Kill Your Darlings (A Mallory Mystery)

by Max Allan Collins

  “I’m gay, not blind. And how do you know I don’t appreciate the fairer sex, from time to time? Haven’t you heard of bisexuals, in Iowa?”

  “No, but I’ve heard of them in California.”

  “Touché. As I was saying.”

  “What were you saying?”

  “You don’t like me, do you, Mr. Mallory?”

  “That isn’t what you were saying.”

  “It’s what you’ve been saying.”

  “I don’t remember saying much of anything.”

  “That’s precisely how you said it.”

  “Spare me the California mellow-speak, would you?”

  “Is that what you call it in Iowa?”

  “Actually, we call it bullshit. I’m just being polite.”

  “Ah, yes. Contempt is so often expressed by mock-civility.”

  I sipped my Coke. “Go to hell, Jerome.”

  Lids half hid the china-blue eyes. “I’m interested. What is it about me you dislike so? My sexual preferences wouldn’t matter much to you, I’m guessing.”

  “That’s right.”

  “What is it, then?”

  I looked for a fast answer; any smart-ass remark to lob the ball back to him. But I couldn’t find one.

  And he just sat there staring at me with his father’s eyes coming out of that tan face, the subdued lights in the place catching his droopy gold chain and tossing it at me.

  Finally I said, “I don’t know. I don’t know why I don’t like you. You seem decent enough. I think I maybe... resent your lack of appreciation of your father, for who he is... was.”

  “Is that all?”

  “Well. I think you pose, a little...”

  “Don’t you? Don’t you confuse yourself a bit with that sensitive latterday Philip Marlowe you portray in your books?”

  “No. I know where fiction ends and reality begins.”

  “Oh, really? And where is that?”

  “Somewhere east of San Francisco.”

  A smile crinkled one corner of his mouth and both his eyes. “Now you sound like a latter-day Gat Garson.”

  That made me smile. I’d have to be careful or I’d start liking this guy.

  “You’ve read your father’s books?” I asked.

  He nodded. “Yes, I have. I most certainly have. Very witty. Of their kind, the very best there is. My father was an underrated, underappreciated artist. One day he’ll be rediscovered. Perhaps his death will spark a revival. That would be the only fortunate consequence of his passing.”

  Damnit. I was starting to like this guy.

  “I’ve even read one of your books,” he said. “I liked it, rather. I can see why my father might be proud of his student.”

  “You said you envied me,” I said, a little embarrassed by his flattery, “for being close to your father. I wasn’t. He had a wall up he never quite let me get behind.”

  Jerome nodded. “I think that was true even of his wives—with the possible exception of Evelyn the Grotesque.”

  When he spoke her name he might have been sucking a lemon. I must’ve shown in my face my surprise at the depth of his bitterness, because he went on to answer a question I never asked.

  “Evelyn stole my father from my mother. It’s that simple. To me, she’s a thief, and, in a roundabout way, a murderess. But she understood Roscoe Kane. She could relate to him on his own level—trade off-color, wise-guy cracks with him like a drag queen Gat Garson. And, of course, she drank with him. They were boozers together. That can create an enormous bond, you know. It’s a club you can’t resign from.”

  “He eventually left her.”

  Jerome shrugged. “They both went on the wagon. They both periodically fell off, in years to come; but for a while there, they were sober. It’s a terrible thing to sober up and look at the person you’ve been married to when that person has simultaneously sobered up and is looking at the person she is married to, too. Neither one recognizes the sober version, and, well, the rest is history.”

  “And history is Mae Kane.”

  His smile turned up at both corners now. “Bless her greedy little heart. She was my mother’s unintentional avenger. She was Evelyn’s karma come home to roost. Those years of drinking turned pleasantly plump Evelyn into a barrel with legs, remember. And Mae was—and is—an attractive woman, to say the least. You’ve noticed?”

  I rubbed my forehead. “I have noticed.”

  “Mae stole Evelyn away from my father, just as Evelyn had stolen him from my mother. My father always had a weakness for a bosomy babe, as Gat might say. Perhaps his lechery is what put me off the girls, that and being a momma’s boy... the old cliché about being raised by your mommy, being your mommy’s bestest friend, all of that was true in my case. Till she died.”

  “I, uh... never really heard the circumstances of your mother’s death. Roscoe never got into it. That was one of the things he kept behind that wall I couldn’t get back of.”

  “Guilt was back there, too,” Jerome said. “Guilt’s another thing he had back of that wall of his. He blamed himself. But I don’t know that he was to blame, much. It was ten years after he left her that she killed herself.”

  “Jesus,” I said. “I didn’t know... I’m sorry...”

  “Your condolences are noted, and appreciated,” Jerome said, “if a few decades late. My mother, Winifred Kane, killed herself with a gun my father had given her to protect herself with. One of those Gat Garson guns he had half a dozen of.”

  I swallowed. “A long-barreled .38.”

  “Yes.” Jerome smiled. “The kind my father posed with on his book covers.”

  I felt suddenly cold. “That’s a piece of information I could’ve lived without.”

  “One might say the same for my mother. Oh, young lady?”

  He stopped the barmaid for another Scotch and tonic. I asked for another Coke—but I had her put some bourbon in with it, this time.

  “Jerome, I’m sorry to ask this...”

  “Ask, ask.”

  “Why... why did your mother take her life? Did—did she leave a note...? What had been going on that—”

  Jerome shrugged elaborately. “I was a teen-ager, all wrapped up in my own pubescent angst. I had little time to notice my mother’s troubles. Oh, we were close. Very close. But she wore a mask, for me. A mother mask. The woman beneath was never fully revealed to me. What made her tick is a mystery even Gat Garson could not solve. I do know she had what might be euphemistically referred to as ‘mental problems.’ She was diagnosed schizophrenic, and was in and out of institutions where she had countless shock treatments, back while she and my father were married. My father admitted to me that his heavy drinking began in those days. And I can understand why the prospect of, shall we say, joining with the mentally stable Evelyn was an irresistible one. Besides, she had bigger titties than Mother.”

  The bitterness under the poised, Noel Coward exterior was cracking through. I’d known he was largely a pose; but I hadn’t understood the nature of the pose. I hadn’t guessed how sad and angry the real man, behind Jerome Kane’s wall, really was.

  I sipped the bourbon and Coke. Let the intense moment subside.

  Then I said, “You saw your father last night.”

  He nodded. “For supper. We ate at an Italian place on the North Side, Augustino’s, a favorite of his. Quite good. But, then, you saw him, too, didn’t you? Right before he died? That’s why I wanted to see you, Mallory. I wanted to ask you about that final meeting with him....”

  “I’ll make you a deal. We’ll get to my story after I hear yours.”

  “You tell me yours, I’ll tell you mine? Why not. We’re all brothers under the skin. I have seen my father rarely these past twenty years. He took me for a month each summer when I was growing up. But when I moved to San Francisco, after dropping out of college, and he began to get a sense of... my lifestyle... our contact became, well, infrequent.”

  “Roscoe never could accept that you’re gay, could
he?”

  Jerome nodded, looking into the smoky-colored drink. “Quite right. Why, exactly, I couldn’t tell you. Perhaps he saw it as a rejection of him. Gat Garson was an idealized version of himself, you know—oh, Gat was a put-on, a spoof, but still... Gat was macho, and in not a wholly satirical way. Gat Garson was a genuine tough guy, just like Mike Hammer or James Bond. And my father was macho himself, a brawler, particularly in the verbal sense. And, like Gat, he was a womanizer. He loved those blondes with the big boobies—or he did in the early days. I’ve sensed, the few times I was with him in recent years, a declining interest in honey-haired darlings, his lechery fading to but a passing mammary. Speaking of which—miss?”

  He asked for a third Scotch and tonic; I kept nibbling at my bourbon and Coke.

  Then he went on. “Anyway, my father may have looked upon my life-style as a conscious rejection of everything he stood for, as a man. And of course it wasn’t.” He laughed, raucously. “It was a subconscious rejection.” He laughed again, but softly. “I did feel a conscious bitterness about my mother’s death. I did blame him, at least partially. But I didn’t want him out of my life. He was the only parent I had left. I would’ve liked for him to accept me. That, I would’ve liked very much.”

  The third Scotch and tonic came, and he started right in on it.

  I said, “I think your father was proud of what you’ve achieved.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Possibly you’re right. I sensed, or hoped I sensed, he was pleased with what I’d accomplished, proud of my fashion designs being shown in major cities here and in Europe, of my name having gained a certain recognizability of its own, of my financial success, especially my financial success. For a Depression child like Roscoe Kane, money is the major measure.”

  “You probably got your artistic bent from him.”

  “No doubt,” he said. “I didn’t get it from my mother. She had few talents—just her good looks, which started to go on her when her mental problems took hold. But we’ve been down that path before; let’s go elsewhere.”

  “What did you and your father talk about?”

  “Last night, you mean? We... we made ammends, you might say. I can’t go so far as to say he came right out and accepted me for what I am—admitted he knew I was gay and that he could accept me as such. But he did say something that approximated that; well, two things, actually.”

  “What were they?”

  He smiled on one side of his face. “First”—and he imitated his father’s gruff voice, to perfection—“Jerome, sex is overrated.”

  I smiled. “What was the other thing?”

  Jerome shrugged, looked in the drink. “Just that it was nice to have a son.”

  I sat and looked into my bourbon and Coke and pretended not to notice him wipe the tear from beneath one china-blue eye.

  “He was chatting with Cynthia Crystal,” he said, “when I left him in the lobby around nine-thirty. That was the last time I saw him.”

  “Cynthia Crystal?”

  “Yes—the author.”

  “I know her. How do you know her, Jerome?”

  “I don’t—I recognized her from a talk show. Fine writer.”

  “Yes, she is.”

  “Oddly—when I glanced back, their conversation seemed to have heated up.”

  “Really? Were they arguing?”

  He thought about that. “I wouldn’t go that far. ‘Having words’ is more like it.”

  “How did your father happen to know Cynthia?”

  He shrugged, draining the Scotch and tonic. “I don’t know that he did.”

  This morning, when I’d spoken to Cynthia, she hadn’t mentioned speaking to Roscoe Kane. From the detached way she’d referred to him, I’d assumed she’d never met the man.

  “I know why I envy you,” Jerome said suddenly, softly.

  “Why?”

  “Not because you were close to him. Nobody, except perhaps Evelyn the Grotesque, was close to him. And then only when they were in their cups....”

  Silence.

  Then he said: “You were the son he always wanted me to be.”

  I tried to bridge the awkwardness gap. “Look—it wasn’t that way... I was just a fan.”

  “No. Much more than that. You were a surrogate son. And you had access to him in a way I never did. You pleased him in ways I never could. And I envy you that. I resent you for that.”

  There wasn’t anything to say, so I didn’t.

  He said, “Now. We had a bargain. You’re to tell me about you and my father, last night.”

  “Why, are you suspicious?”

  He blinked. “Suspicious?”

  “About the circumstances surrounding his death. Is that why you’re asking questions?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said ingenuously. “I just want to know what my father said.”

  “What he said?”

  He leaned across the table and looked at me with his father’s eyes and the earnestness and trembling lower lip of a child. “About me. Did he mention me? Did he say anything about me?”

  I was one of the last to see his father alive; he wanted to know if he’d been in his father’s thoughts....

  So I told him Roscoe had mentioned what a wonderful evening he’d had with him, that it was obvious he thought the world of Jerome.

  And Jerome sighed, and said thank you, told me I could reach him at Troy’s till he left for the Milwaukee services Monday, and left.

  I just sat there for a while, shaking my head.

  Then just as I’d gotten up to go, a hand settled on my shoulder and I glanced back.

  “Let’s talk, asshole.”

  And I punched Gregg Gorman in the stomach.

  11

  I don’t make a practice of punching people in the stomach, or anywhere else for that matter. Even the likes of Gregg Gorman. I was immediately embarrassed and sorry—even if the feel of my fist sinking into his beer belly had been satisfying, in a mindless, macho, Gat Garson sort of way.

  He didn’t go down or anything; he just doubled over. Nobody except that table of Sardini, Christian and a few others had seen it. So the management didn’t come rushing over and throw me out the door on my butt. Nor did a John Wayne-type table-and-chair-smashing brawl break out. Gorman wasn’t the type to retaliate, except verbally—or with a two-by-four while you were asleep.

  He held his stomach and breathed hard and then pretended to be hurt worse than he was. The beady eyes under the bushy eyebrows were full of dollar signs as he said, “I’m gonna sue you, Mallory, you little creep.”

  “Shouldn’t you call the cops first, and get me charged with assault and battery?”

  “Maybe I’ll do that. Maybe I will.”

  “Better round up your witnesses.”

  He glanced over at the table where Sardini and crew sat, smiling, talking, back in their own conversation. “They’re friends of yours,” he said.

  “That’s true.”

  “Maybe we should just step outside,” he said, puffing himself up like a squat little bear, “and finish this...” And there was a blank space where his favorite term of endearment for me would’ve gone, had he had the nerve to use it again.

  I nodded toward the door. “There’s an alley behind the hotel.”

  He rubbed a hand over his face; indeterminate flecks drifted down from his goatee—dandruff, food, whatever.

  And then he sat down at the table.

  I stood looking at him.

  He looked up and got a completely false smile going and said, “Maybe I deserved that punch in the belly. Maybe I shouldn’t’ve called you that. And maybe I screwed you that time, a little, where your pal Wheeler was concerned. So I’m willing to forgive and forget this little incident. Come on, Mallory—sit down.”

  I sat. But I didn’t forgive, or forget.

  “You said you wanted to talk,” I said. I wanted to talk to him, too. But I’d let him go first....

  He shrugged, elabor
ately. “I just wanted to straighten you out on some shit.”

  Classy guy; a publishing magnate with a real way with words. He used to own used-car lots, and had reportedly made a fortune or two before he somewhat self-indulgently turned to the pursuit of publishing in the mystery field, having been a fan since his teens. I bought his books, but I wouldn’t buy a used car from him.

  “What is it you want to straighten me out on, Gorman?”

  “Call me Gregg. And I’ll call you...”

  “Asshole?”

  He pushed the air with two palms, in a peacemaking gesture I didn’t believe for a split second.

  “Let’s put that behind us,” he said, with his used-car dealer’s smile.

  “Let’s. What do you want to straighten me out on, Gregg?”

  “I cleaned up my act, Mallory,” he said. “Changed my image.”

  If not his underwear.

  “Look, I admit I pulled some... shady deals, from time to time. I’m a little guy. I gotta look after myself. You gotta give me credit for some good work—I got some stuff back in print that you like seein’ back in print, right?”

  I admitted as much.

  “I’m just a one-man show,” he said, “tryin’ to keep my little boat afloat. The mystery fan market isn’t any vast audience by a long shot—and you know it, or you’d dress better.”

  Look who was talking.

  “It’s a small market,” I said, “but you publish expensive books. On that slipcased set of Carroll John Daly’s Race Williams novels you had several thousand sales—chickenfeed for a mass-market publisher, but for a specialty guy like you? At two hundred bucks a set? You’re making a killing.”

  He shrugged, less elaborately this time. “I couldn’t afford to publish nice books when I was starting out. And you know the quality of the stuff I do—the printing, the binding, the paper, all that crap, is top of the line.”

  That was true: his books were every bit as attractive as he wasn’t.

  “But Gregg, old buddy,” I said, “you’re not doing anybody any favors, turning out fancy expensive books. You may be providing a service of sorts, to mystery fans who’re into this stuff, but if you weren’t turning out high-quality merchandise, you couldn’t charge the high prices. So don’t bother bragging to me. It doesn’t cut you any slack, where I’m concerned.”