Minnesota Strip, page 10
“Go on, Eric, call the cops,” I said, sitting resolutely in the chair beside his desk. On the desk there was a half-gone bottle of scotch and a bottle of club soda. No ice in sight though—Eric was doing his drinking without frills.
Durning took the fat lady by the shoulders and steered her out of there. “Take an early lunch,” he said. “Lock the outside door and for Christ sake stop crying.”
Snuffling, the fat woman went out, and if she had any occult powers I was as good as dead. Durning closed the door and went back behind his desk, slopping whisky into the glass before he sat down. He gulped some of it before he added soda, and I saw that his hands were shaking. He looked at me with a doggy look in his eyes, a man looking for mercy and not finding it. When he had finished the drink and was pouring another one just as big, he asked me if I wanted one. “I hate the God damn stuff,” he informed me.
“Sure I’ll have a drink,” I said. Why not? A drink is a drink, even if you’re drinking it with a creep like Eric Durning. “Just scotch, no soda.”
Durning opened the bottom drawer of his desk and found a glass. It looked clean enough. He spilled nearly as much scotch as he poured into the glass. He was starting to dump soda on top of it, but I reached over and took the glass away from him.
“Oh, I forgot,” he said, giving me that doggy look again, wanting to be pals. Durning’s dirty little world was coming apart, and for reasons I didn’t know. On the walls the blow-ups of the old-time movie stars stared down blankly at him. No reassurance there. The poor guy. I wondered how many blowjobs Eric had enjoyed in that dingy little office.
“So here we are,” I said, drinking my straight scotch. It was one of those off brands, Glen something or other, and I guessed they managed to get that genuine ‘smoky’ taste by adding a little iodine.
“Yeah,” Durning said. “Here we are only there’s nothing to talk about.” You never saw a man more depressed than this once jaunty pimp, and before he drank any more scotch he popped two pills of different color. “There’s nothing to talk about,” he repeated, as if saying it often enough would make it so. For a moment brief hope showed in his dull eyes. “Money? Money, is that what this is all about? Okay, I’m a porn guy and that makes me a second class citizen right. Because I’m a porn guy all kinds of people come to me with their hand out. Cops, other guys, all kinds of people come to me. They want a loan. You know—a loan! Trouble I don’t want. Trouble I can live without, but I’ve been getting nothing but trouble from you.”
I let him go on.
Durning said, “I’m asking you how much to leave me alone. No, listen, man to man, how much do you want? People think I’m rolling in money.” Durning shook his head, a man subjected to so much injustice. “I wish I was rolling. That’s not the point right now. One man to another, how much do you want? I don’t know how more fair I can be.”
After I helped myself to another drink, I said pleasantly, “Fuck you, Eric. You and your money.” I wasn’t mad and I didn’t mind being offered the bribe. I like being offered bribes because it’s a sure sign that people are afraid of what you might do to them. Once in a while I even take a bribe when it doesn’t smell too bad
Durning held out both hands to me, palms upward, the age-old gesture of despair. I saw that he was more than slightly drunk. “You’re driving me crazy,” he said. “Not enough you bother me, you call business associates and ask questions about me.”
“Ah,” I said, “Mr. Zimmer and the French Revolution.”
A veil came down over Durning’s eyes when I said that, and I knew at once that I wasn’t going to get anything out of him, no matter what I did. He didn’t want to talk about this super-duper costume picture they were planning. Eric Durning, all at once, was a defeated man, but there was something in his voice that hadn’t been there before. It was as if he had made up his mind to do something. “What more can I tell you, pal?” Yeah, he called me pal. “You won’t take money and go away, so who give a fuck. Right? Right! Who give a fuck! Do what you want. I don’t care.”
Getting up to leave, I said, “When I do, you’ll know about it.”
“That’s what you think.”
As I went out I heard whisky slopping into a glass.
The elevator was a local, with people getting on and off, and it took a while to get down to the lobby. I was through the revolving doors when a woman started to scream. She was standing in the middle of the crowded sidewalk, screaming and pointing upward with a trembling hand. I looked from her screaming mouth up to where she was pointing and saw a man standing on the narrow ledge outside one of the windows. He was up ten floors but there was no mistaking Eric Durning. Old Eric, with his modish gray hair blowing in the wind. For a moment the crowd of gawkers stood perfectly still as though caught by a stop-action camera, then it broke and scattered. Only the woman who was screaming remained where she was, rooted by terror. And then old Eric did a funny thing. He didn’t jump off the ledge. He just raised one leg and stepped off it, like a man doing a funny bit at a swimming pool. Down and down became, perfectly straight, no tumbling or spinning.
I was already walking away by the time he broke up all over the sidewalk.
Two blocks from there I went into a bar and drank two doubles while I listened to the sirens and the ambulance hooters. I didn’t feel one way or another about Eric Durning. I had seen a lot of dead men in Vietnam, better men than Eric Durning had ever been, the best day he ever lived. But still there was a tight band of tension around my head and the booze wasn’t loosening it and despite my resolution to play it by instinct I began to get that bad old feeling that I was at a dead end. I had probably helped to hurry up Eric Durning’s death; that was no sweat off my balls—Eric was always destined to come to a sticky end. His wife probably had him insured up to the eyeballs—insurance is the best revenge—and by now she might be jumping up and down for the sheer joy of it. How many times had she looked at his scrawny neck and fingered the butcher knife in a thoughtful way. Okay, so I have a vivid imagination.
Suddenly I wanted a woman and my thoughts turned to Cindy, my favorite waitress from West Virginia. I looked at my watch and it was eleven forty-five, time for her to take her lunch break. I took a dime and called her at the hotel coffee shop. The Turk who ran the place bitched about calling her to the phone but he knew what a crackerjack waitress he had in that big broad. He knew she hooked on the side and maybe he got a little of it himself.
“This ain’t no social service, you know,” he complained, but he got her to the phone.
“This is Pete,” I said. “You free around noon? I’d like to see you around noon.”
Cindy laughed good naturedly. “My, aren’t we formal today. What’s the matter? You sound uptight.”
I was a little abrupt with her. “You free or not?”
“Hey, listen to me, Shay.” For a moment she was ready to tell me off. Cindy is a good waitress and a satisfying lay and is always in demand. These hillbillies are an independent lot, none more so than Cindy. “I’m free but you got to say please,” she said. “If you don’t say please you can just pull it.”
“Please,” I said like a good boy.
“Come to momma,” she said.
I had another drink to speed me on my way, and when I left the bar the cop cars and the ambulance had gone, and so had Eric Durning. I wondered if the fat secretary had heard about it yet. Maybe now she would have time to finish reading Love’s Brutal Torment. I think she must have been in love with Eric Durning, God help us!
I went up to my room and Cindy came up a few minutes later. She was wearing her white starched uniform, a red rose pinned over the pocket. She kissed me affectionately and said, “I smell from hamburgers,” and went to take a quick shower.
“Hey man, what’s the matter with you?” she asked when we were in bed and I was screwing her with something less than tenderness. “What do you think you have here—a hooker?” That broke the tension and we both laughed. After that she helped me to take it easy, and no one could have done it better. Cindy is one of those amateur hookers who can come if she likes a guy, and that doesn’t always make a difference but it helps. She came easily but I was having a little trouble. I guess it was the tension.
“You are uptight,” she said in her motherly way. “Why don’t you just relax and let momma take care of it.” She did.
“You ought to take better care of yourself,” she said after it was over and we lay side by side with the air-conditioner blowing on us. I felt better. Booze is fine but there is nothing like a woman to unkink the kinks. She was playing with it. “I mean that, Pete. The way you live, you worry me. That’s why I say—you got to take better care of yourself.”
I asked her to remind me sometime.
“Always the wise guy,” she said.
“Not today. I don’t feel wise today.”
“You’ll feel wise tomorrow. If you don’t feel wise tomorrow I’ll call a doctor. I’d hardly know you if you weren’t wise.”
“Cut it out. I’m okay.”
“You don’t sound it.”
“What do you want me to do? Do a couple of snappy routines, tell some jokes?”
“I’d like that better than seeing you down. Don’t you ever do anything except work and drink and screw? You know how many times I’ve been up here? I don’t know how many. A lot. And never once did you say you’d been to a movie or a show.”
“A show!”
“You know, a show, one of those things with the singing and dancing. They’re supposed to take your mind off your troubles. People go to them all the time. They also go out to dinner and talk about normal things. No, I don’t suppose you’d ever do a thing like that. When was the last time you saw a Broadway show?”
“Nineteen-seventeen,” I answered. “Over There with George M. Cohan, writing, starring, producing. I had a heck of a good time.” Snatches of the conversation between Linda and Big John Amelia were running through my head. I got a flash of Eric Durning as he raised his leg and stepped off the ledge.
“Smartass,” Cindy said, swinging her legs off the bed. “But that’s good. Shows you’re getting better. Soon you’ll be able to sit up and take nourishment. I’d like to stay and hold your hand but Achmed downstairs will have a fit if I don’t get back on time. About the ...”
I had taken up an hour of Cindy’s life and after all she was in business.
“I got plenty,” I told her. “Just take what you want. I owe you for a couple of times.”
“You know what I charge and that’s what I’ll take,” Cindy said, her hillbilly pride asserting itself. “Today and the other two times, that comes to sixty. That okay with you?”
While she was getting dressed I had an idea. “Why don’t you call down and tell the Turk you have to get your driver’s license renewed and there’s a long line. What’s your hurry anyway?”
“Very funny,” she said, grinning at me as she combed her thick hair back in place, and fixed it there. “A minute ago you couldn’t keep it hard, now you want to go again. You men!” She tugged down her skirt and straightened the rose on her blouse. “Do I look all right?” She knew she looked better than that.
“Good enough to eat,” I said heartily, and meaning every word. “You sure you don’t want to change your mind?”
Cindy shook her head. She hooked on the side, but waitressing was her profession. As long as she kept her job and did it well she remained respectable. “If you’re still here when I get off I’ll give you a call.”
And then she was gone—and I still hadn’t found the Jannssen girl.
I wasn’t there when she got off at four o’clock. I was out buying a late edition of the New York Post. Eric Durning shared the front page with Pope Paul. They were both dead and got about the same amount of space. MOVIE PRODUCER A SUICIDE the headline blared and right under it was a photograph of Durning looking extremely glum. It looked like the paper had gotten it from the mug files of the NYPD. The story described Durning as a producer of erotic films and a well-known figure in the Broadway area. It didn’t say he was a pimp but the arrest of several years before was mentioned. If you didn’t know about the real Eric Durning you might even think he was important. The story said he had a wife in Mineola, and two grown children. Interviewed after the tragedy, Durning’s personal secretary, Miss Alicia Nieman—so that was her name—said Mr. Durning was the nicest man she had ever worked for.
“Business worries drove him to it,” said Miss Nieman. “Of that I’m certain.” Asked to elaborate, Miss Nieman said, “It’s not up to me to discuss Mr. Durning’s private affairs. All I can say is Mr. Durning’s death is a personal loss to all who knew and loved him.”
I wasn’t mentioned in the dispatches, though of course I had no way of knowing what Miss Nieman might have told the police. One thing I liked about the story was that there was no suggestion that Durning’s death was anything but a suicide. Hundreds of people had seen him on the ledge, watched while he made up his mind, had seen him step off.
I liked that part because it meant the cops wouldn’t be watching his office too closely, if at all. Durning was gone and the cops would be glad. One down, a million more to go, would be the cops’ way of looking at it. They would think the same of me if I took a dive. Anything to get a potential troublemaker off the books and into the ground. Sensible.
I had to get inside Durning’s office because I felt that he was still the key to the whole thing. He was the producer and he was making the arrangements. I wondered about Mr. Zimmer and his shipment of French Revolution costumes. I still had his number and I called him again.
He was still mad about something; maybe he was mad all the time. “Yes, yes, young man, what is it?” I heard the hissing of a steam presser going full blast.
“It’s about Mr. Durning’s order. I already called you about it today. I guess you heard.”
“I heard about it, God rest his soul. Poor schmuck.” Old man Zimmer didn’t sound too broken up about Eric’s passing. “Who is this—O’Shay? You want to know about the order? What’s to know about it? Don’t you people ever get together? Somebody else called and is going to pick it up.”
“Oh sure,” I said, “that would be Miss Johnson from the ...”
“Listen, O’Shay,” Mr. Zimmer said abruptly. “You want any more information you ask your own people. You work there, don’t you? Or maybe you don’t.”
The old man hung up on me and I knew I wasn’t going to get any more information at that end. I called information and asked for a new listing in Brooklyn, the Cort Studios in Coney Island. I figured they would keep the old name for no particular reason except that the old dump already had a name.
The operator got back to me. Yes, there was a new number but it was unlisted. I told her I was Mr. Saul Bregman from Hollywood, California, and it was imperative that I get the number right away. But the star-struck days are over, I guess. She was more polite than she would have been to Peter Michael Shay, but she still wouldn’t give me the number.
That was all right. I didn’t really need the number. What interested me was that they were going right ahead. Eric Durning was dead but the show must go on. Whatever it was.
I took a walk over to Durning’s office building and looked at the damp place on the sidewalk where some maintenance man had been busy with a hose and industrial soap. Such is life: ashes to ashes, suds to suds.
There were no cops hanging around that I could see, and I went into the lobby of the building and called Durning’s office. If a cop answers, hang up. Nobody answered, cop or otherwise, but I let it ring for a long time. I waited for five minutes and called again. There was still no answer but that didn’t mean there wasn’t somebody up there in Durning’s office waiting for me. Miss Nieman might have interested the cops in my comings and goings. She might have an uncle who was a cop. Sometimes things are as simple as that in this usually complex world. They could be up there waiting for me, up there in the silent office with the door locked and the lights turned off. If the cops were up there I could expect to do some jail time for breaking and entering. I had no clout at headquarters, none at all, and they would hit me with every charge they could think of, and if it came to the attention of the court that I had driven poor Eric to his death, I could expect a nice jolt from the judge. I already had an old yellow sheet because of the two teenage arrests. Old though it was, they would dig it out and make me look like Dillinger.
So much for the cops. It would be much more serious if some of the wise boys were up there. I could expect to do a little dancing before the party came to an end. It would be the kind of party that I definitely wouldn’t enjoy. There was still time to walk away from the whole thing, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Maybe if Linda hadn’t come on so strong with her advice I might have quit there and then. I’m not that brave and I sincerely didn’t want to have a hassle with the cops or the robbers.
I was taking big risks for small bucks and still I was ready to go on with it.
What really bugged me was the fact that I might be taking a big risk for nothing. There might be nothing in Durning’s office for me to find. And if I did find something I might not even know what it was. You have to know what you’re looking for, and I wasn’t at all sure.
I began to sweat, but I still thought it was worth the risk.
Chapter Eight
I WAS SWEATING even harder when I got upstairs and walked down the hallway to Durning’s office. The building was tall and narrow and old, with only a few offices on each floor. It was one of those seedy New York buildings where offices rent by the money and the sign painter is kept busy all the time. One door was marked FAR EASTERN NOVELTIES, another was some kind of matrimonial service. I knocked on both doors and didn’t get an answer. It wasn’t so very different from the building where I had my own office.
