Gat Heat (11 page)

“Toothpaste!” cried Mrs. Smellow. She wasn't really crooning so much by this time as giving out with something rather like a battle cry. “Huge lunging horses!” she yelled.

I read on, choosing more of the underlined passages. “… lotions and salves and stickums and pretties with such suggestive names as: Seduction … Surrender … Take Me … Do It … Rape … Makeout … Orgy … Aphrodisia …”

“Stallions!” bellowed Mrs Smellow. “Anvils! Horseshoes! Soap and soup and cigarettes—”

“In this atmosphere, a sizable proportion of still zesty marrieds heeded the siren song of Madison Avenue, the coo of a mammary Mammon, the panting of Big Business, and, with the urgent, repeated and again-and-again-repeated ‘Get with it … Swing!… Join the horny generation … Do it now!-now!-now!' reverberating in their ears, mumbled. ‘Why not?'”

“Naked! Naked horses!”

She really had a thing about horses, she did.

But I wanted to see what the hell this guy was working up to, if anything, so I perused the page a bit more.

“A predictable consequence was the burgeoning of tribal groups which gathered privately for orgiastic conniptions tending toward libidinal unshackling eventuating in casual and part-time polyandry and polygamy, i.e., community fornication.”

I shook my head. Yep, a true and legitimate nut. Worse, he wasn't
clear
. You couldn't tell if he was
for
it or
against
it. Probably had to publish the stinking book himself. I thumbed to the front of the book. Sure enough. “The Doctor Scott Medical Press.” Well, you can fool some of the people some of the time, and all of the people—no, that wasn't it.

“All over the place! Everywhere. In your eyes, ears, noses—”

I mentally turned her off again. She was worse than Dr. Scott. Who, I noted, had produced this prize: “… subconscious banners emblazoned right and left with libidinous slogans, the dexter ‘Give Me A Libertine Or Give Me Death!' and the sinister ‘Better Copulate Than Never.' It began with whispers, with small reports in the tabloids of what was called with a titter, wife-swapping, then rumors of special groups, clubs, sex clubs, and swap clubs, a new breed of emancipated dizzies …”

“Everywhere, all over the place, here—there—”

I couldn't take much more of this without flipping. So I flipped clear to the back pages of the book.

“Thus, as one result of this revulsion against asceticism and denial, the pendulum had swung perhaps too far to the opposite extreme, to unbridled hedonism and voluptuous non-denial. No longer heeding the whisperings of virtue and admonishments of the chaste, they listened—and danced—to the song the senses sang …”

I closed the book.

Mrs. Agatha Smellow fell silent.

I went over and sat down in the rough brown chair again.

“You see, Mr. Scott?” she said.

“I see,” I sighed. “Well, you've—helped a great deal, Mrs. Smellow.”

“Have I? I hope so. Have I?”

“Yes, you have. So I'd better be on my way—”

“Oh, don't go.”

“But I must—”

“I so seldom get to talk to—I mean, discuss important things. I … will you stay a little while longer?”

I peeked at my watch. “O.K., just a little.”

“I know you must drink.” She smiled, sort of. “I smelled it on your breath.”

She had a great smeller. She could smell all kinds of things. But I said, “Yeah, I had a belt earlier.”

“Once in a while I have a little sip, myself. Because it's so lonely.” She didn't hit it hard, didn't dwell on it. In fact she went right on, saying. “And I'm so disturbed I think I'd like one right now.” But, still, a coolness rippled up my spine.

“It's so lonely,” she'd said, very casually, matter-of-fact. It was, I guess. Yes, I guess it was lonely for Mrs. Smellow.

“I know how to mix a martini,” she said.

“You do, huh?” I said, without much enthusiasm.

“Would that be all right, Mr. Scott?”

“Sure. Fine, Mrs. Smellow.”

“Oh, don't call me Mrs. Smellow. Call me Aggie. What's your first name? Sheldon?”

“Shell, Just Shell.”

“You call me Aggie, and I'll call you Shell. All right? If we're going to have a sip of martini, it seems—”

“Sure,” I said. “Sure, Aggie.”

“It's almost like a party—” Apparently she realized the possible connotation of that comment, and gasped. “Oh, I didn't mean—”

“I know.” I grinned stiffly. “Well, up and at 'em; let's stir those jazzy martinis. Uh, not too much, of course.” I paused. “Would you like for me to fix them?”

“No, no. I have a prescription.”

As she got up and reeled across the room, I raised my eyes toward Heaven and groaned a little. Well, I could get one gagger down, I supposed. Had to get on my horse—into my Cad, that is—and zip to the Hamilton Building pretty quick. Two o'clock appointment, and I was cutting it thin already. Maybe you're not supposed to drink and run, but that's what I was going to do.

She doddered back with the drinks. We sat, and conversed delicately a bit more, and a time or two we clinked glasses.

This one was, sure enough, quite a horrendous babe.

But, oddly, there came a point when, for some reason undiscovered, Aggie for a moment looked different. Not much, but some. It wasn't the martini—and, strange to relate, it was a splendid martini. Apparently a wise doctor had written the prescription. No, it was simply that maybe for a second or two her expression was not that of one chewing cavities, but quite relaxed, almost pleasant.

She was still a horrendous babe. But I could almost imagine what once she'd been, or could have been. The eyes weren't really bad. It was just that very little life flickered in them; there seemed not fire but ashes there, and deep frown lines were heavily creased between them. Those cuckoo curly locks could have looked halfway presentable if fixed or put up or coiffed properly, whatever babes do to their hair. And it could have been a quite presentable mouth if not so pinched, not so twisted and almost torn with bitterness. Her smile was very stiff, too, as if she'd forgotten how to smile.

Well, maybe she had. Maybe life had kicked her in the teeth too many times. Of course, maybe she'd stuck out her chops and asked for it. Who knows? How would I know? I know from nothing.

Neither did Aggie. She'd been telling me if it weren't for sex, carnality, lecherousness, and all that, the world wouldn't be sliding downhill to Satan. And Mr. Halstead would still be alive. And everything would be as lovely as love. Once in a while she said things like that.

“Even the birds would sing more sweetly,” she said. I believe she was half plastered on that one martini.

“Well, now, Aggie,” I said, “those birds sing a lot in spring, you know. Don't forget that. Sing like crazy in the mati—nesting season. Can't be all bad. Got to have nests. Little beggars would fall out of the trees.”

There had been so much sexy talk—rather, talk of sex—that the subject was naturally in the forefront of my mind. Which was not, with me, a circumstance as rare as elephant feathers. Consequently, it could not be doubted that my thoughts on the subject were somewhat different from Aggie's thoughts on the subject.

Thus, the dialogue went:

“Sex.”

“Yep.”

“Sex. That's what.”

“That's what, all right. You hit it that time. Couldn't have said it better myself.”

“Sex …” she repeated, lingering over the word as one might linger over the olive in one's first martini. As though savoring it, trying to decide whether she really liked it or not.

But, that's the way it often is with olives. Especially your first few. They're like chocolate bonbons.

Some people take to them right off the bat, go through bottle after bottle saying “Yum-yum” all the time. Others just put up with them, maybe because they come with the martinis. And some people never
do
learn to like them.

I didn't like the way my thoughts were going.

Here we were talking about sex, and I was mentally maundering about olives. I knew I'd hate it if every time I looked at an olive I thought about sex. It could even work the other way—every time I looked at sex I'd think of an olive. Then where would I be? I might have to give up martinis.

It was time to go, sure enough. Even my watch told me it was time to go. In fact, I was late.

Aggie went with me to the door. After a parting comment or two she said, “I've enjoyed our talk, Shell. I hope you can come back sometime. And bring your wife next time.”

“Well, that'll be a little tough. I don't have a wife.”

“Not any more?”

“Not ever, Aggie. I've never been married.”

She blinked. “How old are you? You look at least—well, you're getting close to thirty, aren't you?”

“That's it. On the button. In fact, I've been thirty for a hell of a time now.”

She was aghast. “Thirty! And not
married? Never
married?”

Then she actually stood there, after all she'd said to me, blood burbling in her arteries as though sap in an ancient tree and oozing through her veins like grabbers stirring in a purple swamp, and said, “Oh, Shell, you've missed the greatest joy and fulfillment any man could ever have!”

That's what she said. Just when I was starting to like her, too, almost.

10

Something was going on near the Hamilton Building.

Whatever it was, I'd missed it. Thanks to Aggie I was seven minutes late.

The Hamilton, where I have my office, is in downtown L.A. on Broadway, between Third and Fourth Streets. Near the office is a lot where I park the Cad, and that's where I was heading—only I didn't make it. Not right away.

I was still a block from the lot when the sound of a police siren shrilled in my ears. I pulled over to the right, stopped. The car was a couple blocks away, coming toward me on Broadway, red light flashing on its top.

It was going like hell, at least forty or fifty miles an hour, which was more than plenty for crowded Broadway. It came right past the Hamilton and flashed past on my left, the siren-whine loud enough to stretch the nerves in my spine. As it faded slightly it was joined by another, the second siren wailing nearby. A counterpoint to it was a third somewhere.

There was more shrill noise and screeching and wailing than I'd ever heard in this area before. A police car skidded to a stop in front of the Hamilton. Even from a block away I could clearly hear the tires protesting on the asphalt. One officer, then another, leaped from the car and ran to the sidewalk. I could see other people running.

A crowd was gathering, milling there. There—not near the Hamilton, but right in front of it.

I put the Cad in gear and hit the gas, gunned across Fourth, swung into the lot as another car, siren howling, drew near. This one wasn't a police buggy but a long limousine, an ambulance; attendants opened its back doors as I left my car with the attendant in the lot and began trotting down the sidewalk.

As I pushed through several dozen citizens standing around and gawking, ambulance attendants made their way to the sidewalk carrying a wheeled stretcher. I was only a few feet from the focus of all the excitement, half a dozen men and women still between me and the body sprawled on the cement. It was a man, face down on the sidewalk, legs splayed and feet pointing in opposite directions.

“Excuse me,” I said, tapping a man on the shoulder. He didn't want to move. So I moved him.

Not roughly, I just pushed a bit, and kept pushing, and he moved. He didn't mind. He hardly noticed. But he did turn his head and look at me, eyes bright and face a little pale. “How about that?” he said.

This had probably made his day. I don't know why it is, but the ghouls gravitate to big or little calamities, and sometimes it seems the bigger it is the better they like it. They look, a little frightened, maybe, but more fascinated than frightened, staring at the dead, the maimed, the injured, the dying. Civilized man, at scenes of sorrow.

The guy on the sidewalk looked dead.

I still hadn't made my way into the open, but I could see most of him, see his back, see the holes and dark stains of blood in the cloth of his hound's-tooth jacket, and the mess that was one side of his head.

I moved forward. “Pardon me, Miss. I've got to get through.”

Another one, right in the front row—a woman, at that. Sometimes they're worse than the men. But this one was not what I'd have expected in the front row, not what I'd have expected anywhere in the area. Maybe that's because I find it difficult to think ill of gorgeous tomatoes.

And that's what she was: a gorgeous tomato. Tall, with blonde hair swooping smoothly down from the back of her head to rest, gleaming, just about level with her shoulders. I hadn't seen her full-face, only from the side; but it was the kind of profile that might have graced the temples of Troy, and the body belonged to the queen of saturnalia.

Simply dressed, pale blue sweater and darker skirt, a wide belt, white scarf tied around her neck, she was standing with arms crossed over exceptionally abundant breasts, gazing down at the man on the sidewalk.

As I touched her shoulder she turned. And I saw her full-face. And the face melted.

That's about the only way I can describe it with reasonable accuracy. She looked at me, quite calmly, for about two seconds. For the third and fourth seconds her features seemed to become—well, rigid. Congealed. Like a fixed photograph, rather than something of flesh and blood, juices and bone. But then it melted, twisted, changed.

Her eyes slowly grew wider and wider until they were enormous in her lovely face.

“Ohh-hh,” she said, breath sighing from moist, warm-looking lips.

She pulled in her breath with a soft “Ah—” in three separate jerks, as though her lungs had stopped working involuntarily, and she had to pull, suck at the air, to fill them again.