The Renewable Virgin (7 page)

‘You mean he's so good at getting results you're willing to put up with all that other stuff?'

‘I mean he's no worse than the rest of them. And Leonard does know everybody. Right now he's in the office whispering in Nathan Pinking's ear about how this Miss America gig will be just what
LeFever
needs next year. And Nathan will loll there in his big leather chair, letting himself be convinced. He likes to see Leonard sweat.'

‘Why Nathan Pinking? What does he have to say about it anyway?'

‘It's in my contract—it's a personal contract Nathan had me sign before he'd give me the role in
LeFever
. I can't do anything outside
LeFever
without his say-so. He vetoed a greeting card commercial I'd been offered because he said down-home wholesomeness wasn't exactly the image he had in mind for me. Nathan told me to try to get one of those pantyhose commercials—you know, the ones where the models sit down without
quite
putting their knees together.'

‘I know the ones,' Marian said sourly. ‘Your Nathan Pinking must be a real prince. Kelly, are you really going to do it? Be one of the Miss America judges, I mean.'

‘Sure, if Leonard can arrange it.'

‘And it doesn't bother you at all?'

Oh boy. ‘Look, Marian. A beauty contest is sort of like an audition, you know? It's a recognized way of getting started on a career.'

She snorted. ‘It's a
meat
parade. All those young girls offering their bodies for inspection—like prize cows at the county fair. And you sanction that?'

‘Hey, wait a minute—nobody's forcing those girls to take part. Hell, that's what they
want
, a chance at the spotlight.'

‘Sure, they
want
it—because they're young and just beginning to feel their power and flushed with new success. And because they're taught every day of their lives that girls are supposed to be ornamental. They want it because they don't know what else to want.'

I
snorted at that. ‘Well, I'm going to do it, and that's that.
If
Nathan Pinking doesn't decide to say no just to bug Leonard.'

‘Why would he do that?'

‘Notice how Leonard always calls him Nathan Shithead?'

‘Could I miss it?'

‘Leonard hates Nathan Pinking's guts. And Nathan returns the compliment. Yet each of them is the other's best customer. When Nathan's putting a new show together, he doesn't call a casting office until after he's talked to Leonard. And whenever Leonard manages to sign up an established star who's just fired his old agent, Leonard makes sure Nathan gets first crack at him. They can't stand each other, but they always find a way to do business.'

‘A love-hate relationship?'

‘More like a hate-hate relationship. They really do loathe each other. But money's money, so they'll keep doing business as long as it's profitable for both of them. But if one of them ever starts to slip, the other one will drop him like a hot potato.'

‘What if Leonard's the one to slip? Where will that leave you?'

‘With a new agent. I'm not going down with anybody's ship but my own, may it never come to pass. Here, check me on my new lines—read me my cues.'

‘Ah, it's time I was getting—'

‘It'll take you twenty seconds, for crying out loud. There are only two lines. Come on, read me my cues.'

She grumbled, but she did it.

I didn't see Marian Larch for a while after that. I couldn't tell whether the investigation of Rudy's death was easing off or just heading in a different direction. Or maybe Marian had run out of excuses for dropping in on the
LeFever
set.

When he had a show taping in New York, Nathan Pinking rented space at a converted movie soundstage on West Fifty-fourth Street. We had a few permanent sets, but mostly we shot exteriors. New York wasn't like California, where everything you needed to make a movie or a television series was all right there together in the same studio—the crews, the commissaries, the costume shop, the print shop, the scenery docks, the prop shop, everything. Like a factory. In New York you had to go hunting for all the things you needed in a hundred different places. So, nobody came to New York to make a series
indoors
. You came because of what the city had to offer in the way of location shots. The place was an inexhaustible backdrop.
And
a good filler—for those weeks when the script was a mite on the skimpy side and you had to fill in those empty spots with pretty pictures. That happened on
LeFever
every week, by the way. We never ran long, never went into overtime. Nathan Pinking didn't believe in overtime.

I had a week off from the show. I yelled bloody murder but they wrote me out of the script just the same. The episode was being shot in London and the writers explained in this overpatient way they had of talking to dumb broads that there was no way to justify LeFever's taking a girlfriend along with him on an overseas business trip.
Oh yeah?
I said.
What about all those Congressional junkets?

But the answer was still no, and the real reason, as always, was money. The episode was being financed by a British production company that wanted to use
LeFever
to introduce the hero of a new series they were making. The British were going to try for a direct sale to American television instead of playing it in England first and then selling it to Masterpiece Theatre fifteen years later. So the deal Nathan Pinking had worked out was that the British would pick up the tab for an episode showing LeFever in London cooperating with
their
hero—but the funds were not limitless. Certain things had to go, and the character I played was still on the expendable list. I wasn't exactly overloaded with job security just then.

I called Leonard Zoff and demanded he do something about it, but he wouldn't even try. ‘These things are decided long in advance,' he said. ‘I know what the Brits budgeted for and there just ain't no traveling money for little Kelly. Accept it, darling—there's nothing to be done.'

‘I'll pay my own way.'

‘Like hell you will!' he exploded, causing me to jerk the receiver away from my ear. ‘Once you start that, Nathan Shithead'll have you paying through the nose until the very
second
your contract runs out! Don't you suggest it, don't you even
think
it—do you hear me?'

I told him I heard him but he went on hollering until I said okay
okay
and hung up. So I was to be the Invisible Woman that week.

I had a special reason for wanting to be in that episode. Their hero was a hell of a lot more attractive than our hero. I'd seen their leading man in one movie and almost wrote the guy a fan letter. I wanted to meet him, that's all there was to it. And then when Nathan Pinking pretended to be doing me this big favor by giving me a week's vacation in mid season, I almost poked him one.

Nathan had said okay to my being a judge at the Miss America contest, so Leonard Zoff was trying to arrange it. If Leonard could bring it off, I'd go through with it, no question. I know what side my bread's buttered on. It was easy for Marian Larch to sneer at the ‘meat parade' side of it. She didn't have to worry about the right exposure at the right time in order to earn a living. So a lot of women didn't like the contest, so that was too bad.

Not my problem.

My problem was a bad case of the fidgets. I could use the time off, though. I had my hair done by somebody other than the
LeFever
people, checked my wardrobe, watched the cleaning service people do their weekly thing in my apartment, read some of my mail, and went dancing. That took care of Monday.

The man I went dancing with also took care of Tuesday and Wednesday, but Thursday he felt he should go back to work. He was an architect, and his boss was quote the most demanding, most unreasonable man in the universe unquote. (He worked for his father.) So on Thursday morning I was thinking of getting on a plane and going somewhere for the weekend when the mail arrived, containing a little something I wasn't expecting at all.

It was a yellow box and it had black and white letters that said ‘Sample—Not for Sale' and its name was Lysco-Seltzer.

Now, there's no need to panic
, I told myself in the calmest and most rational way imaginable. Somebody intent on murder wouldn't use a Lysco-Seltzer bottle
again
, surely. Would he? No—it was exactly what it appeared to be, it had to be. Thousands and thousands of other New York mailboxes were holding little yellow boxes that morning,
and they were all exactly alike
. There was absolutely no need to panic.

I called Police Headquarters and screamed for Marian Larch.

One thing about Marian, she never tried to brush your anxieties aside as something you just imagined. She always took
me
seriously, anyway, and while I expected her to say things like
You're making a fuss over nothing
or the like, she never did.

What she did do was take one look at the Lysco-Seltzer box and drop it in her shoulder-bag. ‘It's been tampered with,' she said.

After one look she could tell that? ‘How do you know?'

‘The address label. That address was typed individually—it didn't come out of a machine like an Addressograph or some sort of dry-process addressing machine. In mass mailings they use a master list and print from that. This box goes straight to the lab. Why are you home?'

It took me a second to figure out what she meant. ‘I'm not in the episode they're taping now. I have the week off.'

‘Oh, that's nice,' she said dubiously.

‘No, that's not nice.'

‘No, that's not nice,' she agreed. ‘Look, just sit tight until the crime lab gets finished. Don't go out, keep your door locked.'

‘Count on it,' I said grimly.

Marian didn't get back with an answer until the next morning—that was one very anxious day and night I spent, I can tell you. I'd almost talked myself into thinking there was nothing to worry about when she'd pulled that label stunt on me. Well,
she
didn't pull the stunt, of course, but it was the kind of news I could have lived without knowing. Or maybe I couldn't.
Live
without knowing it, I mean. Jesus.

I was sitting and staring at a big cardboard carton that United Parcel had just delivered when Marian showed up around ten Friday morning.

‘What's that?' she asked.

‘A bomb, no doubt,' I said fatalistically.

‘Nonsense.' All brisk efficiency. ‘Too big for a bomb. Besides, you'll be happy to learn nobody mailed you any cyanide in a Lysco-Seltzer bottle.'

I perked up at that. ‘You mean the bottle wasn't tampered with after all?'

‘Didn't say that—it was tampered with, all right. But whoever did the tampering didn't substitute cyanide this time. The lab boys said it didn't even look like cyanide crystals—
or
Lysco-Seltzer. Yellow instead of white, for one thing. So maybe the guy who sent it didn't really intend for you to take it at all. Maybe it was just a joke.'

‘Joke? What do you mean,
joke?
' I looked at her closely, but that potato face wasn't giving much away; I've got to stop thinking
potato face
. ‘Marian, what was in that bottle?'

‘Phenolphthalein. Ever heard of it?'

‘Spell it.'

She spelled it. ‘It's not hard to get hold of, the way cyanide is. Anybody can buy it in a drugstore—you don't even need a prescription. Kelly, phenolphthalein is used mostly as a laxative.'

I just stared at her. ‘Somebody sent me a laxative?'

She nodded soberly, but I suspected she was trying not to laugh. ‘Somebody sent you a laxative.'

I was absolutely dumfounded or even dumbfounded, I'm not going to look it up. ‘A laxative.' I was at such a loss I went over and kicked the United Parcel carton, I didn't know what else to do.

‘Hey,' Marian said uneasily.

‘You said it wasn't a bomb. Nobody's out to kill me. They're just out to give me diarrhea. Isn't that wonderful? What a glamorous ailment to come down with!
Why would anybody send me a laxative?'

‘Maybe simply to get a rise out of you—to make you react the way you are reacting.'

‘And they just happened to pick the same means that was used to kill Rudy? A Lysco-Seltzer bottle? Come
on
. That's no coincidence.'

‘No—I don't think it is. It certainly could be Rudy Benedict's murderer who sent you the phenolphthalein. Or somebody else who found out it was your Lysco-Seltzer that had been doctored in Benedict's apartment and decided to give you a little scare just for the fun of it. A sadistic practical joker.'

‘Great idea of fun, isn't it?'

‘Whoever sent you the laxative would have to get pleasure out of what he was doing—there's nothing else to be gained. Do you know anybody with that kind of personality? The kind that would get a kick out of embarrassing you?'

‘A couple of hundred,' I said without hesitation. ‘Nathan Pinking, Leonard Zoff, Nick Quinlan—'

It was Marian's turn to say, ‘Oh, come
on.'

‘Come on, nothing. Most of the people I know would think it was funny to put somebody out of commission that particular way. Using the same kind of bottle that killed Rudy is ghoulish, sure, but that just puts an edge on it. It's the kind of thing Nathan Pinking especially would get a kick out of. He's not exactly nice people.'

‘But why would he want to put you out of action for even a day? Wouldn't that cost him—oh, that's right. You're not in this week's episode.'

I said, ‘Nathan's always doing things just to show you what he can get away with. Do you remember Christopher Clive?'

‘An actor, sure.'