Don't Call Me Madame

by Kane, Henry

  A sliver of nastiness was coming through. If it was in there, martinis would bring it out. Martinis are notorious as the catalyst for nastiness. “Dull,” he said. “Like a dish.”

  “No, you’re not.” Laughter. White teeth in a tan face. And under the table delicate fingers unzipped his trousers and a warm hand enclasped his penis. Her lips at his ear: “Oh, you’re a big one, aren’t you?”

  “But dull.”

  “Don’t sulk. It doesn’t become you.” Her lips caressed his ear. She whispered, “Would you like to four-letter me, honey?” She released him under the table and laughed aloud. “See? How prim and proper I can be if I try?”

  Hands under the table, he organized the membership, zipped his pants.

  “Prim and proper” she asked. “Decorous? Aren’t I? You didn’t answer my question.”

  “Which one?”

  Her lips at his ear again. “Would you, sir, frankly care to fuck me?”

  “I, frankly, very much would.”

  “There’s my boy. Straight and true and right to the point.” She drank down her martini. “A one-night stand, baby, you and me, first names, incognito. Please remember the fiancé returns on Friday. Please remember I’m engaged to be married June eleventh. We play a little crazy bingo tonight, you and me incognito, but that’ll be it once and for all and forever. On those conditions, are you game?”

  “Fair game.”

  “A wit yet I found in the Jolly Horseshoe. Okay, reporter, pay the man and take little Liz home to bed.”

  He paid and they went out and walked around the block to 33 East 61st, tall in the starry night, an imposing edifice with thick-glass doors, and they rode up to the fourteenth floor and she opened the door and led him into a lovely living room.

  “Beautiful,” he said.

  “Me?”

  “You too.”

  “Shit with the wit, reporter. Can’t you be nice to little Liz?”

  “You’re beautiful.”

  “That’s better. Not great, but better.” She put her keys in her bag and tossed the bag away and pointed to the bar. “Can you make martinis?”

  “I can.”

  “Make. Plenty of ice. And don’t shake. Stir.”

  “Don’t shake, stir,” he said obediently.

  “And make a lot. In the glass part of the shaker, not the metal part. Fill her up. Right to the top, reporter. Right?”

  “Right.”

  “And make for yourself whatever you wish.”

  “Right.”

  She staggered, caught herself.

  “Stinko,” she said.

  “Right.”

  “Stop agreeing with me.”

  “Right.”

  “See you,” she said and went out of the room.

  He took out the snuffbox, dug deep, and sniffed. Dug deep again and sniffed again in the other nostril. Good. So damn good. So damn blissful good. He put away the snuffbox, licked his fingers, and went to the bar. Plucked out a bottle of Noilly Prat dry vermouth, plucked out a bottle of Tanqueray gin, plucked out a little bottle of Angostura Bitters (if she didn’t like a touch of bitters in her martini, that was just too bad). The shaker was professional, a bartender’s shaker, the metal container sitting within the tall thick-lipped glass container, and he took out the metal, and dumped cubes from the bar-refrigerator into the tall glass, and splashed a bit of the bitters onto the ice. Then vermouth to cover the bottom of the glass, and Tanqueray over the ice all the way to the top, and he stirred vigorously with the long bar-spoon. Found a lemon and cut shards of peel into a little shot-glass. Found a stemmed cocktail glass and set it out. Then made himself a Scotch and soda and sat on a tall stool and sipped and waited and admired the beautiful room and then he admired her.

  She came back and acted as though she were fully clothed. She was, however, stark naked and there was so much, so damn beautiful-much, to admire. Long slender legs and slender long thighs. Buds of breasts like an adolescent, but a big round firm-pouting ass like a trampoline athlete, and all of it, all of her, tan-brown, smooth golden brown, no demarcation of white where a bathing suit might have protected her from the kiss of the sun, and a natural blonde, no question at all about that, the tufted hair of her pubis exactly matching in gleaming color the now tousled short-cut hair of her head.

  And she acted as though she were fully clothed.

  She smiled and sat on a bar stool near him, a knee between his knees.

  And he smiled despite the tumescence caught within his tight mod pants and paining like a strangulated hernia.

  “Hi,” she said.

  “Well, hello there.” (Sophisticated?)

  “You’re staring.”

  “It’s the brown. All. So brown.”

  “No big conundrum to be solved. I’m a member of a nudist camp, and when I swim that’s where I swim. Have you ever been?”

  “Nudist camp? No.”

  The smile. The white teeth in the brown face. And the haughty diction, so perfect it seemed affected. “From what I discovered back there at Chez Vito, you’ve nothing to be ashamed of. Au contraire. Are you a bashful one, pretty Tony?”

  “No. Just … never went.”

  “Too bad I can’t indoctrinate you. But prim and proper, remember me? Engaged to my solid, stolid prick of a Wall Street lawyer. Getting with the nuptials come the eleventh of next month. Remember me?”

  “I remember you.”

  The brown body, pivoting on the brown buttocks, turned to the bar. She ignored the shards of peel, ignored the long-stemmed cocktail glass, raised the tall thick-lipped shaker glass and drank from it. “Hey,” she said, “beautiful. You’re a man who knows how to build a martini. Maybe I ought to marry you.”

  “Why don’t you wait until you’re asked?”

  (Shit no, he thought, suppressing the wrath beginning to rise in him. No! Be good!)

  “Don’t get waspish, pretty boy.” She drank from the big thick-lipped shaker glass. “Wanna know something, pretty boy? I think you’re a bartender, that’s what I think. Don’t crap me with the reporter bit.” She laughed. Nasty, the bitch. There it goes again, the innate nastiness. “A bartender on his night off. Nobody but a bartender can mix a martini like you mixed, baby. Hey you, reporter. Tell the truth. Bartender?”

  “Reporter,” he said humbly, holding down wrath.

  The brown eyes glinting. “Wanna fuck, bartender?”

  “Yes, ma’am, I do.” Humbly.

  “Ground rules,” she said. “I’m gonna lay out the ground rules.” A slight slur in the beautiful diction. “I’m gonna talk, pretty-boy, and I want you to listen.” (Watch out, Wall Street lawyer. Unless you’re a pansy, watch your balls. This beautiful brownskinned lady is a castrater. This is a very authoritative lady, the cocksucker, the small-mouthed, high-talking, haughty bitch. And he held on to wrath, squeezing it away, as he was squeezing away the strangulation pain of the hard-on constricted in his tight pants.) “Fuck,” she said. “That’s what we’re gonna do. Straight fucking, if you please. I’m sick and tired of fancy bartenders who want to suck, nibble, play bowling ball with two fingers, jerk off in the lotus position, or delicately work a vibrator at the seat of my passion, namely my clitoris. I’m an old-fashioned broad who desires a good fuck in the hole, reporter. The hole. That’s the vagina. Not the rectum, not between the tits, not in my mouth or under the armpits. Straight old-fashioned fucking, bartender. Them’s the ground rules, baby. Are we met?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  She drank from the shaker, gurgled a lot of it down, cocked her head in a kind of reverence. “Bartender, you sure mix a divine martini.” (Jesus, how much could she drink?) “Well,” she said, “fornication, anybody?” Moved off the stool, wavered, righted herself. Holding on to the shaker, she squeezed between his spread knees on the stool, kissed him lightly. “Come with me, pretty boy.”

  Enraptured with the smooth, brown, swaying buttocks, he followed her to a cool spacious bedroom done in golds and pinks and pal
e blues. She sat on a small gold chair.

  “Take off de clothes, mine boy,” she sang and sipped from the shaker.

  He undressed, neatly putting his clothing on a blue silk upholstered armchair.

  “Oh, Lord, are you hung!” She put away the shaker on the carpeted floor. “Come here, you gorgeous hunk of man.” She stood up, put her arms around him when he came to her, and kissed him. But a kiss this time, finally. Her soft lips writhed on his, and the tip of her tongue palpated his teeth, his gums, his palate, then thickly rammed into his mouth, swabbing. He could taste her martini.

  And so they stood, body to body, his penis in the crotch of her thighs, and they rocked enclasped, quivering, body to body, tongues lashing, and then she broke from him and pointed to the little gold chair. “Sit down,” she ordered.

  He sat.

  “Man, that’s one beautiful cock you’ve been blessed with.”

  The perfect diction was no longer perfect. It was slow, hesitant, drunkenly distorted. The martinis had reached the capacity level. “Sit, baby. You just sit like that.” She straddled him, brown legs on either side of him, and sank carefully onto the upright pivot, moved up instantly, did that again and again until her lubrication made it possible for her to accommodate him. Then she settled on it, fully, and it was all the way in her. “Jesus, man,” she groaned. “That’s a cock like a ramrod, baby.” Her fingernails scratched his shoulders as she writhed, wriggled, oscillated, pumped. “Kiss my tits,” she ordered. “Kiss me, baby. Suck my nipples. And don’t come. Hold it, baby. Don’t come.” But she did. Time and again, and again and again, sobbing, moaning, sighing, trembling, gasping …

  Then she was off him, the brown body gleaming in a sheen of perspiration, and she bent to the shaker and drank thirstily and took the shaker to bed with her.

  “Sit there,” she said. “You just sit there and let me look at you.” And drank. “You’re a good man, man. Man, you can hold it, baby. You’ve got … control. That’s what you’ve got, pretty boy. A wonderful cock, but what’s a wonderful cock without control?” She drank. She mumbled something incoherent.

  “Don’t you think you’ve had enough of that?”

  “Me? Not me.” She had misunderstood. “I’m insatiable. Honey, I’ll fuck you right out of your mind.” She finished what was left in the shaker, drunkenly tossed it away. “C’mere. Show you. Come to bed, bartender. What is it with you? You afraid of me?”

  He went to bed with her and immediately she was at him, slobbering, kissing, biting, nibbling, and rolled over him, anxious fingers expertly guiding him into her. (On top, always on top, this castrating bitch.) “Man, that cock! Fucking you, baby, oh I’m fucking you, riding that gorgeous cock, baby, and don’t you come, don’t you dare come, you hold it, hear?”

  And then she was screaming, clinging, gripping, her nails tearing at him, her vagina convulsing in spasms …

  And she rolled off.

  And glaze-eyed, looked at him.

  “Where’s my drink?”

  “You threw it away.”

  “Go home,” she said. “I’m tired.”

  He reached for her.

  “No. Go home. You’ve had it, bartender.”

  She lay on her back, lifted her legs, and with the soles of both feet pushed him out of bed and he slid to the carpet with a thump. He rose and went at her angrily, but her eyes were closed.

  “Bitch!”

  He shook her. Nothing. She was passed out cold.

  The bitch. The offensive, affected, selfish bitch.

  “Don’t you come, don’t you dare come, you hold it hear?”

  The insatiable bitch, satiated, was drunkenly asleep. She had used him and literally kicked him out of bed. She had had her satisfaction, orgasm after orgasm, and had not even permitted him one.

  Oh, but I’m going to have mine, bitch.

  I took care of you; now you’re going to take care of me.

  And he went to his clothes on the blue silk armchair and took out the knife …

  SIXTEEN

  THURSDAY morning at eight o’clock Chambers’s bell rang, and it was Felix Budd, and Chambers knew why. He wrote a check for two hundred and fifty dollars, gave it to Felix, and said, “Anything?”

  “If there was anything you’da heard from me, wouldn’t you?”

  “Just making small talk,” Chambers said dourly.

  “No time for small talk. Gotta go.”

  “Where you going?”

  “To work. For you.”

  Chambers let him out, and as long as he was up he stayed up. He showered, shaved, ate breakfast, and came to the office early. His secretary, Miss Miranda Foxworth, sixtyish but effervescent, raised her eyebrows like they were flags on the Fourth of July, but made no comment. Disappointed, he folded his arms on his chest and stood there.

  “What are you waiting for?” she asked. “Applause?”

  “Good morning, Miranda.”

  “Morning.” She grinned. “Is it?”

  “Pardon?”

  “Have you been, if I may ask, to bed yet?”

  “You may. I have.”

  “Turning over a new leaf or something?”

  “Or something,” he said and went past her into his office and worked on routine, of which there is always an overabundance. His mail was heavy but most of it was advertising for dildoes, coital devices, potency pills, sex training books with pictures, and orgy films for home showing in color. Somehow he had gotten on that kind of mailing list and once you’re on that kind of mailing list, forget it — you’re on it forever. But there was mail that was more pertinent, and there was also his bank statement. He did the bank statement first, knowing of course that in the end it would not tally and of course it didn’t But the discrepancy this time was small and in his favor, so let the bank worry about it. Then he paid bills. Then he called in Miranda and dictated on the mail (and on other accumulated mail) and she went out with her book and he did filing. Forever and ever, there is always filing!

  At twelve-thirty she went out to lunch and came back with the afternoon paper and he knew he would be getting a call from Richard V. Starr. The front page proclaimed in thick, black, smeary headlines: MARAUDER STRIKES AGAIN. And on bottom in smaller print: Story on page 3. Photos on pages 4, 5. See editorial, page 31.

  Page three had it all over again, the sickening pattern of deviate murder, throat cut from ear to ear, stomach ripped and eviscerated, but this time it had not happened in a cheap hotel room but in the stylish apartment of Miss Elizabeth Bristol, 33 East 61st Street Miss Bristol, twenty-seven, was a highly successful advertising copywriter with the firm of Kenton, Meers & Grey-stone, and was the daughter of State Senator J. Abner Bristol of Michigan.

  The editorial on page thirty-one burned with threat and indignation. (Sure, Chambers thought. When it begins to happen on the fashionable East Side to fashionable people, then the publishers and the chief editors, they themselves fashionable people, begin to shit in their pants and quake in their boots and burn with editorials because now they know it can happen to them and theirs.) The editorial was an open letter to the mayor. In substance it said shake up your police, shake them out of their torpor. There is a lunatic here in the city on the loose. Get him! If your police commissioner can’t handle the job — remove him! If you don’t remove him, and this lunatic-killer is not removed from circulation, then we’ll have to remove you, Mr. Mayor. Bad enough the streets are not safe — now we’re not even safe in our own apartments. In November there will be an election!

  Tough. Chambers put down the paper. Oh it’s going to be tough now racing the cops to get to the guy first. Three hot, bestial murders — wide open. And this time the victim was the daughter of a senator. Now there would be a political squeeze all the way around, and the big shots would be worried about their jobs, all the way up to the mayor. The heat was on. The real heat, the big heat — on!

  The call came at four o’clock. This time Mr. Richard V. Starr did not ask; he ordered. He
did not say can you make it. He said: “I want you in my apartment at six-thirty.”

  “You bet.”

  And at six-thirty he was there, leaning on the mother-of-pearl button, and being peeped at through the peephole. The three locks snapped open, and the three locks snapped shut, and Mr. Richard V. Starr, tall, elegant, fashionable attired, led him to the study, sat behind his massive mahogany desk, and lit a long thin cigar.

  “Talk,” he suggested.

  “What about?” Chambers inquired. “What about? Where the hell are you? What in hell are you doing about this?”

  “Working my ass off.”

  “How?”

  Chambers sat. Tapped out a cigarette and put fire to it.

  “I’ve put on two extra men at my own expense.” (Two. Better than one. Exaggeration is a part of business.) “I’ve got one man outside Epstein’s office. He knows what Tony looks like from the picture you gave me. So does my other guy who’s stationed outside Epstein’s apartment house.” (Maybe he should have a guy outside Epstein’s house. No. The little lawyer would transact his lawyer-business in his office.) “And I’ve got other irons in the fire.” (Vague. Aura of obscurity. Starr was the guy to understand that. Business is business. Macy might let Gimbel in on a little — but Macy wouldn’t let Gimbel in on all.)

  The little he had let him in on seemed to mollify him. He sat back, smoked his cigar more placidly. “Panic button,” he said.

  Chambers nodded. “I agree.”

  “Suddenly there’s big politics involved.”

  “I agree, but nothing will help them, Mr. Starr. I’ll get to him first, I assure you.”

  “What makes you so cocky?”

  “Not cocky. Simple logic, Mr. Starr. They’ve got a zillion more people, the whole police department, but I’ve got the inside track and I’m away out ahead of them. I know whom I’m looking for — they don’t. I have a full description — they have nothing. And I’ve got the Epstein lead — and they know nothing, and wouldn’t be interested if they did know, about Tony Starr’s connection to Judge Harry Epstein. I told you it would take time, but I’ll get him before they will. I can’t miss.”