Understrike

by John Gardner

  “This is Mr Henniger,” said Boysie affably as they reached the car. Chicory smiled.

  “Miss Triplehouse.”

  “Howdy, Miss Triplehouse; you and Mr Oakes in back, please.”

  “Gee, are we glad to see you,” said Chicory, ducking her head and sliding delicately into the rear seat. “We thought we’d be on that bus till ever.” Boysie stood, looking lost, with the cases.

  “Better put those in the trunk, hadn’t you, Mr Oakes?” smiled Henniger, still making no move to help him. “It’s unlocked.”

  With the luggage stowed away and Boysie snug beside Chicory, the car boomed out on to the road and began to eat up the miles which lash out painfully between the vast stretch of scrubby New Mexico desert. Henniger shifted in his seat, turning half way towards the couple behind him.

  “We’re goin’ to a little motel, ‘bout twenty miles off the main Highway here. Got one of the big boys from the Top wants to see ya Mr Oakes. We stay there tonight, then fly ya down to San Diego from Albuquerque in the morning. Ya gotta be there for briefing Sunday noon.”

  “What’d I tell you, Boysie honey? Albuquerque! Yuck!” said Chicory.

  Boysie reflected that all this piddling about was seriously cutting into his living-it-up time. But then, without the piddling about there might not be any time in which to live it up.

  “Incidentally, Miss Triplehouse, you’ll be able to fly back direct to New York,” continued Henniger. “You’ve done your job and you’ll be contacted on return.”

  “To hell with that!” Chicory’s reaction was violent. “I’m goin’ on down to San Diego.”

  “Sorry, Miss Triplehouse, them’s my orders.” Henniger was firm.

  “I’m going on down to San Diego of my own accord then. Vacation.”

  “You’ll go straight back to New York.”

  “Now look here ... I can do just as I goddam please. I’m a free agent.”

  “There is no such thing as a free agent.” The voice was clipped. Final. The conversation had finished as far as Henniger was concerned. Chicory opened her mouth to speak again, then thought better of it. They had pulled off the main Freeway, and seemed to be hurtling unsteadily along a disused stage coach track. Boysie put out his hand and felt Chicory’s hot in his. He could sense her blazing. “Why don’t you do something about the little shit?” she hissed in Boysie’s ear. Boysie considered the situation and decided that there was very little he could do in the circumstances. The atmosphere was not unlike that of a Mothers’ Union Meeting at which the chairwoman had just advocated free love.

  Fifteen minutes later they were back on the main highway. No one had spoken since Chicory’s hiss. She still simmered, while Boysie remained perplexed. The two men in front seemed quite at ease. A notice on their right said, “Rio Grande Motel One Mile. TV. Pool. Air conditioning. Twenty Units.”

  The Rio Grande Motel was a two-tiered, pink stucco monstrosity trying to look like a hacienda, built to form three sides of a square. It gave the impression of being a tired oasis in the midst of the hot dry prairie.

  “Looks a bit seedy,” ventured Boysie.

  “Old guy who built it thought he’d gotta gold mine—catch passing trade too tired to go on to Albuquerque. Just didn’t pay off. Who’s goin’ to stay in a place like this when they can get the real thing in half an hour’s driving?” replied Henniger. “Anyhow, he’s got the trade today. We’ve taken the whole place justa be on the safe side.”

  They began to disembark from the ear. The patio was deserted. The pool looked stagnant “The living desert,” breathed Boysie, and, trying to make light of what promised to be a very fraught situation, began to sing softly, “There’s a small motel . .”

  “Cut it, will ya, Oakes ...” said Henniger sharply.

  “Now wait a minute ...” Boysie started, then he felt the power of the steely eyes and thought again. He much preferred the quiet efficiency of Lofrese and the cheery bombast of the late lamented Joe Siedler to this kind of treatment.

  “Not here then. Not yet,” said the grey-haired man: the first words he had spoken, except for a short oath when the driver of a jumbo-sized convertible had cut in on them just outside Santa Rosa.

  “Didn’t expect them ta be.” Henniger was looking around him. “Flight’s not due till eleven.” Boysie glanced at his watch. It was only eight-thirty and already, standing out in the open, the sun was beginning to fry the back of his neck.

  “Where the hell’s that old fool.” Henniger raised his voice to a bellow. “Hey, Pop, where are ya! Pop!”

  “OK. No need ta shout. I kin hear ya.” The old man came hobbling round the corner of the hacienda—a walking image of the old gag about ‘that’s waar the horse goes’: a beanpole in tight Levis, with a face held together by deep wrinkles and thick white stubble. He regarded the group with unflattering suspicion.

  “These are the people I told ya ‘bout,” said Henniger with a gesture towards Boysie and Chicory.

  “Thought th’was gonna be three more men.”

  “Other two’ll be over later.”

  The old man spat at a crop of weeds. Boysie could have sworn they wilted. “OK, you’re payin’,” said the proprietor.

  “The luggage is in the trunk.” Henniger walked slowly back to the car, keys in hand. The oldster continued to look at Boysie and Chicory. Boysie began to penetrate the mental processes which lay behind the look. The only people likely to stay at this place were couples bent on adultery. The old horror was obviously adept at spotting naughty weekenders. Bet he bleeds them white, thought Boysie.

  “Ya together? Or are ya separates?” asked the nasty old man. Before Boysie could make an indignant reply, Chicory startled him:

  “Together,” she said, meaning every word of it.

  “Hey now ...” Henniger stood up quickly from behind the car.

  “Together!” repeated Chicory, looking the security man full in the eyes.

  “Are you sure that’s ...?” Henniger was smiling at her: putting on a little style.

  “Together!”

  Henniger’s smile curdled. He continued to look at her. The grey-haired man shuffled his feet. Henniger capitulated, nodded, and bent down again to unlock the boot. Pleased, Boysie turned to smile at Chicory, intending it to be a look of mingled warmth and desire. Ludicrously, he mistimed the turn and cannoned, undignified and hard, into the grey-haired man, who had been moving behind him towards Henniger.

  “I’m so sorry.” Boysie noticed that the grey-haired man had a slight accent which suited the smooth manner. European, possibly Italian, he thought.

  The proprietor made a production number out of carrying the luggage: the limp and heavy breathing coming much into play as he led them across the patio to a ground floor room under the cloister in the central part of the jaded building. The motel room was strangely familiar to Boysie: the large bed, with curved lamps like horns sprouting from either side of the head, armchair, built-in wardrobe, towering television, the pitcher of water with the wax drum for ice cubes, and the compact bathroom with shower, wash basin and lavatory. It was exactly as he had imagined it from Mr Fleming’s novels—right down to the strip of hygienic paper sealing the lavatory seat, and the impregnated tissue for polishing shoes.

  “Big man should be here ‘bout noon,” said Henniger from the doorway. “If ya want anythin’ just ring. We’ll be along when he needs ya. OK?”

  “Fine. Thank you,” said Boysie. The door closed on them.

  “Well?” Boysie smiled.

  “Well my arse,” said Chicory, not unpleasantly.

  ‘What?”

  “You weren’t going to do a thing about it, were you?”

  “About what?”

  “About anything. I had to put my foot down. What the heck? What gives with those guys? They own you or something, Boysie? Gee, did you make me mad. Letting them tell me what to do? Couldn’t you have said something?”

  “Look, Chicory darling. Honestly, I’m sorry.” Boysie wa
s floundering. “I’m in a very tricky position. I’m supposed to do what these people tell me. Under orders.”

  “Orders! I suppose you’ll get chewed up for sharing this room with me then?” She was piqued.

  Boysie grinned. “Oh definitely,” he said, putting on his county drawl. “Be booted out of the hunt; blackballed from every decent club; put on the undesirable list by the debs’ mums; won’t even be allowed to exhibit at Cruft’s…”

  “What the hell are you talking about, you crazy Englishman? Is that Limey humour or something?”

  “Indubitably.” He laughed, then stopped, his face grave. She was sitting on the edge of the bed, looking up at him with those great almond eyes glittering a kind of violence. They stayed there, staring at each other: taking in long draughts of the emotion which leaped between them. Boysie moved over to the bed as she put up her arms, stretching forward in invitation, with head back and the tight orbs of her breasts standing out inside her sweater as though straining to break through and encompass him. He felt her close, her lips on his, and the same spiral intertwining they had experienced in New York. She was running her hands over him as they rocked back on to the bed. They rolled over once: then, together, they were clawing at each other’s clothes, stripping one another, hurling garments from them in a frenzy of need.

  This was wholly animal—as he knew it would be with Chicory. All hunger and the desire for a complete uninhibited satisfying of the sensual appetite. They thrust at each other, and bit, and scratched, hanging on as though this was a wild struggle for possession, not the free mutual granting of their bodies. Sweat poured from them, between them, adding fuel to the physical momentum of the act. When it was finished, and they had both stopped shivering from the long ecstatic shudder that was their peak, Chicory continued to run her hands expertly and smoothly over his body. A long time later, she spoke:

  “Aren’t bodies wonderful, Boysie? Aren’t they just wonderful things?”

  “Be lost without ‘em.” He couldn’t resist it. She chuckled, grateful that he had broken the tension, and kissed him on the nose.

  “May I tell you,” she said, “that you are now on my highly recommended list.”

  “You get the full four-star treatment and a whole chapter to yourself in my autobiography.”

  “That won’t be an autobiography, honey; that’ll be a standard work of reference.” She looked at him, her eyes doing a complicated tango. “You’ve been around, haven’t you, Boysie baby?”

  “I have, as they say, had my moments.” He bent over her again, but she gently pushed him away.

  “Not now, darling. We’ll have tonight. I need a shower.”

  They took the shower together. like children playing at water carnivals; rubbed each other down, and rummaged in their cases for clean clothes.

  “I feel great.” Chicory was standing in the middle of the room, legs apart, hands on her hips, dressed only in tight white briefs and bra. “How about some coffee?”

  “All right, but get some of those clothes on first. If the old man brings it, you could give him a heart attack. I can vouch for it, you look gorgeous.”

  “Nuts. Ring down and get some coffee.”

  Boysie was juggling with the telephone. “Damn thing seems dead. Can’t get a peep.”

  “Let Mama have a go.” Chicory came over and fiddled with the instrument “No. Looks as if it’s out of order. Can’t say I’m surprised, the joint’s falling to bits. See that plaster?”

  “I’ll give the old-timer a shout.” Boysie fastened the waist-ban of his second best slacks and went over to the door. At first he thought it was just jammed; then his heart started to take on the trip-hammer pound. The door was locked. From the outside. Somewhere in the back of his consciousness, Boysie tried to remember something: something that had half come through to him as they had been making love.

  “What’s wrong, Boysie? What’s the matter?”

  “The door. They’ve locked the bloody door. My God…”

  He made a dive across the room towards the television where his charcoal slacks had landed when Chicory wrenched them from his legs, kicking to be unfettered, as they fought for nakedness on the bed. His hands scrabbled at the material, but he knew already. It had gone. He felt the muscles twitching on the left side of his mouth, the tremors, the blood draining from his face, and the twisting in his guts.

  “Boysie, what the hell is it? Why?” Chicory was close to him now, a hand on his arm.

  “My gun. The bastards have taken my gun.” He could have been a small boy running to Mum because the game of Cowboys and Indians had gone all wrong. He remembered the grey-haired man bumping into him—that’s when they lifted the weapon.

  “They’ve locked us in here and pinched my bleedin’ gun.” His right fist was balled, punching into his thigh.

  “Your? Boysie, what is all this? For ...”

  “Oh, great balls of fire,” he moaned, his knees beginning to give way. “Great fuming, fornicating balls of rancid fire.” Boysie buckled on to the bed. “What d’you think it means? Those characters are the boys who sent the two gorillas to lug me out of the New Weston: the twits who parcelled up that fancy snake. They’re no more security men than my ...”

  “Oh gawd! You mean they’re baddies, not goodies?”

  “Just that.” He nodded.

  “For real, Boysie?”

  “For all time real.”

  Boysie looked up to meet the fear in Chicory’s face.

  “What’ll they ...?”

  For her sake, he made an effort: “Oh you’ll be all right. They won’t do anything to you.”

  “Please.” She was biting her lip and shaking her head from side to side. “What’s going on? For pete’s sake what’s going on?” The voice ascending the scale. “Myself, I can look after. Anything, I can cope with, and anyone, if I know what’s going on. But no one has told me a thing. Just wait till I get back to that bastard Max.” From outside came the sound of a car: the slamming of doors; voices, cheery, normal, floating in with the sheets of sunlight through the slits in the venetian blinds. Boysie hauled himself off the bed and went over to the window, prising fingers between two slats of the plastic blind, pushing his face close and looking out. A blue Packard was parked next to the red Mustang. The voices had faded now, and the patio was deserted, wrapped in a warm siesta silence broken occasionally by the wrumm of a car passing on the road a few yards away.

  “They’re not going to be fool enough to leave the keys hanging around just for us, you dope.” Chicory’s fear was turning into angry spirit. Boysie looked round the room, his eyes settling on the bathroom window. All the windows had an outer protective covering of fine mesh—a barricade against insects and the night creatures of the desert—but these would be easily removable. If they could get to the road, perhaps a passing car? As though reading his thoughts, Chicory shattered the idea at conception.

  “Don’t think of running. There’s an awful lot of desert out there.”

  Boysie knew she was right. Anyway they would be watching the door, that was certain. The chances of reaching the road were about as slim as extra-thin rice paper. He returned to the bed, sat down and put his head in his hands.

  “That bloody Mostyn,” he breathed. “That super bastard Mostyn.”

  With a little effort he might even bring himself to believe that Mostyn had, by some foul plan, pushed him, on purpose, into this predicament.

  “Wait.” Chicory motioned silence. Someone was coming down the cloister outside. The shadows of Henniger and the grey-haired man passed the window.

  “How about jumping them?” Chicory whispered: her eyes wide and questioning .

  It was too late. A key turned in the lock and the two men stood in the doorway.

  “He wants to see ya now,” said Henniger.

  “Bloody Commie bastard,” was all Boysie could think up at short notice.

  “It finally penetrated, Huh? Get that Cirio? A real smart guy, this Limey agent. H
e finally caught on.”

  “Smart,” said Cirio, “Very smart, Ritzy.” There was a gun in his hand. “We would like you to come with us, please.” He spoke politely, as though showing a couple to a table in his club. “I’m afraid madam will have to wait here. For the time being, anyway. And really I wouldn’t recommend trying to run for it. Both sides of the building are watched. Actually, you have met the gentlemen who are performing that service for us—in the New Weston the other night. One of them is most anxious to see you again, Mr Oakes. You hurt his arm somewhat. Luckily, he is ambidextrous.”

  “Aw cut it, Cirio, they’re waiting.” Ritzy Henniger turned to the girl. “Ya look cute, babe, wouldn’t mind a whirl myself.” Chicory crossed her hands over her breasts, realising that she was still only dressed in the revealing undies.

  Cirio made a waving motion with the gun. “If you don’t mind, Mr Oakes.”

  Boysie got up: trembling, unsteady. Chicory’s hand brushed his arm.

  “Careful, Boysie darling. Please.”

  Boysie took a lungful of air. His head felt as if it was doing an energetic butterfly stroke through liquid treacle. “I’ll be back,” he managed.

  “I sincerely hope so,” said Henniger, smiling with his mouths only.

  Outside it was really hot. Danger often turns the mind towards trivialities, and Boysie considered that it must be at least ninety-two degrees in the shade. They led him down the cloister to a door at the end of the block. Room 12. The unit was similar to the one that he was sharing with Chicory. A shade darker, but perhaps that was due to coming in from the harsh light, or because the bathroom door was shut. From behind it came the sound of splashing water and a man’s voice singing softly. Boysie had a strange feeling that he had heard the voice before. Through the murk he could distinguish the figure of a man sitting in the armchair by the television. The figure moved slightly and spoke.

  “Mr Boysie Oakes; I am most happy to make your acquaintance. Gentlemen, would you adjust the blinds, please, Mr Oakes and I would like to see one another.” The accent was thick: whipped cream forced through gauze. Boysie unconsciously noted that there was no trace of the American twang. This one had learned his English in Europe. Cirio opened the blind and took up a position against the wall, behind Boysie. Ritzy Henniger sat on the bed. The man in the armchair was ageless, looking to Boysie, like a fat, elegant rich pastry, ripe to ooze its filling. The skin visible on his hands, arms (he wore a blue short-sleeved sports shirt and slacks that bulged opulently around the midriff), neck, and face had that off-white flabby look and a powdery texture; the hair, thin and combed back from the brow in a silky silver sheen. The one bizarre touch—giving the man a curious, doll-like expression—were the eyebrows: full, heavy and dark: a startling contrast. He was drumming on the edge of the armchair with a set of puffy fingers which looked like eclairs ready for the icing. The other hand lay immobile in his lap. From under the George Robey eyebrows, two abnormally small eyes held Boysie with a steady, hypnotic gaze.