The Brass Cupcake

by John D. MacDonald

  “You’re a good girl, Kathy. I’m not mad any more. Tonight you ask Andy to tell you the one about the talking dog in the barroom.”

  She gasped and hung up. I lay there, grinning like a fool.

  At four o’clock I was in Tampa. Any man who knew the tracks well might have made the connection between the message and Johnny Alfrayda. I left the car in a downtown garage and walked four blocks before catching a taxi out to his house. I had the cabby let me off three blocks from Johnny’s place.

  Johnny had a rough time as a kid. When the dough began to come in, and it came in fast and in large coarse amounts, he built the kind of house he had always wanted. It would make an architect scream and froth at the mouth. It is bastard Gothic, Spanish, and chateau, with a dash of Georgian. Out in the back gardens is a whole batch of concrete mushrooms eight feet high, with bronze frogs as big as St. Bernards under them. The wall around the place is twelve feet high and it has broken glass set in the top.

  Johnny went into semiretirement when the syndicate took over his areas. He decided that he couldn’t work for them, wouldn’t work with them, and was too smalltime to fight them. It was a smart decision.

  Johnny looks like the movie version of a big dumb gorilla. Arms like tree limbs and little bandy legs and, eyes set deep under shelves of bone. Blue jowls and one mashed ear.

  The ever faithful Oscar let me in the front gate and told me that Johnny was out in back with the kids. There are about ten kids, half his and half adopted. Johnny grinned at me and chased them all away. We went and sat on a park bench he had taken from some city of temporary residence and stared at his flower beds.

  He pounded my shoulder, nearly knocking me off the bench. “How come it’s got to be business before I see you?”

  “I know. I know. My fault.”

  Johnny’s only occupation is that of middleman. I had met him on a previous recovery case. It had gone as smooth as nylon.

  “Cliff, I been watching this thing. I been hoping it wouldn’t come knocking on my door. This is a bad one, Cliff. This one smells.”

  “I’ve been hearing that every five minutes for nearly three days. It’s not news.”

  “I check, Cliff, and I find you in on it and I get surprised. You know what I mean. I say to myself the Cliff’s got more sense. Maybe he’s tired of the work, huh?”

  “Just tired.”

  “Those punk cops you got down there, Cliff! Terrible. I know a deal like this. The same like I would have handled it in the old days if anything like that goes on in my back yard. Bad for business. Bad for everybody’s business. I would have stuck needles in every cop in town until it got cleaned up. And if any insurance guy started a dicker to get the stuff back, I’d have the cops work on him until he’d agree to cross up the boys who did the job.”

  “You haven’t said anything new yet, Johnny.”

  He sighed. “O.K., O.K. Now comes the new stuff. I got the call this morning. From a pay booth, I guess. A guy, talking low. Says I was recommended to him but he won’t say by who. Tells me to get in touch with the insurance guy and get set for the pay-off. Says he’s got the stones. Told me he’d call again and then he hung up. Just before he hung up, like an afterthought, he gave me the price.”

  “And?”

  “Four hundred thousand, Cliff. Everything goes through right, I get my five per cent. Twenty thousand. Not exactly hay. Cliff. But somehow I don’t like the smell of it The guy is talking probably through a handkerchief, but I can smell how nervous he is. He won’t give me any more information. Not a scrap. I think and think and then decided to talk to you about it. You want my opinion, I say keep your head up. It all smells bad.”

  “How bad?”

  “Take it this way. One murder. Everybody after them. Nothing to lose. So get the four hundred grand and keep the stones too. They’ll expect a cross, so they’ll cross you first. My advice, stay away from it. Resign. Move up here. I’ll get you a job. Anything you like.”

  “No, thanks. I’m in it now. I’m staying in it.”

  “I don’t want to help you, Cliff. Twenty thousand says go ahead. Something else says no. Good sense, maybe.”

  “Go ahead with it, Johnny. I’ll keep my guard up. If they don’t go through you, they’ll go through somebody else. And I’d rather it was you.”

  He slapped his big hands down onto thick thighs. “O.K. What do I tell him when he calls me up again?”

  “Tell them it will take a little time to get the money lined up. Tell them if they’ll be patient, we’ll play ball. Stall them a little.”

  He stared at me. “Stall them, huh? What you got on your mind, Cliff?”

  “A bonus from the company. I’ll be in touch.”

  As I walked around the corner of the house I looked back and saw him sitting there, massive and inert, as seemingly lifeless as the concrete mushrooms, the bronze frogs. The kids, seeing me leave, were hollering down toward him, leaping the flower beds.

  I drove slowly back to Florence City. I ate after dusk in a drive-in on the outskirts of town. There were two ways to figure it, and I didn’t know which way I liked. Either the figure of four hundred thousand had come out of the thin air, or it had come from the hood-eyed Horace Franklin. My little gag had been to tell everybody a different amount and then listen for the echo to come back. I decided that I had been a dope to give out such round figures.

  The shoe didn’t fit the Franklins perfectly because of the eagerness with which Letty Franklin had lunged at the idea of making a few extra bucks. It didn’t seem logical that, with potential big dough in the immediate future, she’d foul up the act by reaching for something much smaller. I could still hear the meaty sound of her husband’s hand as he had struck her. His actions, at the time, had seemed a little extreme. In the light of what had happened, his actions began to make sense… only if he were in on it and Letty was left in the dark.

  There was diagonal parking in front of the beer joint known as the Bomb Run. I pulled into an open slot and walked in. The bar was on the right. Two pin-ball machines and a juke box were against the back wall. The table shuffleboard—shovelboard to the initiate—ran along the left wall, one of the new eleven-hundred-dollar models with electric scoring and coin slots. A few hamburgs were spattering on the grill at the end of the bar and they gave off an odor that was not exactly triple-A beef. The overhead lighting was garish, big fluorescent fixtures that threw a hard and unflattering glare down onto the tables.

  I sat on a bar stool and took inventory. All but two tables were taken. The Franklins weren’t around. A blackboard hung near the shuffleboard with the names of the challengers written on it. Two couples were playing each other, the women at one end, the men at the other. One of the women was an expert, shooting the weights with either hand. The women maintained a competitive silence. The men kidded each other.

  Midway through the second bottle of beer, as I was considering leaving, the Franklins came in, Horace first, Letty following. They went over to one of the two empty tables. Horace walked back and wrote “H & L” on the challenge board. Letty bobbed her head at acquaintances. The proprietor went out from behind the bar and took their beer orders. Letty’s eyes swept across me, stopped, and came warily back. She decided to smile and then changed her mind. She leaned toward Horace and whispered to him.

  He looked directly at me. The overhead lights made blue-green glints on his slicked-down hair. He didn’t change expression as I picked up my bottle and my glass and started toward their table.

  6

  I GAVE THE TWO of them my best off-duty smile as I neared their table. Letty smiled a bit timidly, but Horace continued the stony stare.

  “Hope you don’t mind,” I said, putting my bottle and glass on the table.

  “Not at all,” Horace said. “Sit down.”

  “I can’t remember whether I told you my name. I’m Cliff Bartells.”

  “The insurance man,” Horace said.

  “Don’t remind me. I’m not working at i
t tonight. I want to forget the whole deal. Every once in a while a stinker like this comes along.” I drummed up a gleam in the eye and looked over at Letty. “The only break I get is when there are blondes mixed up in it.”

  “Oh, you!” she said, doing a little writhe in her chair. She was a chunk. Evidently that pale blue sun suit of hers had a skirt that could be worn in place of the shorts. I was sure it was the same halter top. As she moved there was a strong flex of muscles across the bare midriff.

  Horace allowed himself a sour smile that pinched up one corner of his mouth. Letty’s nose bothered me. It was as thin as the blade of a knife and the tip of it was pink and pendulous. I lifted my glass to drink, and I blotted out the nose with a finger. The effect was to turn her into an amazingly handsome woman. Her eyes were particularly lovely. It made my part easier to play. The left side of her mouth was a bit puffy from Horace’s love tap the previous afternoon.

  “Well, you’re having a sort of vacation,” I said jovially.

  “Fine!” Horace said. “We’re dipping into our savings. The damn cops won’t let us head back. I saw the Chance girl today. She gave me the cold eye and told me to be patient. The lawyer’s due tomorrow. We’ve got to see about getting another position, Bartells.”

  “I’m sure Miss Chance will do the right thing,” I said.

  Horace sniffed and looked away. The man had brought two large steins of draught. Letty dipped thirstily into hers, tilting it higher and higher as her strong throat worked. When she set it down there was an inch left in the bottom of it and there was a dab of foam on the tip of her nose. She scooped it off with her knuckle.

  “That’s what I needed,” she said.

  I gave her my boyish smile. “You know, I always had an entirely different idea of… of people who work for…”

  “Of servants?” Horace said with a snicker.

  “That’s right. I never expected to find an attractive couple like you in this sort of setup.”

  “That,” said Horace, “is because you never heard about the rates. You take our job. We’ve worked for Miss Stegman since ’46. The work isn’t hard. Driving, housework, some cooking, a little lawn work, keeping the car in shape, some washing and ironing. Three hundred and fifteen dollars a month plus board and room for the pair of us.” He warmed to his explanation, leaning toward me. “What does another couple without that kind of job pay for shelter? All told, maybe seventy-five. Food is maybe another eighty. So figure our total take at four-seventy a month, and we only have to pay taxes on the three-fifteen. All my cigarettes came out of what she bought to keep on hand for parties. And once in a while a bottle could disappear. The trouble is, people think there’s something low about being a servant. I say let them think so. I’ll take the cash on the line.”

  “I never realized it that way before,” I said.

  “And besides,” he said, “you get a chance to move around. Summers on the Cape, a month or so down here every winter. A trip to New York every now and then. You can’t beat it, can you?”

  I signaled for another round. “I guess you can’t,” I said. I moved my foot cautiously under the table until it touched Letty’s. Her foot moved away quickly. I left mine there, felt her foot come back hesitantly and touch mine. I gave it a gentle pressure, then looked at her. She seemed a bit flustered. She dug into her white purse for cigarettes and matches. As she was lighting her own cigarette, I put one in my mouth and said, “Hold the light.”

  She held the match out. I took her wrist firmly in my hand to steady it and looked into her eyes as I lit the cigarette. There were spots of high color on her cheeks. Letty was no longer in doubt as to whether a pass was being made. Now she was positive, but she didn’t know what to do about it.

  Horace seemed very morose. I got a third stein of beer into Letty before their turn came to play. As challengers they had to feed the four nickels to the machine. Letty played against the female of the couple who had won the previous game, and she played at the end of the board nearest where I sat. I didn’t take my eyes from her and she grew extremely conscious of that fact. She tried to be graceful in every move, but her sturdy figure turned her motions into a burlesque that fell midway between comic and pathetic.

  After each shot she made, she giggled. And the shots she made were terrible. Horace’s glare up the length of the board grew steadily blacker. He made the only points for the partnership, and they were swamped, 21 to 11.

  She came back first to the table. Horace paused at another table for a few moments, then strode to the blackboard and wrote “H & K.” He was still sore when he sat down with us.

  “I never saw you so lousy,” he said, “not even the first night I was teaching you the game.”

  “Is it that important, dear?” she asked airily.

  “When I play, I play to win, damnit. I’m up on the board again, but that guy named Karl Something-or-other is my partner.”

  “I hope you two have a lovely time, dear,” she said.

  For one bad moment I thought he was going to whop her right there at the table. I guessed she thought so too. She wrapped her hand around the fresh stein I had ordered for her and the muscles in her arm were very evident. After the tension faded away, she pushed her chair back a little and crossed her heavy legs. “It’s only a game, dear,” she said.

  He got up without a word and went through a door in the back, coyly marked “His.” The one next to it, of course, was “Hers.”

  “It can’t be much fun for you, Letty,” I said, “and that makes me feel bad, because you look like a person who deserves a good time.”

  “What do you mean by that, Cliff?” she asked warily.

  I shrugged. “I didn’t mean anything. No doubt you love the guy. He just strikes me as being a pretty sour partner for a Florida vacation.”

  “Do you always go around criticizing a person’s husband, now?”

  “You talk like you think this is some kind of a line, Letty. Maybe you’re forgetting something. Maybe you’re forgetting that yesterday I saw him hit you when all you were doing was trying to help. It certainly made me feel awful inside to see a pretty woman slapped around like that in front of a stranger.”

  Her eyes went hard and she touched her fingertips to the left side of her mouth. “Someday,” she said huskily, “I’m going to get even with… you know, this is darn good beer they serve here.”

  Horace came back and sat down. He gave the two of us a suspicious stare. Conversation faded and died. Letty’s color was high. She kept downing the steins of beer as fast as I ordered them. Soon Horace had to leave us to play the game on the board.

  “We were saying…” I said.

  “He can be an awful louse,” she said. “I admit it. I’m not hiding anything. I could tell you what a hell he’s made of my life. I shouldn’t talk about him like this.”

  “It’s good for you. Get it out of your system,” I said.

  She gave me a grateful glance. The beer was getting to her. It took her a little space of time to adjust the focus of her eyes.

  “You know, Cliff, I like you. I knew right off I was going to like you. You ever feel that way about anybody?”

  “Now, there’s a coincidence for you! There’s a coincidence!”

  She blushed like a schoolgirl and buried her confusion in the stein of beer. She turned away and said, “Look! They won that one. Now they’ll keep playing.”

  I leaned toward her. “You were talking about getting even with Horace, Letty. I’ve got an idea. The next time he goes to the men’s room, let’s you and me duck out of here.”

  “Gee, I couldn’t,” she said, but her eyes were bright.

  “It’ll do him good to worry a little. You’ll be surprised how nice he’ll be to you once he realizes that you’re darn attractive to other men. How long since he’s told you your eyes are beautiful?”

  “I don’t know as he ever did. Are they?”

  “You know they are. I’m not thinking of anything, honestly, except just
a ride in my car to cool off. Be a sport, Letty.”

  She gave a jerky nod. “O.K., I’ll do it!”

  When Horace disappeared we were ready. I paid the check and hurried her out. She was giggling nervously as I shut her in the car and trotted around to get behind the wheel.

  “Gosh, I never thought I’d do anything like this! He’s going to go crazy!”

  “Serve him right,” I said. I wondered to myself how low a man can get. I felt like the fellow who needed a stepladder to climb under a snake.

  My plan was all set. I turned south and made time, the lights of Florence City dwindling behind us.

  “Do we have to go so far, Cliff?” she asked. She was sobering fast.

  “Just a little farther, Letty.”

  I turned down Cay Road, down to the deserted strip of beach. I bulled the car through to the packed sand and then drove down the beach, swung toward the moonlit sea, and backed up to the edge of the soft sand. I cut the lights and engine.

  “You said, Cliff, that we’d just ride around and cool off. I don’t…”

  She sobbed in her throat as I reached for her. Like a needle stuck on an old cracked record, she said, “No-no-no-no-no…” But every vital and muscular ounce of her was saying yes in tones that were twice as loud.

  I got out of the car and walked down to the surf line and lit a cigarette with trembling fingers. There is a clean strength about the sea. I felt soiled and old and very tired. Something washed up by the sea. Something that, in order to keep its self-respect, should go drown itself in the clean sea.

  When I looked back up the beach at the car she was walking down toward me, smoothing the light blue skirt down over her hips and thighs.

  “Well, Cliff,” she said in a dead voice.

  I lit a second cigarette from mine and handed it to her. She inhaled it deeply and gratefully.

  “Take me back, Cliff.”

  “First we’re going to have a little talk about Horace.”

  “I haven’t got anything to tell you. I’m the world’s prize damn fool. You haven’t been off duty for a minute, have you?”