Two Much! (29 page)

“I have no idea,” I said. “But that's why I had you type up that agreement. Normally, she wouldn't sign a paper like that for anything. If she signs it now, she's up to something. I just want you to know, Gloria, in case something bad comes out of this later on.”

She gave me a troubled look; part of the reason she stuck with this weird job is that she actually did like me. “You're in over your head, Art,” she said.

“Truer words were never spoken,” I said, meaning it, “but I don't see any way to get out of it. I've got to follow through to the end and hope for the best.”

“I suppose so.”

“If anybody comes around and asks you anything,” I said, “anything at all, you don't know a thing.”

“Right.”

“Not even whether I have a twin brother or not.”

“I'm a complete dummy,” she promised me.

“Maybe I can still beat Liz at her own game,” I said bravely. Then we both heard the outer door close. “She's coming back,” I whispered. “Let's see if shell actually sign that agreement.”

Joe Gold I dealt with later that afternoon, following the visit from the Long Island police. The gun still hadn't been found, but the cops showed no real inclination as yet to consider either Liz or me prime suspects. We'd alibied one another, we'd expressed shock and horror, we'd told what we could of our late siblings' recent activities and associates, and then we'd been left, with apologies, to our mourning.

Immediately upon the departure of the fuzz I said to Liz, “Give me some of your stuff. Undies, lipsticks, crap I can spread around my apartment.”

“Good thinking,” she said, and quickly assembled a paper bag of closet sweepings, with which I rushed to my own place, a residence which no longer resembled the site of a Turkish massacre, but was still not quite so clean as a truckstop diner on a Saturday night Oh, well, Feeney had undoubtedly done his best. Spraying Liz's detritus hither and yon, I made my way to the phone, which seemed to have had honey poured on it, and phoned Joe out there in sunny L. A.

“Listen, Joe,” I said.

“What—more? Can't you join a commune?”

“Joe, I got a serious problem.”

“I've said that for years, Art”

“There's been a murder, Joe. No fooling, no gags, no kidding around, an honest-to-God murder.”

“In the immortal words of Samuel Goldwyn's ad-lib writer,” he said, “include me out.”

“Absolutely,” I said. “Include us both out. But here's the thing, Joe. What I've been pulling here this summer is a twin scam. You know?”

“I don't want to know.”

“You must have had
some
idea, from that conversation.”

“Art, in cases of homicide I make it a rule not to hear conversations.”

“That's wonderful, Joe. Except I think I'm maybe being set up for something. Maybe to take the fall.”

“Art? You wouldn't be trying to pull one on
me
, would you?”

Of course I would, but that isn't what I said. I said, “Joe, I'm too scared to pull anything on anybody. You've got to listen to me.”

“Maybe. Start talking.”

“I met twin sisters. So I became twin brothers, so I could screw them both. A simple innocent game, right?”

“It bears your signature like Andy Warhol's on a junkyard fence,” he said.

“So
then
,” I said, “it turns out these two are rich. But
rich
. And they're suing each other for millions and millions of dollars. And last night, Joe, while I was with one sister here in New York, the other sister was getting murdered out on Fire Island.”

“On the level?”

“Absolutely. I swear on my mother's IUD. But here comes the cute part. Joe, there was a guy out there with her. Killed with her.”

“Yeah?”

“My twin brother, Joe.”

“What? What shit is this?”

“Exactly the question I ask myself, Joe.”

“Somebody's up to something,” he said.

“I had the same feeling myself. Am I being set up for something? I'm scared, Joe, and no fooling. If I get out of this, I may well be cured for life.”

“Amen,” he said.

“Joe,” I said, “the only safe thing I can see for me is that
my scam did not exist
. If the cops want me to have a twin brother, fine. I neither confirm nor deny. But if the twin con comes to light, what happens to me?”

“Art,” he said, “are you asking me to lie under oath in a murder case?”

“Absolutely not,” I said. “I am asking you to stay out of it entirely. If some cop calls you long distance and asks you did Bart Dodge stay with you for a few days you can say yes, because later on you could say you thought he said
Art
Dodge, and maybe you got the dates wrong, and what's the problem anyway? You're out there, you're safe, you're out of it.”

“You're damn right I'm out of it.”

“All I'm asking, Joe,” I said, “is that you don't volunteer. I've
got
to cover the twin con, I've just got to.”

“I begin to think,” he said, “that this may turn out to be a wonderful lesson for you.”

“You bet. Joe, can I count on you?”

“Art,” he said, “you and I have been pals for years. You've always been able to count on me, and you'll be able to go on counting on me right up to the point where it becomes inconvenient.”

“But you won't blow the twin con.”

“I won't volunteer.”

“You're a sweetheart, Joe,” I said, and went back to the Kerner apartment, where Liz met me with fire in her eyes, saying, “Give me that agreement I won't go along with it, I want to tear it up.”

“You what? Listen, I gave you that alibi, I helped—”

“You can just forget that alibi, buster,” she said, “and the agreement, too.”

“Forget it? Why?”

“Because,” she said, “that asshole Ernie Volpinex did it, what do you think of that?” She stood in front of me, arms akimbo, fists against sides, jaw jutting out. “They found a gun where he tried to hide it, his fingerprints are all over it, it was a goddam crime of
passion
! Ernie's run away, nobody can find him, he's guilty as sin, I don't need any alibi, and
I
won't stand for that goddam-goddam-goddam-agreement!
” She shook both fists in my face. “Stop that laughing, you goddam hyena! Stop it right now!”

I
DIDN'T THINK YOU
'
D COME
to work today,” Gloria said when I walked in.

“Ah, well,” I said. “Life must go on.”

“People have called from the
Daily News
, from ABC, and from Channel 11. They want an interview about your brother.”

“No interviews,” I said. What a thought: me on television, discussing the murder of my twin brother. That would finish me, wouldn't it?

“I told them you wouldn't be in today. I suppose they'll try you at home.”

Meaning the nest fouled by Feeney, to which I was unlikely to be returning for quite some time. “Good luck to them,” I said. “And if anybody else calls, friend or foe, I'm still not in. Period of mourning, unlikely to return to the office before next week.”

“Right.” She gave me a conspiratorial look. “Anything else from the Kerner woman?”

“I still don't know what she's up to,” I said. “The only thing to do is just wait and see.”

“Maybe you ought to talk to a lawyer,” she suggested.

“I intend to. Get me Ralph Minck, you have his office number there.”

“Right. Oh, your sister called.”

“Doris? Call her back, I'll talk to her before Ralph.”

I went to the inner office and sat down at a desk that somehow seemed less mine. I had altered into someone different in the last two days, and the cons and concerns of yesteryear no longer vibrated as they once had. The murder cover-up was all that counted now; it exhausted all my energies just to tread water in this mighty ocean.

But once I'd pulled it off, if I did, would I then be able to come back to my innocent former self, full of silliness and smut? In some absurdist way it seemed that in killing Volpinex I was becoming Volpinex. Where was my comedy? Where was my caustic center?

“A Birthday,” I muttered aloud, “a Birthday, a Birthday.” If I could still do them, if I could still come up with a greeting on demand, then there was nothing to worry about.

Buzz. “Your sister.”

“Right.” Click. “Doris?”

“Art, what on
earth
is going on?”

“About what?”

“The newspaper said your twin brother Robert was
murdered
.”

“My what?”

“Art, you don't
have
a twin brother.”

“I know that. What—Oh! That thing out on Long Islandl”

“Fire Island. It said—Wait, I'll get the paper.”

“I know what it said, I noticed that coincidence myself.”

“Coincidence?”

“Doris,” I said, “how many brothers do you have?”

“Barely one,” she said. “You promise and promise and
promise
to call Duane, and you never do it.”

“I've been busy, Doris, getting ready for Thanksgiving.”

“But that isn't the
point
. The
point
is, what is this— Here, I've got the paper. Twin brother Arthur Dodge, Manhattan greeting card publisher.' What are they
talking
about?”

“A different Arthur Dodge, obviously,” I said. “We don't exactly have an obscure name, you know.”

“But a greeting card publisher?”

“Doris, do you know how many little outfits like mine there are, just in New York? And maybe he doesn't have his own outfit at all, maybe he's an executive with Hallmark or Gibson or one of that crowd. I mean, I can see reporters getting mixed up and calling me instead of this other guy, and believe me they've been calling all day, but Doris
you
know I don't have any twin brother.”

“It's just a coincidence?” She sounded no more than half-convinced.

“Listen, Doris,” I said. “I'm looking in the Manhattan phone book right now, right here. Do you know how many A. Dodges there are, just the initial? And this is just Manhattan, this doesn't count people living in Queens and Brooklyn and—”

“It was just such a surprise,” she said. “The same name and everything.”

“There are eight million people in this city,” I said. “Some of them have the same names.”

“At first,” she said, “I thought maybe it was
you
that was killed.”

“What would I be doing in a rich people's place like that?” I said, and oddly enough that was the convincer. The fact was, although I had insisted on being upwardly mobile, she had remained steadfastly rooted in a social level where old tires are placed on the front lawn as planters. So she laughed over the idea of my hobnobbing with rich people, and so did I, and then we had a little chat about the subject of coincidence in general, with some drab examples from her own life and times, and finally she got off the phone and I buzzed Gloria to get me Ralph.

Waiting, trying to think of a new birthday message, I went through the accumulation of mail, trying to get back some of my former
joie de milieu
by repeating once-pleasant activities, but even wastebasketing final notices didn't give me a charge any more.

And what was this? A large thick manila envelope, very like the one Volpinex had carried, the one filled with death weapons aimed at Bart. This new envelope was on my desk face down, with no identification showing, and my hands hesitated over it while the hairs on the back of my neck did little clenching things, as though holding tiny ice cubes. It looked exactly like the Volpinex envelope, which I remembered burning in the sink in Point O' Woods, watching the yellow flames hula over the photostats.

So this was a different envelope, that's all; why was I hesitant? I have never been a believer in ghosts or the occult or any of that mumbo jumbo. I don't even believe Mary was a virgin. So this was a different envelope, and my reluctance to touch it was the result of nervous tension, nothing more.

Exactly. When I did turn it over, a bit more emphatically than necessary, the other side showed me my name and address typed in the middle, a gallery of canceled stamps (Eisenhower with beards and moustaches) on the upper right, and the information “L. Margolies, 37 E. 10, NY 10003” on the upper left.

Comedy: The Coward's Response to Aggression.

Ah. Knowing more these days about aggression and the coward's range of responses to it, I opened the envelope with the expectation of a good rousing argument to come, but was interrupted by Gloria buzzing to tell me that Ralph was home sick. “Drat,” I said. “Call him at home, then. But if a woman answers, hang up.”

“Right.”