Solomon's Vineyard

by Jonathan Latimer

She looked nice with her white skin and red hair. I pulled a towel off the rack and put it over me like an apron. “What the hell!” I said. “I'm taking a bath.”

  “I've seen naked men before,” Ginger said.

  “Not like me.”

  “Maybe,” she admitted. She came in the bathroom and sat on a shower stool.

  I had to laugh. “Why don't you take off your clothes and get in with me?”

  “There wouldn't be room.”

  “I'll make room.”

  “I bet.”

  “Then come on.”

  “No, thanks.” Her face got serious. “I came to talk about the bracelet.”

  “Oh. How'd you like it?”

  “It's beautiful. How much did it cost?”

  “Plenty.”

  “You're not a bad guy.” She twisted the bracelet on her arm. It looked fine with the black long-sleeved dress she had on. The fake diamonds gleamed in the bathroom light.

  “Listen, you shouldn't have given it to me. Pug Banta's got it in for you, anyway.”

  “Yeah?”

  “He found out Carmel gave you the dope on him.

  “Yeah. From Carmel... before he killed her.”

  Her eyes got wide. “How'd you know she was dead?”

  “Her brother told me.”

  “The poor gal.” She shook her head at me. “And you're probably next.”

  “Not me. He knows killing me'll get him in trouble with the Vineyard.”

  “He's getting so he doesn't care,” Ginger said. She leaned over the tub. “Look. Why don't you beat it? He doesn't know where you live. He'd never find you. And you won't have to pay for a coffin then.”

  “Did he send you here to tell me that?”

  “Why, you fool!” Her green eyes got hard. She took a breath. “If you aren't the most conceited bastard! Pug isn't scared of anyone.”

  “That's what you think.”

  “I suppose he's scared of you.”

  “He's not smart enough to be,” I said. “But ask him about the Princess sometime.”

  That made her mad. I could see it in her eyes. “I'm sick and tired of hearing about the Princess.”

  “What's the matter,” I said, “can't you compete with her?”

  She got off the stool. “I'll slug you!” She pulled off the bracelet. “Here!” She threw the bracelet in the tub. “You know where you can stick that, you louse!”

  “Thanks.”'

  “And, brother, don't say I didn't warn you when Pug gets you.”

  She started for the door. I fished around in the tub for the bracelet. “Don't go away mad,” I said.

  “I'm not mad. I never get mad.”

  I heard her close the door. I got another towel and dried off the bracelet. I threw the wet towel on the tile floor. Water oozed out of it. I felt better. Seeing Ginger had made me feel better. I got a drink and lay naked on the bed. I thought about Ginger, and then I thought about the Princess. It was three o'clock. I had four hours before I was due at the Vineyard. I already had that funny feeling in my stomach. I took a big drink of rye and cold water and then lay on the bed. The Princess was the best for one thing I'd ever had. She was as good as any whore in the world, and her heart and soul were in her work. She had a beautiful body, steel and silk and marble and rubber nil rolled in one. I felt the excitement grow. I took another drink, and then I got in the shower. I let the cold water run over me. I soaked a sheet in the water and got in bed without drying myself and pulled the wet sheet over me. It was cooler that way. I got up and locked the door. I went back to bed and in a little while I fell asleep. I was really sore when the clerk woke me by telephone at six-thirty, but another shower and a drink cleared my head. I wondered what the Princess would have for dinner.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  I WOKE with a start, my heart up where my Adam's apple should have been. I found I was having trouble breathing. Moonlight blinded my eyes. I smelled a woman, but I didn't know who it was. I didn't even know where I was. For a minute I thought I was hack with the first woman I'd ever slept in bed with, the physical ed teacher at Lincoln High while I was a junior there. It was confusing to think that.

  When my eyes got used to the light I saw a woman by the bed. She was staring down at me. I saw her body through her silk nightie, and I remembered everything. It was the Princess. She had been watching me while I was asleep. I sat up, feeling spooked, and stared back at her. Her skin looked milky in the moonlight. The pupils of her eyes were dark and uneven, like splotches of ink. Her face was strange.

  She whispered: “How much guts have you, honey?”

  Everything seemed unreal. I felt as though I was dreaming. The moonlight had changed the look of the room, made things stand out I'd never noticed before. An open closet door threw a tall shadow on the wall. The foot of the bed looked like a picket fence. There was a second moon in a mirror. I still had trouble breathing.

  She whispered again: “Honey, how much?”

  “God damn you,” I said. “Did you wake me up just to ask me that?”

  She put her hand on my bare chest. Her skin was hot. “How would you like fifty grand?”

  I was awake now. “Where is it?”

  “In the temple.”

  She sat on the edge of the bed, leaving her hand on my chest. There was a vault in the temple, she said; in the basement. In it were the gifts people had made to the Vineyard for years; jewellery, ornaments, gold and silver... and money.

  “They don't keep any records,” she said. “Nobody knows how much is there. What we take won't be missed.”

  “Why haven't you taken it long ago?”

  “I needed help,” she said. “There was nobody I could trust.”

  “What makes you think you can trust me?”

  “I can as long as Pug Banta's alive.”

  I thought that over. She was right. I would be finished if she turned me up to Pug. He wanted to get me bad enough, but so far she had stood in the way.

  She said: “Are you coming?”

  “This way? Naked?”

  She went to the dresser and got out one of the Vineyard's costumes. There was a white silk blouse and black trousers. I put them on. The trousers were tight around the waist. She put on a red robe. While she was fastening it, I found the brandy decanter and had a drink.

  “What's the routine?” I asked.

  “Not so loud.” She came close to me. “There's one guard at the door,” she whispered. “We get rid of him, and then everything's jake.”

  “Isn't the door locked?”

  “I've got a duplicate key.”

  “It doesn't sound bad,” I said. “Only how will we get rid of the guard?”

  “You'll have to kill him.”

  She said this as though she was saying I should have another drink. I stared at her. The moonlight showed no expression at all on her face. She was pale and calm. Her eyes were like black pools of water, the pupils were so big. I began to get that feeling of being in a dream again.

  “Listen,” I said. “We're not killing anybody.”

  “We'll make it look like an accident.”

  “No,” I said.

  She saw I meant it. “All right. We can get him out of the way. I can.”

  “You're not fooling?”

  “I do think it's safer to kill him.”

  “I won't go for murder, and that's final.”

  “Come on, then.” Her voice was scornful. She pushed me towards the door.

  “Don't we wear shoes?”

  She gave me another push. We went out the hall and through the back door and around the women's building, all the time walking in the shadows. The grass was wet with dew. It felt cool underfoot. From the look of the moon I figured it was about two o'clock. The buildings were all dark. Everybody was asleep. We walked back of some bushes towards the temple. I padded along silently in my bare feet.

  The temple was white in the moonlight, its shape smooth and round like a cake. It looked very big. I saw light
s flickering behind one of the stained-glass windows. There was a woman on the window, the Virgin, I guess; and the lights made her look as though she was shaking her head at us. It gave me a hell of a start. I pointed the lights out to the Princess.

  “Candles,” she whispered. “They burn all the time.”

  We went around to the back of the temple. A bat flew a couple of times at my white shirt. I stumbled over a sprinkler. The Princess came to a door and halted. She listened at the door, then turned to me.

  “You'll have to tie up the guard,” she whispered.

  “What with?”

  She handed me some silk cord; the kind she wore around her waist to keep her robe together. I tried to break it but I couldn't. “Okay,” I said.

  She opened the door. At the far end of a long room I saw light faintly reflected. I couldn't see what made the light. She closed the door and we went down five stone steps. The stone was cold on my feet. We walked along a stone floor towards the light, moving slowly. I smelled an odour of decay, not strong, but very plain. It reminded me of the stink around the Kansas City stockyards. I thought it was probably old Solomon upstairs, turning over in his coffin.

  At the end of the room was another door. This one was open. I saw now the reflected light was flickering a little. It came from a candle. The Princess looked around the door, and then touched my hand. Her fingers felt feverish. I moved forward. I saw a man in a costume like mine sitting by a padlocked door. There was a candle burning on the stone floor by his chair, the yellow flame looking thin in all the darkness. The man was asleep, his chin resting on his chest. He had bushy black hair. The Princess nudged me forward.

  I got about half way to the man when he woke up. He blinked his eyes at me, still half asleep. “Who is it?”

  I walked slowly so as not to scare him. He looked at me, trying to see who I was. He had a big round face and heavy eyebrows. He didn't get alarmed until he noticed I hadn't any shoes. Then he stood up, and I jumped him. We went down together, splintering the chair under us. He fought hard, but I was stronger. I got my hands on his throat and began to choke him, pushing my thumbs into the muscles under his jaw. He kicked in agony and the candle went out. I held him down with my weight, feeling his breath rattle under my palms. Suddenly he went limp and I let go of his throat.

  “Are you all right, honey?” the Princess whispered.

  “Yes.”

  I went through the man's pockets and found a packet of matches. I lit the candle. The light showed the Princess standing by the man, staring down at him. “Did you kill him?”

  “Hell, no!”

  She looked at me as though she'd never seen me before. She watched me tie his hands and feet and gag him with his undershirt. Her eyes were strange, as though she was in a trance. She gave me a key. “For the padlock.”

  I left her looking down at him and went to the door. The key wasn't a very good fit. It turned hard, but I got it around. The lock came open. I took it off the hasp and shoved open the door.

  Inside it looked like a junk shop. There were chests and tables and piles of paintings and vases and books and statues, and God knows what else, all jumbled together on the floor. Near the door I saw a silver candelabra with two candles. I lit the candles and went into the room.

  It looked more like a junk shop than ever. There were hundreds of things in the room. The candlelight shone off a silver tea-set and some silver platters in a corner. Next to these was a small gold-framed picture of a woman's head. She had her hair parted in the middle and hung in two braids over her shoulders. On a red Chinese chest were some gold salt shakers. I almost stepped on some kind of a tapestry showing men hunting a boar in a forest. There was a sword with a jewelled hilt leaning against a bronze statue of a naked boy. I saw the name Scott engraved on the sword. Under a table was a whole set of hand-painted china, including a couple of huge platters, and on the table was a clock with the four seasons, the sun and the moon and the hours all on separate dials. I saw a hand-carved model of a frigate, a big pipe with a silver bowl, a spinning-wheel, an Oriental rug, an engraved silver bit for a horse, an inkwell made from jade.

  This wasn't a fiftieth part of the junk. I was still staring at the things when the Princess came into the room. She was breathing so hard I turned around to look at her. Her face was calm; only her chest moved with her quick breaths. Her eyes went around the room.

  “Has he come to yet?” I asked.

  “No.” Her voice sounded flat and lifeless.

  “He'll be all right,” I said.

  She nodded, but I don't think she paid any attention to what I said. She was looking at the room.

  “Where'd all this come from?” I asked.

  “The Brothers and Daughters,” she said. “They have to take vows of personal poverty when they enter the Vineyard. They turn everything over to the Elders.”

  I stared at the mess of stuff. “God, what junk!”

  “You don't think it's any good?”

  “Do you?”

  She opened one of the chests. “Look.” I held the candelabra over the chest. It was full of watches: gold watches, silver watches, men's watches, women's watches, watches with jewels on the covers, engraved watches. “My God!” There were probably five or six hundred watches there.

  She opened another chest. Tins was full of necklaces and bracelets. The stones gleamed in the light. A lot of them were cheap-looking, but some looked wonderful. I saw one, a kind of collar, that must have had a hundred diamonds in it. The next chest was filled with rings and cameos. Another was full of loose jewels. They were mostly semiprecious stones, but I saw diamonds sparkling in the heap. I put my hand in this chest and felt the stones. They were slick and cold.

  “Pick out some of the diamonds.”

  I put the candelabra down and got a couple of dozen fairly good-sized diamonds out of the chest. One was about five carats, and none was under two. They glittered in the soft light.

  The Princess closed the chest. She took the diamonds away from me. “Now for the dough,” she said.

  She went to a small table at the back of the room, the one with the fancy clock on it, and opened the drawer. Brother, my eyes fairly popped out of my head! The drawer was full of paper money. There were hundreds of bills, many of the old size. These looked strange, bigger than I'd remembered them. She put her hands in the bills, feeling with her fingers for something. She brought her hands out filled with gold pieces. Their colour was a dull yellow in the light of the candles. They made a soft clinking noise. I took one from her and felt it. It was heavy. It was like finding a mine. I picked up a handful of paper money. I had hold of twenties, and fifties, and hundred-dollar bills, and three one-thousand-dollar bills. I had four or five thousand dollars, and it hadn't made a hole in the drawer.

  “They turn their cash into big bills,” the Princess said, “and give it up along with everything else when they come in.”

  She began to sort out bills worth a hundred dollars or more. I helped her, digging my hands deep down in the money. There was a lot of gold there, but we didn't touch it. The bills crackled as we sorted them. We worked for a long time. Once I thought I heard a noise. Our shadows seemed to shiver as we listened.

  “You're just spooked,” the Princess said scornfully.

  We counted what we'd taken. There were twenty-five thousand-dollar bills, thirty six-hundred-dollar bills, twenty-four two-hundred-dollar bills, and sixty-three one-hundred dollar bills.

  “How much?”

  I said it came to fifty-four thousand, one hundred dollars. The Princess started to pick up the money.

  “Wait a minute.”

  “I'll just carry it.”

  “No, you won't,” I said.

  I gave her twenty-seven thousand and tossed the extra hundred back in the drawer. I put the rest in my pocket. It made quite a wad of money. “Let's get the hell out of here,” I said.

  “All right.”

  We went out the door. The guard was still lying on the
floor. I could just see him by the broken chair. I blew out the two candles on the candelabra, and put it in the vault. Then I fastened the padlock. I turned around, and suddenly I noticed something queer about the guard. He was lying in a strange sprawled-out way. I went over to him. There was blood all around his head, and a deep wound on his temple. Something had almost crushed his head in, a stone or an iron bar. Something heavy.

  The Princess stared at me.

  “He's dead!” I said.