“It’s just until we hire a new bodyguard. And I’ll be home as early as I can.”
She pouted, and I couldn’t get a kiss out of her as I left. That was all right; if she was mad she wouldn’t wait up.
I DROVE DOWNTOWN and met Irma and Wageknecht at the Bellflower Café and ordered some chop suey to make up for Sally’s inedible meal. The chop suey was lousy as ever, but by comparison it went down pretty well.
“It’s real white of you to call me in on this,” Wageknecht said.
“The old man promised you you’d get first crack at anything like this, and he keeps his word.”
“I been thinking maybe I could get me a license and do this kind of work full time,” he said. He looked at Irma. “Maybe you could be my gal Friday.”
“Nice try, I’d rather earn my money on my back than sitting in front of a typewriter all day.” She ground her cigarette into the ashtray and gave a little snort.
“Then you could be my partner. Like Myrna Loy and William Powell.”
“Sure, only difference is Powell’s not fucking her, he’s chasing Cary Grant instead.”
I was quiet, wolfing down the chop suey. I signaled the girl to bring me another plate of it while they mapped out their new careers. Finally I stopped eating for a minute and added my two cents.
“I don’t know shit about the detective business, but you could sure make some money taking dirty pictures. Nester could find some way to distribute them through the mail.”
They looked at one another and nodded slowly at the wisdom of my suggestion, scenarios brewing independently in their heads and growing into the seeds of a new enterprise, the future source of a million lonesome orgasms all across this land. I felt like I’d done them a favor, getting them off of this detective nonsense, which was a sure-fire waste of time and energy.
“All right then. You brought the 35 millimeter job?” I asked Wageknecht.
“Brought the Speed Graphic with a flashgun. I figure if you mostly want to intimidate this guy, the Speed Graphic is a scarier camera.”
“Good thinking. The picture will be better, too, if we actually have to use it, which I very much doubt. Are we all ready, then? Everybody know their part?”
IT WAS NEARLY ten thirty when we walked two blocks down to the Eaton, where Burress had a top floor suite. That made it eleven thirty Eastern time, and I assumed that Burress kept conservative hours. Jerry the hotel dick was waiting for us by the kitchen entrance, and when I handed him his envelope full of cash he grinned. “You’re trouble, Ogden, but I like your style. Always a little something extra.”
We went up the service elevator and Wageknecht and I waited outside in the corridor while Jerry quietly opened the door to the suite and let Irma in. Then he went back down the service elevator, pausing to give a jaunty little salute as the doors closed. Strictly speaking I shouldn’t have been on the scene, but I had to see the look on the smug son of a bitch’s face when he realized the game was up.
Two minutes later Irma gave the signal, an eardrum-crippling whistle of the two-fingers-in-the-mouth variety, a skill I’d never mastered myself. We hurried in to find a bewildered J. T. Burress on the floor of the bedroom in his nightshirt, straddled by Irma, who wore only bra, panties, and black stockings.
“Say ‘cheese,’” Wagknecht said, just to be an asshole, and he took the picture, the bulb in the flash gun exploding a little louder than seemed right. Burress was looking at me, and there was a dim sort of recognition in his eyes.
“You were . . . ” he said, pointing his finger at my face, “I saw you today . . . ” With that his eyes went wild and he yelped in pain.
“Oh, shit,” Irma said. “I’ve been around for this before.”
She picked up the phone and dialed. “Jerry, you’d better call an ambulance, there’s a guy up here having a heart attack.”
I drove them over to Norman’s. He was drinking alone and glad to have some company. Irma and Wageknecht were both in a funk, and once he’d heard the story Norman tried to cheer them up.
“You did good, it sounds like to me,” he said.
“That’s the way I see it,” I said. “If he lives, we’ve got a hell of a picture to send him. If he doesn’t, the problem’s solved a different way.”
Wageknecht wasn’t sold on it. “I don’t think I’m cut out for the detective business, if everyone I tail ends up dying.”
“It’s just two of them, and we don’t even know about Burress yet.”
Irma was quiet, and kept handing her glass back to Norman for more. “I kinda like the old guys. They’re generous.”
“Not this one, I’ll bet. He’s a goddamn banker, probably keeps his own dough stuffed inside his mattress.”
Norman perked up at the news that Irma liked old guys. “You know, one thing about us old guys is, we take our time and don’t jizz quite so quick as all that.” Irma and Wageknecht looked at one another, eyebrows raised.
During the solitary portion of his evening Norman had gotten a pretty serious head start on his drinking, and he wasn’t doing a very good job concealing his devotion to his new friend Irma. He was wobbling a little bit even in his sitting position, and when he got up to open a new bottle he had to lean against the wall on his way across the room. Upon his return he refreshed Irma’s glass first, and then knelt in front of her as if to propose marriage, which wouldn’t have surprised me at that point.
“Do you know that you bear a very strong resemblance to the motion picture performer and artiste . . . ” Here he had to stop and collect his thoughts momentarily. “ . . . Miss Joan Blondell, whom I consider to be the most sweet and attractive of all the stars in . . . ” Another pause came, and he closed his eyes and furrowed his brow. “ . . . all Hollywood’s firmament?” This last word came at a cost of some effort, but he added no extra syllables and seemed quite pleased with himself once he’d finished.
Irma looked pleased, too, flushed and newly radiant, and she leaned down and touched her hand to his cheek. I don’t think he could have been more thrilled if it had been a handjob. “Maybe we could arrange a date sometime,” she said, and she rummaged through her handbag for a calling card.
“I would like that very much, Miss,” Norman said, accepting the card as though it were a gift of great price. I was pretty sure we had established earlier in the evening the nature of Irma’s profession; her resemblance to Joan Blondell had cured him of his aversion to paying for it, which would probably result in his being a happier man. Now he turned to Wageknecht. “And what is it you do for a living, young fellow?”
“I’m a private detective,” he said, trying the phrase on like a costume. “I used to be a whore, though.”
Norman nodded, looking like the idea was new to him. “That’s interesting.”
Wageknecht nodded. “And if the private detective business doesn’t work out, I’m thinking about taking dirty pictures and selling them.”
Norman smiled. “That’s a job I would have loved to have when I was younger,” he said.
“How serious are you about giving it up?” I asked Wageknecht.
“Pretty serious.”
I thought for a minute before I spoke again. It seemed perfect. Collins might object to Wageknecht if he knew about the whole queer business, but there was no reason for him to find out unless Wageknecht told him. And he was an ex-marine. “Wageknecht, how would you like a job as a bodyguard and chauffeur?”
“Hell, yes, I’d like it.”
“All right then, show up at Collins Aircraft tomorrow at eleven and I’ll take you down to personnel.”
“That’s swell of you, Mr. Ogden.”
“I believe I’d rather have that job taking dirty pictures,” Norman said, and not long after that he fell asleep.
DRIVING HOME AT three-fifteen in the morning I felt as though I hadn’t slept in a week, and I was ready to surrender to Morpheus. I cursed, then, when I spotted an unfamiliar vehicle parked two houses south of mine, a ’34 or ’35 Chrysler
Airflow with New York MD plates, an absurdly conspicuous choice for a driver who wanted to keep his profile low.
Of all the nights for this shit-for-brains to show up in person, he’d picked tonight. The adrenaline that had pumped through my system earlier in the evening came back in force, and my fatigue evaporated. I turned at the next intersection and doubled back, parking one street west on South Volutsia. I cut between two houses and watched the Airflow for five or six minutes and satisfied myself that the driver, his head back and his mouth open, was asleep. Then I went back to the Olds and drove around the block again.
This time I backed into the driveway and slammed the door when I got out. I didn’t dare sneak a look backward at the Airflow, but I hoped my arrival had startled him awake. Feigning a drunken stagger as I made my way up to the front door, I made a show of fumbling with my keys and stumbled inside, leaving the door open.
Sally was a good, solid sleeper, but I hoped I wouldn’t have to explain to her what was happening. In a crouch, I made my way to the fireplace and grabbed an andiron, one with a nice sharp hook at the end of it, and took a position over by the front door.
A silhouette appeared, holding a gun in one hand and a satchel in the other. He moved gingerly into the room, illuminated by the lone streetlamp outside, and as soon as he crossed the threshold I brought the andiron down hard on the back of his head, and when he hit the ground I hit him again in the face.
I got some copper wiring and a large oilskin tarp from the garage and tied his wrists and ankles with the wire before wrapping him in the tarp, then locked him in the trunk of the Olds. I took his gun, a .38, and his satchel, which was made of leather and marked with the initials WGP MD, and put them in the car, then cleaned off of the linoleum and threw the bloodied dishrag into the big trash can in the garage, piling some newspapers over it in case Sally might take a load of kitchen waste out. Then I took my trusty old wheelbarrow and a shovel and, as quietly as I could, loaded them into the backseat of the Olds.
I got behind the wheel and headed out to highway 54. Just outside the little town of Augusta was an old limestone quarry where my dad used to take me looking for fossils when I was a boy. I was hoping that the abandoned foreman’s shack was still standing; even if it wasn’t, there wasn’t a house within two miles of the place. At least there didn’t used to be.
Fifteen minutes later I was pulling into the quarry road. I hoped my bashful correspondent wasn’t dead, because I wanted to find out a few things before he checked out.
I shone my flashlight into his leather satchel: inside was a sadist’s bounty of torture tools: knives, pliers, duct tape, and an assortment of medical supplies, including syringes and surgical instruments and small bottles of drugs. It seemed impossible that my tormentor was a doctor, given the analphabetical quality of his notes, but that may have been a ruse.
I took the wheelbarrow and shovel from the back seat, opened the trunk, and heaved the oilskin bundle into the barrow. It let loose a grunt when it hit, and I loaded the medical bag and copper wire on top of it. Then I marched to the foreman’s shack, halfway around the rim of the quarry with the shovel balanced over my shoulder and the .38 in my pocket, the wheelbarrow bouncing and jiggling in the dark, the flashlight’s beam shining crazily over the path ahead.
I dumped the barrow out when I got to the foreman’s shack and hauled him inside. Very carefully I untied the wire that held the ends of the tarp closed and found that he was breathing.
From his back trouser pocket I took his wallet and learned that he was not a doctor, nor were his initials WGP. His driver’s license identified him as Ralph Joseph Gardner, of Astoria, Queens, New York, as did a Veteran’s Administration Employee’s Identification card. Apart from a Social Security card and seven dollars, that was all the wallet contained.
With the flashlight in his squirrely eyes I knew him right away. He was a PFC who’d tried to sell me a stolen army jeep in Rome, gap-toothed in front and sunken-chested, who walked with a peculiar stiff-legged gait as though he was imitating John Wayne. “Hell, you’re a fence, ain’tcha?” he’d said, insulted that I wouldn’t fork over for a set of wheels that would have got me court martialed. I remembered him spending lots of his pay on whores, though not whether he was particularly attached to one girl or another.
I considered the possibility of killing him right then and disposing of him somehow before the sun came up. I was still curious about him, though, about how he’d settled on me as the villain in his imaginary love story, so I slapped him in the face, hard. He stirred, his eyes unfocused and bleary, and then he got a load of me and tried to yell. Only a hoarse rattle came out, though, and I thought maybe I’d knocked him stupid.
“How are you, Ralph?”
“Go to hell.” He was slurring, but I didn’t think he was drunk.
“So what’s your beef with me? Still mad about that jeep?”
“Lemme go,” he said, pulling at the wire.
“I didn’t kill Brunela, you know. She killed herself.”
“Same as. Lousy pimp. She loved me.”
“She was a pro. She didn’t love you.”
“She listened to me. She was going to come to America with me when the war was over.”
“Brunela fucked you for money, just like she did a thousand other guys. She listened to your sob stories because you were paying her to. And I didn’t kill her.”
“You pimped her.”
I shook my head, exasperated at his refusal to face reality. “But I didn’t turn her out. She’d been working two or three years already by the time I came on the scene. The fact is I improved her working conditions. Made her last six months or so bearable, the way I see it.”
The funny thing about it was, old Ralph didn’t seem very scared. He was pissed off, sure, but I really don’t think he’d figured out that his number was up. “You think the rules don’t apply to you, Ogden. Just the rest of us.”
“I can’t quite figure you out,” I said. “You’re smart enough to track me down halfway across the country, and dumb enough to fall in love with a hooker.”
“And you cheating Uncle Sam while guys like me was getting killed fighting.”
“Ralph, you were stealing jeeps from the army. And I see you’re still stealing cars. I’m guessing the Airflow and the bag both belong to one of your Administration docs. How’d you find me, anyway? I know you work for the VA, but I can’t believe they’d let an illiterate work as a file clerk.”
“I got a lady friend in the filing department, helps me out.”
“Shit, Ralph, you should have been satisfied with that. A job and a girl, that’s the American dream. You probably would have had your own car before long. House with a lawn. Now what have you got to look forward to?”
“Going to make you pay for what you did to Brunela. And then I’m going to fuck that wife of yours. She’s some potato.”
“You mean tomato, you dumb shit.” I was tired of the sound of him and tired of the sight. He was just about to say something when I picked up the shovel.
“Hey, wait. You can’t kill me.”
“Sure I can,” I said, and I dragged him by the legs out the broken doorframe of the shack. He was struggling pretty hard and I thought I’d better shut him down quickly, so I swung the shovel over my shoulder like a golfer. That finally put a scare into him, and he let loose a terrified wail as I brought the blade down sideways and hard on his head. His piteous wail didn’t end with the impact but wound down over two or three seconds, like a radio that’s been turned off.
A dozen yards from the shack I began to dig.
FIFTEEN
SAUL OF TARSUS
JUST BEFORE DAWN I drove the Airflow and left it in front of Ketteman’s bakery with the doctor’s bag locked in the trunk. I didn’t owe him, but I felt a certain kinship since we’d both had a beef with Ralph. They’d get back to him eventually. The adrenalin hadn’t burned off yet, so I headed to Stanley’s for some breakfast.
As I ate I
went through both morning papers. Burress wasn’t dead, according to the Morning Eagle, but he was paralyzed on his right side and unable to speak, his active career at an end. The Beacon ignored it, though if they’d gotten wind of the presence of half-naked whores and sneaky photographers they certainly would have featured it as their lead. I wondered about sending the photo of Burress to Wilbur Lamarr and George Latham, just as a warning. I didn’t think I needed to, though. With one member of their cabal in the ground and the other in intensive care, the message was probably getting through.
Even if it wasn’t, I was done with the whole shutterbug angle anyway; it would be time for something more direct, so just for laughs I started thinking up ways Latham might get hurt. There was always the danger of something falling onto a man, for example. When I was still in England, a Master Sergeant in the Quartermaster Corps had gotten badly injured that way. An organized man with a knack for detail and a stick up his ass for proper procedure, the sarge had started investigating shortages in certain categories. Poor fellow was walking under a fourth-story window when a fifty-pound bag of cement toppled off the sill where someone had carelessly propped it. He was lucky, in a way, since he didn’t die and got to go home years earlier than he would have, and no one in authority ever figured out who’d left the bag there. Or ever tried very hard, either.
There were ways to sabotage a car, too, though there was always the attendant risk of injuring bystanders, if that kind of thing bothered one. And of course there was my friend Rackey, who might do anything to a man he suspected of nailing his dear wife.
At eleven I met Wageknecht at the Personnel office. Whittaker seemed well-pleased for once, and I left them filling out paperwork and headed for the boss’s office to tell him the good news.
Millie gave a little start at the sight of me, then with an insincere half-smile that was very unlike her she looked down and pretended to be looking for something in her desk drawer. “You can go right in, Mr. Ogden.”
The Adjustment Page 16
