“What was?”
“Everything, as far as I was concerned. I was in a rut, John. A pretty deep one. I should have left this town a long while ago but I didn’t have any place to go or anything much to do, and I figured I would stick with Wally and marry him when his wife died. He wasn’t that exciting but he wasn’t that bad and he does have money and, well, being poor is no pleasure.”
“Agreed.”
She managed a smile. “So by the time I found out I wasn’t going to hear any wedding bells, I took this big long look at little Evelyn Stone and the neat little niche she had cut out for herself. I wasn’t too taken with it, John. Here I’d spent a few years with a fairly romantic view of myself, the youngish girl with the wealthy older man, the office wife living a behind-the-scenes life. And then all at once I wasn’t so young anymore and I was just this girl Wallace J. Gunderman was keeping. And keeping damned cheaply. If you averaged it out, I was costing him less than if he bought it a shot at a time from a cheap streetwalker.”
I didn’t say anything. She studied her hands and said, “I don’t like to say it that way, but about that time I started to see it that way, and it didn’t sit well.”
“Sure.”
“So I went to Vegas for some fun and floor shows and roulette, and maybe a nice rich man would fall in love with me. Except I didn’t like the men I met, and then too I couldn’t afford the kind of vacation that might have put me in the right places at the right time. And I took a beating at the roulette wheel.”
“And met Doug.”
“Uh-huh.” She smiled again. “He tried awfully hard to make me, but I just wasn’t having any. I liked him, though. Right from the start I liked him.”
“Everybody does.”
“I suppose they must. After a while he must have decided that he wasn’t going to wind up in bed with me, so he started talking to me and listening when I talked. He kept getting me to talk about Wally, and I did because I wanted to tell someone how mad I was at the son of a bitch. I didn’t know what he was getting at. Then he came up with the idea and you know the rest of it.”
I nodded. I liked the picture of Doug trying to score with her and striking out. It didn’t exactly fit with the way he’d told it to me, but that figured. Nobody likes to paint pictures of himself in a foolish position.
“John? Did he say he slept with me?”
“No.”
“The way you were smiling—”
“It’s not that. He said that he didn’t try, that he wasn’t interested. And when I saw you in the office this morning I didn’t get it.”
“What do you mean?”
I met her eyes. “I couldn’t imagine him not being interested. Not when I saw you.”
“Oh,” she said, and colored slightly. Then she said, “Listen, don’t tell him what I said, will you? About him trying and not getting any place?”
“Don’t worry.”
“Because he might not like being reminded of it. But anyway, we got along fine once he quit being on the make. And he came up with this idea, and that changed my mind about coming back to Olean. I was back as soon as my vacation was up and went back to work for Wally.”
I didn’t ask the obvious question.
“Back to work in every respect,” she said, answering the question I hadn’t asked. “But it was different now. I don’t feel like a cheap whore anymore.” The brown eyes flashed. “I feel like an expensive whore, John. A hundred-thousand-dollar call girl.”
A busboy cleared our table. We passed up dessert and had coffee and cognac. The cognac was very old and very smooth. I broke out a fresh pack of cigarettes. She took one. I gave her a light and she leaned forward to take it. The jade heart fell away from her white skin. The black dress fell forward, too, and there was a momentary flash of the body beneath it, the thrust of breasts.
A hundred-thousand-dollar call girl. Our eyes locked and we smiled foolishly at each other.
The waiter brought the check. She added a tip and signed her name and, below that, Gunderman’s. We got up and left.
Outside, it was cooler. She drove and I sat beside her. We didn’t seem to be headed anywhere in particular. She said, “This town. You’d think I’d be used to it by now, after six years here.”
“Just six years? I thought you were born here.”
“God, no.” She pitched her cigarette out the window. “Not far from here, actually. I was brought up about twenty miles east of here, a little town called Bolivar. You probably never heard of it.”
“I never even heard of Olean up to now.”
“Then you never heard of Bolivar. It makes Olean look like New York. I got away from there to go to college. I went to Syracuse, to Syracuse University. I was on scholarship. I got married two weeks after graduation and wound up in New York.”
“Doug told me you were married.”
“I told him about it. When I start feeling sorry for myself I get carried away. I probably filled his ear with a lot of that. I married this boy from Long Island that I’d met at school and we went to New York to play house. I was the mommy and he was the man who took the suds out of the automatic washer. I don’t know why I should be boring you with all this, John.”
“I’m not bored.”
“You’re easy to talk to, aren’t you?”
“Uh-huh. I used to be a psychiatrist before I turned crooked.”
“I could almost believe that. What was I talking about?”
“The suds and the automatic washer.”
“That’s right. Except that we played it a little different. I was the mommy and he was the baby, that’s what it all added up to, really. We never had enough money, either, and his parents hated me, really hated me, and then he started running around.”
“That’s hard to believe.”
“You’re nice, but he did. I didn’t really feel insulted by it, to tell you the truth. I had managed to figure out by then that he was a nice boy but that I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life with a nice boy who needed someone to wipe his nose and help him on with his rubbers. That came out dirty, I didn’t mean it that way. You know what I meant.”
“Uh-huh.”
“So I went to Reno and threw my wedding ring in that river there, and came back to Bolivar, and there was a job opening in Olean, the job with Wally, and I took it, and you know the rest. I became a very private secretary. At first it was exciting and then it was secure and then his wife did die, finally, after hovering on the edge for years, and then we weren’t going to get married after all and instead of a fiery affair it was a back-door thing with a bad smell to it.”
Her fingers tightened on the steering wheel. When she spoke again her voice was thinner and higher. “I felt so goddamned good this afternoon. Watching that man, so hot to find a way to make a new fortune for himself, so excited he couldn’t sit still. And knowing he’s just going to get his nose rubbed in it, and that I’m going to do the rubbing. Oh, that’s a sweet feeling!”
For a few minutes neither of us said anything. Her hands relaxed their grip on the wheel and she slowed the Ford and stopped at the curb. “There are things we ought to go over,” she said. “You’ve got to tell me how much I’m supposed to tell him, for one thing, and then there are the letters he gave me. I’ve got them in my purse.”
“Are we supposed to be making a night of it?”
“In a small way, anyway.” Her eyes narrowed. “He didn’t tell me how far to go playing the Mata Hari role. I guess I’m supposed to use my own imagination. There are bars we could go to, but they aren’t all that private.”
“My hotel room?”
“I thought of that. I think he might not like that. Everybody knows who I am, that I’m his secretary and that, well, that I’m more than his secretary. He might not like the way it would look if I went to your room.”
“Where, then?”
“My apartment?”
“Fine.”
“But I don’t think I’ve got anything to drink.�
�
We stopped for a bottle. I paid for it, and she insisted on giving me the money back when we got in the car. This was on Gunderman, she told me.
He was footing the bill for the evening.
Six
She lived in a newish brick apartment building on Irving Street. Her place was on the second floor. She tucked the Ford into a parking space out in front and we walked up a flight of stairs. She unlocked the door and we went inside. The living room was large and airy, furnished in Danish Modern pieces that looked expensive. The carpet was deep and ran wall-to-wall. It wasn’t hard to guess who paid the rent, or who had picked up the tab for the furnishings.
“I’ll hunt glasses,” she said. “How do you like your poison? Water, soda?”
“Just rocks is fine.”
She came back from the kitchen with a pair of drinks. We sat together on a long low couch and touched glasses solemnly. “Here’s to crime,” she said. “To successful crime.”
“By all means.”
We drank. She tucked her feet under her, opened her purse and pulled out a sheaf of letters. “He had a list of people who bought some of that Canadian land,” she said. “Not a complete list, but about twenty names. He wrote letters to all of them asking—well, you can read it yourself.”
I read one of the letters. It was brief and to the point. Mr. Gunderman was interested in any dealings or correspondence that Mr. So-and-So might have had with the Barnstable Corporation, Ltd., of Toronto. Would Mr. So-and-So please let Mr. Gunderman know, and would he also notify Mr. Gunderman if he had made any disposition of his holdings in northwestern Canada, or if he had any intention of so doing?
There were eighteen letters like that. Gunderman’s list didn’t match ours completely. He was missing a lot of the names we’d gotten from Al Prince, and he had one or two that Prince hadn’t given to us. I picked out the letters to the ten men with whom we’d been in correspondence and handed them back to Evvie.
“You can mail these,” I told her. “They’ll tell him just what we want him to know. A few of these pigeons already sold land to us, and the rest have heard from us.”
“What about the others?”
“I’ll keep them.”
“Won’t he get suspicious if he doesn’t hear anything from any of those men?”
“He’ll hear from them. What other letters did he dictate?”
I looked through them. There was a letter to the Ontario Board of Trade inquiring in a general way into the commercial purpose and history of Barnstable, and there was a very similar letter addressed to the Lieutenant-General’s office. I let those go through. Both of those sources would simply advise Gunderman that we had incorporated at such-and-such a date with so much capital, and that we had organized for the purpose of purchasing and developing land in the western provinces.
This was all a matter of public record, and it was something we wanted Gunderman to know. We could tell him ourselves, but it was much better to let him find out on his own hook from properly official government sources. Let him think he was being shrewd. If you let a man convince himself that he is much cleverer than you are, he will never get around to fearing that you’re going to pull a fast one on him.
“And this one here,” she said.
The last letter was addressed to a Toronto detective agency that specialized in industrial and financial investigations. Gunderman asked for a brief report on (a) the Barnstable Corporation, Ltd., (b) Douglas Rance, and (c) John Hayden.
“He asked me to put a call through to these people,” Evvie said. “I told him I couldn’t get through to them and I killed the call, and then he put it all in a letter. I was a little afraid of what might come out. I know he used this agency before, when he got taken the first time.”
“I don’t think this letter should go out.”
“That’s what I figured. And why I cut off the call. If a detective dug into things too deeply—”
“Uh-huh.”
“But if he doesn’t hear from them at all—”
“He’ll hear from them,” I said. I swallowed some Scotch, got a cigarette going. She pursed her lips, moistened them with the tip of her tongue. She started to say something, then changed her mind and finished her drink. I went into the kitchen, filled a bowl with ice cubes, brought it and the bottle back into the living room. I put the bowl on the coffee table and added fresh ice and fresh Scotch to our glasses.
“What should we drink to this time, John?”
“Salud y amor y pesetas,” I said.
“Health and love and money, I know that one. Isn’t there more to it?”
“Y tiempo para gustarlos.”
“And time...what’s the rest of it?”
“And time to enjoy them.”
“And time to enjoy them,” she said. “Yes, that’s worth drinking to.”
We touched glasses very solemnly and drank a toast to health and love and money and time to enjoy them. Outside, Olean remained very peaceful by night. The few traffic noises were all blocks away. I looked at her and felt that old urge come on strong from out of nowhere, a fast rush of desire that surprised me. A comfortable couch, a quiet and properly private apartment, a good bottle, a beautiful girl—all of them components in a standard mixture. I put a lid on it and started to tell her just what she should say to Gunderman in the morning.
I ran all the way through it. It was simple enough, no details but a few hints to steer him in the right direction. The hunting lodge story was a blind, of course. I’d been hopping all over the country lately, and I had bought up a great deal of land, and the Barnstable Corporation stood to make a fortune. I was just a hired hand, and I was a little resentful of the fact that I was on straight salary, albeit a healthy salary, while the principals in the deal stood to pick up a bundle without doing much work for it at all. Of course they were very important men and I was just an employee, so I really had no kick coming. Barnstable already owned a vast stretch of Canadian land, and few prospects had given me a hard time the way Gunderman had done, and I didn’t care too much whether I bought his land or not, because we already had done so well in the land-purchasing department.
When I got to the end I let her feed it all back to me. She didn’t miss a trick, and she added a touch or two all her own. She was very damned good for an amateur. She had the brains for it, and the right attitude. She was a natural girl for the grift. If this fell in, I thought, or even if it didn’t, she could probably make a damned fine living as the female half of a badger game combo. She sure as hell had the looks for it.
She filled our glasses again. She said, “You know, I was very nervous about all of this before tonight, John. I’m not nervous anymore.”
“What changed your mind?”
“You did.”
“Me?” She nodded. “Uh-huh. Doug was all fire and enthusiasm and confidence, but I wasn’t sure he could bring it all off. But there’s something about you, I don’t know what it is, maybe just a feeling that you really know what you’re doing, that you’ll make sure everything runs smoothly from start to finish.” Her eyes narrowed slightly. “I somehow just trust you, John.”
“Let’s hope your boss feels the same way.”
“I think he will. I’m awfully glad Doug was able to get you in on this deal. He told me about you when we were first starting to plan the whole thing, and he said you would be perfect if only you weren’t working on something else. That’s what I was afraid of, that you would have something else going.”
“I did.”
“Oh?”
“I was assistant manager at a bowling alley in Colorado.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“I don’t—”
I drank some more. “I got out of prison a little less than a year ago, Evvie. It was the first really hard time I’d ever served, and I decided I wasn’t going back, not ever. I took a square job and stuck with it.” I put my glass down. “Then Doug Rance turned up with a proposition. I said no
to him a few times and wound up saying yes.”
“What changed your mind?”
Sometimes you have to share your dreams. It was the Scotch or the girl or a combination of the two, I suppose. I told her about Bannion’s dump outside of Boulder and how it would pay off like a broken slot machine with the right sort of operation. And how I couldn’t go there for a drink without itching for the money to buy the place and run it the way it ought to be run. And how I was in this deal for the money because there was no other way for me to get that money, and when the deal was done I would be back in Boulder, through with the grift forever and all set to make decent money on the square.
She asked a few questions and I answered them. Then we were both a long time silent. Our glasses were empty. I let them stay that way. I had enough of a load to feel it and I didn’t want to get drunk. We smoked a few cigarettes. I kept trying not to look at her, and kept failing in the attempt. This was dangerous. The more I looked at her the more I came up with crazy images. Pictures of the two of us on top of a Colorado mountain, walking hand in hand, as fresh and breathlessly natural as a commercial for mentholated cigarettes. The American Dream, stock footage number 40938.
Well, we all of us had our weaknesses. Doug gambled, I fell in love. It was nothing I wouldn’t be able to put a lid on. But I didn’t want any more to drink, not now.
“John.”
I turned to her.
“I hope you get what you want, John.”
We looked at each other. She was curled up on that couch beside me like a large cat in front of a fireplace. I knew what I wanted. I wanted to make her purr.
“John—”
I reached for her; she came to me. She smelled as clean and alive as a newly mowed lawn. I kissed her, and she went rigid and made a weird little sound deep in her throat, and then her arms were tight around me and the tension was gone and we kissed again.
We broke. I lit two cigarettes and gave one of them to her. Her hand was trembling. She dropped the cigarette, and I got down on my hands and knees and chased it. It had bounced under the couch. I picked it up and rubbed the spot where the carpet was lightly scorched. She took it from me and drew on it, coughed, crushed it out in the ashtray. She straightened up and closed her eyes tight. Her hands bunched up into nervous little fists.
The Girl With the Long Green Heart Page 6