The Walking Wounded Read online

  "I'll still take Jung, if you don't mind."

  "Take who you want. It's a free country. Now, will you buzz off for a few hours

  so I can get back to the script? Take you to dinner tonight. Anywhere you like---I'm

  loaded with royalty checks."

  She was so grateful for that offer that she dutifully hugged me and kissed me and

  then took off in her cloud of Balenciaga. Cock-sure, still.

  I spent the rest of that afternoon winding up The Tall Dolores.

  The writing assignment of my own particular lifetime.

  It had become more than a labor of love, suddenly.

  Now it seems a matter of life and death.

  Else why did I buy that .38 caliber Smith and Wesson last week in the sporting

  goods store downtown? The shining, deadly hand gun.

  The silencer was a little more difficult to get. But I got that, too.

  You see, I knew a man who knew a man.

  That's one of the advantages of money in New York. Or anywhere.

  It can buy you practically anything. Legal and illegal.

  Except peace of mind.

  There's a price for that no man can pay. No man.

  Born of woman.

  Born of mothers like Dolores Ainsley.

  Mr. Noon's Tall Dolores, God damn her.

  Awful freak that she was. "You've got to be taught to be afraid

  Of people whose eyes are oddly made

  And people whose skin is a different shade

  You've got to be carefully taught."

  Oscar Hammerstein II

  SOME KIND OF A MURDER

  Who killed Ed Noon?

  There's a headline that will grab them. I don't suppose there are any real Sherlock

  Holmes types in the New York Police Department. Or a Gideon Fell or an Ellery Queen.

  No. It won't matter anyway. I shall leave them a classic Locked Room puzzle. The sort

  of complicated affair that only a genuine maniac can solve. Something that defies

  common sense and logic of all kinds. Sort of a fitting retribution for a world-famous

  private investigator. A busman's holiday, for Noon, for his Captain Monks, and for me.

  I always wanted to write a mystery novel. Never did, of course. My generation was too

  occupied with Vietnam and poverty and air pollution and Civil Rights to fuss around with

  entertainments. I make no apologies for works like Widows Walk Away. I'll always be

  proud of that winner. More coincidence, in that. The show made Violet Paris a star and

  Noon was mixed up with her too before she died. There's something fatal about that guy,

  obviously. Why does he attract sudden death and tragedy? Like a black widow?

  He survives and everybody else dies. The born Indefatigable.

  If he canvassed for a funeral parlor, he couldn't do a better job. Mother---I'm not

  so self-conscious about referring to her that way now---was the vanguard of a literal army

  of the dead for Mr. Noon. I wonder what he's really like? That old joke---I'll know soon

  enough.

  Very soon, actually.

  I mailed him the play today. The chronicle of his big maiden case.

  I'd give anything to see his face when he opens the package and sees the cover of

  that binder. THE TALL DOLORES. He could faint--

  Well, you can't have everything. I'm not the Invisible Man.

  It's the beginning, at least. Genesis. Adam and Eve.

  A start. Prelude to Act One/Scene One. The teaser, as it were.

  From this point on, I control the strings. I'm a new kind of Godfather. And he

  will be the puppet. I'll make very sure of that.

  He will die. Not me.

  I don't intend to enlist in his army of the dead.

  Not if I can help it. I've had enough of losing.

  Apart from that, his death is the only thing that will cure me.

  Free me.

  Forever.

  I know now I can't go on breathing while he still does. Not in the same world.

  Not on this earth. We're on a collision course, now. All the way down the line.

  To the fall of the curtain.

  It happened today. I tried to stop myself, I wanted to hold back but I couldn't.

  There was something in the air, something I could no more resist than opening my eyes

  in the morning. I went to Noon's apartment. Oh, not right up to the door like a

  salesman. Nothing so anti-climactic. Instead, I loitered in the vicinity of the building,

  just across Central Park West, sitting on one of those benches that dot the thoroughfare

  in deference to dog walkers, loners and plain tired people. No one noticed me. It was

  laughable, really. I don't know why I did it. He could have remained in his building all

  day, not ever coming out. Or just shacked up with that black secretary of his or

  something. Or even took a long nap. Who the hell knows? It was like a remnant left

  over from one of those damned movies that Noon loves so much. There I was, bundled

  up in a trenchcoat, the collar pulled around my neck, but not wearing a hat---and yet, in

  one of the pockets rested the .38 Smith and Wesson, with silencer attached. I'll never

  know why I carried it. I wish to Jesus I hadn't, now. Now that Marcel Alevoinne is

  dead. But one never know, does one? The path to Getting Even, to Revenge, must be

  literally paved with good intentions, and accidents. Karma? Fate? I wish to hell I

  knew. I don't, however. I don't suppose anyone does. Not even Valerie Wales with her

  ever-hot, overly-passionate body. Certainly, not her.

  Funny about Noon and his black secretary. Melissa something-or-other. He isn't

  about to marry her, either, though it seems to be as torrid as affair as the one he

  purportedly had with Alma Wheeler. What a strange bastard he must be! All those women, all that love, and he either runs away from it, or stalls it, or finds enough

  excuses never to take the final step. Marriage. I'll ask him about it when and if I can.

  He's obviously a '53 model, due to his age, still operating like a '74 sexual liberal. Just

  like the Young Generation. If there is a Gap, it doesn't seem to exist for him. One thing

  I'm very glad about. His dear Melissa is off somewhere and not in town. Just as well.

  She might louse up the entire situation. Black is Beautiful. I don't want to kill Black.

  They have enough misery and trouble in this terrible life. Noon is all I want. He and he

  alone. We're the match-up in all this.

  No one else. Nobody else. He's the Competition.

  I don't know how long I waited on that crummy wooden bench or how many

  cigarettes I smoked. My mind was filled with what I had to do. What I thought I wanted

  to do. Subconsciously, I perhaps knew that it had to do with the fact that I knew it could

  be the morning that the play would arrive in Noon's mailbox. Maybe that was it. Hidden

  strings and motors had pushed me out of my own Tudor Place studio apartment, right

  after another sheet-session with the dear Valerie. Another shopping spree for her right

  after and I was off on this unknown, somehow motiveless stake-out on the building on

  Central Park West. The Sam Spade routine should have been silly but it wasn't. Toward

  nightfall, Noon himself came bustling out the front door of the place, hailing a cab. It

  was amazing, seeing him like that for the first time. A man I had built a dream on, a

  plan for, a guy whose every thought and action had occupied me for months now.

  Suddenly, faced with him, in the flesh, from a distance of about fifty feet, from bench

  to the opposite sidewal
k, was a revelation of some kind. Fascinating!

  How do you look at the man you know has killed your mother? With what kind of eyes? What type of realization?

  What kind of emotion?

  It was a strange experience for me. The strangest. Out of sight!

  The stats on him raced through my mind. Six feet tall, one hundred and eighty

  pounds, brown eyes, brown hair, no visible scars of any size or importance and yet--

  and yet--

  He didn't look that tall, at all. Nor that muscular. Oh, he was well-built enough

  and there was an easy swing to his walk that suggested litheness and perhaps good

  coordination but I was amazed, nonetheless.

  Reality dwarfed him. The minds-eye is a greater architect.

  He was so average looking that it bordered on nondescript. There was nothing in

  his appearance, apart from an Italian silk suit and a neat pork-pie grey fedora, to place

  him anywhere in or around the unusual category. He was perhaps the stereotype of the

  Executive Suite sort, or the go-getter Ad agency man. The grey flannel-suiter of all the

  TV commercials, the Scarsdale Galahad from Abe Burrows' definition in a Broadway

  musical. The pluperfect William Holden image. Trim, compact, smiling. Odd, that.

  As soon as the name crossed my mind, I recalled reading that somewhere about Noon.

  Yes, it was true. The façade he presented to the world at large---Holden to a past

  generation of movie-goers. An aging Golden Boy.

  It was difficult to tell how old Noon was, from fifty feet. He seemed no more

  than thirty five or so but I knew he had to be years older than that. At least a decade

  older. The clown had served in World War Two, with some celebrity, in the

  mechanized cavalry. As a buck sergeant. God help me, I still liked the man.

  And only wanted to kill him that much more!

  When he and the cab he entered sped away, I was only seconds behind in another

  one. I didn't know where he was going and I didn't care. Suddenly, I was enthralled

  with him. I was like a hunter stalking the dangerous tiger who had eaten so many

  children from the nearby Indian village. I wanted Noon. I wanted him in sight. I wanted

  to watch him as he went about his daily life. And also, I had to find out if he had, at

  last, read my play---and what he was going to do about it. Oh, yes!

  It was no surprise when he got out of his cab on Eighth Avenue and went into

  Downey's Steak House. I had learned enough about him to know it was one of his

  favorite haunts. You get to know the habits and the patterns and choices of your intended

  victim. It is the only way to do these things. How else can you trap a man until you

  know where he will run and hide? Where he will restore himself until he plunges into the

  next battle? Oh, I knew about Downey's, all right. A Noon oasis.

  What did surprise me was Marcel Alevoinne.

  I didn't enter Downey's proper but waited a few seconds after Noon disappeared

  into the pebbled-glass interior and then sauntered in casually, remaining in the short

  outer foyer leading inside. There, in that tiny cubicle, I considered what I was going to

  do. Noon did not know me by sight. My appearance was considerably altered, without

  the short haircut and the moustache and I hadn't appeared on public media shows or any

  of that nonsense in a long time. My one experience with one of the talk show hosts,

  during the height of my fame, had been enough. That idiot had never read War And

  Peace or The Brothers Karamazov and I couldn't see discussing the merits of my work with him once I learned that on the air. I never bothered again with TV. So---I was

  about to walk into the steak house and study my victim. Like a great scientist with a bug

  under his microscope. But all that changed, when I opened the doors and saw, facing

  me, none other than the great Marcel Alevoinne in serious conclave with Mr. Ed Noon of

  Manhattan. Why do I always think of Noon that way?---but I do! They go together like

  ham and eggs, somehow. Rimsky and Korsakov. (I'm even beginning to express myself

  as he does!)

  Noon's back was to me. At a very slight angle from the doorway.

  I hastily drew away, closing the doors again. Marcel had not spotted me in the

  brief opening of the door. He knew me, all right. Knew me very well. He had come

  backstage once to congratulate me, sincerely, on Widows Walk Away. I deeply admired

  the homely rebel. For his work and his lifestyle. Noon's being with him set off all kinds

  of thoughts in my brain. Had they met by chance? Had Noon come to Downey's just to

  meet him? And if he had---why? Wasn't it too much of a coincidence that Noon would

  meet one more famous author exactly during the time when he was being stalked by

  another? Somehow, there seemed only one possible answer. To me.

  Noon had sought out Marcel Alevoinne to ask him about Jo Malmedy. If anyone

  know anything at all about Jo Malmedy, Mad Marcel was the one. That had to be the

  answer. The only explanation that made sense.

  But---God help all those who deny the existence of secret forces!

  The damage had been done. The virus of vengeance, the seething, long

  dormant, carefully-planned vendetta, without white heat to blind me, to spoil the plot,

  had wreaked its havoc. It was powerless, standing in that small foyer, alone and trembling, to fight the red-hot feeling invading me. Suddenly, I could see only one

  thing. Know only one thing. And everything else was shoved to one side. All my

  reason, all my calm, all my passion-less motive. I had thought I was in control.

  Thought I was my own captain and master. Like hell I was. Like hell any of us are.

  In my brain, there was only one picture. One inevitable frame.

  The back of Ed Noon's head.

  That head set on broad shoulders, jutting up from the back of the booth, like a

  bust on display. The only skull in the world.

  It was a nice head, all right.

  Regular, well-formed, brown-haired. Still typically American. Like those old

  GI Joe heads atop all the uniforms in creation.

  And there was another picture too.

  Dolores Ainsley, Mother, The Tall Dolores, clattering down those iron steps

  inside the Statue of Liberty. Running away. Running from Ed Noon and the awful,

  grisly joke her father had played on her; her father was my grandfather, that poor little

  con man, Daniel Brand.

  I didn't hear the explosion in my own head.

  There was no memory of my reaching into the trenchcoat pocket for the .38 with

  silencer attached. I had lost all touch with Reality. With Time and Place. I was a writer

  lost in the plot machinations of his own specific universe. A paper world of people,

  events and climaxes.

  No one came into Downey's in all that time I stood in the foyer. I split the doors, no more than the space required to thrust the barrel of the gun

  inward. The dim lighting could have fooled me, could have made me miss. But I didn't.

  Noon's head thrust upward, larger than life, framed in the periphery of my own vision.

  My own mad eyes, perhaps. I was powerless to stop myself. Inner forces were pushing

  me. Hates and loves and desires. All of them had fused into the trembling, maddened

  whole that was myself. The haunted, beleaguered man, who had lost his grip.

  It was exactly like being spaced out. An acid trip. An Upper, all the way, with

  no Downers to bring me back t
o earth. No tranquilizers.

  There was Noon.

  There was Mad Marcel.

  Blocked from my full view by the head of the man I had to have.

  The .38 went off in my hand like the crack of doom. But that too was only in my

  mind. The silencer did no more than cough. Quietly.

  After that, it was over. Final Curtain.

  I didn't wait to see. I couldn't. Everything was a pulsating blur.

  I turned and ran.

  Ran like Raskolnikov must have.

  Off into the night.

  Less than a man, more than a bastard.

  I had become a murderer in no time at all.

  With my own special Crime. My own brand of Punishment.

  The wheel had come full circle. The Dolores wheel. My millstone.

  I had gotten even, at last. I had avenged my mother's death. I didn't know then, I couldn't know, that a fallen pack of Camel cigarettes, had

  turned everything completely around. Reversed Justice.

  How God must have laughed.

  They must be brothers. They have to be.

  Nowhere does one go, without the other.

  What a monstrous comedy all of it is. Chinese boxes, too.

  Monks is so right about his personal bete-noire.

  Ed Noon of Manhattan can indeed topple into a pile of horse manure and come up

  with an apple pie in each hand.

  Some winners are like that.

  They can't lose for winning.

  "Imperfection and incompleteness are the certain lot of all creative workers. We all compromise. We

  all fall short…"

  H.G. Wells.

  BLOODY AWFUL

  When I returned to Tudor Place, I had no notion how I got there. I was a man

  walking in a dream. There was fire in my head, the pathetic outline of everything before

  me was limned in surrealistic haze and moving masses of misty imaginings. The Real

  and the Unreal. I was unable to sort them out. I was a balloon whose skin did not touch

  the sidewalk. I was conscious only of the flaming thing in the side pocket of the

  trenchcoat; the burning fever in my blood. Be still my brain! Like the widows in my

  own play, I had walked away.

  But had I escaped? Truly escaped. For all time?

  I didn't know. I was incapable of coherent thought.

  It was a nightmare alley I had wandered down. All knowingly.

  I had killed Ed Noon---I thought. The deed was done---it says here. Like Pilate,