loud and obnoxious voice would have carried like a bad smell in a small room.
“Well,” he said. “It’s Mallory. The asshole.”
He wasn’t a big man, at least not tall; maybe five-eight. He had a beer belly and a goatee in which flecks of his last half-dozen meals hung on like bad memories. His hair was a washed-out, colorless red and thinning, and his nose was roadmapped darker red. His eyes were little dark beady things that looked out from under bushy eyebrows like bugs hiding under weeds. His thick upper lip curled up under the mustache part of the goatee and revealed teeth as yellow as the sun, but not shining.
“I love you, too, Gorman.”
He poked a thumb at a chest ensconced in a pale green sweater polka-dotted with vague foodstains and strained to the point of looking threadbare over the protruding belly; one of the collars of the paisley shirt beneath the sweater poked out like a knife, the other was tucked in. For a guy worth half a million easy, he was hardly a page out of
GQ
.
“Anytime you want a piece of me, say the word, asshole. We can step outside now, if you like.”
“All right,” I said.
He just stood there behind his table with a nervous, fallen expression, trying to figure out what to do since I’d called his bluff.
Then he grinned, lamely. “You’d fall for anything, Mallory. You’re that big a sucker.”
“Oh. I get it. You were just kidding. You don’t want to go outside and beat me up.”
“I got better things to do.”
“Like swindle people?” I said.
He bristled. “That’s a serious accusation, asshole. You... you better be able to back that up.”
I looked at Kathy, whose presence Gorman hadn’t yet acknowledged despite her being the editor of one of his publications, and said, “You want to hear why the king of Publisher’s Row, here, doesn’t like me?”
Caught between me and her boss, Kathy just looked blank, managing to swallow once, but not to say anything.
I went ahead: “There was an old mystery writer named Raoul Wheeler. He wasn’t the greatest mystery writer in the world, but he did a series of short stories back in the ’40s about a character who was the forerunner of James Bond. Erik Flayr, a secret service man who battled larger-than-life villains.”
Kathy was nodding; she’d heard of Wheeler and his creation.
Despite her knowing most of this, I wanted to say it all; some people were gathering, and not all of them knew the Raoul Wheeler story.
“Wheeler was one of those writers like Carroll John Daly who are historically important, mentioned in all the reference books and such, but who didn’t
really
make it. The Flayr character had a brief period of popularity in the pulps, and Columbia Pictures even made a serial about him; but that was it for Wheeler—his moment of glory. Then came the James Bond boom in the ’60s and some of the mystery-fiction historians remembered Wheeler’s work and started dropping his name. But none of Wheeler’s Eric Flayr stuff got brought back in print, during the Bond boom, because Wheeler had never done Flayr novels, just short stories, and publishers of paperbacks like to do novels, not short-story collections....”
The rest of Gorman’s face was gradually turning to the same shade of red as his nose.
“Wheeler finished out his career writing soft-core porn and confession-magazine stuff, never amounting to much... but he had a certain pride in Eric Flayr. He lived in Clinton, Iowa, Wheeler did, near me. I heard he was living there and I drove up to meet him. He lived in a two-room flat and he was ill—dying of cancer, in fact. A frail little man with a mustache. Skinny. But he was a nice old guy, with lots of stories about people he met in the pulp days—Hammett, Chandler, Daly, Fred Nebel, Frank Gruber, all those guys—and he had a complete collection of the
Thrilling Detective Adventure
pulps with his Eric Flayr stories in them. One afternoon, he gave them to me. A gift. A
“Well,” he said. “It’s Mallory. The asshole.”
He wasn’t a big man, at least not tall; maybe five-eight. He had a beer belly and a goatee in which flecks of his last half-dozen meals hung on like bad memories. His hair was a washed-out, colorless red and thinning, and his nose was roadmapped darker red. His eyes were little dark beady things that looked out from under bushy eyebrows like bugs hiding under weeds. His thick upper lip curled up under the mustache part of the goatee and revealed teeth as yellow as the sun, but not shining.
“I love you, too, Gorman.”
He poked a thumb at a chest ensconced in a pale green sweater polka-dotted with vague foodstains and strained to the point of looking threadbare over the protruding belly; one of the collars of the paisley shirt beneath the sweater poked out like a knife, the other was tucked in. For a guy worth half a million easy, he was hardly a page out of
GQ
.
“Anytime you want a piece of me, say the word, asshole. We can step outside now, if you like.”
“All right,” I said.
He just stood there behind his table with a nervous, fallen expression, trying to figure out what to do since I’d called his bluff.
Then he grinned, lamely. “You’d fall for anything, Mallory. You’re that big a sucker.”
“Oh. I get it. You were just kidding. You don’t want to go outside and beat me up.”
“I got better things to do.”
“Like swindle people?” I said.
He bristled. “That’s a serious accusation, asshole. You... you better be able to back that up.”
I looked at Kathy, whose presence Gorman hadn’t yet acknowledged despite her being the editor of one of his publications, and said, “You want to hear why the king of Publisher’s Row, here, doesn’t like me?”
Caught between me and her boss, Kathy just looked blank, managing to swallow once, but not to say anything.
I went ahead: “There was an old mystery writer named Raoul Wheeler. He wasn’t the greatest mystery writer in the world, but he did a series of short stories back in the ’40s about a character who was the forerunner of James Bond. Erik Flayr, a secret service man who battled larger-than-life villains.”
Kathy was nodding; she’d heard of Wheeler and his creation.
Despite her knowing most of this, I wanted to say it all; some people were gathering, and not all of them knew the Raoul Wheeler story.
“Wheeler was one of those writers like Carroll John Daly who are historically important, mentioned in all the reference books and such, but who didn’t
really
make it. The Flayr character had a brief period of popularity in the pulps, and Columbia Pictures even made a serial about him; but that was it for Wheeler—his moment of glory. Then came the James Bond boom in the ’60s and some of the mystery-fiction historians remembered Wheeler’s work and started dropping his name. But none of Wheeler’s Eric Flayr stuff got brought back in print, during the Bond boom, because Wheeler had never done Flayr novels, just short stories, and publishers of paperbacks like to do novels, not short-story collections....”
The rest of Gorman’s face was gradually turning to the same shade of red as his nose.
“Wheeler finished out his career writing soft-core porn and confession-magazine stuff, never amounting to much... but he had a certain pride in Eric Flayr. He lived in Clinton, Iowa, Wheeler did, near me. I heard he was living there and I drove up to meet him. He lived in a two-room flat and he was ill—dying of cancer, in fact. A frail little man with a mustache. Skinny. But he was a nice old guy, with lots of stories about people he met in the pulp days—Hammett, Chandler, Daly, Fred Nebel, Frank Gruber, all those guys—and he had a complete collection of the
Thrilling Detective Adventure
pulps with his Eric Flayr stories in them. One afternoon, he gave them to me. A gift. A
Similar Books
