Dinner, like all good things, came to an end, and while Patricia retired again to her kitchen to “tidy up” (a phrase they both used, both of them) Staples and I seated ourselves once more beneath the leaning painting, this time with Corona Hill VSOP Olde Brandy, and after the few obligatory propaganda remarks from Staples about how good it must be for a bachelor to eat a real meal for a change we went back to shoptalk, the subject being murder. This time, though, it was murder closer to home: “You haven’t asked,” Staples pointed out, “about the Wicker case.”
“That’s right,” I agreed. “I haven’t.”
He took that to mean I wanted to know, so he told me. It was one of those convoluted stories of betrayal, disguise, coincidence and overly-complicated scheming that mystery stories always end with, and though I nodded a lot while Staples reeled it off I didn’t retain a word of it, except the fact that Jack March’s real name turned out to be Andrew Thomas Cauldenfield. (Ever since Lee Harvey Oswald, murderers have had prominent middle names, just as tall farm youths used to have prominent adam’s apples.)
Patricia joined us soon after that, and the talk switched back to movies, and that was when Gaslight came up. Staples announced it to be one of his all-time favorite pictures, “but Patricia’s never seen it.”
“I have a print,” I said. And I found myself extending an invitation: “Would you like to come see it?”
Staples stared at me. “A print? You mean you own that movie, you have it right there in your apartment?”
“I have copies of more than twenty films,” I told him, “and access to almost anything else I’d like to see. The studios loan prints to people in the field.”
Staples viewed me with something like awe, and even Patricia seemed impressed. Staples said, “By golly, if I had that I don’t think I’d ever leave the house.”
“It’s like anything else,” I told him. “You get used to it after a while.”
We then discussed the best time for them to come see Gaslight and decided on Sunday afternoon at three. Staples would be working earlier that day, but Patricia could take the subway to Manhattan, meet her husband for lunch, and then the two would come over to my place for the screening.
Soon after that it was time to leave. Staples suggested he drive me back to Manhattan, and though I insisted I’d be perfectly content in the subway he wouldn’t take no for an answer. So I thanked Patricia for a delicious dinner, shook her cool hand, and her husband and I rode the elevator down to the basement garage where he kept his car.
The ride back was full of conversation, by which I mean that Staples kept up a cheerful flow of talk to which I added occasional appropriate punctuation. It was becoming clear that in Staples’ eyes I was a celebrity, and he was delighted to have collected me. My own feelings were too complicated for me to think about, so I simply floated on the surface of my mind, letting it all happen.
At my door, Staples pulled to a stop and shook my hand, saying, “It was really nice to have you out, Carey. Really nice.”
“I appreciated it, Fred. And that’s a wonderful girl you have there.”
“Don’t I know it,” he said, with a big grin.
“See you Sunday, Fred,” I said, and opened the car door.
“Right you are. Goodnight, Carey.”
“Goodnight, Fred.”
I stepped out onto the street, closed the door after me, and the Ford growled away, its exhaust thick and white in the cold air. I crossed the sidewalk, went up the stoop reaching for my keys, and a dark figure came out of a corner of the vestibule to hit me very hard in the stomach. I doubled over in pain and shock, trying not to lose my balance and fall backwards down the steps, and he hit me again, this time in the side, just above the waist.
It was brief, but horrible, and I suspect very professional. Grabbing a handful of my coat, he pulled and tugged and crowded me into the darkness of the vestibule and then punched and kicked and kneed me half a dozen times in quick succession, as I sagged down the wall. All of the blows were to my body, and all seemed placed with some kind of anatomical precision, and all were very painful.
Then it was over and he was gone, without my ever seeing his face or hearing his voice; though of course I knew at once who it was. I sat on the floor of the vestibule, having trouble breathing, and a while later I found the keys I’d dropped and let myself into the building and up several thousand stairs to the apartment, where Edgarson’s voice on my answering machine said, “We’re calling about your debt, Mr. Thorpe. We look forward to early payment.”
Two hours in a hot tub helped somewhat, and so did both Valium and bourbon, but when I dragged myself out of bed Friday morning I was as stiff and sore as though Edgarson had just finished kicking me that very second.
I was supposed to go to a noon screening at MGM, but I found myself reluctant to leave the apartment. Also to answer the phone; so I turned on the answering machine with the monitor button pushed, enabling me to hear my callers as they were leaving their messages. That way, I could speak to anyone I chose, and avoid the rest. Meaning Edgarson.
Even such painful clouds as this one have silver linings. After another long soak in the tub, followed by more pills, I decided to table the problem of Edgarson for a while, and actually managed to get some work done on my next projected piece for Third World Cinema, with the tentative title, “John Cassavetes: The Apotheosis Of The Inarticulate.” Though Edgarson didn’t call, several other people did, but I wasn’t in the mood for any of them and I ignored their messages and went on with my work.
Then, just as I had written, “Onset improvisation sounds so good in theory that it’s a shame it sounds so bad in practice,” the phone rang again, and after my recorded announcement (“Hi. Carey Thorpe’s answering machine here. Please leave your name and a phone number where I can reach you, and I’ll be back to you first chance I get.”) Staples’ voice said, “Fred here, Carey. I was hoping to catch you at home. We’ve got another—”
A policeman; exactly what I needed. Not waiting to listen to any more, I picked up the phone, switched off the machine, and said, “Here I am. I’m here.”
Staples, headed off in mid-message, floundered briefly before saying, “Hello? Carey?”
“I was working,” I told him, “so I left the machine on.”
“Oh, I won’t bother you, then, I just—”
“No, no, that’s fine, I’m ready to take a break. What’s happening?”
“Well, we’ve got another one,” he said. “Feel brilliant today?”
“Another murder?”
“Another tricky murder. Regular murders we get all the time. Want to come along?”
With Staples I would be safe from Edgarson. “Absolutely,” I said.
This time, happily, the body had been removed. In fact, Staples and I had the small apartment on West 76th Street entirely to ourselves.
The victim was a thirty-three-year-old bachelor, an advertising copywriter named Bart Ailburg. His one-bedroom apartment on the third floor of a brownstone half a block from Central Park featured a pleasant large living room with windows overlooking back gardens featuring plane trees.