The Best That Ever Did It

by Ed Lacy

  In 1944 the camp cadre was suddenly shipped to Camp Kilmer, broken up for overseas shipment. Martin spent a fast week-end with Mary in New York City and in a fit of tender love-making gave her eighteen hundred dollars he had saved up, told her he'd won it in a crap game.

  Three weeks later Martin was hanging around a huge repple-depple outside Naples, seemed to be taking his basic over again. One day Pearson read an article in Yank by his former camp editor and wrote to him, asking if it was still possible to be assigned to the magazine. The Yank man was stationed in Rome and to Martin's astonishment he spoke to somebody on Stars and Stripes and Martin was soon sent to Rome as a photographer on the army newspaper.

  Pearson learned a great deal about photography here, for the other cameramen had all been professional newspaper and magazine photographers. Martin covered the front lines, flew a bombing mission, and rode a PT boat to Yugoslavia. Life was exciting but he missed the money he'd made back in the States and Pearson was constantly searching for an angle. Black-market cigarettes were small time; a bigger deal was selling G.I. photographic paper to Italian studios, but that was risky.

  Almost any sort of camera sold for several hundred dollars, while a good camera would bring a thousand or more from the G.I.'s. A Yank photographer had a map of Germany with the towns with camera factories circled and he often talked of coming into one of these towns with the troops and “grabbing off a Rolleiflex or a Leica for myself.”

  Martin saw bigger possibilities, copied the map when he was sent into France after D-day. Months later Martin was with an infantry company when they stormed a German city noted for its expensive reflex cameras. While the soldiers were mopping up snipers, Martin drove a jeep directly to the factory, walked in holding a carbine to find Polish slave laborers still at work.

  They stared at him without much emotion, only a kind of patient beaten weariness, and stood at their benches as Martin carried twenty-seven cameras (each in a neat wooden box) out to his jeep. The Nazi factory manager, finally convinced Martin was alone, at last came out of his office, demanded to know what the hell Pearson was doing.

  Martin answered by busting his head open with the carbine, then shouted at the Poles, “You're free! Understand—free! Take what you want and scram!” He waved his hands at the open doors, but they still didn't move. Martin had taken all the rations out of his jeep, to make room for the cameras, and he handed these out. When he left he saw the Poles gulping the rations, then trooping out with whatever instruments they could carry, and soon the factory went up in flames.

  After giving cameras to the motor pool sergeant, the PRO captain, and several others, Martin still had sixteen cameras and within the following month he was able to sell these for an average of $800 each, giving him nearly $13,000.

  When the war in Europe was over Martin was stationed in Frankfurt, then in Paris, and in both cities he lived well, for he was an American sergeant with money and a PX card that meant cigarettes, candy, and soap. He got into some big crap games, and at one time his $13,000 went to $21,000 and once it shrunk to $4,500. He had $11,000 in Allied currency when he was awaiting shipment back to the States. He managed to change this into $8,500 in American money and money orders.

  In January, 1946, Pearson was discharged and returned to Bay Corners. Mary Pearson had carefully banked all his allotment checks, already picked out a house they would buy, with a garage that could be made into a studio. He never told her about his money. In his confession Pearson stated:

  I really don't know why I kept the money a secret from my wife. But I did. It wasn't the money, rather it was something I knew I could never explain to her. She would think it wrong and well... to me it wasn't a matter of right or wrong. I'd merely been lucky.

  When they were married Mary, as the college graduate, had been the brains and Martin a simple farm boy. But the Martin Pearson who returned to Bay Corners knew all the angles, spoke French, Italian, and German, had slept with many women, seen bombed cities and dead men and women, sunned himself on Capri, the Venice Lido, the beach at Cannes. He looked at the plain, plump, country-school teacher who was his wife and told her he couldn't take Bay Corners any longer. He didn't love Mary, but she was his wife and ho wanted to make a try at living with her.

  Martin said he didn't know exactly what he wanted to do, but he wanted to live in New York City. Of course Mary Pearson thought this foolish: she had her teacher's job in Bay Corners, their families lived there, and ”... I hear some Syracuse people plan to build motels out by the lake. Means plenty of picture work for you. I figure you should make fifty dollars a week at least.”

  She talked Martin into staying in Bay Corners and he remained there—for three months. The day they were to buy a house, he took a bus to New York City. Mary Pearson never knew what happened to him till seven years later when reporters swooped down on her with Martin's picture on the front page.

  Pearson spent a restless year in New York, working in a photography studio. New York wasn't what he was looking for. He decided to study color photography under the G.I. Bill and while looking into the various schools, he overheard some ex-G.I.'s talking about Paris schools.

  In June, 1947, he got passage on a clean little freighter and sweated out a hot summer in Paris, living frugally and taking it easy as he brushed up on his French, hunted for an apartment. In September he enrolled in a photography school, but there wasn't much they could teach him. When he said he was interested in motion-picture work, his teacher introduced him to Theresa Veyron, a film editor.

  No man had ever called Therese pretty. She was tall and slim, flat-chested, and had heavy ankles. Her long, lean face contained sad eyes, an overlarge mouth, and was set off by carefully brushed brown hair that hung to thin shoulders. The only child of a middle-class family, when she was twenty-two —and with the help of a dowry—Theresa married a fifty-two-year-old man who managed a movie theater on l'avenue des Ternes. He openly spent her dowry on his mistress, made a point of remarking about every large-breasted woman they saw on the streets. They politely hated each other and for lack of something to do, Theresa took a job as a secretary with a concern that made short advertising movies. At the start of the war Theresa was a film cutter.

  Therese never considered leaving her husband but the war broke the pattern of most lives: for her it killed her husband, wiped out her family and home during an air raid, and left her mildly active working on underground movies that were never made, and lonely. With the war over she returned to the film business. There were plenty of jobs but no money, and although she worked hard she was always hungry and seedy looking.

  Therese resigned herself to the fact that she was unattractive, that romance was out. Americans annoyed her and she only agreed to go out with Martin because it meant a good supper. He took her to a modest restaurant and she stuffed herself as he talked about photography. Over coffee and hot rums he carefully listened to her ideas about movies. And when he walked Therese to her three-room flat, he politely asked if he could sleep with her. She wasn't certain whether she was angry, amused, flattered, or astonished.

  They turned out to be ideal lovers; each not only aroused a sincere passion in the other, but each of them was fanatically interested in the same subject—motion pictures. As soon as Therese could evict a girl roomer, Martin moved in. He made no secret of his money and they decided he would continue with school—to get the subsistence money—and in time they would open a small studio, produce the clever two-minute commercial used in French theaters between the showings of the regular feature.

  Pearson had about seven thousand dollars left and they carefully hoarded this, living with moderate ease on his G.I. school money. They moved on the fringe of the movie crowd at Joinville, spent their spare time hunting for a studio, looking at equipment—and buying nothing but a cheap 16mm movie camera Martin used for practice.

  Life was leisurely; they were sure of each other and their future: they were very happy. Pearson was one of the few Fortunate Americ
ans who wasn't searching for the Left Bank of the 1920's in post-World War II Paris. Martin loved the Paris he found. It made no difference to him if he ate in a swank tourist restaurant or had supper in one of the student places for eighty francs. He wanted nothing more out of life than to sip coffee and eat croissants in a cafe each morning, racing through the Paris Herald in a few seconds, then slowly stumbling through a French morning paper over his second cup. He would play the pinball machine and finally go to school. In the afternoons he roamed the city, taking pictures of the people, the wonderful old dirty buildings. He was amused by the tourists and never lonely for the States. In fact during the five years he spent in Paris he claims he only went to the American Express once. At five in the afternoon he would sit at a sidewalk cafe and exchange small talk with the waiters as he waited for Therese to have an aperitif with him. He enjoyed watching her in the crowds, the eager impatient way she walked, as if there was absolutely nothing in the world as important as rushing to meet and kiss Martin Pearson.

  One October evening in 1951, as they were having a late snack of mussels and snails in a cheap restaurant on rue Clichy, Therese asked/'You remember Gabby, the little one who thinks she is an actress because she has a bosom like a cow?”

  Martin nodded.

  “She is now living with one of your compatriots, a smug, stupid man who claims he was an actor in Hollywood and on Broadway. He is as bald as an egg, and I think you should see him.”

  “Why? I can't grow hair!”

  “My darling, always you must joke! He has just come from your army in Germany. He has a car and spends his money like a fool. But Gabby swears she has seen three reels of Nazi newsreels he has managed to steal, films never seen before. She says there are pictures of Hitler, Eva Braun, and others, including a parade of nude girls on floats, and horror shots of the beasts looting a Polish village. This... actor has ideas of making a full-length picture around these reels. It can be done, so I have arranged for Gabby to introduce you to this Monsieur Sam Lund.”

  CHAPTER 3

  AT SEVEN-THIRTY Ruthie got me half awake by the usual method of tickling my toes, then banging me on the head, which always brought me completely around. At first I'd thought this was cute, now I couldn't break her of the habit. I went to the bathroom, wearing only a pair of shorts. There was a short scream—I'd forgotten about the baby sitter. May was a skinny fifteen and wearing an old robe of her mother's that went around her several times. Her pimply face was a furious blushing red. I said, “What you screaming about? Haven't you ever been to the beach, seen men in trunks? Want the bathroom first?”

  “I have already completed my toilet,” she announced, so I went in and left her to her blushing.

  After breakfast I drove Ruthie to the nursery school. I only had a few hours' sleep and maybe some private eyes can bat along on no shut-eye, but not me. I needed sleep to sharpen my alleged mind, so I went home and crawled back between the sheets, after setting the alarm for noon. Exactly twenty-three minutes later the phone rang, jarring me awake.

  Jake Winston said, “Hello, cousin.”

  “Hello, Jake,” I said, trying not to sound angry.

  “Waited till you were awake to call you,” he said pleasantly. “I saw Ruthie yesterday.”

  “She told me.”

  “Why didn't you call me last night? You know Grace, always fussing with her cooking. Wants to know if you're coming out Sunday?”

  “Well... eh ...”

  “Been months since we've seen you. The boys want to see Ruthie and Grace will make some fancy dishes I can't even pronounce.”

  Grace was Syrian and could cook Oriental dishes that made you stuff yourself like a pig. “Don't have to sell me, Jake. Thing is I'm on a case and not sure I'll be free Sunday.”

  “Let's settle it that you're coming out. If you get stuck, I'll drive in and pick up Ruthie. A deal, chum?”

  “I'm buying. How's the mail?”

  “Heavy, lot of damn magazines today. See you, Barney.”

  I drove over to the office to pick up my mail—a waste of time, stopped at the coffeepot for a second breakfast and a couple of Alma's old dirty jokes, then headed down to the Andersun home. All the time I felt in a daze, my brain still working on Betsy Turner. There was something sad about her. All that stuff about her late husband getting his kicks out of beating men—I didn't believe it, but I guess anything is possible when a joker goes in for thrills.

  I only expected to find Mrs. Andersun home, but the father was there too. Their apartment was much like mine, a four-room walk-up in a house that was on the verge of becoming a tenement. The Andersuns were ordinary-looking people, both in their fifties—Mrs. Andersun a very pale and delicate-looking woman. Her husband wore a torn undershirt, old pants, slippers, and a hearing aid. He was stooped and thin, a plump face held up by a scrawny neck, his skin an unhealthy pale-white.

  When I told them what I wanted, he told me in a tired voice, “We have been through this so many times, so many questions.”

  I gave him the old reliable, “Only doing my job, Mr. Andersun. And you want us to find your son's killer, don't you?”

  He shrugged bony shoulders. “Yes, I suppose I do want the killer captured. But that won't bring Franklin back to us. When he came out of the war alive, I was so happy, and now...”

  “The war did it,” Mrs. Andersun said as I parked my king-size backside in a worn chair. “Took a quiet boy like my Franklin, had him ride the sky at three hundred miles an hour. He'd be in Topeka one morning, maybe here in New York the next, or in California for breakfast and going to a show in New Orleans that evening. Then they expect him to return to a normal, slow life.”

  “Frank wasn't... eh... nervous or anything, was he?”

  “No, sir, he was a bright boy, a student,” the mother said. “Took three years of college under the G.I. Bill. Studied business. Always said how with the right methods and a little cash, a person could make a fortune these days. Had so many schemes—all legitimate, of course.”

  “What sort of schemes?”

  “No sense going into that,” Mr. Andersun said. “Other detectives asked us the same thing. Franklin never got started, you need capital and we're poor people. He managed to save a few hundred dollars and played the market with that. At first he made a small profit, then he tried some wild stocks and lost it all. He went to the big concerns with some of his merchandising ideas, but they wouldn't even see him. Then he got a couple of jobs, thought he could work his way up. They beat him down, broke his spirit.”

  “Nonsense, Franklin would have been a rich man some day. He had the spunk,” mama said.

  Mr. Andersun shook his head. “No, he lost his drive. That's why he was going to take a trip with this money, instead of investing it.”

  “Where was he going?”

  “No place special, maybe Paris, he just wanted to travel.”

  “Were you in favor of the trip?” I asked.

  Mr. Andersun turned so that the hearing device hooked to his belt faced me. “Was I in favor of it? Oh, travel is a form of education. We hardly had any time to discuss it. Juanita, that's our daughter, she thought Franklin should spend it on new furniture. But far as Mom and I were concerned, the final decision would have been up to the boy.”

  There wasn't anything at the Andersun home, and the cops had already questioned them for several days. The old man had worked for the gas company most of his life, was taking time off now to pull himself together. They had never heard of any Brown, never heard or saw Turner before, hadn't a single idea why their son was shot. Juanita worked as a telephone operator and would be home late in the afternoon. She had a steady boy friend named Irving Spear, who was a hackie. Mom Andersun said, “A very good boy, going to evening college. Of course there's a difference in religion, but they will work that out. Franklin wasn't engaged, but he saw a lot of Cissy Lewis— lives in the house next door.”

  When I left them, I dropped in to see if Cissy was home. She was a silly-lo
oking girl of about twenty-four, with curlers in her blond hair, and quite upset because I found her in a dirty housedress, cleaning up her folk's apartment. She talked in a shrill voice, said her folks ran a local vegetable store and made a point of telling me, “I never work there, of course. Wish I'd have known you was coming; I'd have got dressed. Lots of cops and men have questioned me. Gee, you sure look like a detective —so big and hard-boiled looking.”

  When I managed to get a word in, she said, “I was engaged to Frank and my heart is broken. As I told the reporters, I was so shocked at the news of his death, I fainted. I really did.” She had one of these straight-up-and-down figures except for fleshy, quivering hips, and as she talked she walked around the living room, putting quite a movement into her hips.