by Ted Lewis
The fresh drinks come and the girl goes away again. Some more silence passes and then Murdock says, “A few minutes ago you said you were going after Styles with or without me. I mean, it sounded as if maybe you thought there’s a chance I might be interested in going with you knowing what I know of your motives.”
I shrug and say nothing.
“I guess you think I won’t now,” Murdock says.
Again I say nothing.
“Well,” Murdock says, “it’ll be with me.”
I say nothing again but this time I look at him.
“It’ll be with me,” Murdock says, “because I got this feeling and I don’t have to draw you any more pictures. Styles stinks, Draper stinks, Florian stinks and I want that stink to be blown all over this city like smog so’s everybody can smell it and know what’s going on.”
I smile. “St. George the crusader,” I say to him.
“I just want to be around him when you’re around him because if I’m right, your hassling might make him slip, show me something I can pass on to a different organization than the creeps we work for.”
I shake my head.
“Earlier you said I don’t give a shit about my badge,” I say. “Sounds like you’ve caught something off me after all these years.”
“The only thing I’ve caught off you, being with you, is various pains in the ass, and not all from sitting on the upholstery of that crummy car we drive around in.”
There’s another silence.
“Of course,” I finally say to Murdock, “what would be great, what would be really great, would be to fix Styles the last way he’d ever expect to be fixed.”
“And what way would that be?”
I spread my hands.
“Take him out the way he takes out other citizens.”
Murdock grins but it’s only a small grin.
“Yeah, that would be good. But however much I believe in my theory, I don’t believe that hard.”
“What’s to believe?” I ask him. “We know what he is. We’d be performing a public service. And Jesus, we could do it, no sweat. Clean too.”
“Sure we would,” Murdock says. “But that’s not the way I want it. That way you’re on your own. Whatever he is, if I’m wrong why he’s here, I’m not taking anybody out because you don’t care for who he’s screwing.”
I shrug and take a sip of my drink.
“So what do you intend doing first?” Murdock asks.
“Oh, I’ve been figuring lots of ideas, lots of things been flying around my brain.”
George frowns.
“Okay, okay,” he says. “So tell me when you’re ready; I got till I retire.”
I give him an innocent look.
“Listen,” I tell him. “I’m going to tell you right now, George. Just order a couple more drinks, will you. You do it so well.”
All the way over to Garfield’s Draper tries to get us on the car radio but we just keep quiet and let the static break the monotony until we get to where we’re going--- a high-rise on the south side. When we’ve been in and seen Garfield and got the equipment we need from him and promised his payment by the end of the week, we drive on over to the Chandler Hotel and the first place we go to is the manager’s office. Santell is still as rosy as ever looking like a freshly turned-down bed, but his rosiness turns to ashes when we tell him about the tap we want on Styles’s phone. He blusters and ifs and buts but finally Santell has to take us to the switchboard room and while George fixes up the gear, Santell watches as if somebody’s trampling over a wedding cake he’s had specially made. Then, when George has finished, the three of us leave the switchboard room and I tell Santell that he never heard about what we just installed. After I’ve told him that, I ask for a spare key to the Plaza Suite and again he starts the blustering routine. This time I don’t say anything and neither does George; we just stand there looking at him until he’s allowed himself the luxury of facing us out then he goes and gets us what we’ve asked for. After he’s done that, Murdock and me make for the elevator me saying, “And now our little rosebud is going to be straight on the line to Florian, and in approximately five minutes flat our nice new piece of equipment is going to be ripped out and thrown in the garbage can.”
Murdock shrugs. “Maybe,” he replies, “but I think maybe not. See, that little creep knows the set-up in this town being an employee of Florian himself and it’s my guess he won’t want to bother Florian with a couple of cops and a tape recorder.”
“Good thinking, Robin,” I tell him. “But there’s still a great chance we’re going to finish up with our asses splattered from Cape Cod to California.”
“Sure.”
“And what about your badge?”
“I guess that’ll be a little bent, too.”
We get to the elevator and press the button and while we’re waiting for the doors to open Murdock says to me, “I get more and more convinced I’m right so don’t screw it up will you? I mean, we play this right, we could be second-run Untouchables.”
I make an O with my mouth and say, “So that’s it. Us and Elliot Ness. Maybe they’ll make a T.V. series about us.”
Before Murdock can reply the elevator arrives and we get in. Today it’s a different operator and when I tell him we want to go the Plaza Suite he takes us there without any of the deadpan stuff the other operator thought he’d worked to perfection. We get out of the elevator, go over to the Plaza Suite and I put the key in the lock and open the door.
The late afternoon sun doesn’t exactly do any harm to the Plaza Suite’s general atmosphere. Everything’s softened slightly and the sleek textures look even more expensive than before. Just to top off the Playboy-Penthouse atmosphere Lesley is standing against the broad windows, the sun streaming through the cheesecloth of her long skirt but not through the material of her top because she’s not wearing a top; she’s naked from the waist up, the only decoration from the waistband of her skirt up to her neck being the almost full glass she’s holding in her left hand.
She looks at us and we look at her. That goes on for a minute or two and then it’s Lesley who’s the first to speak.
“So this time you brought a partner,” she says. “What’s your thinking? The two of you can double the reaction?”
I ignore her as much as it’s possible to ignore her and I tell George to go to work on the suite. That makes her start out on a different tack.
“What is this, for Christ sakes? What—”
“Shut up,” I tell her. “Shut up and put a blouse on and I’ll tell you.”
She gives me a kind of smile. “Can’t take it, hey?” she sneers. “Bring back too many unhappy memories?”
“Just sit down,” I tell her, and this time she looks at me and gets the tone of my voice, and so she walks down the steps and picks up a flimsy robe on the way and drapes it around her shoulders. She doesn’t put her drink down; she just slams herself down on the leather divan so that some of the drink splashes onto her breasts and I try not to remember how they felt when I lay with her the night before.
“So nigger’s your taste, is it?” I say to her.
“Well, I guess it’s like they used to say about white women after the Indians had made them into squaws,” she replies. “Never used to be the same back at the old corral.” I walk over to the drinks and make myself one then go down the steps and sit opposite her.
“So the nigger’s here to see his wife and kid, is he?” I ask.
“That’s what I told you,” she says, “but I can’t imagine the Christ why.”
I don’t answer her. I just look.
“So what is this? Morals? Getting your revenge this way?”
“This nigger Styles,” I say to her. “What’s he do? What line of business is he in?”
“Oh, I ge
t it,” she says. “That’s the way. You want him so I’ll suffer that way.”
I take a sip of my drink. “What line of business’s he in?”
“Ask him.”
“Baby, I know. I want to know what he’s told you.”
“He’s a Good Humor Man.”
George is through in the bedroom so I get up and grab one of her tits. Holding my cigarette lighter near her nipple, I push my face close to her and say, “Listen. Just listen. He don’t care for you. You told me yourself. He’ll care even less if you’re marked. So just tell me the answers to the questions I’m asking, all right? That way you’ll have bought yourself a bit more time to hang onto his back with your fingernails.”
The fear in her makes the drink in her glass slop a little bit more and now she knows she’s got to tell me what I want.
“He’s an insurance salesman.”
I let go of her and sit down again. For a minute or two my mind is blank of any reaction but eventually the bubble of her bursts in my brain and I begin to laugh and Christ, I can’t stop, and I’m laughing so hard that Murdock comes through from the bedroom and stares at me as if I’m some kind of nut. Lesley takes a pull of her drink and when I’ve managed to stop laughing I say to Murdock, “I just heard how Mr. Styles earns his bread.”
“Oh?” Murdock says. “And how would that be?”
“He sells insurance,” I tell him. “He’s an insurance salesman.”
Murdock just looks at me for a long time and then he shakes his head a couple of times and turns away, slowly going back into the bedroom.
“I expect you think he only sells to his own kind,” Lesley says. “That’s what you would think, but—”
“Listen,” I tell her. “Listen to me. You think I’m something out of Peanuts? You must think I’m really something to hand out crap like that. Come on, baby, I know I’m only a stinking pig, but even us stinking pigs got some pride. If you’re going to put me on, do it right, hey?”
She looks at me and then she says,“What is this? I mean, what in Christ’s name is this?”
“Listen, sweetheart, I know what Styles does, you know what Styles does. I only asked you because I wanted to hear what you’d say, and now I’ve heard it I’m getting mad because at least I expected something a little less insulting.”
This time she looks at me without saying anything and suddenly I realize that, in fact, she knows nothing. Nothing I’m saying to her makes any sense; crazily, she really does believe Styles is an insurance salesman. So we look at each other for a while and eventually I say to her, “Just how old are you?”
She doesn’t answer. Wearily I say, “There’s two ways—the easy way, the hard way. Which way’s it going to be?”
She thinks about that for a minute or two and then she says, “I’m nineteen.”
“And you never learned to read yet?”
She doesn’t answer.
“Or is it you never got beyond reading the funny pages?”
Still nothing.
“So you’re sitting there and telling me that you don’t know that Albert Styles is the biggest freelance hit man since Attila the Hun?”
I have to give it to her, she doesn’t even blink. Of course she may not believe me, but either way she stays as cool as the drink she’s holding.
“Can you hear a funny sound?”
I look at her.
“Oh, I know what it is,” she says. “Somebody’s trying to get you on your two-way wrist radio.”
I spread my hands.
“It’s true, baby,” I tell her. “Mr. Styles has made the all-time Hall of Fame. He’s got so many firsts it just ain’t true. I mean, he’s the first nigger millionaire hit man in the history of the United States of America.”
She goes silent again and I realize she’s beginning to believe what I’m saying to her. The silence lasts quite some time because there doesn’t seem any point in me saying anything else at the moment. I’m just going to let her sit there and wait and see what she has to say and while I’m waiting for that, Murdock comes out of the bedroom and says, “Of course, it’s clean. The whole place.”
“Sure it is,” I tell him. “The drinks are over there.” George makes for the drinks and when he’s fixed one he wanders out onto the patio and surveys the city.
“So,” Lesley says eventually.
I look at her.
“So what do you think I’m going to do?” she says. “Throw myself off the roof? Or maybe pack up and leave? That’s what you’d like, isn’t it?”
I take a sip of my drink.
“You think that’s the only reason I’m interested in your nigger?”
She doesn’t answer.
“I mean, now you know what he does, you think that’s all? You don’t think our interest is any more than that?”
“Who cares?”
“Presumably you’d care if we put him away and you never lunched on his black cock again.”
She doesn’t even react to that except to say, “If he’s what you say he is, you’re not going to put him away because: A, he’s not here on business; and B, if he was, he wouldn’t carry it out knowing you were on to him; and C, even if he did, he’s smarter than you are and so there’d be no way you could lay your hands on him.”
I smile at her. “You’re sure he’s not here on business,” I say to her. “I mean, five minutes ago you didn’t even know what he did.”
She shrugs. “He’s here on business, he’s not here on business, who cares?”
“The person he’s here to hit that’s who cares.”
She shrugs again.
“Well, I wouldn’t know that person, and not knowing them then it doesn’t make any difference to me, does it?”
“And it doesn’t make any difference to you what I’ve told you about Styles?”
“Why should it?”
Murdock comes in off the patio.
“Nice view,” he says. “Particularly of the Department Building.”
Neither Lesley nor I say anything and while that silence is hanging around in the room, the main door into the apartment opens and standing there is Styles, all six foot two of him, his white teeth flashing in a grin that seems as broad as his shoulders. He pauses for a moment easy and relaxed then he looks at Lesley and says, “Hi, honey.”
She smiles at him and says, “Hi.”
“Hello, guys,” he says to us. “Help yourselves to another drink when you’re ready.”
He begins to walk forward into the room and Lesley gets up and goes to meet him. As she throws her arms around him, the robe slips from her shoulders and her naked breasts press into the sheer cloth of Styles’s suit as she kisses him on the mouth, a kiss that lasts as long as it takes for Murdock to down his drink and go over to the cabinet to get a refill. While they’re kissing, Styles casually feels the breast I’d squeezed earlier, feels it negligently, like somebody weighing a soft ball, clinically, just to see how it feels in the hand. Then Styles pulls back from the kiss and says, “Slow down, baby, else maybe the guys might forget what they’re here for.”
She gives him a quick soft kiss on the cheek and walks away from him back to her drink which she’s left on the floor in front of the leather divan. While she’s doing that, Styles peels off his jacket and says, “Hey, honey, fill the tub for me, will you? I got to get the stink of this city off of me.”
“Just the city’s stink?” I say to him.
As Lesley straightens up from picking her glass off the floor it looks as though she’s about to smash the glass in my face but Styles says, “Don’t bother about it, honey. They want that kind of action. They’ll be sick if you don’t do it. Just fix my tub, huh?”
Lesley stays the way she is for a moment then she unfreezes and pours the remains of her drink int
o her and then walks out of the room into the bedroom. Styles starts unbuttoning his shirt while he’s on his way to where the drinks are, and by the time he gets there his shirt is on the floor where he lets it lay. He fixes himself a drink and when he’s taken a pull on it he unzips himself, steps out of his pants and he’s standing there in his Jockeys as he takes another drink. When that’s done he says, waving his glass at the room, “Well, fellows, what do you think? Pretty plush for a down-home nigger, huh?”
Neither Murdock nor me say anything.
“Yeah, I think so too,” Styles says, moving away from where the drinks are. “By the way, you guys find what you were looking for--- the hardware, the equipment?” Murdock fills his glass up again and I rattle the ice cubes in mine. The sound of running water drifts in through the bathroom door.
“I guess not,” Styles says. “But, hey, I’ll give you a clue. You look under the bed? Maybe you overlooked that.”
Lesley comes back into the room.
“It’s almost ready, honey,” she says. “Be just the way you like it in a minute.”
Styles walks over to her and puts his arm around her shoulders starting on her breasts again and she nuzzles up to him.
Then he says, “Well, I guess I’ll go take my bath. You guys’ll excuse me, won’t you?”
While he’s speaking Lesley slips her hand down the front of his Jockeys and starts feeling him.
“You can’t get into the tub in these,” she says.
Styles grins at us.
“See, these days when white trash go overboard, they really go overboard, know what I mean? They’ll do every little thing for you, you know?” he says.
Lesley kisses Styles at the cleft of his throat just above the collarbone then the hand that’s been inside his Jockeys emerges at the waistband; she takes hold of the waistband between her fingers and her thumb and very gently she pulls his Jockeys down until they’re at a point where they can slip down his legs of their own accord. Then she gives his prick a squeeze, just on the roll of his foreskin, rolling it between her thumb and forefinger and then she lets go and kisses Styles again.
