The Erection Set (2 page)

“I like Dog better. Do you bite?”

“Only in the heat of passion,” I said.

Okay, Dog, now let me read you. Clothes good, but old. Perhaps fifty bucks in your jeans. I made more between cocktails and dinner last night. I had felt his arm and it scared me a little bit because I knew about how old he was and the arm was a little too big and too hard. Poseur? Some do it. A cheap barber had chopped his hair, but it was all there and would be grown back in another week. Gray spotted it and a little white streak tufted up in front. He looked heavy, but there was no fat and he walked funny
,
one hand always hanging loose, and whatever those green eyes looked at, they saw and understood.

 

 

The empty Pabst beer cans made odd splotches of color around the room, their big blue ribbon seals decorating every piece of furniture in the bedroom, including two that I had balanced delicately on the headboard of the bed directly over my face. A couple of soggy towels lay on the floor, sopping up the beer that Lee had spilled and I lay there listening to him sound off just like he used to. Only in those days he didn't wear a LOVE button on his shorts.

“Just quit being a silly bastard,” he said. “And don't tell me staying here is an imposition. Shit, man, why spend loot on a hotel room? You can't even
find
a decent apartment in this town anymore unless you're loaded with cash or have a couple months to poke around in.”

I popped open another beer. “Can it, Lee. You lover types need privacy.”

“Balls. I got two bedrooms right now. If it gets crowded, so we have an audience. I lost all my modesty twenty years ago.”

“Look ...”

“Forget it,” Lee said. “You're staying here. We shared everything during the war, we do it again. Besides, you're going to need more than a pad, buddy. I'm damn glad we're both the same size. I got three closets full of clothes and we're both about the same height. You take your pick of the rack, I'll get them let out a little in the chest and shoulders and you can look like nowadays.”

I went to say something and he shut me up again. “I get them wholesale, Dog. I do big favors for a guy who heads up a chain and he pays off in threads. What the hell do I need? I change twice a day and it would take me a month to repeat a suit. Nice, hey? I'm not rich, I'm not poor, I get along pretty well and, by damn, you're my buddy and you're going to share it with me. I'll give you a week to get stretched out, find your way around, then well hunt up something with scratch behind it so you can get on your feet.”

The beer stopped halfway to my mouth. “Lee ...”

“Don't crap me out, Dog. I got plenty of contacts and it won't be all that hard. Who has to know you stuck yourself in Europe all this time because a bunch of half-assed relatives kicked you out? Man, you have too much false pride. You were a fucking war hero, man. You could have shoved it up their tails. Why the hell did you try to bury yourself for?”

I tried to answer him, but he wouldn't let me.

“Oh, sure, there's always a dame. But you're still not married, are you?” I shook my head. “See, so you blew it, you didn't even nail a broad. You still look like you always did, a raggedy-tail flyboy who'd sooner scream around the wild blue yonder than screw a dame.”

“I got my share.”

“You could have gotten more.”

“I was too busy flying,” I said.

“And you came up with zilch. Plenty of kills, lots of ribbons and you weren't even smart enough to get bullet creased a little so you could get a partial pension. No, you have to come home anyway.” He yanked a cold beer out of the bucket of ice water and looked at me with funny Pabst-colored eyes. “Why did you come back?”

“The old man died and left me an inheritance. I've been trying to tell you.”

He paused, his finger hooked into the circle of the pop top. “Old Cameron Barrin?”

I nodded. “My maternal grandfather. I guess he figured he owed me something, my being a sort of blood relation. If I can establish myself as having a good, clean ... or, let's say, totally pure ... moral record since leaving his household, I can claim the munificent reward of ten thousand dollars.”

“Cash?”

“Uh-huh.”

Lee finished opening the can and let a grin twitch at the corners of his mouth. “How much chance have you got?”

“Not a smidgen,” I told him.

“Then why come back?”

“Hell, maybe I can lie a little,” I said.

For a good ten seconds, he looked at me, then took a long pull of the beer and shook his head. “Damn, it's the same old Dog. Still as naive as they come. You never did learn, did you? Ten grand and you come all the way back for something that can be eaten up in a matter of months. Buddy, the world has changed. The war's over. This isn't Europe. The old days are gone. If we were kids all we might ask for is a bike, sleeping bag and an occasional remittance from home to buy some pot or a little snatch and maybe a side trip into a little bistro on the Left Bank for some gourmet spaghetti, but we're big kids now and we can't go that route.”

I shrugged and drank my beer.

“Brother,” Lee said. “Am I glad you checked in with me. I guess I got a father image. I got to take care of you, Doggie boy.”

My teeth showed in a grin when I looked at him.

Lee grinned back and nodded. “Sure, I remember you pulling those ME109s off my tail. I got a good picture of you squiring me through the skies like a Dutch uncle and keeping my ass intact. You got one lousy year on me, nursed me through the whole damn war and made sure I came out with all my skin and now it's my turn. I play big daddy. From here on in until you're on your own two pedals again I'm
going
to be big daddy and take care of
you
.” He finished the beer off in a single long pull. “You are now my responsibility and the first thing I'm going to do is dump your past into the incinerator, dress you like a living New Yorker and put you back into the world again.”

He flipped the empty can against the wall, yanked a dressing robe from a hook behind the door and wrapped it around him. With a faked gesture of distaste he picked up the battered suitcase with all the pasted-on stickers that were loose around the edges and said, “Anything in here of sentimental value?”

I took another taste of the beer. It was cold, refreshing and lighter than all that other stuff. “A few things,” I said. “You can tell which ones.”

Lee tossed the old bag on the bed, undid the straps, fingered the clasps open and threw the lid back. His expression was very funny. He took his two forefingers and poked around in there and didn't quite know what to say.

It wasn't often that a guy saw a couple of million bucks in ten-thousand-dollar bills.

He looked up. “No underwear?”

“No underwear,” I said.

The law offices of Leyland Ross Hunter occupied an entire floor of the Empire State Building, a private world hundreds of feet above the concrete and asphalt surface of the city, existing in the almost-stunned hush of a library where even the whisper of feet shrouded in thick pile carpets was a minor commotion. Supposedly silent typewriters were touched with timid apprehension as though the operators were waiting to be castigated for every tiny click. It should have smelled of old leather and old people, but modern air conditioning and artificial atmosphere gave it the lewd tang of incense inhaled.

Behind the antique desk the maiden secretary peered at me over her gold-rimmed, flat-plate glasses, thought she bought me with an invisible peripheral glance and said, “Yes, Mr. Kelly, do you have an appointment?”

I said, “No, ma'am.”

“You'll really have to call for an appointment.”

“Why?”

Her smile was very condescending. “Mr. Kelly, please, Mr. Hunter is ...”

“A very busy man,” I interrupted.

“Quite.”

“What do you bet he sees me?” I lit a cigarette and grinned a little bit.

The vox populi had to be kept in its place. She took off the glasses with a ladylike gesture and smiled back indulgently. “Mr. Kelly ...”

“When I was ten I took a picture of him skinny-dipping with Miss Erticia Dubro, who, at that time, was common nanny to our clan.” I took another drag on the butt and blew the smoke over her head. “Miss Dubro was forty-some and fat and was the first broad I had ever seen with hair on her chest. I think old Hunter had a thing for hairy-chested ladies because he let me drive his car that weekend around the estate in exchange for the film.”

“Just tell him Dog is here and mention Miss Dubro. Please?”

She was funny. The indignation was real, but so was the curiosity, and with me standing there speaking too quietly to be anything but real too, she flushed, turned a pair of toggle switches off on her intercom and sniffed up out of her chair into the office behind her.

And when I heard the high cackle of laughter come through the locked doors I was ready for her red face and wide eyes, with that total expression of disbelief that comes from living too long in a commercial nunnery.

“Mr. Hunter will see you now,” she said.

I stuffed the butt out in her paper clip bowl and nodded. “I figured he would.”

 

“Twenty years,” the old man said.

“Thirty.” I sat down. “You were a horny old bastard even then.”

“I wish you worked for me so I could fire you.”

“Balls.”

“You're right. I'd give you a raise for reminding me I used to be a real he-goat. Now word'll go around I'm an old roué and maybe some of those young squirts will give me a little respect. Good to see you, Dog.”

“Same here, old man.”

“You got a.copy of that picture of me and Dubro?”

“Hell no. You got the film before I even developed it.”

“Shit, I wish I had a copy. I'd have it enlarged and hung over the front entrance. I could use a taste of those days.”

“Don't tell me you had your prostitute gland removed.”

“Only massaged, Dog. That's not even fun when a doctor does it.”

“Why not try a lady doctor?”

“Who the hell you think I went to?” He sat back and roared, a wizened old guy with a face like a shaved pixie in a leprechaun body. You could see why he could still make it in a courtroom against the young ones and when the chips were down you'd have to guess where he got the single cauliflower ear that looked so ridiculous stuck there on the side of his head.

“I should have gotten that film developed,” he said.

“Look, if it worries you, I'll set you up for another one. I know some dolls ...”

“Ah, me. It sounds so good, but let me live with my memories. I'm too old to be embittered or flattered. It's just nice to be reminded.” He handed me a silver and walnut humidor. “Cigar?”

I shook my head.

“You got my letter, naturally. I had a dickens of a time locating you.”

“No sweat. I jump around a lot.”

For a few seconds he looked at me, then sat back and folded his arms across his chest. “There's something peculiar about you, Dog.”