John D. MacDonald
Death Is the Answer
Leaning back in the wicker hotel chair, Thomas Gaylord Schurtz gobbled a good half of a Tom Collins. He was in his pajamas and robe. He slapped his protruding paunch and said, “Ah! The world brightens!” He was a big red-faced man, with iron gray hair and big red hands. Ex-carnival barker. Ex-picker of coal. Ex-stevedore. A man with a voice like burnished brass and a laugh that was contagious.
At the moment he was Professor Quotient. It was not hard work, standing on the stage of a theater while slim Mary Adams, in sequined tights and bra, stood by holding the bowl of folded questions, the program notes. Two bright kids, Nick Wellar and Stan Haverly, plus a few local boys picked up for a five each, roamed through the audience with the hand mikes and trailing cords, singling out extroverts in the audience to answer the questions and get paid off in crisp dollar bills — or crisp fifties for the jackpot question of the evening. It was a national hookup, selling the bleating public a mouth wash made of alcohol, water, and peppermint flavoring. A thousand a week. Four hundred for Nick, Stan, and Mary for salaries and expenses. Five hundred clear for Thomas Gaylord Schurtz, alias Professor Quotient. A big deal. A fine fat deal.
Sometimes Tom Schurtz wondered how long it would last. That thought always made him vaguely uncomfortable. He wasn’t saving a dime. Not a dime. But, heck, when folks got tired of this, something else would pop up. It had to. It always had so far.
Mary Adams sat by the window reading Variety. She was trim and dark, with wide eyes and that peculiar little touch of calm self-possession which comes to any girl who must stand before large audiences with no defense but her smile and her figure. Mary kept the job because it paid well. Without its ever being said aloud, Nick, Tom and Stan knew that she was the balance wheel, the foil, the symbol of unity. With a word and a glance she could salve Nick’s self-esteem, quiet Tom’s temper, ease Stan’s basic loneliness. With another type of glance she could freeze a pass by an eager male before it got well started.
Nick Wellar was spread out on a bed, wearing a soft yellow sport shirt and dark green gabardine trousers. He was swinging one leg and humming at the ceiling. He was tall and straight, with the kind of good looks that are admired in Naples, Lisbon and Madrid. He moved like a bull fighter and talked with all the good humor and intelligence of a ten-cent slot machine.
Nick Wellar had three standard daydreams. The first was that he would take over Tom’s job. The second was that he would punch the ears off of Stan Haverly. The third was that Mary would accelerate her slow process of falling in love with him.
Stan Haverly was the outsider, a slow, careful lad who would have been considered handsome in Sweden, Bavaria or Princeton. In fact he had been to Princeton where he had taken work in mass psychology and the psychology of advertising. To him, his job was a clinic. He kept detailed notes on audience reaction and an analysis of humor. Stan Haverly knew that it might take ten years or twenty years, but eventually he would be known in a hundred plush offices in Manhattan as the man to see regarding program construction and audience reaction. He was careful, self-contained, scorned a bit by Tom and Nick as an outsider who was in, but not of, the entertainment world.
Tom Schurtz had hired Nick and Stan because they were clean-cut, they had voices that fit the airwaves and they knew instinctively how to handle the public. He was satisfied with both of them, and especially with Nick. Tom had picked Mary with the knowledge gained from looking at ten thousand women. He knew that each audience was filled with young men to whom the questions were just a roar of sound in their ears and who walked out of the theater in a state of numb entrancement. She could do more by just standing and holding the bowl of questions than most women could do in a lead spot with Martha Graham.
Tom gulped the rest of his drink and said, “Ah! Soon, my children, we must prepare to face our public in this thriving metropolis of Hoagersburg.”
Mary glanced up from Variety. “Thriving metropolis on the outer fringes of civilization, Thomas. Phone for the dog team.”
“Break it off, my dear,” Tom said. “We always fill their largest theater, don’t we? An audience in West Overshoe, New Hampshire, is no different than a small group packing the Yankee Stadium. As I have so often said — people are folks.”
“You used to say, ‘Skin the marks. They’re asking for it.’ Are you mellowing?” Nick asked.
Stan put on his professorial manner. “Marks — an ancient carnival word used to denote the cash customers. Now they are more generally called ‘yaks’.”
“Okay, Doctor Haverly,” Nick said. “Speaking of yaks, how about our usual bet? Our two-man pool? Are you on for a five?”
Mary grinned at Tom and said, “So again we have the five-dollar contest between practise and theory. With practise winning again.”
“Theory is right,” Stan moaned. “I don’t get it. My records say that out of the last seven times, you’ve won six. Six times you’ve handed out more dough on right answers than I have. What do you do? Whisper the answers? Or do you split with Tom?”
“Leave me out of this,” Tom said. “I make it a point to give you and Nick the same number of questions, equally difficult. And they add up to about the same amount of payoff. You guys both know what’s in the bowl. Nick just has a better eye for... for—”
“The extroverted intelligentsia,” Mary supplied.
“Yeah. You bother me, Mary. You’re beginning to sound like Doctor Haverly here. Anyway, since you so kindly supplied the words to fit my thought, I will rephrase. Nick has an eye for smarter people. How are you guys lined up for tonight?”
“I’m right balcony and Stan’s front and center,” Nick said, “You didn’t tell me, Stan boy. Is it a bet?”
“You’re twenty-five ahead. I must bet to protect my investment.”
“Run along, children,” Tom said, getting to his feet with a grunt. “Time to get ready.”
Mary and Stan, as usual, had single rooms down the hall from the double occupied by Tom and Nick. They left the room together, and Stan saw a look on Nick’s face that told him that Nick didn’t like the idea of their going anywhere together.
Stan told himself that Nick had no cause for alarm. It was true that he couldn’t look into Mary’s eyes without a small feeling of shock, but something always made him blundering and stupid when he was with her. He knew it was the gulf between them caused by the job. To Mary, the job was a part of her career. To Stan the job was a training ground, a source of data, an amusing and relatively unimportant phase. He could understand her attitude, but he doubted whether she could understand him. So he made no effort to see if she could understand. With an odd feeling of loss, he watched her gravitate toward Nick.
Suddenly she caught his arm. He looked at her in surprise.
“Hold up there, Professor. You just walked by your room.”
Stan blushed and turned back, looking over his shoulder to admire the way she walked down the hall. He stood for a time in his room, staring out of his window at a blank brick wall, his forehead knotted, trying to figure out why he was so easily beaten by Nick each week...
The Ajax Theater was loaded. Eager citizens who couldn’t find seats were herded behind the aged velvet ropes held by the pimply ushers.
The curtain went up and Tom walked out, shining in white tie and tails. He grinned at the audience, patted the top of the mike and said, “I’m Professor Quotient and friend. Neither of us kill ourselves working.” As usual he got a good laugh. “You’ve all heard this program over the radio. But on the radio, you can’t see Mary. Come out here, Mary.” She came out in her sequined tights and bra, holding the bowl of questions. Tom killed the stomping and whistling by holding up both hands. “This is called a warm up. I’m supposed to make you happy, so when we go on the air Mary and I get what’s called ‘thunderous applause’.”