Two Much!

12

The Gentleman Waittng in my outer officer was up to no good; I could tell it the minute I laid eyes on him. Gloria, with a now-you’re-in-for-it look, waved grandly at the fellow and said, “There’s a Mr. Volpinex here to see you, Mr. Dodge. He wanted either you or your brother Bart.”

Whoops. Mr. Volpinex had apparently been my age when he’d died, several thousand years ago, and in the depths of the pyramid been given this simulacrum of life. The ancient chemists had dyed his flesh a dark unhealthy tan, and painted his teeth with that cheap gloss white enamel used in rent-controlled apartments. His black suit was surely some sort of oil by-product, and so was his smile.

“I take it,” this thing said, extending its hand, “I am addressing Mr. Arthur Dodge?”

“That’s right” His hand was as dry as driftwood.

“I am Ernest Volpinex,” he said, and gave himself away. No real thirty-year-old would have reached into his vest pocket at that juncture and given me his card. So my first guess was right; he was the undead.

I took the card, but kept my eyes on its owner. “How do you do?”

“I am,” he said, with the smile of a bone-grinder, “the attorney for the Kerner estate.”

I sensed Gloria’s ears cocking like a collie’s at the phrase Kerner estate. Kerner had been the name of the girl two days ago, Bart was the person that girl had been looking for, and the word estate was well within Gloria’s vocabulary. “Why don’t we go into my office?” I said.

“Thank you very much.”

And so we entered the office. I gestured to my guest chair, but Volpinex took a moment instead to read the cards mounted on my wall, so I sat at my desk and leafed through the call memos. Wastebasket wastebasket wastebasket...

I had transferred to the incoming mail and had discovered, to my pleased surprise, an actual amended statement and supplemental check from All-Boro, when Volpinex falsely chuckled, turning to face me, and said, “Very amusing.”

“I keep them around to lighten my darker moments,” I said. “Do have a chair.”

“Thank you.”

I didn’t care for the way he made himself at home in that chair, settling in as though he’d just foreclosed on a mortgage I hadn’t known about. He said, “May I smoke?”

You can fry. “Certainly.”

He had a silver cigarette case and a black holder. The case was also a lighter at one end. If he hadn’t used those two magic names Bart and Kerner I would have considered him some sort of overdone buffoon; as it was I watched him with respect, if not admiration.

Satisfied at last with his cigarette, he said, “We’ve been neighbors, you know.”

What? “Have we?”

“You were staying for a while in Fair Harbor, and I’ve rented a place in Dunewood.”

“Ah.” Ah hah! With sudden conviction, I knew that this was my host at the party where I’d first met Liz. And wouldn’t he also be the fellow she was with last weekend, while I was Barting Betty? Which was why Liz had suddenly showed up on that part of the beach.

And to think she’d been putting me down for my connection with Candy.

“You were staying,” my saturnine friend continued, “with Mr. and Mrs. Ralph Minck, were you not?”

“That’s right,” I said.

“And so was your brother, known as Bart Would that stand for Bartholomew, by the way?”

“No, actually his name is Robert. We were named after two famous World War One flying aces, Arthur Powerton and Robert Godunkey. But because we’re twins and so on, I suppose the name just evolved into Bart.”

“Ah,” he said. “That’s probably why I haven’t been able to pick up much about him.”

I permitted myself to look just slightly outraged. “Pick up?”

“I have a passion for being fair,” he said, unruffled, smiling at me. “And I just don’t believe it’s possible to be fair if one isn’t thorough. Don’t you agree?”

“You’ve been checking up on my brother?”

“And yourself,” he assured me. “And your—” his gesture around at my office was condescending “—company. And even your hosts in Fair Harbor.”

“My hosts?” What in hell was he after?

“Ralph Minck,” he said. “Attorney, employed by a large firm downtown. Specialist in stock issue flotation and presentations to the SEC.”

And recently promoted to a level where he could bring his paper work home. I said, “I don’t quite follow what you’re doing, Mr...”

“Volpinex. I believe I gave you my card.”

“Yes, you did. Now what do you want me to give you?”

“Quite simply,” he said, “your assurance that neither your brother nor yourself is a fortune hunter.”

I leaned forward over the desk, my forearms on my scattered mail. “Mr. Volpinex,” I said, “you should go to bed earlier. Watching all those thirties movies on the ‘Late Late Show,’ letting them seep into your brain at three and four in the morning, it just isn’t good for you.”

“Thank you for your concern,” he said, “but my own concern is exclusively with—”

“Another point,” I said, raising one forearm to point a finger upward. A phone bill, sticking to my damp skin, came up with me, midway between wrist and elbow. I made a sound, shook it loose, and said, “Another point. What if I’d been watching the same movies, night after night? Then I would be brainwashed into believing that, guilty or innocent, my only possible reaction to such a charge was to punch you in the mouth. Luckily, my sleeping habits have been healthier than that.”

“Very lucky,” he commented dryly. “I’m a karate expert.”

I gazed at him, utterly depressed. “Are you really?”

“Also kung fu. However, to return to the point, my own concern is exclusively with the Misses Eliz/sabeth Kerner. They are—”

“Excuse me, would you say that again?”

“Beg pardon?”

“The name part.”

“You mean, the Misses Eliz/sabeth Kerner?”

“That’s it. Thank you.” I gave him a courtly gesture. “Proceed.”

“Yes. Thank you. The young ladies in question are, as you well know, only recently orphaned. Their emotional condition is still unsettled. Were they alone and unprotected, who knows what advantage might be taken of them. Fortunately, however, they are not alone and unprotected.”

“They have me,” I said. “And my brother, of course.”

“Please don’t misunderstand, Mr. Dodge,” he said, “but you and your brother are hardly on a social or, may I say, economic level with the Kerners.”

“I thought this was a classless society.”

“Did you really?” He frowned at me, trying to understand that, then shrugged and shook his head. “Setting that to one side,” he said, with another gesture at my little office, “there is still the economic consideration.”

“Of course there is. And I am, as you can see, a legitimate businessman, with a thriving company.”

“Thriving? Your company might support one brother reasonably well, but two brothers would starve on it.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself. Nor would I have. I said, “My brother only recently entered the firm. In the fall we plan a major expansion.”

“Bravo, Mr. Dodge. With two of you hawking your wares door to door I’m sure you’ll do very well.”

There was just something about his style. Here he was, a cockroach in a three-piece suit, telling me I was lower class. Not only that, he was a skinny swarthy thirty-year-old, and he talked as pompously as a fat fifty gray-haired WASP banker. Did he really think he was a Grahame or a Frazier?

Then I got it. A sudden conviction entered my brain, and I pointed at the slimy bastard. “You’re after them yourself!”

“I beg your pardon?”

“One of them, I mean.” I used my pointing hand to snap my fingers, as an aid to thought. “Which one? Liz?”

His pinched-lemon face closed up even more. “I had suspected even before we met,” he said, “that you were the sort to misunderstand professional ethics and automatically think the worst of your fellow man. Your insinuation is beneath—”

“We know each other, Jack,” I told him. “We’re sisters under the skin and you know it. I’m not—”

The door opened and Gloria came in, with two Excedrin and a cup of water. An invaluable woman. As I took my medicine she said, “Charlie Hillerman’s outside.”

“Tell him I went to Alaska to take some Christmas card photographs. Reindeer fucking, that kind of thing.” Then my eye passed over my other unwelcome visitor, I suddenly remembered an odd incident from Charlie Hillerman’s past, and I said, “No, wait. Tell him I’ll be with him in just a minute.”

“And give him a heart attack? Commit your own murders.”

She left, and I went back to Volpinex. Now that I understood him, he didn’t worry me any more. “You didn’t come here,” I said, “to find out if I’m a fortune hunter. Or my brother, him, too, if he was. You came here to find out if we’re competition. And let me tell you something right now: we are. Both of us.”

The pursed look remained on his face, but he got his ass out of my chair. “In your childhood,” he said, looking down across the desk at me, “you should have heeded your elders’ advice, when they warned you against judging others by yourself. I assure you, I will do everything in my rather considerable power to rescue those young ladies from you and your brother.”

Straight out of a Victorian novel, but didn’t he know he was lying? His parents must have kept him locked away in a dusty attic throughout his childhood (and who could blame them), where he had bided his time with the works of Harriet Beecher Stowe and Mrs. Humphry Ward.

But melodrama is contagious. Leaping up, driven to my feet by the force of the scene I was playing, and just for that moment meaning every ridiculous word I said, I said, “Speaking for my brother, Mr. Volpinex, and believe me I think I know my brother’s heart, I’m telling you right now that all grasping attorneys and other vultures hovering over the Kerner inheritance had better watch their step pret-ty carefully, because Liz and Betty, in their hour of need and travail, have found their heroes at last! And good day to you, sir!”