Hush Money (15 page)

It must have been pretty nice for Twink to find out he could cut it after all. Better than nice, the way she told it. More like scoring the winning TD in the Rose Bowl he'd never played in.

Well, he was a Leo, wasn't he?

And all over again he'd been ready to chuck it for her, and his son. Only he hadn't, all over again. And there'd been other times when he hadn't, and hearing her describe them, hearing her tell the dream Twink Beydon was supposed to have dreamed but never got around to living, I saw him again in the sweatsuit with the towel around his neck laying the same shit on me. Only when he'd laid the same shit on me, he'd been talking about his legal wife and daughter.

“Don't misunderstand me,” she said. “I've no complaints coming. We've been well supported. I'm not that pure either, I've had my good times without him,” curling a finger through the side of her hair the way women do when they're thinking about it. “But then after Nancy died …”

Her voice trailed off, leaving me with Ellen Plager in my mind, and maybe all the other Ellen Plagers.

“But it didn't work out that way,” she said levelly. “So I did the next best thing. Dumb romantic thing. Idiotic really, and not at all like me. But I changed my name.”

She grinned at me. Maybe she could read my thoughts.

“I did it on the spur of the moment,” she said. “I mean, it's
easy!
All you do is do it. I imagine if you wanted to change your name to Rockefeller, no one would stop you. Or Beydon certainly.”

Then change it back
, I told her in my mind.

“Friends of mine thought I was crazy,” she said. “I guess I was. Am. Or getting back at him, but it wasn't that. It was just something I wanted to do, always had I guess, and so I did it. It pulled me out of a bad time. After all, from my point of view it was the truth, do you see?”

And weirdly enough, I did. Later on I might think her vanity must have come unglued along the way, and not only her vanity, because no number in her right mind is going to carry her torch that high. But at the time … well, if I'd stuck around her much longer, she might have had me believing in decency and love and God-knows-what-other of our time-honored values.

As it was, she offered me a drink, which I turned down.

“What about your son?” I asked her. It struck me he wouldn't have taken so kindly to her changing the family label, or to be being a bastard for that matter, or to having his old man hanging around all those …

She shook her head.

“No,” she said. “Johnny's not that kind of kid. It's all right with him. He's got his problems, but he wouldn't have had anything to do with Karen, if that's what's on your mind.”

I asked her if she knew anything about a letter Nancy might have written Karen, or if Karen had left a will. No, she said, she was afraid she didn't.

“Just one other thing. Apparently Karen knew about you. Do you have any idea how?”

“No, I don't particularly,” she said, “but she did know. In fact she called me once—not that long ago either, a few months, as much as six maybe. I never told Twink. She wanted to meet me. She said a lot of other things that … well, that weren't very complimentary. I said I didn't think it would be a very good idea. I tried to explain, but she hung up on me finally. And that was that. I think now I should have done something about it, but of course you think a lot of things like that after the fact.”

As for me, as I got up I was thinking: a nice woman, even if she was a damn fool it was a shame, etcetera etcetera. And that it had turned out a nice day after all, the sun was also shining nicely, and one nice thought led to another.

But I happened to glance out the front windows in between Nice Thoughts 2 and 3, and what I saw brought trouble back on the run. The Mustang had company and so did we, plenty of it. Some four or five cars which hadn't been there before were parked in the street around the house. The black Firebird was one, the gunmetal Ford another, and in a third I thought I saw my old and silent friend Gomez, who I hadn't run into since before his brother passed away.

14

“How'd you know it was my birthday?” I said to her.

“Your birthday?”

She started.

“But … I'm sorry, I thought you said you were …”

Then she saw them too.

“Who's that?” she said.

I wondered if she really didn't know, not that it made a damn.

“Well,” I said, “unless somebody else on your street's throwing a party, I'd say they'd come for mine.”

I counted noses—five that I could see—and decided I didn't like the odds. I glanced around the house, looking for the trapdoor to the tunnel which would take me out to some place safe. I didn't see any.

“Is there another way out of here?” I asked for the hell of it.

“Sure, there's the back door. But …”

She laughed, a little nervously.

“You don't really think they'd do anything like that?” she said. “Out here? In broad daylight?”

“I not only think so, I'd be willing to give you points.”

“But who
are
they?”

I explained it, as succinctly as I could. At first she didn't believe it, that he'd do a thing like that. She said I was crazy, I must have made it all up in my head. I said that with all due respect whether she believed it or not or I was crazy was beside the point.

We stared at each other. She hesitated, and I headed for the door.

“No, wait,” she decided.

She held out her arm.

“You're not going anywhere,” she said firmly. “Sit down again and don't move. You wait there for me.”

I sat down again. She left me. Quite some time went by, plenty of time for me to blow kisses out the window and think about my future. I figured she was trying to call him and having the same luck I'd once had back before George S. Curie III “relieved me of my duties.” I thought of going outside and trying to parley, and I tried to picture what would happen if I waited for them to make the first move, and I came up with the same ugly scenario both ways.

But then suddenly I heard her voice talking, arguing, angry. It wasn't a short conversation either, but I didn't get up to eavesdrop.

Finally she came back and sat down next to me. She didn't say a word, but her nostrils were working overtime.

We watched together, like in a silent movie.

A little later, sure enough, we saw the little wimp in the black Firebird jump in his seat. He picked up a phone receiver and listened to it, his head cocked like a dog's. His lips never moved. Then he hung up, got out and went over to each of the other cars, one by one. I was right, it was Gomez in one, also the guy with the elephant nose. They took turns shaking their heads at each other. Then the little wimp got back in the Firebird, and the motors fired one after the other, and they drove out the way they'd come, in a row, leaving the Mustang in the lurch.

It was magic, nothing less.

“I never knew I had a fairy godmother,” I said to her, or some dumb thing, but she was gazing out the window and I don't think she heard, or when I said goodby.

I let myself out.

Her magic held. The Mustang and I got home all by ourselves, without escort. The apartment didn't explode when I opened the door, and there weren't any clicks on the phone, and the biddy from the answering service had a message for me from one of my lady friends. But it wasn't Robin this time, or Karen, or any of the other Karens, or anyone you've heard of, though for the record her name was Solange and she works for Air France. On the impulse—the oldest one there is—I called Solange back. She said she'd like to visit me, her longlost friend Cage, if I wasn't busy. I said I wasn't, on the contrary, and that if she'd give me time to put in some provisions I'd come pick her up. “
Bon
,” she said, “O.K.,” but, with a little laugh, would I mind getting provisions for three? And then on second thought, why didn't I forget about the provisions now and come for them right away?

Her friend's name was one of those hyphenated jobs beginning with Marie. She was very outgoing, this hyphenated Marie, and so was Solange. So was I. In fact one way and another we never did get around to the provisions until Sunday morning when I cooked them a breakfast like they don't get back in France, and then I took them back to bed in the sun and listened to them complain about Sunday flights, first with me in the middle, then Solange, then Marie, and they were still complaining when Solange finally took her hand off the throttle at the airport.

An interlude then. Beautiful. Or call it a hyphen.

Because when I got home, they'd already started filling in what came after the dash.

It was my Firebird wimp again with his cannon, sitting on the edge of my white couch, and this time he'd brought Gomez along for company.

The aztec shut the door behind me.

I made a crack about having the locks changed, but nobody laughed.

“He's ready for you now,” the little guy said. He stood up. “Let's go, Cage.”

Well what do you know? I thought. All of a sudden the shoe was on the other foot, and pinching.

“Go where?” I said. “Now wait a minute, you guys. Hell, I just got home. You know how it is, can't you come back a little later?”

“Let's go,” the little guy repeated, and Gomez encouraged me at the base of my spine.

“You'd better call him first,” I said. I wasn't about to go anywhere with them, not till I had what I wanted, but at the same time I've never seen a fight I wouldn't talk my way out of if I could.

“We had enough of your funny business yesterday,” he said, jerking his head in the general direction of the Valley. “Now he wants you brought in. That's what he said.”

“Sure he said to bring me in. But number one, it's not me he wants, you know that. Number two, I've got it all right, you know that too, but number three, it's not here. Look for yourself. And number four is that if you take me in now without it, like he's never going to get it. Add it all up, sweetheart, it still spells Mother.”

Around in there was when Gomez gave me a little tap. Just for nothing, I think, or maybe he was sensitive about his mother. I couldn't see it coming because he was standing behind me, but he sure didn't wind up from the floor either. All the same it sent the colored light zinging down my vertebrae and back up, and the bell rang in my head and I ended up on my knees.

The little guy cussed him out in Spanish and he backed off.

I shook my head to make sure everything was still there. I stood up, rubbing the back of my neck and watching Gomez out of the corner of my eye.

“Look,” I said to the little guy, “I'm not trying to pull a fast one. All I want to do is talk to him first.

“Call him,” I said.

We waltzed around with it a while, while Gomez waited to cut in. Finally I managed to convince him. I tried to guess the number from his dialing, but I got screwed up between a 7 and an 8 on the third digit and blew the rest. Anyway it wasn't Twink Beydon who answered, but you could tell when he came on by the way the little wimp popped to. Meanwhile Gomez was staring at me mournfully from across the room and scratching his nards.

“… says he wants to do it his way,” the little guy was saying. He didn't actually use “sir,” but it was in his tone. “Yeah … O.K.… Right …,” and with a last “O.K.,” he handed me the receiver.

“Cage? Are you there?”

Hey ole buddy, I answered in my mind, how're they hanging?

“That's right,” I said.

“Look Cage, we're finished playing around with you. I want my property back, right now. Either that or you. It's up to you.”

Just like the general addressing the troops all right: It's up to you, boys, either your nose in the shit or my boot up your ass.

“Like what are you going to do with me?” I said, staring back at Gomez. “Down in the squash court with your gorilla here and throw away the key? What would Margaret say?”

“That's my decision,” he answered tersely. “You make yours.”

“I've already made it,” I said.

“I'm listening.”

I had one card left to play, so I played it.

“You'll get your property, but I don't keep it lying around here. I guess you've already found that out. I've got to go get it first, and I'm not taking your Indians along. You'll have to call them off.”

“That's a cheap trick, Cage. Why should I believe you?”

“That's your decision,” I answered.

True to form, he made up his mind in a hurry.

“I'll give you till five o'clock, that's all.”

It was a little after three.

“That'll make it a little tight …,” I began.

“Five o'clock, no more, no less.”

“Maybe your brothers-in-law would be a little more liberal,” I said.

He didn't bat an eyelash, at least over the phone.

“You bring it here,” he said. “I'm at George Curie's office. You know the address. And let me tell you something, Cage—” he dropped his voice for emphasis “—if you're fucking with me now, it'll be the last time.”

I didn't answer.

“Is that clear?”

“It's clear,” I said.

“Then let me talk to Freeling.”

Have a nice wait, Twink, I said in my mind, and turning to the room: “Hey, which one of you guys is Freeling?”

The little guy reached for the receiver, and I gave it to him. Gomez didn't so much as grin. His stare just kept getting longer and longer, like I was a
piñata
and somebody'd taken his baseball bat away.

“That's right,” Freeling said, keeping his eyes on me, and “O.K.” and “Yeah,” and then he hung up.

“So you did it again, bud,” he said to me, neither surprised nor disappointed. He put his cannon away. “So you got yourself another reprieve. But Mr. Beydon told me to make sure you got the message. It's your last one.”