Stick Read online

  “Yeah, what do they do? What’s the product?”

  “Something for the military. I guess it’s one of those top-secret deals, you know . . .”

  Edgar said, “Musta heard about a big government contract, what it sounds like. That’s the way you make it, get the inside poop. You in?”

  “You better believe it,” Stick said.

  Harvey said, “I thought you never play the market.”

  “I do now,” Stick said.

  “How’d you make a buy on Saturday?”

  “Well, I haven’t actually done it yet, no. But I called this friend of mine, bartender, plays the market all the time. He’ll take care of it first thing Monday. I told him buy all he can. This mother’s gonna fly.”

  Edgar said, “Going from seventeen to fifty? That’s—”

  “Thirty-three hundred dollars a hundred,” Harvey said. “About a three-hundred-percent kick,” Harvey said. “I don’t know, sounds fishy.”

  Stick edged out on unfamiliar ground. He said, “Not when you take into account the P-E ratio.” Harvey was staring at him hard. “Figure twenty to one,” Stick told him, eye to eye. “Based on”—shit, he dug in his mind for the words—”you know, what they’re making, the profit.”

  “Earnings per share,” Harvey said.

  “That’s what I said. See, forecasted up to like three and a quarter. So what’s that tell you?”

  “Jeez,” Edgar said. “What’s the stock?”

  “We’re back to procedure,” Stick said. Christ, they were still bouncing relentlessly through Alley Cat. “I gotta go.” He started off.

  “Whatta you mean you gotta go?” Harvey said. “Wait a minute.”

  “I got to move around. I stand in one place too long—I got a bad knee, an old basketball injury starts acting up.”

  “We can walk with you,” Harvey said. “Where you want to go? How about the men’s locker room? I think we can promote us a cup a coffee in there.”

  “I was thinking of going for a drive,” Stick said. “Mr. and Mis Stam oughta be a while yet.”

  Harvey said, “Wait now, you can never be sure; they’re liable to come out any minute. Let’s talk about this procedure idea, how you see it might work. Say just for this stock you mentioned.”

  “The seventeen-dollar one going up to fifty?”

  “That one,” Edgar said.

  “Only way I see it,” Stick said, “is cash up front. Two bills gets you the name of the stock. Monday the price goes up to three, and if I see the stock take off right away the price might go up even higher. How’s that sound to you fellas?”

  Harvey said, “You’re crazy, or you think we are.”

  Stick said, “Then forget I mentioned it. You want to take your money home to bed with you, Harve, that’s up to you. I personally believe money should never sleep . . .”

  One a.m. the drivers brought their cars out of darkness now to gleam in lamplight, creeping them up the circular drive to the front entrance. One-twenty, Barry appeared like a playboy with a girl on each arm, his wife and Kyle. Stick got out of the car, came around.

  But Barry wasn’t holding them; they were guiding him along, keeping him in check. Barry was drunk, glassy-eyed. His mouth looked wet. He did not appear to Stick to be a fun-loving drunk. He looked, right now, like a high school kid ready to fight. He pulled his arm free of Diane’s grasp, roughly. She smoothed the gauzy, peach-colored material of her dress, layers of it, touched her pearls. Barry pulled open the front passenger-side door and said to Stick for all to hear, “Get inna car. I’m gonna drive.”

  Stick tried an easy smile. “You sure you want to?”

  “Get inna fucking car, will you?”

  Diane seemed paler than usual, face drawn. She turned as though to walk off, saw the dressed-up club members standing on the steps watching and turned back to the car again, not knowing where to look. Kyle, still holding Barry’s arm, said, “If you drive, buddy, I walk.”

  Barry said, “Buddy? What’s this buddy shit?”

  “I mean it,” Kyle said.

  “Then walk, for Christ sake. You want to walk, walk.”

  Stick touched his boss’s arm. “Mr. Stam?” Still pleasant. “I’m the one with the driving suit on.”

  Barry stared up at him with his boozy eyes, pink shirt open, necktie gone. He said, “Stick? Shit, I know why they call you that. Got nothing to do with Stickley, huh?” Barry getting a shrewd-drunk look now, crafty eyes. “You stick people up is why they call you Stick. Isn’t that right?”

  Stick made a gun of his hand, pointing it at Barry, saying, “Yes, sir, you got it right,” crowding him into the front-seat opening, staying close, jamming him, so that Barry was forced to get in, Stick’s head and shoulders following. Now with his back filling the doorway, in there with Barry, away from everyone outside watching, Stick said, “You little fucker, you say another word I’ll punch you into the backseat. I drive. You can fire me tomorrow, but tonight I drive. You got it?” He waited. Barry stared straight ahead, rigid. His face bore a strained expression now that made his nose appear larger, vulnerable. But he didn’t move or make a sound.

  Stick came out of the car. He opened the rear door, turned to Diane and Kyle and said, “Ladies . . .”

  * * *

  Barry’s expression had turned to stone. He refused to speak. He walked with exaggerated care along the hallway, brushing the wall with his shoulder, turned into his bedroom and fell across the bed. Stick looked in from the hall at Barry in his brown-canopied sultan’s bed, a royal tent, the sides gathered up with gold roping. The poor little guy.

  He waited for Diane to come out. “I’ll undress him if you want. Put him under the covers . . . tuck him in.”

  She said, “He’ll be all right,” not smiling but calm once more, brown eyes impassive. “But if you would, please, go down to the boat . . .” She hesitated. “I want to be sure the key isn’t there.”

  “I’ll be glad to.”

  “If you don’t mind.” The voice so quiet and soft.

  Not wanting to leave he wondered what would make her smile. Or show any kind of emotion. Her eyes seemed to daydream, looking at him and giving him the feeling he was in the dream. Letting him look at her . . . at the pearls lying against her skin, lips slightly parted and the eyes again, reflecting . . . what?

  “Is there anything else I can do?”

  Hesitant. “I don’t think so . . .”

  “Can I get you something?” He said it knowing it made little sense. Yet she seemed to accept it without question. He felt that if he took her by the hand and led her through the house and out the garage, to his room, she would follow along without a word, without making a sound. Her gaze lulled him.

  “Well, if you need me . . .”

  He turned to go and she said, “I’ll be up for a little while.”

  He paused. He nodded. He couldn’t think of anything else to say. “All right . . .”

  She turned the light off in Barry’s room, looked at him once more and walked past him and across the hall to a bedroom door, pushed it open and went in. A slanting patch of light appeared on the hall floor. The door closed. He didn’t hear the lock click. A narrow line of light remained on the polished marble. It took him several moments to move away.

  Kyle was waiting on the terrace, holding her arms—her brown arms and shoulders bare in the blue cotton shift—looking up at the sky. She turned as Stick approached, coming down the steps.

  “Is he all right?”

  “He passed out.”

  “What did you say to him in the car?”

  The pool lay behind her in light green illumination, darkness beyond.

  “I told him to behave himself.”

  She narrowed her eyes—for fun, it didn’t matter. “I’ll bet.”

  “You want, I’ll walk you home.”

  “Fine.” And started off, as though she was expecting it: crossed the patio toward the walk that led to the tennis court, Kyle telling him Barry wa
s a terrible drinker and knew it and didn’t get smashed very often. Booze wasn’t that important to him.

  “Like making money,” Stick said.

  “Barry’s last day on earth he’ll spend on the phone with his broker,” Kyle said, “but not because he wants to make more money . . .”

  “He just likes to talk on the phone.”

  “No—he gets his thrill playing with the money, risking it. He’s got more than he’ll ever be able to spend, but when he plays the market and wins, then he’s outsmarted the game and that’s his satisfaction, his accomplishment.”

  “But if he loses,” Stick said, “what’s he out? It’s not like betting the farm. Is it?”

  She said, with realization, “I should be telling you about taking risks . . .”

  Stick said, “Oh,” with his own sense of realization, that Barry had been talking about him. “I forgot I’m one of his exhibits now.”

  “You said you sold cars . . .”

  “Used ones.”

  “You didn’t mention you stole them first, and you were about to take off in Barry’s Rolls when he came out and caught you.”

  “Is that how he tells it? He caught me? No, I helped him out, that’s all, and he took a liking to me.”

  “I’m never sure when you’re serious.” They walked along the white squares of cement. “You want to know what he said?” Her tone changed to a mild street-sound imitation of Barry. “Jesus Christ, I got Aurora on the boat and Diane pacing up and down on the terrace and I got a new driver who was in prison for armed robbery and I don’t know which one of my cars he’s gonna steal . . . This was before we left for the club, waiting for Diane. She takes longer to get dressed than anyone I know.”

  “He say prison?”

  “No, you’re right. He said, in the slammer. Then at dinner he started in again, about you. Diane seemed interested and kept him going . . .”

  “She did?”

  “But you don’t have to urge Barry when he’s on. Which is almost all the time. The way he was drinking, I think it was for dramatic effect, so I’d think he’s pining for Aurora. Or he wanted Diane to ask him what was wrong and he could say, oh, nothing. But she didn’t. So he talked about you—you’re right, with all the words—because he can get into the part and sound tough.”

  “He sounds like the Bowery Boys at Miami Beach,” Stick said. “Why’s he do that?”

  They had crossed the tennis court and were following the walk that led to the front of the guest house. He saw the pale length of the cabin cruiser, windows dark—wondering if Diane wanted him to find somebody aboard and come running back to tell. Or if she wanted him to report back, tell her no, the key wasn’t in the ignition. But no hired skipper was going to leave the key and she’d know that.

  Kyle was saying that maybe Barry acted tough because he was insecure. “Maybe as a kid he was a little smartass and got beat up all the time. Barry loves to start fights in bars.”

  “He does?”

  “Yes, but only when he’s sure somebody’ll stop it. You know, before they come to blows. Barry’s got a problem.”

  They were coming to her front steps now.

  Stick said, “Well, I’ve done some dumb things, I guess, trying to do it the hard way, but I haven’t been in a fistfight since about the eighth grade.”

  “You sound just like my brother.”

  “You kidding? The Fed?”

  She turned to him in the amber glow of the light by the door. “Barry tell you that?”

  “Cornell. He says he’d change color for you.”

  “God, he’s funny. I wish he were a client, instead of most of the ones I have. I could listen to him all day.” She meant it, too, her eyes smiling. “No, you remind me of my other brother, the stockbroker. He used to pitch for the Red Sox.”

  “Jim McLaren, that’s your brother?”

  “Ah, you’re a baseball fan.”

  “Sure, I used to watch him, when the Sox came to Detroit. He was always accused of throwing spitters. Right?”

  “Or, as they say, doctoring the ball with a foreign substance. Jim used to say sweat isn’t foreign, it’s mine.”

  “What’d he do on a cold day?”

  “Well, his pitch, he had a forkball and a gorgeous slider that broke down and in on a right-handed batter. Otherwise, Fenway Park, he could’ve gotten killed.”

  “That short left-field porch,” Stick said. “So Jim McLaren’s your brother, that’s something. I always admired his nerve—the skinny southpaw with the high leg-kick. He isn’t very big, is he?”

  “About your size. He’s heavier now.”

  “That was about, what, ten years ago.”

  “ ‘Seventy-one was his last year. I was going to school in Boston, so I got to see him all the time.”

  “Lemme guess—Harvard Business School.”

  “Nope, I was at Boston U. In sociology, then I switched to speech therapy. But I left school, decided not to fight it and got a job as a market analyst. My dad’s a stockbroker, he was pushing me toward Wall Street as far back as I can remember.”

  “You don’t have to have a special degree?”

  “No . . . You can’t be dumb, but just selling stock you’re usually no more than an order-taker anyway. You learn the words. I sold options for a few years, then got into commodities . . .”

  “I don’t understand any of that.”

  “Well, in that end of the market the next stop’s Las Vegas. I got out of trading, came down to Palm Beach, the big bucks, and opened an office as an investment counselor. Anyway, you remind me a lot of Jim.

  “When he’s throwing spitters or selling stock?”

  “You sound like him. But I didn’t think of it till this evening, when Barry was talking about you. That’s why I remembered you, I guess.”

  “You have fun at the club?”

  “It was all right. Except for the music. As soon as I heard them swing into Alley Cat, God . . .”

  Stick said, “Yeah? . . .”

  “I was going to get up and leave. I can’t stand that insipid goddamn song.”

  Stick said, “How about Climb Every Mountain and You Light Up My Life?”

  She began to smile, those knowing eyes looking right at him. “How about a nightcap? We’ve got scotch, champagne and Gatorade.”

  “You drink with the help?”

  “I’m help, too, aren’t I?”

  He said, “I have to do something for Mrs. Stam. How about if I come right back?”

  Her expression didn’t change; though the amused look in her eyes seemed different somehow. She said, “Well, if you make it, fine.”

  She went inside, leaving it up to him.

  14

  HE WASN’T SURE IF HE should sneak aboard the docked cruiser or make noise. Either way he could scare hell out of the poor girl, probably waiting below. A Prisoner of Love. Perry Como, 1950-something. His mom’s favorite. He had the feeling, ducking into the main cabin, even the guy’s boat was bigger than any house he’d ever lived in. There was a light on below . . . down a short ladder . . . he felt his way along and came to a stateroom with—he couldn’t believe it—a double bed. The spread—a blue, red and yellow rainbow design— was mussed, the rainbow pillows pulled out from beneath the cover. He heard a noise, a pumping action, water running . . .

  The girl came into the room with her head down. She wore a man’s turtleneck sweater and was holding the bottom of it with her wrists, bunched up, while she buttoned the waist of her white shorts, rings on all her fingers.

  Stick said, “Aurora?”

  She jumped with a strangled sound, drawing back.

  “It’s okay. I’m a friend.”

  “Who are you?” All eyes.

  “I work for Barry.”

  “Where is he?” About to cry, she seemed so frightened. “Did he tell you to get me?”

  “He’s in bed.”

  “In bed!”

  “Shhhh. You don’t want to wake up his wife.”

/>   “The hell I don’t! You know how long I’ve been on this fucking boat?” She had the eyes of a cat now, a mean one.

  “I know. I dropped him off yesterday to meet you. I’m his chauffeur.”

  “You’re not Cecil.”

  “I wouldn’t want to be. I’m the new one.”

  She seemed suspicious, but got over it right away. “Good. You can drive me home. That son of a bitch, I’m telling you . . .”

  “I’m supposed to see if the key’s here.”

  “What key?”

  Was she scowling or pouting? Her lower lip stuck out.

  “The one you start the boat with. Is it here?”

  “How would I know? I don’t want you to drive me home in this. I don’t want to ever see this fucking boat again as long as I live. I mean in a car.”

  “I don’t think I can do that.”

  “Why not?”

  “I mean unless he tells me.”

  “You’re driving me home,” Aurora said. “I don’t give a shit what Barry says. All I do is wait for him.”

  “You too, huh?”

  She didn’t hear him. Aurora was pulling the sweater up over her head and he was staring at her bare breasts. Two round red eyes staring back at him as she fought the sweater, trying to work the snug neck past her chin, her breasts swaying, bouncing up and down, big ones. When the sweater came off it left her hair sticking out in all directions. She was the wild woman of Bal Harbour now, the cat woman of Biscayne Bay.

  “You too, huh?”

  “What?”

  “You said all you do is wait.”

  “Wait? You don’t even know.”

  “Yes, I do,” Stick said. He couldn’t take his eyes off her breasts as she smoothed her hair now, not looking at him. They were beauties. They were show breasts. “I wait around till he wants to go out, then we go someplace and I have to wait around again, hours sometimes.”

  “The big shit,” Aurora said. “Why does he have to be so mean?”

  “Well, that’s what he is,” Stick said, “a meany. I’ll tell you something though. I’d never make you wait.” No, sir.

  “You wouldn’t?” She looked at him, caught him staring, hypnotized, but didn’t seem to mind. “I’ve been all by myself since last night. Not anybody came to see me.” She was unbuttoning the shorts now, pushed them down, stepped out with one foot and kicked them across the bed with the other. She stood with hands on hips in narrow bikini panties, looking around the stateroom. “I don’t know where I put my clothes.”