Silent Partner (4 page)

"No car," I said. "I walked." When his face stayed blank, I pantomimed walked with my fingers.

He turned to another valet, a short, skinny black kid, and whispered something. Both of them stared at me.

I looked up at the top of the gate, and saw gold letters: SKYLARK.

"This is Mrs. Blalock's home, right?"

No response.

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"The University party? Dr. Kruse?"

The bearded one shrugged and trotted over to a pearl-gray Cadillac. The black kid stepped forward. "Got an invitation, sir?"

"No. Is one necessary?"

"We-ell." He smiled, seemed to be thinking hard. "You'all got no car, you'all got no invitation."

"I didn't know it was necessary to bring either."

He clucked his tongue.

"Is a car necessary for collateral?" I asked.

The smile disappeared. "You'all walked?"

"That's right."

"Where d'you'all live?"

"Not far from here."

"Neighbor?"

"Invited guest. My name is Alex Delaware. Dr. Delaware."

"One minute." He walked to the box, picked up the telephone, and spoke. Replacing the receiver, he said "One minute" again, and ran to open the doors of a white stretch Lincoln.

I waited, looked around. Something brown and familiar caught my eye: a truly pathetic vehicle pushed to the side of the road, away from the others. Quarantined.

Easy to see why: a scabrous Chevy station wagon of senile vintage, rust-pocked and clotted with lumpy patches of primer. Its tires needed air; its rear compartment was crammed with rolled clothing, shoes, cardboard cartons, fast-food containers, and crumpled paper cups. On the tailgate window was a yellow, diamond-shaped sticker: MUTANTS ON BOARD.

I smiled, then noticed that the clunker had been positioned in a way that prevented exit. A score of cars would have to be moved in order to free it.

A fashionably thin middle-aged couple climbed out of the white Lincoln and were escorted to the gate by the bearded valet. He put the oversized key in the slot, punched a code, and one iron door swung open. Slipping through, I followed the couple onto a sloping drive paved with black bricks shaped like fish scales. As I walked past him, the valet said, "Hey," but without enthusiasm, and made no effort to stop me.

When the gate had closed after him, I pointed to the Chevy and said, "That brown station wagon—let me tell you something about it."

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He came up next to the wrought iron. "Yes? What?" "That car is owned by the richest guy at this party. Treat it well—he's been known to give huge tips."

He swiveled his head and stared at the station wagon. I began walking. When I looked back he was playing musical cars, creating a clearing around the Chevy.

A hundred yards past the gate the eucalyptus gave way to open skies above a golf course quality lawn trimmed to stubble. The grass was flanked by ramrod columns of barbered Italian cypress and beds of perennials. The outer reaches of the grounds had been bulldozed into hillocks and valleys. The highest of the mounds were at the farthest reaches of the property, capped by solitary black pines and California junipers pruned to look windswept. The fish-scale drive humped. From over the crest came

the sound of music—a string section playing something baroque. As I neared the top I saw a tall old man dressed in butler's livery walking toward me.

"Dr. Delaware, sir?" His accent fell somewhere between London and Boston; his features were soft, generous, and pouchy. His loose skin was the color of canned salmon. Tufts of cornsilk circled a sun-browned dome. A white carnation graced his buttonhole.

Jeeves, out of central casting.. "Yes?"

"I'm Ramey, Dr. Delaware, just coming to get you, sir. Please forgive the inconvenience, sir."

"No problem. I guess the valets aren't equipped to deal with pedestrians."

We stepped over the crest. My eye was drawn toward the horizon. Toward a dozen peaks of green copper tile roof, three stories of white stucco and green shutters, columned porticoes, balustered balconies and verandas, arched doors and fanlight windows. A monumental wedding cake surrounded by acres of green icing.

Formal gardens fronted the mansion: gravel paths, more cypress, a maze of boxwood hedges, limestone fountains, reflecting pools, hundreds of beds of roses so bright they seemed fluorescent. Partygoers clutching long-stemmed glasses strolled the paths and admired the plantings. Admired themselves in the mirrored water of the pools.

The butler and I walked in silence, kicking up gravel. The sun beat down, thick and warm as melting butter. In the shadow of the tallest fountain sat a philharmonic-sized group of grim, formally dressed musicians. Their conductor, a young, long-haired Asian, lifted his baton, and the players broke into dutiful Bach.

The strings were augmented by tinkling glass and a ground bass of conversation. To the left of the gardens a huge flagstone patio was filled with round white tables shaded by yellow canvas umbrellas. On each table was a centerpiece of tiger lilies, purple irises, and white carnations. A yellow-and-white striped tent, large enough to

house a circus, sheltered a long white-lacquered bar manned by a dozen elbow-greased bartenders. Three hundred or so people sat at the tables and drank. Half that amount crowded the bar. Waiters circulated with trays of drinks and canapes.

"Yes, sir. Can I get you a drink, sir?"

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"Soda water would be fine."

"Excuse me, sir." Ramey widened his stride, walked ahead of me, disappeared into the bar throng, and emerged moments later with a frosty glass and a yellow linen napkin. He handed them to me just as I reached the patio.

"Here you are, sir. Sorry again for the inconvenience."

"No problem. Thanks."

"Would you care for anything to eat, sjr?"

"Nothing right now."

He gave a small bow and walked off. I stood alone, sipping my soda, scanning the crowd for a friendly face.

The crowd, it soon became obvious, was divided into two discrete groups, a sociologic split that echoed the double-filed cars.

Center stage was dominated by the big rich, an assemblage of swans. Deeply tanned and loose-limbed in conservative haute couture, they greeted each other with cheek-pecks, laughed softly and discreetly, drank steadily and not so discreetly, and made no notice of the ethnically diverse bunch sitting off to the side.

The University people were the magpies, intense, watchful, brimming with nervous chatter.

They'd congregated, reflexively, into tight little cliques, talking behind their hands while darting their eyes. Some were conspicuously sleek in off-the-rack suits and special-occasion party dresses; others had made a point of dressing down. A few still gaped at their surroundings, but most were content to observe the rituals of the swans with a mixture of raw hunger and analytic contempt.

I'd finished half my soda when a ripple spread through the patio—through both camps. Paul Kruse appeared in its wake, weaving his way adroitly through Town and Gown. A small, lovely-looking silver-blond woman in a strapless black dress and three-inch heels hung on his arm. She was in her early thirties but wore her hair like a prom queen—ruler-straight down to her waist, the ends puffed and curled extravagantly. The dress clung to her like a coat of pitch. Around her neck was a diamond choker. She kept her eyes fastened on Kruse as he grinned and worked his audience.

1 took a good look at the new department chairman. By now he had to be close to sixty, fighting entropy with chemistry and good posture. His hair was still long, a dubious shade of corn-yellow and cut new-wave surfer-style, with a flap over one eye. Once, he'd resembled a male model, with the kind of coarse handsomeness that photographs well but loses something in the translation to reality. And his good looks were still in evidence. But his features had fallen; the jawline seemed weaker, the ruggedness dissolved into something mushy and vaguely dissolute.

His tan was so deep he looked overbaked. It put him in sync with the moneyed crowd, as did his custom-tailored suit. The suit was featherweight but conspicuously tweedy and arm-patched—an almost snotty concession to academia. I watched him flash a mouthful of white caps, shake the
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hands of men, kiss the ladies, and move on to the next set of well-wishers.

"Smooth, huh?" said a voice at my back.

I turned around, looked down on two hundred pounds of broken-nosed, bushy-mustached square meal packed into five feet five inches of round can, wrapped in a brown plaid suit, pink shirt, black knit tie, and scuffed brown penny loafers.

"Hello, Larry." I started to extend my hand, then saw that both of his were occupied: a glass of beer in the left, a plate of chicken wings, egg rolls, and partially gnawed rib bones in the right.

"I was over by the roses," said Daschoff, "trying to figure out how they get them to flower like that. Probably fertilize them with old dollar bills." He raised his eyebrows and tilted his head toward the mansion. "Nice little cottage."

"Cozy."

He eyed the conductor. "That's Narahara, the wunder-kind. God knows what he cost."

He lifted the mug to his mouth and drank. A fringe of foam coated the bottom half of his mustache.

"Budweiser," he said. "I expected something more exotic. But at least it's full strength."

We sat down at an empty table. Larry crossed his legs with effort and took another, deeper swallow of beer. The movement inflated his chest and strained the buttons of his jacket. He unbuttoned it and sat back. A beeper was clipped to his belt.

Larry is almost as wide as he is tall and waddles; the reasonable assumption is obesity. But in swim trunks he's as firm as a frozen side of beef—a curious mixture of hypertrophied muscle marbled with suet, the only guy under six feet to have played defensive tackle for the University of Arizona. One time, back in grad school, I watched him bench-press twice his weight at the university gym without breathing hard, then top it off with one-handed push-ups.

He ran blunt fingers through steel-wool hair, wiped his mustache, and watched as Kruse charmed his way through the crowd. The new department head's route took him closer to our table—near enough to observe the mechanics of small talk but too far to hear what was being said. It was like watching a mime show. Something entitled Party Games.

"Your mentor's in fine form," I said.

Larry swallowed more beer and held out his hands. "I told you I was dead busied, D. Would have worked for the devil himself—a bargain-basement Faust."

"No need to explain, doctor."

"Why not? It still bugs me, being a party to bullshit." More beer. "Entire semester a waste.

Kruse and I had virtually nothing to do with each other—I doubt if we spoke ten sentences the entire time. I didn't like him because I thought he was shallow and a phony. And he resented me

'cause I was male—all his other assistants were women."

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"Then why'd he hire you?"

"Because his research subjects were males and they were unlikely to relax watching dirty movies with a bunch of women around taking notes. Not likely to answer the kinds of questions he was asking, either—how often they jerked off, their most frequent masturbation fantasies. Did they do it in public toilets? How often and who they fucked, how long it took them to come. What was their deep-seated primal attitude toward liver in a can."

"Frontiers of human sexuality," I said.

He shook his head. "Sad thing is, it could have been valuable. Look at all the clinical data Masters and Johnson came up with. But Kruse wasn't serious about collecting data. It was as if he was going through the motions."

"Didn't the granting agency care?"

"No agency. These were private suckers—rich porn freaks. He promised to make them respectable, put the academic imprimatur on their hobby."

I turned and looked at Kruse. The blonde in the black dress was teetering on spiked heels.

"Who's the woman with him?"

"Mrs. K. You don't remember? Suzanne?"

I shook my head.

"Suzy Straddle? The talk of the department?"

"I must have slept through it."

"You must have been comatose, D. She was a campus celebrity. Former porn actress, got her nickname for being... limber. Kruse met her at some Hollywood party while doing 'research.'

She couldn't have been more than eighteen or nineteen. He left his second wife for her... or maybe it was the third—who keeps track? Got her enrolled in the university as an English major.

I think she lasted three weeks. Ring a bell yet?"

I shook my head. "When was this?"

"Seventy-four."

"In seventy-four I was up in San Francisco—at Langley Porter."

"Oh, yeah, you double-shifted—internship and dissertation same year. Well, D., your precociousness may have

dumped you in the job market one year sooner than the rest of us, but you missed out on Suzy.

She was really supposed to be something. I actually worked with her— for a week. Kruse assigned her to the study, doing secretarial work. She couldn't type, screwed up the files. Sweet kid, actually. But somewhat basic."

The honoree and spouse had come closer. Suzanne Kruse tagged along after her husband as if
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bolted to a track. She looked fragile, with bony shoulders, a tight-corded neck bisected by a diamond choker, nearly Hat chest, hollow cheeks, and sharply pointed chin. Her arms were shapely but sinewy, bony hands ending in long, spindly fingers. Her nails were long and red-lacquered. They clutched her husband's sleeve, digging into the tweed.

''Must be true love," I said. "He stuck with her all these years."

"Don't bet that it's wholesome monogamy. Kruse's got a rep as a major-league pussy hound and Suzy's known to be tolerant." He cleared his throat. "Submissive."

"Literally?"

He nodded. "Remember those parties Kruse used to throw at his place in Mandeville Canyon the first year he joined the faculty? Oh, yeah, you were in Frisco." He stopped, ate an egg roll and ruminated. "Wait, I think they were still going on in 75. You were back by '75, right?"