I awoke then. The top black satin sheet was wrapped twice around my body, and the bed was soaked with perspiration. Thunder shook the skies, and torrents of rain sluiced down my bedroom windows. The electricity was off, which usually happens during these heavy Miami thunderstorms, and with it my airconditioning and clocks. It must have been at least 85 degrees in my apartment, although I didn’t know at the moment how long the electricity had been off. My heart was still thumping in my chest from the nightmare as I disentangled myself from the sheet and staggered into the bathroom and took a shower.
Roasting in my bed, I thought, must have brought on the nightmare. Except that it wasn’t a bad dream, Mr. Wright was real; he was looking for me with his gun, and I was indeed a captive duck in a shooting gallery—unless I did something about it—and soon.
At three a.m. the airconditioning kicked in. The lights were on again, so I fixed a cup of coffee. While the water was boiling I reset my electric clocks from my wristwatch. The power had been off for almost two hours.
In another three hours it would be light outside. The rain had slackened to a drizzle, and the coffee cheered me up some. I put an LP of the Stones on the stereo, and listened to them sing about the horrors of England, which were, if anything, much worse over there than they were in Miami. I started to cry, something I hadn’t done in at least fifteen years.
Why in the hell was I crying? Perhaps I cried because it was three in the morning, but most of all, I felt that I had lost something, something valuable and irreplaceable, even though I didn’t know what it could be.
But I didn’t go back to bed.
Somehow, the dream had frightened me more, much more, than Mr. Wright’s promise to kill me.
13
The sun and my spirits rose but I was still tired and in need of sleep. I thought about taking a dexie or a bennie, or a half of one or the other now, and the second half at noon. One half of a dexie would wake me fully, give me a feeling of alertness, and provide me with the surge of mental energy I needed.
“I can handle it,” I thought.
But these fatal words, flashing into my mind, changed it. This was the familiar rationalization we were all warned against during indoctrination, together with other grave dangers that specious learning and unlimited access to drugs faced detail men in the field. Studying, as we did, the symptoms of diseases, the clinical properties of the drugs we touted to doctors—what they could and couldn’t do—contraindications and side effects—the danger of self-prescription was always present. And because doctors as a group are not the sharpest body of men one will ever meet, especially if one ever talks to them about subjects other than their work, it is easy to fall into the trap of believing—of knowing—that you know as much, or even more, than doctors do.
Doctors work much too hard. They rarely have an opportunity to read anything, including newspapers. They are, as a whole, naive politically, and unworldly concerning money, economics, or even interpersonal relationships. They make a lot of money, but they never have any because they invariably lose it through poor investments, and they spend it—or their families spend it—as if it came from a magic source. Many doctors, including those with the average $75,000 per annum incomes, who own two or three cars and carry a huge mortgage, have little or nothing in reserve. Bankruptcy is a frequent hazard for doctors, and they are then bewildered men, wondering where all the money went. There are exceptions, of course, but I had talked to hundreds of doctors in the last five years, and the overwhelming majority was poorly informed. They knew very little outside of their trade. It becomes easy, then, to fall into the trap and decide that you, who know so much more about the world than doctors, and have the same access to medical books, medical journals and drugs, can prescribe for yourself when you become sick instead of seeing a doctor.
The company had warned us about that, reminding us, at the same time, that the greatest number of drug addicts in the U.S., as an occupational group, were M.D.s. Doctors, of course, used the same kind of reasoning that a detail man could fall heir to; they had a practically unlimited access to drugs, and because they knew, or thought they knew, as much as any other doctor, they also had a tendency to prescribe drugs for themselves.
“I can handle it,” they thought, and they would pop a bennie to get through a six a.m. operation, and then another bennie at ten a.m., to get through their hospital rounds, and then, because they were bone-tired, and beginning to get sleepy by one or two p.m., and they had an office full of waiting patients to get through, they would take a couple of more bennies that afternoon. And so it would go, with emergency calls at night, and the first thing they knew they would be hooked—on bennies, or dexies, or nose candy, and eventually, on horse.
When you get sick, the company told us, see a doctor. Never, never take a self-prescribed drug of any kind. The rule was a good one, because no one can handle it. No one.
With a shrug, I skipped the bennie, and settled for a close shave and a long cold shower. I put on a pair of gray seersucker slacks and a sportshirt, brewed fresh coffee, and sat down to decide my next move.
Luckily, my reports were made out and ready to mail to Atlanta. It wasn’t essential to call on my doctors during the week. I could fake another set of calls on the following Saturday or Sunday when I made my next report, and it made no difference. The sales in my territory were the highest in the Southeastern District. I could devote fulltime to protecting myself, or better, I could reverse the role. I could hunt down Mr. Wright, and put him on the defensive. I didn’t want to shoot him, or hurt him in any way, but I had to get him alone somewhere and talk to him. I was positive, if I could only talk to him for a while, and explain how Jannaire had passed herself off as a single, unattached woman, and that there had never been anything physical between us, he would see how foolish it was to come after me with a gun.
Jannaire, in all probability, had told him the same thing by now—that there had been no sex between us—and maybe he had cooled off already, during the night. On the other hand, he might not believe Jannaire. She might have had, for all I knew, a long record of clandestine lovers, and if so, Mr. Wright would discount anything she said.
I had to get a gun. What was the best way to go about getting one, and obtaining a license to carry it? Larry Dolman would know, but so would Alton Thead. I couldn’t go to Larry I didn’t want Larry to find out about my predicament. He would help me, of course, but if he did, the nature of our relationship would be altered. He believed that I was screwing Jannaire. Without actually saying so, I had implied as much a few days before when I ran into him at the mailboxes in the lobby. If Larry knew that I had been running around with her for six weeks without getting any, and without even learning that she was married, he would be contemptuous. It was bad enough to be contemptuous of myself, but I couldn’t stand it from Larry. In his opinion, and in Don’s and Eddie’s as well, I was purported to be the greatest cocksman in Miami, and I valued the good opinion of my three friends. If Larry helped me, and I know how eagerly he would volunteer if I asked him for help, it would all come out—the entire story—and he, in turn, would tell Don and Eddie…
The phone rang, a single ring, and stopped. I waited, counting. A minute later, it rang again. This was my private signal. During daylight hours, from eight to five, I never answered the phone unless I was called in this special way. I didn’t want anyone from the company to call me from New Jersey and find me at home, particularly if that was the day I was supposed to be in Palm Beach or Key West. My immediate supervisor, Julie Westphal, the district manager in Atlanta, knew about my special ring, but we were close friends. I was his best detail man in the field, and we always had a good time together when he came to see me in Miami. A few women, perhaps a dozen, had been told about the two rings, and also Larry, Don, and Eddie, of course-but no one else. I picked up the phone.
“Hi,” I said.
“Tom Davies.” The solemn voice paused, and then Tom laughed.
“Tom, you bas
tard,” I said, “how did you get onto my secret ring?”
“I called Julie, in Atlanta. You know I don’t give a shit anyway, Hank, whatever you do, but this is an emergency and I had to get a hold of you. I was afraid you might get away this morning and go to Lauderdale or Palm Beach, and it’s important that I see you.”
“You mean you want me to fly up to New Jersey, Tom?”
“No.” He laughed. “I’m flying down to Miami this afternoon, and I’m going to have a six-hour stopover on my way to San Juan. I’m going to spend a week, maybe ten days, with Gonzales in Puerto Rico. But I want to talk to you, and catch a little sleep at the Airport Hotel before I grab the midnight flight to San Juan…”
“Do you want some action, Tom? It’s short notice but I…”
“No, but thanks, Hank. I’m really tired—I’ll tell you about it when I see you. And I imagine Gonzales has got a few things planned for me anyway in San Juan. So what I’d like you to do is book me a room at the Airport Hotel—I’ll be in about five-thirty—and we’ll get together for awhile at six, in my room.” He lowered his deep voice a full octave. “It’s important, Hank. Very important.”
“Sure, Tom. No sweat. And if you decide you want some action I can probably take care of that, too. I know a couple of girls in Hialeah who like to play sandwich, and if you say the word, I’ll…”
“Not this time, Hank. It’s business. I haven’t slept for twenty-four hours now, and I just want to get a little sack time before midnight, that’s all.”
“Okay, Tom. I’ll see you at the hotel—in the lobby—it’s at the end of Concourse Four—at six o’clock.”
“Good! We’ll have a drink, and talk…”
I called the Airport Hotel and made a reservation for Tom Davies.
My throat was dry, and I was a little irritated at Julie for giving out the information about my special ring. But Julie and I were good friends, and if it hadn’t been important, very important, Julie sure as hell wouldn’t have given the Vice-President of Sales this privileged information. Tom Davies, of course, was a damned nice guy, and he had been in the field himself, long before he became a district manager and then a vice-president, so he knew what the score was, and how we operated. Perhaps they all knew, the entire executive group in New Jersey, including old Ned Lee, who had founded the company. But we played the game, and we pretended to be working our asses off in the field. And some of us, at least some of the time, actually did work like hell. I certainly had, during my first year, but when your sales are up you are can slack off. If they go down, as they will eventually if you quit pushing your product to doctors for several months and they learn about new ones from other companies they want to try, then you’ve got to get out there and hustle again. All the same, I wondered what it was that was so important that Tom Davies, the Vice-President of Sales, would take a layover in Miami to talk to me about in person instead of telling me on the phone.
I hadn’t seen Tom Davies in about eight months, not since the last Atlanta meeting, when we had had a hellova good time. We had picked up two showgirl types, big Southern broads six feet tall, and we had stayed over in Atlanta an extra day with these giantesses. When he was working Tom was a serious man, but he also knew how to unwind when the time came. We had had a lot of fun with those enormous women. But whatever it was Tom wanted to talk to me about, it would have to wait until six p.m.
Right now, I needed to do something about getting a pistol, and my best bet was Alton Thead, J.S.D.
14
My adjustment year in Miami, after getting out of the army, had been a grim and confusing period. I had hated Pittsburgh, a cold and miserable city, and I had made no friends among its residents. I drank and ran around with some of the other officers from the Recruiting Station, and our conversations were usually centered on what we were going to do and where we were going to go after we got out of the service. It had never entered my mind to go home to Michigan. Dearborn, if anything, was a colder and more miserable city than Pittsburgh, and with fewer opportunities.
When a man is finally discharged he is entitled to travel pay to the home of his choice, and when my time came I selected Miami. I had never been here before, but I knew that it was subtropically warm, and I figured that a city of a more than one million people was large enough for me to find a place for myself.
I had saved very little money, and I took the first halfway decent job I could find, working as an insurance claims adjuster, which gave me $9,000 a year and a free use of a car. Eight years ago, it was still possible to live on nine thousand a year—if not very well.
I had the G.I. Bill coming, and I considered going to graduate school and working on a Ph.D. My undergraduate degree in Psychology was virtually worthless, but I did not like the field well enough to spend three years torturing rats and doing the other boring things I would have to do to get a terminal degree.
The idea of going to Law School occurred to me after I was assigned to a reserve unit. This small unit, which I was forced to join and remain with for three years after my discharge from active service, was a Military Government Team (Res.). We met at seven-thirty a.m. on Sunday mornings, ostensibly for four hours, but rarely stayed for more than two. The size of the team varied from twelve officers to twenty-five during the three years I served with it. We took turns giving fifty-minute lectures, usually on some political or government subject, as assigned by our commander. He was a lieutenant colonel on Sundays, who worked in a gas station during the week. After pumping gas and changing tires all week, he gloried in his Sunday morning elevation to military power, and made the Army Reserve experience much worse for us than it should have been. We—the other junior Reserve officers—became unified in our hate for this gas pump jockey C.O., and I made a few good friends in the unit. Four or five of the other officers were lawyers, and as I talked with them over coffee after the Sunday morning meetings, I thought that the law might be a way to escape from my deadend job as a claims investigator.
The Law School entrance examination, which I had feared, turned out to be fairly easy, and I passed it with a high score. More than half of the exam was concerned with graphs, charts, and math—which surprised me—but because math and statistics had been my best subjects at Michigan State, I scored high enough on these sections to make up for the other sections, where my scores were merely average.
I was accepted and I matriculated in the University of Miami night school program. All I had to do was to go to classes for four nights a week for four years, and I would have a J.D.—Juris Doctorate. My first four courses were Torts, Insurance, Reading and Writing for Law, and Introduction to Law, on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday nights, in that order. Two weeks into the semester, I dropped the first three courses, and I would have dropped Introduction to Law, as well, if it hadn’t been for Alton Thead, who taught the course.
Law is dull, but that isn’t the only reason I dropped out. In my job as adjuster, I frequently had to call on people at night, and this conflict made it difficult to attend night classes. My office hours during the day made it impossible for me to find time to study, which meant that I would have had to spend every Saturday, all day, in the Law Library. Sunday mornings were spent at Reserve meetings, and our strict C.O. was a stickler for attendance. If you missed three meetings without obtaining permission to be absent in advance, and he was reluctant about giving permission, too, he would write a letter recommending that you be recalled to active duty for another year. We all lived in fear of this possibility, and he was very anxious to exercise this power.
A seven-day week is not a hardship if a man truly wants to become a lawyer. It is a matter of putting in the fours years, of serving the time, and a great many young men stick with it. But to do so requires more than a negative motivation, and my sole motivation for matriculating was that I did not want to be a graduate student in Psychology.
But it was the example of Alton Thead who persuaded me to give up Law School, although he did not set o
ut deliberately to do so. Thead is a fine man, and he has a brilliant mind. He was entertaining, forceful, witty, and fascinating in the classroom, and he relished talking about his own experiences as a practicing lawyer.
Thead had attracted nationwide notoriety in the late 1950s when he found a Jewish male who was willing to sue his parents for circumcising him as a baby. This was the most difficult part, Thead told us in class, finding a young Jew who was willing to go along with this radical suit. Thead’s case, of course, was a good one. Circumcision is a violation of a man’s human rights, and the unlawful mutilation came within the province of the newer and stronger state legislation designed to protect the “battered child.” Circumcision is not necessary medically, except in about four percent of those male children who are circumcised, and Thead had lined up more than a dozen doctors to testify to this fact to the court. Legally, the parents of the young man were in a poor position. They had “tradition” on their side as a precedent, but little else. They had doctors, too, but the best arguments they could muster were those of “sanitation.” The fact that a circumcised penis is easier to keep clean than one that is not is a poor excuse for the mutilation of a baby’s body and for violating his rights as a human being. Thead’s other major argument, which would have been more cogent today, now that the country, as a whole, is more liberally educated sexually, carried little weight with the jury in the ’50s. And this clincher (in my opinion, anyway) was that the glans of a circumcised penis becomes tough, and because of the loss of sensitivity, anywhere from twenty to thirty percent of a man’s pleasure in sex is lost when the foreskin is removed.
The Shark-Infested Custard Page 11