James Cain - The Magician's Wife

She revealed much savvy at entertaining, not only its basic principles but also its special angles, at the hotel cocktail parties they gave for Grant’s executives and their wives. “The trick,” she whispered, in a dark, conspiratorial way, “is in knowing where to splurge and where to pare the cheese. And the main thing, Clay, is champagne — it’s the key to the big economies. So it costs, you say? Yes, but look what it saves. You try wetting their whistles with the standard line of mixed drinks, and you have to have a bartender, as well as an endless assortment of liquors he’ll tell you he has to have — everything from quinine water to Cinzano. And once opened, that booze is all down the drain. We dare not take it with us, as we don’t know the laws in these states, and even one bottle of Angostura could get your car confiscated. On top of which, you’ll need an extra room where he can set up his bar. But with champagne you don’t need him: the waiter we have can open, pour, and pass. You offer champagne at the start, and who turns it down? Everyone loves it, and if there is one nut who wants Scotch, O.K., you give it to him with your own lily-white hands. You have it stashed with a bowl of rocks under the buffet table — and that takes care of him. For the rest, the champagne is opened as we need it, and extra bottles go back — it’s the standard procedure. So, if that’s understood, we’ll get to the fine points, like the kind of canapés we have.”

But, though all this no doubt reflected her years abroad, in one respect, as she herself admitted, she was a “one-hundred-percent American hick”: she always, on Sunday morning, sent the boy out for the hometown paper and then stretched herself out “to see what’s going on — especially what Fisher’s is featuring.” In New Orleans, with brunch out of the way, she was comfortably flat on her stomach in their sitting room, with The Pilot strewn all around her, when she gave a sharp exclamation: “ Well! ” And then: “It’s about time, it certainly is!”

She was in mules and crimson kimono, he in slippers and monogrammed robe, with a program about to be played in Washington tuned in on TV. “Yeah?” he inquired languidly. “What’s about time, Grace?”

“They’ve arrested that girl, the one that killed poor Alec. That assistant he had in the act. That Buster.”

“... Grace, are you sure she killed Alexis?”

“Well, they know what they’re doing, I think.”

“They’ve been known to make mistakes.”

“On ‘Perry Mason,’ that’s all.”

“Grace, what would she kill him for?”

“The insurance, for one thing.”

“She’d risk her own neck for that?”

“What neck? She jumped clear, didn’t she? By a funny coincidence, after refusing to fasten her seat belt, as he begged her to.”

“Can I see the paper, please?”

Staring at Page 1, he felt himself go slack at the picture he saw, of Buster in ecdysiast attire, and at another picture too, a smaller inset of a woman in uniform cap. This, he learned, was Policewoman Elizabeth Galbraith, who had “broken the case” by getting the parking attendant to talk, the boy who had stood around while the quarrel went on between Buster and Mr. Alexis and who had heard her “make threats.” Until now, it appeared, the boy had refused to talk or admit he had heard anything, maintaining he had been “busy getting the car out.” There was quite a lot more, especially about Miss Galbraith and what she had done, and the boy, whose name was Norman (Bud) Jones. It appeared he had been held as a material witness in $2,000 bail, “which was furnished by a bondsman.”

Clay lay on the bed, one of the twin beds, in the bedroom, massaging his flaccid face, not quite sure how he got there. Then he put in a call to Nat Pender, getting a flash of the jitters at having to find his pen and take down the Pender home number, when Channel City Information looked it up for him. Then he put in the person-to-person, and when at last Mr. Pender came on, talking with a reasonable imitation of easy affability, “Nat,” he said, “Clay Lockwood — say, I owe you a million pardons for bothering you at home and on Sunday this way, but I more or less felt I had to.”

“You calling about Buster?” Mr. Pender interrupted.

“That’s right. I just saw the paper.”

“Clay, that girl’s in trouble, a lot worse than the paper says. Because what’s back of it isn’t Liz Galbraith, though count on her, of course, to get her mug printed any chance she gets. Actually it’s the wife who got to Bud Jones, and in a way to make him dangerous. I mean, after she got through there’s no way to call him off, make him get cold feet, or listen to reason.”

“You mean Mrs. Alexis.”

“Yeah — she’d be better off with a tiger.”

Quickly Mr. Pender sketched the background on the case. Bud, he said, had been soft on Buster himself, but for some reason hadn’t minded her relationship with Mr. Alexis. So he had loyally “clammed,” as Mr. Pender put it, about the quarrel on the lot, realizing it could mean trouble. But then “Mrs. Alexis got in it, having long talks with him out on the parking lot at night, and in the daytime asking him down to visit her at the hotel. She’s put the house on sale, given up her Portico job, and moved into the Chinquapin-Plaza, with a maid and children’s nurse, and the boy was flattered when she invited him for long, intimate talks. Did you know he talks with a stammer? Little by little she began telling him of Buster’s imitations of how he talks. Clay, I doubt if Buster did it — it doesn’t sound like her, she’s a good-hearted girl, though dumb. And it’s Mrs. Alexis, it seems, that has a gift at such imitations — she’s been in show business herself. Anyway, she did a snow job for real, and that jerk hates Buster now. That’s why he can’t be seen, by her or anyone. When she ripened it up and rang Liz Galbraith about it, the rest was a foregone conclusion.”

Clay listened with rising dismay and then broke in: “O.K., Nat, and thanks for filling me in — but what I called about: are you still on the case?”

“Oh, she’s retained me, yes.”

“How do you mean, retained you?”

Mr. Pender spoke at some length in highly ethical terms, but when Clay pressed him, explained that Buster’s insurance, “which was paid her some weeks ago,” made it possible for him to invoke the twenty-five to fifty percent rule, “twenty-five percent of recoveries, as retainer for taking the case, fifty percent if we go to court. Or in other words, it seems fair enough that she pay me six and a quarter thousand down, with another six and a quarter due when she’s tried — which it looks as though she’s going to be.” Clay was staggered, but knew he must pick up the tab. He said: “Nat, I feel I should pay that fee — I have reasons we needn’t go into. So when she sends her check, will you hold it? Pending receipt of my check? I’ll mail it here now today.” And then, doing some mental arithmetic: “Or wait a minute, Nat. I don’t keep that kind of money lying around, and it’ll pinch me in on my trip if I send the whole six and a quarter grand. So can I send you half? Part now, the rest to come when I get back and can sell off some stuff that I have? As I say, I have reasons—”

“Clay,” said Mr. Pender, “whatever you say is fine, and I don’t ask your reasons. She’s a damned sweet kid, that anyone’s entitled to go for and—” Clay opened his mouth to protest it was “nothing like that,” but then realized it might be better if Mr. Pender thought it was “that” instead of something else. He let it ride, and when Mr. Pender asked where he was, told him. “But of course!” exclaimed Mr. Pender. “How stupid of me not to remember! You’re on your honeymoon — and congratulations. My wife knows the bride and can’t say enough in her praise!”