No Questions Asked

17

The dentist kept drilling the wrong tooth. I told him that it was the wrong tooth, but he only smiled and after he was through drilling it he pulled it out with a huge pair of pliers and held it up for me to see. It made my head hurt and it hurt even worse when he reinserted the tooth into my mouth and tried to pound it back into place with a big hammer.

I woke up then and the dentist was gone but the pounding was still there, although it was someone pounding on my door. It didn’t help the pain in my head, which was centered just back of my eyes. It felt as if someone were stabbing at them with a piece of rusty metal.

I opened my eyes then and swung my legs over the side of the bed. I had made it to bed, I saw, but not under the covers. I was wearing only a pair of shorts. A black wave of guilt washed over me and I shuddered. Then the nausea hit and someone pounded on the door again.

I got up and opened it. It was Guerriero. He stood there in the bright sunshine all dressed up in his glowing youth and his white smile and his nice, healthy tan. For a moment I thought of killing him, but instead I told him to come in and then asked him to excuse me because I had to go into the bathroom and throw up.

It all came up, of course. The ribs and the whiskey and the memory of the night before. I didn’t look at it. I kept my eyes closed. I sat there on the bathroom floor, wrapped around the toilet, and vomited until there was nothing left. After that I got up, my eyes still tightly shut, flushed the toilet, brushed my teeth, and splashed my face with cold water.

I went back into the bedroom then and Guerriero was sitting in the lime green chair looking as though he might be thinking of whistling because he felt so well and it was such a splendid day.

I sat down on the bed and held my head in my hands. “I don’t want you to say anything,” I said. “I just want you to do something for me. It just possibly might save my life because I’m really quite near death.”

“You look it, too,” he said.

“In that pile of clothes over there is my billfold. In it is some money. I would like you to go over there and take out a generous sum. It would help if you tiptoed.”

Guerriero went over and took out the billfold. “Hey,” he said, “the money’s all wet.”

“Yes, it probably is. But maybe it will still buy what I need to save my life.”

“Okay, what do you need?”

“First, go to a drugstore and get some aspirin. A lot of aspirin. Next, stop off and get me a quart of black coffee someplace with lots of sugar. Finally, find a liquor store and get a fifth of vodka and some cans of tomato juice.”

“That’s all? Don’t you want something to eat?”

“Just go,” I said. “If you’re back within ten minutes, there’s a slim chance that I might live. But it’s highly doubtful.”

An hour later it was better. The aspirin had relieved any headache. The black coffee had cut through some of the alcoholic fog. And the vodka and tomato juice were patching up my nerve ends. However, there was nothing that I could take for the guilt and remorse that gnawed at me with sharp little bites. Only time would help. A week, a month, or perhaps even a year. After that I could think of Fastnaught lying there dead on the motel room floor and of my scuttling away into the night and instead of sharp black pangs perhaps there would be only a slight involuntary shudder.

I wondered how long it would take for the Los Angeles police to tie me in with Fastnaught. Two phone calls would do it, or if they were unlucky, or tired, or even a little sloppy, it might take three. I decided that I could count on hearing from them by tomorrow or the day after at the latest. By then I might have some answers to the hard questions that they would ask. By then I might even tell them the truth.

I finished the vodka and tomato juice and put the glass on the writing table. Guerriero was sitting in the green chair watching me with a slightly amused expression.

“You’re not going to die after all,” he said.

“The magic elixir worked again.”

“What’s on for today?”

I found the envelope that I had written the name on the night before. The envelope was a little damp. “I’ve got a name and a phone number,” I said. “I’d like to find out something about the name and then maybe I’d like to go see him.”

“Maybe?”

“It depends on who the name turns out to be. If he turns out to be somebody’s long-lost second cousin, we can forget him.”

“What’s the name?”

“Carl Vardaman. One n.”

Guerriero shook his head. “You don’t want to see him.”

“I don’t?”

“I heard about him when I was working in Vegas. They call him Carl the Collector.”

“Is that where he is, Vegas?”

“Sometimes. But most of the time he’s here in L.A. If somebody gets in over a hundred thousand or so and can’t pay, they turn him over to Vardaman. I heard a lot of stories about his collection methods. Nasty stories mostly.”

“Broken legs, arms, things like that?”

Guerriero shook his head again. “That’s old stuff. Vardaman’s methods are more refined. The first thing he does is make whoever he’s trying to collect from take out a life insurance policy for twice as much as they owe in Vegas. Vardaman sometimes even advances the first quarterly premium. The beneficiary, of course, is Vardaman. From what I understand, the realization that you’re worth more dead than alive is a hell of an incentive to go out and scratch up the money. So far, I’ve never heard of Vardaman collecting on any of the policies. But he probably will one of these days — just for the publicity value.”

“What else does he do — or does he?” I said.

“He’s a speculator, from what I hear. Land, gold, commodities, anything that’s fast and profitable. I think he’s got an office in Beverly Hills someplace. Carl Vardaman Enterprises.”

I took the telephone book out of the writing desk and looked under the Vs. Vardaman’s office was on Wilshire Boulevard. I wrote the address down and handed it to Guerriero. “Let’s go,” I said.

Guerriero shook his head. “You certainly run with a funny, crowd,” he said.

“I’m in a funny business.”

Vardaman’s office was on the ninth floor of one of those black glass office buildings on Wilshire just before it runs into Santa Monica Boulevard. The name on the dark wood door said Carl Vardaman Enterprises. It didn’t say Walk In, but I did anyhow.

A woman of about thirty with long black hair looked up from the desk where she was working on a crossword puzzle. She looked me over with large blue eyes that had dark circles under them. Then she gave me a bored half smile and said, “May I help you?”

“I need to see Vardaman,” I said.

“Do you have an appointment?”

“No. I just found out about it.”

Some of her boredom went away. I might be a puzzle. She seemed to like puzzles. “About what?”

“The mixup.”

She frowned. “We could go on like this all day. What mixup?”

I sighed. I made it a long, heavy one, full of exasperation. “The mixup in the Marsh policy. You do know about the policy, don’t you — on Jack Marsh?”

It was all I had to go on and I wasn’t at all sure where it would lead, if anywhere. She frowned again. “I thought that was all—” She stopped. “Have you got a name?”

“St. Ives,” I said. “Philip St. Ives.”

“And you’re with—”

I didn’t finish her sentence for her the way that she seemed to want me to. I smiled at her instead. I tried to make it warm and friendly and even engaging.

“I think you’d better tell him I’m here.”

She frowned again and picked up the phone. “A Philip St. Ives is here,” she said. “He says it’s something to do with a policy on Jack Marsh.” She listened for a moment and then said, “Yes... yes... I see. All right.” Then she hung up the phone and looked at me again. “If you’d like to wait, Mr. Vardaman will see you in a few minutes.”

“Fine,” I said and sat down in a chrome and leather chair and took out a cigarette. I smoked that one and then I smoked another one. The brunette kept busy with her crossword puzzle. Twice, she resorted to a paperback dictionary for help. Nobody came and nobody left. The phone didn’t ring. Carl Vardaman Enterprises seemed to be having a slow day.

I was debating about whether to light a third cigarette when the inner door opened and a man came out and stood there looking at me with the expression of someone who has just discovered ants in the sugar. He wasn’t particularly tall, yet he was thick — all of him. He stared at me and then he frowned and the frown made deep horizontal wrinkles across his tanned forehead.

“You,” he said, “smart-ass. In here.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder and disappeared through the door. I got up and started after him.

“Is that Vardaman?” I said to the brunette.

“Himself,” she said.

On the other side of the door that Vardaman had gone through was a short carpeted hall with three other doors leading off of it. I went through the door that was open. Vardaman was standing behind his desk next to a high-backed swivel chair.

“Close the door,” he said.

I went back and closed the door.

“Sit down.”

I sat down.

“I don’t know what you know about me,” he said.

“Very little.”

“Let me talk, will you. When I want you to talk, I’ll tell you. It took me two calls to find out all I want to know about you. That’s all. Two calls. One to Vegas, then one to New York. Just two calls and I got your whole life history. You’re very small beans, aren’t you?”

“Very small,” I said.

He sat down in his chair and moved a piece of paper on his desk. His hands were thick and covered with dark hair that ran from the backs of his fingers up to the heavy wrists that were exposed where the sleeves of his brown suede shirt jacket had been carefully turned back just once. Underneath the jacket he wore a pale tan shirt with a long collar. It was open not only at the throat but also halfway down his chest where another patch of dark hair grew.

There was more dark hair on the top of his head and at the sides and also down his neck. It had a carefully tousled look that must have cost him at least a quarter of an hour a day. Beneath the hair was a hard, handsome face with black eyes that glittered, a mouth that sneered easily and often, and a big chin with a jutting ledge that I could have laid a dime on.

He leaned back in his chair and worked on me with his black eyes. Although he seemed to search for a while he apparently found nothing about me to like. I was just the morning nuisance and he wasn’t going to let it spoil his lunch.

“There are two ways I could handle this,” he said after he tired of his staring game. “One would involve doctors, bone specialists probably, and a long rest in the hospital. That would be kind of—” He searched for a word. “Sordid, wouldn’t it?”

“Sordid,” I said.

“The other way — well, I don’t much like the other way either because it means that anybody with a long nose like yours can come around sticking it into my private business where it hasn’t got any right to be stuck. You follow me?”

“Closely.”

“You know, you’re the second guy this week that’s stuck his nose into my private business. Yesterday, it was some Washington cop. Today, it’s some New York grifter. Where’s it all going to end?”

“One wonders,” I said.

“Now I run a business here and I’ve got to run it efficiently or else I’m gonna be out on the street nickel-and-diming it and scratching around to make a living, which from what I understand is sort of what you do, isn’t it?”

“I couldn’t have described it better myself.”

“So what I’m gonna do, smart-ass, is I’m gonna tell you exactly the same thing I told that Washington cop yesterday, no more, no less.”

“What could be fairer.”

“Okay. Here goes. Mr. Jack Marsh was in debt to a client of mine who runs a perfectly legal business in Las Vegas. Mr. Marsh owed my client one hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars. My client turned the matter over to me for collection. I talked with Mr. Marsh, who fully acknowledged his debt but asked for an extension of time. I said okay. We both agreed that because we live in an uncertain world it would be wise if Mr. Marsh took out a life insurance policy in the amount of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars with Carl Vardaman Enterprises as the beneficiary. This was done. Before Mr. Marsh could pay off his debt he got himself killed in Washington, D.C., and I got fifteen witnesses, smart-ass, who will put me in Vegas at the time that Marsh was getting himself shot. That’s it.”

Vardaman rose. I rose with him. “Just one question and I’ll be on my way.”

“You’ll be on your way anyhow.”

“Who did Marsh take out the insurance policy with?”

“Pacifica Life and Casualty. He said he had a buddy over there but I don’t remember the guy’s name and I don’t wanta look it up.”

“Spivey,” I said. “Max Spivey.”