Abrams lifted a brass knocker and brought it down on the black door three times.
An attractive young woman of about twenty-five, dressed in a black jumper and a white turtleneck sweater, opened the door. “Mr. Abrams?”
“Mr. Abrams.”
She smiled. “Please come in. You look wet. My name is Claudia.”
He stepped inside the foyer. She had, he noticed, an accent. Central European, perhaps. He handed her his coat.
“Where is your hat?”
“On the bureau of my uncle.”
She seemed uncertain, then said, “Your things are upstairs. Have you been here before?”
“In my last life.”
She laughed. “The second door on the left… Well, come, I will show you.” She draped his coat on a hook over a hissing radiator and led the way.
He passed the sitting room and followed her through the narrow low-ceilinged hallway. The stairs were tilted, as was the whole house, but in a nation of straight new houses, the tilt was somehow chic.
She opened a door off the small upper hallway and led him into a miniature room furnished in what might have been real Chippendale. His tuxedo sat in a box on a high four-poster bed. The box was marked Murray’s Formal Wear, Sales and Rentals.
The young woman said, “There is a robe on the bed. The bathroom is across the hall, and here on the dresser is all you will need for shaving and bathing. When you are dressed, you may wish to join the Van Dorns and Grenvilles for a cocktail. Is there anything else I may do for you?”
She was, Abrams saw, conversant enough with the idiom to smile at the tired old double entendre. As she pushed her long, straight auburn hair back over her shoulders, he looked at her closely. “Have I seen you at the office?”
“Perhaps. I am a client.”
“Where are you from?”
“From? Oh, I am Rumanian. I live here now. In this house.”
“As a guest?”
“I am no one’s mistress, if that’s what you mean. I’m a political refugee.”
“Me too. From Brooklyn.”
There were a few seconds of silence in which they took stock of each other. It was, Abrams thought, unmistakably lust at first sight. He took off his jacket and tie and hung them in a wardrobe cabinet. He hesitated over his shirt buttons, then looked at Claudia, who was staring at him openly. He took off his shirt and threw it on the bed. His hand went to his belt buckle. “Are you staying?”
She smiled and left the room. Abrams finished undressing and put on the robe. He took the shaving kit and went into the hall. He found the bathroom, a small room that looked as if it had once been a large closet. He shaved and showered, then returned to his room. He opened the box of clothing and began dressing, cursing the shirt studs and the tight collar. Murray had forgotten the patent leather shoes, as Abrams knew he would, and he had to wear his street shoes, which were barely passable. He looked in the full-length mirror on the door as he struggled with the bow tie. “I hope everyone else looks like this.”
Abrams went downstairs to the sitting room. Tom Grenville, a handsome man about five years younger than Abrams and about a thousand times richer, said to his wife, “Joan, Tony is studying for the bar.”
George Van Dorn answered the question the wives were thinking. “Mr. Abrams was a policeman for a long time.”
Kitty Van Dorn leaned forward in her chair. “That sounds so interesting. How did you happen to choose that career?”
Abrams looked at her. She was either much younger than her husband or she was heavily into vitamins, exercise, and plastic surgeons. He wondered about middle-aged women who still called themselves Kitty. “I always wanted to be a policeman.”
Joan Grenville, an attractive strawberry blonde with freckles, asked, “Where do you live?”
Abrams poured himself a Scotch from the sideboard. “Brooklyn.” Her voice, he noticed, was kind of breathy.
“Oh… so this is a convenience for you. Us too. We live in Scarsdale. That’s farther than Brooklyn.”
“From where?”
She smiled. “From here. The center of the universe. I want to move back to town, but Tom doesn’t.” She looked at her husband, but he turned away.
Abrams regarded her closely. She was wearing a simple white silk dress. He noticed she had her shoes off and that she didn’t wear toenail polish, or in fact much makeup at all. Healthy and wealthy, he thought. Slim and trim, pretty and preppie, and perhaps even intelligent. The nearly final stage in the evolution of the species.
Kitty Van Dorn added, “We live out on the Island. Glen Cove. George uses this place often. Don’t you, George?”
Van Dorn grunted and moved to the sideboard. Abrams could see that he’d had a few already. Van Dorn spoke as he poured a drink. “Kimberly — that is, Henry Kimberly, Senior — bought this place around the turn of the century. Paid three thousand dollars for it. Bought it from a Hamilton or a Stuyvesant… can’t remember which. Anyway, Henry Junior lived here himself for a few years after he got married. When the war started, he moved his family to Washington. Then he went overseas and got killed. Damned shame.” He raised his glass. “To Henry.” He drank.
Abrams stood by the fireplace and watched Van Dorn drain off the bourbon. Abrams said, “Henry Kimberly was an OSS officer, wasn’t he?”
“Right,” answered Van Dorn. He suppressed a belch. “Me too. What room do you have, Abrams?”
“Room? Oh, second floor, second on the left.”
“That was the nursery — Kate’s room. Henry and I used to go in there and coo coo with her. Henry loved that kid. And her sister, Ann, too.” A melancholy look passed over his ruddy face. “War is shit.”
Abrams nodded. The conversation was picking up.
Grenville said, “My father was also OSS. A whole group of the firm’s men and women were recruited by Bill Donovan. Donovan’s critics used to say OSS stood for Oh, So Social.” He smiled.
Abrams said, “Who were Donovan’s critics?”
Grenville answered, “Mostly the pinkos and J — jerks who hung around Roosevelt. Jerks.”
There was a long silence in the room, broken finally by Van Dorn, who was working on another drink. He looked over his shoulder at Abrams. “You might find this evening interesting.”
Kitty Van Dorn made a sound that suggested it wasn’t likely.
Tom Grenville stirred his drink with his finger. “You’re a friend of Kate’s, right? She called and said you’d be coming.”
“Yes.” Abrams lit a cigarette. This conversation had an unreal quality to it. Neither of these men had so much as nodded to him in the office before, yet, though both men’s attitudes were slightly condescending, they were in some undefined way tentatively friendly. It reminded him of his first interview in the basement of the Bari Pork Store when he’d been dragged in for the announced purpose of having his face broken, and had emerged a Red Devil.
Joan Grenville got out of her chair and knelt on the hearth rug, a foot from where he was standing. She took up a poker and prodded the fire, then turned her head and looked up at him. “Will you be staying here tonight, Mr. Abrams?”
“Tony.” He looked down and saw the smooth white curve of her breasts, ending in the soft pink of her nipples. “I don’t know, Mrs. Grenville. You?”
She nodded. “Yes. Please call me Joan.”
Abrams turned, avoiding Tom Grenville’s eyes, and went to the sideboard although he didn’t want another drink. “Anyone need anything?”