Jack and the Beanstalk (Matthew Hope) (25 page)

The gynecologist says, “What seems to be the trouble?”

The woman says, “My husband keeps complaining I have a very large vagina.”

“Well, let’s take a look,” the gynecologist says.

He puts her up on the table. He puts her feet in the stirrups. He takes a look.

“My
God
, what a huge vagina!” he says. “My
God
, what a huge vagina!”

“Well, you didn’t have to say it
twice
,” she says.

“I
didn’t
!” he says.

The malpractice attorney telling the joke laughed out loud when he delivered the punch line. His partner, who had heard the joke before, laughed so hard I thought he would choke on his sea bass, the catch of the day. I smiled.

I did not feel like talking to Harry Loomis that afternoon. But Cynthia buzzed me at two o’clock to say he was waiting on six, and I sighed heavily and picked up the receiver, and then moved my doodling pad into place.

“Well,” he said, “I finally got her on the telephone. Reason it’s off the hook most of the day is she
sleeps
all day long.”

I assumed he was talking about Burrill’s daughter in New Orleans.

“Doesn’t get to bed till the crack of dawn. What she is, Mr. Hope, she’s a
workin’
girl is what she told me she is. What I mean is she doesn’t get to
sleep
till dawn, she gets to
bed
a lot earlier’n that, and a lot more frequently. What she is, Mr. Hope, is a prostitute down there in N’Orleans, is what she
is
. Hester Burrill. Talked to her early this morning, I think she had a sailor in bed with her, way she kept callin’ him ‘Ensign,’ though that mighta been the man’s name, they got funny names in N’Orleans, comes from the French influence, I suspeck. Point is, Mr. Hope, I’m a God-fearin’ Baptist who don’t want no more truck with prostitutes than’s necessary. She’s flyin’ down here tonight, wants to look over the land tomorrow; you’d think she was inheritin’ the Taj Mahal, way she sounded on the phone. The sailor kept tellin’ her to stop jumpin’ up and down on the bed, and she kept yellin’, I’m an heiress, Ensign, I’m a fuckin’
heiress
!’—’scuse the language, but that’s what she said. You listenin’ to all this, Mr. Hope?”

“I’m listening,” I said. I was also doodling another left profile.

“What I plan to do, I plan to draw a termination agreement ready for her signature on Friday. I don’t want to spend any more time on this than I have to. What I’ll recommend is she settle
for the four thousand in escrow and the Ford Mustang, and be happy the farm’s still hers, that’s what I’ll recommend. We’ll forget all about his sneakers and dirty socks, how’s that? Papers’ll be all ready for her signature, if she knows how to write. I’d appreciate it if you came by Friday morning, picked them up, got your client to execute them, and that’ll be that. I don’t like dealin’ with prostitutes, Mr. Hope. You can get yourself a terrible disease just shakin’ hands with ’em. Can you stop by here Friday morning?”

“Why don’t you just put them in the mail?” I said.

“No sir, I want to expedite this entire matter. You come look them over, make sure they’re okay for her signature, and then take ’em with you. I’ll have her here in the office at eleven o’clock, that too early for you?”

“Eleven’ll be fine,” I said.

“Maybe you can drop them off at the ranch there on your way back to Calusa, get Mrs. McKinney to execute ’em, finish the whole thing off in one day.”

“Well...maybe,” I said.

“Anyway, I’ll see you here on Friday,” he said, and hung up.

7

I
T WAS
raining when I started for Ananburg on Friday morning. It wasn’t supposed to be raining in the morning. In August it was supposed to rain in the afternoon. Maybe the hurricane season was gathering full force. Maybe all of Calusa would get blown out to sea before September, when we
normally
started worrying about getting blown out to sea. I kept kicking myself for not having told the mechanic to fix the windshield wipers. I kept telling myself that a fifty-seven-year-old woman should have known better than to place a thirty-eight-year-old man in conflict with his fourteen-year-old daughter. I kept thinking maybe Frank was right; I didn’t know how to treat women. I kept thinking I should go over his rules more carefully, study them, learn them by heart. I kept thinking I was about to meet a bona fide hooker, and I wondered if I should treat her like a lady.

Hester Burrill did not look like what I supposed a hooker should look like. I expected her to be wearing a slinky red dress cut low over creamy white cleavage, and slit high on a shapely thigh.
I expected her to be wearing bangles and bright shiny beads. I expected her to be swinging a red leather handbag. I expected her hair to be bleached blonde, maybe done in the frizzies, or else worn straight and long and hanging over one eye, the way Veronica Lake used to wear hers. I expected eyes made up to resemble Cleopatra’s, heavy rouge on the cheeks, a scarlet lipstick slash on her mouth, and a scarlet letter on her breast.

Hester Burrill looked like a female accountant.

She was wearing a blue linen suit, with a simple white blouse under the jacket. She was wearing matching blue shoes with low heels. A blue leather shoulder bag sat on the floor near her chair. The only piece of jewelry she wore was a high school graduation ring on the middle finger of her right hand. Her hair was black and styled in a straight simple cut, cropped to just below her jawline. She had green eyes that did not seem to harbor all the obscene sexual secrets of the universe, and the only makeup she wore was a muted lipstick on her generous mouth. I guessed she was in her late twenties. The single clue to her occupation was her very pale complexion; I did not suppose Hester Burrill spent much time in the sun.

“Well, I’d like to get this over with soon’s we can,” Loomis said, searching on his cluttered desktop for the release he’d prepared. He was not chewing tobacco today, I noticed, and he was treating Hester with gentlemanly courtesy and respect; maybe he had read Frank’s ten rules. “Miss Burrill took a look at the farm yesterday, and she tells me—”

“Some farm,” Hester said, and rolled her eyes.

Loomis smiled. “Little run-down, from what she tells me,” he said. “She plans on puttin’ it on the market again, soon’s she’s in actual possession. Meanwhile, she’s read these papers”—he had them in his hand now—“and she’s willin’ to sign ’em soon’s you look ’em over and say they’re all right.”

He handed one set of papers to me, and another to Hester. She put her copy back on the desk again, without looking at it.

“What they are,” Loomis said, “is a simple agreement by both sides to cancel the contract. The estate turns over the four thousand dollars in escrow and the car used t’belong to McKinney, and in return Miss Burrill here agrees not to press further for satisfaction of the contract between her late father and McKinney.”

“This is all assuming, of course—”

“Assumin’ she’s the only heir at law, correct,” Loomis said. “I’ve put that in the first paragraph, and cited Avery’s will, as well, a copy of which is attached to the papers. I don’t think there’ll be any problem with probate, but if for some reason the estate
don’t
go to her, you’re covered.”

“We would not, of course, turn over any property until—”

“Until we clear probate, that’s in there too. We don’t expeck the escrow check
or
the car till it’s determined Miss Burrill is the sole heir. If you look at the will, though, you’ll see there’s no problem.”

I looked at the will. I looked through the papers. Everything seemed in order. Hester Burrill smiled when I told this to Loomis.

“I’ll get Harriet in here to witness the signature,” he said, and pressed a buzzer on his desk. “You think you’ll be able to stop by Mrs. McKinney’s on your way back? Get the whole thing executed today?”

“I’ll have to call her,” I said.

“You can use the phone here,” Loomis said.

I had not spoken to Veronica since she’d left my house on Wednesday morning. I was reluctant to call her now. “Maybe I’ll just drop in,” I said.

“Suit yourself,” Loomis said. “Miss Burrill’s headin’ back home tonight, though, be nice if I could tell her before then that everything’s in order.”

“I’m sure there won’t be any problems.”

“Where in hell
is
she?” Loomis said, and stabbed at his buzzer again.

The door opened a moment later. Harriet—the gray lady from the outer office—came in, looked at me, sniffed the air the way she had the last time she’d seen me, and then said, “I was down the hall,” before Loomis had a chance to ask her.

“I need you to witness Miss Burrill’s signature,” he said.

“Did you want it notarized too?”

“Mr. Hope? I don’t think that’s necessary, do you?”

“Not if you want this expedited. I’m sure Mrs. McKinney doesn’t have a notary public on the ranch.”

“Simple release, I don’t think we need a notary. What do
you
think, Harriet?”

“Never hurts to have something notarized,” Harriet said, and stared at me.

“That means Mrs. McKinney would have to come to the office to sign it,” I said.

“Well, I guess it’s best,” Loomis said. “You want to sign here where I’ve put these little check marks, Miss Burrill? Both as sole heir and personal representative. Harriet, you go get your seal, will you?”

It took another ten minutes for Hester to sign all four copies of the release, and for Harriet to notarize them. Loomis put the papers into a manila envelope for me. I was standing up to leave when Hester said, “You had lunch yet, Mr. Hope?”

“Well...no,” I said.

“Come on, I’ll buy you lunch.”

“That’s very kind of you,” I said, “but—”

“I’m an
heiress
,” she said, and smiled. “Come on, let me splurge a little.”

“Well...okay, sure. But I have an appointment at two—”

“We’ll make it a quickie. Thanks a lot, Mr. Loomis,” she said, rising and extending her hand. “You let me know when everything’s settled, okay? How long you think that’ll be, Mr. Hope?”

“I’ll call Mrs. McKinney as soon as I get back to the office.”

“You won’t be stopping by the ranch, like you said?”

“Well, if we’re going to have these notarized—”

“Right, you’d just be wasting time. Let’s go eat, okay? I’m starved.”

Harriet looked at us both disapprovingly.

The rain had slowed to a drizzle when we came outside. Cowboys stood in sheltered doorways, peering glumly out at the fine mist, their hats tilted low over their faces. We found a little restaurant some three doors up from Loomis’s office. We were both mildly wet when we stepped inside; Hester reached for a tissue in her shoulder bag and dabbed at her face with it. A long counter covered the back wall of the place. There were a dozen or so Formica-topped tables. The jukebox was playing a country-western song to a room that was vacant except for us and a waitress in a green uniform who stood near the juke, tapping her foot in time to the music. We found a table some ten feet from the entrance door. Hester took the chair facing the door. I sat with my back to it. She was putting her shoulder bag on the floor near her chair when the waitress came over.

“Letting up a bit out there?” she asked.

“Seems to be,” Hester said, smiling.

“Prolly
snowin’
up north,” the waitress said. “You like to see some menus, or you just here for cocktails?”

“I could use a drink,” Hester said. “Mr. Hope? How about you? Drink to my good fortune, huh?”

“You win the lottery or something?” the waitress asked, smiling.

“Just about, honey,” Hester said. “Let me have a Johnnie Walker Black on the rocks, please.”

“And you, sir?”

“The same, with a splash of soda.”

“Will you be wantin’ menus too?”

“Please,” I said.

The moment the waitress left the table, Hester said, “Loomis wants a thousand bucks for settling this for me. You think that’s a lot?”

“I don’t know how much time he’s put in,” I said.

“
However
much time he put in, it sounds high. How much are
you
charging?”

“I don’t know yet. I’ll have to figure out the hours. We work on an hourly basis.”

“Really?” she said, and smiled. “So do I. How much do
you
get an hour?”

“A hundred dollars.”

“Shake, pal,” she said, and extended her hand across the table.

The waitress came back with our drinks and the menus.

“Take your time looking them over,” she said, and left the table again.

Hester lifted her glass. “Here’s to lazy days and easy nights,” she said. “Johnnie Walker Black, how
about
that? Never thought I’d see the day.” She clinked her glass against mine. “You know how many tricks I’d have to turn for four thousand dollars?”

“Forty,” I said.

“Well, that would be the
gross
. I don’t get to keep the
whole
hundred, you know. I figure it comes to maybe a seventy-thirty split, after all is said and done. Bobby pays for all my clothes, pays my rent too, gives me spending money. Seventy-thirty is what I figure.”

“Who gets the seventy?”

“Oh,
Bobby
, natch. That’s generous, though, really.
Some
pimps, they take every cent you earn, only clothes they’ll buy you
is what you need to work in. Tight across the ass, tits showing, like that. This Loomis character, he’s behaving just like a pimp, wants a twenty-five-percent cut. That seems high to me. That paper he wrote up is mostly boilerplate, ain’t it?”

“Mostly.”

“How many hours you think he spent on it?”

“I have no idea.”

“You think
he
gets a hundred an hour, too?”

“Probably seventy-five. Here in Ananburg, I mean. Maybe even less than that.”

“Fifty, you think?”

“Maybe.”

“So that’d mean he put in twenty hours. I don’t see how he could’ve put in
that
much time, do you?”