The Topless Tulip Caper

“No.”

“Turns you off, doesn’t it?”

The weird thing is that it was turning me on. I don’t know how to account for it and I’d rather not stop and figure it out. It probably just proves I’m kinkier than l realized, but why go into it too closely?

“C’mere,” she said. I did, and she opened my zipper and groped around. “I’ll be a sonofabitch,” she said. “Well, you’re not a faggot, are you?”

“No, and—”

“And I don’t turn you off, do I? Maybe you’re a sensible tit man, that’s what it must be. You figure half a loaf is better than none. Right?”

“Uh.”

Her hand clutched me possessively. She turned and began leading me toward the staircase. I had the choice of following her or leaving part of my anatomy behind, and I’ve always been attached to it. I followed.

If Althea had had her way she would have kept me there for hours. And I’ll tell you something. If we weren’t in the middle of a case I would have stayed She evidently had an enormous complex about her absent breast, which old Haskell must have done a good job of reinforcing, and as a result she did everything she could to compensate for what she regarded as a terrible deficiency. As far as I was concerned, passing her up because she only had one breast was like refusing to listen to Schubert’s Eighth Symphony because he never got around to finishing it.

I finally managed to get out of there after promising to return when I got the chance. Then I stopped at the Whitman house to confirm Althea’s alibi, although I didn’t really need confirmation. But Haig would be sure to ask and I would have to have the answers.

Mrs. Whitman was quick to recall watching television with Althea on the night in question. She was also quick to offer me a cup of coffee, which I declined because I was really in a hurry. And I got the impression that she would have gladly offered me a lot more than coffee. She was a good looking woman, a little older than Althea, but certainly nothing to complain about.

Back in the car, I wondered if Mr. Whitman was really homosexual. The fact that he drank gin in the evening didn’t strike me as sufficient evidence in and of itself. I know a lot of perfectly straight people who drink gin in the evening. I think they’re crazy, but it doesn’t make them gay.

Then I began thinking about the conversation with Clover, and how I’d told her there probably wouldn’t be much sex in the book. I wondered if our talk had had anything to do with the fact that Althea and I wound up in bed. I suppose it could have operated on a sort of subliminal level. Maybe it was my aspirations as an author that goaded me to respond to Althea’s advances.

Somehow I doubt it.

I drove back over the George Washington Bridge and down the West Side Drive. I got off at 72nd Start and drove down to Tulip’s building. Of course that was no place to park. I circled a few blocks a few times and then stuck it in a lot. The attendant was very impressed by the car and flipped completely when he saw he was going to have to shift it. “A Cad with a stick shift,” he said. “Where’d you ever find it?”

“South Carolina.”

“There a lot of ’em down there?”

“Thousands,” I said.

On the way to Tulip’s building I spent a dime on a telephone and made my report. It took some time and I had to feed the phone extra change. I left out the part about going to bed with Althea. Verbatim only goes so far is the way I figure it.

Haig told me it was satisfactory. I was glad to hear it. He said, “After you see Miss Tattersall, you’ll go to Tulip’s apartment and feed her fish. You haw the key?”

“Yes, sir. She gave it to me a couple of hours ago. You told her to, remember?”

“The Ctenapoma receive brine shrimp. There’s some in the freezer compartment of the refrigerator. I believe that’s all they receive. One moment.”

He asked Tulip if this was so, and she said there were also some bloodworms and mealworms in jars in the refrigerator, and I should give them that if it was no trouble. “They’re strictly carnivores,” I heard him say. “Unless—I wonder if that’s what’s keeping them from spawning! I used to give the scats a lot of wheat genii and it put them in great breeding condition.”

Haig said, “Chip.”

“Yes.”

He covered the mouth piece with his hand and I couldn’t make out what he and Tulip were saying to each other. Then he said, “There is a jar of Kretchmer wheat germ in the cupboard to the right of the sink. On the second or third shelf, Miss Wolinski doesn’t recall precisely where.”

“IH manage to find it. You want me to give some to the Ctenapoma?”

“No! Absolutely not.”

“Fine. Hold your horses. Then what difference does it make what shelf it’s on?”

“Bring the wheat germ back here with you. Do not open the jar. Be very careful of the jar. Wrap it so that it won’t break should you happen to drop it. Do you understand?”

“Oh.”

“Do you understand, Chip?”

“I think so,” I said. “I think I do.”

Fifteen

HAIG MAKES ME read a lot of mysteries. Since we don’t get all that many cases, and since you can only spend so much time feeding fish and cleaning out filters, that leaves me with plenty of time to humor him. It’s his theory that you can learn anything and solve any puzzle if you just read enough mystery novels. Maybe he’s right. It certainly seems to work for him, but he’s a genius and I feel that constitutes special circumstances.

Well, if you’ve read as many of them as I have—not even as many as Haig has, because nobody has read that many—then you know what happened when I finally got around to seeing Helen Tattersall. I mean, her name came up early on, and I kept ducking opportunities to see her, so naturally one of two things had to happen. Either she turned out to be the killer or she supplied the one missing piece of information that tied the whole mess together. Right?

Wrong. Absolutely wrong.

I got in to see her by posing as someone investigating her complaint about her neighbors. Even then I had a hard time because she really didn’t like the idea of opening her door, but I explained that I couldn’t act on the complaint unless I interviewed her face-to-face. Much as she didn’t want to open her door, she decided to risk it if it would facilitate her making trouble for somebody.

When she opened the door I decided on my own that she hadn’t gone to Treasure Chest and planted a poisoned dart in Cherry Bounce’s breast. Because Helen Tattersall was in a wheelchair with her leg in a cast, and the first thing she did was inform me that she’d been in the cast for two months and expected to be in it for another four months, and she didn’t sound very happy about it.

The next thing she said was, “Now which complaint have you come about? The upstairs neighbors? Those prostitutes? Or the man next door who plays the flute all day and all night? Or the married couple on the other side of me with that dreadful squalling baby? Or the man across the hall who gives me dirty looks? Or the evil man down by the elevator who puts poison gas in everybody’s air-conditioners? Or could it be my complaints about the building employees? The superintendent is a Soviet agent, you know—”

So she didn’t even have a personal vendetta against Tulip and Cherry. Instead she had just one enemy: mankind. And she complained about and tried to make trouble for every member of the human race who called himself to her attention.

Well, I couldn’t get out of there fast enough. I began wishing I were Richard Widmark in Kiss of Death so that I could push the old bitch down a staircase, wheelchair and all. I’m not saying I would have done it but I might have given it serious consideration.

I suppose there should have been one little thing she said that got my mind working in the right direction,