“Or let’s really be original—how about an airlines detective?”
“Good—but do they have ‘em?”
Ray shrugged, grinning cheerfully. “I imagine they do, but it doesn’t matter. For our purposes, they’ve got ‘em. And they ought to have ‘em, anyway. Just think of the angles for plot material. Smuggling currency and merchandise and aliens, sabotage, flying saucers, secret devices that the airline is trying out and our lad is on the job to keep the bad guys from stealing the stuff—we can find enough material for a year without knocking ourselves out. The writers for the regular shows all have ulcers worrying about fresh angles. We’re off to a flying start with our flying copper!”
“You’ve hit it.” Maynard sat up straight, slapping his palms enthusiastically onto the arms of his chair. “It won’t make Jack Benny worry, but if it’s written and produced right, it can’t miss.”
“Good—that’s what I thought.”
“Are you going to buy it as a package?”
Ray looked quizzically at his associate. “Since when do we need a package? Between us we’ve got the talent and the energy right here to create five such shows a week.”
“But—the story material, and a producer . . .”
“Hello, Mister Producer,” Ray interrupted him. “You know how to handle that end of it. I know you were in the business once, in a small way. And I’ve got the writers and I’ll help you with the details.”
“But it’s been so long since I worked on stuff like this,” Maynard objected. “I’m out of date.”
“A man with your sound ability is never out of date,” Ray complimented him, putting the sincerity into it. “You’re just a bit out of practice.” He handed Maynard the sheaf of manuscript pages he had been fondling. “Just look that over, Ralph—your first show.”
Maynard glanced at the front page, reading aloud: “Coffins in the Clouds, by Raymond T. Hitchcock. Original script number one for Arctic Food Show. Characters; Bart Talmadge, detective for Trans-Globe Airways . . .”
His voice trailed off as he read on, to himself, beginning to turn the pages of the manuscript one by one. Ray watched him, confident of his reaction. In those twenty-eight pages of double-spaced manuscript there was another little piece of himself, another few tons of nervous energy, creative firepower, that could never be reclaimed. And would never be used commercially. It was too bad that he couldn’t go through with this particular show, too bad it must serve another purpose.
Maynard came to the last page. “Hey, this is good! I didn’t know you could write like this.”
Ray gestured with his fingers, pounding an imaginary type-writer. “Used to pound out pulps and comic strip continuities. Great training. You think it’s solid?”
“As a rock.”
“Got sock?”
“Like a right to the jaw. And plenty of originality. It’ll get noticed.”
“I had confidence in it. But there’s just one place, about page twenty-one, where Bart has got into the C-47 and is accusing Pedro of killing Kassel. That’s a dangerous anticlimax, if it’s too strong. Could take interest away from the final build-up. What do you think?”
Maynard shuffled the pages, read the part, mumbling to himself. He looked up. “It reads all right I think it fits right in.”
Ray had got up and turned on the wire recorder beside his desk, adjusted the mike on its chrome stand. “Bring the script over here,” he suggested. “Let’s just read that part and then listen to it play back. We can’t get a true picture reading it.”
Maynard hurried to the mike, clearing his throat. The two men stood together, like affectionate actors, close to the mike. “Take it from the top of twenty,” Ray ordered. “You’re Pedro. I want to be the hero, of course.”
Maynard chuckled, read, “Why do you ask me, senor, about such a thing as Mister Kassel’s accident?”
He read the part with a thick, false, Spanish accent.
Ray said: “Hey, cut out the accent. Pedro is an educated criminal, from Seattle, remember?”
“Oh, yes,” Maynard was flustered. “Excuse me, Ray, I was so interested in the story when I read it that I forgot about his character. Here we go again.”
He read the part, and Ray chimed in as the detective. They went through the two pages, stopping where the two-man dialog ended and Ruth Starr, Bart’s intrepid stewardess girl friend, burst out of the pilot’s compartment with Pedro’s accomplice holding a gun at her back.
Ray stopped the recorder, rewound the wire, and they sat down and listened to themselves. Maynard had a weak radio voice, but he sat and simpered at himself as if he were Howard Duff. “You sound great, Ray,” Maynard said when the passage was over. “You could do the part on the air.”
“No, I’m not forceful enough,” Ray answered, and polished up a set of lies. “You could do the heavy, though. You’ve got just the right tone of thin menace. But we can’t have our executives taking work away from the guilds.”
“Not unless we want real trouble. They could tie us up tight.”
Ray handed Maynard the script. “Here you are, producer. Break it down for costs and programming. Don’t spend any money yet, until we get a final decision and have a conference—and speaking of conference, keep this quiet. Don’t let anybody know about it.”
Ray smiled benignly. “Polish the story any way you want to. I’m not one of these temperamental copywriters.”
“I don’t think it can be improved very much, it’s a very good job as it stands. When do you want it ready for action?”
Maynard was showing too much energy. The guy might have the thing ready in a day and start bothering him. Ray thought for a moment. He would have enough trouble stalling Maynard and letting the project die when the time came. He said: “Tell you what. Work up outlines for thirteen more stories. Thirteen half-hour shows, that is. Maybe well put ‘em on tape and see what they sound like.”
Maynard gulped, his face suddenly full of woe. “All right—sure, Ray.”
Ray grinned after him. Maynard would hire a free-lance to ghost the scripts, but he wouldn’t be back to discuss Bart Talmadge, Trans-Globe Airways Detective for quite a while, and when he did—the brush-off.
Ray locked the doors, turned on the office radio and found some smooth dance music. The walls were virtually soundproof—he had checked on that.
He played back the wire recording again, carefully timing certain portions with the second hand of his watch, jotting down the periods in which he was interested. He rewound the wire, and erased all but those portions of Maynard’s part that he wished to preserve. He played it once more—this time speaking the new dialog that he had prepared into the mike—matching it into Maynard’s speech.
When he had finished, he ran the wire way back, started it playing again, and leaned back in his chair and lit a cigarette. He smiled faintly as the wire hummed gently through the spools—the music of the radio came through as a background—and then the new dialog filled the room.
“I don’t want to hear any more about it,” he heard himself say, like a man excited and annoyed. “If you did have anything to do with Whitehall’s death, telling me makes me an accessory.”
“. . . but I tell you it was an accident,” came Maynard’s part from the radio script. “We were just arguing, and he got near the window, and he—he fell!”
In the script it had been the window of an airplane. Maynard had not noticed that having a victim fall out of an airplane window would be almost impossible.
“You were struggling, weren’t you?” Ray’s voice asked.
“Well—yes. It was horrible. He went down and down.”
“Dammit, Maynard, don’t involve me any more in this mess. I think you’re getting scared and want help. But don’t look to me. I’m staying out of it.”
The wire hummed through the machine, blank beyond the bit of dialog, except for the faint music of the radio. Ray rewound it, packed the machine in its carrying case, and took it to the Russcorp office
s.
* * *
When Ray played the bit of recorded dialog, for Louis Russ and himself, behind locked doors in Russ’s office, he at first thought that the bookie-turned-businessman was slightly deaf. The recording ended, Ray stopped the machine, and Louis Russ sat staring straight ahead, his face expressionless, the heavy forehead damp and glistening.
Ray waited a full minute, then asked: “Want me to play that through again? You recognize the speakers?”
“Yeah, I do. That’s you and Maynard talking. What did he tell you that for? How did you happen to get it on the tape?”
“It’s on wire,” Ray corrected. “He was pretty well upset when he came in. We talked for a while, and I flipped on the recorder when I had a chance. I saved this piece because—well, I knew you’d be interested.”
The heavy, almost threatening, eyes turned up to stare at Ray. “What do you think we ought to do?”
“Well—we don’t want any more tangles with the police than we have to have, and Maynard might do us some harm if he talked his head off to try and save his neck.”
The eyes looked at him. Russ said nothing. Damn the man! He was like a rock. “I think we ought to play along. Let the cops run around until they get tired and the case is stuck in a file and forgotten.”
Russ nodded. “Funny—that he should spill to you just like that.”
“He’s a bundle of nerves. I’ve gained his confidence.”
“Why would he kill Whitehall—if he did?”
“I don’t like to mention it,” Ray said modestly, “but I have that answer. Maynard and Whitehall were robbing you. I think Maynard wanted more of a cut from the agency money. He was getting a very thin slice.”
Russ kneaded his big hands together. “There have been too many things happening around here. It’s as if somebody started throwing sand in all the gears.”
“Every business has its rough periods,” Ray proclaimed. “That’s where public relations comes in. I hope you’ve noticed—the newspapers are under control.”
“Yeah. I admit they haven’t been panning us.”
“There’s one thing I almost hate to mention.” Ray looked down at his hat. Something about Russ’s attitude puzzled him. It might be a good time to give him something else to think about—and at the same time block a potential danger.
“What’s that?” Russ asked wearily.
“How long have you known Sullivan?”
“Couple of years.”
“Know his background?”
“Sort of. He was well recommended politically.”
“I don’t think it can have any connection with your, troubles, but Sullivan is down in the FBI files as a commie suspect.”
“What!”
“Yeah, I was surprised, too. But some of ‘em are pretty clever.”
“Do you have any details?”
“No. Our informant runs a risk just clearing names for us. He can’t get the records out.”
Russ shook his head, an irritating motion that kept up for so long that Ray became nervous. He said: “I’ll keep an eye on things, Louis. Don’t worry about all this stuff. We can handle it.”
“Yes,” Russ waved a hand in farewell. “We will.”
Late in the afternoon Maynard insisted on seeing him, and for a moment Ray felt the black, beating wings of panic, scattering his thoughts, preventing concentration—he gathered himself, said, “Send him in, Silvia.”
It didn’t take Maynard long to get to the point. “The ad Manager of International Oil and Fuels is a friend of mine. I showed him some of the stuff we’re doing for Russcorp, and he said I can make a presentation in August for their account.”
Ray’s spirits leaped. The first big nibble! There’d be a lot more, when they saw what he could do, but here was a half-million dollars’ worth of billing peeking right in the window. He grinned appreciatively at Maynard. Some day, some way—he’d make it up to the guy. “Great work. How much do you know about ‘em?”
“International? They’re like the U.S. Mint.”
“No, no.” Ray shook his head impatiently. “What about their business? What have they been doing for advertising? What should they do? What problems are they facing? How’s their marketing set-up?”
“I haven’t gone into that very much.”
“Drop the radio programs for now, and get all the material you can on International.”
“Drop the Bart Talmadge programs?”
“Yes. We’ll have a meeting on the International account in two weeks. You’ll need all the time on that.”
“O.K.” Maynard was slightly bewildered.
Ray walked to the window. The first big outside lead! He had hammered his way into the business—but now they were coming to him. He turned to look at Maynard. “We’re going to get that account. Nobody in this town can beat us. We’ll find out what the client needs, flavor it with what they want, and give it to ‘em. I’ll have Melvin work up the finest presentation we can create.”
Maynard nodded energetically, catching some of Ray’s enthusiasm. “Hard work will do it.”
Ray sat down again, the moment of exultation spent. “You’re going to be the account executive, Ralph. You’ll be making more than you ever would have at Russcorp.”
Maynard smiled gratefully. “Thanks, Ray.”
“Thank you, Ralph. This is a big step.” He put forth his hand. “Friends?”
“Friends.” They shook hands until it became banal, but Maynard still looked happy when he went out.
At five o’clock Ray went to Wilner’s Bar—arriving in a cab, now, instead of on foot. There was a new man behind the polished barrier, a young man with a too attentive manner. Ray had three bourbons and soda before he could get him alone. When at last the lad leaned toward him, during a lull, Ray said: “I’m looking for an old friend of mine. A girl. Name is Agnes. She used to come in here a lot.”
“Agnes? What’s her last name?”
Ray gave a wink of intimate caution. “We never worked too much with last names.”
The officious young man studied him, seemed satisfied. “She comes in once in a while. I think I saw her Tuesday.”
“Thanks a lot.” Ray pushed one of the singles from the change from his ten across the bar. “If I give you a note for her, will you see that she gets it?”
“What have I got to lose?”
“Thanks.”
The bartender went away to serve three youths that burst in and ordered beers as if they were buying scotch. Ray tore a leaf from his notebook and wrote: Hi, Agnes. I’ll pay you that twenty I’ll owe you. Worried.
Sealing the message, he wrote Agnes on the envelope, and gave it to Joe. He had composed the note ambiguously, trying to stir her interest without frightening her. If the other bartender had told her the cops were around, she might be scared of him.
He drank bourbons rapidly, smoking cigarette after cigarette, putting money in the juke box until he could not concentrate on tunes any more. He told himself he ought to eat—decided to eat after a couple more. He felt depressed—then lifted by elation, and thought it better not to break the spell with food.
The night tumbled by in its pattern. The after-office drinkers thronged the bar and drifted away. There was a lull between seven and nine, and then the after-dinner crowd and the steadies came in. A sweet young man with waved brown hair took his place at the Hammond organ and flavored the atmosphere with soft rhythms, blues smeared with nostalgia. Ray tipped over his highball glass, and thought that he caught and righted it rather deftly. I’m a little loaded, he decided. It’s lucky I know how to handle it.
He felt the need for distinction, to elevate himself above the mass, and sat down in a booth. He had tipped Joe several dollars, and Joe gave Angelo, the waiter, a wink. Ray got good, fast service. A girl paused by his booth, a worn blonde. Ray thought that she was not quite in his class, and waved her on. But he wanted company. Charlotte? No. Silvia! Ah—he could see her in the low-heeled shoes.
He went to the telephone books, found the Brooklyn number after considerable fumbling, and called. A female voice with an accent he could not place told him that Silvia would be there in a minute. He lit a cigarette as he waited, lighting the match from the packet with a one-handed cavalryman’s flip. He made it the first time. He complimented himself. He certainly could handle it!
Silvia’s voice said, “Hello.”
“Hi, honey. This is Ray.”
“Yes, Ray.” She sounded pleased.
“What are you doing?”
“Now?” She chuckled, sounded puzzled. “Why—I’m ironing a blouse, if you must know.”
“C’mon in town. I’ve gotta talk to you.”
“Tonight?”
“Yep.”
“But—it’s almost ten.”
“Won’t take long. Important.”
“Oh. Business? Something wrong?”
“Nothing wrong.” He didn’t want to worry her. Keep em happy. He knew how to handle ‘em. “Just want to talk to you for a little while. You won’t be out late.”
“Well—all right. At the office?”
“No—I’m—I’m having a bite to eat.” He gave her the address of the bar, told her to take her time but hurry up, and sat down, chuckling. He felt better after talking to her. He’d be very polite when she came in. Say just the right things.
When Silvia reached Wilner’s Bar, shortly after eleven, Ray was stationary drunk—the stage where you can carry on your affairs and conversation—you think—as long as no one makes you move around. He waved to her from his booth, risking just the gesture of a rise when she came up, pleased that he understood his own limitations so well. “Hi,” he said. “Sit down, milady, food and drink will be brought.”
She said, “Hello, Ray,” very softly, a puzzled, but alert expression on her intriguing, boldly wrought features. He wondered if she might be part Eurasian, they turned out some breath-taking jobs.
Silvia wore a form-fitting suit in pumpkin-and-black, with a short jacket, pronounced collar, and very wide cuffs. It annoyed him that, after a lot of fashion writing, he could not tell the material. His brain went as far as two-ply worsted, and stopped. Oh the hell with it, he thought, and said: “Sorry to ask you out this late, but it’s important.”
The Heel Page 15