“Sure you will. How much of it will be true?”
“None of it,” I said.
“That’s what I thought.” He stared into his hands a second, then wiped them across his face. “Dog ... no shit now, you in some kind of trouble?”
“Just staying alive is trouble,” I told him. I folded my coat across a chair and stripped off my shirt. His eyes saw the scars and went wide, his tongue flicking out nervously to lick his lips.
“Dog,” he said, “you know this apartment is being watched?”
“Who says?”
“The doorman, Danny ... he’s a retired cop. He spotted them this afternoon. I heard him telling Clarence when they changed shifts. Look, nobody ever cased this building before, even when the whores had an operation going in the penthouse. These guys aren’t cops, either.”
I walked over to the phone, picked up the receiver and dialed a number. When a voice I recognized answered, I said in Spanish, “Chet, you have a tail on me?”
Chet Linden had just awakened, but was totally alert. “Uh-huh,” he said. “We decided to keep you under surveillance until we’re sure. Have a good time with that pretty blonde, Dog? If you want any information on her I can give it to you.”
“Friend, you wouldn’t want to aggravate me, would you?” I asked him.
“Certainly not, Dog.”
“Then cancel the tails. The next time out I’ll simply lose them. If I pick them up the second time I’ll lean on them a little. If it happens for the third time I’ll hurt them good and come after you.”
“You change colors fast, Dog.”
“Let’s keep it pleasant, Chet. This isn’t amateur night. You should know better. Now, do you lift the tails?”
After a moment he said, “What’s your itinerary?”
“Tomorrow a meeting with the family. Then back here, I suppose. I’ll be glad to let you know if you don’t deactivate this number.”
“You wouldn’t screw me, would you, Dog?”
“Chet, if I did you’d never know it.”
“Okay. We’ll keep this line monitored.”
“Chet ...”
“Yes, Dog?”
“What are you leaving out?”
He chuckled, and I could picture his face wrinkled in a grin. “Still the shrewdie, aren’t you?”
“Let’s have it, kid.”
“There’s a rumble on in the Paris area. Some of your former associates are trying to locate you. Pretty soon they’ll tumble and pick up your trail.”
“Hell, I’m not hard to find. I used my own passport and came back the way I went out.”
I heard that same laugh again. “That’s what fooled them. They never figured that angle. It looked like a beautiful decoy.”
“So tell them where I am.”
“Yeah, sure. Take it easy, Dog. You know conditions in this racket.”
I grunted and hung up. Lee had an uneasy expression on his face, not able to tell what it was all about. Finally he said, “Just answer me one thing, Dog. Do I have anything to worry about?”
It was too good a question to resist. “Hardly a thing,” I told him.
He looked a little pale around the mouth, swallowed hard and shuffled off to his bedroom. “Hardly.” he said.
“Oh, boy!”
The three of us sat in the back compartment of the limousine. Not the back seat. The compartment. When it came to practical luxuries, Leyland Hunter hadn’t been niggardly with himself. He perched in his own specially made swivel chair, idly rocking, grinning at Sharon and me like a kid showing off a new toy.
“Like it?”
“I’ve misjudged you, mighty Hunter,” I said.
He tapped the back of the partition beside him. “Color TV. The bar comes out of the wall on your side. Well stocked, I might add. Radio, freezer compartment for Ice...”
“If this back seat makes up into a bed you’d have a nice rolling bordello, friend.” Sharon’s elbow gave me a nudge and I knew she was trying to suppress a smile. “Don’t laugh, kid,” I told her. “The old goat can still deliver. In fact, he’s thinking of taking up the sport seriously.”
Sharon said generously, “I believe it.”
Leyland’s eyes twinkled. “He’s right, you know. Of course, it will be on a carefully calculated ... and timed basis. My age doesn’t allow for too much exuberance these days.”
“Men,” she laughed.
“And now,” Leyland answered her, “let’s talk about women. Specifically you. Dog here has told me about your forays onto Mondo Beach. Is it possible I knew your father? Was he Larry Cass?”
Sharon’s forehead wrinkled into a puzzled frown. “Why .. yes.”
“Ah, then I did know him. Quite well, in fact. At one time he was in charge of new projects at Barrin. A valuable man. Too bad they lost him.” “He couldn’t stand the new management,” Sharon told him bluntly.
“And I can’t blame him,” Leyland said. “The era of big business came to a standstill when the giants died off. Industry has succumbed to the computer age. The incompetents move in and make up for their inadequacies by the sheer weight of numbers, college degrees and inherited wealth. Nobody pounds a table anymore or walks down in shirt sleeves for a head-on clash with a foreman who screwed things up. Cameron Barrin was a giant. It was a shame to see him go too.” The faraway look left his eyes and he glanced at Sharon with a little smile. “I remember Larry having a daughter. She went fishing with us one day.”
“In a boat?”
“Yes, a rowboat. We caught flounders. You didn’t want to put live minnows on the hook ...”
“And cried! Yes, I remember that. But you were so ... I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. It was many years ago. From the way it looks I’ll be having more fun now than I did when I was young. Incidentally, pretty little lady, I hope you have no designs on my unscrupulous friend here. There are better prospects in the world, I’m sure.”
“I’m engaged, Mr. Hunter.”
“That is no excuse. Would your fiance approve of your being on a junket with someone like him ... even for a day?”
“I doubt if he’d object. He’s very broad-minded.”
“So is Dog. That’s what I had reference to.”
“Aren’t you an acceptable chaperon?”
“Not anymore, little one. Dog has seen to that. I’ve become quite lecherous.”
“In that case, he’ll just have to protect me.”
.“In that case, the cure will be worse than the disease,” Leyland said.
“Well, like the man said, ‘When rape is inevitable, lie back and enjoy it.’ ”
I let out a low growl and said, “You know, I really don’t have to ride back here with you two sex maniacs. There’s an empty seat beside the driver.”
Hunter gave me that funny look again. “I wish I were young enough to take you up on that, Dog.”
“Someday you might try,” I told him. “Then I’m going to ask how you got that cauliflower ear.”
“It’s quite a story,” he said.
Three generations ago Grand Sita had been a distant retreat, a manufactured barony hand tailored to Cameron Barrin’s personal preferences. The rolling hills that covered six hundred acres surrounded a mansion that
