A year later the professor had died of alcoholism, but Jeff had promised himself that one day he would go on a dig. Carthage, first, for the professor.
On the last night before the schooner was to dock in Tahiti, Jeff was summoned to Louise Hollander's stateroom. She was wearing a sheer silk robe.
"You wanted to see me, ma'am?"
"Are you a homosexual, Jeff?"
"I don't believe it's any of your business, Miss Hollander, but the answer is no. What I am is choosy."
Louise Hollander's mouth tightened. "What kind of women do you like? Whores, I suppose."
"Sometimes," Jeff said agreeably. "Was there anything else, Miss Hollander?"
"Yes. I'm giving a dinner party tomorrow night. Would you like to come?"
Jeff looked at the woman for a long moment before he answered. "Why not?"
And that was the way it began.
Louise Hollander had had two husbands before she was twenty-one, and her lawyer had just made a settlement with her third husband when she met Jeff. The second night they were moored at the harbor in Papeete, and as the passengers and crew were going ashore, Jeff received another summons to Louise Hollander's quarters. When Jeff arrived, she was dressed in a colorful silk pareu slit all the way up to the thigh.
"I'm trying to get this off," she said. "I'm having a problem with the zipper."
Jeff walked over and examined the costume. "It doesn't have a zipper."
She turned to face him, and smiled. "I know. That's my problem."
They made love on the deck, where the soft tropical air caressed their bodies like a blessing. Afterward, they lay on their sides, facing each other. Jeff propped himself up on an elbow and looked down at Louise. "Your daddy's not the sheriff, is he?" Jeff asked.
She sat up in surprise. "What?"
"You're the first townie I ever made love to. Uncle Willie used to warn me that their daddies always turned out to be the sheriff."
They were together every night after that. At first Louise's friends were amused. He's another one of Louise's playthings, they thought. But when she informed them that she intended to marry Jeff, they were frantic.
"For Christ's sake, Louise, he's a nothing. He worked in a carnival. My God, you might as well be marrying a stable hand. He's handsome--granted. And he has a fab bod. But outside of sex, you have absolutely nothing in common, darling."
"Louise, Jeff's for breakfast, not dinner."
"You have a social position to uphold."
"Frankly, angel, he just won't fit in, will he?"
But nothing her friends said could dissuade Louise. Jeff was the most fascinating man she had ever met. She had found that men who were outstandingly handsome were either monumentally stupid or unbearably dull. Jeff was intelligent and amusing, and the combination was irresistible.
When Louise mentioned the subject of marriage to Jeff, he was as surprised as her friends had been.
"Why marriage? You've already got my body. I can't give you anything you don't have."
"It's very simple, Jeff. I love you. I want to share the rest of my life with you."
Marriage had been an alien idea, and suddenly it no longer was. Beneath Louise Hollander's worldly, sophisticated veneer, there was a vulnerable, lost little girl. She needs me, Jeff thought. The idea of a stable homelife and children was suddenly immensely appealing. It seemed to him that ever since he could remember, he had been running. It was time to stop.
They were married in the town hall in Tahiti three days later.
When they returned to New York, Jeff was summoned to the office of Scott Fogarty, Louise Hollander's attorney, a small, frigid man, tight-lipped and probably, Jeff thought, tight-assed.
"I have a paper here for you to sign," the attorney announced.
"What kind of paper?"
"It's a release. It simply states that in the event of the dissolution of your marriage to Louise Hollander--"
"Louise Stevens."
"--Louise Stevens, that you will not participate financially in any of her--"
Jeff felt the muscles of his jaw tightening. "Where do I sign?"
"Don't you want me to finish reading?"
"No. I don't think you get the point. I didn't marry her for her fucking money."
"Really, Mr. Stevens! I just--"
"Do you want me to sign it or don't you?"
The lawyer placed the paper in front of Jeff. He scrawled his signature and stormed out of the office. Louise's limousine and driver were waiting for him downstairs. As Jeff climbed in, he had to laugh to himself. What the hell am I so pissed off about? I've been a con artist all my life, and when I go straight for the first time and someone thinks I'm out to take them, I behave like a fucking Sunday school teacher.
Louise took Jeff to the best tailor in Manhattan. "You'll look fantastic in a dinner jacket," she coaxed. And he did. Before the second month of the marriage, five of Louise's best friends had tried to seduce the attractive newcomer in their circle, but Jeff ignored them. He was determined to make his marriage work.
Budge Hollander, Louise's brother, put Jeff up for membership in the exclusive New York Pilgrim Club, and Jeff was accepted. Budge was a beefy, middle-aged man who had gotten his sobriquet playing right tackle on the Harvard football team, where he got the reputation of being a player his opponents could not budge. He owned a shipping line, a banana plantation, cattle ranches, a meat-packing company, and more corporations than Jeff could count. Budge Hollander was not subtle in concealing his contempt for Jeff Stevens.
"You're really out of our class, aren't you, old boy? But as long as you amuse Louise in bed, that will do nicely. I'm very fond of my sister."
It took every ounce of willpower for Jeff to control himself. I'm not married to this prick. I'm married to Louise.
The other members of the Pilgrim Club were equally obnoxious. They found Jeff terribly amusing. All of them dined at the club every noontime, and pleaded for Jeff to tell them stories about his "carnie days," as they liked to call them. Perversely, Jeff made the stories more and more outrageous.
Jeff and Louise lived in a twenty-room townhouse filled with servants, on the East Side of Manhattan. Louise had estates in Long Island and the Bahamas, a villa in Sardinia, and a large apartment on Avenue Foch in Paris. Aside from the yacht, Louise owned a Maserati, a Rolls Corniche, a Lamborghini, and a Daimler.
It's fantastic, Jeff thought.
It's great, Jeff thought.
It's boring, Jeff thought. And degrading.
One morning he got up from his eighteenth-century four-poster bed, put on a Sulka robe, and went looking for Louise. He found her in the breakfast room.
"I've got to get a job," he told her.
"For heaven's sake, darling, why? We don't need the money."
"It has nothing to do with money. You can't expect me to sit around on my hands and be spoon-fed. I have to work."
Louise gave it a moment's thought. "All right, angel. I'll speak to Budge. He owns a stockbrokerage firm. Would you like to be a stockbroker, darling?"
"I just want to get off my ass," Jeff muttered.
He went to work for Budge. He had never had a job with regular hours before. I'm going to love it, Jeff thought.
He hated it. He stayed with it because he wanted to bring home a paycheck to his wife.
"When are you and I going to have a baby?" he asked Louise, after a lazy Sunday brunch.
"Soon, darling. I'm trying."
"Come to bed. Let's try again."
Jeff was seated at the luncheon table reserved for his brother-in-law and half a dozen other captains of industry at the Pilgrim Club.
Budge announced, "We just issued our annual report for the meat-packing company, fellas. Our profits are up forty percent."
"Why shouldn't they be?" one of the men at the table laughed. "You've got the fucking inspectors bribed." He turned to the others at the table. "Old clever Budge, here, buys inferior meat and has it stamped prime and sells it
for a bloody fortune."
Jeff was shocked. "People eat meat, for Christ's sake. They feed it to their children. He's kidding, isn't he, Budge?"
Budge grinned and whooped, "Look who's being moral!"
Over the next three months Jeff became very well acquainted with his table companions. Ed Zeller had paid a million in bribes in order to build a factory in Libya. Mike Quincy, the head of a conglomerate, was a raider who bought companies and illegally tipped off his friends when to buy and sell the stock. Alan Thompson, the richest man at the table, boasted of his company's policy. "Before they changed the damn law, we used to fire the old gray hairs one year before their pensions were due. Saved a fortune."
All the men cheated on taxes, had insurance scams, falsified expense accounts, and put their current mistresses on their payrolls as secretaries or assistants.
Christ, Jeff thought. They're just dressed-up carnies. They all run flat stores.
The wives were no better. They grabbed everything they could get their greedy hands on and cheated on their husbands. They're playing the key game, Jeff marveled.
When he tried to tell Louise how he felt, she laughed. "Don't be naive, Jeff. You're enjoying your life, aren't you?"
The truth was that he was not. He had married Louise because he believed she needed him. He felt that children would change everything.
"Let's have one of each. It's time. We've been married a year now."
"Angel, be patient. I've been to the doctor, and he told me I'm fine. Maybe you should have a checkup and see if you're all right."
Jeff went.
"You should have no trouble producing healthy children," the doctor assured him.
And still nothing happened.
On Black Monday Jeff's world fell apart. It started in the morning when he went into Louise's medicine chest for an aspirin. He found a shelf full of birth control pills. One of the cases was almost empty. Lying innocently next to it was a vial of white powder and a small golden spoon. And that was only the start of the day.
At noon, Jeff was seated in a deep armchair in the Pilgrim Club, waiting for Budge to appear, when he heard two men behind him talking.
"She swears that her Italian singer's cock is over ten inches long."
There was a snicker. "Well, Louise always liked them big."
They're talking about another Louise, Jeff told himself.
"That's probably why she married that carnival person in the first place. But she does tell the most amusing stories about him. "You won't believe what he did the other day..."
Jeff rose and blindly made his way out of the club.
He was filled with a rage such as he had never known. He wanted to kill. He wanted to kill the unknown Italian. He wanted to kill Louise. How many other men had she been sleeping with during the past year? They had been laughing at him all this time. Budge and Ed Zeller and Mike Quincy and Alan Thompson and their wives had been having an enormous joke at his expense. And Louise, the woman he had wanted to protect. Jeff's immediate reaction was to pack up and leave. But that was not good enough. He had no intention of letting the bastards have the last laugh.
That afternoon when Jeff arrived home, Louise was not there. "Madame went out this morning," Pickens, the butler, said. "I believe she had several appointments."
I'll bet she did, Jeff thought. She's out fucking that ten-inch-cock Italian. Jesus Christ!
By the time Louise arrived home, Jeff had himself under tight control. "Did you have a nice day?" Jeff asked.
"Oh, the usual boring things, darling. A beauty appointment, shopping....How was your day, angel?"
"It was interesting," Jeff said truthfully. "I learned a lot."
"Budge tells me you're doing beautifully."
"I am," Jeff assured her. "And very soon I'm going to be doing even better."
Louise stroked his hand. "My bright husband. Why don't we go to bed early?"
"Not tonight," Jeff said. "I have a headache."
He spent the next week making his plans.
He began at lunch at the club. "Do any of you know anything about computer frauds?" Jeff asked.
"Why?" Ed Zeller wanted to know. "You planning to commit one?"
There was a sputter of laughter.
"No, I'm serious," Jeff insisted. "It's a big problem. People are tapping into computers and ripping off banks and insurance companies and other businesses for billions of dollars. It gets worse all the time."
"Sounds right up your alley," Budge murmured.
"Someone I met has come up with a computer he says can't be tampered with."
"And you want to have him knocked off," Mike Quincy kidded.
"As a matter of fact, I'm interested in raising money to back him. I just wondered if any of you might know something about computers."
"No," Budge grinned, "but we know everything about backing inventors, don't we fellas?"
There was a burst of laughter.
Two days later at the club, Jeff passed by the usual table and explained to Budge, "I'm sorry I won't be able to join you fellows today. I'm having a guest for lunch."
When Jeff moved on to another table, Alan Thompson grinned, "He's probably having lunch with the bearded lady from the circus."
A stooped, gray-haired man entered the dining room and was ushered to Jeff's table.
"Jesus!" Mike Quincy said. "Isn't that Professor Ackerman?"
"Who's Professor Ackerman?"
"Don't you ever read anything but financial reports, Budge? Vernon Ackerman was on the cover of Time last month. He's chairman of the President's National Scientific Board. He's the most brilliant scientist in the country."
"What the hell is he doing with my dear brother-in-law?"
Jeff and the professor were engrossed in a deep conversation all during lunch, and Budge and his friends grew more and more curious. When the professor left, Budge motioned Jeff over to his table.
"Hey, Jeff. Who was that?"
Jeff looked guilty. "Oh...you mean Vernon?"
"Yeah. What were you two talking about?"
"We...ah..." The others could almost watch Jeff's thought processes as he tried to dodge the question. "I...ah...might write a book about him. He's a very interesting character."
"I didn't know you were a writer."
"Well, I guess we all have to start sometime."
Three days later Jeff had another luncheon guest. This time it was Budge who recognized him. "Hey! That's Seymour Jarrett, chairman of the board of Jarrett International Computer. What the hell would he be doing with Jeff?"
Again, Jeff and his guest held a long, animated conversation. When the luncheon was over, Budge sought Jeff out.
"Jeffrey, boy, what's with you and Seymour Jarrett?"
"Nothing," Jeff said quickly. "Just having a chat." He started to walk away. Budge stopped him.
"Not so fast, old buddy. Seymour Jarrett is a very busy fellow. He doesn't sit around having long chats about nothing."
Jeff said earnestly, "All right. The truth is, Budge, that Seymour collects stamps, and I told him about a stamp I might be able to acquire for him."
The truth, my ass, Budge thought.
The following week, Jeff lunched at the club with Charles Bartlett, the president of Bartlett & Bartlett, one of the largest private capital venture groups in the world. Budge, Ed Zeller, Alan Thompson, and Mike Quincy watched in fascination as the two men talked, their heads close together.
"Your brother-in-law is sure in high-flying company lately," Zeller commented. "What kind of deal has he got cooking, Budge?"
Budge said testily, "I don't know, but I'm sure in hell going to find out. If Jarrett and Bartlett are interested, there must be a pot of money involved."
They watched as Bartlett rose, enthusiastically pumped Jeff's hand, and left. As Jeff passed their table, Budge caught his arm. "Sit down, Jeff. We want to have a little talk with you."
"I should get back to the office," Jeff protested. "I--"
"Yo
u work for me, remember? Sit down." Jeff sat. "Who were you having lunch with?"
Jeff hesitated. "No one special. An old friend."
"Charlie Bartlett's an old friend?"
"Kind of."
"What were you and your old friend Charlie discussing, Jeff?"
"Uh...cars, mostly. Old Charlie likes antique cars, and I heard about this '37 Packard, four-door convertible--"
"Cut the horseshit!" Budge snapped. "You're not collecting stamps or selling automobiles, or writing any fucking book. What are you really up to?"
"Nothing. I--"
"You're raising money for something, aren't you, Jeff?" Ed Zeller asked.
"No!" But he said it a shade too quickly.
Budge put a beefy arm around Jeff. "Hey, buddy, this is your brother-in-law. We're family, remember?" He gave Jeff a bear hug. "It's something about that tamper-proof computer you mentioned last week, right?"
They could see by the look on Jeffs face that they had trapped him.
"Well, yes."
It was like pulling teeth to get anything out of the son of a bitch. "Why didn't you tell us Professor Ackerman was involved?"
"I didn't think you'd be interested."
"You were wrong. When you need capital, you go to your friends."
"The professor and I don't need capital," Jeff said "Jarrett and Bartlett--"
"Jarrett and Bartlett are fuckin' sharks! They'll eat you alive," Alan Thompson exclaimed.
Ed Zeller picked it up. "Jeff, when you deal with friends, you don't get hurt."
"Everything is already arranged," Jeff told them. "Charlie Bartlett--"
"Have you signed anything yet?"
"No, but I gave my word--"
"Then nothing's arranged. Hell, Jeff boy, in business people change their minds every hour."
"I shouldn't even be discussing this with you," Jeff protested. "Professor Ackerman's name can't be mentioned. He's under contract to a government agency."