The Topless Tulip Caper

by Lawrence Block

  “Don’t be ridiculous. Look, Mrs. Henderson, Althea, maybe I should come back some other time. I—”

  “Oh, hell,” she said, and plunged the hatpin into her left breast. My stomach flipped a little but she didn’t seem to feel a thing. She drew out the pin. There was no blood on it. Her eyes challenged me and I began to get the picture.

  “Foam rubber,” she said. “The other one’s real. Until a couple of years ago they were both real and Haskell was crazy about them. Then I had to have a mastectomy because some knife-happy surgeon decided I had the big C. Turned out it was benign but by that time he’d already done his cutting. Only half a woman now. Used to turn Haskell on. Now all I turn him is off. Still loves me, I still love him, but he takes all his vitamins and drinks his carrot juice and eats his alfalfa and walks around horny as a toad and I don’t do him any good. That’s why he needs his topless dancers.”

  I stood there wondering why floors never open up and swallow you when you want them to. She went out to the kitchen for more gin. I thought she was lucky she wasn’t too drunk when she did her trick with the hatpin or she might get the wrong breast by mistake and it would probably hurt. When she came back I managed to steer the conversation back in its original direction. I asked her what she had been doing the night before last, and what her husband had been doing.

  “He was working late at the store,” she said. “Do you believe that?”

  “Well—”

  “And I was drinking carrot juice and counting my nipples. Do you believe that?”

  “Althea—”

  “He was chasing women in New York. And I was here, sitting in front of the television set and drinking scotch. Not gin. I never drink gin after four in the afternoon. Only a pansy would drink gin after four in the afternoon.”

  “I see. Can you prove it?”

  “Prove it? Hell, everybody knows only a pansy would drink gin in the nighttime. What’s there to prove?”

  “Can you prove you were home watching television?”

  “Oh,” she said. She thought it over. “You think I went into New York and stuck a pin in that girl’s tit. What was her name again?”

  “Cherry Bounce.”

  “Why the hell would I do a thing like that? I don’t go around sticking pins in tits all the time like some kind of a nut. I just did it now to prove a point. Lessee. Kids are at camp so they can’t gimme an alibi. Oh, sure. My neighbor from down the street was over here. Got here about nine o’clock, left when Johnny Carson went off the air. Marge Whitman, lives just down the street. She’s in the same boat as me. Well, not exactly. She’s got two tits but she’s got a pansy for a husband. Leaves her out here and spends his night picking up sailors on Times Square, the fucking pansy. Drinks gin all night long, the goddamn fruit.”

  I got the Whitman woman’s address and started backing toward the door. She asked me where I was going. “I have some other calls to make,” I said.

  “I turn you off too, don’t I?”

  “No, not at all, but—”

  “You’re a tit man like my husband.”

  “Not exactly.”

  “You don’t like tits?”

  “I like them fine, but—”

  “You’re not a pansy are you?” I shook my head. “What do you drink in the evening?”

  “Whiskey, usually. Sometimes a beer. Why?”

  “Not a pansy,” she said. And then she took her blouse off, and then she took her bra off, and I just stood there. She had one absolutely perfect breast, and where the other had been there was smooth skin with an almost imperceptible scar from the incision.

  “Sickening, isn’t it?”

  “No, not at all.”

  “Deformed.”

  “No.”

  “Turns you off, doesn’t it?”

  The weird thing is that it was turning me on. I don’t know how to account for it and I’d rather not stop and figure it out. It probably just proves I’m kinkier than l realized, but why go into it too closely?

  “C’mere,” she said. I did, and she opened my zipper and groped around. “I’ll be a sonofabitch,” she said. “Well, you’re not a faggot, are you?”

  “No, and—”

  “And I don’t turn you off, do I? Maybe you’re a sensible tit man, that’s what it must be. You figure half a loaf is better than none. Right?”

  “Uh.”

  Her hand clutched me possessively. She turned and began leading me toward the staircase. I had the choice of following her or leaving part of my anatomy behind, and I’ve always been attached to it. I followed.

  If Althea had had her way she would have kept me there for hours. And I’ll tell you something. If we weren’t in the middle of a case I would have stayed She evidently had an enormous complex about her absent breast, which old Haskell must have done a good job of reinforcing, and as a result she did everything she could to compensate for what she regarded as a terrible deficiency. As far as I was concerned, passing her up because she only had one breast was like refusing to listen to Schubert’s Eighth Symphony because he never got around to finishing it.

  I finally managed to get out of there after promising to return when I got the chance. Then I stopped at the Whitman house to confirm Althea’s alibi, although I didn’t really need confirmation. But Haig would be sure to ask and I would have to have the answers.

  Mrs. Whitman was quick to recall watching television with Althea on the night in question. She was also quick to offer me a cup of coffee, which I declined because I was really in a hurry. And I got the impression that she would have gladly offered me a lot more than coffee. She was a good looking woman, a little older than Althea, but certainly nothing to complain about.

  Back in the car, I wondered if Mr. Whitman was really homosexual. The fact that he drank gin in the evening didn’t strike me as sufficient evidence in and of itself. I know a lot of perfectly straight people who drink gin in the evening. I think they’re crazy, but it doesn’t make them gay.

  Then I began thinking about the conversation with Clover, and how I’d told her there probably wouldn’t be much sex in the book. I wondered if our talk had had anything to do with the fact that Althea and I wound up in bed. I suppose it could have operated on a sort of subliminal level. Maybe it was my aspirations as an author that goaded me to respond to Althea’s advances.

  Somehow I doubt it.

  I drove back over the George Washington Bridge and down the West Side Drive. I got off at 72nd Start and drove down to Tulip’s building. Of course that was no place to park. I circled a few blocks a few times and then stuck it in a lot. The attendant was very impressed by the car and flipped completely when he saw he was going to have to shift it. “A Cad with a stick shift,” he said. “Where’d you ever find it?”

  “South Carolina.”

  “There a lot of ’em down there?”

  “Thousands,” I said.

  On the way to Tulip’s building I spent a dime on a telephone and made my report. It took some time and I had to feed the phone extra change. I left out the part about going to bed with Althea. Verbatim only goes so far is the way I figure it.

  Haig told me it was satisfactory. I was glad to hear it. He said, “After you see Miss Tattersall, you’ll go to Tulip’s apartment and feed her fish. You haw the key?”

  “Yes, sir. She gave it to me a couple of hours ago. You told her to, remember?”

  “The Ctenapoma receive brine shrimp. There’s some in the freezer compartment of the refrigerator. I believe that’s all they receive. One moment.”

  He asked Tulip if this was so, and she said there were also some bloodworms and mealworms in jars in the refrigerator, and I should give them that if it was no trouble. “They’re strictly carnivores,” I heard him say. “Unless—I wonder if that’s what’s keeping them from spawning! I used to give the scats a lot of wheat genii and it put them in great breeding condition.”

  Haig said, “Chip.”

  “Yes.”

  He cover
ed the mouth piece with his hand and I couldn’t make out what he and Tulip were saying to each other. Then he said, “There is a jar of Kretchmer wheat germ in the cupboard to the right of the sink. On the second or third shelf, Miss Wolinski doesn’t recall precisely where.”

  “IH manage to find it. You want me to give some to the Ctenapoma?”

  “No! Absolutely not.”

  “Fine. Hold your horses. Then what difference does it make what shelf it’s on?”

  “Bring the wheat germ back here with you. Do not open the jar. Be very careful of the jar. Wrap it so that it won’t break should you happen to drop it. Do you understand?”

  “Oh.”

  “Do you understand, Chip?”

  “I think so,” I said. “I think I do.”

  Fifteen

  HAIG MAKES ME read a lot of mysteries. Since we don’t get all that many cases, and since you can only spend so much time feeding fish and cleaning out filters, that leaves me with plenty of time to humor him. It’s his theory that you can learn anything and solve any puzzle if you just read enough mystery novels. Maybe he’s right. It certainly seems to work for him, but he’s a genius and I feel that constitutes special circumstances.

  Well, if you’ve read as many of them as I have—not even as many as Haig has, because nobody has read that many—then you know what happened when I finally got around to seeing Helen Tattersall. I mean, her name came up early on, and I kept ducking opportunities to see her, so naturally one of two things had to happen. Either she turned out to be the killer or she supplied the one missing piece of information that tied the whole mess together. Right?

  Wrong. Absolutely wrong.

  I got in to see her by posing as someone investigating her complaint about her neighbors. Even then I had a hard time because she really didn’t like the idea of opening her door, but I explained that I couldn’t act on the complaint unless I interviewed her face-to-face. Much as she didn’t want to open her door, she decided to risk it if it would facilitate her making trouble for somebody.

  When she opened the door I decided on my own that she hadn’t gone to Treasure Chest and planted a poisoned dart in Cherry Bounce’s breast. Because Helen Tattersall was in a wheelchair with her leg in a cast, and the first thing she did was inform me that she’d been in the cast for two months and expected to be in it for another four months, and she didn’t sound very happy about it.

  The next thing she said was, “Now which complaint have you come about? The upstairs neighbors? Those prostitutes? Or the man next door who plays the flute all day and all night? Or the married couple on the other side of me with that dreadful squalling baby? Or the man across the hall who gives me dirty looks? Or the evil man down by the elevator who puts poison gas in everybody’s air-conditioners? Or could it be my complaints about the building employees? The superintendent is a Soviet agent, you know—”

  So she didn’t even have a personal vendetta against Tulip and Cherry. Instead she had just one enemy: mankind. And she complained about and tried to make trouble for every member of the human race who called himself to her attention.

  Well, I couldn’t get out of there fast enough. I began wishing I were Richard Widmark in Kiss of Death so that I could push the old bitch down a staircase, wheelchair and all. I’m not saying I would have done it but I might have given it serious consideration.

  I suppose there should have been one little thing she said that got my mind working in the right direction, one little thread she might unwittingly supply, but I’m sorry, there just wasn’t anything like that. It was a waste of time. I had sort of thought it would be a waste of time, and that’s why I’d postponed seeing Helen Tattersall as long as I did, in addition to having suspected that meeting her wouldn’t be one of my all-time favorite experiences. I was right on all counts, and it was a pleasure to get out of her apartment, believe me.

  I found a staircase and climbed a flight to Tulip’s apartment and used her key to open her door. I got a rush when I walked in, remembering how I had let myself into Andrew Mallard’s apartment the previous evening, and half-expecting to find another corpse or two now. I don’t guess I really thought that would happen, but I have to admit I went around touching things with the heel of my hand to avoid leaving fingerprints.

  No corpses, thank God. Not in the fish tank, either. The two Ctenapoma fasciolatum swam around on either side of their glass divider. They were doing a great job of ignoring each other, and the male had done absolutely nothing about building a bubble nest.

  I sat on the edge of the bed and watched them for a while. “C’mon,” I said at one point “Clover Swann wants plenty of sex in this book, gang. You can’t expect me to supply all of it myself, can you?”

  I don’t think they cared.

  So I gave up on them and went into the kitchen. I found brine shrimp in the freezer and broke off a chunk, and I found containers of bloodworms and mealworms in the fridge. I went back to the bedroom and fed them until they wouldn’t eat any more, then returned the food to the kitchen I opened a couple of cupboards until I spotted the jar of wheat germ. I reached for it, and then I stopped with my hand halfway to it, and I told myself not to be silly, fingerprints never solved anything anyway and all that, and then I got a paper towel and used it to take the jar from the shelf and set it on the counter top. There wouldn’t be any useful prints and I knew it, but if Haig did check the jar for prints and found mine all over it I would never hear the end of it.

  I wrapped the jar in several thicknesses of paper towels and found a paper bag in another cupboard and put the jar in that. Then I left it in the kitchen and took a careful look around the apartment without knowing what I was looking for.

  I suppose the police must have tossed the place fairly thoroughly the night of the murder, but I had to credit them with doing a neat job of it. As far as I could tell nothing was out of place.

  I went into Cherry’s room, and of course it was impossible to tell whether anything was out of place there or not, because nothing had been in place to begin with. I remember standing there just two days ago when the only victims had been scats, remembered thinking that Cherry was evidently something of a slob, and now I found myself muttering an apology to her. I guess a girl can throw her underwear around the room if she wants to. I guess it’s her own business.

  We’ll get him, I promised her. I don’t know who he is, and I don’t know if Haig knows who he is, but we’ll get the bastard.

  I tucked the jar of wheat germ under my arm and got out of there. The guy at the parking lot ground the Caddy’s gears a little but it didn’t sound as though he’d done any permanent damage. I gave him a quarter and drove back to our garage and turned the car over to Emilio, who never grinds the gears, and who occasionally polishes it when he has nothing else to do. We don’t pay him to polish the Cadillac. He does it because he likes to.

  Then I tucked the jar of wheat germ under my arm again and walked back to Haig’s house.

  Sixteen

  I WANTED TO get up a pool on who would be the first to arrive. But Haig wouldn’t play. At a quarter to three he sent Tulip to the guest room and ordered her to stay there until he called for her. After she was tucked away he and I discussed the seating arrangements. I hate having to tell people where to sit, although I have to admit it usually works out fairly well. You can take a person into a room with twenty chairs in it, tell him he’s expected to sit in one specific one, and it’s a rare case when he gives you an argument. I suppose that proves we’re a nation of sheep just looking to be led, but I’m not sure about that. I figure people are just relieved to be saved the aggravation of making an unimportant decision.

  At twenty minutes to three Haig went upstairs to ask the fish who killed Cherry Bounce. I hoped they would tell him because it was going to be awfully embarrassing if he ran the whole number and nothing happened. I don’t know whether he had it all worked out at that point or not. I figured the reason he went upstairs was so that he would be able to mak
e a grand entrance after they were all seated and waiting for him.

  Anyway I would have been glad to get up a pool, and I would have lost. My pick was Haskell Henderson, and I had a reason for picking him, but since I was wrong there’s no point in going into the reason. The first person to show rang the doorbell at four minutes of three. I passed the kitchen on my way to the door and exchanged glances with Wong. “Here we go,” I said, and he said something in his native tongue, and I opened the door. There was a man standing on the welcome mat whom I had never seen before in my life.

  He had a very youthful face if you didn’t spot the pouches under the eyes or the lines at their corners. His hair was the color of sand, neither long nor short, and his eyes were as clear a blue as I have ever seen. He had an open friendly Van Johnson kind of face. He was wearing a gray plaid suit and his tie, loose around his neck, was a striped job.

  He said, “I have an appointment with a Mr. Haig.”

  “You’re in luck,” I said. “We have a Mr. Haig who will probably fit the bill very nicely. Your name is Glenn Flatt and you’re early.”

  He stared at me. He looked as though he had had his next line of dialogue prepared days in advance and I had blown his timing with an ad lib. I told him to come in, closed the door; and led him to the office. Wong and I had set up a double row of chairs on my side of the partner’s desk, facing Haig’s chair. I showed Flatt which chair was his and he sat, then popped up again as if there had been a tack on the seat.

  “Just a minute,” he said. “I don’t understand any of this. I came here because I wanted to help Mr. Haig. He said he was working on my ex-wife’s behalf and I wanted to help him. Where is he?”

  “He’s busy,” I said. “He’ll be along in a while. That’s your chair but you don’t have to sit in it if you don’t want to. You can look at the fish if you’d rather.”

  “Fish,” he said.

  I was waiting for him to ask me who I was, but he didn’t I guess he didn’t care. Nor did he look at the fish. He sat down again, opened his briefcase, and took out a copy of the Post. He opened it to Jack Anderson’s column and checked out the current entry in the corruption sweepstakes. I sat in my chair for a minute or two but it got to be sort of heavy, just the two of us in a roomful of empty chairs, so I went into the kitchen and watched Wong sharpen his cleaver.