Too Soon Dead (21 page)

He glared at me and then turned his chair around to stare out the window. When he showed no sign of turning back, I left the office and headed down to the Blind Harlequin, a Greenwich Village restaurant, coffeehouse, and hangout, for dinner and a discussion of the state of the novel with two friends of mine who were real, full-time, professional writers.

Bill Welsch writes short stories for the war pulps and the detective pulps, and started selling regularly to
Black Mask
about a year ago, joining the exalted ranks of such as Dashiell Hammett, Erie Stanley Gardner, and Raymond Chandler.

Agnes Silverson produced hard-boiled detective stories under the pen name Charles D. Epp. Her series character, Dagger Dell, was “a private eye with a nose for mayhem,” to quote the blurb on her latest opus in
All-Detective Story Magazine.
She had to use a man’s name on the stories because the editors wouldn’t buy hard-boiled tales under a woman’s byline. She was in her late thirties, and had been married once, as she would admit if pressed. But she would speak no further about the experience, not even as to whether she was currently separated, divorced, or widowed, except to occasionally refer to her erstwhile husband as “that cornucopia of shit I was once married to.”

Bill Welsch was maybe forty, and had done all of those things that writers use to pad out the author’s biography on the flap of the book. He had been a captain in the Army Flying Corps, with three confirmed kills to his credit and a hand that had a great scar running across the back and would no longer close into a fist. He had been a starving writer in Paris in the twenties, when that was the thing to do; had been kept by an Italian countess in her villa outside of Florence (which didn’t make the book jacket); had been a private detective in Chicago; and had written advertising copy for an agency in New York. One day he read an issue of
Air Aces
magazine and said, “It wasn’t like that at all.” So he wrote a story to tell what it really was like, and he’s been doing it ever since.

The two of them were making a good living writing, and they were both very good at it. I liked their stuff. It wasn’t highbrow literature, but they told fast-moving yarns that made the reader want to turn the page. I couldn’t understand why they were wasting their talents writing for the pulps. That night, over a late-night slice of cheesecake and cold coffee, I asked them.

Welsch looked at me like I was crazy. “I’m not wasting my talent,” he said. “Hell, that
is
my talent.”

Silverson stared into her glass of amaretto, or whatever Italian soda she was drinking that night, and said, “I wrote a novel once—a real novel. Full of deep insights into the way people live and make love and hurt each other. I was nineteen. It was dreadful.”

Welsch leaned across the table and waved his finger at my nose. “You should examine your literary prejudices,” he said. “There are no better stylists working today than some of the
Black Mask
boys.”

“And girls,” Silverson added.

“And girls.”

Agnes grabbed my arm. “For God’s sake, Morgan,” she said, “we have high hopes for you. Don’t become one of those stuffed-shirt Establishment novelists!”

“I sometimes doubt,” I told her, “whether I’ll ever become any sort of novelist at all.”

Bill smiled a sad smile. “That’s the curse of the writer,” he said. “The act of creating demands constant self-doubt, which never ends no matter how long you’ve been doing it. If you’re not continually possessed of the feeling that your stuff is never as good as it should be, than you don’t care enough to master your craft, and you’ll never be a really good writer. On the other hand, a feeling that your stuff is no good is not a guarantee that it actually is good. You might be right, after all.”

“Thanks,” I said.

For a while we all stared morosely into our various drinks. “If you want a real reason to lose respect for me,” I told them, “I’m going to a Republican fund-raiser tomorrow.”

They shifted their stares to me. I felt impelled to explain this unnatural act, so I told them what I could of our impending visit to Senator Childers’s parts.

“He’s from a very old, very rich family,” Welsch said. “His ancestors have been cheating and stealing and oppressing the proletariat for hundreds of years. He bought himself a senate seat, which I suppose is better than buying himself a string of polo ponies or a Rembrandt.”

“Better how?” Agnes asked.

“It spreads the money around more. His son, Andrew Brisch Childers, has been kicked out of all the best schools for insobriety and general disdain, and is now getting a law degree in a school his father bought for him. His daughter, Bitsy ‘the Brat’ Childers, has had several husbands and boyfriends and suffers from unspecified behavior problems that are supporting a large part of the alienist population of northern New Jersey and New York. It isn’t eugenic; they’d both probably be perfectly normal kids if their father was a shoe salesman making thirty-five bucks a week.”

“You got something against the rich?” Agnes asked. “You wouldn’t trade places with them in an instant; no, you wouldn’t.”

“Not if I had to stop writing for
Black Mask
, I wouldn’t. My ambition is to starve for my art in the pulps.” Welsch raised his thumb over a clenched fist and waggled it at me. “You know the difference between us and the rich?” he asked. “They have money!”

“May I sit at your feet,” I said, “and eat the crumbs that fall from your beard, O Master?”

“No, no,” he said. “I’m serious. Think about it. You know all those times that you’ve said, or at least thought, ‘If I was rich, then I’d do so-and-so’?”

“Yeah?” I said cautiously.

“Well, consider. That’s the first-level shit. The rich did that, whatever it is, years ago. They went wherever it is, they bought whatever it is, they joined whatever it is, they bedded whoever it is, they insulted whoever the hell they felt like insulting, and they’ve done it all as many times as they like, and they’re bored with it. Now they have to go on to the second and third levels to find things and people that don’t bore them.”

“And what’s on the second and third levels?” Agnes asked.

“How should I know?” Welsch replied. “I’m not rich.”

“Of course not,” Agnes told him. “You’re a writer.”

For the next few hours, after we were done examining the state of publishing and what bastards editors were, we wandered through politics (the Republicans were going to nominate Borah, Landon, or Childers, but it didn’t matter; Roosevelt’s reelection was as certain as a spring rain). We touched on sports (a Negro boxer named Joe Louis, Welsch reported, was creating respect for his people with his quiet dignity and with his sledgehammer fists—a good line; he’d probably use it in one of his stories); on music (the big swing bands maybe weren’t as creative as the small jazz groups, but they gave work to a lot more people); and on the theater (musical comedy is an original American art form).

I was at home and in bed a little after two.

I gave myself an extra hour’s sleep the next morning, since it was going to be a long day. We were collectively going out to Senator Childers’s estate in New Jersey so that Brass could be a celebrity at his party, which started at about one in the afternoon and didn’t end until after what the invitation described as a dress-optional dinner. It was about a three-hour drive, given the bad roads, and we were getting an early start. We could have gone by train; the president of the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western had arranged to put special cars on all the day trains just for the senator’s guests, but being chauffeured by Garrett would give us an extra pair of eyes when we arrived. And nobody ever notices the servants; or so P.G. Wodehouse would have us believe.

It was eight-thirty in the morning when Brass’s new black Packard sedan pulled up in front of the door. Garrett, in a dark blue suit and chauffeur’s cap, was driving. I tossed my traveling bag in the trunk, climbed in front with Garrett, and swiveled around to say good morning to those in back. Brass was sitting between the two girls, who were dressed in the sort of skirt and jacket combination that is known, I believe, as “sport clothes.” Exactly what sport a young lady is supposed to play in them, I don’t know. I would like to watch. In keeping with the occasion, I was wearing gray slacks and a blue blazer with brass buttons that would have done an admiral proud. Brass wore his inevitable suit, but a red four-in-hand tie decorated his neck instead of the usual bow tie; his concession to country life.

We had no trouble finding the Childers’s estate; large tin signs bearing the Childers family crest—a lion’s head with a crown above but not quite touching it surrounded by thirteen stars—and an arrow pointing the way had been posted on all the roads starting about ten miles out. At about ten minutes to one a Negro lackey in what looked like court dress for the Emerald City of Oz checked our credentials and waved us through the pair of ornate wrought-iron gates. The family crest was centered on each gate and on the wrought-iron arch over them. The driveway was a lane of pale orange bricks majestically flanked by oak trees. After about half a mile we came to the house. I should say the main house, since there were a number of other hice scattered about the property.

A second fancy-dress lackey, also a gentleman of color, waved us away from the front door and around to the back, where a green and gold striped pavilion the size of the
Hindenburg
had been set up. Several costumed servitors stood about waiting for the chance to serve. We emerged from the car, all but Garrett, who was taken in hand by yet another minion of the senator’s and guided off to wherever cars and chauffeurs were being kept for the duration of the party.

The senator was a broad-shouldered, ruggedly handsome man in his late fifties, whose plaid suit covered him with the inevitability of truly expensive tailoring. He stood inside the pavilion, flanked by men in blue suits with stern faces and precise haircuts, greeting the new arrivals. As I approached, I could see the amount of careful grooming that had gone into the ruggedly handsome exterior. “Alexander Brass,” he boomed with the verbal excitement of a sideshow talker announcing a new act. “Welcome to my little place! Just great that you could get here—just great! Mighty glad to see you. Mighty glad! We must get together for a gab sometime before you leave. Off the record, of course, off the record. Just a friendly chat.”

Brass smiled, muttered something noncommittal, and introduced his entourage. Childers barely nodded to me, but he enfolded Gloria in his arms and gave her a healthy peck on the cheek, and followed with the same exercise for Cathy. Impartial and fair in his treatment of women, was the senator, and who could blame him? Having bestowed his senatorial favors, he waved us on into the pavilion and turned to greet a carriage-load of guests that had come in behind us. The carriage was an open landau, pulled by a matched pair of chestnut horses, with a matched pair of dusky men in the senator’s livery in the driving seat. One of several horse-drawn vehicles of different sorts that the senator kept around, it was being used to pick up guests who arrived at the train station.

On the drive down to Childers’s kingdom we had discussed the possible ways to get the information we were after. The only problem was that we didn’t know what information we might find, or whether we’d know it if we saw it. Brass had been pretty sure that he’d get a chance to have a talk with Childers; what politician could resist a tête-à-tête with an important columnist? But what should he ask and how should he phrase it? “Have you posed for any dirty pictures lately?” seemed a little crass. “Have you murdered or caused to have murdered any newsmen or photographers in the past week?” was a bit pushy. And what there might be to find was even more vague. It seemed unlikely that the room in which the pictures had been shot was on the Childers estate, and if it was, how could we recognize it? A naked couple cavorting on one side of the room, with a cameraman peering into his ground glass on the other, would be a definite sign. Mitchell had suggested that the room probably had a skylight. Perhaps we should ask Childers for a tour of his attic.

The pavilion covered a large serving area for the sort of snacks that one might desire before dinner: a roast beef, a ham, and a turkey, each with its own personal carver in chef’s whites and toque; a crab steamer beside a mound of quiescent crabs; a wide variety of cold cuts, salads, mousses, gelatinous masses, pies, ices, and liquid refreshments. And by the tower of plates stood several servitors ready to help those who did not feel like helping themselves.

We paused at the pavilion flap to take in the view. The air was clear, the sky was blue, the smell of newly turned earth with just a touch of fertilizer perfumed the surroundings. Past the pavilion was a stretch of well-manicured lawn well furnished with lawn chairs and tables on which several groups of people were engaged in quiet social banter. A wide gravel walk semi-circled the lawn before continuing on its way. At about fifteen-foot intervals along the walk were marble statues of men in togas and women in very little.

Before we had a chance to go anywhere, a high-pitched drone surrounded us, seeming to come from all directions at once. After a second we could make out a lower, throbbing accompaniment. Imagine someone working the treadle on a sewing machine a little more rapidly than is actually possible, while at the same time rhythmically hitting a snare drum with a rolled-up newspaper. The noise was something like that. Half a minute later it got much louder and an odd-looking aircraft burst over the top of a nearby hill and headed straight toward us, at about two hundred feet off the ground. It was a single-engine monoplane fuselage with a tail but no wings, and what looked like a spinning parasol suspended over the pilot’s seat.

The plane slowed as it reached the center of the field, and then dropped gently toward the ground with only the slightest forward motion. The various groups of people on the field were frozen in place, as though uncertain as to whether to approach this apparition or flee from it.

“What is it?” Gloria asked.