Even the Butler Was Poor (5 page)

"Save the sales pitch, old buddy, since you won't have to audition at all," the advertising executive assured him. "You've got the job if you want it. I still, you know, remember that impressive job you did as the baby's bottom on the DynaDiaper commercial a couple years ago. Don't know why we haven't been using you more often. One reason, I suppose, is that you've been so damn busy of late. I'd better ask you right now if you're free tomorrow at two. We're, as usual, running about a week late on taping these things. Can you make it?"

"Two tomorrow afternoon, huh?" He glanced up at the buff-colored ceiling high above him. "I'm flipping through my appointment book, Les. Nope, that's clear with me. I'll phone Elsie and have her talk to you about fees and contracts and such."

"Elsie Macklin," said Beaujack without a trace of enthusiasm. "Very aggressive little agent. Sure, tell her to get in touch. Meantime, old buddy, I'll be Fed-Exing you copies of the scripts."

"Okay, that'll be fine."

"We'll be expecting you at the agency in Manhattan tomorrow at two. And, listen, if this session goes well—as I'm damn certain it will—there'll be a lot more work for you. See you." He hung up.

Ben put down the phone and swung out of bed. "Fame and fortune continue to rain down on the personable, if a bit pudgy, Ben Spanner," he said aloud in his pompous anchorman voice. "He, according to latest reports, remains the same lovable chap he always was."

Ben trotted down across the dew-stained half acre of green lawn that fronted his home. After checking inside his bright silvery mailbox, he crouched and began scanning the underbrush around the box pole. After a moment he spotted his morning copy of the Brimstone Pilot lying among some plants that might be weeds.

Seating himself on the large decorative rock next to his drive, he began leafing through the newspaper. On page five he located the story—
Murder at the Mali
. After glancing back at his pink house, where H.J. was apparently still sound asleep, he began to read the account.

Rick Dell was indeed dead and gone. He'd been beaten and tortured, but the apparent cause of death was several knife wounds in the chest. He'd parked his car on an upper level lot and come into the mall. The police had no suspects at the moment, nor a motive. They were, however, extremely anxious to locate and question a witness who they believed might be involved in some way. She was a young woman described as "a stunning red-haired beauty."

Ben glanced toward his house again. "Stunning? Stunning?" he mused in his Sylvester the Cat voice. "Yes, I suppose you could say she is."

"You'll get piles sitting on cold stone like that."

"Good, since I've always wanted to have piles. But my parents claimed we were too poor to afford them." He stood up, grinned, then sat down again. "Morning, Joe."

Joe Sankowitz was a lean, dark man of about forty, decked out this morning in a faded grey running suit. A successful magazine cartoonist, he lived a mile and three-quarters downhill from Ben. "Want to join me for the rest of my five-mile run?"

"No, actually I'd rather sit here and brood."

His friend studied him. "You look as though you've been up most of the night. Trouble plaguing you?"

Ben answered, "Plague is an apt word. Yeah, I feel pretty much like some great incurable pestilence has commenced sweeping across me."

"Can you give me the details in two minutes or less? I don't like to halt my running longer than that," said Sankowitz. "Or do you want to have lunch and tell me then?"

"By noon I'll be in Long Island."

"That bad, huh?" Sankowitz sat down beside him on the big rock. "Okay, so tell me now."

"It all began last night while I was in my kitchen contemplating chicken curry."

"I told you you ought to become a vegetarian."

"Anyhow, this is what happened . . ." He gave Sankowitz, one of the few friends he could confide just about anything to, a fairly thorough account of the unexpected reappearance of H.J. Mavity in his life, including what H.J. had told him about the death of Rick Dell, the dying message, the attempt to run them down with a Mercedes, and assorted other details.

Sankowitz stood up at the end of the account, massaging his left knee thoughtfully. Finally he said, "Do you want some advice?"

"I'm afraid it's too late for advice."

"Your first go-round with H.J.—ten years that one lasted, right?—that encounter caused you considerable grief," the cartoonist reminded him. "It's been my experience—and keep in mind you're talking to a man who's on his third wife and his twenty-second or twenty-third mistress—it's been my experience that resuming relations with a lady who caused you grief in the past in almost always guaranteed to cause you grief in the present."

"Yeah, I've been thinking along similar lines, Joe. But the problem is that . . . Oops."

The front door of the house had opened and H.J., dressed in a sedate grey suit, appeared. She waved at them, pointed at her wristwatch, pantomimed that it was time for breakfast and then a trip across the Long Island Sound.

"A gifted mime," observed Sankowitz. "And she is sort of stunning." Smiling sympathetically at Ben, he resumed his running.

T
he late-morning air was warm and clear, the husky white ferry boat was moving smoothly across the cairn blue waters of the Sound.

Ben and H.J. were sharing a white bench on the open upper deck of the boat. There were about forty or so other passengers on deck, some of them sitting on the rows of benches, others at the railings.

"How about that guy over there with the tweed cap?" asked H.J. close to his ear.

Casually he turned to take a look at the man at the nearby railing. "Naw, he's with that fat lady."

"He's been watching us. I was afraid he might be a thug."

"He's been watching you actually. Maybe you shouldn't sit with your legs crossed like that."

"Jesus, Ben, I look absolutely prim in this outfit."

"Prim yet stunning."

"I didn't write that halfwit newspaper story."

"I'm nearly certain," he told her, "nobody followed us from my place to Bridgeport, or onto this boat."

Shivering slightly, she took hold of his arm. "Maybe I am getting sort of paranoid over this mess. Seeing potential crooks everywhere."

"Crooks quit wearing tweed caps in about 1940."

She gave a small, fretful sigh. "I'm glad you didn't let me down," she said, tightening the pressure on his arm. "I really don't think I could have made this damn trip all on my own."

"Neither one of us has to go through with it, H.J. We can forget Buggsy, have lunch in Port Jefferson and catch the next boat back."

"No, I want to go at least as far as visiting McAuliffe and his dummy."

He leaned back, watching a scatter of bright white gulls circle high up in the morning sky.

H.J. inquired, "By the way, who was it that phoned early this morning? Candy perhaps?"

"I doubt I'll be hearing from her for a spell," he answered. "No, it was Les Beaujack. He's a VP at the Lenzer, Moon & Lombard Ad Agency and they want me for some My Man Chumley radio spots."

"Is that good?"

"Sure, since LM&L is one of the top advertising agencies. The Chumley account alone currently bills about $75,000,000 a year." He nodded, smiling. "They'll pay me a handsome fee—or at least a good-looking one."

"Lenzer, Moon & Lombard," she said slowly, frowning thoughtfully. "Trinity Winters works for them, doesn't she?"

"Yes. She appears in all the television commercials and print ads for Crazed perfume." He switched to a sultry-voice. "I'm crazed with love . . . and in love with Crazed."

"Rick dated her."

"Rick Dell dated one of the top actress/models in New York?"

"For a while. I don't have all the sleazy details, but he flaunted her name to me more than once."

"He was seeing you and Trinity Winters at the same time?"

"Apparently."

"I'm impressed. Two stunning women simultaneously."

"Screw you," she remarked, letting go of his arm. "You still don't appreciate what an attractive person I am. That's why, during the seemingly endless years we were married, you undervalued just about everything about me."

"Our truce," he reminded.

"Well, you started it this time." H.J. uncrossed her legs, recrossed them. "Is it kind of strange, do you think, that the same agency that uses Rick's ladyfriend is also anxious to hire you?"

"Just a coincidence, H.J. I mean, if he'd been dating a woman who was an editor at Bantam Books and they offered you a cover, it wouldn't mean—"

"Yes, I suppose it is only a coincidence."

"LM&L has two dozen major advertising accounts, which means they hire a lot of talent each and every day," he said. "And I've worked for Beaujack before. So it isn't as though this were the first time they called me in to do some voice work."

"What did you do for them before?"

"Oh, just a voice for an animated cartoon spot."

"What product? Maybe I saw it."

"I doubt it's something you'd pay much attention to. It's DynaDiapers and—"

"Oh, that's the one where the little baby's rear end carries on a conversation with the paper diaper. They have a witty discussion about how ordinary paper diapers can cause itching and such. That one?"

"That's it." He looked out to sea.

"Which voice were you?"

"I played the rough, red baby bottom."

Laughing quietly, she took hold of his arm again. "That was a very cute voice," she said. "And very appropriate casting."

He worked free of her, stood and crossed the mildly swaying deck to the rail. The boat was drawing close to Long Island.

"T
urn left just before the crest of this hill," instructed H.J.

Hunched slightly, Ben was behind the wheel of his car. The auto had traveled across the Sound on the ferry with them. "Nobody is trailing us," he assured her yet again. "You don't have to sit all scrunched up like that."

"It's best to take no chances." Knees tucked under her, she was keeping watch of the street behind them.

He executed the left turn. "I noticed a wide assortment of restaurants in Port Jefferson, during the brief time we were there."

"Tourist traps."

"Even so, we could've stopped for lunch."

"We'll eat after we see the ventriloquist."

The Street they were driving down pointed toward the small harbor about a mile away, and was lined with trees and large old houses. Two- and three-story wooden ones, some trimmed in intricate gingerbread, sitting on quarter- and half-acre lots.

"There are probably even some dandy seafood places right here in Coldport."

H.J. untangled her long legs, settled into a new position on the passenger seat and frowned at him. "You're not going to distract or dissuade me, or any combination of the above," she told him firmly. "I'm going to talk to McAuliffe and I'm going to dismantle his damn dummy if need be."

"I've been thinking again about Rick Dell," he said. "They treated him pretty rough."

"I already know that, since he died right on top of me."

"If you get hold of whatever it was he had then they're sure as hell going to treat you rough, too."

"That's one of the risks, sure. Turn right after we pass that godawful mustard-colored saltbox house."

Ben did and they entered a cul-de-sac. At its end rose a narrow, three-story Victorian house, still vaguely white and rich with carved trimming, spires and cupolas. The sea wind had been working at it for over a century, rubbing away much of the paint, twisting the multitude of dark shutters askew, trying to pull the rusted weathercock from its high perch.

The wide front yard consisted of foot-high grass in which lurked a cast-iron elk, the remains of a tandem bicycle, a marble fountain topped by a tottering sea nymph, the weather-beaten and possibly female figurehead off a sailing ship, and the ramshackle skeleton of a small gazebo.

"That's the Coldport Actors Retirement Home." H.J. gestured at it.

"I figured as much." He parked a few dozen feet from the sprung wrought-iron front gate.

"Let me do the talking." She left the car, gracefully and swiftly.

"Same ground rules as our marriage." He followed at a less enthusiastic pace than hers.

"You can be a sourball at times."

They started up through the overgrown lawn, following the remains of a path made of cracked and disordered flagstones. H.J. hurried up the swayback front steps, poking at the doorbell with a forefinger.

Far off inside the giant old house a buzzer made a faint choking sound. After a moment, footsteps could be heard. The oaken door rattled, creaked, swung open inward.

"Well, my goodness, it's Helen. Nice to see you, dear, though under the circumstances, you'll excuse me if I'm not my usual jolly self." The manager of the home, a tall, plump woman of about seventy had opened the door. She had fluffy hair the color of brand new cotton and wore a pale green pantsuit.