Warren Trent said dryly, “I imagined you’d get to it.”
“It’s a fair proposition, particularly in the circumstances. Incidentally, I should tell you that I’m familiar with your current financial picture.”
“I’d have been surprised if you were not.”
“Let me summarize: Your personal holdings in this hotel amount to fifty-one per cent of all shares, giving you control.”
“Correct.”
“You refinanced the hotel in ’39—a four-million-dollar mortgage. Two million dollars of the loan is still outstanding and due in its entirety this coming Friday. If you fail to make repayment the mortgagees take over.”
“Correct again.”
“Four months ago you attempted to renew the mortgage. You were turned down. You offered the mortgagees better terms which were still rejected. Ever since you’ve been looking for other financing. You haven’t found it. In the short time remaining there is no chance whatever that you will.”
Warren Trent growled, “I can’t accept that. Plenty of refinancings are arranged at short notice.”
“Not this kind. And not with operating deficits as large as yours.”
Apart from a tightening of the lips, there was no rejoinder.
“My proposal,” Curtis O’Keefe said, “is a purchase price for this hotel of four million dollars. Of this, two millions will be obtained by renewing your present mortgage, which I assure you I shall have no difficulty in arranging.”
Warren Trent nodded, sourly aware of the other’s complacency.
“The balance will be a million dollars cash, enabling you to pay off your minority stockholders, and one million dollars in O’Keefe Hotels stock—a new issue to be arranged. Additionally, as a personal consideration you will have the privilege of retaining your apartment here for as long as you live, with my assurance that should rebuilding be undertaken we will make other and mutually satisfactory arrangements.”
Warren Trent sat motionless, his face neither revealing his thoughts nor his surprise. The terms were better than he had expected. If accepted, they would leave him personally with a million dollars, more or less—no small achievement with which to walk away from a lifetime’s work. And yet it would mean walking away; walking away from all he had built and cared about, or at least—he reflected grimly—that he thought he cared about until a moment or two ago.
“I should imagine,” O’Keefe said, with an attempt at joviality, “that living here, with no worries, and your man to take care of you, would be moderately endurable.”
There seemed no point in explaining that Aloysius Royce would shortly graduate from law school and presumably have other ideas affecting his own future. It was a reminder, though, that life in this eyrie, atop a hotel he no longer controlled, would be a lonely one.
Warren Trent said abruptly, “Suppose I refuse to sell. What are your plans?”
“I shall look for other property and build. Actually, I think you’ll have lost your hotel long before that happens. But even if you don’t, the competition we’ll provide will force you out of business.”
The tone was studiedly indifferent, but the mind behind it astute and calculating. The truth was: the O’Keefe Hotel Corporation wanted the St. Gregory very much, and urgently. The lack of an O’Keefe affiliate in New Orleans was like a missing tooth in the company’s otherwise solid bite on the traveling public. It had already entailed a costly loss of referral business to and from other cities—the sustaining oxygen of a successful hotel chain. Disquietingly too, competitive chains were exploiting the gap. The Sheraton-Charles was long established. Hilton, as well as having its airport inn, was building in the Vieux Carre. Hotel Corporation of America had the Royal Orleans.
Nor were the terms which Curtis O’Keefe had offered Warren Trent other than realistic. The St. Gregory mortgagees had already been sounded out by an O’Keefe emissary and were uncooperative. Their intention, it quickly became evident, was first to obtain control of the hotel and later hold out for a big killing. If the St. Gregory was to be bought reasonably, the crucial moment was now.
“How much time,” Warren Trent asked, “are you willing to allow me?”
“I’d prefer your answer at once.”
“I’m not prepared to give it.”
“Very well.” O’Keefe considered. “I’ve an appointment in Naples, Saturday. I’d like to leave here no later than Thursday night. Suppose we set a deadline of noon Thursday.”
“That’s less than forty-eight hours!”
“I see no reason to wait longer.”
Obstinacy inclined Warren Trent to hold out for more time. Reason reminded him: he would merely advance by a day the Friday deadline he already faced. He conceded, “I suppose if you insist …”
“Splendid!” Smiling expansively, O’Keefe pushed back his chair and rose, nodding to Dodo who had been watching Warren Trent with an expression close to sympathy. “It’s time for us to go, my dear. Warren, we’ve enjoyed your hospitality.” Waiting another day and a half, he decided, was merely a minor nuisance. After all, there could be no doubt of the eventual result.
At the outer doorway Dodo turned her wide blue eyes upon her host. “Thanks a lot, Mr. Trent.”
He took her hand and bowed over it. “I don’t recall when these old rooms have been more graced.”
O’Keefe glanced sharply sideways, suspecting the compliment’s sincerity, then realized it was genuinely meant. That was another strange thing about Dodo: a rapport she achieved at times, as if instinctively, with the most unlikely people.
In the corridor, her fingers resting lightly on his arm, he felt his own senses quicken.
But before anything else, he reminded himself, he must pray to God, giving appropriate thanks for the way the evening had gone.
14
“There’s something downright exciting,” Peter McDermott observed, “about a girl fumbling in her handbag for the key to her apartment.”
“It’s a dual symbol,” Christine said, still searching. “The apartment shows woman’s independence, but losing the key proves she’s still feminine. Here!—I’ve found it.”
“Hang on!” Peter took Christine’s shoulders, then kissed her. It was a long kiss and in course of it his arms moved, holding her tightly.
At length, a shade breathlessly, she said, “My rent’s paid up. If we are going to do this, it might as well be in private.”
Taking the key, Peter opened the apartment door.
Christine put her bag on a side table and subsided into a deep settee. With relief she eased her feet from the constriction of her patent-leather pumps.
He sat beside her. “Cigarette?”
“Yes, please.”
Peter held a match flame for them both.
He had a sense of elation and lightheadedness; an awareness of the here and now. It included a conviction that what was logical between them could happen if he chose to make it.
“This is nice,” Christine said. “Just sitting, talking.”
He took her hand. “We’re not talking.”
“Then let’s.”
“Talking wasn’t exactly …”
“I know. But there’s a question of where we’re going, and if, and why.”
“Couldn’t we just spin the wheel …”
“If we did, there’d be no gamble. Just a certainty.” She stopped, considering. “What happened just now was for the second time, and there was some chemistry involved.”
“Chemically, I thought we were doing fine.”
“So in the course of things there’d be a natural progression.”
“I’m not only with you; I’m ahead.”
“In bed, I imagine.”
He said dreamily, “I’ve taken the left side—as you face the headboard.”
“I’ve a disappointment for you.”
“Don’t tell me! I’ll guess. You forgot to brush your teeth. Never mind, I’ll wait.”
She laughed. “You’re hard to talk …?
??
“Talking wasn’t exactly …”
“That’s where we started.”
Peter leaned back and blew a smoke ring. He followed it with a second and a third.
“I’ve always wanted to do that,” Christine said. “I never could.”
He asked, “What kind of disappointment?”
“A notion. That if what could happen … happens, it ought to mean something for both of us.”
“And would it for you?”
“It could, I think. I’m not sure.” She was even less sure of her own reaction to what might come next.
He stubbed out his cigarette, then took Christine’s and did the same. As he clasped her hands she felt her assurance crumble.
“We need to get to know each other.” His eyes searched her face. “Words aren’t always the best way.”
His arms reached out and she came to him, at first pliantly, then with mounting, fierce excitement. Her lips formed eager, incoherent sounds and discretion fled, the reservations of a moment earlier dissolved. Trembling, and to the pounding of her heart, she told herself: whatever was to happen must take its course; neither doubt nor reasoning would divert it now. She could hear Peter’s quickened breathing. She closed her eyes.
A pause. Then, unexpectedly, they were no longer close together.
“Sometimes,” Peter said, “there are things you remember. They crop up at the damnedest times.” His arms went around her, but now more tenderly. He whispered, “You were right. Let’s give it time.”
She felt herself kissed gently, then heard footsteps recede. She heard the unlatching of the outer door and, a moment later, its closing.
She opened her eyes. “Peter dearest,” she breathed. “There’s no need to go. Please don’t go!”
But there was only silence and, from outside, the faint whirr of a descending elevator.
15
A few minutes only remained of Tuesday.
In a Bourbon Street strip joint the big-hipped blonde leaned closer to her male companion, one hand resting on his thigh, the fingers of the other fondling the base of his neck. “Sure,” she said. “Sure I want to go to bed with you, honey.”
Stan somebody, he had said he was, from a hick town in Iowa she had never heard of. And if he breathes at me any more, she thought, I’ll puke. That’s not bad breath in his mouth; it’s a direct line from a sewer.
“Wadda we waitin’ for, then?” the man asked thickly. He took her hand, moving it higher on the inside of his thigh. “I got something special for you there, baby.”
She thought contemptuously: they were all the same, the loud-mouth chawbacons who came here—convinced that what they had between their legs was something exceptional which women panted for, and as irrationally proud as if they had grown it themselves like a prize cucumber. Probably, if put to a real white-hot test, this one would wind up incapable and whimpering, like others. But she had no intention of finding out. God!—that stinking breath.
A few feet from their table the discordant jazz combo, too inexpert to get work at one of the better Bourbon Street places like the Famous Door or Paddock, was raggedly finishing a number. It had been danced—if you chose to call untutored shuffling a dance—by one Jane Mansfield. (A Bourbon Street gimmick was to take the name of a celebrated performer, misspell it slightly, and allocate it to an unknown with the hope that the public passing by might mistake it for the real thing.)
“Listen,” the man from Iowa said impatiently, “whyn’t we blow?”
“I already told you, sugar. I Work here. I can’t leave yet. I got my act to do.”
“Piss on your act!”
“Now, honey, that’s not nice.” As if with sudden inspiration, the hippy blonde said, “What hotel you staying at?”
“St. Gregory.”
“That’s not far from here.”
“Can have your pants off in five minutes.”
She chided: “Won’t I get a drink first?”
“You bet you will! Let’s go!”
“Wait, Stanley darling! I’ve an idea.”
The lines were going exactly right, she thought, like a smoothly running playlet. And why not? It was the thousandth performance, give or take a few hundred either way. For the past hour and a half Stan whoever-he-was from somewhere had docilely followed the tired old routine: the first drink—a try-on at four times the price he would have paid in an honest bar. Then the waiter had brought her over to join him. They had been served a succession of drinks, though, like the other girls who worked on bar commission, she had had cold tea instead of cheap whiskey which the customers got. And later she had tipped off the waiter to hustle the full treatment—a split bottle of domestic champagne for which the bill, though Stanley Sucker didn’t know it yet, would be forty dollars—and just let him try to get out without paying!
So all that remained was to ditch him, though maybe in doing so—if the lines kept going right—she could earn another small commission. After all, she was entitled to some sort of bonus for enduring that stinking breath.
He was asking, “Wha’ idea, baby?”
“Leave me your hotel key. You can get another at the desk; they always have spares. Soon as I’m through here I’ll come and join you.” She squeezed where he had placed her hand. “You just make sure you’re ready for me.”
“I’ll be ready.”
“All right, then. Give me the key.”
It was in his hand. But held tightly.
He said doubtfully, “Hey, you sure you’ll …”
“Honey, I promise I’ll fly.” Her fingers moved again. The sickening slob would probably wet his pants in a minute. “After all, Stan, what girl wouldn’t?”
He pressed the key upon her.
Before he could change his mind she had left the table. The waiter would handle the rest, helped by a muscle man if Bad Breath made trouble about the bill. He probably wouldn’t, though; just as he wouldn’t come back. The suckers never did.
She wondered how long he would lie hopefully awake in his hotel room, and how long it would take him to realize she wasn’t coming, and never would, even if he stayed there the rest of his useless life.
Some two hours later, at the end of a day as dreary as most—though at least, she consoled herself, a little more productive—the big-hipped blonde sold the key for ten dollars.
The buyer was Keycase Milne.
WEDNESDAY
1
As the first gray streaks of a new dawn filtered tenuously above New Orleans, Keycase—sitting on the bed of his room at the St. Gregory—was refreshed, alert, and ready for work.
Through the previous afternoon and early evening he had slept soundly. Then he had made an excursion from the hotel, returning at two A.M. For an hour and a half he had slept again, waking promptly at the time he intended. Getting up, he shaved, showered, and at the end turned the shower control to cold. The icy rivulets set his body, first tingling, then glowing as he toweled himself vigorously.
One of his rituals before a professional foray was to put on fresh underwear and a clean, starched shirt. Now he could feel the pleasant crispness of the linen, supplementing the fine edge of tension to which he had honed himself. If momentarily a brief, uneasy doubt obtruded—a shadow of fear concerning the awful possibility of being sent down for fifteen years if he was caught once more—he dismissed it summarily.
Much more satisfying was the smoothness with which his preparations had gone.
Since arriving yesterday he had enlarged his collection of hotel keys from three to five.
One of the extra two keys had been obtained last evening in the simplest way possible—by asking for it at the hotel front desk. His own room number was 830. He had asked for the key of 803.
Before doing so he had taken some elementary precautions. He had made sure that an 803 key was in the rack, and that the slot beneath it contained no mail or messages. If there had been, he would have waited. When handing over mail or messages, desk clerks had a habit of
asking key claimants for their names. As it was, he had loitered until the desk was busy, then joined a line of several other guests. He was handed the key without question. If there had been any awkwardness, he would have given the believable explanation that he had confused the number with his own.
The ease of it all, he told himself, was a good omen. Later today—making sure that different clerks were on duty—he would get the keys of 380 and 930 the same way.
A second bet had paid off too. Two nights earlier, through a reliable contact, he had made certain arrangements with a Bourbon Street B-girl. It was she who had provided the fifth key, with a promise of more to come.
Only the rail terminal—after a tedious vigil covering several train departures—had failed to yield result. The same thing had happened on other occasions elsewhere, and Keycase decided to profit from experience. Train travelers were obviously more conservative than air passengers and perhaps for that reason took greater care with hotel keys. So in future he would eliminate railway terminals from his plans.
He checked his watch. There was no longer any cause to delay, even though he was aware of a curious reluctance to stir from the bed where he was sitting. But, overcoming it, he made his last two preparations.
In the bathroom he had already poured a third of a tumbler of Scotch. Going in, he gargled with the whiskey thoroughly, though drinking none, and eventually spitting it out into the wash basin.
Next he took a folded newspaper—an early edition of today’s Times-Picayune, bought last night—and placed it under his arm.
Finally, checking his pockets where his collection of keys was disposed systematically, he let himself out of the room.
His crepe-soled shoes were silent on the service stairs. He went two floors down to the sixth, moving easily, not hurrying. Entering the sixth-floor corridor he managed to take a swift, comprehensive look in both directions, though—in case he should be observed—without appearing to.