The Only Girl in the Game

by John D. MacDonald

  They were dull days for Hugh Darren. He had gotten back into the swing of the work, but there was no satisfaction in it. Somebody had pared the bright edges off the world, and he was filled with discontent. He drank a little more than was his custom, and seldom swam, and was conscious of a new flabbiness of waist and belly, but felt no urge to correct it. Max required little favors from time to time. He would stuff a bill or two into Hugh’s breast pocket, pat the pocket and smile his Mongol grin and say, “A little off the top, sweetheart.” It seemed to Hugh that the favors were growing more risky and cynical, but he could not bring himself to care. The extra money piled up in a private place, but there was no pleasure in it.

  One afternoon in late May he went out to the pool, and he saw her there stretched sweetly in the sun, her forearm across her eyes, miraculously returned. His heart paused and gave a staggering leap of joy, and his belly was hollow and his knees weak. He went to her in a gladness almost unbearable, but as he started to speak the woman took her arm away, and he saw the hard skeptical face of a stranger.

  “I … thought you were someone else. I’m sorry.”

  “My husbun’ just happens to be at a meeting, wise guy.”

  As he walked slowly away from her, toward the pool, the final knowledge of just what it was that he had experienced with Betty came into his mind with such clarity that he was astounded it had taken him so long to find out. It was more than the bland and pretty word of the tunesmiths—love. It was that and more. It was a harsh necessity. Life was not worth a damn without her. She had been, all along, his inevitability. And so it was time to stop pretending, and get back to the basic fact of his need. The only act that made any sense in his world was the act of finding her, no matter how long it took. Everything could be dropped for that purpose. And once he found her, he knew he could make her understand. No two people had ever been as good together in so many ways, all important. Once he knew what he had to do, it was like a weight lifting off his heart.

  On the following day, before he had told anyone his plans, a man came to see him, a young man with a rather pale and earnest face, sedate in dress and manner, scrupulously polite and obviously without a shred of humor.

  He shook hands and presented his card and repeated the information on the card, saying, “I am James Wray of the San Francisco legal firm of Balch, Costin and Sommers.” He seated himself, crossed his legs with neatness and precision and said, “The executor of the estate of Dr. Randolph Dawson authorized this trip in the hope that it might shed some light on the disappearance of Miss Elizabeth Dawson, daughter and principal heir of the late Dr. Dawson.”

  “Disappearance?” Hugh asked blankly.

  “Since arriving in Las Vegas this morning, I have talked to Mr. Gideon, a theatrical agent, who has had no word from her, and I have talked to your Mr. Hanes, who seems unable to shed any light upon this troubling mystery. The police have ascertained that Miss Dawson left by air on the Tuesday afternoon following the day of her father’s death, en route to San Francisco. They located and interviewed a taxi driver who took her from the airport to the middle of the city, actually to the corner of Market and Van Ness. He reported her as being very upset about the death of her father.”

  “She knew about it?”

  “Of course she knew about it. A Mrs. Mead, housekeeper for the late Dr. Dawson, phoned her right at this hotel within an hour after the doctor’s sudden death, talked to her at length and described the circumstances surrounding the tragedy. Miss Dawson said she would return home at once, but we have been unable to trace her movements after she asked the cab driver to leave her on that corner. I have come on the remote chance that one of her friends here might give us some clue as to what could have become of her.”

  “I … I tried to get in touch with her.”

  “I know that, sir. Mr. Hanes informed me that she left a note for you when she departed. Do you still have that note?”

  “I.… Yes, I saved it, Mr. Wray, but it’s personal.”

  “I can assure you that my interest is professional, Mr. Darren. The deceased has left a sizable estate to Miss Dawson. We would feel remiss in our duties if we did not attempt to check every piece of information, regardless of its pertinence, or, I should say, apparent lack of pertinence.”

  “You wait here and I’ll go get it.”

  He brought it down from his room. It had the frayed and worn look of a document much handled. Wray could guess at the numberless times he had read it.

  James Wray took it and scanned it quickly, then read it slowly. There was a slight frown on the pale brow as he handed it back. “When did you receive this?”

  “I found it under my door at about midnight the same night she left. I went to her room immediately. She had packed up and gone.”

  “We can safely assume,” Wray said slowly, “that this message was written after her telephone conversation with Mrs. Lottie Mead. Forgive me if I observe that from the tenor of this note, you and Miss Dawson were … quite close. Yet the note has a certain gaiety. There is none of the flavor you would expect from a woman who had just learned of the death of a father whom she loved dearly.”

  “I guess there’s only one way to explain that, and you would have to know her to see it, Mr. Wray. She is … a spirited woman. She doesn’t have to lean on anybody or anything. She decided that it was a good time to … end our relationship. I don’t know why she made that decision. But she wanted to keep the … termination on the same level as all the rest of it. So she took pains that she wouldn’t get from me the … help and sympathy I would have tried to give her if I knew why she was leaving so suddenly. This is much woman, Mr. Wray. Proud and strong.”

  James Wray pursed his lips and studied his perfect but unobtrusive manicure. “Many young women disappear without a trace in this country, Mr. Darren. Most of them, at the time of their disappearance, are emotionally disturbed. You may have thought Miss Dawson a strong person, but a few facts should be considered. She is an only child. She ran away from college in the company of … a most unsavory sort of human being. She was estranged from her father for a prolonged period that ended only after the relationship between her and Mr. Luster ended. One can but imagine the burden of guilt she felt.

  “Perhaps the sudden death of her father occured before she had what she felt was a decent chance to make it all up to him. The report given by the cab driver indicates a semihysterical condition. And why didn’t she have him drive her to her home? I will ask you one last question and then I will take up no more of your time. During the time you knew her—some eight months, more or less, I believe—did she express a desire to live in any specific area? Can you think of any place she would have gone in an attempt to … conceal herself from her own guilt feelings?”

  “I … I can’t think of anything like that. She’d get very nostalgic about San Francisco, about the kind of foggy misty days we don’t have here.”

  “It’s always possible she may be in that city, I suppose,” Wray said with a touch of wistfulness. “I could not imagine living anywhere else.” He smiled and shrugged and started to stand up.

  “Wait just a moment,” Hugh said. “You told me she left here on a Tuesday-afternoon flight. But I know she left the hotel Monday evening.”

  “She did?”

  “So she had to stay somewhere in Las Vegas on that Monday night.” He checked his desk calendar. “That was April eighteenth. Today is Monday, May 30th, exactly six weeks ago, then.”

  “I see what you mean, Mr. Darren. Whoever she stayed with might know her plans. Have you any idea where she could have stayed?”

  “I can think of only two possibilities.”

  James Wray looked thoughtful. He nodded as though he had arrived at some decision. “Mr. Darren, I’m not authorized to spend as much time here as I would like. My expenses come out of the estate of Dr. Dawson. The executor has to be very careful, because the courts are reluctant to approve this sort of expenditure. You seem to me to have … a strong p
ersonal interest in Miss Dawson. I wonder if you could find the time to … investigate those two possibilities and send me a report?”

  “Of course.”

  “Personally, Mr. Darren, I suspect … foul play. I don’t know how else to say it. That’s a terribly trite and dramatic way to put it, I know.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Would you say she was a hysterical person?”

  “No!”

  “Did she love her father?”

  “Yes. They were estranged for years, and she was pleased they had gotten back on a good basis.”

  “In that note to you she indicates she will never come back here. But her small car, Mr. Darren, is still in the airport parking lot. A Morris Minor.”

  “I’m familiar with it.”

  “It would be worth, on a cash sale, not three hundred dollars, I would imagine. But it doesn’t seem in character for her to abandon it. I had not intended to tell you all this, but since I am asking your help it is only fair. Before coming to you I visited the Nevada Security Bank. I had no proper writs, of course, but I located a cooperative vice-president, and after I identified myself and stated the problem, he was able to tell me that she maintains a checking account and a lock box there. There have been no checks written against the account in the past six weeks. The last check that cleared was her check for a one-way, first-class airline ticket to San Francisco. She made no withdrawals at the time she left. She has not visited the safety deposit vault in almost a year.”

  “But … it doesn’t make sense,” Hugh said.

  “That’s my impression too, Mr. Darren. If she was leaving, never to return, one can assume she would have used her time on Tuesday morning to close out those accounts, sell the car and so on. Perhaps something came up which kept her from doing that. But if so, why hasn’t she returned here, stealthily if that is the way she wants it, and closed out her affairs?”

  “Maybe … maybe she will.”

  “Possibly. But what is she living on? I find it all … very baffling and distressing, Mr. Darren. I suppose I am, at heart, an orderly man. I get a feeling of frustration when I deal with acts that seem utterly without logic. You have my card. I will appreciate hearing about anything you find out.”

  “What will happen to the estate?”

  “After taxes and minor bequests, there will be, I would guess, about a hundred and fifty thousand dollars remaining. Fortunately there is a contingent beneficiary, a second cousin, a man in his early forties with a wife and two children. He is an associate professor of economics at North-western University. At the end of the period of years specified by law, if all reasonable efforts have failed to locate Miss Dawson, the executor will apply to the court to have her declared legally dead. My report of investigation will be submitted along with that application. If the court does so declare, the estate will be turned over to the second cousin and the executor will get a final discharge of his responsibilities.”

  “But if.…”

  “If she returns at any time, she can claim it, of course.”

  James Wray glanced at his watch again, stood up, departed after a precise handshake and words of thanks.

  After Wray had left, Hugh Darren knew that his romantic plan of quitting his job and going in search of Betty had collapsed miserably. Officialdom was looking and had been looking for six weeks. Suddenly there was no place to start. It was, though in a minor key, as though Ulysses, after planning some epic journey, went down to the sea only to find the ship had left without him.

  He handled a few routine matters in an absentminded way, and he knew something was bothering him, some small thing. Suddenly he realized what it was. Betty had known of her father’s death. She had received the long-distance call from that Mrs. Mead right here at the hotel. Any large hotel has a functioning information network that would awe the Central Intelligence Agency. Yet he had heard nothing about it. And he could not conceive of that sort of information being relayed without his learning about it, because his relationship with Betty was doubtless common knowledge.

  After a few minutes of thought, he phoned Max Hanes and was told he could reach him at Al Marta’s penthouse apartment. He phoned there and got Max on the line. He could hear background music and laughter. It was five o’clock. The unending party in Al’s place was moving toward its daily peak in the cycle.

  “Max, I want to ask you something about Betty Dawson.”

  “Who?”

  “Betty Dawson, dammit! You know who I mean.”

  “Sure, sweetheart. For a minute there I didn’t get wired up. If the question is will I take her back on, the answer is no. I got to have more notice even from entertainers hotter by a thousand per cent than she is. You seen her?”

  “No, I haven’t seen her. Remember on that Monday night, the night she left, I talked to you and you had no idea why she’d left so abruptly. Did you ever find out why?”

  “Yes. Her old man died. But she didn’t tell me that. If she had I wouldn’t have been so sore.”

  “How did you find out?”

  “Hell, I don’t know. Somebody told me, maybe the next day. I don’t remember who.”

  “So why didn’t you tell me? You knew we were good friends.”

  “Kid, that broad took off and you were gloomy about it, and why should I start talking about something that makes you gloomy? Anyhow, you never brought her up in the conversation. If you had, maybe I would have said her old man died, but hell, I thought you knew it, the way I knew it. Did you just find out?”

  “Yes. That young lawyer told me.”

  “Now there’s a square type. Apparently she turned up missing or something. I told him there’s no cause to sweat. She’s just shacked up someplace. Maybe had a couple drinks and didn’t make the old man’s funeral, so she’s having a ball someplace until she has to go back to work. Forget her, sweetheart. Why don’t you come up here? We hardly ever see you up here. At this very moment, boy, the males are outnumbered and there is a couple of French broads from the show at the Mozambique who are getting upset because of not enough guys. So come on the run before the word gets around.”

  “Some other time, Max. Thanks anyway.”

  A few moments after he had hung up, his secretary, Jane Sanderson, entered the big office and gave him a fragment of smile as she strode briskly to her corner desk, a sheaf of papers in her hand—departmental reports to be consolidated and summarized.

  She put the reports in her working file, hooded her typewriter, took her purse from her desk drawer.

  “Jane?” he said.

  She turned toward him with a look of mild surprise. “Signed all that glop already?”

  “I haven’t even looked at it. Have you got something planned, or can you spare a few minutes?”

  She came to his desk, her head tilted to one side, quizzical, moving more slowly than usual. She sat in the chair beside his desk and lit a cigarette with his desk lighter. “I have a horribly important engagement with a swim suit, a tall drink, a long novel, and the folding chair I lug out to my favorite spot beside the apartment-house pool. But I’d rather talk. It’s nice to know you. What did you say your name is?”

  “Darren. It’s painted on that door over there.”

  “Oh.”

  “Maybe I’ve been away.”

  “That’s one way to put it, Hugh.”

  “How do you like it here, Jane?”

  She pursed her lips. “I don’t suppose you want the snow treatment.”

  “Of course not.”

  She frowned. “Not as much as I did. You transplanted me from the City of the Angels to the City of the Angles—there, I’ve been waiting ever since I made that up for a chance to say it. Anyhow, as you know, I didn’t like it at all the first couple of months. Then I adjusted, and liked it a lot better. Now it’s getting a little tiresome again. I’ve even been feeling wistful about smog. I don’t know. I’m good, Hugh. You know that. Why shouldn’t I be? What the hell else have I got but the work I do?
So I can write my own ticket. It’s getting to the point where I have a pretty fair income from my own investments, so money isn’t going to hustle me into any job not attractive to me.”

  “Isn’t this job attractive?”

  “I liked it better when we were starting from scratch, junking the old systems and putting in the new ones, fighting with everybody. Golly, I was working sixty and seventy hours a week and loving every minute of it. The pay is good, and I guess it’s an interesting sort of place to work if a person likes abnormal psychology, but … it’s pretty much a routine lately.”

  “The point was to get it running smoothly.”

  “I know that, Hugh. But there’s something else that.… Oh, the hell with it.”

  “I want to know what you think, Jane.”

  “It may turn out to be a little more frankness than you want to take, boss.”

  “Don’t worry about that.”

  “The most critical part of any job, Hugh, is who you work for. You were the tops.”

  “Past tense?”

  “Definitely. After I came here I heard how this town can change people. I was sure it wouldn’t change you. But it has—in the past month or so. It’s as if you’ve lost interest. You’re drinking too much. You’re getting that puffy look. You’re beginning to do things the easiest way instead of the right way. And I don’t know where or how, but I do know you have a few of those little angles working for you. You’re on the make, Hugh. You’re … beginning to look and act and think just like all the rest of the fat cats around here. It isn’t a change I particularly wanted to see, and maybe I don’t want to hang around and watch it continue. Maybe I’m one of those dull folk who must be able to give total respect to whoever I work for. You had that respect, Hugh. And now—forgive me—I feel a little patronizing about you. A little sad, too.”

  He wondered if his face looked as flushed as it felt. “You come on pretty strong when you get an opening, Jane.”