You Might As Well Die (7 page)

They said their hellos and asked to see Ross.

“He’s not in,” she sighed, exasperated. “He’s down in the dumps.”

“Poor old Ross,” Benchley said sympathetically. “The magazine is having problems so soon?”

“Yes, we are, as a matter of fact,” she said, throwing down her pencil. “We’ve had no electricity until yesterday. We have no office supplies. We have no staff. And every time I talk on the phone to a vendor or supplier—or just anyone who knocks on that door—I have to explain what
The New Yorker
is.”

“Very sorry to hear that,” Dorothy said. “I guess that’s why Ross is down in the dumps.”

Jane shrugged. “I guess so.”

“In any case,” Dorothy continued, “we’d like to speak to him. Can you tell us where we can find him?”

She looked at Dorothy incredulously and spoke impatiently. “Didn’t you hear me? I just told you. He’s down in the dumps.”

 

Dorothy and Benchley stepped off a hired boat onto a long wooden pier at Rikers Island. To either side of the pier, weather-beaten garbage scows unloaded steam shovels full of rancid trash, which had been shipped up the East River from Manhattan and the other boroughs.

Dorothy and Benchley looked around. Mountains of garbage filled the landscape. Trash covered nearly every inch of ground. Above them, squadrons of seagulls rose and then dived like warplanes in a dogfight. Somewhere on this ever-expanding hundred-acre island wasteland was a small prison farm, but it was nowhere in sight. Nor was Harold Ross.

The putrid stench of decomposing garbage, combined with the sulfurous odor of the river, was overpowering and nauseating. Benchley handed Dorothy a clean handkerchief, which she thankfully used to cover her nose and mouth.

“How will we ever find him?” she wondered aloud, her voice muffled. “And what is he even doing out here?”

In the distance, a flock of seagulls suddenly rose en masse, as though startled by something.

“Let’s check over there,” Benchley said.

They cautiously followed a rough dirt path that had been forged by bulldozers. Dorothy’s little blue pumps were not made for walking on the bumpy, muddy terrain. At one point, her shoe got stuck in the muck. She stood on one leg, holding her bare foot aloft, while Benchley reached to retrieve the shoe. It made a sucking sound as he freed it from the gluey mud.

They followed the winding path as it twisted between the mountains of garbage. They eventually found themselves in a ravine, with high slopes of trash on either side that blocked out the sunlight.

In the narrow ribbon of smoky blue sky overhead, a red object soared in a gentle arc through the air. They couldn’t see where it landed. Above the sound of the seagulls and steam shovels, they seemed to hear voices. Familiar voices.

They emerged from the ravine and saw that the path in front of them rose uphill. They climbed the short ascent and saw a figure at the top of a hill.

The man had his back to them, but they recognized his hunched shoulders, his spiky straw-colored hair, his hands jammed sullenly in his pockets. He stood at the edge of an overlook. Dorothy and Benchley approached him silently.

Harold Ross didn’t move. His mournful eyes looked down at the clearing below. The clearing was a wide area of bare ground studded here and there with monolithic objects of junk—a claw-foot bathtub, a rusty spring mattress, the carcass of a Model T, and many others.

On opposite ends of the field, two figures in white athletic sweaters and pants ran around helter-skelter. Dorothy identified them right away—Alexander Woollcott and Harpo Marx, playing their crazy game of croquet.

“Hello, Ross,” Dorothy said casually.

Ross barely turned to glance their way. He didn’t seem at all surprised to see them.

“Hi, Dottie. Benchley.” His voice was melancholy. His gaze returned to the game. “What brings you here?”

We could ask you the same thing,
Dorothy thought. Instead, she took a deep breath, which she quickly regretted, and spoke up. “We came to ask for an advance on the fee for the article.”

Ross didn’t look at her. “An advance?”

She thought he was asking for an explanation. “There have been certain expenses—” she began.

“Expenses?”

“Yes, expenses. You know, related to research. Telegrams. Telephone calls. Research fees. And the like.”

“Sorry,” he sighed, his shoulders drooping further. “Can’t help you out. Fleischmann is tightening the terms of the loan.”

“Ah,” Benchley said. “That’s not good news.”

Ross shook his head. He spoke as though talking to himself. “Starting up a magazine is damned expensive! I never realized the amount of the investment involved. The money is just running through my fingers. You need money for putting down deposits for paper at the printer. For creating promotional mailers to send to advertisers. For purchasing a mailing list to find initial subscribers, and then for printing up a notice to send to them, plus the postage on top of that. Then there are the day-to-day expenses. Leasing the office. Buying desks and typewriters and office supplies. Installing telephone service—”

“Again, sorry to hear that,” Dorothy said. She did feel bad for him. But she also didn’t want to make this lousy trip out to Rikers Island for nothing. “We understand you’re stretched. But could you at least help us out a little?”

Ross shook his head again. Then he looked at them directly for the first time. “Matter of fact, I’m glad that you’re here. I wanted to talk to you. I have to reduce the fee for the article. Instead of five hundred, I can only offer you four hundred.” He turned back to watch the game. “You can shorten the article accordingly. It’s not like we need a helluva lot of editorial pages to balance out the few ad pages. This goddamn magazine—” He cursed loudly. “Damn! It went right down the toilet.”

“What?” Dorothy and Benchley said together.

“Harpo’s croquet ball.” Ross pointed toward the field. “Just went down an old toilet.”

“Oh, right,” she muttered softly. “I know exactly how it feels.”

T
hat afternoon, Dorothy waited on East Twenty-fifth Street with her dog, Woodrow Wilson, a bat-eared, bug-eyed Boston terrier. They loitered in front of an ancient limestone office building—a narrow, grim, dark and dreary old mausoleum of a place.
Like something out of a Dickens novel,
Dorothy thought. She looked up at it. On the grimy, sooty windows of the third floor was painted in peeling gold-leaf letters: ABRAHAM SNATH, ESQ.: ATTORNEY/ARTIST’S AGENT/ART DEALER/NOTARY PUBLIC.

“And pants pressed while you wait,” Dorothy said aloud. The dog looked up at her quizzically.

That morning, as she and Benchley had left the city dump of Rikers Island and took the hired boat back to Manhattan, they realized they had only one option left—they’d better get their article written and done with before Ross cut the fee any further.

They also realized they stank like sweaty fishmongers. So Dorothy went back to her apartment at the Algonquin, and Benchley took the train back to his home in the suburbs, to clean up and change clothes.

She was frustrated. She felt thwarted by the situation with the article. With Harold Ross. With Tony Soma—and his wife and son. With Ernie MacGuffin. With the whole damn lot of them!

But right now, she was annoyed at Benchley the most. He had to take the train all the way back to Scarsdale. For what? To get a bath and put on a new suit? Couldn’t he do that in the city?

She had to admit to herself (and not for the first time) that she didn’t like having to share him.

Why is it,
Dorothy thought yet again,
that when you’re denied something, you only want it more?

But how absurd! She knew she was being unreasonable.
Share him?
Benchley was a faithfully married man. She was a single woman. He simply wasn’t hers to share. The pleasure of his company was all she could ask for. And frankly, that was all she needed.

Woodrow Wilson tugged on his leash. A slim young woman with a peroxide blond permanent wave and a short, tight blue skirt approached Dorothy and the dog. Woody wagged his little tail; his wide-set eyes bulged even more and his bat-like ears perked up.

You horny little pervert,
Dorothy thought, looking at the dog.
Just like a man.

“Cute pooch,” the woman said as she handed Dorothy a flyer and kept walking. Dorothy didn’t look at the leaflet; she turned and watched the woman saunter away. Dorothy had an instant, and admittedly unfounded, dislike for the voluptuous blonde. Every man who walked by the woman gave her a good look up and down. She handed a flyer to each of them. Dorothy saw Benchley coming. He tipped his hat at the woman but didn’t ogle her. He hardly gave her a second glance. Instead, he looked at the paper she handed him.

Damn that Benchley. Just when she was getting good and ready to be angry at him, he had to act like a gentleman.

Now Woody wagged his tail as Benchley approached. Benchley scratched him behind the ears. “And how is President Wilson today?”

“He refuses to take a leak,” Dorothy said. “I don’t know how he can hold it so long.”

“Well, some tasks simply cannot be rushed.” Then he spoke excitedly, holding up the flyer. “Did you see this?”

“No. What is it?”

“Look at it. It’s a leaflet for that séance—the one for Ernie MacGuffin.”

Dorothy looked at the cheaply printed handout. It pictured a crude line drawing of the platinum blonde herself seated at a small table in a darkened room. Her eyes were closed in rapture, her arms extended upward. A spectral face, shadowed in smoke, floated in the air above her.

Dorothy read aloud: “‘Mistress Viola Sweet—Spiritualist, Mentalist, Clairvoyant, Interlocutor of Paranormal Manifestation—conjures the voice from beyond the grave: famed artiste and victim of suicide, Ernest MacGuffin. October 31, Halloween night, eight o’clock and again at twelve midnight. Arrive early—only a few true believers will be permitted inside. Donations gladly accepted.’ ”

“That was her!” Benchley said. “Mistress Viola.”

“More like Lady Godiva,” Dorothy muttered. “She looks like a showgirl, not a spiritualist.”

Benchley checked his watch. “Well, we can discuss it later. We’re late for our meeting with this lawyer fellow.”

 

Dorothy and Benchley, with Woodrow Wilson in the lead, ducked inside the old limestone building, then up two flights of once-grand but now well-worn stairs, and found the lawyer’s office. No one sat behind the secretary’s desk in the musty, poorly lit waiting room.

Heavy double doors led to the lawyer’s office. One was partially opened. Inside, they could see a large figure moving about.

“Yes?” the man called. His voice was deep, resonant— and impatient. “Are you here from the secretarial agency? You’re late.”

Benchley pushed open the creaky door and stepped aside for Dorothy to enter. She paused at the doorway and looked around the large, high-ceilinged office. Woody cowered at her feet. Unframed paintings were everywhere. Some two dozen canvases of different sizes were stacked against the tall bookcases lining the walls. Another dozen stood on the floor leaning against the lawyer’s massive, old-fashioned mahogany desk. More canvases filled the old crimson velvet chairs, and even more were piled on a wide wooden table beneath the large soot-stained windows.

“I said, you’re late,” the man snapped.

For the moment, she ignored him and continued to look around at the paintings. Some pictured scenes fit for pulp magazines—cowboys, gangsters, women in danger. But others were simpler, more artistic, more conceptual—like the one Ernie MacGuffin left on the Brooklyn Bridge.

Did MacGuffin leave all these paintings behind? she wondered. Surely, they couldn’t
all
be his?

The lawyer suddenly stalked toward her and towered over her. He was tall and imposing and wore an expensive, well-cut black suit over his large frame. His salt-and-pepper hair was slicked back above menacing black eyebrows. His long, thin nose tapered down toward a chin so narrow and pointed, you could use it to chip ice, Dorothy thought. And from his demeanor, maybe that was exactly what he did, she thought.

The man inhaled deeply through large nostrils, panting like a bull in a bullring. “You expect to work for me, yet you show no respect for punctuality? You bring a mangy mongrel with you into a professional office? And you call yourself a secretary?”

“No,” Dorothy said quietly. “I don’t.”

“You
what
?” The lawyer’s face screwed up in indignation. “The impertinence—!”

“I’m not from a secretarial agency,” she said calmly. “We’re journalists. From
Vanity Fair
. We called earlier and made an appointment?”

His demeanor changed immediately. His vicious stare softened. His scowl transformed to a wide, solicitous grin.

“My humblest apologies.” His deep voice was now a purr instead of a growl. “I beg your pardon. Yet another secretary quit, at the busiest of times. What gets into these infernal young women?” He swooped away behind his desk, amazingly light and agile for so large a man. “Abraham Snath, Esquire, at your service,” he said with a nod and a dramatic sweep of his hand.

Dorothy and Benchley introduced themselves.

Snath said eagerly, “Journalists, you say? Well, well, I gather you want to know about the auction, then?”

“Auction?” Dorothy said.

“Of Mr. MacGuffin’s works. A very prestigious affair, I assure you. Exactly the kind of event the readers of—
Vanity Fair
, was it? Exactly the kind of event your affluent and discriminating readers will want to attend.”

“Actually,” Benchley said, “that’s not why we’re here—”

Snath bristled. “It’s not?”

His moods change faster than a traffic light,
Dorothy thought. She spoke quickly. “What Mr. Benchley means is that we’re here to ask you about Ernie MacGuffin—for a story
to accompany
a notice about your auction.”