Cash McCall

by Cameron Hawley

  The blast of voice fitted the man. “You like?” he demanded with a guttural roar, a gesture sweeping aside Cash’s attempt at introduction.

  Max was looking down on her, the giant of giants, the ogre of ogres, and she saw herself in self-portraiture, the cowering child lost in the forest, and she said as a desperate bid for favor, “Please believe me, it was the most wonderful lunch I ever had in my life. It was the most delicious—delectable—oh, it was simply superlative!”

  A barely perceptible nod indicated Max’s acceptance of her effort as having satisfied his minimum requirement and he turned to Cash for a further contribution.

  “A magnificent achievement,” Cash said earnestly. “You’re the master of masters, my friend, the greatest of the great.”

  An explosive snort of disdain fluttered the giant’s lips. “You do not know even what you eat!”

  “Oh, but I do,” Cash protested. “Let me tell you. In the sauce there are little river shrimp and—”

  Max blasted in with a thundering interruption, his body quaking as if the mountain were harboring an incipient volcano. His face became an agonized appeal for simple justice as he turned back to face Lory. “Please you will help me make our friend understand. Can he explain the Michelangelo if he says what are the colors of the paint? What they have to eat for Last Supper—is it only the yellow ocher, the burnt sienna, the lapis lazuli?” A cunning smile bulged the circles-within-circles contours of his face. “You think I do not know the lapis lazuli? Ha! I know the lapis lazuli like our friend know the little shrimp! Who does not know the little shrimp? Anyone who is not blind can see it is the little shrimps. But is the lapis lazuli the secret of the Michelangelo?” He rocked his head, stabbing a mustache in Cash’s direction. “To him I am nothing but the little shrimps.”

  Her own laughter was uncontainable but Cash made a valiant attempt at sober concern. “Max, believe me, I would never make the mistake of thinking you were only—”

  The raising of the chef’s giant hand was an imperious command for silence, broken finally when he said in a sweet-sad voice, “What you eat—only once it has ever been made before—once—when it was create by the great Réchaud for the wedding breakfast of Napoleon and the beautiful Josephine.”

  She saw Cash gulp and then the flashing twinkle in his eyes. “My dear friend, you are a magnificent chef, but a miserable historian. It was not for the wedding breakfast—it was for their luncheon on the day of their betrothal.”

  Max took a breath that seemed to suck in half the air of the room. But in the instant when an explosion seemed inevitable, his inflated body began a slow collapse and a kewpie smile settled on his face. “You must also say, I am no better liar than you. Réchaud does not create this dish for the Napoleon and Josephine, I create it for you, mademoiselle.”

  He bowed to her, apparently a last-second inspiration, as unexpected to him as it was to her, so suddenly executed that catastrophe seemed certain. Surprisingly, he recovered his balance and then, as an even more startling feat, executed a light-footed dance step that carried him nimbly to the pantry door. Again he bowed, the backthrust of his posterior banging back the door. “You have eat the great love dish of the little pink shrimps—Soufflé aux Petite Crevettes Roses.” He hesitated and then added as a final fillip, “De Héloïse et Abélard.”

  For an instant after the door closed, her mind flashed back, wondering if there had been a significance in Cash’s mention of a betrothal luncheon. But if there had been it was lost now. His head was thrown back, tears in his eyes as he tried to muffle the sound of uncontrollable laughter. She was mystified. There was no doubt that Max had been amusing but was it really that hilariously funny?

  12

  In all the years that he had attended conventions of the American Association of Plastic Molders, Grant Austen had never found himself the center of as much attention as during the few minutes that the delegates were pouring into the Moon Beach Club after the arrival of the special train. As a not entirely coincidental happenstance, he was in the lobby waiting to go into lunch with Miriam when he heard the tinkling bells of the approaching pony cart parade. Lou and Ed Floeger of L & E Molding were the first two through the door. Naturally he had to get up to greet Lou and Ed—they were real old-timers in A.A.P.M. and a couple of grand guys—and from then on he was stuck, the whole gang pouring in and there was nothing he could do but stay there at the front door shaking hands. A couple of the fellows—Sid Murkle and Charlie Fergus—tried to kid him about being a one-man reception committee, but anyone could see that Sid and Charlie had been hitting it up pretty hard on the train coming down.

  Everybody was really surprised to see him, all of them patting him on the back and telling him that he was the smartest guy in the plastic molding business, saying that they wished they could do just what he’d done. Of course, they’d all been talking about his retiring, and there’d been no chance to set them straight, everyone rushing to get in line to register. But one thing was certain—he’d made no mistake in coming to the convention. It took something like this to make a man appreciate how many friends he really had.

  The gang was rushing back down from their rooms now, getting into the dining room before it closed, and Grant Austen was glad that he’d had the foresight to get a table near the door so that he could point out everyone to Miriam and tell her who they were.

  “You’ll meet ’em all later,” he assured her. “That’s Luke Hoover from Interstate—Frank Smith and his wife—Frank’s really a card when he gets wound up. Wait until you see him at the Associates Reception tonight! What you going to have to eat?”

  She looked down at the menu again. “Dear me, I just don’t know, Grant. Everything looks so good. What should I have?”

  “How about a nice well-done filet mignon?”

  “Oh that’s much too much for lunch, really it is.”

  “Then maybe some nice filet of sole with tartar sauce?”

  “That’s better,” she agreed, folding the menu.

  “Sure, you bet. Well, what do you think of—say, there’s Harlan Bostwick.”

  He waved but Harlan was talking so hard to Bill Tottmeyer that he couldn’t catch his eye. “That’s one fellow I sure want you to meet. Harlan Bostwick. Swell personality. Executive Secretary of the Association. Handles all of our Washington contacts.”

  “Our Washington contacts?” Miriam asked, her eyes teasing him.

  For a minute he didn’t get what she meant. Then he did and grinned at her and she smiled back … but, of course, she didn’t get the point.

  Frank Smith was up on the bandstand where the orchestra played at night, putting on one of those gold hats that the cornet player had left hanging on his music stand, and right away the gang at Charlie’s table started singing Sidewalks of New York. In a minute there’d be Chicago and then the Indiana crowd would try to drown them out with Wabash Moon.

  “They always do this,” he explained to Miriam. “Everybody’s got their own song to show where they’re from. You know, like St. Louis Blues—California, Here I Come!”

  Miriam was really getting such a kick out of it, laughing at the way Frank was acting the fool, that Grant Austen took a chance and added, “I guess if you were from Washington, D.C. it would have to be America the Beautiful.”

  But she still didn’t get it. She thought it was just a joke.

  13

  Driven by the need to talk to someone … anyone … Maude Kennard blindly pushed open the door of Everett Pierce’s office. In the instant of the door’s opening she knew that she had made a mistake. What could she say to him? Nothing! That little bitch was still up in Cash’s suite … but what could Pierce do about it … or about Max … or anything else?

  The manager stared at her. “Is something wrong, Mrs. Kennard?”

  The pressure within her burst through her lips. “I’ve found out who your Mr. McCall is,” she blurted out, the words as uncalculated as the tone of anger in which they were bathed. “He
owns the hotel!”

  Everett Pierce started to rise from his chair but then, as if the movement was only the spastic response to a mortal wound, he sank back.

  In a flash of acute perception, Maude Kennard knew what he was thinking … now he would never get back his tenth-floor suite!

  She looked at him with the disgust of the madly brave for the cringing coward … he was whipped … licked … totally beaten. Watching, her disdain became a restorative, Everett Pierce’s weakness a gauge of her own strength. She backed out of the office, closing the door, feeling that she had scored an important victory. She was clear-headed now, no longer sickened by the clinging aftermath of the nausea that had struck her in the kitchen.

  14

  “Will there be anything else?” Andrew asked.

  Cash McCall shook his head. “Thank you, Andrew, for a very nice lunch.”

  The old waiter bowed his acknowledgment and left, leaving them alone in a silence broken only by the thrumming of the pantry door, fast fading as the spring hinges snubbed its pendulum swing.

  “Was it?” Cash asked, edging back his chair.

  “Was it what?”

  “A nice lunch.”

  “More than nice. Much more!”

  “Have I made my point—about the small adventures?”

  She shook her head, laughing. “This hasn’t been a small adventure. It’s been a big one—for me, a very big one.”

  He was standing, moving behind her chair, and when she arose it was into the circle of his arms. “Not past tense,” he said. “Don’t say that it has been.”

  There was no need to accept his correction. She was certain that he had felt the tremor that had gone through her body, and that it had said everything that needed to be said. He knew—and she wanted him to know—that for her this was the great adventure, the adventure of adventures.

  The telephone rang but it was not an annoying interruption, only the pleasant proof of reality. Telephones did not ring in dreams. She drew back her head, parting their lips, pushing him away toward the living room.

  He offered her the flattery of resistance but she rejected it, slipping out of his arms, seeing then his look of puzzled inquiry as he glanced toward the bell sound, repeated now.

  Moving quickly, he left her and when she followed him into the living room he was already listening to what someone was saying on the other end of the line. He glanced at her as she came into the room but it was not a diversion of attention from what he was hearing, only a reassuringly matter-of-fact acceptance of her presence.

  Cash began to talk and she listened, at first only to the sound of his voice, not bothering to give meaning to his words until the consciousness dawned that he was speaking the language of another world, a second life that was something beyond the imagined sharing that, in these last few minutes, had begun to seem completely attainable.

  “Yes, Gil, I understand that,” Cash was saying. “But I can’t possibly see him this afternoon. I’m sorry but—”

  “Please!” she called out, quicker than thought. “If it’s because of me—please don’t let me be a nuisance!”

  His hand went over the mouthpiece and his eyes searched her face. “Do you mean you’d forgive me if I left you for a half hour?”

  “I wouldn’t forgive you if you didn’t.”

  The look he gave her was a glittering reward for her sacrifice. He withdrew his hand from the telephone instrument, glancing at his wrist watch. “All right, Gil, I’ll see him at three-thirty. If that can’t be arranged, call me back. Otherwise, I’ll see you then.”

  His hand reached out after he had hung up and she moved into the inviting circle of his arm.

  “That was a nice thing to do,” he said.

  “You have your work, I know that,” she said, leaving unsaid what couldn’t be said, the subconscious realization that happiness was dependent upon only her life changing, not his. He was the stability of solid earth, the immutable rock, the steadfast rallying point of unchangeable desire.

  “Will you promise to be here when I get back?” he asked.

  “Maybe,” she said quickly, surprised that she was suddenly confident enough to risk coquetry, even more that she could resist the obvious invitation of his lips, so close now as he drew her to him. She pirouetted out of his arm, a turn and backstep carrying her to a chair, dropping to a half-sitting posture on its arm, gaily asking, “Do you have to leave right away?”

  “Not for a few minutes.”

  “Then tell me about it.”

  “About what?”

  “You.”

  “What about me?”

  “Anything! Everything! Tell me what you do.”

  “Do?”

  “Your business.”

  “But I did tell you—yesterday.”

  “Only that you bought companies.”

  “And sold them.”

  “Well, I know you work for the Gammer Corporation—but that’s all I do know.”

  A quizzical smile broke. “Is that what you really thought—that I worked for the Gammer Corporation?”

  “Don’t you?”

  He laughed and for an instant she was afraid that it was at her expense. But his face sobered. “I don’t work for the Gammer Corporation, Lory. I am the Gammer Corporation—and the Aurora Corporation, and the Scotch Valley Corporation, and goodness how many others, past, present and future.”

  “But I—but you—”

  He came to her, sitting on the other chair arm, then slipping down into the seat, his face almost level with hers. “Don’t be too impressed, Lory. A corporation is only a piece of paper. Almost every time I buy and sell a company, the lawyers find some excuse for setting up another corporation.”

  “And that’s all the Gammer Corporation is, just a piece of paper—but the piece of paper is really you?”

  He chuckled a part denial. “That’s what I get for trying to be facetious.”

  “I was being silly, too.”

  “There’s more than that to the Gammer Corporation. It was an operating company when I bought it. When I sold the assets and inventory I kept the corporate shell because there was a loss carryover that I could use. That’s why I bought your company through Gammer—so I could take advantage of it. I don’t suppose that makes much sense to you—”

  She caught his side glance and, following it, saw that he had looked at her drawing. “What have you been imagining about me—that I’ve been living in some kind of fairy-tale world where there wasn’t any such thing as income tax—or phenol-formaldehyde resins, or double-ram presses, or thermoplastic extruders? Would you like me to give you some hints on how you can reduce cycle time with electronic preheating? Or would you prefer my ideas on the advantages of the declining balance method of amortizing mold costs?”

  He laughed his incredulity. “You can’t really mean that you’re interested in business?”

  “Aren’t you?” she countered, trying to make her eyes say that there was nothing about him that didn’t interest her.

  “Of course but—yes, I suppose I have been thinking of you as something out of a fairy-tale world.”

  His hand found hers, making self-denial even more difficult than it had been before, but she managed to ask, “If you’re the Gammer Corporation, then you bought Suffolk Moulding for yourself?”

  “But you knew that, didn’t you?”

  The grip of his fingers had slackened alarmingly and she hesitated, not certain now what she had known, knowing only that in her anxiety to share the small secrets of his life she had gone too far, opening doors that were best left closed. “It doesn’t matter one way or the other.”

  Cash asked anxiously, “You didn’t think I was buying it to operate?”

  “No, I—well, I suppose I thought you were buying it for someone else.”

  “I was.” An odd smile flashed. “But until last night I didn’t know who it was going to be.”

  Watching, she saw the smile change from a kindling spark to an exp
ression of full-blown excitement, rigidly contained but unmistakable.

  “Is this one of those big adventures?” she asked.

  “It could be,” he said. “But still not big enough to worry about unless you’ll promise to be here when I get back.”

  “I promise.”

  He rose, glancing at his watch. “It shouldn’t take too long, a half hour, three quarters at the most. Sure you won’t get bored here all by yourself?”

  “I won’t.”

  “Unless there’s something else you want to do?”

  The thought of her undeposited check popped into her mind, but she shook her head, grasping at the excuse that the bank was certain to be closed by now. “Is it all right if I just stay here?”

  “All right? Of course. Why not?”

  “I don’t know the rules for a very innocent girl in the apartment of a very sophisticated man.”

  He laughed, starting for the foyer, the sweep of his arm carrying her with him. “I don’t either—but I’ll lock the door just in case one of those very sophisticated characters turns up.”

  “The door doesn’t need to be locked,” she said, her voice fading to a whisper before she had finished.

  “I know that,” he said, so intently serious that she expected the crush of his arms. Instead, his hands stopped at her shoulders and he kissed her lightly, as a husband would kiss his wife when he left the house for work in the morning. And he said, “If anything holds me up I’ll call you.”

  He was gone then and she walked back into the living room, straightening the slip cover on the chair where they had been sitting, picking up a dropped match, seeing an ash tray that needed emptying.

  15

  As Winston Conway had suggested, Gil Clark intercepted Cash McCall in the law firm’s reception lobby and took him to a vacant office for an account of his interview with Dr. Martin Bergmann. He had given Cash the highlight facts over the telephone and now he filled in the detail, attempting an almost verbatim report of the entire interview, driving resolutely ahead despite the discouraging suspicion that Cash McCall was no more than half listening. He seemed impenetrably preoccupied, staring silently out of the window, his only expression an oddly inscrutable smile that came to his face when, now and then, his eyes lifted to the patch of blue sky that was visible through the wedged gap between the two buildings across the street.