Lush Life: An Artie Deemer Mystery (2 page)

It seemed days before Brian bellowed, “Cut!”

The technical folks tried to quell their giggles. A couple of them had to leave the set. Strangled titters bounced around the studio as Brian marched onto the floor. Christ, the spokesdog hated the New & Improved formula!

“Uh, since we’ve stopped, Brian,” said the Space Traveler, further fogging his helmet, “let me ask you this—” I had seen the Space Traveler do Robespierre in
Danton’s Death
off -Broadway,
and he seemed to be a real actor. I felt sad for him up there in that helmet. “I don’t exactly understand the line, ‘After all these intergalactic light-years—’ Isn’t a light-year a measure of speed, not—”

The gangplank snapped. The Space Traveler plunged from sight like a hanged man.

“Deemer!” shouted Brian. Brian always shouted. “Get me Artie Deemer!”

“Right here,” I said.

“Did my eyes deceive me, or does that dog hate the New and Improved formula?”

“He didn’t seem to relish it, did he?”

“Relish? Are you kidding, relish? He about barfed at the stink of it!”

The Space Traveler began to keen in agony beneath the gangplank’s remains.

“I think he’s injured, Brian,” I pointed out.

“Space Travelers come a dime a dozen. He liked the other shit—the regular formula, right? Somebody get me a bag of the regular shit.”

“No,” said a somber voice from the rear of the studio, “we can’t do that.” It was Mr. Fleckton, the poor sod who had conceived and spearheaded the introduction of New & Improved R-r-ruff.

“Christ! She’s gonna go!” screamed a technician.

The spaceship was wavering on its landing pad, creaking and groaning, its structural members cracking. The Space Traveler cried out in terror. Techies scurried in all directions, but they knew exactly what to do. They ran back onto the set with wood and heavy hammers, shoved two-by-four bracing beneath the ship, pounded and kicked it into place.

“Why not?” Brian wanted to know.

“My leg!” wailed the Space Traveler. “I can see my leg bone!”

“Because I’d be a laughingstock, that’s why,” said Mr. Fleckton. He shuffled up beside Brian and me. He held his
hands in a strange prayerlike posture under his chin. Beads of sweat sprouted from his upper lip. The man was watching his standard of living diminish to homelessness before his very eyes. He looked at me pleadingly and said, “Does he really hate it, Artie?”

“He hates it,” said Brian. “What can I tell you, he hates it.”

Mr. Fleckton kept removing his glasses, blowing on the lenses, and replacing them. “Our own spokesdog…hates it. Is there nothing you can do, Artie?”

The Space Traveler whimpered from out of sight beneath the spacecraft. “I can see my leg…bone!”

“I’ll try to hand-feed him,” I said.

“Food! Get me fresh food!” demanded Mr. Fleckton. One of his assistants hurried over with a twenty-pound bag of it.

“Come here, pal,” I said gently.

“God help us,” said Fleckton.

I scooped a few pieces of kibble from the bag and petted Jellyroll with the other hand so he’d know I wasn’t mad at him. I held a single kibble under his nose. He turned his head. He blew out his lips as if to expunge the stink of the thing. “He hates it, all right.”

Mr. Fleckton wavered like the spaceship. His assistants supported him. The R-r-ruff honchos would probably have him executed gangland style and dump his body in the Meadowlands beside that of the guy who invented New Coke.

“I think I’m gonna…pass out,” said the Space Traveler weakly.

“Fuck it, let’s just stick a steak under it,” said Brian.

As I mused subsequently in my morris chair, Brian’s words, “
Stick a steak under it
,” struck a metaphorical chord with me. That’s what I should do with my life, I decided. But what was the real-world equivalent of this metaphorical meat I’d stick under my life? I pondered that question, Jellyroll at my feet, listening to
Ben Webster’s assertively erotic version of “Love Is Here to Stay,” when the answer struck me like an epiphany.

I needed to fall in love.

I had been in love before, and I remembered how love took the edge off the hideous, how it brightened the world and made one feel all warm and runny inside…But whom would I love? Where might I meet my new lover? I had read in a magazine that the two best places to meet a lover were at work or at recreation. I didn’t work, and for recreation I hung around a pool hall. I wondered what the third best place was.

Shortly thereafter, I met Crystal Spivey—in the poolroom.

TWO

M
Y DISBARRED ATTORNEY, bruce munger, introduced us.

“Don’t call me Bruce,” said Bruce.

“Who are you today?”

“Viscount Pitt.” He also went by the names Mr. DeSoto, Special Agent Rock, Captain Jacoby, and Samuel Beckett. There were others. “Never mind that now, just back me for fifty bucks. I can beat this guy. This guy is a no-talent bum. Besides, what’s fifty bucks to you?” My attorney was talking about Too Louis, who stood, cue in hand, grinning greedily, hoisting his seeds from between crushing thighs.

“Wha’ chu wan’ do, Bruce?” cooed Too Louis.

“Don’t call me Bruce.”

Bruce was partly right. Too Louis was a bum. He lived with his mother, and together they sold cheap stolen goods on St. Mark’s Place. Too Louis was ugly enough to break your heart. He took the aesthetics right out of the game. But he had talent. It was my attorney, already down $150, who lacked talent. Thus far the games had only seemed close.

“Come on, Artie, I got this fish right where I want him,” my attorney whispered. “He’s overconfident. He’s ready to give me the seven ball. The seven! I can
stomp
him with the seven ball.”

“Not if you continue to dog the six,” I pointed out.

“Look, I’ll tell you what. If you place Jellyroll’s financial might behind me to the tune of fifty bucks, I’ll introduce you
to Crystal Spivey. Don’t think I don’t notice how you moon over Crystal Spivey.”

“I don’t moon.”

My attorney called to Outta-Town Brown, who sat on the bench in the corner with a group of regulars: “Hey, Brown, does Artie moon over Crystal Spivey or what?”

“Moooon River, wider than a mile,” sang Outta-Town Brown. Ted Bundy and Chinese Gordon giggled. “I’m crossing you in style sommmmeday.”

I ignored that.

I had tried to meet Crystal on my own. Once, when she was practicing alone, I strolled by her table with Jellyroll. He is so cute, friendly, and famous that most women fall all over themselves to pet him, thus leaving me an entrée to introduce myself. Crystal was no different. She had just stroked the cue ball with that lovely, languid follow-through of hers. It was a tricky sharp-angle shot, but the object ball split the pocket and the cue ball softly caressed three rails with running English, then stopped precisely where she wanted it to. “Isn’t that the R-r-ruff Dog?” she asked.

I smiled. “Yes, he’s—”

Crystal knelt and ruffled his ears. I admired her stately neck below boyishly bobbed black hair. Jellyroll smiled at her and began to lick her cheek.

I envied him that. “I’m Artie Deemer. I—”

“Oh, you are
wonderful!
”

For a giddy instant I had thought she meant me.

She presented her other cheek to Jellyroll and mewed over him. They carried on like that for a while. I stood shifting my weight from one leg to the other. She nuzzled his muzzle; he kissed and kissed.

“I’m Artie Deemer.”

“Uh-huh,” she said without looking up. Then she straightened, picked up her cue, and resumed sinking balls as if she could do it in her sleep, with me mooning around or off visiting
business associates on Baffin Island. Only recently have women pool players come into their own as professionals, but most still maintain a guarded pose, because there’s always somebody waiting to hit on them in poolrooms.

“You don’t know Crystal Spivey,” I said to my attorney.

“I do indeed. In fact, we were an item once.”

“You were not.”

“Well, we almost were. She wanted me, but I had to demur in the interests of my practice. She hung around poolrooms with those of questionable character. That would have given the appearance of infelicity. Felicity is bad enough. Infelicity is out of the question. C’mon, Artie, fifty bluchers. I can beat this cretin, after which I’ll take you and Crystal out for an eau de vie.”

I gave my attorney fifty bucks. Jellyroll looked up at me. His eyes seemed to say, “You are a true chump.” Then I sat down on the regulars’ bench to wait for Crystal to come in. Outta-Town Brown, Ted Bundy, and Chinese Gordon sat with me. I tried not to watch my attorney lose, but fifty bucks isn’t such a high price to pay to meet the woman you moon over, if you don’t have to watch.

“Hey, Artie,” said Ted Bundy out of the side of his mouth. Ted’s real name was Albert Bundy. Naturally, everybody called him Ted. “You ain’t backing that fish of a viscount, are you?”

“Do you think I’m a chump?”

Ted didn’t reply.

Pool has changed. The game is enjoying a prosperity and wide interest it hasn’t known since the twenties. With that, there has arisen something entirely new—the upscale poolroom. Now, instead of in grotty dives where your shoes stick to the floor, you can play in refined rooms with attendants who empty the ashtrays. Now respectable contributors to the GNP, real citizens who have checking accounts and pay income tax, play pool on double dates. In some poolrooms today, you can order herbal tea and
veal sandwiches with Mornay sauce, and no one will question your sanity or sexuality.

I had spent many years in grotty, preboom poolrooms. I could hear my mother’s voice from out of the murk of the past: “Arthur, where are you going? You’re going out to play pool with bums, aren’t you?”

“Oh, no, Mom. I’m going over to work on the homecoming float.” I envisioned myself sticking multicolored tissue paper up a chicken-wire badger’s ass and turned left to the poolroom. I should be a better player than I am. Maybe I lack talent. Or drive. Or what my mother used to call “gumption.”

Ted Bundy said, “I’m worried about our nation. Take this fuckhead President, for example. Here’s a guy can’t run four balls in a row, yet he’s boss over a major country.”

Thumper, an aging amputee, swayed over and sat down on the regulars’ bench. He stretched out his existing leg painfully. “Artie, you wouldn’t be interested in a top of the line Toro Snowblower, would you?”

“No. I don’t blow much snow.”

“Your Toro never loses its resale value. You don’t need to use it. Toro’s a solid investment.”

“Hey, Brown,” said Ted Bundy.

“What?”

“I’ll play you one game for a t’ousand.”

“Let’s go,” said Outta-Town Brown.

“Of course, I’ll need weight,” said Ted.

In poolrooms talk is incessant, talk is a way of life.

“Here it comes,” said Brown, rolling his eyes. “What weight do you need?”

“The seven and the eight.”

“Are you nuts? Are you twisted? The seven and the eight? This guy can beat me head up, and he wants me to give him the seven and the eight. Charity. He expects charity. Charity belongs in the home. Besides which, I don’t give weight to no serial killers.”

“I also need the break.”

“I’m speechless.”

“We should be so lucky,” said Chinese Gordon, who’d heard it all before.

“One game for a t’ousand. Right now, rack ’em up. Oh, I forgot to mention—you got to bank the nine at least six rails.”

“You’re deeply full of shit, Ted,” said Brown. “You ain’t even ever seen a grand in one location before. If I was gonna give weight to somebody in a big-money game, I’d give it to somebody with money, somebody, say, with a rich dog.”

The regulars thought Jellyroll’s existence behooved me to lose enough to each of them to put their loved ones through the colleges of their choice. “Okay, Brown,” I said just to hear him say it, “I’ll play you some straight pool next week.”

“I’ll be outta town.”

“Hey, Brown,” said Ted Bundy right on cue, “just what is it you
do
outta town?”

“I travel.”

Jellyroll sprawled on my feet. I scratched between his ears the way he likes.

“One game for a t’ousand. Rack ’em up.”

Nobody moved.

The PA system emitted piercing squeals of feedback, then Davey, the deskman, announced, “Phone call for Thumper. Thumper, you gotta call.” Thumper made his tortured way toward the desk.

By this time my attorney was down three games to none. Too Louis wasn’t even trying to make it look good.

Never-Miss Monroe came in. He did so each and every day. He’d carefully rack all fifteen balls, place the cue ball on the head spot, screw together his custom-made, mother-of-pearl-inlaid, ebony four-point cue, lean it against the side pocket, and then he’d sit down on the bench. Never-Miss would light a great stinking stogie, cheeks puffing like Diz soloing on the cigar—and sit.
He never played, he never hit a single ball. Ever. As a result of this routine, Never-Miss Monroe had attained legendary stature.

“Hey, Monroe, how you hittin’ ’em?”

“I’m playing like God.”

“Can’t miss, huh?”

“Not without I try.”

Legend had grown up around Never-Miss. It held that he was a hustler/gambler of the old school, the sort who’d travel the nation pretending to be a bumpkin in shitty coveralls with a sprig of straw in his mouth. The locals would fight over who’d get to skin him. Then he’d take them for every cent in the room and beat it out the window in the john.

Never-Miss, it was said, used to bet on absolutely anything, and that’s how he arrived at his current pathetic state. Caught on the golf course in an electrical storm, he bet his partner two grand that the partner would get struck by lightning before he did. They went out on the fairway and held sand-trap rakes over their heads like Benjamin Franklin. Never-Miss won. A bolt fried his partner’s footprints into the grass. Ironically, the bolt leapt across to Monroe’s rake. It didn’t injure him physically, but it turned him weird.

The legend further held that Monroe, who found only eight charred bucks in his dead partner’s pockets, hit the widow up for the winnings right after the funeral. He is said to have pointed to the gaping grave and announced, “I knew this guy like a brother. He wouldn’ta wanted to go down a welsher.”