The Shadow (5 page)

Tam said thank you as he hurried out, then turned to Shrevnitz in agitated excitement, gesturing to the backseat as the hackie led him away from the car.

“That’s The Shadow. I mean,
that’s
The Shadow . . .”

Shrevnitz took hold of Tam’s right hand and began to pump it, humoring him with a nod and a grin. “Hey, you’re a pretty smart guy.”

He was a tall man, with large features and mischievous eyes. Beneath the peacoat he wore a flannel shirt and dark-green wide-wale corduroys.

Tam was still peering at the rear window of the cab. “I’ve heard the rumors on the radio and read them in the papers, but I thought it was just talk. I didn’t think he existed.”

“He doesn’t, get it?” Shrevnitz’s eyes narrowed, and he touched a forefinger to his temple.

Tam returned a blank stare, then a slow nod of comprehension. More of that agent business, he told himself. But what did it mean to be an agent of The Shadow’s? The hackie had released his hand, but there was something on it that hadn’t been there before: a heavy silver ring, adorned with a smooth oval of ruby-red stone. Slipped onto his third finger, where some American men wore wedding rings.

“Don’t ever take it off,” Shrevnitz cautioned. He winked and turned to go when Tam took hold of his arm.

“Wait a minute. Who are you? What part do you play in all this?”

“Somebody who owes him his life.” Shrevnitz’s eyes bored in on Tam, and he raised his right hand, displaying an identical ring. “Someone just like you,” he added, jabbing Tam lightly in the chest.

Tam was still standing on the sidewalk, wondering how he was going to explain the ring to his wife, when the taxi sped off.

Shrevnitz continued downtown at a more subdued pace. He had both hands on the steering wheel now and faced forward in the seat. Every so often he allowed his eyes to drift toward the rearview mirror, not, however, to check on traffic but to check on his passenger, who sat like a lump of solid darkness in the backseat. The Shadow’s rapid breathing could be heard over the noise of the engine and gearbox. More, there was a strong smell of astringent in the air.

“You okay, boss?” he asked.

“Nothing that won’t mend,” The Shadow told him after a long moment.

Shrevnitz heard the sound of the drawer opening—a secret compartment one of The Shadow’s agents, Chance Labrue, had installed under the rear seat when he’d added two feet to the overall length of the car. The drawer concealed clothes of all sorts, makeup kits, medical supplies, clips of ammunition, an assortment of wigs and mustaches, false noses, and cauliflower ears. The Shadow was stirring now, visible in the rearview, as the hat, cloak, and jacket came off, to be stored for future use.

Shrevnitz thought about Roy Tam, and about his own first encounter with The Shadow, five years earlier. Tam would be surprised to learn the extent of the secret fraternity into which he had been enlisted. A fraternity whose New York chapter alone included the clean-cut Harry Vincent; Clyde Burke, now a staff reporter for
The Classic;
“Cliff Marsland,” who moved effortlessly among the city’s gangsters and racketeers; Rutledge Mann—the network’s “man”—who headed up The Shadow’s intelligence bureau; Hawkeye, the stoopshouldered panhandler; Jericho Drake, a black of unsurpassed strength; Tapper, Stanley, Yat Soon, Dr. Rupert Sayre . . . the list went on and on.

Shrevnitz had worked with all of them over the years, and in all kinds of circumstances. Duke Rollins obviously considered himself a tough guy, but he was small potatoes compared to some The Shadow had taken on; archfiends of crookdom, like Mox, Macmurdo, Q, the Green Terror, the Vindicator, and Rodil, who called himself Doctor Mocquino . . . Another list that went on and on.

Shrevnitz heard the drawer close and glanced at the rearview mirror. The Shadow had moved to the center of the seat and was leaning forward. In the light of the street lamps and the dashboard gauges, he looked fatigued, either from his efforts on the bridge or from the feverish excitation his violent encounters frequently gave rise to. But he was dressed for a different form of nightlife now, in tuxedo, black overcoat, and white scarf. His thick black hair was combed straight back, and the relaxed muscles of his face had assembled themselves into the handsome features of Lamont Cranston. The ring, adjusted to fit his bare finger, shone from his left hand.

“The usual place, Mr. Cranston, sir?”

The transformed Shadow nodded.

The Cobalt Club was near Times Square, in among the theaters, private clubs, swell shops, and fancy restaurants. The Cobalt itself had once been an exclusive men’s club, but those days were gone. Now it was the latest epicenter of the city’s social scene, a place to see and be seen. A fiend known as the Black Tiger had even declared war on the club a couple of years back, but The Shadow had put a quick end to that. Lamont Cranston had been a member in good standing for close to ten years, and he was known by the waiters to be the best tip on the block.

The round-topped entrance was as elegant as the interior was rumored to be, featuring a square of Modernistic canopy that supported the club’s name done in white neon block letters, and under which stood eager-to-please doormen in top hats, braid, and cobalt-blue jackets.

As Cranston entered—the doormen tipping their hats and the coat-check girl giving him her best smile—he stowed his pain where it couldn’t get at him. The hand that had made mincemeat of Duke Rollins’s face was feeling better, makeup covering what he hadn’t been able to heal through a
tumo
summoning, which brought body heat to a wounded area. His mentor Marpa Tulku had been able to stick pins through his tongue, sleep atop the sharpened edges of swords, stride with impunity over hot coals, send messages on the wind, render himself seemingly invisible, subsist on a diet of edible fungi, endure subzero temperatures, walk for endless hours without rest on the Tibetan plateau . . . But only a few of those uncanny abilities had been successfully communicated to his fretful student.

Cranston paused at the top of a short stairway to survey the club’s main room. Wainwright Barth was seated at his customary table on the far side of the room, far enough from the band so that the waiters could take his order without having to lean over with hands to their ears.

The room was equal parts Hollywood and Buck Rogers, with square tables arranged on either side of a gleaming dance floor. Behind the raised level where the band sat rose a towering fan of gold lamé, down the center of which ran a stripe of shimmering cobalt-blue fabric that might as well have been made of feathers plucked from some exotic jungle bird. The intense blue was picked up in the glass panels of a stately pillar that stood at the center of a rectangular bar that took up a corner of the room. Elsewhere were embossed wall panels that shone like silver, etched-glass windows, tall porcelain urns, and glittering chandeliers and sconces. The club demonstrated its progressiveness by featuring an integrated band, fronted by a buxom, black female singer, who usually wore her hair in a bun and that night was wearing a blue halter dress.

Cranston eyed Barth’s table once more. The nearly empty plates meant that Barth had gotten tired of waiting for his erstwhile, gadabout nephew and gone ahead and eaten. Cranston gave a smart tug to his Saville Row jacket and crossed the room, greeting regulars in route and signaling a waiter to bring him the usual. Many of them knew him as “Monty.”

“Sorry I’m late, Uncle Wainwright,” he said, settling himself into the straight-backed chair opposite Barth’s. “There was an accident on the bridge.”

Barth grunted resentfully and continued to mop up what was left of his meal. He was a large man with a big, round head and the soulful eyes of a hound dog in a fleshy face. His salt-and-pepper hair was neatly combed, and the lapel of his crisply tailored tuxedo jacket sported a white carnation. A member of the gentry, or so it would seem; but, in fact, he was the city’s newest police commissioner.

“I didn’t think you’d want me to wait,” Barth said finally, in between bites. “The prime rib is excellent, by the way.”

A waiter appeared with two martinis and placed them in front of Cranston.

“Your usual, Mr. Cranston.”

Cranston thanked him, popped one of the olives into his mouth, and took a long sip from the fluted glass. Alcohol wreaked havoc on the body, but it was important to keep up appearances.

Barth set his fork down and dabbed at his mouth with a linen napkin. “I’m very upset with you, Lamont.”

Cranston sighed on cue and took another sip. “What is it this time?”

“Mr. Hadley Richardson is one of New York’s most respected financial counselors. I had to pull a lot of strings to get you that meeting with him. You could have at least had the decency to hear him out.”

“I got caught up,” Cranston said, angling away from the table, his eyes sweeping the room for something of interest.

Barth reddened. “You got caught up. Too damn busy to meet with Mr. Hadley Richardson?”

Cranston made no reply. A young woman stood at the top of the stairs, gazing about as he had earlier. Attractive without having had to resort to the serene, languid look of the moment, she had a curvaceous if slender figure and a bonnet of wavy, golden-blond hair that barely reached her ivory-white shoulders. Cranston waited to see if she had arrived unescorted.

Her gown was cream satin and hugged her like paint. It had an array of crystal-fringed sashes that crisscrossed her breasts and dangled over one shoulder, secured by a silver brooch. An actress, Cranston thought, as the maître d’ was showing her to a table. Half the men in the room were oogling her, but she was ignoring the attention, as only someone accustomed to attention could do.

One man, who had the look of a tennis pro, was waving and grinning at her, showing perfect teeth. The woman acknowledged him with a tight smile and a gesture that anyone smart enough would have recognized as a kiss off.

Barth’s voice intruded on his thoughts. “Lamont? Lamont? Are you listening to me?”

Cranston turned to face him. “Sorry. What were we talking about?”

Barth exhaled in exasperation. “Lamont, I have never meddled in your affairs. All this constant traveling around the world to remote places and such. And when you disappeared for all those years after the war, I didn’t ask any questions.”

Cranston shot him a sharp look. He tolerated Barth because he had to: because he was Lamont Cranston’s uncle and because he was the police commissioner and useful as such, inept though he was. But he was sometimes a meddlesome fool who had to be controlled. Unlike the former commissioner, Ralph Weston, a social climber who was continually trying to curry favor with the wealthy Lamont Cranston and too fatuous to pose problems of a personal sort.

Barth’s mouth was open, as if his words about the war and Cranston’s unexplained disappearance had become lodged in his throat. Cranston released his hold, and Barth said, “In fact, I don’t want to know anything about what happened to you over there. Or where you went, or what you did. To be perfectly blunt, Lamont, there’s something unsettling about you that’s always frightened . . . your aunt Rose.”

Cranston stared at him. “Aunt Rose, huh, Uncle?”

Barth cleared his throat meaningfully. “But this business with Hadley Richardson is different. You have to understand that your life is bound up with the lives of your family. As sole trustee of the Cranston estate, which provides a monthly stipend to all your relatives, you have responsibilities, Lamont.”

The Shadow’s whispered laugh of evanescent mirth almost escaped him. “Including you, Uncle.”

Barth’s gesture of dismissal was not altogether convincing. “That’s hardly the point. You’re simply not qualified to select investments without knowledgeable counsel. That fly-by-night electronics company you just bought into, for example. What is it? IBT? IBS?”

“IBM. And it’s not electronics, it’s business machines.”

“That stock will be worthless in six months. Believe me, Lamont, the world will never be run by machines.”

“Call it a hunch.”

Barth sighed in exasperation. “Lamont, what do you have against taking advice? Why do you even continue to make plans for dinner when you know that you’re only going to arrive late because of ‘accidents’ on the bridge?”

“Police Commissioner Barth?”

One of the club’s messenger boys was standing over the table, a silver tray in hand. Muttering to himself, Barth began to read the neatly folded proffered note. Thankful for the opportunity, Cranston pretended disinterest. His eyes returned to the woman, who had been seated across the room, facing him. The tennis pro had come over to her table to light her cigarette and was leaning over her now, conversing in low tones, one hand on the back of her chair. She laughed courteously at something he said, then patted his other hand, sending him on his way. Her left leg was crossed over her right, her foot tapping to the band’s rendition of “Some Kind of Mystery,” the very picture of urbane sophistication. Her shoes were moiré pumps, dyed to match the dress. Twice, in eyeing the room, she glanced Cranston’s way, concealing the flirtation with strategic sips from her water glass. Just now she had the wine menu in hand.

“What’s the matter, Uncle,” he asked Barth. “Cops and robbers business slowing down? Or has one of your canaries escaped?”

Barth took a sip of water and shook his head. “Another sighting of that damned Shadow character.”

Cranston set his martini down more forcefully than he meant to. “I thought you said The Shadow was just a rumor?”

Barth’s blunt fingers flipped at the note. “He is a rumor. But all of a sudden Duke Rollins doesn’t think so.”

“A duke, huh?”

Barth’s expression soured. “A mobster we’ve been after. Wanted for murdering a cop. Half an hour ago he walks right into the Eighth Precinct and confesses, babbling that The Shadow made him do it. The desk sergeant says Rollins looked like he’d been thrown through a window. Rollins swears he’s going straight—if he doesn’t get the chair.”

Cranston smiled to himself. When a crook went straight, The Shadow sometimes became his friend.