Alice Read online

  We stopped in front of a building in the East Seventies, between Madison Avenue and Fifth Avenue. It was one of those broad, neoclassic townhouses, a thirty-foot front, magnificent bronze doors, and a sturdy veneer of limestone. It was the kind of a house that always moves me deeply when I walk through these East Side streets and dream of what I would build, were I ever commissioned to build anything—the kind of house that is disappearing so quickly, giving way to the towering, high-rental apartment buildings. Only the fact that New York has become a sort of world capital, housing so many foreign delegations, has preserved a few dozen of the best of these houses—this one among them. Next to the door was a bronze plaque, and upon it: CONSUL GENERAL–REPUBLIC OF——. I leave the name blank, and it remains blank. For good reason, as you will see.

  The door was opened by a uniformed doorman, who bowed to Lenny. She was respected, and his bow gave the impression that, were it permissible, he would love to get down on his belly and crawl for her. It was an emotion I understood and to some extent shared. She swept in, turned to give me a smile of reassurance, and then motioned for me to follow her across the marble floor, through the white and gold entranceway, to a door that faced us. The doorman scurried to get to the door before she could touch it, opened it, and motioned us into a magnificent dining room, where a long table at the far end was set for three, a plate at the head of the table and two plates flanking it. And at the head of the table, sitting in a big armchair, there was a fat man, not a pudgy or overweight man, but a man enormously and grotesquely fat, a man whose head sat in a neckpiece of chins, whose eyes squinted from fleshy sockets, and whose flesh bulged in rings and sacs. Yet as we entered, he rose out of his chair with the easy motion of a slim young man—he was about fifty, I would say—and advanced to greet us with the quick, mincing step of a ballet dancer, and, like a ballet dancer, he appeared to be poised on the balls of his feet, ready to take off in a breathtaking leap. As incredible as that may sound, such was the impression he gave.

  “My dear, my dear,” he cried, “how brilliant of you—how wonderful of you!”

  He had even less of an accent than she did, the little he had mixed with a British intonation. He had a cupid-bow mouth, small and arched and strangely at odds with his firm, confident voice. He thrust out his hand at me, and when I took it, his grip was hard and firm. The cupid-bow mouth smiled. The blue eyes, sunk in their sockets of fat, twinkled, and the heavy jowls shook as he nodded his head.

  “And you are Mr. John Camber. A pleasure, sir. An honor—as my guest. We pride ourselves on our hospitality—the one thing my poor little country teems with. Welcome, sir.”

  “My husband,” Lenny said. “Mr. Camber, this is Portulus Montez.”

  I stared at him, standing there quite stupidly and senselessly, stared at him and tried to think of something to say, of anything to say. He was not perturbed. Bouncing on the balls of his feet, he led the way to a bar that stood against a wall of the room.

  “A drink, sir? I know it is early in the day, but when people meet to break bread for pleasure or profit, a libation is called for. It mellows the spirit, softens the soul, heightens the taste of the food and the flavor of the conversation. Will you permit me?”

  “Yes,” I replied slowly. “I’ll have a drink.” I felt that I needed one—more than I had ever needed one before.

  “I took the liberty.” He held up a pitcher of ice and colorless fluid. “Martinis. Is there anything purer? Or cleaner? Or bolder? Not your European martini, no sir! Order a martini in Monte Carlo, in Nice, in London, in Berlin—name your city, sir—order a martini and they will pour two parts gin to one of vermouth. And all odds are, sweet vermouth. Sweet vermouth! And they call us civilized, Mr. Camber. No, sir. I offer you a martini blended as my good friend, your excellent Under-Secretary of State, taught me to make it. A precious gift. Not wholly to the point, yet it might be said, ‘I wonder what the vintners buy one half so precious as they sell?’ For I gave him nothing in return, nothing except my gratitude. His secret? You take the mixing bowl—no, no, a pitcher would be a better term, yes?—and you wash the interior with dry vermouth. Pour off the excess. Add the ice. Pour the gin, and mix gently.”

  He poured and filled three four-ounce glasses as he spoke, handed one to his wife and one to me.

  “No olive, no onion, no lemon peel, simply the pristine purity of the chemical magic, caressed by ice, moderated by the slight dilution with icy water—I give you our health!” He raised his glass. “Our health and success in all of our ventures!”

  He drank his down as if it were water. I sipped at mine. Lenny only touched hers to her lips. Truthfully, it was the best martini I had ever tasted. I drank it and a magic lotion salved my wounds. Lenny smiled at me encouragingly. Portulus Montez led the way to the table.

  “Bring your glasses,” he told us. “I never linger over a drink before lunch. Cocktails and conversation are an evening affair. Your lunch, which we call dinner in my country, is a serious matter of pleasure and preservation.” As gracefully as a stage courtier, he drew back Lenny’s chair, slid it under her. “Do you want wine? Please say so if you do, Mr. Camber. My own taste is for beer in midday, and Lenny drinks neither. Or can I refurbish your cocktail?”

  He clapped his hands, and a waiter in black entered. Montez pointed to my glass. The waiter brought the pitcher and filled the glass. Finish that and I would be drunk; I knew myself at least that well, and Lenny glanced at me thoughtfully.

  When it came to food, Montez wasted no time. A second waiter was bringing our first course, while the first one poured another drink for Montez, who said, “Our business will wait. Like Socrates, I feel that truth emerges from a full stomach, not out of a parched hunger. Now these—” he gestured at the plate in front of him, “—what would one call them in your tongue? A large prawn or a small lobster? I have them frozen and flown in from my poor country, where our fishermen have caught them for centuries. The freezing removes some of the fine delicacy of the taste—but, alas, what can one do? Yet they are remarkable, don’t you think, Mr. Camber?”

  “They are very good,” I agreed.

  “And the sauce—simplicity, as all wonders are. Egg, oil, a pinch of salt, a pinch of pepper, a pinch or two perhaps of mustard, the English mustard, mind you, and dry dill ground very fine. Kings have admired this sauce, kings and republican statesmen as well.”

  I was already a little drunk, and I was bizarrely comfortable, sitting opposite an incredibly beautiful woman whose wide and innocent eyes rested upon me so fondly and warmly, eating food such as I had never tasted before, wiping my mouth with damask, handling a gold-plated knife and fork. I was a little drunk and very content, and if it would only end here and now, with that cursed key out of my hands, then I would be content with this. As for Lenny—I hardly dared to speculate upon a future that included Lenny, yet in some curious way, I was gratified and relieved that this was her husband. Another kind of man would have smashed whatever drunken hopes I had begun to cherish.

  A clear soup was put in front of me.

  “Taste it, Mr. Camber,” Montez urged me. “You will find it unusual and memorable, a fine, lightly spiced broth of chicken and trout. The fish flavor is very delicate, hardly noticeable, but suggestive and tantalizing. I know that it goes against the Anglo-Saxon grain to mix fish and meat in the same broth, but it is an old habit of ours, and an engaging one, I might say.”

  He was right. The soup was delicious. I noticed that just as Lenny had only toyed with her prawns, so she only tasted the soup. I finished mine, but in the time it took me, Montez had a second plate. He had the unusual gift of being able to talk and eat at the same time, and to perform both functions effortlessly.

  The third course consisted of crisp roast duck in a fruit sauce, with stuffed apricots. I could not help comparing it with Alice’s product of the night before. I had finished the refurbished martini, and Montez insisted that Lenny and I have a glass of dry Tokay with the duck. The recipe for the
duck, he told me, had been given to him by General Cheng Wo of Formosa, and he went into a lengthy discourse on the varieties of Chinese cooking. I was quite content to watch Lenny and to listen.

  We completed the meal with a “floating island,” which my wife, Alice, had once attempted but not too successfully, followed by thick Turkish coffee and a white liqueur.

  “The liqueur,” Montez said, “if you are not familiar with it, Mr. Camber, is Strega, a product of Italy, a decadent people who happily possess a few virtues—among them this fine cordial. The Italians have given themselves to art and freedom like a whore gives herself to a handsome but penniless suitor. My own people follow the virtue of labor, the strength of austerity, the dignity of obedience. But we must not dilute the pleasure of this liqueur, which is so excellent.”

  Lenny rose, and both Montez and I stood up.

  “You’re not leaving are you?” I asked her.

  Montez spread his hamlike hands. “But we have business to discuss, Mr. Camber. We observe the habits of your host, and in my country, women are not present when business is discussed. Afterwards—well, who knows?”

  “I will see you, Mr. Camber,” Lenny smiled. “Good luck.”

  She left the room, and her effortless walk, combined with my own half-drunken condition, made her appear to float out. Staring at her until she was gone, I sank back into my seat.

  “You admire my wife?” Montez said. I glanced at him guiltily, but he shook his head, smiling, and offered me a cigar from a box the waiter had placed in front of him.

  I am not a cigar smoker, yet I accepted one of the slim panatelas.

  “Clear Havana, Mr. Camber, and fortunately I put in a few thousand before that pig of a Castro came. You will enjoy it.” He lit his and my own. “You admire my wife. Of course you do. If I confronted you with some precious work of art I possess, would I not be offended if you failed to admire it? Men admire Lenny. She is pure, the effect of a cool, clean mountain stream, to use an expression of your Madison Avenue. Her full name is Lenora Frasco de Sica de Lenvan Mossara Montez—an impressive name, is it not? She clings to the names of her first three husbands. I am her fourth.”

  “The fourth?”

  “Surely you are not surprised, Mr. Camber? If you had an interest in stamps as true and dedicated as Lenny’s interest in men, then you would be a stamp collector, would you not? Are you surprised that Lenny is a man collector? And some of them she is wise or foolish enough to marry. I have often thought it is better when she has her little adventures without marriage.”

  I stared at him dully, befogged, heavy with food and drink.

  “I am sure you are in love with her,” he went on. “I would doubt you if you were not. So many men fall in love with innocence, and I must live with this process in a civilized fashion. Sex is not one of my compulsions, Mr. Camber; I find too many things in life more interesting than women. I understand Lenny. She understands me, and each of us permits the other what the other requires. If you were to go up to the third floor of this house, front, in one hour from now, you would find Lenny stretched out upon a magnificent Empress Josephine bed. I assure you, I am above jealousy, Mr. Camber. But perhaps that should wait. I am very thoughtless when I speak to Americans. I have never wholly understood their morality. Ours is much simpler. My own is to be a host in the full meaning of the word. The guest in my house lodges in my heart. Shall we talk about the key, Mr. Camber?”

  “Yes,” I replied slowly. “I would rather talk about the key.”

  “You have it, of course?”

  “I have it.”

  “With you? Here?” He was unable to conceal the eagerness in his voice.

  “No. Not here, not with me. No.”

  “Clever. Appearances deceive, Mr. Camber. They would have it that you were a simpleton. I think I am a better judge of people. We will talk about the key, but first let us clear the air somewhat. I will ask you a question to which I already know the answer, but humor me if you will. Did you kill Shlakmann?”

  “The old man in the subway?”

  “Yes, the old man in the subway.”

  “No!” I cried. “Of course not! Why should I kill him? I never saw him before.”

  “Never?”

  “No, I never saw him before. He was sick or he seemed to be sick. He came to me for help. He clung to me. Then he must have seen something that he was terribly afraid of, and he pulled away from me and fell over the edge of the platform.”

  “He saw Angie,” the fat man smiled.

  “What?”

  “Certainly you did not kill him, Mr. Camber. I told you I would ask you a question to which I already knew the answer. Nevertheless, it was a disturbing sight, poor Shlakmann ground up as fine as mincemeat.”

  “I didn’t remain to see.”

  “Of course you didn’t,” Montez said softly, smiling again. “If you had, well no one observes intelligently among such excitement. You would have been hard put to prove you had not killed him. In fact, haven’t you been asking yourself just how responsible you are for old Shlakmann’s death? He did give you the key, you know.”

  I shook my head. “No. He fell.”

  “Of course. And it is even conceivable that Shlakmann would ask a stranger for help. They do, you know, they have so few resources. How did Mr. Shlakmann strike you, Mr. Camber? What sort of a man do you imagine he was?”

  “I told you, a tired, sick old man—very gentle, very frightened.”

  The fat man burst into laughter at this. He laughed with enormous delight, his whole body quivering like gelatin, the rings of flesh under his chin bouncing up and down.

  “Forgive me, forgive me,” he spluttered, “but I have never heard Shlakmann so described before. Gentle. Ah—I am being impossibly rude. But who do you think the late lamented Shlakmann actually was?”

  “I have no idea,” I answered stiffly, my pride touched, even through the fog that encased me. “I told you I had never seen him before.”

  “And indeed, I believe you. What greater testimony than the description—gentle. That could not be an invention. I am a broad man, Mr. Camber, a man of tolerance. I hesitate to use the appelation of evil for anyone, and if the devil had a good palate, I would be honored to sup with him. But Shlakmann—Shlakmann was a colonel in Hitler’s SS—a concentration camp commander—and behind those beguiling Teutonic eyes—well, how does one describe Shlakmann? He was decorated for the achievement of having passed through his gas ovens three hundred and twelve thousand men, women, and children in a single month. That was a record. A man of tremendous organizational ability. I am not a moralist, but I stop short at some things. Well, he’s dead at last. But to come back to what we were discussing before, Mr. Camber, as an American citizen, one would imagine that upon discovering the unique qualities of the key you held, you would go to the police. For obvious reasons—with which we both agree—you did not. Instead, you very wisely permitted Lenny to bring you here.”

  “I had nothing to go to the police about,” I muttered. “I didn’t want that damn key. It was given to me by mistake.”

  “Well put. And when you hand the key over to me, you hand over the burden it entails.”

  “But I know this,” I said craftily, managing a sort of drunken smile. “I know that key is not just any key.”

  “It certainly is not,” Montez agreed.

  “That wasn’t very kind of you, to say that I was a simpleton. Could I have some more of that—what did you call it?”

  “Strega?”

  “Strega. Very good. Very good.”

  He poured it into my glass. “But recollect, Mr. Camber—it was not I who designated you as a simpleton. Others did. I took sharp issue with them.”

  “What others?”

  “My associates, you might say.”

  “Well, they’re wrong,” I replied thickly, nodding several times to make my point. “They’re wrong. I don’t say that I’m the smartest man in the world—maybe I’m no brighter than the next
one. But I’m no simpleton. I know that key is important. It’s the key to a safe-deposit box, isn’t it?”

  “It is.”

  “There you are. But I know this—a safe-deposit box has two keys, not one. I say, where’s the other key? How come this one’s so important?”

  “And I’m going to answer you, Mr. Camber—forthrightly and squarely. You ask an intelligent question and you deserve an intelligent answer. But let me preface my answer by stating flatly that the key belonged to me. As you suggest, there were two keys, both of them held in trust for me by Shlakmann, who, among other things, was a thief.”

  I shook my head. “He didn’t look like a thief.”

  “And may I remind you that he did not look like a murderer either. Looks are notoriously deceiving, Mr. Camber. What can you tell by looking at me, the cheerful, jolly image of a fat man. A tolerant man, worldly, understanding. A man of some wit and perception and culture. That perhaps by being with me and observing me, but how little of myself that reveals! Shlakmann and I had a common interest in that box, but he was not content with it, and he attempted to make off with my key. In his desperation, he passed one key to you. The other remained upon him, where, no doubt, it was found. At this moment, common sense would indicate, the police have his key.”

  “Then they will also have what is in the box,” I pointed out, squinting at him wisely.

  “Ah! But not so quickly, Mr. Camber. If the key were unmarked, they might never have the box. But unfortunately, the key has a tiny lower-case f at the top. This is the code mark of the City National Bank, which has fifty-two branches in New York. There is no short cut to the box, but we also admit that your New York City police are very thorough. To find the box, they must try every box in each of the fifty-two branches of the bank, first obtaining a court order. Twenty-five thousand boxes? At least—possibly many more. It will take time, but it also gives me some time. That is why I must have the key, Mr. Camber, not tomorrow or the next day, but now.”

  “I don’t have the key on me. I told you.”