Soft Touch

by John D. MacDonald

  But that was nonsense. I could be grateful to Vince for one reason. His wild plan had increased my determination to get out of E. J.’s little family corporation. Seeing Vince had crystallized my discontent with a futile job and a spoiled child wife.

  Your lady is a lush. It had made me angry when he said that in his cold, amused way. But it was accurate.

  Maybe this was the time to get out. Change the dice once more before it was too late.

  I went up to bed. There was no need to be quiet. I could have marched Armstrong and all the saints through the bedroom without changing the deep drugged rhythm of her breathing. I stood over her and looked at the slack sleeping face. In sleep her face had the innocence and vulnerability of a child.

  After I was in bed I began to plan my little chat with E. J.

  3

  Liz told me at nine o’clock Saturday morning that the big little man wasn’t in yet. It was raining steadily. The rain on the window by her desk had a stained and greasy look.

  I sat by her desk and said, “I suppose he sent out a lot of cancellations when he got back yesterday.”

  “Dozens. All by wire.”

  “Liz, I’m going to get out.”

  She finished a line of her typing, banged the carriage back and turned and looked at me. “It’s about time, Jerry.”

  “I didn’t know what your reaction would be. I didn’t expect that.”

  “Why not? Couldn’t it be as obvious to me as it is to you? All your reasons?” She glanced toward the door and said, “Good morning, Mr. Malton.”

  E. J. came in, followed closely by Eddie. “Good morning, good morning, good morning! Great day for ducks.”

  “I want to talk to you, E. J.”

  “In a moment, Jerry. In a moment.” And he went into his office with junior and shut the door. Junior didn’t come out for half an hour. I couldn’t imagine any conversation that would require his presence for half an hour.

  “Come in, Jerry,” E. J. baroomed.

  I shut the door behind me. I sat down and said, “I want you to listen to me, E. J. To what I say.”

  “You know perfectly well I give my full attention to everything that comes up.”

  “I chickened out yesterday, E. J. I let you bluff me. You went ahead and canceled the orders I placed.”

  “Orders you placed after revising working drawings without my permission. You know the rules around here.”

  “I want a showdown. I want those houses built my way. You promised me a free hand.”

  “A free hand within the rules. Within our operating procedures.”

  “Nuts. Do you let me build them my way?”

  “On a project this big, Jerry, I’d be a damn fool to let you go ahead with a lot of silly experimentation. If you’re asking a stupid question, the answer is no.”

  “Then I want out. Now.”

  “Why, if we were to go ahead with your ideas, we’d be the laughing … What did you just say?”

  “I said I want out.”

  “Out of the corporation? You want to be released?”

  “More than just a release. I’ve got two hundred shares of stock in my own name, E. J. When I came in eight years ago, Dan Dentry kept telling me I was making a good deal. Okay, then it should work both ways. I have here a complete inventory of everything you picked up out of my little business. On a conservative estimate of value, I’ve worked it out at eight thousand dollars. So you can have my two hundred shares back for eight thousand bucks, E. J., and we’ll shake hands and you can stop scrapping with me.”

  For once he was really listening. He pursed his trout-mouth and said, “Absolutely impossible, Jerry. I’m disappointed at your attitude. We have our little dissensions, but I thought we were a good team. You certainly know that the size of this project requires all the working capital we can swing.”

  “If the corporation can’t buy the shares back, suppose you buy them personally.”

  “I’m in no position to do that.”

  “Then give me a truck and some tools up to eight thousand dollars’ worth.”

  “Park Terrace will require all the equipment we have.”

  “Can you get it through your thick head that I’m through?”

  “I can understand you’re being rude and stupid.”

  “You won’t make any kind of deal on the stock?”

  “No.”

  I stood up. “I’m still through.”

  “And you are still my son-in-law, Jerry. You can do as you please. If and when your attitude changes, I can always make a place for you here.”

  “You think this firm will go on forever?”

  “I see no reason why it should fail.”

  I caught Cal Warder at his desk at the Merchants Midland Bank a little after ten o’clock. We made some golf talk and then I gave him the story. But Cal had been doing a little investigating of his own regarding E. J. Malton. He is a nice guy but he had the banker’s instinct for a sorry situation. He thought he might get a loan of a thousand dollars on my two hundred shares past his loan committee, but he wouldn’t guarantee anything. We made a rough balance sheet of my assets. I told him Lorraine wouldn’t let me unload the house. All he could offer me was his sympathy, and advice to go back with E. J. and try to stave off disaster.

  I thanked him for laying it on the line. I got home at eleven. Vince was in the living room, leafing through a magazine. He said Irene had fixed him a good breakfast and he thought Lorrie was up because he had heard her shower running a little while ago.

  I went up. She was in the bathroom drying herself on a big yellow towel and humming to herself. I hadn’t heard so much cheer in months. I looked around the bedroom and the bathroom, but I didn’t spot a morning jolt anywhere.

  “Good morning, darling,” she said. “What are you doing home so early? Don’t you trust me alone with your exciting friend?”

  I followed her into the bedroom and sat on the dressing table bench and watched her select panties and step into then and snap the elastic across her stomach.

  “I’m home because I’m unemployed. I quit this morning.”

  She stared at me. “You must be out of your mind.”

  “I’ve got good reasons, but let’s not go into them. The fact remains, I quit. Your old man won’t buy my stock back. I’ve got to have money. I don’t think we’ve talked seriously in a long time, Lorraine. Or hardly talked at all. Now I’m talking seriously. I’m asking … begging for your co-operation. I want to put this dismal house on the market and price it to move. We can move into a rental deal for a while. I can get Red Olin back and some good men for a working crew. With decent capital, I don’t think it will take me too long to get healthy.”

  She didn’t answer. I could not read her expression. She slipped her arms into bra straps then bent forward from the waist to hammock her breasts neatly, straightened up and snapped the fastening. She took a cigarette from her night stand and lit it. She looked at me.

  “Now I’m convinced you’re out of your mind.”

  “Lorraine, all I’m asking—”

  “—is for me to make a choice between you and my family, Jerry. All over some stupid little quarrel we had yesterday.”

  “It isn’t only that.”

  “That’s all there is to it. Now let me tell you something. You’re trying to force me into a choice. All right. If you keep it up, I’ll choose my family. Gladly. Gratefully. I won’t even saddle you with any alimony, dear. I’ll take a settlement, thank you. This house, both cars, the checking account, and three thousand dollars in cash. And, of course, your stock in the company. If you want to be stubborn, dear, I’ll strip you just as naked as you were when Daddy took you on and started paying you more than you’ve ever been worth, or ever will be.”

  “You’re so damn easy to get along with, Lorraine.”

  “Now you’ve got the choice, darling. It’s right in your lap.”

  She went to her closet to select clothing. I was tempted to tell her she’d
made herself a deal. But a little whisper of wariness drifted through my mind. If I said what I had intended to say, I’d have to pack and get out. And perhaps, for Vince’s purposes, the house was a base.

  “You make it tough,” I said.

  “No tougher than you want to make it on me.” She zipped her skirt, turned from side to side to look at herself in her mirror.

  “I guess I better do some more thinking.”

  “I guess you should.”

  When she went downstairs I did some more thinking. I sat there a long time. I uncapped a couple of bottles of her scent and sniffed them, and wondered what they had cost per ounce. How many gallons could you get for a million bucks? Or would it be simpler to buy the distillery or whatever you called the place where they made perfume?

  When I went down I heard her laughing that laugh again. The one that wasn’t for me. The one that was for Vince.

  When I walked into the dining roóm where she was being served breakfast and Vince was being served more coffee, she said, “And here comes the brave and fearless unemployed one. Did he tell you yet? He quit his job this morning. He quit Daddy in a monstrous huff.”

  I saw the quick look of interest in Vince’s eyes. “It won’t be too much trouble to line something else up,” I said. “Her old man is a practicing psychopath. He finally wore me out.”

  “Daddy is a dreamboat,” she said demurely, and as I looked at her I wondered why this should be the first time I noticed that her mouth did have, in much less degree, that same look of the trout.

  It took some doing to pry Lorraine loose from Vince. On the pretext that I was going to show him some houses I had built, I drove him out to the Helena Forest Road and parked in one of the state picnic places. The rain was coming down harder.

  “What does it mean that you quit your job?” he asked, turning in the seat so he was facing me.

  “Not what you might think. I’ve got other plans, Vince.”

  “Oh.”

  “But—just for the hell of it, understand—I’d like a little more detail on this nice smooth operation in Tampa.”

  “Just for the hell of it. Okay. As a courier Melendez is using a regular diplomatic courier from another South American country. Melendez owns this boy body and soul. I’ve never met him, but I’ve studied some very clear and accurate photographs of him. He makes his next trip on either the seventh or eighth of May, from the capital of his country to the office of his country’s consul in Tampa. He will have diplomatic immunity from customs search. This will be his fourth trip bearing money. The procedure will be the same. He will be met at the Tampa International Airport by an official car with uniformed chauffeur and one other passenger. It is possible that he may be under surveillance by Kyodos’s people from the moment he lands. In the past the car has stopped at a downtown hotel. He registers and takes his suitcase to the room. Then he returns to the official car and takes the pouch to the consulate. While he is at the consulate, Kyodos’s people pick up the money from the hotel room. I don’t know just how that is arranged, but it isn’t important.”

  “Is this a daylight deal?”

  “Yes. I wouldn’t risk any kind of an operation after the money is in Kyodos’s possession. That Greek is too smart and too rough. We have to make the interception between the airport and the hotel.”

  “Oh, dandy!” I said. “Armed robbery by daylight right in the middle of traffic.”

  “Jerry boy, you are losing your touch. Have you ever known me to be crude? Here is the way I’ve worked it out. You will arrive in Tampa on the sixth and register at the Tampa Terrace Hotel. I will have gotten there earlier. By then I will know the exact flight he’ll be on and the time. And I’ll have made certain other arrangements. I will have available a nice black sedan, rented or purchased, and in either case very discreetly. And I will have a gray chauffeur’s uniform that will fit you perfectly. Or perfectly enough.”

  “Oh, no!”

  “Don’t let your little heart go pitter-patter. In plenty of time before his flight arrives, the consulate will be advised by cable that he will arrivè on a later flight. I will meet him in the terminal, and my Spanish is excellent, Jerry. I will have a plausible cover story which need not worry you. You will be in the car and it will be parked in such a way he will not be likely to see the plates. I’ve already acquired a nice little official decal for the side of the door. Believe me, he will come along like a lamb.”

  “And if he doesn’t?”

  “Have confidence in Uncle Vince. And if he doesn’t, where do you stand? Have you done anything illegal?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “By then you will have been over the route at least twice, more if he doesn’t come until the eighth. At the very first opportunity, I will quiet the gentleman with my little bag of shot. And then stick him with enough demerol for a four-hour nap. Then we will be alert to see if we are being followed by Kyodos’s people. If not, we take the car to a downtown lot where you can park it yourself. And lock it. The gentleman will be on the floor in back, snug under a blanket, with his head pillowed on his diplomatic pouch.”

  “And if we are followed?”

  “You do look on the dark side of things, Jerry. In that remote possibility, I have an alternate plan. We drive directly to the emergency entrance of a hospital I have selected. In voluble and excited broken English I ask help for the unfortunate gentleman who passed out without reason. We accompany him into the hospital, with baggage. It will baffle the people tailing us. They will have no special reason to suspect we are not legitimate, unless they get clever about the plates. You will go out a side entrance to a cab stand, carrying the suitcase of money. I will say I must take the pouch to the consulate. I will park the car in the lot as in Plan A, leave the pouch therein, lose myself in the labyrinth of a handy department store and join you at the hotel. And within an hour we will be out of town.”

  “How?”

  “We can decide that later.”

  “If you have to buy the car, why not use that?”

  “We might do it that way. Any flaws?”

  “In the hospital bit. I don’t like wandering around with a chauffeur’s uniform on. And going in and out of the hotel.”

  “People look at the uniform, not the face. An air of casual confidence and professional deference is all you will need. At one point you will have the money all to yourself—in Plan B. That’s why I had to select an associate with great care.”

  “I can understand that. What if the cable gets fouled up and two cars show at the airport?”

  “That detail won’t be fouled up.”

  “Will you carry a gun?”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t think I’d like the sound of it if you do.”

  “I don’t see why I would need one.”

  “Then don’t.”

  “Anything to please you. I take it you’ve agreed.”

  “Did I say that?”

  “No, but you sound as if you’re going along.”

  “I’ve got to think about it.”

  “There’s also Plan C, which I’ve been giving consideration to. Drive right out of town with our pigeon. Give him a second shot when he starts to come around. Keep moving. But that keeps us in the car too long. It increases the possibility of the things you can’t plan for. Speeding ticket. Accident. Breakdown. I say we dump the car fast, and him too.”

  “Sounds better.”

  “It would be easier at night. But it will be a daylight arrival. I’ve checked the possible flights. PanAm 675 at three-fifteen on the afternoon of the seventh looks most likely. If so, at three o’clock lots will be happening. Peral will be reading his mail and Carmela will be making a nervous solo.”

  “When do we divide it and split up?”

  “I don’t want to hang around Tampa long enough to do that.”

  “Where do we go?”

  “I suggest we take a bus to Clearwater, check in at a downtown hotel, transact our business and split up in th
e morning.”

  “It isn’t like Burma.”

  “The general philosophy is the same. There’s just more people.”

  “Wouldn’t it make a hell of a lot more sense if I brought a car down there?”

  “I thought of that. I didn’t go into it thoroughly. I didn’t think you’d want to take too much time off.”

  “Time off from what?”

  “You have a point.”

  “It might make a cleaner job. Leave the hospital part in. My wagon will be parked near that cab stand you talked about. I just go out and get in it. Then I go wait near the department store. And we go on from there, Clearwater or any place else.”

  “That’s clear thinking. Or maybe a rental car.”

  “If it goes sour, that’s somebody else to identify you, Vince.”

  “Right you are.”

  “One rental sedan is enough.”

  “Any other improvements, Jerry?”

  I went over it all in my mind. If Vince could get him into the car it all seemed clean enough. The hospital touch would make the courier’s statement very damn confusing. And I felt better about not going back to the Tampa hotel. But I still didn’t think much of the damn uniform.

  “How about just a uniform cap, Vince? And I wear a gray suit. Then, at the hospital, I can leave the cap in the sedan. And, hell, you can wear it when you drive to the lot.”

  “I’d like to keep the complete uniform bit in.”

  “I wouldn’t.”

  He grinned at me. “Okay. Just the uniform cap and you’ll go ahead with it? Shake.”

  “Don’t go so damn fast. How good is your information about the courier?”

  “I got some of it from Carmela. I’ve made some contacts in that area, Jerry, and I checked it all out. The courier is scared witless about the whole thing. He spilled it all to his wife. They have two little girls. I’m convinced he’s no problem.”

  “How about intercepting the money before he gets it?”

  “Four of Melendez’s agents escort him and it to the airplane.”

  “Suppose one goes along with him this time?”