A business maverick was nearly always respected and feared. It was his unorthodoxy, perhaps, his sixth sense about matters of commerce. Whatever it was, he could dovetail into this world as easily and well as if he were born to its manner and its mystique.
In the Mecca he looked suspiciously out-of-place dressed in his $300 suit (on which he still owed $210) and the black attaché case (on which $12 was still outstanding). But cutting expenses was a vital necessity now. Not much cash had come out of the Parkington burglary and the men with whom DuVol contracted the job were having difficulty selling the paintings and the jewelry.
Paintings! He had told them a hundred times never to take original oils, under no circumstances those by local artists. But DuVol, out of necessity and haste, often had to deal with men who did not listen and could not learn and would not deny their greed.
He sighed at these human vagaries, finished off the remainder of his milk and left the Mecca. One of Stortino’s men was still watching him, he noticed, a bulky, brutal-looking man who pretended to peruse the out-of-town newspapers at a sidewalk stall just outside.
The man had been with Quentin DuVol for over three weeks now. He hadn’t approached DuVol, hadn’t spoken to him, had made no contact with him whatsoever. He was just a messenger — Stortino would push the button when introductions were in order.
DuVol passed the man, pretending ignorance of his presence, and hailed a taxi. The man followed in a second cab out to DuVol’s apartment building on a street lined with palms.
There were girls swimming in the azure, oval pool but DuVol scarcely took note of their lithe, bronzed bodies as he made his way up a stairwell to the second floor, where his unit was located.
He had already shed his suit coat when the knock came. He let the burly man in. Stortini had pressed the button.
“Name’s Kurt. Just... Kurt. Don’t hold it against me personally, Mr. DuVol. I work for wages for Mr. Stortini. I have to buy groceries, spend a buck-twenty to do my laundry. If I don’t do work like this, I don’t do any kind of work except crime.”
“I don’t hold it against you, Kurt,” said DuVol civilly as he moved to a portable bar he had bought when winners came too fast and furiously to count. “Drink?”
“Sure. Mr. Stortini don’t mind booze on the job. He don’t mind much at all as long as the work gets done.”
Quentin DuVol felt the perspiration begin to seep onto his neck and chest. He abhorred people who sweated, unless it came in fencing or at handball or squash. He liked poker players who sweated. Sweating poker players always played into your own hand. In fact he loved them dearly.
“Preference?” He said to Kurt.
“Anything. You got any Southern Comfort? Something smoothe?”
DuVol made himself a short scotch. It was good scotch and there wasn’t much left. It was usually dispensed only in the company of his intended marks. On second thought, he filled his own glass to three-quarters full. It wouldn’t do for Stortini’s man to think he had hit lean days.
“This is very nice, Mr. DuVol,” said Stortini’s man savoring his drink and taking in the furnishings of the living-room. “Nice drink, nice surroundings. Nice. What’s that tall thing over in the corner called?”
“A French armoire, carved in the Pyrenees in the 16th century.”
“The Pyrenees.”
“It’s a range of mountains running between Spain and France,” said DuVol.
“And this chair I’m sitting in.”
“English Regency.”
“And that table off in the dining room there.”
DuVol sighed to himself. “Spanish. Jacobean period.”
“Very sturdy-looking.”
“That was the style of the period. Heavy oak veneers and solids.”
“Yes, very classy stuff, Mr. DuVol. Where I grew up, in South Philly, we didn’t have nothing like this in our home. We had Goodwill separates. Early American Miscellaneous. If my old man couldn’t steal it, he got it through the welfare office.”
DuVol touched his necktie and smiled civilly.
Stortini’s man set his drink down on the coffee table. “Mr. Stortini assigned me to you. I guess you know that. About three weeks ago.”
“As a direct result of the loan I secured from him five months ago.”
“Six.”
“Six months ago.”
Stortini’s man stifled a cough and withdrew a small black notebook from an inside pocket. “You been paying the interest on the principal right along, what it says here. Clockwork.”
DuVol shifted in his seat.
“Up to about a month ago. Then you hit quite a streak of bad luck. At the race track, playing poker at that athletic club, in a couple of flyers you took on — what was it — oh yeh, soy bean futures they was going to sell to the Russians.”
“Gambling is a cyclical business,” DuVol said.
Stortini’s man was fishing for some reference for the word.
“It runs in cycles,” said DuVol, helping him out. “The swings are entirely mathematical. The swings in fortune and misfortune.”
“Well, I wouldn’t know about that, Mr. DuVol. All I know is Mr. Stortini is very mathematical. He keeps very impeccable records on these matters. When you deal in the lending of capital, you have to be impeccable.”
“Of course,” said DuVol.
“And mathematical figures have their own way of telling a story, Mr. DuVol. I mean, they can be read like a book almost.” Very carefully the man set down his glass. DuVol felt something shift in his chest, felt a squirming in his stomach. “Mr. DuVol, what I’m here to tell you is Mr. Stortini is calling in your notes. With penalties and interests, the amount is nine thousand five hundred eighty-three. Mr. Stortini would like full restitution by ten p.m. this evening.”
DuVol tried to fashion on his face a look of calm disdain. “That will be impossible. You’ll just have to tell Mr. Stortini that is totally beyond the realm of possibility.”
“Mr. DuVol, this is an arbitrary decision. I’m sorry.” The man flipped backward in his notebook to some fresh data. “There is this other matter due to come up soon,” he went on. “This business at Hollywood Park about two weeks ago. Mr. Stortini, if you will recall, went out on quite a long and slender limb for you in that matter. You had the drug, Mr. Stortini had the trainer.”
“The double.”
“The daily-double, yes.”
“And you will recall,” said DuVol, “I made Mr. Stortini over nine hundred in those two races. Without an inquiry.”
“You explained to Mr. Stortini that the drug was not traceable.”
“Reserpine, yes,” said DuVol. “I had it on good authority.”
“Apparently not good enough. The usual routine tests given all horses seemed negative. But some sharp-eyed chemist, an assistant to the commission veterinarian, thinks otherwise. It seems he’s isolated the drug reserpine and one of its tranquilizer-agents, pentazocine, found to have been present in the systems of the two favored horses on those races. Tomorrow, he is going to introduce reserpine into the systems of two test horses and compare the results of blood and urine samples.
“Our trainer has been moved out of state successfully, but that won’t prevent the racing commission from developing a network of suspects. So Mr. Stortini’s hands are esentially tied. He wants his money by ten p.m. this evening and he wants you out of the state by morning — and permanently.”