No Doors, No Windows

Twelve: Two Inches in Tomorrow’s Column

Benny kicked the electric blanket off his naked feet, patted Bonnie on her naked stomach, and placed the telephone receiver to his naked ear. Three chuckles of ringing and abruptly, on the other end, a cricket was rubbing its hind legs together. It was Candy, Orson Heller’s right-hand boy.

“Mistuh Helluh’s office,” the cricket chirruped.

“Candy baby!” Benny was not smiling. “Like to talk to Mr. Heller. This is Benny.” Bonnie had lit a filter; now she handed it across, and Benny puffed deeply.

“Jus’a’minnit, Mr. Mogelson. Mr. Helluh’ll be right whichah.” There was the soggy sound of a hand coming across the mouthpiece, a faraway voice, and the phone changed owners.

Orson Heller — who, for seventeen years, had been in charge of the Combine’s hit system, i.e., its assassination branch — cleared his throat. As befitted the new owner of the Sunset Strip’s poshest dining club. “Benny. How’s my PR man?”

“Orson, I’m a hero.”

“That so?”

The public relations man straightened in Bonnie’s bed, and flicked ashes unceremoniously onto the white pile rug. “So. Very much so. Remember I told you I’d make you a star? Well, by this time tomorrow, The Barbary Coast and its new owner — the celebrated Mr. Orson Heller — will be the hottest properties in Hollywood.”

“You talk a lot, Benny.”

Heller had not quite lost the thug tones he bad employed for seventeen years. Or perhaps the weight of sixty-four men’s souls — shot, stabbed, doused with acid, embedded in concrete, and fed to the fishes — rested heavily on the vocal cords as well as the spirit.

“What I’m trying to build you up for, Orson sweetie, is —”

“Don’t call me those names, Benny.”

“— uh, yessir, yessir, well, what I’m trying to tell you is that you get two inches in tomorrow’s paper. And are you sitting down? Are you planted firmly? Are you ready for this? Ta-ra-ta-t aaaa! You, oh employer of mine, will be two inches in Bonnie Prentiss’ column.”

The smirk came unbidden to Benny Mogelson’s publicly related face.

The gasp was tiny, but audible, at the other end. “Bonnie Prentiss? Saaaaaay …” Heller drew the word out with awe and pleasure. “Benny boy, you are a winner. An authentic winner. How did you manage that? ”

Benny’s hand strayed absently to Bonnie’s full breasts. Firm and still warm from the recent encounter. “Oh, just a little schmachling — a little butter — Orson. Miss Prentiss and I are old friends.”

Heller was delighted. “Great, Benny, just great. I knew when I hired you on as PR for the club, I just knew, you were going to pan out. Glad to see it. See you tomorrow after the column hits the newsstands. A little bonus perhaps.”

“Fine, Orson. Just fine. Talk to you tomorrow.”

He racked the receiver and turned to Bonnie. She was really getting long in the tooth, he mentally noted for the thousandth time. The little crow’s tracks were becoming more prominent, even with her heavy tan, evenly laid on by metal reflectors, poolside. And the sooty puddles of dissipation under the eyes were daily becoming a little harder to disguise with heavier and heavier layers of pancake makeup. Too many oversweet daiquiris, and too many overplayed young boys. Too many rocks in the rack with hustlers like Benny Mogelson, PR man supreme.

“That hood!” Bonnie Prentiss snorted viciously. “All the French cuffs, big studs and white-on-white ties will never make him anything more than a hood. Why do you associate with such filth, Benny?”

“Because,” Benny replied nastily, snubbing the butt in the onyx ashtray, “this is a town full of teeth, Bonnie baby, and I have this thing about fang marks in my neck. Heller pays me a nice fee for getting him promo coverage. If I don’t do it, some other schlep ’ll do it instead.”

“He’s a dangerous clown,” Bonnie said, rubbing herself up against Benny.

As he turned toward her again, feeling her body heat rise, Benny murmured softly, “Hey, baby, that, uh, that column already went to bed, didn’t it? Tomorrow’s items?”

“Mmm-hmm,” Bonnie hummed, reaching her half-open mouth up to his. “Time for everybody to go to bed …”

Benny closed his eyes and moved in next to her. He had to close his eyes; he couldn’t stomach making love to Bonnie with them open … the aging harridan … and with his eyes closed he could dwell in silence and darkness on the exquisite pleasure of the letter she would receive in her mail that day. The letter that would tell her it was all over between them; that he had been using her lust and his cunning against her for three months; bedding her in exchange for favorable items about his clients in her column. The letter that wished her hail and farewell, since he now had a happy and contented list of big-name clients who would stick with him despite the anger he knew she would direct against him.

“… but it gets to be time for me to remember that I’m a human being, not a rutting machine,” the letter concluded, “and there are other columnists I don’t have to wallow in scum with, to get a mention. Bye bye baby. Stay well, and say hello to the next young patsy you sucker into your sack.

With eyes closed, and hands mechanically busy, Benny could dwell on the fact that he had outsmarted Hollywood, that the town had not gotten to him, that he had come out on top.

Yes, this time he was on top.

And after a while, she was.

Benny’s tailor was fitting the new hopsacking sport jacket in the office (very Palm Springs: double-breasted, royal blue, military crest buttons), when the phone call came. It was a full day since he had last seen Bonnie, and he had been expecting this call. She had gotten the letter.

“Mr. Mogelson,” said the switchboard girl, “Miss Prentiss on 45, sir.” He pressed the button and Bonnie’s voice came floating out at him.

“Benny darling, I got your letter.”

He took a deep breath. What threats would she offer? “Sorry, Bonnie. But it’s been a hard three months.” He tapped his right cuff, holding the phone with his shoulder, indicating to the kneeling tailor that he wanted more length at the wrist.

“I understand perfectly, darling. Perfectly.” Bonnie almost purred. Benny’s eyes narrowed. She didn’t sound angry.

“It was fun while it lasted, Bonnie, that’s it.” He tried to goad her into frenzy, trying to extract from her a tiny measure of anguish for the degradation she had heaped on him for the blackmailing hours in her bed of pain.

But Bonnie was soft as one of Dali’s watches. “Benny, my sweet, I understand completely. I’m sorry I misused you. Well, I’ll just sign off now, darling.”

There was a golden pause.

“Oh, yes,” Bonnie added, almost as an afterthought, “you know my friend Theo, at the Amusement Center? He also sends his hellos and goodbyes. Night-night, darling.” And she was gone.

He was still holding the phone as the switchboard girl came back on. “Mr. Mogelson? Today’s papers are here, sir. Do you want me to send them in with Diane?”

Benny answered yes, absently, and hung up the phone, still perplexed by Bonnie’s call. No fury? No threats? There was something wrong. That woman had ruined better men than him for less than what he had done to her. She was infamous in Hollywood; the most vindictive shrike going. And that comment about Theo, at the penny arcade. Now what the hell did she mean by that …?

The office door opened and Diane came in, depositing a stack of daily papers on Benny’s desk. “I’m leaving now, Mr. Mogelson,” she said. “My afternoon with the dentist.” She smiled at him with her almost complete set of capped teeth. Benny nodded absently; he was still thinking about Bonnie.

“Oh, there’s a paper there from Miss Prentiss’ office, Mr. Mogelson,” she added, hand on doorknob. “It came over by special messenger a few minutes ago.”

Benny had hurriedly rummaged through the paper seeking Bonnie’s column before the office door had closed behind the secretary. He found it and scanned down the column till he found the item:

Benny’s mouth was dry as chalk-dust. It was impossible. He had read the item before she had sent it to the newspaper. She couldn’t possibly have changed it. The edition had gone to bed a day ahead of time, standard procedure for syndicated columnists, and there was no way of calling it back. He grabbed up a newsstand copy of the paper from the desk, and turned to the column. He’d been right. It was as she had sent it in.

Then what was this other, deadly, item?

He had no more time to wonder about it; the door to the office opened, and Orson Heller and Candy came into the room softly. “Leave!” Candy jabbed a finger at the tailor.

The tailor took one look at Candy, at the set of his yellow teeth against his lower lip, and nearly swallowed the pins in his mouth. He looked up at Benny Mogelson. “I said: leave,” Candy repeated. The tailor left, hurriedly.

Benny found himself staring at the blued-steel bulk of a .38 Police Special, the cumbersome cylinder of a silencer marring its smooth muzzle length. “Orson, baby, I —”

“I got this by special messenger, fifteen minutes ago, Benny buddy,” Orson said gently, handing across the folded edition of Bonnie’s newspaper.

One glance told Benny it was the bogus edition, and all at once, clearly and quickly, he knew what Bonnie had done. Theo, at the penny arcade, printed up dummy newspapers. The kind hick tourists bought, with jazzy headlines like HARRY SMITH HITS HOLLYWOOD, GIRLS TAKE TO THE HILLS!

And before Heller could get to Bonnie, she would somehow let him know it had been a gag, and get the real, the street, edition to him, saying Benny had thought it would be a funny bit, for his eyes only … or some-such drivel. But it would work; Heller would think ten times before giving Bonnie — as big as she was on the scene — a hard time.

But that wouldn’t save Benny.

It would be too late, then.

“Orson, baby, sweetie, listen, I —”

“I’ve told you, Benny, don’t call me those names,” Heller said companionably.

The silencer chugged once, asthmatically.

Benny was spun backward, against the desk, and as he hit the floor, as the light began to flicker and dim, he realized they would never find his body. He would be gone, like most of the other men Heller had hit. Bonnie had fouled him good. Very good.

Today, Orson Heller had gotten his two inches in the daily edition.

And by tomorrow, Benny Mogelson would have gotten six feet, or possibly full fathom five.

And as the light went further and further away, finally fading out entirely, he contemplated the ultimate irony of his career; that Benny Mogelson would never, never even get his two inches in tomorrow’s column. The obituary column.