The Girl, the Gold Watch and Everything

Chapter Five

The executive conference room was sixteen stories above the street, with a huge window framing the bay, a segment of causeway and distant pastel confections of hotels out on the beach. The decor was lime and white, and the big round table and the captains’ chairs were lusterless black.

There were eight men at the table. D. LeRoy Wintermore sat at Kirby’s left. At his right was a square, pale, motionless fellow named Hilton Hibber, representing the trust department of the bank named executor in Omar Krepps’ will. The other five men were Krepps Enterprises executives. They depressed Kirby. They always had. He could not tell them apart. They all had names like Grumby and Groombaw and Gorman. They all had snowy linen, gold accessories and an air of reverence. And they all had big fleshy faces weathered to a look of distinction, perfect governors on television dramas.

And he had always found their general attitude tiresome. They seemed to resent the frivolity of the decision to have the main offices in Miami. And somehow they had pigeonholed Omar Krepps as being a rather ludicrous eccentric, a little man who complicated their grave chores by hopping around picking up odd bits and pieces of businesses which they then had to fit into the measured structure of empire. And they had never tired of trying to tuck O.K. Devices into the fold. In far countries Kirby had always been getting little multicolored forms with small holes in them and blanks for him to fill out. Uncle Omar had told him to ignore them and he did. But they kept trying, and sometimes they would write him sad scolding letters.

The middle one called the meeting to order and said, “Let me recap the terms of Mr. Krepps’ will, gentlemen. All the assets of the estate are to be turned over to the Omar Krepps Foundation. Krepps Enterprises will be slowly liquidated over a period of time as its holdings in other corporations are transferred. We five executives of K.E. become officers and directors of the Foundation, in addition to our continuing corporate duties. It has occurred to us, Mr. Winter, that it would be fitting that you should be connected with the Foundation in some active capacity. We are mindful of the fact that Mr. Krepps left you no money in his will. We shall need an executive secretary for the Foundation, and we are prepared to offer you a salary of twenty-five thousand dollars a year.”

“I haven’t asked for anything,” Kirby said.

The five looked sternly at him. “You are unemployed, are you not?” the spokesman asked.

“At the moment.”

“Gentlemen!” said D. LeRoy Wintermore suavely. “You are giving me and my client here the impression some deal is underway. But we cannot properly assess its merits until we know what you expect of him.”

“Your client?” the spokesman asked. “Isn’t that a conflict of interest?”

“No indeed,” the old man said.

Hilton Hibber cleared his throat. “Perhaps I can shed some light. In going over the summary records for tax purposes, I find that over the past eleven years, some twenty-seven million dollars in cash and liquid assets have been drained from the asset structure of K.E. and turned over to O.K. Devices. Inasmuch as all taxes were paid on this money, Internal Revenue took no particular interest in it. But O.K. Devices was entirely owned by Omar Krepps. And now they wish to consider that twenty-seven million part of the estate. If they do, scraping up the tax money on that amount would gut the structure of K.E. and reduce the scope of the Foundation seriously. The current books of O.K. Devices were turned over to me. They were maintained by Miss Wilma Farnham, who, aside from Mr. Winter, was the only other employee of O.K. Devices. The books show a current asset value of four hundred dollars. There are no notes payable or receivable, no accounts payable or receivable.” He hesitated and took out a white handkerchief and wiped his face, though the conference room was cool. “In fact, there are no records at all, aside from the depreciation account on office equipment.”

“And we know why there are no records,” the spokesman said in a strangled tone. “Miss Farnham claims she was following Mr. Krepps’ instructions. She hired a truck and helpers, and on the day following the death of Mr. Krepps, she took all the files and records to a remote area and burned them. She stacked them, poured kerosene on them, and burned them, by God!”

“Most unfortunate,” Mr. Wintermore murmured.

“Furthermore,” Mr. Hibber said, “the Revenue people will assume this was done to conceal the location of the hidden assets. Obviously they will eventually subpoena both Miss Farnham and Mr. Winter in an attempt to extract information regarding these assets. So I suggest that — uh — co-operation at this point on the part of Mr. Winter might be beneficial to all.”

Everyone looked at Kirby Winter. “Let me understand this,” he said. “You’re in a tax jam. You don’t know what I’ve been doing for the past eleven years, and you are dying to know. If I explain what I’ve been doing and what happened to the twenty-seven million dollars, then I get a nice reward of an undemanding job for life.”

The spokesman smiled. “Badly stated, of course. But if you should refuse the offer, you can’t blame us for suspecting that some of this missing money might be — diverted to your private account.”

“That statement is slanderous, sir,” Wintermore said tartly.

The spokesman shrugged. “Perhaps. But we’re all realists here. We have to protect ourselves.”

Kirby leaned back in his chair and studied the intent faces. “You just want to know where all that money is, huh?”

He saw six eager nods, six pairs of glittering eyes.

He smiled at them. “It’s gone.”

“Gone!” It was a sound of anguish.

“Sure. I gave it all away.”

Consternation turned immediately to indignation. The spokesman said, “This is hardly the time for frivolous responses, Winter. Mr. Krepps was eccentric. But not that eccentric.” He leaned forward and struck the table with his fist. “Where is that money?”

“I gave it away,” Kirby said. “You asked me. I told you. I gave it away.”

“My client has given you his answer,” Wintermore said.

“In view of Mr. Winter’s attitude, I see little point in continuing this meeting,” the spokesman said. “His attitude is not unlike Miss Farnham’s attitude. Obviously they are agreed not to co-operate with us. May I ask your plans, Mr. Winter?”

“I might go on a cruise.”

“With twenty-seven million dollars?” Hibber asked in a cold voice.

“I never carry more than fifty dollars in cash.”

“Where do you keep the rest of it?”

“I gave it all away.” He leaned to his right and whispered to the elderly attorney.

Wintermore straightened up and said, “As the only living relative, my client is entitled to whatever personal papers and documents Mr. Krepps left here.”

All five executives looked uncomfortable. “He left a case of documents in the vault here,” the spokesman explained. “When we were faced with — this problem, we examined them. It would seem to be — some sort of a joke. The case contains fifty or so pounds of texts and pamphlets on jokes and magic. Decks of marked cards. Handkerchief tricks. Interlocking rings. The old man was — rather strange you know. The case is back in the vault — any time you care to send for it.”

On the taxi ride back to Wintermore’s office, the old man was silent and thoughtful. When they were in his private office, he began to make a strange sound. Kirby looked at him with alarm. Wintermore’s face was dark. Suddenly Kirby realized the old lawyer was laughing.

“Oh dear, oh dear,” Wintermore said. “Forgive me. I have added up all the little clues in a long friendship. Oh dear. Yes indeed. There is no other answer. You did give the money away.”

“That’s what I told them.”

“But you see, they can never believe it. It is a concept so monstrous, they rebel at it. Omar delighted in practical jokes. And this is the biggest practical joke in financial history. Wherever he is, he is laughing as helplessly as I am. Those p-poor earnest fellows! And I am sure Miss Farnham was following his instructions when she burned the records.” Wintermore blew his nose and stood up and said, “I’ll get your watch.”

“Doesn’t the will have to be probated or something first?”

“Not for keepsakes, Kirby.”

Wintermore came back in a few moments with a fat, old-fashioned, gold pocket watch on a worn chain. The watch was running and on time. On the other end of the chain was a charm in the shape of a little gold telescope. Kirby looked at the watch and then he looked through the telescope, turning it toward the windows. The light illuminated a little interior scene done with photographic realism. Kirby gasped and stared and then looked questioningly at Wintermore.

“My dear fellow, your uncle did not care to live with a woman. But that does not mean he found them entirely useless. He was a man, even as you and I.”

“I feel as if I never knew him at all.”

“He was not an easy man to know.”

“He always seemed — impatient with me, as if I was a disappointment.”

Wintermore leaned back in his leather armchair. “He didn’t say much about you, Kirby, but when he did I detected a certain amount of anxiety. It was as if he was terribly anxious that you should be ready. As if some great trial or task would eventually be given you. I wouldn’t say he faulted you for diligence or imagination. But he seemed to be waiting, with decreasing patience, for you to stand on your own two feet.”

“God knows I tried to quit often enough.”

“Quit and go crawl into a hole was the way he put it, I believe. Once he wondered aloud in my presence if you were going to be a ninny all your life. Forgive me, but the quote is exact.”

“I don’t feel hurt. I’ve wondered the same thing.”

“If Omar could have seen you this morning, he would have been heartened.”

“Would he?”

“You were splendid, my boy. Skeptical, indignant, indifferent. I would have expected you to apologize to those five impressive gentlemen for any inconvenience you had caused them, make a full statement of what your duties have been, and gladly accept the position they offered.”

“You know, I’m surprised I didn’t. But people have been pushing me around ever since I got back here.”

“You baffled them, Kirby. You gave them no leverage, no handle, no button to push. So naturally they think you were speaking with the independence of hidden millions.”

“So Uncle would have been heartened. So what? It came a little late, didn’t it?”

“It would seem so.”

Kirby looked again through the telescope, sighed and put the watch in his pocket. “Let them squirm for a while. I’ll take them off the hook when I’m ready. Or maybe I won’t. I don’t know.”

“They won’t just sit there wringing their hands, you know. Expect some sort of counterattack.”

“When it comes, you can tell me what to do. You’re my attorney.”

“It would be interesting to know what Omar had in mind. I do wish we could open that letter he left for you. But I have had a long and ethical career, young man, because I have had the good judgment never to trust myself. We have a Mr. Vitts in this office, a man of truly psychotic dependability. I had him put that letter in his personal safety deposit box. Mr. Vitts delights in sacred trusts. Boiling him in oil would not give anyone access to that letter one day sooner.”

“Before the year is up, I may have a better idea of what’s in it.”

“If you ever have a plausible guess please tell me. Omar was a strange fellow. He made no wrong moves. I’ve often wondered at the secret of his success, and the only answer that seems even halfway reasonable is that, long ago, he devised certain mathematical procedures which enabled him to predict future events. I keep wondering if those formulae are in that letter. It would account for his anxiety about you. The ability to predict would be a terrifying responsibility.”

Kirby frowned and nodded. “It would account for those gambling winnings when I was a kid. And then he lost them back on purpose, so people would leave him alone.”

“I intend to live through this year, too. Just to learn what is in the letter.”

Kirby walked from Wintermore’s office to a neighborhood drugstore for a sandwich and coffee. One little word kept rebounding from the cerebral walls. Ninny. It was a nineteenth-century word, yet he could not find a modern equivalent with the same shade of meaning. Probably it was a corruption of nincompoop. Ninny — that soft, smiling, self-effacing, apologetic fellow, the type who is terribly sorry when you happen to step on his foot, the kind you can borrow money from in the certainty he will never demand you repay it. And if he was a little brown dog, he’d wear his tail tucked slightly under, and wag it nervously, endlessly.

He wondered at his own degree of ninnyism. How severe was it? How incurable was it? Could a man walk through life in a constant readiness to duck? On the other hand, were not the opposite traits rather unpleasant? Arrogance, belligerence, domination. Yet the arrogant man seemed to have considerably less difficulty with one primary aspect of existence.

“Girls,” he said aloud. A fat woman on the adjoining stool turned and gave him a long cold stare. Kirby felt himself flush and felt his mouth begin to stretch into a meek smile of apology. As he began to hunch over, he straightened his shoulders, lifted his chin and said, “Madame, I was talking to myself, not to you. If you feel you’re in the presence of a dangerous nut, I suggest you move to another stool.”

“Whaddaya? Some wise guy?”

“You glared at me, so I responded.”

“All kinda nuts in Miami,” she muttered and hunched herself over her tuna fish.

Kirby felt a small glow of pride. Perhaps not completely a ninny. But one had to start in small ways. One had to emerge, step by step, from ninnyism, acquiring confidence at each small victory.

Actually, at the conference, he hadn’t given a true ninny reaction. Ninnyism would require making a detailed statement of what he had been doing for O.K. Devices, and making them believe it. He had told the truth, but as a gesture of revolt, had made it sound like an evasion. In all honesty he had to admit that it was the intransigence of Miss Wilma Farnham which had backstopped his moments of rebellion. Let the executives sweat.

When a chunky girl came to take his money he braced himself and said, “The coffee is lousy.”

“Huh?”

“The coffee is lousy.”

She gave him a melting smile. “Boy! It sure is.”

He went to the phone booths and called Wilma Farnham at her apartment. She answered on the second ring, her voice cool and precise.

“Kirby Winter. I tried to get you yesterday,” he said.

“Yes?”

“Well, I thought we ought to talk.”

“You did?”

“What’s the matter with you?”

“Nothing’s the matter with me, Mr. Winter. The office has been closed. I’ve turned the books over to the attorneys. I’m seeking other employment. Mr. Krepps left me a generous bequest, but I shan’t receive it for some months they tell me. The relationship is over, I would say. Good-by, Mr. Winter.”

He called her back. “What could you possibly have to say to me, Mr. Winter?”

“Listen, Miss Farnham. Wilma. I heard you burned all the records.”

“That is correct.”

“So it looks as if the tax people might subpoena us—”

“Mr. Winter! I knew you would call me. I knew that the instant Mr. Krepps died you’d forget your word of honor to him. I intend to keep my word, Mr. Winter. I would rot in prison rather than break my word to that great man. But I knew you would immediately start currying favor with everybody by telling them everything you know. Believe me, there is no longer any documentation for anything you have told them or will tell them. And you cannot wheedle me into breaking my word, or frighten me into breaking my word. You are a miserable, sycophantic weakling, Mr. Winter, and I would say your uncle overestimated you all your life. Don’t bother me again, please.”

And once again the line was dead.

Twenty minutes later he was pressing the bell for her apartment. When she answered over the communicator and he told her who he was, there was a silence. The lock was not released. He pressed other bells at random. The door buzzed and he pushed it open and went into the tiny lobby. The elevator was in use. He went up two flights of stairs, found her apartment in the rear and beat upon the door with his fist.

“Go away!” she yelled.

He kept hammering. A door down the hall opened. A woman stared at him. He gave her a maniac grin and she ducked back into her apartment.

Finally the door swung open. Wilma Farnham tried to block the way, but he pushed roughly by her, turned and shut the door.

“How dare you!”

“Now there’s a great line. It swings, Wilma.”

“You’re stinking drunk!”

“I’m stinking indignant. Now you sit down, shut up and listen.” He took her by the shoulders, walked her backward into the couch and let go. She fell back with a gasp of shock and anger.

“Nothing you can say to me—”

“Shut up!” He stared at her. She wore a burly, shapeless, terry-cloth robe in a distinctly unpleasant shade of brown. Her brown hair fell to her shoulders. She was not wearing her glasses. Her small face was wrinkled with distaste, and she squinted at him myopically. “What the hell gives you the impression you’ve got this monopoly on loyalty and virtue and honor, Wilma? What makes you so damn quick to judge everybody else, on no evidence at all? What gives you the right to assume you know the slightest damned thing about me, or how I’d react to anything?”

“B-but you always just sort of drift with—”

“Shut up! You did as you were told. That’s fine. My congratulations. But it doesn’t make you unique. I did as I was told, too. I did not tell them one damn thing.”

She stared at him. “You’re trying to trick me somehow.”

“For God’s sake, call any of the brass. Ask them.”

She looked at him dubiously. “Not a thing?”

“Nothing.”

“But those lawyers told me you would tell everything. They said it was the only way you’d get a dime out of the estate.”

“They made just as bad a guess as you did.”

“Did you just say — nothing? Just refuse to talk?”

“I did better than that. I told them something they couldn’t possibly accept — something they couldn’t possibly believe.”

“What?”

“I told them I gave it all away.”

Her eyes were suddenly too round for squinting. “But... that’s—”

Suddenly she began to giggle. He would not have thought her capable of any sound so girlish. Then she began to guffaw. He laughed with her. Her hoots and shouts of laughter became wilder, and the tears were running down her small face, and suddenly he realized her laughter had turned into great sobs, great wrenching spasms of grief and pain.

He went to her, sat with her. She lunged gratefully into his arms, ramming her head into the side of his throat, snorting, snuffling, bellowing, her narrow body making little spasmed leapings with her sobs, and he could make out a few words here and there. “Sorry — so alone — ashamed — didn’t mean—”

He held her and patted her and said, “There, there, there.”

At last she began to quiet down. He became conscious of the fresh clean smell of her hair, and of the soft warmth of her against him, and of a hint of pleasant contour under the dreary robe. She gave a single great hiccup from time to time. Abruptly, she stiffened in his arms, thrust herself away and scrambled to the far end of the couch.

“Don’t come near me! Don’t touch me, you son of a bitch!”

“Wilma!”

“I know all about you. Maybe the rest of them roll right over on their back, but you better not get the idea I’m going to.”

“What the hell!”

“Hah! A wonderful imitation of innocence, Kirby Winter. I’m glad you’re loyal to your uncle, but that doesn’t mean I have to respect the other things you stand for.

“I knew what you had in mind, setting up those little conferences in that sordid hotel room. We both knew what you were after, didn’t we? That’s why I was on guard every single moment. I knew that if I gave you the slightest opportunity, you would have been after me like a madman.”

“What?”

“I was on guard every single minute. I had no intention of becoming your Miami plaything, Mr. Winter. You got enough of that, all over the world. I used to go to that room in absolute terror. I knew how you looked at me. And I thanked God, Mr. Winter, I thanked God for being so plain you weren’t likely to lose control of yourself. And I made myself plainer when I came to that room. Now that it’s all over, I can tell you another thing too, something that makes me sick with shame. Sometimes, Mr. Winter, in all my fear and all my contempt, I found myself wanting you to hurl yourself at me.”

“Hurl myself!”

“It was the devil in my heart, Mr. Winter. It was a sickness of the flesh, a crazy need to degrade myself. But I never gave way to it. I never gave you the slightest hint.”

“All we did was sit in that room and go over the reports and—”

“That’s what it looked like, yes. Ah, but how about the things unsaid, Mr. Winter, the turmoil and the tension underneath. What about that, Mr. Winter?”

He raised his right hand. “Miss Farnham, I swear before God that I never, for the slightest moment, felt the smallest twinge of desire for—”

He stopped abruptly. He saw anew the neat sterility of the apartment, the plain girl, the look on her face of sudden realization, hinting at the horrible blow to her pride that would soon be evident. And he knew that even if she was slightly mad, he could not do that to her.

He dropped his hand abruptly and gave her a wicked wink. “I guess I can’t get away with that, can I?”

“Beg pardon?”

He winked again. “Hell, baby, I used to see you walking, swinging that little round can one sweet inch from side to side and I used to think — uh — if I could just get you out of those glasses and those old-lady clothes and muss your hair up a little and get a drink into you, you’d be a pistol.”

“Y-you filthy animal!”

He shrugged. “But, like you said, cutie, you never gave me an opening. You never made the slightest move.”

She seemed to cover the distance from the couch to a doorway across the room in a single bound. She whirled and stared at him. Her face was pale. Her mouth worked. “Th-then,” she whispered, “if I didn’t — why in God’s name didn’t you?”

In the trembling silence he reached for the right response, but all he could find was his own terrible moment of truth. He felt impelled to meet it. “Because — I’m scared of women. I try to hide it. Women terrify me.”

She wore an expression of absolute incredulity. She took a half-step toward him. “But you’re so — so suave and so—”

“I’m a lousy fake, Wilma. I run like a rabbit, all the time.”

She bit her lip. “I... haven’t had many chances to run. But I always have. Like a rabbit. But you!”

“You’re the first person I’ve ever told.”

Suddenly she began to laugh again, but he could not laugh with her. He heard the laughter climbing toward hysteria.

“No,” he said. “Not again! Please.”

She whooped, whirled, bounded through the doorway and slammed the door. He could hear her in there, sounding like a small stampede heading through swamp country. He slowly paced back and forth until the sound diminished and finally died away. He sat in a chair, his back toward the bedroom door.

“Wilma!” he called.

“In a minute,” she answered, her voice husky from weeping.

He took the gold watch out. He looked cautiously through the little telescope and shivered. He was studying the intricate monogram on the back of the watch when the bedroom door opened.

“He always carried that,” she said. “Always.”

“I guess I will. I’ll have to wear a vest or get some kind of a belt clip arrangement.”

She was behind him, looking over his shoulder. Suddenly he was inundated by an almost strangling cloud of perfume.

“Sometimes he’d look through that little telescope and then he’d chuckle.”

“I bet.”

“I asked him about it once. He wouldn’t let me look through it. He said I didn’t speak the language. I didn’t understand. Will you let me look through it?”

“I — uh — maybe when — uh—”

She came around the chair. She made a wide circle around it and stood where he could see her for the first time, some eight feet away. He tried to swallow but could manage only half the process. “Bought it two years ago,” she said in a grave whisper. “Tried it on once.”

She had brushed the brown hair until it gleamed, and for the first time he saw the reddish highlights in it. She was facing him squarely, but she had her face turned away from him. She stood like a recruit who had just been chewed out for bad posture. She was not trembling. Rather she seemed to be vibrating in some galvanic cycle too fast for the eye to perceive. He had the feeling that if he snapped his fingers all the circuits would overload and she’d disappear in a crackle of blue flame and a hot smell of insulation. He slowly began to strangle on the half-completed swallow. She wore a single garment. He could not guess at what possible utility it might have. There was an inch-wide ruffle of black lace around her throat. There were similar visible ruffles around her wrists. There was a third circling her hips, apparently floating in air several inches away from the pale and slender thighs. The three visible bands of black seemed joined together by some incredible substance as intangible as a fine layer of city soot on a windshield. Miraculously affixed to this evanescence, and perfectly umbilically centered, was the pink, bloated, leering face, on some sturdier fabric, of the most degenerate looking rabbit he had ever seen.

He completed the swallow with such an effort, it felt as if he were swallowing a handful of carpet tacks. For a tenth of a second he marveled at the uncanny insight of one Hoover Hess, and with a sobbing sound of guilt, inadequacy and despair, he roared out of the apartment and down the corridor toward the stairs. He heard a howl of frustration, and a long, hoarse, broken cry of, “Oh you baaaaaaas-taaaarddd!” As he clumped down the stairs the corridor fire door swung slowly shut, and he heard those hoots of laughter again, heard them begin to soar upward, and then the door closed and he could hear no more.

Two blocks from the apartment building he suddenly heard himself saying, “For God’s sake, Wilma!” and realized he had been saying the same thing over and over for some time. The gold watch was still clutched in his hand. Two old ladies were staring at him with strange expressions. He slowed his headlong stride, put the watch in his pocket and gave them an ingratiating smile. One old lady smiled back. The other one tilted her chin at the sky, braced herself, and with a volume that made every car in that block give a startled swerve, screamed, “Stop thief!”

It panicked him into a dead run, but as soon as he was around the next corner he slowed down, his legs trembling. He stood staring blindly into a bookstore window until his breathing was normal. He oriented himself and discovered he was seven or eight blocks from the Hotel Birdline. Suddenly, for the first time since telling it, he remembered the lie about Uncle Omar’s personal records. He remembered how crafty he had felt when telling it. Sober, he knew it was a blundering stupidity.

He went to the Birdline. The one without any space between his eyes was at the desk, the one with the volcanic acne. The clerk leaned into the small office beyond the switchboard and yelled to Hoover Hess. Hess came out, rubbing his hands, projecting the smile of agony.

“Kirb, buddy, you ready to talk business? You can’t make a better—”

“Not right now, Hoover. I’m a little too rushed. I was wondering about my stuff you’ve got here. I thought I’d—”

“Understand, I’m a guy appreciates a sweet gesture, but I told you so long as I got the room down there, the storage was on the house, right?”

“Yes.”

“And I’m the kind of a guy wouldn’t change the deal on account of you inheriting big, right?”

“But—”

“So what I mean is, I’m touched by the fifty bucks, Kirb. It was a nice thing to do, believe me.”

“Fifty?”

Hess looked shocked. “Was it more? Did those slimy bastards take a clip out of it on the way over here?”

“Uh... no. It wasn’t any more.”

“Rest easy, Kirb. They come and got the trunk and the big wooden case along about eleven this morning.”

“Who?” he said weakly.

“The guys from the Elise! In the truck from the Elise! Chrissake, don’t you even remember who you sent after it? Look, if you could come in and sit down for just five minutes, Kirb, I could fill you in on the whole picture. The way I figure, in exchange for consolidating the mortgages and bringing it down to an interest rate that makes sense, instead of the cannibal rates I got to pay, what you should have is a piece of it. I even got an inspiration about your name, to go with the place. The Winter House. How about that!”

“Some other time, Hoover.”

“Any time you say. I’ll drop everything. Everything.”

Kirby headed across the lobby toward the pay phone. He had to skid to a stop to let a sailor by. The sailor had considerable velocity. He was skidding across the tile floor, revolving slowly, his eyes closed. He was smiling. He carried on into three short wide men in tense argument over a racing form, catapulted the three of them into a couch and went on over with them as the couch went over backwards.

He dialed Betsy’s memorized phone number.

“Kirby! I was about to come looking for you. I tried the hotel a thousand times. Are you there now?”

“No. Look, I think you were right, at least a little bit right anyhow.”

“Thanks a lot!”

“Don’t be so sarcastic. The way things are going, how am I expected to trust anybody?”

“Why Kirby, dear! Your teeth are showing.”

“I think I did a stupid thing. I mean I thought it was shrewd, but I was drunk at the time.”

“It’s a poor week for it.”

“I know. But it worked, sort of. But I’ve got the idea they’re going to be awfully damned mad. And I was supposed to meet her at two o’clock over there. She was going to take me shopping.”

“Standard procedure. She has a wonderful way of getting all her men to end up looking exactly alike. They all end up looking like fairy ski instructors. I think it’s the tan, the sideburns and the ascot that does it. She’s mad for ascots. And it’s a long way after two, Kirby.”

“I have the feeling it wouldn’t be too smart to go over there now. Let me tell you just what—”

“Come on over here. We can talk. I hate phones.”

“I’d rather tell you over the phone.”

“Come on over here. I’m alone. We can thrash it all out.”

“But... but... but—”

“Get over here on the double, you clown!” She hung up.

A little word started bounding about in the back of his mind. It was made of fat little letters, fabric letters, stuffed. NINNY. The fabric, curiously, was the same shade of pink as the face of the lecher rabbit centered on Miss Farnham’s gossamer funsuit. He squared his shoulders. He walked carefully around the broiling brutal confusion of cops, sailors and horse players in the front of the lobby, deaf to the resonant tock of hickory against bone, and took the single cab in front.

As they pulled away, the driver said, “Like they got Saturday night on Monday afternoon in there, huh?”

“What?”

“The riot, man!”

“Sorry, I didn’t notice it particularly.”

After a long silence the driver said, “I don’t know what the hell kind of date you got, mister. All I know is I wisht I had it.”

He had trouble finding the address. It was a crooked little bayfront street, more alley than street. The building had been added onto in random fashion over the years, and each segment of it seemed to sag in a different direction. Apartment Four, when he finally found it, was one flight up, via an open iron stairway bolted to the side of the building. The door was painted an orange so bright it seemed deafening. Over the bell was lettered b. sabbith. He was tempted to press the doorframe with his thumb an inch below the bell, wait ten seconds, then flee down the staircase. “Ninny,” he whispered and pressed the bell. There was a tiny porthole in the door. A green eye looked out at him. The door swung open.

“Come in and look at this creepy place,” she said. She was in stretch pants again. Plaid. And a sleeveless blue blouse. Barefoot. Cigarette in the corner of her mouth. Toffee hair in harsh disarray.

Most of the apartment was a big studio room. He saw a kitchen alcove and a single door which had to lead to a bath. Glass doors opened out onto a tiny breakfast porch.

She stood, hipshot, and included the whole decor in one wave of her arm. “Observe. Rugs to your ankles. Strategic lighting. Cutie little hearth with, for God’s sake, a dynel tiger skin in front of it. Any chair you sit in, you need a helping hand to get out of. That damned bed is nine by nine, and twenty inches high. I measured it. The little library is all erotica. Seventeen mirrors. I counted. Thirty-one pillows. Counted them, too. In the way of groceries, one-half box of stale crackers, one-half box of stale puffed wheat, twenty-one cans of cocktail goodies, two bottles gin, fourteen bottles wine. Make a wild guess, Winter. What is Bernie’s hobby?”

“Uh... philately?”

She spun and grinned at him. “You come on slow, but sort of nice, Kirby. I figured you for a fatal case of the dulls. Maybe not. I recommend this couch over here. It’s the only thing you can get out of without a hoist. It must have come with the place.” She sat down, patted the place beside her and said, “The detailed report, friend.”

He told her all, with a little editing here and there. She seemed quieter, more thoughtful than the last time he had talked to her. “What’s the stuff you had stored?”

“Just personal junk. Books, records, photographs. Tennis stuff. Hunting stuff. Even a pair of ice skates.”

“That’s a nice touch. Ice skates. That’ll make them very happy. But we are forwarder. Now you know for sure they want something. Uncle’s personal records. The clue to the edge he had over the competition. And you say there aren’t any records at all. Are you sure?”

“Pretty sure.”

“Could the Farnham broad have something tucked away? She sounds desperately loyal.”

“I doubt it.”

“Charla and Joseph are going to be very irritable, Kirby. But I think they’ll think you’re still the best link to what they want. And I don’t think they know exactly what they do want. But they want it bad. Badly enough so they shouldn’t treat you too badly. You sure you didn’t give them my address? While drunk?”

“If I had, they wouldn’t be trying to find out.”

“They don’t want us to get together on this. They’d rather deal with a goof, not somebody I’ve toughened up for them.”

“I don’t care much for that word, Betsy.”

“Oh, for goodness sake, be honest with yourself. If I hadn’t planted the seeds of suspicion, Charla’d have you on a leash by now, trotting you around, scratching you behind the ears, tying your new ascots, and giving you the slow strip and tease routine, until you wouldn’t be able to remember your name if somebody asked you quick.”

“I’m not so sure.”

“You just don’t know Aunt Charla. Hell, where are we? I think you ought to trudge on back there and play cute. Make out you know what they’re after. Admit you tricked them. Say you’ll listen to an offer. Maybe then we’ll get a better clue as to what they really want, if they know.”

“I don’t think I’m very good at this sort of thing.”

“I know you’re not very good at it. But hang in there. I think we might get some volunteer help. Bernie’s coming down soon with a crew and some models and so on to do some commercials here. Mad ones all. Maybe they’ll help us add a little more confusion to the deal.”

“Do we need more?”

“Poor Kirby.”

“The thing is, in eleven years you get sick of dealing with people you know you’ll never see again. I kept wanting to get out. I had this idea of maybe finding a town way off a main road with maybe twenty-eight people in it, so I would know them and they would know me, tomorrow, next year, ten years from now. I could stop trying to remember names and faces. And I’d know where I was before I woke up in the morning, instead of figuring it out afterward.”

“With me,” she said, “it’s a dream of being back in that school. I was there for six years, you know. From nine to fifteen, the longest I’ve ever been anywhere. And I dream a class is leaving and I have to leave too, and I’m crying. But then they take me out of the line and I know I can stay, and it’s the most wonderful thing. All the others are marching away, but they’re going to keep me.”

“But they didn’t.”

“Charla came in a car big as a freight engine, with a driver in uniform and an English Lady Something with her who made a horrible snorting sound when she laughed. I was supposed to be in a play at school, but they didn’t give a damn. They drove me to Paris and bought me a lot of clothes. We met some other people there, and then we all flew to Cairo.”

“Sometimes you have more accent.”

“I can get rid of every trace of it when I have to.”

“Could Charla have arranged to have my uncle’s places — robbed?”

“Why not? It isn’t her usual style. It’s a bit crude, and probably quite expensive. But she has the pragmatic approach.”

“They won’t be able to get that letter.”

“They can afford to wait a year. And all you got was a keepsake.”

He took the watch from his pocket. She reached over and took it from him. “A real grandpa kind of watch.” Before he could stop her, she looked through the little gold telescope.

“Happy days,” she said in a tired voice. “Don’t let Bernie see this. It’s all this apartment needs. There’s room on that wall for a mural.” She took another look. “They make this junk in Japan. A girl in school had a candybox full. Hers were all set in rings.” She handed the watch back to him. Just as he put it back into his pocket, she leaned toward him, reached toward him. Because of his humiliating flight from Wilma’s apartment, he had resolved to fight fire with fire. He reached toward Betsy. His aim was defective. His palm slid into and across an abrupt nubbin of breast, frank and firm under the blue blouse as an apple in the sun. And he saw a glimpse of teeth in something not a smile, and something flashed and smashed against the left side of his face. The sudden pain filled his eyes with tears. She was a blur. As vision cleared he saw her looking gravely at him as she sucked her knuckles. With the tip of his tongue he isolated the metallic crumb in his mouth, moved it out to his lips, plucked it out and stared at it. It was a piece of filling. It made a small clinking sound as he dropped it into the ashtray.

In the silence she reached for him again, took his cigarettes from his shirt pocket, took one out of the pack and put the pack back.

“Get carried away by the decor?” she asked.

“I just thought—”

“Maybe Charla has warped your values, pal. Maybe with her it’s a social gesture, like passing the butter. Or asking for the next dance. Not with me, Winter. I put a higher value on myself.”

“She said it was the other way around,” he said miserably.

“How many lies are you going to believe?”

“From now on — not very many.”

“I didn’t mean to hit quite that hard, Kirby.”

“I’ve had better days than this one, I guess.”

She got up and moved across the room. Again he marveled at her talent for expression. The stretch pants projected demureness, regret and impregnability. She fiddled with a panel board on the far wall. Suddenly he heard a rising, hissing scream and knew a jet was diving into the building. As he sprang to his feet, the great sound turned into an infantry barrage. She twisted the volume down and it suddenly was Latin music, bongos, strings, a muted trumpet.

“High fidelity is part of the treatment, too. Two hundred watts, maybe, with tweeters and woofers hidden all over the place.”

“Loud, wasn’t it?”

“The records are down here. There’s no activity you can think of that he hasn’t got music to do it by. But I’ve got it on FM radio now.” She moved restlessly across the room, moving to the rhythm, half-dance, half-stroll. “If we just knew exactly what they’re after.”

“Well — I better go back there and see if I can find out.”

“Don’t let them know where they can find me.”

“I won’t. But what would they do?”

“Find a way to keep us apart. It might be something unpleasant.”

He tried to think of Charla doing something unpleasant. But when he thought of Charla, the air seemed to get too thin. He saw her, vividly, wearing Wilma’s smoky wisp, smiling at him, and the image was combined with the tactile memory of Betsy’s small firm breast against his hand. Betsy came over and stared at him. “Do you have some kind of seizures?”

“Me?”

“Try cold showers, deep breathing and clean thoughts, Winter. Now take off, so I can take a nap.”