She said, “You’re not conning me, are you?”
“I don’t think I could.”
“Because that was starting to sound alarmingly like a proposal.”
“Something like that.”
She turned. She looked at me, straight at me, and I drank the depths of her eyes. Then she began to nod, and she said, “Yes. Oh, yes, yes.”
I saw Gunderman in the morning. I did not much want to see him. I was not in the mood to play a part. The night with Evvie had flattened out the hunger pains, and a hungry man makes a better fisherman.
But the hook was already set, the line already strung halfway across the lake. Even a well-fed angler can reel in a big one, especially when the fish practically jumps into the boat. My heart was not exactly in it, but it did not exactly have to be. Gunderman made it easy.
I followed Evvie’s hunch. When I got around to telling him that Barnstable had bought about as much land as was likely to be available at their price, I stopped for a moment and then let on that I would be out of a job before long.
“They’d let you go, John?”
“They won’t have anything for me to do.” I looked off to the side for a second, then lowered my eyes. “Oh, I’ll find something else,” I said. “I generally do.”
“Have money saved?”
“Not a hell of a lot. On my salary—”
“Be handy if you did, though.”
“Well,” I said, “I’ll manage.” He had Evvie bring us some coffee from around the corner. He stirred sugar into his and got back on the main theme, the opening for one Wallace J. Gunderman. First, of course, he wanted a chance to buy some stock in Barnstable. I told him he didn’t have a chance in a hundred. In the first place, no one would be anxious to sell. In the second, the board would never approve of a stock transfer. Everything was very hushed up, I explained. Even I could figure out that much. They were not looking for publicity. Legal or not, they wanted to keep a lid on things.
“What are they going to do with that land, John? Suppose that they haven’t got any development planned. What are they going to do?”
“I’ve thought about that,” I said.
“So have I. What did you come up with?”
“Just a few ideas.” I stopped long enough to light a cigarette. “At first I thought they were buying for some corporation. It was so hush-hush I figured they had an important client who didn’t want anyone to know what was coming off. But they were buying at random. And there would be one little piece of land in the middle of a few of their tracts, and instead of pushing hard to buy it they would let it go if they didn’t get it at their price.”
“I’m with you so far, John.”
“So they have to be buying for themselves. Especially with so many important people involved. And the secrecy, well, they may be doing something legal but they’re still playing around in someone else’s mess.”
“And so they’re wearing gloves.”
“Right.” I drank some of my coffee and made rings on the desk top with the coffee cup. “I suppose they’ll just sit on the land,” I said. “Just sit and wait until it catches fire pricewise, or until someone wants it enough to give them a pretty profit.”
His eyes narrowed. “Would they sell some of it now?”
“To you?”
“To me.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t think it’s what they have in mind. I don’t really know too much about that end of the operation, actually. I’ve spent most of my time here in the States. My only real contact is through Douglas Rance, and he doesn’t spend too much time filling me in on the subtleties of company policy.” I let a little more bitterness edge forward. I was still Little Boy Loyal, but I wasn’t as important as I would have liked to be.
He said, “You could probably find out a few things, if you tried. I’d make it worth your while, John.”
I looked at him. Wary, but hungry.
“If it turns out that I can make a deal, I’ll cut you in. You wouldn’t have to lay out any cash, and you’d be in for a full five percent of any profit I might make.”
“Well—”
“How does that sound?”
“It sounds very generous, but—”
“And that five percent could be a healthy sum, John. I’m not talking nickels and dimes, you know.”
“I know.”
“Will you go to bat for me, then?”
I pursed my lips and took my time. I said, “But if you don’t wind up making a deal—”
He’d thought of that. He wanted me as a sort of partner in the operation, but he knew I would have expenses and he wouldn’t want me to take a beating. He passed an envelope across the desk. I hesitated, and I let wariness and greed mingle in my expression, and I took the envelope. After all, Evvie was right. I had to be a little bit on the make or he just would not believe I was real.
“Deal?”
“Deal,” I said.
There was, I found out, an even five hundred dollars in the envelope. If he’d had any class he’d have made it a thou.
I’d told him I was taking an afternoon flight back to Toronto. I had told Doug the same thing. I did not go back to Toronto. That morning a girl with a husky voice and deep circles under her eyes had asked me to spend another night in Olean. She did not have to ask me twice.
I went back to her apartment. She had given me a spare key, and I waited inside for her to finish work and come home to me. Around four-thirty I called a Chinese restaurant and ordered up some chow mein. I called around until I found a grocery that delivered, and I had a six-pack of beer sent up along with a carton of her brand of cigarettes. We couldn’t eat out, and I didn’t want to make her cook a meal again.
The table was set when she opened the door. I opened two cans of beer. We ate in the kitchen. The Chinese food tasted as though it had come out of a can. But the beer was cold, and the company was divine.
We didn’t talk too much. She wanted to know how much longer it would take, how long it would be before we scored and blew him off once and for all. It was going to take longer than I wanted to think about — not until we scored, necessarily, but until I had a chance to see her again. After the grift was over, she would have to cool it for a while in Olean before she grabbed a westbound plane. This was all something I didn’t want to think about, or talk about.
“I feel better about it today,” she said. “Not so nervous.”
“It must be love.”
“Maybe that’s part of it.”
“It must be.”
I had a second beer. She was still on her first. She went into the living room, switched on the radio. A newscast — someone chattered about some new foreign crisis. She turned the dial and found some music. I left the table and grabbed her and kissed her. She giggled and shook free and scurried over to the front of the room. She paused at the window, and her face went white.
I started toward her. She held out a hand and warned me off.
“His car,” she said. “Oh, God.”
“So I missed my plane and decided to stay over.”
“No, it’s no good. The dishes—”
I moved fast enough for both of us. I scooped up my dishes and my beer and my pack of cigarettes and my lighter and ducked into the bedroom closet with them. I stood there holding onto everything while her clothes blanketed me. They all carried the smell of her. I was dizzy with it.
He knocked. She opened the door. They spent five or ten minutes in the living room. I could hear snatches of their conversation, not enough to add the stray phrases together and come up with something intelligible. I waited in the closet like a refugee from a French bedroom farce. The humor of it was lost on me. I wanted to grab the son of a bitch and push his face in.
Then they came closer, from living room to bedroom, and now that I could follow the conversation I no longer wanted to hear it. Wallace J. Gunderman was in the mood for love.