Sweet Smell of Success

by Ernest Lehman

  “But Sammy doesn’t know!”

  “Who cares?”

  “You’re going to turn them over to Elwell. Is that what you’re going to do?”

  He stared at me for a moment, seeing that I knew.

  “Elwell has nothing yet,” he said, with frightening coolness. “I’m giving you until midnight tonight. You and Sammy.”

  “To do what?” I cried.

  “To call me at my apartment, to tell me that Sammy has killed the monologue, to let me feel there’s a chance that Julie will come back to me.” He started to get up from the table.

  “But wait a minute.” I grabbed his wrist. “Suppose he won’t listen to me?”

  “He’ll listen to you, Al. You’re no fool. You’ll see to that.”

  “But if he doesn’t …?”

  He yanked his hand free. “From now on, I’m thinking of myself. If bystanders get hurt … well, nobody worried about whether I got hurt all these years, did they?” He looked at me with accusing eyes. “Besides, you’re not exactly an innocent bystander in all this, are you?”

  I looked away. “How can you do this to your own brother?”

  “My own brother …” He spat out the words.

  “If it ever gets out it would ruin Sammy. They’d never believe that he didn’t know about it.” I looked at him imploringly. “Lester, if he finds out, he’ll kill me!”

  “He killed me years ago,” he said with bitterness.

  “If you could only give me a little time.”

  His eyes burned through me, haunted, desperate, suddenly frightening.

  “Midnight, Al,” he said quietly.

  Then he turned and walked away.

  Panic stabbed at my insides.

  I stared after him, watching the graceless, almost ludicrous body, a little too short, a little too plump for the dignity his high-held head sought to advertise, and I wondered again, as I had wondered so many times, what Julie Webb, with her electric personality and her easily marketable figure, had found in him to love and to marry and to live with for five years in what Broadway had always assumed was harmony and happiness. I was remembering the wedding dinner at the Copacabana on that long ago night … the hint of secret fires in her intense dark eyes as she held Lester’s pudgy hand. I was remembering Sammy—Sammy with the raw jokes, Sammy with too much champagne in him, Sammy in the new and uncomfortable role of brother-in-law to a desirable girl, Sammy trying awkwardly not to reveal that it killed him to let Lester have the spotlight even at his own wedding.

  “A plain little nothing,” he had sneered to me afterwards.

  Julie Webb … a plain little nothing out of New Rochelle who had stepped out from behind a perfume counter at Bonwit-Teller’s to marry neat, impeccable Lester Hogarth and grow to hate his loudmouthed, voracious and nationally famous older brother with a plain little, dark little, intense little hatred that might very well have been born that very first night at the Copa, with Sammy keeping her out on the dance floor too long and holding her too crudely close to him and making a joke, finally, that nobody heard but Julie, nor noticed but myself, just as I had been the only one to observe the cold look on her face and the sullen one on Sammy’s when they had returned at last to the table, and not together.

  All this I was remembering as I sat there in the noisy drugstore feeling the dread creeping up slowly, knowing that the past contained all the omens of impending disaster, knowing too that I was going to have to make an attempt, even to do the impossible.

  Reluctantly, I got up from the table and went back upstairs to the office.

  Connie was gone for the day, for the night, to her own private haunts of loneliness. And with a pang, I realized how wrong it was that I wasn’t with her now, always, wherever she was, whatever she was doing. And it didn’t do me any good to tell myself that all that would be different soon—after Sammy’s success, and mine, were assured— because I couldn’t make myself believe it. Not tonight, I couldn’t.

  “That you, Al?” Sammy’s voice came to me harshly from the inner sanctum.

  I went inside.

  “You took your own sweet time, didn’t you?” He was slumped behind his desk, all alone. Just him and the cigar. Sonny and Jake and Phil were gone.

  “Where are they?” I said. “I thought we were going to cut—”

  “We did it ourselves. It’s all finished.” There was a pleased smile on his face, as though he relished this opportunity to show me how well he could do without me. “We threw out the whole Can-Can number. Seven minutes of backsides and no Sammy. It’s lean and smooth now. No fat, no extra weight.”

  “Sammy …” I sank down in the leather chair. “I … I want to talk to you about the monologue.”

  He sniffed. “What about the monologue? It’s beautiful. We even added that stupid Sonny’s crack about Lester being three times as useless. They’ll howl.”

  “All things considered, I think you better drop the routine.”

  He eyed me curiously. “All things considered, I think maybe you better start remembering that I decide what’s in and what’s out around here.”

  “Downstairs, I was talking to Lester. He’s very upset, Sammy.”

  “Tough tiddy.” He bit down on the damp cigar.

  “He’s been in touch with Otis Elwell,” I said.

  His face blanched. Then he forced a laugh. “They deserve each other.”

  “You can joke,” I said. “Lester knows plenty. He’s been on the inside for years. If he should talk out of turn … Elwell is laying for you. Tomorrow would be the time to let you have it.”

  He looked up with startled expression. “Let me have what? Whaddaya mean?”

  I swallowed. “You never know.”

  “Listen!” he shouted with sudden hysteria. “I don’t wanna hear anything more about it! You’re ruining my appetite just bringing up their names! I got nothing to hide that the others don’t have to hide too! So don’t give me any more of that! I want peace! I want to relax! I want—”

  “Okay, Sammy!”

  He stared out of the window fretfully. “What time is it?”

  “Seven o’clock.”

  “Let’s get out of here.” He jumped up.

  I looked at him and saw the nervous, restless twitching of his face. It wouldn’t have done any good to say anything more right then. Perhaps with a little food in his belly … perhaps after the right kind of massage for his ego …

  “Lindy’s?” I said, getting into my coat.

  He snapped off the lights. “Where else?”

  I followed him down the hall to the elevator.

  It was five hours to midnight.

  Only Sammy didn’t know what time it was.

  IV

  I tried not to listen to him.

  I stuffed my ears with the noise of clattering dishes, the babble of table-talk and the shrill-sounding laughter of the silver blonde in the booth behind me. But it didn’t do any good. His voice was like the angry rasp of a buzzsaw, chewing into everything it touched.

  “That’s all I want to know,” he cried, spitting out shreds of tobacco. “Are you with me or with him? The way you talk, I don’t know. It don’t sound right. I don’t like it. All my life he’s in my hair like a flea … a fat little flea. I’m good to him, set him up cozy, see that he shares in my success. And what do I get for it? Flea bites! Nagging trouble! And now this! For him I should cut off my right arm just when I’m about to go into the fight for the title. Al, I don’t wanna hear no more about it tonight. I’m getting sick!”

  “But, Sammy—”

  “Sick to my stomach!”

  It hadn’t done any good coming to Lindy’s. The big entrance, the mob bowing and scraping before the new king, the flattery, the bootlicking, the steady stream of well-wishers to the table—none of it had had its usual ballooning effect on the Hogarth ego. He was still in a troubled mood, unable to clear his mind of whatever it was that was bothering him. And the mere mention of his brother’s name seemed to
make it only worse.

  I watched him working savagely on the cigar.

  “Look, Sammy,” I began again. He turned his face away in disgust. “There can be no question whose side I’m on. I’m not trying to upset you or destroy your format. But to create unnecessary headaches, I just don’t think the Lester monologue is that important. If you tried dropping it just once, I’m sure you’d find—”

  “No,” he shouted, pounding the table. “D’ya hear me? No!”

  “You’re much too big a personality to need any one thing that badly.”

  “You’re goddam right I am,” he sneered. “I’m big enough I don’t need monologues, I don’t need you, I don’t need nothing. But I know what I’m talking about. The jerks expect the Lester routine. They wait for it, they want it, they love it. It’s in, it’s gonna stay in, and that’s that.” He took the cigar out of his mouth. “I suppose you’re gonna tell me Ida Cantor and the five daughters liked his cracks about them all those years. Like hell they did. And what about Jessel with his uncle? And Benny with Mary’s sister Babe?”

  “I never heard them complain,” I said. “It was always in fun, not cutting like a knife. Lester does mind. He has complained. He has asked you to lay off. A man has a right, Sammy. After all, he’s your own brother.”

  “Don’t gimme any of that!” he screamed, the rage mottling his face. “He was never no different, always complaining, even when we were kids, always trying to tear me down. I was never good enough for him. Joe College. The big words. Always the face in the books and the nose in the air for the big dumb brother who makes enough in one year to buy and sell him for life. I try to fix him up with a few broads. But no. Not him. Sammy’s girls aren’t good enough for a hot brain like him. I give him money, an easy job doing nothing at all. I make him famous. Yeah, famous. And all I get is complaints. Never a good word. And now I should tear out the best part of the show just ‘cause he’s whining again. Well listen to me, sweetheart, I’m not gonna do it—not now, not next week, not next year. I like it this way. And besides—” He broke into an ugly, humorless grin. “I like to see him earn his money.”

  It was there on his face, just as it had been written on Lester’s—this lifelong involvement beyond their control. They were like two bodies in space, repelling and attracting, forever swinging about each other in a sickening orbit from which neither could escape. The fist and the punching-bag; the slap and the cheek; and always, the other cheek. Wasn’t I in a similar constellation with Sammy? The bucket and the well; the insatiable thirst for material and the dried-up brain; repelling and attracting, but never breaking away. How easily I could have altered my course if I spoke up now and revealed to him that if he were finally undone by Elwell, it would not be because of Lester but because of me—I who had stood guard at the barricades all through the years against the legions who were aching to see him get everything they knew he deserved. But I just sat there with the sound of his angry ranting in my ears and said nothing. I could tell myself that there was still time. For what, I did not know. But there was still time. So I said nothing.

  I glanced at my watch. Eight o’clock. I looked past Sammy’s shoulder to the revolving door in the entrance. Every night except Saturday you could set your watch by his arrival. Tonight mine must have been fast. He didn’t come walking in until 8:01—Otis Elwell, in the velvet-trimmed coat and the black Homburg, on the prowl for gossip to help him reduce as many lives as possible to the disorder of his own soiled existence.

  I watched him peel off the pearl-gray gloves, hand his hat and coat to the checkroom girl, and stand there for a moment, casing the restaurant for prey. His eyes met mine in a cold, blank stare, and then he turned and walked toward the other side of the room.

  “I’ve got to go downstairs a minute,” I said to Sammy.

  He grunted. “We got a half hour.”

  “I’ll be right back.”

  Downstairs, in the foyer outside the washrooms, I went into a phone booth and called the cashier’s desk upstairs and told them to page Elwell.

  “He just walked in. One minute.”

  Presently I heard the voice, deceptively soft and phonily British. “Elwell speaking.”

  “Otis, this is Al Preston. I’m right downstairs in the men’s room.”

  “Everything finds its natural level eventually, doesn’t it?”

  “Look, I’ve got to speak to you, Otis. Would you do me a big favor and meet me down here?”

  “Why there? My hands are lily-white clean.”

  “Sammy is upstairs. I don’t want him to see me talking to you.”

  “Dear, dear. Will he spank you?”

  “Please, Otis. Only for a minute.”

  “Preston, I know exactly what’s on your fevered, joke-ridden mind. I know precisely what you want to say to me, and I know specifically what my answers will be. But I’ll come down anyway. My fading locks need a combing.”

  He hung up.

  I went into the washroom and let the hot water run on my hands. They were icy with apprehension. I examined my face in the mirror. When would I ever be able to rest? When would I be able to jump off the treadmill? If I failed tonight in what I was trying to do, I would fall off and break my back. If I succeeded and tomorrow’s show became a hit, the treadmill would only go faster. What kind of a game was it when there was no winning, only losing?

  Elwell came sauntering in. “From the way your master is shredding his cigar upstairs, I would say you are trying his patience.”

  I peered under the stall doors. We were alone. “Otis, I’m going to get straight to the point. What is it you want?”

  He took out his pocket-comb and stood before the mirror eyeing himself. “Can you be a little more explicit, Preston? For example, right now I want a plate of Lindy’s chicken soup with noodles. Next summer, I want a month without cares or typewriter on the Riviera. Tomorrow, I want to see under my byline a column that will set this silly town on its left ear. There are so many things I want, lad. All depends when—and for what?”

  “You know damned well what I mean,” I cried impatiently. “What do you want for laying off Sammy … for calling a truce … for not printing …” I waved a hand, “… whatever it is that Lester told you … or gave you … or promised …?”

  He took his time about it. First he wet the comb. Then he combed the black hair forward, then toyed delicately with the part. He glanced at my face in the mirror and smiled a nasty, silken smile. “Good heavens, you look awful, Preston. You ought to take life easier.”

  “What is it you want?”

  “Lester Hogarth has told me nothing,” he said, inspecting his complexion. “He is a slightly hysterical member of the Hogarth species who whets the appetite with tantalizing tidbits, then withdraws. In the trade, we call him a teaser.”

  “You mean he’s told you nothing?”

  “I mean he is holding out like a coy mistress, until midnight. I have a feeling that he’s going to let me down, too. Most teasers do, y’know. I also have a feeling that if he does, I shall be positively desperate for copy. Some how, Preston, it would not seem right to me not to run something about Samuel tomorrow. Tomorrow is unofficially Hogarth Day, if I am to believe what I hear around town. Never has so much been said about so little.”

  I licked my dry lips. “Look, if I get Sammy to turn over a whole week’s salary to your arthritis foundation …”

  He chortled with delight. “If every member of his family were dying of arthritis, Sammy wouldn’t give five centimes to that worthy cause and you know it.”

  “Ten thousand dollars!”

  “Why do you insist on trying to take him away from me? I found him. I claimed him. He’s mine, all mine. And now I want to enjoy him.”

  “A new car then. For Christmas. I know he wants to make up with you. Any make, any model you want. Just say the word.”

  “My dear boy, are you insinuating that I use my column for blackmail?” He regarded me with an amused smile. “Because you
know perfectly well that I do. However, I have a new car, a rather nice one, too. And besides …” His voice hardened. “There is only one thing I would take not to use whatever I pick up from our hysterical friend Lester—and that is an even juicier morsel to replace it.” He grinned. “Get what I mean?”

  “Sammy’s a legend. They’ll hate you for anything you do to him, Otis. Nobody loves a knocker. That’s why nobody likes you.”

  The grin hadn’t left his face, but it had a frozen quality to it. “I never hit a man when he is down, Preston. I always wait for him to get up. And Hogarth is as up as up can be. In my shooting gallery, he is a perfectly legitimate target for the truth. Why take pot-shots at the small game when it is so much more soul-satisfying to bring down the king of the jungle … the lumbering pachyderm with the face of a pig, the smell of a skunk, the appetites of a tomcat and the voice of a Joe Miller?”

  “What did he ever do to you? Nothing! One lousy impersonation on television … a few cracks about the way you dress …”

  The smile vanished. “You don’t seem to understand. There’s nothing personal in this. It’s just that I despise and detest and loathe the man. That’s all. Now may I go?”

  I went after him and held him back. “But you’ll hurt other people, not just Sammy! I know! I know what that crazy Lester is going to fill you full of. He’s not in his right mind. If I told you what’s going on, why he’s trying so hard to help you hurt Sammy, you’d know not to believe a word he says!”

  He was enjoying my terror. “You don’t have to tell me what’s going on, sonny boy. You’d be surprised how much I know. Maybe I know even more than you do. Not everything, mind you, but enough.” He smiled at me in a way that sent a chill through me. “And I’m getting warmer every minute.”

  He left me standing there, my heart beating wildly. I could have gone after him and pounded him to a pulp. But all I did was look at my sweating palms and stare at my white face in the mirror.

  Finally I had to go up the stairs.

  Sammy had his coat on, waiting.

  “You want me to miss this thing?” he muttered. “What’s the matter with you?”

  I got my hat and coat and pushed through the revolving door, catching up with him on the crowded sidewalk.