The Straight Man - Roger L Simon Read Free

a couple of days a week with Cosmic Aid, Eddy
Sandollar's foundation in Ojai. He's doing really original work with
famine relief. I'd like to do more but ..." She nodded toward
the bedroom.
    "I understand. And how can I help you?" I
asked, sounding more like a parish priest than a detective. Or maybe
like Nathanson. Through the window directly behind her a large
billboard dominated the Strip, urging SAFE SEX. It showed about a
half-dozen muscular, shirtless gay guys grouped around a tiny,
smiling Jewish bubba. L.A. LOVES YOU LIKE A MOTHER, it read, giving
the number of the AIDS hot line. Beyond that another billboard showed
a starving African child and said HELP HIM SURVIVE, giving the number
of something called the California Hunger Project. This was West
Hollywood in the eighties—the Plague Years.
    Emily continued to fidget with her Carrera glasses,
holding them far away from her body as she folded and unfolded them.
    " Mike didn't do it," she said. "He
wasn't the suicide type."
    "What's the suicide type?"
    " He was never depressed, for one thing."
    "Rea1ly?"
    "Really. I know it sounds weird, but he just
never let anything get to him. He wasn't particularly good at what he
did and that didn't even bother him. He was happy being a straight
man." She glanced over at her daughter who was visible through a
crack in the bedroom door, staring at the TV with a sad, mechanical
expression. "Not like me. I'm a typical endogenous depressive.
I'm almost as bad as Gene."
    "He's depressed?"
    "Shrinks are the most depressed people in the
world. Who do you think has the highest suicide rate?"
    "Yeah, I know," I said. That was all I
needed—a depressed shrink. With my luck, it was a communicable
disease. "So," I continued, "do you have anything
specific about Mike—or is this all based on character analysis?"
    She stood and looked away, lost in thought a moment.
Then she took out a cigarette and lit it, staring painfully at her
matchbook as if it were a symbol of decadence of some kind. It was
from the Plaza Athenée in Paris. "Do you know a lot of people
in show business?" she asked.
    "Sure. You live in Los Angeles half your life,
you have to know a lot of them."
    "What do you think of them?"
    "As a generalization, I think they have a great
life. That's why they bitch about it so much. Who else gets to do
what they want—more or less—and is paid a fortune for it?"
    " Guilt provoking," she said. "Some of
them give the pleasure principle such free reign, they don't
recognize their death wish until it's too late."
    Endogenous depression. Pleasure principle. This woman
had done a lot of shrinking. At least she knew the buzz words. "What
does this have to do with the subject at hand?"
    "What do you know?"
    "What I read in the L.A. Times. They indicated
Mike's career was floundering. Three weeks before, his five-year
partnership with Otis King had been dissolved. A week after that,
King signed a three-picture pact with Global Pictures for six million
dollars plus a percentage of profits. That could drive a man to
suicide. At least it was good enough for the police .... Is this
accurate?"
    "As far as it goes."
    "What else should I know?"
    " Otis King is an ambulatory schiz with extreme
obsessive-compulsive tendencies."
    " What's that supposed to mean?"
    " He's a human time bomb. Into everything—coke,
heroin, speedballs, freebase, Methedrine, Percodan, men, women,
children, transvestites, and dogs."
    "Sounds uninhibited."
    "He makes Richard Pryor seem like Mother
Theresa."
    The doorbell rang.
    "Just a second," I said, and went and
looked through the peephole. My thirteen-year-old son, Simon, was
standing there grinning at me in a dirty Clash T-shirt and a pair of
ratty cutoffs.
    I opened the door a crack and looked at him. "Hey,
sport. Good to see you. But come back a little later. It's business
hours."
    "I know, Dad. But it's an emergency. I gotta
have sixteen dollars. Fast."
    "Sixteen dollars?" I glanced back at Emily,
who had discreetly