Manhunt. Volume 5, Number 5, May 1957

I undressed, showered, and re-dressed for Gordon Phelps. Gordon Phelps was not a friend. He was a guy I’d run into in the top-type night clubs, a guy with more loot than he could possibly spend, and a guy for whom I’d done a few favors, for a fee. He was a sixty-year-old runabout who still had plenty of vitamins jiggling inside of him. He had an austerely attractive society-type wife who, it appeared, kept a slack rein on him, and he had, also, a fabulous town house on Fifth Avenue, a fabulous beach house on Fire Island, and a fabulous country house in Georgia. Now he had a hideaway. And sinec Gordon Phelps was ordinately generous in the matter of fees (he could afford it) I was quite as anxious to see Gordon Phelps as Gordon Phelps was to see me.

2

“Glad to see you,” Gordon Phelps said, when he opened the door of his apartment to me. “And it’s about time.”

“I made it as soon as I could, Mr. Phelps.”

“What held you up? The sultry Sophia Sierra?”

“No, but she could have, if she’d had a mind to.”

“Terrific piece, that one, eh? But look out there, sonny. She’s just opposite of what she looks like. That little gal is all mind and no heart, and it’s a mind concerned with one thing — gold, pure and simple. Gold, gelt, loot, dinero. But come on in now, young fella. We’ve got a hell of a lot of talking to do.”

He led me through a small round foyer into an enormous exquisitely furnished living room, its floor moss-soft with thick rose-colored carpeting. Above the fireplace hung an oil of a rose-colored nude.

“Just beautiful,” I said.

“Would you like to see more?” he said. He had a cultured, somewhat high-pitched voice, like a coloratura soprano who drank too much. “Everything’s sound-proofed, by the way. And that fireplace really burns wood.”

“Love to see more,” I said.

He motioned me to a bedroom which was bleak compared to the warm comforts of the living room.

He showed me a bathroom with gold plumbing, and a kitchen with all the equipment including a deep-freeze, and then, back in the living room, over drinks, he said, “I could live here for months without going out once. There’s enough food and drink — for months.”

“Is that the way you’d like it?” I said. “Not going out for months?”

“That’s the way I’d hate it. That’s why you’re here.”

“Let’s have the pitch,” I said.

He paced with lithe steps. He was tall and slender and rather graceful, muscular for his age. He had white wispy hair neatly parted in the middle, a pink face, a delicate nose, loose red libidinous lips, and narrow blue eyes beneath expressive not-yet-grey eyebrows. “I want to get out of here,” he said. “And I want to get out of here soon. And I want you to get me out of here.” He went to his desk, brought out an oblong metal box, extracted a number of bills, counted them and brought them to me. “Here,” he said.

I don’t have to be asked twice. I took the bills. I counted them. They amounted to five thousand dollars, money of the realm.

“That a fee?” I said.

“It’s a fee,” he said.

“Whom did you murder?” I said.

“I didn’t murder anyone,” he said.

“Not even Vivian Frayne?”

“Wise,” he said. “A real wise son of a bitch, aren’t you. No,” he said, “I didn’t murder anyone, not even Vivian Frayne, though she was asking for it.”

“Then why are you holed up?” I said.

“Because, a little bit, I’m mixed in it.”

“And you want me to un-mix?”

“Precisely.”

I sighed again. I said, “Sit down, huh? Re-fill our glasses and sit down. Let’s talk it up, huh? But I’m telling you right now, mixed or un-mixed, I keep the fee.”

“Any way it turns out,” he said, “you keep the fee.”

“Anybody know about this place?” I said as he filled my glass.

“Very few. Most of those who know about this place — know me as George Phillips not as Gordon Phelps. I had my attorney — whom I trust — find this place for me, arrange for the lease and all that. I used a decorator to furnish — as George Phillips, and I paid him in cash.”

“Your wife know about it?”

“Heavens, no. I don’t think she’d like it. I think it would rile her. My wife can be quite fierce when riled. She also controls a good deal of... er... what shall I say... my fortune — she controls, with me, jointly, a good deal of my fortune. Her becoming riled could prove embarrassing to me, quite embarrassing — and embarrassing is an understatement, believe me.”

“Then why do you do what you’ve done?”

“Why do any of us do things... we shouldn’t quite do? We have compulsions, desires...”

“Yeah,” I said. “How about Sophia Sierra? She knows that George Phillips is Gordon Phelps and—”

“But she doesn’t know that it has any importance. It’s just a guy using a different name, so that his hideaway can actually be a hideaway. She knows — as the world knows — that I have a good deal of latitude in my married life. It has just never occurred to her that this latitude has any definition, any boundaries... thank heavens. I was drunk, one night, and I slipped — I suppose we all kind of slip sometimes. In a sense, I was boasting to Vivian Frayne, and Miss Sierra was present—”