the Last Buffoon Read online

  “You and Lucinda are old friends how?”

  “I used to date a friend of hers.”

  “Which friend?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “I theenk you’re lying. When’s Lucinda coming home?”

  “How should I know?”

  He taps the gun barrel against the bridge of my nose. “Do not get smart weeth me, greengo.” His eyeballs are popping and in the middle of his forehead is a vein like the Alaska pipeline.

  “Please don’t shoot me,” I plead, shaking from head to foot. “I have a daughter.”

  “Why don’t you stay weeth her?”

  “She’s only four years old and she lives with her mother who hates me.”

  He raises his left nostril. “I theenk you are having a love affair weeth Lucinda,”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. She’d never have an affair with somebody like me.”

  He looks me over. “That ees true.” He checks out his watch. “I weel wait until she comes home, and then we weel see where she has been. Go to bed.”

  “Yes sir.”

  I go to the bedroom, shut the door, crawl under the covers, and close my eyes. The sheets smell like perfume. Maybe Lucy’s sexy sister slept here last. With a happy smile I drift away.

  Screaming!

  I sit up in bed. Sunlight aureoles behind the drawn curtain; my watch says ten o’clock. The yelling is outside my door. I tiptoe over, open up a crack, and see Lucinda and the mad Cuban squared off in the living room.

  “Puta!” he yells.

  “Maricón!” she shrieks.

  She throws an ashtray at him and scores a direct hit on the shoulder he tries to hide behind. He throws his gun at her but she ducks out of the way. She hits him over the head with a lamp. He punches her in the mouth. She scratches his face. He grabs her arm. She tries to kick him in the balls. He wraps his arms around her waist and kisses her. She sighs and runs her fingers through his hair. He picks her up and carries her to the bedroom. The door closes behind them.

  I must get dressed and start making important phone calls.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “Hello, Mr. Frapkin. Mr. Warmflash has been trying to reach you. Hang on a second.”

  Clack.

  “Where are you, Frapkin?”

  “I’m staying with a friend of mine.”

  “You’d better call your wife fast!”

  “What’s the problem?”

  “She claims that you and I swindled her out of a few thousand dollars, and she’s threatening to go to the police.”

  “A few thousand dollars? How come I only got one thousand out of it?”

  “Don’t you think I’m entitled to make a living?”

  “You’ve got a bite like a fucking crocodile, Warmflash.”

  “I want you to call Mabra right away.”

  “Where the hell is she?”

  “You can reach her through her doctor, Sidney Siegel. His number is — ”

  “I know what his number is — he’s fucking my wife. Listen, about my royalties, I want you to initiate lawsuits without delay.”

  “I can’t initiate anything unless I have your contracts.”

  “I’ll send them to you in a few days. How long is this going to take?”

  “From three to six years.”

  “What!”

  “You heard me.”

  “How much money do you think we’ll get?”

  “That depends on how well your books sell.”

  “They’ll sell fantastically with all this publicity, and we’ll split everything fifty-fifty, right?”

  “Wrong, because you’ll have to pay court fees, my expenses, taxes, and so forth. Your share will probably amount to around forty percent.”

  “That’s all?”

  “What did you expect — an oil well?”

  “I think I should’ve been a lawyer.”

  “You’re too indecisive to be a lawyer.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “I’ve been dealing with you for years, and you never know whether you’re coming or going.”

  “I know whether I’m coming or going.”

  “What you need is a good stiff cock up your ass, and I’m just the man to give it to you.”

  “Warmflash, I can’t believe you just said that.”

  “Why don’t you come over to my place tonight? We can have a little wrestling match.”

  “Oh God.”

  “I have a movie projector and we can watch a new film I’ve bought called San Francisco Rough Trade.”

  I hang up the phone and scratch my head. Then I go to the kitchen, pour myself a glass of orange juice, and carry it to the telephone, where I call my wife’s boyfriend.

  “Hiya, Sid.”

  “Who’s this?”

  “Frapkin.”

  “Where the hell have you been?”

  “None of your fucking business. I just spoke to Warmflash and he told me your girlfriend misses me so much she’s going crazy. Is she there?”

  “She’s working.”

  “Tell her I’ll be home in a few weeks, and that I haven’t forgotten her or our arrangement.”

  “You’re not trying to pull a fast one, are you?”

  “The only fast one I pull is between my legs.”

  I hang up the phone, go to the kitchen, and fry three eggs for breakfast. While eating them something is nagging in the back of my mind, and that something is Joe Greenberg. I’ll bet that sonofabitch lives like a prince, while I’m living out of my attaché case. He owes me a fortune and it galls me that I can’t get it. After breakfast I’m going to call him and run a number over his head. I’ll have to use an outside phone so he can’t trace me here.

  When the last morsel is gone from my plate, I throw it and the frying pan into the sink, put on my hat and coat, and leave the apartment.

  Outside the sky is oily and the sun completely obliterated. Five young Puerto Ricans shuck and jive toward me and maybe they’ll cut my throat and end my worries. They walk by and I arrive safely at the corner of 160th Street and Broadway.

  I’m the only Caucasian in sight, a foreigner in my own country. Lining Broadway are bodegas, cuchi-frito parlors, a Cuban-Chinese restaurant, a fruit and vegetable stand that sells things I’ve never imagined could grow, and a candy and cigarette store, some bars, and a pizza stand right on the corner. I think I’ll go there and see if they have a phone.

  It’s warm and pungent inside, and on stools sit Puerto Rican teenagers of the sort who carve out people’s hearts for laughs. The Puerto Rican guy behind the counter has a mustache, tomato-stained apron, and questioning look.

  I stick my finger in the air and pretend to dial. “Teléfono?”

  “It’s over there,” he says in peppery English, pointing toward the back of the shop.

  I get in the phone booth, pull the door shut, and see phone numbers and obscenities scratched everywhere. One wag has written EAT SHIT AND SAVE ON THE HIGH COST OF FOOD. A great inflation slogan if I ever saw one. The President ought to mention it in his next televised speech on the economy. I drop a dime in the slow and dial.

  “Mr. Greenberg’s office.”

  “This is Alexander Frapkin and I want to speak to him.”

  “Please hold on.”

  Zzzzzaaaaaaaaapppppppp.

  “Hello, Alex — so good to hear from you,” Joe Greenberg purrs.

  “I want my money.”

  “What money?”

  “The money you owe me.”

  “Are you going on the publicity tour?”

  “Never.”

  “Then you’re not getting any money.”

  “Okay — listen to this, you scumbag,” I say threateningly. “I’m not asking for charity. You owe me money and I want it. If I don’t receive a large check from you within seven days, I will not see a lawyer, I will not go to court — I’ll take care of you myself, and if you wonder what I mean, just use your imagination a little.”

 
“Are you threatening me?”

  “If you don’t pay me everything you owe me, I’m going to kill you,” I tell him.

  “Frapkin, you’ve got in over your head this time. I’m calling the police right now.”

  “I don’t care if you call the mayor or the CIA. Someday you’ll be walking along and I’ll come out of nowhere and blow your fucking brains out!”

  Click.

  How terrible that an honest citizen like me has to do things like this to get paid.

  While I’m in the phone booth I think I’d better call one of my contacts and try to get a book assignment. I need to pile up a cash reserve so I can relax and take my time while writing my big one. The sooner I get money the sooner I can get started. I find the appropriate number in my little black book, drop a dime in the slot, and dial.

  “Brunswick Publishing.”

  “Selma Sapperstein, please.”

  Crack bong.

  “Hello?” she says, a middle-aged bleached blonde with several screws missing.

  “Hello Selma, this is Alexander Frapkin.

  “To what do I owe this pleasure?”

  “Financial insolvency. You got a book you want written?”

  “I thought you were making a bundle at Criterion.”

  “I am, but they won’t give it to me. Have you got something?”

  “How about a porno?”

  “No porno. I jerk off too much.”

  “Mafia?”

  “I just wrote one and I want a change.”

  “A cop?”

  “Who is he?”

  “Joe Benson, your standard New York detective who hates everybody and doesn’t want to know from the Miranda decision. Interested?”

  “How much?”

  “What do you care? We’re not going to pay you either.”

  “That’s not funny, Selma.”

  “The usual fifteen hundred dollars. You’ll get half within thirty days after you turn in the manuscript, and then rest within the next thirty days.”

  “That sounds like a crock of shit.”

  “It is.”

  “What else do I have to know about this Benson?”

  “He’s a big ugly guy and he’s got black hair. His wife runs around on him. Yours will be number four in a series. How soon can you get it to us?”

  “A few days.”

  “Don’t forget — lots of blood and lots of rough sex.”

  “I won’t forget. Speak to you soon, Selma.”

  I hang up, and it looks like I’m still in the ballgame. I’ll do a Benson and immediately thereafter a Mafia, and that ought to make me financially secure for long enough to write my long-awaited popular best-seller.

  It’s three o’clock in the morning. Stealthily I carry my attaché case and shopping bag full of groceries up the stairs of my building on Christopher Street. My plan is to hide out in my own apartment where no one would think of looking for me, and work in peace.

  A door opens and I hear footsteps coming down the stairs. Secret Agent Frapkin freezes. The footsteps come closer — a cowboy homosexual, a motorcycle homosexual, and a longshoreman homosexual. The cowboy lives on the top floor and does a lot of cruising. We’ve said hello a few times but I don’t think he knows my story as well as I know his. I crouch behind my shopping bag and climb two more flights to my door. Silently I insert the keys and turn the locks. I push the door open, reach around, and click on the kitchen light. My refrigerator, stove, and protein chart taped to the wall haven’t gone anywhere. Home sweet home.

  It smells like soap commingled with Mabra’s perfume, but the sofa’s empty. She must be in the arms of Dr. Sidney Siegel right now, while I must gather my resources to write yet another book.

  The Dexedrine I took to get me home still is coursing through my veins, and I don’t feel like going to bed. Perhaps a homecoming celebration is in order. I think I’ll smoke a joint and listen to Wagner.

  I put away the food, change into jeans, and light up. Flipping the switches on my stereo, the dial glows mint green. It’s an expensive set purchased when I was in the big time, and I hope no junkie rips it off because I could never replace it. I plug in the headphones so my neighbors won’t be bothered, clamp the cups over my ears, position the record, light a stick of sandalwood incense, and lie on the sofa.

  The first eerie strains of “The Flight of the Valkyries” pierces the silence, and I look out the window at the night sky. In the smoggy darkness over the rooftops a quarter of the moon hangs like a crooked smile. A thousand Valkyries fly past, their white gowns iridescent in the moonlight. They’re carrying the souls of dead warrior-artists to Valhalla, and someday they’ll take me along, but right now I’m at the beginning of a great new cop book for which I probably never will get paid.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Benson grabbed the kid and threw him against the wall. “Okay, you little bastard, what you got on you!”

  “I wanna see my lawyer!” Benson raised his .44 and hit the kid in the face, the cold steel mashing lips and teeth. “I said what you got on you!”

  The kid tried to speak, but blood burbled out his mouth. Benson slapped him down and found three glassine envelopes of junk tucked into his sock. “Where’d you get these?”

  The kid shook his head. Benson whacked him with the .44 again, opening a ragged gash on his cheek. “You’d better start talking, fucker, or you’re dead.”

  “I don’t know nothin’!”

  Benson punched the barrel of the .44 into the kid’s mouth, knocking teeth and gums back to his throat. Benson’s finger tightened around the trigger, and perspiration dripped from the kid’s forehead.

  “I’m gonna count to three,” Benson cried, “and if you don’t start talking by then, you can say goodbye to your head.”

  The kid trembled; his eyes begged for mercy.

  “One.”

  Somebody is inserting a key in the front door. I jump from my desk and hide behind the dresser, looking to see if it’ll be the extermination squad, a report, or Shapiro the landlord here to throw all my belongings out the window.

  The door opens, Mabra walks in, stares at my face. “You have shaved off your beard!”

  “How do you like the new me?”

  “You look very different.”

  “Do you think I look better or worse?”

  “I don’t know — turn sideways please.”

  I give her my left and right profile. “Well?”

  She shrugs. “Not better and not worse. Why didn’t you tell me you were home?”

  “I’ve been busy.”

  “You and I have to go for an interview at the Immigration on the 10th of December.

  “What for?”

  “Mr. Warmflash says they are become very suspicious of marriages like ours. He says we will have to make up a good story of how we met and everything. Since you are a writer, maybe you can do it?”

  “I’m working on a new book and I don’t have time. What’re you doing here this time of day — quit your job?”

  “This is my day off.”

  “I’m surprised you’re spending it here. I’d think Dr. Sidney Siegel’s apartment would be more comfortable.”

  “I have told you many times that he and I are none of your business.”

  “I’ve got to get back to work. Try to be quiet, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  I return to my office and close the door.

  “But he’ll kill me if I tell you!”

  “I’ll kill you if you don’t. Two!”

  “Okay, okay.” The kid’s face was streaked with blood, sweat, and tears.

  “Start talking.”

  “You gotta protect me!”

  “Where’d you get that junk?”

  “From the Man.”

  “What man?”

  “I don’t know his name.”

  “What’s he look like?”

  “A big black dude.”

  Benson holstered his .44 and grabbed the kid by the scruff
of his neck. “Let’s go.”

  Benson dragged the kid out of the alley, the kid’s sunglasses shattered and askew on his nose.

  I’m in Bazoomingdales, approaching the sunglass counter. I’m wearing my freshly cleaned and mended Burberry trenchcoat, Borsalino hat, and matching accessories. Swirling around are hundreds of beautiful rich broads.

  Approaching is a young salesgirl who looks like she just stepped out of the pages of Vogue. “May I help you?”

  “I’m interested in purchasing a pair of sunglasses, preferably French-made in the popular aviator design.”

  “Gold or silver?”

  “Silver.”

  “Surely.”

  She walks past a thousand blank eyes and bends over, displaying the kind of ass you’d like to bite. She takes out a display board, which she carries to me. “Try this pair on,” she says, holding out shades.

  I hook them on and look in the mirror. “May I try on the others?”

  “Surely.”

  An important choice must be made, and the Vogue model is impatient to hear it, but I dare not act precipitously, for my future well-being hands in the balance here. I try them all on, and then do it again. I narrow them down to two, and am stymied. “Which of these do you think I look best in?”

  “That one.” She points to a pair that makes me look professional.

  I put on the other pair, which makes me look like a movie star. “I think these are a little better.”

  “No, in my opinion the others are more attractive on you.”

  I put them on and look at myself from all the angles. Maybe she’s right.

  “Yes,” she says, her earrings dangling, “those are much better.”

  “How much are they?”

  “Twenty-five thirty-nine.” I reach into my pocket for the cabbage.

  “You’re certain I look best in these?”

  She smiles. “They make you look distinguished.”

  I hand her the money. “What’re you doing after work tonight?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “I thought perhaps we could get together for a drink.”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “Why?”

  “You’re old enough to be my father.”

  “They say old wine is best.”