Ross Thomas: The Seersucker Whipsaw

“You’re going to live in them?” I asked.

“No, I’m going to be landlord. I’m going to rent them for one dollar a year to poor colored folks. The only condition is that I can come in and look around when I want to. That’s not too much to ask, is it?”

“Not for a dollar a year.”

“I didn’t think so.”

We got up. I paid the cashier and we walked back down Colfax to Broadway. It was a bright cool July morning in Denver and I looked around trying to project how it was almost twenty-seven years before when a seventeen-year-old was admonished to drive off in his legacy except that the legacy had a broken block.

“What happened to your father?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he said. “We lost touch after a while. I haven’t heard from him in twenty-five years.”

“Ever try to locate him?”

Shartelle looked at me and smiled. “I can’t say that I did. Do you think I should’ve?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

We walked on in silence. Then Shartelle asked, “How soon does Pig want me in London?”

“As soon as possible.”

He nodded. “Then we’d better leave today.”

At 10 a.m. Greenwich Mean Time the next day, or 4 a.m., Eastern Standard Time, or 2 a.m., Mountain Standard Time, I picked up Shartelle at the Dorchester in London. We had flown all night after making a close connection in New York. Shartelle was wearing a sleepy look, a light-weight gray suit, a white shirt, and a black knit tie. His white hair was brushed and his gray eyes flickered just slightly as he took in my bowler and carefully furled umbrella.

“I let Duffy wear the Stetson,” I told him. “I try to blend with the background.”

We talked a little at breakfast and then walked the several blocks to the office. Jimmy, the porter, wearing all of his World War II campaign ribbons and then some, welcomed me back. I introduced Shartelle. “Always glad to have an American gentleman with us, sir,” Jimmy said.

“Has Mr. Duffy arrived yet?” I asked.

“Just come in, sir. Been here not more than a quarter-hour.”

Shartelle followed me up the stairs to my office. I introduced him to my secretary who said she was glad to see me back. There were two notes on my desk to return Mr. Duffy’s call. Shartelle glanced around the room. “Either this place is on the verge of bankruptcy or it’s making too much money,” he said.

“Wait’ll you see Duffy’s layout.”

“The only discordant note you got in here, boy, is that machine,” Shartelle said, pointing to my typewriter. It was an L.C. Smith, about 35 years old.

“That’s the touch of class, Duffy figures. It cost the firm ten pounds just to have the damned thing renovated. When he shows clients through the office, he tells them that I wrote my first byline story on it and that I can’t write a word on anything else.”

“You ever use it?”

I sat down behind my U-shaped desk and swung out a Smith-Corona electric portable. “I use this. It’s faster. As I said, I’m a fast writer.”

Shartelle lowered himself into one of the three winged- back black leather chairs that clustered around my desk. Each had beside it a slate-topped cube of solid oiled teak and on those were large, brightly-colored ceramic ashtrays.

“Like that good old man said, you got a carpet on the floor and pictures on the wall. All you need is a little music in the air.”

I pushed a button on the desk. Muzak gave forth softly with something from Camelot . I pushed the button again and it stopped.

Shartelle grinned and lighted a Picayune. “I just noticed one thing,” he said. “You ain’t got a door.”

“The only doors in the place are the front one, the necessary firedoors, the ones that lead to the cans, and four on the women’s stalls. Duffy had all the rest of them removed. He says that anytime anybody wants to see anybody they should feel free to poke their heads in. There are no secrets in Duffy, Downer and Theims. It’s a madhouse.”

As if on cue, the keeper of the madhouse burst in. “Shartelle, goddamn you, how’ve you been?” he demanded. It was Duffy, dressed for the country. He wore a green tweed suit with a weave so loose that you could poke a ten-penny nail through it without making a hole. His shirt was as pale green as it could get without being white and his tie was a black and green wool. Although I didn’t look, I decided that his shoes must be stout brown brogues.

Shartelle uncoiled himself from a black leather chair, shifted his cigarette to his left hand, and slowly extended his right to Duffy. He took his time. A smile that seemed to be of pure delight creased his face as he cocked his head slightly to one side. I was forgotten. Duffy had Shartelle’s undivided attention. It was the Shartelle treatment. There was affection and liking in his gaze, but more important, there was a real and deep personal interest in the man whose hand he shook. Had I been Duffy, I would have bought the bridge and probably taken an option on the ferry.

“Pig Duffy,” Shartelle said, and his white grin widened. “I swear it’s good to see you looking so fit and fine.”

Duffy let the Pig go by, not even flinching slightly. He grasped Shartelle’s right hand with both of his and shook it some more. He threw his head back and narrowed his blue eyes. “Nine years, Clint. I was trying to remember just where it was, as I drove in this morning. Chicago, the Stockyards Inn.”

“July twenty-two.”

“Four in the morning.”

“Suite 570.”

“By God, you’re right!” Duffy let go of Shartelle’s hand. “You haven’t changed a bit, Clint. Did you have a good flight? My boy here take care of you all right?”

“Mr. Upshaw is the soul of courtesy. And, I might add, a crackerjack salesman. I’m here.”

Duffy flicked his blue eyes at me. “How’re you, Pete?”

“Just fine.”

“Did you give Clint all the details?”

“Just the highlights.”

“He mentioned thirty thousand pounds,” Shartelle said with his warm smile. “That was the brightest highlight of all. What are you doing messing around in Africa, Pig? Ain’t that a little out of your territory?”

Duffy rallied. “When I heard about this, I thought the same thing, Clint. I thought, ‘Padraic, you have enough on your plate the way things stand. You haven’t time to give it the guidance it really needs.’ And then I tried to think of someone who could bring off the campaign.” He paused, bit his lower lip reflectively, and glanced downwards. His voice softened, and took on a measure of quiet awe. “I decided that there was only one man — not in England, not in the States, but just one man in the world . And that was Clint Shartelle.” He raised his eyes, looked at Shartelle directly and said humbly, “So I asked Clint Shartelle to help me out.” He paused again and then added a line — almost as a throwaway, but not quite — “And more important, to help out Africa.”

Shartelle shook his head slightly from side to side. It was the gesture of frank appreciation that the concertmaster pays the performance of the virtuoso. His voice was as soft as Duffy’s, and the honeysuckle seemed to bloom as he said, “Put that way, Padraic, no man could refuse.”

Duffy brightened, grabbed Shartelle by the arm, and steered him towards the forever-open door. “I’ve got the whole morning open for you, Clint. We’ll have a bit of a natter, and then you’ll meet the candidate. He flew in two days ago and is leaving this afternoon, but you’ll have a chance to get acquainted at lunch.” Duffy turned his head. “Come on, Pete.” I took it as a nice afterthought.

We walked down the hall past Duffy’s two secretaries to where The Hatrack guarded his doorless entrance. The Hat- rack was a statue made of welded scrap metal. It stood seven feet high on an onyx base and was supposed to be representative of the Crucifixion. And at least that was its real name. The main crosspiece looked for all the world like the corrugated bumper from a 1937 DeSoto, the kind once held at a premium by the hot rod crowd in Los Angeles. Slightly tight and Philistinish after a particularly good lunch, I once had hung my bowler on it. Duffy wouldn’t speak to me for a week, but since then everyone called it The Hatrack. Shartelle gave it an appreciative glance as we moved into Duffy’s office.