She poured coffee, sitting beside Jake on the deep couch. A bar of sunlight struck her face and she put her hand up in a curious, defensive gesture. Jake saw then that she was tired; there were tiny lines at the corners of her eyes and mouth and the illusion of her glowing youth was shaken for an instant. She stood up quickly and adjusted the blind. Then she sat down beside Jake again.
“I hate sunlight,” she said, irritably.
“What about last night? I didn’t rush over here to hear about your phobias.”
May told the story simply. She had gone to bed at two o’clock, the maid having left. She stayed alone at night until the cleaning woman, a Mrs. Swenson, came in at six in the morning, May explained digressively. Sometime after falling asleep she was awakened by a sound on the first floor. The time was three fifteen. She came downstairs and snapped on the lights. There was no one in the house. But an attempt had been made to force a window on the side of the house. A pane of glass had been broken. Her arrival probably scared off whoever had been trying to get in.
“Well, what do you think?” she asked, smiling. “White slavers, maybe?”
“Has it occurred to you that someone may be worried about this book you’re planning?” Jake said, drily.
“Oh, don’t be ridiculous!”
“Listen: I heard Mike Francesca talking last night and I know he’s not happy. Also Dan Riordan is stewing about your book. And there are probably others. So don’t tell me I’m ridiculous.”
“How do you know about Riordan?”
“Noble told me this morning. You weren’t very nice to our client, I gather.”
May laughed and then lit a cigarette. “That was my sincerest hope,” she said. “Jake, Riordan is a type I dislike. He’s the perfect symbol of our society today, the insane blending of Geiger counters with animated commercials. He’s a mixture of man and child, at home building a million dollar plant but equally in character smashing all the furniture with a hammer.”
“I never suspected your flair for epigram,” Jake said. “But the fact that Riordan conforms to our culture is no reason to crucify him.”
“Do I have to have a reason for everything?” May said sharply. Standing, she walked to the window and her shoulders were straight and angry.
Jake remembered that she had been annoyed last night when he’d pressed her about her reasons for writing the book. He lit a cigarette and tried to guess what that reaction meant. Finally a thought occurred to him that seemed to supply the answer, but its very obviousness made him suspicious.
“Turn around and stop sulking,” he said. “I’m curious about why you’re writing this book. You don’t need money, and you aren’t yearning for literary recognition. So what’s left?”
May came back and sat beside him. She crossed her beautiful legs and leaned back comfortably, apparently in better spirits. “What difference does it make why I write the book?”
“None, I suppose,” Jake said. “But I’m curious. You’re going to hurt people, you’re going to make enemies. Why go to all that trouble to become unpopular?”
“Embarrassing a collection of charlatans and frauds is no trouble,” May said, grinning.
“They were your friends at one time.”
“Such magnificent friends they were,” May said. She crushed out her cigarette and looked down at her hands. “Let’s don’t talk about it any more.”
“Okay,” Jake said.
The door opened as he was preparing to say goodbye; the maid came in and said, “There’s a man and woman to see you, Miss Laval. A Mr. and Mrs. Riordan.”
“Well, well,” Jake said.
“Show them in,” May said, grinning at Jake.
The maid reappeared a moment later and stepped aside at the doorway. Denise Riordan walked in, looking tanned and sure of herself in voluptuous mink, but the man with her wasn’t Dan Riordan. It was his lean, sandy-haired son, Brian.
Brian grinned at Jake and walked over to shake hands. Jake introduced him and Denise to May.
“We were having coffee,” May said. “Would you like something stronger, Mrs. Riordan?”
“No, thank you. I sometimes go all the way until the afternoon without a drink,” Denise said drily.
Brian said, “I’ll take a whiskey and soda, if you don’t mind.” He put a hand to his forehead gingerly. “Last night was Homeric in a sloppy sort of way.”
Denise sat in a chair opposite the sofa, where bars of the clean morning sun highlighted the perfection of her furs. She was wearing a brown suit, with alligator pumps. There was a controlled, deliberate quality about her, Jake noticed, as she lighted a cigarette. She watched May all the time, studying her as if she were some curious phenomenon that had been brought to her attention for the first time.
Finally she said, “Dan has told me a lot about you, Miss Laval.”
May smiled gently as she poured coffee, and Jake decided she had already taken a round from Denise. Her simple gray suit and relaxed manner made Riordan’s wife, for all her polished beauty, look like a burlesque queen.
“Dear Danny,” May said. “So impulsive and...” She paused, considering a word. “So garrulous,” she concluded. “What did he tell you about me?”
The maid brought Brian his drink, and he sipped it gratefully. “Fine,” he said. “The old man told me about you, too,” he said to May. “He had a great respect for your intelligence.”
“I think ‘shrewdness’ was his word,” Denise said, and blew smoke in the air.
“You mustn’t give me too much credit,” May said blandly. “Danny stands in awe of anyone who can read without moving his lips. But now that you’ve reminded me, Danny used to tell me about you, Denise. You were in show business or something, I believe.”
“I was a dancer.”
“Yes, I remember. Weren’t you ever afraid of falling off the runway?” May said, innocently.
Brian Riordan slapped his thigh and let out a delighted shout. “Wonderful, wonderful,” he said, beaming at Denise.
Denise looked at him without expression. She put out her cigarette with a hard vicious gesture, and turned to May. “I didn’t come here to swap wisecracks,” she said.
“You haven’t, of course,” May smiled. “But go on.”
“Dan is worried over what you’re going to write about him,” Denise said, and now there were spots of angry color in her cheeks. “He didn’t send me to see you, if that’s what you’re thinking. I came on my own because he means a lot to me. Can you understand that?”
“Why, of course, my dear,” May said.
“All right. I want you to let him alone. We’ve had a good time of it so far, and I don’t want everything spoiled.”
May sipped her coffee for a moment in silence. Finally she glanced at Brian. “May I ask why you came here?”
“Not at all,” Brian said. He smiled. “I came to rephrase my step-mother’s comments, which I knew would be inadequate. Let me put it this way: I have no illusions about my father. However, there is enough of his money around to take care of everyone in his circle very nicely. I like that. So does Denise. So, I should think, would you. Do you see what I mean?”
“All too clearly,” May said.
“I like things clearly understood,” Denise said quietly and it seemed she had recovered her poise. “We’ll pay you to destroy whatever damaging records or information you have about Dan. That leaves one thing to settle: How much?”
May stood up and Jake saw that she was angry, beautifully and completely angry.
She said to Brian, “You came here to re-phrase your step-mother’s comments. You bungled the job. This overdressed creature,” she said, swinging about suddenly and pointing at Denise, “who, I might add, blackmailed your father into marriage by feigning a maidenly hysteria at the prospects of a pregnancy which, after the wedding, turned out to be a false alarm, has about as much understanding of my work as a grub in a bag. She’s worried about her meal ticket. She’d have to go back to doing the grinds if anything happened to Dan Riordan.”