Not that he would, of course. Jack prided himself on his automobile wisdom, which was that only fools drive more car than they have to. The function of an automobile was to carry the human body from point A to point B in reasonable comfort and with reasonable reliability. So far as Jack was concerned, the Volkswagen people, more than anybody else, had best solved that human need.
That. proof was the Volkswagen that he had sold to Rico.
Cheap, solid, reliable. And he had sold it for as much as he had paid for it. What he would do now, he decided somewhat smugly, was buy another used Volkswagen.
This high resolve, this proof that he was mature and above the foolish vanities of his peers, lasted about ninety seconds from the moment he walked onto the Ford dealer's used-car lot in Ozark.
He was drawn like a moth to a candle to something which represented the absolute antithesis of his wise and conservative automobile philosophy. It was also the most maddeningly beautiful thing he had seen since he watched the derriere of the grayeyed girl on the plane undulate ~as she walked into the terminal and out of his life.
It was a Jaguar XKE drophead coupe, flaming red, with red leather upholstery and wire wheels. It was desecrated by only one thing, a violation of its beauty as obscene as carving initials in Mona Lisa's forehead. Someone had taken a shoe whitener--and written "Sharp! $3,000 down!" on the exquisitely slanted chrome- framed windshield.
Jack did the only thing someone of his maturity and common sense could do under the circumstances. He fled the used car lot.
A few minutes later he found himself before the First National Bank of Ozark's plate-glass windows.
If he was going to buy a nice little used Volkswagen, he suddenly realized, he was going to have to pay for it. And he didn't think he would be able to successfully offer a check drawn on the 1010 Avenue Baudouin, Leopoldville, Democratic Republic of the Congo, branch of Barclays Bank, Ltd.
It was a minor problem and he had gone through it before.
There was a Barclays branch in New York and he probably still had their phone number in his wallet, he thought, pleased-who, when telephoned by one of their customers in America, would vouch for his check. When he'd opened his first checking account with Barclays his father had warned him that Barclays had one simple rule: write a bad check and you were out on your ass.
But until that first bad check, they were very obliging about handing you money or vouching for your checks.
He would open an account here, put in enough money to buy a good used Volkswagen, and go buy one.
He went inside and searched through his wallet. Not only did he have Barclays' number in New York, but the name of a guy who had vouched for his checks before. Ten thousand years ago, when he and his father had been in San Antonio, Texas, and come across three surplus Wright R-1830-92 Twin Wasp engines in a forgotten comer of an Aero Services warehouse, Aero Services had been unwilling to take a check on Barclays until the Barclays man in New York had said the magic words to a Texas banker.
And if I'm going to do this, I might as well do it just once. I will need more money than for just the good used Volkswagen.
He made out a check for $15,000, leaving the payee blank, and took it to the nearest teller's window.
"Yes, Sir?"
There was no reply from Private Jacques Emile Portet. He was struck dumb.
Looking at him from behind the counter was the girl from the airplane. She of the intelligent eyes, wholesome face, and absolutely flawless body. She was wearing a white blouse through which he could see the lace of her slip. He could smell her perfume. "Can I do something for you?" she asked.
"I'd like to see an officer about opening an account," Jack said. There was something wrong with his voice. It came out in a croaking whisper.
"What kind of an account did you have in mind?"
"Checking," Jack croaked, and then cleared his voice. "I would like to open a checking account." This came out very loudly, as if he wished to make everyone in the bank aware of his intentions."
"I can do that for you," she said.
She opened a drawer and handed him several forms and then a ballpoint pen.
Jack filled them out, not looking at the girl, but not failing to see that she had long and graceful fingers covered with pure white skin, and that her perfectly manicured fingernails were covered with a transparent lacquer.
He made sure he had his voice under control before he spoke.
"I'm going to give you a check on my Leopoldville bank," he said. "And the number of a man in Barclays Bank in New York City who will guarantee the check." She looked at the check, then raised her voice: "Mr. Medgeley. Can I see you a minute, please?"
Medgeley was a thirtyish banker type, Jack decided somewhat unkindly, who bought his shirts at Sears Roebuck's Annual Distressed Merchandise Sale. He did not like at all the way; the pasty-faced bastard beamed as he looked at the obviously very nice young woman's knockers.
"Yes, Miss Bellmon? How can I be of help?"
"This gentleman wishes to open an account," the girl said.
She handed him the forms and the check.
Her name is Bellmon. I know that much now. What's her first name?
Medgeley said, in moral outrage, 'The payee is not filled in'," then took a better look at the check.
"Captain Portet," he said, "you understand it will take some time for this check to clear?"
"There's the name and phone number of an officer of Barclays Bank in New York. You call him, I'll pay for the call-and he'll vouch for the check," Jack said, and added: "It's Private Portet."
"Is this your check? The name on the check is Captain J. E. Portet," Medgeley said.
"I'm. . . before I got drafted, I worked for an airline," Jack said. "That's where that captain comes from."
Medgeley looked at him suspiciously. "I'm not sure how 'to go about this. It's more than a little unusual."
The translation of that, you pasty-faced bastard; is that you think I'm doing something crooked..."Then get somebody who does," Jack snapped, Wondering why he was so angry. "Who's in charge here?"
"I'm the head teller," Medgeley said with offended dignity.
"Then get me an officer. A vice president or somebody." Oh, goddamn you and your runaway mouth! She's know going to think you're. some kind of a nut! But when he stole a look at the girl, he thought he saw a smile in her eyes.
"One moment, please," Medgeley said, and marched off with the check and the forms.
He marched back in a minute, looking annoyed and without either, check or application forms.
"Mr. Brewer will see you-you, too, Miss Bellmon-in his office." The girl smiled at Jack and pointed toward a glass-walled office. A tall, well-dressed man was standing in its door. When he saw that Jack was looking at him, he smiled and gestured for him to come over.
Jack looked for the girl. She was already making her way behind the counter toward the office.
"I'm Arnold Brewer," the banker said, offering Jack his hand.
"And it you don't mind, Mr. Portet, we'll let Miss Bellmon watch to see how this is done. She just came with us." The girl came to the office.
"You watch how this is done, Marjorie," Brewer said. "Then you won't have to bother Mr. Medgeley in the future, the next time it happens." Marjorie. Her name is Marjorie Bellmon. What a pretty name!
"Yes, Sir," she said. She sat down in one of the leather-upholstered armchairs. She did so, Jack thought, with exquisite grace.
"First, Marjorie, you get some proof of identity. Something with a photograph on it. An Army ID card is fine."
"Yes, Sir." Jack handed over his ID card. Marjorie Bellmon looked at him. For a brief moment their eyes met and Jack felt his heart jump.
"Then you compare the signatures on the instrument-the check-with that on the identity cards," Brewer went on. "When you're satisfied with that, you go to the next step. If you're not satisfied, check with an officer."
"Yes, Sir," Marjorie said.
; "The next step here is to see an officer anyway," Brewer continued. "It takes an officer to approve a telephone approval, if you follow me."
"Yes, Sir." Brewer made the telephone call. It didn't take long.
"He says Mr. Portet's check is as good as gold, that he's a good customer of Barclays Bank, and"-he turned to Jack-"that I give you his best regards." Brewer scribbled his initials on the forms.
"That's all there is to it, Mr. Portet," he said. "You are now a customer of the First National Bank. Welcome."
"And I can draw on that money? Now?"
"Absolutely," Brewer said. "Marjorie will get you some temporary checks and then they'll mail you some from the printing company." There was a small machine that printed account numbers and Jack's name on a thin sheath of checks. It did so far too quickly, long before Jack could think of a way to ask Marjorie Bellmon for a date or even work up his courage to make a desperate try at it.
He was shortly back out on the sidewalk alone, with -nothing but the exquisite memory of the softness of her hand when she offered it like a man to him.
Marjorie Bellmon is obviously not the kind of girl who will be impressed with material things like fancy automobiles. But on the other hand, she just might be-and I am desperate. . . .
An hour after he walked away from the bank, Jack returned at the wheel of the Jaguar. He gathered his courage and marched back into the bank.
She smiled at him when she saw him. "Forget something?"
"Will you have dinner with me?"
Marjorie Bellmon surprised herself. "Yes," she said.
"Wonderful!"
He was almost back on the street before he realized he had failed to fix a time and place. He went back into. the bank and to Marjorie's window.
She smiled at him, and he felt his heart jump again.
"The parking lot behind the bank at six fifteen," Marjorie Bellmon said.
(Two)
Quarters #1 The U.S. Army Aviation Center Fort Rucker, Alabama 1755 Hours 4 April 1964
If he made a list of things he didn't like about being Commanding General of Fort Rucker and the Army Aviation Center, Major General Robert F. Bellmon often thought, it would be headed by Quarters # 1.
It was the largest of the family housing quarters built since Fort Rucker had been designated a permanent installation (from "Camp Rucker," which identified a temporary installation); and it supposedly had the elegance befitting a general officer. But compared to the Commanding General's quarters at forts Bragg, Knox, and Benning (respectively, the Airborne, Armor, and Infantry centers), it was a dump. In civilian life it was the sort of house that a Quaker Oats assistant district sales manager in Kansas City would own. And he had to live there. It was the quarters erected at the direction of the United States Congress for the use of the Commanding General of Fort Rucker-and he was the Commanding General.
He had been stationed at Rucker before, just at the time he had been promoted to colonel. The Bellmons had then lived in a decent house in Ozark, a white-columned, turn-of-the-century semi mansion on Broad Street. It had been expensive, but they could afford it.
The Bellmons were "comfortable." There had been Bellmons in the Army for four generations-it was about to be five after Bob Junior graduated from the Point-and to a man they had been frugal and shrewd with money. And Mrs. Bellmon had been Barbara Waterford, the daughter of Major General Porky Waterford, whose family had once owned 5000 acres around Carmel, California, before. they sold off all but 120 acres on the beach by the inch at very satisfying prices. The Bellmon income from investments was greater than his pay.
And he had to live like a goddamned salesman in this house.
A house without enough goddamned hot water for two people to take a shower one after the other.
General Bellmon had been flying and had come home sweat soaked and in urgent need of a hot shower. His daughter had preceded him home and beat him to the shower, and exhausted the supply of hot water. There was something powerfully wrong with a house that denied a man in his position the simple pleasure, the simple necessity, of a hot shower.
Major General Robert F. Bellmon was seated in his bathrobe on the couch in the too-small living room of Quarters # 1 when his wife and daughter entered the room from opposite ends.
"Well, don't you look nice," he said, meaning it.
"Thank you," Marjorie said, and curtsied.
"Big date?" Barbara Bellmon asked.
"I don't know," Marjorie said thoughtfully. "It could be."
"Johnny Oliver?" Bellmon asked.
"No," she said. "Of course not."
"Who?" Barbara Bellmon asked quickly, to shut off her husband.
"A fellow named Portet," Marjorie said. "He's kind of cute."
"Where did you meet him?"
"I was swinging my purse under the lamp pole," Marjorie said.
"And he just walked up and introduced himself."
"At the bank?" her mother asked, smiling.
Marjorie nodded.
"A local?" General Bellmon asked.
"No," Marjorie said. "He's in the Army." Her father brightened. "Portet, you said?"
"I don't think you've met him, Daddy. He's a private, at the Aviation Board."
"I see."
"'I see,'" Marjorie quoted mockingly, "'he said, trying to conceal his disapproval.'" Barbara Bellmon laughed, earning herself a dirty look from her husband.
"Well, I admire his courage," Barbara Bellmon said. "Most privates would avoid the General's daughter like. . . a leper, I suppose."
"Do you think going out with a private is such a good idea, honey?"
"Don't be such a snob, Daddy. Besides, he's actually pretty dashing. He was an airline pilot in the Congo. And he drives a red convertible Jaguar. He reminds me a lot of Uncle Craig."
Barbara Bellmon laughed out loud. "And the Little Lady wins the all-expense-paid trip, to downtown Tijuana for saying exactly me wrong thing to calm her daddy down."
"What's wrong with Uncle Craig?" Marjorie demanded loyally, and then remembered. She blushed. "Well, you're always saying that about Uncle Craig, but I never believed it. And anyway, I didn't mean it that way. I meant he's sort of dashing."
"I never believed it, either," Barbara "Bellmon said. "He never made a pass at me."
"Well, you are in a small, select group then," Bellmon said.
"I won't be late," Marjorie said. "I have to go."
"He's not coming here?" General Bellmon asked.
"I'm going to meet him at the bank."
"Why can't he come here?" Bellman demanded.
"Because he doesn't know who you are and I don't want to scare him off." And then she was gone.
Barbara Bellmon waited until she heard the sound (she thought it sounded like a lawn mower) of Marjorie's car fade and then turned to her husband.
"You are not," she said.
"I am not what?"
"Not going to call Mac McNair at the Board and check this boy out," Barbara said flatly. "I could read your mind."
"'Airline pilot in the Congo,'" he quoted. "Doesn't that sound a little fishy to. you?"
"First of all you underestimate your daughter," Barbara Bellmon said. "And secondly, that's not what's bothering you.
What's got you upset is that she said he reminds her of Craig and drives a Jaguar."
"Women, especially girls, are not safe around Craig Lowell."
"That's just not so, Bob. I've told you this before, and you simply refuse to. believe it. Women are as safe around Craig as they are in their father's lap. Unless they have itchy britches. Craig hasn't said no very often, or sometimes when he should have, I admit; but I'll bet my last nickel that no woman ever had to tell him no more than once."
"We are not betting nickels, we are talking about our daughter," Bellmon said.
"I am going to have to get your mind off this before it gets out of hand."
"And how do you propose to do that?" Barbara Bellmon threw her husband a credible bump-and grind an
d then leered lewdly at him.
"Go take your shower," she said. "Maybe something will occur to me."
(Three)
The Ozark Cafe Courthouse Square Ozark, Alabama J 805 Hours 4 April 1964
Jack Portet, wearing an obviously new sports coat and trousers, and Marjorie Bellmon sat on plastic-upholstered benches on opposite sides of a well-worn Micarta table, drinking coffee from china mugs.
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