WHO’s DOING ALL THE KNOCKING?!!
In his drug and whisky haze, Hastings Marsh was practically non compos mentis, by the time he had issued his slurry ultimatum to good old Jed Harris, the “Playah for all seasons.”
No doubt Harris would ploddingly track down all the street meat until he had this yokel Billy Luck (Damn him!!) in his sights and then– Well!! Harris just KNEW he couldn’t fail. Not this time, not like the hazy pre-dawn scene at Mount Vernon Square, over by the fenced-in front yard of Ted’s Hotel, when poor dumb Harris had racked himself clean up, and totaled his beloved Mothership— that 1973 Lincoln Town Bomber– oh my, and his floozy wife Skipper, why she had slipped clean away! “For What!”
Marsh shot bolt upright in his Barcalounger in the den of his big ugly house. “Ben, BEN!! WHERE THE HAIL ARE YOU, SON!!”
Just as King Cole had dementedly called for his pipe, bowl and Fiddlers Three in that long-ago fairy tale, now the hors-de-combat Senator from the Borough of Memphis was raging, Raving for his “administrative assistant” (and Gofer), Ben Nimmons, to help bail him out of this latest bout of frothing-mouthed madness he was enduring at this moment.
“Y-Yes, Senator,” Ben stumbled over an ottoman and landed face down in Marsh’s pile of coke on the coffee table.
He quickly dusted his face with a sweaty white handkerchief. You must realize, Nimmons didn’t indulge in most of the Senator’s vices.
“Oh. There you are, Ben. So. You think mah WIFE is shackin’ up with a low life from New York Avenue, Hmmm?”
Just then the doorbell rang.
“Oh no, sir,” mumbled Ben.
The door flew open. There stood Skipper, with Billy Luck at her side!
(To Be Continued)
