TWENTY-ONE

I went home and slept through most of that Sunday, then rose early Monday morning. Della had left early to go to the office. Just as I finished my morning coffee the phone rang. “Can you come to the office?” I heard Della ask.

It only took me ten minutes to pull myself together and drive downtown. I found Della and Mona closeted in Della’s inner sanctum with one the stenographers we’d hired from Fort Worth. She was siting in a straight-backed chair in front of the desk crying her eyes out while Della and Mona loomed over her like a pair of angry hawks. I’d noticed the girl before. She was a short, curvy brunette with a wide red slash of a mouth and a provocative manner. The office chatterbox, at lunch she either had her nose in one of the collection of movie magazines she kept in the drawer of her desk or else she was regaling the other girls with vivid stories of her love life.

“Meet Lisa the leak,” Della said.

The girl wailed louder. “I didn’t do nothing,” she objected. “I swear.”

“Hush,” Della told her. “Be quiet or I’ll call the police right now.”

The girl managed to throttle it back to a tolerable level. “Go ahead and tell him, Mona,” Della instructed.

“I should have seen it before I did,” Mona began. “Lisa ran the title on the Meese tract and on the Kraft lease too. None of the other girls had a hand in either, and none of them knew a thing about them. Then there have been at least three other tracts that have been grabbed out from under us that you never knew about.…”

“Three?” I asked. “But why didn’t you tell me about them?” I asked.

“I didn’t realize what had happened until this morning when I looked to see who had run the chain of title in each case. Lisa checked and passed on every title where the company failed to get the tract we were planning to lease. And who do you think got the leases in every case?”

I nodded. “Van Horn and Robillard…”

“Right,” Della said.

“I want to leave,” Lisa sniveled. “You can’t keep me here. It’s kidnapping.”

“Swell,” Della said. She grabbed the phone and slammed it down in front of the girl. “Just go ahead and call the cops,” she said. “They’ll be glad to come get you.”

The wails began once again.

“And you remember that partition deal with Ned Roberts that fell through a few weeks ago?” Mona asked above the din.

“Sure,” I said.

She pointed at Lisa. “There’s the reason right there. What tipped me off was seeing her with the two of them Friday night.”

“Two of who?” I asked. “You mean Robillard and Van Horn?”

She nodded. “Andy and I were both just too beat to drive up to Odessa for synagogue, and I didn’t even feel like cooking us any supper. About eight o’clock we decided to go to that little barbecue place down past the Row. That’s when we saw Miss Priss here coming out of the Roundup Club with Van Horn and that other guy. Then I realized what had to be happening.”

“Now that I think about it,” I said, “both of them were late getting to the poker game at the Weilbach last Friday. They didn’t come in until around midnight.”

“They were with her,” Mona said. “So the first thing I did when I got to work this morning was start checking the records.”

“How do you know she was the one who ran the titles?” I asked.

“Because I make each girl sign off on every bit of work she does,” she replied. “That way if any sloppy work starts showing up I know who’s doing it.”

Della took a step closer to Lisa. “Which one of them are you sleeping with?” she asked her. “Van Horn or Robillard? Or are you servicing them both?”

“How can you say that?” Lisa shrieked. “That’s so awful!!”

“Which one is it?” Della demanded. She and Mona began to close in on the hapless girl like two young lionesses after an exhausted gazelle. “Was it Clifton Robillard? Don’t you know that man’s old enough to be your grandfather?” Della asked.

“That’s disgusting!” Mona spat.

“I never did it with him! I swear.”

“Then it was Van Horn,” Della said.

“Just a few times,” Lisa said, her tears running like Niagara. “I mean, he’s young … Sorta.”

“He’s in his late forties, and you’re not but twenty-two,” Della said. “Besides, he’s married.”

“Yeah, but he’s got a real bad marriage—”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake!” Della said in exasperation. “Don’t tell me.… His wife doesn’t understand him. Right?”

“Yeahhh?…”

“What did he do?” Mona asked. “Promise to introduce you to somebody out in Hollywood?”

“How did you know that?” the girl gasped.

Della and Mona both rolled their eyes. “And your father’s a minister,” Mona said. “I’ve heard you mention that. What would he think about you sleeping with a married man?”

“Your dad’s a preacher?” I asked. “What kind?”

“B-B-Baptist…”

“Then you ought to know you could go to hell for what you’ve been doing,” Della said coldly.

At that the girl’s wails rose to an unearthly crescendo.

Della looked at me, and asked, “What do you want to do?”

I considered. I could strong-arm the girl into feeding false information from me to Robillard and Van Horn. But to what purpose? The Meese affair hadn’t really been directed at me financially; it was intended simply as an annoyance because that was the kind of man Robillard was. It would be nice if I could get him and Van Horn to waste a pile of money leasing useless land. But they had access to the same geology reports I had, and there was little chance they would fall for a completely bogus tract. Van Horn especially; he was far more knowledgeable as an oilman than I was. Then there was the fact that Lisa was probably too stupid to play a double role with any conviction. We would simply be better off without her. “Get her out of here,” I finally replied.

Mona opened the door. Lisa gazed up at me uncertainly. “Go,” I said. “And don’t ever come back.”

Mona stood back from the doorway. After casting her eyes wildly around for a few seconds, the girl lunged to her feet and bolted from the room like an unbroke filly. Mona pushed the door shut behind her.

“That poor fool has no more brains than a gnat,” Della said, and dropped wearily into the chair behind her desk.

“She has enough sense to know she ought to be loyal to people who’re paying her a generous salary,” Mona countered.

“You’re right,” Della admitted.

Mona heaved a deep sigh and looked at us with a stricken expression on her pretty face. “It was all my fault,” she said. “I’m the office manager and I should have caught it before I did. I’ll be happy to resign if you want me to.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Mona…” Della began.

“No, really … I feel so responsible.…”

“Just hush,” Della said.

“The losses were minimal, Mona,” I said. “But what gets me is the idea that they would do something like that.”

“But isn’t there any legal recourse?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “There are some federal laws that cover industrial espionage, but I don’t know if they apply to oil production. I don’t think they do, and the charges would be next to impossible to prove anyway. That fool girl would be useless as a witness. A good defense attorney would shred her to rags.”

*   *   *

“I guess we’ve put a stop to that business,” Della said that night as we climbed into bed. “Are you going to mention it to them?”

“You mean Robillard and Van Horn? I don’t think so.”

“Why not?” she asked.

“I’ve been boring in pretty heavily on Robillard ever since I started playing poker at the hotel. It was reasonable to expect a man like him to retaliate.”

“Do you think it really was retaliation? Or just normal business skulduggery?”

“Maybe some of both. But Mona needs to keep a close eye on those other girls up there.”

“Oh, she already is. She called the whole staff together today and read them the riot act. I don’t think there will be any more problems.”

“Just please promise me one thing, Della,” I said with a grin.

“What?”

“If you and Mona ever get it in for me, just go ahead and shoot me. I’d prefer it to the way you two skinned that poor girl alive today.”

“Nope. No promises. If you’ve got it coming, then…” She fell silent and raised her eyebrows.

“Ahhh … Cruel, wanton woman…”

“If you’ll shut up, I’ll show you how wanton I can be.”