“For what?” I grinned down at her. “This is my job, you know."
She smiled. “If it gets very expensive—"
“Look, quit worrying about it. For now, anyway. Let's see what I find out today."
I was half convinced I'd find out that Charley White had floated off his eighth-floor balcony, flapping his arms. But at the door, just as she left, she gave me her wadded fifty bucks. I took it. Which meant, no matter what I thought, I was going to find out about Charley White.
I figured I'd spend the day on the case and wrap it up. A big nothing. One of those routine, unexciting jobs that crop up every month or two.
At least one guy I can think of was almost as wrong as I was. He's the guy who said, “They'll never get it off the ground."
CHAPTER THREE
Well, maybe it wouldn't be much of a case, I was thinking, but I was glad to have a job. Any kind of a job. Nothing very exciting had been happening for a couple of weeks, and because I was interested—like everybody else—in the upcoming elections, only three days away now, I'd kind of supersaturated myself with the campaign verbiage, the charges and countercharges and counter-countercharges. It would do me good to get my mind off it for a while.
If possible. Advertisers and publicity men had learned a lot in these last few years, selling toothpaste, contraceptives, anti-sweat pills, and such; they'd achieved near perfection in the use of automated analysis, mass psychology, the conditioned reflex, and hypnosis. Consequently the candidates’ names were hammered at the people day and night—Humble ... Emerson ... Emerson ... Humble—until you wanted to go out and buy one of each just to satisfy the compelling post-hypnotic urge. But, worse luck, you could only have one; so everybody was bound to wind up with an unfilled and gnawing need.
Worse than that, there was electricity in the air, tension and a restless discontent that was contagious. It had been a very hard-fought campaign, and it seemed that this time more than ever before the voters had been stirred almost to a frenzy, were more than normally emotional about their opinions—which conflicted more than just a little. One reason was that, with the two top candidates for the top ‘68 spot, there was a clear and definite choice between opposing philosophies.
Horatio M. Humble was the glib, handsome, sincere advocate of federal solutions to virtually all problems, and his opponent was the equally sincere, though not quite as handsome, not quite as glib, David Emerson, who didn't seem to agree with anything Humble had said since puberty.
It had been a real battle, right down to the wire, and—while the consensus of informed opinion was that Humble should take all the marbles without too much trouble—it was possible that California's electoral votes could swing the election if it was close. Consequently, both of the Presidential candidates were ending their campaigns with intensive last-minute swings through California, winding up in Los Angeles Sunday night and scheduled for speeches on Monday, the last day before the voters went to the polls.
The two candidates had a large area about which to disagree. Namely, everything. But the issue which had come to symbolize their differences had turned out to be, oddly enough—at first thought, anyway—the question of fluoridation of the nation's water supply. Humble was solidly for compulsory fluoridation; Emerson opposed the whole concept.
The basic controversy was simple. Scientists had testified that a small amount of fluorine in drinking water could be beneficial in helping prevent tooth decay in the very young. That was all.
But those supporting compulsory fluoridation said: If we add fluorine to all water supplies, infants will be forced to ingest fluorine with their drinking water and thus become less subject to tooth decay, and that will be good for them.
Those opposing compulsory fluoridation said: Fluorine is only one factor, and a minor one, in the problem of tooth decay; total nutrition, for example, is vastly more important. Most water already has sufficient fluorine in it, often more than is desirable. If chemical fluorine is added for infants, the adult and aged and ill will be forced to ingest it, too, often in greater quantities than desirable. More fluorine, possibly excessive amounts, will be used in irrigation of crops. There are other valid objections, but the basic evil is government compulsion. Compulsory fluoridation of the nation's water, even if it's “good for people,” is forced medication, forced on those who need it and those who don't. If fluorine to prevent tooth decay, why not Alphabetagammacillin to prevent hardening of the arteries and adenoids? If fluorine may be forced upon us, why not tranquilizers? Besides, the cavities in the teeth of my children or my neighbors’ children are not a concern of the federal bureaucracies—at least they shouldn't be. Water is essential to the health and life of every man, woman, and child. Leave it alone.
There were honest, sincere people on both sides of the question. But surely the extreme view was that of the pro-fluoridation group. Oddly, however, those who opposed forcible fluoridation of their drinking water were called the extremists. They were called crackpots. They were called suspicious, paranoid, heartless, unfeeling. They hated babies. They hated baby teeth. They were reactionaries, still living in the eighteenth century when water was—water.
I could come to only one conclusion. The world was losing its grip on reality. Earth might have to be locked up in a padded nebula.
Or maybe I was wrong. Maybe it wasn't Earth. Maybe it was just a few people who made an awful lot of noise.
Ah, but there I went, getting paranoid about noise. Getting suspicious. There was something in the air....
Anyhow, such was the twitchy atmosphere in which I sallied forth to ask a few simple questions about Charley White. It was time I got my mind off the campaign. I'd forget about the elections entirely. Might even save my sanity.
Yeah. “They'll never get it off the ground."
* * * *
After I'd supplemented my memory with background info from the police and a newspaper morgue, I came back to my apartment and got on the phone.
As far as the police were concerned, the death had been accidental; Charley White was presumed to have fallen over his balcony rail and squashed. They didn't think he'd flipped over—at least, nothing was said about any laughing. Homicide wasn't officially interested.
So ... I managed to make a 3 p.m. appointment with Dr. Mordecai Withers, the celebrated noodle specialist who, according to Sylvia, had been fixing Charley's noodle. I got that appointment by insisting that this was of vital importance, literally a matter of life and death—which, after all, it was. I gave my name merely as “Mr. Scott,” and did not indicate that I was a detective.
Then I called the Ulysses Sebastian Agency and got a gal who was, as I came in slow and dull fashion to comprehend, apparently Mr. Sebastian's secretary's secretary. Looked like this might be a tough case, after all. Finally, though, I was granted an interview for 1:30 p.m., after I'd given my full name, occupation, highlights of my career, a description—which she didn't believe—and explained that my call would be in connection with the death of Charley White. I couldn't get near Johnny Troy, by phone or otherwise.
So shortly after 1 p.m. I headed for the Sebastian Agency.
It was a high-powered place to begin. You'd have to say that Sebastian was one of the best known and most influential men in the United States, not only because some of the biggest names in virtually every area of the arts and entertainment world were his clients, but also because he was himself an unusual bird. He had friends in show biz, politics, among publishers, educators, society, in Wall Street—all over the place.
The Sebastian Agency was unique in that it wasn't merely a literary agency, actors’ agency, or artists’ agency, but all of that and more combined: it represented anybody with “outstanding talent.” He'd started in 1955 with only about a dozen clients, but half of those were even then well known in their respective fields: two novelists and a playwright, a political pundit and columnist who'd written several best-selling nonfiction books, an Academy Award-winning actress, and a painter who
was the top name in the field of nonobjective art. Today, thirteen years later, the agency represented scores of writers, actors, poets, painters, speakers, sculptors, ballet dancers—you name it.
One result of Ulysses Sebastian's wide acquaintance with and influence among celebrities and others much in the news, as well as a very broad spectrum of the high-powered opinion-fashioning community, was that becoming a Sebastian client was the next best thing to a solid-gold guarantee of success. Once a client signed with Sebastian, the drums began to beat, the name was noised about, dropped into interview programs, seen in print, and the guy would be flacked, press-agented, publicized, advertized, and eulogized, until the name was known from Zamboanga to Zululand. The classic example of “Sebastianizing” was Johnny Troy—who would have made it even without all the Madison Avenue massage. Some of the others, though, I wasn't so sure about.
The Sebastian Agency was in a six-story building on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, about half a mile east of the Strip. The entire fourth floor was occupied half by the agency, half by Trojan Enterprises, which handled Troy's photos, fan mail, endorsements for sweat shirts and such. I pulled right off Sunset onto Ogden Drive, parked my Cad convertible and walked back to Sunset.
On my right, across Ogden, was the not-very-new plaster-over-brick Sebastian Building. Sebastian had started there when it was called the Whist Building, now owned it, and was still in it though he could probably have bought a good chunk of Sunset Boulevard by now. And on my left was shambles.
The old ten-story State Bank Building had stood here until recently, but it was being torn down now. The whole block was being torn down. As I watched, a man in the crane cab of a big truck-crane waggled some levers and turned his cab around, lowered the long latticed steel boom out and down a few feet. From the end of the boom descended a woven-wire rope attached to a big pear-shaped ball—the demolition ball, it's called in the construction business, sometimes the “headache ball” or “skull cracker.” The crane operator waggled some more levers, the ball swung back then forward and slammed into what remained of a brick wall, whereupon immediately much less remained. The guy had a nice touch with that three-ton hunk of steel, and though I couldn't see him clearly, I thought I knew him.
If it was Jack Jackson, he was now—though he sure hadn't been at one time—a good friend of mine. But the hour was 1:28, and those secretaries had been no more icy than the insides of meat-market refrigerators. So I turned and walked along Sunset to the Sebastian Building.
Much of the ground floor was occupied by the local “Humble for President” headquarters. I skirted that, went in the main entrance and took the elevator up to the fourth floor. As I stepped out I could look down a long carpeted corridor lined with frosted-glass doors which kept popping open and closing. A man opened a door, leaped out, snapped his fingers, leaped back in. A young five-star admiral came toward me carrying a silver coffeepot. In the distance I could hear phones ringing.
I closed my mouth, stepped to the nearby frosted-glass door marked ulysses sebastian agency and beneath that office of the president. I didn't even knock. They weren't going to buffalo me. I rattled the doorknob a bit, then went in.
This was just a wee office. Just big enough for the gorgeous black-haired number sitting behind a pink desk low enough to show just enough: narrow waist, spectacular bosom, beautiful, haughty, high-fashion-model face. If a man had to wait, he wouldn't mind waiting in the wee office. But she admitted me to the real outer office. In it were the secretaries—there were two of them, all right—and a girl at a little switchboard. One of the secretaries looked very efficient, but the other was a dish.
I started toward the dish—and the other one said, “Mr. Scott?"
“Yes."
“Mr. Sebastian is expecting you.” She looked at her watch and seemed pleased. “You may go in."
It was 1:30 on the nose. I went to the door she'd indicated with a cool glance, and inside. I was in the presence.
It was a big room. The carpet and walls were the pretty green of new money, the ceiling a lighter pastel green. On the left wall were bright spots of color, paintings and collages and such by Sebastian clients, plus a large group of photographs of clients. In splendor on the right wall was a large color photo of Johnny Troy, looking sexy as a satyr, his fourteen gold records extending in a line left and right from the sides of his picture. There was room for another six or seven records, and I figured it wouldn't take long till he got those, too.
A huge black leather couch was against the wall beneath Troy's photo, two matching chairs were against the opposite wall and a third was near a big black desk behind which was—Ulysses Sebastian.
Despite all the color in this joint, he seemed about the brightest thing in the room. It wasn't his clothing, either; it was just Sebastian.
I'd seen him on television or in newspaper photos a hundred times, but we hadn't met. I was impressed. There was an air of warmth, life, vitality around him that didn't come through on film or tape. As I came in, he stood up and stepped around the desk toward me, saying pleasantly, “Mr. Scott. I'd have known you anywhere."
How about that? Here he was the guy whose chops had been displayed everywhere from the cover of Fortune to the Okefenokee Swamp Bulletin.
“Hello, Mr. Sebastian,” I said. “Good of you to see me."
We shook hands.
Sebastian was about fifty years old, as tall as I but quite thin, wearing a rough but perfectly fitted salt-and-pepper coat with gray slacks, a pale-blue shirt and neatly knotted tie. His hair was long, with a soft steely grayness at the temples brushed back over his ears. His eyes were black as sin, and he was almost devilishly handsome, except for what struck me as a slightly sardonic expression, as if he looked out upon the world—and me—with mild disdain. There was no evidence of that in his voice or manner, though.
“Come, sit down, Mr. Scott,” he said. I noticed he had a slight, very slight, lisp. Not much; more a lack of sibilance when he pronounced an s and not at all unpleasant. He went back behind his desk and I settled into the black chair.
“My secretary told me you wanted to see me about Charley,” he went on. “Are you representing his heirs?"
“Heirs?” I hadn't even thought of that. “Was he—did he leave a sizable estate?"
“A million or two, I imagine."
I liked the way he said that. He thought big. “A million or two.” Man, the difference between one million and two million is a whole million. At least. I said, “Actually, I'm not concerned with the estate—not yet, anyway. My only interest is the fact of Mr. White's death. You knew him well, naturally, and if there's any reason to assume his death wasn't an accident—"
“Not an accident? What else could it have been?” He waved a long, thin hand gracefully, as if wafting the question away. I noticed that the skin of his hands and face was smooth and unblemished, well cared for, unwrinkled, neat, as if it had been expensively tailored for him.
“In any unattended death there are four possibilities,” I said. “Natural causes, accident, suicide, and murder. I have to consider all of the last three."
“I see. I presume you're representing a relative?"
It was starting to dawn on me that I hadn't exactly been able to bore into the heart of this matter. Sebastian had a way of telling me lots of nothing. At least so far. “I'm representing a client,” I said, “named...” And I left it there. For some reason, in that moment I decided not to tell him. I grinned at him. “Well, a client."
“I did not intend to probe, Mr. Scott. Your client's identity is naturally of no interest to me.” He said it pleasantly, with a flashing smile, but there seemed a soft glitter in his eyes, and he spoke even more quietly than before.
“I've talked to the police,” I said. “They assume Mr. White's death was an accident—in the absence of any evidence to the contrary. I understand, however, that he had been undergoing analysis by Dr. Mordecai Withers—"
“What? You—” He stopped. His calm w
asn't imperturbable after all. That had stuck him. In fact, it appeared to have run clear through him. “How did you discover that?"
“I picked it up."
“Are you sure? Analysis? That's fantastic. Why would he have been in analysis?"
“You've got me. I was hoping you'd be able to tell me."
He shook his head. “Not I. I had no idea...” He stopped, slowly brushed his silvery hair back over one ear with the heel of his hand. “Ah. You feel that perhaps he committed suicide? Is that it?"
“I don't feel anything yet, Mr. Sebastian. You saw him frequently, didn't you?"
“Nearly every day. I think I anticipate your question, Mr. Scott. No, he did not seem to be in an unusually nervous, distraught, or mentally unbalanced state. I'm sure his death was an accident."
“How about murder?"
“Mur—” He winced, closed his eyes and opened them.
People often react like that, or in even more dramatic fashion, like throwing their hands way up in the air and crying, “Murder? Murder! Hah—hoo!” and such, as if they've never heard of such a thing. I guess I'm more used to the word, and the fact, than most people. Probably I should sneak up on the idea.
Finally, Sebastian said, “But that's fantastic. Who—” His phone rang. He said, “Pardon me,” lifted the phone and began talking into it, listening mostly. While he was concluding a deal for a million or two, or whatever he was doing, I looked around the office some more.
Behind Sebastian were a pair of tall windows, floor to ceiling, separated by a two-foot hunk of wall—at least, it had been wall. Now the space was occupied by the famous “Life and Death” oblong designed by Robert Dalton. It was a wooden oblong, two feet square and twelve feet high, on the face of which Dalton had painted the “work of genius” for which Ulysses Sebastian had paid $52,000—shortly before Dalton became a Sebastian client
The painting, or whatever it was, had been set into the wall so the face of the oblong was flush with the wall, and thus there was no way to tell it had ever been a oblong. That's what had distinguished it in the first place; now it looked just like an ordinary lousy picture. Why set it into the wall? Don't ask me. The people associated with Sebastian seemed to do things like that. Not only had it probably been necessary to weaken the whole damned wall to get the oblong monstrosity in there, but “Life and Death” didn't even look like $52,000 worth any more.
The Trojan Hearse (The Shell Scott Mysteries) Page 2