“Deal,” I told her. She hung up. It was a sad thing that we had a strange sexual antagonism that made us want to chop each other to bits. We had to cut deep to see how much it would hurt. And it hurt aplenty. You can’t live with that. But you can learn to live very nicely without it.
At eleven o’clock Dana Holtzer, as carefully poised as an unfriendly diplomat delivering an ultimatum, arrived with the money. Five thousand in cash. She had a receipt form for my signature, made out in the form of a letter of intent. The money was for “expenses in connection with research for a moving picture as yet untitled, to be purchased in treatment form at a price to be negotiated…”
Apparently I was dealing with something called Ly-Dea Productions. She had a file copy of the letter for me. She sat erect on the cushioned top of one of the stowage lockers along the lounge wall under the ports. She wore no hat. She wore a tailored navy blue suit with pleated skirt over a crisp white blouse. I could see no concession to anything in the set of her heavy mouth, the waiting attentiveness of very vivid dark eyes. Had I not seen her reaction to Skeeter’s mouse, I would have given up on her.
“Tax reasons,” she said.
“Of course,” I said, and signed her copy. She refolded it briskly and tucked it away.
I wondered if anything would dent that efficient calm. I expected her to get up and trot off. But she had something else on her mind, yet wanted me to make a move first. I could guess why she had no particular enthusiasm for me. Her confidence would be given to large organizations with computers in the airconditioned basement to tell the other machines which cards to drop into the slot.
Lysa Dean was in trouble. When you are in trouble, you go to J. Edgar Hoover, not to an obviously shopworn beach bum, a marina gypsy, a big shambling sharpshooter without an IBM card to his name. To Miss Holtzer I would look like more trouble, not less. My khakis were faded to pale beige, and the toes were out of my topsiders, and the old blue sweatshirt was fringed at the elbows. So I just fell into a chair, hooked a leg over one arm of it, and watched her mildly.
She took it well and took it long, and then the pink climbed up her throat. “Miss Dean should be the one to tell you this,” she said.
“Tell me what, dear?”
“She could answer any objections better than I could. The agency is sending a competent girl out, to take over for me temporarily with Miss Dean. I’ll catch her up to date this evening.” She took a deep breath. “Miss Dean has assigned me to work with you on this matter, Mr. McGee.”
“That is absolutely ridiculous!”
“Believe me, it wasn’t my idea. But in all fairness, it does have some merit. I can get through to her immediately at any time. There may be information about her you might want to have, and information about her friends and associates. Also I may be able to take some details off your hands, travel arrangements, accommodations, notes, financial records. Miss Dean would feel… more at ease about all this if I am with you.”
“I work alone, Dana. My God, I don’t need any Katie Gibbs-type services, believe me. I wouldn’t know how to act with you trudging behind me with a note book and a ledger. In a thing like this I might have to do a lot of… impersonations.”
“I am quite flexible and resourceful, Mr. McGee.”
I stood up. “But you don’t belong in this sort of thing. It looks as if it would be pretty messy, if I have any luck at all.”
“I said yes to Miss Dean, but I do have one reservation. I must ask you if… if you are employed to kill anyone.”
I boggled at her. “What?”
“That’s a risk I wouldn’t care to accept.”
I sat down and I laughed. She let me laugh it out, without a smile, with quiet patience. When I was through she said, “That’s answer enough. I had to ask. I have to think of risks.”
“Miss Holtzer, I don’t know if I could stand the continuous weight of your disapproval.”
“What does that mean?”
“I understand you saw those pictures by accident, the ones left at the desk at The Sands, and you wanted to quit then and there. Life is full of a number of things, Miss Holtzer, and many of them get a little grim from time to time.”
Her dark eyes flashed. “Do they really?”
“Haven’t you noticed?”
With a thoughtful expression she took cigarettes from her purse, snapped her lighter, huffed a dragon-plume of smoke toward me. “What I tell you now is, of course, none of your business. But I think we should understand each other a little bit in the beginning. My personal life is out of bounds for any future discussion. I am in the business of selling skills, tact, great energy, adequate intelligence and total loyalty. I sell this package to Lysa Dean for fifteen thousand dollars a year. Assigned to you, you get the same package. When I saw what those pictures were, I went through them to see how damaging they might be. I read the note. To me it meant that Lysa Dean was not as good a gamble for me as she used to be. I worried about that before, when I went through that thirteen-week charade.”
I saw her hand tremble slightly as she lifted her cigarette to her lips. “I am married, Mr. McGee. Or was married. My husband was epileptic. He was a talented writer, with a few very substantial television credits. Marriage was a calculated risk. We had a child, a boy. At first he seemed quite normal. Then we learned gradually that he was so seriously retarded an institution would be the only answer. It had no connection with my husband’s difficulty. We had to get away after we put the little boy in. He would never know us, or anyone. Bill had made a good sale. It was a good trip, actually, as good as two emotionally exhausted people could expect. We got well enough to head home. We stopped at a place at night for coffee, along the road. It was a bar. We were not drinking. Bill had a sudden seizure. They never lasted long, but they were quite violent. An off-duty police officer thought he was a murderous drunk and shot him in the head. He did not die. He is permanently comatose, Mr. McGee, with tubes for feeding and elimination, and the alcohol rubs to keep bed sores from rotting him away. It is a medical miracle, of course. That was four years ago. I need that fifteen thousand. It is barely enough for me and my family. If Lysa Dean is going down the drain in a messy way, it is my responsibility to leave her before it happens and go where an equivalent job has been offered. The job might not be open if I was in any way connected with scandal. Yes, Mr. McGee, the world can get a little grim from time to time.”
“What can I say?”
“Nothing, of course. I thought it would be easier to tell you now before you said more things you might regret later, that’s all. You haven’t hurt me. I’m not certain anything could hurt me, actually. I am sorry it is all so soap opera. I haven’t the… self-involvement necessary to make moral judgments. Lee was terribly foolish. The pictures offend me because they are vulgar. And they endanger me. If you can’t work things out for her, I will have to leave her. I think she senses that.”
“Maybe you could be some help.”
“Thank you.”
“Drink?”
Her smile was small, and perfectly polite, and totally automatic. “Bourbon, if you have it. Weak, with lots of ice and water.”
I do not think she wanted it, but knew I wanted a chance to pull myself together, get the taste of my own foot off my front teeth. I had looked at that empty reserve and guessed repression and disapproval. She was merely burned out. Wires had crossed and a lovely machine had fuzed and quit, become a useless lump for her to carry around the rest of her life. I felt like a jackass adolescent who’d tried to tell a dirty joke in front of real people.
When I went in with the drinks, she was standing with her back to me, feet apart, sturdy calves braced, fist on a rich curve of Mediterranean hip, head cocked, looking at a painting.