Silent Partner

by Leigh Brackett

  Question the authorities, she said. Have the company investigated. That was not going to help Karim at home either. Nor the business. You started splashing tar around, and it never did wash off completely. People had long memories for accusations, but they couldn't remember for two days that the accused had been found innocent. Or at least they never quite believed it.

  I ought to stop her, he thought. Only there isn't any way to do that. So maybe I ought to go with her, at that. To keep her mouth shut, keep her steered away from the authorities. I could shake out the company for her, prove to her that there’s nothing wrong, without making a big stink about it. Karim would go along with me—

  A small voice said, “Tony?"

  He turned around. Robin had come in and was watching him doubtfully.

  “Did I keep you waiting too long?"

  “Why?”

  “You’re looking rather purple.” .

  He laughed. “Not about you.” She had, he saw, been dressed quite conservatively for the office. Now her skirt had vanished almost entirely, and the rest of the little whatnot she wore was some kind of lace with a weave large enough to put your hand through. Not a bad idea either. He must remember it. “Do you drink, Robin?”

  “I do."

  “Then let’s not just stand around here.”

  “I eat, too.”

  “What dame doesn’t? But first we drink.”

  He helped her on with her coat and led her out.

  The pleasure palace on the borders of Soho was much like The Third Illusion in Santa Monica, except that it had psychedelic lighting. And of course, the accents were different, the liquor was seventy proof and the beer warm, and the young men had long hair. But it was good. It was very good. He danced with Robin, and she was good and a lot of fun. He danced hotly, furiously, in the shifting light, purging himself of funerals and problems, forgetting Ellen, forgetting Harvey, forgetting Karim.

  The on-and-off lights were hypnotic, flaring, gold, green, red, blue, purple. He danced and felt gloriously, pleasantly drunk.

  Then presently the lights seemed to have steadied down to a dim glow, and there was no more dancing, and he felt a lot more than pleasantly drunk. His head bulged, and his brain swam inside it, aimless as a fish. He looked around for Robin. There was a young man sitting beside him on the right. He wore a velvet jacket, and his beautiful blond hair curled on his shoulders. He smiled at Tony. Tony looked the other way and saw a second young man, dressed elegantly in bottle green, with a large flowing tie and beautiful dark hair waved over his forehead. He also smiled at Tony. Robin was nowhere in sight

  “Where's the girl?” asked Tony.

  “She left you,” said the blond young man. “She’s gone.”

  “Gone? Why?”

  “Don't you remember, Yank?” said the dark young man.

  “God,” said Tony. “I don't even remember coming here." There was a drink in front of him. Beyond the drink he could see an unsteady vista of tables and chairs and people sitting around in a haze of smoke. There was music, pounding, thumping, rocking. “I need a pill," said Tony, and fumbled for his pocket.

  The young men leaned in closer. The blond one had delicate features. His skin was transparent, with a faint rosy flush over the cheekbones. His eyes were enormous and long-lashed. The dark one was coarser, with protruding lips and a large nose. Their Cockney accents were rich and ripe; an expert might have said too rich, too carefully studied. Tony was no expert. All he wanted was a pill, a nice benny to clear away the fog. Get his heart beating again. He didn't have any heartbeat. “I'm a zombie,” he muttered. “Look at me, a goddam zombie.''

  “Zombie, ’e says. What do you think of that?”

  “Don't look like a zombie to me. Looks like a Yank. Cropped hair and all, and that jaw—”

  “Brutal, ain't it?”

  “A baby killer’s jaw.”

  “Ah.” The one with the dark hair and the big nose gathered Tony’s shirt into his hand and shook him gently. “A baby-killin' Yank. All them poor little nippers in Vietnam. Ain’t you ashamed?”

  Tony said distinctly, “Frig you,” and shoved. The dark-haired man moved back, but it was Tony who fell across the table.

  The blond one giggled. “That's why she left you, darling. You were trying to pinch her bottom, and you fell.” He leaned over and inspected Tony. “Oh, he don't look well at all.” He pulled Tony’s head around by the ear, and Tony sat up again, squealing with the pain. The dark-haired one peered at him.

  “I think he's going to be sick.”

  “Ah. Then he ought to go to the men’s.”

  They picked him up, one on each side, pinning his arms, holding him. He kept telling himself to fight, but his legs would not do anything except stagger along between the two pairs of jaunty pipestems with their pointed feet, and his body remained sluggishly uninterested. He could not understand why until he remembered that he was a zombie and had no heartbeat.

  A door opened and closed. The voices and the music became dim. He was in a corridor, gray and cold, with a stale, bad smell. He could see another door at the end of it, an evil sort of door with leprous paint. He balked.

  “Look,” he said. “I’m not sick. I’m not sick at all.”

  “No?” said the blond-haired one. “Well, we must see to that, mustn't we, darling?”

  He let go of Tony’s arm. Moving like a dancer, he stepped in front of him and, giggling, kicked him in the genitals.

  6

  It seemed to go on forever. Sometimes he would go to sleep and forget about it; but then he would wake again, and there they were, capering and prancing on their long, thin legs and hurting him terribly, and the blond one never stopped giggling. “These goddam fairies,” he cried, “don't they ever get tired?” Voices answered him, telling him it was all right now, but he knew well and good it wasn't all right, not while those sharp toes were spearing him and those malicious white hands were busy with torment. He could see with ridiculous clarity how beautifully manicured the nails were.

  Then there was the door, the nasty-looking door with the bleared paint. Every once in a while they would stop their murderous dancing and fling open that door and drag him through it, and afterward for a while it would be nice and dark and quiet, with rain-wet cobbles cold under his cheek, and the pain would go away. But it always came back, and he would find himself in the corridor again, looking up at them as they spun about with their long hair and their coattails flying. He wished they would just leave him in the dark out there. It was so silly to keep on dragging him back in. Only they didn’t, really, they only dragged him out, and he wondered how they got him in again. These fairies were smart—you had to give them that. Smart and talented. He decided craftily that he would stay alert next time and see how they did it.

  And he was sure he had. He was quite triumphant about it. “I caught you,” he said, and laughed, and pointed his finger at them. “You carried me on a stretcher.”

  “Of course,” said the blond-haired one, bending over him. “Mr. Wales. Mr. Wales?”

  He had changed his clothing. He was dressed all in white now, and his voice had changed. Tony was admiring.

  “You do make a hell of a woman,” he said. “You could almost fool me.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Wales!” said the blond one, and began to take his pulse.

  Tony whimpered. “Tell me,” he said, “when it's time to wake up.”

  The time came, and then there were the visitors.

  First it was the police, two quiet, courteous young men, who were very regretful about what had happened and almost apologetic about questioning him. They noted down carefully and in detail his description of the two men. By now Tony understood that he had been robbed as well as beaten; money, wristwatch, cuff links. He could describe the watch and cuff links. As for the money, he had had something like forty pounds in his pocket when he had begun the evening, but he had no idea how much he had spent along the way. They told him they could form an estimate fro
m Miss Thompson's statement, and they added that it was a pity he had not taken her advice and left that place. It was a known trouble spot, and of course, the management had neither seen nor heard any of it. They would, of course, continue the investigation and would inform him directly they had any information.

  They left, and Tony was perfectly well aware that underneath the quiet courtesy they were both thinking the same thing: The bloody fool had got just what he deserved. Next time he might stay sober enough to know what he was doing.

  Bronson came later, bringing fruit and magazines and Robin Thompson.

  They both looked as uncomfortable as Tony felt. "Shocking business," said Bronson. "Disgraceful. We don’t like to think that these things can happen in London. Pride ourselves, and all that. But we do have our plague spots, I'm afraid.”

  Tony looked at Robin and said, “Damn right you do. How did we get into that hole anyhow?”

  She bristled but seemed to be forcing herself to patience, out of respect for the hideous condition of his face. “Don’t you remember at all?"

  “I don't remember anything after we left the place that had the lights."

  Bronson said, "I gather you were . . . ah . . . a trifle under the weather.”

  “I must,” said Tony brutally, “have been slopped right over my eyeballs.”

  “You were," said Robin. "And I’m sorry, Mr. Wales, but I must say you were behaving very badly. You would go wandering about the worst streets in Soho, and I kept trying to tell you—”

  "Okay, okay," said Tony. “So how did we get there?"

  “You insisted on going in for a drink. I knew it wasn't a good place, and I asked you to come away, and you were quite insulting—"

  "So you left.”

  “Yes, I did. Of course, if I had known what was going to happen to you, I would have tried harder. But really, you were impossible.”

  “I think,” said Bronson, "you can hardly blame Miss Thompson.”

  "No,” said Tony. "Hardly.”

  Bronson sighed. “And I thought that a night on the town would do you good. Makes one afraid, doesn't it? I mean, how is one to know what may come of the simplest suggestion.”

  “Oh, hell,” said Tony. "I got drunk, and I took a beating. Nobody's fault but my own.”

  "I'm sorry about it anyway,” said Robin.

  "That’ll teach you,” he told her, "not to go out with visiting Americans.”

  She left, and Bronson said, “By the way, I cabled Karim about this. It seemed that someone ought to.”

  "Thanks.”

  "Get a good rest,” said Bronson. "I'll pop in again in a day or two.”

  He went out, and Tony lay in the austere white room all alone with his shame and his hurt. He closed his eyes, and immediately the nightmare came back. It was a part of the city, the great, gray, powerful city that enveloped him, ancient, proud, full of history he did not know, and ringing with names that meant nothing to him; a wise old city that made him feel like an ignorant child. He tried to be defiant with it. What did he care whose heads had rolled on Tower Green or what moldy old king had done what a thousand years ago? They all were dead and gone now, and what did they matter? Hell, he thought, I don’t even know my own history. But that wasn't any reason to hurt me so. I didn't mean any harm.

  He was acutely conscious of the city. Vast and ponderous, weighing on him, closing him in, and at the same time ignoring him. It was busy with its own affairs. Busy with spring, adorning its window ledges with flowers to burn bright against the gray stone. On fine afternoons the parks were crowded with people sitting in sixpenny chairs and drinking up the sun. A beautiful city. Only deep down in its heart were the dark places where the evil children walked among the mean bars and the flaring blaring lights of the strip joints and the little bookstalls that sold nothing but pornography, and that was where the nightmare was and where it continued. There the evil children tortured Tony Wales. They were lithe and blithe and vicious, and they did not care at all that he was a coward and hated pain.

  In the midst of the nightmare and the torture he kept saying something over and over, but he could not hear what it was.

  When he woke up again sometime later, Ellen was waiting to see him.

  He had hoped she wouldn’t come. He had hoped she had gone to Isfahan and forgotten about him. But there she was, tall and handsome, with her hair falling over her shoulders and her eyes as blue as the sea and so damned direct.

  “I’m sorry, Tony,” she said. “Is it very bad?”

  “You bet it is. And what have you got to be sorry about? You didn’t get me drunk.”

  “No need to be waspish, Tony. And you do look a fright. But the doctor says you’ll be fit to travel in three weeks or so. Tony—”

  “What?"

  “If you’ll come with me, I’ll wait for you.”

  “Come with you?” He stared at her, out of his misery, out of his shattering trauma. Now all at once he knew what he had been saying in his dream. “No. I want to go home! I want to go home!"

  “Poor Tony,” she said. “You’ve never been really hurt before, and you’re terrified. I am sorry.” Somehow he felt that she was truly sorry for him, though not because of the beating. “Very well, then. Good-bye.”

  And he knew she meant it.

  He was alone again. He curled himself into the pillows and thought of home, of gaudy plaster buildings cheerful in the sunshine, of bright beaches and tanned bodies, of Hollywood and the Sunset Strip and The Third Illusion. That was his city. He belonged to it. He would be safe there. He had always been safe there.

  The vision comforted him. When the nightmare came again, it had lost something of its power.

  Waking, he remembered that he had been thinking before the catastrophe that perhaps he ought to go with Ellen to Iran, not for her sake but for Karim’s. Well, the decision had been made for him. He couldn’t go now. Karim would understand; he wouldn’t expect him to come. And after all, there probably wasn’t any real need. Karim could certainly handle any trouble Ellen might make.

  By the time he left England three weeks later he had had two cables from Karim, one urging him to take care of himself, the second concerning Ellen.

  SAW OUR PARTNER IN TEHERAN STOP ABLE TO CONVINCE HER ALL WELL STOP ON WAY TO SICILY INSTEAD OF ISFAHAN STOP BEST KARIM

  That was good news at any rate.

  He climbed aboard the big jet at Heathrow, fairly well healed in his body but still deeply wounded in his soul. The police had not yet found his watch or his cuff links or any trace of the two men.

  When he landed at Los Angeles International Airport, Jake Zacharian was there to pick him up.

  7

  The sun and the sea welcomed Tony. They embraced him and soothed his hurts, and in the nighttime the surf talked gently to him. Normalcy became almost total again, with Sandra to dance with and share his bed, with the other familiar faces to fill in the familiar rounds. Unexpectedly, Zacharian turned out to be a tremendous help, providing him with a patient and sympathetic audience for the necessary oral catharsis until Tony himself got bored with talking about it.

  He danced with Sandra all one Friday night, then took her to his apartment, where they danced some more between the sheets, and when they were through, they drank vodka and fell asleep, and Tony felt really good, really with it, ten feet high and happy.

  The telephone dragged him relentlessly out of the depths of his peaceful slumber to blink at the noonday sun and curse. The thing wouldn't stop ringing, so he picked it up.

  “Tony?”

  It was Zacharian's voice, and Tony groaned. Sandra was stirring poutily in the bed. “What are you trying to do, Jake, ruin my sex life?”

  “Tony,” said the voice, hard and crackling with urgency, “would you recognize the two men who beat you up in London?”

  “What?” said Tony. "What?"

  “I said, would you—”

  “Yes. Anywhere, any time. But—"

  “I'll send my van down
. Don't bother shaving; just get your pants on. George will pick you up in the alley.”

  He hung up. Tony stood with his mouth open and the questions freezing in it, with the sick terror twisting at his guts as strongly as though he still lay in that gray corridor with the sharp boots savaging him.

  Zacharian must have seen them.

  But then Zacharian couldn't know. He had only heard about them from Tony, and God knew there were enough homegrown fairies around, with long hair and tight pants.

  “What's the matter?” asked Sandra, sounding very cross.

  “Ah, Zacharian's jumped out of his tree,” said Tony.

  “Zacharian again? Why does that man hate us?”

  “Go back to sleep.” He started pulling his clothes on.

  “You going out?”

  "Have to."

  "Well, that’s just fine! What am I supposed to do?”

  "Go back to sleep,” he repeated, snarling slightly, and went out.

  The van came in a few moments, a neat brown panel truck with the name ZACHARIAN on it in arrogantly plain gold letters. Tony wondered why the alley instead of the street. He found out when George waved him away from the cab and got out. He opened the back door.

  “The boss said you’re to ride in here, out of sight.”

  He was brisk and matter-of-fact about it. Tony shrugged and got in, hunkering down beside a burlap-covered bale of carpets that smelled of dust and spices. It seemed like a very good idea to him, just in case.

  He sat and gnawed his knuckles, riding blind, and was glad when the van finally did some quick backing and turning and then stopped. He heard George get out of the cab, but it was a minute or two before the door was opened for him. Then Zacharian was standing there, looking not at him but up and down on both sides. They were in the service bay in the alley behind Zacharian’s shop.

  "All right,” he said. "Inside.”