Free Kraven Images by Alan Isler Page B

itself. ‘We kid each other a lot, Liz and I. Don’t want Di here to get the wrong idea. Hell, we’ve got more than twenty years under the bridge. A little kidding here and there, kinda keeps the juices flowing. Having a good time, Di? Right on! Say, better watch out for this guy.’ Papa Doc winked at Kraven and gave him a chummy nudge. He was rapidly recovering his buoyancy, the stuff of which successful chairmen are made. ‘Well, duty calls. I hate to leave you special people.’
    ‘Right on, Ari,’ said Diotima, a quick study. Papa Doc lumbered off. ‘A charming couple the Papadakises, so
sym-patisch
don’t you think?’
    ‘Absolutely,’ said Kraven. ‘They’re everybody’s favourites.’
    The salon was less crowded now. People had begun drifting into the dining room; others were returning juggling paper plates piled high with food, plastic knives and forks, and styrofoam cups of wine. Liz, evidently unable or unwilling to wait any longer for Papa Doc’s fat ass, had launched the buffet on her own. It was after eleven. The salon was a wreck. Ashtrays were filled to overflowing; empty glasses and dishes, spilled drinks, crushed potato crisps, wayward globs of dip, soiled napkins cluttered the surfaces. The smoke hung at eye level.
    ‘Shall we get something to eat?’
    ‘Not for me, thank you. I’m watching my figure.’
    ‘I’ve been watching it all evening,’ said Kraven gallantly.
    ‘Ach, you naughty boy,’ said Diotima, delighted. ‘Now I must be on my way. I think, a pity, no? But the hour is so late; the jet makes a horrid lag, yes? Do you know where in the world is Professor Dillinger?’
    ‘Home with his books, I believe. A flash of inspiration that has cast the last decade of the sixth century into a strange new light.’
    ‘Then my escort has abandoned me?’
    ‘I am your escort, Fräulein von Hoden.’
    ‘But I am an abandoned woman, nevertheless!’
    ‘I sincerely hope so.’ The spirit of chivalrous uncles lived on in Kraven. ‘You have been left entirely in my hands.’ He spread them, as if to accommodate a 38C. The spirit of cousin Marko smiled.
    ‘In this case, let’s go!’
    * * *
    THEY WALKED TOWARDS COLUMBUS AVENUE. A large but nervous member of the family
Belostomatidae
, Gregor Samsa perhaps, skittered shiny-backed across the pool of lamplight at their feet and leaped desperately into the gutter’s garbage. A foetid stench blew in gently from the river on a seasonal zephyr. An old checker cab rattled down the avenue towards them. What luck! Kraven hailed it and quickly bundled Diotima inside. The cab gave off the melancholy smell of long-forgotten urine.
    ‘Where to, man?’
    ‘Where are you staying, Fräulein von Hoden?’
    ‘The Hotel Koh-i-Noor.’
    ‘Hotel Koh-i-Noor, please, driver.’
    ‘Where’s that at, man?’
    ‘Er, where is the hotel exactly?’
    ‘Brooklyn.’
    God save the mark!
    But the Hotel Koh-i-Noor proved something of a pleasant surprise. The cab dropped them there after a wild lurching drive through and around the byways of Brooklyn. Once over the Bridge the cabbie had cheerfully admitted that he knew the Borough not at all. Moreover, he would ask directions only of his black brothers. Diotima, however, was delighted with the turn of events. ‘A quest! An adventure!’ Her enthusiasm succeeded in thawing some of Kraven’s irritability; each wrong turning, each misdirection, became a stimulus to hilarity. She was a spritely old girl. Another juddering stop. ‘Hey, brother, you know where the Cohen-Whore’s at? Shit, no, it’s a
ho
-tel.’ It appeared they were parked outside.
    The hotel stood on a quiet tree-lined street. It had obviously been built in a more generous age, in the second half of the last century, probably before the then proud and wealthy city had thrown in its lot with crass New York. Architecturally it might have graced the Midi in its heyday, not one of the better known hotels perhaps, but one of the quietly opulent, the