I couldn’t afford to wait around; I wanted to hurry back to Catskill to continue developing the Catskill Dice Center, there to make people happy and joy-filled and free again.
Somehow I had to lure him away from the warren of Manhattan. But how? Was he interested in boys these days? Or girls? Or men? Or women? Or money? So what? What was the hook that would drag him out of the cesspool of the city into the lovely, lonely autumn of the woods? How would I prevent his telling someone that he had seen me again, that he was going someplace with me? The only method that I could dimly see was to accost him as he returned from work, invite him to dinner and then lure him out of the city on some spontaneously combusted pretext and, on some isolated country road, miles from the nearest other human being communing with himself, shoot him. It seemed very messy and haphazard, and I was determined to commit a nice clean crime, without any sick emotions, without fuss, with dignity, grace and aesthetic bliss. I wanted to murder in such a way that Agatha Christie would be pleased and not offended. I wanted to commit a crime so perfect that no one would suspect anything, not the murdered, not the police, not even me.
Of course, such a crime would be impossible, so I retreated to my earlier ideal that I should murder without fuss, emotion or violence and with dignity, grace and aesthetic bliss. It was the very least I owed the victim.
But how? The Die only knows. I certainly couldn’t see how. I would have to have faith. The Die indicated I should get myself with Osterflood and see what turned up. I’d never read of an Agatha Christie murderer proceeding in quite this way, but who am I to question …
“Frank, baby,” I said the next evening as he emerged from his taxi. “Long time, no see. It’s your old buddy Lou Smith; you must remember me. Good to see you again.”
I pumped his hand as the taxi pulled away and, still hoping to prevent him from uttering my name within earshot of the doorman, I threw my arm around his shoulder and whispered that we were being trailed and began marching him away.
“But Dr.—”
“Had to see you. They’re trying to get you,” I whispered as we moved up the block.
“But who’s trying—”
“Tell you all about it at dinner.”
He stopped about thirty feet from his apartment.
“Look, Dr. Rhinehart, I … I’ve got an important … appointment this evening. I’m sorry, but—”
I had hailed another taxi and it careened over to our curb lusting after our East Side money.
“Dinner first. Got to talk first. Someone’s trying to murder you.”
“What?”
“Get in, quick.”
Inside the taxi I got my first good look at Frank Osterflood; he was a bit heavier about the jowls than he had been before and seemed more nervous and tense, but it might have been his concern about dying. His hair was nicely trimmed and brushed, his expensive suit fit flawlessly, and he gave off the pleasant odor of some heroic after-shave lotion. He looked like a highly successful, well-paid, socially placed thug.
“To murder me?” he said, staring into my face in search of a jocular smile. I had glanced at my watch; it was six thirty-seven.
“I’m afraid so,” I said. “I learned from some of my dicepeople that they’re planning to murder you.” I stared sincerely into his face. “Maybe tonight even.”
“I don’t understand,” he said, looking away. “And where are we going now?”
“Restaurant in Queens. Very good hors d’oeuvres.”
“But why? Who? What have I done?”
I shook my head slowly from side to side, while Osterflood stared nervously out at the passing traffic and seemed to flinch every time a car drew up alongside us.
“Ah, Frank, you don’t have to hide things from me. You know you’ve done some things that … well, might upset some people. Somehow, someone has found it’s you. They plan to kill you. I’m here to help.”
He glanced back at me nervously.
“I don’t need any help. I’ve got to go someplace at—at eight thirty. Don’t need help.” Tight-jawed, he stared straight ahead at the somewhat unartistic photograph of Antonio Rosco Fellini, driver of the cab.
“Ah, but you do, Frank. Your little appointment at eight thirty may be your rendezvous with death. You’d better let me come along.”
“I don’t understand,” he said. “Since dice therapy with you and Dr. Boyd I haven’t, I haven’t … done anything I haven’t paid for.”
“Ahhhh,” I said vaguely, searching for my next line.
“Except my wife.”
“Where’s this place again?” shouted back Antonio Rosco Fellini. I told him.
“And my wife has left me and is suing me and if I die she won’t get a cent.”
“But those early days in Harlem, Frank. They may know.”
We drove on in silence for a while, Osterflood twice looking behind us to see if we were being followed. He reported that we were.
“What’s this appointment about tonight, Frank?”
“None of your business,” he answered quickly.
“Frank, I’m trying to help you. Someone may be trying to murder you tonight.”
He looked back at me uncertainly.
“I … I’ve got a date,” he said.
“Ahhhh,” I said.
“But it’s a woman that I … that … she likes money.”
“Where are you to meet her?”
“In … er … Harlem.” His eyes flicked off hopefully at a bus stopped beside us, as if it might contain a plainclothesman or CIA man or FBI man. There were undoubtedly a few of each, but they were out of his reach.
“Does she live alone?” I asked. It was six forty-eight.
“Uh … Well, yes.”
“What is she like?”
“She’s disgusting!” he spit out emphatically. “Flesh, flesh, flesh—a woman,” he added.
“Ahh,” I said, disappointed. “Do you think there’s any chance at all that she might be involved in a plot?”
“I’ve known her three months. She thinks I’m a professional wrestler No. No. She’s horrible, but she’s not—it’s not her.”
“Look,” I said impulsively. “Tonight the place for you to be is away from your apartment and out of public places. We’ll have dinner in this out-of-the-way restaurant I know of and then we can all stay with this lady of yours.”
“Are you sure … ?”
“If anyone is going to try to kill you tonight, you can depend on me.”
66
Professor Boggles at a CETRE
Dear Luke,
I am a rational, linear, verbal, discursive, literary man and even your previous absurdities prepared me only minimumly for the shock of my first week in the Catskill CETRE. I dutifully expressed anger, played Hamlet, pretended to be a fool, acted like an enraged tiger; I even swished my considerable hips effeminately when the Die ordered me to turn female but it was all done in isolation and without real feeling.
When a middle-aged woman grossly importuned me to seduce her and the Die dictated that I ought to respond favorably, I found myself slobbering on her neck and squeezing her expansive bosom but feeling totally detached. My phallus remained detumescent. After five minutes she huffed off to someone else.
My awakening came on the fifth day, in the creativity room. The Die had chosen for me the assignment to write four pages using a new language—one employing primarily words from known vocabularies but combining them in a new grammar, syntax and diction. I was to try to express real feelings. I sat for an hour and couldn’t get past doodles. Then I finally wrote a sentence:
“Muckme piddles ping pong poetry.”
I liked the sound of it but the syntax was too regular. I wrote a second:
“Skinned. Skinniedup, baked. Stick a.”
That I felt was better, but lacking in verbs.
“Farceuncle midwoof floops on the cooch Barkening strayners at the dolor.”
I smiled to myself: I felt I was getting closer to
truth.
“Missy-Ied clanker retcatches purr purr floops midwoof flushiting. I wunted crandy. Yo no crandy git, dabby sated. Yo knotted again, he replyed jobbily. Fluckit shushit. Hotbam mastar.”
But I was supposed to be expressing real feelings. How might I do that without being absurdly clear and trivial? I must proceed further, I thought:
“Mime a riter. A riter is sumun who rights. Words, wurts, worst … what too due? Flusshackle thought, ruddycup the blissbiz pronotions gaym, baby gone. Flat chance I have of whining a prize. Holy Muffer, merry of God … Ahhh.
Remaindered Redeemer, where dost thou go?
Kink of the Whirl, you knot me so
I ken not. Rash anality has deshitted me
Of all my strainth. I beg you show me merdesee.
Yoose your head, your my-end, your braying! Your rashanality! Be rashan-dill! (A reckoning crew will destroy us all.) Member, an hefull man is one who unjoys life, finds many playsures. He is a cheyeheld who nose nothink. Be rashanal and use sickology. But write, rite, right, reyet!
Got is the kink of the Universe
(Ice died for our since!)
Got is the kink of the Whirl
(He nailrows what is wide and free)
God makes ridid what is fleshible
(To him who hass much shall be piled)
The seven deadly Since he names,
The things we’ve done, we must do penitentiary for
(Luff, Hee says, is oil)
Got so luffed the whirl that he graved his unly beGotten son that those that bleaf he died for their since may have infernal life.
Ah, Luke, I wrote on and on, for two and a half hours I wrote all glorious nonsense and sense so interfused it will take my graduate students decades to decipher it all. It’s beautiful. I felt so good the next fat female that bloated her boobs for Boggles was erected on the spot. Dear Luke, you are utterly mad and I your faithfool decipherpill.
Yours,
Gobbles.
67
It occurred to me on my drive to Harlem with Frank Osterflood after our uneventful dinner at an obscure restaurant in Queens that I might try to “take him for a ride” to some dimly lit nowheres where mobsters drive to put other less successful mobsters away, but I didn’t know any dimly lit nowheres, and besides, I was beginning to worry that Osterflood might turn his paranoiac tendencies toward me and attack.
We arrived at the apartment house of Osterflood’s “date” at a little after eight thirty-four that evening. We seemed to be somewhere near Lenox Avenue on 143rd Street or 145th Street—I never did find out which. My victim paid the cabbie, who looked resentful at being stuck in the middle of no-man’s-land when he might be at the Hilton or Park Avenue. No one came close to us when we walked the thirty feet or so from the sidewalk to the door of the elegant and crumbling apartment building, although I sensed dozens of dark faces glaring at us in the deep dusk.
We clumped up the three flights of stairs together like a man and his shadow, I fingering my gun and Osterflood telling me to be careful of my footing. The sound of galloping horses and shouts came out of a first-floor apartment, high-pitched hysterical female laughter from the second floor, but from the third, silence. As Osterflood knocked, I reminded him firmly that my name was Lou Smith. I was a fellow professional wrestler. The incongruity of two professional wrestlers showing up to court a lady, one of them dressed with Brooks Brothers immaculateness and the other like a down-and-out hood escaped me at the time.
The woman who came to the door was a middle-aged fat lady with stringy hair, a double chin and a jolly smile. She barely seemed a Negress.
“I’m Lou Smith, professional wrestler,” I said quickly, offering my hand.
“Good for you,” she said and walked out past us and waddled on down the stairs.
“Is Gina here?” Osterflood called after her, but she stomped on down unheeding.
I followed him inside, through a small entranceway and into a fairly large living room, dominated by a huge television set squatting against one wall directly opposite a long, Danish-modern couch. There was wall-to-wall carpeting, thick and soft and a pretty tan color, but badly spotted in front of the television set and the couch. The splash of running water came from a room off to the right, which, from the bulk of white I could make out, seemed to be a kitchen. Osterflood called in that direction:
“Gina?”
“Yeahhh,” came a high-pitched feminine voice.
While I was squinting at two photo portraits on one wall—they looked, so help me, like Sugar Ray Robinson and Al Capone—the woman came to the living room and confronted us. She was a young, full-figured, dark-haired woman, with the face of a child. Big, brown eyes exuded innocence, and her dark complexion was flawlessly smooth.
“What’s this?” she said shrilly and coldly in a voice that, while high-pitched like a child’s, had a “what’s-in-it-for-me?” cynicism that was totally incongruous with the child’s face.
“Ah, this is Dr. Luke Rh—”
“SMITH!” I shouted, “Lou Smith, professional wrestler.” I advanced and stuck out a hand.
“Gina,” she said coldly; her hand was lifeless in mine.
She moved past us into the living room and said over her shoulder:
“You guys want a drink?”
We both asked for Scotch and while she was kneeling and then standing before an abundantly supplied liquor cabinet in the corner to the left of the television set, Osterflood and I sat down on opposite ends of the couch, he staring at the gray lifeless screen of the television set and I at the brown leather miniskirt and tan, creamy legs of Gina.
She came and handed each of us a nice stiff Scotch on the rocks, staring into my eyes with that same incongruous innocent child’s face and saying coldly:
“You want the same as him?”
I looked over at Osterflood, who was staring down at the rug. He seemed sullen.
“What do you mean?” I asked, looking back up at her. She was wearing a tan, v-neck sweater that buttoned down the front and her breasts ballooned out at me distractingly.
“What are you here for?” she asked, not taking her eyes off me.
“I’m just an old friend,” I said. “Just here to watch.”
“Oh, that type,” she said. “Fifty bucks.”
“Fifty bucks?”
“You heard me.”
“I see. It must be quite a show.” I looked back at Osterflood, who still stared at the subliminal floor show on the rug. “I’ll have to think about it.”
“I’d like another drink,” Osterflood said and, head lowered, reached out his long, nicely tailored arm with his glass and two ice cubes.
“The money,” she said to him without moving.
He pulled out his wallet and peeled out four bills of undetermined denomination. She ambled over to him, took the bills, fingered each of them carefully, then took his glass and disappeared back into the kitchen. She moved like a sleepy leopardess.
Osterflood said without looking over at me:
“Can’t you stand guard outside?”
“Can’t take the chance. The killer might already be inside the apartment.”
He glanced up and around nervously.
“I thought you said your date was disgusting?” I said.
“She is,” he said, and shuddered.
The disgusting flesh flesh flesh returned and fixed Osterflood his second drink and freshened her own. I was only sipping at mine, determined to keep my mind alert for the clean, aesthetic moment of truth. It was eight forty-eight by my watch.
“Look, mister,” Gina was saying in front of me again. “Fifty bucks or out. This isn’t a waiting room.” Her voice! If only she would never say a word.
“I see.” I turned to my friend. “Better give her a fifty, Frank.”
He took out his wallet a second time and pulled off a single bill. She fingered it and stuffed it into a tiny pocket in her tiny leather skirt.
“Okay,” she said. �
��Let’s go.”
She walked over and turned on the television set, fiddling carefully with the dials and adjusting the volume quite high. When she moved away from the screen three young men were twitching away and playing loudly some rhythmic tune which was world-famous and which I almost recognized.
I was paying fifty dollars for this? No. Osterflood was paying. I relaxed.
“You want some hash tonight?” she asked Osterflood. He was brooding into his half-finished drink.
“Yes,” he said.
When Gina returned from the kitchen this time she had a small pipe, apparently fully loaded, since she handed it to Osterflood and he lit up right away.
He passed it up to her and she took a long toke and then sat down on the couch between us, leaning back and reaching out an arm to hand the pipe to me. I’d read someplace that the United States Marines found marijuana and hashish excellent aids to the performance of their duties, so I took a healthy puff and passed the pipe back to her.
After only about three or four puffs by each of us, the pipe seemed to have gone out, but after a few minutes, as I was watching a handsome, sincere American clobber a greasy Latin American type on the TV screen, the pipe appeared under my nose again nicely lit. As I passed the pipe back to Gina, holding the smoke in my lungs, I smiled at her, and her soft baby face and large brown eyes looked sorrowfully and innocently into mine. If only she doesn’t talk. Was she Negro or Italian?
By the fourth toke of the second series I was really enjoying the rhythm of the deep inhale, the earnest American talking, frowning, driving his jet-powered jeep, then the blossoming beneath my nose of the gem-studded pipe, the inhale … As I passed the pipe back to her this time, I felt like smiling at her again, hoping she was enjoying the show too, and I watched with interest as she put the pipe in her mouth and Osterflood’s hand bloomed into view just below her chin, clutched like an octopus onto one side of the v of Gina’s sweater and then in slow motion flew away, sending the buttons in front popping off onto the living room rug like machine-gun pellets. Gina continued her inhale and handed the pipe back to me, her eyes focused on the ceiling. I looked at the pipe pleasurably, examining the lacework of fake gems around the outside of the bowl, looked at the small, black, charcoal-looking lump inside, and took a pleasant, long toke. ABC, I now noticed, was presenting “CIA in Action,” a new adventure series, and when the commercial for Johnson’s Baby Powder ended, two earnest Americans, one of whom I remembered seeing earlier, began talking about a Red plot in front of a backdrop of toiling peasants.
Dice Man Page 31