Spider Kiss

Four

Big men, happy men, are often equated with stupid men, slow men … men who substitute camaraderie for the sleek slyness of the professional sharpie. There had been such equations made of Colonel Jack Freeport. They had been made when he was in college, a penniless undergrad with pretensions to Southern nobility. Those who had seen in him a slightly overweight Good Time Jack had been rudely awakened; Freeport had managed to become a power on the campus, had talked any number of the most eligible co-eds into his bed, had promoted several offbeat deals that had made his financial way through higher education infinitely easier, and when he graduated, was labeled by the yearbook

NOT NECESSARILY MOST LIKELY TO SUCCEED, BUT A SHOO-IN TO GET ANYTHING WORTH HAVING.

Jack Freeport had started small.

His first promotion was a string of girlie shows made up of local talent recruited from eight of the widest-open towns in the decadent South. Ostensibly song and dance grinds, the girls were emotionally and physically equipped to do double service as prostitutes, and in little over eighteen months,

Freeport was able to sell the operation to three brothers (one quarter Seminole) and invest his capital in the next ventures…

Indoor, year-round ice skating rinks.

A carnival, top-heavy on grifters and nautch shows.

A dog track.

A traveling country music and revival show.

Some calculated gambling in Reno, Las Vegas, Monte Carlo, and Hot Springs, Arkansas, utilizing the services of a gentleman with only three fingers on his right hand, a need for twenty-seven thousand dollars, and a face seen on posters often tacked-up in metropolitan police stations.

Some gun-running.

Another dog track.

A talent show.

Another talent show.

A third talent show, packaged by Freeport’s own outfit.

A girl singer with connections.

An ill-starred publishing venture (no one was really very interested in reading), The Alexandre Dumas Adventure Magazine.

A Broadway musical featuring a girl singer with connections.

Some more gun-running.

And then, the organization of FREEPORT, SERVICES UNLIMITED. From which foundation emerged young talents and well-known personalities in new formats that, within the space of five years, made the name of Colonel Jack Freeport a touchstone in the trade. The name no longer elicited a querulous, “Who?” in the Brill Building.

With one-minded verve, Freeport made his way, built his fortune, grew older and surer of himself, to pour substance into a dream. The old days, in Atlanta, when the Freeport family had owned Freeport, a family name and a plantation whose fields and rooms and eyries had known light. A dream to rebuild a tiny empire of regal living on land charred by Sherman and his marauders.

Too poor, too long, living with the slightly stale smell of decaying memories. This was the driving force of Colonel Jack Freeport—no more a Colonel than his great-great-grandfather (who had been a pillaging privateer) had been.

And any means to this end was a valid, honorable means. How much more potent is the drive to regain stature than mere love, motherhood, honor, security. Of this substance are made dictators, nations, dynasties, empires, rock’n’roll singers.

Colonel Jack Freeport had a good eye.

His ears were excellent, also.

He saw what Shelly had seen in Luther Whoeveryouare. Had it been necessary to rig the talent show (a small challenge to the man who had convinced America it needed a ticket to a Freeport-produced show more than it needed shoes for baby), he would have done so without hesitation.

But the need had not arisen.

The only competition had been a snot-nosed tot with Shirley Temple dimples and a head of Breck shampoo curls. Weak competition at best, whose only strength had been fatuous mommy-love. Luther had walked off with it; the pre-rigged decision by Freeport had not been necessary.

The boy had been just this side of sensational. Aside from a fleeting nervousness which had quickly dispersed as his audience warmed, his stage presence had been sharp and commanding. He had sung his heart out, received three curtain calls, and collapsed the house by singing on one knee—oddly, in no way reminiscent of Jolson—directly into the pimply face of an adolescent and the wine-bright eyes of a matron. They squealed. They squirmed. They found themselves drenched with a sweat of desire. Luther was a sneak-away success. He won the first prize, which, it miraculously turned out, was a contract with Colonel Jack Freeport, and a trip to New York. Had the tot won, the prize would have been a lovely Westinghouse refrigerator-freezer combination and a check for five hundred dollars.

That’s show biz.

His full name was Luther Sellers. No relation to Peter. Mother dead, father off in the oil fields somewhere. He was— literally—a child of the streets, and it showed through with every word he uttered, with the way he carried himself, his conception of the world, and his interests. It was there all the time—but not when he sang.

He had a manager, which surprised Freeport and Shelly, and immediately made their eyes narrow, their minds begin to work. “Don’t worry about Asa,” Luther told them the next day. “I can handle him.”

“Have you got a contract with him?” Shelly asked.

The boy shook his head. “He heard me singin’ one time and said he’d help me. Got me a place to stay, an’ a job at the hotel.”

Freeport was in a position to be magnanimous. “Sounds like a fine man, Luther. We’ll have to do something for him.” He thought for a moment, pursed his lips and went on. “Of course, the corporation will have to have full ownership of your contract, but I’m sure we can make it worth this uh—”

“Asa Kemp.”

“—yes, uh, Asa Kemp. We can make it well worth Mr. Kemp’s time and efforts spent. I think perhaps a thousand dollars might—”

“Forget it,” Luther said, giving Shelly and Freeport the first solid indication of a somewhat darker character. “I’ll take care of old Asa.”

Freeport smiled indulgently. He exchanged a glance with Shelly that said, This infant knows nothing about business. And Shelly had a Roman candle thought-burst that said very distinctly, Freeport, we have maybe got ourselves a tiger by the short hairs.

“Well, Luther, we’ll see.” The Colonel placated him, adding, “Why don’t we call this Mr. Kemp, and have him come by for a drink?” Luther shook his head.

“We have to go there,” he said. “He won’t leave the bicycle shop during the day. He’s got a thing.”

Shelly and the Colonel exchanged their glances, and Freeport moved to get his pills from the table. “All right, Luther, why don’t we go see Mr. Kemp right now, so we can clear things up here, and be on that ten-thirty plane to New York. How does that sound?”

Luther shrugged. Shelly thought wryly that Luther was very large on shrugs. He was also beginning to notice that Luther had very, very sharp teeth.

It was a fairly safe bet that Asa Kemp was about to get twelve or fifteen inches stripped off his ass. The hard way. Shelly felt uneasy; also greedy. The grab is a helluva disease, he thought, as they descended in the elevator.

He thought about it as the rented limousine pulled up before The Brown. He thought about it all the way across town to the bicycle shop. He stopped thinking about it when he saw Asa Kemp for the first time.

Only a fink could worry about cheating such an easy mark. Asa Kemp was born to be had. He wore wire-frame glasses. And a bow tie. Clip-on.

“Luther!” His face looked like a bonito-bettor’s at hit-time. “Son, how ah you!” He didn’t really want an answer. He grabbed the boy around the shoulders and hugged him carelessly. “Ruth was askin’ after you, boy.”

Then he noticed the silk-suited accompanists, and his smile broadened, became a company grin for the folks at large. “Afternoon,” he beamed.

“Mr. Kemp,” Shelly began, and never finished.

"Luther!" the fat little woman came through the curtains at the rear of the shop. She seemed out of place here among the frames and wheels and rubber tubes strung about the walls, yet she moved between the rough wooden benches and the racked bicycle parts with the ease of familiarity. She held Luther at arm’s length and blinked at him myopically.

“Where have you been, Luther Sellers?” she chided him with false severity. “You’ve had poor Asa and me about worried to death! Do you know we didn’t even know you’d entered the Talent Show at the Fair till we saw’t in the paper this morning that you’d won. Lord, son, you mustn’t worry us like that!”

Luther stared at her coldly. Even to Shelly there was a warmth here, and though he did not do it openly, he felt like smiling at the pleasant Kemps. But Luther stared at them coldly.

“This is Colonel Freeport from New York,” Luther said briskly. “He wants he should talk to you.” He opened the door for Freeport, and stepped back.

The Kemps turned their glances to the massive, leonine head of Colonel Jack Freeport, and a wash of fear marred the placid features of Ruth Kemp for an instant. Asa was just behind, as though the wave had found him an instant later.

Then they composed themselves, their fear of the big town strangers sublimated. “How do ya do, suh,” Ruth Kemp beamed a gingerbread smile at Freeport.

“Mrs. Kemp.” Freeport angled his head in that peculiarly charming and disarming manner only three kinds of people can manage: true aristocrats, well-bred cavaliers, and con artists.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you.” Asa Kemp extended his gnarled and oil-stained hand. Freeport took it without hesitation. Shelly noted the stepping-down to the common man’s level with approval. His admiration and fear of Freeport’s amazing way with all types continued to grow as their association lengthened.

“Mr. Kemp, it’s more than a pleasure to meet you. Luther here has been telling us what a wonderful thing you did for him, getting him his start, and now that he’s on his way, we had to come along and say thank you, thank you very much.” Freeport piped his snake-charming tune while Shelly made a silent background accompaniment of nods and reassuring smiles.

Ruth Kemp’s face began to alter, subtly. Shelly watched.

There was something afoot here, and while her bumpkin husband might get laid out in his grave and have the dirt dumped in his face, smiling and unaware all the while, this woman knew the slickers were here to rob her. She may not have been Polish by descent, but there was the hard, lined look of the babushka-wearing, shopping bag-toting peasant about her. Suddenly. Her voice was no longer its rhythmic pleasured style. “What are you heah foah, Mr. Freeport?” she asked.

“Nothing, really, Mrs. Kemp.” Freeport tried to smooth out the surface of the discussion, sensing intuitively that a true light had begun to shine through his words.

Shelly interjected, “When we heard Luther sing and play, Mr. Kemp—” trying to draw Asa Kemp further into the dealings, rather than leaving them in the mouth and hands of the suddenly-too-competent Ruth, “—we felt he was destined for better things than Louis…”

“My husband manages Luther,” Ruth Kemp inserted flatly.

“Yes, we understand that,” Freeport said, almost obsequiously, “and that’s why we’ve come to—”

“Are you taking Luther to New York, is that it?” Asa asked gently.

Shelly felt a pang. He neither acknowledged nor identified it. This was big gravy now, no time for sentiment.

“Well, we—” Shelly began.

“They’re taking him away, and they’re here to jew us out of our share!” There was a snap in Ruth Kemp’s words. At the word “jew” Shelly’s head came up with anger. He stared at the woman, knowing she had not heard his name, for it had not been given. Jew us, huh, lady … is that the word … well, you’ve never seen jewing till you’ve seen Morgenstern.

Now all the compassion he had felt for these unaffected people fled, and Shelly was ready to do battle, his eyes cleared of impairing, foolish sentimentality.

“Mr. Freeport,” Asa Kemp said gently, “you have to forgive my wife. Ruth gets upset sometimes.” He turned to the fiercely belligerent little woman and touched her shoulder. “Ruth, please. I’m sure Mr. Freeport is here to do the best for Luther. After all we can’t give him—”

“We gave him love, and we gave him our home to live in, and we found work for him, and singing jobs for him, and you’d just stand there, Asa Kemp, and let them take him away, prob’ly make a fortune with him, while we smile and say, ‘It’s all the best for little Luther.’ Well, you’ve done it too many times in the past, Asa, and it’s not going to happen this time.

“If they want to have Luther, they got to pay us for our share of his contract, or we don’t have to—”

Luther’s voice was as soft as a chloroformed rag: “We don’t have no contract, Miz Kemp.”

There was abrupt, smothering silence in the bicycle shop.

Everyone realized what the boy had done. He had left the bag open purposely, and the alley cat had crawled out to be smelled by everyone. Silence would have meant perhaps a little more dickering, and the remote possibility that Freeport and Morgenstern would cool on taking Luther with them—but it would have meant money to the Kemps. He had denied them their stranglehold, showed they were screaming into the wind, and had insured his position with Colonel Freeport.

It was the calculated move of a very smart operator.

It smelled bad, even to Shelly, so anxious to see this woman with her inadvertent prejudice stomped into the linoleum. It smelled very bad.

Ruth Kemp’s face disintegrated. She sobbed once, lightly, and turned away. What she had counted on as an ally had turned out to be the enemy who had destroyed her; she vanished behind the curtains.

Asa Kemp stared with empty eyes. He was suddenly a very old man.

“Well, I feel you people are entitled to something for all the time and good will you’ve spent on Luther,” Jack Freeport said. He reached into his inner jacket pocket for his checkbook.

Luther’s hand stopped him. “You don’t owe them nothin’,” he said flatly. His voice was very even, much lower than his singing voice, almost unreal. “They did what they wanted to, and they wouldn’t of, if they hadn’t wanted to. So I’m all squared with them. They had from me, an’ I had from them. That finishes it.” He turned to go.

Shelly and Freeport stood rooted for a long moment, then turned to follow. As the tinkle of the little brass bell over the door filled the bicycle shop, Asa Kemp’s voice stopped Luther in the doorway.

“Ah hope you’ll be happy, Luther.” There was no veiled meaning in his voice. He said what he meant.

The boy turned and walked out onto the street. Shelly was the last to leave; he looked around the shop. Something had happened here. Something important. What it was, he was not quite sure; but something dreadfully important had occurred, and he knew he would think about it.

When the plane climbed above the clouds, Shelly saw that Luther was staring intently out the window, across the wing and down into the massed cotton candy of the banks. He watched the boy for a while, then turned to snub out the cigarette in the armrest ashtray. He heard the vague murmur of words beside him, and turned back to the boy.

Luther’s hand was pressed against the Plexiglas. His face was close to the port.

He was saying, over and over, very softly, but very distinctly, “Goodbye, you sonofabitch poor, goodbye.”

Shelly wondered if something hadn’t happened to the air conditioning.

He was, all at once, quite cold.