Sinners (23 page)

She sat behind her desk and chewed on a pencil. There was a stack of messages which she didn’t even bother to look at.

Marshall had been great in bed. Surprisingly so for a fifty-six-year-old man. In fact, better than the twenty-three-year-old actor who had been her last encounter.

It was funny going to bed with Marshall. Old Marshall with whom she had worked for seven years. It had seemed almost incestuous at the time, and she had had to get well and truly drunk before they went back to their hotel.

There was definitely a lot to be said for the older man’s technique in bed, which certainly beat stamina any day.

She giggled quietly to herself. What was to stop her getting married now? She was twenty-eight years old, she had been around, she was ready to settle with one man, and Marshall had told her that she could keep on her business.

Of course, her mother, who lived in a nice house in Pasadena with her married brother and his wife, would have a fit. Whenever Carey visited them they were always trying to fix her up with nice up-and-coming lawyers or accountants. She would be the disgrace of the family if she married a white man. But so what? She wasn’t prejudiced.

She buzzed her secretary. What the hell? If she didn’t take the plunge now, she never would.

‘Sue, get me Sunday Simmons in Acapulco.’ She decided Sunday should be the first to know.

‘She won’t be there, will she?’ Sue said. ‘I’ve got Steve Magnum for you.’

‘Put him through.’

There was a pause and then Steve’s voice crackled urgently across the line. ‘Where is she, Carey?’

‘Where is who?’

‘Don’t be smartass. Where is she?’

‘Steve, I just got in. I had a lousy trip and I don’t feel too great, so please stop shouting. If you’re looking for Sunday I spoke to her just before I left, and she was in bed. Why don’t you two move in together and then you won’t be so anxious every time she pops out to go shopping or something.’

‘Cut the shit,’ he said coldly.

Sue, who had a habit of listening in on all Carey’s calls, suddenly came dashing into the office and picked up the top message on Carey’s pad. She waved it under her nose. Carey read it quickly.

‘What the fuck is going on?’ Steve demanded. ‘Are you going to tell me where she is or not?’

‘What happened?’ Carey said. ‘Everything was fine when I left, but my dumb secretary’s just shown me a message from Sunday.’

‘What message?’

‘It seems she called in a press release I’m supposed to give out, and she said she was fine and would call me in a couple of days.’

‘What’s the press release?’

‘It just says “Sunday Simmons and Steve Magnum have decided to call off their engagement by mutual agreement”.’

‘Mutual agreement, shit,’ he snapped. ‘Have you given it out?’

‘I told you, I just this second saw it’

‘I don’t want you to give that announcement out.’

‘You’re
not my client, Steve.’

‘I am now, honey, I’m sending you over a large retainer.’

‘I’m sorry. If Sunday wants me to give out that statement, I’m going to have to do it.’

‘If there’s one thing I can’t stand it’s a spade with integrity.’

There was a short silence, during which she contemplated hanging up.

‘Aw – I’m sorry,’ Steve said. ‘I’ll tell you what, I’m going to hire you anyway.’

‘What happened between Sunday and you?’ she snapped.

‘What happened – who knows. Sunday is a funny lady. I was bombed last night and I guess I did something I shouldn’t have – according to her mixed-up standards.’

‘What did you do?’

‘It was nothing much.’ He hesitated. ‘Anyone else would have laughed it off.’

‘What was it, for God’s sake? It must have been something for Sunday to call everything off.’

‘I had a scene with some nothing broad – a five-minute fuck.’

‘And you
told
Sunday?’

‘Are you crazy? Of course I didn’t tell her. But somehow or other she must have found out; She sent back the ring with a note and just took off. By the time I got up today she was gone.’

‘Dindi?’

‘Huh?’

‘It was Dindi Sydne, wasn’t it?’

‘I don’t know who it was. Those broads all look the same to me. Some little blonde who’s married to the English actor – whatshisname – Charlie Brick. A real freak-out.’

‘Yes, that’s Dindi. I bet she couldn’t wait to tell Sunday all about it. Honestly, Steve, what made you do it?’

‘A hard-on, honey, a plain old-fashioned hard-on. Do me one big favour – don’t release that statement for twenty-four hours. Once I find her I’ll talk her round.’

‘I don’t know, Steve, I should really—’

‘Twenty-four hours, for Chrissake, I’m not asking for ten million bucks. I really love the girl. Give me a break.’

‘All right. But only twenty-four hours, and then, if I haven’t heard anything, I’m going to have to give it out.’

‘You won’t regret it when you’re flower-girl at our wedding. Just keep this quiet. I’ve got a detective flying in from L.A. and he’ll track her fast.’

‘Well, of course
I’ll
keep quiet, but I can’t say the same for Dindi Sydne.’

‘Don’t worry, I’ll take care of her. Keep in touch if you hear anything.’

He hung up.

Great, thought Carey, a great situation. Knowing Sunday, Steve Magnum had lost already.

She sighed. Looking at it from a purely business point of view, the publicity was invaluable.

Marge Lincoln Jefferson sat nervously in the bank manager’s office. Her palms were wringing wet. She wiped them surreptitiously on the cotton skirt of her dress.

Louella had been over time and time again how she was to behave, what she was to say. But still she was nervous as she waited for the man to respond to her speech. ‘So, Mrs Lincoln Jefferson, you’ve lost your bank book, I see. You should be more careful, you know; bank books must be looked after, put away, then we can just add all that nice fat juicy interest on without any trouble.’

When he said fat and juicy, his eyes considered her large floppy breasts sagging beneath the cotton dress in an old dirty bra. She was saving her only good one for the gathering on Saturday.

‘Yeah, I know,’ she said, gathering courage. ‘But I gotta have five hundred dollars quickly, I gotta have it today.’

‘Today? Hmm, I certainly don’t think you can get anything today. We do have a seven-day withdrawal period, you know. However, I’ll take specimens of your signature and details, and then if you come back in a week everything should be fine.’

What would Louella think of that? She might not even let her go to the gathering on Saturday night.

Marge squeezed out two fat tears. ‘I
gotta
have it today. A week’s time might be too late. I gotta go into the hospital, woman’s problems, y’know?’

The bank manager flushed. He didn’t want to hear about this gross woman’s intimate problems.

Marge remembered what Louella had said, ‘Any sign of trouble, and you sweet-talk the guy.’

She got up and leaned over his desk, resting her vast bosom on the desk top. ‘You gotta give me a break,’ she said, remembering the line from an old Mae West movie she had seen six times on television, ‘er – you be good to me and I’ll – er – be good to you – you know what I mean?’

The bank manager knew only too well what she meant. He cleared his throat and coughed nervously. ‘I’ll see if we can make an exception, Mrs Lincoln Jefferson. Would you please wait a minute?’ Anything to get this awful woman out of his office.

Marge sat down and waited. If Herbie knew what she was doing he would kill her, but Louella had said it was all right. Louella had told her she had to do it, otherwise there would be no more circle of friends, no more meetings, no more parties and fun.

A secretary came in and smiled at Marge. ‘Would you sign these forms please?’ she requested. ‘Mr Marvin has had to slip out, but he has authorized me to hand over five hundred dollars from your account.’

*    *    *

Two days passed and nothing happened. Herbert went about his business as normal. He scanned the papers every day, looking for more news about the murder, but there was nothing after the initial item. Murders were everyday occurrences in Los Angeles, and nothing to get excited about unless there was some additional news potential, such as the victim being famous or the crime particularly horrendous.

Marge kept asking in her whiney nasal voice: ‘Whadid you do, Herbie? Why
do
you want me to tell the police you was here?’

He ignored her. He took more showers than usual, and thought in a dreamy way what he would have done if it had been Sunday Simmons instead of that stinking dirty hippie – Sunday Simmons taking her dress off and offering herself to him.

He took the bus to work as usual, trying to find a seat on his own, and deciding that as soon as he got paid he would put a deposit on a car. He couldn’t stand travelling on the bus, what with the smell and the people. He needed to pay the rent on his house which was two months overdue. He also had to meet the monthly payments on the television and refrigerater, but a car was more important. A car was a basic necessity.

It was a pity Marge didn’t go back to work; although she could no longer get a job as a topless waitress.

Herbert coughed in disgust. He didn’t want her any more. She had been useful to cook his meals and wash his clothes, but he could get a day maid to do that. No, after what he had witnessed the other evening, he didn’t want the dirty bitch around.

Divorce was an expensive business. He thought carefully of other ways to dispose of her . . .

*    *    *

‘I got the money,’ Marge announced triumphantly.

Louella, sitting tight-lipped in her old green Chewy, took it from Marge’s outstretched hand and counted it. Then she put it in her purse and smiled. ‘What a clever girl. Now you are
really
one of us.’

They drove back to Louella’s house. She made some herb tea, then she went through the last two days’ papers with Marge, showing her all the items she had underlined.

There were forty burglaries, twelve muggings, a bank holdup, thirty-three rapes, and two murders.

‘It must be one of these,’ Louella said. ‘I want you to read everything carefully until you are familiar with them all.’

‘Do I have to, Louey? My readin ain’t the greatest.’

‘If we want to know what your husband has been up to, you have to. If we find out for instance that it was him that raped that woman alone in her house, then he can never boss you around again. We will be in control.’

Marge giggled. ‘I guess you’re right, but Herbie would never rape anyone.’

‘How do you know? What you must do is familiarize yourself with these cases and mention them to Herbert. When you hit on the right one you will know at once by his reaction.’

‘But what if it’s not any of these?’

Louella shrugged. ‘Then we think of another way to find out what he did.’

‘OK, Louey. Gee, I don’t know what I’d have done if you hadn’t of come and lived next door. You’re so nice to me, letting me join your “circle of friends” and everything.’ She gripped Louella’s arm with a warm, pudgy hand. ‘You’ve changed my whole life, I really mean that.’

Louella smiled, the smile never reaching her small violet eyes. She regarded Marge in the same way that Herbert did, as a lumbering, brainless idiot. But it was stupid women like Marge who enabled her to make a living.

What would Marge do if she knew that the ‘circle of friends’ consisted of a lot of kinky business men who could only make it by pretending they were at some sort of black-magic orgy? Lonely women were so easy to find in Los Angeles – widows, divorcees, actresses who had never got further than the studio gates. Without exception, once Louella found them and befriended them, they were only too happy to join the circle of friends, and none objected to the so-called sexual initiations. It boiled down to the fact that they all wanted to have sex, and putting a respectable name to it and charging
them
five hundred dollars made everything all right.

Louella found the women. Her husband collected together the male misfits, who paid fifty dollars each and attended only once. Had Marge been offered to them as a prostitute for fifty dollars, they would probably all have baulked, but the very bizarreness of the situation made everyone happy.

After two months, by which time Marge would have been initiated by over fifty men, Louella and her husband would quietly vanish with the best part of five thousand dollars, leaving Marge bewildered and suddenly friendless again.

In four years they had treated nearly forty women in this fashion, and the future looked bright, for they hadn’t even half covered the State of California. None of the women ever complained. What could they say? It was as simple as that.

A lucrative sideline, Louella had discovered, was getting something on the victims, something in their past they wished to hide. This could often produce a few hundred dollars more.

Louella sensed that if she could pin something on Marge’s husband, she could pry the rest of their savings away from them. Herbert Lincoln Jefferson looked like a shifty character. A rapist at least.

*    *    *

When Herbert reported for work at the Supreme Chauffeur Company on Saturday night, the man at the desk said, ‘Jefferson, you’re wanted down at the main office.’

‘Me?’ questioned Herbert stupidly.

‘Yeah, you, there’s been a complaint or something.’

Herbert’s body broke out in a cold sweat. A complaint?

He tried to decide what to do. It must be the police. They must have found out about the girl. Should he run? Where to? He had only a few dollars on him and without a car he wouldn’t get very far.

No, the best thing to do was to stay and deny everything. Marge would back him up with his alibi. At least he hoped she would.

The only thing that could possibly connect him with the case was the girl’s neck-chain he had found on the floor of the car, but he had carefully hidden that under the mattress of his bed. Marge hardly ever made the bed, so there was little likelihood of her ever finding it. It was quite safe where it was. He wasn’t even sure that it had belonged to the girl; any of his passengers could have dropped it.