He was anxious to get back to work, but when Karen invited him to her apartment his curiosity shoved aside any thought of working that afternoon. They took the Rolls up to Nob Hill and got out in front of one of the more imposing apartment buildings. They entered an ultraconservative lobby and took a self-service elevator to the eighth-floor penthouse. When Marty joked about the rent she must pay, Karen informed him that she owned the building.
There were fourteen rooms in the apartment, including servants’ quarters, all of them spacious and most of them with large plate-glass windows overlooking sweeping panoramas of the city, the bay, the Golden Gate, and the northern hills. Karen saw the hungry interest in Marty’s eyes and took him on a tour through the whole apartment. He was deeply impressed with the evidences he saw of exceptionally good taste and of how wealth could be used to create privacy as well as comfort.
They went through a combination study-barroom and out to a terrace-patio from where Marty could see the top of the Stannard Hotel. Looking upon his property in such surroundings gave him a feeling of belonging. Karen sensed his attitude and smiled softly. She had a maid bring out a tray, mixed cocktails, and settled herself in a form-fitting deck chair near the low wall surrounding the patio. Marty stood at the edge of the roof looking over the city.
Karen whispered, “Beautiful, isn’t it?”
Marty nodded and looked at her. “Quite a town. But anything would look good from a place like this.”
“You like the apartment?”
Marty grinned. “How could I help it?”
“It’s too big, though. Sometimes I feel as if I’m rattling around in it. All this space for one person — too much. And it takes too much organizing. Actually, the servants get more use out of it than I.”
“Then how come you have it?”
She threw her head back and ran her fingers through the thick black hair. “Principally because it’s expected of me. Whenever George or my uncle entertains, I’m automatically the hostess.” She saw the light smile in Marty’s eyes and added, “I mean family entertaining, not George’s more exotic brand.”
“Sure.”
“Then, too, I’m expected to do some entertaining myself, and for that you need room.”
Marty put his glass aside and sat in a canvas deck chair close to Karen. “There’s a bigger reason than that. Like your reason for owning the Rolls.”
She cupped her hands behind her head and nodded. “Yes. It isn’t the fashion today to be proud of one’s forebears, especially if they were wealthy, but I am proud of mine. The Stannards did big things in this state. They were undoubtedly opportunists in a way, and they probably did their share of shoving and perhaps even plundering, but they were also builders who did their building in a big way. They brought in oil fields, built railroads, created banks, financed huge ranches and farms, and helped bring order out of chaos. They helped build a state. They were great men and their women were on the same scale. Except for Uncle Frank, who shows sparks of their greatness at times, their drive gave out in my father’s generation.”
She paused to stare wistfully into a cloudless sky, preoccupied with an idea. Marty prompted her, “So?”
She explained lamely, “It doesn’t sound quite right when I put it into words. But I think I owe it to them to be a Stannard in every way possible and live on the Stannard scale.” She glanced at him from the corners of her eyes. “Does that sound foolish to you?”
Marty had a sudden acute flash of insight that brought him closer to an understanding of what made Karen tick. She was more feminine and more of a woman than any woman he had ever known, yet lurking within the woman was a small girl with pigtails, a lonely little girl, but a defiant one who was going to “show the world” that the Stannards were still made of the same stuff. That was why he attracted her. She thought she saw in him some of the qualities, even the ruthless ones, of the earlier Stannards. Frank evidently felt the same way and had said as much to Karen. She was confusing him with empire builders. Marty was amused. He was also pleased.
What the hell, he thought, I’ve probably done nothing worse to get where I am than they did to get where they were going. We’re even. Maybe she has something.
An odd feeling crept into his brain, the idea that slowly, inevitably, he and Karen were being drawn closer together, that there was an affinity that had to merge. He could never allow that to happen. He hated her whole class and everything she represented and, though his attitude had changed somewhat toward Karen herself, he could not feel that she was quite true, that she was all she seemed to be. He was suspicious and afraid of her. He knew his own nature, his cruelties and tempers and attitudes toward everyone and everything and the total lack of any emotion in his system even remotely approaching sympathy, tolerance, or any warmth toward other humans. So getting too close to a woman like Karen spelled danger to him. He could lose his completeness and the cold awareness of self that allowed him to operate on any scale he chose.
He shrugged the idea out of his mind and answered her question: “It’s hard to say. I don’t have your background, so I could never understand the angle you think from.”
She looked amused. “Everything is an angle to you.”
“That’s because of my background. I have to think in terms of angles. They make sense to me. You play around with ideas and ideals. They make no sense to me at all.”
“I think we’re speaking of the same thing, but using different terms.”
“Don’t kid yourself. It isn’t the same thing at all. The springboard for your ideas rests on the basic decencies, morals, and ethics of human nature. Mine rests on greed, cruelty, and inhumanity. That’s what I mean by angles. You look at the world from one angle, which colors every thought you have, but I see it from a totally different angle.”
She said softly, “You’re trying to say that our two angles have no common meeting ground.”
“That’s right.”
She smiled, closed her eyes, and turned her face to the sun. It was a hot afternoon. Marty was uncomfortable and soon had a handkerchief damp from wiping perspiration off his forehead. He loosened his tie, opened the collar, and took off his jacket.
Karen opened her eyes and sighed. “It’s a shame to waste this sun. I could improve on my tan.”
“You don’t have a tan.”
“Oh, I have a little. Do you mind if I get in a sun suit?”
“Look. If I’m in the way — ”
“You are not.”
“I should be getting back to the hotel.”
“Stay a while longer.”
“Well — ”
“I’ll only be a minute.”
She walked down the terrace to her bedroom door. Like the study, the patio wall of her bedroom was solid glass, with a large plate-glass door opening out. She opened the door and left it ajar as she disappeared into the bedroom. Marty leaned back in his chair, crossed his knees, and lit a cigarette. He looked out over the city, then swept his eyes casually over the shrubbery lining the patio. No attempt had been made to create a penthouse garden, but a few dozen boxed shrubs and flowers had been scattered about for a touch of color. Marty was wondering idly how they fared when he became aware of movement in the corners of his eyes. He turned his head to look down the terrace. His mouth was suddenly dry and his heart hammered in his chest.
The movement he had seen was reflected in the open door of the bedroom. The terrace, beyond the clear glass, was a dark green that gave the necessary backing to turn the glass door into a perfect mirror. It was also open at such an angle that he could see a major portion of the bedroom mirrored in the glass. He could see Karen as plainly and clearly as if he had been standing in the doorway itself staring in at her. She was standing by the foot of an oversize bed, nude, her head thrown back, her hands busily tying a bow in her hair to knot it together at the nape of her neck. The impact of her nude body on Marty’s brain was almost like a physical blow. He had always been more than aware of her unusual beauty, but
the reality of her body’s perfect symmetry and gleaming, milky whiteness was far beyond anything his imagination had been able to conjure.
He sat forward in the chair, his muscles aching with tension, his eyes drinking in every beautiful detail of her body. Normally, for Marty to see was to act. It took all of his will to restrain himself and remain in the chair. It was one of the most difficult things he had ever forced himself to do in his life. He stayed, but he could not take his eyes away from the mirror of the door, not until Karen moved into a part of the room where he could not see her. Then he leaned back in the chair and mopped the perspiration from his face. He took a deep drag of the cigarette to steady himself, threw it away, and lit another. Some of the tension had drained from his body when Karen returned to the terrace.
Her appearance, however, did nothing to restore his peace of mind. She was wearing two scraps of cloth at her breasts and hips, in the Bikini style, which left almost as much of her body exposed as he had seen in the door-mirror. There was little left to the imagination, but his mind was running riot with what he already knew of that little. He was not even able to return the smile she gave him as she walked by. She dragged a gaily colored sponge-rubber mattress to a point just before his chair, crossed her legs to sit down, and stretched out on her back with a little sigh of pleasure. The sun closed the lids of her eyes. Marty stared down at her, the cloth not at all in the way, again seeing her in the nude. His heart was pounding so hard he was actually afraid she might hear it.
“This is heavenly, Marty. I love the sun. Don’t you?”
It was an effort for Marty to clear his throat. “Sure.”
“We get so few nice days like this. Hand me a cigarette? Please? That little box there on the table.”
Marty took a cork-tipped cigarette from the box, found a lighter, and sank down to his heels at her side. He put the cigarette in her lips and touched the lighter to it. His nostrils quivered with the warm scent of her body. His hand was shaking. She placed a hand on his wrist to steady the light and opened her lids to look into his eyes. A tiny, mocking smile was deep in the darkness of her eyes.
Marty knew, then, why she was displaying herself in the sun suit. Seeing her in the door-mirror had been an accident, but the Bikini sun suit was deliberate. He doubted if she had ever worn it before except when alone.
“O.K.,” he said hoarsely, “so I was wrong.”
Her eyes were still on his, her lips open in a smile. “Certainly. Your angles and my ideas are not so very important and their divergence is not so great as you think. When it comes to a man and a woman, Marty, there is always a common meeting ground.”
“I like the way you prove your point.”
“Crude, Marty, but effective.”
“Do you know what you’re doing to me?”
“I hope I do. So I think, now, you had better be going.”
He snapped his fingers. “Just like that?”
“Yes.”
There was no breaking through the cool barrier presented by her eyes and he knew it. He got to his feet and pulled on his jacket. She shielded her eyes with one arm and lifted the other to wave at him. “Call me, Marty.”
He stood there a moment longer, looking down at her, wondering if he would ever be able to erase the image in his mind and knowing that even to try would be useless. She had done the one thing that could pierce his defenses. A body had dimensions; it was solid and real, something he could understand. It was something to be desired, to possess. He could forget everything else, his own attitude toward her and what she represented, even the dangers involved, but not that body. That he wanted. And that, suddenly, he had to have.
Chapter Eight
MARTY saw Karen as often as possible after that. They dined together, they went to the latest shows, and they discovered that they danced well together, which was important to Marty; he was proud of the appearance he made on a dance floor. Just as a truck driver could get away with wearing a beret, Marty’s build and rugged features allowed him to do what he pleased on a dance floor without fear of ridicule. He took full advantage of it. He met most of Karen’s friends, all of them people of “position,” and went out of his way to be agreeable. Though not exactly accepted as one of the set, he was accepted as Karen’s escort. They seemed to like him well enough and were all, at least, interested in what he was doing with the hotel.
But every time he took Karen out he always wound up using the key to Dotty’s apartment. Karen set his imagination on fire and Dotty slaked his hunger. He was more than pleased with the arrangement. He was even happy that Dotty had remained in the city. Without her, he knew, it was highly probable that his passions would have got out of control. That would have been disastrous, where Karen was concerned.
Dotty was not aware of the way their arrangement balanced out to Marty’s benefit. She was, however, angered by the fact that she saw him only at two or three in the morning and never at any other time. He never dropped by Chez Rouge, where she had become very popular, and he never had time for her when she called on him at the hotel. She was puzzled by his behavior and told him one morning, as he was dressing to leave her apartment, that she would stand for no more of it.
She sat up in bed and cried shrilly, “Practically the only time I ever see you is in bed. Just what do you think I am, anyway?”
Marty stood at the mirror carefully knotting his tie. He glanced at her through the glass with no change of expression. “I’ve been busy.”
“Not that busy. I’ve read about you in the society columns, always chasing around with that Stannard gang.”
“Business.”
“Truly, truly, truly, Mr. Knickerbocker?”
“You know damned well it’s business.”
“Well, yes,” she admitted honestly, “I guess you do have to see a lot of them. But, for my money, you can take that whole crowd and shove it. And they don’t take up all your time. You could drop by the club once in a while.”
He turned away from the bureau, took his coat from the closet, and slipped it on. “I’m lucky to see you here as often as I do. Believe me, baby, I’ve been squeezing twenty-five hours out of every day.” He cocked an eyebrow at her as he asked, “Doesn’t George drop around?”
“Almost every night.” She laughed. “Sometimes with a crowd, sometimes alone. He’s been making quite a play for me.”
“Then he knows nothing about us.”
“No. As far as he knows, I’ve only seen you twice, the night we met and opening night at Chez Rouge. He doesn’t even know you spent that first night — or part of it, anyway — in one of his guest rooms. Did I ever tell you about that morning?”
“No.”
She settled herself back in the pillows, drew up her legs, and clasped her arms about her knees. “It was funny. He was tickled silly when he found he had another guest and two women to have breakfast with him.”
“Didn’t he have a hangover?”
“Just for a few minutes. He’s young. Two cups of coffee and he was feeling fine. I was feeling good, too. Leila, though, was in awful shape. We took her home. Then I changed clothes and we went back to George’s place and had Black Velvets and he just about talked his head off telling me all about himself.”
“He was on the make.”
She frowned. “No. Not exactly. Not then. He just wanted to talk, mostly. Then he got talking about you, telling me what a terrific person you are and how you remind them all of some earlier Stannard. Eli, I think the name was. He was the old gent who first started reaping the family lettuce. Anyway, he was telling me all about what a ball of dynamite you are and inside I was laughing myself sick by thinking of you with red hair and a shotgun in your hands — ”
Marty interrupted her by taking two quick strides to the side of the bed and slapping her face so hard that he knocked her to her side. He lifted her by her shoulders and slammed her back in the pillows. Her head snapped back and rapped the headboard of the bed. She blinked at him, for a moment dazed and
frightened.
“You damned little fool! We don’t talk about that at any time. Understand?”
“But Marty!” She cried, “Here, my apartment — ”
“Not anywhere. Get it through your head or I’ll beat it in. Red Martin is dead. He doesn’t exist. You hear? There is no such person, there never was, and you never knew him. Understand?”
She raised a hand to rub her face, her fears gone, but not replaced by anger. It was too easy to see the terror in his own eyes. She asked quietly, “Do you think you can keep it that way? Forever, I mean?”
“I know I can. Who could ever prove my connection? No one. You’re my biggest danger, and even that doesn’t amount to much.”
“You thought it did.”
“Before, yes. Not now. I’ve been thinking about it. Suppose you decided to turn me in?” He said flatly, a matter-of-fact statement, “I’d kill you first, of course, but let’s suppose it could happen. You knew a redhead who brought you up from Los Angeles and kept you for a while here in the city. So you say he’s Red Martin and now his name is Marty Lee.”
“Wouldn’t that be enough?”
He sat on the edge of the bed, smiled thinly, and shook his head. “Not enough. It would raise hell with me, I admit that, but it isn’t enough. How do you go about proving it? There’s no way you can do it. All you can do is make a statement. Against that, I say sure, I’ve been seeing you here in your apartment, but we’ve busted up and it’s your way of getting even. An angry woman looking for revenge, that’s all. Trying to tie in one casual lover with another.”
“I like that ‘casual.’ Neat touch.”
He ignored her. “My background here would make your statement look silly, my war record is good, and my hotel background elsewhere is legitimate. No one can prove that Marty Lee has lived anything but a strictly legitimate life. That’s the big thing. Marty Lee also has a rock-bound alibi, because he can prove he was in the Stannard Hotel the day Red Martin was picked up and escaped in Chicago.” He took a deep breath to steady his nerves, blew it out, and said, “So now you see?”
Deep is the Pit Page 12
