“Oh, I don’t know. It seems little enough to do for someone who left all that money and everything. Was it just too awful?”
“I really couldn’t say. Most of the time I wasn’t paying much attention.”
“That was clever of you, sweetie. I always think the best way to survive something unpleasant is simply not to pay attention to it.”
“I’m glad you always think so, because you may soon have occasion to practice it. Damn it, Pearl, I do wish you would come out of there.”
“I’m ready, sweetie. I’m coming this instant.”
And so she was and did, wearing a black dress with a short bouffant skirt and sandals with very high thin heels to make her look taller than she was. She kissed Lester lightly on the tip of his nose, claimed her drink and curled up on the end of a sofa.
“Now, sweetie,” she said, “I’m prepared to listen, and you must tell me all about it.”
“Must I? Yes, I suppose I must. Nothing is to be gained by delaying it.”
“What are you trying to say, sweetie? I don’t like the sound of it. Did something go wrong?”
“Not exactly. I mean, things could have gone worse than they did, but they didn’t, although they may go that way yet before it’s finished.”
“Lester, I wish you wouldn’t be so devious. You are clearly trying to avoid telling me what happened. It may be necessary to sue you for breach of promise or something if you aren’t careful. Did you read the will?”
“Not verbatim. We extracted the meat of it.”
“Well, that’s just as good. It told you what your grandfather did with his money, didn’t it? Tell me directly how much you get.”
“A million and a half, more or less, in a way.”
“What the devil do you mean by more or less, in a way? Lester, it’s the most difficult thing in the world to pin you down to a candid statement. Either you get the million and a half, which would be nice, or you don’t, which would be unfortunate so far as you and I are concerned.”
“I get it, all right, but not till Senorita Fogarty dies.”
“What does Senorita Fogarty have to do with it?”
“Damn it, I just told you. Grandfather left everything in trust for her until she dies.”
“Well, what a perfectly treacherous thing to do. I don’t even know Senorita Fogarty. Who is she? Is she some nasty old woman your grandfather was keeping?”
“Not quite. It would be easier to accept if she were. To put it bluntly, Senorita Fogarty is Grandfather’s Chihuahua.”
“Don’t be absurd, Lester. A Chihuahua is a dog.”
“I know what a Chihuahua is. You don’t have to tell me.”
“Lester, sweetie, you are simply telling me the most monstrous lies. I warn you that it won’t work. I’m not so easily deceived. You could surely have thought of a more credible story than that to trick me out of what you practically promised.”
“Credible or not, it’s true. As you say, I’m not crazy enough to make it up from nothing. Only Grandfather was that crazy.”
“That’s so. It must be true, and I’ll have to believe you. Is it so bad, however? How long can Senorita Fogarty be expected to live?”
“Not long at the worst, and a lot less with a little luck. If she doesn’t have any issue in the meanwhile, that is.”
“You mean pups?”
“That’s what I mean. Everything stays in trust for her pups, if there are any, and for her pups’ pups if there are any of those.”
“My God, Lester, this could just keep going on and on. What can be done to prevent it?”
“There is a plan afoot to murder Senorita Fogarty by getting her run over in traffic.”
“That sounds reasonable. Is there anything I can do to help?”
“I can’t think of anything, but I’ll let you know if I do.”
She held her glass in front of her with both hands and looked at him over it with a curious expression in which the ambivalence of her feelings was clearly detectable. She was chagrined and somewhat angry, that was obvious, but at the same time she was already regretting what might become necessary for her to do. The truth was, she would be very reluctant to discard him, and would be happy and relieved if he could somehow be salvaged, but it was, of course, essential that he be solvent when salvaged, and assured of a substantial part of a million and a half dollars, if not all of it. She was hardly prepared to take on a dependent, however handsome and otherwise satisfactory, out of sheer sentiment.
“Lester,” she said, “it was too bad of you to deceive me this way.”
“I haven’t deceived you, damn it. If you ask me, it is I who have been deceived.”
“At least you were surely aware that your grandfather was crazy and was therefore subject to doing crazy things. You might have warned me. It’s quite a shock to learn suddenly that it’s questionable if you will ever inherit a single penny.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll murder Senorita Fogarty one way or another before she is allowed to become a mother. You can count on it.”
“Well, I certainly hope so. I’ve become quite attached to you, as I’ve made abundantly clear on several occasions, but you can see that I can’t afford to have you cluttering up the place and distracting me from more lucrative prospects. It simply wouldn’t be sensible.”
“Oh, I know. I don’t expect you to make any unreasonable concessions or anything.”
“In that case, we’ll just hope for the best, and in the meantime, let’s go out somewhere and have a good time and refuse to worry about it.”
“Where do you want to go?”
“I don’t know, sweetie. We’ll decide on the way.”
“To tell the truth, I was rather hoping we could stay here tonight.”
“No, sweetie. That would never do. It would be far too depressing under the circumstances. Besides, you would surely want to be entertained in a manner that I’ll have to think about until I know how the will comes out.”
7
The place they eventually went to, after being at a couple of other places first, was the King Louie Lounge. As every school boy knows, there was a long line of Louies who were kings of France at various times, and one of these Louies was good enough to be made a saint afterward, and another was considered so great that he was called the Sun King to indicate just how great he was considered, although there was later some doubt about it. In between, there were a lot of Louies who weren’t any better than they should have been, and following was one who lost his head as a consequence of being a lot worse. Anyhow, with all these Louies available, almost anyone would have thought that the King Louie Lounge was named after one of them, probably the Sun King, but it wasn’t. It was named after King Louie Oliver.
King Louie Oliver wasn’t a real king, of course, of France or elsewhere, and about the only thing he had in common with most of the royal Louies was that he wasn’t any better than he should have been, even if you discounted the many who said, usually in an official capacity, that he wasn’t as good. But he seldom if ever lost his head, which was a great advantage in his lines of work, which was operating the King Louie Lounge and several other enterprises about town. As a matter of fact, he seldom lost anything at all, especially money, it being practically always just the other way around. This was a truism to which Lester could have testified under oath if it had been beneficial to his health and well-being to do so.
Unfortunately, King Louie happened to be standing at the front of the Lounge talking with the hostess when Lester and Pearl entered. He was a short man with smooth black hair and an olive complexioned face as round and benign as a full moon. His brown eyes were limpid, and his small scarlet mouth was soft. The attitude he employed with men and women alike was one of solicitous tenderness, and many of both had been deceived by it temporarily into a disastrous credulity. Now, seeing Lester before Lester could escape, he approached with mincing steps and a cooing sound that ended with a soft embrace.