'He a medium-sized man, about five foot nine, not heavy, but compactly built, and quick in his movements. Age about thirty. He has black hair, jet black, growing fairly low on his forehead. He wears it combed straight back. His complexion is dark, almost Indian dark. He has a long nose with noticeably flaring nostrils. He speaks with a French accent, uses a lot of French, and claims to be a French political refugee.'
She had been listening and nodding in confirmation, but my last sentence confused her.'
What was that?'
'He says he's a Frenchman who can't live in France because he doesn't get along with de Gaulle.'
'Oh.' But she still didn't understand.
'De Gaulle is the President of France.'
'I know that, stupid. You think I don't listen to the news?'
She glanced at the radio, which was playing rock.
'Do you mind if I turn that thing off?'' I said.
'You can turn it down a little, but leave it on. I hate the sound of the wind.'
I turned the music not too far down. Based on such minor co-operations an intimacy was growing between us, as if the room had provided us with built-in roles. But it was a chancy intimacy, whose rhythm was an alternating current of fear and doubt. She asked me sensible questions and seemed to believe my answers. But her eyes weren't certain that I wouldn't kill her.
'Do you know who he is?' I said.
'I think so, and he isn't any Frenchman.'
'What is he?'
'I'll tell you,' she said crisply, as if she had decided on her story. 'I happened to be the confidential secretary to a very important businessman in the Southland. This man who calls himself Martel wormed his way into my employer's good graces and wound up as his executive assistant.'
'Where does he come from?'
'I wouldn't know that,' she said. 'He's some kind of South American, I think. My employer made the mistake of giving him the combination to the safe. I warned him not to. So what happens? Mr. so-called Martel takes off with a fortune in bearer bonds, which Harry and me - and I - are trying to get back.'
'Why not the police?'
She was ready with an answer. 'My employer has a soft spot in his head for Mr. Martel. Also our business is highly confidential.'
'What is your business?'
'I'm not in a position to reveal that,' she said carefully. She shifted the position of her body, as if its substantiality and symmetry might divert my attention from the ferry-built flimsiness of her story. 'My employer has sworn me to secrecy.'
'What's his name?'
'You'd know his name if I could tell it to you. He's a very important and well-heeled man in certain circles.'
'The lower circles of hell?'
'What?' But I think she heard me.
She pouted, and frowned a little with her thin painted-on eyebrows. She didn't frown very hard because that gave girls wrinkles and besides I might kill her and she didn't want to die with a frown on her lovely face.
'If you'd take me seriously and help to get the money back, etcetera, I'm sure my employer would reward you handsomely. I'd be grateful, too.'
'I'd have to know more about it,' such as what she meant by 'etcetera.'
'Sure,' she said. 'Naturally. Are you going to help me?'
'We'll see. Have you given up on Harry?'
'I didn't say that.'
But her green eyes were surprised. I think in her concentration on me and on her story - her late late movie story - she had forgotten Harry. The room provided roles for only two people. I guessed what mine would be if we stayed in it much longer. Her body was purring at me like a tiger, the proverbial kind of tiger which is dangerous to mount and even more dangerous to dismount.
'I'm worried about Harry,' I said. 'Have you seen him today?'
She shook her head. Her hair flared out like fire. The wind, momentarily louder than the music, was whining at the window.
'He was talking about buying a gun this afternoon.'
'What for?'
Gun talk seemed to frighten her basically.
'To use on Martel, I think. Martel gave him a bad time today. He ran him off with a gun and smashed his camera.'
I produced the flattened camera from my pocket.
She brooded over it. 'That camera cost me a hundred and fifty bucks. I ought to've known better than to trust Harry.'
'Maybe the picture bit wasn't a good idea. Martel is allergic to cameras. What's his real name, by the way?'
'I don't know. He keeps using different names.'
She changed the subject back to Harry: 'You think Harry got hurt or something?'
'It's possible. His car is parked on the boulevard about half a mile from here, with the key in it.'
She jerked herself upright. 'Why didn't you say so?'
'I just did.'
'Show it to me.'
She picked up her radio and bag, got her coat out of the closet, and put it on while we were waiting for the elevator. It may have been the noise of the elevator, or the radio, or some perpetual sign, which her body sent out, but when she crossed the lobby with me all three of the sharpies were watching from the curtained doorway of the Samoa Room.
We drove along the boulevard. The rising wind buffeted the car. Out to sea I could make out occasional whitecaps. Faintly phosphorescent, they rose up like ghosts which were quickly swept backward into darkness. The woman peered out along the empty beaches. She turned up the window on the ocean side.
'Are you okay, Mrs. Hendricks?'
'I'm okay, but please don't call me that.'
She sounded younger and less sure of herself. 'It makes me feel like a phony. Call me Kitty if you like.'
'You're not Mrs. Hendricks?'
'Legally I am, but we haven't been living together. Harry would have divorced me long ago, only he's a practicing Catholic. And he has this crazy hope that I'll come back to him.'
She leaned forward to peer out of my side. 'We've gone a half a mile. Where is his car?'
I couldn't find it. She began to get nervous. I turned my car and found the hole in the hedge and the fire behind it, which had burned down rapidly to a few breathing coals among the ashes. The three wine-drinkers had blown, leaving their empty jug and the smell of spilled wine.
Kitty Hendricks called to me: 'What are you doing? Is Harry there?'
'No.'
She came through the hedge. She still had her bag and radio looped over the wrist, and the radio was singing like a semidetached personality. She looked around her, hugging her coat to her body. There was nothing to see but the dying fire, the railroad tracks gleaming dully in the starlight, the trampled unlovely earth.
'Holy Mother,' Kitty said, 'It hasn't changed in twenty years.'
'You know this place?'
'I ought to. I was born about two blocks from here. On the other side of the tracks.'
She added wryly: 'Both sides of the tracks are the wrong side if you live close enough to them. The trains used to rattle the dishes in my mother's kitchen.'
She peered across the dark railroad yard. 'For all I know my mother is still living there.'
'We could go and see.'
