Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye (34 page)

‘She was looking for you,’ he said evenly.

‘So let her look. She’s got nothing on me. I didn’t take the dough. Everything was strictly civilized. No hard feelings, no regrets…’

‘Everything strictly civilized,’ he said. ‘And we’d both be a damn sight better off if it weren’t. We’d be a damn sight better off if you’d taken the money like I wanted you to do. But no. You got brains. You know more than anybody else. Let it lay. You don’t want his bloodhounds after you. Make it nice and quiet. You made it nice and quiet, all right. The very thing you thought you’d avoid by not taking the dough is the very thing you’ve caused to happen. The bloodhounds are after both of us now.’

Bloodhounds? I didn’t get this. ‘Why?’ I asked.

‘She’s looking for you, that’s why.’

‘But she’s got nothing on me. Why should she be looking for me?’

‘She’s looking for you to offer you a job. She’s got a job for you. Something very good – with a future. That’s what you told her you wanted – didn’t you? Some business connection with a future? Didn’t you tell her that?’

‘Probably I did. It sounds corny enough for me to have said. But it was just conversation. I’d just met her. I had to talk about something.’

‘And you picked yourself, naturally.’

‘Naturally. …’ I said.

‘And now you’re making the distressing discovery that every man sooner or later makes when he goes around pushing over every dame he meets eventually one of them gets stuck on him.’

‘Stuck on me? She?’

‘That’s what I gathered.’

‘Ah-h-h-h,’ I said. ‘You drag me out here to tell me a lot of crap like this? You break up a party and make Holiday sore at me to get me out here to tell me this? Why do you try to make it sound so goddamn ominous?’

He took a golf towel from his coat pocket and raucously blew his nose. Then he put the towel back in his pocket and crossed his short legs and scowled at me, putting his hand to his face, rubbing his lips with the palm and the lobes of his nose with the thumb and forefinger, giving an imitation of a man who was trying very hard to hold his temper. ‘If you’ll just keep your ego out of the way long enough, I’ll tell you not what makes this sound ominous, I’ll tell you why it
is
ominous,’ he said.

‘Well, don’t take too long,’ I said. ‘I got a girl and a Jeroboam of champagne waiting. Neither is any good if it gets too cold. You’ll pardon the epigram. Just happened to have one with me.’

‘I’m afraid the girl and the champagne are just going to have to wait,’ he said, looking at me. Not for long, old boy, not for long, I thought, looking right back at him. He said: ‘When you didn’t take that thirty-five thousand dollar check from Ezra Dobson, he was bowled over. Nothing like that had ever happened to him before. All his life he’s been a target for people who wanted something – money, political favors, something – and
that
he couldn’t understand, turning down thirty-five thousand dollars as a gift. But there it was. You’d turned it down. I infer from what the girl told me that it took him several minutes to recover, and when they tried to get you back, you’d disappeared. They talked about it – but the girl wasn’t at all surprised that you’d refused the check. Not
she.
She knew all along that you had great pride and was a fine, noble character. She kept harping on that. She had to. Remember that she had her own ass in a sling and the more noble she made you out to be the more her own dereliction was mitigated. Oh, she’s a shrewd bastard, that one … Anyway, she convinced him. She sold him a bill of goods. So, they’ve both got guilty consciences now and they want to square themselves. They’ve got your future all planned. A nice, soft job …’

‘It’s very flattering, I’m sure,’ I said. ‘But I don’t want a job. Didn’t you tell her that?’

‘I told her you had a few excellent prospects, that’s all I could tell her. She was suspicious of me anyway. She resented me. She knows my reputation. Christ, her own lawyer’s been trying to crucify me for years. The less I have to do with this, the better for everybody. It’s up to you now.’

‘Just what am I supposed to do?’

‘It’s very simple. See her and tell her you don’t want the job.’

‘No,’ I said.

‘You have to.’

‘The hell I do.’

‘Of course you do. I promised her you’d call within the hour. It’s damn near that now.’

‘You’re crazy,’ I said.

‘All you have to do is see her. Thank her and tell her no.’

‘No,’ I said.

‘What’s so tough about that?’

‘I can’t do it,’ I said.

‘What do you mean you
can’t
do it?’

‘I mean I won’t do it.’

‘You’ve got no choice…’ He leaned over, staring at me. ‘What’s the matter with you? What’re you trembling about?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Are you sick?’

‘No.’

‘Then what is it? You’re shaking all over? What’s between this girl and you?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Every time I talk about her you get the shakes. What’re you afraid of?’

How could I tell him? How can you talk about things like that? I never wanted to see her again. The road back to the womb was closed forever. Let it stay closed. He would not understand. ‘I won’t have anything more to do with her,’ I said.

He straightened up, bringing his big eyebrows down, almost hiding the pupils. ‘Now, goddamn it, you listen to me,’ he said. ‘I promised the girl that I’d produce you within the hour. It’s either that or her father’s bloodhounds’ll turn you up. And his bloodhounds include the whole police department too. He snaps his fingers and the cops turn flips …’

‘I can stop that,’ I said.

‘Don’t try. Not with your ego. You’ll get the surprise of your life. Do you know what she was going to do if I hadn’t promised to produce you within the hour? She was going to have every downtown apartment and rooming house turned inside out. That’s all she knows about you – that you live somewhere downtown.’

The car turned into an oil station and and stopped under the shed. An attendant moved from one of the pumps to Highness’ window.

‘Fill ’er up?’ he said.

‘Fill ’er up,’ Mandon said. ‘Roll up your window, Highness,’ he said.

Highness rolled up the window.

Mandon waited until this was done and then looked back at me. ‘Can’t you get that through your head?’ he said. ‘She’s made up her mind to find you. What’s more ominous, the old man has made up
his
mind to find you. And he will – even if you start running. Why jeopardize our beautiful set-up when all you got to do is to say no to her. Can’t you face her for that long? Jesus, is it a matter of life or death?’ He took a sheet of notepaper from his pocket and held it out to me. ‘This is her private number. She wants you to call her so she can put you straight on what she already has told the old man. Go on. Call here…’

God! On this night, this night that I had thought was the night of
all
nights… Why was I trembling? The sepulchre had been sealed. Then why was I trembling?

I snatched the sheet of paper from his hand and got out and went in to the telephone.

T
HE TAXI-CAB STOPPED ALMOST
against the bronze gates, and the driver reached around to open the door and let me out.

‘Wait a minute,’ I said. It was a hell of a long walk up the hill to the house.

A door in the stone house beside the gate opened and a watchman in uniform came out. He was wearing a pistol. He came to the cab. ‘Mister Murphy?’ he said.

‘That’s right,’ I said.

‘Have you got some identification, please?’

‘Miss Dobson’s expecting me,’ I said. ‘Isn’t that enough?’

‘Don’t you have a driver’s license or something?’

‘Well…’ I said, and then I thought of my gun permit and showed it to him.

He snapped on his flashlight and looked at the permit, nodding, and turned around, facing the little stone house. ‘Okay, Chris,’ he said, and now I saw in the door of the house another uniformed watchman, who pushed a button in the wall.

The guy who had done the checking got in the cab with me, and the bronze gates began to open slowly.

‘Straight ahead,’ he said to the driver. Then first turn to the right.’

We rolled through the gates. The driveway was wide and lined with cypress.

‘Do you check all the Dobson guests?’ I asked.

‘Them we don’t know we do,’ he said. ‘We don’t usually ride up to the house with ’em though that order was just started tonight.’

‘Oh?’ I said. ‘Why tonight?’

‘Trouble at the plant Unions. Turn right,’ he said.

We turned right. I could see the house on the hill now, its lights glowing.

‘What kind of trouble?’

‘That’s all I know, sir.’

We stopped in front of the house and I got out and paid the driver. The watchman stayed in the cab.

‘Good night,’ he said.

‘Good night,’ I said.

I turned and looked at the house. It was a throwback to the Middle Ages, grim and foreboding on its hillsite, dominant and secure; but more than this I did not think about it; thinking instead of what awaited me on the inside. Something very formal and very official, of that I was certain. On the telephone I had tried to get her to meet me alone, somewhere else, anywhere but here. But she was adamant. Her father wanted to see me, he was going to somehow find time to see me in spite of the press of special meetings necessitated by an emergency situation at his plants. I
must
come here. Well, here I was, I thought, moving across the veranda to the front door. There was no escape and here I was. I would be very gracious and very appreciative and get it over with as soon as possible. This was the last instalment, by God, the very last. …

I pushed a bronze button and the big door swung open. The conventional butler stood there. This one was about sixty.

‘Mister Murphy?’ he said. He had the conventional British accent too.

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Miss Dobson’s expecting you, sir,’ he said.

I went in. The hall was wide and creamy, mirrored and tapestried and chandeliered and the black and white marble floor was covered with Oriental rugs. A winding staircase was at the right and opposite this on the left wall was a cluster of portraits, all individually lighted. The butler had closed the door and was standing beside me, his hand half extended.

‘I have no hat,’ I said.

‘This way, sir,’ he said unperturbed, and started down the hall.

We walked past the drawing-room, and then a door in the wall ahead of me suddenly opened and Margaret got out of a small elevator. She wore a sweater and a skirt and, this time, stockings and new moccasins. But the color of her white face hadn’t changed, nor the color of her black hair

‘Paul!’ she said. ‘I’m so glad to see you!’

Keep a tight rein, do not tremble, I told myself; after tonight the silhouette of horror will be gone, if there is to be a final instalment, this is it ‘Hello, Margaret,’ I said.

We shook hands for the butler’s benefit, and he bowed and resumed walking down the hall.

‘Rushing,’ she said, ‘tell Father that Mister Murphy is here. We’ll be in the tap-room.’

‘Yes, Miss Margaret,’ Rushing said, and came back past us.

‘It was nice of you to come,’ Margaret said to me, hooking her arm through mine, moving me down the hall. ‘I do appreciate it I had the deuce of a time trying to find you.’ She put the palm of her other hand over the hand she had hooked through my arm, smiling as if we were seeing each other for the first time in a long time, a thousand years or so, and turned me into a very large room filled with tavern tables and benches and green and red leather-covered furniture. An enormous bar, as big as a saloon’s, was built against one wall, and behind the bar in a white jacket and a wide grin was a Filipino boy. The lamps in here had been made from whiskey bottles and old coffee-mills and the humidors were tin cookie jars and the ash trays were old sugar scoops and little brass skillets. There was nothing grim or foreboding about this room. It was warm and cheerful and had a nice smell and I could not help thinking that this room belonged somewhere else, to some other house; it had just strayed from home and had been caught here by mistake.

‘Cuttysark and soda, Rafael,’ Margaret said to the Filipino boy. ‘What for you?’ she asked me.

‘Vodka martini,’ I said.

‘Vodka?’ she said, frowning. She looked at the Filipino. ‘Do we have vodka, Rafael?’

‘Yes, Miss.’

She looked back at me. ‘Any special way you want it made? I know how funny you are about your drinks.’

‘Five to one,’ I said. ‘No lemon, no olive, no onion.’

‘Rafael,’ she said. ‘Mister Murphy will have a vodka martini. Five to one. No lemon, no olive, no onion …’

This was unnecessary. The Filipino heard me, and I knew from the way he looked at me that he understood perfectly how I wanted the drink made. She was just being a bitch. You bitch, I thought, but I smiled the smile you smile for the hostess who insists on having everything just the way her guests want.

‘Yes, Miss,’ Rafael said.

‘Sit down, Paul,’ she said. ‘Smoke?’

‘No, thanks,’ I said politely.

She sat down on the edge of the copper-covered coffee table, pushing back some magazines and a humidor of cigarettes and a couple of ash trays to make room for herself.

I sat down on a green leather sofa.

‘I’m glad you didn’t bring all that fire and brimstone with you,’ she said. ‘You sounded pretty ferocious over the phone. Did I do wrong in going to Mandon?’

‘No. Of course not,’ I said, very gracious.

‘I didn’t know what else to do. I didn’t know where you lived. Where do you live?’

‘Oh, in a hole in the wall,’ I said, smiling.

‘Is there some reason for all the mystery?’ she asked. ‘Doctor Green didn’t want to tell me about Mandon and Mandon didn’t want to tell me about you and you don’t want to tell me where you live. …’

‘You found me,’ I said comfortingly.

‘But what a price I paid in wear and tear! I was frantic. I thought that maybe you’d left town.’

‘That’s one thing you can be very sure of,’ I said. ‘I won’t leave town.’

A serving maid came in with a silver tray of canapes and a stack of linen cocktail napkins. She offered the tray to Margaret who picked off one of the canapes and took a napkin; and then to me, and I also took a canape and a napkin. The maid put the tray on the coffee table and went out; and the Filipino boy arrived with the drinks.