Please Write for Details

by John D. MacDonald

  His life was orderly, exceedingly well organized. He was a bachelor, and owned and operated a small men’s clothing store near the University of Pennsylvania. He lived in a small and tasteful apartment ten blocks from the store. He did not drink or smoke. He took splendid care of himself, and purchased many medicines and devices which promised to prolong the appearance of youth indefinitely. He had no close friends. All other potential interests in his life were subordinated to his single, intense, almost psychotic compulsion—the hunting of women.

  He operated his shop diligently and successfully because it provided the funds necessary to his compulsion. He had made his apartment most attractive, not because he particularly cared about his own surroundings, but because he saw a direct relationship between the frame and the eventual picture. Though not a particularly vain man, he tried to look as well as possible at all times because it enhanced his average. He had foregone the luxury of having any specific and positive personality of his own because it was so much more effective to guess what sort of person the woman would be most vulnerable to, and then assume that personality.

  He had both the cold gray eye and the unthinking cruelty of the professional hunter of any sort of game. Some men climbed mountains because they were there. Other men spent frozen hours in duck blinds, or sweaty hours on a high platform over a staked goat. Paul Klauss had equivalent patience and equivalent skills. And he paid just as much attention to the efficacy of his weapons and their condition.

  When he was twenty he had begun his first journal. He had used his specialized but prodigious memory to look back across the last five years of his existence and recall each name, each face, each figure, each circumstance, each perfumed nuance and set them down in perfect order of accomplishment, in prose as cold and functional as his eyes. Ever after that he kept his journal up to date, making the entries as they occurred. When he was twenty-five he purchased several soft and expensive loose-leaf binders and a quantity of heavy, creamy bond paper. He transcribed all his previous records into the new journals, using a portable typewriter equipped with green ribbon. He worked evenings for many weeks, changing many awkward nesses of phrase and expression as he transcribed the records of his success. They were kept in a locked case in his living room, except for the three most recent ones which he had brought with him. They were his trophy room. His fishing log His hunting journal.

  As other men might recall the look of the brown bear or the mountain slope, or the crashing fall of a moose on the short of a Canadian lake, Paul Klauss would remember the precise configuration of a dimpled buttock, or the approximate decibe count of a wordless cry of completion. On those evenings between expeditions, Paul would leaf through his journals. The name of the female person involved was used as a heading for each entry. Directly underneath appeared the dates, showing the duration of the affair. They did not endure long. And they never, never overlapped. After the date appeared certain statistics: her age, and whether it was verified or estimated approximate height and weight and so on. After this appeare two numerical ratings based on a scale of ten. The first ratin was that of the woman, appearance, energy, co-operativeness. The second rating was that of his own estimate of his own effectiveness in inaugurating, completing and removing himself from the affair. It had been a long time since, out of desperation, Klauss had spent time on any woman who rated less than five on his scale, and equally long since he himself had blundered to an extent where he could rate himself lower than six.

  After the factual data began the text of his entry. “Ruth (Mrs. John Williams) entered my shop at three o’clock on the rainy afternoon of April 3, 1948. She was attractively but not expensively dressed in a green wool suit, a transparent raincape and hood over her dark-red hair. She said that she was interested in buying a present for her husband, and said that she had been thinking of a sports shirt. I told her it would help me if she were to tell me what sort of a man her husband was, thus putting me in a better position to advise her …”

  He thought of his journals as having some special value. It was an account of over six hundred trophies pursued, tamed and released. He thought himself unique in the world, and would have been most distressed to know not only how many others enjoyed the same cold game, but also the rather obvious psychological reason for their enjoyment.

  Each winter he made the best of the rather limited opportunities on the Philadelphia scene, and for the past nine years, he had been able to leave the shop each summer in the charge of a trusted subordinate and go forth to where the game was more abundant, the handicaps fewer.

  For several years he operated on the cruise circuit, but there came to be a disheartening sameness about the shipboard conquest of the adventuresome secretary, schoolteacher or nurse. When, even with the help of his journal, he found it difficult to remember their faces and their mannerisms, he decided to seek other hunting grounds.

  Three years ago he had spent the summer at a music camp and conference in New Hampshire. It had provided nine unique episodes for the journal, and had made him feel as exhilarated as a spear fisherman at Marine Studios. Two years ago he had attended a summer writing conference, and it had been a splendid equivalent. But last summer he had erred dreadfully by signing up for a sculpture course in Florida. The selection had been grossly meager. Of the three entries in the journal, he suspected that he had been overly generous in awarding them all fives. Two could have been considered fours. And one might possibly have been adjudged a three.

  When he had come across the announcement of the Cuernavaca Summer Workshop in the February copy of Diary of the Arts, he had clipped it and set it aside. He had been dubious about it, but finally, unable to find anything that sounded better, he had sent his money at the last moment and made his air reservations.

  He had embarked with anticipatory visions of a workshop galaxy of delectable trophies, bold and perfumed and vulnerable, and of himself strolling among them, in slow and thoughtful selection of the perfect blooms for a perfect bouquet. The chase itself was, to Paul Klauss, the heady and delicious aspect of conquest. The culmination, though pleasant enough, was, he sometimes confessed to himself, rather mechanical.

  Now Harvey Ardos had faded anticipation to a kind of sour pessimism. Possibly the ad had attracted a damp swarm of Harveys, and their female equivalents. Abused and disheartened by the intensity of the repetition of banalities, Klauss was pleased when there was a subtle change in the engine noises and the NO SMOKING sign began to flash. Harvey Ardos terminated his conversation abruptly and began to adjust himself to the imminent task of absorbing all the color of an early afternoon landing in Mexico City.

  After they had gone through customs and emerged into the station proper, Klauss heard a tremulous male voice saying nervously, “Mr. Klauss. Mr Ardos. Mr. Klauss. Mr. Ardos.”

  Paul turned and saw a clerky-looking little gray-haired man in chamois jacket standing next to a vast middle-aged woman with metallic yellow hair who stood babbling and billowing beside the little man, peering around with quick movements of her head.

  With sinking heart Paul Klauss went over and introduced himself to Miles Drummond and Agnes Partridge Keeley. Harvey Ardos acted overwhelmed with the distinction of being met in such a huge and glamorous terminal building, and there was a nervous squeak in his voice.

  After a certain amount of bumbling, passengers and luggage were settled into a great gray Cadillac across from the terminal building. Paul managed to maneuver himself into the front seat beside Agnes. He did not feel that he could endure another moment seated beside Harvey. He thought that Miles Drummond was certainly a bold and resounding name for the nervous and apologetic little man who was running the school. In his anticipations of the school he had placed Agnes Partridge Keeley on his list of possibles. He removed her in a tenth of a second. Agnes Partridge Keeley talked volubly about delightful old Mexico as she eased the car through traffic with such an excess of caution that they were trailed at all times by a file of taxicabs hooting in frustrated a
nger and derision. Miss Keeley did not appear to notice them. They sought opportunities to cut around the Cadillac, glaring as they passed, inches away.

  It was a new city to Paul Klauss, but he looked at it with that limited interest born of specialization, in much the same way that an experienced hunter might survey new terrain from the air. There is a water hole. There is heavy brush country. There is a game trail through the hills. Paul noted that there seemed to be a great many bars and a great many hotels. And it was heartening to see the high percentage of trim young females, particularly on one street they traversed. At a corner he found the name of the street and filed it away carefully in his mind. Juarez.

  As Agnes Partridge Keeley talked, Paul extracted pertinent information. They were the first two students to arrive. The rest were coming tomorrow by air, or arriving by car. As Agnes paused for a moment to inch her way around the circle in front of the Continental Hilton and turn south on Insurgentes, Paul said, “How many students will there be?”

  “Thirteen,” Miles Drummond said from the back seat.

  Paul was appalled. Thirteen was far too small a group to provide not only adequate choice, but sufficient room for maneuver.

  “I suppose there are several married couples?” he said with forced cheer.

  “Really, I expected more than we are getting,” Miles Drummond said. “Just one married couple. Their name is Wahl. Doubleyou aye aitch el. Mr. Klauss, tell us about your painting.”

  Paul hesitated long enough for Harvey Ardos to pounce. And pounce he did. From then on whenever Agnes would try to break in, Harvey would run right over her by increasing his decibel count. She gave up and drove up the mountains in silence, a pinched look of exasperation on her mouth.

  Soon after they left the toll road at the Cuernavaca end, they turned through an open iron gate in a high wall and parked directly in front of a building that was not only an exceptionally ugly structure, but seemed to be in a state of utter disrepair. A motley collection of servants came out after the baggage. One of them was one of the dirtiest small boys Paul had ever seen.

  Drummond, with his continual air of apology, took Paul to the ground-floor room that had been assigned to him, and handed over the key and said, “Ha ha, Mr. Klauss. You may find it a bit primitive, but it’s clean and after all, we’re here to paint, aren’t we?”

  “Mmmm,” he said.

  “I’ll let you get settled while I go show Mr. Ardos his room. Dinner at eight-thirty, Mr. Klauss. Until then, ha ha, you are on your own. The town is four miles away. If you feel you need transportation, see me and I’ll see if anything can be arranged. Cuernavaca is very … picturesque.”

  It did not take Paul long to unpack. He changed to a pale-gray wool shirt and dark-blue slacks. He sat on the narrow bed. It was made up with clean gray sheets, a blanket with two holes in it. The narrow window was open. He looked through the patched screening and between the bars and saw a stretch of baked earth between his window and the high stone wall. Broken glass of many colors topped the wall, gleaming in the sun. He turned and looked at the cane chair with a broken seat, the huge bureau that looked as if at one time it had rolled down a rocky mountain. He looked at the single bulb that stuck out of the wall, a big bulb made of clear glass so that he could see the filaments inside. He went over and turned it on by pulling the chain. He could look directly at the light without blinking. He could imagine how dismal the high-ceilinged room would be at night. The center of the narrow bed was a good five inches lower than the corners. And the mattress was stuffed with discarded truck springs and milk bottles. A cockroach strolled out from under the bed, paused and looked at Klauss with insolent appraisal, and went back under the bed. For the first time since childhood Paul Klauss felt like breaking into tears.

  At ten o’clock on Friday morning, the little red bus toiled slowly up the mountains, from the fifty-five hundred feet at Cuernavaca toward the ten-thousand-foot pass a little beyond Tres Cumbres. Fidelio Melocotonero sat gloomily grasping the wheel, sometimes urging the vehicle forward by bobbing back and forth.

  Beside him sat Gambel Torrigan, equally depressed. When, at the Peninsular Art School and Foundation of Englewood, Florida, he had received the letter from Gloria Garvey, he had lunged at the opportunity. Englewood had been a fine place for a time. When they had hired him as instructor in painting, they had turned over to him a rickety but extremely private beach cottage on lower Manasota Key. Classes had started the first of October. He taught in the morning, and worked hard on his own stuff in the afternoon. He’d bought an elderly vehicle that got him back and forth from the school to the Key, and into town for groceries. He had decided that this was the time to turn over a new leaf. Get a lot of work done. Big paintings. Swim and sleep and work. Get in shape. Lay off the bottle, and don’t fool around with the students.

  But by the time Gloria’s letter came, it had all changed, the way it always did. He would look at the paintings he had thought were so good when he was doing them, and they would be meaningless to him. By the time Gloria’s letter came he was spending the good working hours in a beer joint on the Key, with or without Arabella Boycie, the spoiled, rich, drunken, domineering bitch who had bitched up his plans and bitched up the job so that he was certain that when the school closed on the last day of April, he would not be invited back for the following fall.

  It was a timely invitation and, in addition, he remembered Gloria Garvey with pleasure, remembered her untidy magnificence, and was quite certain that she sought a renewal of an all too brief affair. He had been Arabella’s house guest on Casey Key during May and June. After he had purchased his one-way airline ticket, he had nearly five hundred dollars left, some of which was from the sale of the old car, and most of which was a pseudo-loan from Arabella Boycie.

  He had thought it would be a pleasant summer. But Gloria had made her lack of co-operation in some of his plans most painfully evident. The hotel was grim. The food was barely edible. Drummond was a tiresome little man. And fat Agnes and her work were equally unbearable. Also, the two students who had arrived, Klauss and Ardos, were unpromising.

  The red bus came to the highest point and began to descend to the plateau of Mexico, twenty-five hundred feet below. Fidelio sat tautly, brown hands grasping the wheel, the speedometer climbing as he pressed the gas pedal flat against the floor. Gam Torrigan had learned that Fidelio had no English. In a very short time the speed began to make Gam feel uncomfortable. He glanced over at Fidelio’s wide grin. The tires yelped on a corner and Gam had the feeling they had come close to turning over. The speedometer went only to sixty, and the needle was lying firm against the pin.

  “Hey, you!” Gam yelled over the roar of the wind. “Take it easy!”

  Fidelio gave a great roar of laughter. The wind had disrupted his ducktail and long strands of glossy black hair dangled in front of his face. He laughed again. Gam saw at once that there was very little choice. They were going too fast to risk jumping out. It was too dangerous to risk grabbing the wheel. The little red bus rocketed down the mountain, dancing and squealing on the curves, passing everything on the road. At one point there was a stone wall, a low wall, close to Gam’s elbow, and beyond the wall was a dropoff of hundreds of feet. Gam tried to wrench his fascinated gaze away from the drop, but he kept turning to look back at it.

  Fidelio kept yelping, and his face was wet with sweat, his eyes wide and shiny, his knuckles squeezing white. From time to time he gave the horn button a quick bang with his fist. He was in a frenzy of ecstasy. Finally they whipped around a corner and ahead of them was a long straightaway with the toll booths at the end of it. Fidelio stamped on the brake. The bus slewed and rocked and yelled. They bounced wildly over the concrete ripples near the booths designed to slow traffic down, and after a final screaming skid, came to a grandiose stop directly opposite the window. Fidelio gave the man the toll ticket. He drove on, very slowly. He pulled over and parked. They both got out. Fidelio went over and sat on the grass, chuckling we
akly. Gam leaned against the side of the bus and stared at Fidelio glumly. Gam felt as though his knees would bend either way.

  When Fidelio at last stood up, Gam took three steps toward him, doubled his fists, and knocked him down. Fidelio lay flat on his back on the grass. He looked up at Torrigan and suddenly began to giggle again. Torrigan went to the bus and got behind the wheel. No key.

  It took a considerable amount of sign language to establish the status. If the señor did not get out from behind the wheel, Fidelio would walk away with the key and never come back. Fidelio would drive. But he would drive slowly. If he did not drive slowly he would get one more big thump in the mouth when they finally stopped, if they were alive.

  And they proceeded to the airport.

  Chapter Four

  At eleven o’clock on the morning of Friday, the thirtieth day of June, while Barbara Kilmer and John Kemp were sharing the same airliner over the barren lands some four hundred miles north of Mexico City, and while Fidelio was lying on the grass, giggling, and while Felipe Cedro and Rosalinda Gomez were having a deadly quarrel in the kitchen over the split of the morning kickback, and while Miles Drummond was sitting at the table in his apartment, adding up figures, and while Agnes Partridge Keeley was doing an opaque water color of Popocatepetl, managing to make it look like a huge oversweet vanilla cookie, and while Gloria Garvey was drinking beer at her table in front of the Marik, and while Esperanza Clueca sat in the sun behind the staff quarters studying and while Alberto Buceada was asleep in the shade, and while Pepe was abusing a stray puppy, and while Harvey Ardos was buying a straw sombrero in the public market, and while Paul Klauss was lounging grimly on his bed … Margarita Esponjar came into Klauss’s room without knocking, carrying a pile of folded sleazy towels.