Hustle Sweet Love

by Davis, Maggie;

  “Silly Stacy!” the managing editor cried. “Nobody ever came in here not wanting to go Big Time, really! In the front of the book, and a lead position, too! You’re just too modest. I love you for it, honestly I do.”

  “People come and go around here,” Lacy persisted. “I mean, you never know who’s going to be next, do you? I might not even get past the three-month re-evaluation. Think about that.”

  “I love ‘Tacky-Max’,” the managing editor said with untypical firmness. “Everybody else does, too. Now, sweetie, Jamie Hatworth’s just dying to see that marvelous rough draft on the Tiny Lady Training Brassiere fantastic exclusive. Why don’t you go in your office and whip it up and rush it on over to her?”

  How could she explain, Lacy fretted, to somebody like Gloria that for reasons best left unmentioned, the president and chairman of the board of Fad’s conglomerate was going to get rid of her once and for all? Probably by the end of the week?

  There really wasn’t anybody else Lacy could confide in. Because everyone knew, or thought they knew, how she’d gotten the corner office while the rest of the junior writers were still sharing a utility table in an elbow of the art department. That hadn’t exactly made her Miss Popularity.

  Lacy was still feeling it was her duty to prepare somebody for the blow when she wandered into the assistant editor’s office.

  “‘Tacky-Max’ is a good job of writing,” a harried Jamie Hatworth assured her. She put her baby sitter on hold with a quick “I’ll get back to you, Lotus—I’ve got somebody here I want to talk to” and gave Lacy a weary smile. “You were there at the Fishman Brothers’ fire, you got a big story, Fad is giving it a big play. So what’s the problem?”

  “They, uh, bumped the Panty Pants article and lost a lot of money,” Lacy gulped, not wanting to meet the assistant editor’s eyes. “We’ll lose the Panty Pants ads eventually. That’s what Gloria said.”

  “We lose ads all the time, don’t worry, it’s Fad’s publishing disease. ‘Tacky-Max’ is a good lead, kid. You write with a light, zany touch, you’re different. It would have,” the small woman said kindly, “gone in, anyway. Is that what you want to know?”

  Lacy stared over Jamie’s head at a large four-color blowup of the current front cover of Fad, featuring Brooke Shields wearing Che Guevarra-type combat fatigues in red sequins. She was realizing that her attempts to let people know that she was going to be the first and probably only person axed during the job freeze because she was a flop as the conglomerate president’s girlfriend were definitely hopeless.

  “The corner office has lots of space, actually,” Lacy muttered unhappily. “I mean, there’s room for all three junior fashion writers in there if one of us converts the modular executive bar into a desk.”

  “I wouldn’t touch that one,” Jamie Hatworth said, sighing, “with a ten-foot pole. Just keep turning out the light, funny stuff, gorgeous. You’re out ahead by a mile.

  “In more ways than one,” the assistant editor added under her breath, picking up the telephone receiver again.

  When Lacy carried a copy of the proof of the new lead story on the Disco Flame Queen promotion at the Zebra to Mr. Fishman, he was ecstatic.

  “It’s as good as what People magazine did, if not better,” the dress manufacturer encouraged her. “You write so well, dear young lady, with the flair of your own unique personality. You should be very proud of yourself that this old establishment of Fad, which, you should pardon the expression, hasn’t kept abreast of the times so much lately, recognizes your superior talents. So what if the story is a little late? Consider it a profile piece, like in The New Yorker, which is always months behind in getting around to the subject.

  “Let me give you,” Irving said, lunging for his dress racks, “a token of my appreciation, which is past overdue. As a favor to me, you should have your complete pick of our new, improved model of Disco Flame Queens.”

  “I think they’re a little young for me,” Lacy said, politely refusing an orange satin mini with the face of Wayne Newton in neon-colored bugle beads on the front that Mr. Fishman held up for her.

  “Young?” he cried, replacing the disco dress on its hanger. “What is young at your age? You are maybe an old lady of twenty-one, twenty-two?”

  “I’m twenty-three,” Lacy said, full of sadness. “Almost twenty-four, actually.”

  “So now one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen in this business, and believe me, I have seen some beauties, is retired from the fashion business and is working as a very talented writer, an intellectual! What a gift, to have such loveliness and brains, too.

  “And now I see,” Mr. Fishman said with a note of triumph in his voice, “there is a man, also, a wonderful man. Not that your life hasn’t been full of men following you undoubtedly, threatening to jump off tall buildings because you don’t even look at them, but this is a special person, yes? Who has your heart now?”

  Lacy sighed heavily. She was hoping the gossip at Fad about the president and chairman of the board of Echevarria Enterprises, Inc., and one of the magazine’s newer junior fashion writers hadn’t penetrated the Seventh Avenue dress houses. It just made things that much more difficult.

  “Why do you ask if I’ve got a man, Mr. Fishman?” Lacy asked cautiously.

  Irving Fishman took his cigar out of his mouth to regard her with a calm, fatherly air. “Because you have the look, my dear gorgeously beautiful lady, of a woman in love. Believe me, I know the look of love when I see it. Here, let me give you the Neil Diamond number in blue. It’s a gift, blue goes better with your hair.”

  Lacy had a terrible sinking feeling. So it was true. Even Mr. Fishman could see it. She was in love.

  “It’s over, Mr. Fishman,” she confessed, not able to keep the pain from her voice. “Something happened I can’t talk about. Besides, he’s not in love with me. He was just using me.”

  “My poor darling,” the dress manufacturer said, quickly patting her on the head. “Such distress, it’s tearing me apart! I can’t conceive of such a schlemiel. Take my advice and forget this Cossack, whoever he is. Obviously he is not only crazy, he doesn’t deserve you. Go to lunch with this very cultivated handsome lawyer, Mr. Alexander van Renssalaer, who can’t get you out of his mind. He told me as much when he called me recently. Also, he left his card in case I should persuade you to go to the Harvard Club with him.”

  “I don’t need to go to the Harvard Club for lunch,” Lacy said, dabbing at her tears with her finger tips. “Honestly, Mr. Fishman, Mr. van Renssalaer is nice, but I don’t need to be in love with anybody else right now, not even a lawyer. I can’t help it—every man I meet only wants one thing. It’s so degrading. One of my biggest troubles as a model was trying to keep from being hassled, you know? And believe me, I don’t mind being retired from modeling, not at all. I could tell you about lecherous photographers, for instance—”

  “So you’ve heard,” Mr. Fishman said, sticking his cigar back in his mouth, “about Peter Dorsey. What a disaster! Peter Dorsey, one of the biggest fashion photographers in the business, strictly Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Fad, Gentleman’s Quarterly, but a lech, a real lech, you should thank God you didn’t have any trouble with him like some of the girls tell me. He went out of business Tuesday morning.”

  “What?” Lacy said, staring.

  “He was a young man,” Mr. Fishman said, gesturing eloquently with his cigar. “But he was practically an institution in the trade. The Cecil Beaton Award, the New York Dress Institute Award, he was making good money, fantastic money. But who knows what goes wrong? Maybe he was a poor manager. All of a sudden Tuesday morning he comes to open up his studio and there is a crowd of process servers, bailiffs with trucks to seize his equipment and carry all of it away, you name it. My brother-in-law in Brooklyn who is connected with a moving business tells me he heard they wiped him out. Also, they took away Peter Dorsey’s lease. The models who were waiting to shoot pictures for Macy’s summer catalog, they had to take eve
rything back to the store.”

  “Oh, no!” Lacy cried, feeling as though a bolt of lightning had struck. She suddenly had a good idea of what had happened to Peter Dorsey, and why. “Where is Peter Dorsey now?” she asked in a trembling voice. “They didn’t take him to jail, did they?”

  Mr. Fishman shrugged. “I heard it was nothing sexual, but maybe they should put a lech like that in jail, who knows? Actually, I was told in the Thirty-first Street Deli this morning when I went in for bagels and coffee that Peter Dorsey, the photographer, was having his mail forwarded to a Trappist monastery in Vermont. Although this I frankly refuse to believe, because I happen to know personally that Peter Dorsey is not a Catholic.”

  “I can’t believe it!” Lacy cried, horror struck.

  But actually, she could.

  As soon as she could leave Fishman Brothers’ loft, Lacy went straight to a telephone booth on Thirty-first Street and Seventh Avenue to call the Fad editorial offices.

  It was all true, Jamie Hatworth confirmed. Peter Dorsey Photographics, Inc., had folded overnight, leaving a backlog of photographic assignments for some of New York’s biggest fashion magazines and advertising agencies just hanging. Including a batch for Fad magazine. Fad’s art department was hysterical. And, yes, the rumor was that Peter Dorsey had called one of his friends on Vanity Fair just before he left town to tell them he was voluntarily joining a Trappist monastery. It had always been one of his lifelong ambitions.

  “It can’t be,” Lacy groaned, hanging up the receiver. She remembered now, too late, what she’d said at dinner with Michael, about Peter Dorsey being responsible for all the troubles in her life. But anybody who knew her wouldn’t take her seriously, would they? She’d had several glasses of wine and she was practically out on her feet with exhaustion! What else had she said? She remembered saying something about his expensive cigars and Fidel Castro’s Communist Cuba. She supposed Cuba was safe enough.

  What had happened seemed perfectly clear. People didn’t go out of business overnight and join Trappist monasteries when they weren’t even Catholic. What had descended on Peter Dorsey, even though he richly deserved it, was all her fault. She had to take full responsibility for it naturally.

  And if she didn’t know already the way Michael Echevarria’s mind worked, and the power he could wield, her new private eye stood in a doorway on the east side of Thirty-first Street, his hands shoved into the pockets of his trench coat. So much for Michael’s promise he wouldn’t have her followed. As long as she worked at Fad—and it wasn’t going to be long now, Lacy knew, his detective was going to track her movements, down to every last hour of what he thought was their bargain.

  Lacy sagged against the telephone booth. She’d just had a horrible memory of something that had occurred that night in the Sutton Place apartment. It wasn’t very clear, but it seemed that she’d had this weird semiconscious dream and headache and had just rambled on and on about what had happened in the front seat of the Buick with Bobby Sullivan that fateful senior-prom night six long years before. There was no telling what she’d set in motion with that one! Had she said all that out loud, or hadn’t she? She tried to think. It was no good—her mind was a blank!

  With shaking hands, Lacy dialed directory assistance and got the number for the East Hampton firm of Harrison, Sullivan and Weems, Certified Public Accountants. It took her several long moments to get Bobby Sullivan to the telephone. Lacy realized she hadn’t exchanged more than a dozen words with Bobby since high school, and there was, after all, a terrible burden of guilt that lay between them. She wasn’t surprised to find that his voice, when he came on the line, was extremely wary.

  “Lacy, is it really you? Listen, where are you calling from?” he asked very cautiously.

  “I’m calling from New York City,” Lacy said, putting her hand over one ear to shut out the noise of midtown Manhattan traffic. “From a telephone booth. Oh, Bobby, are you all right?” she cried. “I mean, is Harrison, Sullivan and Weems still in business? Nothing’s happened this morning, has it? I mean, the office was still there when you came in, wasn’t it? There hasn’t been any trouble?”

  There was definitely a note of alarm in Bobby Sullivan’s voice as he said, “You’re calling me from a telephone booth? What do you mean, is the office still here? Lacy—what in the hell, have you heard of a bomb threat or something?”

  “A bomb?” Lacy said faintly. She really didn’t think Michael Echevarria would go that far. “I’m calling to—” She found herself strangling on the words. “Oh, good grief, Bobby, I don’t want anything to happen to you!”

  But there was no guarantee, was there? The whole experience that night with Bobby in the front seat of the Buick had left a scar on her life, there was no arguing with that.

  She could no longer ignore the screams and noises very clearly in the background at Harrison, Sullivan and Weems.

  “We’re starting an evacuation,” the voice of Bobby Sullivan said over the racket desperately. “Lacy, don’t hang up—oh, my God, I knew we shouldn’t have done those tax forms for that crowd in Queens! Lacy, your contacts in New York, did they tell you what we should look for?

  “I mean,” Bobby Sullivan shouted over the noises of crashes and hysterical shrieks, “is it smaller than a breadbox, or is it large, black and shiny? Tell me what they—”

  But Lacy did hang up. There was nothing more she could do, she told herself, leaning weakly against the side of the telephone booth and closing her eyes. Either there was a bomb in Bobby Sullivan’s office out there in East Hampton, or there wasn’t. She supposed you could hire anybody if you had enough money. And the president of Echevarria Enterprises had plenty of that.

  There was only one way to find out for sure.

  “I’d like to speak to Mr. Michael Echevarria,” Lacy managed to say when the company operator answered. The next voice she heard was that of Michael’s secretary. Lacy bit her lip, suddenly uncertain.

  “May I ask who’s calling, please?” a cool, crisp woman’s voice asked her.

  She never thought she’d have to do anything like this. Like calling him at work. It was possible they wouldn’t let her through to him. After all, he was one of the richest and most powerful men in the country. Corporate secretaries filtered calls for executives just so they wouldn’t be bothered with people they didn’t want to talk to. There was no reason he should want to talk to her now. Not after Saturday morning in the Sutton Place condominium.

  “He’s in a meeting right now,” the voice continued. “If you leave your name and number, I’ll see if he can get back to you.”

  “It’s Lacy Kingston,” she said, without hope.

  Astonishingly there was only the barest second’s wait and then Michael Echevarria’s cool, authoritative voice came on the line, “Lacy,” he said quickly, “what’s the matter?”

  Lacy clutched the telephone receiver with both hands, not able to speak in a sudden rush of emotion. He was there! He was going to speak to her! He couldn’t still be furious with her, or he wouldn’t have answered the telephone as though he had practically leaped on it when his secretary told him who it was! Now his low, quiet voice was so near and shatteringly familiar she wasn’t prepared for the tidal wave of happiness that swept over her.

  “Oh, Michael,” Lacy cried. It was so nice to know that this powerful president and chairman of the board of a great conglomerate would talk to you, even though you’d hit him in the head with a shoe the last time you’d seen him. Most men would never have forgiven that.

  “I’m in an important conference, Lacy.” His tone wasn’t impatient—in fact, it held a note of concern. “What is it? Are you all right?”

  “Yes. No!” She wasn’t sure how she should put this. She wanted to be discreet. “Where is Peter Dorsey?” she blurted. “Something terrible’s happened to him, hasn’t it?”

  “Ah, I see.” His voice changed, became rather cool. “Your former friend had severe financial troubles, I suppose you’ve heard.�
�� Then with an abrupt edge: “He hasn’t threatened you or anything like that, has he?”

  “Threatened me?” Visions of a commando raid on a quiet Trappist monastery in the hills of Vermont swept through her head. “Oh, no! Please let him be a monk and be happy! He has gone to a monastery, hasn’t he? He was so young!”

  “Is this,” the voice on the other end of the line said grimly, “what you’re calling about? That you’re worried about this ... photographer? I’m informed that he has an estranged wife and a daughter in California. They’ve agreed to take him in temporarily.”

  “Oh, rats,” Lacy moaned, slumping against the door of the telephone booth and ignoring the several people outside who were banging on it and pointing at their wristwatches. Michael Echevarria’s voice sounded definitely chilly and unfriendly. “Bailiffs came and took all Peter’s equipment, sent his models away, locked up his studio. It must have been terrible.”

  “I frankly don’t understand your interest,” he growled, “considering what this man did to you.”

  Lacy moaned again. So he had managed to misunderstand what she’d said at dinner. Michael Echevarria thought it was Peter Dorsey who had—that is, not Bobby Sullivan—but Peter Dorsey.

  She didn’t know if this made things better or worse. “I’m really not all that worried about Peter Dorsey,” Lacy tried to explain. “He deserves everything he gets, as long as he isn’t dead, or anything like that. I just—” She breathed a small, audible sigh. Forget Peter Dorsey, her inner voice told her. The important thing now is that Michael is on the line, he’s still speaking to you. He’s talking about all this very calmly and rationally. “I really don’t,” Lacy said humbly, “know why you bothered. About anything. Not after last weekend.”

  There was silence on the other end. Then the president and chairman of the board said rather huskily, “Lacy, I don’t want anybody to hurt you, do you understand? I don’t like it even if it happened in the past. Make that especially in the past, when you were too young to take care of yourself. I don’t understand what in the hell your parents were thinking of, to turn you loose in New York City in the damned modeling business, alone.”