you faithfully copied the clothes in Harper's Bazaar and the furniture in Home Beautiful and you tried to take an interest in art, and if your husband's business had a sordid side to it, you simply forgot about that. And when things went wrong, your husband started two-timing you, why it was SOP to try to hit the bottle, be the sophisticated lady lush, the silent drinker. And of course it was also SOP to try your charms on the first guy that came along— me.
Under her smart clothes and beneath the skillful make-up Betsy was just a big Ruthie. Well, maybe not quite, but... She was sure the wrong type for a brash punk like Ed Turner to marry, or had he been a trifle backward under his toughness? I told Betsy, “You're young, attractive. In time you'll find...”
“Do you really consider me attractive, Barney?” The dull tone vanished from her voice.
“Yes, Mrs. Turner.”
“Can't you call me Betsy?”
“Look, Mrs. Turner, most of the time you treat me like a servant or a...”
“I never meant to. It's just my way. I told you I can't make friends easily and of course since Ed's death... I've been so upset, unsure of myself.”
“For now let's keep it Mrs. Turner. Perhaps when the case is over, when I'm not working for you, we'll be friends.”
“What do you mean by friends? That you'll make love to me?” Her body stiffened again and there was a sort of horror in her voice that got me sore.
“Maybe. I might ask you to go to bed with me—sure.” She actually leaped out of my arms and off my lap; stood in front of me and shouted, “Now that I'm a widow I'm supposed to be a pushover!”
“You're a healthy-looking and pretty young woman, Mrs. Turner, and I'd be lying if I said you didn't attract me,” I said patiently, picking my words carefully so I wouldn't talk myself out of the job.
“If you think just because you come here every night that...!”
“I don't think anything. When the case is over, if we want to be friends, then we'll both see how it shapes up—then.”
“I thought you were warm and understanding.... You're just a man.”
“I hope so,” I said like a jerk, not sure what she was saying.
There was a moment of awkward silence, then she asked, “Want a drink?”
“No.” She was back to her play-acting once more.
“You have the manners of a boor, Mr. Harris.” She sat on the other end of the couch and reached down, came up with a pint of Canadian whiskey. She poured herself a small shot, tried to take the warm stuff down without coughing. Her eyes watered, but she lit a cigarette, like a hammy actress, asked in a cold new voice, “You're certain Ed was seeing this dirty whore?”
“I'm not certain she's dirty. She's merely selling what she can.”
“I suppose you got this information as one of her customers!”
“I could easily be one of her customers, Mrs. Turner. You probably can't believe it, but Louise has a great deal of charm. But don't let it worry you, I wouldn't put that on the expense account.”
She got to her feet. “I've had about enough of you, Mr. Harris.”
“Okay. I'll send you the balance of your retainer on Monday.”
“No, I didn't mean that. I want you to continue on the case. Only don't ever bring me any such gossip... this miserable woman with her false stories, her ravings about my...”
“It isn't exactly gossip. She had Mr. Turner's picture in her room—the same photo you have over there on the wall. She also told me about that coconut-tree lamp. Seems Mr. Turner took her money one day to buy the lamp for you—in a fit of remorse, I imagine.”
“Did you find out if she killed Ed, or didn't you have time for that?”
“I don't think she killed Ed. Look, I only told you all this because if you still think Ed was a suicide, then I have to know exactly how things were between you two. There's not even a slight motive that we—the police—can find for either of these murders, but there has to be a motive for suicide.”
“I've told you the truth—except that Ed and I didn't hit it off. It wasn't that we were unhappy, we just weren't happy. Can you understand that?”
“Maybe, after I think about it.” I got up and walked toward the door. “Shall I report tomorrow night? It's Saturday.”
“You work union hours?” she asked harshly. “Another thing, I demand some respect—comb your hair when you come to see me.”
“Don't think I will, Mrs. Turner. That's my hair, and I don't consider combing or not combing my hair having anything to do with respect.”
Her face turned pink with anger and as I opened the door I said, “Sorry I upset you, Mrs. Turner. Only did it as part of my job.” I don't know why I had to say that, almost made me gag.
“Get out.”
Out in the hall, as I was waiting for the automatic elevator and feeling lousy, I heard a small crash in her apartment. It hadn't been much of a lamp anyway.
SAM LUND was a hustler long before he enlisted. Orphaned when he was six, Sam was raised by an aunt and uncle who had a small hardware store in Boston. They were childless and adored Sam, but when he was thirteen his aunt had a change-of-life baby and after that Sam was merely somebody around the house.
He grew up tall and strong, an all-around athlete with the grace of a dancer. When he was sixteen he hitched a ride to New York City and landed a job as a chorus boy in a Broadway musical that staggered along for five weeks. After that Sam worked at whatever odd jobs would pay for dancing and dramatic lessons and in his off hours made the rounds of casting agents, lived in Times Square drugstores.
By the time he was nineteen he had danced in several shows, had bit parts in off-Broadway little theaters, and was trying to break into radio. Sam was crazy about the “theater,” but it kept him broke. He was lucky to work two or three weeks a year as an actor or chorus boy and his other odd jobs never lasted, for as soon as he heard a show was casting, Sam would drop his bus-boy or stock-clerk job, to try his luck.
One afternoon he was in a dingy rehearsal studio on West Forty-sixth Street reading for a play due to open in the fall— if seventy-five thousand dollars could be raised. The producer was a middle-aged dapper ex-actor whose bleached-blonde wife took an interest in Sam. A day later she offered to set him up in a small Village apartment. Being supported by women wasn't anything new to Sam, but the lady was in her fifties, strapped her flabby body in a strait-jacket corset so she could wear a twelve dress, liked flashy jewels, and when she got drunk she thought it was tremendously funny to suddenly push her upper plate half out of her mouth and yell, “What's cooking, doc?”
Although Sam turned her down he let her buy him supper several times a week. She'd been around the theater all her life and she told Sam to really get among the people, study and understand them, instead of hanging around drugstores... if he was serious about becoming an actor.
He took a summer job as a barker for a sightseeing bus and a week later nearly died from scarlet fever. The fever left him completely bald. At first his bald dome was a great joke, but he soon found bald-headed young men were not considered for juvenile or lead roles, and that a decent toupee cost hundreds of dollars. He decided to take the apartment in the Village—till the play opened.
Sam admits the elderly blonde did a great deal for him. He told a reporter:
She really wasn't a bad sort, when sober. She bought me a remarkable toupee, a really terrific piece of hair, she had a custom tailor outfit me, sent me to a fine dramatic coach. But she would bust into the apartment in the middle of the night, drunk as a goose, then prance around in the nude under the illusion she was still a gay young thing.
Lund couldn't take this, but there was another reading of the play in a ritzy Park Avenue apartment and he was assured of a feature role. By October the show was still thirty-two thousand dollars short and the opening postponed till January. Sam was angry. While he had clothes, hair, and a charge at the corner grocer, he had no money. In November the producer signed to make a quickie picture in Hollywood and the play was postponed again, but Sam didn't mind, for the blonde went to the Coast with her husband and Sam had some peace and sleep. But she sent him a plane ticket, suggested he try the movies, and before Christmas Sam was rooming in a run-down house in Laurel Canyon. There was a vivacious nineteen-year-old red-headed singer also rooming there and Sam began sharing her room.
Aside from working in two mob scenes, nothing happened in Hollywood and Sam didn't care much for the place. He was glad to follow the producer and his wife back to New York in February, where he lucked up on a steady part in a daily radio soap opera. The play seemed almost certain to start rehearsals any day and things were breaking for Sam—especially when the redhead came East for night-club work.
But there was trouble finding a theater and in April the main backer switched his money to another play; the producer lost his option and announced the whole deal was off. The redhead was going to a Baltimore night spot and asked Sam to come along. The radio soap opera having folded weeks before, he was flat broke. When she was drunk the old blonde was careless with her jewelry, would often phone Sam the next day and ask him to look for a ring or pin she'd left in his place. So Sam hocked her earrings for two hundred and sixty dollars and went to Baltimore, where two detectives picked him up the following day.
Sam wasn't too alarmed. He begged the wife not to press charges, then threatened her with publicity about their affair. The lady merely stuck her false teeth out at him, said her analyst had told her that sort of publicity bolstered her ego. There was a line about the robbery in one of the columns, and Sam's picture made the tenth page of a tabloid when a judge gave Sam two to five years.
In the beginning prison drove Sam crazy, but for the first time in his life he read a lot, studied the men around him, and
