Boldt

by Ted Lewis

  “Hey, baby,” Styles says, “what you want me to do, crack the porcelain?”

  Styles grins at us again, steps out of his Jockeys and walks through the bedroom into the bathroom. Lesley looks at me and says, “See why I’d rather fight than switch?”

  Murdock tries to look everywhere except at me and I get up to make myself another drink. When I’ve done that I begin to walk over to the bedroom door but Lesley stands in front of me starting to ask where I’m going. But before she can finish, I smash her in the mouth with the back of my hand so that she flies out of my way, toppling down into the room’s central depression by way of the back of the leather divan narrowly missing cracking her skull on the glass box table.

  “Easy...” Murdock says, but I keep on going until I’m in the bathroom. Styles is already laid out in the sunken bath, his body etched black against the turquoise tiles, flecks of soapsuds stuck to his body like wads of cotton. He gives a grin and says, “Come on in, daddy, the water’s fine.”

  There is a low gold-plated towel bar running the length of the bath, so I perch on the edge of the bar and look at Styles while he carries on soaping himself with a sponge. Murdock appears in the doorway and leans against the frame, glass in hand, and I say to Styles, “Any amount of scrubbing won’t get it off.”

  “I know,” Styles says. “I tried everything from Brillo on up.”

  There is a sudden screech of anger from the bedroom and I look through the door beyond Murdock to where Lesley’s looking at her face in the dressing table mirror, clawing at the bruise on her face. Suddenly she rushes into the bathroom screaming at Styles, “Look what the bastard did. Look what he did.”

  Styles looks at what I did without stopping soaping himself and says, “Gee, baby, that’s gonna look awful in the morning. Real awful.”

  “You cocksucking mother,” she screams at him. “You fucking cocksucker.”

  “Don’t throw the crap at me baby,” Styles says. “I didn’t do it. And don’t throw it at him either else he’ll only do it again.”

  She stands there in still fury not knowing what to do.

  “Piss off, baby,” Styles says, “unless you want to wash my dick for me.”

  Lesley screams something unintelligible, whirls around and charges out of the bathroom slamming the door behind her. Murdock has to move fast otherwise he would have got the sleeve of his coat trapped. Styles just keeps soaping himself and the only sound in the room is the lapping of the water around Styles’s body.

  “Well,” Styles says eventually, “you didn’t find anything. You waiting for me to pull the plug so you can search the tub?”

  Murdock moves over to the bar, puts his glass down, grabs hold of the bar with both hands and leans over the bath slowly saying, “No, you’re right. You’re absolutely right. We found nothing. But the thing is, we know why you’re here. And you know that, too. So whatever smart-ass stuff you give us, we can take. Because we know. And we can stop you and we’re going to stop you, and gradually, you’re going to know that, too.”

  Styles grins. “Whatever it is you’re supposed to know,” he says. “Whatever that may be, well, why don’t you just haul me in for it, save all the hassle?”

  There is a long narrow trough running alongside the bath, gold-plated like the rest of the place, and in this trough is all the crap that Styles and his girl appear to need to take a bath. Styles now finishes with the sponge and places it in the trough.

  “Because you ain’t done nothing yet, sugar,” Murdock continues. “And us folks is gonna see you don’t.”

  Styles throws his head back so it’s leaning on the rear edge and laughs and while he’s doing that he deliberately raises one of his legs in the bath and farts just as deliberately. I put down my drink, pick up the soap-filled sponge and twist around and ram the sponge against Styles’s eyes, squeezing the sponge so that his eyes are filled with soapy water. He thrashes wildly about and one of his arms crashes out of the bath onto the tiled floor. Murdock moves quickly and stands on his wrist while with my free hand I hold his other wrist so he can’t tear the sponge away from his eyes. I squeeze and squeeze until there is no soap left in the sponge and then I stuff as much of it as I can into Styles’s wide open mouth. At last, I let go of his wrist and Murdock steps off his arm and we both stand back and look at him as he tears the sponge from his mouth, sightlessly trying to scrabble a towel off the towel bar so that he can clear his eyes. When he’s finally managed that, I pick up my glass and finish my drink saying to Styles, “Here’s looking at you.”

  Then I toss my glass into the sunken tub and Styles rises up out of the foam like the Creature from the Black Lagoon; this time there is no grin, just blind hate. He begins to move for us but Murdock and me just stand there, our turn to grin, and Murdock says, “You come for us, baby. You do that. That’d make it easy for us but your contractors wouldn’t be happy, and neither would we because we want you while you’re going to work.”

  Styles stops his forward motion and overbalances slightly steadying himself on the gold-plated bar. He looks at us the same way he’s been looking at us for a minute or two and then the grin comes back again.

  “Sure you do,” he says. “But like I say, this is my vacation and you just began to screw it up, and that is something you’re going to regret.”

  “Sure we are,” Murdock says as we turn away from Styles and walk out of the bathroom into the bedroom where Lesley is back at the mirror examining her bruise. As we pass her by, I say to her, “If we gave you a working over you’d get to be the same color as him then you’d have less trouble when you walk down the street.”

  But her fury’s now gone and she just keeps on looking at her reflection.

  Going down in the elevator I start to say something to Murdock about recent events but he shakes his head looking meaningfully at the operator, and when the elevator hits the ground floor Murdock says, “Let’s go get ourselves a drink.”

  So we walk through to the bar and I begin to make for the stools, but Murdock turns sharp right and sits in one of the booths; so I sit down with him and after a waiter’s taken our orders Murdock says, “I got something.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “From upstairs, I got something.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like a phone number.”

  “You got a phone number. Now that really is something. So what do we do, call the number, find it’s the bookmaker’s or his wife’s number or maybe the number of a whorehouse or something like that?”

  “Yeah, sure,” Murdock says. “Except there’s this about it. The number was on a piece of paper in one of his shoes in a closet. So I took the number and left the piece of paper where it was. Then when he’d gone into the bathroom and you’d followed him in after taking it out on the girl, I checked the shoe again and the piece of paper had gone; he’d taken it out on the way to the bathroom, so maybe he did that because he didn’t want no one to know the number of his whorehouse or his bookmaker.”

  The waiter comes back with the drinks and goes away again.

  “So do I or don’t I have something?” Murdock asks.

  “Maybe,” I tell him, “and maybe you don’t. So what do you intend doing about it?”

  “Oh, what I intend doing, is this. I’ll phone the number and ask whoever answers if they know Mr. Albert Styles, and if that’s so then I’ll ask him if they wouldn’t mind telling me what business they have with him.”

  I take a sip of my drink.

  “You prick, we check out the subscriber, don’t we?”

  “I guess so,” I tell him.

  “Christ,” Murdock says. “What’s the matter with you? You’re talking as if you couldn’t give a fuck and only an hour ago you wanted Styles’s balls.”

  “Maybe I couldn’t give a fuck,” I tell him. “Maybe I changed my
mind.”

  “You mean maybe you got it out of your system by beating up on the girl and hurting Styles a little bit.”

  I’m about to answer when a shadow falls across the booth table between me and Murdock and I look up to see Lambert standing there looking down at us.

  “Mr. Draper sent me,” he says.

  “Oh?” Murdock says.

  “Yeah,” Lambert says. “Been looking for you all over. He really wants to see you a whole lot.”

  “Piss off,” I tell him.

  Lambert doesn’t move.

  “Oh, Christ,” Murdock mutters. “Let’s go see the fuck. We got to see him sometime.”

  Murdock gets up and slides out of the booth. I finish my drink then get up and follow him.

  The three of us walk out of the hotel and outside. Parked near our car is a patrol car with two uniformed men sitting inside.

  “You going to escort us back?” I say to Lambert.

  “I figure you know your own way back,” Lambert replies. “Although some people in the department may disagree with me on that one.”

  “Yeah,” Murdock says, and we get into our car, Murdock in the driver’s seat. As we move away from the curb, I notice in my wing mirror that Lambert doesn’t get back into the patrol car. Instead one of the uniformed men gets out and he and Lambert start back toward the hotel.

  “I got a feeling we’re just about to lose some expensive equipment,” I say to Murdock.

  “Yeah,” he says. “And that narrows the field because we only got tomorrow before the whole fucking circus hits town.

  Draper says, “You were told to call me.”

  It’s the same old scene; Draper behind his desk, Murdock and me standing there taking the crap, but on the way over in the car, we’ve agreed to take it—though not too easy because we want Draper to take our answers as being from the gospel.

  “Florian told us to call you,” I tell him. “I mean, we all know the set-up, we’re all in it, but some things, like getting your orders via Florian, they kind of rub you the wrong way, know what I mean?”

  “That’s not important,” Draper says. “In the meantime, you could have done a lot of harm, a lot of damage.”

  “How do you mean, sir?”

  “Don’t give me that bullshit,” Draper says. “We got clearance on Styles. It’s like you were told: he’s here because of the reasons we know, and that’s all.”

  “It didn’t take a lot to make you change your mind,” I remark.

  “That’s right,” Draper says. “All it took was a few words. The right ones. Styles is clean.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And I suppose since you saw Florian you’ve been checking up on that small thing.”

  “We saw Mr. Styles, yes,” I tell him.

  “Yes, I know, and I hope to Christ that for your sakes he’s still walking around.”

  “He was still walking around when we last saw him, wasn’t he, George?”

  “Yeah, he seemed to be standing on his own two feet.”

  Draper gives us a long, long look.

  “I mean,” I say to Draper, “he must have been fit enough to reach the phone and dial a number.”

  Draper jumps up from his chair and walks around the desk, waving his finger under my nose.

  “And while we’re on the subject of telephones, what about all that crap you put in at the hotel?”

  “Well, it won’t be in there now, will it?” I tell him.

  “You’re damn right,” Draper says. “You’re damn right.”

  Murdock takes a cigarette out and lights up.

  “What did you find in Styles’s apartment?” Draper asks, sarcastically. “An armory?”

  “Yeah,” I tell him, “he even had a couple of tanks.”

  “Christ,” Murdock says. “You think he’d have his gear there with him?”

  “Who cares?” Draper says. “The fact is, the word is, he’s clean, and don’t think I’d let it go at that if I didn’t believe it because the consequences for me would not be good for my ass.”

  “So now we leave Styles alone,” Murdock says.

  “So now you leave Styles alone,” Draper agrees.

  “Unlike what you told us to do earlier,” I say to him.

  There is a pause before Draper says, “That’s right.”

  There is a silence which is broken when Murdock says, “Well, I guess that takes care of everything. I don’t know about you Roy, but I think we’re due an hour or so off.”

  “Yeah,” I say.

  “Your hours off are when your brother’s been and gone,” Draper snaps.

  “Yeah,” I say again, and Murdock and me turn around and walk out of Draper’s office.

  “And another thing,” Draper calls after us as we walk down the corridor. “Murdock, you can drag your ass out of the Chandler Hotel. I’m not signing any bills you send in from there.”

  “Don’t worry,” Murdock calls back. “I can afford it myself on the kickbacks I make.”

  On the way down Murdock says to me, “Why don’t you go on to Clark’s and I’ll join you a little later after I’ve checked out that number.”

  “I got a better idea,” I tell Murdock. “You go ahead and I’ll meet you at Moses’s later than a little later.”

  “What have you got cooking?”

  “Nothing much. Just some chewing gum to stick on Styles’s heel. I’ll see you later.”

  Jack Fleming is sitting behind the desk in his box of an office and on his desk is a bottle with about an inch of bourbon in the bottom of it. Also on the table are Jack’s feet and his shoes neatly placed together next to the bourbon bottle. The office smells of whiskey and of Jack’s feet.

  “Hi, Boldt,” Jack says when he realizes who it is calling on him. “Boldt. Well, well.”

  I sit down on the straight-back chair on my side of the desk and look at Jack. He’s quite a lot younger than I am but what was once a baby face is streaked with booze lines. His shirt is dirty and his suit has never been cleaned in all the years since he bought it which if I remember right was just before he was screwed by the Department and made the scapegoat for a corruption scare blown up by a smart reporter on the Globe. But Jack got off lightly compared to what happened to the smart reporter. Jack served a term and they fixed him up with a kickback and a license to operate privately. At least the kickback was big enough for Jack to soak himself in bourbon and soften him up enough so he wouldn’t feel up to biting the balls off the people who screwed him.

  “Hello, Jack,” I say to him. “Business must be good.” Jack looks at me.

  “The feet,” I say. “You’re resting the feet. Must be doing plenty of legwork.”

  Jack shakes a little with laughter but no sound comes out. When he’s finished shaking he says, “Yeah, that’s right. You got it in one.”

  “So I guess it’s a waste of time me coming to see you.”

  “Business?” Jack says.

  I nod.

  “I may be able to accommodate you,” he says. “Or at least one of my many operatives may.”

  We look at each other.

  “Well,” I say, lighting up a cigarette, “first you got to sober up.”

  “You think I’ve been drinking?”

  I throw my match on the floor.

  “You ever want to get even with the Department?” I ask him.

  He spreads his hands. “Well, maybe if I’d got an atom bomb, I could have done something,” he says. “But you know how it was. Somebody had to go. They saw I was okay when I went out.”

  “You hate the bastards. Particularly Draper.”

  Jack doesn’t say anything for a moment then he says, “So maybe you’re right, maybe I do, but why’re you raking all that up?
What’s that to do with why you’ve come to see me? What’s me and the Department got to do with anything?”

  I blow smoke across the table and reply, “What I’ve come to ask you to do will help to screw Draper.”

  Jack looks at me. “Why should you be interested in that?” he says. “You do your deals and you make your money. You’re one of the lucky ones.”

  I don’t say anything. Then Jack snaps his fingers.

  “I get it,” he says. “I’m just beginning to get it. They need somebody else to heap the shit on, and now it’s your turn and you want me to help.”

  He gives his soundless laugh again.

  I shake my head. “No, it’s not that,” I say. “It’s not Draper I want. He’s incidental. I just thought if you knew he was going to be screwed as well you’d snap to it and be interested.”

  “Sure,” he says. “I do a favor for you; it involves embarrassing Mr. Draper. Mr. Draper finds out and I’m just full of laughs at the way things work out.”

  I shake my head again.

  “Nobody’ll know anything about you, Jack,” I tell him. “And that’s because you’re good. You always were, you still are, if you leave that stuff alone.”

  Jack looks at the bottle.

  “Okay,” he says. “You may as well tell me what I’m going to turn down. It’ll pass the time.”

  “You know, of course, who Albert Styles is?” I ask him.

  Jack leans farther back in his seat.

  “It gets better,” he says.

  “He’s in town for a couple of days. Seeing his ex-wife and kid. A social visit.”

  Jack doesn’t say anything.

  “And that being so, all I want you to do is follow him around here and there wherever he goes and report those things to me.”

  There is silence for a moment or two.

  “I know I’m not awfully bright,” he says, “but why can’t you do that? Or somebody else in the department?”

  I don’t answer him.

  “You answered it,” he says. “They don’t want to because Mr. Florian wouldn’t want them to.”

  I still don’t answer him.