Sweet Wild Wench

by William Campbell Gault

  Mr. Deering was in a small room off the two-story living room, a room that might have been a sewing room at one time. But Mr. Deering was now a widower. He leaned forward to snap off a color TV set as I came in.

  He was a short, stocky man with white hair and a square, pugnacious face. He wore a dark suit and black shoes and a dark-blue tie with his snow-white shirt. No newcomer to California, this man. The traffic from Sunset was dim and distant.

  I told him who I was and why I was here.

  His smile was purely social. “Work for Sam Griffin, do you? I knew Sam would be interested in that rotten racket. He’ll smoke ‘em out.”

  “He’s a fine man,” I agreed. “A great public servant.”

  “And a Californian,” he added. “Where are you from, Mr. Puma?”

  “Fresno, originally,” I answered.

  He nodded in satisfaction. “Sam wouldn’t hire any trash.”

  I said nothing.

  He took a breath. “Some state we’re getting, eh?”

  “It’s certainly growing,” I agreed.

  “Unfortunately. And from all the wrong places. The New York scum and all the others who don’t know their places.”

  It was warm in the room, it was unpleasant. I was glad my name wasn’t Cohen, though Puma must have given him some doubt.

  His sick voice went on. “Another month and I’ll have my holdings disposed of here. Then I’m moving to Texas. They know how to handle the trash in Texas.” A pause. “My kind of people there, the kind I grew up with.”

  I wasn’t here to argue with him. He was past that. I said, “I came to find out, Mr. Deering, if your daughter is still active in this Children of Proton.”

  He shook his head. “She gave me her promise. She has some strange, modern ideas, Mr. Puma, but she still loves her father.”

  “Would it be possible for me to talk with her today?”

  He shook his head again. “I’m afraid not. She’s gone to Palm Springs for a few days.”

  There wasn’t much he knew about the cult. He wasn’t a man who needed a reason to hate anything. He promised to let me know when his daughter got back from Palm Springs.

  As I turned to leave, he asked, “Puma — is that a Spanish name? Castilian, isn’t it?”

  I smiled tolerantly. “I’m Italian, Mr. Deering. Although some people might use a different word. Good day, sir.”

  The Negro maid had the front door open when I got to it. I asked her, “How long has Mrs. Deering been dead?”

  Her brown eyes looked past me toward the living room. “Three years.”

  “Does Mr. Deering spend a lot of time in that little room?”

  “Most of the time that he’s awake.”

  “He’s not — sick — is he?”

  Her glance came back to hold steadily on mine. “I guess all of us are sick, sir, one way or another. He’s no sicker than plenty of others.”

  She closed the door behind me and I went over to climb into the worn Plymouth. It was the middle of the afternoon and traffic on Sunset was heavy both ways.

  The high, narrow windows of the Deering house seemed to stare at me bleakly as I steered the car down the winding drive toward the street.

  It figured that his daughter would be driven into a cult. Or to some more reasonable God. It figured she would need the sunlight of Palm Springs.

  Griffin was at his desk when I got back.

  “Well — ?” he asked.

  “I saw three people and didn’t learn much.” I lit a cigarette. “I saw Mr. Deering.”

  “How is he? Is he well?”

  “Physically, I guess he is.”

  Griffin exhaled heavily. “I know what you mean. He was always bad enough. But since his wife died — ” He broke off, staring into space.

  “This Jeremiah Adams is an impressive front man,” I said. “He’s taken over that former Litter-Barclay funeral home in Brentwood. Some of his sponsors are right out of the social register.”

  Griffin nodded. “I know. And he’s growing too. And that building is paid for. How did you approach him?”

  “I implied I’d lost my faith and was trying to regain it. That wasn’t much of a lie; that could be true of all of us. I think he believed me.”

  Griffin’s smile was thin. “You’re not susceptible to this kind of — hogwash, are you, Joe?”

  “Probably not,” I said honestly. “I was born with a strong streak of skepticism.”

  “Good,” he said. “This investigator Deering hired, this Burns Murphy, turned in an almost favorable report.”

  “I know. I read it.”

  He stood there quietly for a moment. Then he said, “Stay with it. Get all the background you can on this Adams. Find out what he paid for that building and who handled the deal. He’s getting too damned big. If he gets any bigger, we won’t be able to touch him.”

  He was standing at the window, looking out at his city, when I left.

  At the rat-trap apartment I call home I was showering, half an hour later, when my phone rang. It was Adele.

  “How’d your first day go?”

  “Nothing sensational.”

  A silence, and then, “Working tonight?”

  I had only half-planned to, but since I’d just finished a week-end of Adele, I said, “I’d better. It’s my first day and I want to make a good impression.”

  “Sissy,” she said. “Depleted, are you? At your age! You should be ashamed.”

  “I’d like to see you. Honestly I would. But I’m a working man, honey.”

  “All right,” she said. “Don’t call me; I’ll call you.”

  “I’ll call you,” I promised. “Be good.”

  “At thirty-seven,” she said, “that’s easy. Good-night.” The line went dead.

  I replaced the phone on its cradle and looked up to see Deke near the door. My door had been unlocked and Deke never knocks. He didn’t live with me. He had an apartment on the Strip where he could play cards all night.

  “Be nice to her,” he said, “or her brother will can you.”

  “Get off my back,” I told him. “What’d you come for, more money?”

  He looked at me quietly a moment. Then, “No. I came to pay you the two hundred.”

  I took a deep breath. “You needle me too much. I guess I nag at you too, don’t I?”

  He smiled and sat on my sagging sofa. He took a wallet from his jacket pocket and pulled out a sheaf of bills. He handed me ten twenties and asked, “Got any steak in the joint?”

  “Take twenty back if you need eating money,” I said.

  He stared at me, his face tight. “I don’t need eating money; I’m loaded. I got into a floating crap game. I just thought we could have some steak and some gab.” He paused. “Being brothers, and all.” He started to rise.

  “Sit where you are,” I said. “I apologize. There’s steak in the refrigerator. Fillets. I’ve got to take a shower. Get yourself a beer.”

  When I came out again, Deke was at the kitchen table, drinking a can of beer and leafing through the Children of Proton literature.

  He looked up. “Some gobbledegook! Plan to join?”

  “For professional purposes only. Griffin thinks it might be a racket.”

  “Might be? That’s a cinch bet. What do you think?”

  I shrugged.

  He chuckled. “Now I see what’s been bugging you. You never should have left the church, Joe. You’ve been uncomfortable ever since.”

  “Huh!” I said. I took the steaks out of the refrigerator.

  Deke held up a glossy picture of Jeremiah Adams. “Brother Joe, if you can’t recognize this as a con-man, you’re in the wrong business.”

  I shrugged again.

  Deke studied the picture. “I’ll bet some of my friends will have the word on him. In my circles, somebody has the word on anybody in town.”

  “Anybody crooked,” I added.

  He yawned. “In this town, that’s almost everybody. I’ll ask around, Joe.”r />
  We ate the steak and drank beer and talked. I didn’t lecture him and he didn’t needle me.

  He cleaned up the kitchen while I went in to get dressed for the evening’s labor. I had decided to go over to Brentwood; there was to be a sermon this evening by Jeremiah Adams.

  When Deke left, I told him, “Don’t draw to inside straights.”

  He put a hand genially on my shoulder. “Okay. And don’t you lower your stud fee, kid.”

  3

  IT WAS A WARM, clear night in Brentwood and traffic was heavy on San Vicente, heading for the ocean. The parking lot was almost filled when I arrived at Adams’ temple.

  On the terrace near the wide double doors some of the faithful were chatting. I smelled expensive perfume and fine Havana tobacco as I threaded through the group and into the auditorium.

  There was only one person in the foyer, a slim, stacked and beautifully dressed blonde, a real lovely, even by this town’s standards. I was sure I had seen her somewhere before.

  She smiled at me impersonally as I nodded. My knees shook as I went past her into the auditorium. The disturbing odor of her provocative perfume came right along with me, clinging in my nostrils.

  There were only about three rows still unfilled; I sat in the last row, on the aisle. I thought about the blonde as I looked over the crowd.

  Though the building ran roughly north and south, the seats had been shifted slightly from the logical auditorium setting. One of the pamphlets had explained this; all the seats faced true magnetic north.

  Phony enough, perhaps, but no more out in left field than a man being swallowed by a whale.

  As I said before, this is a town addicted to cults and weird off-beat religions. This is where the evangelists blossom and the flagellants thrive. But their appeal was to the ignorant, the underprivileged and badly educated. Jeremiah Adams was getting the carriage trade.

  The Constitution was on their side. Religious freedom includes irreligious freedom, because one man’s God is another man’s false idol. So unless the D.A. could get clear evidence of fraud, there’d be no case for the courts.

  Fraud doesn’t cover voluntary contributions. And Jeremiah Adams was promising nothing but immortality. Who could prove he wouldn’t deliver?

  This much I had to hand the man. He peddled neither fear, bigotry, hate nor hysteria. That put him a few notches above his contemporaries. What he was selling could be bought in any book store, positive thinking, affirmation.

  He had some science-fiction overtones and a touch of layman’s psychology. That wasn’t enough to bring this audience in; he also offered the jackpot — immortality. We lived in a grave-conscious time.

  He had the voice, the manner, the phraseology and a sort of quietly glowing sincerity. He kept the eyes of that upper-class crowd on him every second.

  Every pair of eyes but mine. Mine wandered, seeking the blonde. She was in the first row and she sat almost rigidly intense, tuned to the mellifluous voice of the prophet. The vulgar thought came to me that I’d give a lot to sell her as completely as Adams obviously was. She was being wasted here.

  Was she a movie star? I’d seen that face somewhere.

  And then it came to me. I’d seen her in the newspapers a number of times, on the society page and on the front page. It was Eve Deering, the daughter that Burns Murphy had been hired to watch. And Papa Deering had told me she was in Palm Springs. She must have lied to him.

  Such a lovely, lovely girl to come from that sick man in that bleak house. Her mother must have been the beauty.

  She kept her eyes on Jeremiah Adams and I kept my eyes on her. Pressure mounted in me and I looked at Adams in self-protection. And I saw in him a superficial resemblance to Papa Deering.

  Eve Deering could very easily be seeing a more enlightened, handsomer, tolerant Papa in Jeremiah Adams.

  I realized Adams had a new pitch — faith without morality, salvation without ethics. He stood at due magnetic north, promising them heaven here and there. How could he lose? He never once mentioned sin.

  A number of the faithful lingered after the show was over. I went out to my heap and pulled into a deserted section of the parking area from which I could watch the door.

  There were only three cars left in the lot when Eve Deering came out. She was alone.

  She headed for a Cadillac convertible and I watched her get in and drive to the street before starting the engine on my car. She turned toward Santa Monica and was allmost a full block away when I came out onto the boulevard.

  This is a town full of Cadillac convertibles, but not too many of them are chartreuse. I followed her without difficulty all the way to the Hacienda Arms.

  It was an apartment-hotel overlooking the Bay. An attendant took her car at the entrance and she went up the steps under the striped canopy awning.

  I parked on the ocean side of the street and waited for half a minute before going into the lobby.

  The clerk behind the desk had a small mustache and the bored air of one who has seen them come and go.

  I said, “Joseph Puma to see Miss Deering. Would you give me her apartment number please?”

  He frowned and then went over to study the registry cards. He shook his head. “There’s no Eve Deering registered here, sir.”

  “Okay. That blonde, then, who just came in. Let me talk to her.”

  He stared at me, frowning.

  I opened my wallet and showed him my identification. I said, “At the moment I’m working out of the District Attorney’s office.”

  His frown deepened. “I hope there’s no trouble, sir.”

  “I hope so too,” I said. “We’re wasting time.”

  He picked up the phone and said, “Apartment twenty-eight-B please.” A moment of silence and then, “Miss Dugan, there’s a Joseph Puma in the lobby to see you.”

  Another moment of silence and he said, “You don’t know him? He claims — ”

  I said quickly, “Tell her I’m a friend of Eve Deering’s.”

  The clerk sighed. “He says he’s a friend of Eve Deering’s.”

  Another silence and I had a feeling it extended to the other end of the wire. Then the clerk said, “I’ll send him right up, Miss Dugan.”

  He replaced the phone and looked at me bleakly. “Twenty-eight-B.”

  She had the door open and was waiting when I came down the hall toward her apartment. Her dress was hand-knit and not shadow-proof, her perfume was heavy with musk.

  “Just what is this?” she asked. “I’ve heard of you. You’re a private investigator, aren’t you?”

  “That’s right, Miss Deering. Currently working out of the District Attorney’s office.”

  “And investigating me?”

  “No. Investigating the Children of Proton, Miss Deering.” I paused to give it emphasis. “I talked with your father this afternoon. And then tonight I listened to Jeremiah Adams.”

  “Really? And how did Mr. Adams impress you?”

  “As a man who was trying to sell immortality without morality.”

  She took a deep breath. “That’s the kind of immortality I’m looking for. And to judge from your reputation, that’s the kind you’re looking for. Won’t you come in, Mr. Puma?” She smiled coolly and mockingly.

  I came into an apartment overlooking the lights of the Bay. She indicated a love seat and I sat on that. “How’s Sam?” she asked.

  “Sam?”

  “Sam Griffin,” she explained. “You told me you were working for him.”

  “Oh,” I said. “I can’t quite think of him as Sam. He’s the same as always, Miss Deering. Dignified and dedicated.”

  Her smile was scarcely perceptible. She was standing in front of a liquor cabinet now. “Drink, Mr. Puma?”

  “Bourbon and water please,” I said.

  She brought me my drink and one for herself. She sat at the other end of the love seat. She asked quietly, “Why is Sam Griffin interested in the Children Of Proton?”

  “Because hi
s sister Adele is. Mr. Griffin went to one of the sermons with her and then he learned that you and your father were interested in the group and you two might be able to tell me more about it.”

  “So you went to see my father?”

  “That’s right. This afternoon. And he told me you were no longer interested in the Children Of Proton. He told me he never had been, he considered it a vile racket.” I paused, to sip my drink. “And he told me you were in Palm Springs.”

  Silence. I sipped my drink again. There was a strange taste to the bourbon, I thought, but maybe it was in the water. I’m not a real connoisseur of booze.

  Her voice seemed fuzzier. “Did you talk with my father very long?”

  I nodded.

  “Nice, sweet, tolerant old gentleman, isn’t he?”

  I shrugged, then asked, “Were you ever close to him?”

  “When I was a kid, he was everything to me. Even to a point where I resented my mother. And she was a saint.” She took a breath. “Why am I telling you all this, a big stud like you?”

  I smiled dreamily. “People confide in me, particularly women, for some reason.” I lifted my drink. “What’s in this? It tastes funny.”

  “Good bourbon,” she said. “You’re probably not used to good bourbon.”

  “Miss Deering,” I said with dignity, “you’re a beautiful, wealthy and sensitive girl. And a little mixed up. In this town that makes you a target for all kinds of beasts.”

  “All kinds of beasts,” she agreed, “including stallions. Do you consider Jeremiah Adams a beast?”

  “I’m not sure,” I answered. A wave of clarity came and the room came into focus. “One thing he’s selling in that fancy building is unearned immortality.”

  “Unearned? How?”

  “He never once mentioned morality. It was all science; immortality was assured by the simple fact of existence.”

  Her voice was bitter. “I’ve found a rock, Mr. Puma, one I desperately needed. Your reputation denies you the right to lecture me on morality.”

  I sighed. “I know, I know. But you must remember, though I sin quite often, it’s always with a guilty conscience. You stay with Jeremiah, and he’ll take away your conscience.”

  “You stay with Jeremiah,” she said, “and you’ll never miss it. Another drink?”