Honey in His Mouth

SEVEN

The cablegram was delivered at eight minutes past ten o‘clock that morning and it put real terror into Mr. Hassam. Some minutes passed before he controlled his breathing to the point where he no longer took air into his lungs in shaky gasps. He memorized the name of the town, Kirksville, Missouri, where the cablegram had originated, and the name of the hotel, Colonial Motel, where the sender wished to be contacted, then he burned the cablegram on his desk ashtray. He sat staring at the ash.

Just burning the cablegram might not be enough, he reflected. You never knew. He kneaded the ashes in his palm to be sure he had thoroughly disposed of them. The paper smoke still hung in the office and it smelled enough like what it was, paper smoke, that anybody chancing to come in might recognize it. The president of the bank, the vice president, a clerk, anyone who came in would know paper smoke when they smelled it, and remember. He supposed anyone at the bank would be afraid to say anything, the situation of the government being what it was. But again, you never knew. Everyone was being careful to keep eyes and ears disconnected from mouths as long as the descamisada, the shirtless ones, still thought God had come down to earth and was running the government for their benefit. But the time of crisis was coming.

Since it was only ten o’clock in the morning, Mr. Hassam thought, God was probably still in bed with one of his teenage friends.

The smoke from the cablegram stank like camel breath, Mr. Hassam reflected, and he got up and opened the window. He stood there looking into the Avenida del Libertador General San Martin. It surprised him to see several thousand persons gathered in the street. He could not think what the occasion might be. He could see that the crowd was made up largely of shirtless ones, but for the life of him he could not recall why thousands of the fools should be down there in the street at ten o’clock this morning. He recalled that somewhere in his desk there was a silly calendar made up by some favor-currying concern which showed all the holidays dedicated to El Presidente and his late wife. He found the calendar and looked at it. Today was La Señora De La Esperanza day, the Lady of Hope Day, which was what the shirtless ones worshipfully called the late wife. So that was it.

Mr. Hassam put away the calendar. He wondered how the project of making a Saint out of La Señora De La Esperanza was coming along. El Presidente had ordered the Catholics to make his late wife a Saint about a month ago. The Catholic faith was dominant in the country, and the church officials did not like the Saint project. You could not blame them, for she had been a real bitch. It was rumored that El Presidente had personally telephoned the Pope in Rome and told him the Saint thing had to go through right away. Mr. Hassam could imagine what a hit that made with the Pope. All those teenage girls he was getting must be giving the bastard a God complex for real, thought Mr. Hassam. If he stirred up all the Catholics, he was opening a hornet nest, and he should have enough sense left to know it.

The way the crowd was starting to gather, there would probably be fifty thousand of them under the lecher’s balcony by two o’clock, the hour he usually put in his appearance.

Where was Kirksville, Missouri, anyway? In the U.S.A. obviously, since that was where the cablegram had originated. Mr. Hassam was somewhat puzzled as to which was the town and which was the province, and the general location. He consulted an atlas. Missouri, he found, was a province in the central U.S.A., and Kirksville was a small city.

He still felt frightened. Fear was like having a drink of a strong liquor, vodka or slivovitz or bourbon whiskey, in the way it put a false feeling into a man, and the sensation did not leave the system immediately.

The telephone rang. Mr. Hassam swung about to face the instrument, his nerves tightening. He was reluctant to pick it up, but he felt he must do so.

“Who? Señorita Muirz? Put her on, of course.” It was bad business when a man grew frightened at a telephone call, he reflected. “Ah, Miss Muirz. A profound pleasure.”

“I plan to be in your office at two o’clock, Hassam.”

She sounds high-handed, he thought. He was irritated. High-handedness must be a disease they caught in bed with that bastard. Only last week when he was visiting El Presidente’s summer residence in Olivos, a teenage flip had ordered Mr. Hassam about as though he were a peon, and he had not forgotten.

His voice held its composure. “May I suggest, Miss Muirz, perhaps twelve-thirty would be best for you to come. It is Our Lady of Hope day. The street is already filling with the worshippers.”

She laughed. “Very well. Twelve-thirty. Be there. Goodbye.”

That was a very nasty little laugh she had given, and he wondered what the Our Lady of Hope worshippers would do if they heard her give it. Tear her limb from limb, he supposed, particularly if they knew she had been El Presidente’s mistress while his wife was living.

He had better be careful himself, he thought. Flor Muirz was a woman as cold-blooded and calculating as a shark, and she and Doctor Englaster and Mr. Hassam were involved in some promising plans—very promising plans if they were not found out first.

He started walking rapidly around his office. Then he noticed what he was doing. Nerves. He decided to go out for an early lunch. He put on his Panama hat, and because it was quite a hot summer day outside, he took along his palm leaf fan, a rather large fan which he suspected made him look simple-minded. Well, it kept him cool.

When the president of the bank saw Mr. Hassam leaving, he leaped to his feet and hurried out of his glass cage and walked beside Mr. Hassam and opened the street door for him. Mr. Hassam knew the man wanted an invitation to lunch, but he ignored the opportunity. The bank president was always trying to suck up to one of them, either Mr. Hassam, Doctor Englaster, or Miss Muirz, and Mr. Hassam regarded him with distaste. However it was a small thing and not important.

Mr. Hassam went to La Hermana, a very nice restaurant, and had a fine lunch. Snails, pressed duck, proper wines, coffee diablo, a Grand Marnier. The bill was eighty-seven pesos and Mr. Hassam tipped the waiter twenty more, being rewarded with a deep bow. The Panama hat, his fan, were brought him and in accepting them, he returned equal bows. He dawdled before a mirror. He was reluctant to leave, for some reason fancying the peace and security here in the restaurant alone, a touch of sanctuary. The mirror was gilt and full-length, and he noted how his white suit stretched its buttons. The big palm leaf fan did make him look asinine. As a whole he looked like not so much, he reflected, essentially a short, potty and homely pig of a man, about as silly as anything with the fan. He went outside and wedged his way through the growing throng of shirtless ones, many of whom stood with their hands clasped under their chins, praying.

When Mr. Hassam finished counting the money Miss Muirz had brought, he had the total figure as one million three hundred and ninety-four thousand dollars in terms of American money. Miss Muirz sat across the desk taking down the total of each pile as he counted it out. The money for the most part was in Swiss gold franc notes, and Dutch gulden, although there was some U.S. currency. Mr. Hassam arranged the money in piles totaling one thousand U.S. dollars each, using current New York exchange rates in the computation. As ten piles were attained, he stacked them together, since he did not have space for one thousand three hundred and ninety-four piles of one thousand dollars each on his desk.

Mr. Hassam had glanced at Miss Muirz each time he gave her a figure to add to her total, but actually he was preoccupied and hardly conscious of her presence. This was an accomplishment in itself, since there was no lack of manhood in Mr. Hassam. Miss Muirz was something.

Miss Muirz was an exquisitely formed and tawny young woman. Maybe a trifle too tawny, since she had once been a professional jai alai player and top money winner at the game, too, and it showed somewhat on her. Whenever she moved there was the impression she flowed like a cat. However, she was lovely. And accomplished. When El Presidente was only a Colonel he had stumbled several hours late into an important meeting, and, thoroughly exhausted, had whispered to Mr. Hassam that the woman had given him the goddamn night of his life. Mr. Hassam had only to look at Miss Muirz to believe it. However, manhood was not a factor in Mr. Hassam’s mind while better than a million dollars was passing through his hands. The money felt good on his fingers.

Mr. Hassam shuffled together all the piles of ten-thousand, and leaned back. “That should total one million, three hundred and ninety-four thousand.” He produced a cigarette. “Would you care to smoke?” He lit her cigarette for her.

Miss Muirz smoked with a long holder, silently, tilting her head slightly to one side to blow out thin streams of smoke.

Mr. Hassam coughed. “I burned a cablegram just before you telephoned. Had I known you were coming, I would not have burned it.”

“A cablegram?” Miss Muirz glanced through the smoke at him.

“Yes...from Brother.”

She sat bolt upright. “You mean he sent a cablegram directly to you?”

“Yes.” Mr. Hassam shuddered. “Yes, he did, and it scared me very much, which is why I lost no time in burning it.”

“The fool! He really is quite insane.”

“The cablegram said he urgently wanted to talk to one of us on the telephone.”

“Oh, Lord. He was such an idiot to do that. He should know. Did he mention any names, Doctor Englaster or myself?”

“No, no names. Poor devil, he has been out of the country five years, out of touch with the situation, so he probably does not know how delicately the sword is balanced over our heads.”

“Are you going to telephone, as he wishes?”

“From this country? Not for a million dollars!”

Miss Muirz had brought the money in a suitcase, which Mr. Hassam now placed on his desk. He and Miss Muirz used both hands to scoop the money into it.

Nothing had been said about what Mr. Hassam was to do with the money. The matter had been settled earlier; it was part of an established routine. The money was one month’s proceeds from the special import tax levied on machinery imported into the country. By law it was earmarked for the Lady of Hope Memorial Fund for the needy, with El Presidente legal custodian of the fund, the latter technicality actually making it his money. It was being invested abroad, as was customary.

Now Miss Muirz handed Mr. Hassam an envelope which he found contained the card the New York banking house required its depositors to fill out. Mr. Hassam smiled at the card approvingly. “Very good indeed.” He was referring to El Presidente’s signature on the card, which was not El Presidente’s signature at all, but a forgery by Miss Muirz. He slid the envelope and card into his pocket; when he delivered the money to the New York bank, he would turn in the card with the forged signature. This was also customary. However, El Presidente had not inaugurated the custom, and knew nothing of it. The substance was that Miss Muirz’s forged signature could make a withdrawal, but not El Presidente’s genuine signature.

It was a bald scheme, and really not as simple as all that.

Mr. Hassam lit another cigarette for Miss Muirz. “Do you suppose Brother, after hunting for nearly five years, has found what he has been seeking?”

She grimaced. “I think Brother grows more unbalanced, just as you think.”

“There is not much doubt, I suppose.”

Miss Muirz went to the window where she stood smoking and looking down into the street. The street was now almost packed with citizenry.

“El Presidente is going to make them a speech at two o’clock, Mr. Hassam. He is going to scare the socks off them. He is going to offer to resign.”

Mr. Hassam swung to look at her. He became pale and had to clear his throat. “Resign? Quit the presidency! Oh, Jesus Christ, he cannot do that to us!”

Miss Muirz turned from the window with a smile. “Oh, he does not mean it. He wants to throw his shirtless ones into an uproar, so that they will demand very loudly that he stay in office forever. Then he will promise to do so, but only providing they stand with him against the Pope in Rome.”

“But they are all Catholics themselves. They will be promising to fight themselves.”

“How many of them have sense enough to think of that? It will stir up a lot of trouble for the Pope.”

“Well, I can’t see how it can work out for him. He can’t whip the Pope in this country.”

Miss Muirz laughed outright. “Oh, he has already dismissed the Pope in his mind and is considering taking on God.”

Mr. Hassam did not like blasphemy, and he blotted his face with his handkerchief, although he supposed she was right. “I don’t know how it will all come out, but none of it is good, because it may bring a crisis before we are ready for it.”

“Maybe you had better telephone Brother when you reach a safe place.”

“Are you joking again?”

“No, I am not.”

Mr. Hassam nodded. “I did not think you were.”

Mr. Hassam frequently couriered funds abroad for investment, although he was not the only one who performed such missions. Sometimes Doctor Englaster did it, and sometimes Miss Muirz. Each of them had perfected a procedure. Mr. Hassam’s method was to go by car to the airport at Olivos, which was about fifteen miles from the capitol, and from there take this private plane across the Uruguay border to Montevideo, where he obtained airline passage to New York via Miami.

That evening when Mr. Hassam reached Montevideo, he telephoned the airline office and made his reservations to New York, then placed a call to Kirksville, Missouri, U.S.A. The long-distance connection went through very quickly.

“You fool, what are you trying to do, give us all heart attacks?” Mr. Hassam was not afraid of Brother, and he was angry. “Never send me another direct cablegram. Never.”

Brother replied mildly. “This was an important matter.”

“Nothing is as important as my life where I am concerned. What have you done, found another prospect for a double? This will make about the fiftieth one you have found, will it not?”

“Oh, now, listen. Listen to me, Mr. Hassam. This time I have found the very man.”

Mr. Hassam could not be positive over a telephonic circuit of that distance, but he had the impression Brother was quite placid and confident. Could Brother really have found a double for the bastard? Wouldn’t that be something. He could hardly believe it.

“How sure are you, Brother?”

“The man has the same physical appearance, almost identical. Really shocking resemblance. Not the scar on the face, but Doctor Englaster knows enough to put on the scar. He has the same blood type. And the man is a crook. A cheap down-at-the-heels crook. He will do anything for a few thousand dollars. His name is Harsh. Walter Harsh.”

Mr. Hassam advanced a cautious thought. “How about controlling this man? Can it be done?”

“I have taken care of that. Harsh killed a man accidentally in an automobile chase. I have a witness who will perjure himself to clear Mr. Harsh of blame, or hang him in court if we prefer. We can control this Harsh.”

Mr. Hassam found difficulty in keeping his breathing at normal. They had, all of them, been hoping for years to find a physical double for El Presidente, and it was embarrassing to recall that in the beginning they had felt such a thing would be easy. It was far from easy. It had been impossible to date. Even though they did not plan to use a man to take El Presidente’s place until he went into political exile in some other nation, still it was not easy. Mr. Hassam had become personally discouraged, and so, he felt, had Miss Muirz and Doctor Englaster. But Brother, who was not exactly rational at all times, had kept at it with fanatic zeal. If they had a double for El Presidente, and if they substituted him for El Presidente when the latter fled into exile, then there were millions to be had. Somewhere near sixty-five million, American dollars equivalent, as a matter of fact. It was a lot of honey to taste in a man’s mouth, and Mr. Hassam felt himself becoming very excited.

“I will go back and tell the others.”

“Mr. Hassam, you do that. I was going to ask you to do that. You tell them to be prepared.”

“I will contact you later, Brother.”

“Yes, you do that. Contact me, but not here. I am going to be at my home in Palm Beach.”

After changing his airline reservations to a later flight, Mr. Hassam re-crossed the border to the capitol, and drove his own car, a light blue Jaguar, from the Olivos airport into town. He went directly to Doctor Englaster’s neurological clinic.

Doctor Englaster stood up and they shook hands. Englaster was a tall man, hawklike, with a personality which Mr. Hassam did not care for. Doctor Englaster was a very arrogant man when things were going well. At such times he gave the impression of regarding everything and everyone around him as so much dirt. Not that he expressed the feeling with words. It was his air.

“Buy you a drink, Doctor?” They had long ago decided there was a chance Doctor Englaster’s office was bugged, and this was to let him know the news was private and dangerous.

They went to a bar named Las Violetas which had once been third-rate but which had done well on nothing more than the strength of the fact that, in the days when he was only an army man, El Presidente had often stopped there. That was before El Presidente had a half dozen palaces, twenty sports cars, and a seraglio of teenage girls.

Doctor Englaster ordered vermouth for them both without consulting his companion. Mr. Hassam detested vermouth straight, although he did not mind it in a Manhattan. The way Doctor Englaster ordered vermouth was a small sample of his little arrogant mannerisms.

“Well, Mr. Hassam?”

“What do you think of this thing he is going to pull off today, Doc? Offering to resign?”

Doctor Englaster was not as surprised at the news as Mr. Hassam had been. Mr. Hassam abruptly realized, rather sheepishly, that the speech must have been made, and the resignation threat was old news. Doctor Englaster shrugged. “Well, it will work, of course. The cheers were terrific. The descamisada have turned against the church officials.”

“Temporarily, don’t you mean?”

“Oh, yes, that is how it will work.”

“How temporarily?”

“Not for long. He can never take God’s place with them. He may think he can. He may be that colossal a fool. But he will not do it.”

Mr. Hassam decided not to touch his vermouth. “Here is what I really wanted to talk to you about...Brother says he has found exactly the man he has been seeking for these five years.”

Doctor Englaster looked about nervously, and his voice dropped to a whisper. “The hell you say! Is that right? I mean, where did you see Brother? The fool, is he here, with times as they are?”

“Oh, no. He is in a province called Missouri, in the U.S.A. I talked to him by telephone.” Mr. Hassam outlined what Brother had told him concerning Harsh.

Doctor Englaster recovered his composure and again assumed his superior air. “I believe we all should have a look at this fellow Brother has found.”

“I think so, too.” Mr. Hassam pushed the glass of vermouth aside. “Do you have a good excuse for taking a quick trip to Miami?”

Doctor Englaster shrugged. “I had announced a planned vacation in Panama. I can easily disappear on a jungle hunting trip from there for a few days.”

“How about Miss Muirz?”

“She comes and goes at will, doesn’t she?” Doctor Englaster looked at Mr. Hassam meaningfully and rubbed a thumb and forefinger together as if counting money. “How much are you taking out to add to Our Lady of Hope Memorial Fund this time?”

“In United States money, one million three hundred and ninety-four thousand dollars.”

Doctor Englaster’s eyes glistened. “The take is dropping off.”

“Yes.” Mr. Hassam shrugged. “Hardly worth getting hung for.”

“That is not a very good joke.” Doctor Englaster spoke soberly. “We must be careful. Brother is periodically a paranoiac, not a dependable sort. But he is no idiot. He may indeed have found a double for El Presidente. Shall we drink to the possibility?”

Mr. Hassam ignored the vermouth and picked up his glass of water for the toast.

EIGHT

Instead of airliner-style seats, the plane boasted four private staterooms and a lounge furnished with deep chairs, a cocktail bar, and an office equipped with desk and dictating machines and chairs for conferences in midair. The pilot and co-pilot/steward wore puce-colored twill uniforms with every crease an edge and every button fastened, each cap peak set at an acute angle. The two crewmen looked efficient and close-mouthed. The color motif inside the airplane was all in tans and puce. There was a strip of the brown along the outside of the airplane and the interior upholstery was out of the same pot, custom stuff. The puce and tan was touched here and there with gold, a gold edging around the television screen, a gold filigree on the door latches.

The two crewmen helped Walter Harsh up the steps into the plane. He was very weak, but he could walk. Moving about had made him feel better, or at least feel more like he was going to live. He noticed the wrist watch the pilot was wearing had a tan dial with puce hands and gold figures. Jesus, he thought. They lowered him into a comfortable chair and buckled the safety belt about his middle. From the windows he could see the wingtips and parts of the engines. The engines puzzled him, because he saw no propellers. Jet? he wondered. The airplane was some buggy.

Brother came in and sat in an upholstered seat near him and fastened the safety belt. He then waited for the plane to take off, sitting there with his mouth open slightly, tips of teeth showing, waiting almost visibly. Harsh decided the man was uneasy about flying.

A taxicab arrived outside. The co-pilot/steward left the plane and soon returned with a large tan canvas bag from the taxi. Harsh eyed the bag. “That’s mine. Is my camera and clothes and stuff in there?”

“Yes, Mr. Harsh.”

Harsh leaned back, trying to relax. This was one hell of a thing, he thought, the whole thing from beginning to end. They had sold his car for nineteen hundred dollars, which was a roast, because Harsh had paid four hundred for the iron a year ago and gotten a skinning at that. He was amazed when he signed the assignment form on the back of the certificate of title of the car, and Brother counted nineteen hundred dollars into his hand. He knew nobody had been fool enough to pay nineteen for the old iron, so they were just keeping him happy. He could feel a bulb of sweat move down his spinal column under his shirt, and he knew what was making him sweat. Money. The way money was coming at him, he thought, it would make an iceberg sweat. He looked down at his right arm, realizing he had suddenly formed the habit of keeping it across his chest, the hand pressed where the middle vest button would be, if he wore a vest. Like Napoleon. He tried to recall whether Napoleon kept his right or his left hand tucked in his waistcoat front. He wondered if Napoleon carried fifty thousand dollars taped to the skin of his belly under the hand.

What they were waiting on turned out to be Vera Sue Crosby. A taxicab arrived and Vera Sue got out wearing her new hat, a tight skirt, and a bushy fur stole which was also new and emphasized her round little bottom. The stole was mink-dyed muskrat, her skirt was yellow, her slippers gold-colored with very high heels. She looked like she was headed for the Yukon gold rush, Harsh thought.

He swung around in his chair. “Hey, I don’t want that dame around me. She double-crossed me and I don’t want any part of her.”

“Harsh, you take orders, not give them.”

Harsh saw the glazed expression in Brother’s eyes, and did not press the matter. The man was afraid of the airplane and was forcing himself to take the flight. The fact that Brother owned such an elaborate private plane and was so nervous about using it indicated what was probably a long-standing psychological battle between the man and the airplane. Let him sweat his own troubles out, Harsh decided.

He pointedly ignored the tentative smile Vera Sue flashed in his direction as she moved to a seat. He had a pretty good idea how she felt. The fancy puce uniforms and the plane had knocked her for a loop and she probably felt as out of place as a blowfly in a perfume bottle. He grinned at the thought, liking the comparison.

The plane now moved quietly out to the runway and took off. It made much less commotion than any plane Harsh had flown in. There was none of the roaring and shaking that characterized airplanes with propellers. The takeoff was smooth as grease.

Harsh watched Brother sit there and hate it. Brother gripped the armrests of his chair and the tendons looked like chalk marks down the backs of his hands. The guy will never be a bird by choice, Harsh reflected.

No one had told Harsh they were going to New York, but he had supposed they were because he recalled the O-Negative Blood Group Foundation having a New York address. However the plane flew three or four hours and when it came down Harsh saw palm trees, the sea in the distance edged with a white sand beach and what seemed to be large estates. The plane taxied directly into a large private hangar, where a brown limousine was parked. Brother got into the limousine holding a handkerchief to his mouth. He had bitten his lip badly during the mental strain of riding through the landing.

The limousine carried them quietly for about half an hour with the afternoon sun mostly against its back windows. The uniformed pilot drove. The co-pilot had loaded the luggage in the trunk. Harsh decided the two served double duty as household staff.

The limousine came to a stop before impressive iron gates, and the co-pilot got out and unlocked the gates with a key, waited for the limousine to pass through, then locked the gates, got back in the car, and gave Brother the gate key.

Sunlight splintered like diamonds off immaculate marble and the sparkling glass windows of the mansion before them. The place should be a library in a small city park, Harsh thought. The limousine turned left and right between rows of neatly whitened palm trunks and came to a halt before a leaded glass marquee. Back of the marquee a stained glass door was surrounded by a filigree of ironwork.

They unloaded from the limousine and Harsh found himself able to walk, although he was inclined to be dizzy. The downstairs hall had the faint odor of hyacinth, was floored with mother-of-pearl. The woodwork was Honduran mahogany.

Brother gestured to the co-pilot up a stairway with Harsh’s bag. “Your room is that way, Harsh.”

There was enough space in the bedroom to turn a small automobile. The bed was all of nine feet wide, one room wall was all glass with the ocean beyond it a crinkling aquamarine panorama to the horizon.

Harsh grinned at Brother, who’d followed him up. “As the fellow says, this ain’t exactly what I’m used to.”

Brother showed his teeth, which Harsh saw bore a brownish scum from the blood that had come into the man’s mouth from biting his lip during the plane’s landing. “Your taste does not interest me.” He turned to the copilot, who had put the bag down by the bed. “Get out.”

The man bent his head in an almost imperceptible bow, his eyes lowered and expressionless, then turned and left them.

Harsh glanced at the bed. The bed looked good to him. He was tired, and his broken arm was a bag of pain attached to his shoulder. He went over and gave the bed an experimental poke with his fist. A very good bed.

“The money.”

Harsh straightened. Brother had moved silently to his side, stood at his elbow. “Huh?”

“Give the money to me.”

Harsh moved his tongue over his lips. He could feel the fifty thousand resting against his solar plexus where he had attached it, along with the nineteen hundred he had received for his car, by the use of hospital adhesive tape. “I thought the money you paid me for my car was mine, and I was to keep it.”

Brother tightened his lips over his stained teeth. “Is it necessary you be childish as well as stupid, Harsh?”

“Say now, buddy. Let’s not be so free with insults.”

“Give me the money.”

“Well, now, that needs some talking about. The way I figure, the dough is mine if I do a job, and since I’m doing the job now, why don’t we compromise and me keep—”

Brother’s neck arched so tensely that his head trembled and his eyes protruded.

Harsh became alarmed. “Keep away from me, you son of a bitch.” He knew he did not have the physical strength to put up much of a fight.

Brother leaned toward him. Hit him in the belly, Harsh thought, would be the best move, but hand him a good one so it would settle things. He brought his right fist up toward Brother’s middle, but Brother pushed the fist aside easily. Brother lifted his cupped hands and clapped them together against Harsh’s ears. The effect on Harsh’s eardrums and brain was agonizing. He was sure he had been given a mild concussion. Brother seized Harsh’s right arm and turned with the arm so that his back was to Harsh, the thumb and wrist in a trap-hold which was the most painful thing Harsh had ever had anyone put on him. His wrist and thumb filled with splintering pain, until he thought fire would come out of his ears. He toppled backwards onto the bed when Brother released him. He felt Brother tear open his shirt and begin pulling the taped-on money loose from the skin. Brother’s eyes shone insanely and he drew the tape loose slowly and agonizingly, panting with pleasure as the tape brought the coarse belly hair out by the roots. When Brother arose, the packet of money was in his hands, all of it, Harsh’s nineteen hundred as well as the fifty thousand.

“Mr. Harsh, I give an order only once. I state only fact. I do not threaten, bicker, chisel, or bargain. If any time you hear me make a statement which you wish to construe as a threat, stop. Stop. If I have said it, it is fact, not a threat. A fact beyond recall, unalterable, unassailable, unchangeable, a fact.”

“You got my nineteen hundred there!” Harsh was half blinded with pain.

“Get up.”

“Damn you!”

“Get to your feet.”

Harsh’s ears felt as if steam was escaping through them and he wondered if the eardrums were ruptured. When he saw Brother take a step toward him, he hastily rolled off the bed and stood shakily erect. This crazy fool would kill him, like as not.

“Come. I wish to show you something.” Brother turned and walked to a framed painting on the east wall of the bedroom. The painting was an oil copy of Titian’s Woman on a Couch, a very bold and sexy-looking piece. Brother swung the painting outward like a small door. It was hinged to the wall. This disclosed a wall safe with a combination dial.

“Watch, Harsh. Watch closely. Memorize the combination.” Brother turned the safe dial slowly to four different numbers, reciting each number aloud. He did this again. “Have you got it, Harsh?”

“I think so.”

“Repeat the combination aloud to me to be sure.”

Harsh muttered the numbers, and the directions the dial was turned each time.

Brother nodded. “Now watch closely.”

The inner door was a flat sheet of steel with two openings for keys. It was similar, Harsh recalled, to safety deposit boxes in some banks. Brother drew two keys from his pocket. They were fastened together by a string. He inserted each key in a lock, swung open the door.

“It takes both keys to open the inner door. You understand, Harsh?”

“I get it.”

Brother placed the money in the safe and locked both inner and outer door. He swung the painting back in place. It covered the safe completely. He tore the two keys apart, breaking the string. He put one key in his pocket.

“You get to keep the other key, Harsh.”

He handed Harsh the second key.

“Goddamn it, my nineteen hundred is in there too!”

Brother ignored him. “Only these two keys will open the inner door. I keep one. You keep one. When you have earned your pay, I will give you my key. The money is safe. You know where it is.”

“What about my nineteen hundred?”

Brother turned and walked to the door, went out, closing the door after him.

Harsh went over and lay on the bed, taking care not to jar the cast that enclosed his left arm. He held the key tightly in his right hand.

NINE

Harsh slept nine hours. He awakened with the notion he had been trying to cry out in frustration and had been grinding his teeth together. His throat felt dry and his jaws hurt. It was dark in the bedroom, no light at all coming from the big window, and he decided someone had come in while he was asleep and closed the drapes over the window.

He again recalled the grinding sensation with his teeth, and he was alarmed. He inserted an exploratory finger in his mouth, finding the key to the wall safe was secure. His teeth must have been crunching on the key as he slept. He had placed the key in his mouth before he went to sleep, not worrying about swallowing it because he often went to sleep with chewing gum in his mouth and he had never swallowed that. He realized, however, he must find a more practical hiding place for the key.

He did not like so much darkness in the room, it made him uneasy. He pushed up to a sitting position on the bed, found the edge, and lowered his feet to the floor. The ringing that had been in his ears when he went to sleep was no longer there. He decided his eardrums had not been ruptured. Shuffling barefoot to the window, he parted the drapes, and a flood of moonlight spilled over him. Beyond the window the moonlight covered a wide sweep of cucumber-green lawn and a rope of lime-colored driveway lined by palm trees that were as motionless as upclenched fists. The moonlight made everything very clear. On the beach, night birds were chasing along a squirming yarn of white surf and beyond to the horizon the sea was a blue-black bedspread with a pattern of crinkling waves.

Harsh rubbed his jaw with his right hand. The place looked peaceful, he thought, but there was something to be said for packing up and getting the hell out. The manhandling he had taken at the hands of Brother had undermined his confidence. He had underestimated Brother. The man had a tough, sadistic streak. His right hand and arm still ached where Brother had worked on him with that judo trick. He was sure Brother had inflicted most of the pain just for the twisted satisfaction of hurting him. He would be goddamned if he was going to stay around here and be handled like raw meat...

But he was also damned if he’d leave before getting that wall safe open. He tried to recall what he knew about wall safes. It was very little. Could a man wedge something into the inner crack of the safe door, he wondered, and get it open?

Suddenly excited, determined to tackle the safe, he went to his suitcase and found the package of blades for his safety razor. He took one blade from the package and went to the painting and swung it back, exposing the safe dial. He blew on his right hand for luck and tackled the dial, turning it carefully to the numbers as he remembered them. It would not open! He grabbed it, shook it. It would not open. The son of a bitch changed the combination on him, he thought, and his stomach felt tight. He rubbed his forehead with his right hand briskly, trying to recollect the combination. He was sure it was the way he had just worked it. He tried it again, exactly the same way.

The safe’s outer door opened. He leaned against the wall, sweating with relief. Done some damn little thing wrong, he thought. He wiped his nose on his sleeve before continuing, then gripped the safety razor blade by the edge and attacked the crack. The crack was wide enough to admit the blade, but it struck bottom after penetrating about half an inch, and he could feel nothing like a lock or a bolt. He tried forcing the blade to bend and find its way to the bolt. The blade broke. The hinges were constructed so that he could not get at them. He tried another blade, but this one broke as well, cutting his finger. He gave up and stood there leaning his forehead against the cool metal of the safe.

The thing now, did he leave here without the money, or did he stick around for a break? By God, he would stay, that was what he would do. He would lick the thing yet. He closed the safe and got in bed and pulled the sheet up around his neck.

There was an enormous amount of sunshine in the room when he awakened and felt in his mouth for the key. He wondered what would happen if he sneezed or something in his sleep and swallowed the key. How did one get a key out of one’s stomach? How about a magnet? He examined the key and saw it was brass, which was nonmagnetic. He had better find a place for the key, that was what he had better do.

A knock sounded on the door. Throwing the door open, Brother rolled in a small metal cart bearing breakfast, an omelet, coffee, and toast. Brother glanced at Harsh with an expression of dislike, and he did not speak. He left without having said a word.

Have to go back to the device of securing the key to his body somewhere with adhesive tape, Harsh reflected, since he was too damn dumb to think of another disposition for it. He couldn’t go around with the thing in his mouth. He went into the adjoining bathroom, which had a step-down tub, separate shower, ultra-violet light cabinet, and an electric massage device. He searched for adhesive tape, but was unable to find any. He wondered what you were supposed to do around here if you barked a shin, call a servant or something?

He went back and peered at the breakfast Brother had brought him. The omelet had bits of green herbage in it and he peered at this suspiciously, wondering if it was edible. He would not be a bit surprised to have Brother try to poison him, the way the bastard looked at him every time he came around.

He ate the toast and drank the coffee, then took a tentative bite of omelet. It tasted fine. It was better than any omelet he had ever eaten, in fact, as well as different.

He lay back, feeling stronger for having eaten, more relaxed, and sure he wasn’t licked yet on the safe problem. He would figure something. One way or another, he would get into that safe. And until he got the job done, he was not going to allow the safe out of sight if he could help it.

He wondered if he just lay there in bed and stared at the wall safe, how long it would be before something came into his head that would get the inner door of the thing open.

He watched the safe all that day.

He watched it most of the next night, tossing sleep-lessly.

TEN

The airliner from South America put down for its scheduled Caribbean refueling stop, taking on 100 octane gas, giving the passengers a few minutes to stretch legs and buy souvenirs. Mr. Hassam gained confidence he was not being trailed, watching the fellow travelers. But he would, he decided, stay with a policy of caution, not getting off at Miami, which was the short route to Brother’s home in Palm Beach, but going on to New York and doubling back. You never knew. Also Miami was dangerous. Many exiles, unfriendly to El Presidente, were in Miami, and since it was more or less known that he was a private courier for El Presidente, an embittered expatriate might take a shot at him just for the satisfaction. They were a bitter lot, those exiles, and they would like nothing better than to pot a treasury courier.

The stewardess offered to put Mr. Hassam’s large suitcase with the other passenger baggage.

“No, no, Miss.” Mr. Hassam shook his head firmly. “No, thank you.” He smiled at the stewardess and told her his little joke. “I have my life preserver with me in the suitcase, you know.”

Later the airliner skirted the east coast of Florida. It flew at high altitude but the day had crystal clarity, and Mr. Hassam was able to distinguish Brother’s mansion among the string of elaborate estates facing the sea near Palm Beach. He was very curious. What was the story down there, he wondered. Had Brother found their man, really?

The arrival in New York was uneventful. Mr. Hassam, never letting the suitcase out of hand, crossed New York City in a succession of taxicabs, entering a cab and riding thirty blocks or so and suddenly dismissing that cab to take another in a different direction, arriving eventually at Teterboro Airport across the Hudson River in New Jersey. Here he chartered a small fast plane to Pittsburgh, from which point he chartered another small plane to Palm Beach.

At Palm Beach, he took another taxicab. The suitcase rode in the seat beside him. He had not deposited the money in the New York bank. That would come later, after the matter of the fingerprints was settled. If they were going to add forged fingerprints to the forged signatures, then this shipment was as good a place as any to start.

Before leaving South America, Doctor Englaster, Miss Muirz, and Mr. Hassam had set up a pre-arranged meeting place. The Indian River Palms, a motel.

Mr. Hassam found Miss Muirz and Doctor Englaster at the Indian River Palms registered in different cottages. He did not ask them by what route they had arrived, and they did not question him.

“Have you contacted Brother?”

Doctor Englaster nodded. “By telephone, yes. We are to come out. He has the man here, he says.”

“How did he sound? I mean his mental health? Stable? You do not suppose this is all a delusion?”

“I do not know a better way to find out than to go out there.” Doctor Englaster was wearing his superior manner.

Brother himself unlocked the iron gate for them, running to them with outstretched hand. “Ah, my friends! My wonderful friends!”

Mr. Hassam watched him closely, for he halfway expected to find Brother as crazy as a loon. Brother hailing them as his wonderful friends did not bolster Mr. Hassam’s confidence, since Brother was notoriously unfond of Miss Muirz. But it developed Brother had not at first noticed Miss Muirz in the car. He brought up at sight of her, controlling himself with obvious effort.

Brother shook hands with Mr. Hassam and Doctor Englaster, but not Miss Muirz. “How are things at home?”

Doctor Englaster opened the car door for Brother to get in with them for the short ride to the house. “Getting ready to blow up with a bang from indications.”

“I gathered as much from the newspapers here. How much time do we have?”

“Who knows. The fuse is lit, that is sure. A few weeks at the outside, I would say, maybe less.”

“Time enough.” Brother waved them under the marquee at the house. “This man I have found, this Harsh, he is perfect. You shall see.”

“Does he know what he is to do? Have you told him?”

“Not yet. I wanted you to inspect him first.”

“Is Harsh cooperative?”

Brother gave a mirthless laugh. “I am making a cooperator out of the fellow. I gave him fifty thousand dollars to show him his pay, then took it away from him and locked it in the wall safe in his room. He has been lying there on the bed in his room for two days watching the safe like a mongrel dog trying to figure how to dig up a buried bone.”

Mr. Hassam exchanged glances with Doctor Englaster and Miss Muirz. Brother’s sanity might be questionable after all. Mr. Hassam felt a strong wish to meet this Harsh person. It might be that Brother’s method was exactly the one to work on Harsh, in which case it was sensible.

They encountered Vera Sue Crosby on the terrace. Brother had not planned the meeting. Beside the lounge chair on which Vera Sue lay was a Benedictine bottle and a glass, both in use. Vera Sue wore a dab of yellow sun-suit, and she was glad to see them, for she was lonesome. She was only a slight bit tipsy. She got up and shook their hands warmly when Brother introduced them as Señor Tomas, Señor Ricardo, and Señorita Maria, friends of his. Vera Sue was ignorant of Spanish and did not know he had presented them as Tom, Dick, and Mary, and she asked them to have a drink with her, which they declined.

“Oh, have a pick-up after your trip. I’m sure glad to see a new face around here. This place has been like a damn morgue.”

Brother declined for them, got Vera Sue back in the lounge chair with a glass in her hand, and they moved on. “She is Harsh’s sillero.” Brother’s lips curled with contempt. “A nothing.”

Benedictine at ten o’clock in the morning, my God, Mr. Hassam was thinking. But a well-stacked little trollop.

Doctor Englaster smiled with superior amusement. “Why did you bring her here, may I ask?”

“She knew a little, and I was not sure when a little might become too much.”

Doctor Englaster suddenly looked appalled. “Do we have to cut her in on the loot?”

“Are you mad?”

Miss Muirz had said nothing, just looked Vera Sue over speculatively. “Having seen this Harsh’s taste in girlfriends, I have a suggestion. I believe he is susceptible. Suppose I see him first.”

An exchange of glances passed among the three men. It was a hell of a good idea, Mr. Hassam thought. One encounter with Miss Muirz and Harsh would have difficulty knowing whether he was coming or going.

Miss Muirz left them to visit Harsh.

Mr. Hassam heard Brother cursing softly in Spanish, his eyes closed, his voice low and furious. He was calling Miss Muirz all the Spanish words that even remotely meant bitch.

Except to serve him breakfast, no one had visited Harsh that morning, not that he cared. He was watching the wall safe with the dull malevolent fury of a lion in a trap. He had been able to think of no way into the safe. Repeated efforts to pick the lock had failed. Now he was lying back glowering in what amounted to a self-induced trance.

When the door opened and someone came in, he did not look around. He thought it was Brother until a whiff of excellent perfume touched his nostrils, when he concluded it was Vera Sue. The greedy little slut!

“Listen, Vera Sue, get the hell out of here—”

His visitor laughed, and he turned his head. He sat erect as if he had been lifted by the eyeballs.

“Gee, I’m sorry, Miss.”

“Good morning, Mr. Harsh. You are Mr. Harsh, I presume.”

“Uh-huh. I thought you were somebody else.”

“I am Flor Muirz.”

“Well, I’m Walter Harsh, Miss Muirz, the pieces that are left of him. And say now, I can see where the pieces might grow back together in a hurry now you’re here.”

He was taking Miss Muirz in from head to toe. She was a long graceful girl with a big roll of hair on the top of her head that was so blonde that it had a neon light quality.

“Would you like some coffee, Mr. Harsh?”

“Why, yes, sure, thanks. Say, I don’t see how on earth I mistook you for Vera Sue.”

“Don’t let it bother you, Mr. Harsh.”

He grinned. “Well, making a mistake like that would indicate I was going blind or something, but I’ll try not to let it worry me.”

Miss Muirz smiled and brought him a cup of coffee on a tray with sugar and cream. He held his head up off the pillow, watching the skirt skate around on her hips. It became some trouble for him to keep the coffee cup in place on the saucer.

“Say, you’re not going to be my nurse, by any chance?”

“I’m not a nurse, Mr. Harsh.”

“Oh. I wouldn’t have that kind of luck, anyway.”

She laughed. “I don’t know. Maybe I could be your part-time nurse, if you need one.”

“I’m not sure if that would kill or cure me.”

She poured herself a cup of coffee and sat on the edge of his bed. She drank with him. The expensive odor of her perfume affected his breathing. From the corner of an eye he could see where the cloth of her skirt was drawn tightly across her thigh a few inches from his face, and he began to think what a hell of a place that would be to take a good bite. His chest felt tight.

“How is your arm, Mr. Harsh? I believe I was told it was broken.”

“Yeah, it got mashed between two cars.”

“How is it mending?”

“All right, I guess. Nobody has said different. You say your name is Muirz? How do you spell that?”

She gave him the spelling. “I’m pleased you are on the mend.”

“What kind of name is that, Muirz?”

“I am South American.”

“I figured. You had a little bit of an accent or something.”

“Would you like me to read aloud to you, Mr. Harsh?”

“Huh? Read to me?” Being read aloud to might have been the one thing farthest from Harsh’s thoughts. “Read to me? Well, I hadn’t thought of that.”

“You look tired, and being read aloud to is often soothing.”

“Sure, read to me if you want to.” Harsh could not remember anyone ever having read to him aloud.

Miss Muirz began reading aloud to him from Spinoza, which proved baffling for Harsh. He had never heard of Spinoza. Miss Muirz took the book from her purse. It was Ethics, First Part, Concerning God, with Definitions.

“I. By cause of itself, I understand that, whose essence involves existence; or that, whose nature cannot be conceived unless existing. II. That thing is called finite in its own kind which can be limited by another thing of the same nature. For example, a body is called finite, because we always conceive another which is greater. So a thought is limited by another thought; but a body is not limited by a thought, nor a thought by a body. III. By substance, I understand that which is in itself and is conceived through itself; in other words, that the conception of which does not need the conception of another thing from which it must be formed.”

Harsh listened with a blank expression. Jesus, he thought, who had ever heard of such stuff being sprung on a man. However, Miss Muirz had a reading voice that was low and cultured and musical, and her dress had an interesting way of snuggling up when she took a deep breath so that her nipples stuck out at him. But he did not care greatly for Spinoza.

Mr. Hassam jumped to his feet in the library when Miss Muirz joined them. He was irritated because she had been gone nearly an hour. He was tired from the trip, and he wanted to have a look at Harsh himself, then get some sleep. Doctor Englaster had expressed himself as feeling the same way. Neither of them hated Miss Muirz the way Brother did, but neither of them liked her much either.

Doctor Englaster spoke with sarcasm. “Really, you take longer to weave your spells nowadays, don’t you?”

Miss Muirz shrugged. “I weave well-made goods, Doctor.”

“So I have heard.”

Watch out, Doc, Mr. Hassam thought, watch what you say to her. She is not a patient soul like I am and if she should get her fill of you, then you are likely to be in trouble.

“How did Mr. Harsh impress you, Miss Muirz?” Mr. Hassam spoke hastily.

“Perfect.”

“How did you get along with him? Can he be handled?”

“I think so. He reacts normally. I gave him an overdose of sex, followed by an overdose of culture—in other words, I waved my bottom at him, then read to him aloud from Spinoza. Yes, I would say he reacts normally.”

Mr. Hassam considered the combination of Miss Muirz’s bottom and Spinoza, and he wondered how Harsh had survived.

Doctor Englaster spoke sharply. “And you think this man will do for our purpose?”

“Perfectly.” There was a strange look in Miss Muirz’s eyes. “He even has El Presidente’s dirtily eager way with women.”

Walter Harsh took a quick liking to Mr. Hassam and oddly enough it was for reasons which Mr. Hassam preferred to be appreciated. Mr. Hassam walked into the room and Harsh looked at him, seeing a roundly firm short man with pale coffee skin and a large nose the prominent item in a set of homely features. The full-blown mobile lips, the large innocent eyes, were not impressive.

But Mr. Hassam at once did a thing which set him in solid with Harsh. What Mr. Hassam did was give the wall safe a knowing glance, then wink at Harsh. He did this so the others did not observe. It had the same effect on Harsh that an orator is striving for when he opens his speech with a gut-buster joke. It warmed up the audience, got it interested. The little smoky guy might be an operator, Harsh thought.

Brother made introductions. “Señor Hassam. Doctor Englaster.” He shrugged and added, “My associates.”

The first impression Harsh got of Doctor Englaster was the same one that Mr. Hassam had formed after long acquaintance. The man liked to smell of himself. Harsh noted Doctor Englaster was impressive physically, a man taller than himself by several inches, with well-proportioned shoulders and arms, and smooth flexible looking hands. The well-fitting clothes, the good grooming, meant the man had been successful for a long time. Harsh did not think he would ever be buddy-buddy with the man.

Doctor Englaster did the talking.

“How are you, Harsh? Physically, I mean.”

“Okay, I guess, considering. Making progress, anyhow.”

“I should like to examine you.” Doctor Englaster’s English was good, very Oxford.

“You’re a real doc?”

“Yes.”

“Are you a head-shrinker?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Are you a psychiatrist or whatever they call it?”

“As a matter of fact, yes.” Doctor Englaster, who was indeed a practicing psychiatrist, wondered how Harsh had guessed it. Brother had indicated Harsh was a mental oaf, which could be an error. “Psychiatrists are, as you may know, also medical doctors. It is as a medical doctor that I wish to examine you.”

“You mean my arm?”

“Well, yes, the arm. But a complete physical inspection also.”

Doctor Englaster was El Presidente’s personal physician, and the purpose of going over Harsh was to search for scars, old bone fractures, or other items which might indicate Harsh was an imposter. But Doctor Englaster was not going to tell Harsh this was his reason.

“Are you going to be my regular doctor?”

“Conceivably so, if I decide you are acceptable.”

The remark made no hit with Harsh. He had decided he did not like Doctor Englaster.

“Well, goddamn it, you don’t need to act like it was veterinary work.”

The three conspirators conferred with Brother in the second floor solarium following Harsh’s physical examination.

“Well?” Brother looked to them for opinions.

“I could swear the man is El Presidente.” Miss Muirz seemed dazed. “It is literally inconceivable.”

Doctor Englaster fitted a cigarette in a very long platinum holder. “The man does not speak a word of Spanish.” He was not very fond of Harsh either. “That is a serious obstacle.”

Brother shrugged. “Nothing.”

“The exiled president of a South American country who cannot speak a word of Spanish?” Doctor Englaster’s eyebrows shot up. “That is nothing? Why, it is preposterous, man.”

Miss Muirz was shaking her head. “No. Harsh can manage. When El Presidente goes into exile, he will be afraid of assassination. He will allow no Spanish-speaking strangers near him.”

Mr. Hassam thought the same thing. “El Presidente is sure to take another identity, pretend to be someone else, when he first goes into exile. That is where Harsh can step in. We can get away with it.”

Doctor Englaster frowned. “What about the teeth? Dental records are a means of identification, just as are blood types and fingerprints.”

“They made X-rays of Harsh’s teeth at the hospital. Those X-rays are no longer in the hospital’s files.” Brother smiled at Doctor Englaster. “It will be very simple. El Presidente’s personal dentist is connected with your clinic, is he not?”

“Yes, but—”

“You will substitute Harsh’s X-rays for the genuine X-rays of El Presidente’s teeth.”

They fell silent. Mr. Hassam imagined each of them enjoying the same greedy line of thinking. They had worked for years falsifying those signatures on El Presidente’s investments abroad, working with the open-faced daring of a traveling salesman juggling two wives, hoping they could eventually find a man to serve as a figurehead for El Presidente long enough to enable the conspirators to liquidate the foreign deposits, now amounting to some sixty-five million, and make off with the money. It was a fabulous scheme. The possibility of its imminent fruition filled them all with the same heat.

“He still speaks no Spanish.” Doctor Englaster moved the flame from a jeweled lighter in front of his cigarette. “It is a liability.”

“Did you know, Doctor, I was once a language professor?” Mr. Hassam got to his feet. “Suppose I test his linguistic aptitude. Who knows? If it is favorable, I may be able to cram enough Spanish into him to get him by.”

Harsh’s initial good opinion of Mr. Hassam improved further when the fat man wheeled in a cart on which was an assortment of liquor bottles, ice, seltzer. Mr. Hassam, a man who noticed things, had remembered that Vera Sue Crosby had been drinking Benedictine and he had included a squat bottle of this, but Harsh said he preferred bourbon, straight. Mr. Hassam poured a pair. They clinked glasses.

“Harsh, I am going to ask you some questions, and have you make some sounds. If you wish to think I have a hole in the head, just go right ahead and think it.”

“All right by me, Hassam. Thanks for bringing in something to drink.”

“What I am actually going to do is test your aptitude for learning the Spanish language, Harsh. Do you know what vowels are?”

“Vowels? You mean A, E, I, O, U? I got that crap in school.”

“Good. You are familiar with what consonants are?”

“I guess.”

“Give me some examples.”

“I guess I ain’t that familiar with consonants, Mr. Hassam.”

“Did you graduate from college, Harsh?”

“Not exactly.”

“From high school?”

“Not exactly that, either.”

“The eighth grade?”

“I got four months into the eighth grade. Me and the teacher didn’t seem to jibe.”

“Don’t worry about it. Now, you will repeat after me: La cabeza es para pensar. Will you repeat that? Get the sounds as nearly the same as mine as you can.”

“Law caboose is a pair pants, sir.”

“Come come, Harsh, no joking. This is important. It is in the nature of an important test. I can tell you that you have passed nearly all other requirements. This is the one remaining test, and believe me, Harsh, it is an essential one. Now say after me: La boca es para hablar.”

“La boca es para hablar.”

“Oh, excellent. Much better. Much. Again, please. Watch the stress on the same syllables as I placed it. Again.”

Harsh made the sounds requested time after time, matching Mr. Hassam’s patience with a tolerant curiosity. They had another round of bourbon together. Mr. Hassam then gave a lengthy speech about Harsh being handicapped by unfamiliarity with the psychological make-up of the national character of the Spanish-speaking people in South America, stating this was an unfortunate handicap because the real character of a language stemmed from the user’s environment and habits, and unless one knew the character and environment, preferably knew it firsthand and from experience, then a man would encounter difficulty with the finer nuances of handling the speech of the land, and in particular of the individual who was supposed to be speaking, although as a whole it was not an insurmountable thing if a man applied himself judiciously. Following this out of a clear sky, Mr. Hassam asked Harsh to repeat all the words he had been pronouncing earlier. Harsh came back, getting all of them out, not muffing the pronunciation very seriously.

“Good, oh good for you! Far better than I expected.” Mr. Hassam did not conceal his delight.

“Did I pass, Professor?”

“Oh, excellent.”

“Well, as the fellow says, you didn’t catch me at my best today. To tell the truth my head is kind of fuzzy from the shots I been getting for the pain in my arm.” He did not mention the sleeplessness from watching the wall safe.

Mr. Hassam conveyed his favorable impression to the others in emphatic terms. “I vote for this man. I tell you, I have had my doubts about the sanity of this project from time to time. But not now. This man can pull it off. We will never find a better candidate.”

Miss Muirz nodded. “I am sure.”

Doctor Englaster hesitated. “There is the matter of the broken arm the fellow has.”

“It will mend.”

“Suppose it does not?”

Mr. Hassam shrugged. “Then El Presidente will just have to break his arm when he flees into exile. A broken arm will be believable, I imagine. He will be fortunate if he does not collect a hide full of bullets.”

“I hope not.” Brother’s eyes were suddenly nasty. “I want to shoot the bastard myself.”

Miss Muirz looked away suddenly. Her eyes focused rigidly on nothing in particular.

Doctor Englaster eyed Brother. “You are sure of the blood type?”

“Positive. The same as El Presidente, O-negative. I checked it twice.”

Doctor Englaster waved his long cigarette holder. “You know, I think the bounder might do.”

Harsh had never been fingerprinted by the police. His encounters with the punitive side of the law either had not been on charges sufficiently serious to warrant printing or had been in smaller communities where the police did not go in for promiscuous printing. He had been fingerprinted when taken into the army, however. He assumed his prints were on file with the Pentagon or the FBI or wherever they kept them. He thought of all this quickly when Mr. Hassam asked him to put his fingerprints on a card. By the time he decided not to object, Mr. Hassam had the card and ink pad ready, and he took hold of Harsh’s hand.

“Hey, Mr. Hassam, let’s see the card. That’s kind of a funny-looking fingerprint card, ain’t it?”

Mr. Hassam smiled faintly. He gave Harsh the card. Harsh had never seen a similar card, having had no occasion to truck with banks handling large deposits, but the printed matter told him it was a bank identification card for filling out by a depositor.

“Mr. Hassam, I put my fingerprints on this thing, what am I getting into?”

“I would not mislead you, Harsh. As soon as your fingerprints are on this card, some money is going to be deposited in the bank using the card for future identification.”

“Yeah? How much money?”

“A useful sum, Harsh.”

“Will my name be on the card?”

“No. Just your fingerprints.”

“Then the money won’t be for me?”

“No.”

“How much money, Mr. Hassam?”

“Harsh, I do not think I am supposed to tell you that.”

“Goddamn it, you want my fingerprints on that card, don’t you?” Harsh turned wheedling. “Look, you and I are hitting it off pretty good, Mr. Hassam, so why don’t you go all the way?”

“One million three hundred and ninety-four thousand dollars.”

Harsh lay back on the bed. He felt he was going to be sick.

“May I take your fingerprints, Harsh?”

“Jesus Christ,” Harsh had difficulty breathing. “Go ahead.” He let Mr. Hassam take his limp fingers and roll them on the ink pad, then on the card.

“Thank you, Harsh.”

“Mix me another slug, will you?” Harsh’s voice was ragged. “You people are going to ruin my health, did you know that?” He closed his eyes, did not open them when Mr. Hassam placed a glass half full of bourbon in his fingers.

Mr. Hassam carried the card into the solarium. He waved it under the noses of his confederates.

Doctor Englaster frowned. “Didn’t Harsh object to giving you his fingerprints?”

“I gave him a verbal anesthetic.” Mr. Hassam smiled.

Harsh was sitting up in bed, another drink in his hand, looking at the wall safe when Doctor Englaster came into his room.

This is the stuck-up son of a bitch, Harsh thought.

“What do you want, head-picker?”

“I have a piece of information for you, Harsh.”

“I wish you had sent Miss Muirz in to tell it to me.”

“Miss Muirz is busy.”

“I bet she could be kept busy, all right.” Harsh was somewhat drunk. “How about you taking Miss Muirz a little message from me saying that if she wants to get real busy, she should come in here and see me.”

Doctor Englaster’s cheeks were beginning to flatten out. “Miss Muirz will visit you at her own convenience, I imagine.”

“Is that so? Well, is that a sample of the goddamn hospitality around here? Is that what it is?”

“If you wish anything in the way of food or drink, I imagine you can get it by ringing.”

“Just ring, huh, Doc? Okay, I’ll ring or rub the lamp, or something. I would rub you, only I can see you’re not Aladdin’s lamp.”

“You do that.”

“Doc, you snoot-up bastard, what’s with this Muirz?”

“I do not believe I understand.”

“Oh, you understand me. Between us boys, what’s with that babe? To start with, who does she climb into the hay with around here?”

“Mr. Harsh!”

“Can it, Doc. You can Mr. Harsh! me all you want, you won’t convince me you haven’t eyed that piece yourself. And if she’s off limits, I bet you know who it is that’s keeping her that way.” He took another swallow of his drink. “You know what I think? I think he may not be packing enough for her, whoever he is.”

“May I suggest you are drinking and talking overly much, Harsh?” Doctor Englaster controlled his anger. “You need to be in good physical condition for your operation tomorrow.”

“I know it ain’t you that’s disappointing her, Doc. It ain’t you because I don’t think you pack enough to even start the disappointment.” Harsh paused and blinked his eyes carefully. “What was that last?”

“Tomorrow morning I am going to put that scar on your face.”

“You are? On me?” Harsh rolled his eyes. “Old Scarface Wally Harsh, I’m to be knowed as, huh?” Suddenly Harsh sat up yelling. “You ain’t goin’ to cut on my face, you son of a bitch. Not until I get that money back in my hands!” He endeavored to throw his glass of whiskey at Doctor Englaster but it slipped out of his fingers and fell on the bed where he could not find it in the covers.

ELEVEN

Harsh lay quietly on the bed. For almost an hour he hardly moved. Then the liquor stimulated his kidneys and he got up and went to the bathroom. He was still tipsy enough to be sure that he had to be very precise about each thing he did, and he made the decision that he was precisely scared, that was what he was. His face even looked scared in the bathroom mirror. That sweat on his upper lip was not from the heat.

He addressed himself in the mirror. “What did you put your damn fingerprints on that card for?” His voice sounded scratchy and dry. “Man, you didn’t think, that’s what you didn’t do.” He cleared his throat of phlegm and spat it in the sink. “One million three hundred ninety-four thousand dollars.” He looked at himself. His mouth was hanging open. “Dumb bastard. Somebody’s kidding you, you dumb bastard.”

He laid his fingers against his left cheek and pulled the skin down then pushed it up. He decided the face suited him the way it was, without a scar. He did not want any scar on his face. Someone must be kidding him about the scar too. That was what they had been doing, joshing him, and he was joshing back when he gave permission to do it. Hey, had he told anybody they could carve a scar on him? Great God, he was out of his head if he had told anyone they could scar him.

His right arm gave him a stab of pain when he lowered it. That Brother had just about torn his arm off with that judo stuff, and had looked as if he wanted to laugh like hell while he was doing it. The man liked inflicting pain. When they got ready to cut a scar on his face, Brother would enjoy throwing him down and sitting on him while they did it.

If Harsh didn’t want to know how that felt, he had better get out of this dump.

He ran into the bedroom and glared at the wall safe. The dirty, dirty, dirty bastard, putting all his money in the safe and then locking it with two keys and giving him one key to tantalize him.

He glanced at the window and saw it was night outside. The bright Florida moonlight was shining in the window. Night, he thought, was the time to slip away from here because nobody would see him. But how far would I get with no money? What the hell would it take to open that safe anyway? Would a pickaxe do it? A pickaxe was quite a tool if you put the oof in it when you swung it, and an estate this size would have a tool house somewhere and in the tool assortment might be a pickaxe. But he only had one arm. And the noise. He thought of the noise a pickaxe would make. It was a bum idea, the pickaxe. He would have to come up with a better one than that. The thing to do was lie down and bat his brains until something came out. Maybe he could get up his nerve to rob somebody in the house and skip with whatever he got. He couldn’t leave without a cent, that was for sure.

He turned toward the bed. His eye caught the bottle of Benedictine on the liquor cart, and he brought up short. He began to nod drunkenly to himself. “She got five hundred from Brother, she’s bound to have some left.” His voice had a vicious note. He picked up the bottle of Benedictine and shuffled to the door. He opened the door and hung his head out in the hall, then set out for the door of Vera Sue Crosby’s bedroom.

Vera Sue wore a sheer green silk nightgown which fit tightly to her hips and breasts and loosely elsewhere. She had not been able to sleep either. She was sitting in a low armchair, her feet stuffed in her oldest pair of gold-embroidered mules.

“Oh, hello, Walter.”

“I been thinking about you so hard I can’t sleep, Vera Sue. Can I come in?”

“Well now I don’t know, Walter. You have been acting like you were real mad with me.”

“I know. I been feeling sorry about that. I been laying in my room for hours trying to think of how to make up with you, but I couldn’t think of any way. So I just decided to come over. How about having a drink of water with me, at least?”

Sharing a drink of water was a long-standing joke with them. “Well, I guess you can come in, Walter.”

He entered and closed the door. The bedroom was elaborate to the point of being ridiculous, the furniture Louis XIV silk brocades, the woodwork carved and painted and gold-leafed. He knew Vera Sue would love it.

“You know, I like seeing you in a place like this, Vera Sue. Being in a room like this, baby, a real fine room like this, is what you should have. All the time I been laying there trying to think of a way to make up for how I acted, I wished I could give you something like this, a room that was nice enough for you, and here you were in the room all the time. Ain’t that a coincidence?”

“You have been drinking, Walter.”

“Yeah, I guess I was trying to whiskey-drown the son of a bitch that is me. But you know something, I was too big a son of a bitch for drowning in anybody’s whiskey.”

“I’m sort of glad you come, Walter. I been mad at you, but I been lonesome as hell.”

“I’m glad I came.”

“I’m glad you remembered I like Benedictine.”

“I’m glad I remembered.”

“I had some left, but it was all right for you to bring yours. I been getting up every little bit and having a nip.”

“To look at you, Vera Sue, I wouldn’t know you had been drinking any.”

“A whole bottle tonight, Walter. I drank a whole bottle, one of them big bottles like that one, Walter. The whole bottle.”

“You sure carry it well.”

“Do I? You have been drinking too, haven’t you? Did you say you had? You carry it well too, Walter.”

“We both carry everything pretty well, don’t we?”

He poured some Benedictine in two water glasses and Vera Sue drank hers rapidly. The little bitch goes after the stuff like it was Tom Collins, he thought. When you drank Benedictine the way you were supposed to, he knew a glass was supposed to last half an hour or so. He was glad she had been hitting the stuff before he got there, though. He wouldn’t need as long to get her real tight.

“Walter, can you tell me why we’re here? Nobody talks to me. Act like I was measles, that’s what they do. And you know something, I’m beginning to feel like I was in jail in the damn place.”

“I guess I been poor company.”

“Walter, I’m getting scared.”

“Well, Jesus take us, baby, I didn’t dream you were worried. I thought you knew what was going on. I thought Brother told you. The son of a bitch, I told him to tell you that we were partners in the thing. I told Brother, look, I said, there’s a good straight kid, that Vera Sue, and what I get, she gets half of. Either count her in for half or count me out, that’s what I said.”

“Count me in what, Walter?”

“Why, it’s simple as hell. I invented a new kind of film emulsion. Big money deal. Brother is the bankroll. He’s going to manufacture the film for me.”

Vera Sue moved from the chair to the bed. She sat on the edge of the bed and rubbed her face with her hands, frowning. “I didn’t know you were an inventor, Walter.”

“Yeah, I ain’t a very hot one, but I’m an inventor. Took me one hell of a time to work it out. I been fooling with it since I was a kid, or anyway for years.” He wanted to stop lying and start laughing. He could hardly keep a straight face. She was taking it all in—he was a photographer and therefore he knew enough to invent a film emulsion, something that real scientists probably worked on for years, and mostly failed at besides. “Vera Sue, this film emulsion I invented, it is a kind of ultraviolet emulsion, which is a little more high-powered than the infrared. What it does, you take a picture of a person with it, it shows the type of blood they got. That was what all the stink about that O-negative blood was about. Tell you the truth, I didn’t know the film was that good when I invented it, and maybe I wouldn’t have known, only this Brother got the detective from Kansas City investigating me and that tipped me off I had something. I guess he would have stole my invention if I hadn’t got wise, but I did get wise, and I put it up to him cold gosling, and here we are.”

“Walter.”

“Yeah?”

“Is all that the truth?”

“Jesus Christ, you think I could think up a lie like that?”

“Well, then, I guess there is no need for me to be scared and feel like a prisoner, is there, Walter?”

“Not a bit. Here, how about a kiss?”

“Okay. Just one kiss, though.”

He pushed his mouth against hers and presently she dug her teeth into his lip. The Benedictine slopped out of her glass on her hand and she threw glass and all in the air. Benedictine showered down on them. “Bite me back, Walter. But not too hard.” He found out that having only one hand was quite a handicap. She finally took off the gown herself lying on the bed and writhing and squirming out of the garment, then throwing the gown up in the air the way she had tossed the liquor. The gown swirled around above them and fell back to the floor, skating from side to side in the air the way a leaf falls. The light fell across her body giving it a glow like cream. Her nipples were like acorns and hurt his chest through his shirt. “Goddamn you, Walter, you still got your shoes on.”

When he was sure she was asleep he got out of bed. He leaned down and gave her shoulder a gentle push and she rolled over on her back, her heavy breathing changing to snoring. He grinned. That was what he wanted her to do, snore. It was not hard to get her to snore. She was a snoring machine, this babe, he thought. Now, if she stopped snoring he would know she had awakened and be warned.

Her purse had seven dollars in bills and some change. He took it. He had seen her hide her money too many times when she was tight to need to waste time hunting. He went directly to her best pair of slippers in the closet. It was there, in the toes of the slippers, divided about half and half. He counted it.

“Jesus!”

There was twenty-two dollars. He knew she had gotten five hundred from Brother for selling him the names of the references. Could she have blown it all? She must have. She had frittered away all but twenty-nine dollars and forty-four cents. He counted it carefully. Stupid bitch. Stupid, stupid, stupid. How could she blow every cent she got her paws on?

Harsh lurched to the bed, where Vera Sue lay sleeping loudly, a succession of resonant snores coming from her lips. He reared back and socked her across the jaw with his fist. Her arms jerked and threw the covers askew. The snores stopped. He looked at his hand angrily. Skinned the hell out of his knuckles. On his way out the door, he began to suck on his knuckles.

TWELVE

Doctor Englaster came into Harsh’s room about ten the next morning dressed for the operation as is customary for surgery, white gown and skullcap, surgeon’s mask, rubber gloves. His large flexible hands looked like bunches of bananas in the yellow gloves. Mr. Hassam rolled in an operating table improvised from a massage table, and Miss Muirz pushed in a smaller service table bearing instruments and medicants and a bright light for the operation. Harsh watched the preparations with the feeling of being paralyzed. Doctor Englaster seized his face and began to pinch the skin on the left side, and Harsh lost the paralysis. He knocked the rubber-covered hands away from his face and sat up.

“Get away from me, goddamn it. The operation is off.”

“Indeed?”

“I’ve changed my mind about going through with it.”

Harsh could tell nothing from their faces. The masks gave all of them the poker faces to end all poker faces.

“Will the rest of you step outside a moment?” Brother’s voice was gentle. “Mr. Harsh and I will discuss this.”

“Goddamn it, don’t leave me in here with him!” Harsh was frightened.

No one offered to interfere. Miss Muirz, Doctor Englaster, and Mr. Hassam left the room. Brother came to the bed and looked down at Harsh. His voice was still placid. “Let me refresh your memory, Harsh.”

“I know I agreed to having my face scarred, anyway I think I did. But it’s off.”

“Harsh, do you recall I had you investigated? The detective agency from Kansas City? Do you also recall we learned a Mr. D. C. Roebuck, a photographic supply house drummer, met violent death while pursuing you to collect an unpaid account?”

“I didn’t kill the guy.”

“Don’t interrupt. A witness, a service station attendant, accepted a bribe to say you were not the man D. C. Roebuck pursued. I told you that. What I did not tell you is that the same witness, for the same bribe, if ordered to do so, will testify you were the man D. C. Roebuck pursued, and that he saw a large nickel-plated revolver in your hand. The same revolver, for your information, was found in D. C. Roebuck’s wrecked car. I need not tell you how it got there.”

Harsh eyed him, stunned. “What are you trying to tell me?”

“That I can have you tried and electrocuted for the murder of D. C. Roebuck just by going to a telephone.”

Harsh felt sick. “You think you’ve got me, don’t you?”

“I have got you, you idiot. You are right in my pocket where you belong, or you are right in the electric chair. That is your choice.” Brother went to the door and opened it and put his head out. “Harsh has chosen to go along with us.”

The time required for the operation was less than half an hour. Doctor Englaster used a local anesthetic and the most pain Harsh felt came when the needle pinked his cheek the first time. The left side of his face became numb, the knife did not hurt at all. Neither did the stuff that was sprinkled in the wound before the gauze was applied. Doctor Englaster, obviously pleased with his own work, indicated Harsh need not necessarily stay in bed, but he should keep the bandage in place. “You will like that scar, Harsh. It will be quite a distinguished scar.”

Harsh looked at him bitterly. “Distinguished my ass.” He pulled the liquor table to where he could reach it from his bed and poured bourbon into a glass.

Doctor Englaster watched him with satisfaction. “Harsh, you please me. We need a twenty-four-carat cur for this job, and you show every sign of qualifying.” He got his instruments together and pushed the instrument table to the door. “Miss Vera Sue Crosby has a badly bruised jaw this morning. I treated her.”

Harsh scowled at him. “I like you too, Doc.” The anesthetic in the side of his face made him lisp.

Mr. Hassam began language lessons that afternoon. He came into Harsh’s room carrying a book. Mr. Hassam’s sport shirt was purple with gold flowers and his slacks were pink linen, his sandals held to his feet by straps between his plump toes.

“Brother sort of got the best of you, didn’t he, Harsh?”

“Yeah, I guess. But my day will roll around.”

“Between you and I, Harsh, I hope I am on hand that day.”

“I’ll send you word.”

Mr. Hassam grinned and gave Harsh the book and asked him to read aloud from it. The book was not in Spanish, as Harsh expected, but in English. He began to read, but his efforts to pronounce the longer words caused Mr. Hassam’s expression to grow pained. Mr. Hassam took the book back.

“The truth is my cheeks are sore from that stuff this morning, and I can’t read real clear.”

“The truth is you are practically illiterate, Harsh. But no matter.”

“Well, I guess you might say I can’t read and write real good.” Harsh pointed at the book. “What’s your idea trying me out on an English book?”

“I was merely ascertaining how you put printed letters into sound. We had better stick to verbal instruction and forget the books.” Mr. Hassam pointed to the table. “La mesa.”

“Huh?”

“The Spanish word for the table. La mesa. Repeat after me. We will commence with the names of objects and things, then we will make them into simple sentences and go over and over them until they are fixed in your mind.”

“Say, couldn’t we put it off? My face hurts from that needle gunk, like I said.”

“Time is of the essence.”

“If that means it stinks, you’re so right.” Harsh lay back. “Well, shoot.”

His face continued to hurt from the scar operation, and he kept thinking the last thing he felt like doing today was learn some gook language. If he didn’t sort of like Mr. Hassam, he thought, he wouldn’t be going along with it. “El telefono en la mesa.” The concentration made his head ache, and he really did not give a hoot if he never learned to say the telephone was on the table.

“Hassam, I got it figured you folks are doctoring me up to double for somebody. What I can’t figure, is who.”

“Good grief. Hasn’t Brother told you any facts?”

“Brother tells me nothing. He hates my insides.”

“Well, I’m sure you should know.”

“How about telling me?”

“Telling you what?”

“Who am I going to double for?”

“Why, El Presidente. The president of our nation in South America.”

Harsh did not say another word on the subject. He had not believed Mr. Hassam. Sons of bitches were a bunch of kidders, he decided.

THIRTEEN

The following two days were filled with a peace which puzzled Harsh. He knew that Miss Muirz, Doctor Englaster, and Mr. Hassam must have gone away, basing this conclusion on the fact that he did not see them about. No one told him whether they had departed permanently. He thought of asking Brother about it, but he decided he would not give Brother the satisfaction of saying a damn word to him. He was cultivating a murderous dislike of Brother, and along with thinking about methods of getting into the wall safe, he was letting his mind take an excursion into ways of shutting Brother up permanently.

In the meantime Mr. Hassam reached New York and made the bank deposit. He presented the card with Harsh’s fingerprints along with the signature of El Presidente as forged by Miss Muirz. Mr. Hassam told the banker the fingerprints were part of a new policy El Presidente thought advisable in view of his troubled internal affairs. The thing went off with no more formality than a five-dollar savings deposit. The banker knew Mr. Hassam had been El Presidente’s financial courier for a number of years; indeed it was Mr. Hassam who had arranged a reception with El Presidente and a pleasant evening when the banker was touring South America with his wife two years previously. Mr. Hassam left whistling. No more sweat than a snake swallowing eggs, he thought.

He took his customary succession of taxicabs in a zig-zagging route uptown to a small shop on Seventh Avenue, near Macy’s. The Seventh Avenue shop was operated by a near countryman of Mr. Hassam’s, a Jordanian named Ghaset, who carried on a small plastics manufacturing business. The man was actually a wizard with plastics. He could do something that, so far as Mr. Hassam knew, no one else could or would do. He could furnish a mastic to be applied to a human hand, peeled off when dry, and from this he could fashion a glove which anyone with a hand of similar size could wear to duplicate the fingerprints of the original hand. The price for this was five thousand dollars. He and Mr. Hassam did business without delay.

Brother came in and took Harsh’s temperature once each six hours, but otherwise the two did not see each other. During the first twenty-four hours following the scar operation Harsh did not leave his room. He tried several times to get into the wall safe, succeeding as usual in opening nothing but the outer door to which he had the combination. The only progress he was making as far as he could see, he was getting so he could work the combination lock in nothing flat. That was something. He wedged a match head behind the painting that covered the safe, placing the match head in such a position that it would drop unnoticed to the floor if the painting was disturbed. Then he felt he could take a walk for some much-needed exercise.

The house seemed to be more castle than had been his first impression, a wedding cake castle under whipped cream clouds, the lawn tailored green velvet, each shrub placed with landscaper’s perfection. Half the jerk towns in the country did not have a schoolhouse so large, Harsh thought. The grounds were some ten acres enclosed in a high pink coral wall on three sides. On the fourth side the wall ran into the sea and enclosed a lime-white beach where there were two thatched cabanas resembling South Sea island huts as Hollywood would conceive them.

Harsh took a stroll to the iron gate. It looked solid, but it could be unfastened from the inside with a whack from a heavy rock, if he was any judge of padlocks. But it would be noisy. On the wall, starting about as high as a man could reach by jumping and extending over the top and probably down the outside of the wall, jagged broken glass was embedded. A man might have trouble getting out of the place.

He moved on to the beach and sprawled on a deck chair in front of one of the cabanas. He wondered if he should worry about getting out of the place. The hell with being scared, he thought, let him get hold of the fifty thousand dollars and he could jump the wall flatfooted. He watched the sea. The sunlight was as warm and relaxing as soft honey poured from a pitcher. Boats moved past on a rifle blue sea. A helicopter flailed along a hundred feet overhead following the beach, and later so did a couple of light planes. The chick-like outcries of bathers came intermittently from the unseen beaches to the north and to the south, never near enough for him to distinguish what they were so happy about.

For lunch the co-pilot/servant brought a tray on which was bouillon, garlic bread, an omelet, and sweetish black coffee.

“You fly the food around too, do you, buddy?”

The man kept a wooden face. “No habla, Señor.” He placed the tray on the sand beside Harsh and left. Harsh wondered what would have happened if he had sprung some of the Spanish he had learned on the man. What excuses would he have had then not to strike up a conversation?

There was a telephone on a small table in the cabana. Harsh noticed it through the cabana entrance. He stared at the telephone for some time and abruptly got up and went into the cabana and picked up the telephone directory on which the instrument was sitting.

If there’s one in the telephone book, he thought, it’ll be in the classified section. Under L. L for Locksmith. His hand was shaking until he had to wedge the telephone directory against the wall while he turned pages. Security Locksmithing Company. He threw back his head and showed all his teeth at the ceiling, wishing he could let out a howl of satisfaction. By God, there was a locksmith in Palm Beach. There really was.

As the fellow says, nothing gets results like action, he reflected, and he picked up the telephone.

“May I serve you?”

It was Brother’s voice.

Harsh froze. He had made a mistake here, he had made a real mistake. The damn line plugged into a private switchboard at the house, and Brother had been keeping an eye on it. What could he do about it? He did not want Brother to know he had even toyed with the idea of using the telephone. He held his breath, wondering whether he had gasped or anything earlier so that he could have been heard. Jesus, if he put the telephone back on the cradle now, Brother would know for sure something was screwy.

His eyes chanced on the luncheon tray sitting on the sand outside. I need a table to eat my lunch off of, don’t I? he thought. As quietly as he could he placed the telephone on the cabana floor where it might have fallen if dislodged from the table. Then he picked up the telephone table one-handed, carried it outside, and plunked the legs down in the sand beside his chair. He maneuvered the luncheon tray onto the table, bracing it against his cast. Then he sat down and picked up knife and fork. He ate two bites before Brother came running from the direction of the house.

Brother looked into the cabana. “That telephone is off its hook.”

“It is? Say, I guess it fell off the table when I moved the thing out here. Put it back, will you? If I bend over to do anything, this face of mine stabs me blind.”

Brother’s syrup-dipped eyes stayed on Harsh. His lips were compressed. His breath came and went through his nose rather audibly. Then Brother began to call Harsh things in Spanish, words too fast for Harsh to understand, but which had the tongue lash that profanity has in any language.

Harsh waved a forkful of food at Brother. “Cuss all you want to, you crazy bastard. You think I care?”

Brother became suddenly pale and silent. Then he wheeled and strode back to the house and went inside. Harsh was both surprised and amused, and he was congratulating himself on having gotten rid of the man when Brother reappeared from the house. Now Brother had a shotgun. He came back to the cabana at a run.

Harsh got wildly to his feet, not knowing what he was going to do, feeling sure Brother was going to shoot him down. His skin felt like it was crawling with lice, so great was his nervous tension. Brother ran straight to him and jammed the muzzle of the shotgun against his chest. It was a double-barreled shotgun, a hammer model, and Harsh could see it was cocked. All right, I am going to die anyway, what is there to lose, Harsh thought. He fell back on his army training. It was no trick, the instructor had told them, to disarm a man who has a gun on you providing the gun is jammed against your body. You just grab the gun and knock it aside. It is a matter of the telegraphic speed of nerve impulses. If the gun is jammed against some part of your torso, you can make it, because it takes a split second for your brain to send the grab message to your muscles, and a split second for the other man’s brain to send the message that you are going to grab, pull the trigger. Your message gets the first start, and this is the difference. Enough difference.

Harsh was twisting when he struck the gun. It went off. Noise, a tubful of fire, powder stink. A hole appeared in the sand at their feet large enough to be a grave for a small pig. Jesus God, Harsh thought, it worked, that hairy-chested instructor wasn’t fly-specking us. Harsh got his usable arm over the barrel of the shotgun and spun his body completely around and the shotgun was torn from Brother’s grip. The gun sailed about twenty feet, landing in the foam where a wave was falling apart on the sand. Now Brother stood spraddle-legged and wide open for a kick, so Harsh let him have it. In the groin.

Brother fell backward when the kick got him, but instead of turning green and staying down, he got up again at once. Harsh ran for the shotgun. He tripped and fell face first into the wet sand, but got his good hand on the shotgun after what seemed forever, and sat up. A wave came in and broke and drenched him with salt water almost to the hip pockets. He watched Brother. “You want the other barrel?”

“Give me that gun, Harsh.”

“I’ll give you what’s in the barrel, I ain’t kidding you.”

There was a silence—what the fellow would call a pregnant silence, Harsh thought. He glowered over the shotgun sights and kept the muzzle pointed at Brother’s face.

Brother smiled a rather odd smile. If the smile was intended to worry Harsh, it succeeded, for he felt certain Brother was going to come at him again. But Brother turned and walked, in no hurry at all, back to the house.

Harsh tried to get up from the wet sand, but his legs refused the job. He looked down at the shotgun, and then he realized—he was sure by looking at the down hammers—that both barrels had exploded when Brother fired the gun. He had been threatening Brother with an empty weapon.

FOURTEEN

When Harsh saw Mr. Hassam the next morning, he threw up his arm and waved him over. He was very glad to see him. Mr. Hassam walked into the sun-splashed dining patio adjacent to the kitchen where Harsh was sitting on an iron spider chair eating breakfast. “You got back, eh? It seemed like you were gone forever.”

“I came in this morning early.” Mr. Hassam waved at the table. “I like to get my own breakfast. Excuse me.” He went into the kitchen.

Harsh listened to pans rattling for a time, then moved over to the kitchen door. “What are you fixing yourself?”

“Pompano sautéed in butter with capers. I like fish for breakfast. Could I fix you some?”

“I guess I could go for a little more. I got an appetite this morning, for a change. I’m glad to see you back, Mr. Hassam. I mean that. Nobody else around here offers to prepare me breakfast.”

“Thank you, Harsh. I do not see why you should not be popular.”

“Neither do I, but I keep having run-ins with different people around here.”

“You mean Brother?”

Harsh nodded. “Yeah, that’s who I mean. You know something, I never seen a guy like that bastard. I mean I don’t make him out. No crap. He scares the hell out of me, I’m not fooling you. You know what he tried to do yesterday afternoon? Blow my gut right out of me with a shotgun. Blow it right out of me.”

Mr. Hassam poured coffee into a cup. “Yes. Brother told me this morning. He is very sorry. He said he lost his head. He asked me to express his regrets.”

“He what?”

“He is very sorry, and wants to express his regrets.”

Harsh laughed. “Do you expect me to believe that?”

“Harsh, I could explain how you can avoid future trouble with Brother. I mean, I can tell you some things that may help you exercise restraint and tolerance.”

“I’ll restrain him with a brickbat, he points that shotgun at me again.”

“Harsh, here is the first thing I want to tell you. Brother has a mental handicap, an affliction known as paranoia. It comes and goes, and sometimes it reaches the point where he has to go to a sanitarium and take shock treatments.”

“That’s no news to me, Mr. Hassam. I had figured out he was nuts. You just watch him, anybody would know.”

“Harsh, if you will make allowances for his illness, I think you can handle him. Particularly now, since you bested him in the encounter yesterday.”

“Oh, he figured I licked him, did he? He had me guessing. I couldn’t tell what he thought. He ruined my night’s sleep. I kept wondering when he was going to pop in on me with another shotgun. That’s a tough boy, that Brother. You know what I did, I kicked him right in the privates as hard as I could. It didn’t faze the bastard. He got up ready to eat me. And he would have, except by then I had my mitts on the blunderbuss.”

“That is not so strange.”

“Listen, a kick in the testes like that would put me down for good.”

“Not if you didn’t have them.”

Harsh’s jaw dropped. “The hell you say! Is that what he is? I thought those guys were soft and peaceful.”

“Well, Brother is not. Brother adheres to a routine of rigorous diet and exercise, perhaps to subdue evidence of his handicap, I don’t know.”

“I’m glad you told me about it, Mr. Hassam. Nobody tells me anything but you. I feel kind of sorry for the guy, at that.”

“Yes, and you would feel even sorrier if I told you who did it to him.”

“I would? Why?”

“It was his brother.”

“Jesus. You mean his own brother—Jesus!”

Mr. Hassam tasted of a caper. “El Presidente.”

Harsh stared. “You mean El Presidente is his...and he had him castrated? The guy I look like?”

“Now you’re getting it.”

“Jesus. The first time Brother laid eyes on me, back in that hospital, he gave one hell of a jump. He hated me right off, and he’s hated me ever after. I can begin to see why.”

Mr. Hassam transferred pompano to plates with the skill of a chef. “I trust this information will enable you to be more tolerant.”

“Yeah, it will make his crap easier to swallow.” Harsh accepted one of the plates. “What was the trouble between the brothers, anyway?”

Mr. Hassam smiled thinly. “Miss Muirz. They had a falling out over her.”

Harsh put the plate holding the pompano on the kitchen cabinet. He stood there for a while. “Miss Muirz.” He picked up a cup of coffee and drank it all. “Well, it figures.”

Harsh had intended to bring up the subject of the fingerprints on the bank deposit card but the news about Brother caused him to forget it until after breakfast, when Mr. Hassam brought out the mastic material he had brought with him from New York for the hand casts. The materials consisted of a little tin spray can and a jar of the mastic itself which was the color of taffy candy before it is pulled. Harsh was puzzled, but he followed instructions and sat down and permitted his hands to be sprayed from the can—both hands, the healthy one and the one in the cast. This placed an oily coating on his skin, designed to keep the mastic from adhering to the skin.

Harsh watched Mr. Hassam open the jar of mastic. “Hey, wait a minute. What is this for?”

“You need not be afraid.”

“I ain’t worried about my yellow feathers. What is that gunk, is what I wanta know.”

“We are going to have a custom-made pair of gloves fashioned for you, Harsh.”

“Yeah? Is that right, now?” Harsh drew his hands back. “Just a new pair of gloves, huh?”

“You’re not scared, are you?”

“You know how it is. You’re sure you’re being framed, you get shotguns pointed at your belly, and you get cute answers to questions. I ain’t scared, but I get to wondering.”

“I wish you would go along with me, Harsh.” Mr. Hassam sounded tired. “I have to do this. I have to get these gloves made, gloves which will carry your fingerprints, so that we can place your prints on additional bank deposit cards. You can understand, we can’t run all the way up here from South America with every bank deposit card. That is all there is to it.”

“Hell, I thought maybe you were going to knock off some guy and leave my prints on the job.”

“No, no, nothing like that. I swear it.”

“I think you’re nuts, Mr. Hassam, no crap. I never ran across such a wild scheme before.”

“Trust me, Harsh.”

“Well, okay.” Harsh held out his right hand. “I guess I got very little choice.”

When Mr. Hassam had stripped the set-up mastic off Harsh’s hands, he left the kitchen at once with it, leaving Harsh to do some second-thinking. He immediately wished he had not consented to having the hand casts made. Why had he been such a sucker, anyway? Mr. Hassam was a slick one, talking him into it. If they were going to make some gloves that anybody could wear and leave his fingerprints scattered around, that was serious. They could rob Fort Knox if they could figure out a way to get the job done, and hang it on him if they wanted to.

He felt something wriggling down his forehead. He struck it a hard blow with his palm, but it was just a drop of sweat, which he splashed to nothing.

He went over to the kitchen sink and washed the oily film off his hands, taking care not to get the cast wet. He had to use quite a lot of soap powder to get it off. Then he examined the gunk still left in the jar. There was not much of it. No label on the jar, no way to tell who made the stuff. Well, he had made another sucker move, that was what he had done.

He looked at Mr. Hassam narrowly when the latter rejoined him almost two hours later. “Them things you made of my hands, were they all right? They satisfy you?”

“Perfectly.”

“Could I have a look at them? I’d kinda like to see what they look like.” If he got his hands on the casts, he was going to destroy them.

“I’m sorry, Harsh. I have already sent them off to New York by air mail.”

“Oh.” Harsh rubbed the side of his nose with his finger. “Well, I guess that’s that. What else is on the toboggan for today?”

“More Spanish lessons, if you feel up to it.”

“Why not.”

“Shall we go down to the beach, then? More comfortable there.”

The sea with the early morning sun falling across it looked licorice black, with swatches of scintillating brilliance following along on the wave crests.

“Not that you ain’t good company, but I would rather sit on the beach with Miss Muirz, if you know what I mean.” Harsh took off his shoes and socks and dug his bare feet into the warm sand. “What happened to that dish anyway?”

“She had a business trip to make. I imagine she may return today.”

“Yeah?” Harsh grinned. “I hardly got to know her, she was in and out of here like the Irishman’s flea. So she’s gonna be back, huh? Well, that should pick up things around here.”

Mr. Hassam looked at him with amusement. “You have my felicitations.”

Harsh eyed him. “Yeah. What in the hell’s a felicitation?”

“A blessing.”

“Yeah. You mean with your fingers crossed, the way you sound.”

A wave came swelling in and fell on the ash blond beach at their feet with an audible grunt. Mr. Hassam kicked some dry sand out of the wet sand. “Maybe we should get at the Spanish lesson.”

“If you say so.”

“How much do you remember of what we have already gone over, Harsh?”

For some time they practiced what Mr. Hassam called the lilt of the Spanish tongue, which Harsh decided was mostly a way of pronouncing each vowel with great clarity as if he was attacking the sound. He learned how to take the fuzzy edges off his vowels, and how to put vowel glides in certain places so as to lay a special emphasis. A lot of noodle soup, Harsh thought, but he kept at it.

“You are progressing excellently, Mr. Harsh.”

“Yeah. Well you would have a time proving it by me. This stuff is way out of my line. Say, am I supposed to be able to spout this stuff like a native? I’ll never make it.”

“A smattering will do.”

“Maybe this El Presidente made some speeches or something, ones that were recorded, that I could listen to. Wouldn’t that help?”

“That will come later.”

“Okay.”

They watched a small plane come down the shoreline. The plane had its nose down to within fifty feet of the surf and was making time down the beach. The pilot waved when he went past. Harsh waved back. “That’s a lucky bastard, that pilot. You know I always wished I could fly one of them things. Lot of ’em by here. Must be twenty, thirty, a day. Lot of sightseeing.”

“Tourists, I imagine.” Mr. Hassam was not much interested in the plane.

“Yeah, I suppose. A treat for them poor tourists, I bet, getting a look at a palace like this. It ain’t every day you see something that fancy.” The plane had passed on, dragging a broom of sound over the beach. “Take my old man, he wouldn’t believe this. He was a farmer. He had his feet in the clay all his life. He never knew he was sweating his guts out so some people could live high on the hog in places like this. I wonder what he would have thought, give him a look at this.” Harsh glanced at Mr. Hassam. “Maybe it ain’t nothing unusual to you, though.”

Mr. Hassam looked sober. “I, too, had a humble beginning.” He lay back on the sand and began to talk. He said Harsh might not believe it, but this was a far cry from his own youth also. All but the sand. The sand was the same. Sand was sand, and Mr. Hassam’s had been in dunes, hot as a furnace by day and as nice as a woman at night. “Mr. Harsh, I was born on the sand in a rug tent, begat by a father who bred white asses of fine quality which he exported to Mecca. He bought my mother in a market for a sum of silver piastres the equal of about twenty-five dollars American. Mr. Harsh, does that sound romantic, picturesque? It was not, believe me. I cannot remember a time when I was not hungry there in that desert, and you should have seen me, a skinny teenage kid riding a white ass or a camel. I was seventeen when my father sent me to sell a herd of the asses to a Mecca dealer, and do you know what I did? I took the money the dealer paid and I never went back. I have not seen my father nor my mother again until this day. I went to Damascus, became a fat boy in Damascus. You know what is a fat boy in Damascus? No, nothing nasty. Just a boy the desert has given a permanent hunger for food. I went to work for an importer. In time I found the importer was doing a smuggling business and paying off the local police and bigwigs with a bag of Dutch gold once a month, a bag of gulden left discreetly at the house of the girlfriend of an official. That Dutch gold intrigued me. For decades Dutch gulden have been the most dependable of the world currencies. Anyway, I befriended the girl, we tipped off the military, and we came out of it with one bag of Dutch gold. Or rather, I did, because I left the girl behind but not the gold, and went to Cairo for schooling, and then to Oxford, a great university in England, and then to South America to be a college professor with a specialty in finance. So you see, Mr. Harsh, one thing leads to another and here we are.”

Mr. Hassam fell silent and his eyes were shiny with memories.

Harsh waggled his toes in the sand and scratched his face around the edge of the bandage and wondered what was the pitch. He could not think of anything that could have put Mr. Hassam in a reminiscing mood. They had not been drinking or anything. The fat little slicker is leading up to something, Harsh decided.

“Yeah, Mr. Hassam, here we are.”

“Two men perhaps more alike in environmental molding than you at first presumed, eh, Mr. Harsh? Two men with the same greed and the same needs.”

Harsh watched a wave march up the beach. “So you figure I’m greedy?”

“Well, are you not?”

“Sure. I guess so. Who ain’t? When you come right down to it, who ain’t?”

“No one, I imagine.”

Harsh dumped sand out of one of his shoes.

“I don’t mind talking to you, Mr. Hassam. You’re a very interesting talker. But ain’t you afraid of wearing the bush out by beating around it? What I mean, why not come to the point?”

Mr. Hassam’s eyes were suddenly alert and shiny. “I was coming to the point.”

“Yeah? How, by way of Detroit and points between? What are you driving at anyway?”

“Harsh, I was pointing out that we both like money.”

“Well goddamn it now, I know what you were pointing out. I understand the word money.”

“Harsh, you had a narrow escape yesterday. With the telephone in the cabana, I mean.”

“I wouldn’t know what you mean. And if I did, I would have a hell of a time figuring out what it had to do with money. I’m sorry, I don’t follow you, Mr. Hassam.”

“Harsh, you did not knock that telephone off the table accidentally. What you did, you picked up the telephone to make an outside call. Possibly you planned to reach a confederate to help you crack this nut. You found the telephone was not an outside line, and Brother answered on the switchboard, so you pretended the phone had just been knocked off the table. That was quick thinking, Harsh. A man who was not alert, a man who did not have natural instincts of wariness, would have hung up the phone. That is what a stupid man would have done. But you did not. You were a wary man.”

Harsh watched the other intently. “Mr. Hassam, I don’t know what you’re driving at. You’ve got me going.”

“I am trying to tell you the telephone incident convinced me you are the kind of a man it would be safe to do business with, Harsh.”

“How was that?”

“You can think on your feet. I mean thinking on your feet comes naturally to you.”

“I guess opinions about that might differ.”

Mr. Hassam gave the neighborhood a precautionary look. “You do not need to call in an outside confederate, Harsh. Not when you have one ready-made who knows the ropes.”

“I guess you mean you and I might work something together.”

“Precisely.”

“We put out heads together, is that it?”

“Yes.”

“You help me, I help you. That the idea?”

“Yes.”

“Mr. Hassam, how do you expect me to help you? I mean, what will I have to do?”

Mr. Hassam smiled thinly. “That will come. I am sure it will come. Frankly, I had not yet worked out a plan.”

“Well, you can help me right now. I already got my problem. My problem is fifty thousand dollars in that safe, plus nineteen hundred for my car. That son of a bitching Brother locked the money in the safe and gave me one key and kept the other key himself. My problem is to get my dough out of that safe.”

“Yes, I know about that.”

“There by God is one place you can help me right now.”

Mr. Hassam tilted his head back and watched an airplane that was circling high in the sky above the sea. “I do not have the other key to the safe, you know.” The plane’s wings gave off reflections of light like faint sparks.

“Well, I know one way to get the key off Brother. Knock the son of a bitch on the head and take it.”

“Yes. Yes indeed.” Mr. Hassam’s voice was dry. “Then you could pocket the fifty thousand, and off you could go. Right?”

Harsh’s eyes narrowed. “I get it.”

“You get what?”

“You wouldn’t just hand me the fifty thousand bucks now, would you. I mean, that would be a real sucker deal for you.”

Mr. Hassam nodded. “I think we are beginning to reach a sense of compatibility.”

“You could call it that, I suppose.” Harsh caught a movement near the house. “Look, Hassam, this sniffing around the post you’re doing, are you figuring you might latch onto a part of my fifty thousand?”

Hassam smiled. “Not in the least. I might even add to it, if things break right.”

The figure at the house was Brother, who had popped into view and was running toward them. “We better knock it off. Here comes Brother.”

“Where?” Mr. Hassam looked around.

Harsh pointed. “He’s got the ants for some reason. Look at him run.”

Brother ran toward them with the long loping lurching pace of a distance man. He had been interrupted while shaving for there was lather on one side of his face and he carried a towel in one hand.

Brother confronted Mr. Hassam breathlessly. “Miss Muirz. Long distance. Urgent. You are to return at once. I looked all over hell for you.”

“We were here on the beach, working on his Spanish.” Mr. Hassam’s face began to be less coffee-colored. “Urgent, you say? Has something gone wrong?”

Brother drew himself erect. “El Presidente has resigned.”

Mr. Hassam turned and ran toward the house.