Spider Kiss (27 page)

He nodded tightly. He was starting to come around.

The doorbell went off like a gunshot.

Had he been just another slob on the scene, just another faceless guy brought to official attention, it might have been an Inquisition, and downtown to the Tombs for questioning. But he wasn't. He was Stag Preston. Had the Colonel been around (no one seemed to know just
where
he had gone) even the mild questioning they suffered might have been averted. One call by The Man to his contacts downtown, and like a stream being diverted, they would have talked to intermediaries, left Stag alone. But Shelly had been forced to handle this little performance, and he handled it well.

It didn't take much talking at all, but what there was — was fast. Shelly caught them as they came through the door, juggling them like sterling silver globes. They spun madly, faster and faster, until the publicity man hurled them over to Stag.

Easily Academy Award quality. He acted the role of the half-crazy-with-torment star so well that at times Shelly had to stop to correct his thinking:
He is acting. He isn't actually sorry, or innocent, or in anguish. This is an act
.

But what an act:

"We're sorry to bother you, Mr. Preston, but the girl
did
fall from your balcony." Heavy irony in their voices; an idol was an idol, and they knew their steps could only be so many, so far, so hard; but it didn't preclude irony, heavily, in the voices. "Now what, Mr. Preston, exactly, happened?"

Shelly had told it, but it had to be told again.

Then again.

And a third time. (And still no sign of the Colonel.) But simply told it was simply told: Mr. Preston had seen the young lady — he didn't even know her name — at the theatre. She had been making quite a spectacle of herself, apparently. Mr. Preston had invited her — under Mr. Morgenstern's chaperoning — to stop by for a souvenir and an autograph. Mr. Preston always takes special pains with his fans, because every fan is something special to him. Once in the suite, the girl had acted very badly, pawing and trying to kiss Mr. Preston — aw, hell, fellas, you can call me Stag — and had even clawed at him in an attempt to rip off a piece of his clothing as a memento. She had made embarrassing advances and Stag had tried to get away. In the scuffle she had tripped over a lamp cord and fallen through the French doors.

"The force of her fall must have just thrown her over," Stag concluded, desolation and misery in his eyes, the timbre of his voice. "I — I didn't know what, what to do … she was there one minute and the next …" He shuddered eloquently.

A sharp-eyed plainclothesman, who had been examining the nap of the rug, the placement of the lamp's trailing cord and the way the French door had snapped open the flimsy lock, stood up, and made an, "Uh, Stag?" of attention.

The singer turned to him, and Shelly saw in that face of the law what he was hoping not to see. The man was not fooled; he knew the girl had been struggling ferociously, had not fallen as accidentally as Stag Preston told it. "Uh, Stag, where's the piece of her blouse?"

The boy came through beautifully. There was a briefest flicker of the dark eyes, and a recovery so swift there might never have been a fumble. "What piece of her blouse?"

The detective's jaw muscles bunched and he said very smoothly, "The girl's blouse had been ripped down the front. We thought it might be here in the hotel somewhere."

Shelly leaped in abruptly: "She must have, uh, she must have ripped it on her way down, or perhaps on the door handle here —" He stepped across theatrically, very much like a schoolteacher or a television announcer, pointing to the product, directing (or misdirecting) everyone's eyes. He pointed to the door handle. The plainclothesman turned back to Stag. The man was no dummy.

"You didn't see the blouse, is that it?"

Stag shrugged and spread his hands in all directions, turning. "No, you can look if you like." They didn't look.

"Perhaps one of her friends grabbed it up, those nutty teen-agers, you know," Shelly said, interceding again, misdirecting. "She was with some fan club, a whole bunch of them … you know how they are … maybe one of them grabbed it up."

"Perhaps," the detective murmured, turning away; he knelt down again to study the patterns of ruffling on the carpet.

It went on for some time. Shelly managed to get away once and hit the phone in one of the bedrooms. "Hello … this is Shelly … let me talk to Joe.

"Joe? Shelly. Listen, we've got it and bad this time. The kid had a groupie up here …" He launched into a
Reader's Digest
condensation of the episode, concluding, "… they've got us sewed-up here. I told them I was calling The Palace to cancel Stag's performance. Do that, but get with the columnists. Every goddam busboy and maid in this joint has found some excuse to breeze past the door or the dumbwaiter while the fuzz've been here. It's probably with every stringer in the city by now. Get with them and keep their mouths shut. I don't care how you do it, just
do
it!"

When he reappeared, his face was a twist of sadness. "Captain," he addressed the senior investigating officer, "this has been a helluva strain on the kid. He's pretty much attached to his fans, you know. We've canceled the performance at the theatre, but I'd like to see him in bed for the day. Do you think you've got enough for now?"

The Captain, a man with over twenty years on the force, and a staunch believer in the old saw,
You scratch my back and I'll scratch yours
, a man who knew the Colonel and what he could or could not do, thought he very well might have enough for now. There would, of course, be more questioning later, and the coroner's inquest, but he was sure everything was just as Mr. Morgenstern and Good Old Stag had it.

The girl must have had some kind of unbelievable strength to throw herself out a window like that, but hell, anyone could see Stag was really broken up about this thing, and yes, it's terrible, and sure, we'll refer the newsmen to you, Mr. Morgenstern, I guess you want to handle the way they talk about this thing … some of them got real nasty mouths on them, and sure, we understand, and you betcha we'll pass along the Colonel's regards to the Commissioner for his interest and his help. Thanks a lot, gang.

Then the door was opening and closing and people were leaving. If they had arrived and been juggled like silver globes, then their leaving could only be compared to fog. They left like fog.

Great gouts of them left at one time — harness bulls, the police photographers, the analysts, the reporters, the plainclothes detectives, the Captain. Then smaller wisps drifted away, unseen: the morbidly curious ones who had heard the terrible news and who wanted, for a few instants, to bathe in the glow of the famous, the notorious, the colorful. They were the gray ones, like fog itself, who drift and are never really seen. Who derive all their glamour vicariously, all their color by reflection and refraction, like the oil slick on asphalt after the rain. They disappeared, but only when they were certain nothing more was happening …

Then the last of the hospital staff, leaving the royal chamber, genuflecting and bowing out backward, hoping Mr. Preston and the Colonel would not feel the management had acted in bad faith by calling in the police so quickly, after all, the girl
had
fallen from one of their suites, and their hands were tied, it was only the
natural
thing to do, because they had to maintain their repu —

"
G'wan, get the hell out of here!
" Shelly snapped.

(Was it his imagination, or did they all have huge, gnome-like pointed ears, to hear all the more, to tell all the more?)

And where in the name of Jesus Almighty was the Colonel? Or were they one and the goddam same?

A splitting headache cromped down on Shelly the moment he had slammed the door on the toadies. They would open their mouths, he was sure of it. It was bound to leak out; after all, midafternoon on Times Square, a header into the street, a little chick from Secaucus of all places, and her crowd standing there watching. This was going to hit every penny-ante fan-mag in the country unless the payola was spread thick as peanut butter. The headache grew more intense the harder he thought. He leaned against the closed door, ignoring Stag Preston in the center of the room, still onstage, and he tried to think it out.

The effort was simply too much.

Forget the thinking and let the reflexes take over. It was synapses time, and he was the Old Sheldon Morgenstern, as he had been all afternoon. Was it inevitable, then, that he was doomed to return to that hideous shell of hipness, that shallow shell he had thought cast off? Every time the alarm went off, would he once more revert?

It was too horrible to consider.

The poor man's Jekyll-Hyde
, he thought, wildly.

Break. The story was going to break. Click click click. It was going to get out all over the place unless he acted. He jumped, then, and found the phone again.

Once he had the number, and the dial tone had broken, he barely waited for a voice on the other end. "Joe? Me. Did you take care of it?

"Yeah … yeah … uh-huh, yeah … what about Atra Baer?

"Yeah, yeah … okay, good. Have any trouble with Kilgallen or Wilson?

"Yeah … yeah … right. What? Sullivan hadn't heard? Good, that way we tipped him ourselves. Maybe he'll figure we're playing tight with him.

"Now look: get with Herman and Buddy on the Coast and have them get to the columnists — trade and otherwise. Particularly the second-string
schlock
magazines; the ones we deal with won't screw us, but the others'd sell a story like this to our audience in a minute if they thought they could get away with it. I want them all sewed up.
All
of them. Have Herman and Buddy work on it all night if it takes that long and get back to you. I want a statement on how we stand by morning. Don't forget, they're three hours behind us out there. They've got —" he glanced at his watch, "— five good hours before six o'clock.

"Yeah … right … right …
now
you've got it!

"Look, Joe, I want this sewed up tight before you go home tonight, you got that? Yeah … yeah … that, too … yeah … okay, keep on top of it, and ring me if you come up against anything
boygus
.

"Yeah, it's Yiddish. It means tough. And I'll have your
tuchus
in a sling if you don't cement this thing up.

"What? How the hell do
I
know why the moron picks days like this to get in trouble … ? I'm only paid to wipe his ass for him. No, that
ain't
Yiddish. Now
jump
, willya!"

He hung up and walked back into the living room. Stag was standing by the French doors, now closed. He was silent, with a drink in his hand.

Shelly slumped down into a chair. Suddenly, it was very quiet in the suite and he felt utterly drained. It had not been an easy afternoon.

At that moment the door opened and Colonel Jack Freeport came in. Shelly started to speak, but never got the words past his throat.

"What has been going on here, today?" The Colonel was furious. "Everybody in the lobby was rushing up and saying how sorry they were it had happened. Did this miserable kid do something big again, or is it just another minor emergency?"

Shelly started to speak again. To tell the big, white-haired Messiah that his pride and joy had tossed a teen-aged fan out the window. The words would not come.

"Well, it doesn't matter, anyhow," Freeport said, without waiting for an answer, "I've sold the kid's contract."

Did you know there
are
bombs that make no noise at all?

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A healthy, red apple, with one bite out of it, turns brown and stinking in the air, inside a few minutes. Stag Preston turned around to face the Colonel, and his healthy, red face went brown and stinking within a matter of seconds. Someone had taken a big bite out of him.

But Shelly's question preceded the singer's. "You
what
? You
sold
his
con
tract? Are you kidding?"

They were inane responses to an extraordinary statement, but easily on a par with the inane answers to extraordinary pronouncements down through the ages. Now that it had been said, Shelly was not certain he had really heard it. Men do peculiar things in the peculiar world Shelly Morgenstern inhabited, but they did not throw millions away. Underarm
or
sidearm.

"Tell me what went on here today," Freeport demanded, laying his pearl-gray fedora on the table. He studied the boy in front of him, and his glance narrowed down as he turned his eyes to Morgenstern.

"You, Shelly. Tell me."

Shelly recapped it, hill-and-valleying it for speed and attention to such details as his calls to Costanza in re the columnists. The Colonel, however, seemed peculiarly disinterested; his attention was more clinical than personal.

When Shelly had concluded, Freeport moved across to the French doors, examined them carefully, stepped out onto the balcony and took a fast look down. He re-entered the living room and sat down in an upholstered straight chair, as though he had something brief to say and wanted no part of momentary comfort till he had said it.

"Boy," he said, aiming a blocky hand at Stag, "you have an apartment of your own, I believe. I'll expect you to be out of here as soon as possible. If you have any clothing or possessions I'll have the management send them over to you."

He steepled his longshoreman's hands and puffed at his lips. "Shelly, you still own a block of Stag's stock, don't you? Hmmm. I thought of that this afternoon. Well, of course, it's your decision, but there's always a job open with me if you want to market your share of the contract. I couldn't retain you on my staff with your interest in —" He did not finish the sentence, merely aimed two steepled fingers at his ex-talent.

Then Stag Preston, silent and bottled up during the explanation by Shelly and the comments by Freeport, exploded. He threw the drink across the room.

It shattered just under a Utrillo oil the Colonel had brought back from France, and the stain smeared down the wall in helpless, offensive trickles.