Spider Kiss (14 page)
"Where
was
the Colonel tonight?" Shelly asked.
"Don't
you
know? I thought you kept the tabs up to date?"
Shelly lit a cigarette with one hand, still holding her with the other. He snapped the match against the striker as a truck driver might. "Well, he was supposed to make some dinner at the Overseas Press Club and then a premiere at the De Mille. But he should have been back by now. Oh well … he's a big boy; he can take care of himself."
She didn't reply, and when they pulled up in front of her building she urged him to stay in the cab. "Don't bother, Shelly. I'm beat. Thanks. For tonight. For being you. See you around the campii."
Then she was gone. He told the driver to wait a moment, watching the street-facing window of her fourth floor apartment. The light had been on. A hunch; a mere trickle of an inkling.
When enough time had passed for her to get upstairs, he told the cabbie to wait and left the cab. He walked across the street, into the building, and found the doorman. It was surprising in a city where once you slipped into your burrow in the wall and thought you were secret, how much doormen, bellboys and elevator operators knew.
It only took a fiver. Information goes at a very low rate in certain social strata.
Yes, Miss Friedel had a visitor. No, he had arrived a little earlier. Yes, he had a full head of white hair. Indeed yes, he almost looked like an ambassador, or a celebrity, like a patriarch, like a middle-aged playboy.
Perhaps?
Yes, indeed.
He looked like he might have been an officer; even a Colonel.
Shelly got back into his cab and gave his home address. Carlene was waiting. The cup that chills.
She was lying awake, smoking, when he came into the bedroom. "Joe Costanza called about five minutes ago. He left a number, wants you to call back immediately. He said it was an emergency. Something about the kid."
"Whaaat? I just left him at the hotel. He was plowed out of his mind."
She shrugged, proffered a piece of paper with a number. Shelly bit his lip and dialed the number. "Hello, is Joe Costan — Joe, that you? Where the hell am I calling? The Blue
Angel
? He's WHAT! Are you putting me
on
? Oh, for God's sake!
"Well, the hell with him. I hope he gets his ribs broken … no, I don't mean that. Get him out of there. That guy's a born troublemaker and he'll kill Stag if he gets mad enough. What? No, I'm not coming down. I've done my Gandhi for the evening.
"He's all yours, baby. Just get him out of there, drunk or sober, and up to the suite. Get him to bed. We've got a date at the recording studio tomorrow.
"I don't give a scrim
what
he's doing or
who
he's feeling up. I don't care what Kilgallen or Winchell or anydamnbody says. Get him out of there, and don't bug me any more tonight. I'm beat bushed whacked-out finished. I've had the Boy Wonder for one night. And so saying, I retire.
"Good and
night
!" He slammed the receiver, fell back on the pillow without removing his clothes, and was asleep in a matter of moments, his mouth open, snoring.
Beside him, Carlene smoked for a time, her mouth thin, cruel, undemanding. Then she snubbed the last butt, turned off the light and slid down beneath the covers.
Her last act before dropping off was to turn away from the man beside her.
Her legs were crossed.
"Let's forget our friendship, Shelly. This is a business meeting. We have a cursed problem on our hands, and someone has
got
, I say
got
, to solve it."
Freeport paced the bedroom anxiously. He went from the breakfast table on wheels — steeped in odors of kippers, English muffins, oatmeal and shirred eggs — to the window; from the window to the huge bed; from the bed to the chair in which Shelly sat pinned by a glance. And all the time prowling.
"I've got a million dollars tied up in this boy, Shelly. He's been paying off, but the overhead, well, you know what that's like. I can't afford to risk it. Something will have to be done to curb his, er, activities."
Sheldon Morgenstern spread his hands like a pair of diving doves. "What can I tell you, Colonel? I've tried to keep the kid straight, but he's some kind of a nut. He wanders around late at night like the Werewolf of London. After that scene up here I thought he was stacked-away for the night, next thing I knew he was —"
Freeport rattled a newspaper snatched quickly from a stack on the bed. "— he was brawling in a nightclub with a paunchy ex-movie star whose finest examples of histrionic ability have been in pubs and gin mills, the past five years. You've made every column in the city …"
"… well, publicity can't
hurt
hi —"
"—
hurt
him! Shelly, I'm surprised that you would try that fast talk on me. We both know this is the worst sort of press he could get. Look at this." He folded the paper lengthwise as subway riders do, stabbing at an item circled in red grease pencil with an angry thrust. "They're calling him 'Stud Service Preston!' That is impossible, Shelly, impossible! I won't tolerate it!"
Shelly felt his head swimming. He was suddenly not only his brother's keeper, but regulator of public morals, suppressor of secrets and nanny to the hottest toddler in or out of perambulators. He raised his hands in mute forestalling, hoping to ward off the Colonel's next words.
"Shelly, I'd like to tell you something.
"You may have been wondering at these long distance calls I've been getting from Atlanta the past two weeks. Well, they're from an intermediary who has been trying to move a little land purchase for me. I'm almost in the final stages of negotiation to buy back all the land my family owned in Georgia. I'm going to rebuild a home that was sacked and burned at the time of Atlanta, my boy; it is a dream I've held for many years. The estate of Freeport will grow again. Now you own a good piece of Stag Preston yourself, Shelly, and I know you feel very much a part of this project, but if my own plans are put in jeopardy, I'm afraid I'll have to take steps to remedy matters. There
are
ways, you know."
Shelly knew. He felt unhappy. Very unhappy.
"So let me summarize, Shelly. If you can't do something swift and decisive about curbing this cursed infant's bad habits … I'll have to seek out someone who can.
"Is there any area of our conversation that remains muddy?"
Shelly shook his head, mollified, subdued, cowed. The conversation was clear as an unrippled pool. He knew precisely what the Colonel meant. There were men who could be hired who charged by the broken limb. One hundred dollars for an arm. One fifty for an arm and leg combination. Two hundred and fifty for a broken back. With prices on request for special services peculiar to the client.
He stood up. "Colonel, say no more. As of this moment, I am the Jiminy Cricket of the hip set. I will stick so close to Huck Finn that he will have to send through an interoffice memo if he wants to use the bathroom."
The Colonel winced at the indelicate reference, but smiled immediately thereafter, clapping Shelly on the back, adroitly steering him toward the door. "Good, good, my boy. I knew all it would take was a little close talk on our parts. We're doing fine, Shelly, just fine."
And he was outside.
It was the same sort of bum's rush the Colonel had given outsiders, or people on the staff who were on their way out. The image of Needleman — somewhere out there hustling again — came to him. Was there a power-grab in the offing? Shelly began casting about for ways and means to shore up his position.
Then again
, he caught himself,
I'm in fairly swinging shape if I can keep the Creature From the Stork Club out of trouble
.
It sounded a good deal easier than it was destined to be. As Shelly found out twice within the space of a week and a half.
His first mistake was in taking Stag up to his apartment. His second mistake was leaving the singer with Carlene while he changed out of the charcoal brown business suit into a tux. His third mistake was in not leaving the bedroom door open to overhear their conversation.
They were slated to attend a banquet of pop music publishers, and Stag — who had kept the lamps going all the night before in the watering holes — had not bothered to change out of his Continental tuxedo. He had worn it all the next day, and though he looked rumpled, the animal grace of him canceled the taint of
déshabille
. But Shelly had to change, and so Stag Preston met Carlene for the first time.
"Listen, Carlene, fix Stag a drink, will you? I'll be out in a couple of minutes." It was not that Shelly was unaware of Stag Preston's proclivities toward new women, nor even that he thought Carlene's fidelity was a thing of cohesion and permanency.
It was simply that he was rushed, harried and harassed. He went into the bedroom to change.
Stag Preston's eyes fastened on the long legs and the hidden planes of the face, and for a bright instant the eyes glowed golden.
"Shelly never told me he had a girl," Stag whispered.
Carlene moved with sinuous caution beneath his glance, stepping around to the small bar, forcing the muscles of her buttocks and legs to strain against the sleek Pantinos. It was the ritual mating dance of the creatures in Jungle York.
"That's a polite way to put it, Mr. Preston."
"Put what?"
"May I fix you something, Mr. Preston?" She dodged the obvious answer.
He followed her and nudged in between the bar stools. "Oh, how about a Scotch old fashioned, on the rocks?" He stared pointedly at the baggy folds of her Bohemian overblouse, trying to ascertain the size of her chest.
"J & B all right?" She offered the bottle.
"Swing," he said negligently, falling into a self-assured groove as he realized she was fencing. There was interest here.
For a quiver he considered the ethics of shafting his buddy Shelly. The quiver passed.
"So you're Shelly's girl," he said, without tie to the rest of the conversation; the point dropped, talked around, and suddenly picked up again, reiteration, throwing the other off-guard through frankness.
"It depends what you mean by 'Shelly's girl,' I suppose."
"I guess it means you're on tap when he needs you."
"A girl might be annoyed to be just 'on tap.'"
"Hot and cold running tap?"
"That isn't too funny, Mr. Preston."
"Hot and cold running Stag."
"Mr. Preston."
"
Stag!
You don't have to get nasty about it. I'm only being friendly. Extending a little good cheer to my friend's girl."
"Hot or cold, Mr. Preston?"
"Depends on the receptacle."
Her carefully-plucked eyebrows rose. "They've taught you big words, too. I thought all you knew were words for your songs; the ones with one syllable."
Stag's jaw jumped. He could play the dodge-and-sway game only so long. He was used to getting his way. This one was coming on snappish. He reached across as she offered him the freshly-mixed drink, and fastened to her wrist. The glass dropped from her hand and tipped onto the bar top, spilling. He pulled her half across the counter, till her dark, remote face was up next to his own.
"What's your story, bitch?"
She stared back at him. She had experienced it all during her peregrinations. This approach was not new. But the boy was. There was money here; more money than Shelly would ever know, because the same things she saw in her mirror each morning, she saw in his face.
"You bore me, Mr. Preston. Please let go of my wrist. Or I'll have to call Shelly."
He pulled her further toward him. The bar top cut painfully into her stomach. "You keep chewin' on me, bitch, I'm gonna climb your frame."
She sneered. "That seems to be your only interest, Mr. Preston. You're an animal, you know."
He reached across with the other hand and wrapped it in her hair. He was standing as tall as he could, pulling her up by wrist and hair, painfully, when Shelly came out of the bedroom, half-dressed, on his way to the bathroom.
Stag did not see him. Carlene saw him out of the corner of her eye. Shelly saw it all.
"Animal, huh? You never saw how much of an animal I can be, bitch. I got an animal's —"
"You've got an animal's mouth, Stag," Shelly said coldly, from the doorway. "Get your goddam hands off her before I tear your windpipe out!"
Stag did not loosen his hold, but his head turned, and at first a quip formed on his lips; then he saw the white, corded expression on Shelly's face. Then he let Carlene drop. She plopped back behind the bar with a gasp.
"Get out of here; go wait in the lobby," Shelly said, pointing a trembling finger at him.
Stag started to argue, started to mouth inanities about fun & games. "Get out of here, you little bastard, before I crack your skull for you."
He moved away from the bar, but he wasn't finished. He was Stag Preston and he didn't go quietly.
"S'long, bitch," he said to Carlene, ignoring Shelly. "Don't forget us animals; we get around to makin' it sooner than you'd think."
Shelly moved toward him, threateningly, and Stag paced himself enough to make the door before the shorter man reached him —
without actually running.
As Stag opened the door, Carlene said, very gently, "Goodbye, Mr. Preston. Come again."
He looked at her as the door closed. It was not a look of enmity. The rank, raw glance of the mating beasts smoldered there.
The door closed and Carlene began mixing another drink. Shelly began to feel like Frank Buck.
Three nights later, the Colonel's talk still painfully reverberating in his memory, Shelly found himself with Stag, two chorus girls out of
Carnival!
and a half dozen assorted nameless hanger-on nonentities down front at the Bon Soir. Stag had particularly wanted to make the scene that night.
"A zonky-lookin' com-eed-ee-an," Stag had said.
When it came to the patois of the Broadway hipsters that Stag had recently adopted, Shelly was of the express opinion that a little vocabulary was a dangerous thing.
