1975 - Night of the Juggler (12 page)

That arrangement had ended one misting night about five years ago, when Mrs. Soltik had been struck and killed by an automobile at the intersection of Eighth Avenue and Fifty-fourth Street. The driver, Maria Collins, a nineteen-year-old secretary, had been questioned and released by police. Mrs. Soltik, who was given to drink and strong language, had staggered from between two parked trucks directly into the path of Miss Collins’ car, and the girl testified there was no way in the world she could have avoided hitting the big woman.

After the accident Gus Soltik had hidden himself in the basement of the tenement for a week. He hadn’t gone to the church or the graveyard.

He wasn’t angry. That came later. He was frightened. He was afraid someone would come and take him away, now that he was alone.

Mrs. Schultz coaxed him back upstairs with a tray of rice pudding and hot milk flecked with cinnamon. She had a bouquet of flowers for him.

He didn’t know their names, but they were the colors of this time of year, yellows and reds like the leaves of the trees. They had been sent to the church by Maria Collins. With the flowers was a simple white card with Maria Collins’ name and address on it and a message written by hand which Mrs. Schultz read to Gus. “My sorrow and my prayers are with you today.”

Later Gus put the flowers and the little card in the closet on a shelf above his mother’s black dress.

It was a long time before the fear of being taken away left him. And then the almost unbearable anger began to grow. He looked at the card beside the withered flowers and saw the numbers. He made out the 6 and the 9 and he knew that was Sixty-ninth Street.

Gus Soltik found out where she lived, a basement apartment with two other girls. He went there nights and watched the lights in the apartment. But one night they were all dark and the shades were down. He climbed a wall behind the building and forced open a door.

The apartment was empty. There was no furniture. She was gone.

And he never found out where. He looked for her on the streets and on the sidewalks, but he never saw her again, and as the days grew colder and the first anniversary of his mother’s death drew near, Gus Soltik began looking for someone else.

In the five years since the accident Gus Soltik had lived alone with Mrs. Schultz. Mrs. Soltik, before her death, had once told Mrs. Schultz that because Gus wasn’t right in the head, there was no way he could “go” with girls. His great, hulking size and blemished complexion frightened them, and their fear roused a terrible frustration in him. He had hurt a girl on a school playground once, twisting her arm so hard and vengefully that he had dislocated her shoulder.

In an attempt to prevent any more of this kind of trouble, Mrs. Soltik had warned her son to keep away from girls. She had told him—driving the “facts” home in her grating, menacing voice—that girls carried razors and bottles of acid in their purses, and if he ever tried to bother them, even go near them, they would slash at him with the razors and throw the burning acid into his eyes. Then the police would blame him and arrest him and hurt him.

Mrs. Schultz did what she could for him. She wished he would go to church with her, but all she could do was make sure his clothes were clean and that he got enough food and the sweet things he liked, the cakes and cookies. But she couldn’t coax him into taking baths.

She heard his slow, heavy footsteps on the stairs and stood to pour him a cup of coffee.

In the narrow hall outside the kitchen, Gus put his bulging flight bag behind an old-fashioned hall tree and then went into the fragrant kitchen and sat down at the table with the old woman.

He was wearing his yellow leather cap, denim pants, Wellington boots, and the heavy brown turtleneck sweater.

“It was pretty,” she said. “All the incense and the candles and the singing. And three priests.”

It frightened him to think about it. His mother and the fires.

“Going out?” she asked him.

Gus Soltik stared at his steaming cup of coffee. “Walk.”

Mrs. Schultz knew it was risky to ask him questions when he was in one of his “moods” because it could cause him to erupt in emotional explosions; but she was worried about him, and in some profound, unquiet way, she knew in her old bones that it would be best if she knew where he was going to be that night. And so she risked a final question.

“You gonna see Lanny?”

He shook his head, and when he looked up from his coffee cup, she saw the angry glaze masking his eyes. “Walk,” he said again, but now his voice was rising in volume and intensity and his big hands held the edge of the table with a power that whitened his knuckles.

Just leave him alone, leave him alone. That was best, so the old woman muttered something about taking out the trash and went quickly and silently from the room in her worn felt slippers.

There were no words to describe—no words in Gus Soltik’s limited lexicon, that is—the great white void inside his head and the clamorous shapes of terror and excitement that filled the caverns of his mind with almost physically unbearable hungers and compulsions.

He thought of slim white arms and legs and the green fabric of a school uniform. “Greenropes.” With those images coiling hotly through his body, he stood so abruptly that his chair tipped over with a crash, but he was unaware of this, unaware of anything but his savage, growing needs.

Picking up the flight bag from behind the hall tree, Gus Soltik let himself out of the creaking old building and ran down stone steps to the sidewalk.

It was late afternoon, October 15, and the last thin rays of sunlight fell like a golden blessing over the dirt and refuse that littered the curbs and streets of this bitter and defeated city slum.

Chapter 8

Manolo Ramos, in a suite in the Plaza, lay in the warm and urgent embrace of a florist from Detroit, Michigan. The man, whose three sons attended the University of Pennsylvania, whispered in Manolo’s ear, “Would you do that for me?”

Manolo arched his delicate eyebrows and allowed his exquisite features to register a mixture of surprise and admiration.

“You a crazy stud, you know that?” Manolo said softly.

“Will you do it?”

Manolo looked at his gold wristwatch and shook his head slowly. “It’s been too long, daddy.”

“I’ll pay you extra.” The man had begun to pant like an exhausted swimmer. “I’ll double what I gave you. Please do it.
Please.
”

That would make Samantha happy, Manolo thought sullenly. Overtime for the big black bitch, collected from my sweet ass.

Last night and today, he had earned close to three hundred dollars.

Almost halfway home. But maybe she’d give him a break; she seemed kinky enough yesterday to want to make it with him.

As Manolo’s practiced hands and lips catapulted the florist to a pinnacle of frenzied ecstasy, he was wondering if there was anything for him with Samantha, if he could make it with her, make it straight.

Maybe, he thought, remembering with a blend of guilt and excitement how effortlessly she had turned him on yesterday. . . .

“Oh, God!” the man cried in a soft, shuddering voice.

But if he didn’t score heavy, Manolo thought, he’d have to try the park again tonight. Maybe even the Ramble, where he might luck onto a coke pusher. Some of them were rich enough and hot enough to trick all night. That way he could be even with big Sam by tomorrow.

“Here we go!” the man screamed into Manolo’s ear, his voice threaded with exultant anticipation.

You go, big, fat, crazy shit, Manolo thought, and looked critically at the back of his left hand, the rosy fingertips gleaming dully in the illumination of a bedside lamp.

In the same hotel, at approximately the same time, but on a higher and more prestigious floor, a young waiter named Lee Chang pushed a dinner cart in the direction of the suite occupied by Rudi Zahn and Crescent Holloway.

Chang had been given the heady details of their arrival the preceding day. Waiters, bellhops, desk clerks, all had been gossiping like scandal-starved voyeurs about Crescent’s shrewdly democratic manners and her clothes, a creamy white flannel pants suit trimmed in honey-colored mink, the tabby-striped hair, her great lavender eyes, and the hips, thighs, and breasts which seemed to be linked but oddly separate continents of sexuality. And they had chattered about her luggage, sixteen pieces of matched Hermes, and her personal maid and hairdresser, her cheerful, balding manager and lover, Rudi Zahn, and what the florist had sent up and what they had ordered from room service the night before—oysters, caviar, and three bottles of chilled Bâtard Montrachet.

Chang had hoped for a glimpse of Crescent Holloway, but it was Rudi Zahn who opened the door and waved him inside.

Tall, narrow windows gave out on immense, spectacular sweeps of Central Park. The living room was cluttered with flowers and luggage and bowls of fruit wrapped in bright ribbon and foamy clouds of cellophane, the donors’ envelopes unopened, thrown aside like small unrespected flags.

Chang noted with disappointment that the large double doors leading to the bedroom were closed.

Rudi Zahn signed for the early supper—baby lamb chops, white asparagus, and Mouton Rothschild ‘59—and within seconds Chang was once again in the long corridor, alone again, except for his dashed little hopes and dreams.

Rudi Zahn had drunk sparingly the night before and was in excellent spirits, physically and mentally. Crescent, on the contrary, had finished two bottles of the Montrachet, and Rudi anticipated trouble with her, particularly if she had got into any of the scripts he had left pointedly on her bedside table.

(Nate Sokol had handled the morning’s press conference. Film clips and delicatessen and champagne and whiskey had been a benign substitute for the Stacked House Kid, who, Nate Sokol had explained, was down with a mild bout of flu.)

Rudi had waked at three thirty in the afternoon and, after a half hour of calisthenics, had shaved, showered, and put on a gray flannel suit over a tattersall vest, a combination he thought would complement the smart “British” look of his brown suede shoes. Rudi had ordered this light supper, not because Crescent would be hungry yet, but because nibbling at the food would allow her to savor the wine without any pangs from her conscience.

Not that her conscience ever won out. She ate and drank like a willful, undisciplined child: hot dogs and Cokes for breakfast, bags of roasted almonds, liverwurst sandwiches washed down with scotch as after-dinner snacks. Her handbag was always bulging with candy, and her portable dressing room (practically a bungalow) was stocked like an East Side delicatessen. Yet her skin remained flawless and creamy, her body was firm and slim, and her lavender eyes glowed with calm, serene health, like those of a contented Persian cat.

He pushed open the double doors and pulled the dining cart into her bedroom. “Hello there,” he said to Crescent, who was sitting up in their huge round bed, looking with what he judged to be active dislike at the script she was holding.

“Where do you get this shit from?” she asked him.

“What shit?”

“I mean this script shit,” she said. “I mean, who writes this cunty drivel?”

“There is one thing to remember about each of those scripts, sweetie,” he said and poured a glass of wine for her.

“Thanks. What’s that?”

“Each of those scripts is accompanied by a firm offer, and each offer tops anything we’ve got so far.”

“But why does it always have to be such crud? Honest, Rudi, there’s a scene in this bomb—what’s it called?” She turned the script around to look at the title on the cover. Then she stuck out her tongue at the script. “‘Boobs in the Woods.’ Well, there’s a scene where I’m attacked by vibrators. And are you ready for this? I adore it. Can’t get enough of it.”

“Look, sweetie. We’re not selling you as Bergman or Katie Hepburn,” he said. “You’re everybody’s roll in the hay, the little girl who shivers and squeaks when she’s kissed, who can widen her mouth into a perfect circle and make guys think dirty.”

“But
you
don’t have to act in these stinkers, Rudi.”

He gave her another glass of wine. She gulped two big swallows and then, more petulant than angry now, said, “Do you realize what it’s like to know that the grips and gaffers are embarrassed for you?”

Crescent looked miserably at her empty glass. “What are you so afraid of, Rudi?”

“I’m afraid of not making these three deals,” he said untruthfully, surprised at the question.

“But I don’t have any friends anymore,” she said, sighing again like a hurt child. “I’m thirty-three, and I’ve got to keep acting like I’m twenty. I’m sick and tired of training around the year like a goddamn racehorse. I want to eat and drink what I please—”

He cut in. “Well, if you’re on a diet now, I’d hate to be around when you go off it.”

“You just don’t want to get involved with anything or anybody. Just collect the loot, so we’ll be safe and secure when we’re
what?
Living in some rest home?” She sighed again. “I can’t wait. You and me going hand and hand up the path, where the staff of Ye Olde Bedpan Manor is waiting for us with big, happy grins.”

Rudi smiled at this, but he didn’t want her to start feeling sorry for herself; self-pity was vanity’s sniveling little sister, he knew, and Crescent was more malleable in moods of arrogant self-esteem and sexual exuberance than she was when her spirits plunged into these states of self-deprecation.

“Have some more wine,” he suggested, and when she nodded, he filled her glass.

But Crescent was not ready to be cheered up. “I don’t even see my family anymore. You don’t have any family, so you don’t know what that means, Rudi.”

“My family went up in smoke in Poland,” Rudi said coldly.

“Oh, shit, I’m sorry, Rudi.” She looked contritely at him. “That was a lousy thing for me to say.”

She was going the wrong way again, he realized, loose and sloppy.

To correct this, Rudi said, “I wish you would occasionally think,
think,
if you know what the word means, before you shoot off that big mouth of yours.”