Getting Up With Fleas (Trace 7) (2 page)

Think about a squirrel. You know how they are. They freeze in one place, look around, do whatever the hell it is squirrels do, then race five feet away and do it all over again.

Now you have a picture of Groucho.

Groucho is Walter Marks and he is the vice president for claims of the Garrison Fidelity Insurance Company. Back in the blessed days when my only income was what I got investigating claims for Garrison Fidelity, I guess you could call him my boss. Now he was just another client for the far-flung Tracy and Associates Detective Agency. Sounds impressive, doesn’t it? Tracy and Associates. Until you find out it’s a retired cop (my father), a drunk (me), and a homicidal maniac (Chico).

Groucho wasn’t crazy about the change from employer to client because it meant that he could no longer fire me. The truth, though, is he couldn’t fire me even when I was a claims investigator. He and I both knew that I had the job because Robert Swenson, the president of the company, is my friend and wouldn’t let me be fired. Also, even if I am a little dopey, somehow I get things figured out—usually thanks to Chico—so I’ve saved the company a lot of money over the past few years.

Back to squirrels. That’s the way Marks moved. He would sit behind his desk, look around as if he was always surprised to see you there, and then there’d be a wild flurry of activity on his desk, like shuffle papers or something. Then he’d get up and run across the room, pause, look around, and then, arms flying, he’d do it all over again.

Now, as a characteristic, this isn’t so bad—I’ve known women who floss their teeth in restaurants—but what was wrong was that Marks never really accomplished anything. You can forgive this in a squirrel, since they don’t have anything to do anyway, but I couldn’t forgive it in Marks. Actually, I couldn’t forgive anything in Marks.

At any rate, there I was in his office and he’s running around, from here to there, stopping and sniffing the air for walnuts or something, then running someplace else. And he’s talking. Yap, yap, yap, yap. And he’s little, like a squirrel.

“So it’s got all the potential for a disaster,” he said.

“What does?”

“What we’re talking about. Have you heard a word I said, Trace?”

Actually, I hadn’t paid a lot of attention to what he was talking about. What I was interested in was this big stack of supermarket newspapers on his desk, you know,
The Globe
and
Midnight
and
The Enquirer
and like that. The top one that I could see had a headline that said:

NEVER WORK AGAIN. THE AMAZING, SECRET FORMULA FOR AMASSING WEALTH WHILE YOU SLEEP.

It was one of those headlines that you’re supposed to shout out loud when you read it.

“Of course I’ve been listening to you,” I said. “It has all the potential for disaster. I remember you saying that.”

“Trace, do you want coffee?”

“No.”

“You look like you need coffee,” he said.

“How does a person look when he needs coffee?”

“Drunk. Eyes bloodshot and rolling back in his head. Spit dribbling down the side of his mouth, dropping onto his suit. The way you look. Have some coffee,” he said, then ran across the floor to his desk, picked up the phone, and told his secretary to bring in two black coffees.

I didn’t think he would appreciate it if I told him to lace mine with vodka. I decided I’d drink it raw. But I wouldn’t like it. He couldn’t make me like it.

We waited for his secretary and I had a chance to reflect on the fact that Walter Marks was the singular most uninteresting human being I had ever met. I could not remember his ever saying one thing that was even mildly informative, entertaining, or interesting. His clothes were dull, always three-piece navy-blue suits, and his shoes were shined, thick-soled, and practical. Even his haircut was uninteresting, smooth and neatly polished and not a hair out of place, and his fingers were always clean and his fly was always zipped. He always had socks on. He never had a flask in one of his pockets. He had average skin and some average-color eyes that I don’t really recall, and the only thing unusual about him what was that he was short, real short. Minute might be the right word.

His secretary brought in the coffee. Half of it was spilled in the saucers. He sipped his and I asked him, “Why are you reading all these newspapers?”

“That’s what I’ve been telling you. All our trouble’s in there.”

“I don’t know. I think ‘Never work again. The amazing, secret formula for amassing wealth while you sleep’ isn’t such a bad idea.”

He looked confused. He often did that. No movement, just a puzzled look in his eyes. He set down his coffeecup and grabbed the top paper off the pile.

“That’s not the story we’re interested in. This is the one.” He rapped on the front page of the paper a half-dozen times in quick succession: rap, rap, rap, rap, rap, rap. I was getting a headache. I wondered if squirrels had any natural predators. Owls, I guessed, and eagles, and I wished I was an owl or an eagle.

He stopped rapping and moved his finger so I could see the front page of the paper.

There was a picture of this movie actor, Tony McCue, on the front page. He had a look on his face that I had seen many times before, usually when shaving, the look of a man who is totally shit-faced from the booze.

The headline under the picture read:

TONY MCCUE PLAYS WILLIAM TELL?
Hollywood Hero has Stuntman Shoot Apples from Head

I leaned over to look at the paper, but Groucho said, “You don’t have to read the story. The headline tells it all.” He grabbed another paper. “And look at this one: ‘Tony McCue dives off hotel balcony into pool.’ And this one: ‘Actor tries to slide down mountain on cafeteria tray.’”

He flipped through some pages. “It says the dumb bastard wants to start the Anthony McCue Downhill Slide Memorial Competition. Here’s another one. ‘That girl at McCue’s side is his psychiatrist.’ He travels with a shrink, for God’s sake. Listen. ‘Tony McCue beaten up in redneck bar. Slugs drunk with champagne bottle.’”

Groucho dropped the papers, put his head into his hands, and looked down. He didn’t have a bald spot and I thought that was nice because a bald spot would have ruined the perfect dull symmetry of Walter Marks.

“Why me, God?” he said.

I fished around in the stack of papers.

“Here’s a good one,” I said. “‘Tony McCue drinks bottle of booze at bottom of hotel pool.’ “

“This man is a menace,” Marks said.

“I don’t know. He sounds like my kind of guy.”

“Wonderful,” Marks said. He looked up and smiled. “Just what I wanted to hear.”

“What?” I’ve learned always to be suspicious when Groucho says something is wonderful. That usually means it’s good for him and awful for me, and I wasn’t put on earth to make things good for him and if God wanted things awful for me, he would have made me Iranian.

“I said wonderful,” he explained. “You like him so much, he’s yours.”

“You’d better explain this to me,” I said. “Slowly.”

“Drink your coffee,” he said. “Tony McCue is ready to begin filming a movie in upstate New York. Some kind of mystery. What we have done is to write a six-million-dollar insurance policy on his life with the producers as beneficiaries. The movie will take two months to shoot and we have to keep him alive for two months. That’s your job.”

“Not a chance.”

“Why not?”

“Because I was in upstate New York once. I came down with pneumonia and I got bitten by a catfish. I’m not spending two months there, not for you, not for Garrison Fidelity, not for Tony McCue, not for a Hollywood producer, not for the history of cinema as we know it in our lifetime.”

“You’re jumping to conclusions, Trace,” he said.

“It’s how I get my exercise. That way and moving quickly out of the path of people, like you, who wish me ill.”

“I have never met a person who takes the offer of a paid job as such a personal affront,” Groucho said.

“Don’t deny that you hate me and want me dead,” I said.

“Have you ever thought of getting professional help, Trace? You’re a paranoid.”

“Just because I’m a paranoid doesn’t mean that you’re
not
trying to have me killed.”

“Look. Try to concentrate. Drink your coffee. I am not trying to have you killed. I want you to go to this town…” He looked at a sheet of paper on his desk, “Canestoga Falls. I want you to hang out for ten days, two weeks. See what’s going on. See what kind of shape this lunatic McCue is in. Keep him alive. Don’t let him kill himself. If he’s okay, you come back. If he’s real nuts and self-destructive, you let me know and I’ll make arrangements to send other people up there to watch him.”

“You have zookeepers on your payroll?” I asked.

“No. But I can hire them somewhere, and a hell of a lot cheaper than I can hire you for.”

“I don’t have to stay up there for the whole two months?” I said.

“No.”

“I want four hundred a day plus expenses.”

“Fine,” Marks said.

“Fine? You say fine? You’ve bitched and complained and cheated me out of every legitimate cent I ever spent on expenses and now you’re telling me, just like that, fine, for four hundred dollars a day, fine? You’re saying that?”

“Yes.”

“You’re up to something. Why pay me four hundred dollars a day when you can hire keepers for less than that?”

“Because, while you don’t know it—and, of course, being a paranoid schizophrenic with a drinking problem, you would not believe it—I have great respect for you, Trace.”

“You’re right, I don’t believe it.”

“Well, I do. I find you an insufferable waste of flesh and blood as a human being, but you have a certain native cunning in matters like this that would enable you to see dangers and pitfalls that might elude a normal person,” he said.

“See? And here you thought it was never any good being a paranoid. Of course, I see dangers and pitfalls. The world is filled with them. How about the men’s room at O’Hare Airport?”

“I suppose in some way that’s logical to you,” Marks said. He got up and ran across the room. He stopped, smelled the air, waved his arms around, and pulled some papers from on top of a file cabinet. I wished I had a BB gun.

“How’d you get involved in a deal like this?” I asked. “Insuring this lunatic?”

“Big premium, little risk.” He sounded dejected as he added, “I thought.”

“Then you found out exactly what you were insuring,” I said.

“That’s right.”

“You should have canceled the policy,” I said. “You do it with widows and orphans all the time.”

“Mr. Swenson refused to do that,” Marks said.

Swenson, as I said, was the president of Garrison Fidelity and a sometime friend of mine. If I ever thought that
I
made Walter Marks crazy, Robert Swenson sent him over the edge because he ran the insurance company on wish and whimsy with a large dollop of hang over mixed in. I think his last coup in the industry was pioneering life insurance for heavy smokers.

A lot of things suddenly came clear.

“So you’re only doing this because Bob Swenson told you to?” I said.

“That’s right. But I’m prepared to stand by the decision as mine,” he said.

“Very noble. And I gather that’s why you’ve offered me this job too. Because Swenson ordered you to.”

“Ordered is a strong word. He suggested that you might have a certain special ability in dealing with people like Tony McCue.”

“It’s a compliment,” I said. “Repeat it to me. I love to hear compliments from your lips.”

“Actually, he said, ‘Set a drunk to catch a drunk.’”

“I’ll ignore that because I don’t believe it,” I said. “And that’s why you didn’t argue about my fee. He told you to pay me whatever I want.”

I had him, and he didn’t answer. Instead, he turned his back and pretended to be looking through the file cabinet.

“In that case, I want five hundred a day. Plus expenses.”

He turned and shouted. “That’s robbery.”

“It’s business, Groucho. I’m a very busy partner in a fast-growing private detective agency. It’s going to be tough to fit you into our work schedule as it is.”

He surrendered faster than I’d ever seen him surrender. “All right,” he shouted. “All right. Five hundred a day. And don’t call me Groucho.”

“Plus expenses.”

He spun around. “And you itemize those expenses. Itemize every penny of them or you don’t get them. We’re not running a charity ward here or some big petty-cash fund that you can dip into anytime you want. You have to itemize, do you hear me?”

“I hear you. I’ll itemize. I promise. Every penny. Every parking receipt. Everything, Walter, everything.” I nodded earnestly. It’s good sometimes to let people save face, even if it was a face like Groucho’s. My father always told me that. He said, Give the guy a graceful way to surrender. It’s like if you’re in a saloon fight and the other guy is down; you don’t want to stand over him shouting at him because, as sure as God made insurance swindlers, the guy’s going to get up and hit you with a chair. Instead, you help him up and let him know how sorry you are and it was a lucky punch and you feel terrible and the next time it would have been a far different story and you feared for your life in front of his mighty wrath and like that, and so the guy walks away feeling better and he doesn’t try to get lucky with a chair.

“I won’t expect a penny for any expenses I don’t itemize,” I said.

He nodded and I walked toward the door. “I can see myself out if you’re finished, Walter.”

“I wish you would. My secretary has all the data at her desk in an envelope.”

“One question, though,” I said.

Groucho ran back to his desk, stopped, wiggled his cheeks, and sat down.

“Yes.”

“Why is Bob Swenson taking a personal interest in insuring this McCue nut?”

“I don’t think his reasons are any business of yours. Or mine.”

“Okay, fine,” I said. That meant he didn’t know why Swenson wanted to insure the star of some movie against cutting his own wrists and using his arteries to hang himself. Groucho was one of those people who, if he knew something, couldn’t resist showing off that he knew it.