Stuart Kaminsky - The Fala Factor

I had a hard time finding Jeremy. He wasn’t in his office. He wasn’t in the elevator recleaning the mirror. He wasn’t Lysoling the stairs or polishing the name plates in the lobby. I went back up to Alice Palice’s “suite” and found him there. Alice’s suite consisted of much the same space Shelly occupied two floors above. In the center of the main room was a large oak dining room table. On the table was Alice’s printing press. Surrounding the printing press were cans of ink, towels, and stacks of paper. In fact the room was a mess filled with paper and books. It looked like moving day on the Island of Yap just before the invasion. The smell of ink hit hard and not unpleasantly. Jeremy was standing and shaking his head over something he was reading, which had probably been printed on the press.

“Toby,” he said, “one should be careful about one’s promises. I told Alice I would keep an eye on things for her, she is expecting a delivery. She and Miss Poslik have gone downtown to a sale at Bullocks. They are getting along very well.” He put the printed material down and looked around the room. “I would be very willing to put all this in order, but Alice and I have an agreement.”

“Think you could close up shop and keep me company while I keep an eye on the guy who I think has the dog?” I said.

“You need company?”

“I may run into Bass,” I explained.

“Then it will be my pleasure to join you.”

We took my car, which proved to be a mistake. Since the passenger door wouldn’t open, Jeremy had to slide in on the driver’s side. It was a tight fit past the steering wheel and we almost had to give up. We didn’t think of what might happen getting out. Fifteen minutes later we were parked in front of Lyle’s building on Broadway. I left Jeremy and found by listening at the door that Lyle was still in his office. Then it was back downstairs and more waiting while Jeremy tried to educate me with poetry and a lecture on modern literature. At one point a guy who looked like an old George Brent came out of the shoe store we were parked in front of. He looked like he was going to tell us to move. Then he got close enough to see my face and Jeremy’s body and decided instead to pretend he was looking for stray customers.

Around noon, just when I was going to suggest that I pick up some sandwiches, Lyle came out of the front door of the building followed by Bass. I could feel Jeremy sitting up next to me. Lyle wore a thin coat, which he pulled around his neck. He looked up at the sky and saw a wave of clouds coming that I hadn’t paid attention to. Rain was on the way.

Lyle and Bass went down the street and I started the engine. They didn’t go far. They got in a big Chrysler parked near the corner. Lyle got in back. Bass drove. The New Whigs didn’t fool around with any of this equality stuff.

Following them was no problem. I was good at it and they didn’t know enough to even suspect that I might be there.

It was a long ride. We followed the Chrysler west to Sepulveda and then stayed safely behind as we took Sepulveda up through the hills into the valley past Tarzana. A turn on Reseda and in two more blocks, Bass and Lyle pulled into the small parking lot next to the Midlothian Theater, a small neighborhood cigar box.

I kept driving, made a turn in a driveway where a man in a baseball cap was watering his lawn, an effort that struck me as particularly dumb since Helen Keller could have told him that the rain would be coming down dark and heavy and not in minutes or hours. But the man didn’t seem to care. He nodded at us as I pulled out of his driveway, somewhat relieved, I think, that we weren’t coming to visit him, and went on with his watering.

We parked across from the Midlothian in front of a candy shop and watched Lyle and Bass as they were let into the theater. We already knew why we were there. The marquee read WHIG PARTY RALLY TODAY AT ONE. Then, below this sign in those little black letters was CELEBRITIES-CELEBRITIES-CELEBRITIES. The t s in the last two celebrities were red instead of black. Jeremy thought that was an interesting, eye-catching design concept that he might suggest to Alice for their book. I thought the kid who had put up the announcement had just run out of small black t s.

From where we sat we could see both the front entrance to the theater and Lyle’s car. For the next hour we talked about design graphics, oriental healing (which Jeremy was learning), and the people who straggled into the theater. We didn’t keep count but Jeremy, who was accustomed to gauging wrestling crowds, put the final total at forty-seven, mostly women. We also guessed that most of the crowd had been drawn by the promise of celebrities, none of whom I could identify going in. The most interesting attendee, as far as I was concerned, was Academy Dolmitz, who drove up a few minutes before one, parked in the gravel lot, and got into the theater as fast as he could, apparently hoping that no one would see him. Academy’s pride in his political party was touching. Then Jeremy thought he recognized Hugh Herbert. I said the guy didn’t look much like Herbert to me but maybe he was right.

At a minute or two after one, Lyle stuck his head out the door and looked both ways, either for the celebrities who hadn’t arrived or in the hope of grabbing unwary housewives from the street to fill a few seats. His scanning of the street brought him quickly to me. With Jeremy at my side there wasn’t any room to hide, so I threw a cool smile on my lips and looked straight back at the gleaming lenses of Lyle’s glassses. Lyle’s face went through a mess of emotions that would have been the envy of a starlet on her first screen test: surprise, curiosity, anger, mock confidence, smirk, shaken, superiority, and controlled but quivering anger. Then he pulled his head back in. It was replaced about a minute later by the bulk of Bass, who found us and began to cross the street, ignoring an Olds driven by a guy in overalls who almost ran him down.

“Out, quickly,” said Jeremy, touching my arm.

I opened the door and got out, almost falling into the path of another car. Had my passenger door been working, which it was not thanks to Bass, Jeremy could have gotten out with dignity untested, but he did a fairly good job of it in any case and managed to be at my side just as Bass reached out a hand in the general direction of my throat.

I didn’t back away. I couldn’t back away without hitting my car or stepping into traffic, but backing away wasn’t necessary. Jeremy’s hand shot out and pushed Bass’s down.

Bass looked at Jeremy, whom he seemed to be seeing for the first time, and said, “Butler. You’re through. You quit.”

“We both did,” Jeremy said evenly, understanding what made little sense to me.

A woman of about fifty, dead black mink around her neck and a hat with a long black feather, had stopped on the sidewalk as she came out of the candy store. The sight of two giants in the street was enough to get her attention. I looked at her and shrugged as if I had been recruited as a reluctant referee.

“What are you looking at?” Bass said to the woman.

I gave her credit. She managed to keep from dropping her purse and candy as her heels clacked down the street.

“Go back across the street, Bass,” Jeremy said calmly.

“I’ve got to do him,” Bass said, nodding at me as if I were a package he had been assigned to gift-wrap.

“No,” said Jeremy gently, as a guy in a black Buick stopped his car to complain about our standing in the street and then changed his mind and sped away.

“I’ll do him and I’ll do you again,” Bass said, his eyes wide and his lips dry.

“You didn’t beat me,” Jeremy said.

“Two out of three,” Bass hissed.