Lively Game of Death (15 page)

Any reluctance I’d felt that morning to seeing Ruth Goetz was nothing compared to the way I wanted to avoid telling Penny Saxon the news of Lasker’s death.

She was the only one home in the softly carpeted, five-and-a-half-room apartment; her mother was out shopping on Montague Street. The girl knew I was coming, because her father had phoned—at Scott’s insistence—to tell her to expect the visit of a “private investigator” from Trim-Tram. But the reason for my visit was still a mystery to her, because her father had chickened out from telling her about Lasker.

So it was up to me to break the news. I made it as brief and undetailed as I could. When I’d finished, I wondered whether she’d heard me, for, other than a momentary trembling of her lower lip, she kept her face expressionless.

Forced to stare at nothing in particular for several minutes, I was reminded of the equally uncomfortable silent session I’d spent earlier with Pete Jensen. This time, I was in a straight-backed dining-room chair, having declined the more comfortable living-room furniture—though the latter room is where we sat. Penny Saxon half-reclined on an avocado love seat, her legs tucked up underneath her.

It was difficult to study her objectively; visions of the photos in Lasker’s desk kept intruding. Yet she looked nothing like a tramp, nor did she resemble a casually promiscuous flower child.

Dressed in blue jeans and a simple, unfrilly, pale-blue blouse, she was diminutive, though not slight in build, being demonstrably distaff. Her dark hair, swept above her oval face, offset a complexion so fair as to be practically pallid—an effect that was heightened by the lack of lipstick on her broad mouth and the absence of artificial coloring on her pronounced cheekbones. I couldn’t call her pretty, yet the depth of melancholy experience in her heavily lidded eyes, though far from knowledgeably sensual, made Penny Saxon a fascinating girl to behold—perhaps because her feminine appeal was an attribute of which she seemed hardly aware.

We sat there without a word for five minutes. That may not sound so long unless you’ve timed it out. I would have started fidgeting, but she finally focused on me and, sensing my predicament, ended it by speaking.

“I’m afraid,” she smiled apologetically, “that I haven’t been a very pleasant hostess. Please forgive my rudeness. Would you like a cup of coffee?”

I declined.

“Sometimes,” she explained, “I do that—go off in a daze, I mean. I get so wrapped up in my thoughts I forget where I am, who I’m with.” Reaching for a pack of cigarettes, she offered me one.

“No, thanks,” I again declined. “I’ll only want to take a few minutes of your time, if it’s all right. If I could ask you about Mr. Lasker ...?”

She lit her cigarette, discarded the match, and, leaning back, closed her eyes. I was afraid she would drift back to Lethe, but she dispelled my fears by speaking. Her voice was a thin whisper of sound in the hushed room, a gentle sibilance like a child-ghost manipulating a medium’s flaccid lips.

“Daddy told me to go ahead and answer any questions you had,” she began, “but the strange thing is that I don’t seem to mind, anyway. There’s no pain, no reluctance. You’d think, wouldn’t you, that Tom would’ve meant a little something more to me?”

I told her I couldn’t judge, not knowing what they’d been to one another.

“Nothing normal,” she murmured, and I had to strain to hear her. “We had a very difficult relationship. I wanted the usual—fun, starlight, romance, I suppose. He wanted to dominate. Or, no, not even that—to compel. ...” Shuddering, she took another long pull from her cigarette. “Wouldn’t you think, though,” she asked, looking up at me, “I’d feel something at his death? Besides ...
relief?”

She looked away from me, and I sensed her drawing back in upon herself, turning over dark memories. To snap her out of it, I asked her about recent events, starting with the last time she’d seen him.

“Last night,” she replied. “But it was the first date we’d had in several weeks.”

“Why was that?”

“At the time of his promotion, he apparently decided he’d had enough of me. But I guess he changed his mind, because recently he started calling me again. I was angry at first, and refused to see him. But he kept persisting, so I finally accepted. He just wore me down, calling and calling.”

I asked where they’d gone, but she didn’t want to say. But I gathered they were out all night, so I assumed they’d gone to his place. She didn’t deny it.

“What about his promotion?” I asked. “Did that change him in any way, make any difference in his behavior?”

“Oh, yes,” she nodded, “at least judging from the one time I saw him right after he got it.”

“How was he different?”

“Well, I have to explain ... Tom never told me much about his plans. But, in general, he was very ambitious.”

“Yes,” I interrupted, “so I’ve heard. I was wondering how much of that was for your sake?”

She looked so hurt at the suggestion that I was instantly sorry I’d made it. “None of it was for me!” she asserted. “I didn’t count at all. Tom wanted prestige, money—all for himself. No other reason. When I saw he was ambitious, I mean he was hungry, impatient. He wanted everything yesterday at the latest. Besides ...”

“Besides?”

“Nothing. Never mind.”

“Did you know he asked the president of Trim-Tram for a raise?”

She nodded. “Yes, he was very bitter about being put off. He complained constantly about doing all the work of the operations chief—he couldn’t stand not being compensated for it.”

“When he asked for that promotion, was there any special reason why he might need extra money?”

The girl took a drag of her cigarette, apparently reluctant to answer. “Why do you ask that?”

I explained that there was considerable evidence that Lasker might have been selling company secrets to the competition. It made her wince, and I was quick to pounce upon it.

“Look, Miss Saxon,” I told her, “it’s obvious you know something you don’t want to tell. You can’t hurt Tom with it now, and you might just help us track down his murderer.”

Shaking her head, she said, “It won’t be of any use to you. But—I suppose I might as well tell you.”

“Tell me what?”

“God, I hate this,” she said, stumping out her cigarette in a china ashtray. “Yes, there was a reason for asking for the promotion. Tom needed money for drugs.”

There wasn’t much I could say, so I didn’t.

“I never liked that part of Tom’s scene,” she continued at length. “But how could I say anything? The crowd he used to hang out with is into pot, acid, speed, ups, downs—their regular social ritual. Only, I’m afraid Tom was on stronger stuff.”

I nodded. Then, reluctantly, a little diffidently, I asked whether she’d been forced by social pressure to indulge in any narcotics. I was a little surprised to find myself relieved when she shook her head.

“Except for one nasty trick Tom played on me, he never tried to talk me into taking anything.”

“What do you mean, a nasty trick?”

“One time he slipped me some acid, without my knowing it. Then, when it was too late, he told me what he’d done. Said he thought I should try everything at least once.” She bit her lips, and her brows contracted momentarily. “I was very angry, of course, but there was nothing to do but go along with it, until it was out of my system. Actually, he was very kind that night, helped me so it wouldn’t turn into a bad trip. But, just the same ... never again!”

I had an unsavory suspicion, so I asked her when Lasker had pulled his little prank on her. “Was it before or after he went to Scott Miranda about a promotion?”

“Afterwards. Definitely. It was while he was still very upset about getting the runaround at Trim-Tram, and he claimed he needed something to ‘get out of himself’ for a few hours.”

“Were the two of you alone that night?”

“Yes,” she answered, fidgeting. “Do you mind? I’d rather not talk about it anymore.”

“All right, let’s skip ahead. Did he stay angry until his promotion came through?”

“No. Surprisingly enough, he didn’t. For a while he bitched, but then, all of a sudden, Tom went through an entirely different phase. He acted very self-satisfied and no longer seemed to care whether he’d get promoted or not. Of course, he changed all that when he was actually made a vice-president!”

“Yes?” I asked her. “How did he react to the promotion?”

“Very grateful to Mr. Miranda. Happy. Tired of me.”

“Anything else?” I prompted.

“Well,” she said, a puzzled crease furrowing her brow, “for all the elation he was feeling, inside, I think, he was a little worried. He gave me that impression.”

“Did you tell him that?”

“Yes. He brushed it off, said I was crazy.”

I asked her how Lasker’d behaved on their date the night before.

“Reasonably pleasant,” she said. “He didn’t do anything out of the ordinary.”

“What did you talk about?”

“Nothing special. How I was. How my father was doing—”

I expressed surprise. “If they work together every day, why would Tom—” But that’s as far as I got. Just then, the apartment door opened and Mrs. Saxon entered, a large, brown paper grocery bag in her arms. I went over to help her with it, and Penny introduced us. In her early forties, Mrs. Saxon was a strikingly handsome woman, a little gray and a trifle overweight, perhaps, but not in the least matronly. She was tall, about three or four inches shorter than me, and towered over her daughter.

Mrs. Saxon expressed polite dismay at the news of Lasker’s death, but wasn’t overly grieved. I put the shopping bag in the kitchen and exchanged deliberate small talk with her: Toy Fair, the difficulty of preparing meals for a man who had to work late each night, and—at last—the fact that her husband had to attend a sales meeting the night before.

“Yes,” she answered, “on top of working at the factory, it’s a shame he has to drag down to Twenty-third Street after hours. He came home as soon as he could, though, and I fixed him a little dinner. You know—warmed on the stove, but he’s not choosy this time of year, with the nutty schedule they make him keep.”

I made a mental calculation and came to the conclusion that Saxon hadn’t lingered on his way home from the meeting. Then I thanked the woman for the talk and asked whether I could use the phone. Nodding, she escorted me back to the living room and, at my further request, furnished me with a Manhattan directory.

As she exited to the kitchen, I wondered why she exchanged a raised-eyebrow glance with her daughter.

Earlier, it had occurred to me that I might save some time by phoning the Maggert-Axel Agency. Maybe they would supply some information on Harry Whelan without my trekking all the way up to the Graybar Building.

It was a smart thing to do. Maggert-Axel, a large theatrical-TV-film casting agency, couldn’t care less why I was inquiring about Whelan. I could have been a producer, a long-lost second cousin, or a bill collector; as far as Axel—the agent who handled Whelan—was concerned, the important thing was to answer my questions as fast as possible and hang the hell up.

“Sure I know Harry,” the agent said. “I just put him in an off-off-Broadway showcase. The stupid shmuck.”

“Why do you call him that?”

“Because.
He’s a good trade-show talker; he’s an OK commercials spokesman. He brings us a good chunk of cash. But he drives me crazy! ‘Get me meaty parts,’ he’s always saying. I keep telling him stick with the industrials, the commercials, maybe a SAG bit once in a while. No! Does he listen? He only wants to play Hamlet.”

“So you got him a part in something meaty,” I said, nudging him along.

“I got him Hamlet,”
he snorted. “In a crummy OOB split-the-donations production, no less! He makes me want to jump off the Pan Am Building, the shmuck! That’s why I got it for him, just to shut him up! You think it’ll earn me anything?
Carfare ... that’s what it’ll earn me!”

“Where can I find Harry now?”

“Probably rehearsing. They’re at the Scuttle-and-Grate Loft, the production group.”

I said I’d never heard of it before.

“Neither did I, not before last month. Wait a minute ...” He was apparently fishing around for the address. “I got the notice out of
Back Stage ...
here it is—Third and Second.”

That was all I needed, which was just as well, for Axel rung off at that point without bothering to see whether I had anything more to ask.

I called in to Mrs. Saxon to thank her for the use of the phone and also to say good-bye.

Penny Saxon walked with me to the door of the apartment. I told her I was grateful for her help in answering my questions, then started to walk out the door. But my curiosity overcame me, and I stopped long enough to ask her the meaning of the quizzical glance her mother had given her a moment earlier.

For the first time, the girl smiled unequivocally. “That,” she told me, “is
your
warning to escape while you have the chance! That’s my mother’s famous ‘So-what’s-the-matter-with-somebody-like-him?’ expression. Another five minutes and you’d be trapped into staying for dinner!”

Laughing, I told Penny I could think of worse punishments. She pressed my hand impulsively, and we parted.

S
ECOND STREET NEAR THE
Bowery may not be the worst neighborhood in the city, but it’s right down there in the bottom twenty. The part of the Lower East Side where the Scuttle-and-Grate Loft is inconspicuously situated manages to appear bleak and raw in the middle of July; in March, it is a wilderness of naked bricks and wind-buffeted heaps of sharded glass.

With some difficulty I located the theater between two storefronts. I had to climb three flights up an incredibly filthy staircase, and, naturally, I expected to walk into the usual plaster-wall, curtainless horror-with-folding-seats that most OOB audiences suffer as a temple of drama. So it was a real delight to walk out of the dingy stairwell into a miniature jewel of a theater, with mullioned windows framing tinted thick glass; rich, dark wood walls with inlaid paneling rising halfway to the beamed ceiling, relieved at that point by textured wine-tone wallpaper from which sconces, electrically lit, extruded at intervals.