Death Wore a Smart Little Outfit

by Orland Outland

  “He threw me over for a life of cheap thrills in far-flung ports. I think he’s a writer now.”

  “Oh? What does he write?”

  “All about cheap thrills in far-flung ports, I dare say. For magazines we would not want in our homes. Anyway, you wanted to see me, my dear?”

  “Yes. Pour me a drink, will you.” Doan obeyed, ignoring Frannie’s frown. “I need your help.”

  “And you always have it.”

  “There’s money in it for you.”

  “I adore money, and did you know that you’re the one person I know who I’ve never gotten any out of?”

  “I want you to take ...” she pulled back her comforter to reveal four bulky manila envelopes, “ ...these to the locations specified on them, deposit them there, and not ask any questions.”

  Doan hiked several miles to the other side of the bed and picked one up. “Good lord did you type War and Peace over for fun? Eleanor, these addresses Geneva, Bermuda Paris, London?”

  She handed him his tickets. “Here ya go, kiddo. All-expenses-paid trip to fun capitals of the world, courtesy of Eleanor Van Owens...Ambermere,” she added the last word as an unpleasant afterthought.

  “What’s in them?”

  “No questions.”

  “Oh, crap, come off it! This is Doan! You are asking me, the world’s biggest gossip, to do something without knowing what it’s all about?”

  “You’re putting four copies of the same set of papers in safe places around the world. Can you leave tomorrow? And I made Bermuda the last stop, figured that was where you’d probably want to loiter awhile, but the rest of them have got to get deposited fairly quickly.”

  Doan sighed. “You want me to just drop everything and...go.”

  “Yeah. If you would, please.”

  “Ah! You said please! About time!”

  She narrowed her eyes to regard him. “Yes, Doan. Please do this for me. Please spend time in the great capitals of the world. Please spend the ten thousand dollars you’ll find in that envelope behind the tickets.”

  Doan choked. “What! Now, I really don’t need that kind of money. I don’t want it. After all, how fast can you spend it, really? Real fast, sure, if you start. But I’d look at it, and then I’d think, I really should invest this. And do you know what would happen then? I’d have to go visit my broker to see how my money was doing, and I couldn’t wear a dress, because you can dress like this if you’re very rich, and no one will mess with you because you’re rich, and you can dress like this if you’re very poor, because people expect colorful characters, as they would describe me, to be poor - but if you were suddenly middle - class and dressed like this, why, they’d lock you up!”

  She smiled. “Cheer up. There are casinos in Bermuda, so you can lose some of it, and some of the most gorgeous men go there to find someone to take care of them for a while, so you can spend some on them.”

  “Me, supporting someone else? What a novel idea!”

  “Then you’ll do it.”

  He realized he had been caught completely off guard. “Only if l know what I’m carrying. Are you a Communist plant, who’s spent all these years faking illness as part of your deep cover? Am I taking secrets out of the country?”

  “Let’s just say that they have something to do with my divorce. And that I may not need them. They’re a record of all of Charles’s little indiscretions. I started it before he knew I was getting better. I spied on him in his study, recorded his phone calls, all sorts of good stuff. So, if anything happens to me, there’s the evidence to put him away. And in case anything happens to you between here and Europe, God forbid of course, I’ve got the originals in a safe place here that only I know about.”

  “Eleanor! Do you really think he’d kill you?”

  Her face became grave. “If you knew Charles like I know Charles, you wouldn’t ask.”

  “So why have you waited to put these papers in safe places?”

  “Because he agreed to my terms of divorce last week.”

  “What? Then why do I have to ...”

  “Because it was too easy. That means Charles has got money from somewhere else. From some shady operation he’s got going. You see, I lied to him. I told him the papers were already hidden away. I also didn’t tell him about everything I’ve got on him. Now it seems to be advisable to actually do it.”

  “Why don’t we just kill him?” Doan said, having extremely catholic tastes in justice and not being wild about the idea that he might meet with a bad end on this errand. Frannie grunted her approval of this idea.

  “Because,” she explained, “I want him to suffer.”

  Doan smiled. “Now, that’s my kind of reasoning: revenge as an art form.”

  Frannie’s sixth sense stirred her. “Ambermere’s back.”

  “Uh-oh,” Doan said. “Is there a back exit?”

  “If you want to hop the fence and cut through the de Crump’s yard.”

  “I’ll protect you,” Frannie swore, and they made their way out.

  “Call me from your stops,” Eleanor shouted after him. “I want to be sure you haven’t gotten distracted by that cash - or some man.”

  “No distractions until business is taken care of,” Doan promised. And even though Charles Ambermere came through the door while Doan and Frannie were still on the Scarlett O’Hara staircase, the thought of $10,000 with no bills attached had left Doan feeling warm as toast.

  “Hello, there,” he said jauntily.

  Ambermere looked up, surprise quickly replaced by a scowl.

  “Oh, it’s you.”

  “C’est moi!” Doan corrected him, thinking of his imminent trip to Europe. “Sorry to hear about the divorce,” he added, unable to help himself.

  Although handsome in his youth, Charles Ambermere was not now a good-looking man even in the best lighting and on his good behavior, and hadn’t been for some twenty alcoholic years. His bespoke suits concealed his paunch and narrow shoulders, his glossy silver hair was expensively maintained at prices that would have made a Trump blush, and yet, nothing could be done short of major plastic surgery for that face; a sour, red-nosed complexion, blobby lips pursed in disapproval ... think of Santa Claus laid off and forced into a one-room apartment in the bad part of town, drinking away his Social Security check, and that’s what Charles’s face looked like.

  He pointed at Doan. “You...one day...will get what’s coming to you.”

  Doan brightened. “I do hope so! Well, it’s been nice seeing you. Goodbye!” he added, enjoying the pleasure of looking down on the five-foot-six Charles as he passed him by.

  “What are you looking at,” Charles demanded of Frannie, who was smirking on the stairs.

  “Guess,” she said, leaving him to his humiliation and rage.

  Binky worked as a clerical cog at the San Francisco Police Department, a job that completely mortified her well-to-do Main Line relatives, who were, however, not mortified enough to liberate her trust fund and enable her to live without a job. The purpose of her grandfather’s will had been to see to it that all his granddaughters had good allowances to supplement their husband’s incomes – for they would all, of course, have wealthy husbands of good family. Binky had not married, the family disapproved of this state of affairs, and so the trust money continued as a trickle rather than a flood. This unpleasant state of affairs resulted in Binky’s requiring permanent employment, something her early life had not prepared her for, since having to toil at some drudgy job was not what her kind were ever supposed to even think of having to do. Had she not been forced by childhood teachers to learn how to type (her handwriting being unladylike in the extreme), she would now not have even had this minimal skill to use in defying the dictates of the Van de Kamps.

  She growled in response to her fellow employees’ hellos, poured a cup of coffee, and sat down at her desk. A sip of coffee reassured her that her chances of living through the morning were good. Then Julie showed up.

  “Hi!” If t
hey still made them, Binky thought, Julie would be a perfect Mouseketeer. Dealing with perky people with no problems was not one of Binky’s strong points.

  “Hello, Julie,” she sighed.

  “Hey, did you see this morning’s Times?” Julie asked her.

  “Belatedly, yeah.”

  “Did you read about what that crazy Mrs. Ambermere’s done now?” she asked breathlessly.

  “If it wasn’t in Art’s column or Liz’s, then no, I didn’t.”

  Julie sighed theatrically, cheered by the opportunity to berate someone sillier than herself. “Honestly, Binky, I don’t understand you. You’re a Woman of the Nineties,” Julie pronounced with the reverence Binky felt should be used only for words like Gaultier or heavy cream. “You should be informed about the world around you.”

  “Julie, I can tell you any day’s news in one sentence: a plane has crashed, people are poorer, taxes are higher, someone’s at war.”

  “Saw it,” Lisa said. “Sued for divorce.”

  Lisa had been there longer than any of them, and the absence of proper articles in the police reports she typed all day had affected her powers of speech.

  “What!” Binky asked, shocked.

  “Good,” Mark, the only male typist, said with great satisfaction. “Old man Ambermere will be broke after he pays the alimony she’ll get out of him, the way he’s treated her. It was all her money to start with, you know.”

  Julie got indignant. “You don’t think that poor man has suffered at her hands? What with her crazy stunts and the way she went through all that money on her trips and the way she was always being brought home by the police? Think of what she could have done for the poor, homeless people with all that money...”

  Binky allowed the low drone to find its proper place in the back of her mind as she began the day’s work. Mark lit a cigarette, saw the hungry look on Binky’s face, and tossed her one. “What are you doing this weekend?” He was always eager to silence Julie, had been ever since he’d casually mentioned his boyfriend on his first day of work two weeks ago, and Julie had not nearly as casually informed him that accepting Jesus into his heart could save him from the depraved life that was leading him straight to hell.

  “I was saying,” Julie continued, “that...”

  “I’m going to sleep till noon, then have some pastry delivered, then chill a bottle of champagne, read a Wodehouse novel while eating and drinking my goodies, listen to some extremely loud classical music, and then go out to dinner with some gorgeous man, whom I have not yet met.”

  “Ohhh ...” Mark moaned, more at the thought of the day alone with all of life’s luxuries than at the thought of the man. As was the case with so many people in the city these days, food had effectively replaced sex as the primary deliverer of earthly delight.

  “Yes, oh, yes! Do it to me now!” he shouted, mentally adding a fresh, hot loaf of sourdough bread split down the middle with a stick of butter shoved inside it. As was also the case with most people, food had so effectively replaced sex (that, really, had been so boring most of the time, whereas pastry from the right bakery never failed to deliver the big O) that one was prone to use the terminology of one in reference to the other.

  “There’s no smoking in public buildings as of January first,” Julie reminded them.

  “Well then,” Binky said, “I’ll just have to chain-smoke between now and then to get ahead of the game.”

  Julie made a sound of disgust and went to work.

  Later that morning, Mark got a call. “Oh, God,” he moaned. “I’ve got to go see Old Rotgut.”

  Sympathy was dispensed by all but Julie. Sergeant Seamus Flaharity’s alcoholic incompetence endeared him to many of his fellow officers, for reasons we shall not attempt to fathom. A sergeant for twenty of his thirty years on the force, politics dictated he would go no farther. To the chief of police, he was a priceless asset in the conservative parts of town, but elsewhere in the city he was a embarrassment. His well-known fondness for cheap whiskey, coupled with his enormous stomach (the rest of him being quite skinny, so that in silhouette he looked like a yam mounted on toothpicks), had earned him his nickname.

  Binky was caught up on her fellow employees’ lives and the best office gossip by ten, and, not seeing any point in doing any work, was ready to go home. This not being fiscally possible, she decided to amble by Rotgut’s office and see if she could pick up a thread of the conversation.

  She took her cup with her and stood at the water cooler outside his door.

  She heard Mark’s indignant voice first.

  “...can’t fire me!”

  “...whatever I want.”

  “...sue you...discrimination…”

  “...little fag, listen up...”

  “Little fag! You asshole, you...”

  “...nottheone...uptheass...”

  Binky turned tail and ran. Too ugly for words.

  Mark stormed back in and slammed the door, which caused Julie to spill her herb tea. “I’ve just been fired!”

  “I know. I overheard every other word of it.”

  “I can’t believe this. This is San Francisco, for God’s sake. People don’t get fired for eating dogs or smoking dope or screwing sheep.”

  “They do if they work for the Police Department,” Julie crowed, tossing her head. “We have an image to maintain.”

  Mark looked at her with disbelief, then shook his head. He grabbed his coat and flew out the door.

  Julie sighed. “Don’t worry about him, Binky. They’re used to getting fired. I have to say I’m glad, though.”

  “Why? What the hell did he ever do to you?”

  “Well, you know. I mean... well, I’ve been worried lately. About AIDS. And being around a...homosexual,” she accomplished the death-defying feat of compressing the word into one syllable, as if saying it too slowly could make her one. “He’s probably got it. They’ve probably all got it.”

  Binky smiled. “Julie?”

  “Yes?” she answered brightly.

  “It’s amazing that though I’ve worked with you for six months, until now I never realized what a truly ignorant bitch you are.”

  Julie’s eyes widened, her lower lip trembled, and then she burst into tears. Lisa rolled her eyes and went back to work.

  Binky got up and walked behind Julie. “I’m sorry.” She kissed Julie on the top of her head, then she whispered in her ear. “I kissed a homosexual this morning, Julie. So I’m sure he gave me AIDS. I sure hope I didn’t just give it to you.”

  She crossed her arms and watched with satisfaction as Julie ran screaming down the hall, tearing out huge clumps of her hair and begging for someone to bleach her body.

  Binky caught up with Mark in the parking lot, where he was smoking furiously.

  “Looks like fun,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Smoking furiously. Let me have a ciggie.”

  He handed her one, which she lit off the end of his. “Be careful,” he spat bitterly. “I might give you AIDS.”

  “Oh, did you hear that?”

  “Every other word.”

  “Don’t worry. I assure you, I gave Julie her just desserts. So what are you going to do now?”

  “Right now I’m going to wait for Roy to come pick me up.”

  “Call him back. Tell him not to bother. We’ll do lunch.”

  “It’s ten o’clock!”

  “Brunch, then.”

  “Can you afford to treat? ’Cause the unemployed can’t afford such things.”

  “Don’t worry. Such crises are what charge cards are for.” She sighed. “Besides, you can get another job. Or you can sue and they’ll give you this one back rather than fork out a huge discrimination settlement. You want to hear crisis? Real crisis? My two best friends are coming over later today.”

  “So where’s the crisis?”

  “Oh, it’s just that neither knows the other will be there and they...well, sort of hate each other’s guts.”


  Doan came through Binky’s door at three that after-noon, humming a Rodgers and Hart tune. He screamed at the sight of Binky flopped on the couch with a cigarette in one hand and a pulpy novel in the other. “What are you doing here?!”

  Binky turned to see him in his French maid’s = uniform, replete with white cap, short black dress with white frilled front, and sensible shoes. As he stomped indignantly toward her, she felt a stab of jealousy that he looked even better in skirts than she did. The uniform almost made her laugh. No one was less dainty or subservient than Doan. His light brown bangs flopped over his brow as he stormed toward her, his ice - gray eyes burning holes in her lazy body.

  “You are supposed to be at work. That’s our arrangement. I come in to clean when you’re not here to get in my way. Out!”

  Binky didn’t move. “Cute outfit.”

  “Puts me in the spirit of things.” He towered over her, six feet two inches of pissed-off part-time servant. “Out!”

  “Skip the couch today, okay?”

  “Skip it? No way. I’m a perfectionist. Besides, the spare change I get from under the cushions is almost as much as my pitiful pay.”

  “What do you expect to get for one day a week?”

  “Eighteen thousand dollars a year. Enough for my own American Express card. It’s tedious using other people’s; you never know when they’re going to get sick of you and cancel it. I remember once I was getting some Clinique at Macy’s, and they called it in and ...”

  As he spoke, Doan sat down across from her, crossed his legs, and opened one of her sodas. She cut him off. “Are you working today or not?”

  He lowered his head, arched his eyebrows to give himself room to look at her, and puckered his mouth. The whole effect said, “My, aren’t we testy today?”