Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 77, No. 7. Whole No. 454, June 17, 1981

The Decline and Fall of Norbert Tuffy by Ron Goulart

© 1981 by Ron Goulart

Remember the Los Angeles ad man who used to breeze through these pages? Well, he’s back in circulation, still the father confessor to some of the kookiest kooks in Tinsel Town. This time the dramatis personae include one of America’s top models; a writer named Macho Sweeze; the ex-king of Zayt; a commercial artist who specializes in fruit; a Country-and-Western singer; and, of course, the Blind Butcher... a typical Hollywood cast, wouldn’t you say?

Twenty-six million people saw them die, and that’s not counting reruns.

Real murder is rare on television, particularly on a talk show. If you weren’t one of those who caught the actual broadcast, you probably saw the pertinent footage on one of the evening network newscasts. The killer, who also appeared briefly on the talk show, eventually did a lot of explaining and so most everybody, including the police, thinks they know just about the entire story. Actually, the murderer himself barely knew half of what was going on.

I knew the victims and the killer, although I didn’t realize until too late that they were going to be the victims and the killer. Since the authorities have the killer in custody, and since I hate to get myself tangled in public messes, there’s no reason for me to volunteer the information I have as to the true causes of the effect all those millions of viewers witnessed. Sometimes when we’re filming a commercial with Glorious MacKenzie and I notice her between takes, staring forlornly into her cup of Wake Up! Coffee, I’m tempted to tell her all I know. But I resist the temptation.

It was because of the lovely Glorious, one of America’s top five models, that Norbert Tuffy concocted his whole caper. We’d been using the stunning redhaired Glorious in our Wake Up! Coffee television spots for nearly a year, ever since the Wake Up! lab back in Battle Creek had made their scientific breakthrough and we’d been able to use the very effective slogan, “Wake Up! The only coffee that’s 100 % coffee free!”

Norbert and Glorious were living together in his mansion out on the Pacific Palisades when I’d first met him at a cocktail party that my advertising agency gave for all our commercial talent. Norbert, who was very good in a scrap despite his size, helped me out when the actor who’d just been fired from our Grrrowl Dog Grub account tried to bite my ankle. I’d been expecting trouble from the moment I noticed the actor had crashed the party wearing his Grrrowl police-dog costume. At any rate, the small feisty Norbert and I became friends as a result of that incident.

It was several months later, over lunch at the Quick-Frozen Mandarin in Santa Monica, that he first alluded to the Blind Butcher affair. I was already in the booth when Norbert came scurrying in out of a hazy spring afternoon.

He was clad in one of those maroon running suits he was so fond of for daytime wear. “It was an omen.” He plopped down opposite me and poured himself a cup of lukewarm tea.

“What?”

“When my house fell down the hill and into the sea last month.”

“I thought the house only made it as far as the middle of the Pacific Coast Highway.”

“The symbolism was there to be read by one and all. The decline and fall of Norbert Tuffy.”

“Still haven’t picked up a new scripting assignment?”

“I haven’t had a TV script credit in four months. I am definitely on the proverbial skids.”

“Maybe I can get you some freelance ad copy—”

“Ha,” he said scornfully. “That would really finish me. It’s bad enough my house fell into the Pacific because of a mud slide, it’s bad enough my favorite Siamese cat was eaten by the pet wolfhound of a noted rock millionaire, it’s bad enough Glorious is now living alone in a Westwood condo, it’s bad enough I haven’t won an Emmy in three years, it’s bad enough I am virtually blacklisted because it’s rumored I am suffering from writer’s block, it’s bad enough I’m being robbed of potential millions by a swine calling himself Macho Sweeze — and now you suggest I top it all by working in a cesspool such as that ad agency of yours.”

“We pay as much as—”

“Forget it. I’d rather play piano in a bordello.”

“You’d have to join the musicians’ union to do that.”

“Funny as a funeral is what you are,” he observed as he snatched up the menu.

“Listen, you’re letting a temporary setback cloud your whole—”

“Don’t give me slogans. Do you realize Glorious and I may never get back together?”

“I wasn’t even aware you two weren’t living together. When we shot the last Wake Up! commercial with her the other day, she seemed happy.”

“Sure, dumping me makes her euphoric,” he said, summoning the waiter in the silk kimono. “Bring me the Number Six lunch, and pronto.”

“Being on the skids sure hasn’t helped your disposition, Mr. Tuffy,” remarked the waiter. “And you, sir?”

I ordered a Number Five. “You and Glorious have parted before, Norbert, and always—”

“Oh, I’ll get that incredibly lovely bimbo back,” he assured me. “I know exactly how and when. When I collect the $54,000.”

“$54,000?”

“Happens to be the exact sum I need to pay off my debts and get back on my feet again.”

“Then you are going to get the assignment to do the pilot script for My Old Man’s a Garbage Man?”

“Naw, they double-crossed me out of that gig, too, even after I laid an absolutely socko treatment on ’em,” Norbert said. “I intend to acquire the $54,000 in question from Macho Sweeze. It’s one half of $108,000.”

“It is, but why’s Macho going to give it to you?”

“You know that scum?”

“We had some commercials for 150 %, the Headache Pill for a Headache and a Half on a movie of the week he wrote and I met him at the—”

“Wrote? That goon couldn’t scrawl an X without help.”

“I sense a bitterness in your tone.”

Norbert fell silent until after our freshly thawed Chinese lunches has been placed before us. “Ever hear of a series of spy novels about a guy known as the Blind Butcher?” he asked me. “Allegedly penned by one Dan X. Spear. Published by Capstone Books.”

“Vaguely.” I poked my eggroll with my plastic fork and caused it to make a squeaking sound. “Why?”

“I created that series and wrote all six of the paperback novels.”

“So you’re Dan X. Spear?”

Norbert’s teeth gnashed on his stir-fried tempeh. “Macho Sweeze is Dan X. Spear,” he snarled. “See, this was all four, five years in the past, before I’d reached the dizzying pinnacle of success which I am presently toppling from. Macho had this vague nitwit idea for a series and he was going around with the granddaughter of Oscar Dragomann, the publisher of Capstone Books. A spindly broad of about seventeen summers, but Macho’s always gone in for ladies with underdeveloped minds and bodies.”

“What did you do, Norbert, sign some kind of agreement with Macho that gave him all rights in the project?”

He snarled again. “Norbert Tuffy doesn’t, not ever, do anything dumb,” he told me, pointing his plastic fork. “I was, let us say, injudicious. Something I have been known to be in moments of extreme financial deprivation. Some people get woozy when you take away oxygen, I get careless when I’m suffering from lack of money.”

“Where does the amount of $108,000 come from?”

“The series was less than a hit,” explained Norbert. “In fact, the final book in our series, The Spy Who Broke His Leg, never even got out of Dragomann’s central warehouse down in Whittier.” He paused to gobble a few bites of food. “We now dissolve from back then to now. Macho, lord knows how, is presently a dazzling star in the Hollywood writing firmament. Furthermore, he has become, possibly because of their mutual interest in young ladies who’ve only recently shed their braces, a close chum of ex-king Maktab Al-barid.”

“Him I’ve never heard of,” I admitted.

“Another reason I wouldn’t let anybody chain me to an advertising agency — turns your brains to jelly. Anyway, Maktab Al-barid ruled the Arab country of Zayt until some fanatic holy roller led a revolt and took over that oil-rich little spot,” said Norbert. “Before Maktab Al-barid skipped the country he managed to stash away something like a couple of billion bucks in various banks around the world. At the moment he resides in ex-kingly splendor in a Bel Air mansion once owned by a silent-screen lover and more recently by those rock poets of the platinum records, Honey and Hank.”

“This Arab king is financing Macho in something?”

“The peabrain is going to make movies,” replied Norbert. “His first motion-picture venture, announced but a few days ago in the Hollywood trades, is to be — we’ll skip the trumpet fanfare — an adaptation of The Spy Who Went Through the Meatgrinder.”

“One of the Blind Butcher novels?”

“One of my Blind Butcher novels, yeah. Second one in the series.” The plastic fork suddenly snapped in his clenched fist. “See, under that dumb little agreement I injudiciously signed with him back then, Macho retains all subsidiary rights. All I ever saw was half of the paltry initial advances. Maktab Al-barid has paid Macho $108,000 for the screen rights and he’s going to hand over an additional $216,000 for a screenplay.”

“He seems to favor multiples of 54.”

“That’s the kind of sympathy I need.”

I shrugged. “Norbert, you made a mistake,” I said. “Maybe with a good lawyer you can do something.”

“Good lawyer? There is no such being,” he said. “No, to get my share — and Macho can keep the screenplay money — to get my share of that $108,0001 intend to start applying pressure. I may even drop in on Maktab Al-barid himself, although I hear he keeps himself very well bodyguarded because of a fear, perfectly legit, that terrorists from Zayt may be dropping in. Seems they’d like to have Maktab Al-barid star in a trial for treason and sundry other misdemeanors.”

“I still think an attorney could—”

“I already talked to three of them.”

“What did they say?”

“I haven’t got a chance to collect.”

As it turned out I phoned Norbert less than a week later. Locating him was a little difficult, since his answering service had just dropped him for being three months in arrears on his bill. His agent swore he’d never heard of him, then offered me five other writers who were currently hot properties. Finally I got Glorious to admit she was still in contact with him and that he, having just checked out of the Beverly Glen Hotel in another economy move, was residing in the back half of an old duplex down in Manhattan Beach.

“Hello?” he answered that afternoon, using a completely unbelievable British accent. “You are speaking to Mr. Norbert Tuffy’s confidential secretary, what ho.”

“Hey, Norbert, listen,” I said, and identified myself.

“Old chap, you’re making a bally mistake. Mr. Tuffy—”

“The agency doesn’t like me to waste too much time on personal calls,” I went on. “But there’s something I better talk to you about.”

“Not a penny less than $54,000, if you’re acting as go-between for your buddy.”

“Macho Sweeze? Haven’t even seen him since you and I had lunch last week.” From my office window I could watch a handsome high-rise building being constructed, its topmost floors lost in pale smog. “This has to do with a guy named Fritz Momand.”

“What a sappo name. Who is he?”

“Don’t you know?”

“I have no recollection of the name.”

“Fritz Momand is a freelance commercial artist who specializes in fruit. I happened to—”

“In what?”

“Fruit. He’s doing a series of ads for us for FrootBoms Cereal. That’s the stuff shaped like little hand grenades which explode with flavor when you pour milk over—”

“What has this Fritz guy to do with me?”

“I was at his studio over on La Cienega yesterday, to okay his painting of an orange, and he got to talking about his wife. Her name is Frilly Jonah.” I paused, anticipating a response.

“Anybody who’d voluntarily call herself that must have show-business aspirations.”

“She does. She’s a Country-and-Western singer who hasn’t had much success.”

“Probably sings on key, which is a great handicap,” said Norbert. “You’re not the greatest yarn spinner on the face of Los Angeles, pal. Not that I don’t enjoy chitchat and pointless blab—”

“You don’t know Frilly? You haven’t been seeing her on the sly?”

“Eh? Norbert Tuffy does nothing, absolutely nada, on the sly,” he said loudly. “Besides which, my heart is still in a sling over Glorious MacKenzie.”

“This is the truth?”

“Do I ever lie? Don’t try to tell me this fruit vendor claims Norbert Tuffy has been fooling around with Frilly while he’s been slaving over a hot persimmon?”

I cleared my throat and turned away from the view, which was making my eyes water. “Fritz Momand is a big, violent guy who likes hunting,” I began. “Very tough, extremely jealous. He’s grown suspicious of late that Frilly has been seeing someone else. In the course of ransacking her room while she was off singing at the Back in the Saddle Club in Ventura, he unearthed a complete set of the Blind Butcher paperback novels. Each one was inscribed to his wife in glowing phrases. One such said: To the apple-cheeked, delight who’s brought a new kind of love to me, with the passionate regards of the author.”

“You actually thought Norbert Tuffy could write gush like that?” he asked. “Using a fruit image to woo the guy’s wife is a nice touch, though. How old is this Frilly?”

“Never actually met her, but she’s quite a bit younger than her husband. Probably about nineteen or twenty.”

“So use your coco, chum. It’s obviously that scoundrel Macho Sweeze who’s putting the Dan X. Spear pen name to yet another sleazy use and giving the horns to your pushcart Picasso.”

“But you wrote the books.”

“True, true,” said Norbert, “except, as I made perfectly clear to you when last we met, Macho loves to claim the credit. I am sure it’s he who’s using the books to impress this honkytonk bimbo now that one book is a movie-to-be.”

“You’re probably right. Just wanted to warn you to watch out for Fritz Momand, since he seems the kind of guy who likes to do violence to those who fiddle with his wife,” I said. “You haven’t had any luck getting a settlement out of Macho, huh?”

“The amount of luck I’ve had in any area of late, pal, you could insert in a flea’s nostril and still have room left to pack in an agent’s heart,” he answered. “I approached Macho and, politely for me, suggested he ought to do right by me. He was cordial, for him, and swore he’d see to it I got a little something. That is, after the film is released, which will be a good two years hence.”

“You don’t believe he’ll do even that?”

“Most of Macho Sweeze’s sincere promises could go on that list of the world’s most famous lies, the one that commences with ‘The check’s in the mail.’ ”

“So now?”

“Since you are sincerely interested in my fate, unlike the circle of Judases I used to run with, I’ll tell you what Norbert Tuffy has in mind. I have always been hailed, and justly so, as one of the most brilliant plotters in this nutty town. Even now, in my temporary exile, I have not lost the knack.”

“You have a new movie idea in the works?”

“Naw, I’m working out a foolproof way to get the money Macho owes me.”

The very next day I was stuck back on the SoyHammy account. That’s about the only account in the shop, as you may recall, that I don’t really enjoy. But this was a full-scale emergency and I had to fly to Chicago the same afternoon. It seems the head of SoyHammy’s own advertising department had just been killed in a freak accident. He’d been having a drink at one of those revolving bars in a penthouse night club when the darn thing started to revolve three or four times faster than it was supposed to. When it suddenly stopped, he was flung clean off the terrace and fell to the street thirteen stories below.

His employers at SoyHammy had come up with the idea of giving his remains a lavish funeral, and since he had been associated with SoyHammy for many years, they figured it would be a nice touch to have all six pallbearers in pigsuits like the one the announcer wore on our SoyHammy commercials. To halt that before anybody in the media got wind of it, I was speeded eastward.

Talking all concerned out of the pigsuits and then sitting in while they interviewed candidates to fill the deceased’s job consumed over two weeks. That spell in Chicago coincided exactly with Norbert’s execution of his plan to get what he felt was owed to him.

Since I only spoke to Norbert once, very briefly on the phone, most of the details of his caper are what I got from the newspapers and television. Not that any of them knew who was really behind the scheme. He really was a good planner and the whole deal went smoothly.

What Norbert did was to kidnap Macho Sweeze. He then convinced Maktab Al-barid that the snatch was the work of Zaytian terrorists from his homeland and that unless the ex-king came up with $55,000 in cash for the Zayt Liberation Fund, he’d start receiving packages containing various choice cuts of his favorite author. That extra $1000, by the way, was to cover the expenses of the snatch itself. Norbert wore built-up shoes, a padded coat, and a stocking mask when he grabbed Macho, and even his rival author didn’t recognize him.

“He was a tall skinny guy, must’ve been an Englishman from the way he talked,” Macho told the police and the F.B.I. later.

Norbert gave Macho a shot of horse tranquilizer, something he’d swiped from the location of a Western film, and that kept him out cold for most of the twenty-seven hours that Norbert held on to him. In a way I contributed — unwittingly, to be sure — to Norbert’s final plan. He took Macho out of the parking lot behind that Country-and-Western club in Ventura where Frilly Jonah appeared now and then.

Maktab Al-barid was warned not to go to the law or Macho would be treated exactly as the Blind Butcher treated gangsters and subversives in the novels. To the ex-king, of course, $55,000 was nothing at all and he was even a bit puzzled as to why the fanatics asked for so little. It was a small price to pay for the safe return of one of his dear friends, and he paid it readily.

Once Macho was returned, his agent gave out the story. It was terrific publicity for the upcoming movie. There had already been a few small mentions in the trade papers about the movie, some of which had even mentioned that Macho Sweeze was Dan X. Spear. Now, however, the whole country was talking about the Blind Butcher and his brilliant creator, about how life had imitated art, and what a narrow escape he’d had. You could never really trust terrorists — they might well have taken the $55,000 and butchered Macho anyway.

The kidnaping made a celebrity of Macho. He began to show up on local talk shows, to get his picture in the magazines and the papers. The last time I ever spoke to Norbert was the afternoon the issue of Persons hit the area newsstands, with Macho’s dark, roughly handsome face beaming from the cover.

“Did you see it?” Norbert asked.

I was fresh back from Chicago, suffering jet lag and what I suspect was a serious allergic reaction to nearly two solid weeks of Soy-Hammy for breakfast. My head was throbbing, my eyes were watering, and I didn’t really respond very sympathetically.

“See what?”

“That smug leering face on the cover of Persons. Gosh, it’s disgusting. When writers of real talent can’t even get their pictures on a roll of—”

“Macho’s had a lot of publicity lately,” I reminded him, careful of what I said over the phone. Sometimes they listened at the switchboard. “Thanks, I imagine, to you — that was your touch I noted, wasn’t it?”

“Who else?” I could almost hear his broad satisfied grin. “You going to inform on me?”

“None of my affair.” I surveyed the pile of stuff that had gathered on my desk top in my absence; there was even a 9-pound SoyHammy. “Norbert, I have a lot of—”

“I’m back with Glorious,” he told me.

“Good. I guess. Where are you living?”

“New place in Malibu. Very classy. Used to belong to Honey and Hank.”

“So things are pretty much going okay for you again?”

“I have some bucks for the nonce, yeah. But I am not being bothered by the sound of eager producers pounding at my door to demand scripts. The only nibble I’ve had is from some guy who claims he’s bought the rights to revive Death Valley Days on the tube,” said Norbert, the momentary joy fading from his voice. “Boy, if I could’ve gotten all that publicity that Macho grabbed. After all, I wrote the books. Not him.”

“Macho’s new fame is a side effect of — well, of what happened to him,” I said. “Look on the bright side. You and Glorious are back togeth—”

“That’ll last about six minutes longer than my supply of loot.”

“Still you ought to—”

“He’s going to appear on the Mack Nay dell Show tomorrow morning, live from FishWorld in Laguna.”

“That’s one of the fastest rising talk shows in the country.” I pressed my temple to try and control the throb. “But now, Norbert, I ought—”

“You bet it’s a hot show. Naydell’s going to knock Douglas, Carson, Donahue, Davidson, and Arends right out of the box any day now.” Enthusiasm had returned to his voice. “They’ve been running teaser spots all day about Macho’s appearance manana.”

“Don’t watch, it’ll only—”

“Remember that the Mack Naydell show is done absolutely live,” he said. “Meaning they can’t edit it for most of their markets. I prevailed on one of my few remaining chums in Hollywood and got a ducat for the broadcast.”

“You’ll only upset yourself.”

“Ah, tune in and see,” chuckled Norbert.

Macho Sweeze appeared as scheduled the next morning. The show was broadcast live from the big outdoor amphitheater at FishWorld. The day was clear, smogless, bright blue. There were some five hundred people circling the open-air stage where the prematurely gray Mark Naydell chatted with his famous guests. A very handsome setting the show had — the tree-filled hills around the outdoor theater framed it nicely.

Up in the forest, stretched out among the tall trees, was Fritz Momand. He had one of his high-powered hunting rifles with him, equipped with a telescopic sight. He also had a small battery-operated TV set, the earphone to his ear. Anything said down there on the stage he’d hear.

Frilly, early that morning, admitted she had indeed been having an affair with the man who had written the Blind Butcher novels. Fritz knocked her cold before she got to give him many more details. He left her sprawled, still in one of her fringe-trimmed cowgirl suits, on the living-room floor and took off for Laguna with his favorite rifle. He was a violent man who believed there was only one just punishment for a man who took advantage of his wife.

I watched the show from one of the screening rooms at the agency. My secretary was with me so I could dictate letters while I watched.

“Oh,” she exclaimed just before a commercial break, “isn’t that your friend there, in the second row of the audience?”

“Who?”

She pointed to the screen. “The belligerent little fellow who drops in for lunch sometimes.”

By the time I looked up from my pile of papers they were showing a SoyHammy commercial. “You mean Norbert Tuffy?”

“I think that’s his name. He won an Emmy or something years ago. What’s he doing these days?”

“Sort of difficult to explain.”

After the block of commercials we got a grinning closeup of Mack Naydell. “This next guest’s long been one of my favorite people and a damn fine writer. I’m kicking myself it took a near-tragedy to remind me to have him drop in to visit us,” he said. “Let’s welcome a very talented guy, Macho Sweeze.”

They cut to a medium shot to show Macho come striding out to shake hands and sit in an armchair next to the affable host.

“Happy to be here, Mack,” Macho said.

“He’s got a sexy voice,” said my secretary.

“Before we talk about your recent experiences,” said Naydell, leaning in the direction of his guest, “I’d like to talk about the Blind Butcher books.”

Up in the woods above the theater Fritz Momand made the final adjustments to his rifle. He had Macho in the crosshairs now and was waiting for just the right second to fire. He figured he’d have time for two, maybe three shots. As he waited he listened to them talking.

“Up until recently,” Naydell was saying, “no one knew you’d written these great suspense novels, Macho. One of which will soon be a major movie. But now you’ve come out from behind the Dan X. Spear pen name.”

“Yeah, I got tired of hiding my light under a bushel,” said Macho, grinning. “Now I am openly admitting that I am the author of the Blind Butcher series.”

Fritz’s finger tightened on the trigger.

Then up out of the audience leaped Norbert Tuffy. Before anyone could restrain him, he hopped right on the stage and ripped the lapel mike off Macho’s checkered jacket.

“That’s a lie!” Norbert shouted, and turned, arm raised high and facing the audience. “My name is Norbert Tuffy and I’m the true and only author of the Blind Butcher books!”

Fritz hesitated. He wasn’t sure which one, Macho or Norbert, had written the books and had an affair with his wife.

He decided to play it safe.

He shot both of them.