Acceptable Losses

by Irwin Shaw

  “Who doesn’t have enemies? Why do you ask that?”

  “I have a feeling somehow that he was threatened while I was away and he’s reacting.”

  “Whatever else you can say about our profession,” Oliver said, “it’s a pacific one. Writers don’t go around killing people unless they’re Hemingway, and unfortunately we don’t have any Hemingways on our list. Of course, Mailer stabbed one of his wives with a pocket-knife, but we don’t have Mailer either.” He tried to smile comfortingly and patted Sheila’s hand again. “Maybe it’s just a passing mood. Maybe he was melancholy because you were away and this is the way he’s showing it.”

  “I’ve been away longer than two days before this,” Sheila said, “and he hasn’t proposed living in a fortress because of it.”

  “Maybe he’s hidden it up to now and the two days were the drop that made the cup brimmeth over.”

  “Literary allusions don’t answer this particular problem,” Sheila said curtly. “Is there anything else you could tell me?”

  Oliver hesitated, played with the food on his plate. “One thing. Two things, to be exact.”

  “What?” Sheila’s voice was harsh. “Don’t hide anything, Oliver. Not from me.”

  “Well,” he said, speaking reluctantly, “he was supposed to read a manuscript over the weekend—it’s by a woman we’ve had some luck with up to now—and he’s always so punctilious about getting things read quickly—but on Monday morning he threw the manuscript on my desk and said he couldn’t make anything out of it and asked me to read it and tell him if it was any damn good or not. It turned out that it was perfectly acceptable and he said, Okay, you handle the deal, even though he’d made the contracts for that particular writer every time. Oh, I forgot, I didn’t order anything to drink. Would you like a glass of wine?”

  “Forget the wine. You said two things. What was the second thing?”

  Oliver looked uncomfortable. “I don’t know whether you want to hear this, Sheila,” he said.

  “I’ve got to help Roger,” Sheila said, “and so do you. And we won’t be able to do it if we keep things from each other. What’s the second thing?”

  “Roger once told me that sometimes you reminded him of Medea,” Oliver said, postponing. “Now I see what he meant.”

  “I’d kill anybody who tried to harm my husband,” Sheila said evenly. “And it has nothing to do with a young man showing off that he read enough Greek literature to know who Medea was.”

  “I’m your friend, Sheila,” Oliver said, hurt. “And Roger’s. You know that.”

  “Prove it.” She spoke without pity. “What’s the second thing?”

  Oliver coughed as though he had caught something in his throat and drank half a glass of water. “The second thing,” he said as he put the glass down, “is that he asked Miss Walton to call City Hall and find out how he could get a permit to carry a pistol.”

  Sheila closed her eyes. “Oh, Christ,” she said softly.

  “Oh, Christ it is,” Oliver said. “What are you going to say to Roger?”

  “I’m going to repeat every word of our conversation to him,” Sheila said.

  “He’ll never forgive me.”

  “That will be just too bad,” Sheila said.

  CHAPTER

  FIVE

  DAMON LOOKED AT HIS watch impatiently. He had called his ex-wife, Elaine, and told her to meet him in the restaurant at one o’clock. It was now one-twenty. She had always been late for everything, which was one of the many reasons for their divorce, and she had not changed. She had not changed in other of her habits, either. She still smoked three packs of cigarettes a day and drank from morning to night and gambled away whatever money she could lay her hands on. The mixed odors of cigarette smoke and alcohol that had enveloped her still made the routine kiss of greeting on her cheek a trial for him. She had always dressed sloppily, like a girl going to class in the rain on a weekday morning in Northampton and now, a woman of sixty gone to fat, she still might appear in a restaurant in jeans and a sweater two sizes too large for her. What had seemed a charming lack of vanity in a girl when he had first met her in the book store where she worked was now a studied affectation of youthfulness in the woman. She had been a pretty girl when he married her, with a pert, mischievous small face and long red hair, and she had been smart and witty and had a generous and compassionate heart, but her airy way with money and her indolent neglect of herself and him and their apartment, plus her three addictions, had destroyed the marriage. They had married in haste, ten days after their first meeting, and they had not slept with each other before their wedding. Their discovery that they did not satisfy each other sexually had started the marriage off as an unexpected and puzzling calamity from which finally there was no recovery.

  Despite all this, the divorce had been amicable. Freed of the bonds of physical obligations, they remained friends. Her taste in literature was eclectic and dependable, and he sometimes gave her manuscripts to read to get her reaction to them, and her advice was usually helpful. It was only in the last three years, after her second husband died, that she had taken to asking him for money. Her husband had been a professional gambler, and together with him she had spent most of her time at Las Vegas and at racetracks around the country, sometimes, varying with the speed of horses or the turn of a wheel, living in high style and sometimes forced to pawn the jewelry her husband showered on her during lucky streaks.

  Damon was not a miserly man and even with his limited means before Threnody he would not have begrudged her the comparatively small sums she asked of him if he hadn’t known that the money would end up in the hands of clerks in liquor stores and of bookies and players who were more expert than she at the backgammon board. It was at those times that he returned home grim-faced and out of sorts and to endure Sheila’s disapproval.

  Still, through it all Elaine had retained her ability to amuse him. Today, though, he thought glumly, looking at his watch again, the conversation would not be amusing.

  He saw her coming into the restaurant and looking around near-sightedly for him. Her hair was now cut short and dyed a violent magenta to hide the gray streaks. Gratefully, he saw that she had on a decent dark blue dress and was wearing high-heeled shoes instead of her usual scuffed moccasins. The fumes as he kissed her cheek, however, were still the same.

  Her face was surprisingly young and unlined and her green eyes, against all odds, were clear.

  “You look very well,” he said, as they seated themselves side by side on the banquette. “Very chic, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

  “I’ve had a nice run with the horses,” she said. “It improves the health. And I’ve got a new boy friend who insisted I burn all my old clothes.”

  “Good for him,” Damon said, thinking, at the age of eighty she’ll still be having new boy friends.

  She turned on the banquette so that she could look at him. “You don’t look all that well. What is it—doesn’t good luck agree with you?”

  “I didn’t ask you to come here to talk about my health,” Damon said. “It’s something else.”

  “If it’s about the money I owe you”—she had always pretended that what he gave her were not gifts but loans—“I probably could squeeze most of it out of my boy friend. He’s a distributor.”

  “Distributor of what? Clothes to undeserving ladies?”

  Elaine smiled calmly, undisturbed by the jibe. She had never had a bad temper, except when drunk, when she insulted everyone in sight. “Slot machines. It’s a nice income, even though it means having business dinners with some very peculiar gentlemen.”

  “It’s just because of that,” Damon said, “that I asked you to have lunch with me. As long as I’ve known you, with your penchant for gambling, you’ve mingled with peculiar gentlemen, at least in my view of things. Jockeys, horse-trainers, gamblers, bookies, touts, and God knows what else.”

  “A girl has a right to choose her friends,” Elaine said with dignity. “They’r
e a lot more fun than those dreary writers always talking about Henry James you used to bring home. If you intend to lecture me I might as well leave right now.” She started to get up, but he waved her down.

  “Sit down, sit down.” He looked up at the waiter who was standing in front of their table. “What do you want to eat?”

  “Aren’t you going to offer me a drink? Or are you still crusading to keep me sober?”

  “I forgot. What do you want?”

  “What’s that you’re drinking?” She gestured toward the small glass beside his plate.

  “Sherry.”

  She made a face. “Dreadful stuff. Hell on the liver. Vodka on the rocks is nice at this time of day. Or don’t you remember?”

  “All too well.” Damon looked up at the waiter. “One vodka on the rocks.”

  “Another sherry, Sir?” the waiter asked.

  Damon shook his head. “I’ll make do with this. Take the rest of our order, please.”

  The restaurant was well known for its French cuisine, but Elaine didn’t even look at the menu and ordered a hamburger with fried onions.

  “Still on junk food, I see,” Damon said.

  “The all-American girl,” Elaine said, laughing. “Or all-American lady, considering my age. Now—why are you so interested all of a sudden in my disreputable friends?”

  Damon took a long breath, then speaking slowly and clearly to make sure Elaine understood every word, repeated the conversation over the telephone with Zalovsky verbatim, stopping only for a moment when the waiter returned with the vodka. It was a conversation that was not difficult to remember.

  Elaine’s face turned grave as she listened, and she didn’t touch her drink until he had finished. Then she drank off half of it in one gulp. “What a sonofabitch of a night that must have been. No wonder you look the way you do. Do you know anybody called Zalovsky?”

  “No. Do you?”

  “No. I’ll ask Freddie, that’s my boy friend, if he does, but it’s an outside chance.”

  “Does your Freddie indulge in a little blackmail when he’s not distributing slot machines?”

  Elaine looked uncomfortable. “It’s possible. But only in the line of business.” She finished her glass and tapped it to indicate to the waiter, who was passing the table, that she wanted another one. “He knows about you, of course, but as far as he’s concerned, it could all have happened during the Civil War. The only agents he knows are from the FBI and the only thing he reads is the Racing Form.”

  “Are you ever in Chicago?”

  “Oh, once in a while, when there’s a big race at Arlington or when Freddie asks me to go along on a business trip and we stop off on the way to Vegas.”

  “Of course,” Damon said, “it might have been somebody’s idea of a nasty practical joke.”

  Elaine shook her head. “It doesn’t sound like a joke to me. I don’t want to frighten you any more than necessary, but my guess is it’s a serious business. Dead serious. What do you plan to do when he calls you again?”

  “I’m not sure. I thought you might have some ideas.”

  “Let me think.” She sipped at her second vodka, lit a cigarette and tried to blow the smoke away with a gesture of her hand. “Well, I know a detective on the homicide squad. Do you want me to talk to him and find out what he thinks you ought to do?”

  “I don’t like the word,” Damon said. “Homicide.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, “it’s the only detective I know.”

  “Talk to him and thank you.”

  “I’ll call you and let you know what he says.”

  “Call me at the office. I don’t want my wife picking up the phone when Zalovsky calls again.”

  “You mean to tell me you haven’t told her you’re being threatened?” He could see Elaine meant it as an accusation.

  “I don’t want to alarm her unnecessarily.”

  “Unnecessarily, for God’s sake. If you’re in danger, so is she. Couldn’t you figure that out? If, for some reason whoever is after you can’t get hold of you, what do you think they’ll do—join the Boy Scouts? They’ll grab her.”

  “I haven’t had as much experience in these matters as you have.” He knew that she was right, but even so he knew he sounded sulky at her rebuke.

  “Just because I go to Vegas a few times a year, don’t talk as though I was the queen gun moll of the Mafia.” Her voice was tinged with anger. “It’s just common sense, for God’s sake.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” he said reluctantly. “I’ll tell her.” Another great night ahead at the Damon residence, he thought, as he watched the waiter put Elaine’s hamburger down and his own filet of sole.

  “Are you going to order some wine?” Elaine asked.

  “Of course. What do you want?”

  “What do you want? The host usually orders the wine and I gather that this is your lunch.”

  “I don’t like to drink in the middle of the day,” he said. It had always been difficult not to sound sanctimonious around Elaine.

  “A half-bottle of Beaujolais,” she said to the waiter. In the old days she would have ordered a full bottle. Perhaps, he thought, she’s tapering off.

  “Zalovsky, from Chicago,” she said, almost to herself as she slathered the hamburger with ketchup. “Have you any idea what he might look like?”

  “I only talked to him on the phone for a couple of minutes,” Damon said, “but actually, from his voice I made a mental picture of him. Forty-five, fifty, perhaps, a heavy man, flashy clothes, no evidence of any education.”

  “What’ve you done about it so far?” Elaine asked.

  “There’s nothing much I can do about it—yet. Oh, I’m applying for a permit to carry a gun.”

  Elaine scowled. “I don’t think that’s such a good idea. You know what I’d do if I were you, Roger,” she said, “I’d start making lists.”

  “What kind of lists?”

  “People who for one reason or other had a grudge against you, nuts who’ve come into your office and been turned away, people who think you’ve cheated them somehow, ladies you’ve discarded or husbands or boy friends of ladies you haven’t discarded soon enough …” She grinned and her face was momentarily pert, ageless, again. “Boy, that would be a list. And go way back. People let things fester for years, turn neurotic as they get older—have a run of bad luck and look for someone to blame, or see a movie about revenge or about a woman scorned or God knows what else. Some crazy writer may have offered you a script that you didn’t even read and sent back with a one-line refusal and then read Threnody and seen it on the bestseller lists and think he’s been plagiarized. God, I haven’t been close to you for donkey’s years and even I could make a good-sized list without half-trying. And don’t just look for clues under Z’s. The name might mean nothing. And when you talk to the detective, his name is Lieutenant Schulter by the way, don’t be shy about your exploits. He might just catch something, a hint, that you never thought of. And …” She hesitated, fork in air. “And you might ask your wife to take a good look at her past. She’s a beautiful woman I’ve heard, or at least was a beautiful woman, and I’ve never known a beautiful woman who hasn’t a pot full of grief in her life or who hasn’t at least once picked a real wrong man. And she’s half-Italian and you never know what sort of connections Italians have that they don’t care to advertise.”

  “Oh, leave the Italian thing out of it, please. Her uncle owned a garage in Connecticut.” This was an old battle between them. Elaine came from strict Wisconsin German stock, which explained their chastity before their wedding day, if not after, and had strong opinions about the unworthy characteristics of Italians, Greeks, Jews, airline stewardesses, the Irish and Scotch. If she had ever met a Bulgarian or an Outer Mongolian, she would probably have discovered that one couldn’t trust them, either.

  Elaine watched the waiter pour the wine, her face stubborn. The waiter was dark and Mediterranean-looking. Damon hoped the waiter hadn’t caught th
e end of Elaine’s diatribe.

  “So he had a garage in Connecticut,” Elaine said when the waiter left and she had swigged down half a glass of wine. “I bet there’s about eight other uncles who never saw a garage, but saw plenty of other things that might have interested the police from time to time.”

  “I said leave the Italian thing out of this.”

  “You asked me to help.” Now she was affronted. “If you won’t listen to me, what’s the sense in my telling you what I think?”

  “Okay, okay,” he said wearily, “I’ll make those lists.”

  “And take a good look at your wife’s lists, too, while you’re at it,” Elaine said. “And I hope you’re still married at the end of it. Please”—her voice softened—“please be careful. Don’t let anything happen to you. I have to know that you’re all right and still around. Today, as always, I’m glad to see you, no matter what the reason. Let’s pretend for the rest of the bottle that this is a romantic, nostalgic lunch, and that you’re my glorious old lover whose heart has been broken for thirty years because we parted.”

  She poured herself another glass of wine, lifted it in a toast toward him. “Now, let’s forget it for the rest of the meal and try to get some pleasure out of being together again and still able to eat and drink without wanting to kill each other. Now tell me, honestly, do you think I ought to have my face lifted?”

  CHAPTER

  SIX

  HE WALKED SLOWLY ON his way back to the office after lunch, going over in his mind what Elaine had said to him while slugging away at the drink, hardly noticing the people around him, the names of men and women he had known in his long life not arranging themselves in his brain in orderly and manageable lists as suggested by Elaine, but swirling around in a mist and confusion of identities. Then, suddenly, he saw a slightly stooped, small old man with thick glasses, dressed in a black coat with a fur collar approaching him. There was only one man he had ever known who had a coat like that—Harrison Gray.

  “Harrison!” he said and hurried to meet him and put out his hand.