“All right. I’ll get a drink.”
“Thank you,” Griffith said, being half sardonic and half grateful. He said, “Then, if you insist on a quiet room, go out that door over there and down the hall and through the second arch on your right. Then go across that room and through the door on the other side. That’s my office, you can wait in there.”
“Good.”
“If someone blunders onto you, pretend you’re making a long-distance call or something.”
“All right,” Parker said.
“Now come along and get a drink.”
Parker went with him outside again, past the loud and sober musicians and down across the lawn toward the bar along the hedge. Midway, Griffith got dragged into somebody else’s conversation, and Parker went on alone. He arrived at a slight lull in the bar’s activity, and got himself a light gin and tonic. Mackey came wandering over to him as he turned away from the bar; they nodded to one another, and Mackey said, “You talk to him?”
“We met,” Parker said. “We didn’t talk. You and Brenda hang around out here.”
“Brenda’s having a big time,” Mackey said, and grinned. He was fond of her. “I’ll tell you a rule of human nature, Parker,” he said. “All women are social climbers.”
There was nothing to say to that. Parker nodded again and walked back up the slope toward the patio. A man stepped in front of him, frowning slightly, and said, “Aren’t you Greene?”
“No,” Parker said.
“My God, that’s fantastic.” He was a little drunk, but carrying it well. “Hubert Greene?” he said, as though Parker might be the right man after all and had merely forgotten his own name. “You don’t know him? Surely people have told you you look like him.”
“No,” Parker said.
“Listen, come along here. Do you mind?” Taking Parker’s arm, he turned and started off, calling, “Helen! Come over here!”
A nearby group of three women and two men now shifted to include Parker and the other man, and one of the women said, looking curiously at Parker, “What is it? What’s the matter?”
“Who does this fellow look like?”
Everybody looked at him. Parker stood looking back, waiting for something else to attract their attention.
Nobody could guess who it was he was supposed to look like, and when the first man mentioned the name of Hubert Greene, it prompted a long discussion, half the group agreeing more or less and the other half in violent opposition, one of the women constantly assuring Parker, “You don’t look anything like Hubie Greene, you really don’t.” And one of the men grinned at him and said, “If you knew Hubie, you’d punch Fred right in the face.”
The conversation finally shifted gears when one of the women said, “Why isn’t Hubie here, anyway?”
“I suppose he isn’t a potential customer.”
“Don’t be catty.”
“Face it, dear, the only reason Leon invited any of us here is in the wild hope we’ll take some of his stock off his hands.”
The man who’d thought Parker looked like Hubert Greene now got caught up in this new discussion. Finally releasing Parker’s elbow, he said. “Do you really think that’s true? I thought Leon was loaded.”
“Leon,” said one of the women, “is loaded with valuable paintings, which isn’t quite the same thing.”
“Not the way the tax laws are changing.” one of the other men said, and a couple of people nodded grimly.
The woman named Helen said, “Tax laws? You mean paintings aren’t a good investment any more?” She sounded worried enough to have a lot of money of her own tied up in paintings.
“Investment, yes,” said one of the men. “Tax write-off, no. Not as good as they used to be.”
“The old charity dodge, you know,” said another man.
But it turned out Helen didn’t know. As the group began all at once to explain the old charity dodge to her, Parker moved quietly away from them and on up over the lawn toward the house.
Three
When the door opened and Griffith came in, Parker was sitting at the desk in the small neat office, looking at nothing in particular. Griffith looked at him, shut the door, and said petulantly, “I suppose you’ve gone through everything.”
“There wasn’t that much to go through.”
Griffith obviously didn’t know how to handle Parker’s lack of denial, any more than he knew what to do about the fact that Parker wasn’t getting up from the desk. He stood indecisively just inside the door, and then made an abrupt unfocused movement forward, ending it just as abruptly, and saying, “Well. Very well, I’m here. You wanted to talk.”
“My price is forty thousand,” Parker said.
Griffith frowned. “You should have talked this over with Mackey,” he said. “I’ve made all the financial arrangements with him.”
“I know, he told me all about it. We get one-thirty to split however we want. That’s between you and Mackey. But my price is forty. Meaning that whatever my share of the one-thirty is, the difference between that and forty I get direct from you.”
“Definitely not,” Griffith said. “Absolutely no.”
“All right,” Parker said. He got to his feet, walked around the desk, and headed for the door.
Griffith watched him, frowning, until Parker reached out for the doorknob. Then he said, irritably, “What makes you worth it?”
Parker kept his hand on the knob. Looking at Griffith, he said, “When Mackey called you and said I wanted this meeting, you said no. Mackey told you he wanted me in on the job, and he gave you reasons. The reasons were good enough to make you change your mind about seeing me. Those are the same reasons why I cost forty.”
“Other people can make up plans,” Griffith said. “You aren’t the only one who can do it.”
“If they’re good, they’re expensive.”
Griffith gazed moodily toward his desk. From the way the side of his face was rippling, he was biting the inside of his cheek. Parker watched him, and finally Griffith said, still looking toward the desk, “It might be we could work something out.”
Parker took his hand from the knob. “I’m willing to listen.”
Griffith moved. He tried to pretend he was walking casually toward his desk, but in fact he was hurrying there, not wanting Parker to go back and sit there again. Parker leaned against the door and waited, and when Griffith had seated himself behind the desk, told him, “But my price is still forty.”
Griffith seemed to be more confident with the desk around him. Palms on the desktop, he gave Parker a tight smile and said, “We can’t negotiate that way. Why not come sit down?”
“It might be wasted movement.”
Suddenly irritable again, Griffith said, “Why not argue with Mackey? He’s the one who thinks you’re so important. Tell him you want forty thousand, and he can split the other ninety any way he wants.”
“No. You’re the one buying, not Mackey.”
“Well, what if he finds out you’re getting a special deal? I can’t—”
“I’ll tell him,” Parker said.
“You’ll— But then he’ll come want the same thing!”
Parker shrugged. “That’s up to the two of you.”
“This is—I can’t—” Griffith gestured vaguely with both hands. “I can’t have you people coming in one at a time, holding me up, everybody wanting the same amount as everybody else.”
“I figure it will probably be five men,” Parker said.
“Five! That’s two hundred thousand dollars.”
“If everybody gets paid the same.”
“Won’t they all want to? I can’t afford that.”
“They probably will, yes.”
Griffith shook his head; he was positive, definite. “I can’t do that,” he said.
“Tell them so. My price is forty.”
“I know, I know.” Griffith looked around the small room as though the solution to his problem were written on one of the walls somewhere. Then he brooded at Parker again, and finally said, “Why not do it with three? I’ll still pay one hundred thirty, and you’ll have an extra ten thousand dollars to split among you.”