As it turned out, the woman Jackson had known in Washington had just got married and didn’t think it would be too smart if they started seeing each other again — at least, not yet. “Give me a couple of months,” she had said.
The actor, however, had seemed delighted when Jackson called. He even urged Jackson to stay with him, but when Jackson politely demurred, the actor gave him some halfway-useful advice about where to find a room or apartment in the midst of the housing shortage that still gripped Los Angeles. He then insisted that Jackson come to a cocktail party that same evening. It was at the actor’s party, by the pool, that Jackson met the dwarf.
A quartet of drunks — two writers, a director, and an agent — had just thrown the dwarf into the pool and were making bets about how long it would take him to drown. The writers were giving odds that it would take at least fifteen minutes. The dwarf had never learned to swim, and it was only the violent splashing of his immensely powerful arms that kept him afloat. Jackson might not have interfered had not the two writers tried to sweeten the odds by stamping on the dwarf’s hands whenever he managed to gasp and splash his way to the edge of the pool.
Jackson went up to one of the writers and tapped him on the shoulder. “I think you ought to let him out,” Jackson said.
The writer turned. “Who’re you?”
“Nobody.”
“Go away, nobody,” the writer said; he placed a large, curiously hairless hand against Jackson’s chest, and shoved him backward.
The writer was a big man, almost huge, and it was a hard shove. Jackson stumbled back for a step or two. Then he sighed, shifted his drink to his right hand, went in fast, and slammed a left fist into the writer’s stomach. The writer doubled over, gagging, and Jackson, amazed at his own temerity but enjoying it, gave the writer a slight push which toppled him over into the pool.
The other three drunks skirted nervously around Jackson and hurried to their friend’s aid, although before fishing him out, the director and the agent tried to get bets down on how long it would take the writer to drown.
Jackson knelt by the edge of the pool, grasped the dwarf’s thick wrist, and hauled him up onto the cement. Ploscaru sat wet and gasping, his stubby, bowed legs stuck out in front of him, his big head down on his chest as he leaned back on his powerful arms and hands. Finally, he looked up at Jackson, who, for the first time, saw the almost hot glitter in the dwarf’s green eyes.
“Who’re you?” Ploscaru said.
“As I told the man, nobody.”
“You have a name.”
“Jackson. Minor Jackson.”
“Thank you, Minor Jackson,” the dwarf said gravely. “I am in your debt.”
“Not really.”
“What do you do?”
“Nothing.”
“You are rich, then?”
“No.”
“But you would like to be?”
“Maybe.”
“You were in the war, of course.”
“Yes.”
“What did you do — in the war?”
“I was sort of a spy.”
Still staring up at Jackson, the dwarf nodded slowly several times. “I can make you rich.”
“Sure.”
“You don’t believe me.”
“I didn’t say that.”
The dwarf rose and thoughtfully dusted off his still-damp palms. It was a gesture that he often used whenever he was trying to decide about something. It was also a gesture that Jackson would come to know well.
“Drowning is thirsty business,” Ploscaru said. “Let’s go get some drink and talk about making you rich.”
“Why not?” Jackson said.
They didn’t have their drink at the actor’s. Instead, they left without saying goodbye to their host, got into Jackson’s Plymouth, and drove to the dwarf’s place.
On the way, Jackson learned for a fact that the dwarf’s name was Nicolae Ploscaru. He also learned, although these facts were totally uncheckable, that Ploscaru was the youngest son of a minor Romanian nobleman (possibly a count); that there were vast but, of course, long-lost estates in both Bessarabia and Transylvania; that until the war, Bucharest had boasted the most beautiful women in Europe, most of whom the dwarf had slept with; and finally, that before escaping to Turkey, the dwarf, when not spying for the British, had slain four, or possibly five, SS officers with his own hands.
“I strangled them with these,” the dwarf said holding up the twin instruments of death for possible inspection. “The last one, a colonel — rather a nice chap, actually — I finished off in a Turkish bath not too far from the Palace Athénée. You know the Palace Athénée, of course.”
“No.”
“It’s a hotel; quite a fine one. When you get to Bucharest, you should make it a point to stay there.”
“Okay,” Jackson said, “I will.”
“And be sure to mention my name.”
“Yes,” said Jackson, not quite smiling, “I’ll do that too.”
The dwarf’s place was a house with a view high up in the Hollywood hills. It was built of redwood and glass and stone, and it obviously didn’t belong to the dwarf. For one thing, the furnishings were too feminine, and for another, nearly everything that could take it had a large, elaborate intertwined double W either engraved or woven or branded into its surface.
Jackson stood in the living room and looked around. “Nice place,” he said. “Who’s WW?”
“Winona Wilson,” the dwarf said, trying very hard to keep his w’s from sounding like v’s and almost succeeding. “She’s a friend of mine.”
“And what does Winona do?”
“Mostly, she tries to get money from her rich mother up in Santa Barbara.”
“I wish her luck.”
“I want to get some dry clothes on,” the dwarf said. “Can you make a martini?”
“Sure.”
Ploscaru gestured toward a long barlike affair that separated the living room from the kitchen. “It’s all over there,” he said, turned, and was gone.
By the time the dwarf came back, the drinks were mixed and Jackson was sitting on one of the high stools at the bar looking down across the slightly sunken living room and through the glass to the faraway lights of Hollywood and Los Angeles which were just beginning to come on in the early-September evening.
Ploscaru was wearing a long (long on him, anyway) green silk dressing gown that obviously had been tailored. Peeping out from underneath the skirt of the dressing gown were a pair of red Turkish slippers whose toes turned up and back and ended in small silver bells that jingled not unpleasantly when he moved.
Jackson handed the dwarf his drink and said, “What do you do, friend — I mean, really?”
Ploscaru smiled, revealing large white teeth that seemed almost square. He then took the first swallow of his martini, shuddered as he nearly always did, and lit one of his Old Golds. “I live off women,” he said.
“Sounds pleasant.”
The dwarf shrugged. “Not altogether. But some women find me attractive — despite everything.” He made a curiously sad gesture that was almost an apology for his three-foot-seven-inch height. It was to be one of only two times that Jackson would ever hear the dwarf make any reference to it
Ploscaru glanced about for some place to sit and decided on the long cream-colored couch with its many bright pillows, all with WW woven into them. He settled back into it like a child, with much wriggling. Then he began his questions.
He wanted to know how long Jackson had been in Los Angeles. Two days. Where had he been before that? In San Francisco. When had he got out of the service? In February. What had he done since then? Very little. Where had he gone to school? The University of Virginia. What had he studied? Liberal Arts. Was that a subject? Not really. What had Jackson done before the war?