I began to feel flustered. “Wait a minute, Jeanie,” I said. “I’m a pretty busy guy. I can’t think of everything. Besides, your mother has everything she wants. What else can I get her?”
She put the car into gear again and we began to roll. “Sure, Dad,” she said, a certain dryness in her tone. “Mother has everything she wants. A new refrigerator, stove, washing machine.” Her eyes swung back to me. “Did you ever think of getting her something for herself? Something not quite so useful, but that she would get a kick out of having?”
I was beginning to feel desperate. She had something up her sleeve. “Like what, for instance?”
“A mink coat, for instance,” she said quickly, her eyes on the road ahead.
I stared at her. “Is that what she wants?” I asked almost incredulously. “She always said she didn’t want a mink coat.”
“Daddy, you’re such a dope. What woman wouldn’t like a mink coat, no matter what they say?” She was laughing at me now. “Honest, I don’t know what Mother saw in you. You’re not the least bit romantic.”
In spite of myself I began to smile. For a moment I felt like asking her if she still thought the stork had brought her, but you just can’t talk like that to a sixteen-year-old who knows everything, even if she is your daughter. I spoke seriously. “You think I ought to get her a mink coat?”
She nodded her head as she came to a stop across the way from the school.
“Then I’ll do it,” I said.
“You’re not really so bad, Dad,” she said, leaning against the door as she closed it.
I slid over behind the wheel and put my face very close to her. “Thanks,” I said solemnly.
She kissed my cheek quickly. “Bye now, Dad.”
I got into the office about eleven. I was feeling pretty good. Don had told me that he would really do something special for her. He had her measurements from the Persian she had ordered last summer. I was sure he’d do all right. He’d better. Sixty-five hundred clams for a mink coat didn’t come off trees.
Mickey looked up at me as I came in. “Where have you been, boss?” she asked, taking my hat and coat. “Paul Remey’s been calling you from Washington all morning.”
“Shopping,” I said. I walked into my office. She followed me. I turned around. “What’s he want?”
“He didn’t say,” she answered. “Only that he had to speak to you right away.”
“Call him back then,” I told her, sitting down behind my desk. I watched her ass as she walked out the door to her office. What a great ass, nice and firm and round. There were some days when I wanted to grab that beautiful ass, but I knew better. I didn’t want to, but I did know better. Christ, if I ever lost Mickey my business would probably go down the drain. She was irreplaceable, and on most days almost irresistible. What the hell, as they say, sex makes the world go round, even if it is just thinking about it.
“I’m on hold, it’ll be a few minutes,” Mickey’s voice said through the intercom.
I hoped everything was okay with Paul. I always worried when he called me in the daytime. A special presidential assistant didn’t have time for social calls, so I knew he had to have a good reason to call me.
I really liked the guy. If it weren’t for him I would never be where I was today. In a way he was responsible for it. It went all the way back to the early days of the war.
I had been enthusiastically rejected by all branches of the armed services and finally wound up in the publicity division of the War Production Board. That’s where I first met Paul. He was the chief in charge of a section devoted to building up the scrap drive and I was assigned to his office.
It was one of those things. Two guys cotton to each other right away. He had been a very successful businessman out West and sold out his business to come to Washington for a dollar a year. I had been a flack for a picture company and came to Washington because I heard the pickings were good and I had just been canned by the outfit I worked for.
He did a hell of a job, and he thought I did too. When the war ended he called me into his office. “What’re you going to do now, Brad?” he asked.
I remember shrugging my shoulders. “Look for a job, I guess,” I had answered.
“Did you ever think about going into business for yourself?” he had asked.
I’d shrugged. “That’s a big-time operation,” I’d replied. “I can’t afford it. I ain’t got the dough.”
“I don’t mean that,” he had said. “I mean public relations. I happen to know a few businessmen who might be interested in the kind of help you can give them. You’d need only a small place to get started.”
I had looked down across his desk at him. “This is a press agent’s pipe dream,” I had said, sliding into the chair opposite him. “But keep on talking to me. Don’t stop.”
That was the beginning. It led to a small one-room office with Mickey, my secretary, then to the large offices we had now with more than twenty-five people working. Paul had many friends, and his friends had many friends.
The phone buzzer rang and I reached for the receiver. Mickey’s voice was in my ear. “Mr. Remey’s on the phone, Brad.”
I pressed down the through button. “Hello, Paul,” I said. “How’re things?”
I could hear Paul’s warm chuckle, and then his favorite profanity. “They’ll never improve, Brad,” he finished.
“Don’t give up hope, boss,” I assured him. “You never can tell.”
He laughed again, then his voice came through the phone seriously. “I was wondering if you could do me a favor, Brad?”
“Anything, Paul,” I answered. “Just ask me.”
“It’s one of those charity things of Edith’s again,” he said.
Edith was his wife. A sweet woman, but she’d got a taste of the D.C. whirlpool and it went to her head. I had helped out on some of her projects before. It was one of those things you had to do but I didn’t mind as long as it was for Paul. He did enough for me. “Sure, Paul,” I said quickly. “I’ll be glad to. Just shoot me the dope.”
“I don’t know very much about it, Brad,” he answered. “All I know is that Edith told me to be sure and call you and tell you that a Mrs. Hortense E. Schuyler will be in to see you this afternoon and give you all the information.”
“Okay, Paul,” I said, scribbling down the name. “I’ll take care of things.”
“And Brad,” Paul said, “Edith cautioned me to tell you to be especially nice to the girl. She says it means a lot to her.”
I liked the way Edith used the word girl. Edith was in her middle fifties, and all her friends were girls to her. “Tell Edith not to worry,” I said. “I’ll give her the A treatment.”
He laughed. “Thanks, Brad. You know what these things mean to Edith.”
“I know,” I answered. “You can count on me.”
We spoke a few more words and I hung up the phone. I looked down at the scratch paper. Hortense E. Schuyler. All those dames in Washington had names like that. And they looked like it too. I pressed the buzzer.
Mickey came into the office, her pad and pencil in hand. “Let’s go to work,” I said. “You’ve wasted enough time around here this morning.”
3
It was about four-thirty in the afternoon and Chris and I were just getting down to cost factors on institutional steel copy when the intercom’s buzz called me from the wallboard. I walked quickly to my desk and flipped the switch.
“No calls, Mickey,” I said, annoyance in my voice. “I told you before.” I closed the switch and walked back to the wallboard. “So gimme the figures, Chris.”
His pale blue eyes glittered behind the wide steel-rimmed glasses. He looked almost happy. He always looked happy when he spoke about money. “Once a week in four hundred papers,” he said in his nasal, precise voice, “will come to five hundred and fifteen thousand dollars. Our fifteen per cent placement on that amounts to seventy-seven thousand. Artwork, copy and make-up charges will be a thousand a week, f
ifty-two thousand for the year.”
“Great, great,” I said, interrupting him impatiently. “But can we handle it? I don’t want to find myself in the wrong boat like on that Mason job last year.”
He looked at me calmly. I had taken a job for thirty-five grand that cost us sixty to deliver. He smiled coldly. “That’s what you pay me for,” he pointed out. “To keep you from making mistakes like that again.”
I nodded my head. “How much?”
“Cost you four hundred a week,” he said. “We come out a hundred and eight thousand ahead.”
I smiled at him. “Good boy,” I said clapping him on the shoulder. “Now let’s take a look at the campaign.”
He permitted himself the vestige of a smile before he turned back to the wallboard on which the first series of ads were placed. There were ten advertisements resting there, all very neat in their gray cardboard mountings.
I heard the door open behind us. I turned around. Mickey was coming toward me. “I thought I said I didn’t want to be bothered,” I snapped.
“Mrs. Schuyler is here to see you, Brad,” she said calmly, ignoring my ill temper.
I stared at her blankly. “Mrs. Schuyler? Who the hell is she?”
Mickey looked down at a small calling card she held in her hand. “Mrs. Hortense E. Schuyler,” she read from it. She held it out toward me. “She says she has an appointment with you.”
I took the card from her hand and looked at it. Just the name in simple type. It rang no bells. I gave it back to her. “I don’t remember any appointment,” I said. “I purposely kept all afternoon open so Chris and I could get through this job.”
There was a peculiar look in Mickey’s eyes as she took the card from me. “What shall I tell her?” she asked.
I shrugged my shoulders. “Tell her anything. I went out of town or I’m in conference. Only get rid of her. I want to finish this.” I had already turned back to the wallboard.
Mickey’s voice came over my shoulder. “She says she’ll understand if you can’t see her because of the short notice. But she’s due back in Washington tomorrow afternoon and would like to know what would be a convenient time.”
That did it. Now I remembered. This was one of Edith Remey’s “girls.” I turned around quickly. “Why didn’t you say so the first time?” I asked. “That’s why Paul called me this morning. I gotta see her.” I thought. “Hold her for a few minutes. Make some apology for my delay and I’ll call you as soon as I’m through.”
The peculiar look faded from Mickey’s eyes and something like relief came into them. “Okay, boss,” she snapped smartly, turning on her heel and walking out of the office.
I looked at Chris. “Well, that does it,” I said disgustedly. “We’ll have to take the rest of this up in the morning.”
“It doesn’t give you much time to absorb the plan before you see Matt Brady and the committee at two,” he said.
I started walking back to my desk. “Can’t help it, Chris,” I called back over my shoulder. “If I get stuck I’ll just have to fake it. I’ve done that before.”
He was standing in front of my desk, a look of disapproval on his face. “These boys are sharp, though.”
I sat down and looked at him. “Stop worrying, Chris,” I told him. “They’re human, ain’t they? The same as us. They like money, dames, liquor. They wear clothes, not wings. We’ll get to them the same way as we get to anybody else. Everybody can be reached once you know what they’re looking for. And when we find out, we’ll get the job. It’s as easy as that.”
He was shaking his head as I flipped the intercom switch. I half laughed to myself. Poor old Chris. He still lived in an old-fashioned world where business was just that and no more. I remembered the first time he had heard me get a dame for a customer. He had turned so red I thought the color would rub off on his starched white collar. “Okay, Mickey,” I said into the intercom. “Send the old bag in.”
Through the speaker I could hear a sudden swift intake of breath. “What did you say, Brad?” her voice echoed incredulously in my ear.
“I said send the old bag in. What’s the matter with you this afternoon? You deaf or something?”
Her whisper was almost a chuckle. “You never saw her before?”
“No,” I snapped. “And after today, I hope I’ll never have to again.”
She was really laughing now. “Ten to one you change your mind. If you don’t, I’ll really believe you the next time you tell me you gave up women.”
The intercom clicked off and I looked up at Chris. “She’s gone nuts,” I told him.
He smiled bleakly and started for the door. Before he got there it started to open. He stepped quickly to one side so that it could swing past him.
I could hear Mickey’s voice. “Right this way, Mrs. Schuyler.”
I started slowly to get to my feet as Mickey came through the door. Chris was staring past her into the outer office. There was a look on his face I had never seen before.
Then she came in, and I knew what the look on his face meant. The guy didn’t have dollar bills running through his veins, after all.
The expression on my face must have been worth the price of admission, for Mickey was smiling as she closed the door behind Chris and herself. I found myself walking unsteadily around my desk toward her.
I felt like a schoolboy, my palms were sweaty, my heart was wild. She was soft and warm and giving under her pale blue cotton dress. I could see the curve of her buttocks, the shape of her thighs as the sunlight washed through her skirt. She looked up at me, her eyes gazing deep into mine. I felt off balance; all I could think about was her skin against mine.
“Mrs. Schuyler,” I said, holding out my hand. “I’m Brad Rowan.”
She smiled at me, taking my hand. “I’m glad to meet you, Mr. Rowan,” she said softly. “Edith told me so much about you.” Her voice sounded like chimes ringing in the office.
I was definitely down for the count. I’d seen dames before. Lots of them. When I worked for a movie company I squired some of the most beautiful dames in the world around. It was my job. They didn’t bother me. I could take ’em or leave ’em. But this one was something special.
This one was class. Blue chip stocks on the big board. The gold standard. Big white orchids in florists’ windows. A Rodgers and Hammerstein score. A lazy sun in the summer morning. The green, friendly earth. Ruby port after dinner. A Billy Eckstine love chant.
Her hair was a rich soft brown, short in the front, long in the back, almost to her shoulders. Her eyes were dark blue, almost violet, with large black pupils that you could almost dive into. Her face was not quite round, her cheekbones high, her mouth soft and generous, her chin not quite square, her nose not quite tilted, her teeth white and even, not dentist’s even but human even.
I drew a deep breath and sucked in my gut. Suddenly I wished I had gotten in a little more tennis or golf last summer so that the slight paunch I was developing would not show. “Make it Brad,” I smiled, pulling out a chair for her. “Please sit down.”
She sat down, and still in a sort of daze I went back behind my big desk to recuperate.
I looked over at her. She was slipping off her gloves and I could see her hands, white and slim and small-boned, with a slight coral polish on the nails. She wore one large white diamond on her left hand, no other ring.
“Paul told me you were coming in,” I said awkwardly. “But I hadn’t expected you so soon. What can I do for you, Mrs. Schuyler?”
She smiled again. It was like there were no other lights in the room. “Make it Elaine,” she said.
“Eh-laine,” I said after her, saying it as she did.
She smiled again. “I never liked Hortense.” Her voice was gently confidential. “I never forgave Mother for that.”
I grinned. “I know just what you mean. I was christened Bernard. Everybody called me Bernie.”
She took a cigarette from a flat golden case and I almost broke my neck getting ar
ound the desk to light it for her. She drew on it deeply and let out the smoke slowly.
I went back to my chair and sat down. I was still arguing with myself. I couldn’t understand it.
Her eyes were wide as she looked at me. “Edith told me to look you up, because”—she laughed gently—“you were the only man in the world who could help me.”
I let myself laugh with her. I began to feel better. My control was coming back. I was on ground I could understand now. The old buildup. I looked at her again. I guess what got me was that I had expected somebody else. I never thought Edith’s girls could be anything but carbons of Edith herself. “How?” I asked.
“I’ve been appointed chairman of our local committee on the infantile paralysis drive and I thought you might be able to help me plan a campaign that would really produce results.” She looked at me expectantly.
I could feel a tough cynicism creeping back into my joints. She was one of Edith’s girls, after all, no matter what she looked like. The only thing that was important to her was that she would get enough space in the papers to compensate her for her effort. I felt disappointment.
Didn’t know why I should, but I did anyway. These society dames were all alike. Class or no class, they were like any publicity-hungry dame, looking for some fat clippings. I got to my feet.
“I’ll be very glad to help, Mrs. Schuyler,” I said brusquely. “If you’d leave your name and address with my secretary and keep her informed of any activities on the part of your organization or yourself, we will see to it that you get proper publicity and coverage.”
She was staring up at me in some sort of surprise. Her eyes expressed a bewilderment at the sudden manner in which our talk had ended. Her voice was lightly incredulous. “Is that all you can do, Mr. Rowan?”
I stared back at her in irritation. I was getting sick and tired of all the phonies who wore mink to their committee meetings. “Isn’t that what you want, Mrs. Schuyler?” I asked nastily. “After all, we can’t give you a written guarantee on the space we can grab for you, but we’ll get our share. Isn’t that what you’re in this for?”
Harold Robbins Thriller Collection Page 3