Understudy for Death Read online

  “That’s no indication that she’s a lush. Maybe she just likes gin.”

  “There’s worse lushes around here, I got to give her that,” Mel confided darkly, and went back to work.

  The lounge was crowded now; the air-conditioned air smelled like an evenly mixed combination of gin and perfume. For south Florida, the women were dressed rather formally, either in evening or dressy cocktail gowns, and several were wearing gloves. In Birmingham or Atlanta, they would have all worn hats, but they were hatless here, their hairdos fixed in place with home spraying outfits. (I’d killed a fly on the window once with a can of hair spray, and didn’t realize it until the fly turned a lacquered black, with overtones of gold…)

  I left the bar and searched for Mrs. Scott, the publicity chairman, wondering if she still held that office. For some reason, the women’s auxiliary held new elections at least every three months, and it was almost impossible to keep up with current officeholders. I found Mrs. Scott and four more women in the television room, where they had trapped Dr. Seeney. His face was red. There was a drink in his hand, and he seemed to be enjoying the attention he was getting. I took Mrs. Scott’s arm, tugged her away from the group.

  “Honestly, Mr. Hudson,” she apologized guiltily, “I really intended to call you earlier, but I simply forgot.”

  “I had the lecture date circled on my calendar. Forget it.”

  “And I’ve got another confession…” She took a typewritten list of names from her beaded handbag and gave it to me. “I just don’t know who-all is here and who won’t show up. So what I did was type a list of all the members in the club. I didn’t know what else to do!” Her earnest, brown eyes popped with well-feigned helplessness.

  “That’s fine, Mrs. Scott.” I put the list away inside my jacket. “This will be our little secret. I’ll put them all down as being present for the lecture. That is, unless you think some of the ladies would object to having their names in the story?”

  “Oh, goodness, no!” She laughed, evidently pleased with her subterfuge that had worked. She may not have known it, but every publicity chairman did the same thing on women’s activities of any size.

  “Do you think, Mrs. Scott, I could talk to Dr. Seeney for a couple of minutes alone?” Mrs. Scott put a forefinger in her mouth, looked about nervously. “We could go into the men’s room,” I suggested, as she hesitated.

  “Oh, no, you don’t have to do that! I’ll get rid of the girls and stand guard duty outside the door for you.”

  “Beyond a doubt, Mrs. Scott, you’re the best publicity chairman the club has ever had.” Flushing with pleasure, Mrs. Scott introduced me to Dr. Raymond Seeney, and then shooed the women out of the door, closing it behind her.

  “I’m always happy to talk to members of the fourth estate,” Dr. Seeney said pompously, now that we were alone. “But we don’t have much time now,” he added, looking at his wristwatch. “I’m due to speak in ten minutes. I’m sorry you didn’t come over to my hotel this afternoon—”

  “Don’t worry, Doctor. These affairs always start late. It’ll take Mrs. Barnes another twenty minutes or so to peel them off the bar. I just wanted to check a couple of things with you. I already have the all-important local angle; a list of names. Now, you spoke in Orlando day before yesterday, and I’d like to know if you’re using the same subject tonight?”

  “Yes, I am,” he said firmly, teetering back on his heels. “And it’s a valid topic for today’s modern mother. ‘Psychology and the Family’ is the title of my—”

  “Well, thanks Doctor Seeney. I guess that’s about all I need.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t understand. Don’t you want to know any of my qualifications, something about my background in the field?”

  “All that stuff was covered by the Courtney Lecture Bureau handout, Doctor.”

  “I see. What about pictures?”

  “They sent us a mat for a one-column cut. You must be new on the circuit, Dr. Seeney. You are only getting one hundred and fifty bucks for your lecture, and at that price, they send a one-column cut. If you were a five-hundred dollar expert, they’d have sent us a two-column cut. A bigwig, like Bennett Cerf, for instance, gets a truly big play; and we send a staff photographer to take his picture getting out of the plane. But he’s a fifteen-hundred dollar man.”

  The lecturer laughed. “We’re all classified, eh?”

  “Yes, sir. Sorry if I hurt your feelings.”

  “No, no, not at all. You surprised me, however. I’m certain you’ll enjoy my little talk, though, Mr. Hudson.”

  “I wish I had the time to stick around and listen to it, too.” I stuck out my hand. “But I’ve got other things to do, I’m afraid.”

  He pouted slightly and reluctantly shook my hand. “How are you going to report my lecture if you don’t hear it? Answer me that!”

  “I don’t mind telling you, but you’re a trifle sensitive, Doctor.”

  “I am like hell sensitive!” he growled.

  “Makes no difference to me.” I shrugged. “Here in Florida, like any other state, the News-Press exchanges papers with the other state papers through the mail. A reporter in Orlando covered your lecture day before yesterday, and I got the Orlando paper today. So all I have to do is change the date and place of lecture, and the story’s written for me. At the bottom—” I patted my breast pocket “—I add the names of the women here tonight, and that’s thirty, Doc.”

  “That’s a damned slipshod way of writing a news story!” he said forcefully.

  I smiled pleasantly. “I don’t tell you how to lecture; what gives you the right to tell me how to write news?”

  “For one thing, your opinion of my talk may be different from the Orlando reporter’s. To simply parrot what he says—”

  I laughed and cut him off. “It so happens that the reporter in Orlando doesn’t have an opinion either. He rewrites his story from the Tallahassee newspaper where you talked to the F.S.U. students. And nobody really gives a damn about what you say here tonight, anyway, if you want the truth of the matter. That cackle of women out there will check the paper to see if their name is listed, and to see if it’s spelled correctly; but very few people in town will read the story with any interest. As a Doctor of Philosophy, you should take such things philosophically.”

  Dr. Seeney exploded with a burst of phlegmy laughter. “You’re getting through to me at last, Mr. Hudson! How would you like to join me in a drink? Or do you have to wait for a decision to filter down through Orlando?”

  “Some other time, but thanks.” We shook hands again. “And I hope they send us at least a two-column cut before you come down this way again.”

  “So do I, by God!”

  The lounge was emptying quickly, although some of the women carried their drinks with them into the auditorium. Mrs. Barnes, the club president, bustled about officiously, her neat brown moustache limp with sweat, as she coaxed the women out of the lounge. The two waiters were wandering around the room collecting glasses and emptying ashtrays into a pink garbage can. I sat down at the bar and ordered a double-bourbon.

  “I missed Mrs. Chatham,” I said to Mel, “and I wanted to talk to her before the lecture started.”

  “She’ll be back in a minute.” Mel winked. “I told her you wanted to talk to her, and she thanked me for the excuse.”

  “What do you mean? Excuse.”

  “Stick around. You’ll see.” Mel began to pare some lemons for the after-lecture bar rush.

  Within two minutes the auditorium door opened; and Mrs. Chatham tripped smilingly into the lounge and came directly to the bar. “Did I forget and leave my purse on the bar, Mel?” Mrs. Chatham had a lovely voice, with an alto huskiness that suggested an ability to sing those thousands of songs all about losing a man for one reason or another.

  “No, Ma’am.” Mel shook his head. “You left it with me to hold for you.” He brought the purse from its hiding place, and placed it on the bar beside my elbow. “This is Mr. Hudson
, Mrs. Chatham, the reporter from the News-Press.” I took the two fingers of the gloved hand she extended, shook them, and then indicated the stool beside mine.

  “How do you do, Mrs. Chatham. Could I buy you a—” I put a finger to my nose, and looked at the ceiling as if in deep thought “—a double-martini, perhaps?”

  “How nice.” She hoisted herself onto the stool, and for a happy moment I thought her dress would split.

  “I know you’re anxious to learn about psychology and the family, Mrs. Chatham, but if you can spare me a minute or two, I’d like to talk to you about Mrs. Huneker. You were fairly close friends, weren’t you?”

  “To a certain extent, yes.” She smiled good-humoredly. “But two women, as you should know, can never really be close friends.”

  She half-turned, and I dodged back instinctively from her full bust. Her potent femininity made me a trifle nervous, and she gave off an exotic scent, a peculiar mixture of gin, tweed and night-blooming flowers. “This isn’t really the time and place to discuss the late Mrs. Huneker,” I said gravely. “And if it would be convenient, I’d prefer to talk to you privately at length. Tomorrow, or maybe the next day.”

  “Why?”

  “For one thing, her suicide has generated considerable local interest.”

  “For whom?”

  “My editor, for one. While people still remember her, I’m trying to learn why she did it. The readers might be interested.”

  “She left a note.” Mrs. Chatham accepted her drink, “Thanks, Mel.”

  “The note didn’t say very much, Mrs. Chatham,” I persisted. “A lot of people aren’t too happy about television, but they aren’t killing their children and themselves because of the programming.”

  “You’re a very serious young man.”

  “I’m nearly thirty.”

  “A serious young man.” She hurriedly drained her cocktail, and I marvelled that she could drink that much gin so swiftly.

  “Would you like another, Mrs. Chatham?”

  “Yes, but I’d better go inside. I’m with a couple of other girls this evening. It was nice meeting you, Mr. Hudson.” She extended the two gloved fingers.

  “What about—”

  “Drop by my house in the morning, but not before eleven. I don’t get up any earlier.”

  “Neither do I.”

  Mrs. Chatham may have been self-conscious about Mel and me watching her as she crossed toward the auditorium, because she hardly swung her hips. She only partially opened the door to slip through, and in profile, her breasts were unbelievably large.

  “I wonder, Mel, if she—”

  “In a lousy job like mine,” Mel said sourly, “it doesn’t pay to make any educated or uneducated guesses.”

  * * *

  Without embarrassing Mel by offering to pay for my drinks (I couldn’t pay for them without leaving a tip, and to tip an old friend would be an insult), I drove back to the office. I dug through the out-of-town newspapers to find the account of Dr. Seeney’s lecture. But I had had a change of heart, and I didn’t use the Orlando story after all. Too often lately, I had been taking the easy way, when it wasn’t really any more difficult to write the news story in my own blundering style.

  For three typed pages I gave Dr. Seeney a big build-up, making the trite things he was probably saying about Psychology and the Family sound as if they were new and exciting, and then I pasted the typewritten list of club members to the last sheet and turned the copy over to Harris. Dr. Seeney had seemed a decent sort, and it was no skin off my nose to give him an overblown build-up.

  I picked up my ringing phone, and took some notes from the secretary of the P.T.A. I wrote three paragraphs about the P.T.A. confab and put it in the slot.

  A new publicity man from the Toastmaster’s Club paid me a visit, and I took time out to brief him on the type of stuff we wanted.

  I looked over a few pamphlets about the TM’s that he left with me, found them interesting, and typed up three paragraphs about the aims of Toastmasters.

  The deadline was only fifteen minutes away, and there wasn’t anything that absolutely had to go in, so I called it a night. Carrying my jacket over my arm, I went down the rickety back stairs to the parking lot. For at least five minutes, vaguely depressed, I sat in my car smoking a cigarette.

  I left the lot and drove to the long parking area facing the lake, which was known locally as Smooch Park. I was an intruder at this place, parked all by myself among a dozen or so cars containing panting young lovers, but I wouldn’t be bothered here. A patrol car made the area every half-hour or so, but the Chief of Police had given his night patrols standing instructions to leave the couples alone—that is, unless they dismounted with a blanket and headed into the neighboring piney woods. Once I had asked the Chief about this hands-off policy, which wasn’t very popular among the fathers and mothers of teenaged daughters. “Iff’n young folks don’t have no place for experiments,” he told me, “they don’t never get married.” I considered the Chief’s doubly-negative approach to young love as rather refreshing, and in some ways, practical. In my high school days, I had done some experimenting at Smooch Park myself.

  And thinking back, I still remembered the humiliation of my first experiment, if I could call it an “experiment,” in first-hand biological knowledge. In retrospect, checking over the combination of all the various aspects of my initiation, it had been a nightmare all of the way around that could have turned me against sex forever. It had been a gang affair, which meant that I was surrounded by laughing watchers, all of them older than myself. And worse, being the youngest of the six boys I had been the last in line—except that I wasn’t in the line, nor did I get to watch the other five, peering in through the car windows as they took turns with the willing, nay, eager victim on the back seat. No, not me; I had been stationed up on the road as a guard, a lookout, to holler down to the gang at the car in the event of danger. And all of the time I stood by the road, conscientiously looking up and down, with the concentration of a thirteen-year-old boy assigned to hazardous duty, I was filled with anxiety, afraid that the bigger boys would give me my turn when it came. And I was also afraid I would not get a turn.

  My anxiety was valid enough. The girl in the back seat of the big black Buick, Gertrude Erdman, had learned through experience that she could receive a certain amount of cash for the very same act that made her so incredibly popular at Lake Springs High when she was putting it out free. Her charge was nominal, only twenty-five cents, but no matter how often I counted my change, as I stood guard duty on the road, my eighteen cents was still only eighteen cents.

  But I got my turn; I needn’t have worried. The others wouldn’t have missed their chance to watch my awkwardness, or to issue jeering advice, under any circumstances.

  The dim interior light glowed inside the car, as they pushed me into the back seat and slammed the door, encouraging me to perform feats in the art of love that would have taxed the powers of an immortal Greek God—and there sprawled Gertrude, in all of her unlovely adolescent pulchritude. She had taken off all of her clothes, of course, and even under the dim, ceiling light, it was possible to count every one of the ribs in her skinny, under-developed body. Her breasts were as hard, and every bit as large, as twin halves of a green orange. Her face was perspiring freely, and she had pushed back the dark bangs that ordinarily concealed the peppering of pimples and blackheads on her forehead. She knew that I was the cherry—she had picked literally dozens in Lake Springs High during the two semesters she had operated, both non-professionally and professionally— so she smiled at me first, exposing the golden braces on her front teeth, before holding out her hand.

  “Money first,” she said coyly, “or Gertrude doesn’t play.” I opened my damp fist, and dropped the moist coins into her hand. And sure enough, she counted it, squinting in the semi-darkness, as I held my breath. But to my astonishment, she said nothing; she merely dropped the change into her purse, which was on the floorboards. A good
many years had to pass before I learned that there were a lot of girls in this lousy world who used an open box as a means to obtain affection. But at the time I was merely grateful to her for not announcing my shortage to the others. It was bad enough as it was.

  “Go ahead and kiss her, Richard!” McNally advised. “You paid her.”

  Grinning weakly, I shook my head; the idea of kissing her appalled me. In my mind I could visualize a million germs and food particles on and behind the braces of her teeth.

  “Come on, Richard,” Gertrude said, spreading her skinny legs and leaning back, “let’s get it over with.”

  The watchers had merely been giggling before; they now laughed uproariously as I attempted, in my innocence, to fondle this frail fourteen-year-old. I was limp with fright.

  “Just make believe—Rich,” Gertrude whispered, hissing in my ear; because I had no idea of why they were laughing so hard. By the time I got this idea through my head, she had slumped down and grabbed me—and this was my undoing. The car seat received the full fruit of my eighteen-cent charge. To give Gertrude credit, however, who was certainly aware of the evidence, she played it through, saying nothing, and we pretended for the few moments the others expected the act to take, that everything was up and aboveboard. I was never certain later whether an actual penetration had taken place or not, but the witnesses thought so, and I kept my doubts to myself, naturally. Better to be hung as a goat than a sheep.…

  I lit a cigarette, wondering what had happened to Gertrude after she left Lake Springs. No one ever really knew where she went; she merely disappeared one day, and after the rumors went the rounds—“She got pregnant and had to leave,” “She went to Cuba to work in a house,” and other unsubstantiated speculations—her name never came up again in our conversations. Few who had the chance to get to her, and any boy in the school could have made the opportunity available, were completely free from shame—including myself; although I may be reading my own conscience into the others. But she was a girl for the dark places only; no boy in his right mind would be seen with her on the street or in any public place. My first experience with Gertrude was my last, but for weeks afterwards, every time I had a quarter in my pocket, the knowledge that she was available, that I could stop her in the halls at school at any time and make some clandestine arrangements for an assignation, thrilled me with an uneasy mixture of desire and overwhelming shame.