Even the Butler Was Poor (9 page)

"What is it this time?" The thickset graying conductor was standing in the aisle beside his seat.

"Hum?"

"You're going in to do another commercial, aren't you, Mr. Spanner?"

"Yeah, I am." Slipping his ticket out of his breast pocket, he handed it over. "I'm going to play a part in some My Man Chumley radio commercials."

"Do you know him?"

"Who?"

"Chumley—the guy who plays him, that is."

"That's Barry Katbkart. I've met him a few times over the years, but we aren't chums."

"Seems like a very warm, likeable person."

Ben looked out the window. "I hear he's not exactly that in real life."

Nodding, the conductor punched the ticket. "What are the chances of you getting a job like that for yourself? They not only use that guy on television and radio, but in magazines and newspapers, and even on all the cups and napkins. Just about everything but the toilet paper, but maybe they just haven't thought of that yet."

"I'm basically a voice man, not an in-front-of-the-camera actor."

"He must earn a lot of money."

"I've heard tell Kathkart makes more per year than a Metro North conductor," confided Ben. "Though I find it hard to believe any mere performer can do that well."

The conductor chuckled and moved on.

Ben returned to his scripts. He paused, leaned back, muttered the word "Blimey" several times in different voices. When he finally found the reading he was satisfied with, he returned to marking his lines.

He yawned twice, took another drink of juice. By concentrating on the commercials, he had hoped to keep his mind off H.J. This whole business he was now entangled in with her failed to cheer him.

She still looked great, though. Prettier than ever actually, if you were honest about it. But you had to keep in mind that there's more to a marriage than a wife who looks great. H.J. sure hadn't overcome her tendency to wander into trouble. This Rick Dell/ninety-nine clop clop business was considerably more horrendous than her usual run of trouble, but it followed pretty much the same pattern he'd grown familiar with. She'd get into a screwed up situation, he'd feel obliged to help pull her out.

His life really had been different in the three years since they'd separated and divorced. He'd risen in his chosen profession, met new women, led a much less stressful life and a more content one, too.

A duller life, though. Yeah, and he had to admit that every so often he'd missed H.J.

Such thoughts were dangerous.

"Blimey," he said aloud.

H
ead low, mumbling his lines in the muffin voice he'd pretty nearly decided he'd go with, Ben stepped out of the elevator twenty six-floors above Third Avenue and 51st and walked smack into a very pretty blonde woman who was searching for something in her large scarlet purse. He became briefly entangled with her, executing a wobbly half turn before getting free.

"Asshole," remarked the blonde, elbowing him aside so that she might jump into the elevator just before its doors came hissing shut.

Backing across the thickly carpeted corridor, clutching his attaché case to his chest, Ben stared at the closed silvery doors of the elevator. His nose wrinkled once as he muttered, "Same smell."

The young woman was the model Trinity Winters and she was wearing the same scent as the woman in the ski mask with whom he'd wrestled on Long Island the night before.

The perfume must be Crazed. A popular one, worn probably by thousands of women. Except that Trinity Winters, judging by his quick go-round with her just now, also felt a lot like the masked female burglar.

That's a hell of a subjective judgment, though, based on a quick feel in the hall, he reminded himself.

Still, it was odd.

Everything is odd. Has been since you allowed H.J. to cross your threshold again
. He noticed his watch, saw that the time was two minutes short of two and hurried into the Lenzer, Moon & Lombard reception room.

The place was large and white. The carpeting, the chairs, the reception desk, the platinum-haired receptionist were all shades of white. Three LM&L print ad proofs framed on the far wall provided the only trace of color, and they had wide white frames. Two of the ads were for the My Man Chumley account and featured full color shots of Barry Kathkart as the jovial butler.

Ben crossed over to the desk. "You know, I debated about wearing my white suit," he confided to the receptionist. "Now I'm sorry I didn't. I would've blended better."

She gave him a look that lacked sufficient warmth to be disdainful. "Yes?"

"Ben Spanner."

"Who?"

"Spanner. To see Les Beaujack."

"Oh, yes. If you'll take a seat, Mr. Beaujack will be ready for you very shortly."

An artist, who looked no more than twenty-two, was the only other person waiting. He was slouched in one of the white chairs, his large black leather portfolio resting across his knees.

"Afternoon." Ben seated himself two chairs away.

"You're married to H.J. Mavity," said the shaggy-headed young man.

"Used to be."

"She's an interesting lady."

"She is, yes."

"Nice bone structure, too."

"You think so? I've never been quite satisfied with her ribs along this side."

"Facial bones I mean, speaking strictly from an artist's viewpoint," the young artist explained. "She isn't too terrible a painter either, if you like the trite, traditional paperback school."

"I do. In fact, I was always after my parents to send me to the trite, traditional paperback school. But they insisted on UCLA instead."

"Yeah, that's right." The artist folded his arms and turned away. "H.J. mentioned that you were an incurable wiseass."

Grinning, Ben opened his attaché case and got out his scripts for further study. Eleven minutes later a white door to the rear of the receptionist flipped open and a middle-sized, deeply tanned man of about forty looked out into the room. "Ben, old buddy, come on in," he invited. "We'll be taping right here in our in-house studio today."

"Hi, Les." Shutting the scripts away again, he got up and went over to shake hands with the advertising executive. "I think I've worked out the right voice for the—"

"I'm sure you have, which is why we hired you." He stepped back into the office area, holding the door. "Let me guide you through the labyrinth."

Just about everything on the other side of the door was white, too.

"By the way, I was glad to hear," said Beaujack over his shoulder, "that you and your lovely bride were back together again."

"Where'd you hear that?"

"Oh, around someplace. Isn't it so?"

"For the moment," admitted Ben after a few seconds. He followed Beaujack deeper into the agency.

T
he director up in the booth said, "My Man Chumley, Spot 32B, Take 7." He was a plump black man in his middle thirties. As he pointed at Ben through the glass now, he smiled with just a trace of weariness. The clock on the wall of the small studio showed that it was nearly four o'clock.

Ben leaned into his microphone and said, "Blimey, but I'm on top of the bloomin' world, I am."

The small, pale actor beside Ben said, "An' well yer should be, mate. You've been picked to be part of a blinkin' My Man—"

"Jesus H. Christ, aren't you ever going to read that line right, jerk?" Barry Kathkart, standing at a microphone of his own, lowered his script to glare over at the small, pale actor.

"Barry, old buddy," said Beaujack from the booth, "Pierce sounds fine to us up here. Suppose we try to get all the way through his second commercial before we—"

"He sounds like a raving faggot," said the tall, broad actor.

"I am a faggot," said Pierce Gardener, "but that's no reason for you to keep—"

"Fellows," put in Ben, "I think Les has a splendid idea. Let's get a complete take on this thing and then see about what doctoring, if any, we—"

"If you want to kiss Les's ass, Spanner," suggested Kathkart, "do it elsewhere. I don't think your boyfriend's reading is right. And keep in mind that I'm really the one who has to be satisfied here. I sure as hell know what makes a good Chumley commercial. And let me tell you, brothers, this ain't it."

Ben said, "Granted you've sat in on some of the great muffin performances of the century, Barry. Even so, everybody else thinks Pierce is doing okay."

"Ah, the Sir John Gielgud of silly voices has spoken." Kathkart threw his script to the floor and went striding over to a far corner of the studio. "Les, fire both these assholes and get me two new muffins."

Ben said, "Come on, Barry, we're all professionals here and—"

"I'm telling you Pierce's reading isn't right, and yours isn't all that good either, Spanner." He poked a forefinger in Ben's direction and then at the booth. "Get him the hell out of here, Les."

"Hold it a minute, everybody," advised Beaujack. He came hurrying down out of the booth and into the room.

Giving Ben and Gardener a quick, rueful smile, he crossed over to Kathkart and started talking to him in a low murmuring voice.

"Have you worked with Kathkart before?" Gardener asked quietly.

"Never have, nope."

"I have—once before." He sighed, rolled up his script and rubbed it across his small chin. "I'm not coming across too swish, am I?"

"I've never heard an English muffin with more balls," Ben assured him.

"I would've liked to turn down this particular job, but I couldn't risk ticking Les off. They use me on a lot of other stuff."

". . . don't want to annoy him, remember?" drifted over from Les's murmured lecture to the big actor.

"Okay, okay," muttered Kathkart. "I forgot, Les, I lost my temper."

"This isn't Shakespeare, old buddy," reminded Beaujack in a louder voice. "Don't take it too seriously."

"All right, Les, but keep in mind that if I didn't take this goddamn job seriously the agency would have lost the Chumley account a long time ago." Kathkart came stomping back to his mike, squatted, grunted, and scooped up his discarded script with such force that he turned it into a ball of crumpled paper.

Beaujack tapped Ben's upper arm with his fist. "All your jobs for us won't be this rough," he promised. "Don't hold this against us."

"Right you are, guy," said Ben in his muffin voice, tugging at his forelock.

It was a few minutes shy of six-thirty in the evening when they finished recording the three My Man Chumley commercials.

T
hey'd entered Ben's house at about five minutes shy of two that afternoon. Two of them, big men in dark windbreakers and ski masks. They had come down through a wooded area, pines and maples mostly, to the left of his house and slipped in by prying open the sliding glass doors of the living room.

They were very slick about breaking in, quiet, professional. But, even so, up in the guest bedroom H.J. heard them.

Her heartbeat accelerated, but she didn't panic. Nor did she for a moment assume that they might just be friends or neighbors of Ben's dropping in for an afternoon cup of coffee.

I'd better get my butt out of here
, she told herself, rising slowly and quietly off the bed where she'd been lying and reading through one of the business ledgers she'd dug up in Ben's study. He really was making over $200,000 a year now.

She dropped the black-bound book on the unmade bed, and took a deep breath. From the back of a wicker chair she grabbed her maroon sweater. She couldn't hear them downstairs anymore, but she sensed them.

She flatfooted over to the window and, after breaking a thumbnail on the latch, urged it open, patiently and without noise. H.J. knew, from her earlier thorough casing of the house, that there was a slanting roof just outside this particular window. Poking her head cautiously out, she surveyed things. Nobody was stationed in front of the place, there was no sign of a car parked out on the road.

Taking another deep breath, she climbed out of the bedroom and made her way on hands and knees down across the shingled roof. She had the impression she heard someone coming up the stairs in the house she was abandoning. Not waiting to confirm that, she rolled over the edge of the roof and held onto it with both hands, dangling about ten feet above the side lawn.

Okay, Geronimo or whatever
, she said to herself, letting go.

She hit hard, jangling her teeth. As she fell over, her right knee slammed into the ground. Making a sighing, unhappy sound, she scrambled to her feet and started running.

"I seem to be doing a hell of a lot of limping lately," she observed as she hobbled rapidly into the surrounding woodlands.

After a few minutes of running and stumbling, H.J. found a dark, shadowy spot rich in high, concealing brush. She hunkered down amidst the bushes with her back pressed against a tree trunk. Not once during the long uncomfortable hour that the men ransacked Ben's house did she consider calling the police.