The Seduction of Peter S., The Case of Lucy Bending, and Tales of the Wolf
Three Thrillers in One Volume
Contents
The Seduction of Peter S.
The Case of Lucy Bending
Tales of the Wolf
About the Author
Tales of the Wolf
Contents
Manhattan after Dark
The Rogue Man
The Bloody Triangle
The Man Who Didn’t Come Back
The Woman in the Lake
A String of Blues
The Case of the Purloined Princess
Death of a Model
The Girl in the Office
The Curse of the Upper Classes
The Ice Gang
An Introduction to Murder
The Case of the Missing Nude
The Case of Lucy Bending
PART I
PART II
PART III
PART IV
PART V
PART VI
1
The office was half-nursery. One sunlit wall painted with moon-jumping cows and fiddle-playing cats. A deep bookcase jumbled with toys, games, puzzles, stuffed animals. And on the ceiling, pasted stars.
The man planted behind the desk stared through percolator-top glasses. A snarled salt-and-pepper beard framed rosy lips. His nose was a smudge; dainty ears pressed close to a heavy skull.
His hunched body loomed forward, neck sunken in rounded shoulders. Cigar ashes drifted across an atrocious tie and the lapels of a rumpled black suit so shiny it looked like it had been oiled and polished.
“Mrs. Bending,” he said, his voice a throaty rumble, “Mr. Bending, suppose you sit there … and there. I must start off by confessing that I am a habitual cigar smoker. Of course, if it offends you, I won’t light up. Ma’am?”
“No, that’s all right,” the woman said nervously. “Go ahead, doctor.”
“You, sir?”
“Fine with me, doc. Filter-tips are my vice.”
“Thank you.” He took a dark cigar from an open desk drawer, began to strip cellophane carefully away. “My name is Doctor Theodore Levin. It is spelled L-e-v-i-n, but pronounced Levine, for reasons I have never been able to understand. You are Mrs. Grace Bending and you, sir, are Mr. Ronald Bending. Your daughter’s name is Lucy, and you have been referred to me by Doctor David K. Raskob, pediatrician, of Boca Raton. Do I have my facts correct?”
“Yes, doctor,” the woman said stiffly. She was twisting her wedding band, around and around.
Levin lighted his cigar with a wooden kitchen match scratched on the underside of his desk. He turned the cigar slowly in pursed lips. He blew a smoke cloud toward the pasted stars.
“Now then …” he said. “I have found it best for all concerned if I explain at the beginning exactly how I practice so there can be no possible misunderstanding. As I told you on the phone, ma’am, my fee is a hundred dollars an hour. That is a professional hour; forty-five minutes to be exact.”
“Beautiful!” Ronald Bending said with a loppy grin.
His wife snapped at him: “Ronnie, be quiet.”
The doctor looked at them, woman to man and back again, with a fiercely benign smile.
“This initial interview,” he continued gently, “of forty-five minutes at the usual fee, is to give you an opportunity to explain the nature of your daughter’s problem. At the end of this meeting, I may tell you that I feel I can be of no assistance. It sometimes happens. In such a case, I may be able to suggest other psychiatrists who might be able to help.”
The woman’s eyes squinched with anguish. “But Doctor Raskob recommended you.”
“I appreciate that, ma’am, but your daughter’s problem may be better handled by another. Please let me be the judge of that.”
He paused a moment while Ronald Bending lighted a cigarette, using a gold Dupont lighter. Bending then sat back negligently, crossed his knees, adjusted the crisp crease in his trouser leg. He was wearing tasseled cordovan moccasins, burnished to a high gloss.
Dr. Levin went on: “In the event I feel tentatively that I might be of help, I will require an initial interview with your daughter, uh …”
“Lucy.”
“Yes, with Lucy. After meeting and talking with her, I will be able to give you a final decision on whether I believe I can be of help and will accept the case.”
Bending’s face reddened. He jerked forward angrily. “See here—”
“Ronnie,” his wife interrupted, “please! We understand all that, doctor.”
“And you wish to continue?”
“Yes.”
“If I accept your daughter for psychotherapy, I will inform you as to the frequency of visits I recommend. Once or several times a week. The first regular visit, or sometimes the first two, will be given over to a complete physical examination, conducted by my associate, Doctor Mary Scotsby. There will be additional billing for X-rays and laboratory analyses.”
“Now see here,” Ronald Bending said, lips pulling tight, “Raskob has been Lucy’s doctor since she was born. He has all the tests; he can tell you anything you want to know.”
“I prefer to conduct my own examination, sir.”
“Oh Jesus!” Bending said disgustedly, and leaned forward to jab out his cigarette butt in the big marble ashtray on the doctor’s desk.
“Ronnie,” his wife said, her voice strangled, “will you please let me handle this? We understand, doctor, and we’d like to go ahead.”
“A moment … In the psychiatric treatment of a child of—how old is she?”
“Lucy is eight years old.”
“In the treatment of a child of eight, it is sometimes necessary to meet also with her parents, siblings, if any, and even, on occasion, her teachers, friends, neighbors, and so forth. These interviews are for the usual professional hour and billed at the usual fee. I want all this to be clearly understood before you decide to continue.”
Bending threw his hands into the air and rolled his eyes in comical disbelief. “Grace, this could cost a fortune!”
“We want to go ahead, doctor,” she insisted.
Levin inspected the husband without expression.
“Sir, if you have any objections, or if you feel you cannot carry the, uh, financial burden, I may be able to recommend agencies that—”
“No!” Bending said at once. “No agencies. We’ll go on with this.”
“You’re certain in your own mind?”
“Hell no, I’m not certain. But I’ll go along.”
“And you, ma’am?”
“Yes. Positively.”
“Very well. Now just one additional fact of which you should be aware … This interview—and all interviews in the future, with Lucy, with you, and others—is being recorded on a tape recorder.”
Bending blinked with surprise. “What’s the point of that, doc?”
“To maintain a history of treatment and provide a handy referral to past interviews. To enable me to review the case when the patient is absent and perhaps discover things that were not immediately apparent during the actual interview.”
Bending was back to his lopsided grin. “I hope you keep the tapes locked up!”
“I do indeed. In a fireproof, burglarproof vault. They will be heard only by myself and my associate, Doctor Scotsby. You still wish to continue?”
“Yes, doctor, we do.”
“You, sir?”
“Yes.”
“Very well. If I agree to accept Lucy as a patient, I will ask both of you to complete questionnaires that will provide me with most of the needed basic information: date and place of birth, family medical history, education, employment, and so forth. At the moment, I think we should concern ourselves solely with the reason for your being here. What, precisely, is Lucy’s problem?”
Husband and wife glanced at each other. She fidgeted; he blandly lighted another cigarette, then examined the burning tip.
Silence expanded, filled the room. The doctor waited patiently, squarish hands clasped loosely over his bulging vest. His cigar had gone out; the butt rested on the edge of his scarred desk. He looked calmly at the Bendings, and said nothing. Finally …
“Uh, Grace,” Ronald Bending said, staring off into space, “you tell him.”
She started with a rush: “Doctor, our Lucy is a beautiful little girl. When you see her, I think you’ll agree she is just lovely, and very intelligent and—and poised for her age.”
“Smart as a whip,” Ronald Bending drawled.
“She is very popular with her friends, both girls and boys, and her teachers love her. There is nothing mean or malicious about her. And her brothers just dote on her.”
She stopped. Silence again. Dr. Levin waited a moment, then said, “And …?”
“Well, for the past three years, about, since she was five, she—Ronnie, wouldn’t you say it’s been for the past three years?”
“Maybe longer. Maybe since she was four.”
“Doctor, she has become increasingly, uh, affectionate. Hugging and kissing all the time. Hanging on to people. She’s become very, uh, physical, and is always touching and stroking. Sometimes in a vulgar way.”
“And …?”
“Well … that’s it, doctor.”
“I see …” Levin leaned forward over his desk, looming again, hunched and burly. He spoke to both of them, but he locked stares with Ronald Bending. “You have described to me a very loving, well-adjusted, outgoing little girl. Is that the impression you wish to give me?”
“Grace, for God’s sake,” Bending burst out, “tell him!”
“Doctor, it’s …” Her voice trailed away.
“Oh Christ!” her husband said furiously. “Doc, it’s more than just being affectionate. She’s—well, she’s always coming on. Not with her kid friends or brothers. But with me and any older men we invite to the house. She’s always holding their hands, kissing, and petting them. At first it was cute. Now it’s become an embarrassment. She’s all over every man like a wet sheet. She wants to sit on their laps. She squirms between their legs. You’ve seen young hounds that grab your shins in their paws and rub up and down? She’s just like that.”
“Ronnie!”
“Grace, it’s true and you know it. What the hell’s the point of paying for professional help if we don’t tell the truth? Doc, Lucy is a beautiful, intelligent little girl. That is the truth. But she acts like a sex maniac. I mean it. She touches men between their legs—if you know what I mean. She twists around on their laps and strokes their thighs and wants to kiss. Older men. Always older men. Sometimes, I swear to God, she acts like a little hooker. Touching them up, laughing, really trying to excite them. I include myself, except that now I try to hold her off. Not reject her, you understand, but trying to let her know she’s doing the wrong thing. But every time we have a male visitor, someone older than, say, eighteen or so, she starts coming on with them. It’s so obvious that all our friends know about it. We joked about it at first, but it’s gone beyond the joking stage now. Let me tell you what happened when—”
“Ronnie! Please don’t.”
“Yes, I’ve got to say it. We had a lot of people in for a Labor Day cookout. It lasted all day—a pool party. Things got kind of drunk later that night. I went into the kitchen to get more ice, and here was—here was this good friend of mine backed up against the sink. Drink in one hand, cigarette in the other. Lucy was standing between his legs and robbing him up. He was wearing slacks, and she was robbing his, uh, penis through the cloth. With both her little hands. Listen, he was stoned, I admit it, but also I swear it wasn’t his fault. I’m not even sure he knew what was going on, but Lucy knew. Oh yes! He wasn’t seducing her; she was seducing him. And when I came into the kitchen, she turned, gave me a great big gorgeous smile, and said, ‘Hi daddy!’ as if what she was doing was the most natural thing in the world. I mean there was absolutely no realization that what she was doing was wrong. I yanked her out of there, cracked her behind, and sent her upstairs to bed. Maybe I shouldn’t have done that, but I was so pissed off I wasn’t thinking straight. Then I kicked his ass out of the house. But I know, I know, it wasn’t his fault. It wasn’t his idea; it was her idea. She came on to him. That’s the way she is.”
“I see,” Dr. Levin said. He leaned back in his scuffed swivel chair. Slowly, deliberately, he relighted his dead cigar. He placed both thick hands on the desk top, palms down. He turned his searchlight eyes to Grace Bending. “Ma’am, is what your husband told me correct?”
She lifted her chin, poked slender fingers into her sun-streaked chignon. “Well, ah, of course I didn’t see that particular incident, but I believe it. Yes, that’s the way she acts with men. It’s so distasteful. Disgusting. Kissing them and petting them and touching them. It’s horrible enough in our own home, doctor, but what worries me, uh, us, is what might happen away from home. If some man picks her up … We can’t be with her every minute. I just don’t know …”
Suddenly she was weeping, hunched over and biting a knuckle. Her shoulders shook. Little snuffling sounds came from her. Ronald Bending looked at her ironically.
“Please, ma’am,” Levin said, “try to control yourself.”
“We’re not exaggerating, doc,” Bending said stonily. “That’s the way she acts. We’ve tried talking to her, explaining that she’s annoying people. We’ve tried spanking her and sending her to her room without supper. We’ve tried everything we can think of. But she just doesn’t seem to understand that what she’s doing is wrong. She just keeps doing it. And she’s really beautiful, with a great little body. So a lot of our friends welcomed her, uh, attentions—until they realized what was going on. Now some of them won’t come to our house. It’s just too embarrassing. Doc, may I ask you a question?”
“Yes.”
“Have you ever heard of anything like this before? Have you ever treated a little girl who acts like that?”
“Sir, Lucy’s problem, as you describe it, is not unique, I assure you. There is literature on the subject. And yes, I have treated a similar case in the past.”
“And you cured her?” Grace Bending asked, looking up with teary eyes.
“You must pardon me, but I cannot discuss another case with you any more than I would discuss Lucy’s case with anyone else.”
“But you can cure her?”
“I don’t like that word ‘cure,’ as if your daughter had some dreadful disease. I don’t ‘cure’ my patients; I provide psychotherapeutic treatment and try to adjust their behavior to acceptable standards. For their good, and for the good of society. If you want me to guarantee success, no, I cannot do that; no medical doctor or psychiatrist can. All I can do is tell you that your daughter’s behavior is not as outlandish or reprehensible as you may think, and the possibility of change and improvement does exist.”
“Then you’ll take her on as a patient, doctor?” Grace Bending said hopefully.
“We’ll see, ma’am, we’ll see.”
“Well, what’s the next step?”
“I think I should speak to Lucy.”
2
The rusted air conditioner whined steadily, but the motel room smelled of roach spray and spent passions. A bent Venetian blind on the west window could not be closed tightly; the beamy Florida sun printed a ladder across Jane Holloway’s naked back. Ronald Bending traced shadow and light with a gentle finger.
“How do you get an overall tan?” he asked her.
She lifted onto her side, stretched across him for the cigarette pack. Ribs pressed glossy skin.
“You’ve asked me that before,” she said. “Several times.”
“And you’ve refused to answer—several times. I tell you things.”
“Nothing important,” she said. She rolled onto her back, blew a plume of smoke at the cracked ceiling.
“Tacky dump,” she said.
“You picked it,” he said mildly. “It doesn’t make any difference, does it?”
“No.”
The mildewed walls were a map of strange worlds. Every flat surface in the room bore a tattoo of cigarette burns. In the bathroom, a vending machine dispensed condoms in three colors. The sheets were stiff as sacking, the towels lacy from years of laundering.
From outside came the grind of a powered lawnmower and the whiz of traffic on I-95. They heard the crunch of steps on the gravel parking lot and a woman’s high-pitched giggle. A radio was playing somewhere, too faintly to distinguish the song, but they could hear the driving pulse.
“What about the all-over tan?” Bending asked again.
She turned her head to stare at him. “Persistent bugger, aren’t you?”
“Just envious. I’ll tell you something important if you’ll tell me how you get the tan. Deal?”
“Depends. Let’s hear your news first.”
“Well …” Bending said, lighting his own cigarette, “Grace and I finally went to a psychiatrist in Fort Liquordale this morning. About Lucy.”
“You should have gone years ago.”
“I suppose.”
“Is he going to take her?”
“He wants to talk to her first.”
“That figures. What’s he like?”
“The shrink? Seems like a no-nonsense guy.”
“Young? Old?”
“About my age,” Bending said. “Maybe a few years older. Short. Stocky. Beard and thick glasses. Young Doctor Freud. He’s supposed to be a good man.”
“How much, Turk?” she asked curiously.
“Hundred bucks an hour. Which is forty-five minutes.”
“Jesus. He better be a good man.”
“All right, that’s my trade. Now how about your tan?”
She touched the indentation of her waist, pressed the hardness of her thigh. She felt the flatness of her abdomen, stroked her shoulder. He waited patiently. Finally she said:
“I have a friend in Plantation with a roof terrace above everything around. I suntan in the nude up there a couple times a week. No one can see me.”
“Except helicopter pilots and the people in the Goodyear blimp. Who’s the friend?”
She didn’t answer.
“Man or woman?” he asked.
“Man.”
“Do I know him?”
“I don’t think so.”
“What’s his first name? You can tell me that, can’t you?”
She considered a moment. “His first name is Randolph,” she said.
He looked at her, blinking.
“My God!” he said. “Not the senator?”
“Ex-senator.”
“Whatever. Jane, he’s got to be eighty!”
“Pushing.”
“What does he do—beat you with his truss?”
She showed her teeth. “Nothing like that. He’s never touched me.”
“Then what does he do?”
“Just looks. Looking can be a pleasure, too, you know. I see you staring at the creamers on the beach in their string bikinis.”
“Yes,” he said, nodding, “that’s true. And he’s never touched you?”
“Never.”
“What do you get out of it?”
“A perfect tan. Some good stock tips. Ripe gossip about local political bigwigs. Who’s doing what to whom. Did you know there’s a pillar of the community, who shall be nameless, who gets it off with little black sambos?”
“Big deal,” he said. “I know a pillar of the Community who gets it off with alligators.”
She struck him on the shoulder with a clenched fist. “You’re impossible.”
He agreed.
He swung his legs out of bed, padded to the dresser. He took two Cokes from an insulated bag, just large enough to hold a six-pack. He popped the tabs, came back to bed.
Ronald Bending was a stretched, farmerish man. Hair sun-bleached brown. Ruddy complexion. Laugh lines at the corners of his eyes. A voice curdled with irony. Outsize gestures, almost theatrical. Eyes of faded blue. His body was all angles and edges. Skin a bronzy red above and below the white outlines of his swimming trunks.
He put one of the cold cans of Coke atop her stomach. She gasped and plucked it away. They lighted new cigarettes and sipped and smoked, smoked and sipped.
“Did Luther Empt say anything to Bill?” he asked her. “About a meeting tonight?”
“If he did, I don’t know about it. Why?”
“Luther called me at the office, wants me to come over for a drink. Wouldn’t tell me what it’s about, but he sounded excited. As excited as Luther can get.”
“That man’s a lump.”
“A smart lump. I take it he’s one you’ve missed.”
“You take it correctly.”
“I know where he gets his jollies.”
“Not from his wife, that’s for sure. Did you ever try that, Turk?”
“I tried,” he admitted. “Got nowhere.”
“You’re too old for her,” she advised.
“Too old?” he protested. “I won’t be forty till March. She’s got to have a few years on me.”
“Two, to be exact.”
Then they were silent. All this talk about age was disquieting. You rarely spoke of growing old, and death was taboo. You tanned your skin and played golf or tennis. You dressed young, listened to young music, danced young dances. Youth was where it was. Time was the enemy.
“You know who she has eyes for?” Jane Holloway asked. “Teresa Empt?”
“I didn’t think she had eyes for anyone,” he said. “I thought she had Rose’s lime juice in her veins.”
“Eddie,” she said.
“Eddie?” he burst out. “Your Eddie?”
“That’s right.”
“But the kid’s only sixteen.”
“Going on twenty-five. You know how he’s built.”
“Teresa Empt and Eddie? You’re crazy!”
“Am I?” she said lazily. “We’re having a cookout next week. Keep an eye on her. You’ll see I’m right.”
“Does Eddie know anything about this?”
“Probably. But Bill doesn’t.”
“Does Bill know anything about us?”
“Doesn’t know and couldn’t care less.”
“I hope you’re right. Does he own a gun?”
“No. Do you?”
“Sure. And so does everyone else I know. So when all the dingoes start moving up from Dade County we’ll be able to protect the sanctity of our homes and the chastity of our women.”
“The first time you try to use it,” she said, “you’ll probably shoot off your whatzis.”
“Probably,” he said cheerfully. “And then where will I be?”
“Nowhere,” she said. “You’ll end up in a wheelchair like the senator. Just looking.”
She smiled at the image and handed him her cigarette butt and empty can of soda.
Her hair was a silver-white trimmed to a brush cut, an inch long atop her head. Florida women looked at her strangely, but she didn’t care. Her dark eyes glittered.
Small, hard breasts were bosses. Hip bones stretched tanned skin. Her hairless body gleamed, arms and legs like peeled willow wands. Her face had been lifted once.
Everything about her was tight. Nothing was soft or saggy. She could grip a man with muscles within her and make him cry out. She used reddish brown polish on her fingernails, and gold on the nails of her long, prehensile toes.
She saw Ronald Bending glance at his wristwatch.
“Do we have time for another?” she asked.
“You’re beautiful,” he said with a clownish smile.
“I know,” she said.
3
The terrace faced the beach, ocean, the Bahamas and, eventually, Morocco. A melon moon popped from the sea, rose swiftly, made a path of dark dazzles across choppy water. The air smelled of ruttish heat. In the dimness, white pages turned endlessly on the strand.
William Jasper Holloway, a vague and melancholy man, came out onto the terrace carrying two small snifters of brandy. He paused to slide shut the glass door, locking in the air conditioning. He joined his father-in-law at the white wicker table, handing him one of the cognacs.
“I thank you, Bill,” the old man said.
“My pleasure, professor.”
Lloyd Craner had a white mustache and goatee, a knuckle of a nose, the brows and eyes of a grandee. He glowered at the world from a face that belonged on a cigar box. His false teeth clacked.
Between his knees was propped his rosewood cane with a silver toucan’s head for a handle. He sat stiffly upright, scanning the sea, daring it. All his movements were precise and calculated. He was determined not to die.
“Nice night,” Bill Holloway offered.
The ex-professor of geology stuck his beak into the snifter, inhaled, then dipped his tongue.
“Ambrosia,” he said. “I saw a flurry out there a few minutes ago. Some phosphorescence.”
“School of mullet,” Holloway said. “Maybe.”
“The sea, the sea,” Craner recited. “A man has not lived until he has known the sea, until he has felt the giant bounds the soul takes upward when the eyes look upon a world without limit, beauty without end. Always, everywhere, the sea rolls forever. Men come and go, and nations, and civilizations. But the sea! That is life, constant, eternal.”
“Very nice,” Holloway said. “Who wrote it?”
“I did,” the professor said. “When I was young and innocent.”
“You were never innocent,” his son-in-law said.
The old man showed his teeth and took a swallow of brandy.
“Excellent dinner tonight,” he said.
“Was it?” Holloway said. “I can’t get used to Florida lobsters. They look like amputees to me.”
“Because you’re from New England. They may not have claws, but the flavor is subtle.”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
“What was the fight about?”
“With Maria? Jane said she had put too much saffron in the rice. Maria told her that in Cuba she had been a great lady who had servants working for her. Jane said maybe she’d be happier back in Cuba. Maria told her in explicit detail what she could do with the saffron rice. Too bad you don’t speak Spanish; it loses something in translation.”
“Is that the end of Maria?”
“Probably,” Holloway said indifferently. “She’s lasted three weeks; that’s par for the course.”
They sipped their brandies slowly. A thick southeast breeze whipped the fronds of palms screening the terrace. They heard the plash of the sea. A vee of pelicans flapped north across the glow of the moon.
“Montana was never like this,” Lloyd Craner said.
“Sometimes I feel I’m living in a travel poster,” Holloway said.
“I thought you liked it.”
“I thought I did. Now I’m beginning to wonder. Too much sea. Too much beach. Too much perfect weather. That damned sun … My brain is turning to mush. I used to read eighteenth-century poetry. Now I read the National Enquirer.”
“You still play chess.”
“Badly.”
“A game tonight?”
“Sorry, professor. I’ve got to have a drink with Luther Empt. Some business proposition he wants to talk about.”
“What do you know about him, Bill?”
“Luther? He came down from Chicago about twelve years ago. Started his own business producing slide presentations for corporations and advertising agencies. Then he got into eight- and sixteen-millimeter educational and training films. Lately he’s been processing TV commercials and video cassettes. Seems to be a very capable man.”
“Ambitious?”
“Oh yes. Teresa is his third wife. I heard some talk that it was her money that enabled him to expand into the television field.”
“Was she married before?”
“Once.”
“Going to Jerusalem,” the codger said.
“What?”
“That’s what we used to call the children’s game of Musical Chairs. He’s been married three times, his wife twice. Ronald Bending has been married twice, and so has Jane. I never knew there were so many widowed, divorced, and remarried people in the world until I came to Florida.”
“Going to Jerusalem,” Holloway repeated. “Good name. Florida: the new Jerusalem. Let me get us a refill.”
He took the brandy snifters back into the living room. It stretched the width of the house, decorated in shades of beige and brown. He hated it.
Jane was curled into one end of a ten-foot couch upholstered in chocolate velvet. She was wearing a tube of fuchsia jersey, down to her ankles. She was filing her nails, watching their oversize TV set.
“How’s the movie?” he asked pleasantly.
“Shit,” she said.
He poured his father-in-law another brandy and himself a double vodka on ice with a squeeze of lime.
“Where’s Gloria?” he asked his wife.
“Doing her homework over at the Bendings’. With Lucy.”
“And Eddie?”
“Upstairs. Unless he’s gone out the window again. Let me have a gin martini. Lemon peel.”
He mixed the drink and brought it to her. She took the glass from his fingers without moving her eyes from the television. He carried the other drinks out to the terrace.
The moon was higher, paler, smaller. Dimly, in the gloom, they saw a pack of five joggers pounding down the beach. Far out in the darkness, a necklace of red lights moved northward.
“Probably commercial fishing boats,” Holloway said. “Heading for the Jupiter Inlet.”
“This Luther Empt …” Lloyd Craner said. “You think he’s an honest man?”
“As honest as he has to be. Why the sudden interest in Luther Empt?” He paused a moment. “Good Lord, professor, don’t tell me it’s his mother. Gertrude? Is it Gertrude?”
“What we used to call a fine figure of a woman,” his father-in-law said softly.
“Going to Jerusalem,” William Jasper Holloway said.
Two vodkas later, he slipped off his canvas moccasins, carried them and, barefoot, scuffed down the beach to Empt’s place, only two homes away. The coarse, gritty sand held the day’s heat. There were sand burrs and shards of shell. He didn’t care. For some reason he could not understand, it was good to feel. Even pain.
He knew he was softer and pudgier than he should have been. He wanted to be as lean and hard as Turk Bending, but only succeeded in being as plump as Luther Empt, but without his energy and resolve.
He was a medium man, of medium height, with hair and eyes a medium brown. All his clothes were medium size. He supposed he had a medium mind and, perhaps, a medium soul.
He wore a knotted silk ascot in the open neck of his white, short-sleeved Izod shirt. He always wore an ascot, an affectation that amused his Florida neighbors. And his flower-patterned polyester slacks would have earned a guffaw from his poofy Boston friends.
But that was another world, in another time.
He came up to the Empt place. He leaned against the concrete seawall to brush sand and burrs from his bare feet and tug on his moccasins. He heard murmurs from the terrace and glimpsed the ghostly figures of Luther and Bending standing near the glass-and-stainless-steel table.
William Holloway’s home, and Ronald Bending’s too, were built on half-acre plots. Luther Empt had a full acre of waterfront property—and what that might be worth stunned the mind. But of course Empt had bought it ten years ago. Still …
The house, like most of the others on the beach, was stuccoed cinder block built on a concrete slab anchored to pilings driven deep into the sand. Most of the other homes had shingled roofs. Empt’s had red Spanish tile set in a fish scale pattern.
The lawn facing the highway was beautifully maintained. There was a formal garden, Olympic-size swimming pool, a gas-fueled outdoor barbecue grill. The house itself had been featured in Architectural Digest. The article was titled “Florida Gold Coast Villa.”
“That makes you a villain,” Bending told Empt.
Luther had forced a laugh.
Holloway walked up the short flight of stairs from the beach. His stairs were wooden. Bending’s were cinder blocks. Empt’s were slabs of coral rock.
The three men shook hands and got themselves seated in low canvas slings. Luther had put out a bucket of ice cubes, bourbon, scotch and vodka. There were crystal glasses, slices of lime, pieces of lemon peel.
“I’m not going to wait on you bums,” Empt said. “Help yourselves.”
“I may get stoned,” Bending warned, pouring bourbon over ice.
“Go with it,” Empt said. “I’ll see you home.”
“The last time you told me that,” Bending said, “I ended up sleeping on the beach.”
The two men laughed, and Bill Holloway felt left out. He poured a heavy vodka oil ice and squeezed a wedge of lime. Empt was drinking warm scotch.
“What’s the occasion, Luther?” Holloway asked.
He sat back with his drink. He could see through the big picture window. Teresa and Gertrude Empt were playing backgammon on a low cocktail table in front of a brick fireplace. The only fireplace Holloway had ever seen in south Florida.
“Lemme give you some background,” Empt said. “When I came down here from Chicago, I had some good ideas but not so much cold cash. None of the local cracker banks would stake me. Including yours, Bill.”
“You had no track record,” Holloway said equably.
“True enough,” Empt said without rancor. “Anyway, I ended up at a bank in south Miami. The name don’t matter. At the time it was capitalized for about fifty million and was handling an annual cash flow of about five hundred mil. What does that tell you?”
“Mob money,” Bill Holloway said.
“Or cocaine cash from Colombia,” Turk Bending said.
“Or both,” Empt said, nodding. “But who gives a goddamn as long as it’s green? They gave me a loan. Stiff vigorish, but I paid back every cent. And that was the only time I had any dealings with them. I got rolling, and now I’m A-number-one with the local banks. Am I right, Bill?”
“Correct,” Holloway said, although it wasn’t quite correct. He leaned forward for more vodka.
“About a month ago,” Empt continued, “I got a call from a VP at the Miami bank. He said a couple of good old boys had a business proposition they wanted to talk to me about. He could vouch for them, mucho dinero, and would I listen to their pitch? I said sure, send them up. We met in my office. We talked for maybe three hours, then drove up to Palm Beach for dinner at the Breakers. All in all, I was with them almost six hours.”
“Mob?” Holloway asked.
“You guessed it. That’s who they were, but you couldn’t tell. I mean, no pinkie rings or dese, dem, and dose talk. Conservatively dressed. Quiet-spoken. Polite. No threats. Very, very smooth. But not soft, if you know what I mean. It was plain they had looked me up. They knew my bottom line and who’s holding my paper.”
“What did they want you to do?” Bending said. “Run white slaves over to the A-rabs?”
“Not exactly,” Empt said. “To explain what they wanted, I gotta get technical on you. Better have another drink.”
They helped themselves and settled back. Empt was silent a moment, frowning. He was a slow-moving, slow-talking, slow-thinking man.
He had the hard, massive face of a Wehrmacht colonel. Gray hair in a flattop cut. Small, meaty ears set close to his clippered skull. Shrewd coal eyes. A stiff mouth with folds from the corners to his chin.
He was wearing a guayabera shirt to conceal his belly. In swimming trunks, he looked like he had swallowed a cannon ball. His ponderous shoulders, back, arms, chest were covered with a thick black pelt.
He hunched forward in the sling chair, powerful forearms resting on his knees. His white shirt and white duck slacks gleamed in the dusk. He loomed, monumental in his solidity. His hands always seemed clenched into fists.
“I’m gradually switching from film to video cassettes for training and educational movies,” he said in his raspy voice. “Eventually I’ll be taping everything. It’s the coming thing, no doubt about it. Everyone says so. Right? The price of video recorders and players will be down to five hundred in another year. Right now, you can buy old movies on tape for thirty to sixty bucks. In that range. That price will probably come down, too.
“But the whole industry is in an uproar. Different systems, noncompatible. Video cassettes and video disks. No standardization. Like LPs when they first came out. All sizes, shapes, speeds. Now the goddamned Japs have announced a video cassette no longer than an audio cassette. Everyone’s rushing to get in on video tape. Everyone agrees it’s going to be a billion-dollar business. And you know what? I think everyone’s full of shit.”
He sat back smiling secretly, arrogant.
“What does that mean?” Bending said. “You’re going bankrupt?”
“Not me,” Empt said with a coarse laugh. “I got a sweet business. Educational and training cassettes and disks for corporations, schools, the government. I can’t miss. But when people talk about a billion-dollar business, they’re talking about a mass market, like for LP records, eight-track tapes, and audio cassettes. So I ask: What? What? Where’s the billion-dollar market? Turk, what’s the best movie you ever saw?”
“The best? I don’t know … maybe Gone with the Wind.”
“All right, Gone with the Wind. Would you pay, say, fifty bucks for a video cassette to watch on your small TV screen? Fifty bucks? For Christ’s sake, how many times can you watch Gone with the Wind? Bill, you’re the music nut. Would you pay fifty bucks to watch the New York Philharmonic play Beethoven on your TV set?”
“No … not really,” Holloway said, finally getting interested. “There’s no particular advantage in watching an orchestra play. The sound is everything. In fact, seeing the orchestra would probably be a distraction. Hearing a good stereo LP or tape is all you want, or need.”
“Right!” Empt said. “And what about opera and ballet. On the TV screen the singers and dancers come out a few inches high, and you lose all the effect of the big sets. So what does that leave for the billion-dollar market?”
“Individual stars?” Holloway suggested. “Performers like Liza Minnelli or Sinatra. Las Vegas comedians.”
“Fifty bucks so you can keep watching some sad-ass comic tell dirty jokes?” Empt said. “Maybe once, but how many times could you watch it? You’d know all the gag lines. What I’m getting at is who’d want to own those tapes and disks? Even if the price comes down to ten dollars, I just don’t think the market is there. Let’s have another round.”
They leaned to fill their glasses. Holloway could feel the vodka working. He was beginning to sweat. There was a rosy glow that softened everything. No more rough edges. These were splendid fellows.
“Maybe the answer is like a lending library,” Turk Bending said. “You rent a video cassette or video disk. You want to see a certain movie or football game, say, and you rent it for a day, a week, whatever. From a catalogue.”
“Maybe,” Luther Empt agreed. “Maybe that’s the answer. But rentals are no billion-dollar market. All I’m saying is that there’s not going to be any great rash to buy cassettes or disks of movies, plays, sporting events, orchestras, operas, or ballets. Oh, there’ll be a market with the gadget crowd and maybe the rock-and-roll groupies. But the potential isn’t as big as everyone thinks. Except for one thing.”
“Porn,” Bending said promptly.
“You son of a bitch,” Empt said with heavy good humor, “you’re way ahead of me. But you’re right. Pornography. Blue films on tape cassettes or disks, played through your TV set in the privacy of your own home. Now there’s a market.”
“Enter your mob guys,” Holloway said wryly.
“Right,” Empt said. “They’re no dumbbells. They’re in it already as far as eight- and sixteen-millimeter films go. Plus books and photos, of course. Now they want to get into TV cassettes and disks. They’ve already got a production, processing, and distribution setup in LA. They want to do the same thing on the east coast.”
“Why Florida?” Holloway asked.
“Because they think they own the state. And maybe they do. Because the weather is great for movie production. Because taxes are low, low, low, and these guys are very law-abiding. And because distribution from, say, Miami to the big cities east of the Mississippi is a lot easier than from LA. Also, the talent for porn is here. Plenty of young creamers ready to spread their pussies. Directors and cameramen. Writers and set designers. And if they’re not here, they can fly down from New York in less than three hours. Florida is perfect for this business. After all, Deep Throat was made here. And they could run the finished stuff up to Long Island or Boston by boat, just the way they do with coke and hash, if they don’t want to truck it up or fly it up.”
“And they think the market will be that big?” Holloway asked.
“They know it will be that big,” Empt said definitively. “Porn is something that the guys who get turned on by it can watch over and over. So they’ll want to own it. Collect a library of the stuff. And they’ll pay top dollar.”
“What do they—” Holloway started to say, but then Luther Empt exploded a great roar of fury and disgust. He struggled out of the canvas sling and stood swaying, pointing down with a trembling finger.
“Look at that bastard!” he shouted. “Look at him!”
They looked. A giant cockroach had climbed up the concrete, over the edge of the terrace. Its brown carapace gleamed in the glow from the picture window. Feelers moved languidly. It scuttled this way and that.
“Shee-it,” Turk Bending said, “that’s nothing but a palmetto bug. Can’t hurt you.”
He rose gracefully, moved quickly, and with his bare foot scraped the bug off the terrace back down to the beach.
“No use trying to kill the mother,” he said. “You need a jackhammer to dent them. Let him run away and play.”
“I hate those bastards,” Empt said, shuddering. “They’re so fucking ugly. Lemme get us some fresh supplies.”
Holloway and Bending grinned at each other in their host’s absence. It was comforting to discover another man’s weakness.
“Bugs and snakes don’t bother me none,” Bending said. “You?”
“Not really,” Holloway said, finishing the bottle of vodka and trying to remember how much had been in it when he started. “I can do without the Portuguese men-of-war, but they’re easy to avoid.”
Bending looked at him narrowly.
“Nothing much bothers you, does it, Bill?”
“That’s right,” Holloway said uncomfortably, hoping for deliverance.
It came with Empt’s return. He brought unopened liters of vodka, scotch, and bourbon, and a tub of fresh ice cubes.
“Woo-eee!” Bending said, exhaling. “I may be a wee bit late at the office tomorrow.”
They poured themselves drinks with the exaggerated care of men who feel their coordination slipping. They settled back in their slings. Holloway noticed Luther Empt kept glancing nervously at the spot where Bending had kicked the palmetto bug off the terrace.
“Where were we?” Empt said. “Oh yeah … They told me about the production, processing, and distribution facility they want to set up in south Florida.”
“What did they want you to do?” Bending asked. “Be the top honcho?”
“That’s right,” Luther said, not without pride. “Run the whole shebang. No, that’s not right. They would handle distribution and marketing. I would be in charge of production and processing. I’d deliver the finished product to them, packaged and ready for point-of-purchase sale. All the money I wanted—within reason, of course—and all the technical help I needed. They said they could practically guarantee I’d have no trouble with John Law. But if it bothered me, they’d put a million in escrow to cover my legal fees if I got in a bind. That’s the way they talked: million this and million that. Like it was popcorn.”
“Wow,” Bending said enviously.
“What did you tell them?” Holloway asked curiously.
“I told them thanks, but no, thanks. I said that first of all, I had no experience in porn, didn’t know the market, and didn’t know the winners from the dogs. They said no problem, they could provide a staff to make sure the product came up to snuff. So then I told them I just didn’t have the balls for it. I’ve got a reputation around here, and I didn’t want to risk it. Teresa would have my heart and liver if she found out. You know how she is. The house, the garden, the society columns, the charity teas, the story in Architectural Digest, and all that stuff. Teresa would kill me. Let alone what my mother would say. So I told them no soap.”
“How did they take it?” Bending said.
“They took it fine. No strain. Maybe I was just one guy on their possibles list. They made motions like they were ready to leave, but I didn’t want to see them go. I guess all that big-money talk was getting to me. Turk, are you sure those goddamned bugs can’t bite or sting?”
“I’m sure.”
“Yeah. Well, you know, as long as I’ve been hustling I’ve followed what I call ‘Luther K. Empt’s Three-B Law.’ It guarantees financial success, but they don’t teach it at Harvard or Wharton.”
“What does the K. stand for?” Bending asked.
“Konrad.”
“And what’s the Three-B Law?” Holloway asked.
“Bullshit Baffles Brains. Every time. So I figured I’d sing a song for those mob guys. I told them they were trying to invest in my weakness, not in my strength. I told them I know shit-all about the production of porn. But when it comes to processing, I know as much about it as anyone south of New York. I’m talking about the conversion of film to tape, the reproduction of tapes into cartridges and cassettes, the technology of video disks, and so forth. So why not, I said, get someone else to shoot the goddamn stuff, do the actual production, and I’d take over the technical end.”
“There goes my dream of stardom,” Turk Bending said.
“I figured this way,” Empt went on. “In case the law did move in, I’d be in a hell of a better position if all I had was a factory full of automated machines than if I had a studio full of naked creamers sucking every cock in sight, including Dobermans and donkeys. That makes sense, don’t it? I could even claim I didn’t know what was on the tapes; I just took them in and made copies. Who the hell has the time to inspect every negative they develop? Bill, what do you think?”
“I don’t know,” Holloway said slowly. “I don’t know all that much about obscenity law. I think you’re probably right that as merely a processor, your culpability would be less than that of the producers and sellers. But there’d still be risk.”
“Of course there’d be risk. But the money!”
“Better talk to a lawyer, Luther,” Bending advised.
“I did,” Empt said. “But that’s getting ahead of my story. Come on, drink up. All this gabbing makes me thirsty.”
The moon was high now, to the south, sailing through a serene sky. Occasionally they saw the lights of an airliner letting down for the Fort Lauderdale airport. Occasionally a cloud, no larger than a puff of smoke, drifted, dissipated, vanished.
They were not conscious of the noise of waves slapping the beach, or the rustle of palm fronds. The tropical world was there, but they didn’t feel it, didn’t sense it.
“They looked at each other,” Luther Empt continued. “The mob guys. That’s when we went to Palm Beach for dinner. They picked my brain, and I let them. Technical stuff. Video cassettes versus video disks. They wanted to know which I thought would be the most popular. I told them I didn’t know, and no one else did either. In my business, I’m getting ready to go both ways. I told them that in their business, they better hope it was video disks because tapes are too easy to pirate. Any garage mechanic can copy a TV tape. They laughed and said they had some experience with guys pirating their eight- and sixteen-millimeter films, making duplicate prints from the original, but they said those problems had been solved.”
“Oh sure,” Turk Bending said. “And the guys who tried it are now walking around on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean wearing cement boots.”
“Probably,” Empt said, shrugging. “Those guys play hardball. But I told them that the big problem with video tapes wouldn’t be with pirates trying to peddle copies; it would be with the average joe who buys a porn cassette. Then he calls in a neighbor who’s got a player, too, and it’s the easiest thing in the world for the neighbor to rip off a copy on a blank tape. Get it? You buy porn, and I copy it for my library. Then I buy, and you tape my cassette. There goes your billion-dollar market. So I told these guys they better pray that video disks make it big, because it’s practically impossible to copy a disk—for the average guy anyway. Now you’re getting into laser technology and expensive equipment.
“Anyway, that’s mostly what we talked about at dinner. Technical stuff, and how I’d be the sole processor of their east coast production. They said the proposition sounded good to them, and they’d present it to their people and get back to me. And that’s how we parted. They paid for the dinner. I had a great red snapper.”
There was a pause.
“Is that the end of it?” William Holloway asked, hoping.