EQMM, September-October 2008

by Dell Magazine Authors

  "This is personal, Mr. Candy."

  "What do you mean?"

  Joe had said: “It's not business. You're a rich man, forgive me. There's nothing wrong with being rich. Sometimes it means making enemies, but that's not what's happening here, is it?"

  "You sound very sure of that."

  Joe shrugged. “You're a rich man,” he repeated. “For business-type problems, you'll have people. But you come to me."

  Even Zoe would have admitted, this was Joe at his best. It helped that he looked like Judd Hirsch, who'd been in that old show Taxi. Not a dead ringer, but the same kind face. People often wanted to confide in him. He made friends the way other people make appointments. And sitting in that half-tidied office—the filing cabinet plonked mid floor like a half-arsed installation—Russell Candy, he could tell, was having what Zoe once called a Joe moment, which in this particular case meant forgetting that he was rich and that Joe was for hire. They were just two men sharing a trouble.

  So Candy had told Joe about his wife's brief movie career.

  * * * *

  Joe said, “The thing is, Mr. Candy, this is not like buying a manuscript. It's like buying a book. Somebody else can still buy it, too. There are bookshops all over.” Deciding he'd taken the analogy as far as was useful, he added, “Video shops, too."

  "It's eight years old. Seven, anyway. She used a false name, and wore a sparkly wig. It's not like anyone would recognise her. Not without being told.” Candy paused. “What I'm buying is his silence. That's what he's selling."

  Joe said, “But an actual movie, a film, if it's out there in distribution—"

  Candy said, “There weren't many copies made. Between three and four hundred. A lot'll have gone abroad—Europe, the Far East—and besides, how many eight-year-old videos do you have? Most'll have worn out years ago. And this market ... there's a lot of turnover."

  It would have cost him too much to say it, Joe thought. This market: porn. “He provided a lot of information, your blackmailer."

  "You think I'm about to give him this"—this being the envelope—"without good reason? I wasn't born yesterday."

  He said, “Mr. Candy. Forgive me, I don't wish to step on toes. But is your wife aware of what you're doing?"

  "No."

  "So you haven't, ah, verified—"

  "I knew about the film, Mr. Silvermann. She told me before we were married."

  "Oh."

  "She didn't have to. I could have walked away, called the wedding off. You know how much bravery that must have taken?"

  Joe said, “I couldn't begin to guess, Mr. Candy,” and meant every word.

  Candy leaned forward. “She was nineteen. And hurting for money. I can remember what that felt like."

  "The money part, me too,” Joe agreed. “Nineteen's a bit of a stretch."

  "You've got to allow for gender differences,” Candy said. “Girls growing up faster, I mean. Plus the fact that everybody gets older faster now anyway. So Faye's nineteen was probably more like your or my twenty-five. Anyway, that's not really the point. She wasn't a bad girl, is what I'm saying. It wasn't like this was a step on a road she was taking. It was an offer made at a time she really needed..."

  "An offer?” Joe suggested.

  "She saw it as an opportunity. You know, like it was going to get her into movies, make her a star. I don't blame her. And I'm not just saying that because I love her. I haven't always been rich. I know the things being poor can make you do."

  Joe nodded wisely. “Half the world's woes,” he said. “Did I say half? Ninety percent. Caused by not having what we need when we need it.” Candy was still leaning forward, his hands splayed flat on Joe's desk. Joe reached out and patted one of them. “You're right, though, Mr. Candy. It was bravery itself, her confession."

  "Oh, tell me about it. Tell me. I treasure the moment. It's how I know she loves me.” He eyed Joe as if Joe were his favourite bartender. “I'm worth a lot, Mr. Silvermann."

  "Please. Joe."

  "I'm worth a lot, Joe. A hell of a lot. But take that away, I'm a catch? I've never been much in the looks department. Since meeting Faye I've been making an effort, but what you see is how far I've got. She tells me how to dress, and I still look like an accident in a charity shop. But you know and I know, I could have married years ago. It's just, I never met a woman I wanted who I could believe wanted me and not my money."

  Because he paused, and because Joe was still there, Joe said, “I understand, Mr. Candy."

  "If Faye was just after my money, she'd never have told me about this."

  "I understand."

  Candy said, “He sent me a photocopy. Of the video cover. It's her. Sparkly wig, but it's her. He saw our wedding photo in the local paper. Says he recognised the blushing bride. She—Faye—she has a tattoo. Small, very tasteful.” He tapped his left shoulder with his right hand. “It's there. It's there."

  And then he'd started to cry.

  * * * *

  So now it was nearly midnight, and here was Joe on a bench. Soon this blackmailer would turn up, and Joe would take the video and give him the envelope in return, making the nineteen-year-old Faye Candy's sole movie one of the priciest properties he'd ever heard of. Not that she'd been Faye Candy at the time, of course. And anyway, had used a false name. Well, you would, wouldn't you? If he, Joe Silvermann, ever made a dirty movie, he was pretty sure he'd do it cloaked in anonymity, even if he wasn't cloaked in anything else.

  "He gives me the video, I give him the envelope,” he murmured. Not that he was in danger of forgetting the procedure; he was just spooked by the dark, and the nearness of trees.

  And then would come the tricky bit, which was finding out where the blackmailer went. A car registration. An address. Something to know him by.

  He'd thought he was alert; ready for the slightest clue. A twig snapping, or a rustling of paper. But when someone arrived out of nowhere, and sat down hard next to him, Joe yelped.

  "You Candy's man?"

  That's what Joe thought he said. And in the split second that followed, he had a near-perfect vision of the fiasco about to be born: one in which Joe, mistaken for a local candyman, ended up holding a few grubby fivers, while this dopehead wandered off with what he expected was a bag of crack, but was in fact a beautiful fortune. The next moment, thankfully, blew that nightmare away.

  "From Russell Candy, yeah?"

  Joe said, “And you're the blackmailer."

  As mentioned, it was dark. The faraway lights didn't do much to reveal the newcomer, beyond that he was male, about Joe's height—though slenderer—and fuzzily chinned, as if a beard were considering its options. Joe couldn't really tell what he was wearing. Jeans, probably. A jacket of some sort. His voice quavered, so he was possibly nervous. If there was an accent, Joe couldn't place it.

  "Did you bring the money?"

  "That's why I'm here,” Joe said, without reaching for it.

  "Don't spin this out, man. We just make the exchange, and go our ways."

  "You could be anyone."

  "Didn't I just say Russell Candy? You think that's some sort of cosmic coincidence?"

  Joe said, “Do you want to show me the merchandise?” He wasn't sure why he'd said that. Merchandise. “The film, I mean?” he amended.

  The man—he was a young man, Joe realised; he had the fluidity of movement of younger men—rustled about in the folds of his jacket. Then he was handing Joe a videotape-shaped object, wrapped in a plastic carrier bag.

  Joe put his hand to it, but the man didn't release his grip. “The money,” he said.

  "How do I know it's the right film?"

  "You got a machine handy?"

  Joe didn't have an answer for that, so did what he usually did at such moments: said nothing, and waited.

  After a moment, the young man pulled the bag back, and rustled some more. Then a torch snapped on, one of those pencil-sized lights, and Joe—once temporary blindness passed—was looking at a video box: Bedroom S
tories ran the title, over a picture of a glitter-wigged girl trying to look mean; topless, but with her arms folded over her breasts. What might have been a dead moth decorated one shoulder. Trudii Foxx, it read below the title: two is, two xes. A false identity, like Russell Candy said. Though Faye Candy wasn't, when you came down to it, that bad a blue-movie name itself.

  "Seen enough?” The young man turned the torch off as he spoke.

  Joe said, “What guarantee do we have this is the end of it?"

  "My word."

  "Excuse me, but you're a blackmailer. Maybe your word is not so bankable. How do we know, a month down the line, you won't be back for more?"

  "Because I won't have the movie, will I?"

  Joe opened his mouth, then closed it again: It's not the movie, it's the knowledge it exists. What we're buying is your silence. But it was not his plan to outline any wiggles that this blackmailer hadn't discovered himself. So he said instead, “And how do we know you haven't made copies?"

  "Do I look like a ... technician?"

  "I'm not sure what you're asking me."

  "How would I copy a video? It's not like taping off the telly. You'd need a special machine to record a videotape."

  "I think maybe you can do it with two video machines."

  "Really?"

  "I think so. With some kind of cable.” Joe wasn't a technician either, but he was pretty sure this could be done. “You connect the two machines with the cable, then put a blank tape in one, and play the film in the other, and bish-bosh. Just like recording it off, as you say, the telly."

  Both men considered this for a while. Then the blackmailer said, “Would you have to actually be playing the film? While you recorded it?"

  "That, I'm not sure about."

  "Okay."

  Joe tightened his grip on the parcel.

  The blackmailer said, “So, anyway. The price."

  "I have it here."

  "I figured. You going to hand it over?"

  Joe had to ask. “Are you proud of yourself?"

  "I need the money, man."

  "We all need money. We get jobs, we save up."

  "Look. I saw a picture in the paper, this rich bloke getting married. I recognised her from a dirty film. It was an opportunity, and I don't get so many of those. All right?"

  He remembered Candy saying something like that. She saw it as an opportunity. There was maybe a moral here, or some kind of mirror-imaging, that might repay thought later, but for the moment all he could do was fish the envelope out from beneath his coat and hand it over.

  "Thanks, man."

  "You don't have to thank me,” Joe began, but he was alone by the second syllable.

  That far-off dog barked again. After a while Joe got to his feet and went off to tackle the railings once more.

  * * * *

  There were guidebooks available—etiquette for beginners, that sort of thing—but Joe doubted any of them covered this setup: your knock answered by the star of the porn film you were clutching in your spare hand. Faye Candy was sporting a lot more clothes than on the video's cover, and had shed the sparkly wig, but was, no question, the same girl. Eight years older, but you'd not have guessed it. If her husband's face wore the marks of four decades spent shinnying up the money tree, Faye's was clear and fresh, as if her greatest struggle to date had been finishing Heidi. Looked, in fact, like butter wouldn't melt, Joe thought, before pushing away an unsolicited memory of Last Tango in Paris.

  This morning, Mrs. Candy was wearing black leggings that stopped three inches above her ankle and what looked like a man's shirt: doubtless her husband's. It was collarless and stripey. Blue on white. Unwigged, her dark hair dropped to shoulder length, and her skin, though white, looked prone to blooming pink at a moment's notice.

  "I'm, er—"

  "You're Joe?"

  "Yes. Of course I am."

  "Russell's expecting you. He's in his study."

  The line should have thrilled him more—he'd never called on anyone who had a study. But he felt awkward in her presence, and suspected that the tape in his carrier bag glowed like phosphorus. When she led him down the hall, she moved with what Joe could only call grace, to which various adjectives jostled to attach themselves, lithe winning by a head. He felt like a heffalump, tromping in her wake. She was tall for a woman, and slim of build, though that shirt (he hadn't been able to help noticing) didn't do all it might to conceal her charms. “Slim of build” didn't cover the whole picture.

  He hadn't watched the video. Would Philip Marlowe have watched it? The answer, true, got more flexible if you counted Elliott Gould's shop-soiled version in the Altman movie, but there were rules, so Joe hadn't watched the video. He'd left it on the table in the sitting room. Taking it into the bedroom would have been a tarnished act.

  Come the morning he'd found Zoe in the kitchen, drinking coffee.

  "I didn't hear you coming in."

  "Joe, you wouldn't hear a brass band coming in."

  It was true, he'd slept heavily. Actually, always did.

  "So, last night—"

  "Did I follow him?"

  "Did you?"

  "Did I get an address? A name?"

  "You got his name?"

  "Am I a detective?"

  "What is this, the first to answer a question loses?"

  "You're asking me?” Zoe said.

  He'd had to laugh. When it came to finding ways of getting under his skin, Zoe had yet to run out of inspiration, but she could always make him laugh. Or whenever, he amended, she felt like it, she could make him laugh. He was usually glad they were married, and often wondered if they'd one day make it work.

  "So..."

  "You lose."

  "And for losing, what do I get?"

  She'd reached into a pocket and handed him a folded piece of paper: a name, address, phone number, car registration.

  "This, this is genius."

  "I followed him, Joe. It was no huge deal."

  It hadn't even involved scaling those railings. She'd been waiting outside, in her car, all that time.

  "And then you hunted him down on your Internet."

  "It's not entirely my Internet,” she said. “Joe? Did you really give him all that money?"

  "You think I kept it?"

  "He didn't stop to check. It could have been cut-up newspaper. You'd still have the video."

  "He insisted,” Joe said. “Candy, I mean. He insisted."

  "I know he's rich. But that's plain dumb."

  "I think he saw it as a proof of love. To match his wife's."

  "Like I say,” Zoe said. “Plain dumb."

  And now Joe was standing outside Russell Candy's study, the unwatched videotape tucked under his arm. Faye didn't come in with him; she just opened the door, said, “Darling? Your man for you,” then smiled at Joe, waving him in and closing the door behind him. Stuff to do, Joe supposed; whatever stuff needed doing when you were married to forty million pounds. Perhaps it needed counting.

  Russell Candy said, “Mr. Silvermann. I didn't hear the door."

  "Your lady wife let me in. And it's Joe, remember?"

  "You didn't—?"

  Joe made a zipper motion, finger and thumb to his lips.

  "Then, Joe. Come in. Sit down."

  The room was what Joe'd have guessed a study to be: largely book-lined, with a lot of possibly walnut panelling. But it was the photos you noticed. These were all of Candy's wife: in her wedding dress, at a party, on the deck of a yacht. Only one showed her and Candy together: a studio shot; the groom looking hot and blistered under the lights; Faye radiant, as in all the others. As Joe looked, he realised Candy was staring at him. Or staring, rather, at the package under his arm. Joe handed it to him as he settled into a chair.

  "This is—?"

  "Yes."

  "And did you—?"

  "No."

  Candy closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them, he was still holding the package. Gingerly, as if it containe
d a bomb, he removed the videotape from the bag, closing his eyes again briefly as he registered its cover, then slid open a drawer and hid it from view. All this, Joe watched with compassion. None of it could have been easy.

  After a moment or two, Candy said, “Thank you, Joe."

  "It was my job. There's no need for thank-yous."

  "You followed him?"

  "I have his address,” Joe said. “His name. A few other details."

  "Who is he?"

  "Mr. Candy, are you sure—"

  "Like you say. Your job."

  "McKenzie. He is a Mr. Neil McKenzie.” Joe offered a piece of paper across the desk. “You know the name at all?"

  Candy thought about it. Decided he didn't. Shook his head.

  "No reason you should,” Joe assured him. “He only knows you through your picture in the paper. And he recognised your wife, of course. But he made no copies of the film."

  "He told you that?"

  "I believed him. He didn't seem—he was not what you'd call a technician."

  "And you're a good judge of character?"

  Joe shrugged modestly. “In my line of work, it's a bonus."

  "So I won't be hearing from him again?"

  "I wish I could make promises. But a blackmailer, he's more a jackal than a lion. And you've given him one good feed already."

  "But now I know where he lives.” Russell Candy's hand wrapped itself round Joe's slip of paper.

  A good judge of character would recognise this as a Moment.

  Joe said, “Mr. Candy. Russell. You don't mind?"

  "It's fine."

  "Russell. You will forgive me for asking. We are not friends exactly, of course not. You're paying for my services.” It struck Joe that this wasn't the right line, and he changed tack. “But I feel responsibility. I gave you these details, McKenzie's particulars, so that if he tries his blackmail tricks once more, you can go to the police. This is not just the right thing, Mr. Candy. Russell. It is the only thing."

  "He's a vile little—"

  "He is vile, yes. Maybe not so little, but that's neither here nor there. And I'm not pretending he doesn't deserve punishment, but what I am saying, Russell, is that it would be a matter of grave regret. To take vengeance into your own hands, I mean."

  "Trust me. I wouldn't regret it."