by Kane, Henry
“Tommy Lyons is a highly neurotic young man. Angry, Tommy can be dangerous. She’s pushing him now, and not in flighty figures. If Tommy loses his head, all sorts of bombs can start exploding.”
I wagged my head, numbly. “How, please, can anybody—especially one crusty-poor—refuse a firm offer of a million dollars?”
“In the hopes of getting two million, or five, or ten.”
“But she’s the gal who took nothing—nothing!—when they were legally separated.”
“She had to take nothing.”
“Why?”
“The law was on his side. Cruel and inhuman treatment on the part of the wife.”
“What cruel, what inhuman, what in hell did she do?”
“He caught her in the act.”
“What act, damn?”
“She had an apartment of her own, an apartment he wasn’t supposed to know about, but he did know because he had detectives trailing her, and his detectives set up bugs and microphones and contraptions for pictures. She was caught with her panties down, literally.”
“So he had his evidence. So she was in bed with a guy. So why didn’t he sue for divorce?”
“Because the guy in her bed was a gal.”
I am not easily stunned but that got me.
I sat in silence, mouth open.
“Lesbo,” he said. “AC-DC.”
The steaks arrived, sizzling.
Nine
THEY WERE gorgeous steaks, plump, springy, and running blood, and they were accompanied by wooden bowls of crisp tossed-green salad with, on a side, crocks of French dressing, Russian dressing, Roquefort dressing: take your choice or mix at will. In separate oval saucers were baked potatoes scooped from their skins, mashed with clobbered cream and flavored with chive and returned to their jackets opened to points like budding roses to sunshine. There were icy silver platters of celery, olives, and slivered carrots, and there were bread-sticks sprouting from graceful vases and hot muffins in napkinned baskets and hot garlic bread and melba toast and thin-sliced pumpernickel and quarter-pound nuggets of saffron-tinted butter seated within neat rectangular silver receptacles.
The captain with the gold Dunhill popped and poured new champagne from the iced silver stand and returned the diapered bottle to the silver stand and said, “Is there something else you might wish, gentleman?” and David Holly, chewing, lips greasy, mildly shook his head and punctured a hole in the air with his ebony-handled slender serrated knife in a gesture of Go Away. The tuxedoed captain vanished and the producer-man ate like it was a last meal and the Russians were at the gates, and ate and ate: Momma had brought him up to clean the plate and he was blessed with an animal capacity.
Once he looked up from cutting and picking and clawing, and chewed: “Eat, boy. Eat, man. But delicious. They know how to serve for Holly, you bet, the best.”
I smoked cigarettes. I drank champagne.
He wiped his mouth with a stained napkin, crumbs nonetheless retained in the briar of his mustache, and he said happy: “What’s the matter, baby? You’re not eating.”
“I’m sick,” I said, exposing teeth in what I hoped was a fairly healthy smile.
“Ulcers?” he said, masticating.
“Nope. I don’t have an excuse. Just like sick.”
“Sensitive stomach? Colitis? Liver? Nerves? Diet? Blood? Bladder? What?”
He ate. He ate. He ate quick, rapid, chewing, stuffing, grabbing, swallowing, slobbering, healthy, enjoying. Once in a while he smiled: chewing, stuffing, grabbing, rapid, enjoying. He ate like a normal hungry man without inhibition: he ate like a goddamned pig. “What?” he said. “You can tell me. Gout? Venereal trouble? Prostate? Kidney? Glandular something? Thyroid? Pancreas? Diabetes? That can happen any time.”
Then he bent back to table and ate, ate. Hell, he was a millionaire. Who can get to be a millionaire and stay a millionaire without grabbing and eating and grabbing and eating? But the reverse was incomprehensible in another without medical explanation. “What?” he said, steak finished, string of celery between capped teeth.
“Gallstones,” I said. I don’t even know what the hell gallstones are. I used to call whatever they are gold-stones until a doctor-friend straightened me out, at least on pronunciation. “Gold-stones,” I said, slipping back.
“Ah. Yes. Sure. Can be very painful. You sure you’re not hungry. You were, you know.”
“Sick,” I said. “Gold … gall … the stones … they act up, like sometimes.”
“Serious?”
“No.”
“You ought to get them out.”
“Yeah. I ought.”
“Mind, then?” he said and exchanged his empty plate for my full plate and cut away the side-edge of fat as expertly as a butcher and then cut across the grain and ate and swallowed and slobbered and stained his mustache.
And then, suddenly, the whole pig-performance was over.
Suddenly satiety set in, just a small hunk of steak remaining on the second plate. The ravages were all over the table—pieces of bread, strips of celery, pits from olives, stains from butter, prickly crumbs, curdles of chewed meat, slices of gristle, fragments of carrot, sticky little puddles of potato—but the man at the helm was miraculously transformed from pig-at-feed to millionaire-epicure. First, daintily, he brought up the spotted napkin from his lap and cured the corners of his mouth; then, more earnestly, he dry-cleaned his mustache; then he flicked out the napkin with a sound as a flag snapping in a breeze and applied it to his face in a mop-up maneuver; then he held off the napkin, regarded it fastidiously, crumpled it and bounced it to the tablecloth with patent distaste. He raised his right hand and snapped his thumb and instantly our captain was at table, crow’s feet crinkling about obsequious eyes.
“Let’s get cleaned up here, Pierre,” said David Holly.
“But of course, Mr. Holly.” And now Pierre raised his hand high and snapped his thumb and a troop of bus-boys descended.
David Holly, gently, poked a gold toothpick at his porcelain teeth.
Against the new background of pristine tablecloth and clouds of fresh linens the smiling Pierre inquired: “And now, Mr. Holly?”
“Coffee,” said David Holly. “Black, no cream, no sugar, and no desert, unless Mr. Chambers …”
“Mr. Chambers?” Pierre beamed down upon me.
“Coffee, black, no cream, no sugar. Like Mr. Holly, I must watch my diet.”
“Gallstones,” Holly said lugubriously.
Commiseratingly Pierre said, “Dreadful. I know. My wife had the operation. The attacks are so painful, no?”
“Yes,” I said.
“There is Vichy water from France, if you wish.”
“Just coffee, black, no cream, no sugar.”
“At once of course.”
And over coffee and cigarettes David Holly said, “You still looked startled, Peter.”
“It’s the gallstones, David.”
“It’s the bullshit, Peter.”
“Oh my why?” I said. “I thought you were a big boy.”
“Big.”
“A sophisticate, a man of the world.”
“That’s me, Pappy. A ringadingeroo.”
“So how come since the mention of AC-DC you’ve been sick?”
I drank coffee, black, no cream, no sugar. I smoked. I said, “I’m a peasant, from the soil.”
“A soiled peasant?”
“Funny like a crotch,” I said. “Haven’t you ever read Kinsey?”
“Sho, man.”
“And listened to all the bilge from the psychiatrists who write books?”
“Books talk?”
“Now come off it, Peter. Homosexuals exist.”
“So? What do you want from me?”
“Ever read Andre Gide?”
“Look, let’s get off the literary pitch.”
“You know what AC-DC means?”
“Two different currents of electricity.”
“What is it with you? Are you bei
ng difficult because you haven’t eaten? Christ, I offered.”
“I’m always difficult.”
“Two different currents of electricity.”
“Unique Monique the Freak. Okay, I dig. What do you want me to do? Draw dirty pictures on the new tablecloth?”
“I just want to know that you understand.”
“I understand.”
“Christ, life is complicated.”
“Mr. Holly, I don’t need lectures, I don’t need diagrams, I don’t need pictures on the tablecloth. Monique Lyons likes fellas, but she also likes girls.”
“Tommy Lyons didn’t know that when he married her.”
“But he found out afterward because, within a year of marriage, already he had private sleuths on her trail.”
Holly finished his coffee and pushed his cup away. “Within a year he knew she had married him for bucks and nothing else. You don’t like the man, so you’re looking on the black side of him. He had sleuths on her, thinking she was having an affair with another man. Turned out she was having an affair with another woman. That’s not grounds for divorce in this state. Adultery is the only ground. Adultery is sexual intercourse with a person of the opposite sex. With a person of your own sex it is not, in the law, adultery. It is, in the law, cruel and inhuman treatment.”
“Thanks for the lecture but I know all about that without your lecture.”
“I’m only trying to explain Tommy’s situation.”
“I know all about Tommy’s situation. He found himself married to a dyke but he couldn’t get out of the marriage. She wanted a hundred million bucks, then she wanted fifty million bucks. He had pictures of her and a gal, and he threatened with the pictures, and she didn’t want the scandal, plus the pictures could prove cruel and inhuman treatment on the part of the spouse, so he got his separation for free. But she’s still legally married to him, and now he really wants out, and she’s still holding him up for big dough, and he can get real nasty about it. Okay, that’s Tommy Lyons’s situation. What’s yours, Mr. Holly?”
“Mine, sir?” He was getting priggish around the mustache again.
“Look, you’ve got me here for some purpose. You mentioned something about divorce, but you are already divorced. You mentioned money, and that gave me the pleasure of your company. You also mentioned Arlene …”
He snapped for the captain and signed the check.
“Let’s go home,” he said.
Ten
HOME WAS three floors in an apartment house at Seventy-second Street and Central Park West. Home was a triplex with two private elevators and an indoor swimming pool. Home was a co-op valued at five hundred thousand dollars, stripped. Home was furnished with ten million dollars worth of furniture and objects of art, insured. David Holly was a public figure and the value of his home—just his New York City apartment—was public knowledge and he paid his press agents to keep it public knowledge: David Holly was his kind of nut; there are all kinds and there cannot be objection unless and until the nuttiness overflows from private eccentricity to public misfeasance. Home had six in help the chief of which was a tall muscular Japanese who served as part-time chauffeur, part-time bodyguard, and full-time valet. I had never talked with the man although I knew about him. I had seen him functioning in his other capacities but this was the first time I saw him functioning as valet because this was the first time David Holly had condescended to invite me to his home.
I was deposited in a tufted armchair in a vast drawing room while David Holly, accompanied by valet, went off for a shower, and when he returned he was clothed in a flowered silk robe but he was not wearing shoes. The Japanese came back with him. Holly said, “This is Mr. Chambers, Isadore. Peter, meet my man Isadore.”
I nodded and the Japanese smiled.
“I am called Izzy,” he said.
Holly sank into another tufted chair. “Champagne,” he said.
“Not for me,” I said.
“For you?” said Izzy.
“Are there sausages?” I said.
“There are sausages,” said Izzy.
“He’s an eye, Iz,” Holly explained. “Eyes are wacky because they’ve got to be nuts to be in the business in the first place—like all chorus-boys are gay. Of course there are always exceptions.”
“You wish sausages, Eye?” said Iz.
“Aye,” said the eye. “I wish three scrambled eggs loose with sausages well done. I also wish whole wheat toast lavishly buttered. I also wish hot coffee with cream and with sugar. Can you whip that up for the eye, Iz?”
“And champagne?” said Iz, campaigning for the boss.
“No champagne.” I produced cigarettes and Holly grabbed.
“And you, Mr. Holly?” inquired Izzy.
“Not me. No eggs, no sausages, no toast, no coffee. Champagne.”
I ate and he drank champagne and then he gave up on my cigarettes and started smoking long thin cigars of his own and then he let loose in one volley, “I was married for eleven years and I’m divorced for five. I’m forty-seven, my ex-wife is ten years younger. She divorced me, caught me in flagrante delicto. I had no defense, it was merely a matter of how much alimony. A referee was appointed to decide on that one issue, the pecuniary situation. She was granted fifteen thousand dollars a month.”
“Wow,” I said.
“It could have been worse. The wronged wife is entitled to live in the manner accustomed. She lived on more than fifteen thousand a month, believe you me.”
“I you do believe,” I said but it went by him.
“It hurts, however, fifteen gees every month, month after month, five years now.”
“What about Arlene?” I said.
He put away his cigar, poured more champagne. “If the divorce action would have come to court, Arlene would have been named correspondent.”
“Oh,” I said and then I said nothing, and he said nothing, and then I said, “That explains the key.”
“What key?” he said.
“We’re not up to that yet.” I finished the eggs and I finished the sausages and I went to work on the coffee. “So?” I said.
“Fifteen thousand dollars a month is one hundred and eighty thousand dollars a year. In five years I’ve already paid her nine hundred thousand dollars. It hurts.”
“And it’s going to keep on hurting, I imagine. The only out is if she gets married.”
“Why should she?” he said.
“She shouldn’t,” I said. “What sense?”
“No sense, actually. She can have a lover, many lovers, and there’s nothing I can do about it. But I’ve tried, and that’s where you come in.”
I grabbed for my cigarettes. At long last it was coming to a head. “Fit me in, Pappy.”
He stood up and walked the carpet on naked feet. “You know that I’ve got a couple of shows running in London.”
“Yes.”
“Ever hear of Earl Stanhope?”
“No.”
“It’s a stage name. His real name is Richard Buzzell. Anyway, he’s a British actor and a good one. Once upon a time he used to be in your racket; well, not quite. He was a real cop, a detective with Scotland Yard, but he was just too damned good-looking to stay a cop. He’s about the handsomest man I’ve ever seen, and I’m in the business. Well, I brought Earl over here for one specific purpose.”
“No …” I said, anticipating.
“Yes,” he said, walking. “A beautiful man with a sweet gift of gab. I’ve fixed him up with a fine apartment, I’m paying him three hundred dollars a week, and I’ve let it be known that I’m going to star him in my next show. I’ve also spent two thousand dollars on him for a new wardrobe, and he’s got an expense account if he has to live it up big.”
“All for what?”
“All to seduce the beautiful Ingrid into marriage.”
“Ingrid?”
“My ex-wife.”
“Pretty rotten, Mr. Holly.”
“You’re not here for comments, Mr. Chamb
ers.” He went back to his tufted chair and lit his cigar again. “If he pulls the trick—and if Earl can’t do it, nobody can—he gets a marriage present of one hundred thousand bucks. That’s the story.”
So now I stood up and made tracks on the trackless carpet.
“You haven’t come to me yet, Pappy,” I said.
“I’m giving you the background.”
“I’ve got the background. Now come to me.”
He smoked. “I’m not known to be a dope, Mr. Chambers.”
“There are varied opinions about you, Mr. Holly, but I’ve never heard anybody say you’re a dope.”
“Well …” He smiled. “Ingrid and I are very good friends, I want you to understand. Civilized people, all that crap. I, personally, introduced her to Earl Stanhope—but I’m not setting a guy up in an apartment, paying him three hundred a week, laying out a load for his new wardrobe, and paying his expenses—without keeping tabs on him.”
“Ah,” I said “Carl Rockland.”
“Christ!” He pumped his hands to his knees and got up. “What the hell do you know about this?”
“In time, in time,” I said soothingly.
But he was beyond soothing. We were both on the carpet now, face to face, and his face was ugly with anger. He had hung on to control all evening, an iron control, but now it was molten and the fury showed through. He grabbed my wrists and squeezed till they hurt.
“Leggo,” I said.
“The son of a bitch turned out to be a phony all the way.”
“Who?” I said. “Leggo,” I said and shook free. “Earl Stanhope.”
“Your own boy?”
“I’ll kill the bastard if it’s the last thing I do.”
“Crossed you?”
“He stuck it up my ass.”
“Carl Rockland told you?”
“Rockland tailed him, Rockland gets real close, Rockland keeps tabs, Rockland taps three wires.”
“For how much?” I said, business being business, and the client on the bias.
“Three-fifty per week,” he blurted, “and deserved every nickel. Stanhope was squiring Ingrid, and was also squiring Monique Lyons. Rockland put taps on the three wires. Saturday night he had an earful—for me.”
“Do it easy now, please,” I said.
