Harold Robbins Organized Crime Double

by Harold Robbins

  One day while I was sitting there in the chair looking at the portrait and Marianne was working over her newest painting, a voice within me began to whisper: “You’re through. You will never be anything. You will live on handouts the rest of your life.”

  The voice was so real and so strong that involuntarily I answered it aloud: “I will not.” My voice was loud and rough, and shattered the stillness of the room.

  Marianne threw her brush and palette on the table furiously. I had broken her mood of concentration on the painting. “Didn’t I tell you a thousand times to be quiet when I’m working!” she screamed at me.

  I looked up at her almost in surprise. I had forgotten she was in the room. “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “Sorry!” she mimicked me nastily. “He’s sorry, he says! You fool, do you know what you’ve done! You’ve ruined my painting—that’s what you’ve done. I’ll never get it now.”

  Suddenly I was angry too. It was like a spark thrown to dry tinder. I blazed up before I knew it. My voice went flat and hard with the rage that was in me. “No,” I said, “I’m not sorry—not really. I won’t take the blame for you if you find that you’re trying something outside your reach. You can’t blame your inadequacy on me.”

  “Inadequate, am I!” she shouted. “Who are you to tell me I’m inadequate!” She turned, picked up a palette knife from the table near her, and advanced on me threateningly.

  I laughed coldly. “You’re not going to try that!” I asked contemptuously.

  She stopped short and looked at the knife in her hands and then at me. She threw the knife to the floor. Rage and shame seemed to flow over her face, one chasing the other like clouds across the face of the moon. “You no-good-son-of-a-bitch!” she yelled. “You dirty, rotten bastard!”

  I could feel the blood leave my face in a rush. I felt cold and white and taut with anger. For a moment I could have murdered her, but we stood there and stared at one another while the seconds ticked by. I could feel a pulse beating madly in my forehead. My hands were clenched.

  Suddenly I opened them and could feel them at my side, wet with sweat and trembling. I turned, snatched my hat and coat from the hall tree, and stamped out the door. I could hear her voice calling after me: “Frank, Frank, come back!”

  It followed me as I went down the hall into the street, ringing in my ears with the oddly fearful sound of her saying after me: “Where are you going?” and the slam of the door, and the words, “Please come back!” as if torn from the bottom of her soul and filled with a fear of losing me.

  I knew I would be back, but for the while I felt a savage glee in making her suffer and feel pain and humiliation as I did.

  It was late when I came back, and I was drunk for the first time in my life; but not so drunk that I didn’t know what I was doing—that is, not altogether know what I was doing. I paused a moment outside the door before I went in and listened. I heard no sound, and put the key in the door and went in.

  I staggered over to the table and picked up Gerro’s portrait. “Gerro, my frien’,” I whispered, “my frien’, I mish you,” and began to weep drunken tears. I slumped toward my chair and fell into it, still holding the picture. I held the picture up and looked at it, still weeping. “My frien’, tell me what to do. I feel sho losht.”

  The bedroom door opened and Marianne stood before me in her negligee. I could see the black nightgown she wore beneath it. “Marianne,” I cried, holding the picture of her, “he won’ talk to me.”

  She looked at me speculatively for a moment. Then she took the picture from my hands and put it back on the table. She helped me to my feet and led me into the bedroom and undressed me. I lolled helplessly on the bed while she took off my shoes.

  “Oh, darling,” she whispered, as she unbuttoned my shirt and then helped me into my pajamas, “why did you do it? It’s all my fault—my bitchy temper.”

  I looked up at her. She was never so beautiful as then, her face furrowed with small lines of worry and remorse. “Marianne,” I said solemnly, “you’re a bitch, but I love you,” and rolled over on my stomach and fell sound asleep.

  56

  It was a Thanksgiving party given by one of her friends that really began to break us up. Time moved on slowly, and while I wasn’t completely satisfied, I was fairly content with letting things go as they were. Marianne had become possessive about me. I didn’t object to it. Matter of fact, I liked it. I loved her, loved the way she spoke, walked, acted. I loved the way she held her hands, her feet. I loved the way she pressed against me when we danced that made it seem to intimate, so personal, so daring.

  But this was another party and the usual crowd and the usual thing. Marianne and I alone were one thing—close and warm and understanding—but Marianne and I and a group of people were another. She would gravitate naturally to her crowd of fellow artists and talk shop. I would be excluded from such conversations—not intentionally, but naturally—as I could offer nothing in the way of talk on that subject. So I would stand around, drink in hand, and wait, bored and tired and left out, until the party would break up and we could go home.

  Going home was a silent affair. We would cut through Washington Square, where the double-decker buses waited for their passengers, our breath cutting frostily into the chill night air, and wouldn’t talk until we got home. Then Marianne would say: “Nice party, wasn’t it?”

  I would grunt: “Unh-hunh.”

  And she wouldn’t answer. She probably knew that I didn’t care for them but would never admit it.

  This party was no different than the others. Marianne got busy talking and I held up the wall. The evening dragged by. About ten o’clock a few new people came in and more groups formed. I was beginning to get fed up with my silent role, and was thinking about walking out and going home. I put down my drink and started over to Marianne to tell her I was leaving. Someone caught me by the arm. I turned to see who it was.

  It was a model who occasionally worked for Marianne. “Remember me?” she asked smiling.

  “Why yes, of course,” I said, pleased to have someone to speak to. “How are you?”

  “Stiff,” she said flatly. “The party stinks.”

  I laughed. It made me feel good to know that someone else felt the same way about it as I did. “Why do you come then?” I asked her.

  “Have to,” she answered succinctly. “My business—I have something to sell.” Her hands made a gesture down her body.

  “Oh,” I said, “I see.” I sure did. She had something to sell.

  “Dance?” she asked.

  I nodded. We moved off together in a corner where the radio was playing. She danced well and made me look better at dancing than I actually was. Several of the people stopped talking and watched us. From the corner of my eye I saw Marianne and her group fall quiet as we danced by them.

  “They make an unusual couple,” I heard one of them say to Marianne. “Why don’t you do them?”

  We moved out of hearing and I didn’t hear Marianne’s reply. “Why do you?” the blonde was asking.

  “Do what?” I asked, looking down at her.

  “Come to these parties?” she said. “You’re like a fish out of water.”

  I shrugged my shoulders. “There’s nothing better to do.”

  “I see,” she said knowingly, looking over my shoulder at Marianne. Her meaning was plain enough—orders from the boss.

  Suddenly I had enough of dancing. I was a little angry with myself. “How about a drink?” I asked.

  We stood against the wall watching the others. I could see Marianne looking at us—a quick glance and then away—as we stood there.

  After a while I couldn’t take that anymore. “How about some air?” I asked the girl.

  She nodded and we took our coats and went out. We walked silently through the park and then around it. Once we stopped and looked up at the people getting into the bus. We didn’t talk, we just walked, her hand on mine.

  Then we started back.
At the door of the party I stopped. “I’m not going in,” I said. They were my first words since we started to walk.

  She looked at me. “I don’t feel like it either,” she said, “but I have to. Someone I promised to see about some work tomorrow.”

  I got the impression that if I asked her, she wouldn’t go back at all. I didn’t say anything.

  She stood there a moment watching me, then she smiled and stepped back. “Moody cuss, aren’t you?”

  I didn’t answer. She turned and went into the building, and I went home.

  I sat down in the easy chair at home and read the morning papers. A little after one o’clock Marianne came in. “Hello,” I said, “how’d ya like the party?”

  “Why didn’t you stick around and find out?” she said heatedly.

  I could see she was angry so I shut up. I didn’t feel like fighting tonight.

  She went into the bedroom and came out a few minutes later. “Where’s Bess?” she asked.

  I guessed she meant the model. I looked up at her and smiled. “At the party, I guess. I left her at the door and came home.”

  “I didn’t see her come back.”

  “I don’t know what she did after I left her,” I retorted. I smiled again. “Take it easy, baby. I’m beginning to think you’re jealous.”

  That was the wrong thing to say. She all but hit the ceiling. “Jealous!” she hollered. “Of that two-bit bitch! The hell I am! I just didn’t like it, that’s all. When you come with me, I expect you to stay with me. How would you like people to talk about you?”

  I was beginning to get a little steam up myself. “Let them talk. There’s no way you can stop them. Anyhow, what do we care what they say?”

  “I don’t care!” she yelled, “but how do you think I feel? They know about us, and you run out with that little blonde bitch.”

  “How do you think I feel?” I countered. “At every party I’m shunted to one side like an overcoat, and picked up on your way home. For Christ’s sake don’t be such a goddamn fool!” I lit a cigarette. “Forget it.”

  “That cheap whore made a play for you the minute she saw you.”

  “She seemed like a nice kid to me,” I said defensively. “And besides, what’s wrong with that? What did you do?”

  “I didn’t do that,” she said, walking over to the door of the bedroom. “But if I’d have found her here, I would have cut her heart out.”

  I began to laugh. This was getting a little funny. “Is that why you looked in the bedroom when you came in?” I asked. “You don’t think I’m dumb enough to bring her here, even if I wanted to?”

  She came back to me and stood in front of my chair, looking down at me furiously. Her voice was tense but controlled. “Look,” she said, “remember this. You belong to me. Everything you have, everything you are, everything you ever will be, is because of me—because I gave it to you. And because I gave it to you, I can take it away just as quickly. I can throw you back where I got you from like that.” She snapped her fingers. “When you go anywhere with me, remember that. You stay with me, whether you’re bored, whether you like it or not. You’ll go when I tell you, not before.”

  I was mad, but I sat there coolly and held on to the edge of my temper. She was right. I had nothing of my own. Even the clothes I wore and the money in my pocket belonged to her. “O.K. baby,” I said evenly, “If that’s the way you want it.”

  She looked down at me, curiously disappointed, as if she had expected me to flare up and I didn’t. “That’s the way I want it,” she said a little bit unsteadily.

  I got out of the chair and went into the bedroom and undressed and got into bed. I fell asleep. I don’t know what time it was that I awoke. She had called me. “Frank, are you awake?”

  “I am now,” I said. Suddenly my eyes had opened wide. The dimness in the room wasn’t the only thing I could see through now. I could see myself the way I really was—kept, a sweet man! I writhed a little inside.

  “Come over here, darling,” she whispered.

  “Yes, master,” I replied, getting out of my bed and sitting on the edge of her bed.

  “Not there, darling,” she whispered, her eyes luminous in the darkness. “Lie down here, beside me, and kiss me.”

  I stretched out beside her and took her in my arms. Her body was warm and soft, and I could feel the sparks of fire shoot out when we touched. I was bought and paid for, and I gave her her money’s worth that night.

  I loved her. I knew I would always love her. No matter what she said or did. But all night long someone just behind me and over my shoulder was watching me and laughing and whispering in my ear.

  “Jump when she tells you,” the voice giggled obscenely in my ear. “Dance when she pulls the strings. But remember, something is gone. He! he! he! You’ll never get it back. Never! Never! Never!”

  She was sleeping when the gray of dawn beat its way into the room. I looked at her. Her hair was framed round her head like a living flame on the pillow. Her mouth had a half smile and her face was relaxed and happy.

  I looked at her and my heart went out to her in a funny, lumpish sort of way. I loved her, but something vital had gone, had been lost. And way down deep in the hidden recesses of my mind, I knew it would not be long before I too would follow. And I knew that it would come as sure as day after night and yet—.

  57

  Holiday week—that slow-moving, gaily exciting week between Christmas and New Year’s. The week that children were out of school and even the men and women who worked had a different air about them—an air of excitement, of repressed gaiety, of looking forward to the new year and wondering what excitingly great things were going to happen to them in the year that was coming.

  I spent most of the week sitting in the window of the apartment looking out—watching people as they hurried to and from work, watching children as they played, watching street cleaners shovel snow, watching mailmen deliver letters, watching the milkmen deliver milk, watching cops walk their beat, watching, watching, watching the world move around before me through a pane of glass. This business of watching the world and not being a part of it was beginning to get me in my craw. It was beginning to choke in my throat, make me nauseous and sick to my stomach. The inactivity began to tear at my nerves. The end was coming. I could see it. It had to be soon. And it was—sooner than I had expected.

  It was New Year’s Eve and horns were blowing. And everyone was half lit—except me. I don’t know why. I tried to get lit up like a Christmas tree, but the more I drank, the less effect it had on me. We were in a nightclub in the Village. Marianne and all her friends and I. And suddenly it seemed as if I were outside myself, looking upon the scene as an outsider would, ironically tolerant, sarcastically amused at the foolish, childlike behavior of these so-called adults trying ever so hard to pretend they were glad at the coming of time while inwardly they were afraid. Afraid of tomorrow! I laughed aloud. That’s what I was—afraid of tomorrow!

  Marianne looked at me quietly, her eyes half amused. “Having fun, darling?” she asked.

  I didn’t answer. I laughed again. She thought I was a little drunk. I pulled her to me and kissed her. It was sweet and warm, and I felt strong and powerful. What did I have to be afraid of? I was young and strong—ever so strong. She kissed me back. I kissed the side of her neck down to her shoulder.

  “Frank,” she half whispered huskily. I could tell the passion in her voice. “Not here, Frank, not here!” Her arms were around me.

  I let her go and laughed again. She laughed with me. We laughed together. We laughed and laughed and laughed until we were out of breath, and then we looked at each other soberly.

  Her eyes were haughty and proud. “He is mine,” they were saying. “Mine! He belongs to me. I belong to him. I’m proud of him as he is of me.” Her hand found mine and gripped it tightly under the table. Currents seemed to flow between us—feelings without words, emotions without language. We looked at each other and were proud. The even
ing wore on.

  The lights went down dim and then out. The orchestra began to play “Auld Lang Syne.” And suddenly she was in my arms and we were holding each other close, savoring each other’s warmth. We kissed.

  “I love you, darling,” her lips murmured under mine. “Happy New Year!”

  “I love you,” I heard myself saying. “Happy New Year!” I kissed her cheek. It was wet with the salt of her tears. I could taste it on my tongue, in my mouth. And I realized she had known all along what I was thinking.

  She kissed me again, her mouth half open against mine, her arms holding me tightly to her—ever so tightly. “Don’t go, darling, please don’t go.”

  “I must,” I whispered. “I’ve got to. I can’t help it.”

  The lights went on again, and there we were, staring at each other. She was pale and her eyes were wide and filled with tears. There was something in my throat and I couldn’t speak. Just our hands clung together tightly as we sat down.

  We left the party a few minutes later and walked home silently. The night was bright and clean and new, and a million stars were out blinking brightly. The air was new, everything was new—it was 1934. Silently we went into the apartment. I took off my coat and threw it over a chair. I went to the closet and took down my valise and spread it open on the bed.

  Silently she began to hand me my things: shirts and shoes and stockings and ties and pajamas and suits. I pressed one knee down to close it. I heard the clasp lock.

  I straightened up and faced her. My voice was trembling a little. “I guess this is… good-bye.”

  She flung herself violently into my arms. “No! Frank, no! You mustn’t go! I need you!” She was crying—the first time I had really seen her cry.

  I held her to me and didn’t speak for a moment. “It’s better this way, darling, much better. Believe me,” I whispered shaking. “In time we’d grow to hate each other. It’s better now than when we’ve both grown bitter.”