Westlake, Donald E - SSC 02
Page 1
Enough
Donald Westlake
Enough: too much.
Ambrose Beerce The Devil's Dictionary
For Aram Avakian, fondly, this two-reeler.
Contents
A Travesty
ONE
The Adventure of the Missing R
TWO
The Affair of the Hidden Lover
THREE
The Wicker Case
FOUR
The Problem of the Copywriter's Island
FIVE
The Footprints in the Snow
SIX
The Chainlock Mystery
SEVEN
The Riddle of the Other Woman
EIGHT
The Secret of the Locked Door
NINE
The Death of the Party
TEN
Memoirs of a Master Detective
ORDO
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
If once a man indulges himself in murder,
very soon he comes to think little of robbing;
and from robbing he comes next to drinking and
sabbath-breaking,
and from that to incivility and procrastination.
Thomas De Quincey
"Murder Considered As One
Of The Fine Arts"
A Travesty
ONE
The Adventure of the Missing R
Well, she was dead, and there was no use crying over spilt milk. I released her wrist—no pulse—and looked around the room, while fragments of imaginary conversations unreeled in my mind:
"And you say you hit her?"
"Well, not that hard. She slipped on the floor, that's all, and smacked her head on the coffee table"
"As a result of you hitting her."
"As a result of her polishing the goddam floor all the goddam time."
Laura's clean jagged style had, as a matter of fact, killed her more than anything else. What kind of bachelor girl apartment was this, with its hulking glass coffee table and chrome lamps and white vinyl chairs and bare black floor? Where were the pillows, the furs, the drapes and hangings, the softnesses? Sterile cold hardness everywhere; it might as well be an art gallery.
"But you did hit her, is that right?"
"But it was an accident!"
If it were an accident, it might just as well have happened when I was somewhere else. I wasn't here at all, officer, I was, uhh . . . Screening a film. Yes, at home by myself. Yes, I do that all the time, it's part of my job.
I got to my feet, studying the room. If I weren't here, what would be different?
Well, that glass, for one. It wouldn't be standing on the murderous coffee table with Jack Daniels in it and my fingerprints all over it.
Fingerprints. Well, there'd be fingerprints everywhere in this highly-polished apartment, wouldn't there?
"Yes, officer?"
"Do you know a Miss Laura Penney?"
"Yes, I do, casually" Casually: "Is something wrong?"
"Have you been to her apartment?"
"A few times, I suppose, picking her up for a screening."
Fine. I took the glass to the small kitchen, washed it, put it away, and headed for the bathroom to study the medicine chest. Razor, shaving cream, toothbrush; nothing that would lead anybody to—
Wait a minute. That little medicine bottle with the drugstore label, isn't that—?
It is. My Valium, with my name typed on the prescription label: "Carey Thorpe, 1 as required for stress." So I took one—if this wasn't a situation of stress there is no such thing—and pocketed the bottle.
Nothing else in here, so onward quickly to the bedroom. Clothing, yes. A couple of shirts, a tie, my Emperor Nero cufflinks, some shorts, my other blue sweater-Socks? Black, one size fits all, they could belong on anybody's feet, so leave them. This is becoming a pretty hefty package as it is.
Anything else? Bed-table drawers, with their anonymous drugstore items. Nothing under the bed, not even dust. Fin.
Back to the living room, with my armload of dry cleaning, and Laura spread lifelike on the glossy floor, a scene from almost any John Carroll-Vera Hruba Ralston flick. This side of her looked perfectly fine.
Into my coat. Into my topcoat, distributing shirts and shorts and ties into various pockets, wrapping the sweater around my waist under all the coats. Thank God it was February, and perfectly normal to look lumpy and bulky.
Gloves on, and one final look around. Oh, God, the letter from Warner Brothers, announcing the re-release of some hoary chestnut. My name was on it, and a date making it clear the thing couldn't have arrived earlier than today. I snatched it up and headed for the apartment door.
And what was the movie again, the one they were reissuing? I gave the letter a quick scan: A Slight Case of Murder.
Oh, really. Stopping, I gazed heavenward; or at least ceilingward. "Come on, God," I said. "That's beneath you." And I got out of there.
* * *
Until the night Laura Penney did herself in most of the violence I'd known had been secondhand. Carey Thorpe is the name, and if that rings no bells you aren't a truly serious student of the cinema. I'll admit it's easy to miss my general film reviewing, in publications such as Third World Cinema and The Kips Bay Voice, but my first book, Author And Auteur: Dynamism And Domination In Film, was an alternate selection of Book Find Club in the summer of 1972, and last year my second book, The Mob At The Movies: Down From Rico To Puzo, got universal raves.
Born in Boston in 1942, I came to consciousness concurrently with television. Being a spindly youth, I spent most of my childhood in front of the box, watching whatever the program directors thought fit to show me. Old movies were the mainstay of local programming then, so by i960 when I went off to college (Penn State; anything to get away from home and family) I knew more about movies than Sam Goldwyn and less than him about anything else.
College, of course, was full of other spindly youths just like me. Perhaps our predecessors in the dorms had discussed sex and beer and goldfish-swallowing, but we discussed Hitchcock and Fuller and Greta Garbo (why did she agree to make Two-Faced Woman?). In my sophomore year my film reviews were appearing in the college paper, in my junior year my first general piece—"Billy Wilder: The Smile In The Skull"—was accepted by Montage Quarterly (twenty-five dollars and two contributors' copies, both ripped by the mailman), and when I got my degree in American Lit I moved directly to New York City, typewriter in hand, where I've been ever since.
Fortunately, my maternal grandmother passed away just before I passed out of college, leaving me a trust fund with an income of about fifteen thousand a year. Unfortunately, the old bitch mistrusted me as much as she liked me, and tied up the fund so thoroughly with banks and lawyers that I cant ever get at the principal. (Believe me, I've tried.) Nevertheless, the fifteen G a year has been a reasonably comfortable base, and over the last several years my writing has brought in about as much again, so I've lived moderately well.
On the other hand, I'd prefer to live very well, and I'd been hoping to make a killing (excuse that) with From Italy With Love. It had seemed to me America was ready for a big glossy photo-filled coffee-table book on Italian Neo-Realism of the postwar era, but so far I haven't been able to get together with a publisher. I'll admit seven hundred stills from Shoe Shine, Bicycle Thief, Open City and Paisun might get a little depressing, but what about all those sexy women in their tattered dresses? Sometimes I don't understand the publishing industry.
I met my wife-to-be, nee Shirley Francesconi, about a year after I moved to New York, at a press screening. She was two years older than I and
living with a drugs-politics-8mm freak, so we knew each other only socially for a year or so, and if I'd had any sense I'd have left it that way. But then her freak got busted on possession and went away for an extended rest, so we dated a while and then we lived together and then we got married and then we found out we hated each other.
The only reason we stuck it seven years instead of seven days is because my family thought Shirley was terrific. In fact, when the split finally did come last year it wasn't to her own folks over in Queens that Shirley went home, it was to mine up in Boston. She's been there ever since, moving slowly in the direction of divorce and annoying me about money.
The money problem is unfortunately complicated by the fact that she left while I was still high on From Italy With Love. I'd raved a lot about the vast sums that book would bring in, and Shirley wants some of it. My family is well off—my father's an insurance company executive, he's had his five square meals every day of his life—and they're encouraging her to squeeze me. How's that for a super family?
Then there's the kids. It's perfectly true I'm no good as a father, but I never claimed I'd be any good. If Shirley'd just gone ahead and taken the goddam pill like she was supposed to there wouldn't be any kids, but oh, no, the pill gave her migraine. Migraine! The pill maybe gave her migraine, but the diaphragm gave her a daughter named Rita and the foam gave her a son called John, and whose fault is that? Let my parents go on supporting them if they want, who I want to support is me.
So that's where we stand; or where we stood until Laura took that header. I'm no monk, I like female companionship, but for all I know Shirley has private detectives on me—she'll do anything to strengthen her position for that inevitable day in court—so I impressed on both my girls the necessity for maintaining tight security. We didn't live together, we didn't obviously date a lot, and of course I'd explained to each of them that I'd occasionally have to take other women to screenings or press parties. (The two girls also didn't know about one another. Laura and Kit were nodding acquaintances, with no reason ever to confide in each other, so I was about as safe as anybody ever is in this vale of tears. It was even possible to take one of my girls to a premiere attended by the other, with no suspicions raised.)
Well, all that had now come to an end. Laura, who'd at first come on as the most rabidly independent of Women's Lib types, had been complaining more and more about our secret life, comparing herself to Back Street and other absurdities, wanting to know why I didn't just get the divorce over and done with (why hurry a finish that could only be costly and difficult for me?) and even threatening once or twice to blow the whistle herself with Shirley. Of course she didn't really mean it, but it was upsetting to hear her talk that way, and in fact it was a repetition of the same threat that had caused me to lose my temper tonight and pop her one, etc.
"You say Miss Penney threatened to tell your wife about this affair?"
Mm. I was right to get clear of this, as quickly and quietly as I could. So out of the apartment I went, smearing the doorknobs with my gloved hand, checking the street before leaving the building, and walking all the way over to Sheridan Square before hailing a cab to take me home.
Where I found several messages waiting on my telephone answering machine. After divesting myself of my coats and excess wardrobe I made a drink and sat at the desk to listen.
The first was a nice female voice with a British accent: "Mr. Gautier's office calling Mr. Thorpe, in re screening on the twentieth. Could you possibly make it at four instead of two?"
I'd rather. And since I was unexpectedly dateless for that screening, perhaps the owner of the nice British accent would like to join me. Reaching for pencil and paper, I made a note to call back, while listening to the second message, from Sogeza "Tim" Kinywa, editor of Third World Cinema: "Sogeza here, Carey. Have you got a title yet on the Eisenstein piece?"
No, I didn't. I was about to make another note when the third message started: "Oh, you've left already. I wanted to remind you to bring the Molly Haskell book, but never mind."
Well. A strange sensation that, hearing a voice from beyond the grave. I erased the tape, finished my drink, and went to bed.
* * *
My street door intercom doesn't work. I've talked to the super about it, but he only speaks some fungoid variant of Spanish understood exclusively on a six-mile stretch of the southern coast of Puerto Rico. I've also talked to the landlord, an old man with a nose like a tumor, and his response was the same as to anything his tenants say to him; a twenty-five minute diatribe on economics, expounding a theory so arcane, so foolish, so contradictory and so absurd that I'm surprised the government has never tried it. Or maybe they have.
In any event, when the bell rang at nine-thirty the morning after Laura's accident I couldn't find out who it was before letting them in, but who could it be other than the police? Wouldn't they automatically question all of Laura's friends, everybody in her address book? Bracing myself, I left my half-eaten omelet and buzzed them in.
Him in. When I opened the apartment door and listened, only one set of footsteps was trudging up the stairs. But didn't cops always travel in pairs?
Apparently not. When he rounded the turn at the landing I saw a stranger, a chunky middle-aged man in brown topcoat and black hat, looking something like Martin Balsam in Psycho. And coming up the stairs toward me; so I should quick put on my Granny drag and run shrieking out to stab him.
In fact I should have, but of course I didn't. Instead, I stood in my doorway looking open and honest and innocent and friendly, and when he reached the top of the stairs I said, in a we're-here-to-help-you manner, "Yes?"
"Morning," he said, and smiled. He was puffing a bit from the climb, and seemed in no hurry to get his words out. "Mr. Thorpe, isn't it?"
"That's right. Can I help you?"
"Well, sir," he said, "I think it's the other way around. I think I can help you."
Not a cop? What was he, some sort of salesman? I said, "What's this about?"
"This," he said. Taking a white envelope from inside his coat, he extended it toward me.
Frowning, I said, "What's that supposed to be?"
"You left it behind." He was still smiling, in a casual self-contained way. "Last night," he added.
"Last night?" Unwillingly I took the thing from him and turned it over to see what was written on the other side. Return address: Warner Brothers, 666 Fifth Ave. Neatly centered, neatly typed, my own name and address.
The envelope! I'd remembered the damn letter, but not the envelope. Where had it been?
He answered my unasked question: "Under her."
"Urn," I said.
"Why don't we talk inside?" he suggested, still smiling, and walked into the apartment. I had to move aside or we would have bumped. Then I closed the door and followed him into the living room, where he stood nodding and smiling, looking at the movie posters, the one wall of exposed brick, the mirrored alcove that gives the apartment its illusion of space, the projector and screen set up at opposite ends of the room, the unfinished breakfast on the small table by the kitchenette. "Nice place," he said. "Very nice."
I moved reluctantly closer to him. He didn't look like cops in the movies, but what else could he be? "Are you from the police?"
He gave me a quick amused glance. "Not exactly," he said, and sat down on the sofa. "The fact of the matter is, I'm a private investigator."
"A private detective?" Several thousand private eye films swirled through my head, most of them starring Dick Powell.
"I was on surveillance last night," he told me, "outside that apartment."
I didn't feel like standing any more. Sinking into my leather director's chair I said, "So she did put a tail on me.
His smile grew puzzled. "What say?"
"My wife."
"Oh, well," he said, "I wouldn't want to make trouble for an innocent party. No, sir, it didn't have anything to do with you. It was Mrs. Penney's husband put the agency on the job."
"That's my understanding," he said. "Legally separated, I believe."
And she'd been nagging me to break the old ties. Now I saw the whole plot; she'd hold on to husband number one until I was lined up to take his place. Devious devious women, they're all alike. Josef Von Sternberg knew what he was talking about.
The detective spoke through my interior monologue. "The point is, I was there. I watched the two of you go into the building, and then quite some time later I watched you come out alone, and I must say, Mr. Thorpe, rarely have I seen a man act as guilty as you did. I didn't know what it was all about, of course, but I thought probably I ought to keep an eye on you."
"You followed me."
"That's just what I did," he agreed. "And I noticed another peculiar thing. You must have let half a dozen empty cabs go by, but then when you got to Sheridan Square you were suddenly in a real frantic rush to hail a cab and jump in and holler out your address."
He paused, with a bright alert smiling look, as though offering me a chance to compliment him on his powers of observation. I refrained.
He went on. "Well, it seemed to me you didn't want anybody tracing you from Mrs. Penney's apartment, and I thought that a little peculiar. So I followed you uptown here, and waited to see which lights went on, and got your name from the doorbell. You really ought to ask who's there before you let anybody in, you know, just as a by-the-by."
"The intercom's broken."
"Then you ought to get it fixed. Believe me, it's my business and I know, you can't have too much security."
"I've talked to the super and the landlord both. Wait a minute! What are we talking about?"
"You're right," he said, "I got myself off the subject. I'm a bug on safety, I take all kinds of precautions for myself and I'm all the time pushing safety on everybody else. Let me see, now. After I got your name from the doorbell I went back downtown and let myself into Mrs, Penney's apartment."