“AGM. American General Machine.”
“If I go ahead with it, my friend can clear me with the hotel PR man, and then anyone who happens to check will find out it is all true, true, true.”
“So how come you pick this convention and pick us?”
“This convention fits into my busy schedule, let us say, Mr. Frick, and picking AGM was just the result of closing my eyes and sticking a pin in a list. The winners never question their luck, Mr. Frick. The losers are the ones who say they’ve been jobbed.”
“You know,” he said, “I like it. I really like it.”
“Good.”
“Just … just how will you work it with Hubbard, I mean if you decide you can handle it okay?”
He saw that sweet icy smile again. “Things run to pattern,” she said flatly. “We will become terribly attracted to each other, and get around to admitting it, but we’ll agree to fight it. Then I shall tearfully permit myself to be seduced, and it will be such a compelling and glorious experience that we won’t be able to stop. We will agree that this will be our little stolen time of magical love, and when it is over, we will go our separate ways. But then, you understand, because I am so much in love I can’t stand the thought of the heartbreak ahead, I will get a little drunk, and make some horribly slutty embarrassing scene in front of all the people he most wants not to know about his sneaky little romance. Will that do it?”
“Dear God,” Frick said, awed and humble. “That would sure do it.”
“It’s a scene I’ve played before. And the first two times I played it, I thought I meant it.”
“One thing. Can anybody show up who’d … spoil the act?”
“I’m not notorious, Mr. Frick. I haven’t taken on regiments. I’m not on a police blotter anywhere for anything. I have the quaint idea I resemble a lady.”
“I only meant …”
“I’d say the odds are distinctly against it, certainly at the Sultana.”
“Good.”
“And if there was one of those little coincidences, I’m sure I could handle it very quietly.”
“I’m sure you could.”
“I suppose the most reasonable time and place is in the suite you mentioned, in another … fifteen minutes? That’s when you’ll all be gathered. Say! Suppose the boss man, whoever he is, doesn’t like the idea?”
“The boss man,” Frick said with a barracuda grin, “is Mulaney.”
“You can tip him off, then. I’ll be playing it to the others as well as Floyd Hubbard, so even if Hubbard isn’t there, tell your Mr. Mulaney to be … reasonably skeptical.”
“Sure, Cory. I’ll fix it up.”
“I have the suite right? Eight sixty? I guess I’m dressed all right for that sort of thing. You could probably fit me into the dinner arrangements … if I decide I can help you.”
“No trouble at all.”
Miss Cory Barlund stood up, slung the oversized bag over her arm and began working her gloves back on. “I’ll kill some time downstairs, and get to the suite about six thirty, if that sounds all right, Mr. Frick.”
“It sounds fine. Just fine, only …”
“Only what?”
His lips felt slightly numb, and he knew it wasn’t the drink. “What I mean to say, Cory honey, we’ve set up a sort of little business arrangement here and I don’t have to get up there right on the dot, and I was thinking maybe we could … sort of seal the bargain …” She devoted her entire attention to putting her gloves back on. He swallowed and said, “I … I could sweeten the pot a little.”
She smiled at him, but something in her smile warned him to stay just where he was. “Mister Frick, let me set an imaginary scene for you. You walk into a good restaurant. You see me eating alone at a table. You’ve never seen me before in your life. Now how would you judge your chances of coming over, introducing yourself, and even being permitted to sit at my table and watch me eat?”
“Maybe not so good, but that would be because I wouldn’t know …”
“What I am? You know what I am. At least you think you do.” Her smile became more intense. “Let’s make our relationship clear. At a rate of a hundred dollars a second, Mr. Frick, I wouldn’t let an insect like you kiss the back of my hand.”
He sprang to his feet and in a strangled tone said, “Listen, you! Listen to me!”
“Careful!”
“No high class whore is going to …”
The envelope of money appeared with the abruptness of magic, was slapped solidly across his mouth and fell to the floor at his feet. He looked stupidly down at it and then at Cory Barlund walking briskly toward the door.
“Hey!” he said. “Hey, wait!”
She had the door partially open before she stopped. She stood still for a moment, then slammed the door violently and turned and faced him.
“It seems to mean something to Alma,” she said quietly. “And I seem to owe her more than a little. And your terminology is … rude but accurate. I’m a pretentious bitch, Frick. I’d like your apology.”
“I’m sorry.”
“So am I. Pick up the money and bring it to me.”
She took it from him and put it in her purse again. “Try me again in ten years,” she said. “By then I may have lost the freedom of choice. That’s supposed to be the standard pattern, isn’t it?”
She closed the door quietly. He walked back into the room and called her every foul name he could think of. She had left a faint trace of her perfume in the room. He looked at the stain of lipstick on the two cigarette butts she had left in the ash tray. There was a fainter stain on the highball glass. There was a half inch of her drink in the bottom of the glass. Without much conscious thought he fitted his mouth to the pattern her lips had left and drained what was left of her drink. When he put the glass down he could taste the remote aromatic pastiness of her lipstick.
It was ten minutes before six. On impulse he phoned Alma. He let it ring twelve times before he hung up.
Four
THE SUITE WAS CROWDED and noisy by a few minutes after six. Hubbard stood by the open doors to the big terrace, nursing a tall drink and talking to Dave Daniels of the Chicago area and Stu Gallard of the Los Angeles district office about Cuba and Castro and foreign markets.
Gallard was saying, angrily, “Mitch brought back this half-horse motor he bought in Montevideo. Made in the USSR. The boys at Schenectady tore it down, and it was built damn good, I’m telling you. And for the price he paid for it, G.E. couldn’t even buy the materials. It’s a hit and run operation, and they figure on losing say a couple-hundred thousand to cripple a half-million dollar distribution system, and then they get the hell out. Just wait until they go to work on one of our …”
“Floyd! Floyd, boy,” Jesse Mulaney bellowed, moving through the crowd. He came up and pumped Hubbard’s hand and said, “Glad you could make it. Dave! Stu! How you boys? Both looking fine. Fine. Connie, honey? You know all three of these boys. Dave Daniels, Stu Gallard, Floyd Hubbard.”
“Of course I do. So nice to see you here, gentlemen.”
One of the road men came flurrying up with the Mulaneys’ order, and in handing the drinks to them, managed to step on Hubbard’s foot.
“I’m sorry,” he gasped. “Geez, Mr. Hubbard, I’m terrible sorry.”
“No harm done,” Hubbard said.
“If you boys will excuse Connie and me, we’ve got to go shake every hand we can find before we settle down to any serious dissipation.”
When Mulaney moved off, Hubbard noticed that neither Daniels nor Gallard made the slightest comment about him, and it was a significant departure from the normal routine, wherein somebody would say casually, “A great guy,” or “Jesse is looking fine.” How beautifully the grapevine works, Hubbard thought acidly. The CIA should check into how it’s done. A national organization, and it gossips more than the Podunk sewing circle. Fourteen members here of the big happy AGM family, and every single one of them, even to the road men, know I’m Hubba
rd the Hangman. Beware. Step easy or he may finger you too. And I’ve always wanted to be loved.
He made the small talk, and took the strategic sips of his drink, and was aware of trying to look and sound harmless and likable, and was ironically amused at himself.
About a half hour later, Charlie Gromer, one of the older road men, touched his elbow and said, “Excuse me. Mr. Mulaney wants to see you a minute in the next room.”
The direct approach? he thought. Can’t be. Not so soon.
He went into the bedroom Charlie indicated. Jesse was there, with Fred Frick of the local district and Cass Beatty of Advertising. An exceptionally lovely girl was talking to the three of them with considerable animation.
“There he is!” Jesse said. “Problems, Floyd. We figured maybe you could contribute a high-level policy point of view here. Miss Barlund, may I present Mr. Floyd Hubbard.”
“How do you do, Miss Barlund. Jesse, before you give the young lady the wrong slant on things, let me say I consort with the brass. Some of them even say good morning to me when it’s unavoidable.”
“Run through it again for Floyd, Miss Barlund,” Jesse suggested.
“It’s sort of an off-beat idea, Mr. Hubbard, but I did sell it to Mr. Stormlander. He publishes Tropical Life, and I’ve been doing little free-lance articles for him. Everybody knows about conventions, but nobody knows very much about them, really. There’s many misconceptions. And they’re really a terrific industry down here. My idea is to take a typical company group at a typical convention, and do a sort of … well, a human interest thing. American businessmen at a convention and how they really and truly act—what they do, and what they think of conventions.”
“Why us?” Hubbard asked. “Why AGM?”
“I guess I didn’t go at it very scientifically. The companies are listed in the back of the program and I just picked one. I couldn’t use the first one, because there’s only one man here from that company. And the second one was too big. And the third one turned out to be Canadian. This one seems just about right, actually.”
“Would you use actual names? And the name of the company?” Cass Beatty asked. “I didn’t get clear on that.”
“I’d like to,” she said. “It would make it more real.”
“It could get to be too real, couldn’t it?” Hubbard said. “I remember a book a woman did about how they made a movie of The Red Badge of Courage.”
She looked at him and the dark blue of her eyes seemed to change. He had the feeling she had noticed him for the first time and had found a reason for approval. He was surprised at how pleased he was.
“That was Picture by Lillian Ross,” she said. “Golly, it wouldn’t be that sort of thing. Tropical Life is more like … a sort of puff sheet. There’s no reason you people couldn’t approve the manuscript before I turn it in. You might even be able to use it in some of your company literature, if it turns out good enough. Really, all I want to do is just sort of mouse around, take a few pictures, ask people questions when they’re not too terribly busy. I won’t get in anybody’s way, I promise.”
“I don’t know,” Mulaney said. “I just don’t know.”
“Personally, I can’t see anything out of line in it,” Cass said. “It can’t hurt anything, and we might get something we can use, maybe tear sheets to put in our direct mail stuff.”
“How about credentials?” Frick asked.
“Tomorrow I could bring in a letter from Mr. Stormlander authorizing me to go ahead with it. I mean it wouldn’t be a commitment on his part to really use it, because I am doing it on spec. But it would show he’s interested.”
“Sounds good enough for me,” Frick said.
“Floyd? Cass? Any objections?”
“Hell, no!” Beatty said. Hubbard smiled and shook his head.
“You’re in business, Miss Barlund.”
“It’s Cory, Mr Mulaney.”
“Freddy, you go grab a ticket book for Cory so she can go to any of the events she feels like. Floyd, you go on back out there and tell Bobby Fayhouser to shoo our people in here about three at a time and we’ll brief them without busting up the party. Cory, we’ll tell our boys to level with you and leave it up to you what to put in and what to leave out.”
“Did many of the AGM men bring their wives, Mr. Mulaney?”
“You better call me Jesse. I brought Connie, and, Cass, you brought Sue. Anybody else?”
“That’s the works then.”
“I better get all the names down and the jobs,” Cory said.
“Bobby Fayhouser has a list. You can copy it off.”
Floyd found Bobby Fayhouser fixing drinks. He gave him the message.
“What?” Bobby said. “That girl is going to what?”
“Write a warm, heart-tugging story about how AGM goes to a convention.”
“To be cast in bronze. Oh hell, excuse me.”
“For what?”
“For the flip remark. They come out with no warning. I’m supposed to be eager and reverent.”
Hubbard realized Fayhouser was not the dull, earnest young man he had appeared to be. “Cheer up. I’ve learned to live with the same problem.”
“You, Mr. Hubbard! Doesn’t it make people … uneasy about you?”
“All the time. But the way to handle it, Bobby, once it’s said, don’t let it just hang there, stinking in the sunlight. Say something very sincere.”
“Something eager and reverent?”
“Then they’re sure they didn’t understand. Practice it.”
“And one day I too can have a little stock option all my own? Uh. I have utmost confidence in the fairness with which every AGM employee is treated. Like that?”
“It could be smoother, but you’ve got the basic idea.” They grinned at each other. Bobby trotted off with the drinks. Hubbard made himself a light one and carried it out onto the relative privacy of the terrace. The sea breeze was damp and had a salty smell. He heard the blur of voices behind him, a roar of surf, distant music, traffic sounds. The sun was gone and the sea was gray. He looked for a star and found one and said the old rhyme, but did not know exactly what to wish for. The words did not fit what he wanted. Less confusion, more pattern, more meaning.
Jesse spoke at his elbow, saying, “Somehow I wish I was on that damn thing, going wherever it’s going.”
“On what?”
“Freighter out there, heading south.”
“Oh. I see it. I was wishing too.”
“Now what have you got to wish for, Floyd?”
“I don’t know how to say it. Better answers to better questions, I guess. The way I was when I was twenty and knew everything.”
“What about the Barlund girl? You seemed a little dubious.”
“Not really, I guess. I just had the feeling she’s a little over-specified for the operation. As if that much girl should have something better to do. So I got the feeling maybe there’s a gimmick in it someplace. But I guess not.”
“Cass will check her out tomorrow.” Mulaney chuckled. “Freddy’s road men get short-winded when they get near her and their eyes bulge.”
“Had a few symptoms myself, Jesse.”
“Well, we’ll see what she can do with this bunch of scoundrels. Hope she knows a little judo, for when it gets damp around here. I understand you got in pretty early?”
“And sacked out. They’ve been pushing me pretty hard lately.”
Jesse clapped him on the shoulder. “Well, boy, there’s nobody here to load any work on you, so take this chance to unwind. It’ll do you a lot of good. Don’t think you have to show up for every damn thing. There’s nothing in the world duller than those clinics and morning workshops. You aren’t a regular member of NAPATAN, so you won’t get stuck on any committees.”
“I don’t know the first damn thing about selling anyway, Jesse.”
“Aren’t you supposed to know everything about everything?”
“What I actually know, and what they think I know, Je
sse, is a pair of different shaped horses.”
In the suite, Frick was giving Cory Barlund her book of tickets. He explained the mechanics of it to her, and then said in a lower tone, “You did great!”
“How delicious of you to tell me!”
“Don’t needle me, huh? Is it a deal?”
“In the first three seconds, Frick, it was a capital Y Yes, and then it damned near turned into a no, but for a reason you couldn’t hope to understand.”
“I’m very stupid. Is it yes?”
“It’s yes. And a very foolish yes, possibly. But yes.”
“You think it’ll be easy?”
“All you have to know is I’ll give it a try.”
At a little after eight they went down to the Arabian Room where the larger banquets were staged. AGM had two adjoining tables, each set up for eight. Because Jesse Mulaney had to be at the speaker’s table, the addition of Cory Barlund created no problem. The table where she was seated also contained Cass and Sue Beatty, Connie Mulaney, Floyd Hubbard, Fred Frick, Dave Daniels and Stu Gallard. It was a round table near the platform. She sat directly across from Floyd. She was between Stu and Dave. Floyd was between Connie and Sue Beatty.
“That,” whispered Sue, caught between indignation and admiration, “is one hell of a doll indeed.”
“Yes indeed.”
“Makes me feel the way I did when I was a fat child with braces on my teeth.”
“You look fine, Sue.”
“I wasn’t fishing. You know, that girl comes on slow. She builds. The more you look, the more you see. Floyd, only a woman could know what kind of a total effort that takes, all the time and thought and care.”
Sue Beatty clucked and shook her head. Sue was a hearty dominant woman in her middle thirties, heavy in hip and bust, solid but not fat, fond of bright colors, spiced foods, sweet drinks and lusty laughter.
There was so much noise in the room and so much conversation on the other side of the table they could talk with relative privacy.
“How old is she, Floyd? What would you say?”
“Twenty-two? Twenty-three?”
“How she would love you for that! Look at the backs of her hands, dear man. And the base of her throat. Twenty-eight if a day. But doing very very well at looking twenty-two. Don’t look at me like that. I know whereof I speak.”
A Key to the Suite Page 5
