by Howard Fast
Millie turned to me. She attempted a smile and succeeded. “Well?”
I felt only a little better. “That was the goddamnedest mixture of Calypso and hyperboles and drugstore British that I ever listened to. Where do you think he’s from, Millie?”
“Somewhere in the West Indies—but maybe a long time ago.”
“I’d feel better if he were genuine.”
“And Capestone alive in Rhodesia?”
“What the hell, his body’s lost. He might as well be alive in Rhodesia as dead in Hollywood. What does it all mean? What does it add up to?”
“Heaven knows. Al, where is Capestone’s wallet?”
“At my house.”
“Well, let’s go through it again. Let’s get that telephone number in Capestone’s wallet you told me about and see what we can do about it. Let’s break this thing open somewhere.”
“That sounds very good,” I said. “Resolute.”
“I’m not resolute—just scared. But do you know, you get used to it.”
“I hope so. It’s a hell of a way to live.”
A knock at the door, and Anne Jones entered. “The Ad Hoc delegate has gone,” she said. “He just made a pass at me.”
“Oh?”
“He’s as much Rhodesian as I am, and the closest I ever got to Rhodesia was Black Studies at U.C.L.A. Anyway, I met him somewhere.”
“Where?”
“Not in Rhodesia. It’s right at the edge. It’ll take me a while, but I’ll remember.”
“Think,” Millie said.
“That’s what I’m doing, thinking.”
“And what about his accent?” I asked her.
“West Indian, but gussied up. He’s a cool cat. You know what—he’s an actor. Of course.”
“How do you know?”
“When you’ve dated as many black actors as I have, you know. Oh, man, do you know! You don’t want to tell me what this is all about, do you, Mr. Brody? It’s none of my business, but it’s ethnic.”
“You can say that again,” Millie sighed.
5
She left, and Millie and I stood looking at each other. Somewhere, somehow, it had to add up. “Actors are not crazy,” I pointed out to her. “They’re peculiar, and we have handled enough of them to know that the lines never pour out unless someone else has written them.”
“I know. They hem and haw and get tied up in themselves. When they have a part, it’s one thing; off the cuff it’s another.”
“Our friend Akubee had a part.”
“Who wrote it for him?” Millie wondered. “And what for? Wherever your missing corpse is, it’s not in Rhodesia. We know it. They know it.”
“Who are they?”
“They. You know, Al,” she said, smiling weakly, “they go around stealing corpses and hiring actors.”
“And killing small-time hoodlums. Do you suppose they also kill press agents?” I held out my right hand. “Look at that. My hand never shook before. I was reading an article about stress and heart attacks. I am practically an authority on stress at this point. I say we go to the cops.”
“I think you’re losing weight.”
“I should. I haven’t eaten much of anything for a week.”
“It’s not every girl who gets to marry the boss,” Millie said. “You can just go on losing weight, and that will make up for the stress. Doesn’t it work that way?”
“I’m not sure. I still think we should go to the cops.”
“No. We live in a lunatic world, Mr. Brody, but I don’t know any other. I have come to the conclusion that I want you. You have to make some sacrifices to marry the boss, so I am scared as hell, but on the other hand, you have to pay off your wife before I can marry you. What do you pay her with if we sink the business?”
I shook my head. “Suppose they decide to kill us?”
“Why? What have we done? Faked out the press on Rhodesia? But the Rhodesian government doesn’t go around killing press agents.”
“Who says?”
“Al—come on.”
And then the phone rang. I picked it up, listened for a moment and then covered the mouthpiece and informed Millie that the Rhodesian ambassador was calling from Washington.
“Tell them you’ll call back.”
Millie then dialed Washington, D.C., information and asked for the number of the Rhodesian Embassy. She then dialed the number, asked for the ambassador, listened for a moment and then thanked whoever it was on the other end of the line.
“Fun and games. Where do you think the Rhodesian ambassador is at this moment?”
“In Los Angeles?”
“No, dear man—in Salisbury, Rhodesia. Let’s go to your house and let me turn my calculating woman’s eye on the wallet.”
6
The house was empty, but in Beverly Hills, north of Santa Monica Avenue—which is where the money is—one has the feeling that all the houses are empty. Day after day the sunlight filters through the smog and casts its glow upon the empty street; now and then a car pulls out of a garage or into one, but rarely do you see a human being walk in or out of or past the expensive mansions. There is a legend that the police arrest pedestrians in that part of Beverly Hills, operating on the premise that anyone on foot is of the lower orders and has no business on such lordly thoroughfares as Beverly Drive or Rodeo or North Canon or Lomitas. While this story is rather apocryphal, friends of mine have been stopped and questioned by the police—particularly members of what is tastelessly called the occlusion patrol, men who have survived heart attacks and whose physicians demand that they walk so many miles a day.
But not even one of those was in sight as we drove up and into the garage of my house on North Canon—just afternoon sunlight, stillness, light smog and the first touch of the cooling breeze from the sea. The house itself was shadowed and silent, with that strange hollowness that seems to be a quality of every empty house I have ever entered. There was furniture, rugs, pictures on the walls, yet it was empty; it was a shell.
Millie had been at the house many times before, to pick up or drop off this or that, to chauffeur me when my car refused to function, and now and then for a meeting I did not wish to hold at the office. She knew the house. I stopped at the bar to make drinks that we badly needed. She went on to the study, but in a moment she was back, walking softly, moving up close to me and whispering in my ear, “Al, there’s a man in your study.”
“What!”
“Shhh’I don’t think he heard me.”
“Where?”
“He’s sitting at your desk with his back to the door. I could see his head and arm.”
“Call the cops,” I said. “All bets are off. You know, I don’t even have a gun in this house.”
“Take it easy, Al. We’re not going to call the cops.”
I went to the fireplace, took hold of a poker and then came back and whispered into Millie’s ear, “I never hit anyone with anything in my life. If I hit him with this, I could kill him. Do you know what kind of trouble you’re in if you kill a man in your house?”
“Self-defense,” she whispered.
“Against what? Here, you take it.”
“I can’t even kill a mouse,” she whispered.
“Then let’s not frighten him. We’ll be reasonable, he’ll be reasonable.”
Holding the poker at the ready, I led the way to the study. At this time of the day my study is shrouded in shadows. There was a man in my desk chair, his back to me. That was all I could make out.
Cheerfully, I told myself. Bright, cheerful, confident. “Hello, there!” I called out.
He didn’t move. I could imagine him stealthily sliding a gun out of his waistband and preparing to swivel around and blast me, as they say, and I raised the poker above my head.
“All right,” I said crisply, my voice cracking just a bit. “All right, now, you’ve had your fun. We’ve called the cops. So get up and tell us what you’re doing here.”
He didn’t move. A horrib
le suspicion began to gather at the back of my neck, spreading a fresh layer of wet perspiration under my collar. It was very still in the study now, and I could hear Millie’s soft breathing behind me.
There was nothing to do but test it. Still gripping the poker so hard it left ridges on my palm, I walked over to my desk and touched the swivel chair. It swung around and Millie screamed. Andrew Capestone sat in the chair, his eyes open, his teeth showing, as if his were truly the cream of the jest.
7
“Another drink?” I asked Millie.
“Oh, no. No. Al, let’s get out of here.”
“I live here,” I told her. “I can’t get out of here the way you get out of a hotel room. I can’t just walk out of here and leave him sitting at my desk.”
“Don’t take another drink, Al.”
“Why?”
“I need a clear head and mine is fuzzy. Listen, Al, think about the films you’ve seen. They find a dead body. Then they’ve got to call the cops. If they don’t—well, that’s it. For the rest of the film they’re in terrible trouble.”
“Honey, he’s been dead four days. That’s why this place smells the way it does. He’s been opened up by that grinning hippie at Immaculate Conception and he’s been sewed up again and dressed in a suit of clothes and shoes, and his death certificate has been signed and he was scheduled to be cremated—and God Almighty, he has to turn up here at my desk.”
“That’s it!”
“What’s it?”
“Cremation. Don’t you see, Al? You made all the arrangements for the cremation and then Capestone was missing. But here’s Capestone back again. So all you have to do is call that—what’s the name?”
“Loving Care.”
“Right. Loving Care. You call them up and tell them that it was all a mistake and that now you have the body back again and they can go ahead with the cremation.”
“I tell them that?”
“Absolutely.” She managed a smile and nodded. “Isn’t that the whole point? Once he’s cremated, we’re in the clear. Then he can die in Africa.”
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
“Why?”
“Because Andrew Capestone didn’t walk here and sit himself down at my desk.”
“I know that. What difference does it make?”
“Millie, how can you ask what difference does it make? Some demented joker has been playing games with us all week, and his final touch is to bring a corpse into my house, and you ask me what difference does it make.”
“But, Al, we have the corpse. You can’t simply allow it to sit there at your desk.”
“Maybe if we leave it there, they’ll take it away again.”
“Very funny.”
“That’s right, funny. Otherwise I’ll cry. It’s no funnier than your notion of calling Loving Care.”
“That’s not funny and that’s not stupid,” Millie said, “and if you’ll only think about it, you’ll see that I am right. You haven’t committed any crime. A man who knew you once was in awful trouble. He died. You paid for his funeral. That’s not a crime. By the way, has Loving Care returned the money?”
“Not yet.”
“Then you have an advantage. Such places hate to return money. It must violate their sense of propriety. They are in the safest business in the world. So please, please do as I say, Al.”
It began to sink home. She was absolutely right. First things first. Andrew Capestone could not remain in the world as a corpse. He had to go to his rest, uneasy or otherwise.
“All right. You win. I’ll call Loving Care.”
We went into the kitchen. It was farther away from the study than the living room, and kitchens have always appeared to me as very sane places. I dialed the number, and the now familiar, funereal voice greeted me.
“This is Mr. Brody,” I said.
“You will get your refund, Mr. Brody. This is a reputable house. Loving Care has served the public with integrity and devotion for forty years.”
“I don’t want the money.”
“I don’t understand you,” he said.
“I want to go through with the cremation.”
“Without a body?”
“No, sir,” I told him reassuringly. “There’s been a great deal of confusion and error, but it’s finally been straightened out. I have the body.”
“You are sure?”
“Of course I am sure. It’s right here in my home.”
“And where is your home, sir?”
I gave him the address. It impressed him.
“That’s very nice, Mr. Brody,” he said. “I’m sure it’s a nice home. I’ll send the hearse over first thing in the morning.”
“I don’t want the hearse first thing in the morning. I want it now. Now. And I want the cremation to take place tonight.”
“That’s impossible.”
“How much is impossible?”
“One hundred dollars more. Cash. I can’t take a check.”
“Let me see whether I have that much on me.” Millie offered her purse, but I found enough in my pocket, and then he told me that the impossible was possible and that the hearse would be there within the hour.
“You see,” said Millie. “Nothing is impossible.”
8
“This is impossible,” Millie said ten minutes later. “Do you know that we’re sitting here in the same house as a dead man?”
“Maybe it’s better than a live man.”
“Al, get the wallet. You remember, that’s why we came here. We can go through it now.”
“It’s in the study.”
“Al, do you want me to get it?”
“No, I’ll get it,” I said resignedly. “I know where it is,” I went into the study, leaned over Capestone’s shoulder and retrieved the wallet. It was less ghastly than I had imagined it would be, but as a matter of fact, Andrew Capestone had never really been alive for me. When I returned to the kitchen, Millie had the kettle on.
“Tea,” she said. “Or do you want coffee?”
“I’ll take coffee.”
“Tea is very big in Boston, at least among the Irish and the Unitarians. We always had tea when I was a little girl. Tea with milk. But there’s no milk. Your frig is incredibly empty, only ketchup and hamburger relish. Did your wife take the food with her to Acapulco?”
“Clara took it.”
“Yes, she’s a doll.” Millie put a cup of coffee in front of me and then sipped her tea as she emptied the wallet.
“Millie?”
“Yes?”
“How do you feel about courage?”
“It’s very nice,” she said, reading the clippings. “Didn’t he have any money? I mean, not even a dollar?”
“I’m a coward.”
“You know, it makes no sense. He had a place, he paid rent, he had to eat and sleep—would he simply spend his last dollar and then turn over and die?”
“Apparently that’s what he did. I said I’m a coward. I want to know how that grabs you.”
“Most men are. You know, I don’t think that’s what he did. Al, how much does Harvard mean to you—truthfully?”
“What has Harvard got to do with this?”
“You were at college there—remember?”
“OK, they were four good years.”
“So he said Harvard, and you bolted out of the office.”
“Not exactly.”
“But you did,” she insisted. “Actually you didn’t even know Capestone. You didn’t really remember him.”
“The man was dying.”
“Al, you walked into it. Try to look at it objectively. You were depressed, you had just been kicked in the face by Senator Bellman, you were down, you were trying to justify yourself in every way—so you asked no questions. You took everything for granted. An old college chum, and you rallied round. Only he wasn’t an old college chum. Where has he been these past twelve years? What has he been doing? What brought him to Los Angeles? What turned him into an a
ddict? And where was his money?”
“He was broke.”
“That’s just too much of a coincidence.”
“Then how do you see it?”
“He was robbed. Someone came to see him before you did and took every nickel he had.”
“That’s just a guess.”
“I’ll make another guess,” she said. “That the person who rolled him was Joe Leone, and that Leone left him there to die.”
“Why Leone?”
“Because he’s all we have. His name is here in the wallet. And you think that someone was here in the house, going through your desk. Well, if they did and they moved the wallet, they must have gone through it. Right?”
“I don’t even know that. In the condition I’m in, I can’t even remember my name properly, much less what pigeonhole the wallet was in.”
“But if you were right, Al, then it would appear that whoever went through Capestone’s wallet purposely left Joe Leone’s name there.”
“Why?”
“To make sure that you saw it and made the connection. They also left the telephone number there. Here it is—555 1819. Did you try it?”
“It’s not a local exchange and there’s no area code.”
“Let’s ask information for an area code that fits the exchange.”
“No. For Christ’s sake, Millie, we’re not detectives. I don’t want to get any deeper into this thing. I want to wash my hands of it. I want to forget that I ever spoke to Andrew Capestone.”
“Suppose they don’t want us to forget?”
“Why? What do we know that we shouldn’t forget?”
“Al,” she said gently, “I’m not pushing you into anything. It’s just that we’re in something already. Suppose they killed Joe Leone because he spoke to Capestone.”
“I spoke to Capestone.”
“And no one except you knows what he said to you—or why he picked you to call. Poor dear, I don’t want to drive you crazy, but I don’t think this would be over even if we went to the cops. We would have to explain why Capestone picked you out of the whole city of Los Angeles as he lay dying.”
