“Danny,” she said gently. “We agreed when I took this job that you’d lead your life and I’d lead mine. Tonight I’m leading mine—I have a project.”
“Yeah?” I said sourly. “I bet it leads straight in through the front door of Cartier’s.”
“He’s from the Midwest, looking for an investment program,” she said complacently. “I’m givng him points that haven’t even shown up yet on a Wall Street index.” “So I’ll go talk to the wildcat oilman,” I said gloomily, and walked through into my office.
He sat in one of the white leather armchairs, waiting for me. The mid-century man of average height and weight, constructed from data supplied by an electronic computor; the expensive, dark suit carefully tailored so he would never, never stand out in a crowd.
A guy maybe forty, maybe not, with a polite, intelligent face and a polite, intelligent smile on his lips. Behind the neat, half-framed glasses, were the eyes of a dead slug.
“Mr. Boyd?’* he said in a colorless voice. “You appear to be a success—or haven’t you paid for the furnishings
yet?”
“Been waiting long?*' I asked him.
“Thirty-five minutes.'*
“Maybe I should charge you rent?** I said thoughtfully.
He crossed his legs carefully. “My name is Houston, I’m an attorney.'*
“We all have to make a living,** I sympathized. “I figured you for a process server.**
“I represent Galbraith Hazelton,” he said calmly. “You’ve heard of him, naturally.**
“You don’t mean the Galbraith Hazelton, the female impersonator?” I asked.
“Why don’t we cut the comedy and get right down to business, Boyd?” he asked briskly. “It would be best for both of us—you agree?**
“If your business is my business.’*
“You talked with Martha Hazelton earlier this afternoon in a bar on East 49th. You must have met her by appointment and you talked for some thirty minutes before she left. That’s correct, isn’t it?” His eyes looked smugly at me.
“It’s your story,” I told him.
Houston smiled vaguely. “You drank two gin and tonics while she was with you—I have all the details written down, but there’s no point in quoting any more. I presume she hired you professionally to perform some service for her?”
“You make it sound cute,” I said, “like I was a call-boy or something.”
“I have to warn you,” he said, with a slight edge creeping into his voice, “that Martha Hazelton is not herself.”
“You mean it was old Galbraith the whole time?” I asked with reluctant admiration. “He sure fooled me— the way he filled that skirt—Man! Like it was for real.” 10
The skin around his mouth tightened, slowly turning a dirty gray color.
“You have a poor sense of humor, Boyd," he said. “I mean—and you know it—that Miss Hazelton is sick. A sickness of the mind. She suffers from delusions, imagines things.”
“Like you, maybe?” I suggested. “You look a product of a warped imagination, Mr. Houston. Something out of a nightmare—but an organized nightmare, naturally.*' He took a deep breath. “All right!” he nearly snarled. “Why don’t we stop insulting one another for a moment and get down to facts. Anything Martha said to you would be part of her own fantasies and you’d be well advised not to go any further with them!”
“Her money's real,” I said pointedly.
“Ah, yes—her money!” He relaxed visibly, now I was talking the language he’d majored in.
“Money,” he repeated comfortably. “Mr. Hazelton feels it is only fair you should be compensated for the time you’ve wasted on his daughter. Will fifty dollars cover it?” “In a pig's hindquarters,” I said politely.
Houston looked at me stonily for five seconds, the little contacts inside his computor head clicking softly.
“You put a high value on your time, Boyd,” he said finally. “What do you consider a reasonable amount?” “Two thousand dollars,” I told him.
“Ridiculous!”
“So I’m still working for Martha Hazelton.”
He stroked the tip of his nose gently with one finger, while he thought it over. Then he stood up, rubbing his hands together briskly; he’d come to a final decision.
“I won’t argue,” he said. “A thousand dollars—take it or leave it.”
“Ill leave it.”
“Youll regret it,” he snapped. “You're building yourself all kinds of trouble!”
“Legal trouble?”
‘To say the least.”
“Maybe I should get me a good attorney?” T wondered out loud. “You know where I can find one?”
MOST TIMES I FEEL LTKE A DAY IN THE COUNTRY, I TAKE a walk through Central Park. Now there’s a piece of country that knows its place. If the going gets tough you can always stop off at the Tavern on the Green for a martini—or pick up a cab.
The trouble with New England is it has so much country, it gets kind of overpowering. Not that it didn’t look O.K. with another day of sunshine showing up the scarlet leaves of the red maples, and the golden color of the birch trees. There was just too much of it and all of it real primitive, like a cold water flat or the female Tarzan in one of the Village floor shows who does that Seminole Indian love dance. They say the Seminoles are a vanishing race, and if that’s the way they make love, it figures.
It was just past noon when I found the Hazelton’s farm—a large sign beside the gates read “High Tor,” so there was no mistaking it. The gates were open so I drove in along the tracks toward the farmhouse set a couple of hundred yards back from the road.
By the time I stopped the car out front of the farmhouse, there was a guy waiting for me. A heavily built character, around medium height, with wide sloping shoulders and bare arms that just rippled with muscle. He wore a black shirt, open at the throat with the sleeves rolled high on his hairy arms. The tan polished cottons were belted tight around his small waist, the cuffs tucked into high polished boots.
I lit a cigarette and waited while he walked leisurely over to the car. His thick black hair was combed care-
fully straight back across his head, and there was around the same amount of expression on his face you’d see on a wooden Indian. Sometime, somebody had flattened his nose, and there w'cre tiny white scars above his eyebrows.
He leaned his elbows on the open window edge and looked down at me. Close-up there was no improvement —it was a face and that was all you could say for it.
“You selling something?” he asked in a curiously high-pitched voice.
“Just visiting,” I told him.
“You sure you got the right place, buddy?”
“You make friends real quick,” I said, like I was impressed. “I’ve got the right place.”
“Uh-uh!” He shook his head slowly. “You got the wrong place, buddy. Nobody visits here.”
“I’m the dawn of a new era,” I said. “I’m visiting with Clemmie Hazelton.”
“She don’t see any visitors, buddy,” he said. “Too bad.” “She’ll see me,” I told him. “Why don’t you be a real buddy, buddy, and go find out?”
He sighed noiselessly. “She don’t see anybody—that’s orders—so be a good Joe and drive on out, huh? That way we keep it nice and friendly.”
“Maybe if she’s not seeing anybody, she’s still hearing them?” I suggested.
I pushed down on the horn, and it made a raucous sound for a few seconds, until his fingers clamped around my wrist, pulling my hand away.
“You shouldn’t have done that, buddy,” he said sorrowfully, “now I got to get tough.”
His fingers were still tight around my left wrist, and his head was just inside the windowframe of the car. I let him keep hold of the wrist, lunged at his face with my right hand and got a firm grip on his nose between my first and second fingers. I moved my arm up and down quickly, so the top of his head slammed against the top of the windowframe, and then his chin slapped against the bottom. It was strictly a boing-boing, comic-strip 13 caper, but it didn’t do him any good at all. After five or six times I let go of his nose and he faded out of sight.