Understudy for Death

by Charles Willeford

  “Then you’d say the late Mrs. Huneker had everything to live for? A well-to-do husband, two lovely children, and enough money to do practically anything she wanted. Right? And yet, a woman with all this, shoots her children and herself and blames it on TV.”

  “She had to give some kind of a reason. For suicides, a note of farewell is de rigueur, you know. Think of her social position, Mr. Curtis. What would all her friends at the Beachcomber’s Club think if she hadn’t left a note?”

  “I’m concerned about this case, Hudson. Did you know that suicide ranks as the number nine cause of death in the United States?”

  I shrugged indifferently. “I think you’re taking this too hard, Mr. Curtis. We only lost a reader, not the subscription.”

  “Now just listen for a minute,” J.C. said calmly, not raising his voice. I nodded, and then listened. He was the Managing Editor.

  “There’s an upswing trend in America, Hudson, all across the country. I’m not the first man to notice it, by any means, but the suicide rate has increased gradually ever since 1947. And you can’t pass it off due to population increase, either. Contrary to what people believe, there were damned few suicides during the Depression compared to the prosperous days we have now. Sweden, which has always been prosperous, per capita-wise, has always led in world suicide statistics, but we’re catching up fast.

  “So here’s what I want you to do. I want you to dig into the reasons behind Mrs. Huneker’s murder-suicide and come up with some valid answers. It’ll make a good Sunday feature, and perhaps an entire series on suicide.”

  I laughed ruefully. “When do I do all this? On your time or mine?”

  “You know damned well this isn’t a Guild shop; I can’t give you any overtime. But if you write something we can use, I’ll see that you get some extra money out of it. And I don’t mean space rates.”

  I shook my head. “It’s a waste of time, Mr. Curtis. I don’t object to digging around for dirt or scandal, if there is any, but all I could possibly find out is external information. The only person who could tell me why is Mrs. Huneker, and she’s dead.

  “In fiction, I could make up all of her thoughts before suicide and come up with a plausible, readable solution, but this is the real thing. The facts of life are these: birth, living, and death. Our birth, we don’t remember. Death? We never know when or how it’s going to happen and we don’t even think about it because it’s all a little frightening. The living process, yours, mine, or Mrs. Huneker’s, is meaningless. What good would it do for me to find out what kind of toothpaste she used? Or what she did for amusement? Her life wouldn’t differ by a hair, except for her religion maybe, from any one of those useless women in her same social bracket.

  “And suppose I did learn something scandalous? A lover, for instance, who threw her over. You couldn’t print it because Mr. Jack Huneker is an advertiser. The police say the case is closed, and I’m not interested.”

  “I don’t care whether you’re interested or not. It’s your assignment.”

  “Why not give it to Dibs Allen?”

  “A sports writer? You know what I think of sports writers.”

  “What about Dave Finney then? He’s the journalism graduate around here. He’d eat something like this up, for Christ’s sake.”

  “I’ll put it another way. Do you like your job, Hudson?” J.C. snapped the question, and I didn’t like the way he said it. To my disgust my palms began to sweat.

  “Sure. Sure I do, Mr. Curtis,” I said quickly, hating myself for saying it. But the way he was staring at me made me realize that I was an employee, not a permanent fixture around the newspaper office.

  “So you aren’t interested, you say.” J.C. drummed on the glass top of his desk, and looked reflectively at the ceiling. “I never thought I’d hear you say that, Hudson. Five years ago you entered this office, a raw youth, and asked me for a job—”

  “Yeah. A Raw Youth, by Fyodor Dostoevsky. I was twenty-five, a married man and a father, a college graduate, and I had finished two years in the Army.”

  “I know. A raw youth. ‘I’m a playwright,’ you said, ‘not a journalism student, but before I can write plays, Mr. Curtis, I have to know all about people.’”

  “Did I say that?” I grinned, and felt my face grow warm. “It sounds pretty juvenile.”

  “You said that, Hudson, and very convincingly, too. So I hired you. Six months later you were doing an adequate job of reporting. So-so, nothing more. And now, five years later, you’re still doing an adequate job. Careless, but a typical example of a small-town reporter. Good enough—and I don’t expect to find any better ones in a town this size—for a newspaper with an advertising monopoly.”

  “I don’t have that coming, Mr. Curtis,” I said self-righteously. “I’m always on time, and I turn in as much copy as anyone else. More than most of the people around here, and—”

  “Simmer down, boy.” A fleeting smile cracked the M.E.’s lips. “I’m not going to fire you.”

  “I don’t give a damn if you do!” I lied. “If a man can’t discuss a story with the editor without being threatened, I don’t want to work here!”

  “I didn’t threaten you, boy, or at least I didn’t mean to. But lately I’ve been worried about you, that’s all,” he added gently.

  “I don’t see why.” His new tone bewildered me. “I really like my job, Mr. Curtis. And if I’ve fallen into slovenly habits I’ll do my best to correct them.”

  “A little carelessness doesn’t bother me, Hudson. We’ve got a copy desk to catch mistakes, and a good proofreader downstairs. If there ever was such a thing as good news-writing, there isn’t anymore, and I don’t expect to unearth any talent in Lake Springs. But I am concerned about your lack of interest in people. This is new with you, and maybe you don’t realize it. And another thing. You’ve been on the night shift for three years. Not once in that time have you bitched about it or asked for a transfer to the Evening Press.”

  “I just happen to prefer the morning sheet, that’s all. If a man likes what he’s doing, why should he complain about it?”

  “What about your wife? Does she like it, too? Not having you at home, six nights a week?”

  “At first she didn’t like it, but Beryl’s used to it now.”

  “How old is your boy?”

  “Eight, almost nine.”

  “When do you see him?”

  “I see him every day. He gets home from school about the time I leave for work, and while he changes into his play clothes we generally shoot the breeze for a while. And then, I see him all day on Sunday.”

  “Do you consider this a satisfactory, normal father-son relationship?”

  “Now look, Mr. Curtis,” I said ill-humoredly, “let’s leave my wife and child out of this discussion. I don’t want to work days. I prefer to work at night. If you’re trying to talk me into trading places with Dave Finney, you’re wasting your time. I’ve got everything running the way I want it, a nice little schedule going, and I don’t want any changes. If you want to transfer me arbitrarily, that’s your privilege as the M.E. But if you do I’ll irritate you every day until you change me back.”

  “The only way you’ll ever get on the day shift, Hudson,” J.C. slapped his desk, “is to ask for it!”

  Rubbing my damp palms on my knees, I sat back in the chair. J.C. rummaged in the center drawer of his desk, and withdrew some ragged yellow sheets of AP wire copy. “This is some stuff I’ve been saving for several weeks, Hudson, and it’ll be of some use to you on your articles. Listen to this,” and he read from the copy, “‘Suicide, with from 16,000 to 18,000 annual fatalities in the United States, claims more lives than such conditions as diabetes, muscular dystrophy, multiple sclerosis, and infantile paralysis combined.

  “‘In addition, the problems, costs, and sorrows surrounding both the successful and the much larger number of unsuccessful attempts make the impact of the overall aspects of suicide a major national problem.’ I’ve got a lo
t of stuff like that saved.” J.C. passed me the copy, which I reluctantly accepted.

  I whistled softly. “Sixteen to eighteen thousand a year, huh? I didn’t know the rate was that high. It’s probably a result of all those soldiers stationed in Japan since 1947. In addition to bringing back social diseases, they brought back social customs.”

  “The U.S. suicide rate is higher than Japan’s,” J.C. snapped. “Do you still think it’s unimportant?”

  “I don’t think at all, Mr. Curtis. I’m a reporter, not an analyst. You want me to write a series on suicide so that’s what I’ll do. Okay? Can I go now?”

  “Yes, you can go. But the way you’ve been building up that hard shell of cynicism around you lately—it wouldn’t surprise me if you were the next one to go.”

  From the doorway I smiled and shook my head. “You know something, Mr. Curtis? That prescient mind of yours is beginning to crack. You’re working too hard. Why don’t you take a long vacation, or better yet, a sabbatical year in Newfoundland where you can cool your feverish brain? Twelve and fourteen hours down here every day is beginning to affect your judgment.”

  Back at my desk I printed SUICIDE SERIES across the face of a large manila envelope, and stuffed the copy J.C. had given me inside. As an afterthought I scribbled another line on the envelope before putting it away in the bottom drawer. “Mine, Dave. Don’t touch. R.H.” This would be another R.H. factor for Dave’s intellectual mind to ponder when he ran across the envelope on the morrow.

  There were several notes for fillers on my pad, but it was after midnight and the deadline had come and gone. Of course, I could have written them anyway to turn in the next night, but I didn’t feel like writing anything. A suicide series in particular.

  The M.E.’s attitude had shaken me a little, but I was also filled with the remembrance of what I had seen at the Huneker house earlier in the evening. I didn’t really know whether I had come close to being fired, or whether J.C. was merely riding me. With a man like that, it was almost impossible to fathom whether he was serious or not. In a lot of ways, I’d be better off if I was canned from the lousy job.

  After five years I still made only seventy-five unsanforized bucks a week, which was about as high as I could go as a staff writer. The prospects for a raise of any kind were hopeless— it was that kind of a newspaper. The Morning News, Evening Press, and the joint Sunday News-Press were part of a chain of forty Southern newspapers. The high cost of newsprint had frozen the daily combined circulation to thirty thousand copies. If the publisher bought additional newsprint to increase the circulation another ten thousand daily copies—which could be accomplished easily—the charges for all his paper would be raised correspondingly, and in the long run he would make less money than he was making from the News-Press now. The theory, of course, was that he could jack up his advertising rates to offset the costs. Unfortunately, the News-Press had enjoyed a monopoly for so many years already, the advertising rates had been jacked up so high that the local advertisers couldn’t afford any new jump in rates. In fact, they considered the current rates exorbitant, which they were, and to advertise in the Morning News they were forced to take a similar ad in the Evening Press whether they wanted it or not. Stalemate.

  On a hot local story, the Marion Huneker murder-suicide for instance, the Morning News streetsale copies would be sold out before 10:00 A.M. A resident of Lake Springs, or of one of the surrounding smaller towns, who wanted to keep up with the sales and supermarket specials, was forced to subscribe to both the morning and evening papers. He couldn’t take one or the other. The news delivery boys wouldn’t accept a subscription for just one paper at only fifty cents a week. And the circulation manager had to accept this rule of the newsboys in order to get competent boys to deliver the papers. Even with two daily papers, if the subscribers wanted good news coverage they had to take one of the Miami sheets.

  The local news was fairly sketchy. We relied mostly on syndicated features and columnists to fill the spaces above the advertisements, but the two wire services furnished enough world and national news to keep our subscribers from bellyaching too loudly. The publisher of the chain had a standard formula for all of his papers. It worked. He made money. Why should he fool around with it?

  At loose ends I got up from my desk and wandered over to the window. The downtown streets had been rolled up and put away. At the four-way stop on the corner, the lights had been turned to all yellow, and they blinked away at only occasional motorists.

  That little boy, Antonio, 8, the same age as my own son, was dead; dead before he had ever had a chance to find out for himself what a rotten world he lived in. It wasn’t fair. Seeing the little girl, Kathy, hadn’t been so bad. But like a damned fool, I had followed Riddell up the tree and into the treehouse to take a look at the dead boy. The Huneker kid had been chubby, and he had been doubled up in one corner of the tiny treehouse, both fat hands clasped to his little round belly where his mother had shot him. What a dirty, self-pitying bitch!

  And the pitiful little girl, trying to hide beneath her bed! Six years old, a baby! She had probably hidden under her bed, in play, from her brother, a dozen times or more, and considered it a nice, safe hiding place…

  These were two good reasons why I didn’t want to write an article about Mrs. Huneker; I detested the woman. I had never met her, and I didn’t know her problems, and even if I had known her I wouldn’t have lifted a finger to prevent her from killing herself. To end one’s own life is a privilege under the U.S. Constitution, in my opinion, and if a person’s pursuit of happiness lies in that direction, the person should be encouraged to follow it, by all means.

  But for a mother to murder her two, innocent, little children, and kill them painfully at that, using the Gates of Heaven as an excuse…! I tried to think of something worse, and as usual, I succeeded. Marion Huneker, at least, had completed the job she started. Although I begrudged it, I had to give her that much credit.

  About two years before, I had accompanied two cops to the retirement village on an investigation concerning a shot that had been fired. We found an old man of eighty in his small, pink house, crying hysterically, and cradling his dead wife’s bloody head in his lap. The old couple had made a suicide pact, and he had shot his wife first. Then it was his turn, and the old man was unable to pull the trigger. All he could do, after we arrived on the scene, was to weep and beg the police officers to kill him. To top this off, he had been suffering from an incurable cancer. He had died in the city hospital, less than a month later, and was never brought to trial.

  Yes. That was worse.

  No. Not much worse.

  Under the circumstances I couldn’t allow myself to remain prejudiced against the late Mrs. Huneker. To investigate her death I had to be objective. As the old master, Ben Hecht, said: “To show emotion, be callous.”

  I sat down at my desk again and wrote a note to Dave Finney suggesting a visit to Huneker’s neighbors in the morning to get a feature story for the Evening News. I weighted the note in the center of the desk with a brass ruler, and slipped into my jacket.

  Without waiting for the press run, to get a copy of the morning paper to check out my story, I left the office and drove home. I was tired; dead tired.

  Chapter Two

  I fought my way out of a sound sleep, sluggishly and persistently, at precisely 10:30 A.M. the next morning. I always awakened at 10:30, and at least 300 days out of 365, I awoke dripping with perspiration, due to the hot, humid Florida climate. My pillow was wet and stained with sweat, but my wife didn’t change slips until Saturday, and this was only Tuesday.

  The unvaried unconscious routine: a session in the john, a shave, followed by a heart-shaped dexedrine tablet, swallowed hastily with tepid water from a toothbrush glass, to dispel the confusion of sleep and to prime my sodden brain for thinking. Then a cup of muddy coffee, maybe two, sometimes three.

  The coffee was truly foul. Always.

  My wife was always up before sev
en to prepare breakfast for Buddy and to get him off to school. Beryl rarely drank more than one cup of coffee (and she used a sugar substitute called Sweetums to preserve her figure). The early brew, boiled at seven, sat on the warm electric burner until I got out of bed. By 10:45 or 11:00, when I poured this dark liquid into my cup, a chemical metamorphosis of some kind transformed the coffee into a pitchblack species of slimy mud. After two cupfuls, however, I was as bright-eyed as a puppy—but maybe the dexedrine had something to do with it.

  “I’m ready for my breakfast, Beryl!” I called peremptorily through the glass jalousies of the back door to my wife. She was hanging laundry on the clothesline in the back yard, and although she said something in reply, I couldn’t understand her because her mouth was full of clothespins.

  To my third cup of coffee, I added three spoonfuls of sugar, and kept adding homogenized milk until the liquid turned to a lovely shade of flophouse wallpaper gray.

  Still in my pajama trousers I stumbled around the living room gathering scattered sheets of the Morning News. Buddy read the comic sections faithfully at breakfast, but to find them, he found it necessary to take the newspaper completely apart every morning. When I first started work I used to bring a free paper home every day, but after I forgot to do so a few times, my wife had taken out a subscription. Buddy could be trying when he missed the daily comic strips.

  My story was on the right half of the front page, and it read much better in print than it had in typescript. There was also a two-column photo of the late Mrs. Huneker accompanying the story. The smile on her lovely face was so wide her lower teeth were exposed as much as her uppers. She was wearing an old-fashioned cloche hat, which was decorated with arabesques of silvery embroidery. There was a double-strand of large pearls dangling to her waist. The sack dress, cut low in front, revealed an indecent amount of breast cleavage. She was an attractive woman all right, but for a moment I was puzzled by her choice of attire. Then I remembered. The photograph had been on file in the negative morgue, and she was wearing the costume she had worn in the Beachcomber’s Follies two years ago. The theme of that particular annual charity amateur show had been The Gay ’Twenties, and she had taken a role of some kind.