Plunder Squad

Two

When they got out of the car they could hear rock music, very loud, coming from the other side of the house. There were a dozen automobiles parked on the curving drive, most of them foreign sports cars. The house was two stories high, white, rambling, with white pillars in front.

Mackey said, “I don’t know should we go through the house or around it.” It was warmer today than yesterday; he pulled out a white handkerchief and patted his forehead.

“Through it,” Parker said. He wanted to know who Griffith was, and his house would be a part of him.

Brenda said, “Is my skirt wrinkled in back?” and turned around. She was a slender girl, mid-twenties, good-looking, with a lot of leg. And just as Mackey was a hundred times better than Beaghler, Brenda was a thousand times better than Sharon. She knew who she was, she didn’t have to struggle with anybody, there was never any sense of tension between her and Mackey, no tug of war as to which one of them would run her life. She ran it herself, and she did a good job of it.

Now Mackey smiled happily at the rump she’d turned toward him and said, “Yeah, baby, it’s awful wrinkled. Maybe you oughta take it off and leave it in the car.”

She didn’t see the humor. Very serious about it all, she tugged at the hem of the short skirt in the back, saying, “No, really, is it? We sat in the car so long.”

“It’s okay, Brenda,” Mackey said, still with the same happy grin on his face. “Don’t worry about it, nobody’s gonna hate to look at you.” And he patted her on the behind.

Parker stood there and waited for Mackey to get done with his clowning, so they could move on. Griffith had only agreed to this meeting if it could be handled as though it were a social occasion, which was why Brenda was along. That had been the compromise Mackey had worked out, and Parker was willing to ride with it as long as it didn’t become inconvenient.

Brenda was the first to realize that Parker wasn’t being an amused spectator of the horsing around, but was simply waiting for them to stop; she grew at once brisk and efficient, turning around to face Mackey again, saying to him, “Now cut it out, Ed, you’re supposed to be here on business.”

Mackey glanced over at Parker, and his grin faded. “Yeah, you’re right,” he said. “So let’s go.”

Parker went up between the middle pair of pillars to the porch. A screen door was closed, but the main door inside it stood open, and chilled air drifted out. Parker opened the screen door, looked into a large square entrance hall empty of people and dim after the sunlight outside, and stepped in, followed by Mackey and Brenda.

It was a big house, expensively but thinly furnished, each room looking as though one or two important pieces had recently been removed from it. A wide variety of paintings hung on the light-colored walls. The floors tended to dark woods, sometimes parquet, infrequently covered by small rugs. Light and almost fragile-looking furniture was the rule.

Parker moved directly toward the rear of the house, from the entrance hall through a small airy parlor, down a hall past broad arched doorways showing more airy rooms to left and right, and at the end of the hall into another parlor, this one broad and full of plants. French doors on the opposite side led out to a slate patio and an expanse of lawn sloping gently downward toward a high thick bamboo hedge.

The music was live. When Parker stepped through the open French doors, he saw four musicians at work to his right, methodically pumping away in front of banked amplifiers lined up along the rear wall of the house. Electric guitar, electric organ, Fender bass and drums. The musicians were all very young, and all looked serious and self-absorbed, like apprentices learning to build ship models in bottles.

The music was very much louder out here, drowning all other sounds. Parker had to lean close to Mackey’s ear and shout, “You know what he looks like, you lead the way.”

Mackey nodded, and gazed out over the lawn. About forty people, the men in shirt sleeves and the women in expensively casual day wear, were scattered across the lawn between the house and the bamboo hedge. Down at the far end, a long white-cloth-covered table had been set up in front of the hedge, functioning as a bar at one end and a buffet at the other, with white-uniformed and black-bow-tied men efficiently at work behind it. Although here on the patio nothing could be heard but the music, the guests out on the lawn seemed to be talking to one another.

Mackey scanned the crowd, and then turned back to Parker and shrugged, with an eyebrow-raising movement; he didn’t see Griffith out there. He made a stirring motion with one down-pointing finger; he would circulate around the lawn and look for Griffith. Parker nodded and jabbed a thumb at the French doors; he would wait inside, away from the worst of the noise.

When he went back in, he shut the doors behind him, which cut the volume of the music in half. He wandered around the room looking at the paintings; they were all recently done, but traditional in style, naturalistic. No abstractions here, though he had seen some in other rooms he’d passed while coming through the house. He stopped in front of one painting that showed a civilized cocktail party in a quietly wealthy room. People stood in small groups across the surface of the painting, chatting with one another. There weren’t too many guests for the size of the room, and those present were all middle-aged, well-dressed, obviously well-bred. The quiet sounds of their conversations could almost be heard emanating from the painting, blotting out the rock music from the patio.

“That is a contrast, isn’t it?”

Parker turned his head, and standing beside him was a fairly short man in a white Norfolk jacket, pale blue turtleneck shirt, and dark blue slacks. The drink he was holding was tall, carbonated, iced, and transparent. There was something a little too graceful about the way he was standing. He had black hair, thinning on top and worn long over his collar in back. Between his wide mouth and narrow nose ran a thin line of mustache.

Parker looked back at the painting. A contrast. “Yes,” he said.

“I mean, with that crowd out there.”

Parker said nothing.

“Oddly enough,” the short man said, as though the fact were for some reason sad, “two of the guests depicted in that painting are outside on the lawn right now.”

“Is that right?”

“I don’t believe I know you,” the man said.

Parker shrugged. “You don’t.” He kept on looking at the painting.

“But that isn’t acceptable. I have to know everyone here, that’s one of the rules of the house.”

Now Parker looked at him. “You mean you’re Griffith?”

Griffith’s expression suddenly changed again, became almost petulant. “Oh, of course,” he said. “You must be Mackey’s friend, the one who absolutely had to have a face-to-face.”

“That’s right.”

“Well, I really can’t talk now. You may not believe it, but this little affair isn’t quite off the ground yet. I have to keep breathing on the guests till they come to life. Where’s Mackey?”

“Outside.”

“Why don’t you join him? I’ll have time to chat with you soon.”

“I’ll wait in a quiet room in here,” Parker said.

Griffith frowned, disapproving and not liking to have to explain his orders. “You’re supposed to behave,” he said, “as though you’re here for social reasons only.”

“Mackey brought his woman. I didn’t. I’ll wait in here, in a quiet room.”

Griffith gave an irritable shrug. “Oh, all right, suit yourself. I don’t like this anyway, I don’t see what the point is. I told Mackey what I want and what I’ll pay for it and where it is. What more is there to talk about, for heaven’s sake?”

“You want to talk now?”

“No. I already said no.” He moved his hands in an agitated way. “I don’t have the time.”

Parker shrugged. “What room should I wait in?”

“At least get yourself a drink. Try not to look as though you’re here to repossess the furniture.”

“All right. I’ll get a drink.”

“Thank you,” Griffith said, being half sardonic and half grateful. He said, “Then, if you insist on a quiet room, go out that door over there and down the hall and through the second arch on your right. Then go across that room and through the door on the other side. That’s my office, you can wait in there.”

“Good.”

“If someone blunders onto you, pretend you’re making a long-distance call or something.”

“All right,” Parker said.

“Now come along and get a drink.”

Parker went with him outside again, past the loud and sober musicians and down across the lawn toward the bar along the hedge. Midway, Griffith got dragged into somebody else’s conversation, and Parker went on alone. He arrived at a slight lull in the bar’s activity, and got himself a light gin and tonic. Mackey came wandering over to him as he turned away from the bar; they nodded to one another, and Mackey said, “You talk to him?”

“We met,” Parker said. “We didn’t talk. You and Brenda hang around out here.”

“Brenda’s having a big time,” Mackey said, and grinned. He was fond of her. “I’ll tell you a rule of human nature, Parker,” he said. “All women are social climbers.”

There was nothing to say to that. Parker nodded again and walked back up the slope toward the patio. A man stepped in front of him, frowning slightly, and said, “Aren’t you Greene?”

“No,” Parker said.

“My God, that’s fantastic.” He was a little drunk, but carrying it well. “Hubert Greene?” he said, as though Parker might be the right man after all and had merely forgotten his own name. “You don’t know him? Surely people have told you you look like him.”

“No,” Parker said.

“Listen, come along here. Do you mind?” Taking Parker’s arm, he turned and started off, calling, “Helen! Come over here!”

A nearby group of three women and two men now shifted to include Parker and the other man, and one of the women said, looking curiously at Parker, “What is it? What’s the matter?”

“Who does this fellow look like?”

Everybody looked at him. Parker stood looking back, waiting for something else to attract their attention.

Nobody could guess who it was he was supposed to look like, and when the first man mentioned the name of Hubert Greene, it prompted a long discussion, half the group agreeing more or less and the other half in violent opposition, one of the women constantly assuring Parker, “You don’t look anything like Hubie Greene, you really don’t.” And one of the men grinned at him and said, “If you knew Hubie, you’d punch Fred right in the face.”

The conversation finally shifted gears when one of the women said, “Why isn’t Hubie here, anyway?”

“I suppose he isn’t a potential customer.”

“Don’t be catty.”

“Face it, dear, the only reason Leon invited any of us here is in the wild hope we’ll take some of his stock off his hands.”

The man who’d thought Parker looked like Hubert Greene now got caught up in this new discussion. Finally releasing Parker’s elbow, he said. “Do you really think that’s true? I thought Leon was loaded.”

“Leon,” said one of the women, “is loaded with valuable paintings, which isn’t quite the same thing.”

“Not the way the tax laws are changing.” one of the other men said, and a couple of people nodded grimly.

The woman named Helen said, “Tax laws? You mean paintings aren’t a good investment any more?” She sounded worried enough to have a lot of money of her own tied up in paintings.

“Investment, yes,” said one of the men. “Tax write-off, no. Not as good as they used to be.”

“The old charity dodge, you know,” said another man.

But it turned out Helen didn’t know. As the group began all at once to explain the old charity dodge to her, Parker moved quietly away from them and on up over the lawn toward the house.