Джеймс Чейз: You’re Lonely When You’re Dead

On a nice sunny morning in mid-March, around eleven o’clock, I drove over to the Santa Rosa Estate where the owner, Jay Franklin Cerf, was expecting me.

I had been out when he had called the office, but Paula Bensinger, who runs the business and me too if I don’t watch out, had told him I would be over within the hour. He hadn’t volunteered any information except the matter was urgent and confidential, but the fact that he owned the Santa Rosa Estate was enough for her. You had to have money to run a place that size and money always got Paula steamed up.

By the time I arrived at the office she had dug up some dope about Cerf, and while I made myself presentable she rattled off the facts from news clippings we keep on all the big shots in Orchid City. Cerf was the President of the Red Star Navigation Company, a gigantic wholesale lumber and shipping business operating along the Pacific Coast. He had been a widower for the past two years — his wife had been killed in a car accident and up to now, his private life had been a lot less exciting than the mummy-room of the Park-Livingstone Museum. Recently he had married a mannequin, and that, Paula thought, was probably why he wanted to see me. When a man of his age and wealth falls for a mannequin, she went on cynically, and is sucker enough to marry her, the writing goes up on the wall.

But if it wasn’t his wife troubling him, she continued — she always liked to have an alternative theory then it was probably his daughter, Natalia, a forbidding piece in her early twenties, crippled in the same car accident that had killed her mother, and who made enemies as easily as her father made dollars.

‘The guy’s made of money,’ she concluded, with that wistful look in her eyes the thought of vast wealth always brings. ‘Don’t let him think we’re anything but expensive, and get over there quick. We don’t want him to change his mind about hiring us.’

‘To hear you talk,’ I said bitterly, moving to the door, ‘anyone would think you owned this joint, not me. Thread a new ribbon in your Remington and leave this to me.’

‘I’ll have you know I’m the only one who does any work around here,’ Paula said heatedly. ‘If it wasn’t for me...’

But by then I was halfway down the stairs.

The Santa Rosa Estate was a hundred-acre paradise that embraced the raced lawns, formal gardens, a swimming pool and fountains. It was a pretty lush spot if you like lush spots: I don’t. Whenever I happen on one of these gold-plated, millionaire’s caravanserais my bank balance pokes up its head and jeers at me.

The drive up to the house was along a winding avenue of trees, and on the way I caught a glimpse of a distant lawn, big enough to play polo on, and flowerbeds that were packed with colour bright enough to hurt your eyes. The avenue opened out on to a vast stretch of tarmac on which were parked five or six cars. The smallest of them was a Rolls-Royce convertible in cream and sky blue. Two Filipino chauffeurs were flicking it over with feather dusters, and sneering to themselves as if what they were doing was against their religion.

To the right of the parking lot was the house, a modest little affair of about twenty-four bedrooms, a front door through which you could drive a ten-ton truck and a terrace of french windows overlooking an esplanade broad enough to use as a runway for a B .25.

On my way to the front door I came upon a concealed loggia before which stood two big tubs of red and yellow begonias. I paused to admire the flowers as an excuse to get my breath back, and found myself gaping at a girl in a wheel chair, sunning herself in the loggia. She showed no surprise at my sudden appearance, and her deep-set eyes regarded me so searchingly I had an uneasy feeling she could read the letters in my wallet and count the small change in my pockets.

She was about twenty-four or five, small and as hard as an uncut diamond. She had that pale, pinched look cripples have, and her thin, neat mouth drooped a little at the corners, hinting at a sneer that might or might not be in her thoughts Her dark, glossy hair was shoulder length and curled inwards at the bottom, and she wore a pair of fawn-coloured slacks and a blue Cashmere sweater which was too loose to show off her figure, if she had a figure, which I doubted.

I took off my hat and gave her a polite grin to show her I was a friendly sort of guy if that was what she was looking for, but apparently she wasn’t. There was no answering smile, no bonhomie, just a plain, straightforward freeze.

‘Are you from Universal Services?’ she asked in a voice you could slice bread on. A book lay in her trousered lap, and one thin finger held down a word as if she was scared it would slip off the page.

‘Lady,’ I said, ‘I am Universal Services.’

‘Then you shouldn’t come to the front entrance,’ she told me. ‘The tradesmen’s entrance is to the right and at the back.’

I thanked her, and then as she lowered her eyes to the book I started off again towards the front door.

‘Where are you going?’ she demanded, looking up sharply and raising her voice. ‘I said the tradesmen’s entrance...’

‘Is to the right and at the back,’ I broke in. ‘I know. I heard you the first time. Between you and me and the begonias Miss Cerf, it could be to the left and in the front. It could be on the roof or under a fountain. I’m not particularly interested. One of these days, when I have time, I’ll have a look at it. Maybe it’s worth seeing. I’ll put it in my duty book for a wet afternoon. Thanks for the suggestion.’

But by now she was bending over her book again, apparently not listening. Her long dark tresses fell forward, hiding her face. A pity. I bet she looked as if she had swallowed a bee.

There seemed no point in staying. So far as she was concerned I just wasn’t there anymore, so I continued the long trek to the front door, a shade hotter under the collar than I had been before I met her, thinking she was definitely not the type of girl you took to a gin palace in the hope she’d snap a garter at you.

The butler who opened the door was a tall, regal-looking person with the face of a retired statesman and the manners of a bishop. When I told him my name he said Mr. Cerf was expecting me. He led me through a hall that was smaller than the Pennsylvania station but not much, along a passage lined on either side with suits of armour and crossed swords, down a flight of stairs, past a billiard room to an elevator that whisked us up two floors. From the elevator I followed his stiff back along another mile of corridor to a room overlooking the front lawn and the distant ocean, and which was obviously the great man’s study.

‘I will tell Mr. Cerf you are here, sir,’ he said with a formal bow. ‘He is unlikely to keep you very long,’ and he went away with no more commotion than a snowflake makes to settle on your hat.

Jay Franklin Cerf looked what he was: the President of a six-million dollar Navigation Company. There was an arrogant and authoritative air about him that brooked no non-sense, and it was pretty obvious he had been expensively fed from the time he had got on to solids. He was tall and massive. His complexion was just the right blend of mauve and suntan, and his eyes were as blue as forget-me-nots and as impersonal. He was, at a guess, on the wrong side of fifty, but hard still in mind and body. From the crown of his thinning hair to the welts of his glossy shoes he was a blueprint of the boy who made good.

He came briskly into the room, closed the door and looked me over the way millionaires look over any proposition that might cost them money.