The Girl, the Gold Watch and Everything

Chapter Three

As Kirby opened the rear door of the cab to get in, a girl eeled by him and took the cab.

“Hey!” he said indignantly.

Betsy Alden glowered at him. “Just shut up and get in, stupid!”

He hesitated, got in beside her and said, “But what are—”

“Driver! Go north on Collins, please. I’ll tell you where.”

“But I want to go—”

“Will you shut up!”

They rode a dozen blocks in silence. He looked at her rigid profile, thinking she would be quite a pretty girl if she wasn’t always mad. The taxi was caught by a light. “Right here,” she said and quickly handed the money to the driver and got out. When Kirby caught up with her, she was walking south, carefully examining the oncoming traffic.

“Will you kindly tell me—”

“In here, I guess,” she said, caught at his arm and swung him along with her into a narrow walkway leading to the side entrance of one of the smaller beach hotels. Once in the lobby she looked around like a questing cat, then headed for a short flight of stairs to the mezzanine. He followed her up the stairs. She wore a green skirt and a white blouse. She had changed to a smaller purse. Her toffee hair was more orderly. Following her up the stairs he realized she was singularly expressive. Even in the flex of lean haunches under the swing of the skirt she seemed to project both stealth and indignation.

“Sit over there,” she said, indicating a fake Victorian couch upholstered in shiny plastic under a fake Utrillo upon an imitation driftwood wall. He sat on the couch. She stood by the railing, looking down into the lobby for what seemed to be a long time, then shrugged and came slowly over and sat beside him.

“I’ll tell you one thing and you remember it, Winter,” she said. “No matter how careful you are, it might not be enough.” She gave him a very direct green stare.

“Are you all right?”

“How are you reacting to my dear Aunt Charla? How’s your pulse?”

“Miss Alden, I have the feeling we aren’t communicating.”

“When she wants to really set the hook, she can make any Gabor look like Apple Annie. There’s fine steam coming off you, Winter.”

“She’s an unusual woman.”

“And she takes no chances. She had to have me here on standby. Just in case you’d rather settle for something younger, taller and not quite so meaty. But I told her a long time ago I’m through playing her games. She can take care of her own pigeons without any help from me. I got off her merry-go-round when I was twenty years old. And I was a very old twenty. Charla would be all right — she might even be fun — if she weren’t so damned greedy.”

“What is that about a pigeon?”

“What else do you think you are? Do you think she’s smitten by your charm?”

“She got smitten a few times.”

“What?”

“Miss Alden. Just for laughs. What are we talking about?”

She frowned at him. A strand of the tan-gold hair fell across her forehead and she pushed it back. “I checked the newspapers. Omar Krepps was your uncle. That’s what we’re talking about.”

“I don’t understand.”

“When I was fifteen years old she yanked me out of school in Switzerland and began lugging me around the world with her. She and Joseph are operators, Winter. Canadian gold, African oil, Indian opium, Brazilian girls — you name it, and they’ve bought it and sold it. They aren’t the biggest and they aren’t the shrewdest, but they keep getting richer, and it’s never fast enough to suit them. They are in and out of cartel and syndicate operations with other chums of the same ilk, and their happiest little game is trying to cheat each other. I was only fifteen, but I soon learned that in their circles, the name Omar Krepps terrified them. Almost a superstitious terror. Too many times Krepps would suddenly appear, skim the cream off a deal and leave with the money. I believe they and some of their friends tried to have him killed, but it never worked.”

“Kill Uncle Omar?”

“Shut up and listen. And believe. That fat little old man seemed able to be nine places at once. One time he skinned them good, intercepted cash on its way to a number account in Zurich somehow, and just took it, and they could do nothing about it because they’d in effect stolen it first — Joseph and Charla and some of their thieving pals. At that time Charla was wearing a ring that opened up. A poison ring, I guess, with an emerald. She opened it idly one day and there was a little wad of paper in it. She unfolded it. It said, ‘Thanks, O. Krepps.’ When she came out of her faint she had the wildest case of hysterics you ever saw, and she had to go into a hospital for a week. You see, the ring hadn’t been off her finger since before the money was taken.”

“I can’t really believe Uncle Omar would—”

“Let me finish. Krepps died last Wednesday. They were in Bermuda. They flew here Thursday morning. You arrived at dawn on Friday, and by dawn on Saturday you’re in bed in Charla’s suite. How much accident is involved in that?”

“I thought I met them by accident.”

“That pair doesn’t cotton to the random stranger. There’s always a reason for every move. What do they want from you?”

“They’ve invited me on a cruise.”

“Tell me all of it, Winter. Every word you can remember.” He told her an edited version of it.

She scowled. “And your Uncle Omar left you practically nothing? I guess they must want to pick your brains and find out how he operated.”

“But I didn’t have anything to do with — making money. I don’t know anything about the business end of it. He told me what courses to take in college. When I got out I went to work for him, doing the very same thing right from the beginning.”

“Doing what?”

“Giving money away.”

“What!”

“Just that,” he said helplessly. “He had some sort of clipping service and translation service and I would go and make investigations and give the money away if in my opinion everything was on the level — and if it could be kept quiet.”

“Much money?”

“I think it averages out somewhere around three million a year.”

“To charities?”

“Sometimes. Sometimes to individuals trying to get something started, or small companies in trouble.”

“Why did he want to give it away?”

“He never seemed very serious about anything. He never explained. He just said he did it to keep his luck good. He was a jolly little man. He didn’t like to talk seriously. He liked to tell long jokes and do card tricks and show you how he could take his vest off without taking his coat off.”

“Did you see much of him?”

“About once a year. He was always going off alone. It made people nervous. He had apartments and houses here and there, and it was hard to tell just where he’d be. But I never ran out of work, no matter how long he was out of touch. And he hated publicity of any kind.”

“You are not lying to me,” she said. It was more statement than question.

“No. While he was alive I wasn’t supposed to tell anybody what I did for him. Now I guess it doesn’t matter too much. The notoriety he got in the very beginning — I guess it made him secretive.”

“What notoriety?”

“A long time ago. My parents were drowned in a boating accident when I was seven, and I went to live with Uncle Omar and Aunt Thelma. She was his older sister. She was good to me, but she certainly made Uncle Omar’s life miserable. We lived in an old house in Pittsburgh. Uncle Omar taught high school chemistry and physics. He had a workshop in the basement where he tried to invent things. I guess it was the only place in the house where he was happy. Aunt Thelma was always crabbing about the money he spent on tools and equipment and supplies, and complaining about the electric bills. When I was eleven years old he quit right in the middle of a school term and went out to Reno and won a hundred and twenty-six thousand dollars. It was in all the papers. They called him a mathematical genius. They hounded him. Every nut in the country made his life miserable. He put money in the bank for us and disappeared. He was gone almost a year. He reappeared in Reno and lost a hundred thousand dollars there, and then nobody was very interested in him any more. After that he took us down to Texas where he’d built a house on an island in the Gulf off Brownsville. He set up a trust fund for Aunt Thelma and sent her back to Pittsburgh. I stayed there with him for a little while before I went back. By then he had a lot of business interests all over the world. He supported me and paid for my education and gave me my job when I graduated. But — he didn’t leave me anything, and I don’t know anything about his business interests. In fact, I didn’t know him very well. The papers say it’s a fifty-million-dollar estate. He left me his watch and a letter to be handed to me one year from last Wednesday.”

“And you told Charla that?”

“Yes.”

“And told her what you’ve been doing for a living?”

“I guess I did.”

“And you’ve gone all these years without even trying to make any guesses about your uncle?”

At the moment Betsy Alden irritated him. “I may act like an idiot, but I have average intelligence, Miss Alden. My uncle left that cellar all of a sudden. And how many high school teachers become international financiers?”

“So he found something that gave him an edge.”

“An edge over other people, so he gave a lot of the money away. Maybe it was conscience. At least it made him feel better.”

She nodded rather smugly. “And so Charla is terribly interested in that letter. Isn’t it obvious?”

“But she can’t — I can’t get it for a year.”

“Mr. Winter, any explanation of how one little man could terrorize Charla and her group, fleece them, and end up worth fifty-million dollars is worth a year of effort. And by the end of the year she can have you in such captivity, you’ll turn the letter over to her without even opening it, and whinnying with delight at the chance to please her in some small way.”

“You have a dandy opinion of me.”

“I know Charla. I’ve seen her at work.”

“Where do you come in? What do you want? Do you want the letter?”

“All I want, believe me, is some leverage. I don’t care how or where I get it, but I want to be able to pressure Charla into fixing it so I can go back to work where I belong. She brought pressure down on me.” She stabbed Kirby in the chest with her finger. “And if I can use you to get her off my back forever, I would be a very happy girl. And at the same time I might be doing you a favor, like keeping you from sinking into a swamp.”

“Do you hate her that much?”

“Hate is complex. This is a simple emotion. Contempt. She’s really quite easy to understand. Her only motivation is greed. Greed for money, power, pretty things, admiration, sensual pleasure. She likes to use power, Winter. So does Joseph, but she’s captain of that team.”

“He’s your uncle?”

“Hardly. She calls him her brother, but he’s more a sort of half brother-in-law. And not what you’d want to call a wholesome relationship. But they do seem so charming, don’t they? It makes them a deadly team.”

“I keep feeling that you are dramatizing this. I just can’t believe they—”

“Wait a minute. I just thought of something. You are his only living blood relation. And it was in the papers, so Charla must know that. So in addition to whatever is in the will, won’t you get his personal papers and records?”

“I guess so. I hadn’t thought about it.”

“Believe me, Charla will. And Charla has. Now don’t you dare turn anything over to her.”

“What do you think I am?”

“Don’t be angry. We know there’s something she wants, badly. So we have to find out just what it is she wants. Once we find out what it is, then you can decide whether you want to sell it to her, whatever it is. If you do, let me be your agent. I’ll get you more than anybody else could.”

“People keep moving too fast lately.”

“I’m essentially rougher than you are, Kirby Winter. I’m a graduate student of the school of Charla. You move into the Elise. If you start dragging your feet now, they may change tactics.” She scribbled an address and a phone number and handed him the piece of paper. “When you find out anything definite, get in touch with me here. It’s a little apartment I’ve borrowed from a hokey friend. He’s on one of his annual tours of duty in New York. He goes up there and does commercials so he can afford to live down here and write plays. He’s sick with love for me. Look, Kirby. You don’t have to like me and you don’t have to trust me. What are you losing so far? And call me Betsy.”

“Losing nothing, so far. Possibly my mind. Nothing important though.”

“Play along and play it very cozy, and when you do find out what they’re after, then you can decide whether or not to get in touch with me. Okay?”

“Okay, Betsy.”

Her eyes changed. “When people don’t push me around, I’m nicer than this, really.”

“And I’m less confused, as a rule.”

“I don’t know anything about your tastes — or your opportunities, but the less you give away to Charla, the more you’ll get of her.” She looked slightly uncomfortable. “Just don’t let it dazzle you, Kirby. Just keep remembering she’s one of the world’s great experts on — horizontal persuasion. Keep your head, and we can make her pay and pay and pay.”

“If there’s anything to sell.”

“If she wasn’t convinced there is, she wouldn’t be here.” She patted his arm and stood up quickly. “I’ll be waiting to hear from you. Wait five minutes before you leave.”