Росс Томас: The Singapore Wink

“Why?” Trippet said and I was surprised at the genuine interest in his voice.

“Why? I’ll tell you why. Because in 1937 I was going to college and I was poor. You guys must know what being poor’s like.”

“Not really,” Trippet said. “I’ve never been poor.”

For some reason, I believed him.

“Well, you’re lucky, fella,” the doctor said, obviously convinced that a man who didn’t have a car in Los Angeles probably was not only poor, but destitute. “I was church-mouse poor. I was so poor that I got kicked out of my room one night because I couldn’t pay the rent. So I was wandering around the campus and I see this car, this thirty-seven Plymouth, that belonged to this rich kid in one of my classes. Biology class. So I crawled in and went to sleep. Christ, I had to sleep someplace. But this rich prick (excuse me lady) comes out about eleven o’clock to lock his car and finds me in it. And do you think that son of a bitch would let me sleep in it for the rest of the night? Hell no, he wouldn’t. Not on your life. He said he was afraid I’d get it dirty. Well, you know what I promised myself right then and there?”

“That some day,” Barbara Trippet said, “you would earn enough money to buy one exactly like the one your friend had.” She smiled sweetly. “The rich prick in biology class.”

The doctor looked at Mrs. Trippet with approval. “Right,” he said. “That’s exactly what I promised myself.”

“Why?” Trippet asked.

“Why what?”

“Why did you promise yourself that?”

“For Christ’s sake, mister, I just told you.”

“But what are you going to do with it? The Plymouth, I mean.”

“Do with it? What do you mean, do with it? I’m going to own it.”

“But you already have four other cars,” Trippet said. “What possibly useful purpose will it serve?”

The doctor’s pink, shaved head became a shade pinker. “It isn’t supposed to be useful, damn it! It just has to be there — sitting out there on my driveway so I can look at it. Christ, I can’t talk to you people. I’m going to get another drink.”

Trippet watched the doctor weave his way through the crowd. “Fascinating,” he murmured to his wife. “Absolutely fascinating.” Then, turning to me, he asked: “Do you actually have a motor scooter?”

I didn’t have the chance to answer because Jack Conklin, Los Angeles’s number one cuckolder, slammed what he thought was a hearty hand against my shoulder blade. “Eddie, boy! Good to see you. Getting any?”

Before I could reply he turned to the Trippets. “I don’t think we’ve had the pleasure. I’m Jack Conklin and I’m the lad who’s footing the bill for this little get-together.” Conklin really talked like that.

“I’m Richard Trippet and this is my wife, Barbara. We came with some friends, the Ramseys, but I’m afraid we didn’t have the opportunity to be introduced. I hope you don’t mind gate crashers.”

Conklin applied a heavy right hand to Trippet’s back and encircled Barbara’s waist with his left arm. She edged away. Conklin didn’t seem to notice. “Any friend of Billy and Shirley Ramsey’s a friend of mine,” he said. “Especially Shirley, eh?” and this time he dug an elbow into Trippet’s ribs.

“To be sure,” Trippet murmured when he was through wincing.

“If you want to meet anybody, just ask old Eddie Cauthorne here. Old Eddie knows everybody, right Eddie?”

I started to tell him that Old Eddie didn’t know everybody and didn’t want to know everybody, but Conklin had moved off to use his ever busy hands on other guests.

“I believe,” Trippet said, turning to me again, “that we were talking about your motor scooter. Do you actually have one?”

“No,” I said. “I drive a Volkswagen, but I have twenty-one other cars. Would you like one?”

“Thank you, no,” he said.

“All pre-1932. Prime condition.” As I said, I was on my third drink.

“What in the world for?” Trippet said.

“I inherited them.”

“What do you do,” Barbara Trippet asked, “drive hither and yon?”

“I rent them. To studios, producers, ad agencies.”

“That makes sense,” Trippet said. “But the gentleman we just spoke to — the one with the 1937 Plymouth. He’s afflicted, you know.”

“If he is, so are thousands of others.”

“Really?”

“Sure,” I said. “Take those twenty-one jalopies I have. I keep them in a warehouse way to hell and gone out in East Los Angeles — past 190th. Nobody sees them; they’re not advertised; my phone’s unlisted. But I get at least one or two calls a day from nuts who want to buy a particular car — or even all of them.”

“Why not sell?”

I shrugged. “They produce an income and I can use the money.”

Trippet glanced at his watch, a gold affair that was thicker than a silver dollar, but not much thicker. “Tell me, do you like cars?”

“Not particularly,” I said.

“How splendid. Why don’t you join us for dinner? I think I’ve just had a perfectly marvelous idea.”

Barbara Trippet sighed. “You know,” she said to me, “the last time he said that we wound up in Aspen, Colorado, with a ski lodge.”

After escaping from the cocktail party, we had dinner that night at one of those places on La Cienega which seem to change owners every few months. Barbara Trippet was a small, bright brunette of about my age, thirty-three, with green eyes and a wry, pleasant smile that she used often. At fifty-five, Richard K. E. Trippet just missed being elegant. Perhaps it was the way he wore his clothes or the manner in which he moved. Or it could have been what at first seemed to be a totally languid carriage until you noticed that actually he held himself fencepost straight and that it was the grace of his movements that gave him that curious air of blended indolence and energy. His hair was long and grey and it kept flopping down into his eyes as we talked over the steaks. He was not in the least reticent about himself, and most of the things he told me that night were true. Maybe all of them. I never found otherwise.

Not only was he an Anarcho-Syndicalist in theory and a registered Democrat in practice, but he was also a naturalized U.S. citizen, a top-grade fencer, a saxophone player of merit, a specialist in medieval French, and had been, at one time or another, a captain in what he described as “a decent regiment,” a racing driver-mechanic, a skiing instructor and ski lodge owner (in Aspen), and finally he was still — now — a person of “independent means.”

“Grandfather made it all in Malaya, you know,” he said, as if everyone else did. “Tin mostly. When he came back to London to retire he couldn’t abide the climate and died within a fortnight. My father, who knew absolutely nothing about business and had no intention of learning, simply looked up the most conservative bankers he could find in the City and told them to take care of things. They still do. Barbara’s also rich.”

“Wheat,” she said. “Thousands of acres of Kansas wheat.”

“I feel like Tacky Tom at Rich Rollo’s party,” I said.

“Not to worry,” Trippet said. “It’s just that when we get to my perfectly marvelous idea, I want you to rest assured that we can handle the necessary financing.”

That brought us up to the coffee and brandy, but it still took a while to get to the point.

“That chap at the party with the Plymouth,” he said.

“What about him?”

“Pathetic case really. Yet typical.”

“How?”

“Most middle-aged Americans, I’ve noticed, attach an inordinate amount of sentiment to the first car that they owned. They may not remember their children’s birthdays, but they can tell you that first car’s year, model, color, even date of purchase, and exactly what they paid for it down to a dime.”