lost me,” I said.
“Tapes are tapes. Now look, Peter, don’t go ingenuous on me. You seem to be in the mood to play the little boy this morning, but sweetie, I know how much you’ve been around.”
That finished the cigarette. I squeezed it out, said, “So?”
“Tapes are aural, practically secondary evidence in a courtroom.”
“Plus you have to prove the voices.”
“And tapes can be faked.”
“Yes,” I said.
“Also, as you very well know, tapes are mostly for the masochistic kick, to listen, to hear what’s going on. If all he would have required was tape, then we’d have known he was a weirdo right off the bat.”
“But he also wanted pictures. A double-header.”
“Which made him a husband seeking evidence for divorce.”
“Provided the double-header on the pictures means what I think it means.”
“You’re in the business. You know. The tape and one set of pictures for him. The second set of pictures kept right here in the office. Dig?”
“I do,” I said. “No weirdo. Straight goods. Par for the course. It takes a lot of doing, time and expense, to obtain the evidence, but if the wife catches up with the bit, she might destroy tape and pictures, and the guy’s got nothing to show for his trouble. And once she’s wise, she also reforms, or she does her cheating more carefully, and the guy can’t even get himself his divorce. With a duplicate set of pictures in the office of his operator, he’s got insurance.”
“Very good, dear Peter. It’s nice to have you coming out of your Saturday morning fog.”
“Not fog, dear Marla. Daze. Whoever isn’t dazed by your dazzling presence ought to go see his doctor to check his reactions.”
“Well, thank you. Not bad for Saturday morning. Not at all bad.”
“Thank you. So let’s get back to Jonathan Kiss.”
“He laid ten big ones on the line, and he was a client. Actually, it was routine stuff. Willie handled it, with, of course, Willie’s customary skill.”
“So when did he become a weirdo?”
“Yesterday afternoon.”
The door between the offices swung open and William Boyd Winkle’s broad bulk filled the doorway, jamb to jamb.
FIVE
WILLIAM BOYD WINKLE was as much an anomaly in his way as Marla Trent was in hers. In a profession dominated by plug-uglies William Boyd Winkle was also a Doctor of Philosophy who had majored in abnormal psychology and whose thesis for his doctorate, like Marla’s, had been concerned with criminology. Unlike Marla, however, William Boyd Winkle had been an all-American fullback at Notre Dame, an intercollegiate wrestling champion, and an undefeated wrestler three years running at the Olympic Games. He stood perfectly balanced at six feet two, massive-shouldered, flat-bellied, and homely-handsome with a broken nose. Naturally, he had been nicknamed Wee Willie Winkle. He was soft of speech and easy of manner and slow to anger but when the fuse gave out he could be dangerous. Adding anomaly to anomaly, he was a scholar of the Bible and a scholar of Shakespeare and he had turned down a full professorship at Michigan State for the dubious distinction of private detection, joining with Marla in founding the richly successful Marla Trent Enterprises. It was common knowledge that there had never been a romance between them—each had previously been married, Marla divorced and Willie widowed—and it was common knowledge that there would never be a romance between them, first because their appeal to one another was strictly cerebral, and second because they both subscribed to the pragmatic adage that sexual byplay in commercial venture tends to befoul the business nest.
“To what do we owe the pleasure?” said Willie to Marla.
“Mr. Chambers is representing Mrs. Kiss,” said Marla.
“Why does she need representation?” said Willie.
“She was of the opinion she was about to be blackmailed,” said Marla.
“Can you blame her?” said Willie.
“No,” said Marla. “She’s outside in the library.”
“But Peter is inside here.”
“Give him the file.”
“Are we about to breach a confidence?”
“We are about to trust a fellow worker.”
“Well said, dearly beloved,” said Willie as he gave me the portfolio.
It contained sixty-six full-sized photos, in color yet. It was a peep-show for a pornographer, in glossy color yet. It was no wonder that Marla Trent knew Valerie Kiss and Valerie Kiss did not know Marla Trent. Valerie Kiss had never before seen Marla Trent but Marla Trent had seen all of Valerie Kiss, and in superb action. Valerie Kiss was a beautiful woman who had passed the paramount screen test: she was more beautiful unclad than clad. There were long shots, close shots, high angle shots, and very low angle shots: sexual intercourse in all its aberrations and ungraceful positions was graphically delineated in sharp, stark, sweaty, ungrained, excellent focus.
I looked at the pictures and Willie and Marla looked with me. We made comments but our comments were rigidly clinical. An amateur might have been titillated but we were professionals. We had seen many such pictures; lamentably, we had made many such pictures throughout our careers; somebody has to scrape the sewers, somebody has to mash the garbage, somebody has to clean the purple refuse in the bloody slop-pans of an operating room. There are private detectives who boast that they do not practice in divorce. They are either silly dilettantes with private incomes, or they are hypocrites giving out with the big lie. Divorce work is the backbone of the business. Sly, dirty, disgusting but perfunctory, it is the bread and butter of the profession. Ninety percent is matrimonial work, five percent is even worse, and the remainder is the glamor that the writers write about. What else would writers write about: snapping dirty pictures of dirty people at fun and games, working to prevent the alimony or aggrandize the alimony, tapping telephones, tailing miscreants, unearthing forgotten filth, digging to find where a political body is buried?
There were sixty-six photographs and the further we proceeded the more dour we became, and then silent. We were experienced professionals unremittingly exposed to the nether side of the good, gay, simple life, and our temporary silence was the loud language of our permanent shame: for Valerie, for her partner, for ourselves, for you. “Who’s the guy?” I said.
“Richard Robinson Jackson known as Ritchie,” said Wee Willie Winkle.
“Like how old?” I said.
“Forty-one.”
“How old is the husband?”
“Forty-two.”
“The husband is ugly?”
“The husband is quite as beautiful as the paramour,” said Marla. “Similar type, as a
