Lush Life: An Artie Deemer Mystery

by Dallas Murphy

  I smiled. “Yes, he’s—”

  Crystal knelt and ruffled his ears. I admired her stately neck below boyishly bobbed black hair. Jellyroll smiled at her and began to lick her cheek.

  I envied him that. “I’m Artie Deemer. I—”

  “Oh, you are wonderful!”

  For a giddy instant I had thought she meant me.

  She presented her other cheek to Jellyroll and mewed over him. They carried on like that for a while. I stood shifting my weight from one leg to the other. She nuzzled his muzzle; he kissed and kissed.

  “I’m Artie Deemer.”

  “Uh-huh,” she said without looking up. Then she straightened, picked up her cue, and resumed sinking balls as if she could do it in her sleep, with me mooning around or off visiting business associates on Baffin Island. Only recently have women pool players come into their own as professionals, but most still maintain a guarded pose, because there’s always somebody waiting to hit on them in poolrooms.

  “You don’t know Crystal Spivey,” I said to my attorney.

  “I do indeed. In fact, we were an item once.”

  “You were not.”

  “Well, we almost were. She wanted me, but I had to demur in the interests of my practice. She hung around poolrooms with those of questionable character. That would have given the appearance of infelicity. Felicity is bad enough. Infelicity is out of the question. C’mon, Artie, fifty bluchers. I can beat this cretin, after which I’ll take you and Crystal out for an eau de vie.”

  I gave my attorney fifty bucks. Jellyroll looked up at me. His eyes seemed to say, “You are a true chump.” Then I sat down on the regulars’ bench to wait for Crystal to come in. Outta-Town Brown, Ted Bundy, and Chinese Gordon sat with me. I tried not to watch my attorney lose, but fifty bucks isn’t such a high price to pay to meet the woman you moon over, if you don’t have to watch.

  “Hey, Artie,” said Ted Bundy out of the side of his mouth. Ted’s real name was Albert Bundy. Naturally, everybody called him Ted. “You ain’t backing that fish of a viscount, are you?”

  “Do you think I’m a chump?”

  Ted didn’t reply.

  Pool has changed. The game is enjoying a prosperity and wide interest it hasn’t known since the twenties. With that, there has arisen something entirely new—the upscale poolroom. Now, instead of in grotty dives where your shoes stick to the floor, you can play in refined rooms with attendants who empty the ashtrays. Now respectable contributors to the GNP, real citizens who have checking accounts and pay income tax, play pool on double dates. In some poolrooms today, you can order herbal tea and veal sandwiches with Mornay sauce, and no one will question your sanity or sexuality.

  I had spent many years in grotty, preboom poolrooms. I could hear my mother’s voice from out of the murk of the past: “Arthur, where are you going? You’re going out to play pool with bums, aren’t you?”

  “Oh, no, Mom. I’m going over to work on the homecoming float.” I envisioned myself sticking multicolored tissue paper up a chicken-wire badger’s ass and turned left to the poolroom. I should be a better player than I am. Maybe I lack talent. Or drive. Or what my mother used to call “gumption.”

  Ted Bundy said, “I’m worried about our nation. Take this fuckhead President, for example. Here’s a guy can’t run four balls in a row, yet he’s boss over a major country.”

  Thumper, an aging amputee, swayed over and sat down on the regulars’ bench. He stretched out his existing leg painfully. “Artie, you wouldn’t be interested in a top of the line Toro Snowblower, would you?”

  “No. I don’t blow much snow.”

  “Your Toro never loses its resale value. You don’t need to use it. Toro’s a solid investment.”

  “Hey, Brown,” said Ted Bundy.

  “What?”

  “I’ll play you one game for a t’ousand.”

  “Let’s go,” said Outta-Town Brown.

  “Of course, I’ll need weight,” said Ted.

  In poolrooms talk is incessant, talk is a way of life.

  “Here it comes,” said Brown, rolling his eyes. “What weight do you need?”

  “The seven and the eight.”

  “Are you nuts? Are you twisted? The seven and the eight? This guy can beat me head up, and he wants me to give him the seven and the eight. Charity. He expects charity. Charity belongs in the home. Besides which, I don’t give weight to no serial killers.”

  “I also need the break.”

  “I’m speechless.”

  “We should be so lucky,” said Chinese Gordon, who’d heard it all before.

  “One game for a t’ousand. Right now, rack ’em up. Oh, I forgot to mention—you got to bank the nine at least six rails.”

  “You’re deeply full of shit, Ted,” said Brown. “You ain’t even ever seen a grand in one location before. If I was gonna give weight to somebody in a big-money game, I’d give it to somebody with money, somebody, say, with a rich dog.”

  The regulars thought Jellyroll’s existence behooved me to lose enough to each of them to put their loved ones through the colleges of their choice. “Okay, Brown,” I said just to hear him say it, “I’ll play you some straight pool next week.”

  “I’ll be outta town.”

  “Hey, Brown,” said Ted Bundy right on cue, “just what is it you do outta town?”

  “I travel.”

  Jellyroll sprawled on my feet. I scratched between his ears the way he likes.

  “One game for a t’ousand. Rack ’em up.”

  Nobody moved.

  The PA system emitted piercing squeals of feedback, then Davey, the deskman, announced, “Phone call for Thumper. Thumper, you gotta call.” Thumper made his tortured way toward the desk.

  By this time my attorney was down three games to none. Too Louis wasn’t even trying to make it look good.

  Never-Miss Monroe came in. He did so each and every day. He’d carefully rack all fifteen balls, place the cue ball on the head spot, screw together his custom-made, mother-of-pearl-inlaid, ebony four-point cue, lean it against the side pocket, and then he’d sit down on the bench. Never-Miss would light a great stinking stogie, cheeks puffing like Diz soloing on the cigar—and sit. He never played, he never hit a single ball. Ever. As a result of this routine, Never-Miss Monroe had attained legendary stature.

  “Hey, Monroe, how you hittin’ ’em?”

  “I’m playing like God.”

  “Can’t miss, huh?”

  “Not without I try.”

  Legend had grown up around Never-Miss. It held that he was a hustler/gambler of the old school, the sort who’d travel the nation pretending to be a bumpkin in shitty coveralls with a sprig of straw in his mouth. The locals would fight over who’d get to skin him. Then he’d take them for every cent in the room and beat it out the window in the john.

  Never-Miss, it was said, used to bet on absolutely anything, and that’s how he arrived at his current pathetic state. Caught on the golf course in an electrical storm, he bet his partner two grand that the partner would get struck by lightning before he did. They went out on the fairway and held sand-trap rakes over their heads like Benjamin Franklin. Never-Miss won. A bolt fried his partner’s footprints into the grass. Ironically, the bolt leapt across to Monroe’s rake. It didn’t injure him physically, but it turned him weird.

  The legend further held that Monroe, who found only eight charred bucks in his dead partner’s pockets, hit the widow up for the winnings right after the funeral. He is said to have pointed to the gaping grave and announced, “I knew this guy like a brother. He wouldn’ta wanted to go down a welsher.”

  “Hey, Monroe, I’ll play you one game for a t’ousand,” said Ted Bundy.

  “What game, Ted?”

  “Nine ball. One game for a t’ousand.”

  “I don’t play nine ball, Ted. Nine ball is a game for riffraff. Sheep fuckers play nine ball. I play straight pool, Ted. Only straight pool.”

  “Okay, straight pool for a t�
��ousand.”

  “You’re on, Ted.”

  Nobody moved. Chinese Gordon sighed deeply and said, “Anybody wanna order out?”

  Thumper hobbled back and took his place on the regulars’ bench.

  “Hey, Thumper, I’ll play you one game for a t’ousand.”

  “One game of what, Ted?”

  “Hopscotch.”

  Too Louis made the nine on the break and chortled, setting several layers of blubber twitching and pulsing.

  “Hey, Too Louis,” said Viscount Pitt, “when’s the last time you saw your prick without a mirror?”

  Time was running short for my fifty dollars, but Crystal hadn’t come in yet. Too Louis scuttled around the table, thighs chafing, sinking balls, and when he lacked reasonable run-out opportunities, he played smart, demoralizing safeties. My attorney seemed to be growing visibly smaller each time he stepped to the table.

  Crystal Spivey walked in carrying her hand-tooled leather cue case. She wore tight jeans and an attractive fuchsia tank top with no bra. I mooned as subtly as possible. Outta-Town Brown elbowed me in the ribs and giggled.

  My attorney didn’t get a shot in game five.

  Savage feedback, followed by Davey: “Phone call for Ernie’s wife. Ernie’s wife, you gotta call.” Ernie’s wife had gotten good enough to beat Ernie’s brains out, so Ernie never came in anymore.

  Crystal took a table by herself and began to assemble her break cue and her playing cue.

  My attorney got a shot in game six, actually made two balls, the two and the three, and the rest of the table up to his seven-ball spot looked easy. He missed the four. Too Louis ran out.

  Crystal was practicing by shooting the same long-rail shot time after time. With some shame, I tried to look down her top, but she was too far away.

  In the next game, Too Louis made the one on the break, and the nine rolled to a stop in front of the end pocket, four inches behind the two ball. My attorney whimpered. Too Louis pounded in the two-nine combination. “Double or nothin’?” Greed seemed to make Louis lighter on his feet, almost balletic.

  My attorney would actually have done it. He looked to me and made that money sign by rubbing his thumb and forefinger together.

  I motioned him over. “If you don’t introduce me to Crystal Spivey right now, you’ll never get another red cent.”

  “Okay, okay. But first a word.” He grasped my elbow and glanced around furtively as if somebody might be listening. He always did that as a way to enhance the significance of the bullshit he was about to shovel on the listener. “There’s something I should tell you about Crystal.”

  “What?”

  “She’s married.”

  My heart sank.

  “You’ll never imagine who to. To Trammell Weems.”

  “No—!”

  “God’s own. As a matter of fact, I introduced them. Trammell, of course, paid me handsomely for that service, but I wouldn’t expect the same from you. At least not until something comes of the relationship.”

  I had ambivalently attended law school about a hundred years ago at a second-rate southern institution which should remain nameless. Among my fellow students, using that word loosely, were Bruce Munger and Trammell Weems. There were Weemses on the Mayflower. A Weems ha had signed the Declaration of Independence and served as secretary of the treasury in the Adams administration. Another from the naval side of the family fought under Farragut at Mobile Bay, charted a major chunk of Antarctica, and invented some kind of celestial-navigation wrinkle for determining longitude. And there was Thaddeus Weems, the powerful publisher of a New York abolitionist newspaper who is supposed to have carried on a lifelong affair with Harriet Beecher Stowe.

  While we were in law school, Trammell’s uncle was the senior senator from Virginia. There was also a famous Doctor Weems, who did something big in the battle against tropical disease, but I forgot just what. Then there was the famous psychologist after whom a syndrome or two were named. And, of course, the world of finance and international banking was as warm with Weemses.

  Plus Trammell himself had been a child star. He played Timmy in “The Mayhews,” a sickening comedy series about family life that the entire nation watched in the early sixties. He had contacts everywhere. And he had the brains and charm to do anything he wanted, even without the heavy family connections. But Trammell wanted only to be a professional black sheep. He referred to his kin as “the inbreds.” He wanted mainly to climb up on some high place and flash obscene gestures at them, anything at all to off end, embarrass, and outrage them.

  In school, he seldom bathed. His hair, tied in a ponytail with fat rubber bands, was always matted and greasy. The drunken old coach who ran the gym where we played handball insisted Trammell take showers before he played or go find another gym to stink up, fucking hippies. This pleased Trammell. Also, being at the bottom of the class pleased him. Only Bruce scored lower, until Trammell bribed someone to falsify Bruce’s records, moving him up out of the place Trammell viewed as his birthright.

  Trammell Weems was also a doper. One of the reasons I discontinued my study of the law was that I didn’t want to be a lawyer, but another was that law school became a threat to my physical and mental health. I had a brush with dangerous drugs. So did Bruce. Trammell led the way. We lacked the character to resist. In fact, we flocked along.

  “Look, students, at what I got from my cousin at the San Diego Zoo—rhino tranks. These soothe the savage beasts.”

  There was medicinal-strength acid from the uncle-with-the-syndrome’s office, ether from the Boston School of Medicine, pure THC, Vietnamese pot, Campuchian opium mailed to us by Ambassador Weems’s assistant, Apache peyote, and a lot of pills from vets at the San Diego Zoo. The ingestion of these interfered with my understanding of jurisprudence. The law school agreed.

  “Wait,” said Bruce. “Did I say Crystal was married to Trammell? I meant to say Crystal was married to Trammell.”

  “You mean they are no longer?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Bruce, is this bullshit?”

  “Absolutely not. Crystal Spivey and Trammell Weems were husband and wife in the sight of God. But He blinked. However, if I were you, I wouldn’t mention you knew Trammell. It’s a sore subject with her.”

  Coincidences no longer surprise me. I think that at about the age when one recognizes that all governments lie, one has seen enough coincidences not to be knocked out by the next.

  “Hi, Crystal—” said my attorney.

  “Beat it,” said Crystal without looking up from her stance.

  “Come on, Crystal, don’t be like that. I want you to meet an old friend of mine. We attended divinity school together.”

  “If he’s a friend of yours, why would I want to know him?”

  “I’m no friend of his,” I said. “I picked him up hitchhiking.”

  Crystal peered at me. “You’re the guy who owns the R-r-ruff Dog.”

  “Right. Absolutely.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Jellyroll,” I called. He had been lying on Ted’s shoes, but he leapt up and trotted over for me to take advantage of his household name.

  Crystal knelt down to fuss over him, and he kissed her cheek. She said, “Since you’re no friend of this bum’s, maybe you want to play some. I need to beat someone for practice.”

  At first I didn’t realize she was talking to me. “Sure.” Did she like me, or was she just after my dog?

  Bruce hung around kibitzing for a while as Crystal and I played, but, ignored, he finally wandered off. “Excuse me,” he said, “I think I’ll just go into the john and open a vein.”

  “Make sure you use the men’s john,” Crystal said.

  “You play pretty good,” she said to me after she’d won the first set. I had made her work hard for it, however, and she seemed to enjoy that. I enjoyed watching her move around the table, deep in concentration, planning her moves, improvising when necessary, a lithe feline predator on the scent. Her l
ong, fluid stroke seemed to me to be the most exciting thing I’d seen in a woman. She made the game beautiful.

  I, too, was concentrating with an intensity unfamiliar to me. I had to. Whenever I made a mistake, Crystal would run the game out. We didn’t talk much, and I tried to keep her braless fuchsia tank top separate from the business at hand. Pool is not a social game when played seriously, but we were communicating. We were speaking to each other across the great green gulf.

  Once while I was racking the balls after Crystal had run out from the break with textbook control over the cue ball, she knelt down to pet Jellyroll, who was lounging happily under the table. “So do you work or do you live off your dog?”

  “Oh no, I’m a hard worker.”

  “Yeah? At what?”

  “I’m a test pilot.”

  She nodded.

  “Spaceships, mostly. Very dangerous work.”

  Crystal broke the balls with that ferocious full-bodied snap of hers, and the nine rolled directly into the corner pocket like it had eyes and intent. She glanced up at me almost coquettishly from under her bangs as if to say, “There, that’s what men get when they bullshit me, even in fun.” I was utterly captivated by that break of hers. I felt as I watched her break that something wonderful had come into my life, and for the moment I forgot about Trammell Weems.

  She missed finally, and I got a shot. I proceeded to run out the game, cleanly, never losing control of the cue ball, machine-precise, as if I did that every day. I was out of my head.

  Ted Bundy’s voice, from behind, said, “Anybody seen Artie Deemer? Glasses, geeky sort of fellow. Got a dog.”

  A crowd of regulars had gathered to watch. Here and there side bets were being settled. I hadn’t even noticed their presence. The intimacy was blown.

  “Are you free for dinner tonight?” I asked Crystal.

  “No, but I am tomorrow night.”

  “Fine, I’ll pick you up about eight. Oh, where do you live?”

  “Sheepshead Bay.”

  “Brooklyn?”