Lush Life: An Artie Deemer Mystery (7 page)

“Oh…Sure.” The idea excited me—Crystal running balls in a floor-length, low-cut evening gown, say, of basic black, with shoes and stockings to match. In a crudely male way, I added a garter belt gripping the turn of her hips, perhaps even a black lace merry widow, but of course no pool player could wear that kind of gear, all those wonderful snaps and stays to chafe against the table. Pool players probably wore sensible shoes and panty hose with their evening dresses. I wanted to ask but suppressed the impulse. “Where is it? The tournament, I mean.”

“Philadelphia.”

I noticed a wave of misgiving wash over her face. I asked why.

“…Can I take the invitation back?”

“You couldn’t concentrate?”

“I wouldn’t care. So I dogged the nine? I’d be thinking of you in the stands. And in the room. Those women would have me for breakfast.”

“You need solitude.”

“And celibacy.”

She couldn’t spend the night. She had to go home and pack. “Will you be here? I’ll call you. I’ll be back by Monday. Unless I get eliminated early.”

That was four days, almost a week. I could always hope for early elimination. “I have to do a Jellyroll shoot tomorrow,” I said, “but I’ll be here tomorrow night waiting for your call.” I would pine for the sound of her voice by then.

I had given no thought at all to the shoot or to any other Jellyroll business, but what difference did it make? These things just happen. I merely attend to protect him from assholes.

“Trust me, Artie. There is
no danger
here. Do you think I’d endanger our star? Of course I would not,” pronounced Dirk Black, the director, in his sincere voice, brow furrowed with real caring. “Why, he’s the only reason we’re here.”

The first two Seeing Eye–dog movies had been directed by a friend of mine, a talented man who had moved on to bigger things, leaving us with Dirk Black, headed in the other direction.

We stood, Dirk, Jellyroll, and I, amid the ruins of the South Bronx. Production vehicles were parked nose to tail on the shattered street. Most of the cast members were taking a break in their individual trailers, where they figured they wouldn’t get mugged, while the crew fiddled with gear, struck their lights and reflectors from the “set,” one of the few buildings still standing—it was roofless, floorless, void. This was the bad guys’ hideout, and Dirk had just finished the Bad Guys’ Hideout Scene. Now he was ready to bullshit Jellyroll and me—

“It’s a piece of cake, Artie.” He flipped an arm around my shoulder. “Nat rides from that block right up there to this block right down here where we’re standing. Two blocks, that’s it, two blocks only. What’s two blocks? What could go wrong in two blocks?” He led me across the street, and we stopped at the edge of a watery pit where the sidewalk used to be. “Artie, I happen to be aware of how much weight you place on artistic integrity, so I know you’ll appreciate my problem. I tried it with the dummy, but it didn’t work, artistically. It didn’t have that artistic credibility. I can’t put a thing up there on the big screen that lacks artistic credibility. TV Movie of the Week, that’s one thing, sure, but this is the big screen, Artie. You can’t bullshit the big screen. So that’s where we are today, Artie.”

“Where’s that, Dirk?” I knew what Dirk wanted. He wanted to strap Jellyroll to the back of a Harley-Davidson while some idiot pretending to be blind drove him at high speed.

In this edition, Nat Penn, blind PI, and Jellyroll retrieve some Dutch masters paintings stolen by swarthy, effeminate villains, but that really didn’t matter because audiences don’t go to Jellyroll movies for the plot. They go to see Jellyroll be cute. But Dirk Black had stuck in this motorcycle chase, because he
thought chases were “intrinsically cinematic.” Strapped to the back of the motorcycle, Jellyroll was supposed to scratch Nat’s back once for a right-hand turn, twice for a left, or maybe it was the other way around.

Absurdly, the traffic lights still worked. Dirk waited at the corner until the walk sign came on, then led us across the dead street. “Artie, I know you’re going to be a team player on this thing. Just this morning I was telling Victor Castaway, I said, ‘Vic, I know Artie’s going to get with the program on this thing.’ My words. I happen to know the dummy approach off ends Victor, too.”

I happened to know Vic Castaway (Nat Penn) didn’t give a shit about anything. Vic smoked a lot of northern California homegrown in his van. I knew because the swarthy, effeminate villains and I often joined him.

“I mean, come on,” Dirk continued, “a dog dummy on the big screen? It isn’t tenable. It’s untenable.” Jellyroll sniff ed Dirk’s shoes. “And that’s why I called you out here today. I want you to meet someone, in case you imagined just any old butthole biker would be driving our star around. This guy will set your mind at ease on the motorcycle trick—”

Dirk turned me around and led me back across the street—for a moment I thought he was going to wait for the walk sign again—down the line of shiny trailers to a long white RV parked in front of a dead bakery, its entrance cemented shut forever with cinder blocks. Two toothless derelicts sat on the bakery steps gumming pint bottles of Night Train Express and wondering who you had to know to get a piece of this intrinsically cinematic action. Dirk knocked on the white door.

A big stubbly-faced man with ancient acne pits on his cheeks flung it open. “Ready for me, Blackie?” He was clearly the sort of man’s man a man could trust the life of his dog to.

“Won’t be long now, Pud, boy, but first I’d like you to meet the star of the show, ta-da: Jellyroll—” Jellyroll sniff ed Pud’s
boots. “And this is his handler, Mr. Artie Deemer. Artie, meet Pud Atwell.”

“Put ’er there, Artie Deemer,” said Pud, offering me his left hand. Shaking it, I noticed his right hand. It had only one finger and a thumb. A purple scar wended a jagged path from the corner of Pud’s left eye to the point of his chin. Perhaps a chain-saw trick had gone awry.

“Pud is known as the King of the Stunts,” announced Dirk. Then he pretended to punch Pud in the gut, and the two of them did a boxing routine, forehead to forehead, pummeling each other, man to man. Jellyroll cocked his head from side to side, trying to understand what it meant.

“Yeah, but hell, on the Coast I’m known as king. We’re in the Big Apple now. All bets are off once you’re in the Big Apple. Ain’t that right, Artie? Is that where you live, Artie? Right
in
the Apple?” He said it with pity in his voice, as if we were talking about my brain tumor. “Must be hard on a dog right in the city.” Pud leaned down to pet Jellyroll. “Shake,” he said. Jellyroll doesn’t shake. “Shake,” Pud insisted. Jellyroll’s tail drooped. Pud straightened, paused, said, “So you’re the trainer of our star, huh, Artie?…You wanna know something interesting? I had a dog looked just like him. Back in Lubbock. I was a half-pint then. I called him Bubba. Yep, I’ll never forget Bubba. Bubba kinda brings up a lump in the throat. Who’d have thought old Bubba mighta been worth the big bucks? But then, this is the Big Apple, that was Lubbock. Come on in, sit a spell.”

Pud limped jerkily into the dark, air-conditioned depths of the trailer, which was set up like a little house, complete with kitchen. His right leg didn’t seem to work at all. He basically dragged it along as if he had a log in his pant leg. I thought of walk-this-way gags. He offered us our choice of a dozen different mineral waters. The Formica surface on which we poured our water was stacked with prescription vials. I saw Percocet,
Darvon, extra-strength this and that. The labels all said, “As needed for pain.”

“Artie’s a little concerned about his meal ticket, Pud.” Dirk playfully elbowed me in the ribs as I sat down with my water. “He thinks Jellyroll might meet with a mishap in the motorcycle trick.”

Pud grimaced as he folded himself onto the couch. He interlocked what remained of his fingers behind his head, sighed theatrically, paused, adjusted his log leg, smiled, and said, “Nev-er happen.”

“There! See, Artie, what did I tell you?”

“Well, I’m much relieved.”

Dirk put his arm back around my shoulder as we finished our waters and left our audience with the King of the Stunts. “You know what?” said Dirk. “I’m going to tell you something. Remember, when you see him on the TV special you heard it here first: that guy Pud, he’s going to get himself inducted into the Stuntman Hall of Fame.”

“Piecemeal?”

“What? Oh! Piecemeal! Ha! Good one, Artie!”

“Hey, Dirk—”

“Yeah, pal?”

“Forget it.”

Dirk jerked his arm away. Artistically off ended, he stomped off.

Two hours later, after much standing around and many calls to the Coast, where Pud was king, we were ready to shoot the motorcycle trick—with the dummy. Jellyroll sat between Vic and me on the curb to watch Pud, dressed exactly like Vic in the Nat Penn costume, saddle up the big Harley. With both hands, Pud heft ed his ossified leg over the bike and settled into the seat. It looked to me like Pud was rubbing his nuts on the gas tank. Stoned, Vic giggled like a naughty boy in study hall as Pud put on his dark glasses, adjusted them, and gave the throttle an
ear-wrenching twist. “How do I look?” he asked after another rev. “Do I look blind or what?”

“Blind as a hoe, Pud boy,” said Dirk.

Then the grips and assistants made a big production out of clearing the street, even though there was no one on the street. They called on electric bullhorns for quiet, jabbered with high seriousness on walkie-talkies. Pud loved the focus, you could tell, and that was probably why Dirk had the grips make a big production of it. Pud revved the motorcycle a few more times. Then he tested the strings that controlled the Jellyroll dummy’s scratching legs. “Now wait a minute, I forget. Is it one scratch for a left turn or what?”

“Whichever grabs you, Pud boy. Improvise. You can be spontaneous on this thing.”

Pud glided into position a block and a half to the north. When everybody was ready, Dirk called for action.

The big engine whined and screeched as Pud cracked through the gears. Dust and litter flew up behind the roaring bike. Pud must have been going fifty miles an hour, accelerating, when the front wheel buried itself to the axle in a pothole. Pud continued on over the handlebars at only a slightly diminished velocity.

I averted my eyes. Jesus, the impact would be hideous. Poor Pud. Pud had had his last Percocet. The EMS guys would be collecting Pud with paint scrapers. Long after we’d gone, dry and crusty pieces of Pud would drop off the sides of the buildings onto the winos’ heads. When I looked up, the motorcycle was still cartwheeling, shedding parts. And when it came to rest, barely recognizable as a motorcycle, silence filled the set…

“Look at
that!
” Vic gasped, pointing with both hands—

It was Pud. Pud was climbing to his feet, shakily, to be sure, but he was actually
standing up!

People were sprinting toward him. Vic, Jellyroll, and I found ourselves swept along. A crowd gathered around Pud. Here and there, people reached out for him tentatively, then stopped, as
though he’d fall to gory pieces if touched. His forehead was skinned raw; blood and asphalt mixed in the wound, but there seemed to be no further damage. He shook the dust out of his clothes. Everybody was asking him how he was.

“Well, lemme just check an’ see,” he said with a grin, patting his parts.

“Break it up, spread out, give the man some air.” It was Dirk, elbowing his way through the astonished crowd.

“Christ, Dirk,” said Dirk’s assistant, “I think he’s all right!”

“Of course he’s all right. What do you think? This is Pud Atwell.” Dirk stepped up beside Pud, put an arm around his shoulder, and said to the crowd, “This is the King of the Stunts.” He milked that for about five minutes, then said, “Where’s my stills person? Where’s Greta? Greta, get a shot of Pud beside the smashed bike. Come on, right over here.” He moved pudgy little Greta around by the shoulders until he found the most artistic angle. Pud assumed a heroically masculine pose.

Dirk leaned down to examine the Jellyroll dummy still strapped to the mangled fender. The dummy was decapitated.

“See, right there,” said Dirk, pointing at the torso, “that’s why I decided to go with the dummy.”

“Let’s burn one, Artie,” said Victor Castaway when he’d stopped giggling.

I missed Crystal. I pined for her. Lovers-who-had-to-part songs spun in my head as the car service drove Jellyroll and me home. We were still on the Cross Bronx Expressway surrounded by tractor-trailer trucks when, idly, I picked up the
New York Times
a previous passenger had left on the seat. A fourteen-year-old had been shot dead by a twelve-year-old in a squabble over a basketball. Another tourist had been killed in Macy’s…At least I was keeping up with current events.

I was about to put the paper back on the seat when I saw the article. I must have gasped audibly, because the driver glanced at me in the rearview mirror with alarm on his face.

Trammel Weems, 36, was declared missing and presumed drowned yesterday after a boating accident off Coney Island. Weems’ companion, Bruce Munger, 35, called the Coast Guard when Weems fell overboard while trying to remove a rope which had become fouled in the boat’s propeller. Munger reported that he had gone below to search for a sharp knife, and when he came back on deck, Weems was gone. A spokesman for the Coast Guard, Captain Stephen Schwartz, said the search, a combined effort by the Coast Guard and units from the New York Police Harbor Patrol, had been discontinued at dusk. “There are strong currents in that area,” he said. “It’s possible we’ll never recover the body.” Mr. Weems was CEO of VisionClear Bank and Trust, a New York bank.

Trammell was dead…How did I feel about that? I couldn’t tell precisely. It seemed vaguely ironic, but I didn’t have any deep feelings about it. I wondered if Crystal knew. How would she feel about it?

SIX

T
HERE WAS A message from crystal waiting on my phone machine. She had lost her first match to Gracie Cobb. She said she missed me, and she left her number. I called it.

“Liberty Bell Hotel, your gateway to freedom. Marcia speaking. How can I help you?”