Recipe for Homicide, page 3
“Mr. Evans suggested I talk to you, Miss Wall.”
“Oh, Gil, stop! How long are you going to keep up this—damned nonsense?”
“It’s never nonsense to show respect for the boss,” Gilmore said.
Barbara laughed. It was a pleasant, genuine laugh. She laughed with her white teeth, the corners of her amber-colored eyes, her slim shoulders. She was still damned good to look at, Gilmore reflected, when she was herself. If you analyzed her features one by one, you might decide she was far from beautiful. But the ensemble was irresistibly attractive. She radiated a sort of upswept fascination—an upswept, honey-gold hair-do, upswept eyebrows (without benefit of tweezers or pencil), a smile, as the laugh subsided, that was always (perhaps a little consciously) upswept at the corners, and a nose that was upswept (just a trifle, a little roguishly) at the end.
Gilmore quickly, ostentatiously and at great length lighted a cigarette as though to dispel the whiff of bitter-sweet nostalgia that swept up from the years like the scent of autumn smoke.
“I didn’t think your memo to Mr. Evans was very respectful,” Barbara said. “What’s wrong with my field-rations stunt?”
“I didn’t know you were my boss when I wrote that memo,” Gilmore replied. “But I’d have written it anyhow. I’ve got great respect for the United States Army, even though it is struggling along without Gilmore these days. I don’t like the idea of the Army being used as a singing commercial, so to speak, and my guess is that the Army is going to resent it, too.”
“We all love the Army, Gil. But the Army is one thing and the brass hats are another. I’ve never seen a brass hat yet who wouldn’t stand on his head to get his picture in the paper.”
“You won’t get any brass to come over here to open a can of field rations,” Gilmore said. “At best, you’ll get a lieutenant colonel from the nearest supply depot. He won’t even make the wire services. You’ll be lucky to get a two-column cut in the local press, and we don’t have to sell soup in Northbank.”
“You’re wrong, Gil,” Barbara’s voice showed a trace of annoyance. “I’ll get at least a three-star general from G-4. I’ve got a long-distance call in for Washington right now.”
“Nuts!” said Gilmore. “And if the Army regrets?”
“The Army won’t. But just in case, I’ve a few ideas in reserve, something the Home Economics people can work on.”
The phone rang. “Put the General on,” Barbara said. “Oh, hello, General.… Oh, you have…? I see.… Well, as a matter of fact, I don’t see, but if you—Oh, yes. Well, I think you’re making a mistake, General, but if that’s your decision.… Thanks, anyhow, General. Goodbye.”
She replaced the instrument with a stroke that would have decapitated a spring lamb. The light in her amber eyes hardened, like red-hot rivet-heads cooling.
“Trouble?” Gilmore asked sweetly.
“You work fast, Gil. Who’s your lobbyist in Washington?”
“I work direct. It’s amazing what you can do with a few deep-frozen minks. So the Army won’t play?”
“The Army has reconsidered. The Army now thinks that calling attention to the shipment of military supplies may indicate their destination and thereby give aid and comfort to a potential enemy. Go ahead and gloat.”
“I’m not even going to say I told you so.”
Barbara smiled thoughtfully. “We’ll go ahead with the other idea,” she said. “We’ll glamorize the combat rations for the American housewife—the wives and mothers of G.I.’s. We’ll—”
“You’ll—what?” demanded Gilmore.
“You heard me,” Barbara said. “And don’t be a case of arrested development. Don’t think of rations in terms of the stuff that used to gag you while you were winning the last war. This isn’t C-rations or K-rations. Bart Remington is very proud of our product. He says Papa Lenormand and his crew have turned out a field ration that actually tastes like food.” Barbara paused for breath, but not for long. She resumed quickly. “Your friend Peggy Bayleaves could dress the stuff up with a sauce made from one of our onion soups or something. I can plant the recipe with any one of seven newspaper syndicates. Will you talk to Peggy about it?”
“To Peggy? Why me?”
“Aren’t you in love with her? Oh, I’m sorry, Gil. I’m not keeping up with things, am I? It’s the Carrot Queen now, isn’t it?”
Gilmore glared. He knew exactly what Barbara wanted him to say—expected him to say, probably. So instead he laughed and said: “Barbara, your dope is old—fourteen hours old. You know I can’t be faithful to any woman for that long. You’re two names behind. But I’ll speak to Peggy anyhow, if you want me to.”
Barbara was not amused. She didn’t even smile. “You hate me still, don’t you, Gil?”
“I don’t have time for that sort of thing. I have to keep my mind on serious things—or I’ll get fired. That would even us up, wouldn’t it, Barbara? That’s why you came to Northbank, isn’t it?”
Barbara’s prim, self-confident little mouth dissolved into a distressed moue—so convincing that for a moment Gilmore was sorry he had baited her.
“Gil, we’ve got things to talk about, you and I. When can we talk?”
“Now.”
“I mean privately—and at leisure. Dinner tonight?”
“Can’t,” Gilmore said. “I’m tied up.”
“Tomorrow night?”
“I’ve got a date tomorrow,” Gilmore lied.
“Soon, though. It’s important, Gil.”
“Soon,” Gilmore agreed. “As soon as we acknowledge the debt of the U.S. Army to Barzac. We’ll celebrate.”
“Gil!”
The door slammed as Gilmore hurried away, taking great care not to be tripped up by his better self, a simple guy who might have wanted to put his arms around Barbara.
The important engagement which prevented Gilmore from dining with Barbara that night was at the ringside of the Northbank Sporting Club weekly fights, to watch Kid Mozart knock out Tony Spumante. The city editor of the Tribune had gone to college with Gilmore and always gave him seats behind the press box. Gilmore usually took his dentist, his liquor dealer, or someone else not connected with Barzac soup.
It was a dull evening. None of the preliminaries went the full distance, and the main event was a listless minuet in which the loser eagerly took a dive in the fourth round. So Gilmore got home much earlier than he expected.
He was greatly surprised and not at all pleased to find George Bayliss in his garage.
Gilmore had cut his ignition to roll the last few feet up the driveway when he saw Bayliss backed against the rear wall, spread-eagled in the glare of the headlights. He set his brakes and shouted automatically: “Bayliss!”
Bayliss’s reaction was that of a marionette with an electric fan amok in the guide-strings. He had always been surpris-ingly nervous, superficially, for a man with such a calm, deliberate, methodically devious brain. He did a brief, mad, disjointed dance to get out of the light. He hadn’t changed, Gilmore reflected, since the last time he had seen him—or since the first time, which was ten years ago. He was still the wiry, dark, intense, ageless young man with sharp features and cynical, piercing eyes.
Gilmore reached out and grabbed Bayliss’s arm as he tried to sneak past. “What’s your hurry, George?”
“Oh hello, Gil.” Bayliss pirouetted gracefully. “I wasn’t sure it was you. He arched his free arm into the car and switched off the lights.
“Hey!” Gilmore protested.
“No lights,” Bayliss muttered, “and no noise. You’re in trouble, Gil.”
Gilmore sighed. “How much do you need this time?”
“Real trouble,” Bayliss insisted. There was no banter in his voice. “Didn’t you get my message?”
“Oh, that. As a matter of fact I did, but Peggy wasn’t expecting you down until tomorrow night. Was she surprised?”
Gilmore was still holding Bayliss’s arm. He thought he felt a tremor run through it.
“Peggy doesn’t know I’m here,” Bayliss said. “Do me a favor and don’t tell her. Okay?”
“Why?” Gilmore asked.
“Because I’m going back to Chicago on the midnight plane, and I’ll be back again, officially, tomorrow night. I just sneaked down tonight to make sure you were filled in about Zina, and I—Well, I don’t want Peggy to know I’m here.”
“I see.” Gilmore didn’t believe a word of it. It was not like Bayliss to fly several hundred miles on a purely altruistic mission of warning. He was probably after something. The book, probably. “What about Zina?”
“When did you see her last?”
Gilmore frowned into the darkness, trying to remember what Zina had been like. It was hard to realize that she had once been his wife. He remembered vividly the first time he saw her dancing in a North African café, but the wife image was dim and blurred.…
“I haven’t seen her in several years,” Gilmore said.
“But you’ve heard from her recently, haven’t you?”
“Not since her Reno lawyer sent me the papers.”
“You’ll be hearing,” Bayliss said. “She’s going to testify before that Senate committee next week. It puts you in a three-way jam. You can start worrying.”
Gilmore couldn’t see how this brief, quixotic marriage to a Moroccan dancer of vaguely European ancestry could be a menace either to the national security or his own peace of mind. He said so.
Bayliss laughed unpleasantly. “Some people don’t want Zina to testify,” he said. “They think you’re hiding her.”
“I’m not.” Gilmore thought, I’ll bet you know where she is.
“They also think you’re hiding the book. You remember the book I asked you to bring home to Zina from Paris. Remember Émile?”
Gilmore remembered Émile. He had wondered at the time what interest Zina could have in Rousseau’s novelized treatise on progressive education. He wondered now what had suddenly aroused the interest of the U.S. Senate in the book. Perhaps some Senator had just discovered that Émile had been burned in Paris in 1762.…
“What’s wrong with Émile, after all this time?”
“It’s hot. That’s why I came down from Chicago tonight—to make sure you’d get rid of the book. After all, I got you into this, so I feel some responsibility for keeping you alive.”
“Why pick on me? I delivered Émile to Zina according to instructions—before we were married.”
“Zina didn’t turn it over to the people who were expecting it. Maybe she told them you never gave it to her. They want it.”
“Why?”
“My God, Gil, do I have to draw diagrams?”
“Why, sure. That hot-rod mind of yours always lost me on the turns.”
“Look,” Bayliss said impatiently. “You know as well as I do that Zina never heard of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. But that copy of Émile you brought her has numbers written on the flyleaves in invisible ink. The numbers mean pages, lines, words, and letters. Once you have the key, the book is a sort of directive and organizational chart combined. The code has been changed since, of course, but the names are the same. Evidence like that can’t be picked to pieces like some ex-Commie trying to get right with the world and his conscience. So don’t get caught with it, Gil.”
Gilmore lit a cigarette. He held the match longer than necessary because he wanted to watch Bayliss’s face as he asked:
“Suppose I had the book—which I don’t—what would you want me to do with it? Turn it over to you?”
Bayliss’s deep-set eyes gave back the wavering yellow light of the flame. His expression did not change. When the match went out, he said:
“Get rid of it, that’s all. Bum it. Flush it down the drain, page by page. Destroy it.”
“Why not turn it over to the F.B.I.?”
“Are you nuts? Stay out of this thing. You’ve got a good job at Barzac. Keep it. And keep your nose clean. Zina’s going to testify under her maiden name, so you have a good chance to staying out of things. Don’t dive in headfirst. That’s what I came down to tell you.”
“Thanks,” Gilmore said. He reflected that he was usually thanking Bayliss for getting him out of something he would never have got into originally without Bayliss.
“Well,” Bayliss said, “since I gotta go, I go. But let’s keep Peggy out of this, too. You did promise not to tell Peggy about my side-trip tonight, didn’t you?”
“I didn’t,” Gilmore said. “But I will. Can I drive you to the airport?”
“Don’t be a fool, Gil. You haven’t even seen me in two years. Carry on, guy.”
Gilmore listened to the gravel of the driveway crunching under Bayliss’s retreating steps. He sat for a long time without moving. A cloud of doubts, unanswered questions, and half-remembered thoughts swarmed up out of the past. What was Bayliss really doing in Northbank? What, as a matter of fact, had he been doing in Chicago since Peggy had left him? Had he really come down without telling Peggy? Did his dire predictions about Zina and Émile have any basis in fact?
One of Bayliss’s statements, at least, was entirely true: Zina had indeed sent back her copy of Émile. Apparently she had kept track of Gilmore’s whereabouts; she had mailed the book to the Barzac plant scarcely a month ago. Barbara Wall had been in his office when the package arrived. Barbara knew Zina and was aware of the part the book had played in Gilmore’s rapid roundtrip excursion into matrimony, so after making appropriately sarcastic remarks, she took the book home with her “to try to discover what strange and potent aphrodisiac qualities Rousseau had hidden away in Émile.” She had not returned it.
Well, that much was fine. He could think of no better hiding place for Émile—if the book was really hot—than Barbara’s apartment. As long as the story did not break in the newspapers—if it would ever break—she need never know she was sitting on a time-bomb. He wouldn’t say anything to her for a few days, anyhow. He’d wait at least for the outcome of Peggy’s interview with Bayliss.
Bayliss! Gilmore wished futilely that he’d never known Bayliss. If Bayliss had not sat next to him in English III … but he had, and moreover he had volunteered to ghost-write an overdue theme without which Gilmore would have flunked the course and been kicked off the football team. Gilmore had turned in the Bayliss opus without even reading it—a major error, because the instructor commented privately on the theme to its putative author.
“Excellent piece of work, Gilmore. If anyone else had written it, I should be tempted to say that it was … well, perhaps somewhat derivative. But of course I could hardly suspect a varsity halfback of being familiar enough with Thorstein Veblen to have—” The sentence had ended in such a knowing, accusing smile that Gilmore immediately got Bayliss to introduce him to Veblen, waded through everything the man had ever written, and, once the football season was over, wrote an exhaustive critique of Veblen on the leisure class and craftsmanship that was even more brilliant than Bayliss’s warmedover piece of ghostmanship.
The experience taught Gilmore that he really liked putting words on paper and that consequently he wrote well.
When he graduated, Gilmore was offered a fat job playing professional football with a major-league team. So he went to work as an underpaid reporter for a minor-league newspaper.
Then the President of the United States sent Greetings, two thin gold shoulder bars emerged from the heat and dust of the Great American Desert where the armored divisions were being created, and Second Lieutenant Robert Gilmore landed in North Africa as a minuscule part of Patton’s brave new tank command. Three weeks later he was transferred to the Psychological Warfare Branch.
He wrote surrender leaflets in the forward area until the Tunisian campaign bogged down. Then he was brought back to Algiers to write radio broadcasts. It was in Algiers, one night during the blackout, that George Bayliss came back into his life.
Sergeant Bayliss found Gilmore in the bar of the Comouailles, assuming correctly that he would find his old friend in the usual PWB watering place. What about a night out in the Kasbah?
The Kasbah, being off-limits to the armed forces, was of course a challenge to Gilmore. He even refused to borrow civilian clothes—whereupon Bayliss had parked him behind a bottle of Algerian wine in a smelly little café while he went off in search of a burnous to hide Gilmore’s uniform.
Gilmore had just had time to note that the Moroccan dancer who was performing had the biggest eyes and whitest teeth that he had ever seen; that she was so homely that she was fascinating; and that she had a superb body that was excitingly expressive. Then the lights went out and somebody banged Gilmore on the head.
When he came to, the café was still dark, but a candle was burning beside an overturned chair. The place was deserted except for the dancer (her name was Zina, Gilmore learned while she was putting cold water on his head, and she was a Loyalist refugee from Spanish Morocco). Gilmore was sitting on the floor in his underwear. He was drinking the Mascara brandy Zina brought him when Bayliss returned with the burnous.
“Of all the damned fools!” Bayliss had said. “Don’t you know that some people around here will pay a thousand dollars for a G.I. uniform and identity papers? I suppose they got your A.G.O. card and your dog tags, too?”
Thev had.
Bayliss tossed the burnous to Gilmore. “Put this on, and pull the hood forward to hide your face. Stay here with Zina until I come back. I’ve got to find your stuff.”
Bayliss, apparently, knew his way around Algiers. He was back in half an hour with Gilmore’s uniform and the identity pieces.
So naturally, when Bavliss came around to the Rue Pierre-Charron in Paris several years later and asked Gilmore to do him a small favor, Gilmore couldn’t very well refuse.
He took the book to New York to give to Zina.
It was some months before Zina turned up in New York to claim it—long enough for Gilmore to get out of the Army and into an advertising agency in which his PWB major had been—and was again—a senior account executive. Gilmore was a junior executive who thought he was falling in love with a copywriter named Barbara Wall when he learned that Zina was dancing in a honkytonk in Fifty-second Street.
