“In a few days. Less than a week.”
Lynch was silent for almost a minute while he inspected his half-smoked cigar. Then he looked up at me and there was an expression on his face that I’d seen often enough before, but on other faces. It was a mixture of contempt and curiosity and suspicion and a dash of grudging admiration. I’d probably worn it myself when doing a deal with a double agent. Carmingler, I recalled, had often worn it. “We got a deal, Lucifer,” Lynch finally said. “It’s not one that we have to shake hands on ‘cause I just as soon shake hands with a cottonmouth. But we got a deal.”
“No we don’t,” I said. “Not until I count the money.”
“You think you’re a pretty hard nosed son of a bitch, don’t you?” Loambaugh said.
“When it comes to getting paid I am.”
“We’ll get a check up to you this afternoon for twenty-five thousand,” Lynch said and rose from his chair. He moved easily for the weight he carried.
I sighed. “No checks. No checks from you and no checks from Orcutt. Cash.”
“When do you expect the rest of it?” Lynch said.
“I’ll let you know.”
“I bet you will,” Loambaugh said.
“We’ll get it to you in the morning,” Lynch said, moving toward the door, hurrying a little as if the air had grown slightly foul. It probably had. Loambaugh followed him.
At the door, Lynch turned and said, “Better bank that money, Lucifer. It’s a tempting bundle to leave around loose in a hotel room.”
“I intend to,” I said. “Any particular bank that you recommend?”
He grinned at me with his breakfast-decorated teeth. “So happens I’ve got a little interest in the First National across the street and we’d be proud to do business with you.”
“Fine.”
He paused again, ducked his head, and rubbed the knuckles of his right hand across his nose. It seemed to itch. “By the way, those two punks who tried to bounce you around.”
“What about them?”
“I didn’t send them.”
“Okay.”
“Well, if I didn’t send them and Orcutt didn’t send them, I was just wondering who might have?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Since we’re in business together so to speak, maybe we’d better find out.”
“Their names were Frank Smith and Joe Carson, or so they said.”
Loambaugh nodded. “I know who they are.”
“Check ‘em out,” Lynch said. “We don’t want Mr, Dye to have any more trouble or enemies than he needs, do we?”
Loambaugh gave me one of his bleak stares that again classified me as the town horror. “Something tells me that before he leaves Swankerton he’s going to have plenty of both.”
I couldn’t think up much of a rebuttal to that.
Chapter 23
It was only nine o’clock in Swankerton when I placed the call to New York, which meant that it was ten o’clock there, but that was still too early for Smalldane Communications, Inc. I could hear the firm’s receptionist assuring the operator that Mr. Smalldane never arrived before eleven. I left word for him to call.
Carol Thackerty arrived at nine-thirty, a few minutes before room service decided that it was time to send up my breakfast now that the eggs and bacon were cool enough to have congealed the grease. The toast wouldn’t burn any fingers either.
Carol Thackerty sat in a chair across the room, her legs crossed, her large purse in her lap, and an amused smile on her lips as the waiter lifted up the lids of various silver salvers to let me inspect what the Sycamore’s menu fobbed off on the world as “Southern cuisine.”
“You forgot the asbestos gloves,” I told the waiter.
He said, “Sir?” so I let it pass. He was around fifty with a squeezed-up face, a bad limp, and the look of someone who’s realized that he’s gone as far as he’ll ever go and now wonders why he ever made the effort. He was also white, which the hotel management apparently felt compensated for any laxity in service.
“Heah yo grits,” he said and displayed a cold wad of them as if he were showing off the Christmas turkey, “and heah yo aigs and bacon. Toast righchere. I got an extra cup for the lady case she wants some cawfee.” He left out a few verbs now and then — to save time, I suppose.
“You shouldn’t have run all the way,” I said as I signed the check and added an overly generous tip.
“I dint run,” he said, and I apologized for accusing him of it.
After he left I asked Carol Thackerty if she would like some coffee and she said that she would so I poured her a cup and served it to her. It was still hot by grace of its sterno burner.
“You look quite pretty this morning,” I said as I handed her the cup.
“Thank you,” she said, either for the cup or the compliment or both.
“I enjoyed last night,” I said, trying to smear some cold butter on some colder toast.
“You’re full of compliments.”
“Simple courtesy.”
“You’re not fishing, are you?” she said.
“For what?”
“I just hope you’re not leading up to the one that they all like to ask.”
“Which one?”
“Did I enjoy it, too?”
“I really don’t give a damn,” I said. “All I know is that I’d like to try it again.”
“When?”
“You have anything against mornings?” I said.
“Not a thing.”
I decided that I didn’t really want the cold breakfast after all. I took a final sip of the coffee, rose, and walked over to where Carol sat. I remember thinking that I should call her Carol now. She put her coffee cup down and held out her hands to me. I pulled her slowly to her feet. I recall that she still had that faint smile on her face. It was almost quizzical. “No hurry,” she said, just before we kissed. “No hurry,” I agreed. We tried one of those long, exploratory kisses in which the tongue ventures forth, encounters token resistance that turns quickly into surrender and then into active collaboration. It was a nice girl’s kiss after she’s decided that she’s tired of being nice.
Unlike the night before, we undressed carefully, helping each other when it might prove interesting. There was nothing frenzied about it this time and in bed we stroked and caressed each other with our hands and mouths and words which, if not endearing, were harshly erotic. It went on like that for what seemed to be a long time, her dark red, almost brown nipples taut and erect, her hips thrusting against whatever touched them, sometimes in a smooth and languorous motion, but more often frantic and demanding. And after a look or a moan or a twitch, or whatever it was, we both knew that it was time and I was inside her and she moaned about the ecstasy of it all and we tried to make it last, did make it last, until we damned well couldn’t anymore and accepted it, with no regrets, and plunged into that final frenzy of oblivion.
There is, of course, always an afterwards and some are far better than others. This one was at first. We lay there in the tumbled sheets, not speaking, just breathing deeply while we each listened to the pound of our pulse. Finally, Carol stirred, rolled over on her side, and ran a fingertip down my chest. “I knew a girl once,” she said, “who was terribly afraid of dying until someone told her what death really was.”
“What?”
“One long orgasm.”
“So she killed herself?”
“No. She just took up parachute jumping, scuba diving, things like that. She’ll probably live to be a hundred.”
The phone rang and I reached for it. “Is this Mr. Lucifer Dye?” the operator said.
“Just a moment,” I said, crossed to the closet, slipped on the topcoat, and came back to the phone. “This is Mr. Dye.”