The Erection Set (3 page)

“I'm older.”

“Not that.”

“Wiser?”

“Don't we all get that way?”

This time it was my turn to wait. “Not everybody.”

His smile was impish, his eyes twinkling. “Too bad the old man didn't like you.”

“Why should he? All he wanted was a legitimate heir. My mother got knocked up by an itinerant bartender and I was locked in under the bar sinister to preserve family pride.”

“Did you ever know your mother married your father?”

“Sure. I still got a copy of the wedding certificate. She made sure I knew about it.”

“Why didn't she mention it?”

“Maybe she had her pride too.”

Leyland Hunter unlocked his arms and leaned on the desk. “If the old man had known, things would have been different.”

I tapped another cigarette out of the pack and lit it. “Who gives a damn? All I want is my ten grand. It was standard practice in the family ever since they had slaves and servant girls. They buy you off, kick you out and the foul deed is forgotten.”

“Speculate further,” Hunter said.

“Why not? If the perpetuator was a male, it was laughed off as a boyish prank. If the recipient of the seed was a female claimant to the family name, she was buried under the cloak of shame.”

“You should have been a lawyer.”

I grinned at him again. “Let's say I'm a philosopher.”

“No hard feelings?”

“What for?”

“All the others take ownership of Barrin Industries. Cousins Alfred and Dennison are president and chairman of the board, respectively, Veda, Pam and Lucella own a majority of the stock, your uncles and aunts sit back and direct operations from the big houses at Mondo Beach and Grand Sita, arranging debutante balls and marriages that highlight all the celebrity columns.”

“Sounds pretty dull.”

“And now you're back.”

“I promise not to spoil their fun. All I want is my ten grand.”

“The will was very specific. If there's one hint of immorality in your past ...”

“I killed a few people, remember.”

“That was wartime. You were decorated for it.”

“So I've had a few dames in the hay too.”

“Even that was anticipated. Boys are prone to experiment.”

“I'm not a boy.”

“Exactly.”

“Then get to the point.”

“Is there any possibility that any, er, woman, could ever substantiate that you and she ... er, had ... let's say, an illicit relationship?”

“Now I know
you're
a lawyer.”

“You didn't answer the question.”

I sucked in on the butt and leaned back, grinning. “Old friend, I'm not exactly abnormal. I've had me broads and I'm damn glad to admit it. In fact, I'm damn glad to hear them admit it. I come with a pretty good set of references.”

The laugh lines creased his face and he snuggled back in his chair again. “Dog, you're still a puppy. Talk like that and you'll wipe out that inheritance sure as hell. Why can't you fib a little?”

“I'm not an expert at it like the family is. I always get caught. Hell, even when I told the truth I got nailed for lying, so where's the percentage? All I want is my ten grand.”

On the wall, the old-fashioned windup clock ticked ominously. I looked at the family solicitor sitting there, knowing he was feeling for words he didn't want to say, and just waited. It was an old story; I just wanted to hear it again to make sure nothing had changed.

Finally: “Nobody even wants to let you have that.”

“A small price to pay out of all those millions. Why rattle skeletons in the closet?”

“You ever read stock market reports, Dog?”

I shrugged again. “Sometimes. They fluctuate. I hate to gamble.”

“Barrin Industries is shaky.”

“Ten thousand bucks can break them?”

“Not exactly. The old man's will had to conform to his father's will and if you have a copy of your mother's original wedding certificate you can take over as the first male heir.”

“It's only a photographic copy made a long time ago. I guess you know the courthouse it was filed in burned down and the preacher and the witnesses are dead?”

“Yes, I know that. How did you find out?”

“I wanted to make sure.” I squeezed out the hot tip of the cigarette and dropped it in the ashtray on the desk. “No ten grand, then, I suppose?”

“No nothing, Dog. I'm sorry.”

I stood up and stretched. Outside it was a nice day and despite the smog I was going to enjoy myself. “Want to bet?” I asked him.

“Not with you,” he said. “Of all the family, you got your grandfather's mouth, his hair, even the way he held his jaw.”

“Look at my eyes,” I said. “Whose are they?”

“I don't know, Dog. They aren't your mother's.”

“They were my dad's. That guy must have been a terror. Let's go have a beer. You probably haven't been in a saloon for ten years.”

“Make it fifteen and I'll go with you,” Hunter told me.

She said her name was Charmaine, but only a Polack knows how to smell a kielbasa to make sure it's real and slip it inside a hunk of doughbread she whipped up out of natural ingredients from a delicatessen at one o'clock in the morning, and when she came out of the bedroom wrapped in a bath towel, all peasant legs and cow-busted with a lovely people grin showing through teeth that tore the sandwich apart, I laughed and turned the Beethoven down on the record player and poured the rest of my beer in the glass.

“That old man's pretty hot stuff,” Charmaine told me.

“Big?”

“Nope, just talented. Kind of like surprised me.” She tore the sandwich in half and paused a moment. “Hey, Dog, he ain't ...”

“No relation,” I said. “It would be a hell of a thing for a kid to buy his old man a piece, wouldn't it?”

“Guess so. Didn't they used to do it the other way around?”

“That's what I heard. They gave him a year to get some hair around his gizmo and the kid got treated to a whorehouse job on his birthday. Poor slob, he probably sweated, couldn't get it up, tipped the dame a bundle to lie to his old man and went home bragging about the experience.”

“You do it that way?” she asked me.

“Sugar, I was an old pro by the time I was twenty.”

“How about twelve?”

“I was an old amateur,” I said. “Hunter treat you kindly?”

“A dream. I think maybe I'll specialize in old men.” She bit into the sandwich and sat down opposite me, the towel falling open before she rearranged it. Then she leaned back and propped her feet on the glass-topped coffee table.

“Will you cross your legs or something,” I said.

“Uh-huh.” She finished the sandwich and licked her fingers. “Do I embarrass you?”

“No, but you get me horny and I'm tired.”

“You got Marcia all pooped out. You like my room-mate?”

“Good kid.”

“A crazy kook. She was an acid head until I straightened her out. Always giving it away. Now she meets the right people. She thinks you're out of sight. What'd you do to her?”

“She needed loving. Incidentally, I'm sending her to an old buddy of mine tomorrow. She's going to get a job.”

“She told me. One-fifty a week taking dictation. What a way to ruin a good hooker.”

“Sorry about that.”

“I'm not. She graduated from Pembroke, y'know. Me, I barely made Erasmus High in Brooklyn. I wish somebody had done that for me.”

“Come on, Charmaine, you like it this way.”

“Only because I'm a nympho. I only know two other girls who really get their rocks off when they're making it for pay with a guy. Maybe I'm the total professional. How'd you ever find me anyway?”

“Joe Allen in Belgium. Remember?”

“Ho, old Joe. He wanted me to get tattooed.” She smiled at me and looked for more crumbs on her palm to lick. “He 'told me about you too. I didn't believe it.” Her eyes flicked toward the other closed door. “Marcia says old Joe was not lying, repeat, not lying.”

“I try harder,” I said.

“That's what Marcia says. Why ring the old man in too?”

“Just to make sure he doesn't have to lie when he kills me.”

“That's about that ten grand, isn't it?”

“Even great lawyers will tell a prostie anything, won't they?”

“Look at Mata Hari,” she said.

“And look what happened to her. She got banged the real hard way.”

“You guys are nuts,” Charmaine said.

“All nuts,” I repeated.

“Balls,” she laughed.

“That's what I said.”

 

We sat in the Chock Full o' Nuts mopping up the plate of eggs with crisp toast, two guys watching the early shift of New York go to work before seven in the morning. Leyland Hunter's cauliflower ear was redder than the day he got it and his suit was a mess, but there was a James Cagney twitch in his shoulders that was a suppressed laugh at himself and me at the same time.

“You're dead now, Dog. You proved your point,” he said.

“I just wanted you to be sure.”

He tucked the last piece of toast in his mouth and sat back, happy and satisfied. “I never thought an old fart like me could get laid anymore.”

“When was the last time?”

“I forget.”

“Charmaine thought you were pretty damn good.”

“Lovely of her. She'll never be forgotten. Ah, the feel of silky flesh unmarred by wrinkles is something to be remembered. What annoys me is that I never thought of the alternative. Never again will I be so devoted to my work. By the way, I understand you footed the bill. What do I owe you?”

“My treat. I always felt guilty about spying on you and old Dubro.” I laughed again. “How did you make out in the end?”

“A brush-off. I understand she married the gardener a year later. In those days a skinny-dip was a real orgy.”

“Man, have you got a lot to learn.”

“Unfortunately, no. I'll get all my kicks from pornography collected during the censorship trials or wait for those rare, exotic visits from distant friends. Now let's get back to you. I'm not quite stupid, you know.”

“I didn't want
you
to have to lie, friend.”

“There are some lengths you don't have to go to.”

“Why not?” I asked him.

“Because I could have told. You're not the same Dog they used to kick around.”

I finished my coffee and picked up the bill. “Isn't it going to be a ball when everybody finds that out?” I said.

This time Leyland Hunter wasn't smiling. With a studied, serious look, he scanned my face and nodded solemnly. “I'm going to be afraid to look,” he said. “Do you hold still for advice these days?”

“Depends on the source. From you, yes. What pearls of wisdom have you got for me?”

Hunter took out a gold ball-point pen and fiddled idly with the calibrated rings that made it a slide rule. “Remember, Dog, I've been close to the Barrin family all my life. It was your great-grandfather that made sure my education was attended to and who established a business for me. All that because he and my father were friends, old prospecting buddies, and my father was killed before he ever saw me. Like it or not, I have a moral obligation to be of service.”

“You paid off any debt a long time ago, Counselor. It was your business acumen that saved the Barrin corporation during the Depression, your foresight that built them into millionaire war profiteers and your ingenuity that kept them rolling ever since.”

His fingers kept working at the dials, arranging them into precise figures. “That was while your grandfather was alive and active. Unfortunately, the generation gap isn't a new thing at all. When Cameron Barrin began to decline, the family was quick to introduce a new regime ... their own. I was one of the old guard and my opinions were merely tolerated, not accepted.”

“Then why sweat it, mighty Hunter? You've made it big on your own. Today you're handling conglomerates that make Barrin Industries look like a toy. Oh, a damn big toy, but that's all.”

“I told you,” he said. “I feel the obligation.”

“Good for you, but I'm still waiting for the advice.” I signaled the waitress for some more coffee. It looked like it was going to be a long lecture.

“Remember when your cousin Alfred had that accident with his new roadster?”

I let the sugar lumps drop in my coffee with soft plops. Somehow they had the faraway sounds of bones breaking. I said, “There was no accident. The little bastard ran me down deliberately. He got a roadster and I got a used bicycle. He went off the road to get me and if I hadn't jumped for it there would have been more than a broken leg.”

“He said he lost control in the gravel drive.”

“Balls. You know better.” I stirred the coffee and tasted it. Now it was too sweet. “Funny, but I was more pissed off about my first bike being wrecked than getting the leg busted.”

“Remember what you did to Alfred when you got out of the hospital?”

My mouth was working to suppress a laugh. I had swiped a short-fused aerial bomb from the July Fourth fireworks display in town and rigged it under his car. It blew right through the seat of Alfred's roadster and they picked star-dust out of his ass for a month. “How did you know about that?”