A Key to the Suite (10 page)

“In some ways, John, you are a mean son of a bitch.”

Camplin grinned. “I’m doing a mean job, thanks to you. Hubbard would understand exactly what I’m doing. This is a hardness test, Harry. That would be right up his alley. A piece of bar stock can look just fine. But you don’t know what you’ve really got until you take it into the testing lab and see what it reads on the scale. The world is full of sweet bright young men, Harry. With big warm hearts. Group-adjusted. Group-oriented. Christ, we recruit them in carload lots. But if you ask any one of them to fire another, he’ll turn ashen and collapse. I sent Hubbard to Seattle to see if he had any ideas about tightening up that warehouse operation. A week later he sent me a wire from Los Angeles. It said, ‘Close that crummy mess up there and consolidate here. Figures follow.’ I wired him back. ‘Close it yourself.’ He wired me. ‘Send me a lawyer.’ Two weeks later he came wandering in, grinning, and told me that he’d discovered the secret of going without sleep. Just never get within forty feet of a bed. Accounting says the move will save us upwards of a hundred thousand a year, even including the additional freight charges.”

“Isn’t that enough? Did you have to con him on Mulaney?”

“I don’t want to be almost positive. I have to be dead certain.”

At ten-thirty Cory Barlund was drinking black coffee with Alma Bender in the paneled kitchen of Alma’s apartment. Had Alma’s hair not been dyed a dark and rather poisonous red, she could have posed for a granny’s baked-goods advertisement.

“Pete Stormlander will have the letter ready for me to pick it up,” Cory said. “Big problem. If I asked him, he’d type up his own suicide note for me and bring it across town on his hands and knees. Through traffic. He sickens me.”

“Cory, dear, you are in your usual happy frame of mind. And your lovely eyes are just a little puffy.”

“Somehow I didn’t sleep very well. What I should have done was keep on walking right out that door when that Frick animal started panting and drooling.”

“Freddy isn’t that bad, sweetie. But you don’t think you’ll have any trouble with the Hubbard fellow?”

“He’s a sitting duck, Alma.” Cory looked at the older woman pleadingly. “But he’s such a
good
man. Such a damned
good
man!”

“But this saint will climb into the sack quick enough, won’t he?”

“Yes. But I’ve got to provide all the rationalizations, and all the little accidents, and take it all off his shoulders. There’s a strong physical attraction. Stronger than … anything in a long time. Damn it, I want to be girly about it. You know? Sweet and sighing and submissive, and let myself cry if I want to.”

“Wouldn’t that just make it worse?”

Cory sighed. “Probably. So he’ll get the complete deluxe deal. But one little bonus I’m giving myself, Alma. No faking. I’m going to get just as much as I give and maybe more.”

“Which, as you damn well know, is stupid and dangerous. You act half in love with this convention clown already, sweetie. Do you want to make it worse? The smart whore hates every customer, and that’s all he is, you know.”

“He doesn’t know it.”

“But he’ll guess it sooner or later.”

“I hope to God I never have to see his face after he does.”

“Cory, baby, how come you have such a talent for getting all screwed up?”

“Screwed, at least.”

“Don’t talk smart and dirty in my home, thank you.”

“I’m sorry, Alma. I’m just upset about this. Sometimes, lately, I think I’d have been better off if you … hadn’t happened along when you did.”

“That’s a hell of a thing to say to me!”

“I shouldn’t have said it.”

“You’re more problem than any other four girls I’ve ever worked with, sweetie. If I had better sense, and if I didn’t like you, I’d have let you go it alone a long time ago. And with your judgment, you’d be working the five o’clock in a cocktail bar by now, shook down by every cop in the precinct and clapped up three times a year and ready to go off a causeway bridge. And such a hell of a waste that would be.” She grasped Cory’s hand. “Don’t try to dream, sweetie. Don’t try to sell yourself that heart-of-gold routine. You got a heart like a stone or you wouldn’t be in the trade. Take your fun if you have to, but I’d say you’d be better off without it. Just keep in mind that this saintly man is hot to put it into a girl the second day he knows her, and he and Freddy Frick are a lot more alike than they are different from each other. And remember you’ll be doing a favor for an old friend of mine.”

“Mulaney seems to be a slob.”

“Of
course
he is, sweetie. Of
course
he is. But he’s been generous to me, and I kind of like the old bastard. So you just drive this Hubbard half out of his mind, and then make a jackass of him in public.” She lowered her voice. “You know what I’ve always told you. Pretend he’s Ralph.”

Cory snatched her hand away, closed her eyes, swallowed
hard and swayed in the chair for a moment. Her color returned and she opened eyes like blue porcelain, a deep, hard, inhuman blue. “I’ll spoil him,” she whispered. “Ah, I’ll spoil him.”

“Don’t look at him like that, Cory. It even scares me.”

Cory stood up. “Off to do battle. You’re right, of course. There’s no dreams, no heart of gold. Just a stone heart, and whore tricks, and some more lies, and what’s between the legs.”

“You’d be more content if you’d do less thinking.”

“Don’t you think I try to stop? I’ve got to go.”

“One thing, Cory. You made a bargain. You’ll go through with it all the way, not just half of it.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“I wouldn’t want to have to send Ernie around to straighten you out again. I like you best of all, sweetie, and it hurt me to have to do that to you.”

“I said you don’t have to worry about it!”

“Don’t shout at me in my own home, darlin’. Now be off, and don’t do all that thinking.”

Cory paused in the doorway. “What about … if after this I decide to quit?”

“But you won’t.”

“I might, Alma. I really might.”

“Like you’ve done before? How many times? Six? Eight? Stop wasting your pretty breath, girl. You like things nice. You like them too well. And what other way is there to get them so easy? You’re lazy, girl. Whore lazy. Talking of quitting is just another dream. You’ll make your good living on your back until your looks are too far gone, and you’ll never stop thinking you’re a little too good for this kind of work. But just what the hell else are you good for? You better go now because at the moment I’m getting a little sick of you.”

“Bitch!” Cory whispered. “Fat mean bitch!”

Alma got up and lumbered toward her, and Cory fled. Alma went back to her coffee, smiling mildly. She wished she had the talent to write a book on the trade. Case histories, sort of. Cory would be Miss C—. The past four-year history would show that quite often a sensitive, intelligent girl who is determined to destroy herself can be made into a profitable property. The self-hate and the man-hate has to be put to work. They’re hard to handle; but they command a good price. And they seem to last a lot longer at top rates. The dim, placid, little sluts, they control easy, but they go downhill fast, and no matter how fresh and sweet they look when you start them out, they’re usually ready to be wholesaled off in no more than three years, that is, if you want to keep a class clientele.

At the Sultana the executive offices were located on the mezzanine floor and in an office area behind the registration section. However, the public relations director and his small staff were quartered in an office suite at ground level at the far end of the Convention Hall. There were three offices, a large workroom, a dark room, a printing and duplication room, and a private, luxurious bar-lounge setup. The offices and work areas looked out toward the pool and cabana area, and even, if one stood in exactly the right place in the largest office, toward the ocean, visible as a narrow vertical ribbon of blue.

The private bar was the invention of Alan Amory, the director of public relations for the Sultana. It was called the Hideaway Club. Drinks were on the house, but the service hours were limited—noon to one
P.M.
, five to seven. All advance registrations and sudden checkins were scrupulously monitored by
the PR staff and checked against Celebrity Service, Who’s Who and Dun and Bradstreet. A selected few were issued metallic membership cards. Amory had also done quite well by quietly delivering cards to extra-special celebrities who unfortunately happened to register at other hotels in the area. The name of the club, plus the “members only” designation, often awakened sufficient curiosity.

At eleven o’clock Alan Amory stood alone in his office in a mood of listless depression. He was a willowy man in rust-colored silk slacks, a pale yellow Italian sports shirt. He had a bland oval face, thinning mousy hair, and some rather precious mannerisms. Yet, over the years, all those female employees who had achieved a false sense of security by privately classifying him as queer had, sooner or later, become acquainted with the enormity of their error.

The sounds of business which came from the workroom did not hearten him. He knew it was all dog work, standard releases to hick papers regarding the local activities of one of their prominent citizens, heavily larded with Sultana promotion, and complete with the glossies taken by his staff photographer. The whippety-click of the high-speed mimeos seemed joyless also, signifying only that he was sending gimmicked copy to a thousand indifferent city desks on what he had analyzed to be a thirty-two to one chance of use. The hotel was jammed with nobodies. They’d cut the nut on entertainment in the public rooms of the hotel. There wasn’t even anybody worth a Hideaway card, and nobody due that was worth one for the next ten days. Lately, he thought, it’s like trying to puff a body and fender shop. Maybe turning down Vegas was the worst mistake of my life.

He had once been a radio tenor, of some small romantic
vogue, and when the voice had started to go, he had begun managing a few people, starting with an ex-wife. In the early fifties he had learned that if he developed somebody hot he’d always be squeezed out by MCA or Morris, so he had moved over into the night club thing and then into hotels.

Rick DiLarra came bustling into Amory’s office. DiLarra was a swart, bursting, beetling man, full of a conviction and enthusiasm that was almost plausible. He was the convention director for the Sultana.

Amory turned slowly and looked at DiLarra with mild distaste. “Where were you, sweets?”

“Honest to God, no more than three minutes ago I heard you wanted to ask me something, Alan. I was trying to get the lighting straightened out for …”

“What the hell have you got over there, sweets? Buggy-whip dealers?” Amory drifted over to his flight-deck desk and sagged into a plum leather armchair.

DiLarra perched a chunky hip on a faraway curve of the desk and said earnestly, “No, this is one of the better ones, honest to God. A hell of a lot better than that last bunch. It’s a heavy industry crowd, and every cash drawer in the place is getting well. Is something wrong?”

“I got a call from a clown I know slightly. Stormlander his name is. He publishes a thing called Tropical Life. We make a due-bill deal on a small ad once in a while, I understand. He called just as a matter of courtesy, to say a broad will be in the house doing a spec coverage on one of the outfits in your convention. Something called AGM. That mean anything, sweets?”

“Honest to Christ, Alan, if I started worrying about what initials mean, I’d go nuts.”

“Stormlander says give her cooperation if she asks for it, and
if it’s something he can use, we’ll get tear sheets in advance. I thought you’d maybe know something about it.”

“I haven’t heard a thing.”

“I wrote the girl’s name down here. Cory Barlund. That mean anything either?”

“Absolutely nothing, Alan.”

“I thought I’d better check it out with you before I waste time checking it a different way.”

“Some kind of trouble?”

“I don’t know. A small bell rings. I’ve got the idea she was lined up out of the Hideaway a couple or three times in the past couple of years. But I can’t remember who it was through. I think she’s a little high-style piece for the top dollar, and maybe part time rather than regular—that is if it’s the same kid. Rest easy a minute while I check.”

Alan Amory used his direct line, equipped with a mouthpiece which made it impossible for DiLarra to hear a word he said. After Amory got his party he talked for about a minute and a half and then hung up.

“I was right, but I’m not as worried as I was.”

“Why should you have been worried anyway?”

“After all these years you’re still innocent? A call girl comes into the house all set so she can pretend to be something else, all cleared with me in case somebody gets suspicious, and you should know right away somebody is being set up. It could be my business, Rick. There’s money in that herd of nothings you’ve got over there. So suppose it was a high-level badger game bit? And the sucker doesn’t stand still for it. And it becomes a police and newspaper thing. That would be wonderful public relations, sweets.”

“So why aren’t you worried so much now?”

“Because this chick is on Alma Bender’s list, and that’s a solid guarantee of no trouble. No blackmail, no disappointments. When we got anybody here who could be done a lot of damage and who’ll go for the rate, I play it safe and use Bender, and there’s never been a kick yet. Hey, sweets! Now I know how it is I remember the name of that chick. Cory Barlund. Sure. Remember the honorable congressman from Indiana, over a year ago? The youngish one hiding out down here so he wouldn’t have to testify and embarrass a friend?”

“Almost two years ago.”

“Nice guy. He got lonesome. I used Bender and got him that chick. He flew down here I swear five times trying to get her again, by name, but she never would make the return match, and every time he got a no, I thought he’d break into tears. That’s why the name was familiar. Otherwise, who the hell would remember their names? And why? I feel safe, but I think I’ll check it with Alma Bender anyhow, just to be sure Barlund isn’t going this one alone.”