company. He said in a slightly nagging way: `You hit Elaine pretty hard with all that stuff: She's a sensitive woman, very puritanical about sex and such. And incidentally she's crazy about Tommy. She won't listen to a word against him.'
`Are there words against him?'
`Not that I know about. But he has been getting into trouble lately. You know, with the car wreck and all. And now you t-tell me he's been dipping into the fleshpots.'
`I didn't say that.'
`Yeah, but I got the message. Where does the g-girl live, anyway? Somebody ought to go and question her.'
`You're full of ideas.'
He had a tin ear for tone. `Well, how about it? I'm game.'
`You're doing more good here, guarding the money. How did Hillman happen to pick you to bring the money, by the way? Are you an old family friend?'
`I guess you could say that. I've been crewing for Mr. Hillman since I was yay-high.'
He held out his hand at knee level. `Mr. Hillman is a terrific guy. Did you know he made Captain in the Navy? But he won't let anybody call him Captain except when we're at sea.
`And generous,' the young man said. `As a matter of fact, he helped me through college and got me a job at his broker's. I owe him a lot. He's treated me like a father.'
He spoke with some emotion, real but intended, like an actor's. `I'm an orphan, you might say. My family broke up when I was yay-high, and my father left town. He used to work for Mr. Hillman at the plant.'
`Do you know Tom Hillman well?'
`Sure. He's a pretty good kid. But a little too much of an egghead in my book. Which keeps him from being popular. No wonder he has his troubles.'
Leandro tapped his temple with his knuckles. `Is it true that Mr. Hillman put him in the booby - I mean, in a sanatorium?'
`Ask him yourself.'
The young man bored me. I went into the alcove and made myself a drink. Night was closing in. The garish bullfight posters on the walls had faded into darkness like long-forgotten corridor. There were shadows huddling with shadows behind the bar. I raised my glass to them in a gesture I didn't quite understand, except that there was relief in darkness and silence and whisky.
I could hear Hillman's footsteps dragging down the stairs. The telephone on the bar went off like an alarm. Hillman's descending footsteps became louder. He came trotting into the room as the telephone rang a second time. He elbowed me out of his way.
I started for the extension phone in the pantry. He called after me: `No! I'll handle this myself.'
There was command in his voice. I stood and watched him pick up the receiver, hold it to his head like a black scorpion, and listen to what it said.
`Yes, this is Mr. Hillman. Just a minute.'
He brought a business envelope and a ballpoint pen out of his inside pocket, turned on an overhead light, and got ready to write on the bar. `Go ahead.'
For about half a minute he listened and wrote. Then he said: `I think so. Aren't there steps going down to the beach?'
He listened and wrote. `Where shall I walk to?'
He turned the envelope over and wrote some more. `Yes,' he said. `I park two blocks away, at Seneca, and approach the steps on foot. I put the money under the right side of the top step. Then I go down to the beach for half an hour. Is that all?'
There was a little more. He listened to it. Finally he said: `Yes. But the deal is very much on as far as I'm concerned. I'll be there at nine sharp.'
There was a pathetic note in his voice, the note of a salesman trying to nail down an appointment with a refractory client.
`Wait,' he said, and groaned into the dead receiver.
Dick Leandro, moving like a cat, was in the alcove ahead of me. `What is it, Mr. Hillman? What's the trouble?'
`I wanted to ask about Tom. He didn't give me a chance.'
He lifted his face to the plaster ceiling. `I don't know if he's alive or dead.'
`They wouldn't kill him, would they?' the young man said. He sounded as though he'd had a first frightening hint of his own mortality.
`I don't know, Dick. I don't know.'
Hillman's head rolled from one side to the other.
The young man put his arm around his shoulder. `Take it easy now, Skipper. We'll get him back.'
Hillman poured himself a heavy slug of bourbon and tossed it down. It brought a little color into his face. I said: `Same man?'
`Yes.'
