“Sit over there,” she said, indicating a fake Victorian couch upholstered in shiny plastic under a fake Utrillo upon an imitation driftwood wall. He sat on the couch. She stood by the railing, looking down into the lobby for what seemed to be a long time, then shrugged and came slowly over and sat beside him.
“I’ll tell you one thing and you remember it, Winter,” she said. “No matter how careful you are, it might not be enough.” She gave him a very direct green stare.
“Are you all right?”
“How are you reacting to my dear Aunt Charla? How’s your pulse?”
“Miss Alden, I have the feeling we aren’t communicating.”
“When she wants to really set the hook, she can make any Gabor look like Apple Annie. There’s fine steam coming off you, Winter.”
“She’s an unusual woman.”
“And she takes no chances. She had to have me here on standby. Just in case you’d rather settle for something younger, taller and not quite so meaty. But I told her a long time ago I’m through playing her games. She can take care of her own pigeons without any help from me. I got off her merry-go-round when I was twenty years old. And I was a very old twenty. Charla would be all right — she might even be fun — if she weren’t so damned greedy.”
“What is that about a pigeon?”
“What else do you think you are? Do you think she’s smitten by your charm?”
“She got smitten a few times.”
“What?”
“Miss Alden. Just for laughs. What are we talking about?”
She frowned at him. A strand of the tan-gold hair fell across her forehead and she pushed it back. “I checked the newspapers. Omar Krepps was your uncle. That’s what we’re talking about.”
“I don’t understand.”
“When I was fifteen years old she yanked me out of school in Switzerland and began lugging me around the world with her. She and Joseph are operators, Winter. Canadian gold, African oil, Indian opium, Brazilian girls — you name it, and they’ve bought it and sold it. They aren’t the biggest and they aren’t the shrewdest, but they keep getting richer, and it’s never fast enough to suit them. They are in and out of cartel and syndicate operations with other chums of the same ilk, and their happiest little game is trying to cheat each other. I was only fifteen, but I soon learned that in their circles, the name Omar Krepps terrified them. Almost a superstitious terror. Too many times Krepps would suddenly appear, skim the cream off a deal and leave with the money. I believe they and some of their friends tried to have him killed, but it never worked.”
“Kill Uncle Omar?”
“Shut up and listen. And believe. That fat little old man seemed able to be nine places at once. One time he skinned them good, intercepted cash on its way to a number account in Zurich somehow, and just took it, and they could do nothing about it because they’d in effect stolen it first — Joseph and Charla and some of their thieving pals. At that time Charla was wearing a ring that opened up. A poison ring, I guess, with an emerald. She opened it idly one day and there was a little wad of paper in it. She unfolded it. It said, ‘Thanks, O. Krepps.’ When she came out of her faint she had the wildest case of hysterics you ever saw, and she had to go into a hospital for a week. You see, the ring hadn’t been off her finger since before the money was taken.”
“I can’t really believe Uncle Omar would—”
“Let me finish. Krepps died last Wednesday. They were in Bermuda. They flew here Thursday morning. You arrived at dawn on Friday, and by dawn on Saturday you’re in bed in Charla’s suite. How much accident is involved in that?”
“I thought I met them by accident.”
“That pair doesn’t cotton to the random stranger. There’s always a reason for every move. What do they want from you?”
“They’ve invited me on a cruise.”
“Tell me all of it, Winter. Every word you can remember.” He told her an edited version of it.
She scowled. “And your Uncle Omar left you practically nothing? I guess they must want to pick your brains and find out how he operated.”
“But I didn’t have anything to do with — making money. I don’t know anything about the business end of it. He told me what courses to take in college. When I got out I went to work for him, doing the very same thing right from the beginning.”
“Doing what?”
“Giving money away.”
“What!”
“Just that,” he said helplessly. “He had some sort of clipping service and translation service and I would go and make investigations and give the money away if in my opinion everything was on the level — and if it could be kept quiet.”
“Much money?”
“I think it averages out somewhere around three million a year.”
“To charities?”
“Sometimes. Sometimes to individuals trying to get something started, or small companies in trouble.”
“Why did he want to give it away?”
“He never seemed very serious about anything. He never explained. He just said he did it to keep his luck good. He was a jolly little man. He didn’t like to talk seriously. He liked to tell long jokes and do card tricks and show you how he could take his vest off without taking his coat off.”
“Did you see much of him?”
“About once a year. He was always going off alone. It made people nervous. He had apartments and houses here and there, and it was hard to tell just where he’d be. But I never ran out of work, no matter how long he was out of touch. And he hated publicity of any kind.”
“You are not lying to me,” she said. It was more statement than question.
“No. While he was alive I wasn’t supposed to tell anybody what I did for him. Now I guess it doesn’t matter too much. The notoriety he got in the very beginning — I guess it made him secretive.”
“What notoriety?”
“A long time ago. My parents were drowned in a boating accident when I was seven, and I went to live with Uncle Omar and Aunt Thelma. She was his older sister. She was good to me, but she certainly made Uncle Omar’s life miserable. We lived in an old house in Pittsburgh. Uncle Omar taught high school chemistry and physics. He had a workshop in the basement where he tried to invent things. I guess it was the only place in the house where he was happy. Aunt Thelma was always crabbing about the money he spent on tools and equipment and supplies, and complaining about the electric bills. When I was eleven years old he quit right in the middle of a school term and went out to Reno and won a hundred and twenty-six thousand dollars. It was in all the papers. They called him a mathematical genius. They hounded him. Every nut in the country made his life miserable. He put money in the bank for us and disappeared. He was gone almost a year. He reappeared in Reno and lost a hundred thousand dollars there, and then nobody was very interested in him any more. After that he took us down to Texas where he’d built a house on an island in the Gulf off Brownsville. He set up a trust fund for Aunt Thelma and sent her back to Pittsburgh. I stayed there with him for a little while before I went back. By then he had a lot of business interests all over the world. He supported me and paid for my education and gave me my job when I graduated. But — he didn’t leave me anything, and I don’t know anything about his business interests. In fact, I didn’t know him very well. The papers say it’s a fifty-million-dollar estate. He left me his watch and a letter to be handed to me one year from last Wednesday.”