“Where is everybody?” Pat was leaning out and looking.
“You stay here while I go see.”
Benny got out of the car and walked into the house. The big hall looked empty. He walked to the back, where the ocean was, and looked down the veranda.
“Looking for someone?”
The voice was high and fast, almost like the ping from an air rifle. Benny turned. “Tober, you old crook, it’s good to see you!” Benny pumped a limp hand.
Tober burst out in a shrill laugh when he saw who it was, and his hand became strong like a claw. “Benny the Tapkow! How have you been, how have you been? Come sit and have a drink. Christ, wait till the rest of them get a load of you! Say, man, what happened to your hat? No hat, Benny, I see no hat.”
Tober had talked with that rapid excitement in his voice which happened to him three times a day. Three times daily Tober was a pistol, sharp, fast, and full of noise. His shiny eyes glittered back and forth, and his long, stooped body looked tense.
“You high, Tober?” Benny tried to see the man’s pupils.
“Like a rocket, Benny, like a red, white, blue, and purple rocket. But for you slow-witted squares I got tamer stuff. How about some Scotch, how about some hipscotchdipscotch Scotch splashed over rocks, Benny boy?”
“Slow down, Tober. Listen, I got a guest. You mind if I bring a guest?”
“I’ll make two hipscotchdip-”
“Tober, pay attention. This is kind of a special deal. She and I got to stay under wraps for a day or so. I thought-”
“Benny boy, this is the place to stay under a wrap, if that’s the kind of thing you fancy. Where is this delight?”
“Outside. I’ll get her.”
Benny walked to the front door and waved Pat to come in.
“It’s O.K.?” she asked.
“Is it O.K.? Is it O.K.!” Tober rushed out to grab her by the hand. “I’d say, being a judge of such,” and he looked her up and down.
“Tober, you were going to get some drinks.” Benny took the girl by the arm and watched Tober rush into the house.
They went to the back, where a long veranda faced the Gulf, and sat down.
“Who’s Tober?” Pat asked.
“Just somebody I know.” Benny thought for a moment about the Tober he used to know, fifty pounds heavier, a quiet guy.
“Is he a little crazy?”
“Sometimes. He made too much money. Drives him crazy now and then.” He walked back and forth. “Where in hell are those drinks?”
There wasn’t a soul around, but a piano was being played someplace in the house.
“Let’s look for the piano player, seeing that Tober disappeared.” Pat got out of her chair.
They followed the sound of the music, which was alternately plinking and crashing with a fast rhythm, but it wasn’t so easy to find. They walked through one room where a man was sleeping on a couch. He had a three-day growth of beard and his cheeks puffed out like a bellows when he breathed. They saw a blonde who was sunning herself on a sun deck. She was stark naked and waved at them as they passed. When they finally reached the room with the piano, they found Tober, sitting there on a stool and hitting the keyboard as if he were chopping wood. He stopped when he heard them.
“The drinks!” he yelled, and ran out of the room.
“You sit here.” Benny pushed Pat onto the couch. “I better watch him.”
He could feel her following him with her eyes and then he closed the door behind him.
He wanted Tober to stick around, take some of the work off his shoulders and help put this thing on a business basis.
Tober was in the big kitchen, breaking ice cubes out of a tray.
“A delight,” he said without transition. “A lovely sight of delight.”
“Yeah.”
“Romantic Benny!” Tober said. “Here-warm yourself on an ice cube.”
“Listen, Tober. Anybody here from your old crowd?”
“All dead,” Tober said, “except me. I’m recharged daily.”
“Anybody here knows Pendleton and those people of his?”
Tober looked up and his eyes were almost normal. “I thought I knew her,” he said. “The Pendleton kid!”
“Yeah.”
“An ill-fated romance, Romeo Tapkow, an ill-”
“Business,” Benny said. “I’m just bringing it up so you can tell me to blow. This is like dynamite.”
“A snatch? An old-fashioned abduction?” Tober started to shake with laughter. It stopped as unaccountably as it had started and then he winked. “And doesn’t she know it?”
“Hell, no.”
“Bring the ice, Benjamin.” Tober picked up the tray with the bottle and glasses. They walked down the long corridor that led to the room where Pat was waiting.
“Tober, listen to me. Don’t tell her. It would foul-”
“Benjamin!” Tober stopped, balancing the tray like a mad juggler. “Dear Benjamin, what do you take me for? A hophead?” and then he started to laugh again.
Back in the room Tober made two highballs on the piano and handed them to Pat and Benny. “To the lovers!” he yelled, and watched them hold their glasses. Then he stepped close to Pat. “Meet anybody else yet?”
“Do I have to?” When she caught Benny’s eye she gave him a short smile.
He turned away.
“Pattypat,” said Tober, “you’re not heisting your highball.”
“And you?”
“Tober doesn’t drink,” Tober said.
“You don’t?” She sounded as if she hadn’t heard right.
“I am beyond drink.” He sounded confidential. “I don’t heist highballs, just heist balls.”
“You what?”
“Heist balls, baby. It’s higher than high ball. It’s the highest ball!” He giggled.
Pat laughed too.
“And I don’t often do this,” Tober was saying, “but for a high-built baby like you I’ll fix one.” He started to drag her out of the room.
“Benny,” she called. “What’s a heist ball, Benny? Tober, let go. Benny, he wants to-”
“Go and find out,” he said.
Pat stood still for a moment and her tongue made a nervous movement along her teeth, but she didn’t say anything. Then she turned abruptly. “Show me the thing you can make, Tober,” and she walked out of the room.
Benny watched them leave and sipped at the drink he’d been holding. Let Tober carry the ball if he wanted to. As long as Pat stayed around-two days at the most; as long as he could finish the deal and deliver the goods in the end, let Tober think he was taking over.
He walked out into the hall and found a phone. It took a while to get New York. He lit a fresh cigarette from his stub and sucked on it as if it were his first one in days. Then he said, “Hello, Wally? Tapkow. Well?”
“Hi, Benny. He sent a cable.” A group of maniacs came charging into the hall. They were all chasing a short, squealy blonde who was wrapped in a wet sheet; apparently the idea was to get the sheet off her. The way they were all yodeling and yelling, she really must have been something under that sheet, but Benny wasn’t thinking of that. He watched the chase, hoping she’d lead them down the hall to hell or someplace. The blonde made it.
“Yes-Wally? I’m sorry, I wasn’t listening.”
“He sent a cable, Benny. Two of them.”
“So let’s hear.”
“Well, I didn’t know where you was when the first one came, so I answered it. The first one he asks is everything O.K. so I wire back sure, you got her and everything’s under control. I figured you’d want it that way, and besides, it is, ain’t it?”
“Come on, come on, what else?”
“Nothing else, Benny. And then he sends the second one.”
“Well?”
“He really thinks you’re the nuts, Benny, really proud of you.”
“Christ, get to the point, Wally. When’s he coming back?”
“He says he’s proud of you and have yourself a ball while he’s gone, seeing that you deserve it and he’s doing likewise. You know, he’s got this other dame on board, the one who got switched, and she really musta-”
“When’s he coming back, goddamnit?”
“I can hear ya, I can hear ya. He says a week or so. Keep her under wraps a week or so and that’ll really stew her old man. After a week or so Pendleton’s going to be ripe for anything.”