I told her how good she was. She glowed a little. I asked her where she felt like going for dinner. Nowhere, she said. She had a pair of filets at the apartment and a hibachi to char them on. How did that sound?
“Home cooking,” I said. “You’ll spoil me.”
“You don’t mind? He wanted me to wine you and dine you. He thinks that’s the most effective treatment. The big show of money and influence. He knows a few variations, but they’re all on the same theme. I told him this would be more intimate.”
“It just might.”
She didn’t answer. I turned a corner and found her block, pulled up a few doors from her building. We went up to her apartment and she unlocked the door. She let me make the drinks while she got the charcoal going in the little Japanese stove. I made stiff drinks. We took them back into the living room with us.
“I don’t know,” she said.
“About what?”
“Everything, I don’t think he’s going to fall for it.”
“Why not?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Did he say something?”
She frowned. “No,” she said finally. “It wasn’t anything he said, nothing like that exactly. Right now he’s completely sold. You’ve got him in your pocket, John.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
She thought about it, worked on her drink, looked up at me. “Maybe I’m just worried,” she said. “Stage fright.”
“Could be.”
“It just doesn’t seem possible that he’ll fall for it. He’s not a stupid man, you know. He’s less of a clod than he seems. He’s got a tough streak of sharpness under it all.”
“Then this is tailored for him. A stupid man would never be able to pick up on it.”
“I know, but—” She raised her glass to her lips, lowered it again. “I’ll tell you something, John. I think you’re a little too perfect.”
“How do you mean?”
“Too honest and too square. Right now he believes every bit of it. Right now you could probably tell him you’re the chief holy man of the Ganges and he wouldn’t doubt a word. But he’s no believer in the incorruptibility of mankind. If you stay lily-white, he’ll start to wonder sooner or later.”
“Go on.”
“Let him see that you wouldn’t mind making a buck. Make him draw it out of you a little at a time, but make sure he knows you’re glad to look out for number one as long as it’s safe.”
I thought it over. “You’re right,” I said.
“It was just an idea—”
“No. You’re right. I may have played it a little too angelic. It’s an easy role to fall into.” I finished my drink. “Still worried?”
“Of course.”
“You don’t have to be.”
“I’ll be worried until this is over. God, if this falls in—” She closed her eyes. “Doug Rance is sitting safe across the border. You can hop on a plane and disappear far enough so that no one will ever find you. And he wouldn’t even try too hard. But me—if he ever finds out, John, I’ve had it. The viper in his bosom.” She managed a somewhat brave smile. “He would only kill me,” she said.
A whole batch of lines didn’t do the job. Don’t worry, everything’ll be all right, it’s in the bag—you don’t throw phrases like those at a woman who’s telling you how she stands a fair chance of getting killed. You don’t say anything at all.
I kissed her. She held back at first, too much involved in dreams of doom to ride it all the way. Then the fear broke and she came to me, and the wheels went around again and the slot machine paid off again.
There was nothing casual about it.
I took her on her living room couch with her blouse half off and her skirt bunched up around her waist. The couch was too short, engineered for more sedate pleasures. The lights were all too bright. None of this mattered much.
Afterward, she got up to throw our steaks on the fire. I lit us a couple of cigarettes and made a fresh pair of drinks. We didn’t talk much. It wasn’t necessary.
“What do I do when this is over, John?”
“Take the money and run.”
“And then?”
I had my arm around her. I drummed my fingers against the curve of her shoulder. “According to Doug,” I said, “you’ve got a program figured. Meet a rich man and marry him.”
She was silent.
“Something wrong?”
“I’ve already got a rich man. And it wouldn’t be very different being married to him. I’d just feel like a whore with a license. I don’t know what I’ll wind up doing. Right now I can’t think very much past a day or two after tomorrow.”
We were listening to an Anita O’Day record. Some song about a nightingale. The mood was as mellow as that girl’s voice. We could have used a fireplace with thick logs burning. And some very old cognac.
I said, “You could always stay with the grift.” I made it light.
“Me?” She laughed softly. “I’d shake apart into little pieces.”
“Not you.”
“The way I’ve been?”
“You’ve been beautiful,” I told her. “The nervousness doesn’t mean a thing. Anyone who knows what he’s doing and cares how it turns out gets nervous.”
“Even you?”
“Me more than most.”
“You don’t let it show.”
“It’s there, though.”
She found a cigarette. I lit it for her. “Would you work with me again on something like this? I mean if I weren’t a part of it to begin with. If I was just another hand in the game. Would you want me in on it?”
“Any time.”
“Then maybe I’ve got a career after all. We’ll be partners.”
“You’re forgetting something.”
“Oh?”
“I’m about to retire,” I said. “Remember?”
“I didn’t forget.” She drew on her cigarette, took it from her lips, stared at its tip. “I wasn’t sure whether or not that was the truth. About quitting, buying that roadhouse.”
“Does it sound pipe-dreamish?”
“That’s not it. I thought it might be part of a line. It sounded sincere enough at the time, but later, well, you’re very good at sounding sincere. Will you really do it, John?”
“Yes.”
“And you’re sure you can make a go of it?” She didn’t have to coax me. I was not exactly playing hard to get. I swung into a reading of The Dream, the unabridged version. She kept her head on my shoulder and said the right words at all of the right places. I was long sold on the dream myself, but now it was coming out rosier than ever.
“Colorado,” she said. “What’s it like out there?”
“You’ve never been West?”
“Well, Las Vegas and Reno. But that’s not the same, is it? All bright lights and no clocks in the casinos and lots of small men with eyes that never show expression. What’s Colorado like?”
“Nothing like Vegas.”
“Tell me about it.”
So I talked about air that lifted you up onto your toes when you filled up your lungs with it, and mountains that climbed straight up and dropped off sharp and clean, and the way the trees turned overnight in early October. I probably sounded very chamber of commerce. I’m apt to get that way. I’ve always loved that kind of country. The grift always kept me in the cities, mostly on the Coast, because that was where the action was. But I never really felt I was breathing in the cities, especially in the smog belt. And in Q there were times, a couple of them, when I found myself gasping like a trout in a net. The prison doctors said it was psychosomatic. They were probably right. It still had felt very damned fine to be back in the mountains.
Anita stopped singing somewhere in the middle of the lecture, and some clown came on the radio with a fast five minutes of news. Evvie switched off the radio and came back and put her head on my shoulder where it belonged and listened some more. When I finally ran out of gas she didn’t say anythin
g. I was a little embarrassed. It’s hard to talk like a poet without feeling like a jackass.
Then she said, “You make it sound pretty.”
“It is.”
“You even make it sound . . .possible. Quitting the racket, doing what you said.”
“It’s more than possible, Evvie.”
She said, “I wish—” And let it hang there.
First in Q, and then on the outside, there had been many versions of The Dream. Step by step it focused itself and narrowed itself down. Finding Bannion’s had been a final touch. Each version of The Dream had become just a shade more specific than the last.
Each version had had The Girl. Sometimes she was formless, and other times she was remarkably well drawn. Sometimes she was a glorious innocent, and she either accepted my past and forgave it or else she knew not a thing about it. In other versions she was a trifle soiled herself—a grifting girl, or a halfway hooker, or any of a dozen shadow-world types. Part of the past, but with me in the future.
But every version had The Girl.
And I heard myself saying, “It wouldn’t be exciting. But excitement wears thin after a while. It’s good country, Evvie. You’d love it out there—”
She stood up, walked across the room. I sat where I was and listened to my words bouncing off the walls.
She said, “You’re not conning me, are you?”
“I don’t think I could.”
“Because that was starting to sound alarmingly like a proposal.”
“Something like that.”
She turned. She looked at me, straight at me, and I drank the depths of her eyes. Then she began to nod, and she said, “Yes. Oh, yes, yes.”
I saw Gunderman in the morning. I did not much want to see him. I was not in the mood to play a part. The night with Evvie had flattened out the hunger pains, and a hungry man makes a better fisherman.
But the hook was already set, the line already strung halfway across the lake. Even a well-fed angler can reel in a big one, especially when the fish practically jumps into the boat. My heart was not exactly in it, but it did not exactly have to be. Gunderman made it easy.
I followed Evvie’s hunch. When I got around to telling him that Barnstable had bought about as much land as was likely to be available at their price, I stopped for a moment and then let on that I would be out of a job before long.
“They’d let you go, John?”
“They won’t have anything for me to do.” I looked off to the side for a second, then lowered my eyes. “Oh, I’ll find something else,” I said. “I generally do.”
“Have money saved?”
“Not a hell of a lot. On my salary—”
“Be handy if you did, though.”
“Well,” I said, “I’ll manage.” He had Evvie bring us some coffee from around the corner. He stirred sugar into his and got back on the main theme, the opening for one Wallace J. Gunderman. First, of course, he wanted a chance to buy some stock in Barnstable. I told him he didn’t have a chance in a hundred. In the first place, no one would be anxious to sell. In the second, the board would never approve of a stock transfer. Everything was very hushed up, I explained. Even I could figure out that much. They were not looking for publicity. Legal or not, they wanted to keep a lid on things.
“What are they going to do with that land, John? Suppose that they haven’t got any development planned. What are they going to do?”
“I’ve thought about that,” I said.
“So have I. What did you come up with?”
“Just a few ideas.” I stopped long enough to light a cigarette. “At first I thought they were buying for some corporation. It was so hush-hush I figured they had an important client who didn’t want anyone to know what was coming off. But they were buying at random. And there would be one little piece of land in the middle of a few of their tracts, and instead of pushing hard to buy it they would let it go if they didn’t get it at their price.”
“I’m with you so far, John.”
“So they have to be buying for themselves. Especially with so many important people involved. And the secrecy, well, they may be doing something legal but they’re still playing around in someone else’s mess.”
“And so they’re wearing gloves.”
“Right.” I drank some of my coffee and made rings on the desk top with the coffee cup. “I suppose they’ll just sit on the land,” I said. “Just sit and wait until it catches fire pricewise, or until someone wants it enough to give them a pretty profit.”
His eyes narrowed. “Would they sell some of it now?”
“To you?”
“To me.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t think it’s what they have in mind. I don’t really know too much about that end of the operation, actually. I’ve spent most of my time here in the States. My only real contact is through Douglas Rance, and he doesn’t spend too much time filling me in on the subtleties of company policy.” I let a little more bitterness edge forward. I was still Little Boy Loyal, but I wasn’t as important as I would have liked to be.
He said, “You could probably find out a few things, if you tried. I’d make it worth your while, John.”
I looked at him. Wary, but hungry.
“If it turns out that I can make a deal, I’ll cut you in. You wouldn’t have to lay out any cash, and you’d be in for a full five percent of any profit I might make.”
“Well—”
“How does that sound?”
“It sounds very generous, but—”
“And that five percent could be a healthy sum, John. I’m not talking nickels and dimes, you know.”
“I know.”
“Will you go to bat for me, then?”
I pursed my lips and took my time. I said, “But if you don’t wind up making a deal—”
He’d thought of that. He wanted me as a sort of partner in the operation, but he knew I would have expenses and he wouldn’t want me to take a beating. He passed an envelope across the desk. I hesitated, and I let wariness and greed mingle in my expression, and I took the envelope. After all, Evvie was right. I had to be a little bit on the make or he just would not believe I was real.
“Deal?”
“Deal,” I said. There was, I found out, an even five hundred dollars in the envelope. If he’d had any class he’d have made it a thou.
I’d told him I was taking an afternoon flight back to Toronto. I had told Doug the same thing. I did not go back to Toronto. That morning a girl with a husky voice and deep circles under her eyes had asked me to spend another night in Olean. She did not have to ask me twice.
I went back to her apartment. She had given me a spare key, and I waited inside for her to finish work and come home to me. Around four-thirty I called a Chinese restaurant and ordered up some chow mein. I called around until I found a grocery that delivered, and I had a six-pack of beer sent up along with a carton of her brand of cigarettes. We couldn’t eat out, and I didn’t want to make her cook a meal again.
The table was set when she opened the door. I opened two cans of beer. We ate in the kitchen. The Chinese food tasted as though it had come out of a can. But the beer was cold, and the company was divine.
We didn’t talk too much. She wanted to know how much longer it would take, how long it would be before we scored and blew him off once and for all. It was going to take longer than I wanted to think about—not until we scored, necessarily, but until I had a chance to see her again. After the grift was over, she would have to cool it for a while in Olean before she grabbed a westbound plane. This was all something I didn’t want to think about, or talk about.
“I feel better about it today,” she said. “Not so nervous.”
“It must be love.”
“Maybe that’s part of it.”
“It must be.”
I had a second beer. She was still on her first. She went into the living room, switched on the radio. A ne
wscast—someone chattered about some new foreign crisis. She turned the dial and found some music. I left the table and grabbed her and kissed her. She giggled and shook free and scurried over to the front of the room. She paused at the window, and her face went white.
I started toward her. She held out a hand and warned me off.
“His car,” she said. “Oh, God.”
“So I missed my plane and decided to stay over.”
“No, it’s no good. The dishes—”
I moved fast enough for both of us. I scooped up my dishes and my beer and my pack of cigarettes and my lighter and ducked into the bedroom closet with them. I stood there holding onto everything while her clothes blanketed me. They all carried the smell of her. I was dizzy with it.
He knocked. She opened the door. They spent five or ten minutes in the living room. I could hear snatches of their conversation, not enough to add the stray phrases together and come up with something intelligible. I waited in the closet like a refugee from a French bedroom farce. The humor of it was lost on me. I wanted to grab the son of a bitch and push his face in.
Then they came closer, from living room to bedroom, and now that I could follow the conversation I no longer wanted to hear it. Wallace J. Gunderman was in the mood for love.
She said something about a headache. He said something about girls who had convenient headaches all the time. She said it wasn’t like that at all. He said, and she said, and he said, and they wound up in the hay and I had to stand there and listen to it.
It is not supposed to bother you. It is, after all, part of the game; a con artist can no more be jealous of his girl’s mock-lovers than a pimp can resent his lady’s clients. You are not supposed to give a damn. It is, after all, business and nothing more. It is push-button sex, it means nothing, it is, in fact, part-and-parcel of The Game.
I wanted to kill him. When he was through I heard her saying something about a headache, a really bad headache, and maybe it would be better if he left her alone. He didn’t seem to mind. He had gotten what he came for, what he paid for. He was a long time getting dressed, but he left, finally, and I heard his heavy feet on the stairs.
I crept out of my perfumed closet. She was sitting on the bed, her back to me. I went into the kitchen and put the dishes in the sink. When I came back she faced me and shook her head from side to side.
The Girl With the Long Green Heart Page 10