“Why not, Pendy?” Alverato looked lazy.
“Why not? You seem to forget that I want her back, that I’m learning fast how to deal with your kind, that my methods are far more versatile than yours. Or are you threatening to take her life, you fat moron? How, then, do you suppose, can you keep your hold over me?”
Alverato’s face seemed to swell and his beefy hands balled into fists. “I’m going to sit here and take your gaff, Wrinkle-ass? I’m going to let you tell me how to run this thing?” He took a deep breath, ready now for the next bellow when Benny said:
“I’ll take it from here, Al.”
His voice had been even and the room was suddenly like the hushed hall in an empty house.
“Pendleton is coming around all right,” he went on. “I’m going to tell him why he’ll toe the line. Why he’ll do it fast.” There was a pause as if Benny didn’t care one way or the other. “His daughter isn’t dead. And she isn’t alive. She’s right in between, and the more Pendleton stalls, the worse it’ll be for her. Pendleton, you’re selling the stuff that’s got her away from you. Your baby is hooked.” He was playing with an unlit cigarette. “And you’re hooked, Pendleton. That hook has magic. The longer it stays in, the bigger it grows. And the hook is in.”
He stopped and put a match to the cigarette. There was an ash tray on a table nearby and he took the match there, dropped it in, and came back to the desk before anybody had made a sound. Even when Pendleton opened his mouth, it was only a thin, cracked breath that came out.
Alverato managed it first. “By God,” he said, and “By God” again.
Pendleton had sunk in his chair, and the fight for control showed on his face. His mouth grew stiff and then lax again and after a while there was no expression.
“By God, Benny, I wouldn’t have thought it.” Alverato sat with mouth open, the surprise showing frank and simple. When he slapped his hand on the desk, his sudden laugh made a noise like that of stones in a bucket “I wouldn’t have thought it Christ, Benny, you’re a genius!”
Benny let him think it and watched Pendleton, but there was no argument from him. He had seen it on Alverato’s face, the stupid surprise that hung there, and Pendleton never doubted that all of it was true.
They left him there, making a procession of it First Alverato, next to him Benny, and Birdie closing the door.
For a long while it looked as if Pendleton were just sitting, as if he were frozen there and nothing went on inside. But that wasn’t so. At one o’clock in the morning he picked up the phone and got a sleepy night girl at the switchboard a few hours to the south of New York. He got a number from her and he called that. He talked and was very convincing; so much so that he got simple answers that sounded more and more frightened. Nancy Driscoll was very frightened when she hung up the phone by her bed and started to dress.
Chapter Twenty-Four
He had never been any bigger, but if Benny ever thought about it at all, he would only have figured it was his due. For the time being it meant three things.
There was the job to learn the receiving end of the imports.
There was Pat.
There was Pendleton.
To learn the new operations wasn’t different from what he’d been doing for years. He had kept his eyes open then, he was keeping them open now, and if there was any detail that Pendleton wasn’t asked to explain, it wasn’t important They met every day. There now were four men following Pendleton and they kept their hands in their pockets. Benny came alone. What he had by way of protection was a thin girl sitting on Alverato’s estate who sometimes played the piano, or slept, or did listless things with her hands.
In a way it was simple now to take care of Pat. He knew how much to give her and when. Doc Welch had taken care of that. Doc Welch made a solution of the stuff and showed Benny how much she needed. He used a clean syringe and a sterile needle. It was that simple. She didn’t know it, but the hook was in deep. She was a main-liner.
Sometimes Benny thought of the hot nights in the cabin where the Louisiana swamp was singing outside the windows, and how she’d wake with sudden shivers and a wild look in her eyes, as if she were being chased. He thought of that and of the girl now, safe in her addiction; then of how much longer it would have to last.
And finally, there was the job of Pendleton. For a while that could wait. Benny even forgot about the thing between him and Pendleton, even when he was with the man, and Pendleton gave no cause to bring out what was in the past. He was a machine, without memory, and nothing showed on the surface.
So Benny was thinking of something else when he came back to the gate of the Westchester place. There was a cab there, all the way from the city. That was rare in itself. That it should try to get into the Alverato place was even more unusual. But when Benny saw the cabbie arguing with the man behind the closed gate, he felt only irritation because the cab was blocking the way. He cooled fast, though. He got out of his car, gave a short look inside the cab, and he cooled fast.
“Let ‘em in,” he called to the man behind the closed gate. “This is special.”
It was special that Nancy Driscoll should be coming this way.
At the house he watched her pay off the cabbie and took her into a small room in the rear. She wasn’t wearing seersucker this time, but a dress with a print that showed squishy red flowers and a small berry here and there. He told her to sit down, watching the way she kept smiling, a smile neither here nor there, but spread over her face as if it were meant to stay.
“I didn’t think I’d ever see you again, Mr. Tapkow.”
“No. Cigarette?”
“Thank you, but I don’t smoke. My, I am surprised to see you again,” she said. Then she didn’t know what to say next.
He had to help her out He had to give her a little rope so she could lead the way. “Same here, Miss Driscoll. I didn’t think I’d ever see you again, either.” He gave her a smile.
“Why don’t you call me Nancy?” she said. “Somehow I feel we actually know each other well enough, don’t you?” and then came her giggle.
“Sure, Nancy. And you call me Benny. I feel we actually know each other, too.” He looked down and then at her face. “Or we almost did.”
She tried to laugh as if that were funny, just one of those things in the car there on the highway, making a tipsy pass at Tapkow the chauffeur. He kept watching her and the slow blush she couldn’t control.
“How things do work out!” She laughed. “I suppose I should never have met Mr. Alverato if you-if you and I-” She really looked coquettish then, ending it with a blase sigh that came off very well, only the weird thing was that she kept blushing through it all.
Benny was sure that hadn’t been part of the rehearsal. “I guess you didn’t come to see me, then,” he said.
She smiled. “I’m sorry, Benny, but I didn’t.” The look she tried didn’t come off at all, but Benny went right on.
“I guess it’s Al, then. I don’t think he knew you were coming, though.”
“Goodness, no, and it makes it just a wee bit embarrassing. Of course, he and I had made all kinds of plans during the cruise-you know of the cruise, of course-but then with getting back to work so late, and all that dreadful excitement about Pat-you know about Pat, of course. She hasn’t come back to school yet!”
“You still working in the Dean’s office?”
“Oh, yes. They were very considerate.”
“Must be a good job.”
“I like it. Of course, the pay in an academic place-but then, if you love your work-”
He helped her along again. “Al’s going to be pretty excited when he finds you here, Nancy.”