The Wheel is Fixed

by James M. Fox

  “One dry Martini coming up,” I said.

  A drink, a couch, and a blonde make up a fairly sound combination when a man has time on his hands and nothing on his mind. I wasn’t even sure about being a man. I kept my back against the wall to create an illusion of owning some sort of a spine. Nice Ricky, nice cocktail.

  “Darling, do sit down. Tell me.”

  “Not much to tell. I can’t stay long.”

  “Why not?”

  “This job. I’m flying East tonight. I’ve got to line up fourteen side men, see about rehearsals, auditions, transportation, everything. It’s a pretty big deal, such as like setting fire to a madhouse.”

  “Oh, Rick, that’s wonderful! Where do you open?”

  “Miami Beach.”

  “When?”

  “Next month, the twenty-first.”

  “But that’s five weeks from now. You’ve always told me you could get a band shaped up in three.”

  “Sure, three days. Three bottles of gin. Three doodlesack pipers.”

  She frowned at me. “Rick, what about the union?”

  “They’re taking care of that.”

  “Hitchcock Hotels? Did you have to explain?”

  “No, they knew all about me.”

  “That’s the Marlborough-Plaza in Miami Beach, isn’t it? We ran some copy for it in Holiday last year.” She nibbled on her olive thoughtfully. “Rick, I’m going with you.”

  “Hey, just a minute, now. You know you can’t do that.”

  “Yes, I can. I’ll call Mr. Jeffries right now and get a leave of absence. You’ll need help, darling. I’ll be very useful to you.”

  She was already reaching for the phone. I crossed the room in a hurry and took the receiver away from her. “Don’t be silly. You don’t know a thing about the music business. I’ll have to move fast to get organized. This means a lot to me.”

  “Rick, listen—”

  “No dice. You’ve got a good job where you are. This deal may easily turn into a flop.”

  “Not if I’m around to keep you out of mischief. Darling, don’t you think I realize this is your one big chance? That’s why you need me with you to look after you and, well, you know—”

  “No, thanks. This time I’ll look after myself.”

  She stared at me for a long time. “Which flight are you taking?”

  “How’s that again? Oh, the plane. I don’t know. They told me to report to TWA in Burbank at eight-thirty.”

  “I see.”

  “I’ll have to get a move on pretty soon.”

  “Yes, of course,” she agreed distantly. “When will I see you again?”

  “Three-four months maybe. As soon as I’m settled and back in the chips.”

  Her empty cocktail glass came whizzing. I ducked and heard it shatter against the baseboard behind me. She was suddenly pale and trembling, and her eyes blazed wide with anger. “Oh, fine,” I said. “Now what was that in aid of?”

  “You’re lying to me again. I can’t stand it when you lie to me.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. This isn’t a brush-off, honey, not if I can help it.”

  “Oh, you’ll be back, all right,” she said nastily. “And it won’t be in anything like three months. You’ll be back tomorrow, or maybe next week, because you’re not going anywhere, and it won’t take you long to let those few hundred dollars you won today go down the drain once more. Then you’ll be forced to come round scrounging for a meal again, or for laundry money, or to have me mend the holes in your socks. And I’m just enough of a sap to oblige. But you might at least wipe that injured look off your face. For your information, we do a lot of business with TWA at the office, and they shifted all their night operations from Burbank to Inglewood Field six months ago.”

  “Sorry. My error. I guess I’m not much good at pretending. Or at anything else, for that matter.”

  She swung off the couch in a flash of long, seductively muscular legs and grabbed my shoulders, shaking me with everything she had. “Will you listen to me! Rick, for God’s sake, will you please stop knocking yourself! You are good at things, you are so. You’re a talented musician, and you’re handsome, and clever in many ways, and most of the time we’ve known each other you’ve been swell to me. If only you’d stop beating your head against the wall and get this—this damned kink out of your system, you could—Darling, let’s drive down to Yuma or to Mexico tonight and get it over with!”

  “What?”

  “Yes, I’m asking you. I never thought I could do it, but there it is.”

  “How many drinks did you have by yourself just now?” I asked her stupidly.

  “Rick, I’m serious. Marriage would be so good for you—for both of us. I could make you keep regular hours and get a job and feel responsible for me and all that stuff. You remember what the psychiatrist told you.”

  “That guy. He didn’t tell me to get married.”

  “He told you only a woman could set you straight.”

  “It has been tried. Not infrequently. The patient seems to have developed a certain immunity.”

  We looked at each other for a while in one of those sober, calculating silences that never get anywhere, and then she smiled at me, archly, and punched me lightly on the chin, like a man. “You’ll learn, darling. I’ll get my hooks into you yet. Hungry?”

  “Yes, but I’d better go now.”

  “Calf’s liver and onions, smothered, the way you like them.”

  I sighed and shook my head. “You don’t understand. I really meant it, about leaving town for a few months.”

  “Oh, Rick, let’s don’t start that all over again. How much did you win today?”

  Her lips were pouting at me, demanding attention, not more than inches away. I kissed them gently and almost ran out of the apartment. Something crashed against the door on the instant it slammed behind me, probably a book or an ash tray. I hurried down one flight of steps and rang for the elevator on the floor below. The cocky little Filipino operator winked at me. “Gee, you look pretty good today, Mr. Bailey.”

  “Thanks, Pablo. So do you.”

  He chuckled and went through the business of spitting on his hand and rattling his fist from the elbow. “Little game we got us up tonight down janitor’s basement. Yes, sir, yes, sir. Come on, baby, not so close, Papa needs quinine, the bitter dose. You wanna see some fun, Mr. Bailey?”

  The spot I was in, and still I had to brace myself and dig nails into my palms.

  “Not tonight, kid. Got a date.”

  “Yes, sir, yes, sir.” He sucked air through his teeth in an almost perfect imitation of the dice scampering across a concrete floor. “Forty-five,” he chortled. “Baby, what shot Jesse James? A forty-five! This ain’t your floor, is it, Mr. Bailey?”

  “Step on it,” I growled.

  “Yes, sir, yes, sir.”

  Outside, the Ford’s starter balked at me three times before I could get rolling down to Wilshire Boulevard and out into the stream of headlights traveling east.

  Chapter Five: CASING THE SETUP

  ON Tuesday morning the strident twitter of a mockingbird making like a lark outside my window pushed me back to the surface. Sunlight lay in a crisp, intricate pattern on the bedroom’s elegant powder-blue carpet, the furniture’s starched, expensive chintz, but the air was still cool and filled with the clean sibilance of sprinklers whirling on the lawn. My head felt heavy from thinking long, involved, unpleasant thoughts through most of the night. I shook the gravel out of it under the shower, shaved with more than customary fastidiousness, and climbed into a T-shirt and a pair of shorts.

  Breakfast meant quite a piece of walking. The Hacienda del Sol covered something like twenty acres, an elaborately landscaped park surrounded on three sides by towering orchards of date palms. Eastward the desert bloomed in yellow, white, and royal-purple splendor of verbena, sunflower, and primrose welcoming the spring; westward the formidable San Jacinto range soared to its vast escarpment of a th
ousand pastel colors topped by the bright glitter of eternal snow.

  Crushed oyster shell paved the network of footpaths laid out in a complicated geometrical design across the hotel park, connecting each individual bungalow with all the others and with a sprawling Mexican pavilion of brick and glazed adobe where dining-room and bar, reception hall and ballroom were combined under one roof. The night before a sleepy Negro porter had wheeled my suitcase on a chromium-plated baggage dolly down the path from the courtyard, and the park had been dark, cold, and silent. Now it was basking in the sun as quietly as a high-class cemetery. There were no children playing under the olive trees; not a single dog disturbed the peace of the carefully manicured greensward.

  In the dining-room a handful of guests were addressing themselves to a choice of seven meats, six eggs, a dozen breads, and cereals and the usual fruits and beverages. The paunchy, frock-coated headwaiter favored me with a stare so blandly dubious as to make me wonder if he knew exactly what I was about. Then it occurred to me he was more likely to have noticed that I happened to be the only living specimen in the room who was obviously under sixty years old. The Hacienda del Sol, it seemed, did not specialize in catering to the bobby-sox trade, and presumably charged rates in accordance with that policy.

  I took a leisurely breakfast aboard without much appetite, watching a few more elderly ladies and gentlemen drift into and out of the establishment. By eleven o’clock there did not seem to be much point in stalling any longer. In the park even the sprinkler system had been turned off; the only sign of human life was an occasional recumbent form on the steamer chairs set out on each bungalow patio under the dripping bougainvillea. A painted wooden arrow directed me to the swimming-pool. That took another nice little walk, beyond the main compound through a strip of date garden, past the red gravel tennis courts into a sort of bower surrounded by tangerine trees, neatly trimmed and in full bearing. The bathhouse was glass brick and structural aluminum, the pool a gleaming oval of turquoise; there were rubber mattresses and air-foam cushions and huge gaily striped beach umbrellas by the score.

  The sole beneficiary of all these creature comforts appeared to be a short chunky man in prim white ducks and sneakers who sat on the Ping-pong table, moodily surveying the scenery and expertly juggling four of the little celluloid balls. He had the square, heavy features, the leathery tan, the stiff, grizzled hair of an old professional athlete; his chunkiness was visibly all muscle. He saw me and jumped to the deck in a hurry. There was nothing dubious about his particular brand of surprise. “Good morning, sir. Were you looking for me?”

  I squeezed out a grin for him. “Don’t know myself what I’m looking for,” I said and told him my name.

  “Joe Cornero,” he said. “Director of Recreation.” He made it sound as if formality embarrassed him, and his handshake gave me a wince. “Maybe you want to sharpen up your tennis game a bit?”

  “It’s a thought. You get many customers here?”

  He squinted at me, carefully appraising. “You don’t need no appointment, that’s for sure,” he admitted. “Staying long, Mr. Bailey?”

  “Don’t know yet. Couple of weeks, maybe.”

  He kept studying me with that funny expression of trying to place me. Then he surprised the stuffing out of me by saying, “Roseland Palace in Atlantic City, August ’39.”

  “Fifteen silver dollars to that gentleman,” I said uneasily.

  “Shucks, that was nothing, Mr. Bailey. You don’t remember me, on account of you were up there on the stage and I was down in the hall most every night with a couple of dolls off the beach. Lifeguard captain—you know how it is. Pretty good band you had, and that’s for sure. I like to hear music, not just a lot of blah, like from some of these big-shot combos. Come to think of it, I never did catch up with you again in all these years. You opening in town here soon?”

  “Just resting.”

  “You picked the right place for it.”

  “Seems like as if. No music here, is there?”

  “We get up a square dance every once in a while,” he grinned. “One of them hillbilly outfits. You wouldn’t care so much about that.”

  “Got a piano somewhere?” I asked him, suddenly worried.

  He pointed at the bathhouse. “Right in there. Moved it from the ballroom—too many amachoors working out on it, too many kicks from the other guests. This joint ain’t exactly jumping,” he added dryly.

  I went in to see, and he tagged along behind me. The bathhouse faced the pool with a roll-away picture window. There was a coconut rug, a small bamboo bar, and some modernized log cabin furniture. The piano was a Blüthner concert grand, extra fancy style, a special nightclub job laid in with burnished mother-of-pearl. Its presence created a sort of slapdash baroque effect, like having a stand of armor in your living-room. I flipped back the cover and struck a few keys at random. They had kept it tuned, and the tone was surprisingly resonant, clean and sharp in the distaff, rich and sonorous in the bass. An electrical player attachment lurked below the keyboard with a roll hooked up. I looked at it and bared a tooth; it was the “Poet and Peasant” overture.

  “Go ahead and play, Mr. Bailey,” Joe Cornero said. “This is too far away for them old battle-axes to complain.”

  I ran a few scales, then tackled a Chopin étude. The difference with Marion’s little spinet was something like driving a diesel truck compared to a horse and buggy. My fingers were stiff and wanted to stumble all over the place. Cornero hung across the bar, listening politely, his corrugated-leather face expressionless. I switched to Brahm’s “Hungarian Dance,” and he perked up a bit.

  “Not so many of you fellows know something about that long-hair stuff,” he offered.

  “Well, don’t let me fool you. I can’t play this thing either. All I ever learned was how to fake around.”

  “Sounds okay to me, Mr. Bailey.” He was knitting his eyebrows, wondering if he had a wise guy on his hands after all. I dropped the classics like a hot potato and gave him a couple of riffs out of “Milenberg Joys,” which used to be one of our feature numbers. That was more like it, in his book. He broke into a smile and started snapping his fingers.

  “Now you’re cooking for sure, Mr. Bailey. All we need now is a couple of dolls off that beach in Atlantic City.”

  “You’re the Director of Recreation here,” I said. “Where’s this merchandise you’re keeping under the counter for special customers?”

  “Shucks, Palm Springs is bustin’ at the seams with dolls,” he assured me solemnly. “They come in any size, shape and color, any time you’re ready, Mr. Bailey. It’s just the management don’t like it if you bring ’em in. They got this rule here that says all facilities for the convenience of registered guests only. You know how it is.”

  “Maybe we’d better check the register,” I said.

  “I’m way ahead of you there, Mr. Bailey. All we got just now is them old battle-axes.”

  “That was no battle-ax I saw at breakfast, Joe.”

  He gave me a puzzled frown. “Must of been Mrs. Jones. She’s married, he’s with her. They’re older than you, and they keep to themselves. Then there’s Miss Ryan, but she don’t eat breakfast.”

  “Trying to reduce?”

  “Uh-uh. Nothing like that.” I really had him building up the pot now. “She’s got a figure, all right. Reckon she aims to hang on to it. One of them snooty Hollywood models.” He saw my wink and shook his head to warn me off the track. “She’s been here for a couple of days, waiting for this photographer to show up. They’re gonna take some pictures for an ad. Don’t waste your time, Mr. Bailey.”

  “Why?”

  “Models,” he scoffed. “They’re worse than actresses. All they ever care about is what they can see in the mirror. All a man’s supposed to do is look and pay the bills, and that’s for sure. This Miss Ryan, she’s no different. She just sits around all day, reading them fashion magazines and saving her complexion. She’s already got a mink coat, if you follow me.
”

  We grinned at each other, and the phone started ringing. Somebody wanted him to arrange for a couple of horses after lunch. Gentle ones. He said he’d see about it right away and hurried off to the corrals, holding up a finger at me in admonishing salute. I waited until he was out of earshot, and then I got down to business on the Blüthner, exercising systematically, limbering up my wrists, going back over a lot of territory that was still familiar but needed to be revisited.

  I stayed with it all afternoon, skipping lunch. Joe Cornero didn’t show up any more, and the pool remained deserted. The thermometer in the bathhouse climbed to a hundred. I found a stack of terry towels in a closet. I used one to sit on, one to dry my face, and one to wipe the keyboard and my hands about every other five minutes. Around 6 p.m. the sun ducked suddenly behind the mountains, and a breeze came whistling through the date palms. It got cold and dark so fast I had to wrap myself in another towel and take off for my bungalow at a run or risk catching pneumonia. By that time the Blüthner was ready to sit up and beg.

  At seven, freshly cleaned and pressed, I strolled into the bar, a cavernous affair in terra-cotta tile. The open fireplace had a stack of pine logs roaring away, and on the wall above it an eighteenth-century caballero bestrode his fiery black stallion in life-size four-color mosaic. Behind the counter three harassed white-coated Mexicans toiled on the cocktail assembly line; the room was rank with cigarette smoke and buzzing with the dinner crowd. A straw-blond youth in fancy cowpuncher duds drifted among the tables, strumming his guitar and dispensing the usual sagebrush cantos in a bland, sugary tenor. I managed a toehold on the rail and a Scotch in my hand and looked the situation over. It occurred to me then, a trifle belatedly, that Mr. Walter Hitchcock had thoughtfully fixed the wheel for me. The Hacienda del Sol afforded exactly the right background for casual romance, but its masculine patrons were unlikely to supply me with serious competition.