Bekuv tomorrow,’ said Mann.
‘Tony can keep his mouth shut,’ I said.
‘I’m not worrying about Tony,’ said Mann. ‘But if he knows we’re here, you can bet a dozen other UN people know.’
‘What about California?’ I suggested. ‘UCLA.’ I sorted through my last clean linen. I was into my wash-and-wear shirts now, and the bath was brimming with them.
‘And what about Sing Sing?’ said Mann. ‘The fact is that I’m beginning to think that Bekuv is stalling – deliberately – and will go on stalling until we produce his frau.’
‘We both guessed that,’ I said. I put on a white shirt and club tie. It was likely to be the sort of party where you were better off English.
‘I’d tear the bastard’s toenails out,’ Mann growled.
‘Now you don’t mean that,’ I said. ‘That’s just the kind of joke that gets you a bad reputation.’
I got a sick kind of pleasure from provoking Major Mann, and he rose to that one as I knew he would: he stubbed out his cigar and dumped it into his Jim Beam bourbon – and you have to know Mann to realize how near that is to suicide. Mann watched me combing my hair, and then looked at his watch. ‘Maybe you should skip the false eyelashes,’ he said, ‘we’re meeting Bessie at eight.’
Mann’s wife Bessie looked about twenty years old but must have been nearer forty. She was tall and slim, with the fresh complexion that was the product of her childhood on a Wisconsin farm. If beautiful was going too far, she was certainly good-looking enough to turn all male heads as she entered the Park Avenue apartment where the party was being held.
Tony greeted us and adroitly took three glasses of champagne from the tray of a passing waiter. ‘Now the party can really begin,’ said Tony Nowak – or Nowak the Polack as he was called by certain acquaintances who had not admired his spike-booted climb from rags to riches. For Antoni Nowak’s job in the United Nations Organization security unit didn’t require him to be in the lobby wearing a peaked cap and running metal detectors over the hand baggage. Tony had a six-figure salary and a three-window office with a view of the East River, and a lot of people typing letters in triplicate for him. In UN terms he was a success.
‘Now the party can really begin,’ said Tony again. He kissed Bessie, took Mann’s hat and punched my arm. ‘Good to see you – and Jesus, what a tan you guys got in Miami.’
I nodded politely and Mann tried to smile, failed and put his nose into his champagne.
‘The story is you’re retiring, Tony,’ said Bessie.
‘I’m too young to retire, Bessie, you know that!’ He winked at her.
‘Steady up, Tony,’ said Bessie, ‘you want the old man to catch on to us?’
‘He should never have left you behind on that Miami trip,’ said Tony Nowak.
‘It’s a lamp,’ said Mann. ‘Bloomingdales Fifty-four ninety-nine, with three sets of dark goggles.’
‘You could have fooled me,’ said Tony Nowak, ‘I thought it was a spray job.’
Behind us there were soft chiming sounds and a servant opened the door. Tony Nowak was still gripping Bessie’s arm but as he caught sight of his new guests he relaxed his grip. ‘These are the people from the Secretariat …’ said Tony Nowak.
‘Go look after your new arrivals,’ said Mann. ‘Looks like Liz Taylor needs rescuing from the Shah of Iran.’
‘And ain’t you the guy to do it,’ said Tony Nowak. He smiled. It was the sort of joke he’d repeat between relating the names of big-shots who had really been there.
‘It beats me why he asked us,’ I told Mann.
Mann grunted.
‘Are we here on business?’ I asked.
‘You want overtime?’
‘I just like to know what’s going on.’
From a dark corner of the lounge there came the hesitant sort of music that gives the pianist time for a gulp of martini between bars. When Mann got as far as the Chinese screen that divided this room from the dining-room, he stopped and lit a cheroot. He took his time doing it so that both of us could get a quick look round. ‘A parley,’ Mann said quietly.
‘A parley with who?’
‘Exactly,’ said Mann. He inhaled on his cheroot, and took my arm in his iron grip while telling about all the people he recognized.
The dining-room had been rearranged to make room for six special backgammon tables at which silent players played for high stakes. The room was crowded with spectators, and there was an especially large group around the far table at which a middle-aged manufacturer of ultrasonic intruder alarms was doing battle with a spectacular redhead.
‘Now that’s the kind of girl I could go for,’ said Mann.
Bessie punched him gently in the stomach. ‘And don’t think he’s kidding,’ she told me.
‘Don’t do that when I’m drinking French champagne,’ said Mann.
‘Is it OK when you’re drinking domestic?’ said Bessie.
Tony Nowak came past with a magnum of Heidsieck. He poured all our glasses brimful with champagne, hummed the melody line of ‘Alligator Crawl’ more adroitly than the pianist handled it, and then did a curious little step-dance before moving on to fill more glasses.
‘Tony is in an attentive mood tonight,’ I said.
‘Tony is keeping an eye on you,’ said Bessie. ‘Tony is remembering that time when you two came here with those drunken musicians from the Village and turned Tony’s party into a riot.’
‘I still say it was Tony Nowak’s rat-fink cousin Stefan who put the spaghetti in the piano,’ said Mann.
Bessie smiled and pointed at me. ‘The last time we talked about it, you were the guilty party,’ she confided.
Mann pulled a vampire face, and tried to bite his wife’s throat. ‘Promises, promises,’ said Bessie and turned to watch Tony Nowak moving among his guests. Mann walked into the dining-room and we followed him. It was all chinoiserie and high camp, with lanterns and gold-plated Buddhas, and miniature paintings of oriental pairs in acrobatic sexual couplings.
‘It’s Red Bancroft,’ said Mann, still looking at the redhead. ‘She’s international standard – you watch this.’
I followed him as he elbowed his way to a view of the backgammon game. We watched in silence. If this girl was playing a delaying game, it was far, far beyond my sort of backgammon, where you hit any blot within range and race for home. This girl was even leaving the single men exposed. It could be a way of drawing her opponent out of her home board but she wasn’t yet building up there. She was playing red, and her single pieces seemed scattered and vulnerable, and two of her men were out, waiting to come in. But for Mann’s remark, I would have seen this as the muddled play of a beginner.
