Goldengirl

by Peter Lovesey

  Instead of an automatic, it had been a bottle in her hand. It had hit the wall and smashed.

  “Gee, lover boy!” she said as they toppled against the door. “I didn’t know you cared. Whoops!” She sank to the floor.

  “For Christ’s sake!” he managed to say. “Don’t move from where you are. I’ll put on the light.”

  “Don’t do that,” she quickly said.

  “Broken glass,” he explained. “You’ll cut yourself.”

  “Lift me up and put me on the bed. Then I won’t get cut. I want to talk some. That was Campari. Pity. I’m partial to it. However, I have a flask of scotch in my pocket for you, and I think it’s still intact. You won’t mind sharing?”

  “Why shouldn’t I switch on the light?”

  “Because I wouldn’t care to be seen here,” answered Melody. “No offense to you, Jack. It’s just that I’m shit-scared of my boss. Fraternizing with you isn’t on my job card today. Give me a hoist, lover boy. I’m only ninety-eight pounds.”

  He carried her to the bed. She was wearing a jumpsuit of some weatherproof fabric. From the feel, it was fleece-lined.

  “Here’s the scotch. I don’t mind using that glass you nearly brained me with,” she said. “Do you have a cigarette?”

  He lit a Winston for her, poured her a drink and took a swig from the flask. “If you’d knocked, I might have simply opened the door and let you in.”

  “After switching on the light,” Melody pointed out. “Do I have to repeat that this visit is unofficial?” She curled her legs under her and arranged the pillow against the headboard. “Purely social. Aw, c’mon,” she coaxed him. “What do you say to a civilized conversation? Sit down and tell me how you made out with Goldengirl.”

  “You heard about that?”

  “Pete Klugman told me you had an audience with her ladyship after the workout this afternoon.”

  “That’s correct,” he cautiously answered. “I fixed it officially with your boss.”

  “And you now suspect I’ve been sent unofficially to get your reaction?” said Melody, holding out the glass for more scotch. “Don’t fret, lover boy. I can tell you what happened. She stripped and did her floor show in the shower and then stretched out the body beautiful on the slab for you to look at from every angle. And when you took it as a come-on, you found how wrong you were, huh?”

  “I went for conversation,” said Dryden.

  “She can handle a conversation,” said Melody. “Oh, yes, Goldengirl’s a smart talker. Trouble is, it never alters. When you give her a beauty treatment twice weekly, as I do, it jars a little. Like how she works hard in her training, and what standards she needs to get to Moscow. Like she’s an achievement-oriented girl and she doesn’t mind men looking at the goods so long as they keep their hands off. How do you like that?” She swallowed the rest of the scotch and used the glass to stub out her cigarette. “My, it’s warmer in here than outside.” She pulled down the zip of the jumpsuit to waist level. In the poor light, it looked like bare skin in the divide. “Did you find her stimulating, lover boy? You didn’t stand a chance. Shall I tell you why?”

  “If it pleases you,” said Dryden.

  “Come closer, then. I’m not radioactive.”

  Why refuse? He wanted a woman, and Melody couldn’t signal more clearly that she was available. He kicked off his shoes and stretched out, gently pulling her down. Fumes of scotch, cigarette smoke and Clinique. “Tell me why I wouldn’t succeed with Goldengirl.”

  “Kiss me first.”

  His hand moved inside the jumpsuit, between fleece and warm skin. She wasn’t wearing underclothes.

  She gripped his neck and pulled his face against hers until she was ready to take her lips away. This wasn’t bluff. Melody wanted it badly.

  His hand moved across her breast and slipped the suit off her shoulder. He heard her zip tugged down to its limit and he attended to his own. “What is it with Goldine, then?”

  “Goldine?” She moved away from him to free her legs from the jumpsuit. “Goldine doesn’t exist. There’s only Goldengirl.”

  “Goldengirl, then?”

  She nestled against him once more, and her hand moved between his thighs. “Jeez, you should get a license for that … So you want me to tell you why you got nowhere with Goldengirl. She’s a monster, that’s why. I tell you, lover hoy, Frankenstein had nothing on William Serafin. Maybe in time you’ll get to understand, but if it’s the real thing you want, you’ll have to settle for me.” She rolled on her back, tugging him with her. “Now you can fuck me, Jack Dryden, and I don’t give a damn if it’s Goldengirl you think about, so long as you fuck me good.”

  Chapter 8

  “NINE-EIGHT” VOWS MANLEY screamed the sports page of San Diego’s daily, the Union.

  SAN DIEGO, June 13 — Milton Manley, San Diego Striders’ lastest sprint discovery, is set to dash 100 meters in a world-beating 9.8 in today’s clash with San Jose State speedstar Pete Pagano at the Los Angeles Invitational. Manley, 20-year-old find of the outdoor season, states, “They tell me Pagano is the world’s sharpest starter. Sure, he had the edge on me last time we met, over 60 meters in the AAU Indoor, but he’ll find I blast that extra forty like I’m going for Mars. He’ll need 9.8 and a ninety-degree dip to take me Saturday.”

  Crushed to the foot of the page by the promises of Manley and other stars appearing at the Coliseum, a paragraph coyly announced:

  Today’s track action in San Diego is confined to the Metro Track Club women’s meet. With high-jump record-breaker Darrielle Newman a doubtful starter following a hamstring pull this week, interest switches to the hurdles duel between La Jolla’s Jean Hampshire and UCLA hopeful, Marilyn Pinkton, with an Olympic qualifying standard of 13.2 as a possible prize.

  The state of the newspaper, saturated by exposure to steady rain, said more than all the column-inches of predictions. There would be no world-beating performances in the speed events. The guarantees issued with a rubberized, plastic-coated, nonskid, all-weather track didn’t yet include the sunshine essential to superlative sprinting. Even in San Diego in June it could rain on a Saturday.

  Up in the Sierra Nevadas the visibility had been so poor by ten-thirty that the Jet Ranger was grounded for an hour, and even when they took off, the prospects of finding a safe route through the cloud screen looked slender.

  As scheduled, Serafin, Lee and Klugman had left with Goldine in the Sikorsky, piloted by Lee’s technical assistant, Robb, at eight o’clock, before the visibility had deteriorated. The second party was made up of Dryden, Valenti, Brannon (one of the coaching team, who seemed to have the idea he was in charge) and the pilot who had flown them up from Cambria.

  “Ten flat in seventy-three. Compton Invitational,” Brannon said, as if that established incontestably his status as flight commander. As he was six foot three in height and must have weighed two hundred pounds, the assumption went unchallenged. After that, he relaxed enough to tell them, “I’m called Elmer,” and said no more for the rest of the flight.

  Piloting a helicopter through low cloud in the Sierras is not to be rushed. They eventually touched down at the San Diego Heliport at two twenty-five. A taxi delivered them to the stadium at two thirty-eight.

  With the rain had come a gusty wind and a sharp drop in temperature. Spectators, dressed in the lightweights the climate entitled them to wear with confidence, had clustered in the center of the covered stand along the home stretch on the principle that there was warmth in numbers. The numbers actually ran to about one hundred fifty. If each competitor was represented by a relative or friend, that didn’t leave many there for the sport. This in no way discouraged the man in the public-address booth, who was working as hard as any World Series announcer.

  “Fans, we have a great two hundred in prospect after those qualifying runs. Seems to me San Jose Cindergal, Debbie Jackson, who, remember, has twenty-three point five already this year, and just clocked twenty-four flat in Heat One, is going to pushed by M
arlene Da Costa, the Long Beach Comet, who won Heat Two in twenty-four point three, and there’s Jilly Peterson, of West Coast Jets, one tenth behind in Heat Three. Also in contention we have Delia Calvert, of Lancerettes; Toni Burnett, San Clemente Superdames; and the tall blonde from Bakersfield, Goldine Serafin, who is listed as unattached. That’s just one hour from now, but starting at this moment right in front of you is the long jump, featuring San Diego’s lady of the leap, Cherry Harper, who, you’ll remember, hung up her spikes two seasons back, and has them on again for this Olympic season. She’s challenged by Glendale Gauchos’ star, Mamie Van Dyck, and I’ll pass up the temptation of saying she’s an old master at the art of long jumping, but she won’t mind me telling you she was over six meters fifty — that’s twenty-one feet plus — back in seventy-six. Next on track we have what could be a sensational eight hundred …”

  They found Serafin and Lee sitting apart from the main group of spectators, beyond the finish line. Two men Dryden had not seen before were on Serafin’s left.

  “Three hours in that goddamned flying goldfish bowl, and we miss the bloody race,” Valenti complained.

  “It was only a heat,” Serafin airily assured him. “Gentlemen, I’m sorry if your flight was uncomfortable. Mr. Dryden, I’d like you to meet two other members of the consortium who have come to watch Goldengirl’s debut: Michael Cobb and Oliver Sternberg. You know the Galsgear label? Michael owns it.”

  Cobb stood to shake Dryden’s hand, a silver-haired, white-suited man with craggy, sensitive features redolent of bit players in prewar movies. Not a face you would associate with trendy clothes for the younger woman.

  “And Olly is in wrestling,” Serafin went on. “You could almost say he is wrestling.”

  Sternberg was younger. His skin was cherubically pink, and he had blue eyes. He was very fat. His features were confined to a last stand in the center of a threatening mass of bulbous flesh. It was impossible to say whether he looked friendly. He simply had two eyes, a nose and a mouth, with no room for anything so extravagant as an expression. His body was obviously too heavy to prize from the two seats it spanned, so he passed up the formality of shaking hands. Instead, he raised the flat of his hand like an Indian — an Indian in a white PVC raincoat, and with a red bow tie Dryden glimpsed when the chins shifted.

  “It’s not a question of comfort,” said Valenti, determined that the problems of the helicopter flight should not be brushed aside. “It’s my ulcer. We sat up there waiting for a mountain to come out of the mist and crush us. That’s no help to a doozie, no help at all.”

  Sternberg looked up. “Do you also have piles?” he asked in a boyish voice. “If you do, stay on your feet. These seats are for Eskimos.”

  Before Valenti did more damage to his ulcer, Dryden asked whether he had heard the announcement correctly that Goldengirl had finished second.

  “In twenty-four point six,” Serafin confirmed. “She’s through to the final, which is all we wanted. She has been told to save the real running for the finals. The one-hundred-meter heats take place in twenty minutes. Klugman is with her in the warmup area below us. He isn’t permitted to coach her on the track.”

  “Twenty minutes?” said Valenti, still on his feet. “Do they have a bar in this icedrome?”

  “I think I noticed a Coca-Cola stand downstairs,” said Serafin. “Nothing alcoholic, if that’s what you mean. We’re among people who don’t hold with things detrimental to the physique. The sponsors make most of their profits from toothpaste and soap. If you’re desperate, Klugman is carrying a small flask of brandy for emergencies, and I daresay if you asked him —”

  “Big deal!” said Valenti, lighting a cigar.

  “Does anyone have a program?” Dryden asked, like Valenti, looking for an opportunity of using the twenty-minute interval, though not in the same way. If his plan to get time alone with Goldine was to succeed, he needed to know the stadium’s layout. “I bought a paper, but it doesn’t say a lot about the events.”

  “I know all the information of interest to us,” answered Serafin, “but if you wish to go downstairs for any reason at all, please do, Mr. Dryden. I trust you won’t take it personally if Mr. Brannon goes with you. Until we have come to an agreement about your participation in our project, we have to be a little security conscious. Here in San Diego we can’t extend to you all the — er” — he gave a sly smile — “freedoms you enjoy in the retreat. By the way, Miss Fryer couldn’t make the trip today on account of a headache.”

  “I don’t mind having Elmer with me,” said Dryden, ignoring the innuendo.

  There was more action downstairs than on the track. The covered warmup area, with scores of girls working out in bright-colored tracksuits, had the purposeful confusion, speeded up, of an air terminal in high season. They had difficulty spotting Goldine. She was on the far side, bent low at her calisthenics and simultaneously listening to a lecture from Klugman. She was in a black warm-up suit, her hair tied in a gold scarf. This wasn’t the moment to approach her, so Dryden applied himself instead to making sure where everything was located: dressing rooms, press room, director’s headquarters, medical room, judges’ and stewards’ check-in. There was also a snack bar. He took Elmer inside for a hamburger and coffee.

  When they heard the girls called for the hundred, they went upstairs, picking up a program on the way.

  “Coming up to Heat One of the one-hundred-meter dash,” called the announcer in his corn-belt twang, “and do we have a class field for this race! Debbie Jackson, fastest qualifier in the two hundred, goes again and meets Marlene Da Costa, winner of the two hundred Heat Two, and Goldine Serafin, the Bakersfield blonde, who also made the two hundred Final. Going with them is cute little Delphine Donovan, of the San Diego Mission Belles, at four-eleven a minisprinter, but watch out for her — she’s no slouch. Then we have a clubmate of Marlene’s in the Long Beach Comets, and never far behind her, Judy Winstanley. Lane six will be unoccupied, as Margaret Wales has withdrawn, but oh boy, these girls are going to have you screaming for them, never mind the rain. Do I hear those Long Beach Comets, down from L.A. in force? Two of your girls go in this one, and remember, it’s just the first two in each heat who go through.”

  “Does this crap last the whole afternoon?” asked Valenti. “Can’t we switch him off, or something?”

  Serafin ignored him, totally occupied watching Goldengirl testing her blocks on the gleaming track. Klugman had rejoined them and was explaining the strategy. “She’s going for second again. We figure Jackson will lead them in, so Goldengirl’s job is to edge Da Costa.”

  “Wouldn’t it be simpler to go for a win?” Dryden asked.

  “With three finals to come, and Olympic qualifying times to set?” said Klugman, with a glare. “In these conditions? You have to be joking. She needs to conserve her strength. No sense burning it up in the heats.”

  “We defer to Mr. Klugman’s judgment here,” said Serafin. “He has worked things out with Goldengirl.”

  “You’re bothered about the conditions?” said Cobb. “Is the surface slippery?”

  “Maybe we should issue her skates,” suggested Valenti.

  “It gives a sufficient grip,” Klugman answered, unamused.

  Down in the rain, the whistle blew to bring the girls under starter’s orders. They unzipped their warm-ups and dropped them in the baskets provided at the start. Debbie Jackson, the favorite, a slimly built black girl, was taking her time while the others waited in the rain.

  “That’s the kind of dodge you pick up when you’ve run a few,” Klugman said pointedly to Serafin. “Look at Goldengirl. The first to strip, and she’s that drenched you can see the bra through her shirt. Thank Christ she has the sense to keep on the move. Weather like this finds out muscle weakness sooner than anything.”

  “Coming up to countdown for this red-hot first heat of the one-hundred-meter dash,” gushed the announcer. “We have five girls going, fans. From right, number seventeen, Debbie Jacks
on, San Jose Cindergals; fifteen, Marlene Da Costa, Long Beach Comets; twenty-four, Goldine Serafin, unattached; sixteen, Delphine Donovan, San Diego Mission Belles; and thirty-two, Judy Winstanley, Comets. Over to you, starter.”

  Not till this moment had Goldine’s height in relation to other girls made a strong impression on Dryden. The line-up might have been choreographed for some grotesque modern ballet: five girls — three black, two white — marshaled by two portly women in plastic raincoats. Goldine head and shoulders above everyone in the center. Next to her the smallest girl in the race, on a level with the number on her shirt. It was a definite relief when they got to their marks and sank their disparities in the uniformity of the crouch start.

  The gun fired twice. A false start. “Not Goldengirl,” Serafin emphasized.

  For a second time they formed their unflattering row. Again, they moved forward to the starting line and got into their blocks. The rain drummed heavily on the roof of the stand.

  “Set.”

  As the gun cracked, the first away was the announcer: “Good start this time. Jackson smoothly into her stride. Serafin picking up sharp, too. This girl can move! Looks like Jackson, from Serafin. Da Costa out of it. But here comes Winstanley! Watch this, fans.”

  Jackson was two yards clear and Goldine was cruising in behind her, glancing to her left to be sure there was no late challenge from Da Costa. What she had failed to see — it was stunningly clear from the stand — was the sudden surge of speed from the girl on the near side, who passed her two yards from the line.

  “Jackson takes it from Winstanley,” crowed the announcer. “Serafin third. Howdya like that for a sudden-death finish, fans?”

  Klugman was making it very clear how he liked it. “She’s blown it, the stupid bitch! My God, she wasn’t even looking to her right. Left for dead by a second-choice club runner. It’s unbelievable!”

  Serafin was ashen. “Someone must do something. Not you,” he told Klugman. “You’ll be answering to me for that charade. Sammy, if you please. We must salvage what we can from this. There are two finals still to contest, and I want her in a positive frame of mind, not torn apart by abuse.”