Макс Коллинз - A Shroud for Aquarius

“You must be a friend of Dave’s,” she said. Her voice was even deeper than Caroline Westin’s, but much more pleasant. She undoubtedly gave good phone; with those nails, she hadn’t been hired to type.

I smiled. “You figured out I’m probably not a client.”

“Not unless you’re one of the eccentric ones.” One hand — loaded down with rings, rings loaded down with stones, though none seemed of the wedding variety — curled over the push buttons along the bottom of her phone, long, burnt-orange nails clicking against plastic as she paused before making her interoffice call. “Who shall I say it is?”

“Just say it’s a friend of Ginnie Mullens.”

Her tanned, wholesome face turned somber. “That was a shame. I liked Ginnie.”

“Me too. Did you know her well?”

“Pretty well. Can’t I give Mr. Flater your name?”

“Sure. Tell him it’s Mallory.”

She pointed me down a hallway with a few offices and conference rooms on either side; I walked across a work area where a couple of graphic artists were toiling in cubicles. Flater’s door said DAVID F. FLATER and was shut. I knocked and a deep voice said: “Come in.”

Flater was a thin man with thinning brown hair and an angular face made more angular by a neatly trimmed spade-shaped beard, designed to hide pockmarks. Not a handsome man, certainly; but not homely. Nine out of ten women would’ve found his looks “interesting,” and the other one, well, who needed her, when you had the other nine?

The room smelled of pot, and a joint smouldered in the ashtray before him. A pair of designer, goggle-type glasses also lay on the desk where they’d been tossed. He was wearing a yellow shirt with no tie, open two buttons at the throat; hair from his chest curled up. A tan sports jacket with patched sleeves lay across a two-drawer file cabinet near the door. There was an untidy bookcase, piled mostly with magazines — Advertising Age, Adweek — but a few books — Confessions of an Advertising Man, From the Wonderful Folks Who Brought You Pearl Harbor, a demographics study or two — and some video tapes in black plastic boxes.

He didn’t rise, but forced a half-smile, waved toward a director’s chair opposite his big, modern oak desk.

I sat, glancing around. Behind me was a gallery of pictures, all in black, square, conservative frames: a younger, more fully bearded, less conventionally dressed Flater was shown smiling with the smiling faces of Jerry Rubin, Abbie Hoffmann, Timothy Leary, William Kunstler, Eugene McCarthy. Taken at outdoor rallies, banners with blurred slogans in the background.

“You don’t know me,” I said, a little nervously, “but...”

“You sound like an American Express commercial,” he said. Without expression. “Anyway, keep your ID in your pocket. I know you.”

“We haven’t met.”

“Ginnie mentioned you.”

“She mentioned you to me, when I saw her last.”

He sat up a little; spark of interest. “When was that?”

“Our high school reunion last month.”

He chuckled, without much humor. His eyes were very red, and I didn’t think it was entirely from the pot. “High school reunion. That was the first sign.”

“Pardon?”

“That she was getting in one of her reflective moods again. Her existential angst trips again. Jesus!” He lifted the joint like a sacrament and toked it. “I knew I was in trouble any time she brought your goddamn name up.”

“Really. Why?”

“Maybe you can tell me. I just knew when she did, she’d start talking about the absurdity of life. I’d get quoted everything from Catch-22 to Samuel Beckett.”

Under the stars with Ginnie.

I said, “We used to talk about that sort of thing, back in high school.”

“Precocious, weren’t you?”

“Why the bitterness?”

“It’s not aimed at you.”

“Ginnie, then.”

He started to take another toke, then pushed it angrily away. “I never did this in my office before.”

“What?”

He nodded to the joint in the ashtray, little hairs of smoke rising upward. “I hardly ever use that shit anymore. I just grew out of it.”

“Did Ginnie?”

He looked at me sharply, then softened. “Pretty much. I’m not saying recreational drugs were completely a thing of the past, for either of us, but...”

“Maybe you just outgrew grass.”

He laughed; there was some dry humor in it this time. “You sound like Jack Webb. Sure, Mallory — maryjane led me to the hard stuff; I’m shooting skag now. What do you think?”

“I think a guy who uses the term skag at least knows what he’s talking about.”

He pressed the joint out in the ashtray, dumped it in his wastebasket. “Let’s change the subject. What are you doing here, anyway?”

“You and Ginnie had been seeing a lot of each other, the last six months or so.”

“That’s right. I even lived out at that farmhouse with her, till about a month ago.”

“That would’ve been about the time of our high school reunion.”

“Yes, it would. We fought, the next day, as a matter of fact. But it had been brewing.”

“You say, you fought?”

He brushed a hand at the air. “Fought. Argued. Bickered with the amp on ten, get my drift?”

“You just don’t look like the hothead type to me, Flater. Even if you are ex-SDS.”

He leaned forward, smiling in an appraising sort of way, folded his hands. “I do have a certain background in... protest, not all of it nonviolent.”

“Did you grow out of that, too?”

He sighed; his hands still folded, as if in prayer, he glanced out the window at the plaza — the sun was out now, and it danced on the green. “I guess I did. And no one seems to be taking up the mantle, either, do they?” He looked at me, sharply. “Tell me, Mallory — if you were ten, fifteen years younger, wouldn’t you take to the streets again? Wouldn’t you have something to carry a placard about? The threat of nuclear annihilation, maybe? A warmongering White House? Pollution? Something ?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

“You were a protestor. Ginnie told me.”

“I was involved in a veterans-against-the-war group. We lobbied, we didn’t riot. We worked within the system.”

“Oh, isn’t that sweet! A condescending tone for those of us who really got out and got it done.”

“I didn’t mean to be condescending. People like you helped stop the war; I won’t take that away from you.”

He laughed from down in his chest; I never heard a laugh more bitter. “Isn’t that big of you. Where are you, now? What are you doing now, for the cause?”

“What cause?”

That threw him for a minute.

Then he said, “Any cause. Any good human cause.”

“I write mysteries. You write ads. So spare me the condescension, too, while you’re at it.”

With tight, barely restrained anger, he said, “My agency has handled the campaigns for a dozen Democratic candidates on state and national levels, for cost. ”

“You’re doing a hell of a job, too, judging by all the Republicans getting elected.”

Looking out the window again, he said, “We do what we can.”

“Wasn’t there some bad publicity that probably helped lose an election for that guy, what’s-his-name, who was running for U.S. Senate a while back? When it came out his ad campaign was being run by the former Propaganda Minister of the Yippies?”

He just nodded, as if he barely remembered I was there.

I said, “I doubt any politicians will be using your agency again, even if you do give your services to ’em at cost.”

Still looking out the window, he smiled faintly. “I have other clients, including some rather conservative ones, who are able to coexist peacefully with the radical skeletons in my closet. I have three national TV spots airing this month, Mallory. And I have the single largest advertising account in the state; don’t let my modest offices fool you.”