“Couldn’t he see me now, as long as I’m right here?”
“Here?”
“At West Harbour, dear. In the lobby.”
“Would you please hold the line a moment, sir.” It was a very long moment. She came back and said, “You may come up, sir. Do you know the apartment number?”
“I know where it is, but not the number.”
“Four dash eight A. Four is the tower, eight is the floor.”
I took the walk to the tower nearest the water. The path had a screen of shrubbery. There were curves, stairs up and stairs down, little public courts with benches and some curious cement statuary. The lobby of Tower Four was spacious and empty. You can equate expense with the space they are willing to waste. Two small selfservice elevators. At eight the door hissed open and I walked into a small foyer, indirectly lighted. B on the right; A on the left. I pressed a stainless steel button. There was a three inch circle of mirror set into the door. I winked at it.
The girl behind the voice opened the door and said, “Do come in, sir.”
I did not get a really good look at her until she had led me through a short entrance hallway and down two carpeted steps into a large living room, where she turned and smiled her greeting again. She was medium height, and very slender. She wore pants carefully tailored to her slenderness, of a white fabric worked with gold thread in ornate and delicate design. With it she wore a sort of short coolie coat of the same fabric, with three-quarter sleeves and a wide stiffened collar which stood up in back and swooped down round her shoulders, making a theatrical frame for a slender, pale, classic, beautiful face. Her hair, a very dark and rich chestnut brown, was combed smooth and straight, falling to frame her face in soft parentheses, to chin level, with copper hints where daylight touched it. But the eyes were the best of her. Crystal mint, that clear perect green of childhood Christmas, the green you see after the first few licks have melted the sugar frost. In walk and smile and gesture she had all the mannered elegance of a high fashion model. In most women who have that trick, it is an irritating artifice. Look, look, look at gorgeous incomparable me! But she managed, somehow, to mock herself at the same time, so the effect was of elegance shared. It said: Having it, I might as well use it.
“I’ll tell him you’re here. It would be nice to tell him a name, wouldn’t it?”
“Travis McGee. You have a name too.”
“Debra.”
“And never never Debbie.”
“Never indeed. Excuse me.” She swayed off, closed a heavy door softly behind her. And for the first time the room came into focus. Probably thirty by fifty. Twelve foot ceiling. Window wall vith a spectacular view of the bay, terrace behind it with a low wall, chunky redwood furniture. An almost transparent drapery had been pulled across to reduce the afternoon glare, and there was a heavier drapery racked at the side of it. Giant fireplace faced with coquina rock. Deep blue carpeting. Low furniture, in leather and pale wood. Bookcases. Wall shelves, built in, with a collection of blue Danish glassware, and another, glassed in, with a collection of the little clay figures of Pre-Columbian Latin America. The cooled air was in slight movement, scented very faintly with pine.
It was a very still room, a place where you could listen to the beating of your heart. And it seemed to lack identity, as though it might be a room where executives waited to be called into the board meeting beyond the dark and heavy door.
After long minutes the door opened and Calvin Stebber came smiling into the room, Debra two paces behind him and, in her flat white sandals with gold thongs, maybe an inch taller. He marched up to me and stared up at me, smiling, and I could feel the impact of his superb projection of warmth, interest, kindliness, importance: You could be this man’s life-long friend after ten minutes, and marvel that he found you interesting enough to spend a piece of his busy life on you. It was the basic working tool of the top grade confidence man.
“Well now, Mr. McGee, I do respect Debra’s instinct, and I must say that she was correct. You have not the faintest odor of the law. You do not look irrational; and you do not look a fool. So do sit down, young man, and we will have our little chat. Sit there, please, where you won’t get the glare in your eyes.”
He wore a dark green blazer, grey flannel trousers, a yellow ascot. He looked ruddy and fit, chubby and wholesome as he smiled across at me.
“And,” he said, “our little telltale in the foyer has advised us you are not carrying some lethal hunk of metal. Cigar, Mr. McGee?”
“No thank you, Mr. Stebber.”
“Please, Debra,” he said. She went to a table, took a fat foil-wrapped cigar from a humidor, peeled it, and, frowning in pretty concentration, clipped the ends carefully with a little gold gadget. She lit a kitchen match, waited until the flame was right, then lit the cigar, revolving it slowly, getting a perfect light. She took it to him, her every move theatrically elegant, and this time all elegance was directed at him, and without irony, more as if it was her obligation to herself and to him to be as consciously lovely as she could manage to be. A gift for Calvin.
“Thank you, dear. Before we begin, Harris phoned up here about your companion, Mr. McGee, and I suggested he bring her up.”
“It might be a pretty good trick.”
“Harris can be very persuasive.” A buzzer sounded. “There they are. Do let her in, dear. And tell Harris to bring the car around at five.”
I did not get a look Harris, but Chook told me later that he was so much beef in a grey chauffeur’s uniform, he would make me look shrunken and puny. She said he had plucked her out of the car the way she would lift a kitten out of a shoebox. I realized later that the long wait when I had phoned upstairs was to give Debra time to alert Harris on another phone, possibly a house line to the service area.
Chook came into the room, thin-lipped with fury, rubbing her upper arm. “Trav, what the hell is going on!” she demanded. “That big clown lamed me. And you, fat little man, I suppose you’re the chief thief.”
Stebber scurried over to her, great concern on his face. He took her hand in both of his and said, “My dear child, the last thing I wanted was to have Harris hurt you or anger you or frighten you, really. I merely thought it rude to have you waiting down there in the car in the hot sun. But seeing what a striking creature you are, my dear, it’s doubly a pleasure to have you here. Come over and sit with me here on the couch. There! Now what is your name?”
“But I… Look, I only… Well… Barbara Jean McCall.” It was a measure of his charm that I had never known her name until that moment. She made no attempt to pull her hand away. She looked bedazzled. I glanced at Debra and she gave me a wise, measured wink. “Chookie, people call me. Chook sometimes. I… I’m a professional dancer.”
“Chookie, my dear, with all that grace and vitality and presence, I can’t imagine you being anything else. I bet you’re very good!” He released her hand, gave her an approving little pat on the arm, turned and looked up over his shoulder at Debra, leaning against the back of the couch and said, “Debra, dear, say hello to Chookie McCall, and then you might fix us all a drink.”
“Hello, dear. I’m tremendous with daiquiris if anyone cares.”
“Well… sure. Thanks,” Chook said. I nodded agreement.
“Four coming up swiftly.” Debra said, and Chook did not take her eyes off the willowy grace of Debra until a door swung shut behind her.
“Spectacular creature, isn’t she,” Stebber said. “And, in her own way, quite natural and unspoiled. Now let’s get to it, Mr. McGee. You used a name over the phone. A password. And you show a certain amount of resource and ingenuity. But, of course, we have a problem. We don’t know each other. Or trust each other. What is your occupation?”