Donald Westlake - High Adventure

The skinny black man leveled on Vernon a cold and impatient gaze, and waited.

Vernon dithered. Unwillingly, he said, “We can’t have her walking around the streets now, can we?”

“Say it out, Vernon. Say what you want.”

There was to be no escape from responsibility. Vernon looked aside, out the doorway at trees, brush, vines, heavy greenery turning black in the orange light. He shook his head. “She has to die,” he muttered, and hurried away.

Home.

An accumulation of mail. No burglaries, thank God. The cats and plants had been taken care of after all by Richie from across the hall; what a relief. Sour milk in the refrigerator, but otherwise fine in there. Seltzer gone flat, so the homecoming Cutty Sarks had to be splashed with water from the kitchen sink. And among the messages on the answering machine was the hearty robust cheerful voice of Hiram: “Hanging by my thumbs down here, can’t wait to hear all. Give a buzz the instant you get in.”

“Oh, dear,” Gerry said. “I’m not sure I can face him.”

Back on home ground, Alan was less judgmental, more compassionate. “I know what you mean,” he said, “but we might as well get it over.”

“Can’t I at least shower first? We just walked in, we haven’t even unpacked.”

“You go shower,” Alan told him. “I’ll call Hiram and tell him to give us half an hour, and then I’ll unpack.” (Alan was feeling a bit guilty at the memory of his tension-caused snappishness down there in Belize.)

“Oh, I do appreciate that,” Gerry said. “Thank you, Alan.” The Scotch had made him feel better already, and so had Alan’s supportive mood, and so had the very fact of being home, here among the things he loved.

Before showering, and while Alan made the call to Hiram’s apartment three floors below, Gerry went back to the living room simply to drink in the atmosphere for a moment; the reassurance of one’s own nest. Coming in from Kennedy in the cab through the evening rush, smears of wet dirty snow beside the roadway, Gerry had yearned to be home, and now at last here he was, in his own living room.

On a basic motif of French Empire gilded furniture, Gerry and Alan had overlaid an eclectic mix of other items, all a little outrageous, and yet all coming wonderfully together, like a perfect little ragout. The nineteenth century English rhinoceros horn chair, for instance, made a blunt masculine statement that eased somewhat the overly pompous and delicate Napoleonic pieces, while the heavy window treatments of fringed green velvet against the slightly darker green of the lacquered walls created an inferiority, a hereness saved from claustrophobia by the leopard skin casually thrown on the Aubusson rug. The dark Coromandel screen in the corner served as a focus for the room’s objets; teakwood Balinese demons grinning at brass many-armed Indian goddesses under the baleful gaze of English cathedral stone gargoyles and medieval icons, lit by Tiffany lamps.

Home!

Actually smiling, for the first time in who knows how long, Gerry went on through to the bedroom, hearing the murmur of Alan on the phone in the office, and if the eclectic living room had soothed him the bedroom, designed for comfort and solace, made him almost weep with pleasure. The pattern here was English pastel flowered chintzes, basically in soft pinks and blues on a setting of cream. The king-size bed stated the motif, with a chintz spread tossed with lacy pillows, each in its own patterned cover reflected elsewhere in the room. The walls were sheathed in the softest and most delicate of cloth, with a slightly stronger statement made by the thick chintz window draperies sweeping the floor, backed by lacy sheers. The only strong note in the ensemble was a brass-legged glass table, flanked by low broad armchairs, very overstuffed beneath their chintz covers, soft and squishy and wonderfully comforting to sit on.

Gerry and Alan hadn’t gotten around to doing the bathroom yet, unfortunately — they wanted to get it exactly right before calling in the workmen — so it still reflected the taste (for lack of a better word) of the landlord. Still, the shower was as wonderful and restorative as anticipated.

Thirty minutes later, wearing a black muumuu decorated with dragons, and carrying a fresh Scotch and water in a wide, heavy-based glass, Gerry answered the doorbell to let in Hiram Farley, a tall barrel-chested balding happy man, an important local magazine editor, which means a man who found it impossible to take life seriously. “Gerry, my darling, you’re tanned !” Hiram said, grabbing Gerry by both cheeks and tilting his face down so he could be kissed on his tanned brow. “How beautiful you are,” Hiram said, “and how beautiful that drink looks.”

“No soda, I’m afraid. Plain water all right?”

“Fish fuck in it,” Hiram said, “but on the other hand birds fuck in midair.”

“Hiram,” Gerry said, “was that a yes?”

“The day I say no to a drink,” Hiram said, “ any drink, that’s the day for you to arrange for the six black horses, and the six good men well- hung and true.”

Hiram’s words generally went by Gerry like traffic; in the pauses, he crossed the conversational street: “I’ll make your drink.”

“Thank you, sweetness.”

They bifurcated, Gerry moving kitchenward, Hiram toward the living room, Gerry saying, “Alan will be right in, he’s just finished his shower.”

When Gerry returned to the living room, in fact, carrying Hiram’s drink as well as his own, Alan was already there, dressed in his black- sashed white kimono and seated crosslegged on a white-and-gold chair. Hiram had, as usual, settled his bulk onto the chair framed in rhinoceros horn, which made him look like the white villain in a Tarzan movie. Gerry’s spot was the Madame Recamier.

“To your happy return,” Hiram said, raising the glass Gerry had handed him.

“Here, here,” said Alan, and everybody took a ritual sip.

Hiram smiled hopefully at his hosts. “And to a successful trip?”

“Not entirely,” Alan said.

“Not at all, ” Gerry said. “In fact, a disaster.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t go that far,” Alan said. “We know a lot more about how it’s done. You’re too pessimistic, Gerry.”

“The tapes are gone !”

“Hold on,” Hiram said. “Do what the King of Hearts told Alice to do, and what I tell writers every blessed day, ink-stained wretches, prose from amateurs, talentless bastards.”

Gerry blinked. “Pros from amateurs?”

Hiram leaned forward, assuming a pedantic yet royal posture. “‘Begin at the beginning,”’ he quoted, gravely, “‘and go on till you come to the end: then stop.’”

Alan said, “Everything seemed fine until the very end.”

“And then it wasn’t,” Gerry said.

“No, no,” Hiram said. “Listen more carefully this time. ‘Begin at the beginning—’”

“Oh, Hiram! ” Gerry said, at wit’s end. “The tapes are gone, okay?”

Alan said, “Wait a minute, Gerry. Hiram’s right.” Turning to Hiram he said, “From the beginning, then,” and went on to give a mostly coherent account of their time in Belize, fictionalizing only their reaction to the presence of the mobster at their hotel, and finishing, “Now, obviously somebody knew we’d made those tapes, and guessed we’d try to sneak them out in our Walkmans.”

Hiram nodded, thinking about it. “Galway, do you think?”

“I just don’t know,” Alan said. “There wasn’t the slightest hint of such a thing, he doesn’t seem the type to be able to dissemble that well, and yet, who knows, really?”