Cloud Nine

by James M. Cain

  She’s in her late forties, but looks more like the thirties. She’s quite a dish, a bit on the sexy side. She’s a bit above medium height, but not what you’d call tall, and though not fat has plenty of shape, especially through the chest. Her hair is dark, with just a streak of gray, her skin pale with an ivory tint. Her face is a little heavy though nicely molded. Her eyes are brown, and not warm, or cold, or anything. They’re poker-player’s eyes, except that at times, as now, they can be very soft.

  “Gramie!” she moaned. “I’ve been trying to reach you all morning. Oh, thank God you’ve come!”

  Actually, she said “Gawd,” in the Virginia way she had, as originally she came from Berryville, being of the Burwell family there, who are proud, perhaps a little too proud, of their relationship to one of Jefferson’s secretaries. She was brought to Maryland when young, but sometimes the Old Dominion bleeds through in the way she talks, as when she says cyard for card, and gyarden for garden, or gyowden as I call it, when I’m having fun with her. But we weren’t having fun now, and I just held her close, whispering, “I came the first moment I could, the very first moment I could.”

  She unwound herself from my arms, took my hand, and led me into the living room, where she sat me down on the sofa, the big one facing the fireplace, and then camped herself down beside me. I went on: “I’d have been here an hour ago, except that I had to see Lang—”

  “He’s a perfectly horrible man!”

  “He’s the father of a girl in trouble.”

  “My heart bleeds for her. Did he let you see her?”

  “She came to see me, this morning.”

  “Oh, then you’ve talked with her?”

  I gave it to her quick, what Sonya had told me, at least the highlights of it, then told of my offer to Lang, and the brush he had given it. I asked: “Mother, what does he think he’s up to? At my offer, he practically spit in my eye, and then said pointblank he’d take nobody’s money but Burl’s. But Burl doesn’t have any money! That stands to reason, and yet Lang says he has, and that he knows he knows. What’s it about, do you know?”

  “Not really, but I’m terrified.”

  “Have you given Burl money?”

  “Only his allowance, this fifty a week we’ve kicked in with, you and I together, since he got out of the Army. He could have money, though.”

  “But how? Where would he get it?”

  “Gramie, it all goes back to that girl?”

  “Little Sonya, you mean?”

  “No! The teacher, the one that got killed.”

  “Oh. I didn’t know her.”

  “A nitwit, but insane about him, about Burl. I think he got sick of her. I think she was messing him up with his—weakness. You know what it is?”

  “Women, I would say.”

  “Yes. Gramie, I haven’t plagued you with it, I haven’t said anything—partly from not wanting to weep on your shoulder, partly from hating to talk about it, it’s so ugly. But you’ve no idea what it’s been like, having him in the house, especially since he got out of the Army. Well, one of the angles has been, I can’t keep a servant. Three times it happened, once with a colored girl, twice with white women, and Gramie, the last white woman I got was older than I am. I got her from the agency, and on account of her age thought my problem was solved. He took her while she was fixing dinner—and seemed extra excited by her because she was old.

  “Gramie, I’ve tried to inform myself about men of his kind, I’ve read Casanova’s memoirs, and books about Burr, Sickles, and Charles the Second. I don’t understand them at all, but this I’ve found out about them: They’re sick, or unbalanced, or something. Strange, offbeat things excite them, as Dale Morgan excited him—till she became a pest. She was a born spinster, pale, colorless, and prissy, but that’s what set him off.”

  “Where does the money come in?”

  “I’m coming to that. She was killed when her car hit a culvert wall—her mother was driving, and Burl was here in this room with me, watching a football game. The police didn’t even question him. The insurance adjuster did.”

  “Questioned Burl, you mean?”

  “Right here in this room. And at his request—Burl’s request—I sat in and answered some questions, too. And a strange thing came out: They’d taken out reciprocal policies, I think that’s what they’re called, reciprocal accident policies, his in her favor, hers in his—five thousand for loss of a limb, twenty-five thousand for loss of life, and double indemnity for death in a motor accident. Burl kept telling the adjuster: ‘It was all her idea—I thought it was screwy myself. But she was paying for it, and who was I to object?’ Gramie, that money had to be paid, the whole fifty thousand, and I’m all but certain it has been.”

  “Then Lang was right?”

  “He should know what Burl’s balance is.”

  “Then let Burl pay, why not?”

  She tightened, then went on: “One night, not long after that, a boy showed up here, whose name I don’t recall, but Burl called him Al. He’d been in the Army with Burl, in Japan, in the headquarters motor pool, keeping trucks, cars, and motorcycles in running order. And he got slopped on beer and talked—mainly about girls, in tea houses, shops, and bars, which I thought an odd subject in front of me, but I indulge all former soldiers. But then suddenly he remembered Bong, and I thought Burl was trying to shush him, by changing the subject, by being reminded of other things. But Al kept right on. I judge Bong’s name was Bin Ben Bon, but Al called him Bing Bang Bong, and reveled in his exploits. Bong was a South Vietnamese, who had done undercover work, and special sabotage in Hanoi. And he would boast of how he had killed Hanoi generals, four of them, he said, four ‘genetor,’ it seemed he called them, by loosening a certain screw, a set-screw in the steering assembly, of these North Vietnamese generals’ cars. ‘One slet-sclew,’ he boasted to Al and Burl. ‘Come here rook I show you, one ‘slet-screw’ in generor car, a generor clash, generor die in ditch.’ Al thought him killingly funny, but I didn’t. I had a horrible suspicion I’d heard the truth at last about poor little Dale Morgan’s death.”

  “...Be a pretty hard truth to prove.”

  “Gramie, does Lang have to prove it?”

  “Go on, say what you’re leading to.”

  “What I’m leading to is: I think Lang wants that money, a big hunk of what Burl was paid—if he was paid, as I imagine he was—but I don’t think that’s all he wants. I think he wants to ruin Burl, as a matter of sheer vindictiveness—break the thing wide open before consenting to be bought off—but not before reopening that other case. Because if the police find out that he was paid that money, they’ll have to reopen that case.”

  “But they must know it already.”

  “Right, and then this will force their hand.”

  Now, for the first time, I went into details, on the rape I mean, telling stuff I’d left out before, especially that other couple, but she wouldn’t let me finish. “Please! I can’t listen to it,” she said, “I can’t bear any more! Oh, what a filthy, rotten thing!”

  “Incidentally, why the sundown bit?”

  “...On that, I think I did right.”

  “Yeah, but what was the idea of it?”

  “To give Burl time to skip.”

  “Oh. Oh, I see. Well—did he?”

  “Not till I kicked in with money. Can you imagine that? That tremendous sum he was paid, and still he sandbagged me for five hundred dollars. It’s why I couldn’t call you sooner. I had to go to the bank for cash.”

  I got out my blank check, the same one I had waved at Lang, and got ready to kick in with my share. But actually I wrote five hundred, the whole bite. When she saw that figure, though, she lifted my hand, the one with the pen in it, and kissed it. “Gramie,” she said, “I love it when you give me money—it makes my heart go bump, that’s the woman of it. But this I can’t take off you. No—it’s on me for being so dumb. For having him here at all. For—”

  Suddenly she stiffened, broke off,
and then asked me: “Gramie, you talked to this girl—where? Where is she now?”

  “At my house. I thought I said.”

  “Then, until we know where we’re at, keep her there! Don’t let her go home! Because this is what terrifies me: Dale Morgan is dead—that we know. But it would simplify Burl’s problem, put him in the clear, if this girl were to die, too—accidentally, of course, as Dale Morgan died. It mustn’t happen.”

  “Listen, I can’t lock her up.”

  “You’ll have to do something, Gramie.”

  She stared at me, then went on: “Perhaps Burl has skipped, perhaps not. Perhaps he’s out there somewhere, just biding his time. And if he knows where she is—!”

  It was hard for me to believe, to get through my head at all, that she was talking in earnest. I mumbled I’d try to think of something, and then she asked me: “Would you like me to ring Jane Sibert? And call off your luncheon engagement?”

  “I can’t. I drew some cash too, her allowance for the next four weeks, that I thought I’d hand her before she leaves, as kind of a going-away surprise—”

  “Then, you must go. She’s important to us.”

  “What time is it?”

  “Twelve-ten. You’d better be running along.”

  I kissed her, told her: “I’ll be in touch, I’ll keep you posted. After Jane goes I have to see Sonya, and report to her how I came out. Perhaps she’ll have some idea on how to keep undercover.”

  “Is she nice? Or what?”

  “She’s damned easy to look at.”

  Chapter 5

  SO WHY WAS JANE Sibert important, and why did I have to go? Well, she was a widow who lived on a little farm, a place of sixty-seven acres, in back of College Park, and I’ve already told how she took me in, when I was fifteen years old, becoming a sort of foster mother to me, so I wouldn’t have to live with my stepfather. It was a wonderful place for a boy, and I loved it for ten or twelve years, but it was not such a wonderful place for a middle-aged woman, trying to live there alone—after I pulled out, I mean. And yet she was sot, as she called it, and instead of selling her farm, persisted in living on it, as she had in the days of her marriage, when the University of Maryland, whose campus abutted her fields, was the Maryland Agriculture College, and things were simple and friendly and small. So of course the catch was her assessment. Once it was upped to bring it in line with adjoining properties, which were so valuable it took your breath, she’d be eaten alive by taxes. To head that off, to retain her “rural agriculture” status, the place had to be agricultural, meaning she had to farm it.

  Not herself knowing a rake from a buzz saw, she found a guy out near Berwyn, who had all the required machinery and was willing to go shares with her, making a crop of hay. Then alfalfa it was, but when all deductions were made, it didn’t bring in much cash. So to kind of equalize, so she could go on living in style, I made her a little allowance—not so little actually, as one hundred dollars a week is a drain on anyone’s income, and I can’t say I didn’t feel it.

  Understand: There’d been an arrangement before, with my mother kicking in for my board on the farm, my expenses at Yale, and the money I needed to start out in the real estate business. But once I was on my own, her contribution stopped, and mine began. That is, I became Jane’s paying boarder, bearing part of the farm’s expenses. But when I moved to my house, I had it out with Jane, as to what it would do to her finances. The answer was: She could manage. But that “manage” sounded pinched, and considering everything, how I felt about her, what she’d done for me, and how pretty she was, I said she wouldn’t have to “manage,” as I’d keep my payments up. Then she surprised me and shook me down to my heels. In a quiet little speech, she said she’d been waiting for that, actually hoping for it, to know if I’d be so kind, without any hint from her. So, she went on, since I did come through so “gallantly,” she would make me her sole beneficiary, in the new will she was having drawn, she having no close relatives she had to consider. Or in other words, I would come into her land.

  Or in still other words, I could have my own development, sure to make me at least a million dollars. But it would mean more than that hunk of money, tremendous though it was. It would mean the realization of a dream, the one Mother mentioned, that I’d been having for years, in regard to Southern Maryland, of which Prince Georges County is part. It’s east and south of the District of Columbia, not on the northern side, where Montgomery County lies and Western Maryland begins—and the winter winds blow. I meant to start a development that would hook weather into the promotion, that would smash up the advantage Montgomery County has had, in appealing to moneyed people, and offer property on the basis that Prince Georges is Dixie, which it is. I’d lived in Montgomery, at Cabin John on the Potomac, and seen all those blizzards go whistling down the river, which is beautiful in winter, with the rocks all covered with ice, and so cold even a brass monkey couldn’t take it.

  “Southern Maryland is Dixie,” I told the Rotarians one day. “Let us never forget what Lucky Baldwin told them, out in California, when they complained he was charging too much for the land around Santa Anita. ‘The land?’ he roared at them, ‘hell, we give the land away. We’re selling climate.’”

  I’ve been hipped on the subject, and this farm, if I ever came into it, would give me the chance to make the hookup of climate with the promotion, and take the play away from Montgomery, so Prince Georges would be the place, instead.

  So that’s why I kept pinching myself, after I left her that day, to make sure it wasn’t a dream I’d wake up from. Of course, I couldn’t make any move to check on any stuff, like water, sewers, and power, as it would have been a little like imagining how pretty she’d look in her coffin. But Mother could do it for me, in a quiet way under cover, through political connections she has—and also, she jumped at the chance of coming in with me, of being my financial backer, and she got on the ball quick. Inside of a month, she reported everything clear. All lights were green whenever the cards said go.

  So that’s why Jane was important, in a business way, and personally. I was to pick her up at home, at the old farmhouse, with its 1910 front porch, that I itched to rip off, substitute a modern entrance, add garage and rec room as wings, and in that way make a Southern mansion out of it. It had a circular drive out front, a mudhole in winter and dustbowl in summer, and it didn’t make me feel better right now, that when I turned into it a Caddy was parked out front, which meant of course that these people she was leaving with, for a month’s tour of Canada, had already come for her, and that I’d have to ask them to lunch.

  When she opened the door I did it big, taking her in my arms, smacking her full of kisses, and patting her on the bottom. She’s a pert little thing in her sixties, with a trim figure, pink face, and white hair that she rinses blue. She was in some kind of cotton suit, and held me close for more kisses, out there in the front porch.

  Then she introduced me to her friends, who stepped outside with us, a couple by the name of Hamell, and I give you one guess how much interest I took in them. But with the old Maryland spirit, I pumped their hands, asked them to lunch and wouldn’t take no for an answer. So then we started out, the ladies with me in my car, he following along in his. The idea was that after lunch they’d come back and pick up the bags, then drive to Philadelphia, where they’d pick up another lady, and then head north and tour Canada for a month. “Fine, fine, fine,” I said, though what was fine about it I didn’t know then and don’t know now.

  I took them to the Royal Arms, which served us a nice lunch. We talked mainly of Canada, and I kept cautioning Hamell to take it easy on the Canadian roads. “They’re okay,” I said, “well-built and well-graded, but they have an item called frost, so they bulge and buckle and break.”

  “There’s no frost in Prince Georges,” said Jane.

  “There is, but not much.”

  “Prince Georges County is Dixie.” At last, this endless lunch was over and we went out on the big
portico that overlooks the parking lot, where Jane lingered with me while the Hamells went down for their car. I took the envelope I’d sealed up the night before out of my pocket, and handed it over to her. It contained four weeks’ allowance, four hundred dollars in twenties, and I said: “I thought it might come in handy, while you’re traveling around.”

  She opened it, counted it, and looked at the gag card I’d put in. Then she pulled my face down and kissed me. “You look like Handsome Dan,” she said. Handsome Dan was the original Yale bulldog, whose picture she’d seen on one of her trips to New Haven, visiting me. Then she kissed me again, and said: “Your kept woman thanks you.”

  “Why do you say things like that?” I asked her. “I’m under a thousand obligations to you, and if now and then I try to return the favor, I’m only too glad. You needn’t take cracks at yourself.”

  “Cracks? I thought I was bragging.”

  She looked at me somewhat peculiarly, then asked: “Have you seen your mother lately?”

  “I was with her this morning, yes.”

  “She’s in a spot.”

  “She’s in a spot? What about me?”

  Now if mentally we’d really been in tune, that was her cue to say something, to get in there with it, to give me something to chew on. But, close though we were, in a way, on that level we never seemed to make it. She gave it the back of her hand, in spite of my upset, which I didn’t try to conceal. “Oh I wouldn’t worry about it,” she trilled in a very bland way. “It’s depressing, and must be damned annoying. Just the same it could be worse. Not saying that Burl should not be ashamed of himself. He’s a handsome boy, but wayward, very wayward.”

  “What he did to that girl was inexcusable.”

  “Oh, don’t waste any tears on her—one perhaps, but not a bucketful. She’ll get over it. She’s not the first girl, and won’t be the last, to get caught under the gate. Frailty, thy name is woman, don’t forget.”

  “Unfortunately, this was a slight case of rape.”