman so rich, so abundantly endowed by both man and nature, you are unspoiled, simple—now, I do not mean stupid or anything like that, but simple in its purest sense, as we speak of the simplicity of a saint—”

  “John, how can you?”

  “Not at all, not at all,” the commissioner replied gruffly. “Truth is truth.”

  “Dear John.” Penelope blew him a faint kiss over the telephone.

  Penelope decided to change clothes, and she slipped into an unadorned but classically beautiful dark-gray dress by Trigere. Over that, a black-wool cloth coat, plain but distinguished. She came not unarmed to Sadaba.

  There were no customers in the shop when Penelope entered, at about half past twelve. Ducky scurried to take her coat. Sadaba greeted her—“Dollink, Sadaba is honored,” reaching out to touch Penelope’s dress.

  “Estevez?” Sadaba asked knowingly.

  “Trigere,” Penelope replied indifferently.

  “Trigere?” Sadaba raised her brows. “Can it be? Sadaba would swear is Estevez.”

  “Sadaba is wrong,” Penelope said gently. “Perhaps Sadaba is wrong about a great many things. And furthermore”—pointing to Ducky—“where is that wretched little man going with my coat?”

  “Is going to hang it up.”

  “Put it down on a chair where I can see it!” Penelope said sharply. “The coat just happens to be Estevez.”

  “Oh? You do not trust us?”

  “No.”

  “Is not strange coming from you, Mrs. Hastings? And also, I am telling you Ducky is illegitimate son of Czar’s cousin—so don’t looking down your nose. I am having ancestors in Petrograd when your ancestors are peasants.”

  “My ancestors were horse thieves,” Penelope replied.

  “Ha? Is in blood.”

  “Nevertheless, put down my coat where I can see it, you—what did you say his name is?”

  “Ducky.”

  “Ducky. Good. Keep your hands off my stuff, Ducky.” Penelope turned to Sadaba. “Let us get down to f
acts and cases. I have read about blackmailers in books, but I never dealt with one before. They disgust me.”

  “Please sit down,” Sadaba said grandly, ignoring insults within the larger context of the discussion.

  “I prefer to stand.”

  “Is the same to Sadaba. Sadaba is most pleased, Mrs. James R. Hastings, that Mrs. James R. Hastings comes here. Where there is a client, there is maybe also smoke. Do you follow me?”

  “No.” Penelope stood there, amazed at how little she was either disturbed or apprehensive, watching Sadaba—while the tall, dark, angular woman paced around her. Off to one side, observing, Ducky stood, his head tilted back, his face directed upward, so that heaven might witness the insults to which he had been subjected. Then he changed the plane of his face and stared at Penelope. “Why, he seemed so helpless, but I do think he is quite vicious,” Penelope told herself. She stared back, and made a face.

  “Is no joke,” Sadaba snapped.

  “Oh no.”

  “Please, Mrs. James R. Hastings,” said Sadaba, “you are dropping the pretense of being high-society lady nothing can trouble. Sadaba is having too many customers from your income class to mistake bourgeois for quality. Sadaba is living with quality when you are not yet born.”

  “In Petrograd,” Penelope agreed.

  “In Petrograd.” Sadaba nodded.

  “I do like the Russians,” Penelope said. “We had Prince Igor Borgovich to dinner one evening, because he had talked James into believing that he could negotiate fantastic banking connections in Yugoslavia. He had told James that Tito’s father had been a servant on the Borgovich estate, and James’s board of directors advanced him seven thousand dollars in expenses—but it turned out that there was no such thing as the Borgovich estate or family or anything else and that this Prince Igor was a total fraud and not even a Yugoslav but an Estonian or something like that; but his manners were so lovely that I told James it was worth seven thousand dollars, just to see the way he bowed and kissed a lady’s hand—”

  “Is worth maybe a substantial amount more than seven thousand dollars,” Sadaba interrupted, “because Mr. James R. Hastings is not knowing his wife is robbing banks? No?”

  “What!” Penelope cried, her mouth open in astonished disbelief. It was good disbelief. She had practiced astonished disbelief a great deal in front of her mirror.

  “Sadaba is saying simply,” said Sadaba, pausing in her pacing and turning to face Penelope, arms akimbo, long, bony legs spread determinedly, “that when there comes out of the branch of City Federal Bank across the street a lady with black hair—is a cheap wig even Sadaba would not wear—and a Givenchy suit, the kind of rag Givenchy makes for American ladies without taste and having plenty money—Sadaba is no fool.”

  “What on earth are you talking about?” Penelope asked incredulously. “Yes, I had a Givenchy suit, yellow, quite nice; and when I talked to you on the phone, I did think you might have gotten hold of it. It was stolen from me. But now this incredible tale—Sadaba, I think you have quite gone out of your senses.”

  “Ha!”

  “What does that mean?”

  Speaking for the first time, Ducky said, “Is meaning when Sadaba says ‘Ha!’—Sadaba is no fool.”

  “Exactly,” said Sadaba. “You are coming here to Sadaba’s maybe two, three month before—and what are you wearing? You think Sadaba forgets such an outrageous Givenchy, such a vulgar color a housewife from Teaneck won’t touch it?”

  Penelope’s eyes began to sparkle. Very rarely did she permit herself to become irritated to the point of an outburst, but a direct, sneering attack on the yellow Givenchy was too much.

  “Oh, just one moment,” she said to Sadaba. “I have put up with a great deal from you, princess, and from that creep you call Ducky; but I will not have you tear down the most beautiful suit I ever owned. I suppose Givenchy sent you packing; he deplores women who strut around like men—”

  “You are calling Sadaba a man?” she exploded.

  “Do calm down, princess. The yellow was the most beautiful yellow I have ever seen—the piece was dyed by hand in Milan. One piece—and at his best Givenchy is better than any of the clods who crowd up this so-called salon of yours. So just come down to earth. Talk about me, if you wish, but leave my clothes out of it. I am afraid we will neither of us live to see the day I come to Sadaba for instructions on how to dress.”

  “You are threatening Sadaba?”

  “No, doll, I am not threatening you. I am boring myself. I am also wasting my time. So now—”

  “Ducky!” said Sadaba.

  Ducky minced into place, taking his stance in front of the door, and Penelope said:

  “Oh no—really, you are a silly woman.”

  “So.” Sadaba nodded. “Sadaba is not insulted—is too important for Sadaba to be insulted, and we are seeing who is silly woman. Sadaba says flatly, you are robbing the bank across the street yesterday. Sadaba is reading every detail in paper. Old lady who is no old lady. Wigs—gray wigs, black wigs—is so stupid only police can believe. But Sadaba sees you coming out of bank, Mrs. James R. Hastings—so if you got one brain in your pretty little head, you are not insulting Sadaba.”

  “Do you mean,” Penelope asked, “do you actually mean that you are accusing me of robbing my husband’s bank? You can’t be serious.”

  “Sadaba is never more serious.”

  “Sadaba is also a silly ass,” said Penelope. “And now, Ducky, if you will step away from that door, I will be leaving.”

  “Not so quick, Mrs. James R. Hastings,” Sadaba said nastily. “Is possible to call Sadaba names. Is also possible to pay Sadaba twenty-five thousand dollars.”

  “Ah,” breathed Penelope. “At last, we come to the point of the question—blackmail. As I suspected.” Penelope nodded, rather proud of the way she had put that, and feeling like a leading lady in an insane and pointless play. “And just why should I pay you twenty-five thousand dollars?”

  “Because otherwise, Sadaba is going to Mr. James R. Hastings, only in which case the price goes up. The price to Mr. James R. Hastings, he is making sure Sadaba is not telling to the New York Times—or better is even to the Daily News—that his wife is a thief, the price is double. Fifty thousand dollars.”

  “Well—fifty thousand. Goodness, what that would do to James’s digestion.”

  “Is no money at all for Mr. James R. Hastings,” said Ducky from the door.

  Penelope looked at him silently and nastily. She was not a good looker. She knew women who would be able to devastate Ducky with one glance, render him speechless and make him grovel. Both Alice Carter and Florence Crichton were capable of such cold and withering looks; Penelope was not. Yet she loaded her look with enough contempt to make Ducky’s face redden.

  “What do you want from Ducky?” asked Sadaba. “He is only seven when I bring him from Russia. He is a boy without country, man without country, a soul aching for a body. His is the soul of an artist in country where art is mockery.”

  “I am sure,” Penelope agreed. “Do you have a powder room?”

  “Does Sadaba have a powder room!” The tall woman shrugged.

  “Do you?”

  “Why?”

  “Why does anyone want the powder room?” Penelope asked patiently.

  “All right. Go through. Ducky!”

  “Do you mind if I go to the powder room without Ducky?”

  “Sadaba waits for an answer, must I remind you, Mrs. James R. Hastings?”

  “If I may go to the powder room in response to a very plain bodily need, I will think about it. The whole thing is utterly preposterous—nevertheless, I will think about it. And now may I please go to the powder room?”

  “Is Sadaba stopping you? Back there, past the dressing room, is powder room. Please be my guest.”

  In the powder room, Penelope thought about the matter of blackmail. She had read once that anyone who pays the first dollar of blackmail puts his entire existence into bond
age; and while she admired Madame Sadaba’s perspicacity, she felt that twenty-five thousand dollars was too much to pay for it. In any case, after her strange ten-thousand-dollar plunge with the priest the night before, she had discovered a heady exhilaration in the possession of money—and most particularly in the ability to part with large chunks of it. Being a fairly rich woman and having married a rich man she had always accepted the fact that her own money was held in escrow or in readiness to be carefully invested by James. Now she decided that if anyone was to pay blackmail, James suited the part much better than she did. As for James’s reaction—“I don’t know that it matters,” she said aloud.

  Back in the salon, where Ducky still guarded the locked door, and where a small sign on the outside of said door informed prospective customers that Sadaba would return at two o’clock, Sadaba herself peered at Penelope from beneath her arched, painted brows (the real ones having been long since removed) and asked how she had decided—as if, indeed, Penelope were a one-woman jury just back from the jury room. At least Penelope had the feeling that she was, and thereby felt not unlike Alice through the looking glass.

  “No,” said Penelope.

  “No what?”

  “No money,” said Penelope. “If you could only listen to yourself, Sadaba, you would realize how ridiculous you sound. The very notion of Penelope Hastings robbing a bank is quite unbelievable. There, you have me doing it.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Referring to myself in the third person.”

  “Is unbelievable—so? You think when Sadaba tells the police to take you to Sloan-Kettering bargain store for identification, is nobody has enough brains to identify you? You in your own Givenchy rag. Hah! Twenty-five thousand dollars is cheap.”

  “Not one penny,” said Penelope.

  “Then Sadaba goes to Mr. James R. Hastings himself.”

  “Bless you—go. But let me warn you that James is the last person in the world who will ever believe that I could rob a bank. And now, it has been a not unsullied pleasure, but I am afraid I must leave you.”

  “Not yet you are not going, Mrs. James R. Hastings.”

  “But I am,” Penelope nodded, walking toward the door.