Marty squinted at her with heightened interest. “In fact,” he said, “I think you go out of your way to show it.”
A throaty little laugh welled up and burst like a bubble. “You’ve found me out, Mr. Lee. Yes, I do go out of my way to show it. This car I had deliberately designed for that purpose. Perhaps I’m childish, perhaps I even lack social perspective, but I do not believe that all people in this world are equal, or that they ever will be, or that they can all be made to exist on the same level. I have my own level, and I’ll be damned,” she snapped angrily, “if I’m going to lower it to someone else’s level simply because they don’t have what I enjoy.”
“So you fight back.”
“In a way. Several friends of mine recently bought expensive American automobiles. Every one of them had been sabotaged in the factories where they were made,”
“I’ve heard rumors.”
“Not just rumors. On one car the paint peeled off the top and sides in wide streaks a few weeks after it was delivered. A factory worker had smeared greasy hands over the metal before it was painted. That was all it took to sabotage the paint job. That particular trick is common. There are all sorts of others, connections that don’t quite connect, cylinders overbored, wheels a fraction out of line, all sorts of things done deliberately and — if you’ll pardon the legal language — with malice aforethought. One of the finest sports cars ever made in America had to be discontinued recently because it was impossible to turn one out that had not been sabotaged in some way or other. The workers, you see, knew that a person generally had to be wealthy to buy one of those cars. So” — she shrugged — ”there you have it.”
“And you fight back.”
“Yes.”
Marty sat back in the seat, more confused than he had been when he had seen the car. A few words had brought Karen alive, had taken her out of a class that obsessed him, and had made her an individual possessing more than a normal share of courage. She was willing to fight a trend, in her own small way, and had the courage to flaunt her convictions in the face of the world. He wondered what she would be like in defeat. Probably the same. Nothing could alter the structure of the blood pulsing in her veins, and there would always be that same cool light in her eyes. She seemed to be a symbol of some sort, but he was not sure just what it was she symbolized.
She continued threading the car through the heavy city traffic toward Bay Shore Boulevard. She was a competent driver who exercised caution even though she drove fast, so Marty relaxed. They had nothing more to say until they were on the main highway and coming abreast of the air terminal. Marty looked toward the planes in the air and remarked casually that he still felt like ducking every time he saw one.
“I know you were in the war,” said Karen, “but not what part of it.”
Marty yawned and stretched, feeling lazy in the sun and the warm wind. “Pacific campaigns. Infantry. I was a sergeant.”
She stated flatly, “And no doubt a good one.”
Marty raised his eyebrows and twisted about in the seat so that he faced her. “Why do you say that?”
“You’re tough. It’s in your eyes, your mouth, your responses, the way you handle yourself. I didn’t see it at first, but I know it now. Uncle Frank has noticed it, too. I think that’s why he’s willing to make a deal with you. He’s just as tough, though in a different way.”
Marty felt that at last they were on a subject that could be profitable to him. His laziness slipped away and he was all attention. “What sort of way?”
“Well, he’s not very well liked on Montgomery Street. Business is only a game to him, no more than that. He’s no longer interested in the money involved for the sake of the money alone. All he enjoys is the winning. He will work just as hard on a deal involving a few hundred dollars as he will on one running into the millions. If he loses, even on a little one, it literally makes him ill. I remember he backed some odd little person he knew in opening a small cigar store. It was the wrong location for the man. Uncle Frank lost six or seven hundred dollars when it folded. Believe it or not, he was so upset he crawled into a shell and wouldn’t speak to anybody for weeks. That’s why he can’t play cards. Even minor losses would put him in a hospital. But if he wins, nothing can contain him. With that sort of attitude, his associates on the Street don’t quite know how to take him.”
Marty chuckled. “I can imagine. I had begun to have an inkling of that trait the last few days.”
“Take my advice, watch it carefully. He really is a tough man. But you’re different. Money is the important thing to you, and I think you would smash anyone who got in your way with no more qualms than stepping on an ant.”
Marty rubbed a hand slowly over his chin, his eyes fixed on her profile. “Maybe you have me figured out all wrong. Maybe I’m really a pantywaist at heart.”
She turned to look at him briefly and laughed. “You! Oh, no.” She peered at him intently as she asked, “Tell me, have you ever fought in the ring?”
Marty was so astonished that he answered truthfully, “Yes. How did you guess that?”
“Your hands are too heavy and your knuckles are too big for a hotel clerk, and you have tiny ring scars about your eyes. I knew a fighter some years ago. He was very good, but he married a friend of mine and now he’s no good at all. I noticed the things about him that made him a fighter and what fighting did to him. You have a lot of those things.”
Marty complimented her, “Not bad. You really look a person over, don’t you?”
She turned her attention back to the road and answered casually, “When I’m interested I do.”
Marty felt the old knot beginning to tighten in his stomach. She was patronizing him. Worse than that, she was using him to entertain her on what would otherwise have been a dull ride. That was the only reason she had asked him along. He should have known. He should never have expected anything else from her. Her friend had undoubtedly been a wealthy girl who had married the fighter for a thrill. So Karen had asked him along because he reminded her of the other man. He swore at himself and raged inwardly for having been fool enough to go along with her. But, he thought, if she wanted entertainment and was looking for thrills, he could give them to her.
“What makes you interested?” he asked. “The fact that you and I are from two different worlds?”
She seemed at first perplexed, then looked her surprise. “Why, I hadn’t thought of it that way. I suppose you’re right, but it actually hadn’t entered my head.”
He smiled to lessen the bluntness of his words. “I’m one of those people standing back in that garage. Hadn’t you thought of that? I’m strictly a character from the other side of the tracks. We lived decently enough, but I grew up in the alleys back of hotels and got my fun and friends in street gangs. I never finished high school. I was thrown out because of a tramp I got mixed up with and never went back. I fought in the ring for a while for one reason, extra money. I was pretty good. I could have gone places because I had that killer instinct. I didn’t enjoy just throwing gloves at a man. I wanted to hear bones break and watch the blood run.”
He paused, watching for her shoulders to quiver, but she continued staring coolly ahead. He said, “I left the ring only because I felt I could do better elsewhere and still have some marbles left while doing it. I’ve done all sorts of things — for extra money. I don’t think you would enjoy some of them.”
She remarked softly, “Yet you have come a long way.”
“The hard way, Miss Stannard. Always the hard way.”
“You sound bitter about it. In your shoes, I think I would feel a lot of pride.”
“You don’t know what you would feel in my shoes. If I had to work in an automobile factory, I’d be the guy who smeared on the grease and overbored the cylinders. Let me tell you something. I was the humble clerk’s kid, the untouchable. I was supposed to keep out of sight. Hotel clerks evidently aren’t supposed to have kids. Until I was old enough to go to work, my front door was the
kitchen, the tradesmen’s entrance. My world was the alleys, the basements, the kitchens, the servant’s quarters. Being a kid and so even lower than the servants, I was strictly surplus baggage. Something you hide. Just what is your definition of bitterness?”
“But when you went to work — ”
“It wasn’t changed a devil of a lot. For a while it got even worse, because I was sharper than the old man and worked in better hotels. There I had to associate every day with people who could buy and sell me and never miss it.” He had been about to say, “People like you,” but caught himself in time. “I had my face rubbed in it. More than once I thought of chucking the whole business and just settling back with the rest of the faceless untouchables. The war changed that and made me think. I learned plenty. It was dog eat dog, kill or be killed. You did the shoving or you got shoved. I started shoving.”
“You seem to have made the grade.”
“Almost. There’s a long way to go.”
She said lightly but emphatically, “You’ll make it. You have that quality. I’ve already bet George that you’ll have the hotel on a paying basis within a year after you take over.” She took her eyes away from the road for a second to smile at him again. “You won’t let me down, will you?”
Marty lapsed into a stunned silence. She had not been patronizing him at all. She was not slumming. She was not seeking entertainment from him. She was sincerely interested in him, probably as she would be in anyone who had his drive and seemed a bit out of the ordinary. Karen was not living up to his notions of her class. The gears of his obsession were grinding out of phase. Something had slipped. But, he warned himself, she was still in that class.
She concentrated on her driving the rest of the way into Palo Alto, lost in some reverie of her own. Marty watched her rather than the scenery. She was considerably more restful on the eyes. He liked her long legs and the slim ankles and the smooth curve of her thighs outlined tightly through the dress. Her hips were well rounded, but he thought that if he tried he could probably encompass her ridiculously small waist with his two hands. His eyes followed the slim curve of her throat to the swelling of her breasts under the jacket. He felt a stirring in his chest and heat behind his eyes and looked quickly away.
Too dangerous, he told himself. Keep away, far away. Too much at stake. Start getting ideas about her and you’ll wind up in the gutter.
He thought of the many women he had known, all of them easy, none of them with a difficult virtue, and not one of them expecting more out of life than what they could wrest from it. That was his type. Many of them, if all went well, would soon be working for him in the hotel: waitresses, cigarette and hat-check girls, entertainers, night-club photographers in long hose and scanty costumes. He knew how to get along with them and they understood and accepted him. There he could pick and choose. That was the safe way to do it. He could play it big when it came to the dollar or his own life, and gamble everything on one turn of the wheel, but women — it was safer to play in his own league.
Karen drove to a large home in the hills back of Stanford University and parked her car in a long, circular driveway. She asked Marty to come inside with her, but when he learned that she would be gone but a few minutes he said that he preferred waiting in the car. He was not in the mood to meet strange people and exchange small talk with them. He watched Karen go up the front steps, no hurry, all the time in the world, probably even knowing that he was enjoying the sight of her slim legs taking the steps, then disappear through the door of the home as a butler closed it behind her. Her image remained with him a long time after she had gone.
He wondered about her relative position in the hotel deal. He had not seen her since their first meeting, she had been mentioned rarely in any of the long conferences, and Frank Stannard, with a slight assist from his son, seemed to be running the works. But Marty had a sudden hunch that she was not as disinterested in the details as she appeared to be, and that, in all probability, her uncle kept her well informed on everything going on.
Should he worry about her? She had stated that she was on his side. She seemed to like him. She was reserved about it, but liking did seem to be present. He had also learned that she was not patronizing and was more than casually interested in him. She was willing to help. She had gone out of her way to warn him about one of her uncle’s traits that, if not catered to, could wreck the whole deal.
Marty balled a hand into a fist and pounded it on his knee. What the hell did you do about a woman like that?
She returned in less than a half hour with a package, which she tossed into the back seat, explaining that she was collecting art objects for use in a charity bazaar. Sure, he thought, you babes got nothing else to do with your time, so you concentrate on charity. But you don’t buy the real thing that way. Just the workings of a guilty conscience. Yet he knew, where she was concerned, that he was wrong.
She chose El Camino Real for the return drive to San Francisco and had to travel at slower speed on the narrow road with its many intersections. Marty felt that it was done deliberately, that she wanted more time with him. He braced himself to exercise caution in answering her questions. He had been too reckless before, momentarily forgetting her position in his orbit. It would be wise not to let loose again. Yet he could not carry caution too far. She would notice and resent the change.
But when she did start talking, it was about herself. “I’ve been thinking of your idea of two worlds. I guess, really, there are millions of worlds, each of us a complete one in himself, with his own little moon, stars, and planets.”
Marty said, “Let me tell you what yours is. The best private schools, good tutors, an exclusive finishing school, an expensive university endowed with a few Stannard dollars, and now a secure marriage for protection.”
The crease of a frown appeared between the dark arch of her brows. “Protection?”
“Sure. Name and wealth. That spells protection for you.”
She said mockingly, “How do you know what it’s like in my shoes?”
“So I’m a dope.”
“Of course, it generally is that way. I admit it. But why do you think I want it that way?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I’m just guessing. Has anything happened to you in your life to make that a wrong guess?”
“Not really. Except for the death of my parents, my life has followed the normal pattern.”
“You know, it’s funny, but that’s the first time I’ve heard any reference to your parents. What happened to them?”
There was no trace of emotion in her voice as she answered, “They were lost with George’s mother in a boating accident at Lake Tahoe some years ago.”
“Oh. Sorry. I didn’t know about that.”
“Why should you be sorry? Perhaps fate wasn’t too unkind to them. I loved them dearly, yet I was able to see them clearly enough. They had no direction, no purpose in life, nothing. They were shells of people. They were nice, they were kind, they were moral and ethical, they were charitable, but there was really nothing there. They accepted each other without being in love, they ate their food without taste, and I’m sure they slept without dreaming.” She shook her head, her long-fingered hands tightening on the wheel. “I don’t want that, Marty.” She lifted her hands for a second, as if to embrace something, then dropped them to the wheel. “I want — I don’t know — what I want is to live with every cell of my body and every extension of my being. Does that sound corny?”
Marty squinted at her with suspicion. He had noticed her use of his first name and was also surprised by the intensity of a passion lying deep under her surface coolness. For a moment it had almost come to the surface. If she were putting on an act, it was a good one. He was willing to buy it. But it hardly seemed likely that anyone in her class could be that real.
“Yes,” he said, “it does sound corny. You, your position, this car — ”
She turned to look at him and started to laugh. “You’re wonderful, Marty. You believe wha
t you see, not what you hear.”
“Why not?”
“Yes. Why not?”
She leaned back in the seat, smiling, watching the road, but with her thoughts elsewhere. Marty looked away from her. It was no use. He could not figure her out.
When she dropped him in front of the Stannard Hotel she thanked him for going along. As he got out of the car she said, “Call me, Marty. I enjoy talking with you.”
He was not committing himself. He looked back at her and mumbled, “Sure.”
“Maybe it’s because you have direction in your life. You know where you’re going.”
“I’ll give you a ring one of these days.”
“Good-by.”
She smiled and waved at him and swung the car away from the curb. He stared in the direction she had taken long after she had gone, the scent of her body still in his nostrils. He looked toward the corner, at a policeman standing there idly swinging his stick. Direction, he thought. You aren’t kidding. If that flatfoot knew who I was, I’d have plenty of direction — straight to the Big House and Death Row.
He smiled thinly and turned to enter the hotel. A babe like that. How do you like it? A gal like that. If she hadn’t been making some sort of play for him, then he would have to go back to short pants and learn all over again.
Chapter Five
MARTY closed the deal on the hotel almost before he realized it had happened. He had been battling with the Stannard attorneys all one morning and had just returned to his hotel rooms when Frank telephoned him.
Stannard asked crisply, “Marty, are you willing to settle on the last terms we were discussing?”
Marty’s brain went at once into high gear. He had, for weeks, been stubborn about not allowing the Stannards to retain more than a 10 per cent interest in the property. Frank had demanded an interest ranging from 50 down to 30 per cent, but his attorneys had said finally that he might take 20. That was the point to give way, to make Frank feel that he had achieved some sort of victory.
Marty snorted, “Hell’s bells, what do you think I was yapping about all morning? So all right, you have me over a barrel. I told your attorneys I’d let you keep twenty only because I had to. You understand, Frank, I like to play it my own way. I don’t like anyone in with me, even if it is a small percentage. That isn’t the way I had it figured. But if it has to be twenty, then, damn it, it has to be twenty.”
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