‘The place I saw was a half-million dollar job, would you expect him to have that sort of money?’
‘No, but I don’t know what he’s been doing for nearly a year now. He could have made a lot, but why not give me my due?’
‘That’s the question. Could it have anything to do with his new wife?’
She shrugged and stubbed her cigarette out; it wasn’t her favourite topic. ‘I don’t know. All I know about her is that she’s good-looking and she’s got a silly name.’
I grunted and she made an effort to jolt her out of her absorption in her problems.
‘I’m sorry you were hurt,’ she said. ‘Kay said you were very tough.’
I smiled. ‘I am.’
‘She said you were nice, too. She’s very fond of you. You haven’t drunk your tea.’
I got up from the wicker chair that had been cutting into me. ‘She should have told you I hated tea. You’ve said a lot of interesting things, Pauline. I’m beginning to get a picture of Mr Angel. I’ll be getting back to work.’
‘Be careful.’
‘I will. Kay says she’s coming back to look Sydney over soon.’
She smiled the smile that would look so good without the strain. ‘Yes, won’t it be great to see her?’
‘Great,’ I said.
That pleasant thought made me sloppy. I ambled back down the path and strolled to my car, mentally rehearsing what I’d say to Kay. I put the key in the lock and suddenly there he was, looking at me from the other side of the car; also looking was the business end of an automatic pistol.
‘You don’t listen, Hardy,’ he said. ‘Looks like you’ll have to be shown what to do.’ His dark eyebrows almost met across the top of his face as he crinkled his eyes in the bright sun. He looked like a gorilla, but the gun made him the zoo keeper.
‘Leave this bomb where it is. You’re going for a ride in a real car. Move!’
He gestured at a black Fairlane on the other side of the road. The man sitting at the wheel had his gun pointed at my spine.
‘Bags I drive,’ I said.
Being driven to Camp Cove by that pair was no fun. Ugly I did the driving while Ugly II held his pistol so that if it went off I’d have a big hole in an inconvenient place. The Fairlane cruised slowly past the high front wall, sidled around the side of the house and went through a magic-eye-opened gate into a courtyard big enough to hold it and a couple more. Ugly II prodded me with the pistol and we went up some steps and through some glass and walked across some carpet. It was like wading knee deep through money. My escort tapped on a door and we waited. Inside a telephone was put down and a match was struck, then a deep voice said ‘Come in’ and we did.
He was sitting behind a big desk smoking a small cigar, but there was nothing corny about him. He was very dark with a heavy beard and his teeth shone whitely in all that swarthiness. He was around forty and looked to be about medium sized but with a lot of power in his shoulders and jaw. The shirt and vest he wore went with the house and his haircut and his manicure and everything about him. Even the cigar smelled good.
‘I’m Ben Angel.’
‘Congratulations,’ I said.
‘I’ll hire you when I need a comedian. You come here, you go to see my ex-wife, why?’
‘Say please and I might tell you.’
I heard Ugly II make ugly noises behind me but I didn’t turn round. The body’s one big vulnerable place if you know your business, and he did.
‘I’ll humour you-please.’
He smiled when he said it and I rather wished he hadn’t; Ben Angel didn’t have to work too hard at being scary, it was all there in the soft voice and the way he kept his hands still.
‘Your wife hired me to get you to pay her the two hundred and fifty thousand you owe her.’ I thought I might as well up the ante a little. He smiled again.
‘Thought it might be that. I thought Joel here could persuade you to leave it be. Didn’t work, huh?’
I shook my head.
‘Why? You don’t look dumb.’
‘Reasons,’ I said.’
He leaned back in his chair, and seemed to notice for the first time that I was standing up.
‘Take a seat, Hardy. Joel, be a nice guy and get us both a drink and stop looming like that. We’ve got us a reasonable man here, right, Hardy?’
I pulled a stylish metal and fabric chair closer to the desk and sat down, but I didn’t admit to being reasonable. Joel handed me a glass and put one just the same on Angel’s desk.
‘Go check the teleprinter, Joel, Hardy and me are going to have a chat.’
Joel went out quietly and I took a quiet sip of the drink, which was good Scotch with not too much water. Angel had a drink and leaned forward on his desk so that our faces were only six feet apart.
‘Here’s the thing, Hardy. Pauline thought I was an architect, but I’m not; leastways I was, but…’
‘Not for long.’
‘You’ve got it-not much and not for long. I’ve got other interests, a bit of this and a bit of that. Do I make myself clear?’
‘The front gate and Joel’s. 45 help to make the point.’ I said.
‘Right, now I had a bit of trouble getting into the country with my assets intact and all that. It took a lot of oil in the right places. It’s okay but it’s delicate. I have to watch my ass. Now, suppose I give Pauline the quarter million, she’s so straight what’s the first thing she’ll do?’
‘Clear it with the tax people, after she pays me my fee I hope.’
‘Right, so then I have to account for the money and what do I say?’
‘Legitimate capital gains on property sold in the US.’
‘I didn’t sell any apartment in New York, that was just a story for Pauline. I didn’t own the apartment. I’m supposed to be clean; a floating two hundred and fifty grand makes me look very dirty. You see my problem?’
I drank some more of the Scotch and saw the problem very clearly, except that I saw it as Pauline’s problem and my problem too. ‘When can she expect something then? You don’t have to keep this cleanskin pose up for ever, do you?’
He opened his hands expressively, the first flourish he’d permitted himself. I noticed then that he had a big stoned, un-architect-like ring on his light hand as well as a broad wedding ring on the left. ‘You read the papers-commissions of enquiry into this, investigations of that. It’s heads-down time. I can raise the money all right, no problem there, but Pauline’s the original Miss Clean. This case, she’s her own worst enemy.’
His matey tone and the good Scotch made me incautious. ‘What’s the new Mrs Angel think about it all?’
He clenched his hand around the glass. ‘Have you been snooping around her too? Now that I really don’t like.’ The matiness was all gone. ‘Tell me what you did?’
I finished the drink. ‘Nothing.’
‘Joel!’
Joel came back into the room and I stood up with the empty glass in my hand and backed towards a wall.
‘Our friend here’s got some more talking to do, Joel; persuade him.’
He came at me fast and bent low in a crouch which still put his head on a level with my shoulder. I stepped aside and hooked at the head but it wasn’t where it’d been a split second before. He slammed me with his left as he moved past and I’d have sworn he landed on exactly the spot he’d hit before. The pain cooled me down for some reason and made me quicker; I walked through a punch and got in close enough to land a short right well below the belt. He wasn’t ready for it and he gasped and faltered; I put my knee in the same place and when his head came down I uppercut him with a double clenched fist. He fell away from me, flailed and ripped the front out of my shirt with his clutching hand. Something flew out of the pocket and bounced on Angel’s desk. I was breathing hard when I turned to face him and for the second time in two hours I found myself looking into a gun.