Terrell sat down beside him, and George, the headwaiter, said, “You want to order yet, Mr. Karsh? Or do you intend to keep us in suspense?”
“Go water your whiskey,” Karsh said. “I’ll whistle when we’re ready.”
“Like a dog yet he whistles for me.” The trademark. of the Ridgeland and its clients was the reflexive wisecrack, the smiling and gratuitous insult. George shrugged elaborately and grinned at Karsh. “What’s the matter? Ulcers?”
“It used to be singing waiters,” Karsh said. “Now they talk. Run along and pad my account, George. I said I’ll whistle.”
George bowed crisply and went away smiling.
“He’ll go on smiling for years,” Terrell said. “Then he’ll cut somebody’s throat for asking for a glass of water.”
“Sing me a song of social significance, eh? You know everybody, don’t you?” Karsh said. “Myers, Carruthers—” He stared at the press agents and shook his head. “I don’t know them. Probably spies, travelling under a Martian passport.”
A red-headed girl had sat down beside Terrell and Karsh nodded to her. “Sam, this is Bill. She was named Bill by her press agent, not her mother.”
The red-head pouted cutely at Terrell. “Now don’t put that in your column, Mr. Terrell.”
“All right, I won’t,” Terrell said.
One of the press agents leaned over and touched his arm. “I won’t box with you, Sam. We’re building this girl up for Video Studios. Look, Karsh has said some cute things about her, as a matter of fact. They wouldn’t look bad in print — and they’re straight from the boss’s mouth.”
“I’ll get Mike to tell me about her,” Terrell said. “When we’re alone.”
Karsh smiled around the table. “Sam and I are working tonight. Would you all excuse us?”
“We could get another table,” Terrell said. “No point in rushing them.”
They stood quickly, smiled a good-bye at Karsh, and then moved off in a protective group toward the lobby, having paid nothing for their drinks but a small bit of self-respect.
“A grand bunch,” Karsh said, with a solemn shake of his head. “From my old regiment. They called me The Old Man. Follow me to hell and back.” He watched them as they went up the steps to the lobby. “Goddamn tasteless creeps.”
“Let’s order dinner. You can take it out on George.”
Karsh glanced at him. “You don’t like the Wildean shafts we break, eh. Well, it passes for conversation. If we didn’t insult each other we’d have to talk to each other. Let’s have something to drink, and talk about your story. We can eat any time.”
He was in character now, Terrell saw, a shrewd, intelligent man fascinated by his work. The other roles were forced on him out of boredom; the ruthless cynic, the patronizing seigneur, the bitter iconoclast, all of these were charades played for his own diversion.
Terrell told him what he had learned from Sarnac and Eden Myles, then waited for a reaction. After a moment Karsh said, “Something’s incomplete. What’s Eden Myles getting out of it? I don’t buy the revenge angle and I certainly don’t buy her tale of a suddenly burgeoning conscience. She’s getting paid, is my guess.”
“Sarnac says no.”
“Let’s double-check,” Karsh said. “If she’ll talk for money, we can raise the ante.”
George came over yawning. “Come on, quit stalling.”
The food at the Ridgeland was superb, but Karsh ordered vegetables and soft-boiled eggs. “Wine?” George said, winking broadly. “Real French wine?”
“I’ll have scotch with the vegetables and a double scotch with the eggs,” Karsh said. “Sam?”
“Steak.”
“Ah, expense account tonight,” George said. “How do you want it? With or without?”
“Without conversation,” Terrell said, and regretted the remark instantly. Karsh laughed and raised his drink. “Very good. Knee in the groin that time.”
George’s smile slipped for just a second. “No straight men left anywhere,” he said, snapping the big menu shut. “One steak coming right up, boss.”
Terrell said to Karsh, “What do you think of Caldwell?”
“Did you meet him today?”
“No. I talked to Sarnac.”
“Caldwell is an oddball,” Karsh said wearily. “A civic reformer is a bit like a middle-aged widow with a grown family and adequate insurance. Kind of a zero. No sex life, no kids to shout at, no bills to worry about. The house in order. That’s an intolerable situation for any human being, so they start minding other people’s business. Take Caldwell for instance. Forty-eight, Ivy League school, prosperous law business. Plays squash rackets on Tuesdays at the Union Club, shoots golf in the middle eighties at Fairhill, which is a club the average guy couldn’t get into with eighteen million bucks in his hand.”
Terrell smiled. “You’re a member, aren’t you?”
“But I’m a classy guy. I tell dirty stories in the locker room in Latin. But going back to Caldwell. His life is all wrapped up in neat, well-ordered categories, and he’s approaching the male menopause right on schedule. So what can he do? Drink? That would be my choice, but that takes imagination. Hobbies? That’s the ticket. Caldwell picked cleanliness as a hobby. First he probably had his house and grounds manicured, fussed around coiling up the garden hoses and burning up the leaves. Then he looked around and to his delight saw a great big dirty city he could go to work on.” Karsh dropped his cigarette into what was left of his drink. “He’s set for life. Thousands of dirty alleys and stinking sewers and cruddy politicians to fumigate and burn. He’s lucky, a kid in a candy store, a sadist running wild in a concentration camp.”
“There’s more to it than that,” Terrell said.
“Possibly. Interest in the public weal, duty, right and wrong, morality — could be, Sam.” Karsh shrugged lightly. “But I don’t see it.”
After dinner their interlude of privacy came to an end; the gambler returned to offer Karsh a bet on the St. Francis basketball game. The odds were wrong, Terrell knew, but Karsh took the bet for a figure that made his heart beat faster. The syndicate salesman and press agents came in on the second wave.
“Where’s Bill?” Terrell asked, with no interest at all.
“Prettying up. Don’t worry, she’ll be along.”
“I really wasn’t worrying.”
The syndicate salesman had moved so close to Karsh that he was practically in his lap. “Mike, I just want a quick reaction, just a bounce. Tim O’Mara — he does that swell men’s column — well, he’s been bitten by the bulls in Spain, and he’s come up with a terrific idea. More Americans see bullfights every year, and O’Mara thinks they’d like to follow the fights when they come home. You know, gossip about the big matadors, a story on the big fights at Madrid and Pamplona, that sort of thing. He thinks there’s enough interest and material to support a weekly feature. What do you think? I told Tim I’d get your opinion.”
“A how-to column?” Karsh asked him with a straight face.
“No — more gossip and color.”
“But I like the how-to angle,” Terrell said. He could see that Karsh was masking his irritation behind a droll smile; Karsh hated blood sports.
“Yes, that’s the pitch,” Karsh said, nodding. “And we might run some companion pieces on bear baiting. And for the kids, a handicraft section — build your own thumb screw.”