“How do I get close to him?”
Dominguez leaned back and ran his hand over his bald brown pate. “It’s an interesting problem. He is suspicious of strangers, I understand. I heard some gossip about him. His personal habits are not very nice. He buys his way out of trouble from time to time. He has a look of corruption. A rancid man, I think. And a very acquisitive man. A collector. Let me think about this, McGee. I must ask a few careful questions. I think if you try to make contact carelessly, you’ll spoil any future chance. Can you meet me here tomorrow night at the same time?”
“Of course.”
Seventeen
AGAIN I managed to get lost and again I was a little late. Paul Dominguez was sitting in the same booth, dressed much as before. He stood up and introduced the woman. She was attractive in a flamboyant way. She was big. Big shoulders, big hands, a big and expressive wealth of mouth and eyes. She was swarthy, with heavy black brows. Her hair was expertly bleached to a cap of soft silver curls. Her eyes were a pale yellow-green, feline, mocking and aware. Her voice was a baritone drawl, with an edge of Spanish accent. He introduced her as Connie Melgar. And he gave my name as John Smith.
Her hand was warm, dry and strong. Dominguez hesitated, then slid in beside her and pulled his drink over. I sat facing them.
“Constancia is Venezuelan,” he said. “Very rich and very difficult.”
Her laugh was vital and explosive. “Difficult! For whom? For you, Pablo, with all that machismo?” She winked at me. “I throw myself at his head, and he calls me difficult.”
Dominguez smiled. “I told her the problem,” he said.
“Your problem, Mr. Smith-certainly that cannot be your name-is to find a way to approach Calvin Tomberlin. I can arrange that, of course. Certain groups always have access to that gentleman. But I think it would be very pleasant if I could be assured that you will not waste the opportunity Mr. Smith.”
“In what way?”
“If you can do him some great harm, I will be delighted.”
“If things work out, I hope to make him reasonably unhappy Mrs. Melgar.”
She looked at me for five long seconds, her head tilting, then exhaled and patted Paul on the hand and said, “Thank you, dear. Mr. Smith and I can get along very nicely.”
Paul looked at me in interrogation. I nodded. He stood up and said, “When you see our friends, give them my best wishes.”
“Thank you for the help.”
He nodded and bowed to Connie Melgar.
After he had left, she said, “He is such a very cautious man. But a very good man. Do you know that?”
“I met him through a friend. I like him.”
“He has asked me this favor, Mr. Smith. I owe him several favors. He told me not to ask you questions. That is a terrible burden for me, not to ask questions. And this is not a simpatico place to talk in any case. There is an animal at the bar who leers. You have a car here? Why don’t you follow me?”
She drove a Mercedes 300 SL, battleship grey, with great dash and competence. I had to keep Francine’s little car at a full gallop to keep her taillights in view. She stopped on a dark street and I pulled in behind her and parked. She had me get into her car, and we went another half block and down into the parking garage under a new high rise apartment house. She left it for the attendant to put away, and led me back to a passenger elevator, punched the button for ten. In her high heels she stood a vivid and husky six feet.
She smiled and said, “You are damn well a big fellow, Mr. John Smith. You make me feel almost girlish and dainty. That is a rare thing for me. But not so rare in California as other places.”
Her apartment was 10 B. It was huge, with dark paneling, massive dark carved furniture, ponderous tables, low ornate lamps with opaque shades. As she opened the door, a little maid came on the run to take her wrap. Constancia rattled off a long spate of Spanish which seemed to be half query and half instruction. The maid bobbed and nodded and gave small answers and went away. An older, heavier woman, also in uniform, made an appearance, and stood stolidly while more orders were given.
Connie Melgar led me to the far end of the room, on a higher level, to a grouping of giant chairs and couches.
She said, “The way it was here, it was like trying to live in a doll house. I had it all torn out and paneled in honest wood, and had the furniture shipped up from my house in Caracas, then I had to have walls changed to make two apartments into one. But still I feel cramped here. I like the ranch much better. I have a nice ranch in Arizona.”
“This is very nice here, Mrs. Melgar.”
She fitted a cigarette into a holder. “I own the building,” she said. “As Pablo said, I’m filthy rich. I’ve been riding the winds of change by slowly liquidating at home and reinvesting here. I don’t like what’s going on at home. It scares me. Could you fix us some drinks, please? That thing there is a bar when you open the door. Dark rum on ice for me, please.”
As I fixed drinks I said, “Apparently you don’t feel friendly toward Tomberlin.”
“I don’t like the man. I have no idea why I keep seeing him. Perhaps it’s some manner of challenge to me. I have one horse at the ranch I should get rid of. His name is Lagarto. Lizard. Hammerheaded thing with a mean eye. He is very docile, right up to the point where he sees a good chance to run me into a low limb or toss me into an arroyo. He may kill me one day.”
I took her the drink, and as she started to raise it to her lips, I said, “Maybe I want you to get me close enough to Tomberlin so I can kill him.”
The drink stopped an inch short of her lips. The yellow eyes watched me, and then the drink moved the rest of the way. She sipped and lowered it. “Was I supposed to scream?”
“I don’t know you well enough to make any guesses.”
She studied me. “If that’s what you want, I would assume you have a reason. If you want to do it, you will do it in some way which will not implicate me. But he is not that kind of a nuisance.”
“How do you mean?”
“He’s just a rich, sick, silly man. He might be killed by some other silly man. But a serious man would know he is not worth so much risk. He is an insect.”
I sat at the other end of the gigantic couch, facing her. “What sort of insect?”
“You don’t know him at all? He is a political dilettante. He supports strange causes. Each one is going to save the world, of course. He gives money to ugly little fringe groups and makes them important, and then he loses interest. He collects exotic things, and many of them are quite nasty. Antique torture instruments. Dirty books and films and pictures. Sickening books. Shocking bits of sculpture. He’s impotent, apparently, and he is a voyeur. Bugged bedrooms, and two-way mirrors and group orgy, that sort of boyish amusement. A sad and tiresome case, really. Sometimes he can be quite charming.
“Many people who get too closely mixed up with him seem to get into very sticky trouble. But Cal goes on forever. There is something mildly dangerous about him. Perhaps it’s a sense of mischief. I don’t really know. He is an intuitive blackmailer. He generally gets exactly what he wants out of people. He gets indignant when he can’t have his own way. He loves to find some way of pressuring people to make them do things they had no intention of doing. It is an almost feminine taste for intrigue. He loves to make dark hints about all kinds of conspiracy going on, all kinds of nastiness. His latest cause is that Doctor Face.”
“Who?”
“Doctor Girdon Face, and his American Crusade. Oh, it’s very big lately. Lectures and tent shows and local television and so on. And special phone numbers to call any time of day or night. The liberal-socialist-commy- conspiracy that is gutting all the old time virtues. It has a kind of phonied-up religious fervor about it. And it is about ten degrees to the right of the Birchers. The president is selling the country down the river with the help of the Supreme Court. Agree with us or you are a marked traitor. You know the sort of thing, all that tiresome pea-brained nonsense that attracts those people who are so dim-witted that the only way they can understand the world is to believe that it is all some kind of conspiracy.