3

Millie was in the big living room, curled up in a corner of the couch in front of the fire, her fine long legs under her, an open book on her lap. She closed the book as I entered and looked at me.

“Hello, Al.”

I nodded and walked over to her.

“Sit down, Al. Did you make a deal?”

I took the other end of the couch. “I think so.”

“I hope you squeezed those two bastards dry.”

I looked at her curiously. Then I reached over and picked up the book she had been reading. It was Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather, an edition as old yet as well-kept as the lodge itself.

“It’s a lovely book,” Millie said.

“You are the damnedest strange woman I ever knew in my life.”

“Why, Al?”

“Do I have to itemize?”

“No, I suppose not. Do you hate me, Al?”

“I’m out of practice.”

“Don’t be such a goddamn tin-horn saint.”

“That’s old-fashioned western,” I said. “Do you really come from Boston?”

“I grew up in the slums of Long Beach, Al, about five blocks from where they found Joey Leone. I was put in an orphanage at the age of twelve, after my father beat my mother half to death and out of her mind. I was working in a cannery at the age of fourteen. I taught myself shorthand and got a job as a secretary and did high school at night and entered U.C.L.A. at the age of twenty. You want to think about that a bit? My real name is Mary Pilusky, and no one ever felt sorry for me, not myself, not anyone else.”

“I don’t feel sorry for you.”

“The hell you don’t!”

“Funny thing is, I don’t. I think you behaved like a shit, if you want it plain and direct.”

“All right, you put it on the line, plain and direct. Only tell me this. What did I do to you that has you so pissed off? Did I ever put you in danger? Did I sell you out? Did I try to squeeze out of you what Capestone told you? Don’t think I couldn’t have if I really wanted to. You were meat for the grinder, and if you don’t know that, you’re a plain horse’s ass. But I didn’t squeeze it out of you. I set up this meeting and I gave you a chance to be cut in. Do you know what would have happened to you if you had tried to peddle that horse? You would have been cut to pieces. This way you come out with a piece of the pie and your hands are clean.”

I stared at her in disbelief. “Will you say that again?”

“Your hands are clean.”

“That’s the way you see it?”

“Don’t moralize with me, Al. I didn’t make this world. I only live in it—and that’s not by choice but by circumstances.”

“All right, there it is.” I shrugged.

“Al?”

“Yes?”

“Do you hate me too much to do me a favor?”

“I told you I didn’t hate you.”

“Will you drive me home with you? I don’t want to stay here tonight.”

“Why? Is the general too amorous? He’s sixty if he’s a day, but then you have a taste for older men.”

“You bastard!”

“I’m sorry,” I said after a moment. “That was a lousy thing to say. I’ll drive you back to Los Angeles.”

“You’re all heart,” she said.

The general and the senator appeared then. The general directed my attention to the decor. “You won’t find many rooms like this today, Brody. It speaks of a time when there was law and order, honor and distinction in this land of ours. A place like this will be standing when you and I are forgotten. I’d take pleasure in showing you around the place tomorrow, if you stay the night—our own greenhouses, rifle range, trapshooting, trout stream, eleven hundred acres of land. It’s a way of life that’s rare now. Do you hunt?”

I shook my head. “No—and I must get back tonight.”

“Well, Al,” the senator said, “you’ve got yourself a deal. When can we have the goods?”

“Sunday.”

“Why not tomorrow?”

“Sunday. When can I have the money?”

“You give us the merchandise and we’ll pay for it.”

“Where?”

“Here,” the general said. “I spend my weekends here.”

“No. My house.”

“There’s no deal then. You bring it here.”

“All right,” I agreed. “Late afternoon on Sunday. And don’t play games with me, General. I’m a press agent, and if I don’t drive out of here with the money, the whole world will know every detail of what happened, whether I’m dead or alive.”

“Don’t dramatize yourself, Al,” the senator said. “We are businessmen. We have a deal. Keep your end, we’ll keep ours.”