by Karen Black
A little further on a skinny guy with a wispy blonde mustache, dressed in an equally natty, three-piece, charcoal-gray pinstripe suit, seemed to be paying remarkably close attention to people getting out of taxis. I picked up a newspaper left by someone that got off and peeked around it just enough to see that the bus wasn’t getting any real attention from him. How flattering, I thought wryly, to be rated as too high class for the bus. But still I wasn’t really sure. There are a lot of big, well-built black dudes and skinny guys with thin blonde mustaches in the world. On the other hand this pair seemed unduly interested in who might be departing from Stapleton airport early on a Sunday afternoon.
The bus reached the end of the departure ramp, and only I was left aboard. “Last stop,” the driver called.
“Don’t you circle on around and pick up people below on the arrival level?” I asked.
“End of the line here, Bud. That’ll cost you another fare.”
“Fair enough,” I said, but the driver wasn’t about to smile at puns from passengers.
“In the box, Mac. I ain’t movin’ ‘til it’s in the box.”
“Got change for a dollar?”
“We don’t make change.”
I stuffed a dollar in the box. “You’re a great public servant,” I said. “This ought to make your day.” The driver slammed the door shut, shaking his head as the bus lurched off to circle down to the lower level. I glanced back nervously, but the skinny guy in the three piece suit was still fixated on incoming taxis and limos.
I walked into the terminal against the stream of arriving travelers, and merged with the crowd milling around the baggage carousels, where I began to consider the gauntlets yet to be run: the ticket counter, baggage inspection, and those endless corridors to the departure gates. At this point I almost said the hell with it again; I should give up on this dumb game. If all these people around me knew that I was skulking through the airport by devious routes dodging imaginary assassins, they would be calling for men in white jackets to come and take me away. Shape up, I thought, go upstairs and get on the next available plane to…where? Saint Paul, where Darwin was spattered all over my front steps? Or Los Angeles, where Charley Farnsworth would not be showing up for work in the morning? No, the game was fantastic, but it wasn’t fantasy. People died in it.
Well, I thought, I’d better check out my options for getting to Los Angeles. I went to a phone booth and called some airlines. There were several flights in the next three or four hours, but each one involved going to the ticket counter and getting my ticket rewritten. A simple matter, I was assured, assuming, of course, that a gang of professional hit men didn’t have the flights to Los Angeles staked out.
Next to the telephones was an information board with a diagram of the airport layout. A red star was stuck on it that said, “You are Here.” I took my list of possible flights and set about figuring out which one I could get to with the least exposure. There was nothing much to differentiate between them from the cloak and dagger perspective, except, I noted with a rush of inquisitive interest, there was a nice separate concourse for regional commuter and feeder lines.
That set me off on a new track. What about Charley’s condominium in Aspen? Was it not set forth on a credit card and driver’s license, which I happened to bear, that a certain Dr. Malcolm Gregory, who happened to look a lot like me, was a resident of that self-same condominium? I had never been to Charley’s retreat in Aspen, though he had often spoken of inviting me. I had gathered that it was very private to him. There could be something there to give me a clue, assuming he had a housekeeper or someone who might let me in. From there, I could go on to L.A. via Grand Junction or Salt Lake. Aspen Airways had a flight in a couple of hours.
CHAPTER III
Aspen, Sunday–Meet Corky
I took a taxi to the foot of the ski slopes, an area of deluxe condominiums and resorts interspersed with a mixture of avant-garde contemporary architecture and restored Victorian gingerbread houses from Aspen’s mining-camp days. I got out a block or so from Charley’s address, waited until the cab was out of sight, and then made my way on foot. Charley’s condo was in a block of very trendy architecture, oriented toward the ski slopes and presenting a rather aloof facade to the street.
A faded blue Volkswagen van was parked in front of Charley’s entry, somewhat at odds with the general tone. No lights were visible inside, although the last of the sunshine was just touching the higher mountain summits, and it was getting dusky in the valley. I rang the bell and waited, almost gave up, then tried again. Something stirred inside and through the closed door, I heard an almost-child-like, husky voice, ask, ‘Who is it?”
Oddly, the question caught me by surprise. I hadn’t really settled into myself as Malcolm Gregory. I stammered momentarily and came out with a rather tentative, “Mac Gregory.”
“Who?”
“Malcolm Gregory, a friend of Charley Farnsworth.”
“I can’t hear you through the door.”
“Then open it.” There was a rattling of bolts and the door opened a crack, still secured by a chain. A large, dark and slightly watery eye became visible. “Look.” I held out my Malcolm Gregory driver’s license with the address of Charley’s condo on it. “See,” I pointed, “It’s me, Malcolm Gregory. I’m an associate of Charley’s.”
“Oh,” she said, “you’re Dr. Gregory. You should have told me.” I rolled my eyes toward the fading light on the mountain tops. She giggled a little impishly, closed the door to release the chain, and opened it to me. She held out a small, very firm, well-tanned hand. “The mythical Dr. Gregory, I presume.”
“Mythical?” I must have said it a little sharply. Nobody knew better than I just how mythical Dr. Gregory really was.
She shrugged and smiled in a single rather charming gesture. “Totally mythical to me. Charley said you might never show up. He said–exact words–no use trying to keep up with Mac. If he isn’t in Timbuktu it’s because he’s been there and he’s on his way to Samarkand or Kathmandu.”
“Charley exaggerates.”
“I know, but with that for an introduction you can’t blame a poor little country girl for fantasizing a lot about your glamorous jet-set life.”
“Oh, dear,” I said in feigned dismay, “what have I got to live up to?”
She cocked her head and looked me over appraisingly. “For starters, you’ve got to realize that my Dr. Gregory is blonde, handsome, extremely witty and urbane, and has this incredibly fantastic physique. Rich, too.”
“Well,” I interjected, “I would like to think I fit part of that image–about being extremely witty. The blonde, handsome, urbane, fantastic physique and rich need a little work.” We laughed, and she ushered me in. “By the way,” I held out my hand again. “Who, or to whom, do I have the pleasure of…”
“I’m Corky.”
“Miss Gonzales, I presume?” I said it with mock formality, dimly associating the name with some Colorado skiing celebrity from some years back named Corky Gonzales.
She sighed. “You guessed.”
Trying to hide that I had, in fact, correctly and surprisingly guessed, I said, as if offering some sympathetic understanding, “It must get tiresome.”
“Trite,” she agreed. “Around here it’s like getting nicknamed Casey if your name is Jones.” She giggled again–a silvery, infectious little sound, which underneath it seemed to say, please don’t think I’m anyone to take too seriously.
She was a short, nut-brown girl, almost delicate features but with a certain firmness, a generous mouth, strong, even teeth, and a warm…you might say, radiant…smile, almost pretty, except that some kind of pollen or something seemed to be getting to her. Her eyes were red and puffy and she was trying not to sniffle. A voluminous white terry cloth robe–it must have been Charley’s–brought an end to further description. Her speech was hard to place, no regional or ethnic character, except perhaps a slightly preppie or eastern-girls-school manner.
I
fell silent as she led me into the living room of Charley’s uncompromisingly contemporary Aspen condo. White, very deep shag carpet, stainless steel and black leather furniture, huge white marble-topped coffee table, and a white-cushioned conversation pit surrounding a sunken fireplace with a stainless-steel hood. A two-story floor-to-ceiling picture window with white draperies faced the ski slopes. A well-equipped kitchen was visible behind an all stainless-steel and white-marble dining bar with black-leather-cushioned, stainless-steel stools. A large, stunning Frank Stella painting, in pastel stripes, on the north wall provided the only color.
It could have been cold, even alien. Somehow it wasn’t. It took me by surprise. Poor Charley, I thought. He came here to be a different person. I remembered the rotund figure in the white linen suit, the Panama hat and the Malacca cane. I wondered how he dressed here, what he did and who his friends were.
Corky broke my reverie. “You’ve never been here?” I shook my head. She went on, “Charley called about a week ago and told me you were a great friend and would be using this as your address for a while, but he never explained exactly why.”
“Just a convenience for me,” I lied. “I was giving up my permanent residence, and Charley offered this as a ‘temporary’ ‘permanent’ address. He’d often talked of having me here, but somehow we could never get our calendars in phase.”
“Oh, you should have. You’ve missed some marvelous parties.”
I thought of the Charley I knew…the big-time engineering workaholic putting in 80 to 90 hour weeks, living with his mother in a huge Victorian mansion when I first met him, and in a bachelor’s pad in a second-rate Los Angeles residential hotel since his mother died. So this is where Charley had put his heart and a sizable chunk of his not inconsiderable fortune too. “I need to talk to you about Charley,” I said.
“Is something wrong?”
I let that pass and went on as though nothing were. I wasn’t ready for the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. In spite of her direct and rather engaging manner, I needed to know a lot more about Corky Gonzales and how she fit in before I leveled with her. “Charley called me from Los Angeles a couple of days ago….”
“In Timbuktu or Kathmandu?” Corky couldn’t resist a small titter.
“Minnesota.”
“Far out!”
“Anyway,” I went on, “he wanted me to come to L.A. in one hell of a hurry.”
“Why?”
“Some kind of business deal. He was vague about it on the telephone. Then, in the wee, small hours this morning, we got on the phone again and he changed our plans. God, was it only this morning? He asked me to meet him in Denver, today, as soon as possible. He was very cagey. Just told me–you should pardon the expression–to get my ass out here fast and keep it covered.”
Corky laughed. “Charley and his big talk!” Then, more seriously, she asked, “What do you suppose he’s up to?”
“To continue with Charley’s metaphor,” I said, trying to keep the tone from getting heavy, “I busted my ass to get to Denver, but Charley never met me,” which was, in a manner of speaking, true. For some reason I really didn’t like holding back the truth from this rather disarming girl, but for some other reason, I felt compelled to do so.
“Are you worried about him?”
Up to this point I had been evasive, but I hadn’t really flat out lied to Corky. Now the edges of my veracity were getting grayer. Dr. Gregory was a fiction, if not a lie, and the whole truth about Charley could only get harder to deal with the longer I stalled. Still I answered, “No, I’m not really worried,” taking refuge in the reality that poor Charley was now beyond worry.
“I am,” she said flatly. “He always keeps appointments.”
“Well,” I admitted, seeing a possible opening here, “I’d feel a lot better if I knew what’s going on. I came to Aspen to try to find out. I was hoping he had touched base here and that you might know something.”
“You should have called and saved yourself a trip.”
“I couldn’t seem to get a call through.” Which, in fact, was just because I hadn’t tried, but Corky nodded sympathetically, giving me some undeserved credibility.
“Yeah,” she said, “I don’t know what gives with all these new telephone systems. There was a guy in here working on it just the other day.”
“Anyway,” I grinned, “I was looking for an excuse to actually set foot in my mythical abode, not realizing how disillusioning my actual appearance might be for you.”
“Don’t worry about that.” Corky’s giggle bubbled up. “The de-mythification of Dr. Gregory isn’t going too badly.” We grinned at each other, I finding it pleasantly disconcerting to look directly into those big, doe-like eyes.
I broke the spell with a glance at my watch. Corky picked up on it at once. “Do you want to try to reach Charley in L.A.”?
“Maybe later,” I temporized. “Charley always eats out.”
“Hey!” Corky clapped her hand to her brow in dismay. “With all this traveling, you’ve got to be hungry yourself, or need a drink or something.” She took my arm and guided me to an oversized soft, black-leather cushion. “Sink into that,” she urged, “and tell me what you want.”
I confessed that I could use a drink as I sank, suddenly bone-tired, into the soft, thick cushion, but once seated wondered if I would ever be able to get up. I had pumped a lot of adrenalin through the old system since early dawn in Minnesota.
Corky came back with a scotch and looked down on me appraisingly. “You are also in dire need of nourishment,” she declared.
Although I hadn’t given it any thought, at the very mention of food, I realized she was absolutely right. I was hungry.
In a very short time she was back with a thick sandwich of rugged, whole-grain bread and a wild concoction of cashew nut butter, avocado, sunflower seeds, bean sprouts, mushrooms and yogurt. “I’m a health food nut,” she announced and sat on a cushion in front of me, hugging her knees. “Tell me about yourself, Dr. Gregory.”
I could only shake my head, my mouth being stuffed from trying to encompass the full thickness of her surprisingly good sandwich in one bite. When I could speak without spraying crumbs, I said, “Thanks to you, I have a temporary speech impediment, so first you tell me about you.”
She shrugged. “What’s to tell? I’m just, you know….” Her voice trailed off, leaving me to wonder what.
“Well,” I prodded, “What do you do besides….” I searched for a word, “house-sit for Charley?”
“Good question. I guess you noticed.”
“Noticed?”
“I was a little weepy when you showed up. To be honest with you, I was bawling my eyes out.”
“I thought it was hay fever.”
“Yeah, sure,” Corky said flatly and fell silent.
I took a more modest bite of sandwich. “So,” I said, swallowing, “you house-sit for Charley and weep now and then.”
Corky drew a deep breath. “Not too often, but every now and then it gets to me.”
“What?”
“That I’m a bum.”
“A bum?”
“That’s the answer to your question. I’m a bum, a ski bum, a snow bunny, a classic case of being an up-scale bum.” Her attempted smile was close to a sniffle. “That’s all there is to my story.”
I started to make some flip remark about how I could see that summer coming on must be a drag for snow bunnies, but those big dark eyes seemed a little moist, and I changed the subject. “You don’t sound from your speech as though you hailed from these parts?”
“Denver, just a little west-side Chicano girl from good old Tejon Street.”
“Then there’s more to the story, because you don’t sound like Tejon Street. Don’t I hear a hint of an eastern girl’s school?”
“Yeah,” Corky said harshly, with a touch of sarcasm that was inwardly, rather than outwardly, directed. “I’m a quick study. I pick up on the way those eastern babes talk
and give it right back to them.”
“Come on, Corky,” I probed, “There’s more to it than that.”
There was more than a hint of bitterness in the short laugh with which she responded. “What do you do, write for the soaps? Do you really want to hear the thrilling, real life story of little Consuela Gonzales, how she clawed her way up from the barrios of west-side Denver to find happiness in a luxury condominium on the high-rent side of Aspen, leaving a trail of broken hearts and dreams behind her, most of which happen to have been her own?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact, I do,” I said, and, as a matter of fact, I did.
The last dusky light was fading in the sky above the shadowy silhouettes of the mountains. Corky lifted her face to the twilight, eyes veiled by long, dark lashes. She seemed to be weighing things–on the one hand an impulse to unburden in a way that sometimes can only be done to a sympathetic stranger; on the other hand the normal constraints of a casual acquaintance. Abruptly she turned her eyes directly into mine, which was something like switching on a little jolt of electricity. “Okay, I’ll level with you, if you’ll promise that afterward you’ll level with me.”
“It’s a deal,” I nodded
“Okay, but remember, you asked for it.” She looked questioningly at me, as if she still wasn’t quite sure I really wanted to hear her story. I nodded encouragement.
“Well, I guess the most important person in my life was my dad, Pops. He didn’t have much education, started out hauling pianos. He was strong as a bull, so everyone called him ‘El Toro.’ Over the years he saved up enough money to buy his own big rig…I’ll tell you how another time…move his family of four boys and two girls into a nice new house in a Denver suburb, where I got to go to school with all those ‘well-bred’ Anglos.” Corky’s eyes narrowed, and her small, husky voice hardened. “About the time I thought I couldn’t stand school another minute, there was a flash flood in Oklahoma in the middle of the night, a bridge went out, and Pops piled up in the creek.” Her voice broke, but she went on.