SomeDieYoung
JAMES DUFF
Some Die Young
Copyright © 1956 by James Duff.
Published by Wildside Press LLC
1
HE TOTTERED ON HIS SHORT LEGS, FALLING into the empty chair. His right hand grasped the half-empty bottle with a desperate fierceness. His eyes stared at me, unseeing, and his left hand made a half-hearted attempt at straightening the sparse grayness of his hair. Dribble moved out of the corner of his mouth and he laughed, a coarse, unhappy sound.
“Daddy!”
The voice came from the darkened hallway beyond the open door. I turned, trying to see her, catching only the long white nakedness of her legs.
“Daddy,” she said, “I told you not to come into this room. Please, Daddy.”
The old man somehow pushed himself erect. His chest pouted out for one brief moment, then returned to its original position above his protruding stomach. He looked at the bottle, at me, at the sound of the voice; he mumbled something unintelligible and moved across the room, stumbling, making the doorway, disappearing.
She came through the doorway then, and I got to my feet. She was a little older than she appeared to be on the screen, but, still and all, she was positively the most shockingly beautiful woman I had even seen. The sun-suit was much too brief for my comfort.
“You must excuse Daddy, Mr. Phelan,” she said. She paused. “You are Mr. Phelan?”
I nodded. The Filipino servant had let me in.
She sat down opposite me, crossing her legs. She seemed to fit in perfectly with the room, which was a strange mixture of period and modern. I noticed the beginnings of wrinkles of fat high on her thighs and felt embarrassed; I had found a flaw in what had been termed the perfect woman.
“I hope you don’t think too ill of me, Mr. Phelan. Daddy is a hopeless lush. I tried, for some years, to have him cured. Several institutions, a lot of money.” Her words came out in a sing-song manner, drifting over me. Her blue-gray eyes swept my face and she smiled. It was that famous smile. “Now,” she went on, “I just let him drink. It’s all he wants to do. It will kill him, eventually, but he’ll die happy. I can’t give him any more than that.”
I said, “I’m not a nurse-maid for drunks, Miss Harding.”
Someone laughed outside the house and I heard the distant splash of a body hitting water. Claire Harding gave me the benefit of a second smile.
“I hope that doesn’t disturb you,” she said. “Just some week-end guests. I don’t swim myself, but my guests always enjoy the pool.”
“That’s understandable.”
“You don’t look like a private detective, Mr. Phelan. Horn-rimmed glasses, a moustache. Definitely not the Bogart type.”
“I’m bigger than he is,” I said.
She rose to her feet. “A drink?”
I thought of the old man. “No,” I said.
“I didn’t call you about Daddy, Mr. Phelan. I gave up on him long ago. It’s—” she paused, for the first time losing some of her regal air—“it’s about another matter entirely. Quite an important matter.”
“Importance is a matter of relativity, Miss Harding. What’s important to you might not be so important to me.”
She gave me a studied stare. “Come with me,” she said. “I have something to show you. Or rather, someone.”
I followed her across the room, and it was quite a hike. She paused at the wide, heavily curtained windows, standing back just far enough not to be visible from the outside. Her hand touched my arm, holding me.
I looked out through a small pencil of sunshine. There was a group of some ten or twelve people about a heart-shaped swimming pool. Two men with a lot of muscles and a lot of hair were in the water, bouncing a rubber ball back and forth between them. A stunningly beautiful brunette, very young and very appealing in a too-brief swim suit, stood on the diving board, her pose purposeful. She did a slow pivot, turning to walk off the diving board; she paused beautifully by the pool-side, then walked slowly across to sit beside a short, fat, bald-headed man.
“If that’s what is troubling you,” I said, “I can see your problem.”
Claire Harding turned to look at me. Anger crossed her face and left it. She didn’t like to be compared with other women, especially young ones.
“That, as you so aptly put it, Mr. Phelan, is not my problem. She’s just a young slut. She has no talent.”
“I could argue that point with you.”
“Mr. Phelan—” her voice was caustic—“I don’t want to play word games with you. If you want this job, you’ll please pay attention.”
I felt properly reprimanded.
She turned back. “See that man?” she pointed with her hand and I sighted over the bright of her nails a broad-shouldered, dark-skinned man sitting beside the pool, his feet dangling in the water. “That’s my problem.”
The man’s face was vaguely familiar to me. I tried to place it in my memory, but failed.
“That is my husband, Mr. Phelan. Harrison Woodward. You’ve undoubtedly heard of him?”
I placed him then. “Of course,” I said,
“I thought so.”
We made the long hike back across the room, resuming our sitting positions. She lit a cigarette, not offering me one. I would have enjoyed turning it down.
“Harrison is in some kind of trouble, Mr. Phelan,” she said. “I’m not sure just what kind it is. But he hasn’t been himself lately.”
“You want me to find out what that trouble is?”
“That’s right.”
“Sounds simple enough.”
“You come very highly recommended, Mr. Phelan. I’ve been told you’re very discreet. I hope you can remain so.”
“For fifty dollars a day,” I said, “I can be the soul of discretion.”
“I see.” She laughed, suddenly, and with a good deal of force. “I once played in a private-eye movie, Mr. Phelan. It was years ago. I didn’t think, then, that I would evei be consulting one in real life.”
“Private eyes, as you call them, Miss Harding, are necessary evils.”
“I guess they are.”
I thought back to the last movie I had seen her in. She had been an Egyptian princess, or something like that; she was getting a little old for that type of role.
“Could it be woman trouble, Miss Harding?”
Again anger touched her face; this time it was replaced by an unnatural smile.
“Really, Mr. Phelan, let’s not be naive. This is Hollywood, the land of the divorce. Marriages here are not quite as important as they are in—let’s say, Sioux City. Harrison is my fourth husband. If he chooses to play around a little on the side, no harm is done.”
“And you?”
The question seemed to startle her. She tapped a long finger against a naked knee. She moved the finger away; but I kept my eyes on the knee.
“My morals are my own, Mr. Phelan.”
“I guess