Further Adventures (8 page)

QUESTION: What would The Green Ray do in this situation?

ANSWER: Let Peter Tremayne investigate.

Step 2:

QUESTION: What would Peter Tremayne do in this situation?

ANSWER: Seek the cunning counsel of Lamont Carruthers.

Step 3:

QUESTION: So what was I going to do?

ANSWER: Go up to the 14th Floor to knock upon Lamont Carruthers’ office door.

So Aunt Eunice owed it all to Lamont Carruthers—so what so did Ray Green in my case Lamont created The Adventures Of The Green
Ray for me to create his Heart & Soul. But look how far Heart & Soul got me with Annie: a shiner short of a cup of Java so now I needed some expert guidance to point me where my personal story could go from here. Who was it who knew all the Clues before Peter Tremayne did? LAMONT CARRUTHERS. Who figured all the twists & turns of complicated mysteries? LAMONT CARRUTHERS. Who knew the true motives of Rosalind Bentley that make her tick i.e. all the feelings that Annie had to feel most sincerely to play her part in Episode after Episode? The writer LAMONT CARRUTHERS. By the way the true brains behind the Voice of Aunt Eunice uncomplicater of the complicated troubles of Womankind.

The elevator door opened before me and before me was the length of the 14th Floor and the echo of that creaking metal was the only thing stirring up there. (A dumb piece of Deception for anybody who could count that high knew it was really the 13th Floor hung with a different number to pamper superstitious mankind.) Down at the end I saw a strange sight—a guy at the drinking fountain he looked like a stork up on one leg. Also cloudy blue eyes looked back at me & his face all white stubble yellow sweat stains on his collar & at his feet i.e. foot was a Fuller Brush sample case.

“Say bub?” I got his attention. “You haven’t passed by 1421 in your travels by any chance?”

“It’s easy to get lost up here,” he observed and I observed he had a very polished accent on him for a Fuller Brush salesman. “Are you a messenger boy?”

Of course I could not let a member of the general public in on my True Identity so I obliged him by this idea of me. “It’s my first day see just trying to find my way around.”

“You’ve got a message for 1421?”

“Uh-huh.”

“First door on the left after you hit the corner. I’ve just come from there.”

“Was Mr. Carruthers in?”

“Oh. Him.” He picked up his sample case. “Be careful around that bird. In days of yore when a messenger brought bad news”—he swiped his finger across his throat—“cut off the messenger’s head.”

“Good thing it isn’t bad news.”

He turned his back on me mumbling, “You can leave whatever it is with his secretary Miss Shapiro.”

“Dropping or picking up?” Miss Shapiro aimed the guns of her eyes at me in the door.

“Is Mr. Carruthers in?”

“About what is this concerning?”

“It’s personal business.”

“Personal concerning whom or what matter?”

I did not want to reveal too much too soon so I told her it was Green Ray business.

“Oh.
That
hooey.”

Nor I did not expect her to do a backflip when she heard those words but a dark surprise filled my stomach when she shrugged off our Show being hooey. “I’m Ray Green.”

“Mr. Carruthers doesn’t like to get involved with the actors Mr. Green.” She offered me a frost smile. “Anyway”—the smile melted on her face—“he’s at lunch.” She stretched a canvas cover over her typewriter shutting up shop for Lunch Hour.

“Nobody else calls The Green Ray hooey.”

“That’s good,” she said. Miss Shapiro standing up was not much taller than Miss Shapiro sitting down & when she stood up next to me to switch off the office light I was looking down on a bald spot the size of a yarmulke.

“Everybody else says The Green Ray is their inspiration to do good.”

“The world should be so simple. At exactly the right place in the nick of time a man in a green cape shows up flashing a green light and before you can say
mazel tov
everybody bad is in jail everybody good is saved and the whole world gets fixed better than new,” complained Miss Shapiro. “What’s waiting for children when they grow up if they believe in hooey like that?”

“Is that what you tell Mr. Carruthers?”

“Are you kidding? As if he’d ask. He doesn’t care about anybody’s opinion. Not mine or Mr. Silverstein’s or”—she dropped her Voice & whispered—“P. K. Spiller’s either. He doesn’t get emotionally involved.”

At the elevator I pushed the Down button very gentlemanly. “His shows don’t sound like that to me.”

“You don’t know him from Adam that’s why. I know Mr. Carruthers 16 years.” She tugged my sleeve & said, “Confidentially he doesn’t vote. That’s how much he cares about what happens. Not even for president. Not even for F.D.R.”

“He didn’t vote for Wendell Wilkie either.”

Miss Shapiro stabbed the Down button a few more hurry-up stabs. “It’s not the New Deal or any deal. He just doesn’t care. He says we get the politicians we deserve. I say we must be doing something right to get Franklin D. Roosevelt and he’s a man I thought Mr. Carruthers would sympathize with.”

“How’s that?”

“Since they both overcame their handicaps. Instead of staying cripples they rose to the top of their profession.”

Ding-a-ling. “Polio?”

“F.D.R. had the polio and Mr. Carruthers lost his leg in the Great War.”

“Him?” I sang out. “I saw him drinking water from the fountain!”

“He also eats soup with a spoon.”

Well I could not stand around counting my fingers & toes waiting so I ran down 13 floors and skidded across the lobby. Stan the Cigar Man watched me almost crash into his glass display case. “Did you see Lamont Carruthers go out?”

“Who the hell’s Lamont Carruthers?” Stan wanted to know.

“Tall geek,” I panted, “with one leg.”

“Yeah yeah.” Stan scratched his beak & closed his peepers to picture him. “Panatelas.” His poached egg eyes popped open. “Carruthers huh? Remind him he owes me 35 cents from last week. Walked right past me a minute ago.”

“Right.”

“Remind him 35 cents is 35 cents. Y’know Ray?”

I look back at what happened to me & where & when & so help me I can not tell you which was the right place at the right time & which was the wrong. I am guessing here but maybe the things that happen are just the things that have to happen when you look at your state of mind (mine = desperate) & body (mine = exhausted). I revolved out of the revolving door & caught sight of Lamont Carruthers heaving his Fuller Brush sample case into the back of a taxi and pulling the door shut behind him. I stood there helpless behind the exhaust pipe too late he drove off.

Around the block I walked around the City with no expert guidance what else was I going to do? I did not feel the cold of the weather or hear the noise of the traffic only the pressure of the heavy clouds & the scrape & slap of my own shoes in & out of sidewalk rain puddles. Ugh. My mind traveled back to Annie on a worry of what her mind did when it traveled back to me.

To Annie I was a girl crazy short pants kid going around in a goofy swoon and it was too bad her rotten Luck she got in the way.

I was a juvenile fugitive from responsibility just living it up cheap &
easy with the morals of a cockroach riding for a fall into the pit of Shame & Regret for not going to college.

To David Arcash I was a whiny glass-jawed cream puff who did not Possess the nerve or the verve to stay in the ring any ring be it boxing or romance.

To Lamont Carruthers I was a dumb ham actor in the words of Miss Shapiro ALL HOOEY.

God forbid if my Life ended by itself in the Desert from a heart attack and if Annie LaSalle was there by my side I believe with my last breath I could defend my Actions of 73 Years and keep my Good Name. But before it could wind up that way my past experiences came back to me under my skin suckered the Good nature of my character and led me to people places & actions that God did not forbid. It peeled off my innocent skin but underneath it was the Opposite nor I do not mean Experience no it was Guilty.

I can see by the dawn’s early light also by the clock on the clubhouse wall now it is the next A.M. so in my opinion I am safe here another 12 Hours—he will not come near at this time I know from personal experience he is a Creature of the night. He can do what he wants but not when he wants to he needs the dark to disguise his Deeds from the eyes of the world but if I refuse him he will not disguise his fingerprints on them any further. I am going to turn the Light on him.

I can hear all the normal Sounds outside starting up i.e. the traffic on Ortega also the Mail delivered. Boys & girls going on the sidewalks gangs of them barking & mewing into School. I just heard a bird chirp he must be right out by the kitchen window. A screen door just banged shut downstairs. All the Normal Sounds the relief made me think for
half a second my Life is back the way it was 3½ Weeks ago. My mind is wandering I have to figure & concentrate on it before it goes down the drain so Ray think think think.

I want him to picture me better the best & equal. He has a gun & I have one here in my hand with bullets no kidding. So what the Hell I am going to eat a bowl of dry cereal it is Breakfast time. All I have in the kitchen is that box of Uncle Sam laxative cereal that Tay Gek’s delivery boy brought me from the Convenience Wagon a month ago so what it tastes the same fresh or stale. I was saving it for some emergency only I figured the Emergency might come on the bowel level not on the level of my Last Meal on Earth but I say NUTS to that! A Emergency is a Emergency and as long as I am in Control in my own apartment in my Final Hours & if I want my last supper to be a bowl of Uncle Sam Laxative Dry Cereal so I go out on a full stomach & empty bowels THEN THAT IS HOW IT IS GOING TO BE!! I am not going to let any villain with his polite manners & his cutthroat razor ruin my healthy Appetite. NUTS TO THAT.

Maybe this was the Act that opened the door that led me into my present Predicament maybe this was when I took the fatal step & Gravity took over from there…I put my Ad in the Classifieds of the
Mason Examiner
—

The clerk on the Classified Desk suggested the abbreviations (e.g. F.O.C. = Free of Charge) he vowed everybody who read those ads knew
all of the abbreviations by Heart so what was the point of paying extra for a whole word? Also I figured it was a good reason to accept a Case if a hopeless person understood the code of my Ad.

I got Mrs. Orban to check my P.O.B. & see if any needy mail was there. Right off I received 6 cries of help. Each letter I read with care each one was a Heart Ache wrapped in a envelope. If I was going to be any good at it I had to use the powers of my Intelligence first & my Heart second so I decided to act on all of them but strictly in Alphabetical Order.

Case Number 1 was a runaway teenage girl her name was Charmaine Abercorn. Her father Mr. Al Abercorn of Lot 8 Deauville Trailer Court in Mason wrote to me & told me of his 14 Year old girl who got involved with bad types in the old business district (near the East 8th) he had not seen hide or hair of Charmaine in 7 Weeks. He sent me a Polaroid photo of her very pretty round-faced child red-haired (magenta & pink stripes) in her shorts & T-shirt.

I wrote Mr. Abercorn this postcard—Dear Mr. Abercorn I am on the Case of your Missing Daughter (of missing daughters I have some Experience many years ago). With your Authority I will find Charmaine & return her where she belongs age 14 to her loving home. Sincerely Peter Tremayne.

By the East 8th I had no worry I did not care in that foul area I had my Purpose to light my way plus it was broad daylight & all I had in my plan (first part) was flatfoot it around the streets to get the feel of the lay of the land. Down there with the garbage of beer cans and Hostess Twinkie wrappers etc. I belooked upon the sky and wondered how it could be the same clean blue sky over Pecan St. and simultaneous hanging over this greasy asphalt & corrugated shutters spray-painted with Filth.

You know on the license plates it declares New Mexico Land of Enchantment—if that is a fact then the people of the East 8th must be the trolls & gnomes the Little People of the enchanted land with a curse
on them to live amid the beer cans & Twinkie wrappers etc. or at least I do not think the Losers live in the same country as the rest.

Many juveniles who should be in school float in & out of a liquor store called by name The Lucky Dime I believe it is on the corner of 8th & Adams. Check down there or Travis & 8th. On 8th anyway on the East side of Division St. I parked my car the Raymobile I ordered a chicken enchilada across from there at a stand I ate it very slow & watched the kids go by. This is a good Tremayne plan tried & true also my ankles got hot & puffy so a little rest let them cool off slightly.

Which is a Tactic that paid off after one hour because then I eyeballed my Suspect with her face too young to be sucking on a bottle of Colt 45 Malt Liquor. The magenta & pink-striped hair on her also I never saw such a color walking around before maybe on a Munchkin in the movies maybe in Munchkinland not in Mason! Therefore I followed my hunch likewise I followed Charmaine around the corner.

The farther you go the worse it looks down in that area I recall it is on East Division where the empty warehouse is situationed. All the windows smashed out etc. but a castle to a missing Daughter. In the back is a ravine full of old refrigerators shopping carts plastic bags the Garbage Of The Ages piled up & beyond that is a hole in the wall. The Anus of the building I will say with garbage stuffed up in it such a pathetic sight where she led me.

When Charmaine started to search inside every greasy pizza box for leftovers I stopped her by a friendly hello.

“I can’t talk to you,” she said.

“You should eat something fresh. Come on, it’s on me.” I handed her five dollars.