Solomon's Vineyard (4 page)

“Do you know who I am?” Pug said.

“No,” I lied.

“I'm Pug Banta.”

“Oh.”

He moved nearer me.

“I'm sorry,” I said. “I didn't know she was your girl, Pug.”

He slapped my face. His arm moved so fast I didn't even have time to
duck. My teeth cut my lip. I could taste the blood.

“You'll know it next time, fatty,” Pug said.

Ginger looked frightened now. The Greek spoke to me “I guess you're
not so tough.”

“What's he been doing?” Pug asked.

“He thinks the game is wrong,” the Greek said.

“If you don't like our games,” Pug asked, “why don't you go home?”

I kept saying to myself, don't start anything. I wanted to kill Pug.
I never could stand being hit by anybody, not even a woman. I wanted to
take him and his pals. I could taste the blood in my mouth.

“I like your games,” I said; “with the right dice.”

“Wise, eh?” Pug said, and hit me on the cheekbone. It was a good
punch. I fell back against one of the slot machines. The metal stand
tilted and the machine fell on the floor, shattering the glass front.

“Don't get too tough,” I told Pug.

He hit me again. The dark-haired woman with Chief Piper screamed. He
hit me on the right temple. He hit hard with both hands. I sat down
with my back to the wall. I felt blood run from my mouth. I was a
little dizzy. He tried to kick me, but I blocked his foot with my arm.
The dark-haired woman ran to him.

“Stop that, Pug,” she cried.

He kicked at me again. The woman jerked his arm, trying to pull him
away. He got the arm loose and hit her on the nose. The blow sounded
like a ripe tomato dropping on a cement floor. She went over on her
back. Blood spilled from her nose. Chief Piper, his small eyes
frightened, started to protest.

“Keep your damn whores in line,” Pug snarled at him.

The chief backed away. The blood had gone from his face, leaving it
the colour of a turnip. The Greek was grinning, his tongue running over
his lips. Pug kicked at me again; not hard this time. It was a gesture.
He turned his head to the two bodyguards.

“Toss him out.”

They picked me off the floor. Nobody bothered to do anything about
the woman. She was sobbing, her breath coming in gasps, blood streaming
down her face. Pug had broken her nose. The bodyguards started me out
of the room. I looked at Ginger. She stared at me as though she had
never seen me in her life. In her hand was the money she'd won with my
twenty. The bodyguards ran me through the dining-room. I was still a
little punch-drunk. They halted on a veranda.

One said: “If we catch you again, fatso, we'll cut off your tail
feathers.”

“And that ain't all,” the other said.

They threw me down the steps. I lit rolling, but gravel cut my hands
and face. I got up and walked to the parking place. Nobody bothered me.
I got in the car and found a rag and wiped the blood off my face. My
jaw hurt when I moved it, but I cursed the Greek and Chief Piper and
the bodyguards. Then I cursed Pug. I cursed him longest. I decided I
would kill him when I got through the job in Paulton. That made me feel
better. I started the engine and drove away. For a long time I could
see the neon sign,
Tony's,
through the rear mirror.

IT GOT really hot again in the morning. I kicked the sheet off the
bed, but that didn't do any good. It was too hot to sleep. My watch
said nine o'clock. I got up and peered at myself in the mirror. My face
wasn't so bad. There was a blue mark on one cheekbone, and a swollen
lip. I cursed Pug Banta again, but I hadn't forgotten I had my own
business first. My own and then Oke Johnson's. Somebody would toast for
that. I hoped it was Pug Banta. That would tie everything up nice.

I thought about Oke. He'd been killed by a bullet from a rifle with a
silencer. That didn't sound like a crime of passion, as the newspapers
say. What I'd told the chief about husbands not keeping rifles with
silencers in the closet was right. Somebody smart and cold-blooded
killed Oke, and h could only have been because of our case.

I shaved and put on a white linen suit and sent four dirty shirts to
the laundry and went down to the air-cooled coffee shop. I ordered the
sixty-cent club breakfast, with ham and eggs and corn bread. The
waitress gave me the
Paulton Morning Mail.
It didn't have
anything about Oke's death that I didn't know. My name was mentioned at
the bottom of the story. The name Karl Craven, that is. I was a friend
of Oke's, according to the police.

I didn't like the story. It meant somebody might take a shot at me
with that silenced rifle. Maybe they'd wait, though, to see how much I
knew. I'd worry along.

I drove around the town in the Drive-It sedan for a while. There was
a haze over everything and the air was hot and still. I found a cop and
asked him how to get to the Vineyard. He told me. I drove past the
brick school and followed the car-line. Pretty soon I saw the
vineyards. They ran up a range of low hills, broken in spots by flower
and vegetable gardens and trees, and disappeared over the crests of the
hills a couple of miles away. Green grapes hung from the vines. The
road ran between low brick walls, but from the sedan I could see people
working in the vegetable gardens. They were mostly women, in
bright-coloured clothes that looked like Rumanian or Hungarian peasant
costumes. Some of the women had red bandanas on their heads.

I came to a big gate with a metal sign over it: THE VINEYARD. Up to
the left I saw the buildings. The gates were open and I drove in. There
were two big live-story buildings, two smaller ones, all of them of
brick, and a big marble temple. That was where Solomon lay in state.
I'd read about it in the
American Weekly.
They bad embalmed him
like Lenin and had put him in a glass coffin where the people could
look at him. They were waiting for the Day of Judgment, when Solomon
would jump out and lend his people to heaven in a flaming catafalque.
That's what the story said, a flaming catafalque, but I never found out
what in hell that was.

I drove past the temple and parked in front of one of the smaller
buildings. There were some other cars parked there. I got out of the
sedan and started to go into the building. A tall guy in a white blouse
and black trousers stopped me. He wore boots over the trousers.

“Only on Sunday are tourists allowed, brother, he said.

“I'm not a tourist,” I said.

“What do you want?”

He looked damned unfriendly. His hair had been cropped close almost
shaved,- and that made his bushy eyebrows seem queer. His eyes were
deep-set and they looked as though they had been mascaraed. “I want to
see Penelope Grayson.”

He hadn't been paying much attention to me before, but now his eyes
poked at me from under the bushy eyebrows. “What for, brother?”

“You can ask her, brother, after I get through talking with her.”

“Are you a relative?”

“No.”

“You can't see her.”

“If I can't,” I said, “I'll be back with a court order.” His face
didn't change.

“And if that doesn't work, I'll get a warrant charging the Vineyard
with kidnapping.”

He didn't like me. He'd have liked to take a punch at me. He probably
couldn't because he was a member of the Vineyard. He went in the
building. I looked around. I saw a few more men dressed in the white
blouses and black trousers moving between the buildings. The clothes
made them look Russian. I didn't see any women.

He came out and crooked a finger at me. We went along a brick walk
towards one of the five-story buildings. Behind the buildings, in a
hollow, I saw barns and silos. In one field a woman was ploughing
behind a pair of grey horses. It was funny to sec a woman ploughing. We
went up the building's front steps and into a big room filled with old-fashioned furniture. A woman about thirty-five with eyes the colour of
maple sugar came into the room. She had a soft white face. She wore a
white blouse and a red skirt.

“Daughter Penelope,” the man said.

I thought I saw interest in the woman's face, but when she turned to
me she had no expression at all.

“Your name?”

“Karl Craven.”

“I will ask her.”

“I come from her uncle,” I said.

I saw the maple-sugar eyes light up again. She went out. I sat down
on a couch and lit a cigarette. The man touched my shoulder.

“We do not allow smoking, brother.”

I put the cigarette out. I started to throw the butt in a
waste-basket, but I thought better of it and stuffed it in my pocket.
The man stood looking down at me, his face cold and unfriendly. He made
me uncomfortable.

“Hot weather we're having,” I said.

He didn't answer, just stared at me. I didn't try any more
conversation. I sat there and wondered what I'd do if Daughter Penelope
refused to see me. That was a funny way to name anybody, I thought. I
wondered if all the women at the Vineyard were called Daughter.

The woman came back, saying over her shoulder: “Here he is,
Daughter.”

Penelope Grayson was thin and blonde and almost beautiful. She was
dressed in white. She should have been beautiful, but she wasn't. There
was something strange about her face. It was like the face of a person
who is blind. What I mean is she looked at me out of grey eyes that
really didn't see me. The woman and the man both watched her.

“I'm Karl Craven,” I said. “Your uncle asked me to talk with you.”

“It's no use,” she said slowly.

The woman went away. The man stayed. I turned to him. “We don't need
you.”

“I will remain.”

“Do you want him to stay, Miss Grayson?”

“Yes, please.”

She spoke as though she was in a trance, or doped, or dreaming. She
stared back at me steadily enough, but she didn't see me. She wouldn't
know me again. Her face was queer, as though it was out of focus. The
man looked at me smugly.

“Your uncle wants you to come home,” I said.

“I belong here,” she said.

“He is very worried about you.”

She stood with her dull eyes on me. Her skin was very pale “You must
tell him I am happy here.” She looked anything but happy. I didn't
understand it.

“He is lonely,” I said. “You're his only relative.

“No longer,” she said. “I am a Daughter of Solomon. I have abandoned
my worldly connections.”

I began to feel spooked. It was like talking to a medium. Her voice
came out of her mouth, low and soft, but it didn't really seem to have
anything to do with her. It was as if she didn't know what she was
saying. I wondered if she could be hypnotized.

“Have you anything for me to tell your uncle? I asked.

“I have no message.”

“Will you see him if he comes here?”

“Please tell him I am happy here.”

“Wouldn't you be happy somewhere else?” I asked. “Where your uncle
would not worry?”

The man tapped my arm. “Daughter Penelope has talked enough.”

“Please,” she said; “I must go.”

“You are keeping her from her duties,” the man said.

She started to leave. I got in front of her. “Wait,” I said. “Don't
you know you're in danger here?”

“I am happy here.”

“She is going now,” the man said.

His face was hard. He took her elbow and started to guide her around
me. His eyes were as black as ripe olives. I hit his jaw with a right
uppercut. He fell on the brown carpet, got up on one elbow. He was
dazed, but he wasn't out. I got my revolver and split his head open
with the barrel. That put him flat on the floor. I tucked the revolver
in the holster. Penelope Grayson stared at me with her wide
drugged-looking eyes.

“Why did you do that?”

“I want to talk with you alone,” I said. “You're in a lot of
trouble.”

She was hearing and seeing me now. I had broken through whatever was
wrapped around her mind. She was still dreamy and unnatural, but a part
of her was listening to me.

“I am in no danger,” she said.

“I have to talk fast, so listen. I am a private detective. I have a
partner, Oke Johnson.”

I looked at her eyes, but the name meant nothing to her. I kept it
simple, as though I was talking to a child.

“He came to Paulton three weeks ago. At your uncle's request.”

“A short, fat man?”

“Yes. He was to persuade you to go away.”

“He tried, but I am happy here.”

I heard voices outside. Some women were coming towards the house. I
grabbed the man by his shoulders and dragged him behind one of the
couches. His feet stuck out so I doubled up his legs. There was some
blood on the rug, but I put a chair over it. The girl watched me
dreamily.

“Yesterday Oke Johnson was murdered,” I said. “Somebody shot him. You
understand, murdered him. It's in the papers, if you don't believe me.
Somebody was afraid of what he was doing in connection with you.”

Feet made a noise on the stairs. The girl's eyes were on me. I stared
right back at her. I wanted her to believe. “Do you understand what
I've told you?” I asked.

Someone came into the room behind me. The girl said: “Yes, I
understand.” I looked around.

It was the woman I'd seen at the station. The woman with the curves.
She stopped by the door and stared at me. She had on a Russian-looking
costume, too, only hers was scarlet, both the blouse and the skirt. And
beside the others I'd seen, it looked like a number out of Hattie
Carnegie's window. She was beautiful. She was surprised to see me, but
she smiled, as though it was a pleasant surprise.

“I will go now,” Penelope Grayson said.

She glided out of the room. I said “Hello” to the Princess.

She smiled again and said “Hello.”

I went by her to the door, smelling her perfume. It made me think of
black lace underwear. I wanted to stay and talk, but I had to get out
before my pal behind the sofa began to moan. The Princess had blue eyes
and her breasts pressed against the red silk. I smiled at her and
walked down the front steps.