Cutter and Bone (21 page)

Opening the heavy glass and stainless steel front door, he entered the glacial air of the reception room. And nothing was as he had expected. The man who bought ready-made suits off the rack at his own discount houses showed no similar lack of taste here. The decor was contemporary, but so beautifully and expensively done that the room had an almost antique ambience, dark and quiet and restful despite the huge nonobjective paintings and art objects and the indirect lighting and sleek modern furniture, most of it made of leather and brushed wood. And it was an ambience the receptionist only reinforced, no teenybopper pretending at hauteur but a gray-haired woman of fifty or so, well groomed and intelligent-looking, with a soft voice and a trace of English accent. At the moment she was with a young man who would have looked more at home at Hollywood and Vine, with his long hair and suede jacket and cord slacks and Dingo boots. But he did have a briefcase, and also some sort of problem, which gave Bone time to wander over to a wall display across the room. It was very handsomely done, wood-framed and discreet, obviously the interior decorator’s solution to one of his client’s more gauche demands. For it was quite simply a celebration of J. J. Wolfe, the man and his empire. There was an arrangement of photographs, all in sepia tone, some of them real Kodak box-camera antiques showing Wolfe as a kid on his Ozark farm and as the teenage businessman carrying a crate of eggs. And there was the first supermarket; the first discount house; Wolfe pushing the button to start the feed rolling in an automated cattle feedyard; Wolfe piloting a jet; Wolfe and his family grouped around a champion Angus bull at a Denver show. Next to the photographs was a three-dimensional graph, a kind of inverted family tree showing how the Wolfe empire was structured, flowing from the single entity at the top, the man himself, down into the stout tree trunk of Wolfe Enterprises, Incorporated, which in turn put out a series of heavy branches, corporations that owned corporations that owned corporations, and oddly it was only at the far reaches of the tree, the small single leaves, that the words meant anything, were in fact true household names in American business, flabby venerable giants that had been gobbled by the upstart Wolfe.

“May I help you, sir?”

The receptionist, alone now, was speaking to him from across the room.

“Yes,” Bone said. “I was to meet a friend here. He said he had some business upstairs, and when he was finished he would wait here for me.”

She smiled warmly. “I see. And his name?”

“Alexander Five.”

“Five?”

“Yes—same as the number.”

“That’s one you’d think I’d remember.” She was scanning an appointments list. “But I don’t. And—no, he isn’t here. I’m afraid I don’t have any record of him. Are you sure this is the right address?”

“The Wolfe building, he said. Yes.”

“I see. Well, perhaps if you gave me your name.”

“George Swanson.”

Once more she scanned her appointments list.

“I don’t think you’ll find me there either,” he said.

“No, I don’t suppose.” She smiled again. “I guess about all we can do then is wait. If you want to wait here, it’s perfectly all right.”

“Thank you. Maybe five minutes or so.”

“Of course. There are some magazines over there.”

She indicated a davenport and coffee table near the front door, the
glass
front door beyond which Valerie and Cutter would be driving past every few minutes.

“Forgot my glasses,” he said. “I’ll just wait over here.”

“Fine.”

At some distance from the door, Bone angled his long body into a soft short-backed chair. Under his clothes—the new checked shirt and the navy blazer and gray slacks—his body was slick with sweat. But he felt fine, he felt free, as if someone had just rolled a gravestone off his chest. Until the moment he opened his mouth and actually spoke to the woman, he had not known what he was going to say or do, whether he would run from the thing or stand his ground with Cutter like some poor terrified rabbit freezing on a highway. He felt no shame at all, nothing except relief and a hearty dose of self-disgust, anger at what an ass he had been, what a fool. Hadn’t he known Cutter well enough to recognize all this for what it was, simply one more of his self-destructive gambits? What did it matter if some sixth or seventh sense told Bone that Wolfe
probably
was the man he had seen that night? In fact what did it matter even if the man slaughtered and dumped a teenage girl in every city he ever visited? It was all beside the point—which, very simply, now and forevermore, was
power
. And power was the inverted tree across the room. It was the building enclosing Bone and the network of similar buildings spread across the whole amber-waved continent. It was money, finally, big money. And the fact that Bone had temporarily ignored this cardinal fact of life, for a time had dreamed with Cutter his bizarre little dream of affluence and independence—well, better late than never.

So Bone felt no guilt for what he had done, or more accurately, not done. He had backed out at this late moment not just to save his skin but theirs too, Cutter’s and Valerie’s. And he was sure Valerie at least would see the truth of this if she could have been with him now, here at the “point,” Cutter’s vaunted Purple Heartland. Yes, Valerie might understand and go along. But Cutter? Not likely. No, Bone would have to let him down slowly, like a canister of nitroglycerine.

Because Cutter had expected someone to follow Bone, he had instructed Valerie to park the car just off Unicorn, two blocks from the building. Thus a few seconds after Bone rounded the corner—and was temporarily lost sight of by his hypothetical pursuers—he could slip into the car and be gone, the three of them in the Pinto quickly disappearing in the La Brea traffic. And except for any pursuers, that was just how it happened. For fifteen or twenty seconds neither Cutter nor Valerie said a word to him. Cutter was busy staring out the rear window for any sign of a “tail” while Valerie frantically worked the car down the narrow off-street and onto La Brea.

Finally Cutter wheeled from his post: “Well?”

Bone shrugged. “Who knows?”

“What the hell does that mean? Come on, what happened, man?”

“Your Mr. Whozit turned out to be an administrative assistant name of Price. Very swishy. And very bored. Acted like what I was really after was a job.”

“Couldn’t you go over him?”

Bone lit a cigarette, taking his time, making clear his feelings of anger and disappointment. “Mr. Price reports to Mr. Brown, who reports to Mr. Hudson.” This last name Bone stole from a street sign as they were moving along Hollywood Boulevard now.

“You mean the thing has to go through two more people!” Cutter bawled. “Before it gets to Wolfe!”

Bone nodded. “That’s the way it’s done, old buddy. If you’d ever worked a day in your life you’d know that. The old organization chart. You go over your boss’s head, and he’ll have yours. On a platter.”

Cutter sagged into the back seat. Valerie, weaving through the traffic, took the time to glance over at Bone, and her look was not worried so much as searching, trying to read him. Quickly Bone threw out a bit of lifeline:

“We did get one break, though—Brown and Hudson weren’t there this morning. So I really put it to the fairy. I told him the message was just what it said on the envelope—personal—that it had to do with something Wolfe was
personally
involved in up in Santa Barbara, and I could guarantee him Wolfe wouldn’t like it if the matter went through two other men.”

Cutter was sitting up again. “Good boy.”

“I even laid the old office jargon on him—I said it was his big chance to make Brownie points with the old man.”

“What’d he say to that?”

“He asked how he could be sure the thing wasn’t a letter bomb—that’s one we didn’t anticipate, huh? I suggested he get one of his own envelopes and I’d take the note out of ours and put it in his.”

“Did he?”

“No, he took my word for it. I told him letter bombs were fat, which I think they are. Anyway he’s our man. If we get through to Wolfe today, or if we don’t—it’s up to him.”

Cutter was definitely in the ascent now. “Well, Christ, Rich, that’s all we expected, wasn’t it? A foot in the door. The note’ll do the rest.”

Bone shook his head. “I don’t know. I didn’t like how the guy came on, so goddamn condescending.”

“Well, he doesn’t sound like a loner anyway,” Valerie put in. “Like he’d take it on himself to censor the boss’s mail.”

“Or run upstairs with it,” Bone countered. “It cuts both ways.”

In answer Cutter belched luxuriously, giving them the ghost of his breakfast again. And he began to pound Bone on the back.

“Come on, come on!” he laughed. “Get with it, will you, man? You did it! We’re in like Flynn, for Christ sake! Face it! You did it!”

“You think so, huh?”

“I know so.”

“No, you don’t. We won’t know till I call back at three.”

“So we’ll know then.”

“And I told him it’d have to be Wolfe, I wouldn’t talk to anyone else.”

Cutter took a bow. “Just like we rehearsed.”

But Valerie, as she drove on, had a puzzled look. “I still don’t see why we have to get through to him today. Why not tomorrow or the next day? It’s the same message. The same situation.”

Clucking his tongue, Cutter took hold of Valerie’s cheek and playfully began to shake her head back and forth. “Bad little Valerie,” he said. “Stupid little Valerie. She should try to remember each day that passeth means that many more people get into the act—secretaries, vice-presidents, janitors. And that don’t leave Mr. Conglomerate much choice except to stonewall it, like his ex-commander in chief. Only in this case stonewalling would mean calling in the fuzz. The man. You dig?”

Valerie, looking angry, pulled her cheek free. “Yes! All right—I dig!”

Cutter checked his watch. “Eleven-ten,” he announced. “Four hours to kill.”

Following Cutter’s lead, they killed the hours in style. They had some drinks at a dark comfortable steakhouse bar near their hotel, then ordered a round of New York-cut steak “sandwiches” at seven dollars each, altogether diminishing Valerie’s estate by another thirty dollars. Then, back at the hotel, Cutter decided that they should take advantage of the weather, which was clear and warm, and go down to the pool for a swim.

“And maybe I’ll just go in too,” he said. “Can you picture it? I come gimping out there, maybe coughing a little to add to the general effect. And then I carefully take off my robe and test the water—with my stump!” At this he flapped his left arm, what was left of it. “And zap! Everybody’s up and running, like it’s starting to rain turds.”

“Very funny,” Valerie said. “Very sick.”

“Okay then. Just you two go. I’ll watch.”

She told him they had not brought swimsuits.

But Cutter was undaunted. “Just leave that to me.”

More to humor him than anything else, Bone and Valerie went along, following him downstairs and into a clothing shop located at one end of the lobby. Like the gift and sundries stores on each side of it, the shop was small, understocked, and overpriced. In the elevator Cutter had told the two of them what the object was, to get a pair of swimsuits without surrendering any cash. They were to pick out the swimsuits and he was to do the talking. And talk he did, hitting Bone with a dry toneless monologue that started the moment they entered the shop and continued uninterrupted as Bone and Valerie examined the swimsuits offered, held them up against their bodies and quietly discussed their merits and prices with each other and the sales clerk, a lady who seemed to think she was Greer Garson.

Cutter had had a bellyful of the cattle operation, that was all there was to it. The goddamn thing simply had to go, he said. He had put up with it long enough, each year expecting the thing would take hold and show a little profit, but no dice, the operation was a loser pure and simple and the sooner they realized it the better. And he didn’t give a good goddamn what the price of red meat was, he was simply going to unload the herd no matter what. Hell, the Ojai avocado ranch had half as many acres, didn’t it, and you sure as hell couldn’t call the profit it produced small change now, could you? And as far as that went, just one well in the Marshall field—just one, mind you, not twenty or fifty—just one of their lousy little wells there produced more long green in one year than that whole cattle operation had managed in ten. And, oh sure, he knew it was a good tax loss and all, but what the hell—
ten years
as a tax loss? That was carrying things a bit far. No, the whole lousy setup had to go, he had made up his mind and there was no talking him out of it. The ranch hands, well he was sorry about them but what the hell did Bone think he was, a welfare state? Let them eat food stamps.

And so it went. Bone and Valerie chose their swimsuits, and Greer Garson happily bagged them and wrote up the sales ticket, which Cutter grandly snatched away from Bone. “Here, let me get this—you got lunch.” And then he began to pat his pockets, searching for his wallet—which, alas, was not there but probably still up in his room—he would forget his leg if it weren’t attacked to his body, a joke the lady seemed to miss. Would she let him charge the bill to his hotel account? Of course, she would. So he whipped out his nineteen-cent Bic pen and signed the check, carelessly scrawled his name across it from the bottom to the top:
Valerie Durant
. Miss Garson, probably a touch impressed, graciously thanked him, and the three of them left.

The pool was situated in a large courtyard bordered on one side by the high-rise part of the hotel and on the other sides by a two-story structure housing cabana rooms and the pool bar. Throughout the courtyard there were real palm trees and other flora not likely to be found in Peoria, which Bone believed to be the main criterion for any successful Southern California tourist enterprise. But now, in April, the pool was deserted except for a few sunbathers like Bone and Valerie, who had stretched out on a pair of chaise longues next to the umbrella table where Cutter sat sipping a scotch-and-water. And he evidently was feeling the pressure as keenly as Bone, for there was no more talking now, no more hijinks and yeasty self-confidence, no more counting of Wolfe’s dollars before they were extorted. But where Cutter undoubtedly had run up against a real anxiety, the anxiety of not knowing what, lay immediately ahead, Bone’s only problem was technical,
how
to bring about that very situation which his colleague dreaded.