Helga's Web (15 page)

Gibson showed no surprise; he had at once closed up, suspicion providing its own armour. “Yeah? Go on.”

Savanna looked towards the door to the outer office. “Are we likely to be interrupted?”

“Only if I press the buzzer for her. I’ll do that, Jack, if you waste my time.”

Savanna had not expected the interview to be easy, but now Gibson’s rudeness seemed to put him more at ease. He sat back in his chair, gazed at the unfriendly old man for a long moment, then said, “Les, you’re going to be blackmailed.”

Gibson didn’t even blink. “Who by? You?”

“No. A German girl I know named Helga Brand.”

“One of your fancy pieces?” He saw the look on Savanna’s face and he laughed, a sandpaper sound. “I know about ‘em. Not their names, but you’ve had half a dozen over the past ten years. You haven’t been doing the right thing by Josie for a long time. I got no time for fornicators, Jack.”

The old-fashioned term almost made Savanna laugh. “Les, you’re the last one should give me a lecture on morals. I know of at least two men who committed suicide because you broke them.”

“There was only one. The other bloke was gunna die any-

way, he had cancer.” He felt a twinge as he said the word; it was already at work on him, the very thought of it eating its way into him. “He just got nasty, had a last shot at me before he blew his own brains out. The coroner took no notice of his note/’

“Well, even one suicide would prey on most men’s conscience.”

“I think about him sometimes, but he doesn’t worry me. It was business. He was weak, he just couldn’t stand the idea of being broke. I could lose all this—” He waved a hand at his surroundings. “Lose the lot. But I wouldn’t blow my brains out. I might even start in all over again.”

“You probably would,” said Savanna grudgingly.

“Anyhow, I got my own set of morals. They don’t allow for blokes who two-time their wives.”

Savanna shook his head in good-humoured exasperation. “I don’t know why I bothered to come. I’ve spent the whole weekend thinking about this, giving myself a headache, not sleeping—” He shook his head again. “I came here to give you a warning and I walk into a lecture on what I should do with my spare time.”

Gibson’s hand was close to the buzzer on his desk. “Jack, get to the point or get out.”

“All right,” said Savanna savagely. He sat up and leaned forward. “This girl, Helga Brand, is going to ask you for a hundred thousand dollars.”

Savanna had to admire the old man’s control; there wasn’t a shadow of any reaction on the mottled, lined face. “What for?”

“Les, your boats—or anyway one of them, the one I was out on the other night—it’s smuggling in drugs. The stuff is dropped from some overseas ship in waterproof packages and Bixby and his crew pick it up and bring it in. I don’t even know if you’re in on this—”

Gibson took his hand away from the buzzer. “Thirty years

117 -°-

ago I’d have kicked your balls off for that remark.”

Savanna hesitated, then nodded. “Okay, I take it back. You have morals about drugs, too, have you?”

“Bloody strong ones. Go on. What about this girl? How did she get into it?”

Savanna made a weak gesture. “That was my fault.” He told Gibson what had happened on the morning of his arrival back from the overnight trawler trip. “To tell you the truth, I was a bit scared of Bixby. I think he could be a mean bastard without any trouble, a real stand-over merchant. When I told her about him and the drugs, she suggested I should blackmail you. I just thought she was joking. Then Friday night—well, then I got a whole new picture of her. Up till then I don’t think I’d thought anything of her but a good lay who took some money on the side.”

For the first time Gibson showed some expression; his small beak of a nose twitched with distaste. “I’m not interested in what you thought of her. Harlots aren’t worth anyone’s opinion.”

Savanna couldn’t help it: “You could change places with Father Wrigley, you know that? Jesus, Les, I didn’t think you were such an old wowser—”

Gibson twisted his mouth sourly at the comparison with Wrigley, but didn’t seem to mind being called a strait-laced prude. “What’s this girl planning to do?”

“I’m not quite sure what she’s planning. She just said she was going to ask you for a hundred thousand dollars or she’d make trouble for you.” He paused, getting used to the new view of Helga; she had become another person since Friday night. “I think she might, too. I thought I knew her pretty well, but now I find out she can be as calculating as—”

He paused again and Gibson said, “As me? That what you mean? Then we oughta be a good match for each other, oughtn’t we?” He stared at Savanna, his bright blue eyes as hard as pieces of glass, his thin lips tucked in till his mouth was only another line in his lined face. “Why did you come

and tell me all this, Jack? Wasn’t she gunna split the money with you?”

“That was her original idea/’ Savanna confessed frankly. “But when I turned thumbs down on it, she said she’d bite you for the lot herself.”

Gibson’s eyes were still hard and bright. “Did it occur to you to put the bite on me yourself?”

Savanna wondered for a moment if Gibson would appreciate honesty. Then he decided against it: Gibson hadn’t got where he was by being honest. “It never entered my head. I’ve got my set of morals, too.”

Gibson grunted as if he found it impossible to believe that Savanna had any morals at all. But all he said was, “Just as well. You’d have been sat back on your arse before you knew what hit you.”

Savanna complimented himself on his good sense in not having been honest. “What are you going to do about Helga?”

“Where does she live?”

Savanna told him.

Gibson swung round in his chair, looked out the window. Savanna sat ignored, cut off from the old man by the high-backed chair. He wondered if he should get up and walk out of the office, then decided against it. Gibson wouldn’t let him go like that, and he was not going to get halfway to the door to be called back like some cattle dog. Because he knew he would come back if he were called, though he was not quite sure why. Where had the rebel gone that had once been himself?

“You didn’t tell me, Jack—” Gibson was still staring out the window, the back of his chair still turned to Savanna. “Why did you come and tell me all this?”

Savanna had been trying to find the answer to that all night. “I don’t quite know,” he confessed. He took out a cigarette, lit it as Gibson swung back in his chair. “I don’t think there’s any love lost between you and me, is there?”

“If there is, I’ve never missed it. They’ll ruin your health.”

Gibson waved away the smoke of the cigarette as it drifted towards him. He coughed, a reminder of the sixty a day that he himself had once smoked. “You didn’t come to me to spite this girl, did you?”

“I don’t think so. That might be part of it, but I’m not even sure of that. Do you remember the reason for every action, every major one, that you ever took?”

“I don’t remember them, no. But I know there was always a reason. I didn’t get here by accident.” He looked around the room without pride, just acceptance. “There were accidents of luck, but I knew enough to take advantage of them.”

“Well, all I know is, I’m not here by accident. I’m—”

“You’re what?” Gibson said as Savanna paused again.

“You’re not going to believe this. I don’t know that I believe it myself. But I might be here because of Josie.”

Gibson looked skeptical. “You’re right. I don’t believe it.”

Savanna shrugged, but persevered with his explanation, if only to explain it to himself. “Josie has a lot of respect for you. Some of what Glenda feels for you has rubbed off on her.” Gibson blinked, as if he had just been surprised. “You don’t believe that, either, do you?”

For the first time Gibson showed a weakness: “I’d like to. But that doesn’t explain why you’re concerned about me.”

“Only indirectly, Les. I think I might be here because I wouldn’t want Josie to be disappointed in you. If ever this came out into the open, it would knock Glenda for a loop. And that would hurt Josie. She’s had her disappointment in me. I wouldn’t want to see it piled on her.” He drew on his cigarette, blew out smoke, then shrugged again. “It’s not a very convincing reason for my being here. But it’s part of it.”

“What’s the other part?”

It’s a catharsis, an urge to be delivered of all the worries that have plagued me now for five years. Vve reached a stage where Vve become one huge aching boil and if I can open it up, even to you, everything will come out. It wont work, of

course, and the hope is stupid. And you wouldn’t believe what I’d say, anyway, because you’re too tight, too closed up against the world, ever to believe in the value of catharsis. But a man sometimes has to talk to someone, even an enemy.

But all he said was, “Maybe it’s just that I don’t believe in blackmail.”

Gibson sat silent, sucking on his thin lips. He was not afraid of what this girl Helga would do to him and he certainly wouldn’t give her any money. But he hated the thought that an outsider, an absolute stranger, could suddenly and without warning threaten his impregnability. He had arranged his empire against every emergency, against takeovers, economic depression, wars; he had believed till a few minutes ago that his only weakness was the vulnerability to disease of his own body. And now this girl, this harlot, was threatening him as if he were no stronger, no more unassailable, than this weak-kneed bastard of a brother-in-law sitting opposite him. She would have to be taught a lesson. And so would Bixby, the man who had opened the crack in the fort.

“Leave the girl to me. Just don’t tell her you’ve been to see me.

“Don’t hurt her, Les. I mean physically.”

“I don’t knock women around. Blokes like me, the ones who don’t have much time for women other than our wives, we’re usually the ones who treat ‘em best. It’s bastards like you, the playboys, who knock ‘em around.”

“You’re wrong there.” Savanna stood up. He was still not sure that he had done the right thing in coming to see Gibson, but he felt a curious relief, as if at last the boil was coming to a head of its own volition. “I’ve never hit a woman in my life. But if you hurt Helga, I’ll come back and belt the living daylights out of you. I’ll be bastard enough to take advantage of your smallness and your age. You might be the only man left I could belt. And I’d do it, don’t make any mistakes about it.”

Gibson stared up at the tall man opposite, thinking: twenty-five or thirty years ago he could probably have taken on a football team and done the lot of them. The army didn’t give him his medal because it liked the look of him; he must have done something courageous to get it. What happened to him? When did his particular cancer begin eating away at him?

“Do you love this girl, Jack?”

Savanna shook his head without hesitation: he loved Silver, but he wasn’t going to mention her name to Gibson. “Not at all. But I liked her. And that’s been something. She’s suddenly turned out to be a bitch, but I still wouldn’t want her hurt. Just see that she’s not, Les.”

Gibson continued to stare at Savanna. He’s weak and he’s buggered up his life, but maybe there’s a spark of decency somewhere in him. “All right, Jack. She won’t be hurt. But she’s gunna get the shit scared out of her.”

Savanna grinned. “Unlike Father Wrigley, she doesn’t like vulgarity. Watch your language in front of her, Les.”

Gibson had one of the moments of insight that had made him so successful in business. “I thought you might have a slap at him sooner or later. It sticks in your craw, doesn’t it, that I’m taking him to Europe with us?”

Savanna hesitated, then nodded. “There are better things you could do with your money.”

“Like helping you out of the hole your business is in?”

“Yes,” said Savanna, wondering how Gibson knew the state of Olympus’ finances.

It was Gibson’s turn to grin. “That would do me no good with Glenda. You should get on better with her, Jack. In the long run I only spend my money for her.”

Savanna was at the door. He turned and looked back at the wizened little man hunched like a baboon in the big leather chair. Then he smiled, a little sadly. “It’s a pity there’s

so much bastard in you, Les. There’s a spark of decency in you that you’ve never really given a chance.”

Gibson smiled inwardly, his expression not changing at all. That’s two sparks: between us we might have started a bush-fire of decency. “I don’t regret anything.”

“I don’t believe that.” Savanna waved at the books on the shelves. “What were you looking for there? A man doesn’t read history unless he feels he’s missed something. What was it, Les?”

“I wasn’t looking for my character there, if that’s what you mean.”

“What then? Are they all just there for show, trying to give yourself an air of breeding?” Savanna shook his head, smiling without malice. “You’ll never be a gentleman, Les, no matter how many books you read, no matter how much education you give yourself.”

“I know that,” the old man said flatly. “I never wanted to be a gentleman. A long time ago, long before I had any money, I realized that having money didn’t make you a gentleman. I’m talking about the old definition of the word. There are very few of them here in this country, but there’s a bloody lot who like to think they’re gentlemen. It’s more than having money or education. It’s breeding, I suppose, and it’s got to go back a long way. There was an Englishman once said, Gentility is naught but ancient riches. The more I read of history, the more I realize he was right on the knocker when he said that. My money is too new for me ever to be a gentleman.”

Savanna looked at him with new interest. “Then the books-?”

“I’ve got a sense of history, Jack. You’re not gunna believe this—” he smiled as he tossed Savanna’s phrase back at him e —but I don’t like to think everything started and is gunna end with me.”

Savanna said nothing for a moment, then nodded. “Don’t

hurt Helga,” he said, abruptly opened the door and went out.

Gibson hunched himself more in his chair and chewed on his lips. A spark of decency that each had recognized in the other: Jesus, he thought, whatever went wrong? And felt an unfamiliar taste in his mouth, one that he did not recognize, the salt of regret.