Pud limped jerkily into the dark, air-conditioned depths of the trailer, which was set up like a little house, complete with kitchen. His right leg didn’t seem to work at all. He basically dragged it along as if he had a log in his pant leg. I thought of walk-this-way gags. He offered us our choice of a dozen different mineral waters. The Formica surface on which we poured our water was stacked with prescription vials. I saw Percocet, Darvon, extra-strength this and that. The labels all said, “As needed for pain.”
“Artie’s a little concerned about his meal ticket, Pud.” Dirk playfully elbowed me in the ribs as I sat down with my water. “He thinks Jellyroll might meet with a mishap in the motorcycle trick.”
Pud grimaced as he folded himself onto the couch. He interlocked what remained of his fingers behind his head, sighed theatrically, paused, adjusted his log leg, smiled, and said, “Nev-er happen.”
“There! See, Artie, what did I tell you?”
“Well, I’m much relieved.”
Dirk put his arm back around my shoulder as we finished our waters and left our audience with the King of the Stunts. “You know what?” said Dirk. “I’m going to tell you something. Remember, when you see him on the TV special you heard it here first: that guy Pud, he’s going to get himself inducted into the Stuntman Hall of Fame.”
“Piecemeal?”
“What? Oh! Piecemeal! Ha! Good one, Artie!”
“Hey, Dirk—”
“Yeah, pal?”
“Forget it.”
Dirk jerked his arm away. Artistically off ended, he stomped off.
Two hours later, after much standing around and many calls to the Coast, where Pud was king, we were ready to shoot the motorcycle trick—with the dummy. Jellyroll sat between Vic and me on the curb to watch Pud, dressed exactly like Vic in the Nat Penn costume, saddle up the big Harley. With both hands, Pud heft ed his ossified leg over the bike and settled into the seat. It looked to me like Pud was rubbing his nuts on the gas tank. Stoned, Vic giggled like a naughty boy in study hall as Pud put on his dark glasses, adjusted them, and gave the throttle an ear-wrenching twist. “How do I look?” he asked after another rev. “Do I look blind or what?”
“Blind as a hoe, Pud boy,” said Dirk.
Then the grips and assistants made a big production out of clearing the street, even though there was no one on the street. They called on electric bullhorns for quiet, jabbered with high seriousness on walkie-talkies. Pud loved the focus, you could tell, and that was probably why Dirk had the grips make a big production of it. Pud revved the motorcycle a few more times. Then he tested the strings that controlled the Jellyroll dummy’s scratching legs. “Now wait a minute, I forget. Is it one scratch for a left turn or what?”
“Whichever grabs you, Pud boy. Improvise. You can be spontaneous on this thing.”
Pud glided into position a block and a half to the north. When everybody was ready, Dirk called for action.
The big engine whined and screeched as Pud cracked through the gears. Dust and litter flew up behind the roaring bike. Pud must have been going fifty miles an hour, accelerating, when the front wheel buried itself to the axle in a pothole. Pud continued on over the handlebars at only a slightly diminished velocity.
I averted my eyes. Jesus, the impact would be hideous. Poor Pud. Pud had had his last Percocet. The EMS guys would be collecting Pud with paint scrapers. Long after we’d gone, dry and crusty pieces of Pud would drop off the sides of the buildings onto the winos’ heads. When I looked up, the motorcycle was still cartwheeling, shedding parts. And when it came to rest, barely recognizable as a motorcycle, silence filled the set…
“Look at that!” Vic gasped, pointing with both hands—
It was Pud. Pud was climbing to his feet, shakily, to be sure, but he was actually standing up!
People were sprinting toward him. Vic, Jellyroll, and I found ourselves swept along. A crowd gathered around Pud. Here and there, people reached out for him tentatively, then stopped, as though he’d fall to gory pieces if touched. His forehead was skinned raw; blood and asphalt mixed in the wound, but there seemed to be no further damage. He shook the dust out of his clothes. Everybody was asking him how he was.
“Well, lemme just check an’ see,” he said with a grin, patting his parts.
“Break it up, spread out, give the man some air.” It was Dirk, elbowing his way through the astonished crowd.
“Christ, Dirk,” said Dirk’s assistant, “I think he’s all right!”
“Of course he’s all right. What do you think? This is Pud Atwell.” Dirk stepped up beside Pud, put an arm around his shoulder, and said to the crowd, “This is the King of the Stunts.” He milked that for about five minutes, then said, “Where’s my stills person? Where’s Greta? Greta, get a shot of Pud beside the smashed bike. Come on, right over here.” He moved pudgy little Greta around by the shoulders until he found the most artistic angle. Pud assumed a heroically masculine pose.
Dirk leaned down to examine the Jellyroll dummy still strapped to the mangled fender. The dummy was decapitated.
“See, right there,” said Dirk, pointing at the torso, “that’s why I decided to go with the dummy.”
“Let’s burn one, Artie,” said Victor Castaway when he’d stopped giggling.
I missed Crystal. I pined for her. Lovers-who-had-to-part songs spun in my head as the car service drove Jellyroll and me home. We were still on the Cross Bronx Expressway surrounded by tractor-trailer trucks when, idly, I picked up the New York Times a previous passenger had left on the seat. A fourteen-year-old had been shot dead by a twelve-year-old in a squabble over a basketball. Another tourist had been killed in Macy’s…At least I was keeping up with current events.
I was about to put the paper back on the seat when I saw the article. I must have gasped audibly, because the driver glanced at me in the rearview mirror with alarm on his face.
Trammel Weems, 36, was declared missing and presumed drowned yesterday after a boating accident off Coney Island. Weems’ companion, Bruce Munger, 35, called the Coast Guard when Weems fell overboard while trying to remove a rope which had become fouled in the boat’s propeller. Munger reported that he had gone below to search for a sharp knife, and when he came back on deck, Weems was gone. A spokesman for the Coast Guard, Captain Stephen Schwartz, said the search, a combined effort by the Coast Guard and units from the New York Police Harbor Patrol, had been discontinued at dusk. “There are strong currents in that area,” he said. “It’s possible we’ll never recover the body.” Mr. Weems was CEO of VisionClear Bank and Trust, a New York bank.
Trammell was dead…How did I feel about that? I couldn’t tell precisely. It seemed vaguely ironic, but I didn’t have any deep feelings about it. I wondered if Crystal knew. How would she feel about it?
SIX
THERE WAS A message from crystal waiting on my phone machine. She had lost her first match to Gracie Cobb. She said she missed me, and she left her number. I called it.
“Liberty Bell Hotel, your gateway to freedom. Marcia speaking. How can I help you?”
“Crystal Spivey, please. Room three thirty-eight.”
No answer. I explained to Marcia that Crystal was playing in the pool tournament held in the hotel ballroom. “Could you send a message to her?”
“Well, sir, my records show that she checked out at noon.”
“I see. Thank you.”
“Thank you for calling Liberty Bell, your gateway—”
The phone rang soon aft er. I snapped it up.
“Is he eating it?” Mr. Fleckton. I had forgotten entirely about the New & Improved problem. His voice had a panicky edge. “Don’t hold anything back, Artie. I can take it.”
“Well, actually, he showed considerable interest this morning,” I lied.
“You mean he ate it?”
“No, but he sniff ed it. I took that as a hopeful sign.”
“Jesus, that’s wonderful. He sniff ed it. Yes, that is a hopeful sign. Call me anytime d
ay or night if he eats it. We can shoot at a moment’s notice.”
“Okay.”
Now what? I tuned in WBGO, the area jazz station, and listened nervously to a special on early Louis Armstrong. I heard “Azalea” and “Weatherbird,” and they still seemed fresh and modern, but I wasn’t really concentrating. I was thinking about Trammell Weems. In law school, I had found his utter contempt for sacred cows attractive. Even though I had had an inkling back then that rebellion wouldn’t sustain one forever, I dug the stance of the outsider with a sense of the ridiculous. Now I began to feel sad, but not exactly for Trammell. Somehow, sitting there in my morris chair listening to Mr. Armstrong, I linked Trammell and my youth. Both were dead. Nothing is sadder in life than the tendency of time to pass. Let alone of humans to sink in deep water.
The phone rang.
“Hello, Artie. Did you hear? Can I come up?”
“Of course! Where are you?”
“Around the corner.”
She carried a plastic garment bag over her shoulder and her cue case in the other hand. Her eyes were red-rimmed, but whether from crying or driving, I couldn’t tell. We waited to speak until Jellyroll finished his effusive greeting. Meanwhile, I took her stuff, hung the garments in the hall closet and leaned the cue case against the wall.
Then we embraced.
“Who told you?” I asked.
“Uncle Billy called. He’s very upset. He loved Trammell.”
She sat at the dining-room table. I made her a BLT. She didn’t speak as I did so, just sat sadly petting Jellyroll. I wanted to know what exactly she felt.
“Something’s wrong, Artie,” she said finally.
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know exactly…It doesn’t feel right.”
“What doesn’t?”
“Trammell’s death. I feel scared.”
“Scared? Why?”
“Artie, people are following me. I know they are. Sometimes I think they want me to know they’re back there, like they’re making it obvious.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know. Do you believe me?”
“Sure, if you say so.”
“I hoped you would.”
“I didn’t know he was a banker. Did you?”
“Yeah. He got indicted in Miami for fraud. We lived together then. Trammell and two other guys owned a bank. They loaned money to each other and skimmed off the interest.”
“What happened?”
“Nothing. All charges got dropped. Trammell knew they would. He was never worried. That was the first time I left him.”
“Because you didn’t want to be married to a white-collar criminal?”
“That, and other things I don’t feel like talking about right now. I’ve tried to feel sad that he’s dead, but I can’t. I feel sad for myself. I was just a girl when I married him.” She began to cry. She said something else, but it got lost. “You know what I was to him? I was a fuck-you gesture. Trammell Weems—of the great Weems family—married a pool player from Sheepshead Bay. That was a laugh. Even her name was a laugh! Crystal Spivey. Let’s take our clothes off and get into bed.”
“Sure.”
And so we did. But we didn’t make love, we just held each other. “Can he come up?”
“Sure.”
Jellyroll floated up onto the bed and began licking her face. I told her he’d keep doing that until her cheeks were gone, so she should call him off when she’d had enough. “Crystal—”
“Hmm?”
“Do you want to get out of town for a couple days?”
“What did you have in mind?”
“I have a neighbor upstairs who owns a place in Fire Island.”
“I went there once. A bunch of us rented a share in Kismet one summer.”
“Jerry’s place is in Lonelyville.”
“Sounds wonderful. Can I stop and see Uncle Billy on the way?”
“Sure.”
I phoned upstairs. A woman answered.
“Hello,” I said, “I’m with the Sierra Club.”
“Just a minute.”
“Hi, Artie, what’s up?”
“Can I rent your Fire Island place for a few days?”
“Cash?”
“Cash.”
“Come on up. But if you see any strangers on the stairs, don’t stop.” Jerry was holed up in his apartment to skip the process servers. He was wanted by the SEC to testify in the matter of something or other. I never ask. Nobody was lurking on the stairs.
Jerry answered my coded knock in a terry-cloth bathrobe. He was barefoot, tousled, and his eyes looked like burnt holes in a smallpox-infested Army blanket. The guy couldn’t have passed for fifty. He was twenty-six years old. He opened the door wide enough for me to sidle in. Two years ago, he was pulling down two hundred grand a year. I used to feed his cat while he jetted off to merger acquisitions and subordinate debentures. There were summer homes and boats, cars and fancy women in short black dresses, but then the bottom dropped out, and the Jerrys of the financial community plunged into a narrow pit.
His apartment was identical to mine, a one-bedroom in a prewar building undistinguished except for the view. From the western windows, Jerry and I could see all the way north to the George Washington Bridge and the bend in the river beyond. Looking south, we could see to the World Trade Center. But Jerry had the shades drawn tightly against the view. Except for bars of daylight beneath the shades, the only light in his living room came from a flickering, muted TV. Until my eyes adjusted, I didn’t even see the young woman sprawling on the leather sofa. She, too, wore a frumpy robe and no shoes.
“Artie, this is Fritzi Kellior.”
She waved unenthusiastically. She was even more unkempt than Jerry, but gradually, in the TV light, I could see that her features were long and patrician. Her short, unwashed hair was expensively cut. Humphrey Bogart caught my eye. fie Treasure of the Sierra Madre.
Jerry and I quickly settled on a price for three days. Jerry asked me if I wanted to buy the place. I said no. “That’s right. You don’t own anything, do you? Except a dog.”
I just let that slide by. “Have you ever heard of Trammell Weems?” I asked.
“Yeah. Glub-glub,” Jerry said.
“What about before the glub-glub?”
“What about it?”
“What did he do? The paper said he was a banker.”
“Yeah, right,” said Fritzi.
“Ponzi banks. There probably used to be an honest man at VisionClear Bank and Trust, but he died in the last cholera epidemic. The interesting question is, who pulled the strings? How high did it go? You know?”
“No. How high did what go?”
“The cover- up.”
The intercom buzzed. Jerry went off to answer. Fritzi stared blank-eyed at the TV. Bogart staggered through the purgatorial thicket blabbering about gold. Jerry hustled back. “We gotta split. That was the super. I paid him a hundred bucks to tell me when they’re on the way up. Well, they’re on the way up.”
“Shit!” said Fritzi Kellior.
“Use my apartment.” I tossed him the keys. “I’ve got a friend staying there. I’ll try to deflect them.”
“You will?” said Jerry. “Jesus, thanks, Artie.”
“I’m sick of this,” muttered Fritzi as they beat it out the door. “I’m real sick of this as a way of life.”
I gathered up vodka bottles, glasses, and an empty orange-juice carton, dumped them in the sink, and hurried back to the living room to see what I’d missed—Fritzi’s panty hose and pumps. I had had a brief affair with a woman who had once worked for Salomon Brothers, long before they got busted. She told me that exposing toe cleavage was bad form for a woman on the fast track. It was simply not done. I tossed Fritzi’s shoes into the dark, cluttered bedroom. The banditos were slithering down the banks of the ravine after Bogart. He was finished.
The doorbell rang.
I peeped out the view hole. A little guy in a rumpled blue
seersucker suit, no tie, stood in the hall. “Mr. Gerald Thwactman. I have a subpoena from Federal Court for the Southern District in the case of—”
I opened the door. “He’s not here.”
“When will he be back?”
I wondered how official this guy was. He didn’t look like he carried much clout, but you can’t always tell in New York. However, if he were a cop, he’d already be inside, and I’d have footprints on my face. He looked like an out-of-work actor, and I felt sorry for him standing there, snapping a manila envelope against his thigh. “I’m house-sitting for Jerry. He left this morning for Hawaii. His father had a stroke. Paralytic, apparently.”
He didn’t even pretend to believe me. He just sighed. “Tell him sooner or later they’ll send the cops.”
I told him.
SEVEN
“THEY WERE A cute couple,” said crystal as we crossed the Brooklyn Bridge. “Jerry and Fritzi.”
“The blush of youth…If you want to invite Billy to go with us, that would be fine with me.”
She stroked the back of my neck with one hand and drove with the other, and I felt intense desire for her. I wondered if we’d be able to make love with Billy there. Jerry’s walls were summerhouse thin. But she didn’t say any more about it until we stopped in front of a two-family house somewhere on Avenue X, near the Golden Hours. Crystal said it was her aunt Louise’s place. Billy was staying there.
I waited in the car. It seemed simpler that way, and besides, I didn’t want to see Billy sad. As I sat there I began to feel that I was being watched. I decided to forget it. This was a quiet street in south Brooklyn. What happens in Sheepshead Bay? Once a year an elderly lady slips on the ice and breaks her hip, but this was midsummer…The feeling didn’t abate. It intensified.
I slid into the driver’s seat so I could use the mirrors. I watched an old gas guzzler, a Buick, I think, double-parked across the street and several car lengths behind. There were two men in the front seat. The driver was black, and the passenger was white. They didn’t seem to be watching me, but then that would be part of their job—to watch without seeming to.
Lush Life: An Artie Deemer Mystery Page 6