Lawrence Block - The Topless Tulip Caper

(You could read about it if you want. It’s in a book called Chip Harrison Scores Again . I want you to know that the title was not my idea.)

Anyway, the car’s a Cadillac, which sounds impressive, but it’s also more than twenty years old, and I guess it’s the last stick-shift automobile that Cadillac ever made. It’s in beautiful shape, though. Geraldine only drove it on Sundays. To church and back.

I picked it up at the garage, crossed over to Jersey and managed to find the Palisades Parkway. I got off at the Alpine exit and found the town of Closter, and I only had to ask directions four times before I found Haskell Henderson’s house. It was a colonial, painted yellow with forest green trim, set fairly far back on a lot shaded by a great many large trees. A huge dog in a fenced yard next door barked at me. I waved at him and walked up a flagstone path to the front door and poked the bell. An elaborate series of chimes sounded within the house. I waited for a while and was about to hit the bell again when the door opened. A woman stood in the doorway with a cigarette in one hand and a glass of colorless liquid in the other. She said, “If you’re from the Boy Scouts, the newspapers are stacked in the garage. If you’re from the ecology drive the bottles and cans are in a bin next to the newspapers. If you’re selling something I’ve probably already got it and it doesn’t work and the last thing I want is to buy another one.”

I was standing close enough during her little speech to identify the colorless liquid in her glass. It was gin. Mrs. Haskell Henderson was in her early thirties, built like the Maginot Line, and already sloshed to the gills at ten twenty-five in the morning.

“I’m not,” I said.

“You’re not which?”

“Any of them,” I said. “My name is Chip Harrison and I work for Leo Haig.”

“I don’t.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I don’t work for Leo Haig. I don’t work for anybody. My name is Althea Henderson and I drink a lot. And why shouldn’t I, huh? That’s what I want to know.”

“Well. May I come in?”

“What the hell, why not.” She stood aside and I entered the house. “Why shouldn’t I drink?” she demanded. “Kids are at camp, husband’s at the office, why shouldn’t I drink?” She gestured vaguely and some of the gin moved abruptly from the glass to the oriental rug. She didn’t appear to notice. “Bad for the liver,” she said. “Well, what the hell do I care, huh? Who wants to drop dead and leave a perfectly good liver behind? What you got to do in this world is wear out all at once. It’s a question of timing.”

“Oh.”

“Wanna drink?”

“It’s a little early for me, thanks.”

“Then how ’bout some carrot juice? Carrot juice, papaya juice, dandelion coffee—that’s the kind of crap my husband drinks. How ‘bout a nice bowlful of sprouted alfalfa, huh? Just the thing to set you up for a hard day’s work, right?”

“Speaking of your husband, Mrs. Henderson—”

“Call me Althea.”

“Speaking of your husband, Althea—”

“What about him?” Her eyes narrowed, and I got the impression she wasn’t quite as drunk as she made out. She’d been drinking, certainly, and it was getting to her, but she had been riding it a little, either for my benefit or because it felt good. “What about him? Is he in some kind of trouble?”

“It’s possible.”

“It’s that girl who was murdered, isn’t it? The one with the big tits.”

“Cherry Bounce, yes.”

“Cherry Bounce my ass,” she said. “That little bitch must have given her cherry the bounce when she was eleven years old. Was he fucking her?”

“No.”

“That’s a surprise. Maybe her tits weren’t big enough. Were they big ones?”

“Well. Uh. Yes, uh, they were.”

“Then I’m surprised he could keep his hands off them,” she said. She took another swig of gin and asked if I was sure I didn’t want to drink. I was sure, and said so. “He’s a tit man, Haskell is. Always has been. A health freak and a tit freak. That’s why he runs around the way he does. Oh, hell, if you were thinking about keeping his secret, he hasn’t got any secret to keep. The two of us play a game. He pretends I don’t know he runs around and I pretend the same, but all it is is a game.”

She flopped into a chair. “He can’t fool me. All the health crap he eats, all the vitamins he takes, the man’s got more energy than Con Edison. He used to make it with me twice a night and once every morning. Rain or shine, three times a day. He was wearing me out. And now he hasn’t made it with me in almost three years.”

I didn’t say anything.

“Because of these,” she said, cupping her enormous breasts in her hands.

“I don’t get it.”

“Neither do I,” she said. “Used to get it three times a day and now I don’t get it at all. Because of these. They used to be the reason he married me, and now—”

“Uh—”

“The hell of it is that I love the bastard. And he loves me. But I don’t turn him on anymore. Because he’s a tit man and that’s all there is to it.”

“You lost me,” I said.

She stood up. “C’mere,” she said. I stepped closer to her. She put the index finger of her right hand to the tip of her left breast. “Feel,” she said. “Christ sake, don’t just stand there. Grab yourself a handful. Go on, dammit!”

I cupped her breast with my hand.

“Don’t be shy. Give it a little squeeze.”

I gave it a little squeeze.

“Feel good?”

“Uh, yes.”

“Now the other one.”

“Look, Mrs. Henderson—”

“Althea, dammit.”

“Look, Althea—”

“Shut up. Feel the other one, will you?”

I followed orders.

“Well?”

“Well what?”

“Uh—”

“Both feel the same?”

“Sure.”

“Not from this end they don’t. Wait right here. Don’t go away.” I waited right there and didn’t go away and she came back with a hat pin about four inches long. “Stick it in my tit,” she said. “The left one.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Look, Mrs. Henderson, Althea, maybe I should come back some other time. I—”

“Oh, hell,” she said, and plunged the hatpin into her left breast. My stomach flipped a little but she didn’t seem to feel a thing. She drew out the pin. There was no blood on it. Her eyes challenged me and I began to get the picture.

“Foam rubber,” she said. “The other one’s real. Until a couple of years ago they were both real and Haskell was crazy about them. Then I had to have a mastectomy because some knife-happy surgeon decided I had the big C. Turned out it was benign but by that time he’d already done his cutting. Only half a woman now. Used to turn Haskell on. Now all I turn him is off. Still loves me, I still love him, but he takes all his vitamins and drinks his carrot juice and eats his alfalfa and walks around horny as a toad and I don’t do him any good. That’s why he needs his topless dancers.”

I stood there wondering why floors never open up and swallow you when you want them to. She went out to the kitchen for more gin. I thought she was lucky she wasn’t too drunk when she did her trick with the hatpin or she might get the wrong breast by mistake and it would probably hurt. When she came back I managed to steer the conversation back in its original direction. I asked her what she had been doing the night before last, and what her husband had been doing.

“He was working late at the store,” she said. “Do you believe that?”

“Well—”

“And I was drinking carrot juice and counting my nipples. Do you believe that?”

“Althea—”

“He was chasing women in New York. And I was here, sitting in front of the television set and drinking scotch. Not gin. I never drink gin after four in the afternoon. Only a pansy would drink gin after four in the afternoon.”