Hush Money

by Peter Israel

  “It was my great pleasure to refuse him,” she wrote to Karen.

  And why had she finally decided to unburden herself of the truth? Why this letter, after all the years? It was because she was dying, she said. She knew she was, and perhaps it was just as well. She even had her own medical theory to go along with it: that the deception of her own life had made her susceptible to cancer.

  And now, you could say, she was passing the truth on to Karen, along with the rest.

  “When I was twenty-one,” she wrote, “I did something against my father’s advice. It was a big step, and I was very young. How often I’ve wished I could have told him he was right.

  “But now, Karen dear,” she wrote, “you’re going to have a choice to make, also at twenty-one. What I suggest you do, once you’ve read and digested this letter, is to go to George Curie and ask him to show you your grandfather’s will. The rest will be up to you, and you will have three years to think about it and make up your mind. It is in order to help you that I’m sending you this rather ghastly confession of the truth.

  “May God bless you and keep you, darling.”

  Read cold, I suppose, and with the prose misted up a little, it might have had you reaching for your handkerchief.

  You maybe. Not me.

  Happy Birthday, Karen.

  A discrepancy in that last paragraph interested me, but I filed it away. It wasn’t the only one by a long shot. Maybe you’d have to take Twink’s version, and Margaret’s, and Nancy’s, not to leave out Karen’s, and scramble them all together to get the family portrait in focus.

  Even then …

  But what got to me more was how little effect it seemed to have had on the Karen of the notebooks. I mean, you imagine getting a birthday card like that from your old lady. Well, you could say Karen was strung out already, also that it would have taken a mental retard to grow up in a household like that and not put a few things together. But it was more like Nancy had been talking to her all her life, that the letter only confirmed what she already knew in her bones. Like Twink, the murderer. Like a name for Twink’s whore. Like that abortion detail, which gave her phony letter to Twink an extra twist of the knife. The more I thought of it, the more I thought: like mother like daughter.

  Sure she’d’ve made up her mind already.

  And then she’d jumped.

  If she’d jumped.

  I’d been playing with my loose change on the bar top. I picked the coins up again and dropped them and pushed them around in the wet till I had them all lined up in ranks like bright young troopers standing Reveille. They were singing out “Here, sergeant!” and listening to them gave me that warm, feet-up-by-the-fire feeling. I ordered another scotch by way of a salute. Not that what it added up to was necessarily the whole bona fide cross-my-heart-and-hope-to-die truth, but it would do. Oh it would do. They were all there, present and accounted for, all the bright young troopers. The only one missing was the C.O., and I had his spot zeroed in nicely in the crosshairs.

  It was dusk when I came south over Sepulveda Pass. The rush hour was long since over and all the Valley breadwinners back home and finished dinner and settled down for the Tuesday Night Movie. I wave them goodby. Out toward Santa Monica the sky was a deep deep purple. I headed east from the freeway, past UCLA, the gates of Bel Air and into Beverly Hills, and by the time I pulled off Sunset onto Doheny, the deep purple had lost its nerve.

  What did I say? That I’d have settled for twink twike tweek twuck?

  Then make a wish. Because that’s exactly what I got.

  20

  I’m going to give it to you the way you want it first. Otherwise it’d spoil the poetry.

  Poetry? Well, I don’t know what else you’d call it, unless you want to figure Twink Beydon and his shyster had been sitting there holding hands for the past forty-eight hours, waiting for Lonesome Cage to ride in with the Pony Express. As for me, I’d expected maybe a cleanup woman or two, or if I was lucky that receptionist number boning up on her law, or unlucky, Miss Sensible Shoes polishing her lorgnette. Or most probably, nothing at all but an alarm system to worry about.

  But that’s why I hustle for a living instead of writing poetry. I mean, you put the scene together: a soft night falling onto Beverly Hills, Lonesome Cage riding up on his trusty Mustang, clippety-clop, clippety-clop, Lonesome Cage tethering his Mustang to the hitching post, giving the joint the once-around, walking around to the shyster’s private office where the lights were on, looking around the corner of the window and spotting in the library … who? two chambermaids polishing up the spittoons?

  Not in this ballad, friend.

  So Lonesome Cage tested the front door, locked, and drew his trusty six-shooter. He blasted a hole through the lock big enough to drive a team of mules through. He kicked in the door and climbed into the library, spurs clanking.

  The cattle-rustler looked up from the table where he was shuffling the pasteboards. The shyster looked up too. The cheroot fell out of the shyster’s mouth.

  “We been waitin’ on ya, Lonesome,” said the cattle-rustler. “How’re they hangin’? You want I should deal ya in?”

  “Ain’t got time, Big Twink,” said Lonesome Cage. “Brung somethin’ you been lookin’ for.”

  Lonesome Cage unbuttoned his shirt pocket, pulled out the papers, dropped them on the table.

  “Read,” said Lonesome Cage.

  The shyster reached for the papers. Lonesome Cage shot a hole through the shyster’s palm, about as round as a silver dollar, about as clean.

  “Read,” said Lonesome Cage.

  Big Twink read. The nerves commenced to jump in his jaws.

  “I fold, Lonesome,” said Big Twink when he’d finished. “The game’s over. You win. It’s all yourn.”

  Big Twink pushed the chips and the paper money across the table. He pushed the gold and the silver across the table. Then he looked up at Lonesome Cage, his brows in a question mark.

  Lonesome Cage said nothing.

  “You name it, Lonesome,” said Big Twink. He got up, knocking his chair over.

  Big Twink went over to the wall safe, his back to Lonesome Cage. He fiddled with the wall safe dial.

  “You name it, Lonesome,” said Big Twink over his shoulder.

  Big Twink had the wall safe open.

  “Ain’t money,” said Lonesome Cage. “It’s your ass.”

  Big Twink commenced to laugh. His whole body shook with the laughing.

  “My ass!” said Big Twink, laughing. “My …”

  “Ain’t me who wants it neither,” said Lonesome Cage. “It’s Karen.”

  Big Twink stopped laughing. He froze by the wall safe and his eyes rolled in their sockets. He reached inside the wall safe and came out with the Gatling Gun. Even before he turned around the gun was going off in his hands. It spit lead all around the library. It tore the chandelier out by the roots and sent it crashing to the floor.

  Then the Gatling Gun jumped out of Big Twink’s hands, and it quieted.

  Lonesome Cage had put a hole about the size of a dime between Big Twink’s eyes, up where the nose ran out of sight.

  “Karen …” Big Twink said.

  Them was his last words. He went down like the big wood, out in the forest.

  Lonesome Cage put up his six-shooter. He rolled Big Twink over with the toe of his boot. He picked the papers up out of the mess on the table and turned to the shyster.

  “Got a light?” said Lonesome Cage.

  “Sure Lonesome,” said the shyster. “Jesus …” handing him a match with his good hand.

  Lonesome Cage held the papers up in one hand and lit them with the other. He held them up while they burned. He watched them burn till the flame went out between his thumb and his forefinger.

  “Thanks,” said Lonesome Cage.

  The shyster was shaking like a leaf in the big wind.

  Then Lonesome Cage stepped over Big Twink’s body, and he went out the way he’d come in.

  H
e untethered the Mustang and climbed into the saddle.

  Then Lonesome Cage rode west down the trail of broken hearts, and the sound of the lonely bugle followed him into the night, blowing “The Ballad of Lonesome Cage.”

  21

  Only it didn’t happen that way.

  I mean, Lonesome Cage has a nice ring to it, and if you put it on my tombstone I won’t mind at all, but I didn’t even go in the front door.

  I parked around the corner and walked the rest of the way. At night in Beverly Hills that’s evidence of burglary—a man on foot without a dog or a number—but if Freeling, Gomez, etcetera were still out beating the cactus for me, I wasn’t taking any chances.

  Like I said, I’d made my last mistake.

  I softshoed around the house and that’s when I saw them in the library, through the window. Twink Beydon was staring right at me, in his shirt sleeves. His tie knot was pulled halfway down his shirt, the collar button open, and he was gesturing with an open palm while he spoke.

  It gave me quite a turn. I still don’t know what the hell the two of them were doing there at that hour, except that they must’ve had plenty to talk about once I didn’t show up for tea on Sunday. Or were they waiting for someone else?

  Poetry. Sheer poetry.

  But the fact is: I never liked poetry. Also I’d no intention of tête-à-têting with Twink, not until I’d read Bryce Diehl’s last will and testament all the way down to the nickels and dimes.

  But on the other hand …

  The front door had that strong silent look. It was also locked, and one of those wrought-iron lantern deals was hanging over it, all watts go. I could have lonesomed the light, but suppose the lock held? Or suppose it let loose the Baskervilles?

  I circled back to the back. I mucked around in some shrubbery till I found another door. It must’ve been for the help once, but these days it only got used once a year when they delivered the booze for the Christmas party.

  It was locked too, but there are locks and locks.

  No alarm, no Baskervilles, nothing.

  I found myself in some kind of pantry, maybe. I waited there in the dark, making a rough mental map of the premises. Then I did my No Man’s Land special: one foot up and bring it down, but slow, lest you step on a foreign object, like a booby trap. I found a door that way, opened it, and entered a sort of storeroom filled with office furniture. Either the light got better then, or my eyes did. I opened another door and came out into the reception hall.

  There wasn’t anybody there to take my name.

  I opened another door, quietly, and the light got a lot better. I went down three stairs and crossed a room on tiptoe, then stopped in the shadows.

  That door to the library was open too. Three more steps up and there was Twink Beydon, his back to me, his ass about on a level with my nose. I could hear him talking. He happened to be talking about some son of a bitch I’d never heard of, name of Cage.

  Poetry.

  George S. Curie III was writing something down on a pad.

  Twink twike tweek twuck, I said to no one in particular. Then, girding my loins—You only go around once in life, buddy boy—up the stairs I went.

  George S. Curie III saw me coming. His eyebrows yo-yoed up and stayed there. He opened his mouth, but nothing came out. Maybe he was watching the redcoats coming back from Bunker Hill with their ass in a sling.

  Big Twink saw George S. Curie III see me. He half-turned in his chair, started to get up, but no more. I gave him a gomez on the back of the head, low down on the right side. He sat back down. I bent over, checked him out, and then I gave him another one on the left side to balance things, and he slumped in his chair like a bum sleeping in a railroad station.

  George S. Curie III was on his feet too, like somebody’d poured hot tea right in his lap. He was looking every whichway. Where’re the redcoats? he was saying, where’s the law? where’s my secretary?

  I pointed the musket at him, and he stared at me.

  “You look like hell, Cage,” he said. “My God, what happened to you? We ought to call a doctor, we …”

  “Calm down, George,” I told him. I waved the barrel of the musket at him. “You can call the doctor later. Meanwhile we’ve got some business to attend to, you and I. We don’t want any interruptions. I don’t use these things much, but I guess you know I wouldn’t mind if I had to. So if anyone calls, or the Fuller Brush man rings the bell, you tell ’em you’re busy and to call back later, right?”

  He glanced at Twink, then back at me. I don’t suppose he liked the sight of blood.

  He nodded.

  I took the copy of Nancy’s letter out of my pocket. He knew what it was all right. I saw the little greedy gleam flash through his eyes, then disappear when he realized it wasn’t the real thing.

  “Sorry to disappoint you, George,” I said, “but what did you expect? The original? It’s in a safe place. Very safe. I’ll want you to tell Twink all about that when he wakes up, some other things too. But first I think we ought to have a look at Bryce Diehl’s will.”

  “Bryce Diehl’s will?”

  He did the eyebrow bit again for me. He said he didn’t think he could do that, and he started to give me a lot of bullshit about confidentiality.

  I cut him short.

  I told him I could always get it the long way round, which he knew. Didn’t he know that? Yes, he guessed he knew that. Only it would take time, I told him, and I had better things to do. And if he didn’t go get it, I’d lay him out next to his client and go find it myself. And I’d make a hell of a mess while I was finding it, he knew that too, didn’t he? And who could tell what else I’d find along the way?

  He caved in. I suppose the George S. Curie IIIs always do.

  As it happened, we didn’t have to go anywhere to find it. It was sitting right there in a bunch of papers on the table beside his chair. So much for confidentiality. I also took a gander at the pad of yellow legal paper he’d been writing on when I came in. A shot in the dark maybe, but when I flipped the pages they smelled an awful lot like the draft of a stock prospectus to me.

  “You were being a little bit previous there,” I said, grinning at him, “weren’t you George?”

  He didn’t answer.

  I sat him back down, pulled up a chair and started to read. I read it all too, though I didn’t have to. It always interests me to see how the rich operate when they realize they can’t take it with them, and you could say that Bryce Diehl had left little to chance or the tax people. There were codicils within codicils, trust funds within trust funds, bequests, foundations, you name it. Most of the fortune went to his four children, but even that was so hedged and hemmed and footnoted in that I had to get George to explain some of it. He did too. I guess he was proud of his handiwork, or George S. Curie II’s. All in all it was quite an education, and I’ll have to keep it in mind when I get around to remembering my grandchildren.

  But then I got down to the meat of it, what all the fussing and fuming was about, what had given Nancy Beydon the hammer lock on Twink, and Karen after her, and gotten everybody so exercised once Karen kicked off.

  Before he died, Bryce Diehl had formed InterDiehl Holding, the big daddy of all the family enterprises. He left it to his four children, and he left them full control of it: Bryce Jr., Nancy, Andrew and Boyd. Left them control? Hell, he dotted the i’s, crossed the t’s, and damn near chained them to the fencepost. What it meant, once you got through all the legal shrubbery, was that no change in the status of the corporate setup could be made for ten years after Bryce Diehl’s death, and after that only with the full and unanimous consent of the four. Any one of them could block it, and if and when one or more of them died, the power passed on to his or her children. And if they were minors? Then, according to George S. Curie III, the setup was frozen until they reached their majority. And if the children died before they reached their majority? Then, according to George S. Curie III, their rights, powers and obligations passed on to t
heir next of kin.

  Oh.

  So that Bryce Diehl had taken care of the son-in-law he’d never met, even from the grave. Had taken care of him as best he could, if not till Judgment Day at least into the generation beyond him. I could imagine Twink’s face when he first found out about it, like reaching for the prime ribs and finding out his wife’s old man had just wiped the platter clean.

  There was a question in my mind about whether it was legal or not. I mean, if you can’t take it with you, how far ahead can you tie it up? George S. Curie III admitted it was a good question. It had never been answered because only the courts could decide it, and as a practical matter … Well, George S. Curie III intimated, once you started dealing with the more delicate rackets, such as city-building, dependent as they were on the good will of politicians, planning commissions and other fixers, it didn’t pay to air the family linen. Better the end piece of beef than none at all, right, Twink babe?

  So Twink had had to bide his time. He’d brought the Diehl brothers around, but he couldn’t budge Nancy. Oh he’d given it the old college try, but somebody had taken the megaphone away from his cheerleader. And when Nancy died, he’d had the moratorium to sweat out till Karen reached twenty-one. But when Karen died ahead of time, why then it was open season, first come first served—unless, that is, someone could throw some doubt onto Twink Beydon’s next-of-kinship.

  “There’s no question about that,” George S. Curie III said.

  “How do you know, George? You didn’t represent him when Karen was born, did you?”

  “I checked it for him once.”

  “For him, George? Like when? Say, a couple of weeks ago?”

  He didn’t answer. For a while there he’d been mighty helpful, friendly almost, but now he was back on the defensive, all closed up in his George S. Curie III Savile Row lining.

  “The Diehls didn’t think so, George.”

  “It’s solid enough,” he said. “It would stand up in court.”