Kisses of Death

4

I had every reason to expect I’d seen and heard the last of Maxwell Bodenheim, and his lovely souse of a spouse, and to take Ben Hecht at his word, that he was finished with subsidizing the bard of Skid Row.

But the first week of February, at the office, I got a call from Ben.

“You want to do another job for me, kid?”

“If it involves Marilyn Monroe.”

“It doesn’t, really. Unless you consider it an extension of what you did for me, before. Did you hear what happened to Bodenheim, after the party at Riccardo’s?”

“You told me,” I reminded him. “He and the missus got tossed out on their deserving backsides.”

“No, I mean after that. Remember how I told you we raised a grand total of twelve bucks for him?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, he spent it on rubbing alcohol. He was found in the gutter the next morning, beaten to shit, with half a bottle of the stuff clutched in his paws.”

“Mugged?”

“I doubt it. More like he’d been mouthing off and got worked over for it.”

“This didn’t make the papers or I’d know about it.”

“See, you don’t know everything that goes on in Chicago, kid. Even out in Hollywood, I know more about the town than you... I got a call from Van Allen Bradley.”

Bradley was literary editor over at the Daily News. He continued: “Seems the lovely Mrs. Bodenheim, Ruth, came around begging for a book review assignment for Max, so they could raise bus fare back to New York.”

“Ben, don’t tell me you flew ’em out one-way, for that benefit?”

“Hell, yes! I expected to raise a couple thousand for the no-good son of a bitch. How did I know he was going to disintegrate in public?”

“Yeah, who woulda guessed that?”

“Anyway, Bradley assigned some new collection of Edna Vincent Millay, and Ruth brought the review in a day or so later. Bradley says it was well written enough, but figures Ruth wrote it, not Bodie. She stood there at Bradley’s desk till he coughed up the dough.”

“They’re a class act, the Bodenheims.”

“Listen, Heller, do you want the job?”

“What is it?”

“In June, back at the ABA, I talked to an editor with a low-end paperback house, about reprinting some of Bodie’s books — you know, that racy stuff about flappers fucking? Slap on cover paintings of sexy babes and Bodie’s back in business. I got nearly two thousand in contracts lined up for him, which is big money for him.”

“So what do you need me for? Just send him the damn contracts.”

“Nate, I can’t find the SOB. He’s a goddamn street bum, floating somewhere around Greenwich Village, or the Bowery. I know for a while he was staying at this farm retreat on Staten Island, for down-and-outers, run by Dorothy Day, with the Catholic Worker? I had a letter from him from there, and I called Dorothy Day and she said Ruth and Bodie showed up on her doorstep, with his arm and leg in a cast from that beating he took. He was there for several months, healing up, and I guess he even managed to sell a poem or two, to the New York Times, if you can believe it, for I guess ten bucks apiece... but Ruth started flirting with some of the male ‘guests,’ and once his leg healed, Bodie dragged his blushing bride back into the city.”

“I’ll line up a man in New York to handle it for you, Ben. It’ll be cheaper.”

“No, Nate — I want you to do this. Yourself. You got some history with Bodie; you might get through to him where somebody else wouldn’t.”

“This could end up costing you more than these contracts are worth.”

“Hey, I had a little upturn. I can afford it. I want to get some money to Bodie without gettin’ back in the routine of me supportin’ him. Anyway, I think it would do him good to see his work back in print.”

I laughed, once. “You really are that bastard’s friend.”

“He doesn’t deserve it, does he?”

“No.”