A Deadly Shade of Gold

by John D. MacDonald

  Be greeted Connie with what I guessed was supposed to be warmth, gave her a little hug, and placed two firm pats on her ample knitted stern. But it was done in a curiously mechanical fashion, as though he was a machine programmed to make these social gestures.

  Connie introduced us. His hand was cold and soft and dry. He looked at me as a butcher looks at a questionable side of meat, and turned away. I had it feeling a relay had clicked and my file card had fallen into the right slot. I was next to him, but in an identity where I could not establish contact. Stud for the Venezuelana. Ambulatory service station. I sensed the same recognition and dismissal in the others. They weighed me with their eyes, so much captive meat, and turned away. I did some drifting. Groups formed, broke, reformed, changed. I saw the pool people. I paced the big suspended deck. The lowest level was bedrooms. The upper level was lounge area, dining areas, a library. The day was gone, and the lights came on as they were needed.

  I found Connie and, after a patient time, cut her out of the pack.

  "What was that about a west wing or something?"

  "Cat's little museum. Up the stairs and to the left. Locked tight."

  "Any way to get to see it?"

  She frowned. "I don't know. I can try. Hang around this area, dear. If it works, I'll be back to get you."

  While she was gone a wobbly type came up to me, a big blond kid with a recruiting poster face. He looked ready to cry.

  "You have some good laughs when she pointed me out, pal?"

  "You're wrong. She didn't."

  "I saw it, buddy. I saw it happening. You know what you got to do. You got to take her a damn big bug."

  "A what?"

  He wavered and held up a thumb and finger, a quarter inch apart. "There's a hell of a smart spider. A spider, no bigger'n this. When he goes to see the old lady spider, he wraps up a big juicy bug and takes it along, like an offering. He's one smart little old son of a bitch, because he knows that it's the only way he can have his fun and get away alive, because she gets so busy eating that bug she doesn't get around to eating him. You got the message, buddy boy? You take Connie a hell of a big bug, and remember I told you so."

  "Thanks a lot. Take off."

  He shook his head. "You're so smart, aren't you? You know every damn thing. She's worth millions, and she's the best piece you ever ran into, and you're set forever. That's the way it is, huh? Living high, boy. Well, brace yourself, because she's going to...."

  "Chuck!" she said sharply. He swung around and stared at her. She shook her head sadly. "You're turning into the most terrible bore, dear. Run along, dear."

  "I want to talk to you, Connie. By God, I want to talk to you."

  "You heard the lady" I said.

  He pivoted and swung at me. I caught the fist in my open hand, slid my fingers onto his wrist. He swung the other fist, off balance, and I caught the other wrist. He bulged with the effort to free himself, then broke and started to cry. I let him go and he went stumbling away, rubbing his nose with the back of his hand.

  "Nicely done," she said.

  "I am supposed to bring you a wrapped bug."

  "Yes. I remember that little analogy. He got very fond of it. He did turn into a dreadful bore. Come along. Cal is waiting. I told him I wanted to see how you'd react."

  "How should I react?"

  "Suit yourself. It gives me a funny feeling."

  He was waiting for us, mild as a licensed guide. He unlocked a very solid-looking door, closed it and locked it again when the three of us were inside. Lines of fluorescent tubes flickered and went on. There were little museum spotlights. The room was about twenty by forty. There were paintings and drawings on the walls. There was a big rack of paintings and drawings. There were pieces of statuary on pedestals and on bases, and set into glassed-in niches in the walls. There were display cases. It was all very tidy and professional and well organized. The windows, two small ones, were covered with thick steel mesh.

  "I have here, and in the next room," he said in that buzzing voice, "what is probably the most definitive collection of erotica in the world today. It has considerable historical significance. The historical portion of the collection, the library of over two thousand volumes, the ancient paintings and statuary, are available for the use of qualified scholars by appointment. Because so many of these things are irreplaceable, I could not venture a guess as to the value of the collection."

  Each major piece of art in that tidy room was shocking. There was a curious clinical horror about it, a non-functional chill. I had the odd feeling that walking into this room was precisely like walking into Cal Tomberlin's mind. I glanced at Connie. Her eyes were narrow and her rich mouth compressed.

  He showed us the cases of ancient instruments of torture and ecstasy. He turned a ground glass easel on, took large Ektachrome transparencies from a safe file and showed us a few of them, saying, "These are studies of the Indian temple carvings at Konarak and Khajuarho, showing the erotic procedures which were always a part of the Hindu religion."

  He put them away and said, "Beyond here we have the special library of books and films, a small projection room and a small photo lab. A recent project has been to duplicate the Konarak carvings, using amateur actors and period costuming. Stills, of course."

  "A project?" Connie said. "Really Cal! You make your own diseases sound so terribly earnest."

  He looked at her blandly. "Connie, my dear, any time you wish to lend your considerable talent to any of these little projects...."

  "I would look a bit out of place among your poor hopped-up little actors and actresses, darling."

  "You are wonderfully well preserved, Connie."

  I wandered over to the side wall. The individual niches were lighted. I had counted one area of thirty-four of them. The gold statues were behind glass.

  "Are these real gold, Mr. Tomberlin?"

  He came up behind me. "Yes. I recently had more space made for these. Most of these were a recent acquisition. As you can see, many of them do not fit in with... with the general theme of the entire collection. But I decided not to break the collection up. Strange and handsome, aren't they?"

  I moved over and got a close look at the squatty little man. Borlika Galleries had sold him to Carlos Menterez y Cruzada. Carlos had taken him from New York to Havana to Puerto Altamura. Sam Taggart had taken him from Mexico to California to Florida. He had unwrapped him there and shown him to me. And somebody had come and taken him back to California. Now I had traced him down, and I imagined I could see an ancient sour recognition in his little eyes.

  "Where would you go to buy stuff like this?" I asked.

  "I purchased a collection, Mr. Smith. I haven't had them properly identified and catalogued as yet." He was bored. He had no interest in my reaction. He turned to Connie and said, "Would you like to see a new film, dear? It's Swedish, and quite extraordinary."

  She shivered. "Thank you, no. Once was enough for all time. Show it to Rhoda, darling. She adores that sort of thing. Thank you for the guided tour. Let's all get back to the people, shall we?"

  After we were alone again, she shivered again and said, "That's pretty snaky in there, isn't it?"

  "He's a strange man."

  She pulled me into a corner and put her hands on my shoulders. "Is it those gold things, dear?"

  "Was I that obvious?"

  "Not really. But it would be nice if it were those gold statues. He was so delighted to get them. He's had them only a few months. He must have made a very good deal. He kept chuckling and beaming. But, darling, it would be quite a project. That room is like a big safe. This place is alive with people at all hours. And I think he has burglar alarms."

  "It presents a few little problems."

  "Including the police."

  "No. They wouldn't come into it."

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "They're not his. Twenty-eight of them aren't."

  She looked amused and astonished. "Now don't tell me he stole them!"
r />   "He sort of intercepted them after they'd been stolen."

  "It's very confusing, my dear. And you are... employed by someone?"

  "Paul told you about asking questions."

  "I remember something about that. Don't you trust me, my dear?"

  "Implicitly, totally, without reservation, Constancia. But if you don't have any answers, you can't answer any questions."

  "Will people ask me questions?"

  "Probably not."

  "Darling, do as you wish. I am the middle one of five daughters in a very political family, and we were all born to intrigue."

  "The idea of there being five of you is a little disconcerting."

  "Don't be alarmed. The other four are little satin pillows, surrounded with children. I am twenty-one times an aunt. Tia Constancia." She hooked a strong hand around the nape of my neck. "Be kissed by an aunt," she said. It was quick and pungent and most competent. And loaded with challenge.

  "I think there'd be a nice place for me, just to the left of the lion."

  "I would be more concerned about what your trophy room looks like, Mack Smith."

  "It's very dull. You see, I don't go after the record heads. In fact, I don't go after anything at all. I'm not a collector, Connie."

  "That makes you a little more dangerous. I understand collectors. You see, I.... What's the matter?"

  "I just wondered if I know that man."

  She turned and looked. "Oh, that's one of Cal's show business connections. A dreary little chap. Claude Boody."

  There was no hint of the imperiousness the artist had put into the oil painting in Puerto Altamura. The jowls were the same. The eyes were sad, wet, brown and bagged, like a tired spaniel, and he walked with the care of a heart case.

  "I guess he just looks like someone I knew once."

  "He has some dreary little syndicated television things, and he buys old foreign movies and dubs the English and resells them to independent stations."

  "You sound knowledgeable, Mrs. Melgar."

  "I have some money in that, too. But not with him."

  "Does Tomberlin have some business association with him?"

  "Heavens no! Calvin cultivates a few people like Boody because they can always round up some reckless youngsters for fun and games. Poor Boody travels the world over scrounging properties, and he always looks tired. I guess he does well enough. He lives well. His wife is a neurotic bitch and his children are spoiled rotten."

  We went back to the upper lounge where Tomberlin's hard-working staff had laid out a generous buffet. It was delicious, and we took loaded plates down to the big deck and ate like a pair of tigers. She licked her fingers, patted her tummy, stifled a belch and moaned with satisfaction. There is a direct relation between the physical approaches to all hungers. This great hearty woman would ease all appetites with the same wolfish intensity, the same deep satisfaction. She would live hard, play hard, sleep like the dead.

  Her strong rich body had that magnetic attraction based on total health and total use. She did not relate in any way to the sick subtleties, the delicate corruptions in Tomberlin's private museum. And I got the hell away from her before I had more awareness than I could comfortably handle.

  I wandered again. The party kept shifting and changing, people leaving, people arriving, various states of various kinds of intoxication achieved, small arrangements, made and broken, small advantages taken and rejected. Music boomed from hidden speakers when somebody turned the volume up. All evening it had been incurably, implacably Hawaiian. I heard the reason in a snatch of conversation. Tomberlin liked it, and would have nothing else.

  I mapped the place in my mind. Then I rechecked my dimensions. I wandered outside and identified the windows and the relationship between them. I charted in the power sources. I wondered how many Hawaiians the damned man had. I wondered what kind of nippers would bite that wire, and how I would get up to the window, and how I would get back up to it from the inside bearing a hundred and a half of ancient gold, if I could get it out from behind those glass ports.

  I went out into the darker end of the garden beyond the lights of the now empty pool, and sat on a pedestal, sharing it with a welded woman perched upon one steel toe. I smoked a cigarette and felt again the monstrous dejection which had nearly foundered me in Francine's tub. There can be a special sort of emotional exhaustion compounded of finding no good answers to anything. Too much had faded away, and the only target left was a grotesque pornographer with a voice like a trapped bee, and he seemed peripheral to the whole thing. Too much blood. Too much gold and intrigue. Too much fumbling and bumbling. It was like taking a puzzle apart and having the pieces disappear the instant they came free. From the talk with Sam, all the way to the hard tasteless gallop in Francine's bed, I had handled myself like an idiot, suffering all the losses, enjoying no gains.

  And, except for Nora, the whole thing had seemed like a long bath in yesterday's dish water. The house lights faded the stars, but I looked up at them and told myself my recent vision of reality had been from a toad's-eye view. The stars, McGee, look down on a world where thousands of 4-H kids are raising prize cattle and sheep. The Green Bay Packers, of their own volition, join in the Lord's Prayer before a game. Many good and gentle people have fallen in love this night. At this moment, thousands of women are in labor with the fruit of good marriage. Thousands of kids sleep the deep sleep which comes from the long practice hours for competitive swimming and tennis. Good men have died today, leaving hearts sick with loss. In quiet rooms young girls are writing poems. People are laughing together, in safe places.

  You have been on the underside of the world, McGee, but there is a top side too, where there is wonder, innocence, trust, love and gentleness. You made the decision, boy. You live down here, where the animals are, so stay with it.

  I got up and went back to the party. A new batch of faces had arrived and some had fallen off. A dusty little man in his middle years, with fierce eyes and a froggy bassoon of a voice was standing orating in the big room, surrounded by a mixed group of admirers and dissidents. He wore a beret and a shiny serge suit and he had a great air of authority. I drifted into the edge of the group and heard an earnest woman say, "But Doctor Face, isn't it part of our heritage for anyone to be entitled to say what they think, right or wrong?"

  "My dear woman, that is one of the luxuries of liberty, not one of the definitions thereof. And it is traditional and necessary in war that we forgo the luxuries and concentrate on the necessities. My posture is that we are at war, with a vile, godless, international conspiracy which grows in strength every day while we weaken ourselves by giving every pinko jackass the right to confuse our good people. I ask you, my dear. Who takes the fifth? Known hoodlums and fellow travelers. Our so called traditional liberties provide the bunkers in which these rascals hide and shoot us down. I say we must work together. We must silence all the divisionist voices among us.

  "If we are to be strong, we must impeach all traitor justices of the Supreme Court, give greater powers to the investigating committees of the Congress, decentralize our socialistic central government, institute wartime censorship of all mass media, expand the counterespionage efforts of the FBI, smash the apparatus of the Communist Party as it exists within labor unions, the NAACP, the CLU, and the hard core of sympathizers on all college campuses, both students and faculty.

  "We are engaged in a bitter war for the hearts and minds of men, and our enemy is without soul or mercy. To be strong we must silence, once and forever, every jackass who tells the people that we can win through weakness rather than strength. Over twelve thousand people have signed up as Crusaders. We're tough. We're smart. We're wary. And we raean to save this country in spite of itself."

  The delivery was effective. It radiated sincerity, concern, earnestness. But he had it all down just a little too pat. He had said it too many hundreds of times. And as I stood there I had a curious feeling I had been there before. It took me a time to remember. Then I re
called it, lifetimes ago, as a small kid in a Chicago park, hanging onto the big hand of the daddy, listening to this same dusty little man with his smeared lenses and the same general impression of dirty underwear. Not the same man, of course, but the same mechanical messiah approach. And that duplicate little man of long ago had been calling upon all decent men to arm themselves against the dirty capitalistic conspiracy, bread for the workers, break the chains, unite, save America.