Dreams of Jeannie and Other Stories

by Catherine Dain

  "Are you the only broker selling these cars?"

  "Not quite. Almost. There are three of us."

  "But there's a prospectus. The other party's name has to be on it."

  "I'm afraid it isn't."

  "Oh, Billy." I shook my head. "You're not telling me your name is on the prospectus."

  "And the other two brokers," he said. "It's not just me. It's like a limited partnership with a silent partner."

  "That has to be illegal."

  Billy didn't answer. He shifted in his chair and rubbed his eyes again.

  The waiter brought my beer, Billy's martini, and a basket of rolls.

  "Dinner will be right up," he said cheerfully.

  "Looking forward to it," Billy said, with what he surely hoped was a believable smile.

  "How did the silent partner talk you three supposedly as­tute financial types into risking your licenses and livelihoods like this?"

  The rolls were sourdough, and warm. I tore one apart and buttered it while Billy decided what he was going to tell me.

  "By explaining why it was better that the SEC think it was a deal put together by three Southern California stock­brokers and by pointing out how much more lucrative it was for us. We'd be getting not just the sales commissions, but a cut of the partnership profits as well."

  "Greed. The silent partner appealed to your greed."

  "In a word." Billy nodded, doing his best to hold on to the smile. "And what's wrong with greed? Every man pur­suing his own self-interest is what makes the invisible hand of the marketplace work."

  "Or not. If every man pursues his own self-interest at the expense of every other man, and woman, the marketplace is a jungle, and no invisible hand can turn it into a civiliza­tion. That takes effort and goodwill."

  "Have it your way. I didn't come here to argue with you."

  "That's right. You came to ask me a favor."

  "Jesus. You're not making this easy."

  "What do you want me to do, Billy?"

  "I just want you to talk to the guy. He's staying at the hotel, with the orthopedic surgeons' group. Ask him to forget about the SEC. Tell him I'll give him back the money. Out of my own pocket. Please."

  "You also want me to tell him you're sorry? And you'll never do it again?"

  "Whatever it takes to get him off my back."

  "Why can't you take the elevator to his room and tell him yourself?"

  "I tried to tell him myself. He said he'd hurt me if he saw me again. And the other party might hurt me, too."

  Billy shrank in his chair as he said it. I wondered how big this surgeon was. And how big the silent partner was.

  "I'll have to think about it."

  "Sure. We'll eat first." He took a deep breath. "And talk about something else. How's your mother?"

  "Fine. You ought to go up to the lake and see her while you're in the area. Do you have a car?"

  "Yeah. A blue Acura. And the rental agency gave me a map to go with it. Maybe I'll drive up there tomorrow."

  "I'm sure she'd like that."

  "How are you? You ever get married?"

  "No. You?"

  "Yeah, twice. One kid from the first. I guess I should have sent you an announcement or something."

  Billy shifted in his chair again.

  It turned out to be a long dinner. The more we tried to talk, the less we had to say.

  In the back of my mind, I was working out how to tell him I wouldn't do it. I didn't want to be anywhere near his scam, even to help him out from under a federal investiga­tion.

  But things about him—the shape and color of his eyes, the small hands with the long, narrow fingers, the way he separated his salmon steak from the tiny center bones—kept reminding me of Ramona. Saying no to him would be like saying no to her, only worse. I'd have to tell her about it af­terward. And even though she wasn't close to her sister, she felt some kind of an undefined obligation, one she would expect me to honor.

  All conversation had stopped by the time the waiter brought coffee.

  Billy looked at me with desperate hope in his eyes, eyes that needed only mascara, liner, and three shades of eyeshadow to match Ramona's.

  "How did you find out the tank cars weren't there?" I asked, still not ready to commit.

  "The guy—the orthopedic surgeon—found out. The base of operations was supposed to be the railroad yard in Sparks. Since he was coming to Reno for the convention, he thought he'd drive three miles east to check out his invest­ment. But nobody in Sparks had ever heard of the deal, so he called me. I made a few phone calls and discovered he was right. I flew up here yesterday, just to make sure there was no mistake."

  "What did the silent partner have to say?"

  "Oh, hell, the usual. That I jumped the gun. That the cars weren't supposed to start rolling until September first, and everything would be worked out by then."

  "But?"

  Billy shook his head. He took a sip of coffee before he answered. "But this is almost June, and we've started selling cars, and the prospectus—with my name on it—says they're already sitting in the yard. And even if there's some way everything will be different in September, I don't think the surgeon would be willing to wait. And I can't blame him. So I want to give him the money back."

  "You have the check?"

  "I wish I did." He reached into his jacket.

  "Sorry for the delay, sir." The waiter slipped a black leather folder onto the table.

  Billy froze, hand in his pocket.

  "No problem," he whispered.

  The waiter disappeared into the shadows.

  "I have a down payment," Billy finished, his voice barely audible. He pulled out his wallet. "Ten now, the other ninety when I can get it together."

  His hand was shaking as he held out a sealed envelope.

  "Please."

  I took the envelope. There was no name or any other mark on it.

  "Where do I deliver it?"

  "Upstairs. Room 1103. Theo Georgopoulos. And I owe you one, Freddie, I swear, if you ever need anything I can give."

  I hoped it wouldn't come to that.

  "Are you certain he's in his room?"

  "No. But you might as well give it a shot while you're here."

  "Okay. Where will you be?"

  His eyebrows shot up, and his mouth formed a circle of speechless wonder.

  "I have to report back to you," I said. "Let you know what happens. Where will you be?"

  "How about the lounge? There's some kind of musical entertainment going on. I'll try for a table at the back."

  "Okay. And thanks for dinner."

  I left him there. I figured he could settle the bill without me.

  Outside the black door, back in the light and noise, I had to reorient myself to find the elevators.

  One stopped for me almost immediately. I rode alone to the eleventh floor.

  Room 1103 was the second door on the right. Whoever had last gone in or out hadn't bothered to pull it quite shut. I knocked, and it moved.

  "Dr. Georgopoulos?"

  No answer.

  I pushed with my elbow, and the door swung open.

  A closet and bathroom blocked the sightline to the bed, beyond them on the left. A solid wall stopped the door on the right.

  "Dr. Georgopoulos?"

  I stepped cautiously over the threshold and moved just far enough forward to see the rest of the room.

  A man was lying on the bed, legs partially hanging over the end.

  He was wearing a dark suit, white shirt, and striped tie, almost an echo of Billy's outfit, both of them too formal for Reno. And he was here for a convention. Maybe he had de­cided to come back to his room and take a nap after some kind of formal presentation. He had unfastened his belt buckle and his pants, getting comfortable. Certainly he was big enough to intimidate someone as small as Billy. Prob­ably six-foot-four, if he had been standing.

  But he wasn't going to do that again.

  His hair had receded
to a fringe of black around a high, white dome. A bullet hole sat like a third eye in the center of his forehead.

  The wall behind the bed was spattered with blood, as if the guy had been upright, and the shot had knocked him more or less onto the bed. The blood still looked runny, as if it might be fairly fresh.

  I thought I heard a noise from the bathroom. A surge of adrenaline almost sent me flying back out of the room and into the hall, but I took a couple of deep breaths to get the fear and the anger under control, and realized the noise came from the room next door.

  I had two choices. I could call hotel security and be stuck for an hour, or I could find Billy and make sure I hadn't been set up. If the guy hadn't been so obviously dead, or if I thought the perp had been hiding in the closet, I would have called security. As it was, I wanted to find Billy.

  I slipped back to the door.

  A man and woman were walking toward the elevator bank, arguing.

  I listened for the elevator doors to open and close, the si­lence to return.

  When I was certain the hall was clear, I left the room and turned away from the elevators. I found the stairs, walked down two flights, and decided I could ride the rest of the way.

  I hoped Billy would be in the lounge. I really wanted Billy to be in the lounge.

  I wish I could say I was surprised when he wasn't there.

  He'd had more than enough time to settle the bill, stop in the men's room, and get to the lounge. I cleared a path through the crowd with my elbows and my boots, apolo­gizing all the way, knowing I was too late to catch him in the parking lot if he wanted to escape that way.

  Once out of the building, I picked up speed. I trotted to the exit lane, then took it across the middle of the lot, checking the rows both ways for a little man in a blue Acura trying to head for the hills.

  I couldn't spot Billy, and I wasn't ready to check the lot car by car, especially when I didn't have a license plate number.

  On the off chance that he'd asked me to meet him at the hotel where he was staying, I went back inside and picked up the house phone near the door.

  "Billy Davis's room. William Davis," I corrected.

  "Just a minute," the operator answered.

  The phone started ringing.

  I let it ring until she came back on the line.

  "He doesn't seem to be there. Would you like to leave a message?"

  "Not just now."

  If he had a room, he'd have to go back to it, sooner or later. I just had to find it. I thought again about telling se­curity. I still wanted to talk to Billy first.

  I had to check the lounge one more time.

  On stage, a man with shoe-polish black hair and a face dripping with flop sweat was belting, "What's New, Pus­sycat," while the band behind him did its collective best to keep playing, and to keep him from keeling over in embar­rassment.

  Billy still wasn't at a table.

  I looked around for a sign that would direct me to a restroom. A stall seemed to be as good a place as any to see what was in the envelope. All I saw were bright, Disneyesque parrots pointing me toward the buffet. I fig­ured restrooms would be close to the buffet line, and I was at least right on that.

  The restroom wasn't crowded. The first lucky thing that had happened since I arrived at the casino.

  The envelope contained just what Billy told me—his per­sonal check for ten thousand dollars, made out to Theodore Georgopoulos.

  For the first time, I wondered if something had hap­pened to Billy after I left the restaurant, something that kept him from the lounge. I had to check out his room.

  Finding his room would have been a lot easier in pre-electronic days, when rooms had keys instead of program­mable cards, and messages were stuck in racks of key boxes behind the registration desk. I could have left him a mes­sage and watched where it was placed. But not here.

  My only quick idea was the maitre d' at the restaurant. If he wasn't bribable, or if Billy hadn't charged dinner to his room, I'd be reduced to calling security.

  I retraced my steps to the escalator, rode to the second floor, then walked around the balcony to the dark restau­rant door.

  The maitre d' smiled when he saw me.

  "Did you forget something?" he asked.

  "Not exactly. I wanted to split the dinner bill with my cousin, Billy Davis, and he's being stubborn. Could you possibly retrieve our check from the waiter and let me see it?" I had a twenty folded in my hand.

  "Certainly," the maitre d' said, still smiling, once the twenty was his.

  He slipped into the dim recesses of the restaurant and came back with Billy's signed receipt. And I had the room number. Room 1115, right down the hall from the corpse.

  I thanked the maitre d' and left the restaurant for the second time, heading again for the elevator bank and the eleventh floor.

  I barely glanced at 1103 as I passed. The door was still ajar. I hadn't pulled it shut, both because I wanted to leave it as I found it and because I didn't want to put my hands on anything in the vicinity of the dead man.

  When I reached the door to Billy's room, I knocked, out of habit, not really expecting an answer.

  But I could have sworn I heard a groan.

  I knocked again.

  "Billy? Are you there?"

  Silence.

  "Billy, if you're there, open up. Because if I leave, I'm coming back with hotel security. Two of them. One for the room down the hall, and one for you."

  I was about to walk away when I heard someone turn the lock.

  The woman who opened the door was easily six-foot-two in her stiletto heels. Long black hair hung straight down over her bare shoulders, all the way to her lace-trimmed red corset, the kind with matching underpants, and garters to hold up black fishnet stockings. Her arms were fleshy, and a roll of fat billowed softly over the satin-covered wires.

  But the set of her wine-red mouth was hard. I glanced down at her hand, expecting a whip.

  She was holding a gun.

  "Come in," she said, blinking a heavy fringe of fake eye­lashes. "You must be Billy's cousin. He's told me so much about you."

  "Oh, God. Next you'll tell me he couldn't come to the door himself because he's tied up."

  In bare feet we would have been eye to eye. I didn't like having to look up to meet her gaze.

  She smiled one of those wide-lipped smiles that vampires use to expose their fangs.

  "I'm going to step back from the door," she said. "You're going to come in and shut it behind you. If you leave instead, I'm going to end your cousin's life and disap­pear before you can return with help. Do you understand?"

  "Yes, ma'am."

  She kept the gun on me as she moved away from the door. I followed her into a room that was the twin of 1103, except that the man on the bed was Billy, and he was still alive.

  He was naked and gagged, and his hands were cuffed be­hind his back, but he was still alive.

  I could tell because he squirmed, and his face turned red. He looked even smaller and more pathetic naked than he had in the suit and boots.

  "Sit down." The woman used her gun to point toward a chair on the far side of the room.

  I did as told.

  She leaned against the wall, regarding me thoughtfully.

  "What happens next?" I asked, not wanting to give her too much time to think. "I can't believe you're going to walk out of here and leave us to call the cops."

  "No. I hadn't expected you, and I'm afraid I'll have to improvise. In fact, I had specifically told Billy to leave the situation to me. Fortunately, I suspected that he was weak enough to panic. I've had friends keeping tabs on him. And when I saw him meet you, I knew what he was doing. I was about to punish him when you knocked."

  "We haven't been introduced. I'm Freddie O'Neal, and you are—?" I broke off the question to wait for her answer.

  "You don't need to know my name. You can call me Sada if you like."

  "Sada. Are you by some other name known as
a financial whiz?"

  "I don't think you need to know that, either."

  "Maybe not, but if you are, it would make sense out of why three Southern California stockbrokers chose to risk their licenses in a scam. Had to be something more than greed."

  "A scam? Naughty Billy. I've told him not to use that word."

  Billy squirmed some more, drawing his knees up to protect his genitals. He tried to make sounds through the gag.

  "He called it a misunderstanding," I said.

  Billy nodded rapidly.

  "Good Billy," Sada purred.

  Billy didn't relax his knees.

  Sada looked at me again.

  "I had hoped I could control Billy, at least until the money from investors was safely deposited in an off-shore bank. Unfortunately, I don't think you're quite as amenable to persuasion as your cousin. So this is what we're going to do. You and I will exchange clothes. And poor Billy will shoot you and then himself, after having shot the good doctor down the hall, in a love triangle gone awry." She thought it over and sighed. "This is far too messy for my taste, but I don't see a way out of it. Undress now. Start with your boots."

  I bent over toward my right foot. And I pulled the gun out of my boot and shot.

  With a small .22 caliber, you have to pray when you shoot. It's the equivalent of throwing a Hail Mary pass in football.

  My first shot landed in her right shoulder. Her gun hand wavered.

  My second shot grazed her ear.

  "Stop." She dropped her gun. Blood ran in one stream down her arm, in another down her neck and across her collarbone. "Stop."

  I kept the gun aimed more or less at her chest. My stomach was churning, and I was tempted to walk out and leave both of them. But I didn't.

  "Uncuff Billy and let him call security."

  "I'll have to get the key."

  "Wrong. Just ungag him, then. You can hit 0 for Oper­ator, but I want him on the receiver. I don't want you faking the call and somehow alerting a friend instead."

  Awkwardly, with her left hand, she loosened Billy's gag, picked up the receiver, hit 0, and then held the receiver next to Billy's head.