Stick (12 page)

Barry: “Arthur says the fringers aren't gonna make it.”

Kyle: “I don't pick fringers.”

Barry: “He says the bloom is off the energy rose.”

Kyle: “I'm going to be sick in your car.”

Barry: “He says high-tech remains first in the hearts of investors.”

Kyle: “Tell Arthur good-bye.”

It was hard work, driving and listening. Trying to remember that Southwest Bell and British Colonial Hydro were corporate bonds that looked good. That you could make a killing on Firestone if the company was taken over and the possibility kept getting better. By the time they crossed over on the causeway and were approaching Bal Harbour Stick was sure of one thing: Barry would never be the chauffeur's hero without Kyle McLaren.

Barry never let up. As the car swung into the drive, home, he was talking about somebody named Howard Ruff, who—as near as Stick could figure out—was an investment expert of some kind, an economic forecaster. Barry sounded impressed. “Howard Ruff says buy all the gold you can and silver's even better.”

“He'll tell you to buy his record album, too,” Kyle said. “If you like the advice of a guy who sings
Climb Every Mountain
and
You Light Up My Life,
I can't help you.”

It didn't matter that Stick had never heard of Howard Ruff. He was getting a pretty good idea who Kyle McLaren was.

He got her bags out of the trunk and carried them to the terrace where Kyle was talking to Diane Stam. Barry was heading for the morning room, ducking under the awning that shaded the arched openings in the wall. Stick hung back, watching the two ladies in polite conversation: one with slender brown legs, smiling easily, touching Diane's arm; the other a different type, soft and white beneath a striped robe. They were edging away from each other now but with pleasant expressions; they seemed to get along. Kyle glanced toward him, waiting with her bags. Diane turned away and he followed Kyle along the paved walk that led from the terrace to the tennis court. He had not been to this side of the property before, but Kyle seemed to know where she was going. She carried a tote slung over one shoulder and the briefcase under her other arm. They passed the line of palm trees and under the red-and-white-striped awning—there were deck chairs here and a small bar, empty now—crossed the red clay court
and
approached the guest house just on the other side, partly hidden in shrubbery. There was a door here; but Kyle walked past it, following the path around front to the bayside of the house.

Turning the corner she glanced back at Stick and said, “We'll let the producer have the sun in the morning. I'll take the room with the view.”

He didn't know what she was talking about and was going to ask, what producer? But now they were at another entrance. One of the maids appeared in the doorway as they approached and Kyle said, “Luisa Rosa!” like she was glad to see her, the maid smiling. “How're the anxieties doing?”

“My depression is much better,” the maid said, still smiling. “I'm very glad to see you again.”

Stick took the bags inside as they stood talking. He looked around the living room, which seemed to be all yellow and white with rattan furniture, fresh-cut flowers everywhere, a bottle of champagne in a silver bucket on the cocktail table with three glasses. He wasn't sure what to do with the bags. The entire front wall was glass, facing the bay, Barry's cruiser tied up off to the right. He wondered if the girl was still aboard. He heard Luisa Rosa laugh. He heard her voice, with its pleasant accent, say, “Have a nice day.”

“You can put those in the bedroom,” Kyle said, “if you will, please.”

There were twin beds pushed together with yellow spreads, screens that opened onto a patio and a somewhat different view of Biscayne Bay. The guest house was bigger than any house he had ever lived in. As he came out she was unslinging the tote, dropping it with her briefcase onto the sofa.

He paused, not sure of the procedure, wondering if she was going to offer him a tip. He hoped not.

She said, “I've been curious about something for the past—I guess it's been about two weeks. Do you remember my being at Mr. Gorman's, in Lauderdale? We were in the living room and you walked by on the balcony.”

“You know I remember it,” Stick said. She did, too. He could feel it between them. “You want to know what I was doing there?”

She said, “If I'm not being nosy. I'm curious, because Chucky didn't seem to have any idea who you were, in his own apartment.”

“I was with a friend of mine. He was waiting to see him.”

“Do you recall what you said?”

“He asked me—what, if I was an appraiser?” He smiled as he saw her smile, familiar with each other, and knew what she was going to say.

“Yeah, but the best part”—her eyes smiling now—”he asked if you saw anything you liked, and you looked around, not the least bit hurried, and you said, ‘No, I guess not,' and walked away.”

“You remember that.”

“Your timing was great.”

“Thank you. Can I ask you one?”

“What was I doing there?”

“No, I figured that out. You tell people like Barry and Chucky what to do with their money. Barry comes off as the boy wonder, but you're the brains.”

She raised her eyebrows. “You got that on the way from the airport?”

“I got more than that. You put up with him, but you're getting tired of it. He only listens when you're talking about business . . .”

“That's amazing.”

“No, it isn't, that's what you told him.
I
listen. But I think there's more to it. You kept telling him you're tired, I think you're tired of what you're doing.
You
feed and he scores the points, makes all the money.”

“You're close, but that's not it.” Those gentle, knowing eyes stayed on him and she seemed about to say more, perhaps confide. But she eased away from herself, saying, “You don't sound quite—well, like a man who wears a chauffeur's uniform.”

“One of the help. No, ordinarily I'm self-employed. I'll try this another week or so.”

“You don't like to drive?”

“I don't like to wait for people.”

“I don't either. What do you usually do?”

“Well, I sold cars for a few years. Used ones. I drove a truck now and then . . .”He said, “What I wanted to ask you—that time at Chucky's a couple weeks ago, you only saw me for about a half a minute . . .”

“Yeah, about that.”

“How did you recognize me today?”

She said, sounding a little surprised, “That's a good question, you don't even look like the same person. But I knew you as soon as I walked up to the car.”

CORNELL LEWIS WAS SITTING IN
a pair of red briefs watching television, his bare feet up on a chair he'd pulled over. He didn't look up as Stick came in.

“What's going on?”

“Chuck Norris, man. Look-it him do it to the gooks.”

“I mean what's going on
here
?”

“Nothing—resting up for the evening. I'm off, man.”

“There some kind of a producer gonna be staying here?”

“Next week he's coming. Monday, I think.”

“Movie producer?”

“Look-it Chuck. Shit, huh? Yeah, the producer gonna show the man and some of his friends how to get into showbiz. As I understand it. Gonna have a few people over for the day.”

“We just picked up a girl at the airport—”

“Yeah, Kyle. She's nice, huh? That Kyle is the only reason I know of I'd ever want to be white and I don't even think she'd care.”

“She work for Barry?”

“No, she work for herself, like an advisor. Tells the man how to invest his hard-earned bread.”

“She didn't seem too anxious in the car. Or she was tired.”

“Man bugs her. No, see, she specializes, tells the man what different businesses he should go into. But, see, he's in
every
thing. You know, with his stocks and bonds? You know what I'm saying? See, she
knows
all that stock-market shit better than he does, even though it's not what she specializes in. So he like
uses
her every chance he can.”

“Yeah, that's what it sounded like.”

“Ah, you listening, huh? Look at this one, man.” Nodding at the TV set. “Hawaiian Punch, with little Donny and Marie. They cute, you know it? Look-it 'em.”

“She live in New York?”

“Who, this girl?”

“Kyle McLaren.”

“She live in Palm Beach. I think she used to be in New York when she was a stockbroker. First time she come here she was telling me all about it. She's got a brother that's in the FBI.”

“Jesus, you kidding?”

“Not here. I think in New York. Look-it little Donny and Marie. Yeah, baby, I give you a punch. Shit, I'd punch him too, he's so cute.”

“Why's she staying here?”

“Who's that?”

“Kyle McLaren.” He liked her name.

“Man wants her to be here for the producer, the showbiz pitch and then spend some time with him. But not the way you thinking. I seen the man, he's half in the bag one time start to hit on her? No deal. She put him down quick, but very nice about it. No strain, no pain. Man say she don't take no shit offa
anybody
. One of these millionaires—don't matter who it is, she don't like him she don't do business with him.”

“She married?”

“I don't believe—no, she live by herself. Got a condo up there on Lake Worth.”

Stick took off his coat and tie, walked into his room to drop them on the bed and came out again.

“How's Aurora doing?”

“What are you, the question man? She still out'n the boat. Man run in and talk to her on the phone soon as you got back. Could almost hear her yelling from outside. Got this voice sound like she crying.”

Stick said, “So they'll be going out for a cruise.”

“Uh-unh, not today. Mama fixed him, she called some people and made a date to meet at the club for cocktails and dinner . . .  little dancing to that ricky-tick club jive. Yeah, they gonna have
fun,
man. Big evening at the country club with all the beautiful folks.”

“I guess I drive, uh?”

“Said tell you the black suit.”

He watched Chuck Norris lay out several Orientals with chops and kicks but without changing his expression. He was surprised Chuck Norris was a little guy. Chuck and Chucky . . .

Chucky and Barry and all the hotshots who made it look easy. He said to Cornell, “What's the most you ever made on a job? Before you got sent away.”

“You mean in my other life?”

“Yeah, what's the most you scored?”

“Was from a liquor store. I had a piece I picked up on a break-in one time? I went in there . . .  had to do speed to get me in the door. I took eleven hundred and sixty dollars and could never do it again sky high. Why you asking?”

“I was just thinking,” Stick said, “that making a phone call to your broker in the backseat of a Cadillac doing sixty miles an hour with the air conditioning on is an awful lot easier than going in someplace with a gun, isn't it?”

Cornell looked away from the television screen for the first time. “You just finding that out?”

“I got a few things to learn,” Stick said.

The chauffeurs were not watching with purpose, though they were looking out of darkness toward the source of the music, across flower beds and shrubbery
to the club patio strung with paper lanterns where ladies in long skirts danced with men in blazers and pastel trousers to medleys of show tunes: some barely moving, some moving as though they were following footprints, some of the ladies discoing with studied abandon while their men, with glazed expressions, glasses reflecting the lantern glow, hunched their shoulders and sometimes snapped their fingers.

The sound of elevator music filled the night. Stick had never seen a country club dance before.

He'd dropped off the Stams and Kyle McLaren an hour ago, raced up to Southwest Eighth Street to find a bar and had several bourbons over shaved ice while Cubans stared at him in his black suit. Or would have stared at him anyway. Stick didn't mind. He was free, taking a time-out; he bothered no one and they left him alone. Now he was back at Leucadendra.

Harvey saw him, adjusted his chauffeur's cap and came away from the others: a half-dozen drivers over there, along the edge of light coming from a window in the working part of the clubhouse. One of the drivers looked like Lionel Oliva, but it was too dark here to be certain. Faint moonlight through the palm trees, the sound of a kitchen fan blending with the melodic rush of the five-piece dance band,
The Man I Love
turning into
A Stranger in Paradise
as Harvey, chauffeur's cap cocked like a fighter pilot's, came over to him.

“How's it going? Or should I say, what do you hear from the backseat these days?”

“That heavyset guy over there,” Stick said, “his name Lionel?”

“That's him, the Cuban.” Harvey turned his back to the group, standing in close. “Says his boss's been in there in the locker room rolling Indian dice since this afternoon and Lionel ain't had his dinner yet.”

“Why doesn't he leave and come back?” Stick wasn't sure if he wanted Lionel here, or if it mattered.

“He'd drive off and there'd be Mr. Gorman looking for him,” Harvey said. “Don't you know that's how it works?”

Stick said, “I guess I'll learn, if I stay at it long enough.” The bourbon was glowing inside him and Lionel's presence, he decided, didn't matter. Though it gave him something else to think about: still another chance of running into Chucky Gorman. He had walked into a new, tight little world down here and had not yet walked out the other side. But he was learning a few things.

Harvey was holding back, trying to appear casual. He said, “Look at all that money out there dancing. Not a care in the world.”

It seemed enough of an opening. Stick said, “On these stock market tips you mentioned? . . .”

Harvey said, “Yeah, how we doing there?”

“Well, I wondered if you have a certain procedure you follow.” He saw Edgar coming over now.

“You tell us what Mr. Stam's playing,” Harvey said. He shrugged, hands in his pants pockets.

Stick waited. “That's it?”

Harvey said to Edgar, “He wants to know is there any procedure giving us, telling us about any interesting stocks he might've heard about.”

“What procedure?” Edgar said.

Stick said, “What if I give you a good one and you pass it on and then come back and tell me your boss already has that stock? You know what I mean? How do I protect myself?” He saw Harvey and Edgar catch each other's eye as he looked off toward the strains of
Alley Cat,
Jesus, hoping they'd rush it faster than the others or he'd have to get out of here. It was the only song he knew that made him want to break something.

Edgar said, “You mean like if Mr. Harrison accepted the tip but told me he already had it?”

“I'd be out of luck,” Stick said, “wouldn't I?”

“But Mr. Harrison would never pull anything like that.”

“How do I know? You guys say it, but, hell, I don't know Mr. Harrison.” He shot a glance at Harvey. “Or Miz Wilson. You know as well as I do rich people can be funny. They're not always generous.” Stick shook his head, tired. “Boy, he was on that phone with his
broker all the way from the airport. His financial advisor—you know who I mean? . . .”

Harvey said, “Miz McLaren?”

“That's the one, yeah. She was with him, see, telling him what to buy and then he'd pass it on to his broker. On the phone the whole time. See, she just come in from New York and I guess she had all these hot tips.”

Edgar said, “Yeah? What were some of 'em?”

“Well, that's why I asked about a procedure,” Stick said. “I got these companies”—he patted his side pocket—”fact I wrote 'em down right after we got back so I wouldn't forget. I remember you mentioning somebody did that.”

Harvey said, “Over-the-counter stocks, huh?”

Stick said, “Well, I suppose you could say that.” Not having any idea what Harvey was talking about, though he had heard it before.
Over the counter.
Harvey was squinting at him and Stick said, “I got one they say is about to take off and hit the moon and it's only seventeen bucks at the present time.”

“Jeez,” Edgar said. “Gonna take off, huh?”

“When they get done driving it up,” Stick said. “It'll go at least to fifty, you can bet on it. Probably higher.”

Harvey said, “They gonna drive it up, uh? What kind of stock is it?”

“You mean what kind of company?”

“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.”