Sinful Woman (3 page)

“Do I know her?”

“Shoon be surprise.”

“ ... I do?”

“Is Hezzel. Is your seester Hezzel.”

S
HE HAD BEEN HOLDING
her glass up to the light, watching the bubbles drift up the stem, but now set it down. Then she stared at Vicki as if she were trying to realize what he had said, to sort it into its various implications, to grasp what it meant. He, his face momentarily in repose, his eye everywhere but on her, seemed to have changed a little; the glow had left him, and he suggested still another characteristic of the Middle Europe that had produced him: a capacity for slippery schemes, not prosecuted in offices, where Americans cut throats, but in the boudoirs of women and other haunts of the helpless. His dark good looks were quite sinister under her stare, and he merely shrugged when she burst out: “Vicki, you can’t seriously mean what you say?”

“Min? Sure, I min. Hezzel nize girl.”

“You must be—gagging or something. You can’t go through with it and face what hell will have waiting for you.”

“Hell? Can be. Who knows?”

He was distressed but vague, and she stood up, the tears glittering in her eyes. “I don’t speak of myself. I suppose it was too much to hope for, that I could get rid of you and Dimmy and Phoenix all in one day. But why did you have to pick on Hazel? You know she’s practically an institutional case right now? You know—”

“Then why you no take her to court?”

“In other words, if she’s not herself, then I ought to have put her away. And if she
is
herself, she’s perfectly free to marry you, and the stock is yours, and I’m yours, to make sarong pictures as long as Dimmy tells me to—and then
you’ll
have her put away.”

“But, I
lahve
her, Sylvia! I—”

One pretty fist caught him in the mouth, and its fluttering throb gave way to a tight pursing, as he touched it with his handkerchief to see if it was cut. She began to stride up and down with a slow, feline glide. As she talked, her breath came in deep inhalations and her fingers laced and unlaced: she wasn’t a woman giving way to emotion, but like one trying to repress it, and the agony of this effort gave a measure of what she felt. “You—bird of prey. You’re no more capable of loving her than of loving me or any woman in your life. To you, none of us mean anything except what you can get out of us, and once you had your big reunion with Dimmy and he showed you how to cash in on the handkissing and the dancing and the title, that was our bad day. And especially a bad day for any girl named Shoreham. I think I’m going back to my trade, Vicki. Waiting on the table is a lot more respectable than working for you and Dimmy.”

“Yes is ver’ nize work.”

“So that’s where she’s been going.”

“You gambol so moch, Sylvia.”

“Yes, I’ve gambled a lot. After I got her out of California, away from the chartreuse and the B-and-B and cointreau you kept filling her up with, she had a crackup and I had quite a time with her. And then when she wanted to drive up in the mountains, because they made her feel good and helped her get back to normal, I was only too glad to let her do it. I couldn’t go with her. They made me feel giddy and light-headed and sick. So, I let her go alone, and to have
something
to do while I was hanging around here, I gambled. I gambled $100 a day, quite a lot, but nothing to what you and Dimmy cheated me out of these two years. And all that time she wasn’t driving in the mountains at all. She was meeting you—”

“Sylvia! I see her two-three-four time.”

“You’ve been coming to this place a week, and what places did you go to before that? I know, now, that it was liquor I smelled on her breath, and not cactus candy as she said. Thanks for that, Vicki. You know it’s the worst thing in the world for her, but you didn’t stop at it, did you? Not if that was the way to keep her coming to that lovely shack of yours.”

She continued her restless pacing, seemed to get older as her face took on a desperate, haggard look. He remained motionless, perched on the edge of the big desk, staring unwinkingly at nothing. With wolfhounds at his feet, peasant girls behind him, a banker at one side, trying to collect his money, a dead deer on the other, head hanging limply down, a falcon on his finger and a feather in his cap, he would have made an excellent oil painting of
Europe and How She Got That Way
. He barely moved when she stopped suddenly and said: “This isn’t your think-up, Vicki. It’s too good and you haven’t got the brains. I see Dimmy’s fine Hungarian hand in it. Is he here?”

“Dimmy? Can be. I—”

But as though in answer to her question, the door opened and three men entered. One was short, fat, and pale, and looked oddly like an obese penguin. One was small, thin, and freckled, with unnaturally blond hair and light shifty eyes with no lashes on them. He looked like an albino rat. And one was tall, lithe, and sunburned, with delicately-carved features and luminous eyes, so luminous they suggested the moon-agates that marble players use as shooters. He looked like a horse who aspired to lofty things, such as popcorn instead of oats. All three advanced on Sylvia at a noisy run, their arms outstretched, their mouths forming big grins. She backed off with a snarl. With no apparent sense of embarrassment, the tall man and the freckled reduced speed to a walk, then strolled over to a framed photograph of the Johnson-Jeffries fight, and stood studying it. The third man, the short fat one who looked like a penguin, came to a full stop, and stood looking at Sylvia as though she had cut his heart out and he wished she would give it back. Then he said: “Sylwia! Is me! Is Dimmy!”

“You think I’m blind?”

“But, Sylwia! This is no way to act! Here we come! Make a big surprise for you! Bring fine script! Queen of the Big House—ah Sylwia, you’ll love this little B-Girl that goes to prison to save the fellow she loves.”

“I can see her now.”

“And we have another surprise! Tell, Vicki!”

Vicki, however, kept silent, and in a moment Sylvia sat down, covered her face with her hands. After a while she went outside, stumbled aimlessly around, spied Tony’s car, got in it. There, in a moment, tiptoeing up to the window, Tony joined her. “Bad, hey?”

“Worse than I could have dreamed.”

“Who are these others?”

“The one in the beret is Dimmy Spiro, head of Phoenix Pictures. The tall one is La Bouche, his production manager. The little one has a last name, I guess, but I don’t know what it is. He’s called Benny the Nib. He’s a check forger that Dimmy brought in as a writer, to do a story for me called Queen of the Big House. And they’re up here to—”

She broke off, thought a minute, as though to decide how much she wanted to tell this man anyway, then told him what was brewing in short, jerky sentences. When she mentioned Hazel he whistled, evidently having long since guessed the girl’s mental condition. Then he said: “Then it all checks up.”

“What checks up?”

“Jake heard a little more. They got in last night, and stayed with your husband in his shack. The idea was, they were to lay low until your divorce was granted, then the girl your husband is to marry—Hazel—would come out and they’d be married. But your husband, he wanted some sort of ring he’d given you, so Hazel could be married with it. He wanted to catch you before you left town, but he hadn’t had a phone put in the shack, so he came here. They’re pretty sore. They didn’t want you to know until it was all over, and they thought the ring could wait.”

“Not a Baltic baron’s ring. It’s his soul.”

“They’re a funny bunch.”

“You’re telling me?”

Mr. La Bouche appeared at the back door and asked Tony if he had a shine boy. Tony called, and a Mexican youth came out of the garage at rear. Mr. La Bouche told him to go inside, and step on it. Benny came out and announced that if he had no saddle soap, he needn’t come in at all. Mr. Spiro came out, flicking a handkerchief against his soft leather boots, and inspected the can the boy had by now taken out of his box. It was at this point that Vicki came out, leaned close, and whispered something to Mr. Spiro. When Mr. Spiro nodded, Vicki started around the club, first stopping to lift Sylvia’s hand out of the car, press a kiss on it, and put it tenderly back. When he had gone, Sylvia said: “Tony, will you lend me the car?”

“You mean now?”

“I’m going to follow him in. I’m going to follow him straight to wherever he’s meeting her. I’m going to stop this horrible thing if it’s the last thing I do on earth.”

“Well—I guess so.”

“Give me the key, quick.”

Following the Baron, however, wasn’t quite as simple as it looked. She was only a few yards behind him as he turned out the gate, and for a few hundred yards up the road she held him in view. But then, as she matched his rapidly mounting speed, the needle leaped to 60, to 70, to 80. At 82 she missed a truck, lost her nerve, and pulled back to a sane rate. The green car disappeared around a curve, then vanished altogether. She drove a few moments uncertainly, then leaned forward with evident purpose. Back in town, she drove to a small office building. When she hurried into a lawyer’s office on the second floor, and asked for Mr. Daly, the girl at the switchboard seemed mildly annoyed. “Well, he’s been expecting you all morning, Miss Shoreham. He’s had to break two engagements outside, and I’ve been trying to reach you.”

Mr. Daly, a tall, thin man with sandy hair, was amiable enough about her tardiness, but when she blurted out that she wanted the divorce stopped he frowned, announced frostily that this was a most unseemly time. Briefly, leaving out psychopathic details, she explained what was afoot. He interrupted disagreeably: “I can’t impress on you too strongly the thought that it will be practically impossible to straighten out your affairs, particularly your professional contracts, until you get this divorce. Under the community property laws of California, your husband can—”

“I want this marriage blocked!”

“Why
shouldn’t
he marry your sister?”

She didn’t answer.

He got up, took his hat, started for the door. His phone rang and he came back. When he hung up he put his hat back on the tree. “Your decree was entered an hour ago.”

“Mr. Daly, what can I do?”

“Nothing.”

“Can’t we phone the marriage license bureau and—”

“They have no authority to refuse your sister a license, if, as I understand it, she’s of age. Besides, she can be married anywhere. Why don’t you talk to
her?
”

Dismally, Sylvia drove back to the hotel, but there the clerk shook his head. “Your sister went out, I’d say it was over an hour ago, Miss Shoreham. No, she didn’t leave any message, or—” He broke off to answer his phone, then held up his hand. “It’s for you, Miss Shoreham. Would you like to take it here?”

Trembling, she took the phone, but it wasn’t Hazel, it was Tony. “How’s it going, Miss Shoreham?”

“Just terribly.”

“I just called up to leave word that you needn’t bother about sending the car out or anything. If you’ll just leave the keys at the desk I’ll have somebody drop by for it.”

“Thanks, Tony.”

“Oh, and one other thing. That ring.”

“Ring? What ring?”

“It’s the ring I’ve seen you wear, the one with a coronet on it. I thought perhaps it’s the same one your husband—”

“Yes, it is. What about it?”

“He must have forgotten it, or dropped it, or something. One of the girls picked it up in the office. I’ll bring it in—”

“No, no! Listen to me, Tony!”

“Yes, what is it?”

“He won’t get married without it. He’ll be out after it, and I might still be able to stop them. Say nothing to anybody about it, and don’t give it up, even to him. I’ll be right out, as fast as your car can take me.”

In the casino of the Galloping Domino a fat little man sat playing roulette with one hand, holding a coffee cup with the other, and extending both feet to a Mexican boy who was just finishing an extensive job of polishing two soft calf boots. Behind him, a tall man and a little man stood admiringly, exclaiming over the acumen of his bets, which had now netted him an agreeable profit. In the office, a girl sat at the redwood desk, fingering a ring that lay on the blotter before her. On the steel oval she noticed tarnish, rubbed it on the virgin blotter. It made marks. Possibly to find a smaller blotter she opened the center drawer, then the righthand drawer. But this she closed quickly, for she had glimpsed something never far out of sight in gambling houses: the cold, oily sheen of pistol barrels and rifle butts.

Outside, a car with its lights burning turned in at the gate, a girl at the wheel, a man beside her. He jumped out, ran into the casino. She continued around to the side, turned the car so it faced the road, stopped, and waited.

“All right, Vicki, here’s your ring, and I guess you win. What’s the deal? A new contract? Sell Dimmy the stock? Do Queen of the Big House? Whatever it is, it’s all right, if you’ll only promise not to go through with this ghastly thing.”

“Is O. K., Sylvia. We mek new contract, big money for you, vary big money. Sell Dimmy a stock, yes, he pay fine price. Pay one twanny five. Is nize, ha? Do Quin a Big ’Ouse. Ah, Sylvia, is fine picture!”

“Just one little thing.”

She went over, stood very close, looking him in the eye, and spit in his face. He took out a handkerchief, wiped his cheek, and stood looking at the floor a long time. Several times he started to speak, and couldn’t: of all the insults she had offered him in the last hour, this one alone seemed to have reached the quick of his nature. His mouth had just started to throb when there was a light tap, and the door to the casino opened.

T
HE GIRL WHO NOW
entered the room in a stagey green dress was a by-product of Hollywood that gets little attention in print, but that occurs with unhappy frequency in that enormous catch-basin of talent: the feeble residuary legatee of such life as remains in a family after some prodigious child has been born. Rarely on public view, they are to be seen in homes, clubs, and dressing rooms, these pale, futile, carbon-copies of greatness, having no identity of their own, no existence except what they can suck from somebody else. Most of them, however, are happier than the rest of us manage to be, for it is the irony of life that those whom they worship commonly love them to distraction, would do anything for them, try to do everything for them. The real story of many a celebrated actor, if anybody were cruel enough to print it, would turn out to be, not the romance that his fans talk about, or the success he has made in his profession, but his unremitting effort to bring Christmas into the life of some dimwit brother who means more to him than anything else on earth.