Oliver Bleeck - Brass Go-Between

“Of what?” I said.

“High-class art. Say a guy wants to go into business for himself. You know, he’s got a full-time job but he wants to get into something he can run out of his home. I put him in business. Direct mail. Let the post office do the hustling, I say.” He reached into his desk drawer, took out a sheet of paper, and slid it across the desk to me. “This has been one of my hottest numbers. About a thirty-percent return on this one and that’s goddamned high in the direct-mail business.”

I picked up the letter-sized sheet of paper and looked at it. It was a Xeroxed copy of a handwritten letter and was addressed to “Hi, Friend!” In the upper right-hand corner was the blurred picture of a nude man and woman. The body of the letter read:

I’m Sally and that’s Bill you see there with me. We’re a liberal minded young couple and we don’t mind showing you the things we enjoy doing together and with our friends. I’m blonde and cute. Bill is tall and very well endowed. I measure 36-24-36.

We went to Mexico City last month with some girl friends of mine and visited one of those little known exotic night spots you hear about for mature minded people. Because of their unusual nature, these places are illegal here and mighty hard to find down there. But I’m sure you’ve heard about them and all the wild things that go on inside.

We took some photos of each other with another couple that was there. Some of us girls by ourselves and the rest show us couples in almost every position possible. These aren’t any of those phony nudist photos. These are the real thing.

I’ll sell you a whole set in black and white for $8.00 or four sets in color for $12.00. I’ll include some very special shots they took of me and Betty together. Send me the money and I’ll rush them right back to you.

It was signed, “Sincerely yours, Sally.”

I tossed the letter back on the desk. “Business pretty good, huh?” I said.

“Getting better all the time,” Shippo said. “I furnish the whole thing: the letter, the photos, and the sucker list. They mail out the letter once they get copies Xeroxed and then sit back and wait for the dough to roll in. They make money, I make money, and a lot of lonely people get their jollies. You want a set of the colored shots? I can let you have them for fifty bucks.”

“It said twelve in the letter.”

“I might throw in a little information,” Shippo said.

“Fifty is still steep.”

Shippo leaned back in his chair which squeaked, placed his fat hands on the bare desk, and smiled at me with yellow teeth that seemed too large and square for his small mouth. “That’s a nice suit you got on,” he said. “I know suits. I figure you’re worth fifty.”

“You remember my name, now?”

“St. Ives,” he said. “It ain’t a name you forget or if you do, you remember it when somebody brings it up. Fifty bucks?”

I nodded. “Fifty bucks.”

“Let me get you your pictures first.” He moved over to one of the files, took out a nine-by-eleven-inch manila envelope, peeked inside to make sure that it was the right one, and then sat back down in his chair. I took out my wallet, found two twenties and a ten, and pushed them over to him. He handed me the envelope. “You want a receipt?” he said.

“Just information. Such as who asked you to call Parisi about me?”

Shippo took the three bills and folded them lengthwise. Then he folded them in half, then folded them again, and tucked them into his watch pocket. “That was a couple of months back, wasn’t it?”

“Was it?”

“Yep, I remember now. It was a couple of months back.”

“In June,” I said.

“In June.”

“Now we have when, let’s try for who.”

Shippo looked around his desk as if he wished that there were some papers to shuffle. There weren’t so he opened a drawer and brought out a bottle of Old Cabin Still and two smeared glasses that looked like they had once contained Kraft cheese spread. He poured them half full and then moved one of them over to my side of the desk. “I always have a drink about this time of day,” he said. “Doctor says it’s good for my blood pressure. I got high blood pressure.” He picked up his glass and drained it, sighed, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Drink up,” he said. I picked up the bourbon and took a swallow out of politeness and then put the glass back on the desk. I don’t care much for bourbon.

“Funny thing the way your name came up, you know,” Shippo said. “Guy I hadn’t seen in five, maybe six years calls up and wants to know if I know anybody who might give him a once-over on a Philip St. Ives, so I tell him that I know lots of people and he says, no, not those kind, he needs somebody who’s got a good reputation, like his word is his bond, who’s respectable and all. So I say how about my good friend Johnny Parisi, is he good enough for you? And the guys says, you know Johnny Parisi? And I tell him that Johnny and me have been friends for a long time.”

“What else did he say?”

“Nothing. He just wanted me to call Parisi and find out about you.”

“Find out what?”

“Find out if you were okay, A-1, and would do what you said you would do. You wanta know what Johnny said about you?”

“No,” I said. “I want to know Who asked about me.”

“Oh, him. He was only good for thirty bucks, but what the hell, it only took a couple of phone calls.”

“All right,” I said. “Who?”

“A guy name of Frank Spellacy, but you gotta understand that he was only calling me about you for a friend of his.”

“Where can I find Spellacy?” I said.

“In the phone book. Manhattan.”

“What’s he do?”

“You mean for a living?”

“For a living.”

Shippo shrugged. “What does anybody do? Me, I think of myself as an art dealer who provides a service for lonely people and believe me, they’re a lot of lonely people around. But you know what those creeps from the post office said I was? They said I was a hard-core pornographer. So I said to hell with them. I don’t use the post office no more. I send everything out by messenger if it’s close by, and Railway Express if it ain’t.”

“They must have hated to lose your business,” I said.

“You mean the post office?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Nah. They got so much business they can’t take care of it now.”

“You don’t have any idea of what Spellacy does?”

“He dabbles in this and that.”

“Such as?”

“Well, five or six years ago he was running a securities firm.”

“You mean a boiler room.”

“You call it a boiler room. Me and Spellacy called it a securities firm. I was helping out in the afternoons and we were doing pretty good until there was a misunderstanding and, well, Spellacy had to liquidate. I didn’t hear nothing about him for a couple of years. I think he was out of town.”

“He must have drawn a short sentence.”

“His lawyer wasn’t too hot,” Shippo said. “You gotta have a top lawyer if you wanta survive in the business world which, when you come right down to it, ain’t nothing but a jungle, like Jimmy Hoffa said. Now there’s probably one of the most unappreciated men in the country. And look what they done to him.”

“History will justify him,” I said. “But let’s get back to Spellacy. You don’t have any idea of what he’s doing?”

“He did mention something about real estate, come to think of it. He said he’s got some big development going out in Arizona.”

I got up. “Thanks for the information.”

Shippo didn’t stir, other than to wave his hand. “Glad to oblige.”

I was heading for the door when he called me back. “Hey, your pictures.”