Shark Infested Custard Part 9

If I knew this much, he certainly knew it, too, and there was no doubt in my mind that he would try to kill me. And that is exactly what he would do, unless I killed him first.

So starting right this moment, Mr. Wright, I thought, I am going to be looking for you, and we shall see who will be the first one shot--you, or me.

I unlocked the front door, went to the trash chute down the hallway, and picked up a stack of discarded newspapers. Alter relocking my door and testing the chain, I crumpled up big b.a.l.l.s of newspaper, scattered them on the floor, and went to bed. For a while, I lay on my back, watching the electric numbers flash on the ceiling from my electric clock projector, and I thought I wouldn't be able to sleep all night. But soon I got so sleepy I couldn't keep my eyes open...

CHAPTER TWELVE.

I have always been a strong swimmer, but my forte has been endurance, not speed. And yet, here I was, flailing my arms in a loose Australian crawl, with minimum kicking, and I was ploughing through the water at three times my normal swimming speed. My head was high and out of the water, and most of my back was high out of the water as well.

The light was gray, misty, and swirling with patches of fog. I could only see about three or four feet ahead. A huge amorphous shape loomed in front of me, but I neither gained on it nor lost water. Whatever it was, we were apparently making the same speed. If I didn't know where I was going, or where I was, what was the hurry? I stopped swimming altogether. Strange. I didn't sink, and my steady pace continued. I sailed through the murky, pleasantly warm water, as if I were being towed. It was at this point that I felt the wide band around my middle. The band wasn't uncomfortably tight, but it was snug. I was tied somehow, and the band around my wrist, attached to something or other (a submarine periscope?), was propelling me at top speed behind the shapeless gray form ahead.

The gray shape swerved sharply to the right, and a moment later I did, too, into absolute blackness. I wasn't frightened, although I was vaguely uneasy and more than a little puzzled. My pace didn't slacken as my chest parted the water. I clasped my hands, and rested my chin on my knuckles, peering ahead into nothing. Then, beyond the blacker shape ahead of me, the darkness began to lighten slightly, and I saw a half-circle of white in the distance. As the white circle became larger, I realized that I was in a tunnel, a curving tunnel, and a moment later I was bathed in hot pink light as I shot out of the blackness. The gray shape ahead of me metamorphosized immediately into a garishly painted wooden duck, much larger than me, and there were sudden splashes of dirty water between the duck's fanning tail and my head. I heard the sound of the shots then, craned my head and neck to the left, and saw the upper body of a man leaning across a wooden plank, perhaps a hundred yards away, aiming a rifle in my direction. For G.o.d's sake, I thought, as my arms flailed the water in an effort to increase my speed, he's shooting at me! I recognized, or thought I did, a patch of vitiligo on the man's forehead. -It's Mr. Wright, and he's shooting at me!- I awoke then. The top black satin sheet was wrapped twice around my body, and the bed was soaked with perspiration. Thunder shook the skies, and torrents of rain sluiced down my bedroom windows. The electricity was off, which usually happens during these heavy Miami thunderstorms, and with it my airconditioning and clocks. It must have been at least 85 degrees in my apartment, although I didn't know at the moment how long the electricity had been off. My heart was still thumping in my chest from the nightmare as I disentangled myself from the sheet and staggered into the bathroom and took a shower.

Roasting in my bed, I thought, must have brought on the nightmare. Except that it wasn't a bad dream, Mr. Wright was real; he was looking for me with his gun, and I was indeed a captive duck in a shooting gallery--unless I did something about it-- and soon.

At three a.m. the airconditioning kicked in. The lights were on again, so I fixed a cup of coffee. While the water was boiling I reset my electric clocks from my wrist.w.a.tch. The power had been off for almost two hours.

In another three hours it would be light outside. The rain had slackened to a drizzle, and the coffee cheered me up some. I put an LP of the Stones on the stereo, and listened to them sing about the horrors of England, which were, if anything, much worse over there than they were in Miami. I started to cry something I hadn't done in at least fifteen years.

Why in the h.e.l.l was I crying? Perhaps I cried because it was three in the morning, but most of all, I felt that I had lost something, something valuable and irreplaceable, even though I didn't know what it could be.

But I didn't go back to bed.

Somehow, the dream had frightened me more, much more, than Mr. Wright's promise to kill me.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

The sun and my spirits rose but I was still tired and in need of sleep. I thought about taking a dexie or a bennie, or a half of one or the other now, and the second half at noon. One half of a dexie would wake me fully, give me a feeling of alertness, and provide me with the surge of mental energy I needed.

"I can handle it," I thought.

But these fatal words, flashing into my mind, changed it. This was the familiar rationalization we were all warned against during indoctrination, together with other grave dangers that specious learning and unlimited access to drugs faced detail men in the field. Studying, as we did, the symptoms of diseases, the clinical properties of the drugs we touted to doctors--what they could and couldn't do-- contraindications and side effects-- the danger of self-prescription was always present. And because doctors as a group are not the sharpest body of men one will ever meet, especially if one ever talks to them about subjects other than their work, it is easy to fall into the trap of believing-- of -knowing--- that you know as much, or even more, than doctors do.

Doctors work much too hard. They rarely have an opportunity to read anything, including newspapers. They are, as a whole, naive politically, and unworldly concerning money, economics, or even interpersonal relationships. They make a lot of money, but they never have any because they invariably lose it through poor investments, and they spend it--or their families spend it-- as if it came from a magic source. Many doctors, including those with the average $75,000 per annum incomes, who own two or three cars and carry a huge mortgage, have little or nothing in reserve. Bankruptcy is a frequent hazard for doctors, and they are then bewildered men, wondering where all the money went. There are exceptions, of course, but I had talked to hundreds of doctors in the last five years, and the overwhelming majority was poorly informed. They knew very little outside of their trade. It becomes easy, then, to fall into the trap and decide that you, who know so much more about the world than doctors, and have the same access to medical books, medical journals and drugs, can prescribe for yourself when you become sick instead of seeing a doctor.

The company had warned us about that, reminding us, at the same time, that the greatest number of drug addicts in the U.S., as an occupational group, were M.D.s. Doctors, of course, used the same kind of reasoning that a detail man could fall heir to; they had a practically unlimited access to drugs, and because they knew, or thought they knew, as much as any other doctor, they also had a tendency to prescribe drugs for themselves.

"I can handle it," they thought, and they would pop a bennie to get through a six a.m. operation, and then another bennie at ten a.m., to get through their hospital rounds, and then, because they were bone-tired, and beginning to get sleepy by one or two p.m., and they had an office full of waiting patients to get through, they would take a couple of more bennies that afternoon. And so it would go, with emergency calls at night, and the first thing they knew they would be hooked--on bennies, or dexies, or nose candy, and eventually, on horse.

When you get sick, the company told us, see a doctor. Never, never take a self-prescribed drug of any kind. The rule was a good one, because no one can handle it. No one.

With a shrug, I skipped the bennie, and settled for a close shave and a long cold shower. I put on a pair of gray seersucker slacks and a sportshirt, brewed fresh coffee, and sat down to decide my next move.

Luckily, my reports were made out and ready to mail to Atlanta. It wasn't essential to call on my doctors during the week. I could fake another set of calls on the following Sat.u.r.day or Sunday when I made my next report, and it made no difference. The sales in my territory were the highest in the Southeastern District. I could devote fulltime to protecting myself, or better, I could reverse the role. I could hunt down Mr. Wright, and put -him- on the defensive. I didn't want to shoot him, or hurt him in any way, but I had to get him alone somewhere and talk to him. I was positive, if I could only talk to him for a while, and explain how Jannaire had pa.s.sed herself off as a single, unattached woman, and that there had never been anything physical between us, he would see how foolish it was to come after me with a gun.

Jannaire, in all probability, had told him the same thing by now-- that there had been no s.e.x between us-- and maybe he had cooled off already, during the night. On the other hand, he might not believe Jannaire. She might have had, for all I knew, a long record of clandestine lovers, and if so, Mr. Wrightwould discount anything she said.

I had to get a gun. What was the best way to go about getting one, and obtaining a license to carry it? Larry Dolman would know, but so would Alton Thead. I couldn't go to Larry. I didn't want Larry to find out about my predicament. He would help me, of course, but if he did, the nature of our relationship would be altered. He believed that I was s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g Jannaire. Without actually saying so, I had implied as much a few days before when I ran into him at the mailboxes in the lobby. If Larry knew that I had been running around with her for six weeks without getting any, and without even learning that she was married, he would be contemptuous. It was bad enough to be contemptuous of myself, but I couldn't stand it from Larry. In his opinion, and in Don's and Eddie's as well, I was purported to be the greatest c.o.c.ksman in Miami, and I valued the good opinion of my three friends. If Larry helped me, and I know how eagerly he would volunteer if I asked him for help, it would all come out-- the entire story--and he, in turn, would tell Don and Eddie...

The phone rang, a single ring, and stopped. I waited, counting. A minute later, it rang again. This was my private signal. During daylight hours, from eight to five, I never answered the phone unless I was called in this special way. I didn't want anyone from the company to call me from New Jersey and find me at home, particularly if that was the day I was supposed to be in Palm Beach or Key West. My immediate supervisor, Julie Westphal, the district manager in Atlanta, knew about my special ring, but we were close friends. I was his best detail man in the field, and we always had a good time together when he came to see me in Miami. A few women, perhaps a dozen, had been told about the two rings, and also Larry Don, and Eddie, of course-- but no one else. I picked up the phone.

"Hi," I said.

"Tom Davies." The solemn voice paused, and then Tom laughed.

"Tom, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d," I said, "how did you get onto my secret ring?"

"I called Julie, in Atlanta. You know I don't give a s.h.i.t anyway, Hank, whatever you do, but this is an emergency and I had to get a hold of you. I was afraid you might get away this morning and go to Lauderdale or Palm Beach, and it's important that I see you."

"You mean you want me to fly up to New Jersey, Tom?"

"No." He laughed. "I'm flying down to Miami this afternoon, and I'm going to have a six-hour stopover on my way to San Juan. I'm going to spend a week, maybe ten days, with Gonzales in Puerto Rico. But I want to talk to you, and catch a little sleep at the Airport Hotel before I grab the midnight flight to San Juan..."

"Do you want some action, Tom? It's short notice but I..."

"No, but thanks, Hank. I'm really tired-- I'll tell you about it when I see you. And I imagine Gonzales has got a few things planned for me anyway in San Juan. So what I'd like you to do is book me a room at the Airport Hotel--I'll be in about five-thirty--and we'll get together for awhile at six, in my room." He lowered his deep voice a full octave. "It's important, Hank. Very important."

"Sure, Tom. No sweat. And if you decide you want some action I can probably take care of that, too. I know a couple of girls in Hialeah who like to play sandwich, and if you say the word, I'll..."

"Not this time, Hank It's business. I haven't slept for twentyfour hours now, and I just want to get a little sack time before midnight, that's all."

"Okay, Tom. I'll see you at the hotel--in the lobby--it's at the end of Concourse Four-- at six o'clock"

"Good! We'll have a drink, and talk..."

I called the Airport Hotel and made a reservation for Tom Davies.

My throat was dry, and I was a little irritated at Julie for giving out the information about my special ring. But Julie and I were good friends, and if it hadn't been important, very important, Julie sure as h.e.l.l wouldn't have given the Vice-President of Sales this privileged information. Tom Davies, of course, was a d.a.m.ned nice guy, and he had been in the field himself, long before he became a district manager and then a vice-president, so he knew what the score was, and how we operated. Perhaps they all knew, the entire executive group in New Jersey, including old Ned Lee, who had founded the company. But we played the game, and we pretended to be working our a.s.ses off in the field. And some of us, at least some of the time, actually did work like h.e.l.l. I certainly had, during my first year, but when your sales are up you are can slack off. If they go down, as they will eventually if you quit pushing your product to doctors for several months and they learn about new ones from other companies they want to try, then you've got to get out there and hustle again. All the same, I wondered what it was that was so important that Tom Davies, the Vice-President of Sales, would take a layover in Miami to talk to me about in person instead of telling me on the phone.

I hadn't seen Tom Davies in about eight months, not since the last Atlanta meeting, when we had had a h.e.l.lova good time. We had picked up two showgirl types, big Southern broads six feet tall, and we had stayed over in Atlanta an extra day with these giantesses. When he was working Tom was a serious man, but he also knew how to unwind when the time came. We had had a lot of fun with those enormous women. But whatever it was Tom wanted to talk to me about, it would have to wait until six p.m.

Right now, I needed to do something about getting a pistol, and my best bet was Alton Thead,J.S.D.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN.

My adjustment year in Miami, after getting out of the army, had been a grim and confusing period. I had hated Pittsburgh, a cold and miserable city, and I had made no friends among its residents. I drank and ran around with some of the other officers from the Recruiting Station, and our conversations were usually centered on what we were going to do and where we were going to go after we got out of the service. It had never entered my mind to go home to Michigan. Dearborn, if anything, was a colder and more miserable city than Pittsburgh, and with fewer opportunities.

When a man is finally discharged he is ent.i.tled to travel pay to the home of his choice, and when my time came I selected Miami. I had never been here before, but I knew that it was subtropically warm, and I figured that a city of a more than one million people was large enough for me to find a place for myself.

I had saved very little money, and I took the first halfway decent job I could find, working as an insurance claims adjuster, which gave me $9,000 a year and a free use of a car. Eight years ago, it was still possible to live on nine thousand a year-- if not very well.

I had the G.I. Bill coming, and I considered going to graduate school and working on a Ph.D. My undergraduate degree in Psychology was virtually worthless, but I did not like the field well enough to spend three years torturing rats and doing the other boring things I would have to do to get a terminal degree.

The idea of going to Law School occurred to me after I was a.s.signed to a reserve unit. This small unit, which I was forced to join and remain with for three years after my discharge from active service, was a Military Government Team (Res.). We met at seven-thirty a.m. on Sunday mornings, ostensibly for four hours, but rarely stayed for more than two. The size of the team varied from twelve officers to twenty-five during the three years I served with it. We took turns giving fifty-minute lectures, usually on some political or government subject, as a.s.signed by our commander. He was a lieutenant colonel on Sundays, who worked in a gas station during the week. Alter pumping gas and changing tires all week, he gloried in his Sunday morning elevation to military power, and made the Army Reserve experience much worse for us than it should have been. We-- the other junior Reserve officers-- became unified in our hate for this gas pump jockey C.O., and I made a few good friends in the unit. Four or five of the other officers were lawyers, and as I talked with them over coffee after the Sunday morning meetings, I thought that the law might be a way to escape from my deadend job as a claims investigator.

The Law School entrance examination, which I had feared, turned out to be fairly easy, and I pa.s.sed it with a high score. More than half of the exam was concerned with graphs, charts, and math--which surprised me--but because math and statistics had been my best subjects at Michigan State, I scored high enough on these sections to make up for the other sections, where my scores were merely average.

I was accepted and I matriculated in the University of Miami night school program. All I had to do was to go to cla.s.ses for four nights a week for four years, and I would have a J.D. --Juris Doctorate. My first four courses were Torts, Insurance, Reading and Writing for Law, and Introduction to Law, on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday nights, in that order. Two weeks into the semester, I dropped the first three courses, and I would have dropped Introduction to Law, as well, if it hadn't been for Alton Thead, who taught the course.

Law is dull, but that isn't the only reason I dropped out. In my job as adjuster, I frequently had to call on people at night, and this conflict made it difficult to attend night cla.s.ses. My office hours during the day made it impossible for me to find time to study, which meant that I would have had to spend every Sat.u.r.day, all day, in the Law Library. Sunday mornings were spent at Reserve meetings, and our strict C.O. was a stickler for attendance. If you missed three meetings without obtaining permission to be absent in advance, and he was reluctant about giving permission, too, he would write a letter recommending that you be recalled to active duty for another year. We all lived in fear of this possibility, and he was very anxious to exercise this power.

A seven-day week is not a hardship if a man truly wants to become a lawyer. It is a matter of putting in the fours years, of serving the time, and a great many young men stick with it. But to do so requires more than a negative motivation, and my sole motivation for matriculating was that I did not want to be a graduate student in Psychology But it was the example of Alton Thead who persuaded me to give up Law School, although he did not set out deliberately to do so. Thead is a fine man, and he has a brilliant mind. He was entertaining, forceful, witty, and fascinating in the cla.s.sroom, and he relished talking about his own experiences as a practicing lawyer.

Thead had attracted nationwide notoriety in the late 1950s when he found a Jewish male who was willing to sue his parents for circ.u.mcising him as a baby. This was the most difficult part, Thead told us in cla.s.s, finding a young Jew who was willing to go along with this radical suit. Thead's case, of course, was a good one. Circ.u.mcision is a violation of a man's human rights, and the unlawful mutilation came within the province of the newer and stronger state legislation designed to protect the "battered child." Circ.u.mcision is not necessary medically, except in about four percent of those male children who are circ.u.mcised, and Thead had lined up more than a dozen doctors to testify to this fact to the court. Legally, the parents of the young man were in a poor position. They had "tradition" on their side as a precedent, but little else. They had doctors, too, but the best arguments they could muster were those of "sanitation." The fact that a circ.u.mcised p.e.n.i.s is easier to keep clean than one that is not is a poor excuse for the mutilation of a baby's body and for violating his rights as a human being. Thead's other major argument, which would have been more cogent today, now that the country, as a whole, is more liberally educated s.e.xually, carried little weight with the jury in the '50s. And this clincher (in my opinion, anyway) was that the glans of a circ.u.mcised p.e.n.i.s becomes tough, and because of the loss of sensitivity, anywhere from twenty to thirty percent of a man's pleasure in s.e.x is lost when the foreskin is removed.

Thead lost the case, which certainly would have had nationwide ramifications if he had won, and he appealed to the Florida Supreme Court. He lost there, too, on a five-four split decision, and then appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. The U.S. Supreme Court refused to review the case, and that was the end of it. Eventually, I suppose, another lawyer will take it up again, and the mutilation of boy babies in this country will be stopped; but Thead's mistake, which he acknowledged, was in using aJewish male instead of a WASP. The religious tradition was too much to overcome, all at once, and he should have sued on behalf of a Protestant male instead, avoiding the religious issue altogether.

Alter losing this case, Thead became involved in an income tax dodge, and almost became disbarred. He advised a Palm Beach client about a tax dodge, and the man was caught later on by the I.R.S. The disgruntled client spread the word that Thead, after advising him, had informed the I.R.S. about the dodge in order to collect the ten percent informer's fee. Several anonymous letters were sent to the Bar a.s.sociation, but nothing was proved. But once the false rumor got around, Thead had to close his Palm Beach office for lack of business.

He then obtained a private investigator's license in Miami Beach, and lost it through some mysterious technicality-- or loophole--discovered by the City Commission. Thead could not tell us the reasons why because the information was still privileged, between Thead and an unnamed client, but he would be able to reveal it some day in his autobiography, he said.

At any rate, Thead had returned to the Harvard Law School and earned a doctorate in Judicial Science, and then obtained a teaching position at the University of Miami Law School.

If the practical practice of law had given such a hard time to a man as brilliant as Thead, I thought, there was little future in it for me. Besides, there are more lawyers per capita in Miami than in any other city of comparable size in the United States-- and I intended to make Miami my permanent home. During that single semester, while I took Thead's introductory law course, we became friends. We were not close friends, but we had a relationship a little deeper than the usual teacher-student friendship because he knew that I was dropping out of Law School at the end of the term.

I hadn't seen Dr. Thead for about three years. Two or three times during the last three years I had driven over to the university to see him, but I hadn't been able to find a place to park. This morning, however, I intended to see him even if I had to park illegally, which I finally had to do. All of the visitor slots were filled, taken in all probability by law students too cheap to buy a five-dollar student decal, so I was forced to park on the gra.s.s between a coconut palm and a "No Parking-- Anytime" sign.

Eight years ago, there were always a few law students wearing coats and ties, but not any longer. The law students, like the undergraduates, wore the new poverty uniform--jeans, T-shirts, ragged blue work-shirts, beards, shoulder-length hair and beads, and they frowned in disapproval as I crossed the courtyard. My suit, and relatively short hair, alienated me, I supposed, and the dirtiest looks came from the students who were my age or older. But I am used to these intolerant looks, and I had other, more important things on my mind. I had called Thead before driving over to the university, and I knew that he was waiting for me.

Thead grinned at me when I entered his cubby-hole office, and stopped writing on his legal pad. He was thinner and smaller than I remembered. I took off my jacket and sat in the single visitor's chair. Wearing a half-smile, Thead looked at me from behind his gla.s.ses, and nodded. He took a pack of crumpled short Camels out of his shirt pocket, untangled a boomerang from the cellophane, straightened it, and managed to light it without taking his eyes off mine. This was a neat trick, and I had forgotten how disconcerting it could be.

"You look prosperous, Hank," he said. "How much are you making nowadays?"

"Twenty-two thousand, expenses, and a free Galaxie." I shrugged. "And I usually get a Christmas bonus."

"That's two thousand more than I make, and I don't have the use of a free car, so why did you finally decide to visit the old loser?"

"I've tried a few other times, Dr. Thead, but there's no place to park around here. I'm in a 'no parking' area now, and when I asked you for your unlisted home phone, you wouldn't give it to me."

"I finally took the phone out, Hank. An unlisted number doesn't work Somehow, and there are dozens of ways, students got the number and called me at home. If someone really wants to see me badly enough, he'll find a way, even if he can't find a place to park."

"That's true." I grinned. "A very good friend of mine has a problem, and asked me to help him out. I said I would if I could, and that's why I came to you."

He grinned. "Good. I was afraid that you had gotten into some trouble."

"No, sir. It's a friend. A man has threatened his life, and even took a pot shot at him, and he doesn't know what to do about it."

"The shot missed, I take it?"

"Yes, but it was quite close. Should he ask for police protection?"

"He could, but he wouldn't get it. What did he do--screw the man's wife?"

"No, but the man thinks he did."

"What makes him think so?"

"The situation he was in made it look bad, that's all. But there's no doubt that the husband is serious. He really intends to shoot my friend."

"In that case," Thead said, "your friend had better shoot him first. If he pleads self-defense, he won't get more than two or three years."

"How about a license to carry a gun?"

"It takes a little time. How much time does your friend have?"

"Not much."

"To get a license, it's necessary to write the chief of police a letter and request one. The reason the weapon is needed must also be stated, and it has to be a good one, like carrying large sums of money. In your case, it would be simple. As a detail man, you carry drug samples in your car, and you need to protect them from theft, right?"

"All my friend carries is credit cards, Dr. Thead. Very little cash."

"How many credit cards?"

"American Express, Diner's, MasterCard, and three or four gas cards, I guess."

"There you are, then. Stolen credit cards are worth fifty or sixty bucks apiece on the black market. So there's two-fifty or three hundred bucks already. That's a large sum of money, Hank, even in Miami. The next step is going to the police range. To get a license to carry a weapon, a man has to qualify on the range with his own pistol. The initial fee, if he qualifies on the range and his application is approved by the chief, is seventy-five bucks, plus a twenty-five dollar annual fee after that. So the initial outlay is some spare time, and a hundred dollars. The license is good for Dade County only. If he wants to take the pistol into other counties he has to get another separate license from each county."

"What about carrying a pistol without a license?"

"A man's permitted to carry a pistol in his car, as long as it isn't hidden. He can put it on the seat beside him in plain view. If he keeps it in the glove compartment, the compartment must be locked at all times. They have to let a man carry a gun in his car, Hank. Otherwise, he wouldn't be able to drive home with it from the gun shop, you see."

"So there's no problem in buying a gun?"

"None at all, if you've got the price."

"Thanks, Dr. Thead. I'll tell my friend."

"I'll bet you will. And because he's your friend, Hank, there's no fee for all this valuable information."

"He can afford a fee, Dr. Thead. Send me the bill, and I'll see that he sends you the money."