A Deadly Shade of Gold

by John D. MacDonald

  "Tomberlin gave the orders about Almah and about the explosive?"

  "I guess he told Claude what to do and who to pick to do it. Nobody meant for that woman with you to be...."

  "Why do you do what they tell you to do, Dru?"

  "Me?" She looked astonished. "Golly I guess it's about the same with me as it was with Almah and a lot of other people. Those pictures of me, if they ever sent a print of even one of the cleanest ones to my daddy I swear it would kill him. You don't know about the first pictures they take, and then they use those to make you do things for more pictures. Rather than have my daddy ever see me doing anything like that, his own daughter, I'd cut my wrists first. I'd do anything they ask. I think where Almah got out from under, her mother died while she was down there."

  I remembered the untidiness of Almah Hichin, the look of soil and wear and carelessness. It was easy to see now why she had ceased to value herself. And it was an ancient gambit, using the threat of the most horrid scandal imaginable to tame people to your will and use. And the son of a bitch had so casually mentioned his photo lab.

  "You know what Tomberlin is? And Claude Boody?"

  "I can't help that. I don't think about that."

  "Baby, you are going to have to think about it. You are an accessory to murder. And your dear daddy is going to have to know the whole filthy mess, and you are going to have to talk and talk and talk to save your sweet skin, sun bunny. Even so, you may spend ten years in a Mexican rest camp, living on tortillas and frijoles."

  "Leave me alone, you son of a bitch! I think I'm bleeding inside. You can't do anything to me. I bet you can't even get back through the gate out there."

  I turned and looked at the two slumberers. Chip was still bleeding. Boody had stopped, though his gash looked bigger. I had a sudden idea about him. I went over and put my ear against his chest. When I was still a foot away from him, I realized there wasn't much point in it. I was aware of the girl moving from the bed to go and bend over Chip. I listened to utter silence. All I could hear was my own blood roaring in my ear, like listening to a sea shell. Boody didn't live in there any more.

  As I slowly got to my feet, there was a sharp brisk sound, like somebody breaking a big dry stick. The sun bunny had backed over toward a dressing table. She had a little automatic in her hand, a little more weapon than my shiny bedroom gun. She held it at arm's length, aiming it at me. She was biting her lip. She had one eye closed. The small muzzle made a wavering circle. It cracked again and I felt a little warm wind against my ear lobe.

  "Cut it out!" I yelled, fumbling for Claude's gun, tugging it out of my pocket. She fired again, and I knew she was going to keep right on, and I knew she couldn't keep on missing at that range, particularly if it occurred to her to stop trying to hit me in the face. The third shot tingled the hair directly on top of my head, and Claude's pistol was double action, and I tried to get her in the shoulder. It made a ringing deafening blam, and the slug took her just below the hairline on the right side of her head, and the recoil of that light frame jumped the gun up so that it was aiming at the ceiling.

  The slug slammed a third of the top of her skull away, snapped her neck, catapulted her back into the dressing table, smashing the mirror, soiling the wall, leaving her in a limp, grotesque, motionless backbend across the dressing table bench. The silent room was full of the stink of smokeless powder. I made a sound that was half retching and half hysterical giggle. Hero McGee wins the shootout. He's death on sun bunnies. Stomach contents rose in an acid column against the back of my throat and slowly subsided. Dear daddy wasn't going to make out too well after all.

  Bits of mirror still in the frame gave fragmented reflections of her. No more the bikinied prance, thigh-swing, hair salt, gamin sun bunny smile-no working hips or droll wink or busting with fun, no loads of love to daddy from your loving Dru, no surfer teeter on the dipping board, or the slow greeny world down by the coral heads with the fins scooting her along. Her bright dreams and visions, stilled into paste, were clotted onto a bedroom wall.

  I wondered if she had really known that it was all real. When she had been popping that little gun at me, perhaps she had still been one step removed from the trueness of it, seeing herself as a TV second lead making up the script as she went along, seeing both me and herself as symbol figures in one of the dramas that would always end with everybody sitting around, having coffee before the next take. I hoped she was taken dead so quickly she was given no microsecond of the terrible reality of knowing that she was ended. I stood tense, half on tiptoe, trying not to breathe, listening, listening. I moved to the door, listening. I could not risk opening it. Not yet.

  The little gun was under the dressing table bench. I managed not to look at her as I retrieved it. I had assembled a rude script for my own survival, and I went through the motions like a wooden man, with everything but the necessities of the situation blocked out of my mind. I took the little gun over and stood over Claude and fired one slug down into his dead heart. I took the gun back and put it into Chip's hand and curled his fingers around it. I knelt beside him and gave him a solid blow on the side of the head with the length of pipe, to keep him sleeping. And, in the event he woke up too soon and wanted to rearrange the scene to fit some other pattern, I used the pipe to give him a knee that would keep him still and bother him as long as he lived.

  I folded the bigger gun into Claude's slack hand. I saw where the three times she had missed had put raggedy little holes into the panel meat of the door. I stood and looked at the scene. I knew I was going to wear it for a long long time, right in there on one of my back walls, with studio lighting. I tasted blood and realized I had nibbled a small piece out of the inside of my under lip.

  I was still so rattled that I came dangerously close to wiping the door hardware clean. That is like leaving a signal flag. I recovered and smeared it, using the heel of my thumb, bases of my fingers.

  I had to leave the room light on. I opened the door an inch. The corridor was silent. I heard steel guitars. I slipped out and pulled the door shut and went to the end of the corridor. The deck was empty. I went out there and closed the corridor door. Somebody had left half a drink on the rail. I picked it up. My right arm ached. There was a very tender area behind my right ear and slightly above it, but the skin was not broken. I fixed my tie and took deep breaths of the night air. I had the length of pipe in a trouser pocket. I ambled back to join the party.

  I had the eerie expectation of finding everyone gone, chairs overturned, drinks spilled, signs of hasty exit. But the groups were still there, unsteadier now. Some of the kids were on the stairs, and others were dancing. Dr. Face still brayed disaster at his captive circle. I looked at my watch. It had all happened in about twenty-five minutes. I saw mine host in pewter silk standing in a group, his dull black wig sitting trimly on his naked skull, iced tea in his right hand, his left hand mechanically honking the buttock of a slender woman who stood beside him, like a child playing with an ancient auto horn. No one paid me any attention.

  I searched for Connie without haste, and found her down by the sheltered part of the pool, sitting on a bench, talking real estate tax laws with a slight young man with a mild face and fierce mustache. The young man, after the introduction, excused himself to go off and find his wife.

  Connie stood up and said, "Now can we go back to my place? My God, darling, this is turning into one of the dullest evenings of my life."

  I hauled her back down onto the bench and she was a little off balance and came down too solidly.

  "Hey? Are you tight?"

  "Listen one damned minute, Mrs. Melgar. Listen to a suppose. Suppose you got a little foolish and reckless one night, and you got a little drunk, and you went back into that studio or whatever he has beyond that jolly museum of his, and somebody took some very unwholesome pictures of you...."

  "That may be his little hobby, dear, and he may have scads of friends who are sick enough to play, but it leaves me absolutely cold. He has ma
de his oily little hints. For God's sake, you heard him. I may be lusty, dear, but I'm not decadent, not in any exhibitionistic sense."

  "So suppose he sets you up sometime, with something in your drinks, and he picks a couple of choice negatives and sends them to somebody in Caracas who will make a couple of thousand prints and distribute them. What would happen then?"

  Her big hand clamped my wrist strongly. "Dear God!"

  "Two of your sisters are married to men in the government. What would happen?"

  "My grandfather and my dead husband's grandfather were terrific men. They're sort of folk heroes now. It didn't help very much, having me leave for good. A thing like that would.... It could be put to terrible frightening use. What are you trying to tell me? That Cal would do a thing like that? But, my dear, it doesn't make sense! Everybody knows that Cal helps a lot of people fight the sort of people who would put pictures like that to political use. He gives loads of money to people who are fighting Communist influence in Latin America."

  "What if he strengthens the groups who are going about it in the wrong ways, in ways that merely help rather than hinder."

  "But that would mean he......"

  "He is a grotesque. He loves intrigue. Maybe he hates his own class, and particularly himself. Maybe he hides behind this facade of... political gullibility and this collection of erotica. Maybe he is not quite sane."

  "For goodness sake, he is just Calvin Tomberlin, a dull, self-important, rich, silly, sick little man."

  "I don't like wasting time with these questions, but I have to ask them. Was Rafael Mineros doing anything effective about the Cuban situation?"

  In the shadowy reflections of the pool lights, she looked startled.

  "He asked me to come in with them. Maybe I was too selfish. Maybe I didn't have his dedication. He had organized a group of wealthy people, about half of them from Cuba and the others from sensitive areas, Guatemala, Venezuela, Panama. They formed a syndicate to try to stifle trade with Cuba. They weren't working through governments, with sanctions and embargos and things like that. They were dealing directly with the businessmen in Japan and Greece and Canada, the ones who wanted to buy from Cuba and sell to Cuba. They would line up other sources and other markets, and then put in enough money to make the deal more attractive than if they'd dealt with Cuba.

  "It was his idea that if they could hasten the economic collapse of Cuba, they would be hastening the fall of the Castro government. He showed me where they could prove they had stopped forty-three ships from taking cargoes to Cuba and bringing Cuban goods out, just by locating other deals elsewhere. I guess it wasn't very dramatic and exciting, like buying little airplanes and hiring madmen to drop little bombs on refineries, but I imagine it is dull negotiations like that which do a lot more damage. Rafael was completely tireless and dedicated. I think he was flying a million miles a year. It is probably all falling apart now. It was an expensive project. His son Enrique and Manuel Talavera were his aides, and Maria Talavera did a lot of the office work. Now they are all gone."

  I took her by the upper arms and shook her. "Now listen to me. Listen to two things. Make it three things. One. Tomberlin had that group killed. And then he had the people killed who had killed them. He used his collector's mania as window dressing. Two. I told you precisely the plan Tomberlin has in mind far you. Three. In one of the bedrooms of this house there are two very dead people right now, dead by violence, and this whole situation may blow up in our face at any moment. But there is too damned good a chance that Tomberlin can cover the whole thing up. He has too many personal pictures of too many people in his files. His big levers are money and blackmail. I didn't want to get you too involved. But now there isn't much choice. You can still say the hell with it. Or you can help. It depends on how much any of this means to you."

  She huddled her big shoulders. "I... I've never been what you would call a p-patriot. But the way they think about my family... that's a precious thing. And... Rafael was a good man. What do you want of me?"

  "Let's get him back into that museum."

  "How?"

  "Be a little drunk. Tell him you want your picture taken. Tell him it has to be with me, and it has to be now, before you change your mind."

  "What are you going to do?"

  "You said that layout is built like a safe. Nobody is going to get in and upset anything. Let's see what happens."

  Nineteen

  IT TOOK her about fifteen minutes to set it up. The party was now visibly dwindling. Tiresome drunks were in the majority of the diehards still left. I noted with approval that when we went in, Tomberlin locked the heavy door. Connie was doing a good job of simulating a constant high foolish giggle. I was unsteady on my feet, and wore a vacant, lecherous, fish-eating grin. Tomberlin was very soothing, and kept turning a quick broad smile off and on as though he were hooked up to a repeating circuit.

  He took us back through a library to a small studio. There was a shiny jungle of lighting equipment. A technician was fiddling around with cameras. I had not anticipated his presence. He was a little old fellow, a mixture of oriental blood lines, part Japanese.

  "As I explained, my dear, you will have absolute privacy." Tomberlin said. "I wouldn't want you to feel too restrained. Charlie will get the cameras set up and then we'll leave you alone."

  The equipment was interesting. There were three 35 millimeter Nikon cameras, still cameras with automatic drive and oversized film carriers. One was locked to a track directly over the low broad couch, aiming down. One was on a high sturdy tripod at the foot of the couch, slanted down. One was on a low tripod beside the couch.

  Charlie led the drive cables over to jacks in a timer box. He adjusted lights, one a direct flood, but softened and diffused, and the other a bright bounce light from the white ceiling. Charlie turned the timer on. One camera clopped, and after about six seconds another one clopped and buzzed, and at the same interval the third one fired. Charlie turned the timer off and nodded.

  "The film will last about fifty minutes, dears," Tomberlin said, wiping his pale lips on the back of his hand. "Do try not to be too dull and ordinary."

  "What are you going to do with these pictures, Cal?"

  "Darling, it's just a fun game, that's all. We can go over the contact sheets together and see what we have worth enlarging. I'll give you all the negatives. You'll have some very interesting souvenirs, Connie dear. The lady in her prime. Don't be too quick dears, and waste all that film."

  "Is anybody likely to walk in?" she asked.

  "There's not the slightest chance."

  "Where will you be?"

  "I might rejoin the party and come back in an hour."

  I rambled over to the timer box and turned the switch on. The little old fellow hissed at me and slapped my hand away and turned it off. I'd wasted one exposure.

  "Please don't touch the equipment," Tomberlin said.

  I went grinning over to where he stood. Bashful guy. The old Hank Fonda in a farm picture. Shucks. I studied my fingernails, head bent, and said, "There's one thing about all this, Mister Tomberlin."

  "Yes?"

  I pivoted a half turn. I had screwed my legs down into the floor, and I pivoted with thighs, back, shoulder and arm, to see if I could drive my fist all the way through softness above his belt, right back to the backbone. The wind yawffed out of him and he skidded backward, bowing low, spilling tripod and camera, hitting the couch with the back of his knees, rolling up into a kind of curled headstand on the couch before toppling over onto his side.

  Even though I started moving the instant I hit him, I still almost missed the old man. He had the speed of a lizard. I got him by the back of the collar just as he went through the doorway and hauled him back. He began to jump up and down and whoop and bat at me with his hands. He was too hysterical to listen to anything. I held him at arm's length, got the length of pipe, timed his leaps, and with due regard for the long fragile look of his skull, bumped him solidly right on top of the hea
d. His eyes rolled out of sight and I lowered him to the floor. I don't think he weighed a hundred and ten. Within moments he was snoring heartily. They do that quite often.

  Connie stepped out of my way as I went over to the couch. Tomberlin was on his side, his color dreadful, knees against his chest, semi-conscious, moaning softly with each breath. I shook him and said, "Greetings from Almah. And Sam. And Miguel. Rafael, Enrique, Maria, Manueh Greetings from the whole group. Dru is dead too. And so is Boody."

  "Boody!" Connie gasped. "Claude Boody?"

  "World traveler."