“I’m sure the work has begun,” I said. I was definite, calm.
“Yes, it has,” he answered. “Without a contract.”
“The steel should have arrived also,” I said weakly, sparring for time.
He gave me another analytical glance before he spoke. “It has.”
I pointed to the pages on the desk. “Here’s the contract,” I told him. “It’s a simple purchase order. I marked the place for you to sign.” My calmness and force were having some effect on him. He reached for the pen in the holder in front of him, hesitated.
“I want to read it first,” he said, flicking a contemptuous finger at the document.
“Please do,” I replied.
“I want to read it later. Later tonight.” Goetz was measuring me again, the speculative glimmer still in his eyes.
“It would be gratifying,” I said, “if you could read it now, Mr. Goetz. I have an engagement in Los Angeles tonight. It’s a long drive back.” It was a mistake to press him, the cheap little power complex craving a victim, hungry for an audience.
“Mr. Wainright.” Even the way he pronounced my name had become a subtle insult. “You supposed to service this deal?”
I nodded.
“Service it then.” Suddenly he grew affable again, his ego evidently sufficiently well fed for the moment. “Come to the house for dinner. I’ll read the contract and sign it tonight.”
I balanced future hours of this game of cat and mouse against another miserable meal in the bowling alley. “All right, Mr. Goetz,” I said. “I should be delighted to come to dinner.”
Goetz pointed to the contract. For the first time I noticed that the middle fingers of his right hand were bandaged. “Fold that for me,” he said. “I have a sore hand. Caught it in a piece of machinery. Chewed the tips of two fingers off.”
“I’m sorry,” I replied.
Goetz looked at me, amusement touching his lips. “No you’re not, Wainright. Right now you hate my guts.” He smiled, silkily. “But I’m not such a bad fellow when I get my own way. You’ll get over your gripe.”
He was mistaken.
There was an elongated convertible parked in front of the building, chromed, blatant, expensive. Goetz paused a moment near it, fishing awkwardly for the keys with his injured hand. He turned to me again.
“You got a car, Wainright?”
“In the parking lot at the bowling alley,” I said.
“Leave it there. Get in.”
He drove with a flourish, tooling the big car expertly through the streets of Three Forks, impatient and agressive with the less opulant traffic. I examined him covertly as he drove, cigar clamped in his teeth. This is the way, I told myself. This is how it is done. Assurance. Arrogance. The acceptance of superiority without question. “Get a load of this toy,” he said, reaching for a telephone under the dash, then placing a call to his home through the mobile telephone operator.
The Goetz residence crouched at the top of a rolling hill, overlooking the town, a fenced and manicured show-place, flat-roofed, red-bricked, heavy with glass and modernity.
“One hundred and fifty thousand bucks,” he said, as we got out of the car.
“Charming,” I replied.
Goetz turned to me, a twisted smile hovering around his lips. “Come off it, pool salesman,” he said. “You hate it. You’re the quiet New England type. If I gave it to you, you wouldn’t live in it. You’d sell it to another hustler like me and find yourself a quiet little cottage full of nice, conventional mouldy furniture.”
“Perhaps I would,” I said.
“C’mon in.”
The interior of the house was incredibly, unbelievably beautiful. I remember my feelings of shock as we entered the living room, my feet slipping deliciously into the velvety pile of the wall-to-wall carpet, the cool touch of muted music somewhere in the background. The room was done in gentle grays and black, sparsely and tastefully furnished, an occasional spray of flowers a colorful accent against the otherwise unadorned walls. Goetz did something to a hidden electric switch behind a set of white drapes. whispering them aside, uncovering a wall of glass which ran the full length of the room. I saw the patio stretching away from the house, and beyond that, the ugly scar of the excavation for the swimming pool.
“Sit down, Wainright,” Goetz said. “I have a couple of calls to make. I’ll go and tell my wife you’re here.”
He departed at once, leaving me free to give my attention to a Chinese screen in a corner of the room unable to keep my fingers from caressing the luscious lacquer, tracing the intricate design.
“Do you like my room?”
Spinning in the direction of the sound, for a moment I was without poise, having been startled by the voice of the dark woman standing there.
“I’m Mina Goetz,” she said. “You do look like him.”
“Jonathan Wainright,” I said. “I came about the pool.”
“I know,” she replied. “He told me.” She waited calmly for me to speak again. Part Indian, I thought, Mescalero — perhaps Comanche.
“It is a lovely room,” I said. “Did you do it?”
She was impassive, weighing her reply. “Yes,” she finally said. “It’s easy, when you have anything you want to work with.”
“It’s never easy. Not really.”
“Don’t flatter me, Mr. Wainright. I’m not used to it.” She moved quietly into the room. “Please sit down. Will you have a drink?”
“No, thank you.”
“There are cigarettes beside you.” She moved to the wall switch, closed the drapes. “I like that better. It filters the light. Besides it shuts out that awful hole your men made.” She curled up on the chair across from me, sinuously winding her legs into a comfortable position, the light playing on her high cheek-bones, sculpturing her face. Ubasti, cat-woman, ready for the blood.
“Tell me what you do next.”
“Tomorrow we put the steel in. It’s like a basket. In the afternoon we spray in the cement.”
“Spray it in?” She was making conversation, covering her scrutiny of me with questions.
“It’s a new system,” I said. “Squirts concrete out of a hose. Like a fire hose. Then we plaster, and the job is done.”
“And then what?”
“We put the water in while the plaster is still wet. Whole job takes only a few days.”
“How did you happen to get into this business?” She asked.
I told her a little about my back ground. She was an exceedingly good listener, although I found her remarks somewhat conventional and ordinary.
“Where are your people?” she asked, finally.
“They died some years ago. I was an only child.”
“I’m sorry. And your wife?”
“I am a widower.” Hesitating before following her lead, I decided to risk it, caution giving way to curiosity. “How long have you been married?” I asked.
There was a decided pause before she replied. “Three years,” she said. I could see the shadow cross her eyes as she spoke. “Three years,” she said again.
“Makes it sound like thirty, doesn’t she?” Goetz was standing in the doorway, a drink in his bandaged hand, “C’mon, let’s eat.” He moved toward the dining room, his eyes hot and savage as they flicked across his wife’s face.
I turned to wait by the door for her. She was standing in the middle of the room, her dark face placid, only her eyes alive as she watched her husband leave the room. She moved then, as though consciously willing, herself to move.
Ray Goetz stood at the head of the table, the drink already at his place, a maid hovering nervously in the background. He motioned me to a place. “Sit down, Wainwright.” It occurred to me with some interior amusement that this was the fourth time the man had ordered me to a seat. “Have a drink.”