The Girls in the High-Heeled Shoes by Michael Kurland Read Free Book Online

back at the theater by six-thirty. Will that be a problem?”
    “No, mum,” Garrett said, turning to smile a wide smile at her. “I’ll see to it, mum, I will.” He faced front and moved the car away from the curb.
    Sandra stared at him for a moment then leaned back in her seat. “Can you find Eastern Parkway?” she asked. “The Brooklyn Botanical Gardens?”
    “Yes, mum,” Garrett said.
    Two-Headed Mary lived in an apartment building across the parkway from the Botanical Gardens, which is cheek-and-jowl with the Brooklyn Museum; a fine institution of which most New Yorkers—that is Manhattanites—are unaware. Garrett pulled up to the awning and a doorman in the full-dress uniform of a captain in the Ruritanian Guard leaped out from the building to greet us. The wind tugged at his fancy dress-coat and almost blew off his buskin or taskit or whatever those high, fancy hats are called, but he clutched at it with his left hand while he held the door open for us. We decarred and staggered through the wind into the building. A small placard on a stand right inside the entrance informed us that this was OLMSTEAD TOWERS; 2, 3 AND 4 BEDROOM APTS and that there was NO VACANCY .
    “I brought my key,” Sandra said. “I think it’s the right key. I haven’t been here in two or three years.”
    I paused to stare in wonder about me. The lobby, a combination of rich, dark wood and gleaming white tile, with little niches along the wall for plaster busts of ancient Romans, stretched off a good distance to the left and right, uncertain as to whether it belonged in an English country home or Caracalla’s baths. Four rococo-gilded chandeliers, each with a cluster of small round lightbulbs, distributed light and shadow along its length. Approaching us was a portly man with a walrus mustache who, by the coils of gold braid on his uniform, was at least a field marshal in that same Ruritanian Guard. His normal post, from which he presumably directed his troops, was behind an ornate Gothic gilt-filigreed lectern to one side of the door. A palatial lobby with attendants out of a Rudolf Friml operetta; we did not have such things in Manhattan apartment houses. “The glory that was Greece,” I muttered to Brass, “the grandeur that was Brooklyn.”
    “May I assist you, madam?” the field marshal asked. “To whom do you wish to see?”
    “Mrs. Bain, apartment seven-E” Sandra told him.
    “I’m sorry, Mrs. Bain is not at home.”
    “That’s all right,” Sandra said. “I’m her daughter. I have a key.”
    A look of surprise crossed the field marshal’s face, and was immediately suppressed. “Your name, please,” he said.
    “Sandra Lelane. The super knows me. That is if Norman is still the super. Is he around?”
    The field marshal’s expression now could have been either indignation or indigestion. “Madam, is this a jest?”
    “Jest?” Sandra did her best not to look alarmed. “What do you mean?”
    He took a step back and a deep breath. “Never mind. Mr. Schreiber is somewhere about the building. If you will wait here, please.” He left in a scurry for the distant left side of the lobby where they kept one bank of elevators.
    “What do you suppose—,” I said.
    “I don’t suppose,” Brass replied.
    Sandra clutched Brass’s arm. “You don’t think something has happened to Mother and they don’t want to tell me?” she asked.
    Brass freed his arm and put it around her. I wish I’d thought of that first, but then he outranks me. “Let’s wait and see,” he said.
    About ten minutes later the field marshal reappeared with a small man in a wrinkled brown suit. “Normy!” Sandra said.
    The brown-suited man held out both hands, which Sandra took in hers and squeezed. “Miss Lelane,” he said. “It’s truly nice to see you again.”
    “Normy, what’s going on? Is my mother all right?”
    “Yes. It’s not that. Well, I don’t know, I haven’t seen Mrs. Bain in a couple of weeks. But—you