He let out another strange, raspy laugh. “Hell, I like it better the other way around. I'm the lazy type myself. Prolific, imaginative, but lazy. Half the time the only thing I get into is a conversation.”
“And the other half?”
“That's another story not fit for virginal ears,” he said.
She almost had an answer for him, but he winked and walked off, sipping at his beer. For some reason she felt annoyed. Raul Fucia had been right, of course. She
had
known what she was doing when she dressed for the party, instinctively aware of her potential, but it was not more than any of the others had known. No one was needed to tell her that she was beautiful and well constructed. They had, but the mirror was enough. Raul's reaction was enough to satisfy her judgment, but then that damned Dog had to come along and shatter her illusions. He couldn't have cared less.
She picked up her drink and tasted it, swirling the ice around in the glass, feeling a little smile pulling at the comers of her mouth. Hell, the dog, yes, small “d” dog, did it to her. He couldn't have cared less. And she wasn't too old, either. She was just right, absolutely prime, beautiful, knowledgeable, apt and exactly right.
The smile widened when she realized she had put her finger on it. She had been around just a little too long in the fast-moving world of show business where judgment had to be quick and correct if you wanted to survive not to miss it. She had put him in the forty-plus class, but the full head of short hair and only light touch of gray had fooled her. That and the strange lack of aging and the musculature. Heredity. Dog Kelly was a real, total predator.
And now he was stalking. She watched him across the room, his complete unconsciousness of what he was doing. The women's eyes would drift and follow him, return blankly a moment to what they had been doing, then drift again. In the small groups he would join there was an un-comfortableness among the men, barely discernible because they were aware and the act they chose as a facade would cover them. Sharon knew they felt the same way she did. They wondered what he was doing there.
For some obscure reason a funny thought ran through her mind. She wondered if he were carrying a gun.
It was Darcy Taylor who took the initiative as always. A sweet thing on the screen, but a wild one when a man passed she wanted. She left Raul in midsentence and had her arm through Dog's, taking the glass out of his hand to taste his drink with a mock shudder and steering him out of sight to the bar beyond the French windows. It just wasn't Raul's day at all. Sharon felt sorry for whoever he managed to go home with this night.
“Enjoying yourself, Sharon?”
She looked up, smiling, knowing the voice. “Hello Walt.”
Walter Gentry III was the prototype of any and every bachelor who ran his own private world with inherited millions that Hollywood had attempted to emulate. The major difference was that this, the last of the fabulous Gentry clan, had, by shrewd business acumen, more than doubled his inheritance, another factor he had inherited along with a natural aristocratic appearance and charming manner. He had been the target of women from monied families for the past twenty years, but somehow never bothered to become permanently attached to any of them.
“I see you met Dog,” Walt said.
“Yes, who is he?”
He tapped a long cigarette from a gold case and lit it, letting the stream of smoke drift from his lips. “We met in the Army. Quite a guy. He was one of the natural-born killers. He make an impression?”
“Unusual type,” Sharon told him noncommittally. “What's he do?”
Walt smiled and shrugged. “I often wondered but never bothered to ask. One day he took me to a fraternal club in London and I saw a picture of him in a football uniform. Seems like he was an All American in college.”
“He looks like a cop.”
“I kind of think he dabbled in that business too. He's got some odd friends.” He picked a drink from the tray of a passing waiter and tasted it. “Good to see you again, Sharon. It's been quite awhile. How come old S.C. let you out?”
She looked up into his knowing grin and smiled back. “My boss is dangling me like bait on a hook for his enterprises, as if you didn't know.”
“Lovely bait. How could any fish resist it?”
“You're not supposed to. I was critically inspected for capture appeal by the great one himself before being turned loose in your pond.”
“And what sort of catch are you supposed to land this time?”
He signaled the waiter over, took another glass from the tray and handed it to her. “Thank you,” she said. “S. C. Cable wants you for a coproduction deal. He figures you for at least a five-million-dollar bite.”
“Nice, he laughed. ”And you're the bait. I imagine you are expected to give your all.”
“That's what I've been told. You'll never miss a slice off a cut loaf, and all that sort of thing.”
“Except that your boss doesn't know ... or believe ... that this particular loaf has never been sliced.”
“He's been told, but he doesn't believe,” she said.
“Ah, you demi-vierges must have a rough time. You're too much for me, young lady.”
“I thought you enjoyed the last time.”
“Oh, I did. And thoroughly too. A little nerve-racking, but absolutely enjoyable. You're quite a performer. If you must know, I never had a more pleasant night and day after, but it was a real cliff-hanger with that attitude of yours. Not that I don't appreciate it. All I can think of is how awful it would be if you ever had an accident, like slipping on a bicycle pedal or something. All your efforts would have been wasted.”
“I could still take a lie detector test,” she said.
“Sharon, I'd sure like to be the lucky man Want to make a trade?”
“For what?”
“Your virginity against the five million?”
“Walt, you're a wonderful man, but I think I'll hold out awhile longer.”
“Old S.C. is going to be pretty mad when he hears about the terms you're turning down.”
She smiled at him, a laugh in her voice. “He'll never believe it,” she said. “The bonus factor alone is worth five percent.”
Gentry had to laugh back at her. “You know, sugar, I usually can get anything I want with a nice sidewise glance of my gorgeous blue eyes, and if that doesn't work a cheap diamond compact will do the trick. Except with you. Honey, you're impossible, but to get you off the hook and let you enjoy your own personal hang-up a few months longer, you can tell S. C. Cable that the deal is on. If you even like me a little bit, tell him you gave me some of that precious stuff just to preserve my reputation.”
“Any options?”
“Sharon ... I'm too lazy to fight for it. Or over it.” He looked across the room to where Dogeron Kelly was standing, leaning against the doorjamb of the French windows, looking out into the misty night with Mona Merrima nuzzling his shoulder. “Watch out for him, Sharon,” he said.
“Why, Walt?”
Gentry took another sip of his drink and idly flipped open a gold cigarette case. “He reminds me of a title of a book. Not the book, just the title.”
“Oh?”
“Call of the Wild,”
he told her.
Â
She could feel the heat in her and he was a full room away. When she looked down, her fingers were twisting the ring around ... third finger ... left hand. It was made of brass and she had to wash the verdigris off every night. The stone was glass, green and chipped, something they laughed at but she excused as her good-luck charm when everyone knew she was neither sentimental nor superstitious. Her virgin stone one had named it, still green, not yet ripe, and when it changed color, ready for picking. She had culled out all the answers when they queried her and the answer were enough to stuff up the mouths of the smart ones. She had been around too long and too well. The diamond's cutting edges were just a little too sharp to touch. Nobody ever mentioned the ring anymore.
Across the room Mona Merriman had taken him outside the French doors. The rain had stopped and a gentle fog turned the windows across the avenue into soft orange ovals. Sharon got up and walked up to Raul Fucia, holding her glass in front of her.
“I need a drink,” she said.
VII
“Mona Merriman,” I said, “you're a scratchy woman. Why don't you go get yourself a celebrity?”
“I've done them all, dear. You look like better copy.”
“Except that I'm a nonentity.”
“Not quite, Dogeron. I've already spoken to your friend Lee Shay. You see, he doesn't dare hold things back from me. Your being an heir of Barrin Industries makes you an item.”
“Mona, an heir I am, but an inheritor I'm not. I told you I was the family bastard.”
“Even
that
is news,” she smiled sweetly. “After all, mine is a gossip column.”
I ran my fingers down the side of her face and pinched the skin under her chin. “Baby,” I said, “you wouldn't want me to chew you up, would you?”
“That sounds like fun.”
“I didn't mean that way.”
“There's another way?” She was laughing at me now.
“Suppose I told everybody how old you are.”
Her laugh didn't fade a bit. “Impossible!”
“Want to bet?” I asked her.
Then the smile started to ease off.
I said, “Give me one hour on the telephone and I'll give you the place, date and time.”
She cocked her head and looked at me, not quite sure of herself. “I don't believe it.”
“Look at my eyes, Mona,” I said.
“I see them.”
“Now you know. It's a game I can play better than anybody you ever saw. Just nip me and I'll bite your head off.”
“You really
are
a bastard, aren't you?”
“Everybody keeps telling me so,” I said.
“Would you really tell how old I am ...
If
you found out?”
“Just try nipping me, kid.”
“You're interesting, Dog. How old am I?”
“Wild guess?”
“Sure.”
I let my fingers travel over her face again and felt the tiny lines. “Twenty-one,” I grinned.
“Do it again, but for real this time.”
“Sixty-two,” I said.
“You overaged me by a year, you bastard. If you tell anybody I'll kill you.”
“If they ask you're under thirty.”
“Shit. I love you, you crazy creep. Now I'm going and find out all about you, then
you'll
be sorry.”
“Come on,” I said, “why work for it. Anything you want to know, I'll tell you.”
Mona Merriman looked into her near-empty glass, swirled the contents around a few times, then met my eyes. “Have you ever killed anybody?”
I nodded.
“Want to speak about it?”
“Not necessarily.”
“Guess I got me a live one. You know what I'd like to do to you?”
“Naturally. I always have trouble with you young broads. Pick on somebody your own age.”
“Okay, killer. Now one little kiss and let's go back inside.”
Her lips barely brushed mine, but I could feel the tiger behind them and all the real want that was there. The little pubic touch, the outthrust chest that tried so hard to initiate the nipples into a semiorgasm behind the engineering of elastic and fabric. Twenty years ago she could have been fun.
So I grabbed her arm, kissed her right, just once, and she went all tight at first, then to pieces, and I got that funny little-girl look and said, “No more, Mona. You and I have a generation gap.”
“I'd like to gap you.”
“But you won't. Now behave.”
“Bastards I have to run into,” she smiled “I'm going to take you apart, Mr. Kelly.”
“It's been tried before.”
“By experts?”
“By experts,” I said.
“You only think so, Mr. Kelly.” Her hand dropped from my shoulder, reached down and felt me, then went back to my shoulder again. “My, you are impervious.”
“Not really, doll. I just pick my own time and place.”
“Let's go back. I want some friends of mine to meet you.”
Walt Gentry saw us step across the sill of the French doors into the alcoholic hubbub of the room, waved and excused himself from the couple he had been talking to and ambled over in that loose-limbed stride of his. He gripped my hand and shook it with a grin and a wink toward Mona. “Good to see you again, Dog. It's been awhile.”
“Same here, Walt.”
“Mona got her hooks into you already?”
She gave his arm a pinch and faked a pout. “You could have prepared me for this beast, Walter. He's a refreshing change from the usual group.”
“That's because I'm a commoner,” I said.
“You back to stay?” Walt asked me.
“Could be.”
“Things get a little dull on the Continent?”
I shrugged, trying to remember the last twenty-some years. “What's excitement one time gets to be pretty routine the next. Maybe I'm like the salmon coming back to spawn where it was born.”
“And die,” Mona added. “They always die after they spawn. Is that why you came back, Dog?”
“Dying isn't my bag, lady. At least not yet.”
“Ah, an item. You've come home to spawn. And who will be your spawnee?”
Walt laughed and patted her shoulder. “Mona, my girl, must you always look at the sexual side of things?”