Putting Lipstick on a Pig

by Michael Bowen

  Melissa straightened, gritting her teeth against the pain in her arm. Sometimes there’s nothing quite like the unvarnished truth.

  “My name is Melissa Seton Pennyworth. I’m an assistant professor of English at the University of Wisconsin—Milwaukee.”

  Dreyfus grinned sardonically, and wagged his head from side to side.

  “You expect me to believe that?”

  “Believe what you like,” Melissa shrugged. “It happens to be true.”

  “English, huh?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Okay, ‘professor.’ Who wrote Silas Marner?”

  “George Eliot,” Melissa said. “Actually Marian Evans, using George Eliot as a pen name because critics wouldn’t take a woman novelist seriously.”

  “Ooh, primo bluff,” Dreyfus said, sarcasm dripping richly from each syllable. “But no sale. It so happens I was an English major at Florida State University. Samuel Butler wrote Silas Marner.”

  “No, he didn’t,” Melissa said, “but he did write Hudibras—which ironically includes some advice that’s particularly helpful here:

  Love is a boy by poets styled;

  ‘Then spare the rod and spoil the child.’

  She swung her purse as hard as she could at the bandage on Dreyfus’ right hand. Her car keys, dimpling the purse’s leather skin, caught the dressing squarely. Cursing with vehement eloquence, his face paling in agonized rage, Dreyfus dropped her arm and staggered backward.

  Melissa darted past him and headed for the door. Or thought she did. Instead of the hallway door, though, she found herself looking at the front of a classroom: teacher’s desk backed by a blackboard with DETENTION printed boldly on it. It took her three seconds of panicky turns in all directions to figure out that the schoolroom was a life-sized backdrop that Dreyfus had put in place so that he could pose a properly costumed Melissa in front of it. That looked like three seconds more than she had to spare, because Dreyfus was now coming after her with a full head of steam.

  She ran straight for the backdrop. She had almost reached it when she barked her right shin on something and pitched headlong to the floor. She heard Dreyfus’ waffle-stompers pounding heavily toward her. Rolling over, she reached for the metal waste basket that had tripped her. She grabbed it by the rim with both hands and raised its bottom toward the charging Dreyfus.

  “No more Mister Nice Guy,” he panted. “You’re getting bitch-smacked.”

  He was almost on her. Lacking any better ideas, she threw the waste basket directly at his face, as if she were making a two-handed set shot in a 1950s girls’ basketball game.

  She caught him on the nose—one part of his body that, it turned out, was soft, and had apparently received previous attention from people more pugilistically gifted than she. Newton’s laws operated with their usual predictability, and she found much of the contents of the waste basket scattered over her hair, face, and sweater. She nevertheless came out of the encounter in better shape than Dreyfus, who recoiled once again to clear blood and tears from his face.

  Melissa rolled under the easel propping up the backdrop. She bruised her shoulder on it as she scrambled to her feet, knocking it over. She found the door, found the knob, twisted it.

  Nothing happened. Locked. She heard Dreyfus scrambling again. Fingertips slick with sweat, she fumbled for a latch, came on a button, pushed it. It popped out. She turned the knob. She felt Dreyfus’ breath on her neck as she pulled the door open and squeezed into the hallway.

  She began running for the stairway ten yards away. She could hear Dreyfus breathing in ragged grunts just behind her, and she had a sick feeling that she’d run out of miracles.

  He caught her just as she reached the top of the stairs. His left hand clamped the back of her neck and stopped her cold, pulling her back so hard that her feet almost flew out from under her.

  “I don’t think you’ve ever been properly slapped,” he muttered.

  “You’ve just insulted my mother and two congregants of the Sisters of St. Joseph,” Melissa said indignantly.

  He jerked her backward, flung her violently to the floor, and pinned her belly with his knee.

  “I’ll show you what an insult is,” he hissed.

  “I’ll scream,” Melissa warned him in a desperation-tinctured voice that was much smaller than she wanted it to be.

  “Scream all you want. Coming from here, anyone who hears you will think it’s sexual ecstasy. Which cheek shall I start with?”

  The best answer Melissa could think of involved a suggestion that Dreyfus perform an anatomically impossible sex act. Before these unladylike words could cross her lips, however, another voice intervened.

  “That’ll do, junior.”

  Dreyfus rose slightly, flew two or three feet to Melissa’s left, and landed heavily on his side. The hand that he had raised in preparation for slapping Melissa now gripped his diaphragm, attempting to rub away the aftereffects of a wing-tipped toe that Walt Kuchinski had just artistically planted there.

  “Who in hell are you?” Dreyfus moaned.

  “Someone who picks on people his own size,” Kuchinski said. “Although in your case I’ll make an exception.”

  “She was burglarizing my studio under false pretenses,” Dreyfus whined. “You’re aiding and abetting.”

  “The only times I’ve ever been in prison have been to see clients, which puts me well up on you. So if I were you I’d leave the legal conclusions to me.”

  “Technically, I’ve never actually been in prison,” Dreyfus insisted. “Work release at the county jail doesn’t count.”

  “I’ll keep that nuance in mind,” Kuchinski said.

  “Unless you want me to call the police, what you’ll do is get the hell out of here so I can teach this bitch a lesson.”

  In no haste whatever, Kuchinski helped Melissa to her feet and planted her protectively behind him. Then he leaned over Dreyfus. He kept his arms down, as if pleading with Dreyfus to take a swing at him.

  “You say one more stinking word, short eyes,” Kuchinski whispered, “and you are going to piss off the wrong polack.”

  Dreyfus seemed to deflate, apparently cowed even more by the epithet “short eyes” than by Kuchinski’s looming physical presence. He lay in sullen docility as Kuchinski and Melissa retreated down the stairs and out the door.

  “Thanks,” Melissa said.

  “I just don’t hold with hitting women on the face,” Kuchinski said.

  “How did you know I was here?”

  “As soon as I got back from court, Her Serene Highness described your exit performance this morning. No one in town is auditioning people for Private Lives, so I figured you were smoking to get ready for an appearance over here.”

  “Well, I’m glad you guessed right. I feel pretty silly right now, but getting the stuffing smacked out of me would have been excessive atonement.”

  “Did you learn anything?”

  “He’s definitely the guy,” Melissa said, and told Kuchinski about the bandage and the smoking shots. “Why did you call him ‘short eyes’?”

  “I had the Duchess of Devonshire back at the office run a computer check on him while I was on my way back from court. He has a prior for sex with a sixteen-year-old when he was twenty-three. Not exactly cradle-robbing, but it is underage in civilized jurisdictions.”

  “Probably a career-limiting move for him.”

  “Doubt it. I make him for a loser from the get-go. What you cleverly dug up just now reinforces that view.”

  “I wish I’d been clever enough to quit while I was ahead,” Melissa said. “I didn’t learn one useful thing by grandstanding my way into his studio.”

  “Maybe not, but after Rep gets through chewing you out he’ll be proud of you. And it looks like you have a souvenir.”

  With that, Kuchinski plucked a scrap of cardboard from Melissa’s hair and handed it to her. It was a business card. Melissa glanced at
it, then did a double-take and examined it at greater length.

  “Isn’t that interesting?” she said, showing Kuchinski the card.

  Karen Wilkinson

  Certified Shorthand Reporter

  Chapter 12

  As soon as Melissa slipped into Kuchinski’s 1968 Buick Riviera she caught herself pushing an imaginary accelerator, desperate to get them on their way. Kuchinski, though, seemed in no particular hurry. He unlocked the Club anti-theft device from the steering wheel, stowed it carefully behind the front seat, and checked traffic with the elaborate care of a driver’s ed teacher before he pulled out.

  “I’m careful with the Club,” he said. “One time I didn’t lock it properly, came back for the car eight hours later, and it was gone.”

  “Someone stole your car?” Melissa asked sympathetically.

  “No, stole the Club. Got the thing off the steering wheel and walked off with it. And left the car. I have never felt so disrespected.”

  “If you’re kidding me to help me get over the trauma, I appreciate it,” Melissa said. “If you’re serious, then I’m blown away.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment either way. Home or—hold on.”

  Kuchinski made a sharp right turn, roaring up a residential street with less than a yard of clearance from the cars parked along both curbs. Another sharp right onto a street that seemed to curl back the way they had come. Over the next seventy-five seconds or so street signs flew past Melissa with dizzying incoherence as her breakfast made an encore appearance in her throat. Cambridge-Warren-Albion-Farwell-SomethingElse-Prospect-Royall, Farwell again, Brady again, then blurs until North. Only at that point did Kuchinski stop the Dukes of Hazzard routine and begin driving sedately toward the upper east side.

  “Home or school?” he asked at that point.

  “Home. I’ll go back for my stomach later.”

  “I thought I spotted someone following us,” Kuchinski explained. “Pulled out the same time we did, kept a car in between him and us, burned through a red light to stay with us. Red sedan, looked like some kinda rice-burner, but I didn’t get make or model.”

  “You lost him, though?”

  “Oh, I lost him all right. Right now he’s probably trying to find his way out of DiBrito’s Car Wash.”

  “What’s a rice-burner, by the way?”

  “Japanese car,” Kuchinski said, winking broadly at her.

  “Any chance the guy following us was Pelham Dreyfus?”

  “No way. As soon as he finishes puking, that little wuss is gonna be curled up in bed with a bottle of aspirin for two days.”

  Melissa, who had deliberately left her cell phone off during her escapade, pulled it out now and turned it on.

  “I’ve got to talk to Rep,” she explained. After four unanswered rings she got a voice-mail prompt and said, “Honey, please call as soon as you can. This Sue Key mess just got a lot more serious.”

  ***

  “You don’t know the half of it,” Rep said to her when she answered the phone in their apartment two hours later. “Max Levitan was murdered, apparently during the small hours this morning.”

  “Murdered,” Melissa repeated numbly.

  “I’m afraid so. Sue Key’s case is connected to Levitan and may be linked to his murder. Therefore, it has now officially dropped off my job description. Detective Lieutenant Latrobe Washington and the Milwaukee Police Department can track down Roger Leopold’s deposition and figure out what it means.”

  “Uh, well, actually,” Melissa stammered, “they won’t strictly speaking have to track the deposition down.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I’ve sort of indirectly stumbled over a copy of it. Dreyfus did steal Sue Key’s notes, and then had the transcript typed up by a court reporter in Chicago. Sue called her and the transcript is probably sitting in my email right now.”

  “‘Sort of indirectly stumbled over a copy of it’ is provocative diction, carisime. How did you manage that little trick?”

  Sounding fairly contrite, for her, she told him. Then she sighed and said, “Okay, let me turn off NPR so you can chew me out.”

  “‘Lucy, you got some ’splainin’ to do!’, that kind of thing?”

  “Yes. Plus a caustic observation about behaving with remarkable stupidity for someone holding three university degrees.”

  She braced herself.

  “Well,” Rep said then, “this is as close as I’m going to come to chewing you out. Quit beating yourself up. You spotted the danger. You decided to go ahead because you underestimated Dreyfus. You miscalculated a calculated risk. That’s not stupidity, it’s an error.”

  “An unforced error.”

  “But not an error of sloppiness or laziness. An error of enthusiasm.”

  “You say that almost like it’s something admirable,” Melissa said.

  “It is. I’m proud of you.”

  ***

  Rep had every intention of leaving things right there. After Melissa got the Leopold transcript to Detective Washington, the only place they’d get further information about Max Levitan or Pelham Dreyfus would be the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. Adulterating the purity of these good intentions, however, was a worry that germinated in Rep’s mind as he reviewed what Melissa had told him. It grew while he drove through the night to Wausau, and blossomed just before he found his way to a Hampton Inn near Exit 191.

  Melissa had said that Dreyfus asked who’d sent her. So Dreyfus thought someone else was interested in something he had, whether it was the Leopold deposition notes or something else. And Dreyfus was apparently right, because someone had followed Kuchinski and Melissa—someone who had to have been keeping an eye on Dreyfus’ studio while Melissa put on her act. Now this unknown character presumably suspected that Melissa might somehow have extracted the valuable information from Dreyfus, and he might come after her for it. By the time Rep finished unpacking in his room, this worry hadn’t gone away.

  Pretty Girls Smoking Cigarettes itself wasn’t pornographic, but Dreyfus had clearly wanted Melissa to pose for something that crossed that line. Dabbling in porn risked involvement with organized crime. The mob doesn’t control all production and distribution of pornography, just like it doesn’t control all commercial trash hauling in New Jersey, but if you don’t see it there at all you’re not looking.

  Rep had one source that Detective Lieutenant Washington didn’t—and never would, if Rep could help it. He had to check his Palm Pilot for the number because it had recently changed—something it did with regularity. He thought for a moment about getting a fistful of quarters from the front desk and blundering out into the night in search of a pay phone. Then he realized that such thriller-novel precautions were unnecessary. Most of the calls to this number probably came from hotel rooms like this one, from lonely men away from home.

  He used the room phone to dial 556-685-4968. Four rings, followed by the answering machine. After the insinuating introduction—“Have you been naughty?” and so forth—the beep finally came.

  “This is Spoiled Sibling,” he said, because events a generation ago kept him from using his name when he talked to his own mother. “I—”

  “Hello,” a voice he recognized interrupted.

  “Hi.” Rep checked his watch and subtracted two hours for California time. “I thought you’d be with a client right now.”

  “He left early. He wanted to test limits. The limits passed. In fact, you might say they aced the exam. What’s on your mind?”

  “I need to know about some people on the fringe of the industry. Max Levitan, Pelham Dreyfus, and I guess Roger Leopold.”

  “Hold it, let me get a pen.…Okay, how far out on the fringe?”

  “The final knot at the end of the last tassel on the far edge of the rug would be my guess,” Rep said. “But I don’t know.”

  “Well, I can’t tell you anything right now. I’ll ask around.”

  �
��Thanks. I appreciate it.”

  “You may not appreciate it right now, young man, but you will. Believe me, you will.”

  The words sounded familiar and well practiced. Rep wondered how many men in the last couple of weeks had felt a delicious frisson of fear and excitement tremble through their bodies when they heard that carefully cadenced phrase.

  Well, it could be worse, he thought. She could be an insurance defense lawyer.

  Chapter 13

  The warming trays in Helmsing Corporation’s board room the next morning told Rep he was wasting his time. Danish, juice, and bagels were the stuff of a working breakfast. Scrambled eggs and sausage were a sin offering: Sorry about the wild goose chase. Eat hearty.

  Rep surmised that Helmsing’s vice-president of risk management had agreed to Rep’s presentation only to extract lower rates and a more acute sense of urgency from the local lawyer the company already had. By ten-twenty Rep had finished a professional but brisk run-through and gotten back on the road, determined to drive straight through to Milwaukee and salvage a fraction of the day. By twelve-forty-five this firm resolve was evaporating rapidly. It disappeared altogether at twelve-forty-seven, when he saw the words FOOD NEXT EXIT on a freeway sign.

  That promise proved less than candid, for the nearest restaurant lay more than a mile from the freeway and its appearance did nothing for his appetite. Rather than turn back he foraged a bit further. He was on the verge of giving up when he saw a weathered billboard announcing that Sally’s Lake Delton Bar and Grill lay just around the next bend.

  Either God has a sense of humor or the lords of coincidence are working overtime, and I’m too hungry to care which it is.

  Nothing in Rep’s southern Indiana boyhood prepared him for Lake Delton. Aside from the Great Lakes, which are basically freshwater inland seas, Rep’s idea of a lake was a self-contained body of water that you could see across on a clear day. Lake Delton’s deep blue, sailboat-dotted water started about three hundred feet from Sally’s parking lot and with heart-stopping majesty stretched to the horizon in every direction. The idea that in two months this expanse would be a vast slab of ice thick enough to drive on—or not, as Vance Hayes had found out—took his breath away.