“Technically I’m a German. But I got a Texas momma, and I grew up in the U.S. of A., for the most part. Name’s George Hirschfeld, of Lentz amp; Hirschfeld, Bremen-hell, you can’t shake my hand with those drinks in it. You must be one two-fisted drinker!”
“Under these conditions I am.”
“Hey, a table’s opened up over there-care to join me?”
Hirschfeld settled into the booth side and Charteris took a chair with a small round table between them. They were seated near the railing and the windows. Charteris set down his drinks, and extended his hand.
The author was in the midst of a too-firm grip with the German Texan, and was starting to introduce himself, when Hirschfeld said, “I know who you are, Mr. Charteris.” He mispronounced it Char-teer-us. “You’re the mystery writer. Your detective’s the Saint, right?”
“It’s Chart-eris, actually. Are you a reader of mine?”
“No.” Hirschfeld was firing up a Pall Mall-Charteris’s favorite American brand, coincidentally. “No offense, but I gotta read too much, in my work-reports, newspapers, charts, and God knows what all. For relaxation, I’m more a movie man, myself.”
“Well, they’re probably going to make my stuff into films, pretty soon. RKO just picked up the rights.”
This seemed to impress the cotton broker. “Yeah? Who’s gonna play your detective?”
“I’m lobbying for Cary Grant. I presume I’ll get Grant Withers.”
Hirschfeld laughed at that, a deep, raspy sound. “Broadway and Hollywood-that’s what America’s really about.”
“You may have seen a picture or two I wrote.”
“Really? You wrote movies?”
“Until the producers and George Raft rewrote them. I ended up telling Hollywood where it could get off.”
“No kiddin’?”
“Yes, and Hollywood reciprocated by telling me what train I could get on.”
Hirschfeld chuckled, flicked ash into a hungry ashtray, and gulped some beer. “Yeah, but now they’ve come crawlin’ back to you. You got bestsellers to your credit, and so they wanna do business-that’s the biggest part of show business, after all, that second word.”
“Well,” Charteris said, exhaling smoke through a tight smile, “I wouldn’t say they’ve come crawling; but I am doing business with them, yes. How is it you know so much about me, if you don’t read me?”
The businessman sighed. “I asked around about you, got to admit. I was interested in who beat me to the punch.”
“Beat you to the punch?”
“There are two unattached females of the species on this big fat flying cigar, Mr. Char-teer-us… Charteris.”
“Leslie.”
“Leslie-and I’m George. Anyway, the only two girls aboard who aren’t married to some other passenger are that dried-up spinach leaf the college boys are fighting over, and that good-looking blonde you cornered the market on….” He lifted his beer glass, shook his head, smiling ruefully. “More power to you.”
“I must admit when I first saw Miss Friederich, I felt time was of the essence. You have an affinity for the well-turned ankle?”
“That’s one of the parts I’m fond of-wouldn’t say it was number one on my personal list. You see, my hobby is collecting showgirls, Mr. Charteris-Leslie. I make no apologies, and I get no complaints.”
“Now I understand your appreciation for Broadway.”
“You spend much time in America, Leslie?”
Funny thing was, “German” George Hirschfeld was the crystallization of Charteris’s cock-eyed, cliched onetime expectations about America. As a youth he’d sat in Singapore, learning of the U.S.A. from books and magazines, discovering a land largely peopled by Indians and characters in fringed buckskin jackets, a purple sage-covered landscape through which cowboys in chaps and sombreros galloped in endless chases, either part of, or one jump ahead of, a posse.
“More and more, these days,” the author admitted. “America’s where the money is-and impending war isn’t.”
“Don’t listen to the doomsayers. Politics always takes a backseat to money. You probably don’t realize you’re talkin’ to a card-carryin’ Nazi.”
“Really?”
“Joined May first three, no, four years ago. Party card number 3075295.”
Charteris had finished his first Scotch; it was clearly time to begin his second. “If you don’t mind my saying so, George, you don’t seem the, uh, Nazi type.”
Hirschfeld lifted his glass to Charteris. “And I take that as a compliment. See, back in thirty-three these little men in the Nazi party demanded seats on the Cotton Exchange and on the Board of Trade. You know the expression-if you can’t beat ’em?”
“Join them.”
Hirschfeld grinned and nodded. “I outfoxed the bastards-protected my seat by signin’ up.”
“I see.”
“Do you? Let me ask you this-do you know what a bale of cotton is?”
“You mean what it sells for?”
“Hell, price is always in a state of flux. What I mean is, ask any showgirl and she’ll tell ya: cotton and money, they’re the same damn thing. Interchangeable. A few bales of cotton-a Mercedes, a box at Longchamps, a gold ring the size of an onion. And that’s an exchange that can be made regardless of who holds political power, irrespective of political ideas and economic theories.”
“Well, no matter one’s politics, one does need cotton.”
“Damn tootin’. You wear it, pants, shirt, underwear, ties, socks, your wife even serves the evening meal on it, and as for war? You know what war means to me? Tents and uniforms and parachutes and rags to clean your goddamn guns with.”
“And to sop up blood.”
“Now, now, Leslie, you think I’m coldhearted, cold-blooded? No. I’m a businessman. What the fools of the world want to do with themselves is their concern-I just know, whatever they do, whatever they decide, they’ll still need me.”
“Is cotton trading so difficult a business to master?”
“Cotton trading isn’t just a business, Leslie-it’s an art. You see, my poppa was a cotton broker, and when I was twenty-three, he put me to work on our cotton plantation on the Brazos River. This was born and bred into me.”
“Ah.”
“A true trader can tell between good cotton and poor cotton, between rain in Mississippi and Minnesota. Right now I’m in the middle of the biggest cotton deal of my career-fifty thousand tons in one fell swoop.”
“This is American cotton?”
“That’s right. Last deal like this that came along, Washington wouldn’t sell cotton to Germany without us takin’ some surplus U.S. lard. Imagine that? Cotton dunked in lard! Not this ol’ boy. Because I talk their language. Because they know I’m an American at heart.”
An American Nazi.
“I take it you’re not Jewish, George?”
“No. My partner is.”
“And you’re not worried for him?”
“No. Economics will prevail over petty prejudices.”
“For your partner’s sake, I hope you’re right.”
“Have I offended you, Leslie?”
“No. Not at all.”
“I’m a party member because those are the waters I have to swim in.”
That was becoming a familiar refrain.
“That’s fine, George-as long as you know to keep a keen eye out for sharks.” Speaking of which. “Have you by any chance met my cabin mate, Eric Knoecher?”
“Why, yes! Charming man. I haven’t seen him today.”
If Hirschfeld was lying, he was very smooth; Charteris saw nothing in the man’s eyes, heard not a hesitation or quaver in the man’s voice, to indicate a murderer hiding his tracks. On the other hand, this was a man big enough to pitch another man out a window.
“Poor Eric’s picked up a cold,” Charteris said. “I suggested he stay in our cabin, under the sheets, and apparently he’s taken my advice.”
“Good advice. You give him one of your books to read, Leslie, to pass the time?”
“No, but perhaps I should. I’ve sometimes been told that my immortal works have brought cheer and comfort to the bedridden-but I have to admit that certain other readers have indicated I make them sick.”