I looked up, startled, feeling like the proverbial kid caught with her hand in the cookie jar. He glanced at me in the mirror, then his eyes drifted back to the road.
“She didn’t say one way or the other,” I told him.
“Then how about we err on the side of caution?”
“So you didn’t know where you’re taking me, but you know I shouldn’t open this box? How’s that work?”
“Ain’t the world just full of mysteries,” he said.
For a minute or so, I silently watched the headlights of the oncoming traffic and the metronomic sweep of the windshield wipers. Then I asked the driver how long he’d worked for Ellen Andrews.
“Not very,” he said. “Never laid eyes on the lady before this afternoon. Why you want to know?”
“No particular reason,” I said, looking back down at the box and the qilin etched in the wood. I decided I was better off not asking any more questions, better off getting this over and done with, and never mind what did and didn’t quite add up. “Just trying to make conversation; that’s all.”
Which got him to talking about the Chicago stockyards and Cleveland and how it was he’d eventually wound up in New York City. He never told me his name, and I didn’t ask. The trip uptown seemed to take forever, and the longer I sat with that box in my lap, the heavier it felt. I finally moved it, putting it down on the seat beside me. By the time we reached our destination, the rain had stopped and the setting sun was showing through the clouds, glittering off the dripping trees in Riverside Park and the waters of the wide gray Hudson. He pulled over, and I reached for my wallet.
“No, ma’am,” he said, shaking his head. “Miss Andrews, she’s already seen to your fare.”
“Then I hope you won’t mind if I see to your tip,” I said, and I gave him five dollars. He thanked me, and I took the wooden box and stepped out onto the wet sidewalk.
“She’s up on the eleventh,” he told me, nodding toward the apartments. Then he drove off, and I turned to face the imposing brick-and-limestone façade of the building the driver had called the Colosseum. I rarely find myself any farther north than the Upper West Side, so this was pretty much terra incognita for me.
The doorman gave me directions, after giving me and Fong’s box the hairy eyeball, and I quickly made my way to the elevators, hurrying through that ritzy marble sepulcher passing itself off as a lobby. When the operator asked which floor I needed, I told him the eleventh, and he shook his head and muttered something under his breath. I almost asked him to speak up, but thought better of it. Didn’t I already have plenty enough on my mind without entertaining the opinions of elevator boys? Sure, I did. I had a murdered Chinaman, a mysterious box, and this pushy little sorceress calling herself Ellen Andrews. I also had an especially disagreeable feeling about this job, and the sooner it was settled, the better. I kept my eyes on the brass needle as it haltingly swung from left to right, counting off the floors, and when the doors parted, she was there waiting for me. She slipped the boy a sawbuck, and he stuffed it into his jacket pocket and left us alone.
“So nice to see you again, Nat,” she said, but she was looking at the lacquered box, not me. “Would you like to come in and have a drink? Auntie H. says you have a weakness for rye whiskey.”
“Well, she’s right about that. But just now, I’d be more fond of an explanation.”
“How odd,” she said, glancing up at me, still smiling. “Auntie said one thing she liked about you was how you didn’t ask a lot of questions. Said you were real good at minding your own business.”
“Sometimes I make exceptions.”
“Let me get you that drink,” she said, and I followed her the short distance from the elevator to the door of her apartment. Turns out, she had the whole floor to herself, each level of the Colosseum being a single apartment. Pretty ritzy accommodations, I thought, for someone who was mostly from out of town. But then, I’ve spent the last few years living in that one-bedroom cracker box above the Yellow Dragon—hot and cold running cockroaches and so forth. She locked the door behind us, then led me through the foyer to a parlor. The whole place was done up gaudy period French, Louis Quinze and the like, all floral brocade and orientalia. The walls were decorated with damask hangings, mostly of ample-bosomed women reclining in pastoral scenes, dogs and sheep and what have you lying at their feet. Ellen told me to have a seat, so I parked myself on a récamier near a window.
“Harpootlian spring for this place?” I asked.
“No,” she replied. “It belonged to my mother.”
“So, you come from money.”
“Did I mention how you ask an awful lot of questions?”
“You might have,” I said, and she inquired as to whether I liked my whiskey neat or on the rocks. I told her neat, and set the red box down on the sofa next to me.
“If you’re not too thirsty, would you mind if I take a peek at that first,” she said, pointing at the box.
“Be my guest,” I said, and Ellen smiled again. She picked up the red lacquered box, then sat next to me. She cradled it in her lap, and there was this goofy expression on her face, a mix of awe, dread, and eager expectation.
“Must be something extra damn special,” I said, and she laughed. It was a nervous kind of a laugh.
I’ve already mentioned how I couldn’t discern any evidence the box had a lid, and I supposed there was some secret to getting it open, a gentle squeeze or nudge in just the right spot. Turns out, all it needed was someone to say the magic words.
“Pain had no sting, and pleasure’s wreath no flower,” she said, speaking slowly and all but whispering the words. There was a sharp click and the top of the box suddenly slid back with enough force that it tumbled over her knees and fell to the carpet.
“Keats,” I said.
“Keats,” she echoed, but added nothing more. She was too busy gazing at what lay inside the box, nestled in a bed of velvet the color of poppies. She started to touch it, then hesitated, her fingertips hovering an inch or so above the object.
“You’re fucking kidding me,” I said, once I saw what was inside.
“Don’t go jumping to conclusions, Nat.”
“It’s a dildo,” I said, probably sounding as incredulous as I felt. “Exactly which conclusions am I not supposed to jump to? Sure, I enjoy a good rub-off as much as the next girl, but . . . you’re telling me Harpootlian killed Fong over a dildo?”
“I never said Auntie H. killed Fong.”
“Then I suppose he stuck that knife there himself.”
And that’s when she told me to shut the hell up for five minutes, if I knew how. She reached into the box and lifted out the phallus, handling it as gingerly as somebody might handle a stick of dynamite. But whatever made the thing special, it wasn’t anything I could see.
“Le godemiché maudit,” she murmured, her voice so filled with reverence you’d have thought she was holding the devil’s own wang. Near as I could tell, it was cast from some sort of hard black ceramic. It glistened faintly in the light getting in through the drapes. “I’ll tell you about it,” she said, “if you really want to know. I don’t see the harm.”
“Just so long as you get to the part where it makes sense that Harpootlian bumped the Chinaman for this dingus of yours, then sure.”
She took her eyes off the thing long enough to scowl at me. “Auntie H. didn’t kill Fong. One of Szabó’s goons did that, then panicked and ran before he figured out where the box was hidden.”
(Now, as for Madam Magdalena Szabó, the biggest boil on Auntie H.’s fanny, we’ll get back to her by and by.)