CHAPTER ONE
I was in trouble [said Denham] from the moment the big ape dropped into the middle of 34th Street. If I’d been half as smart as I thought I was, I would have been on the first train out of town as soon as Kong knocked out the back wall of the theater. I guess I’d gotten as caught up in the novelty of the thing as everyone else in the city had. I don’t think I’d realized what a mistake I’d made until I told that cop that it was beauty what killed the beast. It was a great line—a natural—and it eventually made all the papers. By then, of course, I wasn’t so hot for publicity as I might have been the day before. It didn’t take but a moment for the cop—and the crowd behind him—to realize that I was the guy responsible for bringing Kong to New York in the first place. They’d been keen enough to stand in line for hours to see the big monkey while it was chained to the stage, but now all they could think about was the damage he’d done. Did they blame those damned news photographers who’d spooked poor old Kong after I’d specifically warned them not to use their flashes on him? Nope. That’s what I get, I suppose, for insisting that my name go up on that marquee in six-foot illuminated letters.
The cop tapped me on the shoulder and said, “Say, now, Mr. Denham, just what do you intend to do about that?”
“Do about what?”
“The big ape, Mr. Denham. You can’t just leave it there, blocking traffic like that and all.”
“Well, just what do you think I can do about it?”
“That ain’t my problem, thank the good Lord. But there’s a law about leavin’ dead animals in the streets. It ain’t hygienic.”
From where I stood I could see two dead dogs and a cat that had not seemed to have offended any of the cop’s finer sensibilities—but I could also see just as clearly that the weight of the argument—all fifty tons of it—was clearly on his side and chose not to make a point of the discrepancy.
I could also just as clearly see that word of my identity was spreading fast through the crowd, none of whom appeared to be pleased by the news.
“You’re absolutely right, officer. I’ll just run into that drug store over there and find a phone and make arrangements to have all this cleaned up.”
“Well, you see that you do that right away, Mr. Denham. I’d hate like anything to have to write you a citation. The fine is a hundred bucks.”
“No, noI’ll take care of it,” I said, thanking the cop for bringing the matter to my attention. I then made my way toward the drugstore, which, as I had carefully noted, was on the opposite side of Kong from the crowd. I walked with what I hoped was a convincing casualness, hands jammed in my pockets, whistling “Pennies from Heaven.” But as soon as I got Kong’s body squarely between me and the mob, I made a bolt for the revolving door.
There was only one person inside, evidently the pharmacist himself, judging from his white coat and pince-nez, who was busily replacing all the goods that had been thrown from his now empty shelves . . . the shock of Kong’s impact must have been like a small earthquake.
“Is there a back door to this place?” I asked.
“Who’re you?” he replied and looked down his skinny nose at me, crossing his eyes in an effort to see through both of his cockeyed lenses at the same time. “Another reporter?”
I tried to think of something snappy to say, but the sound of angry voices outside the shop encouraged haste over wit. So I grabbed the scrawny gink by his collar and shouted into his face. “You got a back door or not, Mac?”
“It’s in the back!” he squeaked. “Where else would it be?”
As I ducked around the counter and through a curtain into a rear room, I heard the mob trying to get through the revolving door without, I was glad to notice, a great deal of success.
The door at the back of the store deposited me in an alley. I looked to my left and right, but so far no one had thought to flank me. There was an open door diagonally opposite and about a hundred feet away, with clouds of steam pouring from it. I leaped from one opening into the other like a spooked prairie dog, slamming the door behind me. I found myself facing a half dozen yellow faces, swimming in a fragrant fog like a school of myopic goldfish.
I was in what must have been the kitchen of a Chinese restaurant and a bulky gentleman—who I assumed was either the chief cook or the proprietor, or both—approached me, hefting a glinting cleaver in one beefy, jaundiced paw. He had eyes like greased ball bearings.
“What you want here, huh?”
I saw a chance to make a good impression, so I replied in the only Mandarin phrase I knew by heart: “Nothing more than to take most reluctant leave of your excellent company, cousin.”
“What hell you talk bout, bub? Get hell out here fore I call cop!”
I could see little point in arguing with someone who was obviously inarticulate even in his own mother tongue, so, keeping as many tables and garbage cans between myself and the cleaver as I could, I slipped through a swinging door into the dining room. It was dark, crowded and full of poker-faced people concentrating on discerning whether their plates held moo goo gai cat or sweet and sour spaniel. Maybe they didn’t care. I threaded my way between tables and out the front door, which gave, I discovered, onto 35th Street. That put a whole city block between me and my critics. I hailed a cab and jumped in before it came to a stop. I told the driver to take me to Grand Central and step on it. I could have walked it easy, but I didn’t think it would be wise for me to be hoofing around New York in the broad daylight.
“Didja see the big monkey?” the driver asked.
“What big monkey?” I said, playing dumb.
“What big monkey? Whereya been, pal? Jeez, a monkey big as the Woolworth Building prackly ate Nyork an’ you missed it? Jeez!”
“I’ve been busy.”
“I’m glad I ain’t got your job, pal.”
The wisdom of going by cab was proven as we approached the station: an anthill doesn’t have as many ants crawling around it as that place had cops. Well, the Chink eatery had given me an idea so I told the cabby that I’d changed my mind and to take me to Chinatown instead. He looked in his mirror at me kind of strange-like, but I’ve faced down a dozen mugs uglier than his from the Congo to Borneo. He shrugged, made a U-turn and headed downtown. I had him drop me off at Mott and Canal since I saw no need to give the driver any more to remember about me than I thought he could safely handle. I zigzagged a dozen blocks on foot until I got to Charlie’s uncle’s place, drawing no more attention, I hoped, than any other white man on the street.
Charlie’d been the cook on board the Venture. He was a good guy, practical and trustworthy—so far as anyone, I suppose, can trust a Chinaman. But then, if it hadn’t been for Charlie, we’d never have caught up with those yeggs who had kidnapped Ann and God only knows what would have happened to her then. So I figured I kind of owed him something. I’d offered him a job as my houseboy and cook, but he chose to stay with Captain Englehorn, I can’t imagine why. The Venture had sailed only a few days after we’d unloaded Kong, headed for parts unknown—though I can tell you that right at that moment, as I shouldered my way through the crowded street, I wished I was on it wherever it was. Anyway, Charlie had an uncle who ran an herb shop in Chinatown and he’d asked me to look him up sometime to say hello and tell him that his humble nephew Charlie was doing just fine. This seemed to be as good a time as any to do that.
Unfortunately, finding any particular herb shop in Chinatown was more or less like trying to find a particular grain of sand on a beach. It helped a little that I knew the uncle’s name—Feng Shui—since it narrowed my search down to only five or six dozen places. The eleventh one I tried proved to be the right place, thank God—I didn’t think my nerves would’ve held out very much longer. The shop was no different than any of the others I’d already seen: about the size of a phone booth and crammed with hundreds of little boxes and bottles containing I don’t know what sort of unholy muck. Charlie’s uncle proved to be an unbelievably old man with a face like a dried apple. His eyes and mouth were just three more wrinkles among a hundred others. He didn’t have a hair on his head and when he smiled (surprising me, because I’d picked the wrong wrinkle as being his mouth) he revealed only two teeth, one on the right and one on the left. He was delighted to learn that I’d been a friend of Charlie’s and, jabbering in English, Chinese and pidgin, invited me into the back of the shop for tea.
“Friend Charlie friend Feng, you bet,” he said, bobbing and bowing as he gestured for me to sit. The last thing in the world I wanted at that moment was the cup of hot tea the old man poured from a steaming teakettle into a porcelain cup so translucent I could clearly see the level of the dark liquid, but, you know, it was just what I needed, I guess. After the first few perfumed sips I realized that I’d been sitting bolt upright, as tense as though the chair seat had been covered in razor blades. The hot tea, the dark, fragrant, claustrophobic room, the wrinkled brown face grinning at me like an ancient moon—all combined to make me feel a little more relaxed. There might be a whole city out there after my head, but for the moment I was safe. How long the moment might last was another question.
“How Charlie? OK?”
“Charlie’s just fine,” I said, and told him something of his nephew’s recent adventures. Fortunately, he understood English better than he spoke it. He sat silent and goggle-eyed while I told him about the journey to Skull Island and how Charlie had alerted us to the kidnapping of Ann Darrow when the natives wanted to sacrifice her to Kong. I told him how Jack Driscoll had pursued Kong and his fair captive through some of the most awful adventures any human being has ever had to face, until he was able to rescue her and bring her back to us—with Kong in hot pursuit. Then I told him about the bright idea I’d had to bring the giant ape to New York so we could put him on show and make our fortunes, which would have worked out just fine if it hadn’t been for those damned newspaper photographers.
“Kong make plenty big mess New York, that’s for sure, for sure,” old Feng.
“He did at that.”
“You in plenty big trouble now, huh?”
“Pretty big.”
“Maybe bigger than you think?”
“I can think pretty big, Grandfather.”
“This big?” he said, handing me a late edition of the Post. I had only to glance at the headlines before agreeing that, no, maybe so far as my troubles were concerned I hadn’t been thinking nearly big enough. In my hurry to escape lynching I’d forgotten that I’d had Kong insured—with an indemnity clause in case he happened to cause any damage. This recollection should have lifted a burden from my shoulders—except that the insurance company wasn’t about to shell out a couple of million bucks in damages and wrongful death suits, not if it could get me in prison instead on charges of criminal negligence. The insurance company had gone straight to Tom Dewey, the DA, and got him to call for a Grand Jury investigation. I knew this Dewey bozo—as unscrupulous a shyster as they make em, with his hands in everyone’s pockets and an eye on the governor’s mansion, and maybe even the White House, I wouldn’t doubt. He’d milk this for everything it was worth—and the insurance company would never have to pay out a dime. The lawsuits would drag out in court until they died of old age and I’d rot in some damned prison cell while the whole city carried Dewey on its shoulders clear to Washington thinking he was some kind of hero.
In a pig’s eye.
“So Dewey’s got a warrant out for me, does he?”
“Indeed! And you see? Big insurance company offer most handsome reward for capture of honorable friend.”
“So they have, so they have.”
“More tea?”
“Sure, thanks. Doggone it. What am I supposed to do now? If Dewey has his way, and he will, every flatfoot in the city’s going to sniffing after me.”
“Need get out of town, eh?”
“You bet I do, and the sooner the better. Old Englehorn would’ve stowed me away, but he’s already sailed.”
“If I not being too presumptuous, perhaps you will allow me to offer humble assistance to friend of esteemed nephew?”
“That’s mighty kind of you, Grandfather. To tell you the truth, I was kind of hoping you’d let me hole up somewhere around here until I could figure a way out of this burg.”
“You would be more than welcome, but I am thinking something maybe more useful, if I may be permitted to say so.”
“Oh?” I guess I was half hoping he was going to suggest Dewey winding up with a Tong hatchet in his back some dark night, but what the old man came up with was nearly every bit as good so far as I was concerned.
“I can get you out of New York tonight without slightest bit of difficulty, if you will forgive me the immodesty of saying so.”