“Yes, you did,” came the same deep voice. What Bob had thought was a tarpaulin began to slowly unfold into two massive, leathery wings, spreading until they almost touched either wall. Between them was a humanoid-type creature with a horned head, slitted, yellow eyes, and a fanged mouth. One of the yellow eyes winked and the mouth curled into something of a smile. Except for a small, belted garment at the waist, the creature was naked, not that it mattered. “You must be Jube’s friends.”
“Yes,” Carlotta said, “Well, he is anyway.” She pointed to Bob, who was trying to get his mouth to shut.
Croyd stood up on feet that, although sporting four clawed toes each, were more or less human. “He said you need protection. Afraid the Son-of-Sam is after you?”
“No,” Bob said, finally able to speak. “He doesn’t work Manhattan anyway. I thought Jube would have explained, Mr . . . Croyd.” Bob then covered the story of the heckler in the alley for the second time that night.
“Do you have any enemies that you know of?” Croyd turned his horned head lazily toward Carlotta.
“No. I’m from Iowa.”
“Well, you seem to now. Nothing I can’t handle, though.” He gently placed a taloned finger under her chin. “I aims to please.” He emphasized the word “aims,” obviously aware that it was a town in Iowa.
Everybody’s a comedian, thought Bob. “And your fee for protecting Miss DeSoto will be?” He was trying to get Croyd’s attention. The last thing he needed was someone else trying to horn in on Carlotta, literally or figuratively. That line was already long enough.
“She’s not a DeSoto.” Croyd gave Carlotta the slow once over, which she didn’t seem to mind at all. “With curves like that, she’s more like a Mustang.” Croyd cleared his throat. It was an unpleasant noise. “You can have me for five hundred a day, one day’s pay in advance and the rest when the job is over.” He walked in an ungainly fashion to the partitioned area of the room. Bob heard the sound of a bottle-cap coming off and being replaced, a drawer opening. Then Croyd emerged with a small amber bottle held between a massive thumb and forefinger. He carefully opened and dabbed some of the liquid contents on one his fingers, then scooped Carlotta’s blonde hair back and applied it gingerly behind her ears. “Et, voila.”
“What’s that for?” she asked, sniffing. “It’s definitely not Chanel.”
Croyd handed her the bottle. “No, but if someone does get their mitts on you, the scent will help me track you, so take good care of the stuff.”
Bob was equal parts tired, suspicious, and annoyed. If Jube hadn’t vouched for Croyd, there was no way he’d deal with him at all. Not because he was a hideous joker, but because in spite of that fact, he was still charming.
“I don’t have that amount of cash with me,” Bob said. “But once Miss DeSoto is safely home, you can follow me to my business. I’ll pay you there.”
“And just what is your business?” Croyd leaned his head toward Bob’s face.
Bob held his ground, in spite of Croyd’s unusually hot breath on his face. “I own a comedy club in the Village, the Village Idiot. I’ll meet you in back of my place, show you what happened and where, and give you your retainer.”
“You know,” Croyd said, “I find the fact that the name of your club is the Village Idiot to be completely believable.”
“I work there,” Carlotta said, stifling a yawn. “So show some respect. By the way, you do fly don’t you? Those wings aren’t just for show?”
Croyd laughed. It was a deep, booming sound, and in spite of the source, Bob liked it. “I fly like a bat-out-of-hell, just wait and see. And if you spot something on a building that looks like a misplaced gargoyle, don’t worry. It means I’m on the job.”
“You can’t cover her 24 hours a day,” Bob said, hoping the comment didn’t reveal his paranoia. “When you’re asleep, I’ll take over.”
“I won’t be sleeping on this job,” Croyd said. “Later. I’ll sleep later.” There was a hint of something in Croyd’s demon voice that to Bob almost sounded sad. With that thought in his head, he smiled.
They hadn’t seen Croyd since hiring him, although Carlotta said she thought maybe she’d spied him a time or two, a dark, still shadow on the rooftop of the building opposite her apartment. Bob was fine with the situation. Out of sight, out of mind, as far as he was concerned. A grand every other day was a steep price, but sooner or later the Mutt and Jeff, or maybe the pickup artist who spooked Carlotta, would try again. If Croyd did his job as advertised, that would be their mistake.
He’d offered to buy her dinner at a steak house off Central Park West, knowing she’d have a hard time saying no. Bob knew what she took home in pay, and it didn’t allow room for passing up a free meal. She also had to overcome the fact that it was the 13th of the month and she was deathly superstitious.
They got to the restaurant early enough to beat the crowd, and darkness was settling in over Manhattan when their food arrived. Bob had ordered a t-bone smothered in onions, while Carlotta had gone for the filet mignon. It was 10 ounces and he hoped she’d let him poach off her plate if she wasn’t up to finishing it.
“This is one thing my people could never get right, cooking meat,” he said after downing a particularly tasty bite.
“Your people?”
“The English.” He dabbed a spot of juice from his chin. “I’m a Brit, you know that.”
“You’re a New Yorker in denial, you mean.” She shook her head. “You spent what, two years in England after you were born and have been here the rest of your life. You’re just a New Yorker with a slightly different pedigree. Live with it.” Carlotta pointed to her filet with the fork. “This is great, by the way. Thanks.”
“You’re welcome, and I’m English, thank you very much. My parents lived there for ten years before we moved to NYC, and raised me to be a repressed, cultured snob.”
“Bet your mom would smack you if she heard you say that. You’d deserve it, too.” She gave him a lascivious smile that promised only torment. “At least you’re right about the repressed part.”
“Oh, that’s great, coming from the Ado Annie of Iowa. You wouldn’t know repressed if it bit you on the ass, and it’s probably the only thing that hasn’t.”
“No,” she said, smiling. “That would be you.”
Bob wagged a finger in her direction. “No dessert for you.” The lights inside the restaurant flickered and went out, tried to come back on for a second, and then went completely dark.
“Looks like they’ve blown a fuse,” Carlotta said.
Bob turned and looked out the windows toward the street. There was light, but it was fainter than it should be. “I think the whole area has a power outage. The street lights are gone, too.”
The waiters were moving from table to table, lighting candles. One particularly lanky fellow made it over to where Bob and Carlotta were seated to furnish the couple with their meager source of light.
“Any idea what’s going on?” Bob asked.
“No,” the waiter replied, shaking his head, “and wouldn’t you know the manager would be off today. Like he didn’t know it was the 13th. Someone’s on the phone though, checking into it. We’ll pass on any word we get.” He hurried off to another table.
“A man after your own heart,” Bob said, smiling. Carlotta’s face, lit by the flickering candle, had an almost sinister cast. Her round features, lit from beneath, reminded him of the face in the mirror from Disney’s Snow White.
“If you want to make jokes, you should get up on stage and try it sometime.” She took another bite of steak. Bob’s hope of leftovers was quickly disappearing. “You don’t have any superstitions?”
“No. Only fact-based fears.” One of them, that Carlotta would completely finish her steak, had already been realized. He raised his arm and waved it in an exaggerated fashion, trying to flag the waiter, who noticed after a few moments and wove his way expertly through the mostly empty tables toward them.
“No word yet, sir, but I believe it’s city-wide.”
“Thanks. Could we have the check?”
“Certainly, sir,” he said, and quickly disappeared in the direction of the register.
Bob fingered his shirt’s topmost button uncomfortably. “It’s getting pretty warm in here without the a/c. Want to stop by the park and see if we can get some ice-cream?”
“Sure. My relatives in Wisconsin would tar-and-feather me if they found out I passed up a dairy product. I wonder what it’s going to be like on the streets?” Carlotta pulled a compact out of her purse and checked her face briefly. “Like anyone will be able to see me.”
Their waiter returned and set the tray with their bill in front of Bob. “Our credit card machine is down, sir. I hope cash won’t be inconvenient.”
“Not a problem,” Bob said, pulling out his wallet. “Thank you.” He carefully stacked several twenties onto the tab and helped Carlotta out of her seat. “Let’s have a look outside.”
The street was unreal in the dim moonlight. People stood in small groups talking quietly, and a family, probably out-of-towners, waved in vain for an available cab. The traffic was crawling at best, but drivers were still jockeying from lane to lane, trying to find an opening. Bob looked up and saw the stars. Normally, the city lights washed them out completely, but now they were clear and distinct. In contrast, Central Park loomed darkly across the crowded, hot asphalt.
“It’s going to be murderous getting you home,” Bob said. “Even the subways are going to be useless. Maybe we should reconsider our plan.”
“We’re not going anywhere until the power comes back on.” She headed across Central Park West, moving around the cars that were momentarily at a standstill. “Might as well kill the time as best we can.”
“Alright,” Bob said, “wait for me.”
After half an hour wandering along the edge of Central Park looking for an ice-cream vendor, Bob was ready to give up. He’d also noticed a group of kids following them at a distance. Even if they were just wandering in the same direction, it made him uneasy. He was glad to still be carrying the revolver.
A sharp snapping noise, followed quickly by another, stopped them in their tracks. Screams began to drift through the still, hot air from nearby.
“What the hell is going on?” Carlotta asked, looking quickly from side to side. “It’s just a blackout.”
A dark shape appeared at the tree line and grew in size. More snapping. Bob realized it was the sound of branches being split. Several people were sprinting directly at them. One of them screamed “The ape! It’s loose.”
Bob knew in an instant how much trouble they were in. The giant ape had been a mainstay at the Central Park Zoo for over a decade. Every now and then it broke loose and started looking for a young, blonde woman to clutch to its massive chest. After abducting its Fay Wray stand-in, the beast invariably headed in scripted fashion for the top of the Empire State Building. His mind registered that the monster ape had first appeared during the blackout in 1965, but there was no time to dwell on coincidence. He grabbed Carlotta by the wrist and bolted for the street. She had no trouble keeping up, matching him stride for stride in the race to reach the hoped-for safety of a building interior.
A kid running full-tilt crashed into a garbage container and sent it rolling in a tight semi-circle right into their path. Bob felt a pain in his knee and sprawled headlong, Carlotta’s hand wrenched from his grasp. There was an animal roar that rattled his fillings and he scrambled to his feet.
The ape knuckle-walked toward them, its eyes fixed on Carlotta and her blonde hair. She struggled to stand and backed slowly away from the monster. Then stopped. “Knock-knock,” she yelled. The ape bared its teeth and snorted. “Who’s there?” Carlotta answered to her own question, at the top of her voice.
Bob pulled the revolver and pointed it between the ape’s luminous, yellow eyes. She’d panicked and was trying to use her power on it. “You can’t make a gorilla laugh,” he yelled. “Run.”
The giant ape regarded him for a second, then returned his attention to Carlotta, taking another giant step in her direction. “Banana, banana, banana, banana,” she continued, ignoring Bob’s advice.
He tightened his finger on the trigger, and the ape lunged for Carlotta, scooping her up with a giant, hairy paw. She screamed and then went limp. The ape gingerly propped up her head with a single finger and made what might have been soothing vocalizations in ape language. The monster turned suddenly and saw Bob. It snarled and bared its teeth.
Bob suddenly felt very alone, the useless gun heavy in his hand. He’d be a dead man in a few seconds and the punch line to a bad joke for years to come if he didn’t do something. So he got flat.
He didn’t lie flat; that would have been no help at all. As a particularly shy teen-ager, Bob had been forced by a zealous drama teacher to take a role in a Moliere comedy. During a dress rehearsal, he felt sick with stage fright and, right before his entrance, literally flowed puddle-like to the floor. The sensation of giving up his physical form was even more frightening than performing on stage. His vision and hearing became almost non-existent. Worse, he couldn’t move any more than a beached jellyfish. After a few long moments, he’d reconstituted, naked, as he’d puddled right out of his clothes. A few of his fellow students saw what happened, or thought they did, but the school kept it quiet. He was dismissed from the play and told his parents it was because he called Moliere an over-praised, humorless Frog. Over the years he’d worked with his ability in secret, and had even mastered a sort of pseudopodal movement. Bob assumed part of his attraction to Carlotta was the fact that they’d both been touched by the wild card, albeit a glancing blow.
Bob had a feeling that, flat or not, if the giant ape stepped on him, he’d be crushed to death. He felt the thunderous footsteps move toward, and then past, him. He waited until the vibrations seemed a safe distance away and pulled himself back together. The few people who hadn’t left the area were looking at the ape, which was about a hundred yards distant. Bob hurriedly donned his clothing and put the gun back into his pocket. The ape was making good time. Bob knew he’d never catch it on foot, and with traffic snarled because of the blackout, a car was out of the question, too.
He heard a horse neigh and turned to see an empty carriage not far away. Abandoned by its driver, the horse, coal black with a white patch on its forehead, regarded Bob warily as he approached. He moved slowly toward the spot on the ground where the reins lay. The horse snorted as he gathered the slim, leather leads into his hands.
“Good boy,” Bob said, clambering up into the carriage. Once seated, he tried to plot a course in the direction the ape and Carlotta had taken and then shook the reins.
The horse didn’t so much as twitch. Apparently, he didn’t have the voice of authority. “Yaah!” he yelled, and tossed the reins violently. Nothing.
“I’m not in the mood for this,” Bob said, pulling the pistol from his pocket. He fired off a round into the air and the horse immediately bounded away at full tilt, hooves pounding the earth. Bob’s back was slammed into the driver’s seat by the carriage’s abrupt start and he fought to pull himself back into a position to drive, not that he had any idea what he was doing. The hot summer air whistled in Bob’s ears and he noticed they were veering a bit to the left of his best guess at the ape’s path, so he pulled on the right-hand rein but got no response from his charging steed.
“Damn,” he said, and pulled harder, but the horse galloped hell-bent onward. Bob saw what looked like a curbed pathway directly ahead and reached for the side of the carriage to brace himself for the impact, but his reaction was a second too slow. The carriage’s front wheels slammed into the curb and the front of the vehicle vaulted into the air, tossing Bob out of the carriage and down onto the grass on the far side of the sidewalk. He rolled to a stop and sat up. The now riderless carriage was disappearing into the darkness. Bob let out a deep breath and there was a rush of air around him that raised a cloud of heavy dust.
Croyd landed next to him, chuckling. “Can’t even keep a girl safe at dinner, eh?”
Bob bit back on his anger at Croyd’s nonchalance. He needed help to save Carlotta and Croyd was it. “If you were watching, why didn’t you do something?”
“I’m tough, but no match for a giant gorilla. Keep your shirt on, though. As many times as this has happened, not once has the ape’s captive blonde been hurt, unless you count soiled clothing.” Croyd helped Bob to his feet, a glint in his yellow eyes. “There’s a bit more to you than I thought.”
Bob felt sick. He’d guarded his secret for years and Croyd was one of the last people he would have picked to share it. “That’s not important now. Let’s get going.”
“You da boss.” Croyd slipped his taloned hands under Bob’s armpits and began beating his wings. The pair rose slowly from Central Park.
Bob felt more than saw the world falling away. The noise level faded as they headed into the sky. Car headlights lit the streets and avenues at ground level but everything else was inky black, except for the occasional dim window he assumed meant someone inside had lit a candle or two. To his relief the air cooled a bit as Croyd carried him upward. Combined with the rush of Croyd’s wings, the sensation was almost refreshing.
“You’re not going to throw up are you?” Croyd’s breath was warm on the top of Bob’s head.
“No. I’m okay.” Which was true as long as he didn’t think or look down. “Where are we going?”
“Empire State, Mr. Village Idiot. The ape always climbs it, if he gets that far. And we can pick up some reinforcements there. Like I said, I can’t handle him alone.”
“Aces High?” Like everyone else, Bob had heard of the famous restaurant atop the Empire State building and knew that as often as not there was an ace or two having dinner there.
“Give the boy a cigar.” Croyd’s breath was becoming a bit raspy. “You’re not exactly a lightweight. This whole thing is going to cost you extra, by the way. Not exactly what I signed on for. Might cut you a deal for a couple of rounds with your girlfriend, though.”
“Have you even got genitalia?” Bob snapped.
Croyd let go of Bob with one hand and lowered him level with the demon’s crotch. “Care to check?”
Bob grabbed hold of Croyd’s sinewy arm with both his hands and clutched it tightly. “Okay, okay. You made your point.”
Croyd made a sibilant noise that sounded like a giggle. “An attitude and altitude adjustment. Good thing. You’d feel like one stupid shithead during the time it took you to fall. Here we are.”
The observation deck of the Empire State Building stood out in faint shades of gray and silver. They landed softly on the concrete and Croyd took a deep breath. Bob was both happy and sorry to have his feet on something solid again. Nothing else he’d experienced was quite like the flight he’d just had.
“Here’s how it’s going to work. I’m going to shadow the ape and grab Carlotta on the off chance he makes a mistake. How fucking likely that is I don’t know, but we can’t count on it. You go inside and tell Hiram that I sent you. See what help you can round up and have it waiting when our hairy friend shows up.” Croyd grabbed Bob by the shoulders and spun him around, then gave him a shove toward the door. “Do it.” Then he was gone again.
Bob opened the door and groped his way down the stairs as quickly as he could, and when he reached the first landing felt around for a doorknob. He couldn’t turn it and started pounding on it as hard as he could. “Open up. I need help.” He was silent a moment to try to hear any sound from inside but there was only silence. He was groping for the handrail when he heard a door open not far below him.
“Who’s there?” The voice was deep, male, and irritated.
“A friend of Croyd’s,” Bob said, his hand finding the metal of the railing. He was halfway down the flight of stairs when a flash-light came on, blinding him momentarily.
“A friend of Croyd’s who isn’t a woman? That’s a novelty.” The voice took on a somewhat more amiable tenor. “Come inside.”
The man holding the door open for him had to be Hiram Worcester. Bob had seen pictures of him in the papers and magazines. Hiram was tall and broadly built with a distinctive spade-shaped beard. Even in the candlelight spilling from the restaurant Bob could tell every aspect of Hiram was perfectly groomed, right down to the crisp lines of his white tuxedo.
“Thanks.” Bob stepped into Aces High and was taken aback by its elegance. The tables, punctuated here and there by exotic-looking plants or objects d’art, were ideally situated to provide patrons with a view of the entire establishment while still maintaining a degree of privacy for conversation. Aces High was illuminated with the flickering light of least a hundred candles, reflecting polished crystal and silverware, giving the restaurant a romantic, ethereal glow.
“Have a seat,” Hiram said, gesturing to an empty table. “And tell me what’s going on.”
Bob sat down and took a deep breath. “You heard the ape is loose?”
Hiram shook his head. “No. I told Emil to listen to the radio and let me know what’s going on, but he clearly hasn’t done it. Would you like a brandy, by the way?”
“That would be great.”
Hiram caught a waiter’s eye and raised two thick fingers. The man nodded and disappeared. “So what do you have to do with Croyd and the giant ape?”
“The ape has my girlfriend.” Bob was surprised to hear himself refer to Carlotta that way, particularly since it was far from true. “And Croyd is, well, in my employ. He flew me here and then took off to see if he could get Carlotta away from the ape. Most likely it’s climbing the building by now. Are there any other aces, beside yourself, who might be able to help? Croyd said there might be.” Each of Bob’s phrases came out quicker than the one before. He hoped he didn’t sound hysterical.
The brandies arrived and Hiram took a sip of his. Bob drained half of the liquid in his snifter and the bracing quality of the liquor made him feel instantly calmer. “You can see we’re a bit less crowded tonight than usual, but there’s someone here who might be helpful.” Hiram gestured toward a young woman sitting alone at a table.
Except for her magnificent, curled wings, or maybe because of them, she was the most beautiful girl Bob had ever seen. He’d seen her on the Tonight Show and in Playboy, repeatedly. His mind groped for her name. “Ptarmigan,” he said, realizing the name was wrong the instant it passed his lips.