FOUR
Della hadn’t returned to the cabin when my cab pulled in at the tourist court. After I’d paid the driver, I unlocked the door and went on through the bedroom to the kitchenette, where I plugged in my traveling percolator. It had just quit bubbling when Deputy Marne knocked on the door. This time around things were a little more friendly between us, free of the tension that had marked our first meeting. And why not? I had him on the payroll now and we both knew it. “Coffee?” I asked after I’d ushered him into the room.
“Sure.” He took it black and hot and unsweetened and drank it in quick little sips, his small eyes glowing with pleasure. “Say, how tall are you anyway?” he asked.
“Six four,” I told him.
“Jeez!” he replied.
People often ask that question, and most of them are surprised that I’m not even taller. I think it may be because at 210 pounds I’m such a large-framed man. Or it may be because my hair has gone prematurely silver and they don’t expect to see a thick pewter-colored mop on a man obviously in his forties. Or maybe they’re just snoopy and it’s one of those personal characteristics deemed socially acceptable to comment on. Who knows?
We both liked our coffee scalding hot, and we let the conversation lapse until our cups were empty.
“I think you’re in,” he said at last. “You just gotta go talk to one guy.”
“Who?”
“The president of your bank, old man Rhodes. My contact fronts for him. That was a nice chunk of money you moved in here. My guy says as soon as the draft clears you’ll be a pillar of the community in this town.”
“Glad to hear it.”
He gave me one of his quick, braying laughs. “At least you will be as long as your money lasts, anyway.”
“Isn’t that the way it works everywhere?” I asked.
“That’s about the size of it, buddy. Now I gotta go.” He hopped to his feet and went to the kitchenette where he rinsed his cup and put it in the sink. I started to like him a little then. It said something about the man that he didn’t expect me to clean up after him.
“Hold it a minute,” I said. “I need to ask a couple of those little favors I mentioned yesterday.”
“Ahhh…” he said, his hard little eyes suddenly full of suspicion.
I shook my head and gave him an easy smile. “Calm down and don’t worry. I told you I won’t ask you to do anything you wouldn’t do for a friend anyway.”
“Okay, let’s hear it.”
“Della couldn’t get a card at the public library because we don’t have a permanent address yet. But they said if some solid citizen like yourself could call and vouch—”
“Say no more. It’s done. I’ll drop in on my way back to the office,” he said, brightening a little. I guess he thought I was going to demand his boss’s head in a bucket. That might come later, but by then he’d be ready to serve it up to me with trumpet flourishes.
“And she thinks maybe she needs glasses, so I hoped you might know a good eye doctor.”
“Scopes,” he said without even thinking. “Dr. Scopes. He’s in the Wayland Building, downtown. My kid’s nearsighted as hell and he’s the doctor we use. Best in the city.”
“And we want to get a house. Do you know a good realtor?”
I knew he would. Guys like him always know where to get it and who to get it from. He quickly pulled a notebook from his inner coat pocket and scribbled in it for a minute. “My brother-in-law,” he said, as he tore off the page and gave it to me. “He’s a straight-up guy. Deacon in his church and all. You thinking about buying?”
I shook my head. “I want to lease. Hopefully we can find something that’s partly furnished.”
He nodded. “He’s the man to see. I’ll call him and tell him to treat you right, deacon or no.”
“Thanks.” I followed him to the door.
“By the way,” he said. “Did you hear what’s happening out west of town?”
I shook my head.
“Word is some old guy brought in a big gusher. I thought I might drive out and take a look myself. Nobody ever heard of oil in this county till today.”
“Gusher? When?” I asked with interest.
“Hell, right now. The thing blew in just a little while ago.”
“Where is it exactly?”
“Just go west on Route Nine and you won’t have any trouble finding it. Probably be a line of cars headed that way. One of the patrol guys said half the county is out there already.”
I stuck out my hand and we shook for the first time. His grip was firm and dry. “Hey,” he said, turning back just outside the threshold. “I told everybody down at the office that Harvard line of yours. Got a big laugh.”
“I’m a clown, all right,” I said with a big, sappy grin. “Say, did you ever hear the one about the traveling salesman and the two-headed farmer who had twin daughters?” I asked.
A few seconds later both of us were roaring with laughter. After I’d given him a parting slap on the back and watched him walk to his car, I glanced down at the piece of paper he’d given me. The realtor’s name was just a name, but the sheet was personalized at the top. It read “Detective Ollie Marne” and gave a phone number. So his first name was Ollie. I liked that. It fit him. I folded the paper and put it in my wallet, then watched him climb behind the wheel and drive off. Something told me that Ollie Marne was going to be one of the best investments I’d ever made.
When he was gone, I went back in the cabin and unpacked and hung three suits I’d picked up at the freight office on my way home. I’d ordered them at a Memphis tailor’s three weeks earlier—two dark blue of slightly different shades, one a charcoal gray, all three pinstriped, and all three made of summer-weight wool. I had to have my shoes custom made because my feet were size thirteen, D width. Since the first loafers hit the market, I hadn’t touched a shoestring except on the rare occasions when I wore a tux.
I decided to get some fresh air. After pouring myself another cup of coffee, I took a Montecristo Corona from my travel humidor and went outside with my newspaper. To one side of our cabin sat a little patio with three wooden park benches arranged around a small concrete table. I lolled and smoked and read my paper, and my cigar was almost down to the end when I heard the crunch of tires on gravel. I looked up to see Della swing into the drive. The convertible top was down, and she was wearing a head scarf and dark sunglasses. I sat in silence and watched as she got out of the car and pulled off the scarf to give her hair a shake. It was parted on the left, and in the back and sides it fell to her shoulders in a golden waterfall that turned under at its end. That day she wore a pair of nicely fitted white slacks and a red silk blouse. I noted the graceful ease with which she moved, and as I watched her fine, firm bottom and full breasts I almost decided to cancel my trip out to the gusher. Almost, but not quite.
“Hey,” I said. “You want to take a spin?”
“I’ve been spinning. Let’s go get something to eat. I just had toast at breakfast, if you remember.”
“We will, but there’s an oil well I want to see first.”
“Okay. Let me freshen up and get a drink.”
“Bring me another cigar, please,” I asked her.
When she returned a couple of minutes later, I opened the passengers’ door and pointed to the wheel. “You drive,” I said. “I like to look at a beautiful woman at the wheel of a fine car. It stirs me.”
She handed me the cigar and cranked the engine. “So get stirred,” she said, and slid her sunglasses on her face.
She was a good driver and a fast one, but soon we had to slow down to twenty miles an hour. The road was clogged with a steady caravan of cars going out toward the well. The last two miles we traveled took us thirty minutes to cover, but at last we came up to the edge of a low bluff that marked the beginning of the Donner Basin. From there we could see it, a mile away, blowing like mad. Some gushers and blowouts will crest and peak, then fall back to a trickle only to surge and blow once again as the pressure changes and shifts far beneath the earth’s surface. But this one was pushing a steady stream of oil up out of the ground like an open faucet, and even from that distance the roar sounded like a hurricane.
She pulled over to the side and we stepped out of the car. “They’re thrilling, aren’t they?” she asked. “Gushers, I mean.”
“You’ve seen one before?”
“Oh yes,” she replied.
There’s something dreadfully primitive about an oil well blowout, and I was hypnotized by its violence. We stood and watched the well for about five minutes until Della gave me a gentle poke in the ribs. “We’ve seen it. Now let’s go do something about it,” she said.