Later, after he had quietly parked the pickup truck in Mrs. Little’s garage and then even more quietly walked to his room and entered, he found a new pair of men’s bikini swim trunks on his bed, with a gift card bearing a message written in lavender ink:
How about a midnight swim?
And Bone found himself almost convinced that Valerie was right. It would all work out. It had to.
7
If Bone learned anything at all in high school it was the importance of initial decisions, those casual first steps that could effortlessly lead to a second step and then a third and before one knew it had locked him into some miserable marathon without end. It was a lesson he learned best of all in freshman track, a sport he was really not all that interested in and probably would not even have gone out for if it had not been for the urging of his father, who had earned his only varsity letter as a member of the mile relay team back in the good old Jim Crow days when white boys only had to run against other white boys. So Bone had gone along, had suited up and run with the rest of the hopefuls, not very fast actually, just trying to stay with the crowd, that was all. But for some reason the coach had liked his stride and had singled him out: “You, Bone—think you could run the mile?” And Bone, indifferent, had shrugged: “Sure. Why not?”
Over the next four years he was to learn why not, as he endured the pain of the daily five-mile grind just to stay in shape and then the heightened suffering of the clocked runs and finally the races themselves, the true crucibles of agony, as he pared his time from five minutes down to four-thirty and finally a four-nineteen that made him feel as if his heart had beaten him to death.
But Bone learned his lesson. One did not volunteer. One did not shrug and go along. One bit one’s tongue and watched carefully and made the big moves, the initial moves, as if one’s life depended on it. Because it so often did. So he did not go out for college track. Nor did he meekly submit to his Selective Service draft notice, any more than he would have volunteered for the marines. Instead he spent the Vietnam years going to college and being married and having children and rising in a competitive business. And similarly his renunciation of all that these last years was in its way yet another cautionary move—one could lose his life selling paper in Milwaukee just as surely as he could shooting gooks in Vietnam.
So Bone was not feeling very happy late Monday morning as Valerie drove him and Cutter in her small Pinto back and forth on the streets above Hollywood Boulevard near La Brea. Time and again they turned onto Unicorn and drove past the elegant old five-story one-time apartment building that now served as the West Coast office of Wolfe Enterprises, Inc., and each time they did so Bone had the uncomfortable feeling that he was a kid again, a stupid cocky kid who had just been asked if he could run the mile and had answered Sure, why not?—to Coach Cutter sitting in the back seat, leaning forward between him and Valerie and darkening the air with the reek of his breakfast pancakes, ham, and scrambled eggs, already going sour in his stomach in the heady excitement of the morning.
“The whole top floor’s Wolfe’s apartment,” he was saying. “Time says he spent a couple hundred thou having it redone to suit him. He’s a maniac for gadgetry, sort of an Ozark Hugh Hefner. Push a button and there’s a waterfall. Or a belly dancer. Or pickled pig’s feet.”
Bone muttered his misgivings. “Goddamn place looks like it’d be easier to see Howard Hughes.”
“If you’d seen Hughes do what this cat did, you’d be able to get an interview with him, believe me.”
“You’re so positive these days, Alex.”
“What’s the matter, you got the shakes?”
“Let’s just say I wish it was over.”
Valerie gave Bone a reassuring smile. “It will be, before you know it.”
“Yeah, I know. Just waltz in and make my spiel. Uh, miss, I’m here to blackmail your boss—who do I see?”
But Cutter was in no mood for comedy now. “Bullshit, Richard—you’ve got it cold. Nothing could be simpler. You just do it the way we practiced, that’s all. In ten minutes you’ll be home free.”
Sure, Bone thought. Just do it the way we practiced. The place of practice had been their ninth-floor room at the Sheraton-Universal, a hotel Cutter had chosen because an old college chum of his was now a Sheraton vice-president and according to him might come in handy if and when any problems developed regarding Valerie’s Master Charge card, which the three of them were using to finance what they could of this initial part of the operation. The most likely problem of course was that someone at the hotel would run a credit check on her and set a low limit on her card, which would force the three of them to fall back on the six hundred dollars she had borrowed on her car. The room rate alone was thirty-eight dollars a day; four rounds of drinks last night at the poolside bar had come to twenty-three dollars; and thanks largely to Cutter’s increasingly go-for-broke attitude, even breakfast at the coffee shop this morning had totaled ten-fifty. At that rate, and if it took more than a few days to make contact with Wolfe, Bone figured Valerie would stand a fair chance of ending up in bankruptcy court, a prospect that apparently had occurred to her as well, for she had not shared Cutter’s almost festive attitude last night in the hotel room.
After changing into pajamas in the bathroom, she had come out and pulled back the covers on one of the double beds. But before she could settle in, Cutter said he wanted a practice session, “a war game,” as he put it. Pulling the room’s small desk out from the wall, he told Valerie to sit behind it.
“And remember,” he told her, “you’re not some measly smalltown insurance clerk. You’re a Hollywood receptionist—which means you’ve got at least two years of high school behind you, you don’t snap your gum between nine and five, and you know all about handy purse-size douches. Above all, you’ve learned how to talk high class, with that kind of cool sexy hauteur, you know? Like this—Anymore, there just ain’t nothing left between he and I.’ You got that, Val? You think you could manage that?”
She was giving Bone a pained look, recognition of what they both were in for.
“You think you could?” Cutter persisted.
“I can try.”
“Okay then. Now you’re going to have to use your imagination here, as I come through the front door,” he told her. “I walk tall and straight, you see, with an air of easy authority. And my eyes are Paul Newman blue, my smile dazzles. I have this very special look that combines a sort of knowledgeable self-confidence with a certain physicality, you know? Like, say, a billy goat in rut.”
Bone lit a cigarette. “Get on with it, for Christ sake.”
Cutter nodded grimly. “You’re right, Rich—this ain’t no laughing matter. It’s business. So let us proceed. You enter the building, the reception room, and the girl of course takes you in. You look okay personally, physically, but not exactly successful, you know? I mean, well, your clothes aren’t exactly today, are they? More like yesterday, or even the day before. So the girl’s probably gonna be a touch cool. You cross over to her—” Here, Cutter gestured to Valerie, who shrugged.
“Good morning?” she tried.
Cutter shook his head. “Jesus, you are really with it.”
“Well, how do I know what you want me to say?”
“All right, then. I’ll play both parts.”
Valerie got up from the desk. “That I can live with.”
Cutter ignored her. “Okay, Rich—you go up to the girl and the two of you say good morning or up yours or whatever. She then asks what she can do for you, and you tell her the truth, straight out. ‘My name is Bone. Richard Bone. And I know this may sound a little unusual, but I came here to see Mr. Wolfe. I have to see Mr. Wolfe.’ She asks if you’ve got an appointment and of course you got to say no, at which point she starts the brushoff routine. And that’s when you’ve got to move in close. You draw up a chair, say, and give her the old eyeball whammy. ‘It’s a very personal matter,’ you tell her. ‘A very crucial matter. And all I can say is
it concerns the night Mr. Wolfe’s car was firebombed in Santa Barbara—and that he’ll be very grateful to hear what I have to tell him. But it has to come from me personally. No intermediaries. Now I can tell other people—his assistants and so forth—I can tell them this same story, just what I’m telling you. But that’s all. The information I have for Mr. Wolfe, I have to lay it on him alone. Just the two of us. No other way.’”
Cutter evidently felt he was doing a pretty good job, for he smiled grudgingly, as if in approval of someone else’s performance.
“By now, you got the girl by the short hairs,” he went on. “But she’ll try a cop-out, give you the no-authority bit, tell you all she can do is call her boss, old Miss Iron Crotch, and let her handle it. Then you just slide this one in on her—you say, Well, you do what you have to, miss, but I can guarantee you the Great Man ain’t gonna be happy if very many people are let in on this. My advice to you is to go as high as you can with it, over as many heads as possible.’ You put the fear of God into her, and she’ll come up with someone above Iron Crotch—probably young Mr. Whozit. And you say, Fine, call him.’”
And so it went. Without bothering to come down, Cutter then winged it through the interview Bone would have with Whozit, and then Whozit’s boss, that person or point where Bone would realize he had gone as far as he could go verbally and now would have to give them the typewritten note addressed to Wolfe and marked personal, but which Cutter expected to be opened and read by an intermediary, though of course without the fullness of comprehension Wolfe alone would bring to it. The note read:
Dear Mr. Wolfe:
You may recall reading in the newspaper that on the night your car was firebombed in Santa Barbara, a man was witness to another crime in another part of the city. I am that man.
I have vital information for you—and you alone. At three o’clock this afternoon (Monday, April 7) I will phone your office to arrange a personal meeting between us. Be advised that time is of the essence.
Richard K. Bone, witness
In time Cutter closed his one-man show. And Bone, taking a pillow and cover down onto the floor, told him not to be offended but he didn’t sleep with fellas. Cutter in turn said that it was just as well because his hemorrhoids had been acting up lately. Valerie gave them both a despairing look and again went into the bathroom—she had been drinking Tom Collinses down at the bar. But when she opened the door to come out, Cutter crowded her back in and locked the door behind them, and Bone expected to hear nothing then except heavy breathing. Instead he heard an argument, Valerie quietly shouting for Alex to take his goddamn hands off her while Cutter’s voice, bored and exasperated, kept up a steady “Aw, c’mon, c’mon.” And finally there was a light crash against the wall and the sound of a plastic cup striking the floor and bouncing. Valerie came out and got into her bed. Cutter emerged a few moments later. Dropping into the other bed, he explained things to Bone.
“She’s got a sick headache.” Then he added, “Goodnight, all.”
For almost an hour Bone lay awake on the floor. And when he finally did drop off, all he found was a few hours of shallow sleep that ended around four in the morning. He got up and went out onto the narrow balcony to smoke a cigarette and watch the traffic on the freeway, the endless headlights streaming endlessly past, even at this unlikely hour of the night.
He had been there only a few minutes when the drapes behind him parted and Valerie came out, with a sheet wrapped around her.
“Can’t sleep?” she asked.
“I guess not.”
“Worried?”
“Shouldn’t I be?”
“I don’t know. It all seems safe enough to me.”
“Maybe I’m the worrying kind.”
“No. You’re the one who’ll be going in—‘the point,’ as Alex says.”
“He ought to know.”
“I’m sorry about that earlier.”
“About what?”
“In the bathroom. Alex doesn’t like no for an answer.”
“Who does?”
For a while she just stood there looking at him and shivering on their little promontory above the city.
“I wish you liked me better,” she said finally.
“I like you fine.”
“No, you think I’m hard and hungry—which I guess I am.”
“And I’m such a paragon? Someone to sit in judgment?”
“No, I know you don’t. Still, you must wonder. I mean, Pam was my sister, my flesh and blood. And she hasn’t even been dead a week, yet here I am, like Mo said, trying to cash in.”
“You’ve got your reasons.”
“I know. But still, it’s kind of odd. I mean when I try to look at it straight and honest, I have to admit I don’t feel much of anything. About Pam, I mean. Her death. It’s almost as if it’d happened to some other kid, someone in the newspaper, and all I feel is the usual vague outrage and anger because of all the creeps in the world. But that’s all. Nothing important. Nothing like grief. No real pain.”
“Maybe you weren’t close.”
“That’s what I mean. We weren’t. No more than my mother and I are. And I have this terrible feeling sometimes that we’re not all that exceptional, that almost everyone I know, and others I watch in public, the families, I mean, that they’re just people who live together, you know? And don’t give a damn about each other.”
Bone thought of Milwaukee and his own budding band of strangers. “You could be right,” was all he said.
“Why is it like that, Rich? Are we all sick or something?”
Bone did not particularly like the subject, especially at four in the morning, and on this day. “What do you take me for?” he asked. “A wise man?”
“Sometimes.”
“Sure. And I come bearing frankincense and myrrh.”
“Don’t put yourself down.”
“Was I?”
“I get that feeling. And I think I know why. Because you’re ashamed. You really don’t want any part of this, do you?”
“I’m here.”
“In body anyway.”
“In spirit too. If we score, and you and Alex decide to keep the money, I’ll be right there with my hand out.”
“But you don’t like the idea.”
“I like it fine.”
“And will we score?”
“You tell me.”
“Are you thinking it wasn’t him now?”
Bone shook his head. “No, that hasn’t changed. I still have this feeling it was him. But nothing more. I still couldn’t swear to it, not in court.”
“We have a chance then.”
“And a chance to put our asses in a wringer.”
“You want out?”
Bone did not answer. He took one last drag on his cigarette and ground it out against the steel railing of the balcony.
“You’re pretty tight,” she said.
“You noticed.”
“Can I do anything for you?”
He turned to look at her, to see if he had read her right, but in the darkness her eyes gave him nothing save the light of the cars down below, bright blips darting across her gaze.
“Like what?” he said.
“Can I relax you?”
“You sure Alex would like that?”
“He’s asleep.”
“Never for long.”
She shrugged. “I’m not his girl. I’m a hooker, remember? Li’l old weekend hooker, me.”
Bone could already feel the excitement beginning in him, but for some reason he felt compelled to resist it. He shook his head. “Maybe you’re not his girl. But then, maybe he thinks you are.”
“So what? What does that matter?”
“I guess it matters to me.” Bone did not expect her to accept the rejection gracefully, nevertheless he was surprised at how her mouth twisted in anger now, even hatred.
“Whatever you say,” she snapped.
Then she went back inside. And only moments later Bone heard
Cutter’s voice, a grunt of irritation at being awakened, followed by soft laughter and whispering and then the slowly building other sounds of sex.
But all that was in the past now, irrelevant to the deepening sense of dread Bone felt as Cutter directed Valerie to pull over to the curb. Wolfe’s office building was across the street, in the next block.
Cutter clapped him on the back. “Well it’s about that time, Rich. What our sergeant used to call the wet-ass hour.”
“You’re a big help.” Bone opened the door.
“It’ll go fine,” Valerie said. “You’ll do fine.”
Bone did not respond. Getting out, he went around the car and across the street, heading along the sidewalk toward the white stone building in the next block. And it seemed that every step he took only intensified his feeling of dread, as if he were setting out on a cinder track without end.
Opening the heavy glass and stainless steel front door, he entered the glacial air of the reception room. And nothing was as he had expected. The man who bought ready-made suits off the rack at his own discount houses showed no similar lack of taste here. The decor was contemporary, but so beautifully and expensively done that the room had an almost antique ambience, dark and quiet and restful despite the huge nonobjective paintings and art objects and the indirect lighting and sleek modern furniture, most of it made of leather and brushed wood. And it was an ambience the receptionist only reinforced, no teenybopper pretending at hauteur but a gray-haired woman of fifty or so, well groomed and intelligent-looking, with a soft voice and a trace of English accent. At the moment she was with a young man who would have looked more at home at Hollywood and Vine, with his long hair and suede jacket and cord slacks and Dingo boots. But he did have a briefcase, and also some sort of problem, which gave Bone time to wander over to a wall display across the room. It was very handsomely done, wood-framed and discreet, obviously the interior decorator’s solution to one of his client’s more gauche demands. For it was quite simply a celebration of J. J. Wolfe, the man and his empire. There was an arrangement of photographs, all in sepia tone, some of them real Kodak box-camera antiques showing Wolfe as a kid on his Ozark farm and as the teenage businessman carrying a crate of eggs. And there was the first supermarket; the first discount house; Wolfe pushing the button to start the feed rolling in an automated cattle feedyard; Wolfe piloting a jet; Wolfe and his family grouped around a champion Angus bull at a Denver show. Next to the photographs was a three-dimensional graph, a kind of inverted family tree showing how the Wolfe empire was structured, flowing from the single entity at the top, the man himself, down into the stout tree trunk of Wolfe Enterprises, Incorporated, which in turn put out a series of heavy branches, corporations that owned corporations that owned corporations, and oddly it was only at the far reaches of the tree, the small single leaves, that the words meant anything, were in fact true household names in American business, flabby venerable giants that had been gobbled by the upstart Wolfe.
Cutter and Bone Page 16