When I had completed the questionnaire, which asked nothing beyond the customary Age? Address? Occupation? Marital Status?, Dracula’s daughter evaporated with it into an inner office—and while he was gone, this girl ambled in, an overweight but damned attractive girl, a young boule de suif with a pink creamy round face and a fat pair of boobs squirming inside the bodice of a summery pink dress.
She cuddled down next to me and tucked a cigarette between her lips. “How about it?” I explained if it was a match she wanted, I couldn’t help her as I’d stopped smoking, and she said: “So have I. This is just a prop. I meant how about it, where’s Butch? Butch!” she cried, rising to engulf the returning secretary.
“Maggie! ”
“Butch!”
“Maggie!” Then, coming to his senses: “You bitch. Five days! Where have you been?”
“Didja miss Maggie?”
“Fuck me. What do I count? But that old guy from Seattle. Oy vey, the hell he raised when you stood him up Thursday night.”
“I’m sorry, Butch. Gee.”
“But where have you been, Maggie? I went to your hotel twice. I called a hundred times. You might have checked in.”
“I know. But see … I got married.”
“Married? Maggie!”
“Please, Butch. It’s nothing serious. It won’t interfere.”
“I can’t imagine what Miss Self will say.” And at last he remembered me. “Oh, yes,” this secretary said, as if flicking lint off a sleeve, “Miss Self will see you now, Mr. Jones. Miss Self,” he announced, opening a door for me, “this is Mr. Jones.”
She looked like Marianne Moore; a stouter, Teutonized Miss Moore. Grey hausfrau braids pinioned her narrow skull; she wore no makeup, and her suit, one might say uniform, was of prison-matron blue serge—a lady altogether as lacking in luxury as were her premises. Except … on her wrist I noticed a gold oval-shaped watch with Roman numerals. Kate McCloud had one just like it; it had been given her by John F. Kennedy, and it came from Cartier in London, where it had cost twelve hundred dollars.
“Sit down, please.” Her voice was rather teacup-timid, but her cobalt eyes had the 20/20 steeliness of a gangland hit man. She glanced at the watch that was so out of keeping with her inelegant texture. “Will you join me? It’s well after five.” And she extracted from a desk drawer two shot glasses and a bottle of tequila, something I’d never tasted and didn’t expect to like. “You’ll like it,” she said. “It’s got balls. My third husband was Mexican. Now tell me,” she said, tapping my application form, “have you ever done this work before? Professionally?”
Interesting question; I thought about it. “I wouldn’t say professionally. But I’ve done it for … profit.”
“That’s professional enough. Kicks!” she said and hooked down a neat jigger of tequila. She grimaced. Shuddered. “Buenos Dios, that’s hairy. Hairy. Go on,” she said. “Knock it back. You’ll like it.”
It tasted to me like perfumed benzine.
“Now,” she said, “I’m going to roll you some clean dice, Jones. Middle-aged men account for ninety percent of our clientele, and half our trade is offbeat stuff one way and another. So if you want to register here strictly as a straight stud, forget it. Are you with me?”
“All the way.”
She winked and poured herself another shot. “Tell me, Jones. Is there anything you won’t do?”
“I won’t catch. I’ll pitch. But I won’t catch.”
“Ah, so?” She was German; it was only the souvenir of an accent, like a scent of cologne lingering on an antique handkerchief. “Is this a moral prejudice?”
“Not really. Hemorrhoids.”
“How about S. and M.? F.F.?”
“The whole bit?”
“Yes, dear. Whips. Chains. Cigarettes. F.F. That sort of thing.”
“I’m afraid not.”
“Ah, so? And is this a moral prejudice?”
“I don’t believe in cruelty. Even when it gives someone else pleasure.”
“Then you have never been cruel?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Stand up,” she said. “Take off your jacket. Turn around. Again. More slowly. Too bad you aren’t a bit taller. But you’ve got a good figure. A nice flat stomach. How well hung are you?”
“I’ve never had any complaints.”
“Perhaps our audience is more demanding. You see, that’s the one question they always ask: how big is his joint?”
“Want to see it?” I said, toying with my super-special Robert Hall fly.
“There is no reason to be crude, Mr. Jones. You will learn that although I am someone who speaks directly, I am not a crude person. Now sit down,” she said, refilling both our tequila glasses. “So far I have been the inquisitor. What would you like to know?”
What I wanted to know was her life story; few people have made me so immediately curious. Was she perhaps a Hitler refugee, a veteran of Hamburg’s Reeperbahn, who had emigrated to Mexico before the war? And it crossed my mind that possibly she was not the power behind this operation but, like most American brothel keepers and sex-café padrones, a front for Mafioso entrepreneurs.
“Cat got your tongue? Well, I’m sure you will want to understand our financial agreement. The standard fee for an hour’s booking is fifty dollars, which we will split between us, though you may keep any tips the client gives you. Of course, the fee varies; there will be occasions when you will make a great deal more. And there are bonuses available for every acceptable client or employee you recruit.
Now,” she said, aiming her eyes at me like a pair of gun barrels, “there are a number of rules by which you must abide. There will be no drugging or excessive drinking. Under no circumstances will you ever deal directly with a client—all bookings must be made through the service. And at no time may an employee associate socially with a client. Any attempt at negotiating a private deal with a client means instant dismissal. Any attempt at blackmailing or in any way embarrassing a client will result in very severe retribution—by which I don’t mean mere dismissal from the service.”
So: those dark Sicilian spiders are indeed the weavers of this web.
“Have I made myself understood?”
“Utterly.”
The secretary intruded. “Mr. Wallace calling. Very urgent. I think he’s smashed.”
“We are not interested in your opinions, Butch. Just put the gentleman on the line.” Presently she lifted a receiver, one of several on her desk. “Miss Self here. How are you, sir? I thought you were in Rome. Well, I read it in the Times. That you were in Rome and had had an audience with the pope. Oh, I’m sure you’re right: quel camp! Yes, I hear you perfectly. I see. I see.” She scribbled on a note pad, and I could read what she wrote because one of my gifts is to read upside down: Wallace Suite 713 Hotel Plaza. “I’m sorry, but Gumbo isn’t with us anymore. These black boys, they’re so unreliable. However, we’ll have someone there shortly. Not at all. Thank you.”
Then she looked at me for quite a long time. “Mr. Wallace is a highly valued client.” Once more a prolonged stare. “Wallace isn’t his name, of course. We use pseudonyms for all our clients. Employees as well. Your name is Jones. We’ll call you Smith.”
She tore off the sheet of note pad, rolled it into a pellet, and tossed it at me. “I think you can handle this. It’s not really a … physical situation. It’s more a … nursing problem.”
I RANG MR. WALLACE ON one of those sleazy gold house-phones in the Plaza lobby. A dog answered—there was the sound of a crashing receiver, followed by a hounds-of-hell barking. “Heh heh, that’s just mah dawg,” a corn-pone voice explained. “Every time the phone rings, he grabs it. You the fellow from the service? Well, skedaddle on up here.”
When the client opened the door, his dog bolted into the corridor and hurled himself at me like a New York Giants fullback. It was a black and brindle English bulldog—two feet high, maybe three feet wide; he had to weigh a hundred pounds, and the force of his attack hurricaned me against the wall. I hollered pretty good; the owner laughed: “Don’t be scared. Old Bill, he’s just affectionate.” I’ll say. The horny bastard was riding my leg like a doped stallion. “Bill, you cut that out,” Bill’s master commanded in a voice jingling with gin-slurred giggles. “I mean it, Bill. Quit that.” At last he attached a leash to the sex fiend’s collar and hauled him off me, saying: “Poor Bill. I’ve just been in no condition to walk him. Not for two days. That’s one reason I called the service. The first thing I want you to do is to take Bill over to the park.”
Bill behaved until we reached the park.
En route, I considered Mr. Wallace: a chunky, paunchy booze-puffed runt with a play mustache glued above laconic lips. Time had interred his looks, for he used to be reasonably presentable; nevertheless, I had recognized him immediately, even though I’d seen him only once before, and that some ten years earlier. But I remembered that former glimpse of him distinctly, for at that time he was the most acclaimed American playwright, and in my opinion the best; also, the curious mise-en-scène contributed to my memory: it was after midnight in Paris in the bar of the Boeuf-sur-le-Toit, where he was sitting at a pink-clothed table with three men, two of them expensive tarts, Corsican pirates in British flannel, and the third none other than Sumner Welles—fans of Confidential will remember the patrician Mr. Welles, former Undersecretary of State, great and good friend of
