Taming a Sea Horse

20

The Crown Prince Club was located at the end of an alley off Boylston Street near the Colonial Theatre. There was a heavy dark oaken door with a brass crown canted at a rakish angle just above the peephole. An antique brass turnbell handle projected from the middle of the door. I turned it and a bell rang distantly inside. Beside the door was a slot for card keys so that the members could go right in without ringing. It was three-thirty in the afternoon and no members were in sight.

The door opened. The guy who opened it was at least six four and looked like a nineteenth-century British soldier in the King's African Rifle Brigade. He had on a red tunic and a white pith helmet and gold epaulets, and his round black face was shiny and severe.

He said, "Yes, sir?"

I said, "I'm thinking of joining the club. Is there anyone I can talk to?"

"I'm sorry, sir, club memberships are not presently available."

"Damn," I said. "Tony Marcus told me that there was an opening."

The doorman looked at me instead of through me. "Mr. Marcus?"

"Yes, Tony sent me over. Said he'd talked with Perry Lehman about it."

"Mr. Lehman?"

"Yeah, said Perry could fix me up. I'm new in town."

"If you'd step in, sir, I'll ask our marketing director to speak with you."

"Thanks."

I went into the foyer. It was paneled in the same kind of dark oak that the front door was made of, and lit by Tiffany lamps. On the right wall was a high, narrow fireplace, and above it a painting of a horse that might have been by George Stubbs. The doorman gestured- me to a large red leather chair near the fireplace. On a table beside the chair was a sandalwood box of cigars and a decanter of port, and several squat thick glasses.

"Please help yourself, sir," he said, "while I speak with Miss Coolidge."

I sat and the doorman disappeared through a door on the opposite side of the room. I poured myself a glass of port. The heft of the glass in my hand was masculine and weighty. There were two other paintings on the walls. One opposite the entrance door was of a black-and-white English spaniel curled up beside several recently shot partridge. The other, beside the door through which the Royal Zulu had departed, was of a British officer mounted on a red roan horse looking directly at me. A vaguely desert background rolled away behind him. The sun never sets on the British Empire.

I had drunk about half the wine when a brisk middle-aged woman appeared in the doorway with the big black man. She strode into the room.

"I'm Gretchen Coolidge," she said. "Would you come with me, please."

"Sure."

The doorman stepped aside and I followed Gretchen Coolidge out of the waiting room and down a short corridor to an elevator. She gestured me in and we went up five floors and stopped and the doors slid silently open onto a brilliantly sunlit glass-canopied space. Compared with the dark Edwardian elegance of the waiting room the brilliance of the fifth floor was overpowering.

I followed Gretchen out into a corridor of potted plants to a large circular pool in the center of the room. The plants were exotic flowering types that I didn't recognize, but the scent of them and the density of colors was intense. Beside the pool a man sat at an emerald cube of a desk in a silk bathrobe talking into a silver telephone.

Gretchen Coolidge said, "Please sit down." I sat near the desk in an angular chrome chair with green upholstery. Gretchen sat next to me. The guy at the desk continued to listen to the phone, nodding slightly. I looked around.

Gretchen Coolidge looked to be in her early forties. She had prominent cheekbones and short blond hair and large black-rimmed aviator glasses. She wore a double-breasted gray suit with a fine pinstripe in it and a lavender shirt with a narrow lavender-and-gray dotted necktie. A lavender handkerchief showed in her breast pocket. Her hose were a paler shade of lavender with very pale gray patterns in them. And she wore sling-strap three-inch heels of a deeper lavender. Her nails were short and painted pink. Her lipstick was pink. Her teeth were very white and even. Her breasts were large and looked as if, freed from restraint, they'd be even larger. She had slim hips and her ankles were small.

The guy on the phone was Perry Lehman. I'd seen his picture enough to recognize him. He was smallish and had long black hair. He wore a thick gold chain around his neck with a diamond-studded miniature crown suspended from it. The crown was hung to the same rakish cant as the trademark on the front door. He was darkly tanned. His small hands were manicured. He smoked a large cigar as he listened on the phone. Taking it from his mouth occasionally to study it, admire the pale greenish precision of the wrapper.

He had a big diamond ring on the little finger of his right hand. Where the silk robe gaped, there was a sprinkle of gray hair on his cocoa-butter chest.

He said into the phone, "Okay, bottom line is one million, no more. You crunch the figures any way you want to, but it's one million, no more."

He listened again, then nodded once and said "Yes," and hung up the phone. He let the chair tilt forward and touched a button on his desk phone. Actually desk phone didn't quite cover it. There were enough buttons and lights and switches to qualify it as a communications console. He leaned back again in his high-backed green leather swivel and put his feet up on the desk. He was barefooted. A black man even larger than the one downstairs came in from behind some greenery carrying a silver tray with a silver ice bucket with an open bottle of champagne in it. There was a tall fluted champagne glass on the tray. The black man placed the tray on a small glass table beside the desk and stepped back. He was wearing a regimental tunic with brass buttons and gold epaulets, like the guy downstairs. But this tunic was white. He was hatless, his hair cropped close to his head: He looked at me without expression.

Lehman said, "That will be fine, Brutus. I'll call if I need you." The black man nodded, about-faced, and marched out. Lehman took the champagne from the ice bucket and poured some into his glass, carefully, a little at a time, letting the bubbles settle. The champagne was Taittinger Blanc de Blancs. When he had filled his glass he took a mouthful, and closed his eyes and tipped his head back and let the wine trickle down his throat. When he had swallowed he opened his eyes and looked at me and said, "Ah, nectar of the gods."

"Actually that's a tautology," I said.

"Excuse me?" Lehman said.

"Nectar is the drink of the gods, no need to say nectar of the gods. It's like saying ambrosia of the gods. Better simply to say, `Ah, nectar.' "

Lehman looked at Gretchen Coolidge. "This gentleman says he is from Tony Marcus," she said. "He told Virgil that Mr. Marcus told him you would, ah, fix him up."

"You an English teacher, pal?" Lehman drank more champagne.

"Pal," I said. "I always love guys that call me pal."

Out of the corner of my eye I saw the regimental beastie reappear near one of the palm trees, by the far edge of the pool.

Lehman stared at me.

Gretchen said, "Mr. Lehman is very busy, perhaps you could tell us exactly what you had in mind?"

"And why you think a recommendation from Tony Marcus means a piss hole in the snow to me?" Lehman said.

"Ah, the lilt of your imagery, Perry."

Lehman flicked a glance at the big black man.

"If Gunga Din assaults me, Perry, you'll never find out what I want and the place will get all messy."

He glanced at the Rolex watch on his left wrist.

"You got one minute from now," he said, "to tell me what you want." He drank the rest of the champagne, pulled the bottle from the bucket and carefully poured some more.

"I'm backtracking a kid named Ginger Buckey. Art Floyd picked her up at a massage parlor in Portland, Maine, and brought her down here and put her in your club. I want to know where she went from here."

"I don't know any Art Floyd, or Ginger whatever."

"And you, Ms. Coolidge?" I said.

"I'm afraid I can't help either."

I turned my head and looked at the black man. He stared at me without expression. "Et tu, Brutus," I said.

"Any other questions?" Lehman said.

"You haven't run across a woman named April Kyle, have you?"

Lehman shook his head. Gretchen shook her head. Brutus simply gazed at me.

"I thought this was a palace of pleasure," I aid. "I'm not having any fun here at all."

Lehman drank more of his champagne. "That's 'cause you're not asking for the right things, cowboy." He put the champagne glass down, picked up his cigar and puffed on it. I thought a duck might come down from the ceiling but nothing happened. "And because you're just talking, you follow my meaning? You're not giving me anything."

"What would you like?" I said.

Lehman shrugged and took the cigar out of üs mouth and looked at the end of it and smiled.

"Hey," he said. "I'm easy. How about your name, for instance? How about your connecion with Marcus? How 'bout why you want o know all this shit? Stuff like that." He had wother swig of the champagne and put the cigar back in his mouth and puffed on it and shifted in his seat and folded his hands on his small belly. Behind him against the far wall here was a bright red and blue parrot in a big gold cage. The parrot was eating a sunflower seed.

I fished a business card out of my shirt pocket and held it out. Gretchen took it and put it on Lehman's desk. He didn't look at it.

"It's a nice card," I said. "New design. Crossed blackjacks."

Lehman didn't change expression. "Name's Spenser," I said. "With an's. I'm a private detective and I'm doing two things. I'm looking for a kid named April Kyle, and I'm investigating the murder, in New York, of a kid named Ginger Buckey. I think they're connected."

"And why come to me?" Lehman said. "And what's this Tony Marcus shit."

"I came to you because I know Ginger Buckey ended up working downstairs, and the Tony Marcus"-I looked at Gretchen-"ah, doo doo, is because I figured his clout would get me in."

"Marcus got no clout with me," Lehman said. "I got the clout."

"Sure," I said. "But here I am."

"And how do you know that Ginger Fuckey or whatever her name is ended up here?"

"Buckey," I said. I winked at Gretchen Coolidge. "I have my sources," I said, Gretchen seemed frozen. She sat with her hands folded, her knees together, reading a spot about halfway between me and Lehman.

"I want to know," Lehman said.

"So here we are," I said. "I know something you want to know, and you know something I want to know."

"Maybe I'll just have Brutus shake it out of you," Lehman said.

"Maybe Brutus can't," I said.

I could hear Gretchen Coolidge breathing a little fast next to me. Lehman smoked his cigar and drank some champagne and smoked his cigar some more. There was a short furrow between his eyebrows. Probably trying to think. He looked at Brutus again. Immobile by the pool, still half shadowed by the palm fronds. He looked back at me.

"Okay," he said. "I can deal. Ginger Buckey worked for me for a while here and then later on at one of the other clubs, I don't remember which one, but Fetchin' Gretchen will be able to give you dates and places."

"I can check the files, Mr. Lehman," she said.

Lehman looked at me. "I keep telling Fetchin' she should get in the other end of the business." He nodded toward her hips. "She's sitting on a million bucks there."

Gretchen looked at her folded hands. "You'd pay a few bucks for a ride on that, wouldn't you, Spence?"

"Even better than pal," I said, "I like guys that call me Spence. Especially pimps and guys that sell dirty pictures."

Lehman snorted. "Shit," he said, "aren't you a touchy bastard." He looked at his champagne glass. It was empty. He said, "Wanna pour me a little more, sweets."

Gretchen stopped looking at her hands and stood up and got the bottle and poured. Lehman said, "I gave you what I had, let's hear yours."

"Art Floyd," I said.

"Sleazy little Ivy League prick," Lehman said.

Gretchen finished filling the glass and sat down. Lehman drank some.

"How'd you find Artie?" Lehman said.

"Usual way," I said. "I asked people, they told me."

"What's your connection with Marcus?"

"I know him, I talked with him. He doesn't like you."

Lehman laughed, "Tough shit for him."

"He said you were wired."

"He was right," Lehman said. "Connected, solid. Keep it in mind."

"Floyd told me he was connected too," I said.

Lehman laughed. "Yeah, he's connected all right. To me. I'm his fucking connection." He drank more champagne. He wasn't sipping anymore. "Connected." Lehman laughed again. "What a hot shit." He shook his head. He emptied the champagne glass and gestured at Gretchen. She poured out the rest of the bottle. Lehman saw the bottle was empty. He nodded at Brutus.

"We got anything else to talk about?" he said.

"Not this minute," I said. "But maybe we could get together again soon. I'd like to get your philosophy on things."

Lehman's face had a slight flush beneath the deep tan.

"If it's for sale buy it," he said. "If it's female fuck it. That's my philosophy, pal."

"Perhaps I should take Mr. Spenser to my office," Gretchen said, "and help him find out where Miss Buckey went."

Brutus appeared with a new bottle of champagne and put it in the ice bucket.

"Pour me a little more nectar, Miss Efficient Sufficient," Lehman said. "Then you can go."

Gretchen poured his champagne. I stood.

"Remember," Lehman said. "Buy it or fuck it-sometimes both."

"Words to live by," I said. And followed Gretchen out.