Carnal Hours

“What?” Higgs asked.

De Marigny’s attention was caught, too; he stood.

“You fellas happen to notice the background of that Chinese screen? It’s a wood-grain pattern-whorls, sort of. Now look at this print…look at the background….”

Higgs took the photo. “It doesn’t resemble a wood-grain pattern at all.”

“It’s more like a pattern of small circles,” de Marigny said.

“What does this mean?” Higgs asked, puzzled.

The presentation I was about to make wasn’t as elaborate as Barker’s, but it was every bit as impressive.

“It means,” I said, “that this print did not come from that screen.”

19

So that’s the infamous Axel Wenner-Gren,” I said. Tall, white-haired, hefty, blandly handsome, with a pink complexion, apple cheeks and a small white smile, the blacklisted billionaire stood leaning against an armchair, gazing at me with pale blue eyes that radiated a cold intensity.

“Yes, that’s the notorious Nazi sympathizer you’ve been hearing about,” Di affirmed in her wryly British way.

The huge oil painting in its glorious gilt frame hung over the fireplace in a round living room otherwise decorated with primitive artifacts of some kind.

Di saw me looking at the grotesque clay masks, garishly decorated pottery and gold-and-turquoise ceremonial daggers, displayed on walls and on shelves, and said, “Inca.”

“Dinka Doo,” I said.

That made her laugh; she put a hand on my shoulder, shook her head, making her shoulder-length silver- blond hair shimmer. “No, seriously. My employer’s avocation is anthropology. He’s made countless expeditions, to the remotest digs in Peru. Simply everything you see here is museum-quality.”

She sure didn’t look like she belonged in a museum: white silk gown with shoulder pads and silver-sequins collar that plunged to the wide matching silver-sequins waistband. She was ready for this evening’s party-a dance to be held here at Shangri La, in my secret honor.

Our absent Swedish host’s estate on Hog Island was a sprawling white limestone hacienda affair set against a lush tropical garden, with enough rooms to give the British Colonial a run for its money. The place was filled with antique mahogany furniture and polished silver pieces, trays, bowls, plaques, platters; the dining room I glimpsed must have been sixty feet long with a twenty-foot mahogany table.

Right now a lot of the mansion was closed off, however; as Di had explained, Wenner-Gren’s staff of thirty servants had been cut to a meager seven, when he had been forced to relocate to Cuernavaca for the duration.

“That’s one of the reasons why we’ll have such a grand turnout,” Di had told me earlier, as she’d helped me settle in at my guest cottage, which was a single room but larger than my entire suite at the Morrison back home.

“Why’s that?”

“Well, I’ve thrown several parties since Axel’s departure, but all of them were at hotels in town. This is the first opportunity Nassau society has had to see Shangri La, post-blacklist. Their curiosity will bring them around.”

My curiosity, as we stood in the living room under the oil portrait’s cool watchful gaze, was piqued about something else.

“Never mind the Incas,” I said. “What’s the story on the elephants?”

With the exception of those rooms given to primitive Peruvian artifacts, it seemed everywhere you looked was a statue of an elephant-from tiny as a beetle to big as a horse, these gold, silver, ivory and wooden pachyderms ruled the estate, trunks held high.

“It’s the Electrolux symbol, silly,” she said. “My boss made his fortune by inventing, and selling, vacuum cleaners, and those elephants signal his triumph.”

“Oh.”

“A lot of them came from the estate of Florenz Ziegfeld-he collected elephants, too.”

“Ah.”

“You notice their trunks are erect, every single one of them? Can you guess why?”

“They’re glad to see me?”

Her smile settled on one side of her pretty face. “No, you fool. An elephant with its trunk down is a symbol of bad luck.”

“So is an elephant with his foot on your head.”

She took my arm and sat me down on one of two facing, curved couches that fronted the unlighted fireplace. In the Bahamas I would imagine you wouldn’t light it often.

“You’re in a smart-alecky mood,” she said, almost scolding me; she looped her arm, bare in the white silk gown, in mine. She had been treating me like an old friend-or even, old lover-since I’d gotten here. Complaining would have seemed ungracious.

“It’s just that I feel awkward in a monkey suit,” I said.

I was wearing a black tuxedo that I’d rented from Lunn, the tailor kitty-corner from the B.C.

“Balls! You look elegant, Heller.”

“I’m going to be mistaken for a waiter.”

“I don’t think so. My waiters are too distinctively attired.”

“Oh, yeah-I saw that. Why in hell is the help wearing those Navy uniforms? And frankly, all those blond boys do look like Nazis. Don’t you have any native help?”

She was shaking her head, but smiling. “You are bad. Of course we have native help-the boy who brought you over in the launch, for one. But our house staff wears the same uniforms as on the Southern Cross.”

“Oh-your boss’ yacht.”

“Exactly. And those blond boys are five Swedes and a Finn.”

“One of my favorite vaudeville acts.”

“Bad,” she said, laughing. “I don’t know why I’m helping you.”

“Actually, neither do I-but I’m glad you are.”

She fixed her Bahama blues on me, serious now. “Nancy’s just about my best friend in the world. I’d do anything to help her get her Freddie back.”

“A true romantic.”

“I am. Are you, Nate?”

“A true romantic? I don’t know.”

“What are you, then?”

“A true detective,” I smiled.

“Well, you’ll get your chance tonight,” she said, looking away from me, leaning forward to a coffee table and popping open a gold cigarette box on the top of which an elephant reared-trunk erect.

“Thanks to you, Di. I do appreciate it. Very kind of you.”

She shrugged, as she lighted her smoke with an elephant lighter, flame bursting from its trunk. Its erect trunk.

I shook my head. “If your friends figure out why you’ve invited them here-that is, to be grilled by yours truly- you may drop off the social register with a thud.”

“Heller,” she said, and despite the blood-red bruised lips her grin was almost mannish, “if you have enough money, you may behave as insufferably as you wish.”

“Hell-I’ve managed that without the money.”

She leaned her head back, blew smoke out through her mouth and nose, and chuckled.