Too Soon Dead Read Online Free Page B

are written. The six Helbine Houses, where a down-and-out citizen can get a good meal, a shower, and a place to sleep for a dime, and if he doesn’t have a dime he can wash dishes, are models of philanthropic endeavor.
    The woman, Suzie Frienard, was an attractive blonde who had not yet seen her fortieth summer and looked even younger. Were it not for the extreme youth and vitality of her partner, one might have thought she was just one of the girls. From the view of her charms in the photographs, I certainly wouldn’t kick her out of bed. Her husband, Dominic Frienard, was a major contractor in the New York City area. It would be hard to walk more than ten blocks in any direction without walking over or past Frienard-poured concrete.
    The last person on the list, Stepney Partcher, was the senior partner of Partcher, Meedle and Coster, a very political law firm. The file had little about him, since the firm employed a public relations expert to keep all of their names out of the papers. What these six people had in common, besides wealth and a presumably inadvertent appearance in smutty photographs, was not revealed in their files.
    The staccato sound of Brass pounding the keys of his Underwood wafted its way through the door of my little office. Can sound waft? Well, I guess it can now. We novelists bring life and vigor into language. Can I call myself a novelist when I haven’t been published? Can I call myself a novelist when I haven’t yet finished a novel?
    Brass spent a long time every day staring at a blank sheet of paper, but when he actually started typing it usually went pretty fast. When he was done he’d let it sit for an hour or two, and go over it with a blue pencil, and give it to Gloria to make sure it didn’t contradict any obvious facts or natural laws, or anything he’d written previously. Gloria has an eidetic memory, which means that she never forgets anything she sees or hears, as though her other attributes weren’t frightening enough. Then she passes it to me to type a final draft to send down to editorial.
    Brass claimed not to be a perfectionist, and he affected a low regard for his own prose, but he regularly achieved the sort of subtle turn of phrase that would sneak up on the reader and whack him on the back of the head when he wasn’t looking. Brass’s description of Senator Burnside as having “delusions of adequacy” got Brass denounced on the Senate floor. I particularly admired his recent description of singer Bessie Elliot as wearing a red silk dress that was “just too tight enough.”
    While Brass typed I concentrated on sorting through the mail. The letters fell into about six standard categories as well as “too nutty to deal with” and “the boss better see this one.” It all got answered except a portion of “too nutty to deal with,” which was too nutty to answer. The six standard categories would receive versions of six standard but personalized form letters.
    My favorites were the letters from convicted criminals explaining, usually voluminously and in pencil, why they were innocent. Brass was one of the six members of the Second Chance Club, a group that worked to free people wrongly convicted of major crimes. The only problem was that everyone whose freedom had been curtailed by the court thought himself innocent, and wrote to Brass to prove it.
    Gloria and I shared the pleasure of typing the replies to the rest of the mail. When the backlog got too big, Brass would get one of the city-desk reporters who needed some extra money—and they all always needed extra money—to help us cut it down. Billy Fox, the reporter who was out following our fat friend, was one of the regulars at the old L.C. Smith typer in the hall.
    One time I pointed out to Brass that H.L. Mencken, a fellow newsy who worked for the
Baltimore Sun
before going off to found his own magazine, was reputed to have an all-purpose reply that he used for his mail: a postcard with a rubber-stamped