Sweet Wild Wench

by William Campbell Gault

  “First of all, he’s got some big name parishioners. And second, no matter what you think of the cult, he defines it as a religion, and there he’s got the Constitution on his side. We have to be documented to the teeth before we move in on a setup like his. He can scream persecution, and won’t these idiotic newspapers pick that up!”

  “And how about murder? Adams had a motive for killing Burns. He had means and opportunity.”

  “Opportunity and motive, but no means. Where’s the gun?”

  It was quiet in the room. Deutscher stared at me meaningly and smiled.

  I asked quietly, “You don’t, for a minute, think I’ve got the gun?”

  He didn’t answer right away. Then he said, “Let’s pretend I didn’t. Puma, you’ve told me more about this whole setup than I had learned so far. So help me, there’s nothing I can add.”

  I stood up again. “You’re not going to fight us, though, are you?”

  “Not unless I have to,” he said. “Not unless the boss tells me to.”

  I went out into the overcast light of middle afternoon and walked down to my car. We’d parted as near-allies, but who could trust Ned Deutscher? Like the mayor, he worked only for himself. Though he wouldn’t buck the money; he was too much of a realist for that.

  Tonight, I decided, I would go to another sermon in the converted mortuary. Eve would probably be there.

  I went home and showered and shaved. I was cutting my toenails when the phone rang.

  It was J. D. Deering. His dry voice was like a desert wind. “I wanted to tell you you’ll have no more trouble from the Progressive.”

  “Thank you, sir. How did you manage that?”

  “Two of the major department stores comprise eighty per cent of the display advertising in that miserable union sheet. I happen to know the major stockholders in both stores.”

  “Excellent,” I said. “Thank you, again.”

  “Ah — did you learn anything new on this Adams?”

  “I learned he had killed a man with his car back in Connecticut. An accident. I’m going over to another sermon tonight.”

  A few seconds of silence, and then, “You’ll tell me, won’t you, if you see Eve there?”

  “You can bank on it, sir,” I told him.

  When I hung up, the taste of the “sir” was still sour in my mouth. But, hell, I’d called worse men that. I’d even called second lieutenants that.

  And why, I wondered, did J. D. phone me personally instead of calling his friend Griffin? And then I realized he couldn’t have asked the District Attorney for a personal report on his wayward daughter.

  I dressed in my best and went over to Cini’s for dinner. I went from there to the temple on San Vicente. And though I was twenty minutes early, the parking lot was more than two-thirds filled.

  Inside, I found a seat near the back where I could observe all without being too conspicuous. Lady Eve was again in the front row and I remembered my promise to her father and wondered if I meant to keep it. I am not completely honorable, as you may have noticed.

  Then, down the far aisle, I saw the mountain who moved like a man, Ned Deutscher. He took a seat in the back but in the opposite corner from me.

  The joint was full when Jeremiah came from behind a velvet curtain to take his place in the pulpit. He was wearing a silver-gray sheen gabardine tonight and he looked like a Brooks Brothers saint.

  Silence settled in the rooms as the house lights dimmed as unobtrusively as twilight. There was a reflected aura around Jeremiah, a trick of some expert lighting technician.

  He talked of faith tonight and he talked of persecution. It seemed to me that when he was most fervent, most winningly articulate, the aura around him glowed brighter. It could have been my imagination, but more likely it was done with a rheostat.

  I looked over at Ned Deutscher, but couldn’t tell from this distance whether he was scoffing or praying. In the front row, the reflected light from Jeremiah shone on the face of Eve Deering. She was drinking it in like champagne.

  Jeremiah went on with the pseudo-science gobbledegook and I dozed and dreamed of Eve and of a wrathful Adele who caught me with Eve. Somewhere in the background, Sam Griffin glowered.

  Ahead of me, a man turned around and said “Ssshhhh!” and I realized I must have snored a little.

  I met his stare and he turned around.

  Jeremiah was winding it all up now. He finished, turned and faced due magnetic north, his back to his parishioners. And they all rose, already at due magnetic north and the entire audience stood that way for a full minute. And nobody laughed.

  They began to file out and the perfumes changed as they passed, but they all smelled expensive. A well-tailored prophet for an upper class parish; what else would be fitting? In their Bibles, money was still the major virtue and lack of success the major sin.

  In the other corner, Deutscher still sat. He was watching Eve.

  As soon as the aisle was clear, I went down to where she sat.

  She looked up gravely, “Wasn’t he wonderful?”

  “An extremely persuasive man,” I agreed. I smiled at her. “I promised your father I’d report it to him if I saw you here, but that would be nasty, wouldn’t it?”

  She nodded, her eyes moving around my face. “That was an interesting picture of you and Adele Griffin in the Progressive. You’re quite a ladies’ man, aren’t you, Mr. Puma?”

  “I’ve been lucky,” I admitted. “Couldn’t we go out for a drink or something?”

  “And if I don’t?”

  I shrugged.

  “If I don’t, you’ll tell my father I was here. Is that it?”

  “Please!” I said. “You’re being ridiculous, Miss Griffin. I have a number of vices, but blackmail isn’t one of them.”

  She smiled suddenly. “I know, I know. I was miffed. Do you like to dance?”

  “Love it,” I said. “I grew up at the Palladium.”

  “I know a place in Santa Monica,” she said. “The Pico Room.”

  “What are we waiting for?” I asked. “Let’s go.”

  And when we went out, Deutscher still sat in the back and though he watched us every step of the way he gave no sign of recognizing me.

  10

  THE DESERT WIND was back and the night was warm.

  I held the door of the chartreuse Cadillac open for Eve and then went around to climb in behind the wheel. As I was adjusting the power operated seat, she asked, “When did my father ask you to spy on me?”

  “About three hours ago was the most recent time.”

  “Is that standard service for citizens from the District Attorney’s office?”

  “No. But in my more solvent moments, I’m also a private investigator. And he’s taken the Progressive off our neck. That earned him some extra attention.”

  She said, “I saw you the second you came in. But I didn’t know you had come to spy on me.”

  The Cad purred down San Vicente. I said, “I didn’t come to spy.” There was a ragged overtone in my voice.

  We drove for a few blocks in silence. Then I said, “Why did you tell your dad you weren’t in Palm Springs?”

  “Because I knew he’d find out. I thought you might tell him.”

  “I didn’t. Do you plan to go home now?”

  “I don’t think so. I probably won’t stay at the hotel. I’ve an old hideout I used to use, a place I bought with some of the money my mother left me. I used it in those phases I used to go through. It’s in the hills above Malibu.”

  “Phases?” I asked.

  She laughed quietly. “I was going to be an artist when I first bought it, a self-sufficient devotee of the beautiful. Before that, a poet, and after that, an actress.”

  “And now,” I said, “You’ve decided to be a femme fatale. Well, they’re all fine professions if you can afford them. Most girls settle for what they have to be.” Again, there was that ragged, tomcat overtone in my voice.

  There wasn’t much of a crowd at
the Pico Room, so the dance floor was almost usable. We danced and had a few drinks.

  And we talked. Or rather, she did. Some compulsion perhaps compounded of the Adams’ spell and the Pico Room booze forced her to relate to me the history of that strange female, Eve Deering.

  A girl less beautiful would have bored me. I listened carefully and watched her mobile face through the catharsis and managed to seem interested.

  And then, after midnight, she said, “This is monstrous. I’ve bored you silly, haven’t I?”

  I shook my head. “It’s been very interesting. Shall we try another dance?”

  She finished her drink. “I’ve a better idea. Why don’t we drive out to my Malibu hideout? You’d love it.”

  “Great,” I said, the overtone back.

  She looked at me suspiciously. “Don’t get any ideas, Joe Puma. I was drunk the other night.”

  “So was I,” I said. “What do you think I am, a tomcat?”

  “I’m not sure,” she said. “I never saw a tomcat your size.”

  The Santana still blew; there was very little chill in the steady breeze from the east. The stars were clear and there was only a wisp of cloud drifting across the face of the moon.

  She drove and she drove well, handling the Cad with competence and imagination. She cut down from Ocean Avenue to the Coast Highway at the stop a few blocks beyond her hotel.

  To our left was the water, to our right the bluffs of the Palisades. The speedometer needle went up to seventy without strain.

  I said, “The limit’s thirty-five along here.”

  “Ah, yes,” she said, “the police mind.” The car slowed and she smiled.

  A hotrod went blasting by to our left, its twin tailpipes snorting contemptuously at the oversized Cad. And then, from a beach parking lot, a pair of headlights flashed on and a prowl car went screeching out onto the highway, trailing the rod.

  “Kids,” she said. “Even they can’t have fun.”

  “They have fun. And the highways run with the blood of the innocent. What fun is that?”

  “Being free, free, free,” she said emphatically. “Not bound by the cowards’ laws.”

  “Were you always free, free, free?” I asked her.

  “Except for three days when I was married — at fifteen. Dad had it annulled. Nicest thing he ever did for me.”

  Brother! I had one here. Right out of the mad twenties. And Jeremiah Adams made it all seem right to her.

  We went past the hotrod and the prowl car. The two kids who had been in the ‘rod were now standing next to it, their hands on its top, while one officer frisked them. The other was examining the inside of the car with a flashlight.

  “Hotrod hoodlums?” Eve asked.

  “It’s hard to tell. Anyway, they’re looking for weapons.”

  “Maybe kids don’t have fun these days. Do you have fun, Joe Puma?”

  “Here and there, now and then. I’m not kicking. Fun needs contrast. And usually money.”

  Her voice was very quiet. “The way I heard it, you could marry money right now.”

  “You heard wrong. I could never marry money. I’ve this middle-class compulsion to make my own way.”

  The lights of the Bay formed a curving line from Palos Verdes to Point Dume. The Cad went whispering along and my thoughts moved ahead faster than the Cad.

  Just before we got to the guarded entrance to the Malibu Colony on our left, Eve swung the big convertible to the right, along an asphalt road that curved up into the hills. A sign read: Private. No Trespassing.

  No pressure in my loins. And why? I’d had a full weekend and some nocturnal episodes since, but I was a big, virile guy and the girl was taking me home to her hideaway. Why was expectancy dead in me? Was I getting old?

  It was all there in my imaginative mind, but there was no answering response from my body. Imminence was failing me.

  The road turned sharply. As the headlights swung in an arc, a huge flat-roofed modern house of painted adobe and glistening glass was floodlighted in the glare. The place was cantilevered out from the hill on steel beams; the parking area was on the higher ground to the rear of the house.

  She parked and turned out the lights of the car. I followed her without dialogue past the garage toward the door. She opened it and flicked a switch.

  I don’t know what I’d been expecting, probably dusty floors and sheet-shrouded furniture. She’d said it was a hideaway.

  This was nothing like that. This was a spotless place of white leather built-in furniture and gleaming, black-composition floors. The living room was the section I had seen thrust out from the hillside on beams and there was ceiling-high plate glass on three sides, showing all the shore line from horizon to horizon.

  “It’s — spectacular,” I said. “Who keeps it clean?”

  “A housekeeper comes in occasionally. She doesn’t want to live here alone. She says the place frightens her.”

  “It’s awesome enough.”

  She asked casually, “Drink?” Too casually. Tremor in her voice?

  I nodded. What was it, a muscular block? The mind imagined but the awareness in the body did not respond.

  She went over to a small Formica bar built into the wall that wasn’t glass. “Bourbon and water?” she asked.

  “Please,” I said. Was it because I considered her sick? Could some gallantry in me refuse to permit my taking advantage of a sick woman? She wasn’t that sick; her decision had been toward freedom, a man’s freedom. She could have erred, but it had been a rational decision nevertheless.

  She brought me the drink and said, “Look at the Bay. Look at the lights.”

  Then she went over to the bar again and pressed a button and music came from speakers nowhere in view. I went over to the biggest wall of glass and looked out at the lights and the stars.

  Some of my older friends had told me of their own experiences of this kind, when the spirit was willing but the flesh would not respond. Damn it, I wasn’t old!

  Big mouth Joe Puma, I had to ask her to go out for a drink. And when the ninth inning came, I wouldn’t even have a bat. Why did I have to have such a big mouth?

  Could it be conscience? No. Conscience I had, but never about this.

  I had to stall. I said, “You puzzle me.”

  She came over with her own drink to stand next to me. “Do I?”

  “Last time I left you, you said ‘good-by’ as though you meant it. You were annoyed with me. Tonight you’re friendly.”

  “Jeremiah does that for me. My basic nature is friendly.” She lifted her drink in a mocking salute. “And you have an exceptional animal attraction, Mr. Puma.”

  Dimly I could smell her fragrance. She pressed another button and light charcoal satin drapes moved easily along the traverse rods on both sides of us, silently except for the whir of a small electric motor.

  Buttons, buttons, buttons — where was mine? Only the glass in front of us was uncovered now. The world was being closed out and panic rose in me.

  The music went to something faintly Spanish and she asked, “Do you tango, Joe?”

  “Not since my Palladium days,” I said, “but let’s give it a whirl.” Anything to stall, anything.

  As we danced it came back to me. The dimly familiar routine of the tango, I mean, not what I was wishing for. She danced with grace and the proper proximity, her queen’s body making contact at all the important places, her perfume designed to stir the male, but not stirring this male, this usually so stirrable male.

  “Is something wrong?” she asked.

  Oh, brother!

  “You’re so quiet,” she said.

  “The better to dance with you, my dear,” I said, and there was a tremor in my voice. But the tremor was fright.

  “Are you in love with Adele Griffin?” she asked.

  I nodded, and she seemed to stiffen.

  “And some others,” I added. “Women, I love ‘em. They make so much more sense than men.” Talk, talk, talk, Puma,
for lack of anything better to do.

  “You seem dispirited,” she said. “Jeremiah?”

  Jeremiah? I searched my memory. “Oh,” I said in sudden remembrance. “You mean Jeremiah Adams. No, he doesn’t dispirit me, if that’s the word.”

  “Something’s wrong,” she said. “Something serious.”

  I took a deep breath and my mind went scurrying for answers and one last best hope came to me, and I said thoughtfully, “I guess I’ve been thinking about that bourbon. It doesn’t taste like that whisky you gave me at the Hacienda Arms. Different brand?”

  She drew back to stare at me, and then she began to laugh. Cognizance came to her mobile face and she said, “Joe, not you? Not the great Puma? Am I guessing what you’re trying to tell me?”

  “I don’t know,” I said lamely. “That other whisky tasted better, sort of — peppier.”

  Her face was grave, but not her eyes. She said solemnly, “I have some of the other whisky here. It takes time to pour. You have another look at the view.”

  I went over to look out at the lights and she went to the bar. I heard the whir of the small electric motor again and the drape that covered the biggest window began slowly to close. And now the world would be shut out and the big game would begin and would I come to bat?

  She brought my drink and said, “Try this. It’ll take you back to high school.”

  And Joe Puma, that champion, reached out humbly for the liquid crutch.

  It was magic, it was an elixir, it was manhood in a glass. And the flesh followed the mind, like it was designed to, and she said, “Shall we dance again?”

  “Why?” I asked.

  The indolent life that she lived, how could she maintain such a firm body? Lacking exercise, how could she be so strong, so active, arching her back to lift all that weight, demanding my best, matching me muscle for writhing muscle, climax for climax, an artisan of phenomenal strength and agility.

  Later she stood by the bedroom window that looked out over the Colony far below. Her fine body was dimly visible in reflected light from the hall. Those strong, slim and long legs, those high, proud breasts and that tight, smooth tummy.