Lover Man: An Artie Deemer Mystery (17 page)

"I heard he was killed in a plane crash en route to a hospital in Miami."

"Yes, I heard that, too."

"You don't believe it?"

"Eleanor told me he refused at the last minute to board that airplane. Right on the tarmac, as the other patients were boarding. But I don't know. By then, I think, Eleanor was losing her mind. I know the press reported Danny on the airplane, and I have no reason to think differently, except that Eleanor told me so. Billie spent most of her childhood with me, but we haven't spoken in ten years. We had a falling out about Danny Beemon. She seemed to have forgotten everything. For some reason, I took it upon myself to remind her. She despised me for it. I thought one day we'd make up, but..."

"I met your sister at Bright Bay. She said Beemon was alive. She said he was Keith Hernandez."

"Who?"

"A baseball player."

"I see. Breaks my heart to see her like that. I don't think it does her any good to see me. I was in town about a year ago, and she was talking about her reunion with Danny." He swallowed a sob.

"A year ago?"

The doorbell chimed, and he excused himself. His animals stared at me as a group, three-dimensional memories. A great deal had happened "about a year ago."

Gordon Jainways returned and pulled the sliding door closed behind him. "There is a man named Watson at my door. He is an agent of the FBI. He wants to ask me questions about my niece. Why the FBI?"

"I don't know."

"I don't believe you, and I don't believe you are just curious. You'd better leave by the back way." He motioned me into the adjoining living room, a sublime wooden place with fifteen-foot-high ceilings. "That door will lead you to the garden. There's a path to the street on the west side of the building. Mr. Deemer, why are you paying for my sister's care at Bright Bay?"

"Because Billie used to own the R-r-ruff Dog, but she gave him to me."

He didn't say anything.

As I left the house, I slipped on a wet flagstone and fell painfully on my hand. The rain had returned, hard and steady.

She was waiting for me in her original spot on the fire stairs. She wore a tight sweater and skirt, and her black hair was frizzed. There was trouble on her face. I quickly placed us behind double-locked doors.

"The fridge!" Sybel hissed. "Now it's at Renaissance!"

"Is Freddy—?"

"Yes! I went to work like nothing happened, just like that bastard Pine said. I was alone all day—" She took a gasping breath. "I decided to look around. There's a temperature-controlled vault on the top floor.
He's still in there
, Artie!"

I hugged her. She trembled like a cold little girl at the beach. Somebody had moved Freddy in his crypt. Why? What would you use for a job like that. A dolly? Why move him at all? To dispose of him? Or was it a setup? Pine setting up Jones? Jones Pine? Neither? I suddenly felt exhilarated and clear. Now it would blow up in their faces. Not only that, I could cause it to blow. Just tell the cops, anonymously. Now I had some power. That seemed so clear to me then, and I loved it.

Sybel sat in the Morris chair and hugged her stockinged shins. Jellyroll looked questioningly into my eyes, like a Jainways animal. I hugged him, and he licked my chin. Billie used to
roller-skate everywhere she went. The image floated across my memory. Summer, Billie would wear shiny white shorts, and she would undulate her hips to slow herself down on the incline between West End and Riverside.

"What's the matter with you?" Sybel wanted to know.

"Me? Nothing."

"You had a funny look on your face."

"Naw," I said convincingly.

"You're obsessed."

"Obsessed?"

"It's written all over you. Billie has you by the balls. You're like her puppet." She headed for the door.

"Where are you going?"

"To the cops. Why didn't I go there in the first place?"

I stopped her. She gritted her teeth and slugged me in the shoulder. That seemed the rhythm of our relationship. Jellyroll watched, distressed.

"Listen," I said, "we can't just tell the cops straight out. We've been withholding evidence in a capital crime!"

"You sure you're not a lawyer?"

"If Cobb chose to press it, we could land in jail."

"That's a lot better than a Frigidaire."

"I have to take Jellyroll to work."

"What? When?
Now?"

"There's been trouble on the set. I've got to go. Come with me. Calabash will be right behind us. Then we'll come back here and call the police, but first we'll figure out a story. Please."

Sybel paused, then nodded. "Do you think she had all this planned?"

SIXTEEN

N
EW YORK CAB drivers react to dogs in strange, often voluble ways. In the home cultures of some cabbies dogs are food, not fares. The sociological implications of a cab ride to work always made me nervous. Nothing in New York is simple. Maybe nothing anywhere is simple, but I've been here too long to know. The rain made us considerably less desirable fares. However, a cab turned the corner and stopped before we'd been standing two minutes. Then he spotted Jellyroll, screwed up his face with repugnance, and waved us away from the door handle as if a dog on the floor of a car, a dented and swaying pollutant that didn't even belong to him, represented an affront to his fundamental values. Why didn't he see the dog when he stopped for us? It happens that way all the time. Is he half blind? Or did he figure we'd just leave the dog on the sidewalk and get into his piece-of-shit wreckage? On any other night, comfortable in my natural stance as a close yet invisible observer, I might have mused on the complexity of social interaction when so many cultures try to live together, but tonight it made me late, tense, and intolerant. That was no state to be in when one had to collide with Stockman Billingsly, as soon I must. Then there were no more cabs.

I glimpsed a flash of Calabash back there doing his job with the usual easy competence. I motioned for him to join us. Enough of this covert bodyguarding. The time for subtlety had passed. Now was the time to call in the firepower for all to see, everyone. Pine, Jones, Cobb, Palomino, Stockman Billingsly. Let them
imagine the cost in casualties and property damage to fuck with us. I pictured with a chill of pleasure Calabash and me wearing crossed bandoliers, festooned with lethal devices, kicking in the studio doors, leveling our flamethrowers at their hearts and saying, "Okay, fuckers, you're on Jellyroll's time now," and then Jellyroll himself would enter snarling, pulling a wagon loaded up with extra parabellum ammo.

Jellyroll was delighted with all the company, now that things seemed reasonably normal. We were off to work.

A Checker lurched to a stop. The driver, a bald black man, slid across the seat and rolled down the passenger window. "Hey, buddy, ain't that the R-r-ruff Dog?"

"Yes, indeed."

"Well,
get in
. The R-r-ruff Dog. Ho-lee shit!"

"Dey make TV
here?"
Calabash asked as we strolled into the studio. His innocent enthusiasm made me feel protective of him, my bodyguard. Sometimes I get sick of irony.

The "plot" was typical of the R-r-ruff mind. Jellyroll, wagging his tail with expectancy, approaches a bowl of ordinary dog food (it says "Ordinary Dog Food" on the bowl), sniffs it, and his tail drops dejectedly.
Ordinary
Dog Food. Then he lies down beside the bowl and puts his head between his paws. His "Owner" enters, sees his dog's dejection and says, "You want the Full Flavor Dog Food, don't you, R-r-ruff?" Jellyroll leaps up and barks. The Owner gives him a bowl of R-r-ruff, which he devours gleefully. Stupid, but no problem. Then, however, comes the reason we all were here for a makeup.

Jellyroll and his Owner cuddle and nuzzle lovingly after dinner, thus overcoming the audience with cuteness, moving them to purchase whole hillocks of R-r-ruff. Stockman Billingsly played the owner. There was a different "plot" about every six months, all brimming with cuteness. The present bit should have taken about two hours' shooting. This was the second day. The
problem was simple. Billingsly was a sour old sot who hated my dog, this job, and his own life. Jellyroll recognized his hatred and wouldn't cuddle very convincingly, wouldn't nuzzle at all. He was probably frightened for his life. Jellyroll loves to please; it's easy to teach him things. In return for care and affection, he has agreed to make me rich. But I couldn't make him nuzzle Stockman Billingsly.

The mood was instantly apparent. Long faces everywhere, director, camera people, including Phyllis, agency people, the client, even the people in the booth, looked like shipwreck victims. There he was, stage center on the shitty kitchen set in skeletal light complaining to two young interns assigned to take his heat and nod politely. Somehow, even through all that light in his face, Billingsly spied me. He made a big show of drawing forth his three-pound pocket watch and putting on hideous black-framed reading glasses that sat on his face like a pair of handcuffs. "Finally," he said in stentorian tones. "I have plans for August." He looked at the ASMs and laughed like an old rogue of a charming kidder, and kept on laughing until he forced the interns to join him. Pretty soon he'd start referring to Jellyroll as the "cur." But tonight would be different, I told myself.

The director, a gifted stage director and a kind of friend of mine, came over to head off trouble. Kevin Malquist—he even had a director's name—smiled at me and shook hands. "Like a duck's back, Artie. Just like a duck's back."

"Sure, Kevin, no problem." I introduced Sybel and Calabash and asked if they could watch. Kevin welcomed them affably and set up two folding chairs behind the center camera, from which Phyllis rolled her eyes at me. Calabash was awed. Jellyroll happily greeted all his friends on the way to stage center, but then he spotted Stockman Billingsly. If a dog can be said to turn on his heel, that's what Jellyroll did. "Stay," I told him.

"Can we get started?" Billingsly wanted to know.

The stage manager called places, and I took Jellyroll to his entrance. The stage manager called quiet, and Kevin called action. It went beautifully, until the nuzzling part. "Cut." We tried it again. No nuzzling whatsoever. Cowering. He began to turn upstage toward me for some reassurance. "Cut. Let's take five, ladies and gentlemen."

Kevin motioned me aside. "Artie, isn't there anything you can do? You agree that this isn't working?"

"Sure."

"Look at those guys over there—" The agency people and the product people hunkered in the corner, whispering encouragement to one another. "They're going to start dropping dead one by one, the overweight alcoholics first. I've got to do something, Artie, fast."

"He has to make up to Jellyroll, obviously. He has to pretend to like him. Then we can only hope Jellyroll buys it."

"There's nothing
you
can do? It'd be better if there was something you could do."

"I'm sorry, Kevin."

"I'd hate to think, Artie, that you'd leave my ass out on a limb just to make the old guy look bad."

"I wouldn't, Kev."

"So what does he have to do?"

"Ruffle his ears, smile, the usual."

Stockman Billingsly was a pioneer in the days of live TV. His claim to enduring fame is
Dad's Home!
He played Dad in a family of nitwits meant to reinforce audience values and thereby sell them shit. Neither Dad nor Mom had any genitals.

Kevin called me onto the set. The lights burned the back of my neck. "Artie, show Stockman what you were showing me about dog handling. That was very interesting. Show him how you ruffle his ears. Know what I mean, Artie?" Kevin pleaded.

I demonstrated how to pet a dog.

"Will he bite?"

"Of course he won't bite."

"Now maybe there's something in that, Stockman," said Kevin, trying another tack. "Maybe Jellyroll feels that you're frightened of him. If you would—"

"Excuse me, young Mr. Malquist, but you seem to imply that this is my problem when we both know it's the cur's problem."

"If you call him cur one—"

"Pardon me, Stockman—" Kevin smiled as he grabbed me around the shoulders and led me away from the set. His smile vanished. "I'm asking you, Artie, I'm asking you face-to-face. Give me a break here. I want to wrap this up. I got a rehearsal tonight. I'm doing
Danton's Death
at the fucking Public, and I don't want to show up a wreck. Now please," he hissed through his teeth.

"I'm sorry, Kevin, I've been upset lately."

"I know. I'm sorry, too."

"But he's got to make up to Jellyroll." I looked over at the money folks to see who had died. Nobody yet.

"Affection, that's what we're talking about, right? Maybe I can get him to do an improv." Kevin hurried back to the hot lights. I followed slowly.

I told Jellyroll to sit, which he did, and Billingsly reached out to pet his head, only he held his other hand balled in a fist cocked and ready to punch Jellyroll should he bite the hand that petted him. Three-year-old children in the park toddle over to pull his hair and the mothers show no concern at all that their children might get mauled after one look at Jellyroll's smiling countenance. Now he sat staring at this cocked fist and began to pant. He looked back over his shoulder at me with an expression that asked, "Just what is it you want from me?"