The Man in the White Linen Suit

by David Handler

  “Have you tried contacting his wife, Kathleen?”

  “Tommy left her two weeks ago. Moved out and rented himself a furnished studio apartment in Hell’s Kitchen.” She peered at me suspiciously. “You didn’t know that?”

  “I’ve been away for the summer. Just got back into town. I haven’t spoken to Tommy in months.”

  “He hasn’t phoned you since he disappeared on Friday night?”

  “No, he hasn’t.”

  “Are you telling me the truth?”

  “Of course I am.”

  “Then why don’t I believe you?” she demanded accusingly.

  “If you don’t believe me, then I’m going to leave this table and walk out the door. Is that what you want, Sylvia?”

  “What I believe,” she went on, totally ignoring what I’d just said, “is that he intends to hold the manuscript hostage until I agree to give him, in writing, the coauthorship and royalty participation that he claims I promised him three books ago. Which has to be the sneakiest, most low-down tactic I’ve witnessed in my entire career.”

  “Very sneaky and low-down,” I agreed. “Almost as sneaky and low-down as promising him coauthorship and royalty participation that you never had any intention of giving him. Did you call the police?”

  “And tell them what? I don’t even know what’s happened.”

  “Which is why you’re here, dear boy,” Alberta put in helpfully. “You and Tommy are chums, after all.”

  “And you do seem to specialize in these sorts of . . . awkward situations,” Sylvia conceded. “I’d like to enlist your services as a kind of go-between. You know Tommy’s haunts. Find him. Convince him to come to his senses and deliver the Tulsa manuscript. If he refuses, then I will be forced to call the police and report it stolen.”

  “You’d actually have him arrested?”

  “Without hesitation. Tulsa is our big moneymaker for next summer. We must have it. Well, what do you say?”

  I looked down at Lulu. Lulu was looking up at me—with keen-eyed disapproval. “Sorry, I can’t help you. I’m working on a novel of my own.”

  Sylvia nodded. “Yes, I know. Alberta told me she’s read the first three chapters and that they’re fascinating.”

  “I believe the word I used was thrilling,” Alberta said dryly, lighting a Newport.

  “Guilford House will make you a very lucrative offer for it if you’re able to defuse this situation. As a good-faith gesture, I’m prepared to cut you a check for $25,000 against the generous advance we’d be expecting to give you.”

  “Good-faith gestures go for $75,000 this season,” the Silver Fox countered.

  “Let’s not quibble, Alberta. This is much too important. We’ll make it $50,000.”

  “We’ll make it $75,000,” Alberta insisted as I sipped my Macallan, calmly waiting for Sylvia to cave. The woman had zero leverage. None. But she had to behave as if she did. That was how the game was played.

  Sylvia let out a weary sigh. “Very well. What do you say, Stewart?”

  “I’ll want to talk to your father.”

  “He knows nothing. I can assure you it’s not necessary.”

  “It’s necessary if I say it is. I won’t do this unless I have a free hand.”

  Sylvia hesitated. “Fine. But I want to be present when you speak to him.”

  “As you wish. Where does your stepmother, Yvette, fit into all of this?”

  “You mean Princess Lemon Jell-O?” Sylvia curled her lip again. “You should see the way she jiggles and wiggles in those tight little dresses of hers. Doesn’t know the meaning of the word bra. She’s so obvious that only teenaged boys and dirty old men could possibly find her the least bit enticing. You can guess which group Addison falls into. And if you wish to remain on cordial terms with me you will never, ever refer to that bimbo as my stepmother again. She doesn’t fit into this, in answer to your question. Or I don’t see how she could. Between shoe shopping, facials, manicures, pedicures and getting her hair done, the poor dear hasn’t a minute to spare.”

  “Is she out at their place in the Hamptons or here in the city?”

  “She’s here. Why?”

  “Just trying to get the lay of the land, as it were. I take it you’re not particularly fond of her.”

  “She’s a greedy bitch who played Addison for a fool. She’s also a tramp.”

  “Meaning she has a man friend on the side?”

  Sylvia let out a harsh laugh. “As in one specific one?”

  “I believe that’s what I asked.”

  “Yes, a Long Island attorney named Mel Klein. There’s a money angle to it. With her there always is. She’s persuaded Klein to try to renegotiate the prenuptial agreement she signed when she married Addison.”

  “Can he do that?”

  “Not a chance. I will never let that happen. Nor will Addison’s attorney, Mark Kaplan.” She studied me—or I should say my bow tie—sternly from across the table. “Well, what’s your answer, Stewart? Will you help us?”

  Before I could reply, Gaylord arrived with a rotary phone, plugged it in to the floor jack under our table and handed it to me. “For you, Mr. Hoag,” he said as he whisked Lulu’s empty plate away.

  “Stewart Hoag speaking,” I said into the phone.

  “Liver and onions?” Merilee said from the other end of the line.

  “Only if it comes with multiple rashers of thick-cut bacon,” I said as Lulu sat right up and whimpered. She can always tell when I’m talking to her mommy.

  “Blue Mill Tavern, seven o’clock?” her mommy said.

  “I’ll see you then. Shall I take this to mean that you’re back in town?”

  “Can’t put anything over on Mrs. Hoag’s boy Stewie, can I? I’ve been calling your apartment every half hour, darling. Don’t you ever check your messages? I had to find you through Alberta’s office.”

  “What brings you back here, Merilee?”

  “Something wonderful. I’ll tell you about it at dinner.”

  “It’s a date,” I said, hanging up the phone.

  Sylvia glanced at her watch impatiently. “I’d really like to catch the 6:57. What’s your answer, Stewart? Will you do it?”

  “I’m in the middle of something very exciting, but I can take a few days off and ask around.” After all, Tommy was a good guy and was clearly in deep trouble. So was my bank account, which could use that $75,000 cash infusion. And it certainly wouldn’t hurt to have Guilford House make an offer on my novel. Alberta would then be able to show it to a select group of editors at other houses and start a bidding war. “But let’s be clear about something, Sylvia. I’m not doing it for you. I’m doing it for Tommy. I hate to see him get buried because of the way you lied to him. This sort of thing never used to happen in publishing. It was an honorable business. Am I right, Alberta?”

  “I hate to disillusion you, dear boy, but I’ve been in publishing since 1948 and it has never been the gentlemanly profession that people made it out to be—particularly the Hollywood crowd, who were totally taken in by anyone who had an Ivy League degree and didn’t spit when he talked. I’ve known quite a few publishers in my time who were outright thieves. And believe me, some of the finest fiction ever produced was a J. P. Lippincott royalty statement.”

  “When can I see your father, Sylvia?”

  “I still say it’s not necessary.”

  “And I still say it is.”

  “Very well. I’ll meet you at his penthouse tomorrow at noon. The address is 110 Riverside Drive.” Sylvia reached for a tote bag at her feet that bulged with manuscripts and stood up. “And please be discreet about this.”

  “Not to worry. Discretion is my middle name.”

  Actually, I lied. It’s Stafford. But there was no need for her to know that.

  LULU AND I caught a cab from the Algonquin to the Blue Mill, which happened to be where Merilee Gilbert Nash and I first met, for those of you who’ve ever wondered. A college chum and I were heading toward our boot
h when we happened to stroll by the one where Merilee was having dinner with a playwright whom I knew. Introductions were made, pleasantries exchanged, and as I got lost in those green eyes of hers, I realized she was staring right back at me. Within a week we were an item in Liz Smith’s column.

  God, that was a lifetime ago.

  The Blue Mill was down in the Village, where it occupied a quirky little crook in Commerce Street near Barrow, a few doors down from the Cherry Lane, which has the distinction of being the city’s oldest continuously running Off-Broadway theater. Sam Shepard’s True West had its New York premiere at the Cherry Lane in 1982 with John Malkovich and Gary Sinise. Right now a one-man drag show called Lypsinka! was playing there.

  The Blue Mill opened in the early 1940s, and whenever I walked in the door its vintage decor gave me an inkling of what it must have felt like to live in New York City back in those days. The menus were hand-scrawled on individual chalkboards parked beside each wooden booth. The waiters were career professionals, not struggling actors. Most of them had worked there for at least twenty years. They knew their regular customers by name. Always, they fussed over Lulu and made sure she got a nice fresh piece of Dover sole.

  Merilee was already seated there, sipping a martini. She drank martinis whenever we went to the Blue Mill. Never drank them anywhere else. I kissed her on the cheek, sat down across from her and ordered one myself. I never drank them anywhere else either. It was a tradition.

  Lulu was so excited to see her mommy she whooped and whimpered and crawled up into her lap.

  “Yes, sweetness,” Merilee cooed at her. “Yes, I’ve missed you, too.”

  Merilee looked bright-eyed and excited. Her waist-length blond hair was tied back in a ponytail. She was wearing a faded Western-style denim work shirt with snaps instead of buttons, khaki slacks and Arche sandals. No makeup. She never needed any. Merilee was still strikingly beautiful at forty, and my heart never failed to race a bit whenever I caught sight of her. Not that she’d ever been conventionally pretty. Her jaw was too strong, her nose too long, her forehead too high. Plus she was broad shouldered and nearly six feet tall in her bare feet. But the camera loved the planes of her face and those green eyes. And whenever she walked out onto a stage, she owned it.

  Lulu gave Merilee’s face a good, thorough licking before she finally settled next to her with her head in her lap and made contented argle-bargle noises.

  Stavros brought me my martini. I clinked Merilee’s glass with mine and took a careful sip. Martinis transform me into a blithering, flannel-tongued idiot.

  “So what were you and Alberta doing at the Algonquin?” Merilee asked, tilting her head at me curiously.

  “Can’t tell you.”

  Her eyes widened with girlish delight. “It’s a secret?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “Whose memoir is it? God, it must be huge. Let me guess. Is it Ol’ Blue Eyes?”

  “We were not discussing Frank Sinatra.”

  She furrowed her brow. “I can’t imagine anyone else’s memoir being so top secret unless . . . it’s not Jackie O, is it?”

  “It’s not a memoir at all. I’ve been asked to help a certain publisher find a certain something that’s gone missing.”

  “What’s gone missing? Is it animal, vegetable or mineral?”

  “It’s a manuscript,” I replied, wondering if she was already on her second martini. “If I’m successful, Alberta will be able to get an auction going on my novel when I finish it. And if I’m not, I’ll still get $75,000, which will allow me to keep working on it without wondering how I’m going to pay my rent and keep Lulu in 9Lives canned mackerel.”

  “Darling, I have plenty of money. If you want to stay focused on your novel, just let me write you a check.”

  “Merilee, I’m not taking money from you. I carry my own weight.”

  “Oh, pooh. You are so quaint and old-fashioned. Mind you, that is one of the things I find most attractive about you. That and your tush.”

  Possibly her third martini.

  “I promise I’ll tell you all about it when it’s over,” I said. “But enough about me. What’s this wonderful news of yours?”

  She waited to tell me while Stavros arrived with Lulu’s Dover sole and our plates of the best calves’ liver, onions and bacon in New York City, along with our family-style side dishes of green beans and mashed potatoes. You must, must have mashed potatoes when you order calves’ liver, onions and bacon at the Blue Mill to sop up any morsels of sautéed onions that are left on your plate. I ordered a bottle of Côtes du Rhône as Merilee spooned green beans and mashed potatoes onto our plates and Lulu vanished under the table to enjoy her sole.

  “My wonderful news,” Merilee informed me, cutting into her liver, “is that I’m leaving on an early morning flight tomorrow to spend the next five weeks in Budapest. Our financing for The Sun Also Rises has finally come through.” Last winter she’d been cast in the prized role of Brett and had flown over there to launch production, only to have the financing fall apart. “And this time it’s rock solid. Paramount has gotten involved.”

  Stavros returned with our wine, showed me the label, uncorked it and poured a taste in my glass. I sampled it and pronounced it excellent. He filled our glasses and retreated.

  “That’s terrific, Merilee. Truly. Is Nick Nolte still in as Jake Barnes?”

  Her face fell ever so slightly. “Nick has a conflict now. He’s out.”

  “Who’s in?”

  “Mel Gibson.”

  “Oh, him.”

  “He’s a very gifted actor and I’m looking forward to working with him.”

  “Does this give you an inside shot at a featured role in Lethal Weapon 4?”

  She didn’t dignify that with a response. Just ate with great appetite before she paused to sip her wine, letting out a sigh of regret. “I’m going to miss the farm. It’s so lovely there in the fall. The apples and pears are ripening. The leaves on the maple trees are turning gorgeous colors. The air is so crisp and clean. I just love to curl up in front of a big fire in the fireplace with a good book. You should feel free to go out there and write any time you want. You can take long walks in the woods with your hands buried in the pockets of your Norfolk jacket and Lulu trotting along beside you, thinking deep thoughts.”

  “Just to be clear, is it Lulu who’ll be thinking these deep thoughts or me?”

  “I’m serious, darling. Mr. MacGowan will be keeping an eye on the place. I’ll let him know you may come out and stay for a while.”

  “Thank you, Merilee. That’s very kind of you.”

  “Which brings me to what I actually wanted to talk to you about. Should we order another bottle of wine?”

  “That’s what you wanted to talk to me about?”

  “No, that was an awkward non sequitur.”

  “You say that as if there’s such a thing as a seamless non sequitur.”

  “Are you being a writerly pickle puss, mister?”

  “Little bit.”

  I caught Stavros’s eye and raised the bottle into the air. He nodded and returned with a fresh one and clean glasses. We replayed the entire ritual of his showing me the label and uncorking it and pouring me a taste, my sampling it and pronouncing it excellent. Then he filled the fresh glasses and retreated.

  “What I wanted to say is that it’s still summer and it’s going to be miserably hot and sticky for at least two or three more weeks, maybe even four.”

  “All very true,” I said as I ate. Lulu was already done and had climbed back up next to Merilee with her head in her lap.

  “It must be horribly hot in that starving writer’s garret of yours.”

  “It’s a tad subequatorial, but I’m taking my salt tablets.”

  “Why don’t you two stay in my place while I’m away?” Meaning her prewar eight-room apartment on the sixteenth floor of a luxury doorman building on Central Park West that enjoyed magnificent park views from nearly every window, most o
f which were equipped with whisper-quiet air conditioning units. Meaning the apartment I’d once called home. “You’ll be much more comfortable there. I’ve just refurnished the office, as it happens. I think you’ll find it to your liking. And Lulu suffers terribly in the heat. She’s covered in hair, you know.”

  “So I’ve noticed.”

  “Use the Jag, too, if you want.” Meaning the red 1958 XK150 that we’d bought when we were married. She got it in the divorce settlement, same as she got the apartment. “It’ll just be sitting in the garage on Columbus gathering dust.”

  “Things don’t gather dust in New York, Merilee. They gather soot.” I cleaned my plate and took a sip of my wine, gazing at her over the rim of my glass. “Tell me, what’s brought all of this on? You’ve gone away numerous times for months at a stretch and never offered me the use of your apartment.”

  “You make a good point,” she conceded, turning serious on me. As in hugely serious. Actresses don’t possess small emotions. “Okay, here it is. I feel as if our relationship changed this summer. You writing every day in the guest cottage and puttering in the garden. Me directing my play. The two of us eating dinner together out on the porch looking out at Whalebone Cove and talking about everything and nothing. It felt like it used to back when we were . . . God, please say something before I stab myself in the eye with this steak knife.”

  “Merilee, you know how I feel.”

  “No, mister. I don’t know how you feel.”

  “We belong together. We always have. We always will. I put you through hell, I know that. I’ve spent the last ten years trying to make up for it. We can’t ever go back to our sunshine days. I’m not the same person. Neither are you. We’ve been battered, bruised and humbled. And we’re not kids anymore. But for me there’s you and there’s only you.”

  She reached across the table and gripped my hand. “Thank you for that, darling. I did try, you know. Seeing other men. But I still haven’t met anyone who’s half as fascinating or good-looking as you are.”

  “Why, Merilee Gilbert Nash, are you flirting with me?”

  “Trying to. I’ve never been good at it. I want you to feel as if the apartment is yours. It was yours, after all, before everything turned to poo. What do you say?”