Эд Макбейн - Happy New Year, Herbie and other stories

“Thank you, darling,” she said, and one meticulously manicured hand reached up to touch the bun at the back of her neck, tidying it, the hand glistening with a diamond the size of Quemoy. “Oh, gentlemen, I didn’t realize you were here. I hope I’m not interrupting anything. Oh, but I am, aren’t I? Forgive me. I’ll be as quiet as a mouse.”

“We were almost finished, Flora,” Epman said. “You’ve met both Mr. Cohen and Mr. Wainwright, haven’t you?”

“Yes. You must forgive me, gentlemen. I know how Sam is about his conferences. He can’t even stand the telephone intruding.”

“Why, you’ve brought the sunshine with you, Mrs. Epman,” Wainwright said, smiling, and I glanced through the window and noticed that the sun had indeed broken through the clouds at last.

“Only to match your golden tongue,” Flora answered quickly with a look that seemed unconsciously flirtatious, but only in a regal way, the smile a queen allows a sentry. The look was curious because Flora Epman was not beautiful, I realized, and yet she seemed to believe she was beautiful, and her belief was contagious. “I must change out of these wet clothes,” she said.

“I was just telling them about the title, Flora,” Epman said. “S.P.Q.R.”

“Yes, it’s a good title, don’t you think?” She took off the wet black raincoat, pulled a hanger from the closet, and stopped on her way to the bathroom to face me.

“I don’t know yet,” I said. “It takes a while for a title to grow on me.”

Flora went into the bathroom, apparently to hang the raincoat over the tub. She returned as Epman said, “It’ll grow on you, don’t worry. Even if it don’t grow, it’s a great title. On the common man, to use Mr. Wainwright’s terminology, the only thing that grows on him is his toenails and his hair.”

“But Mr. Cohen is not the common man,” Flora said, smoothing the short suit jacket over her hips. “If he were, he wouldn’t be working on this picture.”

“Thank you,” I said, and then wondered if I’d been complimented.

“I must change,” Flora said. “I’m soaked through to my underwear.” She smiled briefly and maternally, as if she hoped this inadvertent reference to her lacy unmentionables would not erect a lust-arousing image of herself. “Will you be long, Sam? I’d like to go downstairs for a cocktail.”

“A few more minutes,” Epman said. “You go ahead and change.”

“If you’ll excuse me,” Flora said, and again she smiled and then moved toward the bathroom with a walk that was peculiarly unfeminine even though the hip and leg movements were those usually associated with feminine, if not outright sexy, women. The effect puzzled me. I watched her as she walked across the room. She was, I supposed, about five feet two inches tall. She walked with her shoulders back and her head erect, the bun at the nape of her neck curled with the artistic precision of a conch shell. Her waist, though beginning to record the advance of years, was slender nonetheless, smoothly flowing into the curve of wide hips. She moved with a fluidity that tightened her skirt across an invitingly plump backside, and her legs looked clean and trim, tapering to the flawlessly cut high-heeled pumps. The effect should have been one of desirable, if mellowing, femininity. And yet something was lacking.

She moves like a frightened bird, I thought.

I realized in a rush that Flora Epman had known either Hollywood or Sam Epman for too long a time. The marshmallow exterior she presented might once have been only the coating for a solid steel core, but it was genuine enough now. Whatever strength she’d once possessed had become a banality. For all her smiling agreement, she was a lost and frightened woman. And I wondered if Sam Epman hadn’t made her that way.

Epman waited until the bathroom door had closed behind her.

“I’ll make this short,” he said. “You’re the boys who are going to write this movie. Are you supposed to sit down and work with each other without even knowing what brand cigarettes you smoke? Impossible. I took the liberty,” he went on, moving toward the dropleaf desk near the windows, lowering the front of the desk and reaching into it, “of buying copies of your respective books. Everybody should take such liberties, huh? Not that you need it.” He chuckled. “Mr. Cohen, from you I bought Slum Boy because this is all you wrote so far. From you, Mr. Wainwright, I bought your latest one, Tambourine , on the theory that a man’s latest is always his best.” He picked up the books and carried them across the room. “You only get one book each,” he said, chuckling. “Your own book you don’t have to read.” He extended the books. I took my copy. Wainwright glanced through his and then handed it back.

“I’ve already read this,” he said.

“What?” Epman asked, as though he hadn’t heard Wainwright’s earlier praise of my novel.

“I thought it would be a good idea to research my colleague’s work,” Wainwright explained. He shrugged in embarrassment like a student who, in a class of forty, is the only one who’s prepared his assignment.

“Well, good, good for you,” Epman said. “But if you don’t mind, would you read it again? I want you to get acquainted with each other’s styles. We got to marry these two different styles into one shooting script; it shouldn’t look like the Russian Army wrote it. So learn them. It won’t be boring, believe me. Those are good books. If they weren’t, their authors wouldn’t be working on my picture.”

He pulled a slender pocket watch from his vest pocket, held it on the palm of his hand for an instant, and then put it back into the pocket. “I’ll see you all in the morning,” he said. “In the meantime, I better get dressed or Flora will take a fit. Thanks for coming up.”

“It was a pleasure hearing your ideas, Mr. Epman,” Wainwright said. “It sounds as if we’re going to have a great picture here.”

“I think so,” Epman said reflectively. “I think we’re going to have a great picture here.”

He paused and looked at me.

I cleared my throat. “I think we’re going to have a great picture here,” I said.

Epman smiled. Then, with sudden energy, he said, “Listen, I don’t want you to think I’m kicking you out, because what I’m doing, actually, is kicking you out. Unless you want to see a hairy-legged producer in his undershorts.” He chuckled and smoothed his mustache, as if mention of hair had reminded him of it. With his free hand he opened the door.

“See you in the morning, Mr. Epman,” Wainwright said cheerfully.

“Right,” Epman snapped with a curt nod of his bald head, and then he closed the door behind us. Wainwright and I stood awkwardly in the hallway.

“Feel like joining me for a drink, Dave?” he asked. He grinned. “Or would you rather start reading my novel?”

“The drink now, the novel later,” I said.

We walked down the hallway in silence. I rang for the elevator, and then I turned to Wainwright, a frown on my face, and asked, “What do you think of all this? Do you think it’ll really work?”

Wainwright nodded quickly. There was in his eyes the same fear I had felt emanating from Flora Epman. “I think it’ll be a great picture,” he said, and then as if I hadn’t already done it, rang for the elevator again.

He took the key from his pocket, unlocked the padlock, and then took the shotgun down from the rack.

The shotgun was a Savage automatic, and he thought the name was wryly appropriate because he was about to kill himself and he considered the act essentially savage and at the same time automatic, almost inevitable. Holding the gun in his big hands, he looked down at it with a curiously sad smile. He hadn’t even wanted the damn thing.