feel them hit the Gibbs-Stewart spoons or the live sardines, whichever you were using, leaping end over end and then turning and running toward the boat, broad tails lashing the water to foam, then sounding to take the line out again; you could play them, fight them, pit raw stamina against raw stamina, know the exhilaration of landing them, of winning, of taking them with their shining bluish-silver bellies onto the ice. There was no time for thinking, then, no time for dwelling on a past that refuses to stay buried. But in the winter...
Conradin drained the balance of the amber fluid. He debated having another drink; he had had four already, and he could feel them just a little. It was barely noon, and Trina would have lunch for him before long, in the big white house overlooking the bay from the northern flat. Still, there was time for one more; there was always time for one more.
He glanced toward Sal, the bartender, who now had his face very close to Dolly’s, whispering something in her ear. She giggled girlishly, her face reddening. Conradin said, “How about a refill.”
Grudgingly, Sal moved away from the girl to pour two more fingers of bourbon into the empty glass. When he took Conradin’s dollar, his eyes said that anybody who drank ten fingers of sour mash before noon was a goddamned lush, or something.
Trina might have agreed with that, in a way; Trina said he drank too much, and maybe she was right. But only in the winter, he thought, only when there was the time for thinking.
Silently, he raised the glass to his lips.
When Larry Drexel brought his sleek jade-green Porsche 912 SL to a stop in the driveway of his tile-roofed hacienda-style home in Los Gatos, he saw that Fran Varner was waiting for him on the rear patio. She was propped up on one of the chaise longues near the stone fountain in the patio’s center, reading a paperback book. A bulky- knit sweater was draped over her shoulders, and the short sky-blue skirt she wore had hiked up to expose her slender legs to a pale November sun which danced intermittently behind heavy clouds. Her rich seal-brown hair was carefully combed, curved under at the nape of her neck, the way he liked her to wear it.
Drexel smiled a little as he set the parking brake, thinking that if he had somehow been crazy enough to marry her, as she had been after him for six months to do, then she would be greeting him when he came home from El Peyote—wrapped in a shapeless housecoat, with her hair up in rollers. This way, with the arrangement, she was always at her best for him—even when they were in bed, especially then, putting that cream sachet he liked in all the secret little places and sleeping in the nude instead of in the old flannel nightgown he knew she wore at her apartment.
Dark-haired and dark-complected, looking somewhat like the actor Ricardo Montalban though he was not of Latin descent, Drexel stepped onto the flagstone walk that paralleled the house. He moved with almost feline fluidity inside his two-hundred-dollar sharkskin suit, following the path past the bottle brush and barrel cactus in the landscaped borders. When he reached the patio, his eyes—black, expressive, sharply watchful—moved approvingly over the rows of
Fran stood as he approached, smoothing her skirt and touching her hair with that almost self-conscious movement women seem to affect. “Hi, honey,” she said, kissing him.
He held her for a moment, his hand moving in a familiar way along the gentle curve of her hip. “A little cool for the patio, isn’t it?”
“Well, it got to be stuffy inside.”
“Been waiting long?”
“Since noon.”
“Any mail?”
“A couple of things,” she said. “I put them on the hall table.” She slipped her arm about his waist. “Have you eaten lunch yet? It’s past one.
“Juano brought me a sandwich,” Drexel said. “Listen, Fran, you’re going to have to work half a day tomorrow, noon till five. Elena’s brother is getting married in Watsonville.”
“Okay.” She sighed wistfully. “It must be a lovely feeling to know you’re about to become a bride or a groom in twenty-four hours.”
“You’re not going to start in again, are you?”
“No, honey. I was just thinking about Elena’s brother.”
“Sure,” Drexel said. “Come on, let’s go inside and do it on the kitchen table.”
She blushed crimson, poking his arm. He grinned. This kid was something else, that was a fact. She couldn’t get enough of it, Christ she wore him out sometimes, but when you came right out and talked about it in the light of day, without the sun having set and the shades having been drawn and the lamp having been put out, she acted as if she’d never before seen or heard of a hard-on. Maybe it was that blushing schoolgirl innocence that had made him keep her around as long as he had; it was like making it with a virgin every time.
They entered the house through the glass-enclosed archway off the patio, stepping into the parlor. It was dark in there, shadowed and with very little color. The furniture was old and heavy and ponderous and expensive. An imposing scrolled desk sat on one side of the room, and on the rear wall, in close proximity to one another, were a religious mural and an oblong painting of a nude girl on blue velvet; a few people had been shocked by the impact of
He went to the hall table and retrieved his mail. There was a telephone bill, and an advertisement for some real estate development called Whispering Echoes in Southern Oregon, and a two-week-old copy of the Philadelphia
Fran said, “Why do you take newspapers from all over the country? Have you got relatives or something in Illinois and North Dakota and Pennsylvania?”
If only you knew, sweets. But he said, “No, it’s just a hobby. Some people collect stamps or coins or old rubbers. I collect newspapers.”
She blushed again. “Want some coffee?”
“Fine.”
She disappeared into the kitchen. Drexel lighted one of the thin black cheroots he affected, and spread the paper open. He began to scan it with practiced expertise, chuckling a little at Fran’s reaction to the idea of anyone collecting old rubbers. But the smile left his face abruptly when his eyes fell on the headline in the upper left-hand corner of Page Four: EUGENE BEAUCHAMP DIES IN PRIVATE PLANE CRASH. Holy Jesus, he thought. He put out the cheroot and read the accompanying story carefully; then he refolded the paper and laid it on the cushion beside him.
He stood and began to pace the muted Navajo rug, his mind working coldly, methodically, weighing and considering.
Fran came in a moment later. “Honey, there isn’t any cream. Do you want—?”
“Shut up,” Drexel said without looking at her. “Shut the hell up.”
“But I—”
“I told you to shut up. Get out of here. I’ll call you later.”
“Larry, what is it? What’s the matter?”
“Damn you, do what I say!”
A mixture of hurt and confusion made liquid form at the corners of her amber-colored eyes. She stood rigidly for almost ten seconds, and then she said, “All right, then!” and ran toward the hallway that led to the front entrance. The sound of the thick, arched wooden door slamming behind her caused faint reverberations to drift through the dark house.
Drexel continued to pace, still weighing, still considering. Finally, having made a decision, he went to the scrolled desk and unlocked the bottom drawer on the right side with a key from his pocket case. Inside, there was an old ersatz-leather scrapbook and a smaller, clothbound address book. He took the address book out and opened it and studied the facing page.
After a moment, he turned and went to where the telephone sat on an oddly shaped driftwood stand near the
