The Glass Inferno

CHAPTER 16

One of the few good things about being poverty-stricken, Harlee Claiborne thought, was that when it came to going out for the evening, it reduced the time you took to decide what to wear. For a suit, the choice was simple-it was either the blue or the brown. For shirts and accessories, the choice was almost as easy. He opened the top drawer of his bureau and inspected the contents within.

Three drip-dry shirts, two of them with French cuffs, and two neckties, fashionably wide. Again, one blue and one brown, both with the paisley patterns he preferred.

He picked out one of the shirts and the brown tie and laid them out on the bed. Harlee Claiborne-“gentleman,” as he liked to think of himself-was about to go to work. He had already showered and applied a trace of cologne to his face, and then a drop or two on his wrists.

His military brushes were on the top of the bureau, neatly clipped in their leather traveling case, and he took them out to run through his hair. He was in his late fifties and wore his longish, white hair in the latest style. It was one of his few conceits, partly because his wife of many years ago had always been fond of it. Pragmatically, he realized, it was one of his more important assets, along with a naturally lean figure that had never seen either a handball or a tennis court but somehow suggested that he was a former expert at one or the other.

Another asset, he was frank to admit, was a faintly British mid-Atlantic accent. He had acquired it as a commercial agent in the Bahamas years ago and when he discovered how charming women considered it to be, he had cultivated it assiduously.

Along with his appearance-that of an aging, handsome gentleman in the pink of condition-his carefully modulated, accented voice had been of inestimable value in his business: that of meeting and subsequently conning middle-aged and lonely ladies of affluence. He didn’t consider himself as either a fake or a predator but more as an actor whose stint on stage might last several weeks or several months and who invariably gave value for value received. He had once even gone so far as to marry one of his ladies some ten years before, a delightful woman who had inherited a printing and engraving shop.

He had managed it for several years, even learning the intricacies of the technology . , before being forced into bankruptcy through no fault of his own.

Adele had died soon after, but the knowledge acquired at the shop had stood him in good stead when the memory of her had faded and he had gravitated back to the company of lonely but well-off matrons. It was the trade which God had apparently chosen him and he no longer debated the morality of it with himself. He prided himself on his charm-and on the interest he could drum up in an otherwise useless stock certificate. For years he had favored lumber stocks but more recently he had switched to those dealing in metals, especially uranium.

But whichever they were, all of his certificates were works of art.

He lit a cigarette from the stiff burning butt in the ashtray and pulled open the bureau drawer just below the one that held his shirts.

Its only contents were a thick kraft envelope containing the best examples of his work to date. He opened the envelope and gently pulled out the certificates, inspecting the engraving critically. The corporate seal impressed on gold foil in the left-hand corner was a masterpiece; he’d hand-cast the die for the seal himself. United Power Metals. It was impressive and if one were to go so far as to check, there even was such a corporation in California. The ambiguous title was what had attracted him, though the company in question dealt in purified alkali metals such as sodium and calcium, a far cry in the Table of Elements from uranium. He carefully slipped the certificates back into the envelope and walked to the closet. His good blue suit, much sponged and pressed, was there on a heavy wooden hanger he had taken from the Hyatt Regency in San Francisco several months before.

The suit had been tailored for him in St. Paul years ago and the lapels were somewhat narrow by current fashion standards but the tailor had made sure he could carry the large kraft envelope in the suit coat without ruining its lines. After all, you didn’t go to dinner lugging along a brief case. The tailor had been a genuine craftsman; it had been a pity to have to leave St. Paul so soon after the suit had been delivered, but it would have been a mere matter of hours before the tailor discovered that his credit card had lapsed the year before.

Computers had definitely made his life more difficult, even the primitive ones back then.

He would be leaving the Glass House soon, too, he thought; he was behind in his rent and the business office was getting a bit stiff in its demands. The long weekend would probably see it, unless he was exceptionally lucky or could persuade Lisolette to be of some help.

He put on the trousers, following it with the coat, slipped the envelope into place, then swore to himself when he realized he had dribbled ashes onto the lapel. He to)ok a clothes brush off its closet hook and began to scrub at the faint gray powder stains, in the process knocking off more of the hot ash from the cigarette dangling between his lips. A coal lit on some fluff on the closet floor and glowed brightly for a moment before he stomped it out. Coughing slightly, he returned to the bedroom and took another cigarette from the pack on the bureau. He would have to quit; at his age, he smoked entirely too much. Lisolette had chided him about that in her schoolmarmish way and for an instant she had sounded like an echo of his long dead wife who had constantly nagged him, saying, “Harlee, you’re rotting your lungs out with those things.” Later, he wondered if she had been present; she had been at it long before the Surgeon General’s warning.

In many respects, Lisolette reminded him of her.

Heavier, of course, but the same sparkling eyes, quick wit and broad, cultural interests. He had found her fascinating, from the start and there were times when he regretted his baser motives in seeking her out. But one had to live and the nile of the world was still eat or be eaten. He knew from the discreet inquiries he had made-granted his questioning of Jernigan tonight had not been discreet; indeed it had been a serious mistake-that she had a teacher’s pension and a small inheritance. The amount of money that Lisolette would be willing to “invest” would probably be small, but he had no intentions of pushing it, of leaving her destitute or even badly inconvenienced.

That was one of the rules of the game: You never sheared the sheep so close it hurt. They seldom went to the police then, but he liked to think there was a touch of altruism to it as well.

He carefully knotted the blue paisley tie and he inserted the tie tac, looking in the mirror as he centered the latter.

He carefully shot his cuffs so the proper fraction of an inch was exposed, then stopped. Smoke. For a, moment he thought it was the butt of his earlier cigarette which he had failed to scrub completely out, then realized the odor was of burning cloth. He carefully inspected the rug on the floor, locking the nap this way and that, then thought, panic-stricken, that it might be coming from his other suit, the brown one. He ran to the closet, pulling the suit off the hanger and spreading it out on the bed for a quick inspection. Nothing. He returned to the closet where he had stomped out the coal earlier, searching through the slight whorls of dust and hair on the floor.

Then he spotted the faint haze of smoke. A spark from his cigarette had lodged in the seat of one of his good pair of slacks and smoldered to the point where there was a charred spot the size of a dime in the top of the inseam.

He pinched the fire out, momentarily feeling both disgusted and depressed. They were his best trousers, expensive double knits that he had purchased only a year before. He might,be able to mend them but he doubted it. That was the trouble with knits; it cost a lot to have them rewoven and, in any event, he had little enough money remaining as it was.

Well, there was no helping it now. No matter how fond he was of Lisolette, the burn in the trousers had underscored the fact that he was broke and tonight he would have to score. Perhaps, if she didn’t go for stocks, he could manage a small personal loan. “My dear, I’m terribly embarrassed but my financial man hasn’t forwarded my monthly check and … Lisolette would undoubtedly be softhearted enough to sit still for a loan.

All of his ladies had been very generous.