The Erection Set

XVII

Dick Lagen hadn’t closed in yet, but his last paragraph hinted at a pending story that was going to be shattering in certain circles. Mona Merriman was doing the big thing in her gossip column, telling all about the workings of S.C. Cable and Walter Gentry in locating their new picture at an old picturesque factory site northeast of New York. Several prominent motion picture stars had already been suggested for leads in Fruits of Labor with the female slot being pretty well tied up by a current English beauty. My name was right up there with the rest of the Barrin clan as having been instrumental in bringing the picture to an eastern location rather than going onto California sets which were beginning to lose their appeal to total realism.

On the inside pages there was a one-column item about the two “mystery murders” as yet unsolved, but identification had been made and the usual solution was in the immediate future. I said, “Balls!” to myself and tossed the paper down just as the phone rang to tell me Al DeVecchio was on his way up.

Without his rocker, coffee and salami he was uncomfortable. He sat in a straight-back chair fiddling with the papers on his lap, shaking his head at the stupidity of it all and when he found what he was looking for, held it up as though he really needed it and said, “You won’t make it, Dog.”

“Why not?”

“McMillan figures to edge you out by at least five percentage points. That’s enough for control.”

“All proxies?”

“Who needs anything more? He’s got Farnsworth Aviation interested and with those contracts he gets the stockholders interested. There’s no more nostalgia, buddy. Anybody holding Barrin stock wants dividends, not fond memories. Most of what’s out has been inherited. It’s in new hands that couldn’t give a damn about anything except money.”

“He’s going to raid Barrin, Al.”

“Sure, I know it. He can take the contracts to his own factories and do the job better, but he isn’t holding that out in front of the people holding odd pieces of Barrin paper. He’ll make a shambles out of Barrin and couldn’t care less.”

“How come Farnsworth is interested at all?”

“Barrin reputation for excellence. They still use some of the old extrusion processes and that’s what Farnsworth wants. They don’t know it, but McMillan will probably screw them too. Prices aren’t about to go down no matter how you do it. He’s sold them a bill of goods somehow. Now he’s making it all look good to the little people.”

“What do I need?”

“Nothing you can get. McMillan has his shares and the proxies. You can get a seat on the board but it’ll be stacked against you. It’s his ball game.”

“How about the SEC?”

“Old Cross has got that licked too. He can always produce for a little while. Come on, Dog, you know what he’s really after.”

“I think I’m the only one who does,” I said.

“What?”

“Nothing. Just mumbling.”

“You wasted a lot of dough, pal.”

“Not yet.”

“Remember, I told you that you never even could count.”

“I hire people who can count, Al.”

He let the paper slide back into the pile and relaxed back into the chair, his face all funny. “What have you got going?”

“Just a lot of odd ideas. Barrin isn’t all that much to fight over.”

“So?”

“There’s something else.”

“Care to tell me?”

“I will when I can.” I lit a cigarette and held one out to him. “What happened to the Guido brothers?”

He took the light I offered and blew a stream of smoke across the space between us. “You like to put a chill on the party, don’t you?”

I waited.

“Everything’s come to a screaming halt until the Guido boys come up with the goods. I’m not in anybody’s confidence.”

“Then extrapolate. You’re pretty good at extrapolating.”

“I extrapolate a hell of a lot of money wandering around someplace where nobody can find it. The button boys are back on the streets again and small talk has it that contracts are ready to be handed out. The older Guido laddie got his family into South America just in case, but the other one didn’t think fast enough and his place in Jersey is staked out by a team over there. They’re scared shitless is what I know and they have heavy dough out to dig up that missing shipment.”

“Good for them.”

Al folded the papers into their envelope and tossed them at me. “And now, my old buddy, I want out of your life. I’m paid to date and I don’t want any more complications. You have all I’m about to give you and if you throw any of that old wartime camaraderie jazz at me I’ll tell you where to put it.”

“I’ll call you.”

“Anytime. For lunch, dinner, a squadron reunion, but stay out of my working life.”

He started to the door, stopped and turned around. “It’s been fun, Dog. Just enough to keep the old pecker up as the British used to say.”

“You’ll be missing the best part,” I said.

“I hope so.” He grinned at me and tossed his cigarette butt into an ashtray. “Incidentally, I had a long talk with Roland Holland.”

“Oh?”

“Let’s say I extrapolated again.” He paused and let his grin get wider. “You’re a sneaky slob,” he said.

When he closed the door I looked at the doodles I had scribbled on the pad. Circles were drawn around the name Ferris and sixes and fives were intertwined around the edges of the paper. Straight lines from the name went out to each of the numerals and the seed grew a tiny stalk but still went unidentified. Out of habit I got up, flushed all the paper on the pad down the toilet, burned Al’s sheets in the sink and went out to meet my contact.

His French faltered and burst into rapid Spanish punctuated with little taps of his forefinger on the tabletop. “No, I am sorry, Mr. Kelly, there is no more. Everything is completely out of hand now.”

“Tell me what O’Keefe said.”

Sweat dotted his forehead and ran in a rivulet down his temple. “Please.”

I could see my face in the mirror behind him and it wasn’t something I could enjoy either. He had been too long in the easy end of the trade and now he was knowing what it was like on the other hand. He swallowed hard, trying to cover his shakiness by sipping his drink, but it didn’t work and I waited him out.

“For you,” he said, “it will be as a favor.”

“As a favor,” I repeated.

“It has left the country. The courier who was killed... he entrusted it to somebody. The one called LeFleur... he suspected it went to that bookstore in Soho...”

“Simon Corner?”

“That is the one. Simon Comer is now dead. He did not have it either. However, it has given the English police a chance to locate the mysterious Le Fleur. As the Americans put it, all hell is breaking loose over there. They may now have the opportunity to break the entire structure of the apparatus. The monetary loss of the shipment was too much for any organization to stand. They cannot recoup unless it is found.”

“What did O’Keefe say?”

He took another taste of his drink and nodded slowly. When he put the glass down he patted his mouth, then licked his lips nervously. “For some reason they have decided to concentrate totally on you. People are... being alerted. O’Keefe says... for you to... take off.”

“It’s screaming halt time, isn’t it?”

“Pardon?”

“I’m like persona non grata now.”

“Precisely, Mr. Kelly. All indications point to you as not being able to live more than a few days unless...”

“Unless?”

“Yes. Unless... you surrender the shipment.”

“The real big guns are coming out now, aren’t they?”

“I’m... afraid so.”

“You were authorized to make this meet then?”

“Yes.”

“Tell them to go fuck themselves,” I said.

When you can’t run and you can’t hide, you do a little bit of both and bring them out into the open. In the weeds you make yourself a weed while they’re rocks and in the rocks you’re a rock while they’re weeds. But you keep them visible and not you, always keeping the back door open and a few birds around to caw and scream when the intruder shows up. You find your own backyard where you know all the crevices and trip wires and you’re safe until they break the defenses and if you’re lucky, by then you’re in another backyard you know equally as well and start all over again. But you had to remember, it wasn’t the hound tracking you who had the worst bite. It was the strange dog in the other yard who got you from behind.

I turned the television on, caught fifteen minutes of worthless news and switched it off again.

Sharon Cass was out to lunch and couldn’t be reached. I left a message that I’d see her at her apartment that night and stretched out on the couch. The seed in the back of my mind grew another inch, but it was just a tiny thing and I said the hell with it and went to sleep.

It was a nice party. Only a small ten-piece orchestra and a few hundred important people in a tidy twenty-room penthouse belonging to S. C. Cable.

The noise of the crowd rose above the soft music, drowning it out completely, bass laughter and the tinkle of glasses making it seem as if it weren’t there at all. Flesh was rampant in see-through blouses and plunging necklines or backs designed for a maximum of exposure. Skin-for-sale time. Feel for texture, pluck for resiliency, poke for resistance. Body fragrances were mixed into a cesspool of heady smells that had no individual identity. Uniform of the day, nearly exposed, jutting tits. No underwear. Crotches thrust forward, eyes seductively lowered. Lips wet. Face the tuxedos and black business suits, for here is the enemy who might drop a piece of priceless information for a closer look at those bulging orbs, or, for the comforting rub of protruding genitals against a girdled thigh, the little fat lady with the diamond rings might just hint what agency contact to see about a part.

Sharon said, “I knew you’d hate it, Dog.”

“It’s not all that bad.”

“Not if you like the sex routines.”

“Right now that’s all you can smell.”

“That’s movie business.”

“Any business, kitten. How long do we have to stay?” Her laugh was gentle and low. “I thought anyone who spent time in Europe would be used to the sophistication.”

“They’re a little more subtle about it over there,” I told her.

She handed me a glass from the tray that was offered her by a pert little waitress. “What’s wrong, Dog?”

“Nothing.”

“Those girls are giving you that look again.”

“Screw them.”

“You aren’t very sociable tonight.” She touched my arm and smiled at me. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have made you come along.”

“Nobody makes me do anything.” I laughed and gave her hair a little tug. “I’ll ease off. Too many things have been happening.”

Sharon nodded toward the door. “There’s Lee. He’s the one who talked the English actress into signing with S.C.”

“Cable have him on the payroll too?”

“For the duration of the picture. Good choice. I wonder why he doesn’t seem all that happy about it.”

“Broads on his mind maybe. He’s a horny character. Right now he could have a feast.”

“Couldn’t everybody?”

“I don’t enjoy eating at the trough, honey,” I said. “It’s better at your own dinner table.”

“Trying to tell me something?”

“Nope. You’re a spoken-for woman.” I dropped my empty glass on a passing tray and waved off a refill. “When do I get to meet your fiancé?”

Almost absently, she said, “He’ll show up when he’s ready.”

“Independent slob.”

“Yes,” she told me. “Quite.”

“Somebody ought to warn him.”

“Why don’t you?”

“Let the prick watch out for himself.”

“There you go again with that dirty language.”

When I looked at her there was a far-off smile on her face that reminded me of something else and the calendar started turning over backward, dropping the years away, one by one. The seed was growing now and a leaf was sprouting from the stalk. It had a vague number on it but too distant to read.

Somebody came and took Sharon to the other side of the room while I was thinking about it and a pair of blondes filled her place with small talk I answered abstractedly until Mona Merriman came up with her usual brassy style and told them to bug off because I was all hers, and with imperial pomp introduced me to a few friends before getting me off alone.

I said, “What?”

“You weren’t listening at all.”

“Sorry, doll.”

“I said, what has Lagen got on you?”

“Beats me.”

She turned me around so nobody could see her face and looked at me seriously. “They take me for a gossipy old woman, Dog, but I was a damn good reporter long before I hit the money line. He’s got something and he wants you crawling.”

“Forget it, Mona.”

“Son... I said I was a reporter. My staff passes me interesting tidbits of information.”

She was a strange broad. Suddenly there was no flabbiness in her face at all. It was all hard, questioning planes with a fire dancing out of her eyes.

“He thinks I was a big hood in Europe,” I said.

“Were you?”

“The biggest, kid.”

“And now?”

“Out.”

“Damn. For real?”

I nodded slowly.

“He can prove it?”

“No chance.”

“Baby, I could make music with you. Real typewriter music.”

“Don’t. There’s other music that’s louder.”

“And much more staccato, I suppose?”

“If you want to put it that way.”

“The crashing of cymbals?”

“The big brass drum, Mona.”

“Who’s the drummer?”

“Sometimes a guy can be lucky all the time,” I said. “Let’s go join the party.”

“You won’t want to.”

“Why not?”

“Cross and Sheila McMillan are here. He seems quite perturbed about the entire arrangement.”

“Only he can’t do anything about it, can he?”

“Not since your cousins okayed the deal.” Mona’s fingers squeezed my arm. “You really put the heat on, didn’t you?”

“A public service.”

“From what I hear, it was plain heat.”

“They needed it.”

“Doggie, I’d like to take you to bed with me.”

“I’m not exactly a Teddy bear, Mona.”

“You’re better than a two-battery vibrator.”

“You’re wild, baby. What do you do for fun?” I let out a laugh and put my arm around her shoulder.

“Mainly play with the children who would give their dingdong for a chance like you have, knowing how I’d give them paragraphs for their scrapbooks.”

“Write me out then.”

“You never even were penciled in, Doggie. Your type is alive in the wrong era.”

“Perceptive cunt, aren’t you?”

“That’s the nicest thing anybody’s said all week. And true. Very true. Maybe that’s why I like you. Now be a smart boy and get you and your little blonde out of here. The glacier has been looking this way and I can read all the signs.”

“Who?”

“Sheila McMillan. I’m an older pussy than you are a dog and I can read all the signs too.”

The years were catching up. I was tired and annoyed and it wasn’t fun anymore. I thought I was put of it, but nothing would let go. Somehow it was like waking up and thinking the dream you just had was real, then you saw a different room in the cold light of a bright sun and knew the dream was fake and what the judge said was the true thing and if you waited a little while longer you’d hear the feet coming down the corridor, feel the scissors against your leg slicing the trousers and sense the razor shaving that small bald spot on your skull. You could wait a little more after that and they’d put the hood over your face with the metallic plate under it, then somebody would hit the switch to let the voltage sweep through all the tissue in one monstrous sheet of pain and you could call it quits for good.

Or was life and memory so accelerated at that last moment you lasted for another lifetime of absolute agony smelling the searing flesh and knowing the excruciating pain of muscles knotted in horrible spasms? Was it really like that?

Maybe I had seen them die too often. Maybe I had been on the line one too many times. You shouldn’t think about things like that. Or was the thought for somebody else? I used to believe they went quietly, realizing that it was their time, and almost glad to go to be away from all the things that led up to that last second. Two of them had even smiled at me because eventually the wheel would turn and I’d be the one dropping off. I had lasted longer than most of the others, but now it was the ninth inning, the score was tied, two out, nobody on base and I was up to bat with a hostile grandstand behind me.

Kelly at the bat. Forget Casey. Now it was Kelly.

“What are you thinking about?” Sharon asked me.

“I’m thinking why the hell you don’t put some clothes on.”

“After all those naked females tonight I’m positively decent,” she said.

“Not in a chiffon nightgown with nothing on underneath.”

“You haven’t felt me yet. How do you know?”

“I can see your snatch, kid.”

“Like it?” She grinned at me deliberately.

“Love it, so scram, virgin.”

She handed me the coffee cup, spooned in the sugar and added the milk. “You resent my maidenhood?”

“Horseshit, lady. After a while it’ll get tough rubbery.”

“Not according to medical statistics.”

“So it’ll atrophy from disuse,” I said.

I got another of those funny smiles and she turned and sat down opposite me, making a project of crossing her legs. The nightgown split open, exposing those lovely legs and her eyes laughed too. “How many women have you had, Dog?”

“Plenty.” I took a pull on the coffee and burned my mouth.

“Virgins?”

“Numerous.”

“About how many?”

“What kind of question is that? Come on...”

“Make a guess.”

“A dozen. I never made it a practice of fooling around with virgins. They were all accidents of nature.”

“Does it hurt?”

“How the hell would I know!”

“Well, did they scream?”

I burned my mouth again and put the coffee down for a cigarette. “They all scream when I’m laying them.” I thought that would shut her up but it didn’t.

“I mean the first time.”

Even the cigarette burned. I took another drag and stamped it out. “No,” I said. “When I found out they hadn’t been hit I went classical. They loved every damn second of it and screamed for more. I know all the tricks, all the techniques, all the little nuances from foreplay to afterlove and I’ll be damned if I’m going to set you up for somebody else.”

“I know some tricks too.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I heard you telling Raul about them when I first saw you.”

“Jealous?”

“Nope. I even appreciate your attitude. Like total understanding. Why don’t you let your boy bust it for you and be done with it?”

“Because he may be dead.” The way she said it was so simple I should have known.

“Serviceman?”

“Yes.”

“Overseas?”

Sharon nodded and sipped at her coffee.

“When did you see him last?”

“The day he left. It was the day we became engaged. There wasn’t time to do anything else so he gave me this.” She held up her hand with the cheap little ring on it.

I said, “I’m sorry, kid.”

“That’s all right.”

“Love him?”

“I’ve always loved him.”

“Get letters?”

“No.”

“How long do you expect to wait?”

“Until I’m sure he’s dead.”

“Meanwhile?”

“I play my own tricks. And techniques. And nuances.”

I pushed out of my chair. “He doesn’t have much more time,” I told her.

“Yes, I know.”

Thunder rumbled outside the window and I walked to the French doors and looked down at the big-bellied city that squatted underneath me. Headlights of the cars probed through the darkness, their horns demanding pathways and tiny dark things scuttled across between traffic lights whose WALK and DON’T WALK became another commandment to the mice caught in the concrete maze of the city.

“When does the picture move out to Linton?” I asked her.

“The crew will be looking for location sites the end of the week.”

“You coming out?”

“I have to go.”

“The old house on Mondo Beach...”

“Yes?”

“I’ll be there.”

“Dog...”

I turned around and she was standing there in front of the chair with the nightgown in a puddle around her feet. She was a naked picture of beauty that made everything inside me tingle for a short second before it went sour. In the dim light she looked slippery and wet again, all gorgeous thighs and bushy-haired belly surmounted by high-aiming breasts, but I could see her teeth and I couldn’t tell if it was a smile or a laugh and I thought it was a laugh. I grabbed my coat and hat, grinned back a little bit and headed for the door.

It was raining out again. The night blanket of dark and haze cut all the buildings off like a soft, cheesy knife, muting the roar of the city lion to an angry growl punctuated by the irritated snarls of taxi horns at intersections where the red hadn’t quite changed to green. On the avenues, cars drifted by nearly empty buses, reluctant to get to their destinations, and what few people walked the streets huddled under the canopies of umbrellas or just walked, heads lowered, not caring where they went.

It’s a funny city, I thought. It only went in two directions, up and down and across. Somebody had laid it out like a grid on a tactical map and there it was. It didn’t go in circles like London; it didn’t ramble and squeeze and evacuate its bowels like Rome and Paris and Madrid... it was just there going north, south, east and west unless you got to where they forgot directions and called it the Village, or Brooklyn, then it was something else. But when you said the City, it meant Manhattan, the head of the world octopus that was all computers and vaults and money and the big rich and the little poor and the idiots trying to make the poor rich and the rich poor to pocket the votes and not once did they know that you can’t do either one. You were either rich or poor, so enjoy it, citizens, and squawk your fucking heads off if you feel like it, only remember, it won’t do you any good at all. The poor try to take, the rich intend to keep and anybody who gets rich is going to damn well keep it because only idiots stay poor anyway. Like the alive stay alive and the dead stay dead.

And it’s funny to be dead. Civilization was nourished on the dead. Cultures and religions and even governments flourished on the dead. But all the dead do is smell. It’s the alive who can hurt you. But sometimes the dead smell in advance.

And that was a smell familiar to me. It was behind about a hundred yards and holding. In another few blocks it would come closer.

I had spotted him when I left Sharon’s and wondered what had happened to all that jungle knowledge I had supposed them to have. Hell, it was a setup, a plain simple setup all the way. I had laid on three alternates if they had spotted the first one and they had gone for the initial track. All my fancy prearranged signals on the alternates reported all clear so I didn’t have to sweat out being flanked.

There was only one guy back there.

In a way, he was like me, but not quite. He didn’t know the city. To him they were all the same. Not to me, though. The bricks and concrete were another world and I led him through the maze to the hole in the wall and when he reached it I was waiting for him.

He was almost as fast and almost as wary, but that little edge is what makes the difference between living and dying. The gun was in his fist, but I had the .45 in my hand and it makes one hell of a hole when the lead goes through flesh and intestines and tears the backbone right out of a man. It blows you back six feet, all doubled up, living long enough to wish you were dead, and when I picked the .38 out of his fingers I looked at his face and said nice and quiet, “You only got ten minutes to go, buddy, but it can be the worst ten minutes of your life. You want me to shorten them or make you really hurt?”

Somehow he managed a crooked smile, all greasy with blood and spit. He lay there, letting the initial shock wear off, knowing what would happen when all those nerve endings registered incredible pain in another ten seconds. “El Lobo,” he said.

“I killed El Lobo ten years ago,” I told him.

“The Dog?”

I nodded.

He pulled the trigger on a gun that wasn’t in his hand anymore.

“One more time,” I said.

He shook his head.

“Who?”

The guy smiled and gave me that same negative sign so I let him look down that big black hole of the .45 and for one second he wanted to tell me but that one second was too late. The blast of the shot was muffled in the small roll of fat around his belt and I remembered the others, with Lee last in the bathtub, and while he was dying I said, “Good luck, sucker,” and got out of there while the woman was still screaming in the window and the sirens were whining their way up the avenue.

Before I cut out I took a look at his shoes to make sure.

They were brown.