Falling Angel Read online

  MY IS SHE FAT! read the caption under the picture of a woman big as a blimp holding a tiny parasol above her pumpkin-sized head. The tattooed man — BEAUTY IS ONLY SKIN DEEP — was flanked by portraits of Jo-Jo, the Dog-faced Boy, and Princess Sophia, the Bearded Lady. Other crude portraits showed an hermaphrodite, a young girl entwined by snakes, the seal man, and a giant wearing evening clothes.

  OPEN SAT. & SUN. ONLY, a sign announced in the empty ticket booth by the entrance. A chain hung across the open doorway like the velvet ropes in nightclubs, but I ducked underneath and went inside.

  The only illumination came from a dingy skylight, yet it was sufficient to reveal numbers of flag-draped platforms arranged along both sides of the deserted room. A smell of sweat and sadness hung in the air. At the far end, a line of light showed under a closed door. I went over and knocked.

  “It’s open,” a voice called.

  I turned the knob and looked into a large, bare room, made homelike by several sagging second-hand couches and gay circus posters brightening the mildewed walls. The fat lady filled a couch like it was an armchair. A diminutive woman with a black curling beard spread across her demure pink bodice sat engrossed in a half-assembled jigsaw puzzle.

  Under a dusty fringed lampshade, four curious misshapen humans engaged in the familiar ritual of draw poker. A man with no arms or legs perched Humpty Dumpty-fashion on a large cushion and held his cards in hands growing directly out of his shoulders like flippers. Next to him sat a giant, playing cards reduced to postage stamps in his massive fingers. The dealer had a skin condition which made his cracked complexion look like the hide of an alligator.

  “You in or out?” he demanded of the player on his left, a wizened leprechaun wearing a tank-top undershirt. His neck, shoulders, and arms were so heavily tattooed that he appeared to have on some exotic skin-tight garment. Unlike the gaudy epidermal artwork pictured on the canvas poster outside, he was bleached and faded, a blurred carbon of what was advertised.

  The tattooed man eyed my attaché case. “Whatever you’re selling, we don’t want any,” he barked.

  “I’m not a salesman,” I said. “No insurance or lightning rods today.”

  “Then what the hell’re you after, a free show?”

  “You must be Mr. Haggarty. A friend of mine thought someone here might be able to help me out with some information.”

  “And just who might this friend be?” the multicolored Mr. Haggarty demanded.

  “Danny Dreenan. He runs the wax museum around the corner.”

  “Yeah, I know Dreenan, a two-bit con man.” Haggarty hacked up a wad of phlegm and spat into a wastebasket at his feet. Then he smiled to show he didn’t mean it. “Any friend of Danny’s is jake with me. Tell me what you need to know. I’ll give you the straight dope if I can.”

  “Mind if I sit down?”

  “Be my guest.” Haggarty pushed an unoccupied folding chair away from the card table with his foot. “Park it there, pal.”

  I sat between Haggarty and the giant, scowling above us like Gulliver among tike Lilliputians. “I’m looking for a gypsy fortuneteller named Madame Zora,” I said, setting my case between my feet. “She was a big attraction before the war.”

  “Can’t place her,” Haggarty said. “What about you fellas?”

  “I remember a tea-reader named Moon,” piped the man with flippers in place of arms.

  “She was Chinese,” the giant growled. “Married an auctioneer and moved to Toledo.”

  “Why’re you looking for her?” the alligator-skinned man wanted to know.

  “She used to know a guy I’m trying to find. I was hoping she could help me out.”

  “You a shamus?”

  I nodded. Denying it now would only make things worse.

  “Gumshoe, eh?” Haggarty spit into the wastebasket again. “I don’t hold it against you. We all gotta earn a living.”

  “Me, I could never stomach a peeper,” grumbled the giant.

  I said: “Eating detectives gives you indigestion, right?”

  The giant grumped. Haggarty laughed and pounded the card table with his red-and-blue-embroidered fist, upsetting careful stacks of chips all around.

  “I knew Zora.” It was the fat lady who spoke, her voice delicate as bone china. Magnolias and honeysuckle bloomed in her melodic accent. “She was no more a gypsy than you are,” she said.

  “You sure of that?”

  ” ‘Course I am. Al Jolson wore blackface, but it didn’t make him a nigger.”

  “Where can I find her now?”

  “I couldn’t tell you. I lost track of her after she folded her mitt camp.”

  “When was that?”

  “Spring of forty-two. One day she just wasn’t there any more. Walked away from her racket without a word to anyone.”

  “What can you tell me about her?”

  “Not a whole lot. We’d have a cuppa Java together once in a while. Jaw about the weather and stuff like that.”

  “Did she ever mention a singer named Johnny Favorite?”

  The fat lady smiled. Somewhere under those acres of suet lurked a little girl with a brand-new party dress.

  “Didn’t he have a pair of golden tonsils?” She beamed and hummed a tune from long ago. “He was my favorite, all right. I read once in the scandal sheet that he consulted Zora, but when I asked her about it she clammed up. It’s like a priest hearing a confession, I guess.”

  “Is there anything more you can tell me, anything at all?”

  “Sorry. We weren’t that close. You know who might be able to help you out?”

  “No, who?”

  “Old Paul Boltz. He used to be her shill back then. He’s still around.”

  “Where can I find him?”

  “Over at Steeplechase. He’s the watchdog there now.” The fat lady fanned herself with a movie magazine. “Haggarty, can’t you do something about the steam heat? It’s like a boiler room in here. I’m about to melt!”

  Haggarty laughed. “You’d make the world’s biggest puddle if you did.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  The Boardwalk and Brighton Beach were deserted. Where summertime crowds lay sweating like wall-to-wall walruses a few determined scavengers probed the sand for discarded pop bottles. Beyond them, the Atlantic was the color of cast iron, surf surging against the breakwater in a leaden spray.

  Steeplechase Park spanned twenty-five acres. The Parachute Jump, a hand-me-down from the ‘39 World’s Fair, towered above the factory-size, glass-walled pavilion like the framework of a two-hundred-foot umbrella. A sign out front said THE FUNNY PLACE above the leering, painted face of founder George C. Tilyou. Steeplechase was as funny this time of year as a joke without a punchline, and I looked up at the grinning Mr. Tilyou and wondered what there was to laugh about.

  I found a man-size hole in the chain-link fence and pounded on the salt-encrusted glass near the locked front entrance. The noise echoed through the empty amusement park like a dozen poltergeists on a ghostly spree. Wake up, old man! What if I was a gang of thieves out to boost the Parachute Jump?

  I started on a circumnavigation of the vast structure, beating the glass with the flat of my hand. Turning a corner, I came face-to-face with the muzzle of a gun. It was a Colt’s Police Positive .38 Special, but seen from my vantage point, it looked about the size of Big Bertha.

  Holding the .38 without a tremor was an old party in a brown and tan uniform. A pair of pig-squint eyes sized me up above a nose shaped like a ball-peen hammer. “Freeze!” he said. His voice seemed to come from under water. I froze.

  “You must be Mr. Boltz,” I said. “Paul Boltz?”

  “Never mind who I am. Who the fuck are you?”

  “My name is Angel. I’m a private detective. I need to talk to you about a case I’m working on.”

  “Show me something to prove it.”

  When I started for my wallet Boltz jabbed his .38 emphatically at my belt buckle. “Left hand,” he snarled.

 
; I shifted the attaché case to my right hand and got out my wallet with my left.

  “Drop it and take two steps back.”

  “Do not pass Go, do not collect two hundred dollars.”

  “What was that?” Boltz stooped and picked it up. His Police Positive stayed trained on my belly button.

  “Nothing. Just talking to myself. Open the flap and you’ll see my photostat right on top.”

  “This here honorary buzzer don’t mean shit to me,” he said. “I got a piece of tin at home just like it.”

  “I didn’t claim it was valid; just look at the photostat.”

  The pig-eyed watchman flipped through the cardholders in my wallet without comment. I thought of rushing him then but let it rest. “Okay, so you’re a private dick,” he said. “What do you want with me?”

  “You Paul Boltz?”

  “What if I am?” He tossed my wallet onto the deck at my feet.

  I picked it up with my left hand. “Look, it’s been a hard day. Put the gun away. I need your help. Can’t you tell when a guy is asking for a favor?”

  He looked at the revolver for a moment, as if considering having it for supper. Then he shrugged and slipped it back into his holster, pointedly leaving the flap unbuttoned. “I’m Boltz,” he admitted. “Let’s hear your spiel.”

  “Is there someplace we can get out of all this wind?”

  Boltz motioned his misshapen head, indicating I was to lead the way. He followed a half-pace behind, and we went down a short flight of steps to a door marked NO ENTRY. “In here,” he said. “It’s open.”

  Our footsteps boomed like cannon shots in the empty building. The place was large enough to contain a couple of airplane hangars with room left over for a half-dozen basketball courts. Most of the attractions remained from an earlier, unmechanized era. A large, undulating wooden slide gleamed in the distance like a mahogany waterfall. Another slide called the “Whirlpool” spiraled down from the ceiling, spilling out onto “The Human Pool Table,” a series of polished, revolving disks built into the hardwood floor. It was easy to imagine Gibson girls in leg-o’-mutton sleeves and dapper gents tipping their straw boaters as the calliope played “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.”

  We paused in front of a row of “fun house” mirrors, the distorted images making freaks of us both. “Okay, shamus,” Boltz said. “Give with your pitch.”

  I said: “I’m looking for a gypsy fortuneteller named Madame Zora. I understand you used to work for her back in the forties.”

  Boltz’s phlegm-thickened laughter rose to the lightbulb-studded girders overhead like the barking of a trained seal. “Bub,” he chortled, “you ain’t gonna get to first base the way you’re headed.”

  “Why not?”

  “Why not? I’ll tell you why not. First off, she ain’t no gypsy, that’s why not.”

  “I heard that, but I wasn’t sure if it was on the level.”

  “Well, I’m sure. Didn’t I know her racket inside and out?”

  “You tell me.”

  “Okay, dick, I’ll give it to you straight. She weren’t no gypsy and her name wasn’t Zora. I happen to know she was a Park Avenoo debutante.”

  A mule’s kick would have seemed the kiss of an angel alongside that bombshell. It took a while to get my tongue back in gear. “Did you know her real name?”

  “Whadya take me for, a gazoonie? I knew all about her. Her name was Maggie Krusemark. Her father owned more boats than the British navy.”

  My elongated reflection stretched like Plastic Man across the wavy surface of the trick mirror. “When did you see her last?” the rubber lips asked.

  “Spring of forty-two. One day she pulled a fade. Left me holding the crystal ball, you might say.”

  “Did you ever see her with a singer named Johnny Favorite?”

  “Sure, lots of times. She was stuck on him.”

  “Did she ever say anything about him that you can remember?”

  “Power.”

  “What?”

  “She said he had power.”

  “And that’s all?”

  “Look. I never paid much attention. To me it was just a carnie hustle. I didn’t take it serious.” Boltz cleared his throat and swallowed. “It was different with her. She was a believer.”

  “What about Favorite?” I asked.

  “He was a believer, too. You could see it in his eyes.”

  “Have you ever seen him again?”

  “Never. Maybe he flew off to the moon on his broomstick for all I care. Her, too.”

  “Did she ever mention a Negro piano player named Toots Sweet?”

  “Nope.”

  “Can you think of anything else?”

  Boltz spit on the floor between his feet. “Why should I? Them days are dead and buried.”

  There wasn’t much else to talk about. Boltz walked me back outside and unlocked the gate. After a moment’s hesitation, I gave him one of my Crossroads cards and asked him to call if anything came up. He didn’t say he would, but he didn’t tear up my card either.

  I tried calling Millicent Krusemark from the first phone booth I came to but got no answer. Just as well. It had been a long day and even detectives are entitled to some time off. On my way back to Manhattan, I stopped in the Heights and gorged myself on seafood at Gage & Tolmer’s. After poached salmon and a bottle of chilled chablis, life no longer seemed like a glass-bottomed boatride through the city’s sewer system.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Toots Sweet made page 3 of the Daily News. No mention of the murder weapon in what was slugged SAVAGE VOODOO KILLING. There was a photo of the bloody drawings on the wall over the bed, and one of Toots playing the piano. The body had been discovered by the guitar player in the trio, who stopped by to pick up his boss before work. He was released after questioning. There were no suspects, although it was widely known in Harlem that Toots was a longstanding member of a secret voodoo cult.

  I read the morning paper on the uptown IRT, having left the Chevy in a parking lot around the corner from the Chelsea. My first stop was the Public Library where, after several misdirections, I asked the right question and came up with a current Paris telephone directory. There was a listing for an M. Krusemark on the Rue Notre Dames des Champs. I wrote it down in my notebook.

  On my way to the office, I sat on a bench in Bryant Park long enough to chain-smoke three cigarettes and rehash recent events. I felt like a man chasing a shadow. Johnny Favorite had been mixed up in a weird underground world of voodoo and black magic. Offstage, he led a secret life, complete with skulls in his suitcase and fortunetelling fiancees. He was an initiate, a hunsi-bosal. Toots Sweet got knocked off for talking. Somehow, Dr. Fowler was a part of it, too. Johnny Favorite cast a long, long shadow.

  It was nearly noon by the time I unlocked the inner door to my office. I sorted the mail, finding a $500 check from the firm of McIntosh, Winesap, and Spy. All the rest was junk I filed in the wastebasket before phoning my answering service. There were no messages, although a woman who refused to leave a name or number called three times that morning.

  Next, I tried to reach Margaret Krusemark in Paris, but the overseas operator could get no answer after twenty minutes of trying. I dialed Herman Winesap down on Wall Street and thanked him for the check. He asked how the case was getting along. I said just fine, mentioning I wanted to get in touch with Mr. Cyphre. Winesap said he was meeting him later in the afternoon on business matters and would see he got the message. I said fair enough, and we both chirped our goodbyes and hung up.

  I was struggling back into my overcoat when the phone rang. I grabbed it on the third ring. It was Epiphany Proudfoot. She sounded out of breath. “I’ve got to see you right away,” she said.

  “What about?”

  “I don’t want to talk on the phone.”

  “Where are you now?”

  “At the store.”

  I said: “Take your time. I’m going out for something to eat and will meet you back in my office a
t one-fifteen. You know how to find it?”

  “I’ve got your card.”

  “Swell. See you in an hour.”

  She hung up without saying goodbye.

  Before leaving, I locked Winesap’s check in the office safe. I was kneeling there when I heard the doorstop’s pneumatic wheeze in the outer room. Clients are always welcome, that’s why COME IN is painted on the front door under the name of the firm. But clients usually knock on the inner door. When someone barges in without a word it’s either a cop or trouble. Sometimes both in the same package.

  This time it was a plainclothes dick wearing a wrinkled grey gabardine raincoat unbuttoned over a brown mohair pipe-rack special with cuffs sufficiently shy of his perforated brogans to provide a sneak preview of his white athletic socks.

  “You Angel?” he barked.

  “That’s right.”

  “I’m Detective Lieutenant Sterne. This is my partner, Sergeant Deimos.”

  He nodded at the open partition door where a barrel-chested man dressed like a longshoreman stood scowling. Deimos wore a knitted wool cap and a black-and-white plaid lumberjacket. He was cleanshaven, but his beard was so dark it looked like powder burn under the skin.

  “What can I do for you, gentlemen?” I said.

  “Answer a couple questions.” Sterne was tall and lantern-jawed with a nose like the prow of an icebreaker. His face thrust forward aggressively above his stooped shoulders. When he spoke his lips scarcely moved.

  “Be glad to. I was just heading for a bite to eat. Care to join me?”

  “We can talk better here,” Sterne said. His partner dosed the door.

  “Suits me.” I walked around in back of the desk and got out a fifth of Canadian whisky and my Christmas cigars. “This is all the hospitality I can offer. Paper cups’re over by the water cooler.”

  “Never drink on duty,” Sterne said, helping himself to a handful of cigars.

  “Well, don’t mind me. This is my lunch hour.” I carried the bottle over to the cooler, filled a cup halfway, and added a finger of water. “Cheers.”