Death Is the Answer

John D. MacDonald Death Is the Answer

Leaning back in the wicker hotel chair, Thomas Gaylord Schurtz gobbled a good half of a Tom Collins. He was in his pajamas and robe. He slapped his protruding paunch and said, “Ah! The world brightens!” He was a big red-faced man, with iron gray hair and big red hands. Ex-carnival barker. Ex-picker of coal. Ex-stevedore. A man with a voice like burnished brass and a laugh that was contagious.

At the moment he was Professor Quotient. It was not hard work, standing on the stage of a theater while slim Mary Adams, in sequined tights and bra, stood by holding the bowl of folded questions, the program notes. Two bright kids, Nick Wellar and Stan Haverly, plus a few local boys picked up for a five each, roamed through the audience with the hand mikes and trailing cords, singling out extroverts in the audience to answer the questions and get paid off in crisp dollar bills — or crisp fifties for the jackpot question of the evening. It was a national hookup, selling the bleating public a mouth wash made of alcohol, water, and peppermint flavoring. A thousand a week. Four hundred for Nick, Stan, and Mary for salaries and expenses. Five hundred clear for Thomas Gaylord Schurtz, alias Professor Quotient. A big deal. A fine fat deal.

Sometimes Tom Schurtz wondered how long it would last. That thought always made him vaguely uncomfortable. He wasn’t saving a dime. Not a dime. But, heck, when folks got tired of this, something else would pop up. It had to. It always had so far.

Mary Adams sat by the window reading Variety. She was trim and dark, with wide eyes and that peculiar little touch of calm self-possession which comes to any girl who must stand before large audiences with no defense but her smile and her figure. Mary kept the job because it paid well. Without its ever being said aloud, Nick, Tom and Stan knew that she was the balance wheel, the foil, the symbol of unity. With a word and a glance she could salve Nick’s self-esteem, quiet Tom’s temper, ease Stan’s basic loneliness. With another type of glance she could freeze a pass by an eager male before it got well started.

Nick Wellar was spread out on a bed, wearing a soft yellow sport shirt and dark green gabardine trousers. He was swinging one leg and humming at the ceiling. He was tall and straight, with the kind of good looks that are admired in Naples, Lisbon and Madrid. He moved like a bull fighter and talked with all the good humor and intelligence of a ten-cent slot machine.

Nick Wellar had three standard daydreams. The first was that he would take over Tom’s job. The second was that he would punch the ears off of Stan Haverly. The third was that Mary would accelerate her slow process of falling in love with him.

Stan Haverly was the outsider, a slow, careful lad who would have been considered handsome in Sweden, Bavaria or Princeton. In fact he had been to Princeton where he had taken work in mass psychology and the psychology of advertising. To him, his job was a clinic. He kept detailed notes on audience reaction and an analysis of humor. Stan Haverly knew that it might take ten years or twenty years, but eventually he would be known in a hundred plush offices in Manhattan as the man to see regarding program construction and audience reaction. He was careful, self-contained, scorned a bit by Tom and Nick as an outsider who was in, but not of, the entertainment world.

Tom Schurtz had hired Nick and Stan because they were clean-cut, they had voices that fit the airwaves and they knew instinctively how to handle the public. He was satisfied with both of them, and especially with Nick. Tom had picked Mary with the knowledge gained from looking at ten thousand women. He knew that each audience was filled with young men to whom the questions were just a roar of sound in their ears and who walked out of the theater in a state of numb entrancement. She could do more by just standing and holding the bowl of questions than most women could do in a lead spot with Martha Graham.

Tom gulped the rest of his drink and said, “Ah! Soon, my children, we must prepare to face our public in this thriving metropolis of Hoagersburg.”

Mary glanced up from Variety. “Thriving metropolis on the outer fringes of civilization, Thomas. Phone for the dog team.”

“Break it off, my dear,” Tom said. “We always fill their largest theater, don’t we? An audience in West Overshoe, New Hampshire, is no different than a small group packing the Yankee Stadium. As I have so often said — people are folks.”

“You used to say, ‘Skin the marks. They’re asking for it.’ Are you mellowing?” Nick asked.

Stan put on his professorial manner. “Marks — an ancient carnival word used to denote the cash customers. Now they are more generally called ‘yaks’.”

“Okay, Doctor Haverly,” Nick said. “Speaking of yaks, how about our usual bet? Our two-man pool? Are you on for a five?”