“I’m not sure. Is this all you have?”
“Oh no. This room is for my more conservative clientele. I have another that might prove more suitable. Priapus wouldn’t be worthy of the name if it didn’t offer something for the taste of every connoisseur.”
“It wouldn’t?”
“Ah, you’re not familiar with the mythological reference?”
“No, I’m afraid not.”
“In Greek mythology, Priapus was the son of Dionysus, best loved son of Zeus, and the god of wine and pleasure. Priapus was the god of virility and procreation; his symbol was an erect penis.”
“Oh,” I said.
“Will you follow me, Mr. Wade?”
I followed him — into another room, much larger than the first one but similarly appointed. There was also a desk unobtrusively tucked into one corner, and beside it a portable bar that appeared to be well stocked. Littlejohn asked me if I cared for an aperitif; I said no thanks. Then we got down to the real stuff, the most erotic and no doubt most expensive items in Littlejohn’s stock.
First he showed me what he called “Dionysian literature”: old books, many of them beautifully bound in leather — copies of the Chin P’ing Mei from China, Harlot’s Dialogues from Italy, Fanny Hill from England, Sade’s Justine and Juliette. Then it was Rajput miniatures from India, delicate Chinese Ming scrolls, small screen blocks and painted scrolls and two-hundred-year-old folding paper fans from Japan; wooden statues and carvings from Madagascar, Central Africa, the Philippines, silver figurines from Peru, bronze figurines from the Ivory Coast, a humorous phallic demon from Bali; paintings and sketches, both primitive and modern, from all over Europe and from the United States. Some of the stuff was downright obscene, but in the main it was highly sensual. I found myself thinking that it was a good thing I’d come here and not McCone; a few of the items made me blush. But that was my paternal streak again. McCone was a grown woman, as she’d tartly reminded me. For all I knew, she might have enjoyed all of this much more than I did.
Littlejohn gave me a running commentary on each of the objects we looked at, beaming on them in a paternal way of his own. “Erotica from every culture has passed through Priapus,” he said. “Think of it, Mr. Wade. Every culture of man! The human animal has always been fascinated by matters of the flesh, always paid tribute to his desires.”
“Uh-huh. Tell me, what kind of erotica fascinates Lloyd Beddoes the most?”
He looked mildly surprised. “You haven’t seen his collection?”
“Ah... well, no, not his recent acquisitions. I’ve been out of the country for a while. On business.”
It was flimsy, but all he said was “What business are you in, Mr. Wade?”
“Oil exploration.”
“Very lucrative, that sort of thing, isn’t it?”
“I do pretty well,” I said.
“Yes, of course. Well, Mr. Beddoes prefers items with homosexual and S and M themes, naturally.”
“Why ‘naturally’?”
This time Littlejohn frowned. “You really don’t know Mr. Beddoes very well, do you?”
“Not really, no. He’s — a friend of a friend.”
“Indeed? May I ask who that is?”
I had backed myself into a corner. Trying to get out of it, I said the first thing that came to my mind, “A fellow in Borrego Springs. He, ah, belongs to the club out there.”
It was the right thing to say, even though I had no idea why. Littlejohn beamed again and said, “Mr. Darrow?”
Darrow was one of the names that had been on the list among Lauterbach’s notes, one of those with a check mark in front of it. I said, “That’s right. Arthur Darrow. You know him, then?”
“Oh, yes. He and his charming wife both. Lovely people. They buy from me occasionally, you know.”
“I didn’t know that. The same sort of items Beddoes is interested in?”
“Somewhat. Although their tastes generally run more to the heterosexual.”
I pretended to study a complicated Oriental silk painting. “Does Beddoes come in often?”
“Oh, yes,” Littlejohn said. “Every week or two.”
“Does he buy much?”
“Well, I do consider him one of my best customers. He has a very large collection.”
“All homosexual and S and M stuff?”
“For the most part. Just last week I found a marvelous whipping statuette from Germany for him. And before that, a rare first edition of Teleny, or the Reverse of the Medal — one of the earliest and best of the homosexual erotic novels, published in 1893 and quite probably written by Oscar Wilde.” Littlejohn beamed again, but there was a glint of avarice in his eyes. He was telling me all this because he thought I had money to spend and that I would be impressed by his ability to satisfy his customers. I was impressed, all right. But not the way he thought.
I said, “Items like that rare first edition must be pretty expensive.”
“One must always pay well for the rare and the unusual. Don’t you agree, Mr. Wade?”
“Sure. Always.”
“And may I ask what you’ve seen that strikes your fancy?”
I hesitated. I wanted to ask him some more questions about Beddoes, and about the Darrows of Borrego Springs, but I couldn’t figure a way to do it without arousing his suspicions. And if his suspicions got aroused, he’d be on the phone thirty seconds after I walked out the door, telling Beddoes and the Darrows all about my visit. The smart thing for me to do was to back off and be satisfied, for now, with what I had already learned.
To make it look as if my hesitation had been over one of his offerings, I reached out and picked up an item at random. “What would this set me back?”
“Ah,” Littlejohn said. His smile got wider and the gleam in his eyes got brighter. “An excellent choice, sir. A truly excellent choice. That figure is from the third or fourth century B.C., of Mexican origin. Note the simplicity of the design, the superior condition of the terra-cotta. A rare work of art. I know of only three others like it in existence.”
“How much?”
“I could let you have it for five thousand.”
“How much?”
“Five thousand dollars. A bargain at that price, Mr. Wade. A bargain.”
I took a closer look at the thing in my hand. And then put it down in a hurry. “Well, uh, I’ll have to think it over, Mr. Littlejohn. Five thousand might be a little out of my price range.”
But it wasn’t the price that made me put the figure down so fast. It was what the thing was — for all I knew, a statuette of old Priapus himself. The guy it depicted was naked and grinning, probably because he had the biggest jutting phallus you ever saw. And that, for God’s sake, was what I had been holding it by.
25: McCone
Lloyd Beddoes looked terrible. He sat hunched on the edge of his couch, wearing a blue shirt and pants that he must have slept in. Yesterday afternoon his hair had had the appearance of having been clawed at; now it looked like someone had been working on it with a rake. His face was pale and drawn, his eyes red. I couldn’t decide if he’d been crying or had a bad hangover — or both.
I’d spent a while longer at the Deveer place, making a thorough search of the office and Deveer’s personal belongings, in the hopes of turning up a more concrete link between the financier and Beddoes, but nothing had materialized. Then I’d called to see if Beddoes was at home and, on hearing his subdued voice, had hung up without speaking and driven to his shingle-and-glass home perched high on a bluff in Point Loma. To my surprise, he’d admitted me without a protest, almost indifferently, and now he was trying to ignore my presence.