Nothing to Lose But My Life (2 page)

It had cost me even more to learn about the Colonel because on the surface he was still all respectability. He was still John Hoop, investment banker. Five years ago, at the time he was crying broke to me, he had just received a fat loan that allowed him to more than recoup any losses. Ultimately, he paid back those profits he was forced to pay. But two of his clients hadn’t been able to wait and had taken the easy way out, and a third—me—had apparently disappeared. He juggled the books and wiped off the debts. He paid back the loan and that money went to Nikke. My dossier here hinted that the Colonel might be connected with the Syndicate.

I knew a good deal about Hoop and the people connected with him. His business partner was a man named Charles Conklin who had come up from L.A. six months before my troubles began. He had married Sofia Proctor, the elder of two sisters, and it was his money that kept her on the Hill. Her parents had died, leaving the Hill equivalent of peanuts. I knew that Sofia’s younger sister, Enid, the harum-scarum college kid of five years before, was still single, that she drank too much and was seen almost nightly at Nikke’s biggest new club, a place on the highway south. My last reports on her indicated that she had started to work for Nikke, shilling the fat and bald boys from out of town to the roulette tables and setting them up for the kill.

And I knew about Tanya Mace. She was a widow and had come to Puerto Bello two years ago. She was engaged to marry Hoop. She was thirty-one and he was going onto sixty. He had loaded her with jewels and was remodelling his house to suit her. He had fallen hard and I suspected that she was showing her affection by giving him the full sucker treatment.

I also knew that her husband had been William Mace, one of the smoother boys who worked in the background for an L.A. syndicate. Something had gone wrong and he found himself up on a manslaughter charge. He had jumped bail and gone to Central America. Tanya followed him and came back alone. She tried to resume her exclusive dress-designing business in Beverly Hills but gave it up and moved to Puerto Bello. Mace was never heard from again. His death was not legally proved but she was planning to marry again anyway.

These were the things I knew about Nikke and Hoop and their associates, and I was going to use the information to get myself back. I was going to see Nikke sweat and squirm as I had done and then I was going to watch him die—as Jen had died. I was going to take my profit from Hoop—fifty thousand I figured it to be, with five years’ interest—and then I was going to let him know how it felt to lose someone you loved. I was going to do these things and more, and I would do them so that when I was finished, my name would be clear and Malcolm Lowry, alias Lowry Curtis, no longer would need to hide.

I had four thousand dollars and two envelopes to help me. The money didn’t mean a whole lot but the envelopes did. They represented two tickets to hell—for Nikke and for Hoop.

I DRESSED
carefully in gray flannel, went to the mirror and studied myself. They would recognize me in time but I didn’t think it would be too soon. Five years had made a lot of difference. I had left plump and pink and thirty. I had returned lean-faced, heavily tanned by the Mexican sun, dark hair shot with gray at the temples, mouth line reshaped by a medium heavy black mustache. The leanness brought out the hard bones of my cheeks and chin, set my eyes in deeper, made me look my full six feet one. I could pass for forty.

All I wanted was a short while to get started, to observe Nikke and the Colonel and their associates, bring my dossiers up to date. Then I didn’t care who recognized me. I tried to smile at myself, but smiling had come hard these past five years. It didn’t come off well.

I went down to dinner, stopping to put my dossiers in the safe.

The last report I received told me: Colonel John Hoop had made a reservation at the Portview. There was to be an intimate dinner party for a few friends. The date was tonight. I had pushed my planned departure date forward a week to take advantage of this information. I only hoped that it was right.

It was. The Portview had, besides the bar and grill, a coffee shop, a spot for dining and dancing, and a small but fancy dining room. I entered this last and there where he could bask in the public gaze sat Colonel Hoop at the head of a round table. There was a fancy centerpiece and a good many wine glasses. The party consisted of only five people but they were the five I most wanted to see.

I chose one of the side tables, placed so that I could have my back to the party but still see them via one of the ornate wall mirrors. It was a Louis XVI room, full of plaster fleur-de-lis, mirrors in carved and gilded frames, and wall lamps in the form of candelabras. There was only a handful of diners; no one paid attention to me.

The waiter wore a monkey suit, and he looked almost unhappy when I ordered no more than a steak and salad. I asked him what the festivities were all about.

“Mrs. Mace, the blond lady, is having a birthday.”

I decided to have a bottle of Dutch beer and some hors d’oeuvres while I waited for the steak. He went away, happier with me. I turned my attention to the party, interested in seeing what five years had done to those I knew.

Charles Conklin, separated from Hoop by Tanya Mace, looked almost as I remembered him. He was a man of medium height, with a round face that gave him an almost cherubic look. He was neat and dapper and pink-cheeked. He really seemed quite boyish until you saw his eyes, and then the hardness that had taken him so far so fast in the business world was apparent. They were the kind of eyes that would look on a widow as something to foreclose a mortgage on rather than as something to make a pass at.

On his right was his wife, Sofia Proctor Conklin. A pretty woman of thirty, she was as I remembered her. Everything was correct—the dress, the hair, her way of eating and drinking, of inclining her head when she spoke to Conklin on one side or to her sister, Enid, on the other. She had been Jen’s maid of honor, her intimate friend, and I had come to know her and all the Proctors quite well. She had always seemed to me to represent the epitome of the Junior League; I had the feeling that she always would.

Enid, at twenty-six, looked as if the world had given her everything it could muster and she had taken it all. She was not beautiful; her features were too irregular. But she had life and spirit in her face despite a drawn, nervous look. Dark hair fell in almost an unruly mass to her shoulders, contrasting sharply with Sofia’s precise hairdo. Her evening gown plunged just to the edge of good taste. She had changed more than any of them but she was still Enid, the harum-scarum kid. She had that look about her.

When she reached for one of her wine glasses, I saw her sister’s hand reach out and touch hers, stopping her. Enid’s reaction was an expression that said she wanted to go to hell and why were they stopping her. But she drew her hand back and said nothing.

The Colonel was the same as far as I could see. Gross in the belly and in the jowls, his gray hair a little thinner but no more wrinkles around his blue eyes. The smooth smile, the hearty laugh, all were as they had been. He sat as straight and stiff as he walked, his shoulders back as if fearing to lean forward would cause his stomach to drag him onto his face. His title came from some state militia in the Midwest. He clung to it, lived up to it, usually talked as if he were giving orders to a regiment. I was delighted to see him looking so healthy. I wanted nothing to happen to him until I had my chance at him.

Enid Proctor interested me because she was one way of getting at Nikke. But Tanya Mace, who completed the circle, interested me most because she was the way of my getting at the Colonel. She represented the person with whom he was most deeply involved emotionally. I studied her carefully.

The picture of her in my dossier failed to do her justice. She was almost beautiful. She was tall, a big woman, with a fine bosom and hips, and with a head of pale blond hair that looked like spun platinum. On anyone else it would have seemed artificial; on her, no one could dispute its genuineness. She wore it drawn back, revealing the sharp, bold outlines of her face, and knotted at the back of her neck.

Only her mouth threatened to spoil the picture. It was heavy, almost but not quite out of proportion with the rest of her. Once she turned so that I saw her full face and the line of full, sensuous lips struck me as forcibly as did the light in her large, green eyes. It was a strange sensation. She saw that I was watching her, yet she gave no indication. She might have been looking at a wall decoration. But somehow I knew she was not. She was looking at me with the same intensity that I was using on her. And her interest came through to me as plainly as if she had spoken.

The Hoop party was down to the dessert by the time my steak arrived. I had made a decision and so I ate more hurriedly than I liked, gave up the anticipated brandy and coffee, and made it to the lobby before they left the dining room. As they sailed through, I went directly up to the Colonel.

“Colonel Hoop, sir?” I put a thread of Texas drawl I had deliberately cultivated into my voice. “I believe I recognize you from the newspaper pictures Cousin Malcolm used to send us.”

Hoop was staring at me and having a hard time hiding the mixture of surprise and fear on his countenance. His reddish jowls took on a faint greenish tinge, and then that went away as what I had said seemed to penetrate.

“Cousin Malcolm?”

“Allow me to introduce myself, sir. Lowry Curtis.”

“You’re related to Malcolm Lowry?” He didn’t sound as if he approved of the idea.

“Kissing kin on my mother’s side,” I said modestly. “But we haven’t heard from Malcolm for some while, and since I was out this way, I thought I’d inquire. He mentioned you highly in his letters. I was planning to look you up when I saw you here.”

I wasn’t sure that it wasn’t a foolish move. On the other hand, a bold stroke is sometimes the best defense. That was one reason I had decided to do this. The other was that I wanted the Colonel to start remembering Malcolm Lowry.

He seemed to take in all I said and swallow it. “Uh—Malcolm Lowry left some years ago, Mr. Curtis. I haven’t heard from him since.”

The others were looking at me with a good deal of interest and, I thought, speculation. Charles Conklin stepped forward. “As a matter of fact, Mr. Curtis, your cousin left here with a rather unsavory reputation.”

I let my eyebrows crawl up. “A fact? I didn’t know he had spunk enough to get any kind of reputation.”

Tanya Mace gave a low, soft laugh. “You might introduce us, Colonel.” So she flattered him by calling him Colonel instead of John.

He made the introductions, obviously without much enthusiasm. I think he was afraid I would attach myself to the party. I got a perfunctory handshake from Charles Conklin and a boring look from those hard, pale blue eyes. I met it equably and then turned to his wife. She gave me her fingertips. I bowed over them, repeated the process with Enid, who was measuring me openly, and then accepted Tanya Mace’s long, strong hand.

“Tanya?” I said. “Russian, Mrs. Mace?”

Her green eyes mocked me. “Just kissing kin on my mother’s side,” she said. “White Russian.”

I turned almost rudely away from her. The woman bothered me, and I could not afford to be bothered at a time like this. I excused myself for intruding and let them go on out. Then I took myself to the bar and grill for my delayed brandy and coffee. I stayed there, killing time until it would be late enough to go to Nikke’s. I felt good now; I had started things moving.

Shortly before ten, Tanya Mace came in alone. She walked directly to me as if she had been hunting me. I rose and asked her to sit down. She was wearing a magnificent sheath-tight green dress that was molded to her handsomely proportioned figure. When she threw back the small fur she was wearing and reached her arms up to adjust her knot of hair, I looked hastily around for a waiter. She was the first woman since Jen that I was afraid of. Jen, I had loved. I had given her my self-possession willingly. Tanya Mace was different. She threatened to take my self-possession by force.

“Whiskey and water,” she said. She had a husky, rounded voice. When the drink came, she took half of it before setting down the glass. “I came looking for you, Mr. Curtis.”

“Because we both have kissing kin?”

Her full mouth curved up in a smile. “Because we both have problems.” She reached for her fur. “I’ll have to go or I’ll be missed. Are you staying here?”

“Bungalow eight,” I said.

“Thank you,” she murmured. We rose and she turned to leave. “I want to talk to you very much.”

“I’m always glad to be of aid to a lady,” I said in my best Texan.

“This may be the other way around,” she said. “Good night, Lowry Curtis.”

I watched her go, sat down until I stopped shaking inside, and then went to my bungalow. I put on my tuxedo, took a black coat and hat, and went out to find a taxicab. Settled, I said casually, “Nikke’s.”

“Which one?”

I had to think that one over. To me Nikke’s meant just the one place—on the Hill. Tonight I wanted Enid Proctor, not Nikke himself, so I said, “The big one, south.”

“That’s a long way, mister.”

I showed him a bill. “I can cover.”

We went.

• • •

This wasn’t Nikke’s. There was none of his stamp on the place. This was cold and chromed and hard without any of the soft charm that was reminiscent of a time of gracious living, the charm Nikke had imbued his own place with. I entered a small dining-room bar where there was no one but a bored-looking barman. Behind him was a door and I started for it.

He jerked a thumb toward another door on my left. “Through there, bud.”

I went through. There was a small lobby, the kind you see in a middle-class hotel. There was a counter at one side and a cloak room opposite. Between them was another door. A man was behind the counter, his elbows on it, his chin propped in his hands. He was intent on a photography magazine that was mostly pictures of girls pretending to be nude.