Never Give a Millionaire an Even Break

by Kane, Henry

  She stood still, for a moment, in the doorway, and I stayed rigid behind the bar.

  Let us take it from the top.

  I had been told she was thirty-seven years of age. She was not thirty-seven years of age, she was not fifty-seven years of age, she was not twenty-seven years of age: she was a woman ripe, lovely, breathtakingly beautiful, ageless. She had taken a long time to come back to the room; I was certain she had done the whole toilette, even bathed; her scent was different, her hair-do was different; her make-up was different.

  From the top.

  The hair, golden, gleaming, was now massed high on the head, ears revealed, tiny and pink. The nose was small, upturned; the cheeks wide and without rouge; the mouth full, wetly red; the eyes huge and brilliantly blue; the neck white and without wrinkle or mar. She wore a silk coatee of crimson with gold buttons and a gold belt, a short coatee that started at her shoulders and ended at her thighs and was just tight enough to give full play to her statuesque figure. She had large stick-out breasts, crimsom-sheathed, and a slender waist and full flawless thighs and long slender legs and narrow feet in high-heeled crimson pumps. And now she moved into the room, a tall white-fleshed gleaming woman, her thighs superb …

  The ice in her drink was long dissolved.

  Hastily I added new ice.

  “Thank you,” she said and took the glass.

  “Welcome,” I said and watched, fascinated, as she went to a soft purple chair. Thus far the magical crimson tunic was a device that hid as well as revealed: cunningly no private part of her showed—but what would happen when she sat down?

  She sat.

  No private part of her showed.

  Beneath the silk crimson tunic were matching silk crimson skin-tight panties.

  She sipped the B. & B. “Ah, good,” she said.

  “What am I doing here?” I blurted.

  That made her laugh: it was resonant, melodious.

  “The good Lord watches over his children, especially his innocent children,” she said and sipped. “You are here to be warned, you are here to be protected.”

  Was this a kook?

  Kook or no … I was willing.

  “Who is the innocent child?” I said.

  “You.”

  “And who does the warning, the protecting?”

  “I.”

  I lapped at my highball. “You have an interesting accent,” I said.

  Quickly she said, “We do not talk of me tonight.”

  “Your name is Ingrid?”

  “We do not talk of me tonight.”

  “But your name?”

  “Yes, Ingrid.”

  “I’d rather talk about you.”

  “There will be other nights.”

  It was a promise and it was comforting. I came out from behind the bar and climbed up on a stool and sat exposed to whatever protection she wanted to shoot at me.

  “You have two powerful enemies,” she said.

  “What the hell is this—a tea-leaf reading?”

  Again she made with the musical laugh. She set away her drink, reached into a box for a cigarette. I would have jumped to provide flame from a match but I was afraid to go too near. Hell, how impervious can you get! If I moved near enough I might grab and if I grabbed I might spoil the whole kookie setup. I just sat and kept my thighs together. She used a lighter from the marble-topped table near her.

  “Mr. Chambers,” she said. “I did not expect you.”

  “Did not expect me where?”

  “Did not expect you as you.”

  “Honey, I don’t understand what—”

  “No. Not honey. Please do not call me ever honey.”

  “Mrs. Holly, then?”

  “By decree I now use my maiden name. Miss Strindberg. Ingrid Strindberg.”

  “Swedish?”

  “It is.”

  “What do you mean—you didn’t expect me?”

  “I expected another, another type.”

  “But how could you expect any—”

  “Mr. Chambers, I know about you, so much. Peter Chambers. I have hear about you from many—from David, from Tommy, even from Arlene. The picture I formed of you is not the you who now I have seen. It is that which I mean that I did not expect you as you. Do you understand?”

  “No.”

  “I had expected an animal.”

  “An animal, hey?”

  “A stud, a bull, a stallion, an animal satisfying a woman’s animal desires while the woman makes other decisions in her life.”

  “Miss Strindberg, I don’t quite follow you.”

  “The woman is Arlene.” She rid herself of her cigarette. “The lady Sadie Flanagan has told me admirable things about you, that you are a sensitive man. I look upon you and I find you most interesting a man. How could you become involved—”

  “Honey, I’m not involved—”

  “Not honey!”

  I left my glass on the bar and got off the stool and sat in a soft purple chair opposite her soft purple chair and I looked at her thighs and her breasts and her eyes and I said, “What is this all about? Would you tell me, please?”

  “You are in terrible trouble.”

  “That you’ve told me.”

  “But you do not believe me, do you?”

  “I do not.”

  “Are you stupid, Mr. Chambers?”

  “An idiot, Miss Strindberg.”

  “Do you know that you are well hated, my friend?”

  “Who isn’t?”

  “But hated by people whom you do not suspect to hate you. You are in the middle, surrounded by intricate people, subtle people, but powerful and dangerous people.”

  “Who hates me?”

  “Even your sweetheart.”

  “My—who?”

  “Arlene. Let us not pretend naivete.”

  “Oh now, come on!”

  “You cannot believe that she hates you?”

  “Hell, why should she?”

  “Arlene also is more intricate than you imagine.”

  “So? What’s that got to do with hating me?”

  “What she cannot conquer, she hates.”

  “But she has conquered me, Miss Strindberg.”

  “Has she, Mr. Chambers?”

  I went back to my stool at the bar and I wet my throat with whiskey. “Miss Strindberg,” I said, “you’re out of your ever-livin’ mind.”

  It made her laugh but there was no joy in the laughter.

  “Mr. Chambers,” she said, “I have known Arlene Anthony for many years, you have only known her for a few months. She is, psychologically, destructive. There is a need in her to conquer the male, to destroy by subjugation. Successful, she is satisfied. Unsuccessful, she hates. She has rarely been unsuccessful.”

  “How do you know she’s been unsuccessful with me?”

  “I have watched, I have listened, I have inquired—from afar.”

  “Why?”

  “When a lamb is led to useless slaughter, there is great sympathy for the lamb.”

  “And I am the lamb?”

  “You are the lamb.”

  I have been called many names across a long career. Lamb? This was the first time. “Miss Strindberg,” I said, “you sure you’re not a bit wooly yourself.”

  “You’re a fool, Mr. Chambers.”

  I’d had it.

  I got off my stool.

  “Honey,” I said, “I came here with you because I happened to flip my lid for you, bang, like that. Frankly, I didn’t come here for lectures, I came here for action, and you’re now dressed for the action.”

  “Stop that!”

  “You’ve called me stupid, you’ve called me a fool, you’ve called me a lamb. I’ll pass those three. You also called me a stud, a bull, a stallion. I’ll stand up for those three. So kindly take off the scarlet jacket and let’s see how we make out right here on the white rug.”

  I shot most of that off for reaction but I did not expect the reaction I got.

&nbs
p; She stood up from the purple chair and unbuckled the gold belt and flung off the crimson tunic. She stood tall and naked except for the silk panties and the red shoes. “If you insist,” she said and the huge eyes brimmed with tears.

  I stood and looked and swallowed. I did not move.

  “Put that thing on,” I said.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  She put on the coatee and tied on the belt and came to me and kissed me, no hands, gently on the lips. “There will be time for that,” she whispered, “much time, and not on the white carpet.” Then she went back to her purple chair and her brandy and benedictine.

  I stood like the stump of a chopped tree.

  “What the hell is this?” I said.

  “Mr. Chambers, I know more about you than you think.”

  I was beginning to believe it.

  “Why? How?” I said.

  “First the why,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “Because you are a lamb.”

  I went back to the bar. I went behind the bar. I made myself busy fixing a drink. Then I leaned my elbows on the leather.

  “Mr. Chambers,” she said, “David Holly is a dangerous enemy.”

  “Holly!”

  “I must begin at the beginning. May I?”

  “I beg of you, please.”

  “We will omit my marriage to him. That is personal talk and we will talk about that too, but another time. We will begin with Arlene Anthony.”

  “Again Arlene?”

  “David is a subtle man, a dangerous man, an egotist, somewhat of a madman. He is in love with Arlene Anthony.”

  “No.”

  “Yes. She has been his mistress for many years. You may not know that my divorce was based—”

  “I do know.”

  “He loves her—totally, possessively, insanely.”

  “Then hell, why doesn’t he marry her? They’re both free.”

  “Marriage? Not David. Once burned, never again near the fire.”

  “But I can’t believe—”

  “Mr. Chambers, it is David Holly who made a star of Arlene Anthony, who has nurtured her—in show after show of his—until the pinnacle where she is now. Of course she has talent—in many directions, I am certain—but without David Holly she would still be struggling to achieve her status. And he, the staunch David Holly, bends to every whim of hers. Even now, at the height of Holly’s Follies, when she has declared the desire to leave the show, he is already breaking in a new actress, Elizabeth Harrison.”

  “Holly …” I said.

  “Subtle, subtle, always remember—subtle. He will not marry her, but he will not permit her to go to another. Of course in the years that they have been together she has had other lovers but, subtly, always subtly, he has destroyed them. Do you think that David, a towering snob, would have anything to do with you—except for the fact that Arlene has taken on another lover, you, and he must plan to be rid of you, subtly, subtly, even if you have to die.”

  “No, no …”I said but my elbows were off the bar.

  “Yes, yes, and there have been many lovers over the years, but David has remained while those others are gone. Some he discredited, some he destroyed in business ventures, some are in jail, and some—simply have disappeared. There is nothing that he is not capable of. I know. I was his wife for eleven long frightened years. I was a child when I married him, I was only twenty-one, and he thought he had me safely put away in the niche of wifedom. I know what David Holly is capable of, and David Holly is capable of anything. There is ego and ego, and there is the ego that verges upon madness.”

  “Aren’t we going just a little bit overboard, Miss Strindberg?”

  “Mr. Chambers, David Holly, in ordinary circumstances, wouldn’t spit on you. Instead, you are friends, and, I have the feeling, there must even be, already, some sort of business relationship. Is there?”

  I could not tell her the business relationship involved her. But I could tell her: “Yes.”

  “Of course,” she said. “He will destroy you, Mr. Chambers. That is his only purpose, his only concern with you—and not because of you—not because you are a man called Peter Chambers—but because you are a lover of Arlene’s. He will not fight with Arlene, he will not reproach her, he gives her, ostensibly, full freedom—but no lover lasts: David Holly, by whatever means, frees Arlene from whoever is the lover she has chosen.”

  I lapped at whiskey and water and felt as though I were at a lights-out séance with ectoplasm floating about. “How do you know?” I said.

  “We are at opposite ends, David and I. In a sense, for me, it is a game. If I can, if I know, if it is within my power, I strive for the lamb, I strive to save, using many methods, the lamb that must end as sacrifice. I have saved some, I have been unable to save others. With you—because of my investigation of you—I am using the direct method, face to face, and truth without artifice.”

  “Investigation? Investigations cost money.”

  “I receive fifteen thousand dollars a month.”

  “I know.”

  “I know you know.”

  It was nutty but some of it made sense.

  I had a gambit and I threw it.

  “What about Tommy Lyons?” I said.

  “Ah, yes, Tommy.” She lit a cigarette, puffed briefly, extinguished it. “Tommy is not as stupid as he makes out. They are well-pitted. He has thrown you to Tommy, and Tommy to you, and he is hoping that one of you will destroy the other. In the meantime, he makes sure that Tommy cannot offer marriage.”

  Not so nutty. She knew.

  “How?” I said.

  “David has the ear of Monique and David’s lawyers are Monique’s lawyers. The price for divorce keeps increasing; more millions; and Tommy is an emotional man, and a stubborn man. David, behind the scenes and for his own purposes, is, I believe, pushing Tommy too hard. There may be a tragedy.”

  “Christ,” I said and I believed, I believed.

  “Right now there is only Tommy and you. He has arranged you two, one against the other, and he keeps Tommy married to Monique by advising Monique, through her lawyers, one way, while advising Tommy another way. Do you remember what I said, Mr. Chambers? Subtle, and dangerous.”

  She either had a hell of a lot of information and a hell of a lot of intuition or she had a hell of a lot of imagination coupled with a hell of a lot of hate for David Holly; I was in no position to come to a decision; but I was in sufficient position for this decision: my primary purpose had not one chance in hell of fruition; such primary purpose being wild love on the white carpet. Not tonight, baby. I moved out from behind the bar and began to think of going to bed, alone.

  “It will end,” she said.

  “Beg pardon, what?” I said.

  “The fifteen thousand dollars a month, and you may be able to help.”

  Suddenly I was out of the séance; the ectoplasm was dirty underwear hanging by black strings in eerie dark with well-oiled trap-doors off to the sides. Suddenly I had a feeling that I could be put to use, and being put to use is the business of the private richard, and all of this could be the build-up for a substantial business relationship. Okay by me, but I was getting out of there; even love has its cue-lines. I was smitten fully, all the way down to an unrelenting spasm in the groin, but love has its cue-lines, and there was no cue-line for love with a white-thighed Swedish lady rampant and crazy on the carpet. I was going home to a hot bath to relieve the spasm in the groin and to a cool bed and to, I hoped, sleep without erotic dreams. Hell, I’m an old boy; but I caught that up quickly: there is no old boy that does not have erotic dreams, no matter how seldom, except a dead old boy.

  “I’ll be happy to help,” I said.

  “We have much to talk about in the future,” she said.

  “Can we tug that future to like the fairly imminent?”

  “Pardon?” she said.

  She was a Swedish lady with a Swedish accent and I was putting on with the hip English. I murmur
ed “Sorry” and went to her and extended my hand and she took it and I pulled her up and she came up tight and close to me but I was spiteful—spiting me perhaps—so I backed off and let go her hand and went to the vestibule and to the door for adios, and she went with me.

  “Our future,” I said. “Can it be like quick?”

  “Tomorrow night?”

  “It cannot be quicker, I love you.”

  “Tomorrow night I go with the Swedish ambassador to see a play. He is an elderly gentleman. He will take me directly home, and I will not permit him to come in.”

  “You want me to be here, waiting?”

  “No.”

  “You want to come to me?”

  “No.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I want to eat you.”

  “I would like nothing better.”

  “I will save supper for you, us, together.”

  “Any special place?” I said.

  “Toots Shor’s, I love the rugged Yankee Pot Roast. That man must have a Swedish recipe. Toots, yes?”

  “Sure. What time?”

  “Midnight, yes?”

  “Midnight, fine.”

  I grabbed her and I held her and we traded tongues like a couple of frantic sophomores outside the sorority house and then I broke out of the clinch and said, “Investigation?”

  “What?” she said, still heaving, and I loved that.

  “Who investigated whom?”

  “I. You.”

  “And who did this investigation for you?”

  “I should not tell you.”

  “Well, what prompted it?”

  “Arlene.”

  “Arlene asked you to investigate me?”

  “Oh no. It was when I learned about you and Arlene and Monticello and all. It was when I learned you were the new lamb.”

  “Cut that lamb stuff, will you, sweetie? So who investigated me for you?”

  Her smile almost had me grabbing for her again.

  “You will die,” she said.

  “I am dead,” I said.