Death of a Flack

by Kane, Henry

  “I was just leaving,” she said.

  “Don’t let me keep you,” I said.

  “Can you afford it?” she said.

  “I’m working on it,” I said.

  “Good-bye,” she said to Jeff. “Good-bye, smart aleck,” she said to me, and Jeff and I remained silent and transfixed at the undulant vision of her retreating, roundly filled skirt.

  The door slam restored Clayton.

  “Where the hell you been?” he growled.

  “Around,” I said beamishly.

  “What the hell makes you so happy?”

  “I’m a happy type. I love and trust my fellow man.” I placed the tin of film on a lamp table. He did not notice. He was deeply concerned with his own peeves. He licked bourbon, licked his lips, licked his wounds.

  “I’ve had cops crawling all over me,” he said. “Is this what happens when you report a lost gun?”

  “Only when that lost gun kills somebody the very next morning. Did you do it, Jeff?”

  “Son of a bitch,” he said. “You too?”

  “Mine is only a modest inquiry. Sort of passing the time of the day.”

  “I didn’t do it and you know I didn’t. After all, you’re my alibi.”

  “Me!”

  “Sure, you. Cops say Martell was killed at about eleven-thirty. You and I were having lunch then, don’t you remember?”

  “I remember. I’m afraid you don’t. We had lunch but it was very early lunch. Maybe elevenish or so. Plenty of time for you to have mosied over and put a slug into friend Martell if you had half a mind to. Cops put the time of death between eleven and eleven-thirty, but there’s no total limit on that. It could go fifteen minutes either way without any question.”

  He rushed at me as though I were his partner in an adagio dance. He grabbed at my lapels and yanked. “What the hell are you trying to do to me?”

  I brushed him off. “Setting you up.”

  “Setting me up for what?”

  “A fee.”

  “Fee. Fee. That’s all you ever think of.”

  “Wasn’t it Somerset Maugham who said so well: ‘All our passions, in the end, turn to money.’ “

  “The hell with you and Somerset Maugham.”

  “Well, you don’t think I’m here for the pleasure of your company, do you, pal?”

  “You—and your love and trust of your fellow man! Why, you cynical, no-good, mother-grabbing …”

  “Temper, temper,” I said, and I laid a hand on his chest that left its mark and shoved him into a chair, and he flopped.

  “What the hell?” he demanded, aggrieved.

  “What did you do after lunch?” I said.

  “Walked.”

  “In the rain?”

  “Yeah, walked in the rain.”

  “Then?”

  “I took a bus.”

  “You took a bus?”

  “A bus came, and it stopped, and I was there, and I took it.”

  “To where?”

  “I got off at 42nd Street. I dropped into one of those flea-bitten movie houses.”

  “How was the picture?”

  “Who the hell knows? I fell asleep.”

  “Did you tell this to the cops?”

  “Certainly.”

  “No wonder they’ve been scratching like you were dermatitis. Those are the kind of alibis that produce half-hour shows on television.”

  He pushed up out of his seat. “I didn’t give them those facts as an alibi. You’re my alibi. I gave them you. Have they talked with you?”

  “Not yet,” I said. “Oh, they’ll come to it. Everything in good time, my Princeton buckeroo.”

  “What’ll you tell them?”

  “What can I tell them?”

  “You’ll back me up?”

  “I have to consult with my conscience.”

  “Well, consult, damn you!”

  “Not now. I’m busy.”

  “Busy!” He gazed upon me with the dazed, blank look of a stranger confronted for the first time by a seriously babbling schizophrenic. “Busy with what?”

  “With trying to earn a five-thousand-dollar fee.”

  “From whom?”

  “From you.”

  “From me! What is it with you! What the devil is the matter with you?”

  “Sit down.” I pushed, more lightly this time at his chest, and he fell into the chair, grabbing at the bourbon for balance. “Jeff,” I said, “You see how trouble can bubble up from almost nothing, and you have no idea how trouble begets trouble, and a mess grows and grows to frightening proportions.”

  “I’m learning,” he said.

  “Can you imagine when there’s a real unimpeachable base?”

  “Like what, man?” He drank gulpingly. “What else?”

  “A man by the name of Martell is dead. Cops figure a man by the name of Clayton had a motive because Martell beat him to a gal. Can you imagine if cops knew that Martell was blackmailing the said Clayton? Can you imagine how that would put a pique to their activities, sharpened by additional and more corrosive motivation?”

  Gamely he said, “Yes, I can imagine.”

  “Let us attack it from a different tack.”

  “Attack. Tack. Man, I don’t know who is loaded—you or me.”

  “Take it from this tack. A guy by name Martell gets kicked off.”

  “You said that already, man. Too often.”

  “A guy leaves effects. You know? A man is dead, things remain behind. A man is dead by murder, the things that remain behind are subject to special scrutiny. What happens when a couple of duplicate films turn up, each one putting Jefferson Clayton on display in some rather frantic action? Fun, huh? A real fun film, huh? A real fun film dealing with real fun people put on for the edification of all sorts of fun observers. How would you like it, kiddo?”

  “Man, you’re so frigging right.”

  “How would you like it?”

  “I would hate it.” He bit into a double filter cigarette, slyly guaranteed in the advertisements not to give you cancer. “You know, that edge of this deal got lost. It plumb—as they say in the Westerns—slipped my mind.”

  “You hired me to find those films.”

  “Man, I’m afraid to ask. Did you?”

  “That’s what I’ve been setting you up for.”

  “What?”

  “Five thousand bananas.”

  “For what?”

  “For those films.”

  “I mean, you have them?”

  “I mean—do you have a projector?”

  He lurched up, proudly. “Have you ever heard of a stockbroker who does not have a movie projector? Man, that would be as mortally sinful as a stockbroker that doesn’t play golf. Man, you bet your ass I have a projector, the best, and a gorgeous portable screen, too.”

  “Project your projector, man,” I said. “Also set up your gorgeous portable screen.”

  “For what?”

  “I want to see how good you are in the hay.”

  He studied me, staggering. Double vision may have convinced him. He lurched off, on the bias, slantingly, and he returned with all sorts of clattering paraphernalia. He set up the projector on a rolling metal table. He pulled down the playing surface of his gorgeous portable screen. He said, petulantly, “So when do we roll?”

  “Now,” I said. I opened the tin and gave him the film. He adjusted the sprockets and I dimmed the lights. There were a few preliminary, crazy-flashing flickers, but then the film settled down to an amazing exposition. Jefferson Clayton garnered new respect from me, but Sherry Greco actually collected involuntary applause.

  “Wow,” I said.

  He turned off the machine. He switched on the lights. “Butt out of my private life,” he said, grinning proudly.

  “The hell with you,” I said. “It’s the chick. She despised you.”

  Wonderingly he said, “It showed, didn’t it?”

  “But what a performance,” I said.

  “You
think she wouldn’t despise you, hero?”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  “Why don’t you try?”

  “I’ve been trying.”

  “You’ve got to earn her.”

  “So I’ve heard.” I sipped some of his bourbon, said, “All right, man, write your check.”

  “I don’t have to worry about films any more, is that it?”

  “That’s it,” I said.

  He brought out a checkbook, scribbled a check for five thousand dollars, and gave it to me.

  “Too much,” I said. “See what I mean about loving my fellow man?”

  “How about the duplicate?” he said.

  “Too much,” I said. “You gave me two thousand to give to Barry Miller. Barry Miller is no longer with us.”

  “Yeah, the poor bastard. They told me.”

  “So that two thousand I have. Do a new check for three, and we’re even.”

  He tore up the old check, wrote the new one, and I accepted it. “So?” he said. “What about the duplicate?”

  “I’ve got it,” I said.

  “Yeah, but I haven’t, and I’m paying.”

  “Have I ever crossed you, Jeff?”

  “What’s the point?”

  “You’re going to destroy this roll of film?”

  “You’re goddamned right I am.”

  “Well, I’ll destroy the duplicate.”

  “You have it?” he said.

  “You’re goddamned right I have it.”

  “I’m supposed to have it. I’m paying, remember?”

  “I’ll take care of it.”

  “You sure you have it?”

  “I wouldn’t have one without the other. I’ve never crossed you, Jeff. Have I?”

  “No.”

  “There’d be no sense starting now.”

  “So where’s the duplicate?”

  “I have it. I’ll destroy it.”

  “When?”

  “After I run it over a few times.”

  “What the hell for, you degenerate?”

  “Maybe that’s it. Maybe I’m a degenerate. Maybe I want to learn. Maybe I want to masturbate. I have that duplicate and I’ll destroy it. Don’t worry about films any more. Cut that out of your worry department. You’ve got enough to worry about.”

  He stood, legs wide, wavering only slightly, and he squinted at me steadily. “I don’t know what you’ve got up your sleeve, Peter Pan—and you have more sleeves than any guy I know—but if you tell me, hand over heart, that I don’t have to worry about films any more, I won’t worry.”

  “I tell you—hand over heart.”

  “All right, get out of here. I’ve got sleeping to do. You’ve earned your fee. Now get the hell out of here.”

  He put the projector back into its box and rolled up the screen and folded its base.

  “I’d like to borrow that stuff,” I said.

  “What stuff?”

  “That projector and screen bit.”

  “What for?”

  “I want to roll that duplicate once or twice, for kicks, before I destroy it. Remember me? I’m your degenerate pal.”

  “All right. Take the stuff. Get out.”

  “Thanks large, pal.”

  “Get out.”

  “Jeff,” I said, “I don’t know if you’re as drunk as you pretend, but I do know that you’re being awfully sweet because of my conscience. You’re hoping that when I consult it, it’ll go the way you want it to go.”

  “Who needs trouble?” he mumbled.

  “You know what I’m promising you?” I said.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Die,” he said.

  I took up the projector and I took up the portable screen, and I fought my way out and parked once more at the fire hydrant outside my apartment house. Carefully, I reinstated the parking ticket already inscribed. “Fight,” my dear departed mother once had said. “Don’t ever let misfortune lay you down. Fight. Make misfortune work for you.” I was trying, dearest mother, in the slightest of manners. One violation might do for two. A ticket is a ticket. A ticket already flapping in the breeze prevents a second ticket. If it doesn’t, what do I have to lose? To gain—fifteen smacks. And in case of fire, they’d wreck my car getting it out of the way. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

  SEVENTEEN

  I was shuttling in and out of my apartment as though it were a bathroom and I was in the unfortunate piss press of chronic prostatitis. This time I laid away a projector and stuffed away a magic screen. I shed my clothes and unenthusiastically showered in the time-honored custom of all salubrious Americans. We shower and shower as though to wash away guilt. I toweled, dried, shaved, powdered, and dabbed deodorant where it might have best effect. I called my beloved and she replied in one ring.

  “Sophia here,” she said.

  “Peter here,” I said.

  “I am waiting,” she said.

  “I am coming,” I said.

  “You say it so sweet,” she said.

  “I love you,” I said dutifully.

  “So sweet you say that too. You are not an American. You are a European.”

  “Have it your own way,” I said.

  “You will come quickly?”

  “Is that the way you like it?”

  “Please, not now for jokes. I am waiting.”

  “See you pronto, as we Europeans are wont to say.”

  “What?”

  “I’ll be there right away. Just stay put.”

  I hung up and the phone rang and it was Clayton. “Say,” he said murkily. “What about the five hundred I already paid you?”

  “You wanted to know what happened to your gun.”

  “So?”

  “So you know what happened to your gun.”

  “And for this I had to pay you five hundred dollars?”

  “Maybe you paid me five hundred dollars so I’d vary up the time a little bit on your alleged alibi.”

  “Stop that!”

  “Go to sleep.”

  “Pete, I’m scared.”

  “Naturally. Now go to sleep, stockbroker, and stop straining yourself about financial matters. You never spent five hundred more wisely—nor five thousand, for that matter.”

  I put away the receiver and dressed for the evening, remembering such attire would also have to serve for the morning (tomorrow): dark blue suit, black shoes, white shirt, narrow maroon tie. I left my car where it was, protective ticket fluttering bravely, and I took a cab to Sophia. I used my own key, experiencing a lover’s conspiratorial thrill, and I hoped, vaguely, that Gilmore had not recovered sufficiently to have used his own key. He had not. She was alone. She was something to see.

  The shiny black hair was done in a new soft coiffure, pulled to one side, revealing one tiny ear, and neatly hanging in front, like some unusual, shining, fluffy ornament, over one shoulder. A single, long, slender, black, lambent jewel hung from the ear. Her dress was black velvet with narrow sequinned straps, scooped in front, scooped in back, and scooped at the sides. She touched a hand to her hair and the smooth hollow of her armpit was more prod to libido than total nudity. The high spike heels of black velvet shoes made her appear taller and the added height gave a slimness to the full graceful body. She wore a bluish mascara on her long lashes which made the dark eyes appear deep violet, as did the soft-glimmering magenta lipstick. I did not kiss her full on the mouth as was my impulse. I did not have it in me to spoil the effect. Instead I pecked a peck upon her rougeless cheek.

  “You’re so goddamned beautiful,” I said, un-European-like.

  “Thank you, dear Peter,” she said in that secret, sigh-whisper voice that was incitement to vice.

  “I’m a little late but better laid than never.” Of course, that went by her.

  “No. Not late. Not at all. The custom in Europe is for much later to eat than here. I like it better, late. I am so glad to see you. It is as though I have known you for so long. It is so terrible, fu
nny, for really strangers to feel so close, no? To feel like they know each other for so long, no? I am sounding stupid, no? It is hard for me to express it things deep, deep things, in this tongue to which I am foreign.”

  “You’re doing all right.”

  “You understand me, dear Peter?”

  “I dig you the most.”

  “You what?”

  “I understand you perfectly. That is, I understand what you’re saying. Now let’s go. The inner man needs feeding.”

  “You may feed off me, my Peter. As little fishes sometimes do off big fishes.”

  “You’re not so big, sweetie, and I’m not so little.”

  “No.” She laughed. “It is like figure of speech.”

  “Feeding off you, although a delightful prospect, wouldn’t afford, I’m afraid, sufficient nutriment. Now let’s go eat. Get a wrap for those gorgeous shoulders.”

  She went away and came back with a black flat fur jacket. As we locked up, I said, “How’s friend Gilmore?”

  “He is not really sick. It is a day of rest. We have talked for a long time today on the telephone. Very interesting talk.”

  “About what?”

  “Later I shall tell you. Now let us go, yes?”

  We ate sumptuously and without hurry at Chez Lucie, and then we listened to the fiddles, gala, and without hurry, at Chez Vito. Mr. Vito himself brought us to a secluded, cozy, corner table, and we dug the music and chatted and drank and flirted beneath the dim, rosy lights. She had switched from sherry to Pernod and tonight the smell of her was her natural, fragrant, faint musk tinged with the sweet licorice of the Pernod. She seemed happy and utterly without guile, and I wondered somewhat pensively, under the conglomerate influence of full stomach, much scotch, and romantic music from massed fiddles, about the lure of this soft yielding generous woman as contrasted to the lure, equally poignant, of the brittle, practical, defiant Sherry Greco. Almost at once, I was rescued from my momentary, fiddle-inspired, jejune, spurious dream of difference. “You will sleep with me tonight?” she whispered.

  “That’s the over-all plan. Unless you have objection.”

  “Objection? Oh, you crazy Peter. All day I think of you and the night.” Her hand, in my lap, grew mischievous. I swelled in various places with, I hope, pardonable pride. Don Juan had nothing on Don Chambers—not much. And who was this guy Casanova? The boom was ready to be lowered and I admit, this once, it was unexpected. Ah, the sophisticated male. Inside, until death, there beats the disappointed heart of the glowing (glowering?) adolescent.