She smiled, took a cigarette from the table and accepted a light. “What is?”
He couldn’t think! There had been no reason, of course, other than loneliness and a desire for her. Desire! That was it. He said: “Wait till we get a couple of drinks here.” He looked around for Joe, found the waiter. “What’ll it be?”
“Scotch and soda,” Silvia answered. She looked at him carefully as he ordered, said when the waiter had gone, “You’ve had a lot to drink, haven’t you?”
Had he? Yes, he supposed he had, but fortunately he could handle it, because he was the kind of a guy who went where he wanted all the time, drunk or sober. He understood the angles. He knew how to handle ‘em.
The waiter came in swiftly with the drinks, like a Coast Guard picket boat cutting up beside a dock to discharge a couple of passengers. Ray said, “Here’s how.”
Silvia drank half the highball, put it down, and asked: “All right, Ray. What was so important?”
“You.” He would play it straight. She liked him. Mix a little flattery with opportunity.
“I’m pleased,” she chuckled. “But I’d like it better if you made dates with me in advance and we could get tight together.”
He peered at her. His eyes were narrowed, now, from the constant effort to concentrate, and he did not know that his speech was slow and precise, the words coming out long and flat, like a phonograph record run too slow. “We’ll go out now. Do the town. Twenty-One—Monte Carlo—Spivy’s Roof—O.K.?”
“No. I’m sorry.”
The shock was tremendous to an ego inflated by alcohol. “What the hell—we’ll have fun.”
“I’m afraid you might not last the night,” she told him, with an attempt at gaiety.
He scowled. She didn’t know him. He could handle it, I could handle anything. Why not lay it on the fine? She was just another dame—no, she was Silvia. Something special. But weren’t they all alike?
He tried to smile at her confidently, not knowing that only his boyish features kept it from looking like a senile leer. “Call your family. Tell ‘em you’re working late and you’ll stay in town overnight. All on the firm.”
“No.”
“Go ahead.”
“No.”
It was suddenly ridiculous, lusterless, stupid. Not what he was asking—but her doltish, school-girl attitude. “The hell with you, then,” he said brutally. “They’re a dime a dozen. Come in tomorrow and get your pay.”
She just smiled at him, amazed that she was not angry, that she felt like a parent watching a child in a tantrum. “All right. We can talk about it tomorrow.”
“Nothing more to talk about.”
“Can I tell you something?”
“Yeah, go ahead.”
“You won’t like me for this—” she began slowly.
“Come on, come on,” Ray said importantly. “I’ve got plenty to do, since you’re so childish.” His tongue slipped, and it came out chilsheesh. He glanced at her slyly. Probably she had not noticed. Why didn’t she go home? Maybe he would fire her tomorrow. He certainly had scared her, though. She’d probably stay up all night worrying. Poor kid, perhaps he ought to tell her it was all right.
And all the while that he was stroking his own ego, lost in thoughts of little value that centered, halo-like, around his own ego, Silvia was saying earnestly: “Ray, you shouldn’t carry on like this. Your personal life is your own, but you have a great future. You can get to the top. Really—you have what it takes.”
She stopped, watching him. He had heard the last sentence, and replied, “Thank you for the compliment.”
“Are you listening to me? Your eyes are so misty.”
“Certainly,” he answered, and drifted away. Misty eyes, had he? He tried to look alert, giving himself a grotesque appearance, like a cadaver high on Phenobarbital.
Silvia talked on. “I haven’t mentioned it, and I suppose if I do you may really fire me, although I know you didn’t mean it just now. But you’re taking chances with your business, Ray, and you don’t have to. I don’t know too much about what you have done, but do know that some of it was almost illegal—bribery—false billing—and other things.” He seemed inattentive. She put her hand on top of his and squeezed gently.
Ray nodded absently, but he was thinking about Charlotte. Maybe he would call her, he didn’t want to be alone tonight. Silvia said: “You’re talented, even brilliant. I know—I’ve been around this business a little while. You have both the executive ability and the creative flair. They’re rarely found together. You can go far, Ray. Very far—legitimately.”
She accented the last word. Ray focused his eyes and said, “Yes, you’re right.” He had not heard a word.
He had retreated into the trance again, then realized that she had stopped talking. “Since you can’t stay,” he said, “I think I’d better get going. Gotta promote to emote.”
They walked to the subway. Silvia said: “You’d better go home to bed, Ray. Things will look a lot different tomorrow.”
He swayed back and forth beside the newsstand, not enough to lose his balance, but he knew that he should be sitting down. He said good night and went back to Wilner’s.
He stayed at Wilner’s until three in the morning, when they closed. He made some new friends who were delighted to listen to him as long as he bought them drinks, and others who stayed with him as long as he would listen to them. About midnight he blacked out, as far as memory went, and moved through a gray fog of faces and words and liquor and music from the juke box. There was a girl, and it was set, but then somebody came who had prior claims, and he found himself at an all-night restaurant. His head cleared slightly—the alcoholic’s second wind—and he ate two bowls of split pea soup and drank three glasses of milk. A taxi driver came in for his coffee, and Ray hired him for the ride home. He was morose and silent during the short ride, and the driver thanked him for the fare and tip, glad he had not drawn another talking drunk when he had troubles of his own. Ray hung up his coat and trousers, dropped everything else on the floor, and turned in. He tossed and turned for a nerve-wracking period before finding oblivion again.
Chapter 14
The hangover was bad—the remorse was worse. Ray fortified himself with a Whisky Sour and a big breakfast of ham and eggs which he almost had to force down his throat with a mallet. Even after two cups of coffee, he felt terrible, and bought a packet of aspirin, downing three tablets with a third cup of coffee that tasted like diluted tar.
Silvia, looking fresh and full of vitality in a mannish, tailored white blouse—subtly tailored to accent the fact that she was not a man—smiled and said good morning when he came in. Ray returned the greeting with warmth and went along to his office. So—he hadn’t been too bad, or she would have refused to speak to him. He hung up his hat and turned to find that Silvia had followed him. Oh—oh! Here it came. He sat down at the big desk, before the neat pile of correspondence. “Yes, Silvia?”
“Miss Sanderson at Russcorp wants you to call.”
“Ah, yes—Charlotte.” He used the other girl’s name as a weapon. Silvia did not change expression.
“It must be urgent,” she said. “She has been calling every few minutes.”
“O.K. Get her for me, will you?”
“Yes.” He watched her go out, breathing a short sigh of relief. Whatever he had done last night—he had got away with it.
His telephone buzzed and he picked up the instrument. Charlotte was saying, “Ray—Ray—hello, Ray?”
“Hi, Charlotte,” he said. “Aren’t we informal this morning?”
She spoke rapidly, and he noticed the anxiety in her tones. “Mister Russ told me to ask you to come over. Right away.”
“Of course I will. He knows I come over every morning.”
“But he’s upset about something. He made it very definite—and sharp. The detectives were here again, and a lot of other people. I can’t talk too long. A lot of people here.”
“O.K. Thanks
. I’ll be over. Stop worrying.”
In spite of his advice to her, his mind raced as he placed papers in his briefcase. Damn those dicks. Were they trying to ruin his business? He’d take plenty of new material along to show Louis—get his mind off the situation. And those other people. Who could they be? Rival agencies? That was it. He clung to the idea because it simplified things. Well they’d never outsell and perform Hitchcock and Company!
There were people in the plush reception area when he stepped out of the elevator at Russcorp. Salesmen—assorted characters—no one that he knew. He bent over Charlotte’s desk and said softly: “Tell him I’m here. Who’s in with him now?”
Her words hit him like a deluge of cold water from a hydrant that burst beside him on a winter day. “Botsch and Abbott and Burke, and a little detective named Sam Foxe and the two big ones, Doyle and Cohen. And several people I don’t know.”
She must have known he would ask, he thought as he went toward Russ’s office. What the hell was that private snoop Sam Foxe doing with Russ? Had Sullivan paid him more for a triple-cross? Why hadn’t that commie pitch discredited Sullivan?
Miss Tully greeted him too sweetly, almost licking her lips, like a cat knowing she can get her claws into a goldfish. “Go right in, Mister Hitchcock. Mister Russ is waiting for you.”
Russ was behind the desk in the palace-like chamber, Botsch and Abbott on either side of him, just like the first time he had met them. But their attitudes were different, now. Not at all pleasant. Ray smiled broadly. “Good morning.”
“Hello, Ray,” Russ answered. “Sit down.”
There was a chair placed in front of the desk, a heavy piece of furniture. A third-degree chair. Ray sat in it.
Russ stared at him like a bull pawing the ground before the charge. A black bull, with the blackness spread from glowering eyes over the heavy face and broad area between the dark brows and receding hairline. “Ray, you’ve been fouling us up. I don’t like it.”
Ray let his face fall in amazement, altered it slowly to an expression of wounded innocence. “Me! I’ve been working day and night promoting your business. You know that. And you know that most of my work has been highly successful.”
Russ took his cigar from the ashtray, clamped it in his lips and talked around it. He looked less like an important businessman—more like an important, though aging, hood. “That’s what has me fooled. What the hell is your angle? You gonna dump us all out the window some day and try and take over the business?”
Ray’s surprise was real, now. “What makes you talk like that? Do you think I’m mad?”
“I’m not sure. Why did you try to frame Maynard?”
He said: “He framed himself. He wasn’t loyal to you, and it came out. As disloyalty always does.” The last phrase was meant to be a nice touch. It fell flat.
Russ said one dirty word. Then growled, “I’m not talking about the business deal.”
“No?”
“No. You tried to tag him with Whitehall’s murder.”
The remark jarred Ray’s teeth. How had they figured that one so fast? There was no evidence except the conversation between himself and Russ. Even Maynard couldn’t have figured it out. “I don’t see how you figure that,” he commented cautiously.
Russ touched his intercom button. “Send Foxe in here.”
Foxe came in from the adjoining office as though he had been standing at the door and somebody pushed him. He was still wearing the coat that was too long for him, still looked like a not-too-bright keyhole peeper. Russ said to him, “Tell us what you heard yesterday from Hitchcock’s office.”
Sam Foxe looked at notes scrawled on a dirty, dog-eared pad of paper. “Hitchcock and Maynard made all this chatter about a radio program. Then Hitchcock cut out that stuff about a radio program on Bart Talmadge, the airplane detective, and made up a phony that would frame Maynard. It went something like this. ‘If you had something to do with Whitehall’s death, telling me makes me an accessory.’ And then Maynard’s part went, ‘but I tell you it was an accident. We were
arguing.’”
“Hey,” Ray’s exclamation stopped him. “What the hell is this? He’s crazy—but that’s what Maynard told me.”
“Get wise,” Russ almost snarled. “Foxe had your office tapped. The bug and lead-out are still there. Right?” He turned to Foxe.
“That’s right,” the detective agency man said smugly. “The bug is behind the window drapes. The lead goes out to the hall, into the stairwell. I just clip on whenever I want to.”
Ray’s control broke. He jumped out of the chair, started for Foxe. “You won’t clip on any more!”
“—learn you to push me around,” Foxe snapped, and skipped back through the communicating door like a scared terrier, and Doyle and Cohen came through it into the office. Ray stopped, blocked by the two men.
“Sit down, Hitchcock,” Russ said. “Tell me—why?”
Ray walked back to the chair, struggling for composure. This was a tight one! “Why what?”
“Why have you been pulling all this stuff, dammit?”
“You’re mixed up, Louis. That little snooper heard some stuff, sure, but he was listening to one of our radio programs, and then he heard me play over the recording of my talk with Maynard before I brought it to you. It sounded somewhat the same. He was mixed up.” It might work. Russ could get the truth from Maynard, but if he could reach Maynard first . . .
“Tell him, boys,” Russ said to the two detectives.
Doyle looked at Ray with detached annoyance, as if he were looking at a log he had stumbled over, and it troubled him. “Whitehall’s girl told us about his death.”
“What?” Ray asked weakly.
“Whitehall had a dame,” Doyle said patiently. “Her pimp used to go up to Whitehall’s, too. They had a drunken argument that night, and Whitehall fell or was pushed. The pimp beat up the dame yesterday and she squealed. We’re looking for him now.”
Ray felt as if he were in an old building that was being demolished. The debris was raining down on his head. He fought off his fears and tried another angle. “All right, I made a phony recording of Maynard’s supposed confession. I wanted to keep you on my side, Louis, after I heard that these city dicks were still nosing around, because I knew Maynard was just waiting for a chance to get back at me. After all,” he looked at Doyle again, “I didn’t do anything criminal. Sure, Maynard can sue me for libel, but that’s all.”
“Oh, yes,” Russ purred grittily, “that’s all. Nobody is going to prosecute you criminally, Hitchcock. The detectives and I have agreed on that.”
For how much, Ray wondered. He said: “We can still be friends, Louis, and business associates. Let’s forget this unpleasantness.” He gestured toward Botsch. “Herman will tell you what we’ve done for him. His business is booming. And I think Herman will tell you I’m not a bad actor.”
Herman could still chuckle, his booming voice filled the room. “I’m not sure, Ray. I had quite a talk with my wife and Sullivan. You may be bad news.”
Boom! The debris was still battering his skull. He tried once more. “Think of your business,” he said to Louis. “Where can you get the kind of service I’m giving you? Your advertising is clicking. Your public relations are just about perfect.”
“Yeah,” Russ responded. “And if I keep you around, we’ll all wind up in strait jackets.” He turned to Doyle and Cohen. “I’d like to talk to Hitchcock privately, gentlemen. Thanks for your cooperation. Better take Foxe along with you.”
Doyle said: “Thank you, Mister Russ. We’ll run along. You have our number if you want to call us.”
Sure, Ray reflected, he’s got your number. It was a safe bet that the Doyle and Cohen wallets went out a lot heavier than they had come in. And all for giving him a push into the well! He tried again. “Why not let bygones be bygones, gentlemen?”
Abbott spoke for the first time. Three descriptive curses. Russ touched the intercom. “Burke—bring in th
e others.”
The door opened, and Burke ushered two men into the room, a contented smirk on his face as he waved them on. First came the burly porter from the Hencher Clothes building, the tough character whom Ray had sapped on that early morning that seemed so long ago, and behind him came the old man with the heavily lined face—the old man he had forced to take the elevator up after he and Fancy had stepped out!
“That’s the guy!” They fell over each other pointing him out. “That’s him!”
“He made me run the car up,” the old man cried.
“And he sapped me,” the burly porter growled, and started for Ray.
Chapter 15
Ray stood up and took a step forward as the porter charged. He welcomed the action, it gave him a respite from thinking—from piling self-reproach and bitter regret upon his own head. What the hell had he done wrong? They were lucky to have him working for them, he’d pay them for the damage to their lousy little . . .
The porter swung his right from the floor. Ray faded to the left, hooked his own right up into the man’s belly. It was like hitting side of beef on a packing house hook. The porter gasped slightly, turning, his momentum carrying him past Ray. As his head turned, Ray’s whistling left cross hit him high on the cheekbone, moving him a few inches. Ray’s fist felt broken.
Out of the corner of his eye Ray saw Burke closing in on him, and he balanced, ready to launch a kick at the porter, or turn and swing at Burke.
Thwack! Thwack! The sounds dominated the room like a heavy chunk of rump beef slammed down on a butcher’s block. “Hold it! Harry. Burke. Cut it out.”
Ray let his eyes slide for an instant toward the sound. Louis Russ was bellowing at them, half-standing and pounding his hand on the desk. It was a tone Ray had never heard him use—a penetrating, walrus roar.
Burke and the porter froze in their tracks. They knew their master’s voice.
“Jim—Harry,” Russ growled, “knock it off. We know what the score is, now, but we don’t want no rough-house in here.”
The Heel Page 16