“Hey, that’s O.K. You did good. Any chance to pull it again?”
“Not a prayer. The guy you called out isn’t going to get suspicious because he isn’t about to talk things over with his wife, anyway. Even when he learns she didn’t leave the city he’ll probably just think some friend got things wrong and was trying to help him. But if I muscled in there again they’d all be suspicious.”
Joey grunted and said reluctantly, “Yeah, I guess. But you sure did all right for a one-shot deal. No trouble?”
“None.” He laughed and said, “They’re all my pals.” He sat on the edge of the desk, playfully slapped Joey on the top of the head, and said, “Look, get me all the dope you can on the Hickses. Hibbard and Faye Hicks.”
“I don’t hear of him playin’ no golf.”
“I don’t think he does. He’s strictly a drunk. But she’s loaded. I’d like to know how much.”
“Still the same old idea, huh? You figure you gotta marry it.”
“Well, goddamn it, you tell me where else I’ll get it.”
“Listen, kid, believe me, you work harder when you marry it.”
“The hell with that stuff.”
Joey sighed. “O.K. So you’re doin’ fine, so you ain’t satisfied. So all right. I’ll get the dope you want. Now where you goin’?”
“Over to a cocktail party at the Ransons’.”
“You want me to telephone later with that important-conference gag?”
“That isn’t necessary. They think I’m loaded.”
“I’ll call anyway. Never miss a trick, kid.”
Clark heard a car horn blowing, told Joey good-by, and went outside. Faye was alone in her car, a powder-blue Cadillac convertible parked in the driveway. There was a slight chill in the air and fog was moving in from the ocean, but nevertheless the top was down. Clark slid in to the right-hand seat and appraised Faye, who was again beaming at him. She changed into a highly colored peasant skirt and a white silk blouse that left her shoulders and back bare. She had made one concession to the chill afternoon, a scarf thrown over her shoulders. A mink coat was lying in the back seat.
When he asked about Hibbard, Faye said casually, “Oh, he-passed out in our room. I guess he was drinking more than I realized.” She stepped on the gas, spun the car out of the driveway, and said, “But he passes out every afternoon, anyway, and at least once or twice during an evening.”
“He isn’t what you’d call an eager beaver.”
“He is for alcohol.” She sighed deeply and said, “I’ve tried everything to cure him, but nothing works.”
“Psychiatry?”
“That, too. The trouble is, he has a really brilliant mind when he’s sober and simply confounds the psychiatrists. When he gets through with them they need treatment. No, nothing seems to do any good. He’s determined to drink himself to death and I guess he will.”
“You’re serious?”
“Oh, yes. He really doesn’t care to live. You see, he was a wealthy man at one time, but lost everything in shipping right after the war. I told him you had to grow up in that business, like Daddy, but he wouldn’t listen. He didn’t find out it was the most cutthroat business in the world until he was so far in he couldn’t get out. The bigger outfits pulled the plug and he went down the drain.”
“That’s a shame.”
She did not seem too perturbed. “I told him what would happen. He wouldn’t listen. He deserved what he got. So he’s been drinking ever since.”
She continued talking about Hibbard as if she were speaking of a corpse. Clark began to notice that under her seeming placidity was a deep hatred for her husband. She despised him for losing his money and hated him for now being dependent on her. Clark wondered why she remained with him, but there was no answer to that in her conversation.
She drove down the winding lane, came out on the Seventeen Mile Drive, continued on for perhaps a quarter of a mile, then turned into a driveway before an imposing mansion perched on a small cliff at the edge of the ocean. There were a dozen other cars in the driveway.
Clark had seen mansions similar to the Ranson home, but had never been in one of that size. He hoped he would not blunder and make a fool of himself as they went through the door into an enormous reception foyer. Before him were two broad staircases curving up to the second floor and high above them a domed ceiling. He followed Faye into a two-storied living room and through that to a glassed-in terrace where the guests were assembled, about thirty people. The ocean seemed like a painted backdrop through all the glass. At one end of the room was a long bar, with bartender, equipped as well as any commercial establishment. Some of the guests were standing near the windows, peering out at the ocean through the fog, but most of them were close by the bar.
Ricki was in the latter group. He turned and saw Faye and Clark and came toward them and, though he seemed surprised to see Clark, he was also apparently pleased. He shook hands warmly. “This is very nice, Clark.”
“Well, I don’t exactly like breaking in like this …”
“Nonsense.”
Faye said, “I insisted on bringing him along.”
He looked at her with distaste, but retained his smile. “I’m glad you did. Very glad. Come on, Clark, I’ll introduce you around. Faye, I think you know everyone.”
“Oh, yes.”
Clark had met a few of the people before at the Lodge, but the others were all strangers. Some of their names, however, were familiar, all detailed and annotated in Joey’s black binder. Two of the men, Wallace and Bothello, he knew to be excellent golfers and heavy money players. They also knew about him, probably from Ricki, and they regarded him with open, friendly curiosity. There were a few exceptions, but it was mostly a young crowd, the men tanned and fit and their women young, generally slender and fairly tall, all of them expensively dressed, but with the right casual touch. But Clark noticed the tiny signs of dissipation about the eyes and mouths of most of them and realized it was also a heavy drinking crowd. That he enjoyed. He functioned best when others were drinking heavily.
They accepted him without question. He, too, had the right casual touch, even though it had been acquired. It was also learned that he had taken the Nyland house and that placed him solidly in their group. Anyone who could afford that house, particularly a bachelor, was beyond suspicion.
Clark saw that he was accepted and relaxed. He took a Martini every time one was offered to him, but he always managed unobtrusively to switch glasses with an empty one. He was caught in the act only once. One of the women put her empty glass down on a glass-topped table. Clark slid his glass into its place and lifted the empty one. He felt a slim hand on his arm and looked around.
Ione was smiling at him, one eyebrow cocked up at a mischievous angle. “So that’s how you operate, you naughty boy.”
Clark looked down at her and felt his pulse starting to pound. She was even lovelier than he remembered in a winter-white sheath gown that accented every perfect curve of her body and brought out the coloring and highlights of her dark beauty. She wore one piece of jewelry, a single strand of pearls about her slim throat, which seemed to be the stem for her small, flower-like head.
He said, “I missed you. I was afraid you weren’t here.”
“I was upstairs.” She nodded at the empty glass in his hand. “You’re a cheat, you know.”
“I’m not much of a drinking man.”
“That makes you a freak in this crowd.” She turned her hand about until it was tucked under his arm and asked, “Who did you come with?”
“Faye Hicks. I guess her husband passed out, and she insisted I come along.”
“Did it take much insisting?”
He smiled down into her eyes and shook his head. “Frankly, none at all.”
“I’m glad.” She indicated a couch across the room. “Let’s sit over there and you can tell me all kinds of lies about yourself.”
But they were hardly seated when Faye hurried across the room to jo
in them. She plopped herself down on the couch at Clark’s side and proceeded to go on at some length about some rare painting she had bought. It looked as if she would spend the afternoon there, but the couch was too far away from the bar and the Martinis were not coming fast enough to please her. She at last left them to join a group leaning against the bar.
Clark heaved a great sigh of relief. “God, what a bore!”
Ione shrugged. “Oh, she isn’t so bad.”
“Oh, now, wait. You can’t tell me you enjoy her conversation.”
“It isn’t that. It’s just that I know what makes her the way she is. I feel sorry for her.”
Clark made a guess. “Her husband’s drinking?”
“No. You know she’s from the Tyrell family, don’t you?”
“Yes. Solar Lines?”
Ione nodded. “Her father was a tyrant and her mother died when she was born. So her father held that against her and resented the fact that she wasn’t a boy. In spite of his millions, she was raised almost like some dead-end kid. I understand her weekly spending allowance was increased to fifty cents when she was eighteen and to the magnanimous sum of five dollars when she was twenty-one.”
“No kidding!”
“He was that way. He sent her to cheap boarding schools and bought her the cheapest kind of clothes to wear. She was always a big horse, of course, and the other kids made fun of her. She never had any friends and evidently her life was miserable. Summers she worked as an ordinary filing clerk in one of the shipping-line offices.”
“It’s a wonder one of the other clerks didn’t grab her off.”
“That was Papa’s idea. That was one reason he was so parsimonious. He wanted to get rid of her and hoped she would marry someone, anyone, he didn’t care who. He was a very amazed man when Hibbard started squiring her about. Hibbard is about fifteen years older than Faye and was Papa’s idea of a polished, cultured gentleman, the sophisticated man of the world. And the last person in the world Papa ever expected to be interested in his cow of a daughter.”
Clark was puzzled. “But from what I understand of them, Hibbard must have been a wealthy man too at that time.”
“He was.” Ione giggled and said, “Hibbard has a mammary complex. Faye’s build fascinated him.”
Clark stared at her and abruptly laughed. “That’s the damnedest thing — ”
“True, though. Watch him in a crowd sometime. He can’t keep his eyes away from the well-stacked women. That’s also the reason Faye dresses the way she does, always accentuating the positive. She may not be smart, but she didn’t need a blueprint to know what it was about her that was so interesting to him. Hibbard married her for that reason alone. And right after that Papa died of a stroke and Faye, who had never had more than a few dollars in her hand at any one time, was suddenly worth millions.”
“So she went hog-wild.”
“Yes. One extreme to the other. That’s why I say I feel sorry for her. No balance. No perspective. And she isn’t so bad, really. At least, she’s harmless.”
Clark glanced at Faye across the room and understood why she wanted so much attention. She needed it. She was starved for it. But he felt no sympathy for her, nor did he understand how anyone else could be sympathetic. She was a big moose and that was all there was to it. Her father must have had a rough time of it, at that.
He looked back at Ione and forgot all about Faye. She was studying him, looking deeply into his eyes, almost seeming to read his mind. “You don’t really care, do you?”
“Not much.”
She said seriously, “You have cold eyes, Clark. I have a funny feeling you could be a very dangerous man.”
“Not at all.” He smiled. “I’m harmless, too.”
“I don’t think so.” She looked about at the scattered groups, then back at him. “You’re not really like the other men here. I guess you have the same background and your manner seems the same, but you’re harder. You’ve been tempered in some way. Was it the war?”
He thought of his own dead-end days and freezing in open boxcars, caddying in the rain, running from the police, stealing to live, and said, “No. Not a shot was fired at me in anger. I had it soft.”
“But there is something — ” Then she laughed and said, “I apologize. I’m always doing that with new people. Anyway, I like you.”
“That’s the first sensible thing you’ve said. Shall I tell you what I think about you?”
Her eyes slanted away from his. “Do you think this is the time and place for it?”
“You name it.”
“Well, I’m running up to the city tomorrow, but I’ll be back by the end of the week. Call me then.”
“Anything wrong with tonight?”
“I’m going out with Eric Bothello.”
It was Bothello, a young man with a crew cut and the powerful build of a football tackle, who broke up their conversation. He heard his name and joined them, talked golf with Clark for a few minutes, then smoothly maneuvered Ione up from the couch and away. Clark felt like working him over with a baseball bat.
The party began breaking up shortly after that, as soon as it started to get dark. Faye joined Clark and suggested that they have dinner somewhere. When Clark asked about Hibbard she laughed and said, “Oh, him. Who cares about him?”
“Maybe he won’t like the idea of being left out.”
She stared at him as if he had lost his mind. “What does he have to say about it?”
“Forget I ever brought it up.”
Clark saw Ione again as they were going out the front door. He felt that someone’s eyes were on him and looked back and saw her standing halfway up the staircase, one hand on the rail, her body turned about, staring down at him. Suddenly her image merged into that of Elsie and his fingertips tingled with the feel of her skin and the warm blood pulsing under it. She smiled and waved at him and ran up the stairs. He ran his hand thoughtfully across his chin. Five years to wait? Too long. He went out the door with Faye.
They had dinner at the Blue Ox, just outside of Monterey, and Clark was again fascinated by the manner in which Faye chewed her cud and concentrated on her food to the exclusion of all else. They danced a few times after dinner, an idea that made Clark tremble, but Faye danced surprisingly well. Later they went to the Crocodile’s Tail, a restaurant-bar at the airport, and looked at the ceiling lights projected out through the dark windows like flying saucers over the quiet field. Faye was now drinking steadily and heavily, as if she would never get enough, all the while telling Clark about what a drunkard Hibbard had become.
They ran into him later. They stopped at the Copa on the way back, a night club on the edge of town, and found Hibbard at the bar. He was so drunk he could hardly sit on the stool. He grinned at them and waved a limp hand in the air. Faye gave him a look of disgust and turned on her heel to leave.
“Hey, wait,” he cried. “Where you — you two goin’?”
Faye snapped loudly, “None of your damned business,” and eyes swung about in the room to stare at them.
“I’ll go ’long, too.”
“You will not, you souse.”
“But I’m broke,” he whined. He hiccuped and said, “Cold, stony broke. Need money. Your li’l ol’ husban’ needs shekels. Shell out, baby doll.”
Faye glared at him, then laughed, opened her purse, and threw some money on the bar in front of Hibbard. He grabbed it, as if someone would take it away, then turned to grin slyly at Clark. “You takin’ her home with you?”
Faye snorted with indignation, took Clark’s arm, and stalked out. But she had had much too much to drink herself and tripped at the exit. Clark grabbed her just in time to prevent a nasty fall. He went out the door with Hibbard’s raucous laughter ringing in his ears.
Faye drove her car badly, but thought she was doing beautifully. She refused to relinquish the wheel to Clark and told him in no uncertain terms that she was far superior to most men drivers. He considered it a minor miracle when they fi
nally pulled into the driveway at his home.
She wasted no time in dallying about. She switched off the ignition and the lights and threw herself into his arms with all the lithe grace of a cow skidding down a hillside. She breathed in his ear, “I’m crazy about you, Clark. You know that? Crazy about you.”
He was so startled that the first feeling he experienced was revulsion and rage. He closed his fist and lifted an arm to slug her, then realized it was millions he would be slugging. His anger dissipated as quickly as it had been born. She saw his arm and thought it had been raised for another purpose. She squirmed in his arms, pressed hard against him, and kissed him violently.
Well, he asked himself, isn’t this what you wanted? You didn’t even have to make a move. She’s making the pitch herself. O.K. Go along with her. Think of someone else. It shouldn’t be too tough. You’ve had worse.
She kept mumbling, “Crazy about you. Since I first saw you. Dozens of prints of your picture all over my house. You didn’t know that, did you?”
Clark had the greatest difficulty keeping from laughing in her face. Even so, his maleness was aroused and his aggressive virility asserted itself. He was again the road kid with a tramp town girl he had picked up. He made love to her in the car, awkwardly, and it was a cheap, degrading performance, but not to her. She begged to go in the house and spend the night with him. He explained that he had a guest and talked her out of it. He had to keep talking, and fast, before she finally and sorrowfully agreed to leave.
He watched the taillights of her car disappear down the lane, then turned toward the house. He was frowning, lost in thought. It would sure be nice to have a bank roll like Faye’s to dip into. No more worries then. And none of those everlasting exercises to keep his co-ordination in shape. Jees, it would be sweet to relax for a change.
And there was no doubt in his mind that she would go for him, if Hibbard were out of the way. The poor jerk. He thought, with a grim smile, that Hibbard was really on a dangerous spot. You could almost murder a guy like that, with all those millions in view.
Chapter Five
Up a Winding Stair Page 6