The Topless Tulip Caper

Fourteen

I WAS THE last one awake. I yawned and stretched and reached for Tulip and encountered nothing but air and linen. I yawned some more and got up and put clothes on. They were having breakfast. I slipped out without saying hello, walked the few blocks to my own rooming house, showered and changed clothes and went back to Haig’s. By then they were in the office and the great man was on the telephone. I couldn’t tell who was on the other end of the line or what they were talking about, because all Haig said was “Yes” and “No” and “Indeed” and, at last, “Satisfactory.” For all I could tell he had called the weather bureau and was talking back to the recording.

“There you are,” he said to me. “I thought you’d gone off without instructions. You’ll want to see Mrs. Henderson without further delay. And there are other errands for you as well.”

I got out my notebook.

“I also want your report. Last night, from the time you left for Treasure Chest until your return. Verbatim, please.”

I came as close to verbatim as possible and he listened to it with his feet on the desk. When I’d brought it to the point where I left Danzig at his apartment and hopped a cab home, he took his feet off the desk and leaned forward and frowned at me. “How did Mr. Danzig know where to find you?” he demanded

“I thought about that. Jan Remo.”

“The barmaid.”

I nodded. “She excused herself to go to the bathroom. I don’t think she went to the bathroom. I think she went to the telephone.”

“And called Mr. Danzig.”

“Right. I think she fingered me. That’s the right term, isn’t it?”

“I believe so.”

“Well, I believe she fingered me.” I pictured Jan, the red hair, the feline face, the fishnet stockings, the body stocking filled with just what I’d always wanted far Christmas. “She fingered me,” I said. “I’d like to return the favor.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Just thinking out loud,” I said.

Haig grunted—his way of thinking out loud—and spun around to consider the Rasboras. I looked over at Tulip and she gave me the world’s most solemn wink. I don’t know if I blushed or not. I probably did.

Haig turned around again. “There’s another variable. Rather surprising. You had a telephone call this morning during your absence.”

“Oh?”

“From another topless dancer, I assume. One of those inane stage names.” He turned to Tulip. “Your pardon, Miss Wolinski. No criticism is intended.”

She assured him none was inferred.

“I don’t recall that you’ve mentioned this one,” he went on. “You know your reports must be as comprehensive as possible. The slightest detail—”

“There was no other dancer. Oh, there were a couple new ones last night, but I didn’t talk to them. I didn’t even get their names, and if that was an oversight I’m sorry. Who was it that called?”

He consulted a slip of paper. “She gave her name as Clover Swann,” he said. “I’ve no idea what her real name might chance to be. She left a number.”

“Oh, for Pete’s sake,” I said. “She’s not a topless dancer.”

“Indeed?”

“She’s an editor,” I said. “At Gold Medal,” The image of Clover Swann, Gold Medal’s resident hippie, dancing nude on the stage of Treasure Chest, suddenly flashed somewhere in my mind. It was by no means an unappealing image, but I had the feeling she was happier editing books.

“It was not an illogical assumption,” Haig said. “Clover Swann indeed.”

“Well, she’s an editor. She probably wants to know when I’m going to do another book for them. I’ll call her tomorrow or the next day.”

“You’ll call her now.”

I just looked at him.

“Now,” he repeated. “Bear in mind, Chip, that I hired you as much for your journalistic ability as anything else. It is not enough to be a brilliant detective. The world must know that one is a brilliant detective. Cal Miss Swann. I have the number right here.”

“I know the number,” I said. I picked up the phone and dialed it, and after I’d given the operator everything but my Social Security number I got through to Clover.

“I’ve been reading the papers,” she said. “It sounds as though you’re right in the middle of an exciting case. Topless dancers and everything.”

“And everything,” I agreed.

“It ought to be perfect for your next book. Are you going to write it up?”

“That depends,” I said. “A few hours from now Mr. Haig is going to reach into a hat. If he pulls out a rabbit I’ll have something to write about. If he comes up empty it’s not going to make much of a book.”

Haig scribbled furiously, passed me a note. I read it quickly. It said: “Show more enthusiasm.”

Clover must have read the note because she showed plenty of enthusiasm. She went on telling me what a great book it would make, that it had all the ingredients. “And it should be a cinch to have a lot of sex in this one,” she said. “You know what Joe always says.”

I knew what he said, all right. “People like to read about what a character Haig is and all that, Chip, but if you want to sell books to them you have to give them a hard-on.” That’s what he always said.

“I’m not sure there’s too much sex in it,” I said.

“Oh, who do you think you’re kidding?” She laughed heartily. “Topless dancers? Chip Harrison cavorting with a batch of topless dancers? If I know you, you’re bouncing around like a satyr in a harem.”

“Er,” I said.

“Just let me know how it goes today, Chip, and we’ll draw up a contract. You could even start thinking about a title.”

“Uh,” I said.

I wrapped up the conversation and then I had to give Haig a Reader’s Digest version of it. Then he told me what I had to do next, and I made some notes in my notebook and headed for the door.

Tulip walked me to the door. When we were out of Haig’s hearing range she slipped an arm around my waist. She turned her body so that her breasts rubbed companionably against my chest.

“Not enough sex,” she purred. “Ho, boy! How about a fast bourbon and yogurt?”

I’m sure I blushed that time. Damn it.

I got the Cadillac from the garage. It’s my car, but if it weren’t for Haig I wouldn’t be able to go on owning it. He pays fifty dollars a month so that it can live in a garage on Tenth Avenue. Maybe twice a year I have occasion to use it, and yes, it would be a lot cheaper to rent a car, but I like this one and Haig doesn’t seem to mind the expense. The car was given to me by Geraldine, who runs a whorehouse in Bordentown, South Carolina, where I worked for a while as a deputy sheriff.

(You could read about it if you want. It’s in a book called Chip Harrison Scores Again. I want you to know that the title was not my idea.)

Anyway, the car’s a Cadillac, which sounds impressive, but it’s also more than twenty years old, and I guess it’s the last stick-shift automobile that Cadillac ever made. It’s in beautiful shape, though. Geraldine only drove it on Sundays. To church and back.

I picked it up at the garage, crossed over to Jersey and managed to find the Palisades Parkway. I got off at the Alpine exit and found the town of Closter, and I only had to ask directions four times before I found Haskell Henderson’s house. It was a colonial, painted yellow with forest green trim, set fairly far back on a lot shaded by a great many large trees. A huge dog in a fenced yard next door barked at me. I waved at him and walked up a flagstone path to the front door and poked the bell. An elaborate series of chimes sounded within the house. I waited for a while and was about to hit the bell again when the door opened. A woman stood in the doorway with a cigarette in one hand and a glass of colorless liquid in the other. She said, “If you’re from the Boy Scouts, the newspapers are stacked in the garage. If you’re from the ecology drive the bottles and cans are in a bin next to the newspapers. If you’re selling something I’ve probably already got it and it doesn’t work and the last thing I want is to buy another one.”

I was standing close enough during her little speech to identify the colorless liquid in her glass. It was gin. Mrs. Haskell Henderson was in her early thirties, built like the Maginot Line, and already sloshed to the gills at ten twenty-five in the morning.

“I’m not,” I said.

“You’re not which?”

“Any of them,” I said. “My name is Chip Harrison and I work for Leo Haig.”

“I don’t.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I don’t work for Leo Haig. I don’t work for anybody. My name is Althea Henderson and I drink a lot. And why shouldn’t I, huh? That’s what I want to know.”

“Well. May I come in?”

“What the hell, why not.” She stood aside and I entered the house. “Why shouldn’t I drink?” she demanded. “Kids are at camp, husband’s at the office, why shouldn’t I drink?” She gestured vaguely and some of the gin moved abruptly from the glass to the oriental rug. She didn’t appear to notice. “Bad for the liver,” she said. “Well, what the hell do I care, huh? Who wants to drop dead and leave a perfectly good liver behind? What you got to do in this world is wear out all at once. It’s a question of timing.”

“Oh.”

“Wanna drink?”

“It’s a little early for me, thanks.”

“Then how ’bout some carrot juice? Carrot juice, papaya juice, dandelion coffee—that’s the kind of crap my husband drinks. How ‘bout a nice bowlful of sprouted alfalfa, huh? Just the thing to set you up for a hard day’s work, right?”

“Speaking of your husband, Mrs. Henderson—”

“Call me Althea.”

“Speaking of your husband, Althea—”

“What about him?” Her eyes narrowed, and I got the impression she wasn’t quite as drunk as she made out. She’d been drinking, certainly, and it was getting to her, but she had been riding it a little, either for my benefit or because it felt good. “What about him? Is he in some kind of trouble?”

“It’s possible.”

“It’s that girl who was murdered, isn’t it? The one with the big tits.”

“Cherry Bounce, yes.”

“Cherry Bounce my ass,” she said. “That little bitch must have given her cherry the bounce when she was eleven years old. Was he fucking her?”

“No.”

“That’s a surprise. Maybe her tits weren’t big enough. Were they big ones?”

“Well. Uh. Yes, uh, they were.”

“Then I’m surprised he could keep his hands off them,” she said. She took another swig of gin and asked if I was sure I didn’t want to drink. I was sure, and said so. “He’s a tit man, Haskell is. Always has been. A health freak and a tit freak. That’s why he runs around the way he does. Oh, hell, if you were thinking about keeping his secret, he hasn’t got any secret to keep. The two of us play a game. He pretends I don’t know he runs around and I pretend the same, but all it is is a game.”

She flopped into a chair. “He can’t fool me. All the health crap he eats, all the vitamins he takes, the man’s got more energy than Con Edison. He used to make it with me twice a night and once every morning. Rain or shine, three times a day. He was wearing me out. And now he hasn’t made it with me in almost three years.”

I didn’t say anything.

“Because of these,” she said, cupping her enormous breasts in her hands.

“I don’t get it.”

“Neither do I,” she said. “Used to get it three times a day and now I don’t get it at all. Because of these. They used to be the reason he married me, and now—”

“Uh—”

“The hell of it is that I love the bastard. And he loves me. But I don’t turn him on anymore. Because he’s a tit man and that’s all there is to it.”

“You lost me,” I said.

She stood up. “C’mere,” she said. I stepped closer to her. She put the index finger of her right hand to the tip of her left breast. “Feel,” she said. “Christ sake, don’t just stand there. Grab yourself a handful. Go on, dammit!”

I cupped her breast with my hand.

“Don’t be shy. Give it a little squeeze.”

I gave it a little squeeze.

“Feel good?”

“Uh, yes.”

“Now the other one.”

“Look, Mrs. Henderson—”

“Althea, dammit.”

“Look, Althea—”

“Shut up. Feel the other one, will you?”

I followed orders.

“Well?”

“Well what?”

“Uh—”

“Both feel the same?”

“Sure.”

“Not from this end they don’t. Wait right here. Don’t go away.” I waited right there and didn’t go away and she came back with a hat pin about four inches long. “Stick it in my tit,” she said. “The left one.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Look, Mrs. Henderson, Althea, maybe I should come back some other time. I—”

“Oh, hell,” she said, and plunged the hatpin into her left breast. My stomach flipped a little but she didn’t seem to feel a thing. She drew out the pin. There was no blood on it. Her eyes challenged me and I began to get the picture.

“Foam rubber,” she said. “The other one’s real. Until a couple of years ago they were both real and Haskell was crazy about them. Then I had to have a mastectomy because some knife-happy surgeon decided I had the big C. Turned out it was benign but by that time he’d already done his cutting. Only half a woman now. Used to turn Haskell on. Now all I turn him is off. Still loves me, I still love him, but he takes all his vitamins and drinks his carrot juice and eats his alfalfa and walks around horny as a toad and I don’t do him any good. That’s why he needs his topless dancers.”

I stood there wondering why floors never open up and swallow you when you want them to. She went out to the kitchen for more gin. I thought she was lucky she wasn’t too drunk when she did her trick with the hatpin or she might get the wrong breast by mistake and it would probably hurt. When she came back I managed to steer the conversation back in its original direction. I asked her what she had been doing the night before last, and what her husband had been doing.

“He was working late at the store,” she said. “Do you believe that?”

“Well—”

“And I was drinking carrot juice and counting my nipples. Do you believe that?”

“Althea—”

“He was chasing women in New York. And I was here, sitting in front of the television set and drinking scotch. Not gin. I never drink gin after four in the afternoon. Only a pansy would drink gin after four in the afternoon.”

“I see. Can you prove it?”

“Prove it? Hell, everybody knows only a pansy would drink gin in the nighttime. What’s there to prove?”

“Can you prove you were home watching television?”

“Oh,” she said. She thought it over. “You think I went into New York and stuck a pin in that girl’s tit. What was her name again?”

“Cherry Bounce.”

“Why the hell would I do a thing like that? I don’t go around sticking pins in tits all the time like some kind of a nut. I just did it now to prove a point. Lessee. Kids are at camp so they can’t gimme an alibi. Oh, sure. My neighbor from down the street was over here. Got here about nine o’clock, left when Johnny Carson went off the air. Marge Whitman, lives just down the street. She’s in the same boat as me. Well, not exactly. She’s got two tits but she’s got a pansy for a husband. Leaves her out here and spends his night picking up sailors on Times Square, the fucking pansy. Drinks gin all night long, the goddamn fruit.”

I got the Whitman woman’s address and started backing toward the door. She asked me where I was going. “I have some other calls to make,” I said.

“I turn you off too, don’t I?”

“No, not at all, but—”

“You’re a tit man like my husband.”

“Not exactly.”

“You don’t like tits?”

“I like them fine, but—”

“You’re not a pansy are you?” I shook my head. “What do you drink in the evening?”

“Whiskey, usually. Sometimes a beer. Why?”

“Not a pansy,” she said. And then she took her blouse off, and then she took her bra off, and I just stood there. She had one absolutely perfect breast, and where the other had been there was smooth skin with an almost imperceptible scar from the incision.

“Sickening, isn’t it?”

“No, not at all.”

“Deformed.”

“No.”

“Turns you off, doesn’t it?”

The weird thing is that it was turning me on. I don’t know how to account for it and I’d rather not stop and figure it out. It probably just proves I’m kinkier than l realized, but why go into it too closely?

“C’mere,” she said. I did, and she opened my zipper and groped around. “I’ll be a sonofabitch,” she said. “Well, you’re not a faggot, are you?”

“No, and—”

“And I don’t turn you off, do I? Maybe you’re a sensible tit man, that’s what it must be. You figure half a loaf is better than none. Right?”

“Uh.”

Her hand clutched me possessively. She turned and began leading me toward the staircase. I had the choice of following her or leaving part of my anatomy behind, and I’ve always been attached to it. I followed.

If Althea had had her way she would have kept me there for hours. And I’ll tell you something. If we weren’t in the middle of a case I would have stayed She evidently had an enormous complex about her absent breast, which old Haskell must have done a good job of reinforcing, and as a result she did everything she could to compensate for what she regarded as a terrible deficiency. As far as I was concerned, passing her up because she only had one breast was like refusing to listen to Schubert’s Eighth Symphony because he never got around to finishing it.

I finally managed to get out of there after promising to return when I got the chance. Then I stopped at the Whitman house to confirm Althea’s alibi, although I didn’t really need confirmation. But Haig would be sure to ask and I would have to have the answers.

Mrs. Whitman was quick to recall watching television with Althea on the night in question. She was also quick to offer me a cup of coffee, which I declined because I was really in a hurry. And I got the impression that she would have gladly offered me a lot more than coffee. She was a good looking woman, a little older than Althea, but certainly nothing to complain about.

Back in the car, I wondered if Mr. Whitman was really homosexual. The fact that he drank gin in the evening didn’t strike me as sufficient evidence in and of itself. I know a lot of perfectly straight people who drink gin in the evening. I think they’re crazy, but it doesn’t make them gay.

Then I began thinking about the conversation with Clover, and how I’d told her there probably wouldn’t be much sex in the book. I wondered if our talk had had anything to do with the fact that Althea and I wound up in bed. I suppose it could have operated on a sort of subliminal level. Maybe it was my aspirations as an author that goaded me to respond to Althea’s advances.

Somehow I doubt it.

I drove back over the George Washington Bridge and down the West Side Drive. I got off at 72nd Start and drove down to Tulip’s building. Of course that was no place to park. I circled a few blocks a few times and then stuck it in a lot. The attendant was very impressed by the car and flipped completely when he saw he was going to have to shift it. “A Cad with a stick shift,” he said. “Where’d you ever find it?”

“South Carolina.”

“There a lot of ’em down there?”

“Thousands,” I said.

On the way to Tulip’s building I spent a dime on a telephone and made my report. It took some time and I had to feed the phone extra change. I left out the part about going to bed with Althea. Verbatim only goes so far is the way I figure it.

Haig told me it was satisfactory. I was glad to hear it. He said, “After you see Miss Tattersall, you’ll go to Tulip’s apartment and feed her fish. You haw the key?”

“Yes, sir. She gave it to me a couple of hours ago. You told her to, remember?”

“The Ctenapoma receive brine shrimp. There’s some in the freezer compartment of the refrigerator. I believe that’s all they receive. One moment.”

He asked Tulip if this was so, and she said there were also some bloodworms and mealworms in jars in the refrigerator, and I should give them that if it was no trouble. “They’re strictly carnivores,” I heard him say. “Unless—I wonder if that’s what’s keeping them from spawning! I used to give the scats a lot of wheat genii and it put them in great breeding condition.”

Haig said, “Chip.”

“Yes.”

He covered the mouth piece with his hand and I couldn’t make out what he and Tulip were saying to each other. Then he said, “There is a jar of Kretchmer wheat germ in the cupboard to the right of the sink. On the second or third shelf, Miss Wolinski doesn’t recall precisely where.”

“IH manage to find it. You want me to give some to the Ctenapoma?”

“No! Absolutely not.”

“Fine. Hold your horses. Then what difference does it make what shelf it’s on?”

“Bring the wheat germ back here with you. Do not open the jar. Be very careful of the jar. Wrap it so that it won’t break should you happen to drop it. Do you understand?”

“Oh.”

“Do you understand, Chip?”

“I think so,” I said. “I think I do.”