Millie Read online

  “And do what?”

  “I don’t know. Run a gas station. Write a book. Grow oranges. You have enough money to do anything you want to do.”

  “I am what I am.”

  “No, you’re not,” she said, dabbing at her eyes with her napkin. “You don’t have the vaguest notion what you are, and now you’ve ruined my makeup.”

  13

  It was a good, solid press conference that Millie and Anne Jones had put together. Miss Herzog, our bookkeeper, served coffee and thin sandwiches, for which she had a well-deserved reputation, and Millie took care of the early drinkers. We offered Cuban cigars, a lure few cigar smokers can resist, and we catered to quality and got quality: the wire services, The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Herald-Examiner, the San Francisco papers, San Diego and a dozen others who mattered.

  I opened with a five-minute introduction to Andrew Capestone and his mission, and then informed them that Capestone’s publishers had just been on the phone to inform me that they were going ahead with a new paperback edition of his book. Then I took questions.

  “Just how dangerous is this mission?”

  “I don’t know—yet. The Rhodesian government is the bad boy of the colonial world, but whether they would arrest or take sterner measures against Capestone if they found him, I can’t say.”

  “What sterner measures?”

  “Diplomats have been assassinated for less cause.”

  “Have there been any death threats?”

  “None that I know of.”

  “What has Capestone been doing previous to this?”

  “For some years he has been busy with a major work on colonialism—which took him to Vietnam, Indonesia and then to Africa. As you may have gathered, he has abjured publicity.”

  “What made him change his mind?”

  “His situation in Africa. He’s in real danger. Publicity helps.”

  “And what does he look forward to after this mission?”

  “His dream has been to work with the United Nations.”

  A tall, slender black man, who wrote for Ebony, stood up and said, “You speak of an Ad Hoc Committee for Black Liberation. As I am sure you know, Mr. Brody, ad hoc simply means to this or for the sake of, and since it is a committee for black liberation, the first two words neither define it nor designate it. I myself know of at least a dozen committees for South African or Rhodesian black liberation or independence, any one of which could be the committee you refer to.”

  “Precisely,” I agreed.

  “Would you elaborate on that?”

  “I am afraid I cannot—without endangering either Capestone or the committee itself. I have the right to do neither.”

  “Can you give us the name of the head of the committee—or some of its sponsors?”

  “No, for the same reasons.”

  “And what is the program of the committee?”

  “Nonviolent liberation—in the tradition of Gandhi’s movement. When you read Mr. Capestone’s book, Law and Civilization, you will find that he devotes an entire chapter to Gandhian ideas of progress and liberation.”

  “And does he look forward to a Gandhi-like movement arising in South Africa?”

  “He would not be there if he did not.”

  There were a dozen other questions, and then it broke up. They knew they were dealing with a flak’s rigging, but it was still possible that Capestone might be the man of the hour someday; and if it were no page one story, it was certainly worth half a column on page three or four. The food was good, the drinks were generous, and the cigars were in the fifty-cent range. And when I picked up the Los Angeles Times at my door the following morning, I found the story on page three and very well treated indeed.

  On the same page I found this smaller item:

  A small-time drug-pusher and hoodlum, Joe Leone, was found dead in Long Beach yesterday morning. He had been shot three times, once in the head and twice in the body. According to the police, Leone had been executed elsewhere and his body brought to where it was found in Long Beach, at the edge of an abandoned pier. His legs were roped together, indicating that perhaps his killers were engaged in weighting the body for a drop into the water when they were disturbed at their task and had to take off. Leone has a police record of nine arrests and three prior convictions. He served five years at San Quentin and two years at Soledad, and he has been suspected of connections with one of the larger drug rings operating from south of the border. According to the police, there is little doubt that this is a gangland execution, but so far they offer no motive for the killing.

  I read through the entire story because the name jabbed at my memory. But where? When? Certainly I had never known anyone named Leone. I don’t forget the names of people I have known. Even Capestone’s name came back to me after twenty-five years.

  That struck a spark. I went to my desk, got out Capestone’s wallet and riffled through the papers. There it was, the slip of paper with the single name on it—Joe Leone.

  I think I sat staring at it for perhaps five or ten minutes. When I picked it up, my hand was shaking. I put it back in the wallet and returned the wallet to my desk and sat there for perhaps ten minutes more. What was it Millicent Patience Cooper had said to me when I told her I knew what I was? Words to the effect that I hadn’t the vaguest notion what or who I was. I had created an image for a living man who was a rich nonentity, and I more than anyone or anything else had put him into the United States Senate. When he put me down, I took a small boy’s revenge and decided to do the same thing with a dead man. But where was I going with Andrew Capestone? I asked myself. What had gotten me into this incredible mess? And now, how could I get out of it?

  I had come off my high, as the lads say. I had finished my trip. I was Al Brody, press agent. I made a quick, deliberate and irreversible decision. Andrew Capestone was to disappear into the Rhodesian jungles or grasslands or whatever they had in Rhodesia, forever. The American public has a twenty-four-hour memory; next week as few would remember Andrew Capestone as had known him last week.

  Meanwhile I would check on the cremation. I had to know that the corpus delicti had become ashes.

  Decision made, I breathed my first sigh of relief—of real relief—and decided that I would now breathe my second in a few moments. I dialed the number of the Loving Care Funeral Home and spoke to the funeral director.

  “This is Mr. Brody,” I said. “You will remember me—Andrew Smith’s cremation. I presume that all went well.”

  “I find this in very bad taste, Mr. Brody. Certainly you should have informed me. I suppose you will want your money back now. You must understand that our contract calls for a surrender of ten percent of the total price. There are additional charges for the use of the hearse, whether with or without the deceased.”

  “What the devil are you talking about?”

  “The fact that when our hearse arrived at the Hospital of the Immaculate Conception, we were told that you had made other arrangements and that the deceased had been removed.”

  “That is impossible.”

  “Bad taste, Mr. Brody. Ourselves, we try never to do anything in bad taste.”

  I finished with him and telephoned the Hospital of the Immaculate Conception and asked for the pathology room. I told them that I was a friend of Andrew Smith’s, and would they be kind enough to tell me whether his body had been removed.

  “Yesterday morning, sir.”

  “To what funeral home?”

  “If you will wait just a moment—” I waited, and then the voice said, “Hillrest Mortuary.”

  “Do you have an address?”

  “Twenty-two hundred Wilshire Boulevard.”

  I put down the phone and got out the Yellow Pages. There was no Hillrest Mortuary at 2200 Wilshire Boulevard or indeed anywhere else. I then called information and learned that there was no such mortuary or funeral home anywhere in Los Angeles County.

  I did not take the second breath of relief. Instead, I
proceeded like a somnambulist to the garage, got into my car and drove to my office. The creation was over. If I remembered properly, the deluge followed.

  PART TWO

  The Deluge

  1

  It’s a living, which is practically all that is left, and which has replaced religion, ethics and morality. It’s the ultimate label, the balm that soothes all wounds. The kids despise it, so long as someone else is doing it, and there are no communes for the so-called adults. From birth to coronary it passes the hours, and you pick up things along the way. At some point you take a course in justification—which was the point I was at. I failed the course. Being bored, empty, rejected and humiliated, I had plunged headfirst into a stupid and unexplainable mess. I had set out to prove that I had created the image that was Senator Bellman and that I was clever enough to do the same with a dead man. I was going to show the world how to make that modern monstrosity we call “the image.”

  A man was dead on a pier at Long Beach; a corpse had disappeared; and I was in some kind of filthy, wretched trouble that was utterly beyond my understanding. A week ago I had been a normal, unhappy, mechanically functioning rich man who lived in Beverly Hills with two kids who never really knew that he existed, a wife who had only contempt for him, and a secretary-assistant who pitied him; now I was pursued by demons invisible and terrible. I had burned all my bridges. If I turned to the police, what could I tell them except that I had perpetrated a childish hoax that was beyond any explanation I could offer? Police do not respond to a story that begins with a man’s dreams of becoming a writer and ends with the destruction of a man’s gonads and his self-esteem. It’s hard to believe a man will invent a ploy that will make a celebrity out of a corpse, so he can justify the humiliation built into his profession. I didn’t even know whether what I had done was criminal or not, and I had lost the sense of humor that let me tell myself Senator Bellman had been no more alive when he became my client than Andrew Capestone.

  I drove to my office because it was morning and in the morning a man in my profession drives to his office. I rode up the elevator to the seventh floor, walked down the corridor to where double doors—a small but significant mark of status—proclaimed ALVIN BRODY, PUBLIC RELATIONS, entered, passed Miss Herzog, the bookkeeper, passed Miss Jones at the switchboard, noticed a man sitting in the waiting room, glanced into the mimeo room where Charlie Ghent, twenty-three, was at work, glanced at the closed door of Millie’s office, and then went into my own office and sat down at my desk and stared at the pile of newspapers and mail.

  I was there, and I asked myself, “What do I do now?”

  Anne Jones tapped at my door and then entered. “That man outside, Mr. Brody,” she said, “is from the State Department, and he has been waiting fifteen minutes.”

  “Does he have an appointment? What’s his name?”

  “Benedict Hawley. He has no appointment. He arrived and said he would wait for you. I told him you see no one without an appointment. He said he thought you would see him. Here is his card.” She placed it on my desk, a small, engraved card with the emblem of the State Department and a downtown Los Angeles address. “Your appointment with Casper Lunde is at ten-thirty, so you do have half an hour.”

  “All right, I’ll see him,” I said hopelessly.

  Hawley was a man in his fifties, bespectacled, stoutish, in appearance a respectable and resigned chief teller at a conservative bank. He apologized for not making an appointment.

  “But you understand, Mr. Brody, Washington would not brook any delay. I was to talk to you and clarify this matter before noon today.”

  “What matter?”

  “This business of Andrew Capestone.”

  And when I made no response, he added, “You do represent him, do you not?”

  “Yes, I represent him,” I answered slowly.

  “And he is now in Rhodesia, meeting with this—er, Ad Hoc Committee for Black Liberation?”

  “So far as I know.”

  “Now that’s very odd, if you will permit me, Mr. Brody. The Passport Department has no record of any passport being issued to him subsequent to …” He took out a small black notebook and consulted it. “Subsequent to the fifth of June, 1958.”

  “That’s surprising.”

  “Yes, isn’t it?”

  “It might have been issued in another country?”

  “No, hardly.”

  “Then you’re telling me that he’s traveling without a passport?”

  “Or with a false passport, or conceivably there is a mistake in our records. With these very new, sophisticated computers, it does happen. But that is something Mr. Capestone will have to explain eventually and not the crux of my call. What does interest the State Department is the nature of his trip. You see, Mr. Brody, our present negotiations with Rhodesia are of the most delicate nature. I don’t have to explain that to you. In all of Africa there is no more critical spot than Rhodesia, and I reveal no secrets when I say that much of the future of Africa depends on the outcome of the situation in Rhodesia. The last thing in the world we need at this moment is for an American with no diplomatic status whatsoever to interfere in the internal affairs of Rhodesia. It could have tragic consequences. As far as this Ad Hoc Committee is concerned, we find it impossible to respond to Salisbury’s inquiries. There is no publicly known committee of this name either in the Union of South Africa or in Rhodesia, so we can only conclude that Capestone used the name as a cover for some clandestine group, conceivably terrorists.”

  “No,” I protested. “Capestone is a man of peace, of nonviolence.”

  “We would have to take your word for that. Nor would it be the first time an advocate of nonviolence has been used by terrorists or has resigned his philosophy and become a supporter of terrorism.”

  “I don’t think Mr. Capestone could be used.”

  “We shall see. In any case, I must ask what prompted you to call a press conference yesterday and announce to the world that Capestone had undertaken this foolhardy venture?”

  “It was at his request,” I replied unhappily. “He felt that it would give him some degree of security.”

  “Then he’s more the fool than I had imagined. Now I am going to ask you this, Mr. Brody, and I beg you to answer me truthfully and not to be deterred by your loyalty to a client. Do you have an address in Rhodesia where Mr. Capestone could be reached?”

  “No, I do not,” I answered, truthfully enough.

  “It’s a pity. I am ready to believe that Mr. Capestone was motivated by real if misguided sentiments of goodwill, or at least I must assume that attitude until I know differently. He has taken an irresponsible and dangerous path, and we can do absolutely nothing to protect him.” The gentle bank teller had become something else entirely, a soft-voiced, hard-eyed man who was regarding me with suspicion and repressed anger. “I am going to ask you to shed any romantic notions you may hold about Mr. Capestone and to inform me immediately if and when you hear from him. There is a good deal about Mr. Capestone which you do not know—or at least I hope so. We have no right to order you to do anything or to refrain from any action, and I am making that plain. Nevertheless, I trust you will think twice before you hold any more press conferences on the subject of Andrew Capestone.”

  Then, with a cold nod, he departed.

  2

  “What was that all about?” Millie asked as she entered my office with a sheaf of clippings. “You’ll be pleased to know that Andrew Capestone has become a sort of minor public figure. The black angle took like wildfire, and two black magazines have already called for special features.” She paused. “You don’t look very happy. What did the State Department want?”

  “Close the door and sit down.”

  “Al, Casper Lunde is outside. You have an appointment with him. He’s been waiting. That’s a twenty-five-thousand-dollar fee, and they say his group will be another Beatles. It’s what you might call the ultimate peerage of rock. I refuse to be a social commentator.
Something tells me that you don’t want to see him. I think you should.”

  “Millie, I can’t talk to Casper Lunde now.”

  “Please, Al. I know what I’m talking about. I don’t know everything about rock, but I know at least three times as much as you do. See him for ten minutes.”

  “No one ever got rid of him in ten minutes.”

  “I’ll promise you that.”

  For the next fifteen minutes I sat in a sort of catatonic daze and listened to Casper Lunde tell me about four hairy boys and one less hairy girl whose ear-shattering sound would not only set the rock world on fire but would change hairstyles, clothes styles and life-styles beyond anything Madison Avenue dreamed of. “I’ll pay your fee, Al,” he said. “You name it, I’ll pay it. But I’m not cutting you in. I am not cutting anyone in.”

  “It’s a deal,” I agreed. “Well send you a contract tomorrow.”

  “Are you listening to me, Al?”

  “Every word.”

  Then Millie came in to announce an important longdistance call and usher him out. The call was simply a blind. When Millie returned, I asked her to close the door and sit down. Then I told Anne to hold all my calls.

  “This Benedict Hawley from the State Department—do you want to talk about him or not? It’s trouble with the Capestone thing, isn’t it?” Millie was on my side now. We might work in a sewer, but we were damn good at it.

  More or less word for word, I repeated my conversation with Hawley. I did not anticipate Millie’s reaction.

  “Well,” she said, “he has one hell of a nerve! We’re still not a police state! Where does he come off, telling us who should or who should not work for black liberation! That kind of character is typical of their whole idiot administration. Maybe if there were a few hundred Capestones we wouldn’t be in that bloody mess in Vietnam. But isn’t that just typical! Instead of recognizing the courage and selflessness of Andrew Capestone, they’re ready to put him in jail. Right on the line; they never miss. You know what I think we should do, Al—I think we should rub their noses in the dirt. What a chance to put down a piece of this administration. We can send out a press release this afternoon. I can see the headlines: