The Promoter

by Orrie Hitt

  Late that morning I had spoken with Eudora on the phone and she had asked me to bring the girl out about eight. Most of the guests, she’d said, were not scheduled to arrive until about ten.

  “The money’s still the same?” The eyes that regarded me across the top of the table were cold, speculating. “And you’ll take care of Nelson?”

  I laid a hundred-dollar bill and five tens in front of her.

  “I’ll give Nelson his,” I said. “And he’ll have the other hundred and fifty for you, just as I said.”

  She had dressed sensibly for the occasion. Her dress was red, rather low cut in front, and it went very well with her blonde hair. It flowed down over her body with such closeness that it gave the impression she had been dipped in a pool of blood.

  As she carefully placed the money in a huge red pocketbook I outlined what I wanted her to do.

  “As I told you,” I said, “this is to be an inside story on the city at night. I’ve gotten myself an in with these people and I’ve led them to believe that the girl I’m bringing may be vulnerable to male attack.”

  Her lips curled in a slight sneer.

  “In other words, if some guy wants me to give in, I do so. Is that right?”

  “Well — yes.”

  She lifted her drink.

  “Just as long as I know,” she said. “For three hundred bucks in one night I’d let any man play house.”

  “You may be asked to do something else,” I said as calmly as I could. “I don’t know.”

  She finished her drink without pausing.

  “You mean, unusual stuff?”

  I nodded, afraid, as she stood up, that I might have frightened her.

  “Let’s get on with it,” she said. She buttoned her coat, smiling at me as she did so. “Man or woman, it doesn’t make a great deal of difference.”

  On the way out to the country in the cab she told me that her name was Mary Sharpe, that she was twenty-four, had been born in Branchville, New Jersey, and that she had been a call girl since the age of nineteen.

  “It isn’t too bad,” she confided. “Sometimes it’s even a little fun.”

  I reminded her that she was to tell people that she came from Allentown, that she had worked for me as a model for a while and that she was new in the city.

  “I hope I don’t run into anybody I know,” she said. “I’ve been in and out of a lot of beds.”

  I wished that I’d told her to dye her hair but it was too late for that now so I forgot about it. I told her my name, Bill Gordon, and I had her repeat it several times until I was sure that she would remember it.

  “If the article comes out well,” I said, “there might be a bonus in it for you.”

  She slid across the seat, pressing her body in close to me.

  “You’re nice,” she said. “Do you want Nelson to pull off the road for a couple of minutes?”

  I told her, no, it was okay, she didn’t have to do that for me, and we rode the rest of the distance in silence.

  Eudora met us at the door and she smiled at me when she saw the girl.

  “Oh, darling,” she said. “Come in.” Her frank glance moved to Mary’s face, approvingly. “Is this the young lady you were telling me about, Bill?”

  I made the introductions and Eudora had me put our coats on one of the couches in the living room. Several other coats were already there.

  “We’re having some fun downstairs,” she explained “Come along.”

  She had not shown me the basement before but I was not surprised to find that it was quite massive and elaborate. The main room was about thirty by forty and there was a huge, blazing fireplace at one end of this. Four or five men and two women stood in front of the fire, laughing and drinking and talking.

  “Why don’t you wait over there?” she said to Mary. “Make yourself at home. I want to show Mr. Gordon something.”

  Mary said it would be all right, if she could help herself to the drinks, and I followed Eudora Channing across the big room and into a narrow hall.

  “I like your little friend,” she said. “But she isn’t the — uh — the young one you mentioned, is she?”

  “Hardly.”

  She stopped at a birch door and swung around to face me.

  “We could have fun with a young innocent one,” she said, pulling my head down and kissing me on the mouth. “You have no idea.”

  I was quite sure that I hadn’t.

  “I could have her next week,” I said. “For Friday. If that would be — ”

  “Oh, could you?”

  I kissed her, because it was the thing to do, but the taste of her lips sickened me. “If Friday’s all right.”

  “Any time is fine for something like that.” She clung to me a moment, kissing me several times before she pulled away. “Take my hand,” she directed. “It’s dark in here and I don’t want you to fall.”

  She grasped my hand as she opened the door and I got a fleeting glance of half a dozen faces, about an equal number of them men and women. Then the door closed behind us.

  “This is something new with us,” she whispered as we sat down on a narrow bench. “And it’s so exciting!”

  “Quiet!” somebody said from the front of the room. “Or you’ll ruin the tape.”

  The odor of cigar and cigarette smoke hung thick between the four walls. I could hear the sound of heavy breathing near me and once a woman sighed. Now and then somebody puffed on a cigar or a cigarette and the glow swelled like a huge red danger signal in the night.

  “For the benefit of those who just arrived, I’ll review what we are doing,” a male voice at the front of the room said. “As you know, psychiatrists have used a drug known as sodium amytal to hypnotize many of their patients. Police have also used it for the purpose of obtaining confessions. At the moment, we have a young girl under the influence of this drug — she is lying here peacefully upon a small settee — and we are recording on a tape those things she is telling us about her life. Other copies of this tape can be made and, I am sure I do not have to tell you, we can profit greatly by selling them.”

  I felt cold sweat break out upon my forehead. Eudora Channing gripped my hand firmly.

  “This girl is a minister’s daughter,” the voice said. “She had told us, just prior to the time the door opened, that she had first fallen in love at the age of seventeen. We will now continue with the questioning. Please, everybody, remain quiet.”

  My guts churned as I heard the tape recorder whirr into action. In a blind, insane fury I wanted to rip down the walls of the room with my bare hands, to strangle everybody in there until they would never be able to talk or breathe again. But all I could do was wait and listen.

  “Your name is Judith Call?”

  “Yes.” Her tone was flat and expressionless. “My father is a minister.”

  “Tell us again about your first love.”

  “It was during the summer. We had a boy who used to take care of the lawn. I was in the garage one afternoon when he came in. I was wearing shorts and a halter. He kissed me. I …”

  Somebody in the room snickered and I closed my eyes tightly, trying to beat down the revulsion that rose up in my chest. I resolved in that moment, with even greater determination than before, to destroy this cancer even if it meant that I might lose my life in so doing.

  I will not bore nor offend the reader by reporting the remainder of Judith’s recital. But as we left the room a few minutes after its end I had a feeling of loathing such as I had never experienced before.

  “You’ll find a ready market for the tapes,” I forced myself to assure Eudora.

  Her eyes, looking up into my face, were luminous.

  “What a combination they’ll be with some of our movies,” she said.

  “Yeah.”

  There were a number of people in the other room and she introduced me around. I noted, with satisfaction, that Mary seemed to be holding her own with a husky gray-haired man at a table in one of the darke
ned corners.

  “Harry Miller,” she said, smiling. “Harry is one of the top guns in the vice squad. Harry, meet Bill Gordon. Bill is going to be one of our new chasers.”

  I soon learned that a chaser was only a fancy word for a procurer. I became aware of this as they discussed Peter Anderson. Miller said that he was in St. Johns Hospital, suffering from a broken arm, and that he had been picked up under embarrassing circumstances. I gathered, from the way that Miller spoke, that Anderson would not live long after his discharge from the hospital.

  “We have to be very careful,” he told me and I did not fail to catch the warning in his voice. “The stakes here are very big and one little slip can ruin everything.”

  I met others, some of greater and a few of lesser importance. There were manufacturers, a radio announcer, a television personality, a couple of artists and — this rather shocked me — a state senator. In addition to these, there were both men and women high up in the top echelons of the city’s ranking society. There was, I decided, enough influence in this one room to swing the next gubernatorial election. I was even more firmly convinced of this when Eudora introduced me to a representative from the district attorney’s office.

  “I told you this whole thing was tremendous,” she said. “Now do you believe me, Bill?”

  “I’ve believed you right along.”

  “There’s a great deal of money to be made. And our protection is the best. It couldn’t be better.”

  She was called to the phone once and when she returned her face was worried.

  “Some people I wanted you to meet couldn’t get here,” she said. “They have a model agency downtown and it caught on fire tonight. Can you imagine a thing like that happening?”

  I thought, briefly, about Diana. The poor little kid had really gone out and done it.

  “Probably an overheated furnace,” I said. “Those things happen this time of the year.”

  “No. It was deliberate. And they arrested the girl.”

  “Why would anybody do a thing like that?”

  “I don’t know. They said she called them to come down to the office and they did. When they found nothing wrong and got ready to go, she just threw a match to the place. She must be nuts, I told them.”

  Or wildly desperate. What had the little fool gone and done? But I couldn’t help admiring her for it. She was with me, it would seem, every inch of the way.

  A long table had been set up near the fireplace and the many plates on it were stacked high with sandwiches and canapés. Everybody crowded around the table, eating heartily and drinking and joking. I talked with Mary for a moment and she said, with alcoholic demureness, that I might be ashamed of her for what she had consented to do.

  “You were right about one thing,” she told me. Her voice was thick and slurred. “These are people with their hair down.”

  I noticed the peculiar dilation of her eyes and I wondered if she had come up against some of those little yellow capsules that swept inhibitions aside. I supposed that she had and, although I regretted such a thing had happened, I congratulated myself on the fact that they had not given her one of the truth pills. For that matter, just the thought of what had taken place with Judith, and what those pills could accomplish, sent stark terror racing up and down my spine. If somebody got the idea of feeding one of them to me and then asked me questions about my past — well, it wouldn’t be good, that’s for sure.

  Presently the tables were pushed aside and several of the men began arranging the chairs in a sort of semi-circle about the big room. Eudora left me for a few moments, saying that she wanted to make certain all of the arrangements for the entertainment had been completed. I moved about casually, counting the people present and hoping that I would be able to remember most of the faces I saw. There were eighteen men and fifteen women. The men were of all ages but most of the women were in their twenties. I heard fragments of conversation, and gathered that most of the talk, surprisingly, concerned itself with business. One secretarial-type blonde was arguing with Miller.

  “I don’t care if you can make a million dollars,” he was saying to her. “If you send some of your girls up to a convention here in the city, or even up into the country, that’s one thing. But if you take on a deal out of the state, across the state line, then we’re apt to run into some real trouble. All you need is for somebody to put up a holler and you’ll have the FBI down on you so quick that you’ll wish you’d never been born.”

  The girl made a nasty remark, lifted her shoulders haughtily and stalked away.

  “Bitch,” Miller said, his glance following the smooth, practiced movements of the girl’s hips. Then he shrugged and smiled at me. “They’re all the same,” he said. “Once they know you’ve fixed it for them so they can’t get run out of town they want to put up a sign in the village square. Know what I mean. — what is it? — Gordon?”

  I told him the name was Gordon, all right, Bill Gordon, and that I knew what he meant.

  “Saw your pictures,” he said. “With the girl. Morrie’s quite an operator, isn’t he?”

  I assumed he was speaking about the fat man who had arranged things for me on Tenth Street, so I assured him that Morrie knew what he was doing, there could be no doubt about that.

  “I’ve wanted to talk to you about those pictures,” Miller said. “And about yourself, too, Gordon. In a way, since Eudora brought you in, it’s her job. But I have a feeling that she has a sort of personal yen for you. Not that I blame her, mind you. You’re young and good-looking and, I’m sure, you can give her just what she needs. Still, while you’re having your fun, just remember a couple of things. First, you’re in this with us to stay, Gordon, and make no mistakes about it. Your job is to get recruits for us and any time that you can’t, or you feel you don’t want to, those pictures of you will go into circulation all across the country. You wouldn’t like that too much, would you?”

  “Don’t get yourself excited over me,” I told him. “I’m in this to make money and not to change my mind.”

  “Fine. But don’t forget what I’m telling you, Gordon. You get out of line, just once, and I could even have you nailed on those pictures. You’d get five years in the can.”

  Miller was a few inches shorter than I was, about up to my chin, and I stared down at him for a long moment. Putting it mildly, I hated his guts. He was a creep who hid behind a shield and helped spread filthy sex. But I had to tolerate him. At least, I had to tolerate him until I was ready to act.

  “In that case,” I said, “the girl would get it, too. What about her?”

  His look was stony. “Who cares? Besides, we could always get her to say that you had forced her. Your striking her — and Morrie got a good shot of that — would add strength to claims that you had mishandled her.”

  Neat, I thought, stepping aside as some of the men came along, moving chairs. So neat and clever that there wasn’t any possible way out. All the girl had to do was shed a few tears in court, point to me as being the man who had ruined her, and I could exchange my name for a number.

  “Well, don’t worry about it,” I said to Miller. “I went into this with my eyes wide open and my wallet empty. Even Sears, Roebuck doesn’t give a better guarantee.”

  “For your sake, Gordon, I hope not.” A girl came over to him, clutched his arm but he flung her aside. “The other thing you should know is that you won’t always be Eudora Channing’s favorite. She devours men the way other women eat candy. Remember that, Gordon.”

  I was glad to get away from Miller. I don’t mind admitting that I had feared him from the start, that my talk with him had not lessened that feeling. To be truthful about it, I harbored the suspicion that he had, at one time, been very close to Eudora Charming and that he now deeply resented his lack of success in that department. It was impossible to guess to what lengths he might go in an attempt to reclaim that which he believed belonged to him. Perhaps, on the other hand, I had overestimated his interest in the girl and he
had only sought to be kind to me, preparing me for an event which he knew, from past experience, was bound to occur.

  I crossed to the fireplace, hoping to refill my glass, but was stopped by Eudora.

  “Here,” she said, placing a pill in my hand. “Take this.”

  I noticed, then, that she had been giving the tiny pink pills to everyone. A brunette who stood beside me gave me a nudge with her elbow and popped a pill into her mouth.

  “Take it,” she insisted. “It’ll make you live up a storm.” Everybody seemed interested in getting one of the pills. Even Miller came over for his and made a wry face as he swallowed it.

  “Let’s live,” he said to no one in particular. He grabbed a tall pretty looking girl and kissed her fully on the mouth. “Let’s live it up, honey, or die in the act.”

  When I was sure no one was watching I dropped the pill into my coat pocket. As soon as I had an audience again I lifted one hand to my mouth and pretended to take the thing.

  “They just relax you,” Eudora said. She pulled my head down and wet my mouth with her lips. “Come with me,” she whispered. “Let’s get a good seat.”

  A good seat, I soon discovered, was almost any place in the room. Some of the guests sat upon chairs while others lounged on cushions upon the floor. As the lights dimmed, a girl giggled.

  “Look,” Eudora whispered. “Here they come.”

  Mary and a young man appeared from one of the small rooms at the rear….

  I cannot go into what followed. I was about to flee in disgust when, fortunately, I heard a voice, a voice filled with evil excitement.

  “Here, Bill.” Heavy hands gripped my shoulders, turning me around. “Allow me.”

  It was Miller. His face, covered with huge beads of sweat, was twisted almost beyond recognition.

  “I think I want some of that,” he said.

  Even if I had been inclined to resist, which I wasn’t, he seemed determined to have his way. A contemptuous smile played at the corner of his mouth as I pushed Eudora Channing away from me and got to my feet.

  “That’s a good sport,” Miller said. “Give a pal a break.”

  Gratefully I turned my back on him, and on Eudora, and walked toward the door.