Understudy for Death

by Charles Willeford

  “You weren’t such a bad-looking guy yourself, Pop. That’s quite a soup-strainer you were wearing. Were you hiding from the police?”

  Adamski cackled delightedly, slapped his bare, bony knee. “No, sir, Mr. Hudson. Everybody was wearing handlebars those days.”

  “Your wife wasn’t.”

  “I mean the men folks.”

  “I think we can use this picture. We get a couple of golden anniversary stories every week, and—”

  “I know you do. I’m a subscriber. That’s how come I came in to see the editor. You ran a big write-up on Mr. Jessup’s anniversary, and he’s a neighbor of mine. I figured if an old crank like Jessup could get him a write-up, me and Hazel should get one too!”

  “When a couple sticks it out for fifty years, Mr. Adamski, the newspaper feels that it’s a newsworthy item. But when we can, we like to get a new angle. This old photo is still in good condition, and should reproduce well, so my idea is this: We’ll have one of our photographers take a new photo of you and Mrs. Adamski, and then we can run both pictures side by side. What do you think?”

  “You can’t do it, Mr. Hudson.” The old man soberly shook his head.

  “Why not? We won’t damage your old photo. I’ll guarantee it.”

  “Oh, I’m not worried about that old picture,” he waved his hand back and forth in dismissal. “But my wife died more’n twelve years ago now. She just ain’t available for no new picture, that’s all. You see what I mean?”

  “Yes, sir. I sure as hell do!” I lit a cigarette, shoved the pack in Adamski’s direction. He shook his head and smiled.

  “I never touch ’em myself. I don’t smoke and I don’t chew and I don’t go with girls who do!” He winked again and smiled. “Ever hear that one?”

  “Yeah. Our class won the Bible. But I’ve never heard of any man celebrating his fiftieth anniversary without his wife.”

  “Mr. Jessup did,” he said sternly. “It was all wrote up in the Sunday paper five or six weeks back.”

  I closed my eyes and rubbed them, thinking back. No, thank God! I hadn’t written the Jessup anniversary story.

  “If that got into the paper, Mr. Adamski, it was a mistake, and we’ll have to print a retraction. The way it’s supposed to be,” I explained gently, “both members of the marriage are supposed to be alive on their fiftieth anniversary.”

  “I always thought that, too.” The old man’s lips trembled; his eyes were very bright and close to tears. “But when old man Jessup got his write-up, and he’s been showin’ it around down to the cardshed to every fool that’ll look at it, I didn’t see no harm in me getting a little notice too. I’m as good as he is, and I’ll beat him two out of three games of checkers every day but Sunday!”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Adamski.” I closed the scrapbook, and placed it in his lap.

  “Can’t you make no exceptions?” he pleaded.

  “Not very well. I’m sorry as hell, Pop. It’s a crazy rule, I know, but the paper has to draw the line somewhere. You can see that, can’t you?”

  “It just seems like yesterday me and Hazel was married.” Hugging the huge scrapbook he got wearily to his feet. “And it ain’t right! An old fool like Hank Jessup, and…” With a gnarled, twisted forefinger, he wiped his eyes.

  “I’ll tell you what, Mr. Adamski. This week I’m pretty busy, but some time next week I’ll call on you, and maybe we can work out some kind of feature story—”

  “No, thanks.” He drew his shoulders back and lifted his chin. “I ain’t worth no story all by myself.” Holding his back stiffly, he marched briskly toward the stairway.

  I went into the M.E.’s office and told him about the old man and the Jessup incident.

  “I remember the Jessups,” J.C. said when I had finished. “There wasn’t any mistake, Hudson. I checked that out myself. Mrs. Jessup looked as if she was dead, but she was definitely alive. Adamski was trying to snow you under, and you’re lucky you caught him at it.”

  “Right now, I’d like to write a story on Adamski’s golden anniversary anyway.”

  “Why?”

  “I feel sorry for him, that’s why.”

  “Even with my mushy prostate and hemorrhoids, I am also capable of feeling sorry for an old widower like Adamski. And in your weary style, Hudson, you could write a fairly decent human interest story about the old man. But the population percentage of Lake Springs, counting the retirement village, runs close to thirty percent in residents over sixty-five. These old people take these things seriously. If we ran a faked-up piece on Adamski we’d have to set up a separate Sunday section on anniversary dates for widows, widowers and all.”

  I grinned. “That isn’t such a bad idea, Mr. Curtis. We could also expand the Sunday Women’s Section. About all it has now is wedding announcements, engagements, and bride photos. We could very easily add a new section on divorce, with photos of divorcees and their ex-husbands. ‘Mr. and Mrs. Smith announce the impending divorce of their eldest daughter, Mary. The beautiful divorced matron wore a dark gray dress, ballerina length, and carried a bouquet of green money. The principal witness, Divorcee Helen Jones Brown Goldstein Henessey, one of Lake Springs’ most popular co-respondents—’”

  “Haven’t you got any work to do?” J.C. said ominously. “If you haven’t—”

  “I’m going out to the Beachcomber’s Club. There’s a child psychologist giving a lecture to the Women’s Auxiliary, and I plan to pry into Marion Huneker’s past while I’m out there. She was a member, you know.”

  “You should get something. How’s Beryl, by the way?”

  “Fine. I see my wife every day, and she always asks about you, Mr. Curtis. In fact, as long as I’m on the night shift, she worries because she can’t have you out to dinner. She wonders if you’d like to drop by for breakfast some morning?”

  “Give Beryl my regrets, but ask her if she’d like to have breakfast with me some morning at the Sealbach Hotel. We have room service there.”

  “She’ll be thrilled, Mr. Curtis. I’ll tell her about your invitation the next time I see her.”

  I left the M.E.’s office, shoved a wad of yellow copy paper into my jacket pocket, and drove to the Beachcomber’s Club.

  Chapter Four

  The Beachcomber’s Club was a long powder-blue building on the nicer side of the lake, with yellow ground lights placed haphazardly throughout the tropical grounds, trained into the rattling tops of coconut and royal palms. An enormous patio, flagged with irregular stones composed of mixed coral and concrete, separated the “L” shaped swimming pool and “L” shaped blue-and-white cabanas from the main clubhouse. There was an outside bar for outside parties; and an inside bar-lounge that was closed for cleaning only, between four and six A.M. Two narrow but sturdy piers jutted out at right angles from a wide veranda facing the lake, and members could berth their boats at these piers all year ’round for a reasonable fee.

  The annual club membership fee was not reasonable. A single membership was $150 a year, and a family membership was $250. Needless to say, I was not a member.

  The original idea behind the establishment of the Beach-comber’s Club had been fairly sound, but the original plans fell through, as too ambitious plans often do. While the building was still under construction, six years before, an energetic club committee plugged confidently away at a preconceived plan for permission to have a canal dug from Lake Springs to the Inland Waterway. The funds were available, and if permission had been granted, the members would have been able to leave the lake, sail down to the waterway, and from there to almost any port on the East Coast.

  The city commissioners, who were delighted with the idea of having an elaborate clubhouse on the lake, stalled the club members on the canal business, and then turned them down flat when the construction of the swimming pool and club buildings was well under way.

  Their reasoning was valid so far as Lake Springs’ permanent residents were concerned, although there was still bitterness among the members
of the Beachcomber’s Club. Lake Springs had a white, sandy bottom; the water was clear enough to spot a lost wristwatch at three fathoms. There were ten to fifteen thousand tourists who came to Lake Springs every year to fish and swim in our delightful lake, and if the water had been turned into a muddy, cruddy blue, which it may have done if a deep-channeled canal had connected it to the waterway, these tourists would have bypassed the lake—or so the hotel and motel association convinced the city commission. The other objection, which had been more practical, concerned itinerant boat bums. If Lake Springs residents could reach the Inland Waterway, the out-of-state boat bums could also reach Lake Springs. And this was a type of pest our city didn’t want to encourage. We didn’t want our lovely city turned into another Fort Lauderdale, St. Augustine or Stuart.…

  The pro and con arguments made good newspaper copy occasionally, and I was no stranger when it came to visiting the club. But the twenty-foot limit for boats allowed on the lake had turned the club into a dilettantish social organization instead of the exclusive yacht club it had wanted to become originally.

  Not more than one club member in ten owned a boat of any kind. The male members got drunk, played poker, and on Sunday afternoons were coaxed into rhumba and cha-cha lessons in the auditorium. The wives, with more idle time on their hands than their husbands, played bridge, gave tea and cocktail parties, had their minds improved by visiting lecturers, and also got drunk in the bar.

  I parked in the front lot, but to avoid the crush of milling women and the reception committee clustered at the main entrance, I entered the clubhouse through a sliding, glass patio door. It was still early, and there were only a half-dozen women in the bar. They must have expected a big night, however, because I noticed that Mel Haight, the Chief Bartender, had hired an extra bartender and two extra lounge waiters. I sat at the lower end of the bar, half-hidden by an unneeded white concrete column, and waited for Mel to break free for a few minutes.

  Mel was one of my contemporaries. I was a year older, but we had attended Lake Springs High School together, and we had both served time on the football and basketball teams. Neither one of us had been able to make the baseball nine. Except for this all-but-forgotten sports activity, all we had in common was a nostalgic remembrance of the way things used to be. Not much, but lasting friendships have been formed on lesser ties. I had preserved my hair, but Mel’s straw-colored hair had been gone for several years. Mel had gone to work immediately after leaving high school, instead of going to college, so naturally he had forged ahead of me in annual take-home pay. As the head bartender, his salary and tips more than tripled my yearly income. He drove a new Buick convertible, and I drove a five-year-old tudor Chevy.

  Within a few minutes Mel came down to my end, reached across the bar, and we shook hands. “You covering this thing tonight, Richard?”

  “After I get a drink I am.”

  Mel dropped two ice cubes into a six-ounce glass, filled it with Coca-Cola, and smiled as he set it before me. I pushed it to one side.

  “I said a drink.”

  “Wait a couple of minutes, Richard,” he said softly. “The manager’s over by the arch. They’re starting to crack down lately, enforcing a new ordinance. That last rezoning law put the club into the residential section, and the only way we can keep our liquor license is to serve members only. Not even guests can get a drink, unless they’re from out of town.”

  “I’m not in either category. I’m a member of the press, and besides, that ordinance is only a technicality.”

  “I know, but the Chief of Police is trying to enforce it. He came out the other day and threw a scare into the manager. They picked up a stranger on a drunk-driving charge, and he claimed he picked up his load here. He didn’t, but the sweat is on for awhile, anyway.”

  “Little old Lake Springs is becoming quite a metropolis, isn’t it?”

  “Nothing’s the same anymore, Richard.” He sighed. “I had to shell out a thousand bucks in advance to send my boy to military school for six months. And I ain’t counting the uniforms I still have to pay for on top of that.”

  “That’s tough, Mel,” I said sympathetically.

  “And tips ain’t near what they used to be either.” He scowled, raised his chin contemptuously, in the direction of the women at the far end of the bar. “And now, if they won’t let guests drink in here, it’ll be tougher yet.”

  “Times are hard.”

  “You said it.” Mel took my untouched Coke, held it below the level of the bar, and after dumping half the contents into a sink, filled it to the top with bourbon.

  I winked, and lifted the glass. “To better days.”

  “How’s Beryl?” he said sincerely. “We never see you people anymore. Margaret was asking about you and Beryl the other day.”

  “Beryl’s all right. But you and I are both working every night; you know how it is.”

  “Yeah, and now the Season’s coming up at the end of the month.”

  “Maybe we can have lunch some afternoon.”

  “How about some golf, Sunday maybe?”

  “I don’t play.”

  “I can’t say that anymore, Richard. The new pro at the club has done miracles with my game. You really ought to take some lessons.”

  “Maybe so, Mel,” I said seriously. “I think Beryl would appreciate that. She doesn’t think I get enough exercise.”

  “You give me a ring, and I’ll introduce you to the pro, get you started right before you develop any bad habits. A lot of pros can play all right, but they can’t teach. This new guy can explain things. The other morning we—”

  “Mel. Did you know Marion Huneker, the woman who killed herself ?”

  “Pink Lady.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Pink Lady. She always drank Pink Ladies.”

  I laughed. “How do you make it?” I took some copy paper out of my pocket.

  “Well, not everybody makes ’em like I do, but I never get any complaints. I use a half-ounce of lemon juice—not lime— and one teaspoon of sugar. Then add a half-ounce of sweet cream and a dash of grenadine. One and a half shots of gin and shake with cracked ice. This strains out to a four-ounce cocktail glass, and I always decorate with a cherry on a stem. A lot of bartenders now, they use a hollow-stemmed cocktail glass, and fill it with grenadine, but that’s pretty God-awful. Tell you what, Richard; you wait till after the lecture starts and I’ll make you one.”

  I shuddered at the suggestion. “You couldn’t pay me to drink one, Mel, but thanks for the recipe.”

  “What did you want it for then?”

  “I’m doing a follow-up piece on Mrs. Huneker’s suicide. And you’ve given me a good lead. ‘Mel Haight, Chief Bartender at the Beachcomber’s Club, said that Marion Huneker’s favorite drink was a Pink Lady—’”

  “Jesus, Richard! You wouldn’t put that in the paper would you?”

  “Why not?”

  “They might blame me, that’s why. And it would reflect bad on the club. People might say I got her all tanked up on Pink Ladies and she went home and killed her children!”

  “Do you think that, Mel? That Mrs. Huneker got drunk and shot her children?”

  “Why else would she do it, if she wasn’t drunk? But she didn’t get drunk here, I never seen her get loaded even. Most she ever drank, anytime she ever came in here, was two Pink Ladies. But leave my name out of the story, Richard.”

  “All right. It was just an idea. What was she like, anyway?”

  “What’re any of ’em like?” Mel said hotly, jerking his thumb toward a group of chattering women. “Mrs. Huneker was just like them, far as I’m concerned. A drink. A drink for me to remember. They don’t like it when you don’t remember what their favorite drink is, so I remember. It’s my job.”

  “Did she ever happen to talk to you? I mean, sometimes people spill things to a bartender they’d never tell anybody else.”

  “No, she was a fairly pleasant woman. She must’ve told me a dozen ti
mes or more that she liked the way I made Pink Ladies, and last Christmas she gave me five dollars, which will be five dollars I won’t get this Christmas. Once she asked me if I was married and I told her yes. Then she asked me how my wife killed the evenings when I was working, and I told her that my wife stayed home and looked after the children.” Thoughtfully frowning, Mel rubbed a fat, pink hand across his lower jaw. “I never thought about it at the time, but I guess I shouldn’t have told her that, should I?”

  “Why not?” I shrugged.

  “You know, she might’ve thought I was criticizing her for not staying home with her own kids instead of hanging around the club.”

  “Don’t worry, Mel. She’ll never report you now.”

  “That’s right.” Mel smiled cheerfully, and then frowned. “A guy really has to watch what he says around here. And when they get loaded, it’s all I can do sometimes to keep from telling somebody off. Well, I’d better get back to work, Richard.”

  “Sure. But one more question. Did Mrs. Huneker have any close friends, girlfriends, for instance, among the members?”

  “Mrs. Chatham. Gladys Chatham. She’s married to the New York lawyer, Mr. Victor Chatham, the guy who came down here about five years ago or so. He’s that lawyer who got a twenty-five thousand dollar judgment against the city the time the motorcycle cop ran over that crippled kid.”

  “Sure, I remember who he is, but I don’t know him.”

  Mel looked past my shoulder across the room, raised his chin. “That’s Mrs. Chatham, the blonde talking to Mrs. Barnes.”

  Turning on the stool, I spotted her easily. Mrs. Chatham was wearing a red-silk cocktail gown that looked as if it had been sewn onto her body. Her face and shoulders were evenly tanned, and her long tawny hair was like a mane down her back.

  “She’s a real beauty, Mel.”

  “Now she is, but not for long. She’s a lush, Richard. In about one minute she’ll be over at the bar asking for a double-martini.”